Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – August 1, 2012

How an American Can Stream the BBC’s Official Olympics Coverage and Overcome NBCFail – If you’re outside of the United Kingdom then getting a good live feed of the Olympics isn’t easy. NBC is streaming some video, but it’s ugly, slow, and requires a cable subscription. Worse, what they’re showing on their over-the-air broadcast is tape delayed. In short, NBC is failing to deliver suitable coverage in a connected age. If you don’t want the internet (or the morning newspaper, in some cases) to spoil everything, here’s how to get access to the official (and excellent) BBC live streams.

Microsoft Previews New Consumer Webmail Service Called Outlook.com – Microsoft on Tuesday began publicly previewing a new webmail service for consumers called Outlook.com that will eventually replace Hotmail. Once Outlook.com exits its test phase, it will replace Hotmail’s user interface, although users will be able to retain their @hotmail.com, @live.com and @msn.com addresses as well as their contacts, messages, password and rules.

Outlook.com lures 1M users in 6 hours – More than 1 million people sign up right off the bat for the new Outlook.com, Hotmail’s successor and Microsoft’s bid to keep users from jumping ship to Gmail and other rivals.

Your Computer May Belong to Hackers – One of the scariest demonstrations at Black Hat came from Toucan Systems, which showed a technique by which anyone with access to your computer or its components could seriously reduce its security in a permanent and undetectable fashion.

Linux Desktops Dominate at Black Hat – For desktop OS users of the Wi-Fi network, the top desktop OS was… LINUX. That’s right Linux (and no we’re not talking about Android either). Linux came in at 19.9 percent of the total users on the Wi-Fi network. Windows came in at 19.2 percent and Mac OS was 13.7 percent. Those of us that use Linux desktops have long relied on it for security, which is likely the chief reason why it showed up so well at Black Hat.

Is the Market for Personal Printers Dying? – Printing out a document or a photo on a personal printer consumes expensive ink, and only the person you give it to can see it. Posting the same material online costs nothing, and countless people can see it. The result? Fewer people are purchasing and using personal printers — and printer vendors are feeling the heat.

Make Your Open Tabs Reappear When You Restart Your Browser – Want all your open tabs to open again the next time you start your browser? If you use Chrome or Firefox, it’s easy.

Read Old Outlook Express Messages When You No Longer Have Outlook Express – For many years and versions, Windows came with the Outlook Express email program. Microsoft discontinued Outlook Express with Vista, which had its own email program–Windows Mail.

Police can imitate your drug dealer to text you from his phone – A US court has decreed that sending texts using a seized iPhone while impersonating the phone’s owner doesn’t violate privacy rights.

Entrepreneur’s Guide to Low-Cost Accounting – These tips will help keep your books in order when ambition is in ready supply, but the money is tight. There’s no shortage of small business accounting software offerings like Intuit’s venerable QuickBooks line of products to help make the task easier, or at least manageable. But what if you want something a little cheaper, or perhaps even free?

IT Security DOs and DON’Ts – Free IT security training tools to keep your employees safe

Security:

O2 users targeted with phishing emails offering vouchers – When the service was restored, O2 promised to reimburse the affected users by either taking 10% off from their July subscription or 10% extra on their first top-up in September. In addition to this, all customers would also receive a £10 O2 voucher to spend in store. Also at the time, the company explicitly warned about potential phishing emails sure to follow after this incident, and advised users to ignore them.

Hackers Break into Korean Telco in Telemarketing Scam – South Korea’s second-largest mobile operator, KT Telecom, admitted Sunday that two computer programmers had infiltrated its network and stolen data from roughly 8.7 million customers.

Fake Lloyds TSB emails lead to phishing – An email supposedly coming from UK retail bank Lloyds TSB is doing rounds, trying to trick recipients into following the embedded link to a malicious page. The email claims that the bank is setting up new online banking authentication procedures, and urges clients to confirm their banking details, warning that they will not be able to access their accounts if they do not do this.

