Samsung Electronics Co. has unveiled a new mobile phone that features some of the sleek design and functions of Apple Inc.’s much-hyped iPhone.

Samsung’s Ultra Smart F700 will be exhibited at next week’s 3GSM World Congress, a telecommunications exhibition in Barcelona, Samsung spokeswoman Sonia Kim said Friday.

Samsung said the Ultra Smart F700 also has a full touch screen as well as a traditional QWERTY key pad that slides out “for users who are not yet familiar with a touch-screen-only user interface.”

The phone can also access the Internet, play music, take pictures, show videos, handle e-mail and share photos, said Samsung, the world’s third-largest manufacturer of mobile phone handsets.

Its third-generation (3G) technology is considerably faster than the iPhone’s EDGE system, and its 5-megapixel camera outclasses the iPhone’s 2-megapixel camera.

Source: AP

A Canadian start-up says it will demonstrate a working commercial quantum computer in Mountain View next week, years ahead of many experts’ predictions.

Venture capital-funded to the tune of $20m, Vancouver-based D-Wave says it has built a quantum computer with 16 qubits - the quantum world’s version of a digital bit, but which simultaneously encodes 1 and 0, so can carry more information and solve problems more quickly.

D-Wave’s claims have met with some practical and mathematical skepticism from the quantum-computing community, wary of over-hyping the technology. There’s a taster of that doubt here at the Quantum Pontiff blog.

With just the 16 qubits, the device, known as Orion, will not have the brawn to perform factoring of the extremely large numbers which underly cryptography. The number-crunching feat has IT security firms and spooks afraid their current encryption technologies will be rendered obselete when a quantum computer with hundreds of qubits arrives.

Source: The Register

Music label EMI Group is in talks to release a large portion of its music catalog for Web sales without technological protections against piracy that are included in most music bought over the Internet now, sources said on Thursday.

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs called this week for record companies to drop anti-piracy measures. That would dramatically change the way digital music is sold over the Web, making it much easier for consumers to move songs between devices — and between people. The question is whether sales would rise because of easier use or fall as piracy increased.

One source familiar with the matter said that EMI was in talks to release a large amount of its music in an unprotected MP3 format to various online retailers.

Another industry source said EMI was seeking large advance payments from retailers in return for the right to sell its music in this format.

The second industry source also said EMI was in talks with Snocap, a company founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, to release music in MP3 format on News Corp’s popular MySpace social networking site.

Source: Reuters

Finjan Inc. unveiled Finjan SecureBrowsing, an intuitive security assistance tool for end-users. Finjan SecureBrowsing is a new browser extension that proactively alerts users to potential malicious content hiding behind links of search results, ads and other selected web pages. Finjan SecureBrowsing accesses each of the links in its current form on the web, and scans the relevant pages in real time using Finjan’s patented behavior-based technology. Each link is then marked with a safety rating - either safe (green) or potentially malicious (red). Finjan SecureBrowsing enables end-users to experience the same best-in-class security technologies currently in use at large enterprise customers.

Finjan SecureBrowsing runs as an Internet Explorer and Firefox extension, and will be available for download from Finjan’s website in March.

A dangerous buffer-overflow flaw in Trend Micro anti-virus software products was reported by Trend Micro and confirmed by security researchers at iDefense Labs.

Researchers at Secunia have also posted an advisory on this vulnerability and have deemed this to be highly critical.

This flaw can be exploited in both Windows and Linux systems, and could be used to gain access to machines, cause DOS (denial of service) activity and allow attackers total control of affected systems.

Trend Micro responded to the vulnerability by pushing out a patch that a company spokesperson says fixes the issue.

Source: eWeek