In movies and on TV sneaky spy types have been able to gain access to password protected files and areas by using the smudges on a keypad to figure out a password. That is all fiction from film though right? A group of researchers claim that those smudges on your smartphone screen could in fact give [...]

The Canadian heart-throb, who has nurtured a clean-cut image, appears to have used his huge influence on the micro-blogging site to punish a young foe. On Saturday night Bieber thrilled his 4.5 million followers with a message suggesting they would all have a chance to speak to their hero. It read: “Everyone call me [phone number [...]

Along with being nuts about games, many of us here at JD are aficionados of Google’s Android phone platform. So when a news item comes along that combines both, it’s like chocolate and peanut butter. The fine folks over at Android Central have spotted this new US Army wrist computer that bears more than a [...]

he new Digg has gotten a lot of attention for the opportunities it creates for publishers (see ReadWriteWeb and BlueGlass for details). First and foremost is the ability to create official profiles and automatically submit content, which publishers are hoping will turn Digg into a friendlier place for mainstream media. But how will users respond to the [...]

Any day now, the Evo 4G is going to get an over-the-air update to Android 2.2 (aka Froyo), complete with marquee features such as the ability to play Flash video and share contact details over Bluetooth. But after spending every day with a Motorola Droid, now running Android 2.1, we can think of plenty of [...]

Well, look at that. A Rocketfish tablet. Can’t say we saw this coming, but Best Buy’s CTO and Geek Squad founder, Robert Stephens, just tweeted two pics of the surprisingly polished-looking tablet. We’re currently digging for more details but from what we can tell from the pics, the tablet looks remarkable similar to early HP Slate pics. [...]

TorrentReactor, listed among the five most popular torrent sites on the Internet, has surprised friends and foes by acquiring a small town in central Russia. The town formerly known as Gar has reportedly been bought for the equivalent of $148,000 and was quickly renamed after the Russian-based torrent site. The last time a torrent site [...]

So what makes someone on Twitter influential? My two cents is that it starts with not posting your every Foursquare check-in, obliquely mentioning meetings you can’t talk about, or sharing your latest bodily function. But a team at Hewlett-Packard Labs tried to find a more scientific answer by analyzing 22 million tweets published in a short [...]

The landmark and rather opaque tweet was sent at 1544 GMT Saturday byGGGGGGo_Lets_Go, a Tokyo graphic designer for an advertising agency. It said: “So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.” Twitter took four years to reach its 10 billionth tweet, in March this year, and less than five months to [...]

WikiLeaks is currently in the news because its Afghan War logs comprise one of the largest and most controversial intelligence leaks to date. But while WikiLeaks is relatively new to the public, it is actually a product of a long-established culture. That culture has already had a banner-bearer; a quintessential exemplification of its values — The [...]

Both types of attack have increased in the past year, according to the 2010 Verizon Data Breach Investigations report in partnership with the US Secret Service. This is the first time private and commercial data has been combined in a data breach report, said Matthijs Van der Wel, head of the EMEA forensics team at [...]

Yahoo is considering investing in hackers with good ideas and technologies, a company executive said on Saturday. “We are open to many ways of having a stake in creative young companies,” said Jeff Kinder, Yahoo’s senior vice president for media products and solutions, on the sidelines of a Yahoo Open Hack Day in Bangalore. The [...]

It’s the 8th annual HOPE convention where hackers have gathered from around the world. I was able to interview Adrian Lamo yesterday on camera while surrounded by heavy security. It was rather nerve-wracking. Adrian Lamo, if you don’t already know, is at the center of an international controversy involving the hacker community, Wikileaks, the CIA, the [...]

Netflix continues to pile on subscribers – and profits – but higher Wall Street expectations still sent the stock tumbling on Wednesday. Despite announcing that its second-quarter profits were up by 34 percent and that it had added another 1 million subscribers, Netflix shares fell by 9.2 percent the same day, due to revenues that [...]

Up to 24 million Americans lack access to broadband, the Federal Communications Commission announced Tuesday. Between 14 and 24 million people in the country lack access to high-speed Internet, and immediate prospects for them accessing this service is bleak, the commission said in its sixth annual reportto Congress about the state of deployment. The 14 million tally [...]

To defend the rights of BitTorrent users worldwide, the Swedish Pirate Partyvolunteered to provide bandwidth to The Pirate Bay after previous hosts got into legal trouble in May. At the beginning of July, the Pirate Party surprised again. Not only would they be The Pirate Bay’s new host, but they would use Parliamentary immunity to run [...]