Dropbox data breach proves the “One Site, One Password” rule – A couple of weeks ago, Dropbox users started noticing an upturn in spam to email addresses they’d only ever used for Dropbox. Understandably, they wanted to know, “Why?”

Company News:

Samsung Unveils Music Hub Subscription Service for Galaxy S III – Samsung unveiled Music Hub, an all-encompassing music service that will run $9.99 per month and debut on the Galaxy S III.

ManageEngine Adds “IPFIX with Extensions” to Firewall Analyzer – ManageEngine, the real-time IT management company, today announced the immediate availability of “IPFIX with extensions” in its firewall log and configuration monitoring software, Firewall Analyzer. The ‘Best of Interop 2012’ security category finalist, Firewall Analyzer also gains user-group VPN reports, application reports for Check Point and SonicWALL, and a dedicated compliance section for monitoring firewall rules and change management.

Microsoft Open to Patent Deal With Motorola – Microsoft on Tuesday published a blog post in which it insisted that it was open to a patent settlement with Google’s Motorola Mobility. But there are conditions, of course.

Apple V. Samsung: How It Was Explained to the Jury – The 10 California jurors who will decide the rights and wrongs in the battle between Apple and Samsung were sworn in late Monday and alongside instructions on how to proceed during the case, the U.S. judge presiding over the case explained to them the basics of the high-profile battle.

Google Acquires Social Media Marketing Firm Wildfire – Google has acquired Wildfire Interactive, a social media marketing company, aiming to creating new opportunities for its clients to engage with people across all social services, it said Tuesday. Started four years ago, Wildfire in Redwood City, California, is focused on helping brands optimize their presence across various social networks. It offers a software platform that integrates directly with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Oracle releases MySQL migration tools for SQL Server, Windows users – As it prepares to release its Windows-enhanced MySQL 5.6 database, Oracle announced late last week a number of downloadable migration tools to ease the process of converting from Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL, including data conversion, Excel and Windows installer tools.

Webopedia Daily:

RAID – redundant array of independent disks – RAID is short for redundant array of independent (or inexpensive) disks.It is a category of disk drives that employ two or more drives in combination for fault tolerance and performance. RAID disk drives are used frequently on servers but aren’t generally necessary for personal computers. RAID allows you to store the same data redundantly (in multiple paces) in a balanced way to improve overall storage performance.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Google gets creative with its work environments – Thought you were lucky because your company’s only vending machine was usually stocked? Take a look at the creature comforts Google offers its employees.

Bring your own Internet is the next trend to vex IT pros – Affordable devices and slow-to-adapt IT departments drove the growth of BYOD. The next logical step in this trend is Bring your own Internet (BYOI).

Buttermilk “plays” with her “friends” (video 1:05) – Buttermilk Sky is a five-week-old Nigerian dwarf goat kid at Took a Leap Farm in Houlton, Maine. I think we’ll have our hands full with this little one! (recommended by Michael F.)

“Why Are You Pulling Me Over?” and Other Things You Shouldn’t Say to a Police Officer – Interactions with a police officer can be tricky. You want to do whatever you can to get out of trouble—especially if you didn’t do anything wrong—but that’s not always a simple process. However, it does help to know what not to say.

Exposing the Money Behind Malware – Today’s cybercriminals are driven by one thing – money. At SophosLabs, we see more than 200,000 malicious files each day. Learn about how cybercrime works and what you can do about it.

Server-side polymorphism: How mutating web malware tries to defeat anti-virus software [VIDEO] – Web-based malware dynamically obfuscates itself to try to evade detection by anti-virus software. Watch this video to see it in action.

Today’s Quote:

“It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right – especially when one is right.”

–       Friedrich Nietzsche

Today’s Free Downloads:

Chrome Add-on Morphine Saves You Time by Banking It – Morphine’s concept is solid and interesting, and could work well as a system-wide utility that tracks all browsers and is more difficult to circumvent.

PhraseExpress – PhraseExpress is a utility ($50 for commercial use, free for personal use) that helps automate the typing of commonly-used text or phrases, such as “Please check snopes.com before forwarding me another urgent message, Mom.”