News: Microsoft Announces Xbox One

Microsoft has unveiled its next-generation video games console, Xbox One, its’ new voice and motion-controlled home entertainment… thing.

“Where your games look and feel like nothing else, where your TV becomes more intelligent, where all of your entertainment comes alive in one place. Team Xbox is on a new mission – design and build an all-in-one system to light up a new generation of games, TV and entertainment.”

If you don’t want to read my whole sceptical story, here’s the summary:

TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV, TV. Call of Duty. Plus dog.

No backwards compatibility with the Xbox 360.

Spielberg: Halo TV series. Oh, that’s TV again…

News: MasterCard Display Card

I know this announcement originally came from a MasterCard press release in November 2012, but given the recent hack of ATM’s in New York and further credit card fraud, perhaps this ‘future of credit cards’ will be brought forward.

The problem with the current generation of credit cards are not well protected. Most of the time, you can get away with just the credit card number, the expiration date and the security code, all of which are shown on the card itself.

MasterCard, is moving on to additional verification to add a two-factor authentication to the card. The slightly clunky Mastercard Securecode demands  online purchasers use an extra partial pass phrase on sites that support SecureCode. Verified with Visa works in a similar way, as the merchants have to integrate the feature on their sites.

Now MasterCard Display Card harkens back to an old remote network login authentication that we used to use to access corporate networks in the 80′s and 90′s. Adopting the one-time session authentication token, MasterCard  plans to add an LCD display and numeric keypad to their credit card.

How-to: Avoid Fake and Insecure Apps

Do you assume that anything in the Apple and Android app stores has been vigorously tested, vetted and proven 100% legit?

Don’t.

We’ve been telling users for decades now to be extra careful when downloading PC software to avoid common scams by crackers, fraudsters and pirates: so it is with tablet and smart-phone apps. Even though most Android malware comes from apps ‘side-loaded’ or installed from outside Google Play, be sceptical of cheap, free and trial apps even in the store. These may be perfectly legitimate, they may also be cloaks for nefarious activities such as financial and identity theft.

Opinion: Why Windows 8 Has Flopped

The numbers are in and the numbers are disappointing. Windows 8 may be shipping in the millions (100 million to date) but against the half billion of Windows 7 licenses and the long tail of Windows XP, the Count Dracula operating system that refuses to die, it has a long way to go.

With sales now dropping off in established markets, it looks unlikely that, even with the burgeonging markets in the developing world, Windows 8 will be the unparalleled success that CEO Ballmer ‘bet the company on’ (actually he didn’t but that’s another story).

So what’s gone wrong for Windows 8?

How-to: Avoid Common Security Mistakes On-line Part2

In part one, we looked at the most common software mistakes; this time the focus is on the ‘wetware’ – that’s you, the human being, with all your fallible human behaviours.

Mistake #4: Falling for Email Exploits
Email is still the top delivery system for cracks and software exploits. And for phishing. And for social engineering.

Email commonly harbours all those cold callers who try to scam you or steal the contents of your house while you’re not looking.

Review: Outlook.com Web Mail 2013

Hotmail gets the Metro treatment to become Outlook.com. Microsoft’s web-based email service remains solid, without starting a revolution.

Realising that Hotmail was getting long in the tooth, and was hardly a unified experience sitting in the Windows 8 browser, Microsoft is now adopting Outlook as a brand for personal, web-based email services.

The accompanying facelift – or face-flattening when you look at the Fisher-Price Metro/Modern-UI look imported from Windows 8 – means it sits comfortably in the Metro browser.

I finally got ‘upgraded’ from Hotmail to Outlook.com, which I put off as long as I could: as we know, not all such upgrades are an improvement.