Tech Peek Base

Acer’s just outed a new line of laptops, the TravelMate Timeline series. Aimed at business customers, the TravelMate Timeline 8571, 8471 and 8371 are 13.3, 14.1 to 15.6-inchers, respectively, with a range of Core 2 Duo CPU options, Intel GM45 Express chipsets, up to 4GB of SDRAM, also boast 802.11a/b/g/Draft N WLAN, Bluetooth and gigabit LAN. These Windows 7 bad boys also come with Acer’s Bio-Protection fingerprint security, which might furnish you with some small peace of mind on the road. The TravelMate Timeline series range in price from $899 to $999, and are available now. For full specs, check the press release after the break.

Continue reading Acer busts out TravelMate Timeline laptops for the business type

This time next week, if Mel Torm

There were two minor video plug-in related updates last night. First Adobe released a new beta of their Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 (this on the heels of a set of security patches for the stable release version last week). Flash 10.1 is introducing a host of new features, but is primarily aimed at the mobile market. Among the biggest new features in 10.1 will be the ability for developers to create multi-touch aware Flash content for a wide range of devices. Looks like Adobe is still hoping to prove Flash worthy for Apple for use on the iPhone.

Along with this beta release Adobe has reminded us that they are abandoning the G3 processor after this upcoming version of Flash. In the release notes [PDF] and in last week’s security announcement, Adobe says:

We’ve received multiple tips right around 10 pm that Twitter was hacked and defaced with the message below. The site is currently offline. We’re looking into this and waiting on a response from Twitter.

The message reads:

Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about syncing photo libraries, compressing and transferring large files, creating a virtual PDF printer, increasing screen readability, and more.

As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don’t specify).

We can’t say we’ve ever heard of a $26 Russian program called SkyGrabber before, but it’s about to get famous real fast — according to the Wall Street Journal, Iraqi insurgents have been regularly using the satellite-snooping software to monitor live Predator video feeds. Apparently the Predator transmits video over an unencrypted link, so there’s no major hacking or security breach going on here, but it’s obviously a huge issue — and we’d say the bigger problem is that Pentagon officials have known about this flaw since the 1990s, but they didn’t think insurgents would figure out how to exploit it. Way to underestimate, guys. The WSJ says the military is working to encrypt all Predator feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, but it’s slow going because the Predator network is more than a decade old and based on proprietary tech — too bad it’s not proprietary enough to keep prying eyes out of it.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Achieving Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance for online transactions is an expensive and timely endeavor; routinely costing hundreds of thousands of dollars and spanning several quarters in tim. According to Gartner, PCI compliance will cost up to an average of $2.7 million among Level 1 merchants and $267,000 among Level 2 merchants. Further, Visa and Mastercard will be imposing new PCI requirements upon online merchants, which will include more frequent on and off site security reviews, beginning in 2010; thus forcing more companies to upgrade their systems to meet compliance standards.

Demand billing and recurring subscription management company, Aria, offers a solution built to manage PCI compliance for companies.

Young American woman travels over to Jerusalem to meet some friends, see the sights, live the life. Overzealous border security officers ask her a bunch of questions, take issue with her answers, and a few well-placed bullets later she is allowed entry into the country with a somewhat altered MacBook in tow. So what can we all learn from this incident? Firstly, back up all the data you consider important; B, Israeli policemen don’t mess about; and 3, distressed laptops look gorgeous no matter how they got there — just look at the way the glass trackpad has wrinkled up from the force of the bullet penetrating near it, it’s a borderline work of art. The young lady in question has been promised compensation, but lest you think this is a one one-off you can see pictures of an equally dead Dell at the Flickr link below. We’ve got a couple more close-ups of the ravaged MacBook after the break.

[Thanks, Itai N.]

Here’s a new one. As Facebook continues to grapple with the negative press over its privacy overhaul, it’s now suggesting a new way to protect your personal information: lie about it. At least, that’s what Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy, told the Wall Street Journal in an article this evening. From the story:

Facebook also made public formerly private info such as profile pictures, gender, current city and the friends list. (Mr. Schnitt suggests that users are free to lie about their hometown or take down their profile picture to protect their privacy; in response to users’ complaints, the friends list can now be restricted to be viewed only by friends).

I work in a busy office. Occasionally a coworker will call or knock on my door and ask for my help with something, and the two of us will go to wherever I am needed. Most of them time I get back to my office and realize that I have left my MacBook Pro unlocked. To solve this, I’ve tried various things: setting a “hot corner” to trigger my screensaver, which requires my password be typed, or manually switching to the login window. (Many Windows users are used to hitting the Windows key plus “L” to temporarily “logout” but Mac OS X doesn’t have an equivalent feature built-in, although there are some possible work-arounds.)

The biggest problem with all of those solutions? They require me to remember to do something. Which I usually forget to do.