New Apple iPad, iPad Air, or iPad Mini set up steps

Christmas Day is here, Apple fans, so you know what that means: iPads being unwrapped from coast to coast. The newest additions to the iPad family are the iPad Air$479.00 at Target.com and iPad mini (with Retina Display)$399.00 at Apple Store. If you happen to be a fortunate techie who receives one of these slates—whatever the holiday you celebrate—let us say congratulations on acquiring one of the best tablets on the market today. The Apple iPad, after all, is a wonderful combination of excellent design and deep app-store integration.
But the iPad isn't quite ready for use out of the box. Oh, no: you must first set up the device. Thankfully, it isn't at all difficult. If you want to know exactly what you need to do to set up an iPad Air or iPad mini, follow these simple steps.
After you do that, don't forget to check out The 10 Best Free iPad Apps and The 100 Best iPad Apps for software suggestions. Because, while the iPad is a great tablet piece of hardware, it's the software that really makes it sing.

1. Select a language. There are over two dozen languages available including English, Spanish, Dutch, and Polish.

2. Select a country or region. Same deal here. There are many locations to choose from including Thailand, the United States, and Zimbabwe.
3. You have the option to set up the iPad over Wi-Fi or by using iTunes. We recommended going the Wi-Fi route as you can set up the new iPad from anywhere (you don't have to physically connect the tablet to a PC).
4. After you do that, select "Set Up as New iPad."

5. Select "Create a Free Apple ID."
6. Enter your birthday. This is used to determine age-appropriate services and apps, and to help recover your password should you forget it.
7. Enter a first and last name.
8. Decide if you want to use an existing email address or create a free iCloud email address.
9. Select three security questions and answers. These, too, will help you when recovering a forgotten password.
10. Enter a rescue email account that you'll use to recover your password should you have problems with your primary email address.
11. Determine if you want email updates turned on/off. This will send Apple news and software announcements to your inbox. Or not.
14. Read the terms and conditions.
15. Do you want to use iCloud? Make your choice here.
16. If you want to use iMessgae and FaceTime, associate it with your Apple ID. Or, simply skip this step.
17. You have the option to create a four-digit passcode.
18. Diagnostics & Usage is the final step. Choose to have the iPad automatically send/don't send diagnostic and usage data to Apple.
19. That's it! Tap "Start Using iPad" to finally arrive at the iPad's home screen.

Target hackers reportedly got encrypted bank PINs

 

The hackers who managed to steal data for up to 40 million credit cards used in Target stores on Black Friday and in following weeks have reportedly accessed the associated encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs) as well, which could be cracked and used to make fraudulent withdrawals. Reuters revealed the news in a recent report, which cited “a senior payments executive familiar with the situation.” However, Target says that unencrypted PINs were not accessed during the “sophisticated” digital heist and that there was no evidence that PINs were compromised, even if encrypted data that may have or may have not contained encrypted PINs was stolen.
“We continue to have no reason to believe that PIN data, whether encrypted or unencrypted, was compromised. And we have not been made aware of any such issue in communications with financial institutions to date,” Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said by email. “We are very early in an ongoing forensic and criminal investigation.”

Meanwhile, two banks have taken measures to reduce the risk of hackers accessing the accounts of customers. JPMorgan Chase and Santander Bank lowered ATM withdrawal limits and put a cap on the amount of money that can be spent at stores. Furthermore, JPMorgan was able to issue replacement debit cards for some of its customers.
The worry is that the hackers will be able to bypass PINs encryption and replicate credit and debit cards using the other card-related data stolen from Target. Soon after Target confirmed the data breach, it was discovered that stolen cards were already trading in the underground black markets in batches of one million, with prices going from $20 to $100 per card. Additionally, FOX News has learned that Target is also warning customers that they may be targeted by phishing emails following the digital attack.

