What Is NFC On Your Mobile Phone?

 

 

 

 

If you’ve looked at the hardware specifications for a top of the line handset at any point in the last few years, there’s a good chance that you’ve seen NFC listed on the spec sheet. But despite the age of NFC, it hasn’t yet become the norm for all smartphones. If you’re content with an older handset, or can’t quite justify springing for the latest top of the line model, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. So here’s a rundown of what NFC is, how it works, and what it can be used for.

Advertisement

NFC stands for “Near Field Communication” and, as the name implies, it enables short range communication between compatible devices. This requires at least one transmitting device, and another to receive the signal. A range of devices can use the NFC standard and can be considered either passive or active, depending on how the device works.
Passive NFC devices include tags, and other small transmitters, that can send information to other NFC devices without the need for a power source of their own. However, they don’t really process any information sent from other sources, and can’t connect to other passive components.  These often take the form of interactive signs on walls or advertisements.
Active devices are able to both send and receive data, and can communicate with each other as well as with passive devices. Smartphones are by far the most common implementation of active NFC devices, but public transport card readers and touch payment terminals are also good examples of the technology.

How it works

Just like Bluetooth and WiFi, and all manner of other wireless signals, NFC works on the principle of sending information over radio waves.  Near Field Communication is another standard for wireless data transitions, meaning that there are specifications which devices have to adhere to in order to communicate with each other properly. The technology used in NFC is based on older RFID (Radio-frequency identification) ideas, which uses electromagnetic induction in order to transmit information.
This marks the one major difference between NFC and Bluetooth/WiFi, as it can be used to induce electric currents within passive components as well as just send data. This means that passive devices don’t require their own power supply, and can instead be powered by the electromagnetic field produced by an active NFC component when it comes into range, but we’ll talk about that in greater detail some other time. Unfortunately, NFC technology does not command enough inductance to be used to charge our smartphones, but QI charging is based on the same principle

 

Forgot Your Blackberry Password?

 

 

 

Your BlackBerry device password can't be recovered or changed if you don't enter your current password correctly. For security reasons, the only way that you can reset your password without knowing your current password is to delete all of your device data. You can do this by entering an incorrect device password multiple times.

Research In Motion recommends that you regularly create and save a backup file on your computer.

 

And Finally, The Google Inbox App Is Here!

 

 

 GOOGLE INBOX APP

 

 

If you are a Google fan then you definitely need to have this App. But it is not available for download on the internet right now but Google will email it to you on request. All you need to do is to send the Google Inbox team a mail to get the App. You can reach them at inbox@google.com, be the first to use the much awaited inbox App!

 

Android OS Maybe Hacked?

A flaw in Android's GUI framework let university researchers hack

into applications with up to 92 percent success rate.

They tested apps from Gmail, H&R Block , Newegg, WebMD , Chase

Bank, Hotels.com and Amazon.

"Changes in the shared memory side channel allow an attacker to

infer if there is an activity transition going on in the foreground,"

researcher Zhiyun Qian, an assistant professor at the University of

California at Riverside, told LinuxInsider.

"This is a design choice by modern OSes ... . The same attack may

work as well [on other mobile OSes]," he added.

Details of the Flaw

When a new screen or window is shown, the GUI framework

allocates a fixed amount of memory in the shared memory register

that's proportional to the size of the screen, Qian said. This memory

is allocated inside the app process and shared with a separate

window compositor process.

Shared memory is commonly adopted by window managers to

receive window changes or updates from running applications. This

gives rise to the side channel.

When a user downloads a malicious app, the shared memory lets

attackers steal information such as login credentials, and obtain

sensitive camera images such as photos of personal checks sent

through banking apps.

Existing attacks can be enhanced in stealth and effectiveness by

providing the target UI states; further, user behavior can be

inferred by tracking UI state changes.

How the Attack Works

The researchers first built a UI state machine based on UI state

signatures constructed online.

In real time, they inferred UI states -- called "activities" in Android

-- from an unprivileged background app.

They then exploited the designed functionality that allows UI

preemption, commonly used by alarm or reminder apps on Android,

to break the GUI integrity.

"This is akin to a combination of other well-known flaws such as the

Trojan Horse approach," Al Hilwa, a program director at IDC, told

LinuxInsider.

Trojan Horses capture user data with a decoy UI before error

messages are put out, and the real app is brought up once the data

is stolen. However, in the researchers' attack, "the real app is used

but another app is capturing the data, then throwing out an error

message," Hilwa said.

The findings put paid to the common notion that downloaded apps

cannot interfere with each other.

The Killing Fields

The researchers achieved success rates for their attacks of 92

percent for the Gmail and H&R Block apps; 86 percent for Newegg's

app; 85 percent for the WebMD app; and 83 percent for the Chase

Bank and Hotels.com apps.

They had the lowest success rate -- 48 percent -- with the Amazon

app, because it allows an activity to transition to almost any other

activity, making tracking difficult.

