Santa gets technical: Over 17M iOS and Android devices activated Christmas Day

Christmas Day marked the most iOS and Android device activations than “any other day in history,” according to a report from mobile analytics company Flurry – with over 17 million new smartphones and tablets booting up for the first time.

Compared to the rest of December, new iOS and Android activations soared 332 percent on Christmas Day. Every other day in December only averaged around four million activated devices. It also squarely beat out last Christmas, which only hit 6.8 million devices activated.

Smartphones and tablets are undeniably mainstream and parents, friends, and significant others are seemingly happy to shell out for the technology everyone wants. It helps that a number of new products entered the market in the recent months, including Apple’s iPad Mini, iPhone 5, Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 4, and Nexus 10. The hype and marketing from these releases surely contributed to people’s holiday wish lists.

Interestingly, however, it seems like people think of tablets as a present, as opposed to an every day expense. Throughout December, 80 percent of activated iOS and Android devices were smartphones, whereas on Christmas Day, tablets rushed up and claimed 51 percent of activated devices.

Apps also saw an expected spike on what has now come to be known as Download Day. Compared with the rest of December, app downloads increased by 112 percent on Christmas Day with 328 million apps downloaded overall. Only 155 million apps were downloaded each day in December prior to Christmas.

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Blowfish12@2012 blowfish12.tk Author: Sudharsun. P. R.

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[virus] Fake Android app can launch DDoS attacks from your phone

Researchers at Doctor Web found a new trojan app in the Google Play store that can launch distributed denial of service attacks when opened.

Android.DDoS.1.origin, as it’s called, is Russian and disguises itself as the Google Play icon once downloaded. When opened, the app takes its victims to the actual Google Play store so as to distract the user. In the background, however, it searches for its command and control server — and if a connection is made, the app sends the infected phone’s number to the criminals. These hackers then administer commands to the app via text messages.

Commands include launching a DDoS attack or sending other text messages. Doctor Web suggests that the text message function could be used to spam others in the phone’s contact list, prompting them to either download the app or something else the hackers are pushing.

Nowadays when we think of DDoS attacks, we often are reminded of Anonymous, the hacker collective that launches a number of these attacks in the name of political protest. We’ve seen DDoS attacks take down a number of important websites including the CIA’s, financial institutions, and others. These attacks send large amounts of traffic toward a certain website’s servers in an attempt to overload the system and shut it down.

With this app, however, hackers with DDoS intentions are roping in innocent bystanders to do the dirty work. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a campaign like this. In the case of the CIA website’s take down, Anonymous was accused of distributing links on Twitter to low-orbit-ion-canons (LOIC). These “cannons” send thousands of packets of information to a targeted server per second. When the Twitter links were clicked on, unsuspecting visitors would suddenly be roped into the attack.

Doctor Web goes on to say that the app can cause the phone to perform poorly, and can actually run up the owner’s bill by texting premium numbers.

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Blowfish12@2012 blowfish12.tk Author: Sudharsun. P. R.

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[Shortcuts] List of Shortcuts on Windows 8

Press this	To do this
Windows logo key‌ +start typing	Search your PC
Ctrl+plus (+) or Ctrl+minus (-)	Zoom in or out of a large number of items, like apps pinned to the Start screen
Ctrl+scroll wheel	Zoom in or out of a large number of items, like apps pinned to the Start screen
Windows logo key‌ +C	Open the charms
Windows logo key‌ +F	Open the Search charm to search files
Windows logo key‌ +H	Open the Share charm
Windows logo key‌ +I	Open the Settings charm
Windows logo key‌ +J	Switch the main app and snapped app
Windows logo key‌ +K	Open the Devices charm
Windows logo key‌ +O	Lock the screen orientation (portrait or landscape)
Windows logo key‌ +Q	Open the Search charm to search apps
Windows logo key‌ +W	Open the Search charm to search settings
Windows logo key‌ +Z	Show the commands available in the app
Windows logo key‌ +spacebar	Switch input language and keyboard layout
Windows logo key‌ +Ctrl+spacebar	Change to a previously selected input
Windows logo key‌ +Tab	Cycle through open apps (except desktop apps)
Windows logo key‌ +Ctrl+Tab	Cycle through open apps (except desktop apps) and snap them as they are cycled
Windows logo key‌ +Shift+Tab	Cycle through open apps (except desktop apps) in reverse order
Windows logo key‌ +PgUp	Move the Start screen and apps to the monitor on the left (Apps in the desktop won’t change monitors)
Windows logo key‌ +PgDown	Move the Start screen and apps to the monitor on the right (apps in the desktop won’t change monitors)
Windows logo key‌ +Shift+period (.)	Snaps an app to the left
Windows logo key‌ +period (.)	Snaps an app to the right

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Blowfish12@2012 blowfish12.tk Author: Sudharsun. P. R. Courtesy By: Windows

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Fact for the day: 25-07-2012

Sara Lhadi logged 16,799 hours grinding away in Runescape between November 2004 and October 2009 . That's nearly 700 days, which is nearly two solid years of game time!!!! Also, that averages out to 9 hours 20 minutes a day.

One million domain names are registered every month!!!

In a recent survey conducted by security specialist Symantec of the 100 most unsafe and malware infested web sites, 48 per cent of them feature adult content.

Bit torrents, depending on location, are estimated to consume 27 to 55 per cent of all internet bandwidth as of February 2009.

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Blowfish12@2012 blowfish12.tk Author: Sudharsun. P. R.