SINGAPORE, 4 August 2008 - Singaporeans will now be able to cruise the information superhighway with a new fixed broadband service operated by M1.

Offering a mobile broadband service since 2006, M1 will become a full fledged broadband player when it introduces M1 Fixed Broadband from tomorrow.

M1 Fixed Broadband is available to all homes with cable access points or which are cable ready. The service is capable of achieving download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 2 Mbps.

“M1 is repositioning itself for the future as it develops new businesses anchored on our core competencies. The launch of M1 Fixed Broadband is an important step in our planned transformation from a single-play mobile operator to a dynamic multi-play operator with interests in both the mobile and fixed sectors. The proliferation of the Internet and the increasing demand for Internet bandwidth also make this an opportune entry into the fixed broadband market,” said Neil Montefiore, Chief Executive Officer of M1.

M1 will launch its fixed broadband service with four unlimited data plans based on varying Internet access speeds. Providing customers faster speeds for less, the monthly subscription fee starts from as low as $40.60 for existing M1 customers*. Customers will also be offered a plug-and-play cable modem as part of the launch promotion when they sign up for the service.

Promotional Price

• 10 Mbps $43.50/month
• 15 Mbps $58.50/month
• 30 Mbps $73.50/month
• 100 Mbps $88.50/month

Promotional Price for existing M1 customers

• 10 Mbps $40.60/month
• 15 Mbps $50.70/month
• 30 Mbps $63.70/month
• 100 Mbps $76.70/month

Usual Price

• 10 Mbps $58/month
• 15 Mbps $78/month
• 30 Mbps $98/month
• 100 Mbps $118/month

Those who wish to sign up for the M1 Fixed Broadband service can call at any M1 shop or visit www.m1.com.sg/broadband for more information.

* Existing M1 customers eligible for the additional discounts refers to existing postpaid customers on selected M1 Mobile Plans and Mobile Broadband plans

Source: Hardware Zone Forums

Whats up with the Internet today? So many major news floating around the Internet.

• Microsoft releases the long awaited Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to Windows Update
• Apple releases Safari 3.1
• Intel officially announced new 6-core processor codenamed “Dunnington” and new Itanium processor codenamed “Tukwila”
• NVIDIA officially launched GeForce 9 - 9800 GX2
• Nokia officially announced N82 in Black
• Engadget played with iPhone Firmware 2.0
• WordPress releases the long awaited WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate 1

Did I missed out any technological news?

The format war is finally over and Blu-ray has won. Personally I am quite happy that Blu-ray has won as I preferred it over HD-DVD. I believed that consumer will greatly benefit from it, if there is only 1 standard format in the market, just like DVD and CD.

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. “While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Source: Engadget

Interesting article that I found in Neowin: Back Page News.

Ten years ago, Microsoft was the company everyone loved to hate.

The most vociferous Microsoft haters slammed the company for being a greedy industry bully that used its monopolistic, clunky, copycat operating system to force software on users and coerce partners into unfair licensing deals.

Don’t look now, but the role of the industry’s biggest bully is increasingly played by Apple, not Microsoft. Here’s a look at how Apple has shoved Microsoft aside as the company with the worst reputation as a monopolist, copycat and a bully.

Apple the monopolist

The core complaint about Microsoft in the 1990s was that its Windows market share gave it monopoly power, which it abused in multiple ways. Attorneys General and others zeroed in on the “bundling” of the Internet Explorer Web browser, which they claimed was forced on users because Microsoft offered it as part of Windows.

People love iPods (including me; my family of four has purchased 12 iPods in the past few years). But iPods come bundled with iTunes. Want to buy music from Apple? Guess what? You must install iTunes. Want an Apple cell phone from AT&T? Yep! ITunes is required even if you want only to make phone calls. Want to buy ringtones for your Apple phone? ITunes.

Apple not only “bundles” iTunes with multiple products, it forces you to use it. At least with Internet Explorer, you could always just download a competitor and ignore IE.

Not fair, you might say. Any hardware device that syncs data with a PC as part of its core functionality has software to facilitate that syncing. True enough. But operating systems have browsers as part of core functionality, too. Doesn’t Mac OS X come with Safari? Doesn’t the iPhone?

And “bundling” works. Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has distributed 600 million copies of iTunes to date. The overwhelming majority of those copies were iTunes for Windows. And iTunes for Windows’ popularity isn’t driven by software product quality. ITunes is the slowest, clunkiest, most nonintuitive application on my system. But I need it because I love my iPods.