"We will shut down the vulnerability on Android first, followed by

iOS," James Wu, CTO and COO of Newegg North America, told

LinuxInsider. He expects these fixes to be in place by next week.

"At this time, there is no indication that any H&R Block client data

has been compromised as a result of this vulnerability," said

company spokesperson Gene King.

"H&R Block takes privacy and security very seriously, and we are in

contact with appropriate parties to address these reports," he told

LinuxInsider.

The researchers had not yet notified Google of the flaw, UCR's Qian

said.

On Responsibility and Defense

As for fixing the flaw, Newegg's Wu said, "everyone is responsible

-- the OS makers, app developers and phone users."

The researchers "did a good job at pointing out and educating

everyone about a possible vulnerability," he continued. "Now it is up

to all of us to do something about it."

OS vendors could eliminate the shared memory side channel, Qian

suggested, although that could impact backward compatibility. Or

they could redesign the GUI framework to avoid frequently

allocating and deallocating memory, instead preallocating double

the size of the memory. That approach would increase memory

consumption, though.

There are "not always perfect solutions," Qian admitted, noting that

each imposes its own penalties.

Richard Adhikari has written about high-tech for leading industry

publications since the 1990s and wonders where it's all leading to.

Will implanted RFID chips in humans be the Mark of the Beast? Will

nanotech solve our coming food crisis? Does Sturgeon's Law still

hold true? You can connect with Richard on Google+ .

Internet Explorer 11 - Re-Designed For Our Browing Pleasure

Browsing with it few years back was  very frustrating, snail-slowed. Properly formatting web pages was a luxury Internet couldn't afford  and load was a nightmare. But all that has gone now, Internet Explorer 11 is one of the best web browsers right now.

Personally, I can't think of a better web browser to compare to it ( except the notable exception of Google chrome). It now loads with lightning speed, all its security challenges have been fixed many thanks to Microsoft programmers Internet Explorer team.

below is a list of all the new features for your browsing delight. Enjoy and tell QHN what you think about the all new Internet Explorer 11.

Internet Explorer 11 and Windows 8.1 let users, developers, and IT professionals experience the state-of-the-art immersive and desktop browsers, enabling the creation and use of next generation web apps, games, and media. Internet Explorer 11 continues our vision of allowing users to experience the web in a fast, fluid and seamless way that is perfect for touch. New and updated features include:

• Faster web browsing. Allows network requests to prioritize content, connecting users to information faster than ever before. Plus, with the new SPDY/3 support, Internet Explorer 11 Preview can provide faster and more efficient browsing, even over slow networks.
• Fast and fluid navigation. Back swipe feels instant with smarter web page caching, and with prefetch and prerender, many forward navigations (like getting to search results) feel instant as well.
• Rich, hyper-fast 2D and 3D experiences. Supports the emerging Web Graphics Library (WebGL) standards, lighting up games and other interactive content, while still maintaining security, reliability, and performance. In addition, the interactive content in Internet Explorer 11 is now hardware-accelerated for DirectX 9 and later, including a software fallback option.
• Great on all your screens, large and small. Supports gyroscope input and display orientation lock, making Internet Explorer 11 great for tablets. And, with side-by-side browsing, multi-monitor support, and high pixels per inch (PPI) scaling, Internet Explorer 11 is also great for large screens.
• Improved compatibility. Internet Explorer 11 improves compatibility with web standards, other browsers, and real-world websites. There's updated support for popular web standards and changes that prevent older websites from displaying incorrectly.

Features for users

Internet Explorer 11 lets users interact with the next generation of web apps, games, and media, through these key features:

• Perfect for touch. Includes enhanced support for consumers using touch-based devices, including touch-based drag-and-drop, hover, and active link highlighting. Grouping together the navigation and tabs provides better control, with support for up to 100 open tabs per window.
• Pinned sites. Enhances pinned sites to support Live Tiles, letting your content update dynamically and creating a more personalized Startscreen. Using Live Tiles with Internet Explorer 11 blurs the line, creating an active and seamless experience between apps and web apps.
• Seamless integration. Internet Explorer 11 seamlessly integrates with Windows 8.1, enabling new ways to experience websites, including being able to use the Search charm to accelerate web searches.
• Syncing across devices. Syncs your open Internet Explorer 11 tabs across multiple devices, so that when you open Internet Explorer on another device, you see the same tabs. You also have the option to sync your browsing history and typed URLs, favorites/bookmarks, user-configured settings, and passwords.
• Click to call. Automatically changes phone numbers into clickable links for apps that work with phone numbers, such as Skype.

