Sony Faces another Hack Attack; This Time Compromising Its Website Pages

A web page of the official Sony website in Thailand was hacked recently, redirecting the users to enter personal information on another fake webpage of an imposter Italian credit card company. It was disclosed by the security firm, F-Secure, on Friday that the hackers intended to, once again, steal personal and crucial information from customers.

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Recently Sony has continuously been victim of high-level hacking. First attack was exposed in April, when hackers successfully broke into Sony PlayStation Network and stole a huge chunk of data from more than 77 million accounts. Later on the 2^nd May, Sony further declared that hackers also stole another chunk of data, this time of almost 25 million user accounts via their Sony Online Entertainment website. The first attack on PSN is being considered to be the most large hack attack in the Internet history, which left the Sony devastated and it had to immediately suspend most of its services, including PlayStation Network, for almost a month.

Glenn Beck Setting Up a Deals Website, In Same Market as Groupon

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The experienced and one of the most popular TV commentators, Glenn Beck, will be leaving from the Fox News talk show within next few months. Though he is, in advance, working hard in arranging his next endeavor, which will be a daily deals website. Glenn Beck’s own personal production company, Mercury Radio Arts, will be soon officially launching MarkDown.com. This website will be quite similar, in features and offers, to its rivals like Groupon, LivingSocial. There are thousands other deals group buying website companies in the market, Back hopes to make his website different from all the others. It has been revealed that this website will offer daily deal considering enough people have purchased it within a specified time limit, the first deal of the website be the offer to buy chocolate worth $20, in the retail price of $10 from Chocolate.com.

Markdown will also be having a showy referral system offering deals like; if a user refers to someone for visiting the website and that someone ends up buying some deal from it, the first user will get 10% more discount on the discounted price. In essence if a user is able to make 10 successful referrals to friends, it will get the promoted item for free. Beck has introduced this new website on his own personal page, saying “Markdown is a place where I will be able to connect you directly with the products and retailers that I love.” Adding underneath “…But, best of all, Markdown is a place where my personal slogan and values will be brought to life.”

President Barack Obama Speaks On the Role of Technology in the Uprisings of Middle East and Africa

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During a speech on Thursday morning, President Barack Obama declared the official stance of the U.S. government over the role of technology in the the uprisings occurring in Middle East and Africa. He acclaimed all the changes that the role of technology has brought about and stated that this technology-led uprisings and movements have laid even more stress on the support of U.S. to ensure proper and free access to information on the Internet. 

“In fact, real reform will not come at the ballot box alone. Through our efforts we must support those basic rights to speak your mind and access information,” said Obama. He added that “We will support open access to the Internet, and the right of journalists to be heard — whether it’s a big news organization or a blogger. In the 21st century, information is power; the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.”

Panasonic Unable To Present Its Full Year Forecast After the Earthquake

Image via CrunchBaseJapan's Panasonic Corp. will have to go through a very difficult time this year due to the disturbing earthquake in March, 2011. Their sales are constantly being held up by the disaster, which their executives claim is expected to continue till September. The company will also be conducting 17,000 job cuts until March 2013 in almost equal numbers throughout the company’s local and foreign operations, informed the President, Fumio Ohtsubo, on Friday.

He estimated that due to the unimaginable loss by earthquake and pow

er shortages in the time of summer, it is not likely that that the demand will rise for the company. Ohtsubo said "On April 28, we forecast the disaster would cut first quarter sales by several hundreds of billion yen." He claimed that "At this point we see it as less, possibly half or a third of what we thought. But the second quarter will not be much better, because of the lingering difficulties with the supply chain." The factories of Panasonic in the most affected northern region of the country are almost repaired but still not in the full operating condition. "Basically, I have the strong sense that the 2011/2012 financial year will be extremely tough," he declared.

Symantec Plans To Buy Smaller Companies This Year

The C.E.O. of Symantec Corp., Enrique Salem, has very strong intentions to make some valued acquisitions this year, he is scheduled to present his plans of acquiring other security and storage software companies to the investors next week. Symantec being the world's fifth largest software maker, has not made any large acquisition yet, except the last years purchase of  VeriSign Inc, which creates technology for secured payments over the Internet, for the amount of $1.3 billion.

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This Tuesday, while attending the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York, Salem told that making such an expensive acquisition is still possible for the company; however, he seemed more inclined towards smaller, "tuck-in" acquisitions. The prime targets of acquisition for Symantec this year could be the companies working in the field of not only storage or security companies but cloud computing and virtualization too.

He asserted that Symantec may even make a decision just next week in its annual analyst meeting in New York, the company has $3 billion in cash and it just has to decide the deals. The budget of last year for acquisitions was $2 billion, from which it not only bought VeriSign assets, but also a private data encryption software maker, PGP Corp for $300 million.

Apple Rumored to Be Adding the Build-To-Order Mac Feature in Its iOS App Store App

According to the recent inside news from within Apple Inc., it is planning to upgrade its "Apple Store" retail app of iOS, adding the new support for build-to-order Mac purchases. It is expectedly scheduled to take place during the routine retail servicing this weekend. MacRumors also asserted that Apple has plans to add this new feature in Apple Store application for iOS devices along with other routinely planned upgrades to its online and brick-and-mortar retail operations as well. It is being told that this up gradation will not take long, and the newly updated app will be available on Sunday "with full support for customizing build-to-order Macs." This would mean that there would be no more difference in the options available through the Apple online store and Apple Store application iOS anymore.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Currently the Apple Store app for iOS devices only supported features like stock configurations, AppleCare and One to One. Once this upgrade is enrolled the customers will be able to only be able order customized processor, memory, hard drive but also several other hardware options for every model on the store, along with select software titles for reinstallation. The scheduled plans of Apple revamping its Stores include a number of major upgrades to not only for its iOS Apple Store app but also the online Apple Store; procedures are scheduled to take place on this Sunday, 22^nd May. Apple already disabled the option of inquiring order status on its website, on Friday until Sunday, for the up gradations of its Sores.

Grant Imhara, the Host Mythbusters, Gives Words of Wisdom to Aspiring Hardware Hackers

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All those teenagers who are always messing with the hardware of any everyday gadget to robots, the host of TV show MythBusters, Grant Imahara gave few words of advice to support their obsession. Imhara attempted to help strengthen the instincts of Hardware Hackers; he began stating that “Anything that’s already broken is fair game! The worst-case scenario is it stays broken. The best-case scenario is you find out how it works or, even better, transform it into something else.”

Like all other kinds of hacking, Hardware hacking also gets your hands dirty and requires a sense of curiosity to know what and how things actually function. Imhara spoke on his show asserting that most of the hardware hackers gain that feeling of curiosity at a very early age; he said “I think it’s something you’re born with — the desire to know how things work inside.” He added “And you can tell your kid is a hardware hacker if none of the Hot Wheels cars have wheels, if the remote control gets take apart on a weekly basis.” “The best thing to do is give them more things to take apart so they can see how things work on the inside. Give them tools, and teach them how to use those tools,” Imhara added.