At least with Windows, you could reformat your PC and install Linux or any number of other PC-compatible operating systems. Can I reformat my iPod and install something else? Can I uninstall iTunes but keep using the iTunes store and my iPods? Apple strongly discourages all that, claiming that the iPod, the iPod software and iTunes are three components of the same product. But that’s what Microsoft said about Windows and IE.

Source: PC World - Is Apple the New Microsoft?

We all use passwords every day; they have become very common today. Checking out mail, transferring money, shopping online, all those actions involve introducing a password. So if you use a password it is supposed to be a long difficult one in order not to get your account stolen. We are always told of stories about breaking easy passwords and stealing money.

Very many people have read and heard these stories, but let us see what happened to the passwords that people use.

10. ‘thomas’ (0.099%)
In the tenth place we see a name Thomas as a password. It was the most popular name in UK in the year 2000 maybe that is what made this password so popular. Anyway 1 person of 1000 picks this word as their password. Or could it be Thomas Jefferson or Thomas Edison? Their fans could use this password too.

9. ‘arsenal’ (0.111%)
The other popular choice for a password is the name of a soccer team. For example Arsenal is in 6th place in soccer related passwords. And it made it to the top 10 most common passwords.

8. ‘monkey’ (0.133%)
Why monkey? I dont understand it too. Maybe people think that no one would think of this password if they wanted to brake into your account. Usual there is a 6 minimum letter passwords and monkey is a 6 letter word, besides it is memorable so maybe this is what played its role.

7. ‘charlie’ (0.139%)
We have got one more name in our top list. Maybe such famous persons like Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Sheen or the Charlie from the Chocolate Factory persuaded people to choose that password. Or maybe people just use its Slang Meaning which means cocaine and that’s not a very good thing.

6. ‘qwerty’ (0.141%)
QWERTY is the word that is the easiest to type. Our keyboard set is called like that and this is what comes first to mind for those who use a 10 finger fast typing technique. It made 1 person out of 700 pick this word as their password or maybe not.

5. ‘123456′ (0.176%)
Another easy combination that is even easier for the users ‘123456′ it meet the requirements of minimum 6 letter password and this password contains numbers in it which is another requirement on some web sites. Just count to six and you get a password.

4. ‘letmein’ (0.176%)
A good desire when you want to check out your account or see if you received any money there. It is a modern equivalent of ‘open sesame’ which is longer and takes one second more to type. It is something like ‘trustno1′ password from X-Files series.

3. ‘liverpool’ (0.182%)
Liverpool is one of the most popular soccer teams in the world and here is the result: one person out of 550 picks this word as their password. So many people trust their team and their password.
By the way ‘liverpool’ is ranked 3rd in the most common soccer related passwords leaving Manchester United and Newcastle United far behind. Well maybe those names are too long and hard to type.

2. ‘password’ (0.378%)
Here we come; we have got to the 2nd place with password ‘password’. Well, when it says “Type Password” you start typing a password. And 1 person in 250 is doing that.

1. ‘123′ (0.3784%)
It has not gone too far from ‘password’ but it is even easier to count to 3 then to count to 6. Apparently not that many websites require users to have a minimum 6 letter passwords. And it brings us to 4 people out of 1,000 that type the simplest combination possible ‘123′. It is a good thing they dont type something like ‘111′ or ‘222′ etc. Maybe most of us know that it would be ridiculous to have such a simple password.

If you add up all those percentages you will get that 1.8 % of people worldwide use one of the passwords from the top 10 list. As a matter of fact 6.5 % of people use passwords from the top 100 list. We are glad that the remaining 91.7 % has nothing in common when they pick a password. It is up to you to decide whether to use a longer and stronger password or to use a more memorable one.

Source: LunaSouL of Hardware Zone Forums

In a roundtable with the European press, John Chambers confirmed the “end of life” of the Linksys name, being replaced by the new and redesigned Cisco branding.

This decision follows Cisco’s move last April to make it easier for Linksys resellers to add Cisco products to their offerings and vice versa. Also, just a few weeks ago, Cisco created a new division solely focused on the SMB market and headed by Rick Moran, formerly marketing chief of several Cisco communications applications like the unified communications portfolio, Cisco IPICS, Cisco Small Business Systems (Linksys One), TelePresence, Business Video and Physical security.

“It will all come overtime into a Cisco brand. The reason we kept Linksys’ brand because it was better known in the US than even Cisco was for the consumer. As you go globally there’s very little advantage in that”, said Cisco’s CEO.

Source: Cisco kills Linksys brand, plans agressive move into consumer markets (video)

Press Release
SanDisk Corporation and Sony Corporation today announced the development of the “Memory Stick Micro” format, an ultra-small IC recording media designed to meet the growing storage needs of highly compact, multifunctional mobile phones. Licensing for the development of “Memory Stick Micro” compatible hardware will begin October 3, 2005.

