The Xbox Metro Update Nudges Microsoft’s Console Closer To Set-top Hedgemony

The upcoming Metro update to Microsoft’s Xbox, shipping tonight and arriving on your console some time this week, pushes Microsoft’s gaming product away from the traditional run-and-gun of gaming consoles and into a new realm: that of the home media center.

While the Xbox existed as a media center before, allowing you to download video and music content and stream content from your home computers, this new update makes it easier to find disparate pieces of content, whether its from Microsoft’s own video/music store or another source or directly from the Internet through YouTube and various partner services. The update also allows Windows Phone users to control the Xbox remotely, adding items to the queue and looking up content to send to the TV while other content is playing. In short, this update isn’t about the games, it’s about content.

On the surface, the Metro update looks much like Windows 8. Tiles abound, with various UI elements mimicking the new Windows UI almost wholesale. Every new app is Kinect-enabled, allowing you to swipe through tiles with your hands or call up apps with your voice. The most prominent change is the Bing search screen, a service that will bring you web content as well as allow you to search the entire Xbox and Microsoft stores for potential matches. For example, when you search for “X-Men” you don’t get the Wikipedia entry, you get all of the movies, based on availability for download or streaming.

The focus in this update is on partners. These include UFC, HBO Go, and a number of other content providers as well as a 25-channel HD line up from Verizon FiOS and another selection of channels from Comcast. Keep in mind that there is no DVR function yet and no real scheduling system, but that’s clearly down the line.

Most important in this move is Microsofts tacit admittance that they are gunning for the living room. By adding Comcast and FiOS, for example, the Xbox becomes less a gaming console than a way for junior to watch TV at college or the Xbox to become the bedroom media player.

Google and Microsoft are clearly in a cold war for the couch. While many have paid lip service to the effort to “colonize the set-top,” this new Xbox update is a clear effort to change the way people look at the Xbox and could be the first step in a new, more powerful Xbox with better DVR and media browsing experiences built-in. All of the big players have TV devices – Google TV, Apple TV, and now Xbox. Who will win – or whether there is a need for a clear winner – is anyone’s guess.

20 Percent of Android-Based Apps Grant a Third-party Application Access to Private or Sensitive Information

COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time since its inception, Android based smartphones outsold iPhones in the first part of 2010. Consumers who purchase these smartphones are downloading millions of Android-based applications, and, according to a new SMobile Systems analysis of the Android market, putting their personal and professional data at risk.

SMobile System's Global Threat Center (http://threatcenter.smobilesystems.com/) has performed an in-depth analysis of over 48,000 applications currently available on the Android market and discovered the following threats:

• 20 percent of applications in the Android market grant a third party application access to private or sensitive information that an attacker could use for malicious purposes, such as Identity Theft, mobile banking fraud and corporate espionage; 5 percent of applications have the ability to place a call to any number, without requiring user intervention;
• Dozens of applications have the identical type of access to sensitive information as known spyware
• 2 percent of market submissions can allow an application to send unknown premium SMS messages without user intervention.

"The Android operating system and the Android Market are quickly becoming the most widely used mobile platform and app store in the world. There are individuals and organizations out there right now, developing malicious code designed to capture your most personal information and use it to their advantage," said Neil Book, Chief Executive Officer of SMobile Systems.

To help protect Android and other smartphones, SMobile has incorporated a new patent-pending spyware detection technology into its Security Shield solution. This revolutionary capability analyzes an entire device in seconds and immediately identifies and mitigates known and unknown spyware threats, all with virtually no impact to the user experience or device performance. Built from SMobile's extensive history of protecting BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm devices and originally released for Android at the launch of the first Android-phone, Security Shield was the first commercially available mobile security solution specifically developed to protect devices utilizing the Google Android operating system. To view the complete SMobile Android Market whitepaper, please visit http://threatcenter.smobilesystems.com/.

"The open-source architecture that drives Android phones and the abundance of application stores available for all smartphone devices have allowed developers to quickly create and post thousands upon thousands of new applications. As a result, applications are currently available that have the potential to cause serious harm to devices, customers and to the broader cellular network," said Daniel V. Hoffman, Chief Technology Officer for SMobile Systems. "SMobile's eight year history of providing industry-leading mobile device security and management solutions, coupled with the robust features included with SMobile Security Shield provide the highest level of security in the market to Android and other smartphone devices, protecting against Malware threats, Identity Theft, and lost and stolen devices.

SMobile's Security Shield for Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian provides complete mobile device protection for consumers and enables Enterprise and SMB customers to manage, protect, audit and report on their entire heterogeneous mobile device population via the SMobile Management Console.

About SMobile

SMobile, Inc. has created the first and only complete line of products and services that securely protect mobile phones and the global wireless infrastructure from hackers, viruses, data compromise, unauthorized data theft and the effects of lost or stolen devices. The company's security applications include virus and malware detection, text message and data filtering, prevention of unwanted messages from interrupting the user, spam blocking, enterprise management, protection for mobile professionals from harmful data on open networks and data security and password-protection for content and files. SMobile is headquartered in Columbus, OH with facilities in Fort Lee, N.J., Dortmund, Germany, and Pune, India. The company is privately held.