Archive for May 5, 2014

Google Play Music Teams Up With Sonos In Canada

Posted in Commentary with tags , on May 5, 2014 by itnerd

Google Play Music launched today in Canada. That’s a really big deal. So is the fact that Sonos supports Google Play Music so that you can stream directly to Sonos from within the Google Play Music app on your Android device, or simply stream Google Play Music from your Sonos app to any Sonos player throughout your home. Here’s what the combination of the two brings to the table for Sonos users in Canada:

  • Blend your personal library – Google Play Music lets you store your personal music collection for free online (up to 20,000 songs) so you can stream all your favorite music from one place, to any room in your home
  • Discover more than 22 million tracks on demand
  • Create a custom radio station or try I’m Feeling Lucky radio and enjoy fresh music based on your listening habits with unlimited skips and no ads

Listening to the music you love just got even faster and more flexible:

  • Enjoy all the features of your Google Play Music app in Hi-Fi sound by playing directly to Sonos from Android devices
  • Use the Google Play Music app to start a song in any room and control the volume without ever leaving the app
  • For full access of all your music services and multi-room control, use the Sonos app to stream all the music you love to any room

Google Play Music is now available on Sonos in Canada. To get started, select Google Play Music from the services menu on your Sonos and log in with your Gmail. Android users can now play directly to Sonos from within the Google Play Music App on their device by selecting the cast icon.

Users can try it for 30 days for free, then $9.99/month thereafter. Sign up before June 30 and pay just $7.99/month.

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OVH.com Brings Big Pipe To The Datacenter

Posted in Commentary with tags on May 5, 2014 by itnerd

Hosting provider OVH.com earlier today announced that they now offer dedicated servers with a 40 Gbps connection, a first on the worldwide market. This innovation leads to an evolution of datacenters’ networks, which are now equipped for 40 and 100 Gbps connections. This shouldn’t come as a shock as six years ago, OVH.com became the first hosting provider to supply dedicated servers connected to a 10 Gbps network in Europe. Available on the “Big Data” and “Storage” lines, the 40 Gbps connection fastens data exchanges between servers through the vRack, a private network.

The 10 Gbps connection remains a standard on our public network, designed for exchanges between the servers and the Internet. However, over the course of the past three years, needs have evolved, so the clients do not only manage one or two servers for a website, but they administer entire infrastructures of servers synched together. With the vRack, OVH.com offers a large private network allowing connectivity between dedicated servers and the Dedicated Cloud. The hosting provider stands out on the market by extending the vRack to its 15 datacenters, including across North America and Europe.

OVH.com customers have put in place Hadoop and OpenStack Swift clusters with data volumes that can go over 100 Pb and are often configured across multiple datacenters. The need for 40 Gbps comes into play at this point. These horizontal networks across datacenters are forced to work on a smart combination of the 40 and 100 Gbps connections, depending on the delay time that separates the servers.

If you need speed from your hosted solution, OVH.com is likely going to be the first call that you make.

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Patent Troll Threatens Podcasters

Posted in Commentary with tags on May 5, 2014 by itnerd

Something that has been under reported in the media is the threat by a Patent Troll that goes by the name of Personal Audio who are asserting a set of patents that covers what is commonly referred to as podcasting. They’re going after prominent podcasters including Adam Carolla to make some money of these dubious patents. Now, why do I feel that they’re patent trolls? Here’s why:

  1. Their company is set up in Beaumont Texas which is ground zero for Patent Trolls.
  2. They have not actually produced a product of any description which is typical of patent trolls.
  3. The company has sent podcasters letters demanding that they pay Personal Audio to use podcasting technology or else vague things will happen. That is another typical patent troll tactic.

The company justifies their actions this way.

“We invented the technology that enables podcasting back in 1996 as part of an effort to develop a portable and personal audio system that would offer users a customized listening experience using content and data downloaded over the Internet,” said Charles Call, a co-inventor on the ‘504 patent and a member of Personal Audio, LLC. “Today, this patented technology is used by several media companies offering podcasting.”

They have won judgements against Apple and several big companies do have licenses with other big companies. But that does not mean that they invented or have the rights to the patents. Also, companies often sign license agreements because it makes the Troll go away. Plus the cash they have to spend amounts to a rounding error relative to the cost of ongoing litigation. Now the Electronic Frontier Foundation is getting involved in this fight. Here’s why:

As with so many patent troll cases, the troll is asking for money despite having contributed nothing to the industry. By its own admission, Personal Audio tried and failed at its attempt to make an audio player. Having failed at actually making something, it became a shell company that does nothing but sue on its patents. And now it wants a handout from those who worked hard to create popular podcasts.

Thus they’re not only looking for donations, but they’re looking for examples of podcasting that pre-date any of the patents that this company has. By finding these examples, it would invalidate the patents and put an end to this Patent Troll. Keep an eye on this story. It’s a very important one that will have far reaching implications.

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New Serious Security Flaw Found And It Should Concern You

Posted in Commentary with tags on May 5, 2014 by itnerd

Fresh off of the Heartbleed threat comes a brand new one. Flaws have been found in OAuth and OpenID which are used by websites by Facebook LinkedIn and Google among others. Here’s why this is scary:

Wang Jing, a Ph.D. student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, discovered that the serious vulnerability “Covert Redirect” flaw can masquerade as a log-in popup based on an affected site’s domain. Covert Redirect is based on a well-known exploit parameter.

For example, someone clicking on a malicious phishing link will get a popup window in Facebook, asking them to authorize the app. Instead of using a fake domain name that’s similar to trick users, the Covert Redirect flaw uses the real site address for authentication.

If a user chooses to authorize the log in, personal data (depending on what is being asked for) will be released to the attacker instead of to the legitimate website. This can range from email addresses, birth dates, contact lists, and possibly even control of the account.

Regardless of whether the victim chooses to authorize the app, he or she will then get redirected to a website of the attacker’s choice, which could potentially further compromise the victim.

And if that’s not enough, here’s what makes this worse. It’s not going to get fixed anytime soon as fixing it is an extremely complex matter. So the question is, how do you protect yourself? It’s simple. You should be careful about clicking links that immediately ask you to log in to Facebook or Google. Closing the tab immediately should prevent any redirection attacks.

Hopefully this gets fixed and companies that are affected open about the fact that they’ve fixed this.

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