Source: Reuters

BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis reportedly offloaded 3.5 million shares of stock

BlackBerry co-founder Mike Lazaridis had so much faith in the company he helped rise to greatness — which, coincidentally, is also the company he helped destroy — that he considered a bid to purchase the struggling vendor earlier this year. Now, however, Lazaridis might finally be losing some faith. Following BlackBerry’s fiscal third-quarter earnings report that saw the company post a massive $4.4 billion loss, interim CEO John Chen managed to convince investors that BlackBerry is on the verge of a rebound. As a result, the company’s share price has soared more than 25% over the past few days. Lazaridis may be unsure of BlackBerry’s prospects or he may have just been looking for some quick cash, but a regulatory filing dug up by The Associated Press reveals that he offloaded 3.5 million shares of BlackBerry stock between Monday and Tuesday. The massive sale puts his remaining stake in the company at just below 5%, down from 5.7% before he made the sale.

Source: The Associated Press

New Sony Smartwatch Passes Through the FCC

 The smartwatch and wearable device market continues to gain momentum. Samsung is spending millions on advertising, Pebble isn’t slowing down, classic watch companies are getting into the game, and the rumors of Apple, Google, LG, and Motorola all getting into the watch game just won’t go away.

Sony, too, hasn’t stopped trying to innovate in the smartwatch space, being one of the very first companies to offer a wearable smart watch with their LiveView. They have since followed it up with the Sony Smartwatch and Sony Smartwatch 2. Now, according to new documents from the FCC, it looks like Sony is working on a new wearable device.

The new device is referred to as a “BT Wrist Notifier” and goes by the model number SWR10. The current Smartwatch 2 is model number SW2, so since this new model isn’t being called SW3, it’s possible that this isn’t a new sequel to the smartwatch line, but perhaps something new entirely.

Of course, this might turn out to be a Smartwatch sequel, and the documents don’t give much to go by. The device has NFC, Bluetooth 4.0, and an internal battery.

Since it’s not called a smartwatch anywhere in the documents, but rather BT Wrist Notifier, it’s very possible that this isn’t a watch at all. Perhaps Sony is getting into the fitness tracking market, to compete Fitbit, Nike, Jawbone, etc. These fitness and lifestyle trackers have also become incredibly popular recently, and it would be interesting to see Sony’s take on it.

It’s also possible that this is destined to be a cheaper, slimmed down version of their smartwatch. Perhaps a device that is less expensive, has fewer features, longer battery, and simply acts as a watch that provides notifications without the extra features Sony and Samsung have put into previous watch models. We’d love to see more companies adopt Pebble’s approach of an always-on screen that looks good in sunlight and still gets almost a week out of a single charge.

Despite lackluster reviews of their latest model, Sony continues to press on with wearables. We should hear more about this device very soon. Remember that CES is only a couple of weeks away.

Google working towards dominating the robotics industry

If robots are indeed the future then Google is getting a big head start on the competition. Technology Review notes that robots created by Google-owned companies absolutely dominated rivals in a recent competition hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)  in Miami. The point of the competition was to have different robots perform a series of tasks related to disaster relief including “clambering over rubble, clearing debris, and operating a fire hose” — and Google-owned robots accounted for three of the four best performing robots overall.


The No. 1 robot was Schaft, the robot designed by a team of engineers at the University of Tokyo that we profiled in our recent list of Google’s five craziest robots. Schaft was created to be the world’s strongest humanoid robot and it performed like it during the DARPA challenge by winning 27 out of 32 possible points. Google-owned Boston Dynamics, meanwhile, did almost as well with its Atlas humanoid robot that was used by two different teams of programmers and recorded second-place and fourth-place finishes.
Google has really only started devoting significant resources to the field of robotics this year and the company has bought a total of eight different robotics firms in the last six months alone. Although Google has been gobbling up robotics talent, the company still hasn’t specified what it plans to do with its newfound android army just yet.