“Memory Stick Micro” media is approximately one-quarter the size of “Memory Stick PRO Duo” media, yet only about 1.2 mm thick. The media’s edges are slotted lengthwise to allow for more slim-line designed connectors to reduce space in host devices. As dual-voltage media, Memory Stick Micro supports devices operating at 3.3 volts and 1.8 volts.

Memory Stick Micro is designed as an externally removable media with a controlled eject function to prevent users losing the media. Users will be able to insert Memory Stick Micro into an adapter for exchanging data to a Memory Stick PRO compatible product.

Dr. Eli Harari, president and chief executive officer of SanDisk Corporation, said “The Memory Stick PRO format co-developed with Sony has become a highly successful product line for us due to its popularity with a wide range of consumer electronic products such as digital cameras and videogame consoles. Sony and SanDisk recognize the rapidly growing market opportunity for memory cards with multimedia mobile phones, and are joining forces to develop the ultra-small Memory Stick Micro format to foster development of extremely compact multimedia mobile phones”.

Akira Kubota, President of Micro Systems Network Company, Sony Corporation said “Sony’s collaboration with SanDisk Corporation has continued to develop since our initial announcement of the joint Memory Stick PRO format development in 2003. Today€„¢s joint announcement of the Memory Stick Micro format provides a new, versatile IC recording media for mobile products such as mobile phones for sharing entertainment and data.”

Since the September 1998 market introduction of Memory Stick, cumulative shipments of media have achieved 145 million units as of August 2005. In recent years, Memory Stick media has been used not only to store still images of digital still cameras and sharing data among PCs, but has also been widely used for entertainment purposes such as playing back video and music content. As mobile phones become more advanced with varied functions, including video and music playback, there is an increasing need for smaller, high-capacity media which this product addresses.

The Memory Stick Micro media will be made available in the first half of 2006.

Memory Stick Micro Specifications
» Dimensions: 15 x 12.5 x 1.2 mm, 225mm 3
» Connector Pin: 11-pin
» Maximum Capacity: 32GB (Theoretical)
» Max. Data Transfer Rate: 160 Mbps (Theoretical)
» Operating Voltage: 1.7 - 1.95 V and 2.7 €œ 3.6 V
» Interface: Serial I/F and 4-bit parallel I/F
» Operating Temperature: -25° - +85° C
» Copyright Protection Technology: MagicGate

Click here for the image.

Stumbled upon a site that has a news headline called “109-bit Encryption Broken”, after reading it, it is quite interesting, so I might as well share it with you all.
Here is it:

109-bit Elliptic Curve Cryptography knocked over with brute force

Academics yesterday scooped a $10,000 prize after using a
distributed computing network to decrypt a message scrambled using an 109-bit implementation of Elliptic Curve Cryptography. The success of Chris Monico and his team of mathematicians from Notre Dame in solving the Certicom ECCp-109 challenge was achieved using raw computing power to brute force the key. There’s no suggestion that either Certicom’s algorithm or Elliptic Curve Cryptography itself is flawed. Commercial versions of Certicom’s wireless encryption technology use 163-bit keys, which the firm estimates be one hundred million times harder to solve than ECC 109. Certicom’s higher strength 163-bit encryption toolkits are used by many firms in the IT industry including Cisco, Motorola and Palm.

The Certicom ECCp-109 challenge, first posed in 1997, was solved by the Notre Dam team using a network of 10,000 computers (mostly PCs) running 24 hours a day for 549 days. $8,000 of their $10,000 prize money was donated to the Free Software Foundation. The challenge was designed to encourage further research into security standards while placing ECC under third party scrutiny. It is hoped the experience gained from this challenge will help confirm comparisons of the security levels of public key systems such as ECC, RSA and DSA that have been based primarily on theoretical considerations. Certicom is offering $20,000 in prize money for the solution to the next challenge, which involves solving a 131-bit key that is expected to require several thousand times more computing power than the ECCp-109 Challenge.

Of course, RSA has been running factoring challenges relating to its encryption technology for some time. Prizes ranging from $10,000 for the 576-bit challenge to $200,000 for a 2048-bits conundrum. The RSA algorithm is based on mathematics of prime numbers. Its security relies on the well established difficulty of factorising the products of two large prime number, against the ease of multiplying these numbers in the first place.

ECC uses a similar idea taken from the mathematics of elliptic curves. ECC is particularly beneficial in applications where bandwidth, processing, or battery power is constrained such as security for handhelds, mobile middleware and other embedded devices.

Interesting.