Tags: Google

Source: Technology Review

Google Crashes Rap Genius’ Search Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam

 

Google hit back hard yesterday after it learned lyrics site Rap Genius had been using dubious SEO tricks to attain top spots in search results. Now RapGenius.com doesn’t appear on the first page of results for a search of “Rap Genius,” and popular queries like “Jay-Z Holy Grail Lyrics” don’t bring up the startup like they used to. [Update: But the two companies are working on a resolution.]
Founded in 2009, Rap Genius is a lyrics and text annotation site. It lets users provide their own explanations for song lyrics, religious texts, legal documents, images, and more that other users see when they hover over snippets of text hosted on the site. The startup lept into the limelight when it received a massive $15 million investment led by Andreessen Horowitz in late 2012.
Known for their foul mouths and outrageous behavior, the Rap Genius founders had been riding high over the last year as their site climbed to prominent and lucrative slots in Google search results. For a sense of how ridiculous these guys are, check out our onstage talk at TechCrunch Disrupt NY where founder Mahbod Moghadam apologizes for telling Mark Zuckerberg to “suck his d*ck”.

Rap Genius Announces News Genius at Disrupt NY

But earlier this week, Rap Genius invited bloggers to join its “Rap Genius Blog Affiliate” program. John Marbach, the founder of email filtering startup Glider, emailed in asking for details, and Rap Genius offerered to tweet links to his blog in exchange for him placing a series of links to Rap Genius’ Justin Bieber lyrics on his blog. The links were designed to trick Google into giving Rap Genius better result rankings on searches for lyrics to songs from Bieber’s new album — sure to be popular searches this season.



Marbach then revealed Rap Genius’ unscrupulous tactics by publishing the email it sent him in a widely read blog post, prompting Google’s webspam czar Matt Cutts to announce on Hacker News, ”We’re investigating this now.” Rap Genius apologized in an open letter to Google, asking for the entire lyrics site category to be examined, implying shady SEO tactics were common amongst its competitors.



That apology doesn’t seem to have gotten it very far, as Google this morning practically swept Rap Genius out of its search results. Previously, Rap Genius was appearing at the top or close to the top of search results for queries of popular rap songs and the word “lyrics,” for example “Kanye West Flashing Lights Lyrics.” It would even sometimes appear high in simple searches for artist and song names.
Now, you won’t find Rap Genius for that query until the fifth page of results, likely further than anyone would look. For evidence of how serious the punshment is, adding “Rap Genius” to the end of that query actually makes Rap Genius appear even deeper down the results on the sixth page.
And just to make sure it was clear, Google banished RapGenius.com to the bottom of the sixth page of results of searches for “Rap Genius.”
Becoming practically unsearchable could be a huge hit to Rap Genius’ business, which depends on Google search referral traffic. Without that traffic, it will be much harder to grow its user base, collect new annotations, and potentially monetize with ads down the road.
Whether Google’s reaction was too tough is a matter of opinion. Gaming search results with spammy SEO tactics is certainly deplorable, but wiping Rap Genius off of top result pages for queries that include its own name is pretty harsh. Whether the startup deserves it or should get a lighter punishment depends on your perspective regarding the sanctity of Google search results. We’re awaiting a response from the Rap Genius founders, and have been promised a statement shortly.
Update: Rap Genius’ founders have provided this statement, indicating they’re working with Google on being returned to better search result rankings:

“We are working with Google right now to resolve this. They’ve been really great, helping us identify changes we need to make, even on Christmas. We’re working on it as fast as we can, and expect to be back on Google very soon.
It sucks to be off Google for us and for the thousands of our community members who have worked so hard to create what’s often the best search result.
We hope everyone who reads this will take a little time out from their Christmas and head to Rap Genius and sign up so you can contribute your knowledge on your favorite subjects – becoming a member of our community makes the site way more fun. Merry Christmas”

Looks like Rap Genius and Google might come to some compromise where Google restores at least some of the startup’s search result ranking juice in exchange for it cleaning up its act. However, at least some of the decreased visibility is likely to stick around for a long time, impeding Rap Genius’ business. We’ll have more details on the outcome of the talks as soon as possible and we are awaiting a response from Google.