Features for IT professionals

Internet Explorer 11 supports the needs of enterprises, helping to reduce deployment, management, and support costs, through these key features:

• Enhanced Protected Mode (EPM) and AppContainer turned on by default. Prevents pages from reading or writing to the protected parts of the operating system in both the immersive and desktop environments. For more information, see Enhanced Protected Mode (EPM) on desktop IE.
• Adobe Flash included in the platform. Adobe Flash is available out-of-the-box for Windows 8.1 Preview. It can run on both Internet Explorer and Internet Explorer for the desktop, with management happening through Automatic Updates and Group Policy, so you can use one update mechanism for all of Internet Explorer.
• New Group Policy settings. Introduces these new Group Policy settings, while still supporting all of the previous Group Policy settings back to Internet Explorer 9.
  • Turn off Page Prediction
  • Turn on the swiping motion for Internet Explorer for the desktop
  • Allow Microsoft services to provide more relevant and personalized search results
  • Turn off phone number detection
  • Allow Internet Explorer to use the SPDY/3 network protocol
• Do Not Track (DNT) exceptions. Enhances user privacy by not allowing websites to track users, by default. Internet Explorer 11 lets websites ask for an exception from the user based on the DNT exceptions API, which if granted, creates an exception that allows headers to be sent to the website to allow tracking. This relationship allows users to develop a trusted relationship with the site, regarding privacy.

Features for developers

Internet Explorer 11 is optimized to support all of the popular web standards, to offer premier security, and to provide new and updated developer tools that'll help you code across browsers and web-based apps, using these key features:

• Modern web standards. Internet Explorer 11 supports more web-based standards than ever before, including:
  • WebGL
  • Canvas 2D L2 extensions
  • Full screen API
  • Encrypted media extensions
  • Media source extensions
  • CSS flexible box layout module
  • Mutation observers like DOM4 and 5.3
  With these new standards you can use the same markup language across the multiple browsers that are available
• New F12 Developer Tools. These tools have all been completely rebuilt. You can use them to debug code, solve display issues, improve performance, and increase the stability of your webpages. All of the tools have a cleaner user interface, improved functionality, and an easier and faster overall workflow, including the new Responsiveness, Memory, and Emulation tools.
• Perfect for touch. Internet Explorer 11 introduces the msZoomTo method for animated scrolling effects, even more finely-tuned controls for panning and zooming on sites or in Windows Store apps, and several updates to Pointer Events.
• Improved HTML5 video. Internet Explorer 11 also takes HTML5 video to new levels with support for new and emerging standards-based features in the areas of adaptive streaming, content protection, and captioning.

Windows Azura - Micrososft Taking Care Of Your Cloud

Windows Azure is Microsoft's operating system for cloud computing. As with other technologies for cloud computing, Windows Azure is intended to simplify IT management and minimize up-front and ongoing expenses. With Windows Azure, Businesses and Individuals don't need to keep buying and storing softwares on their systems or bother with the task of updating applications and desktop based programs as Microsoft will manage all that for both Business users and Individual  users alike.

 

 

Windows Azure is not the 'Cloud' itself, it is just an Operating System like Windows XP, 7, 8, or Windows 10. But while Windows XP, 7, 8, or Windows 10 run on your desktop computers or laptops at home or in your office, Windows Azure runs on the Cloud. (QHN will provide you with comprehensive info on what the 'Cloud' is at your request)

image credit: blogs.msdn.com

 

Goodbye to Nokia?

It was in 2013 that Microsoft bought  the Finland Mobile Phone giant, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2bn (£4.6bn). Nokia has suffered a major setback on patronage largely due to the more recent Android phones with other mobile phone hardware companies like Samsung, techno etc taking the lead in the mobile phone industry.

Very little improvement has been recorded ever since Microsoft bought the company last year, QHN can now confirm that Microsoft is planning to finally drop the "Nokia" from the Nokia phones in favor of it's own phone(s) - Windows Phone.

What do you think about the name change or name 'drop' as some would prefer it?

Cloud Computing, It's Myths Explained

You may not be tech or computer wiz but I bet you must have heard of the word 'Cloud Computing'. Many who hear this word don't give much attention to its meaning and the few who give attention don't get satisfying answers. So what really is Cloud Computing?

By definition it is the practice of storing regularly used computer data on multiple  Servers that can be accessed via the internet. With Cloud Computing, Businesses don't need to keep buying softwares and updating them regularly, the same thing applies to Individual or single users. However, there security challengers with this method of computing.

Cloud Computing cannot run or even exist without the internet. All the softwares and applications owned by businesses or individual can only be accessed via a secured internet connection. To do this, users and organizations will need to setup an 'iCloud' account which will be managed by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) or Internet Giant Companies like Microsoft, Google, Cisco, IBM etc that provides 'Cloud' services.

Quantum-Networks (QHN) will provide you with a comprehensive video file of Cloud Computing at your request.

 

 

 

Google's Inbox

Google seems to be taking the lead in the latest technology. To Wednesday, 23rd October 2014, Google has launched  a new App called "Inbox". Inbox is designed to manage your emails and calendar settings more nicely.

Google will make it available in the Google Play Store  in few days time. Below is the full story from CNN tech section

Inbox, which launched Wednesday, offers a different way of handling the daily avalanche of email. Specifically created with mobile users in mind, it sorts and turns emails into reminders, highlights the important bits and adds outside information it thinks is helpful.

Even as people are turning to other tools to quickly communicate from their phones -- messaging apps, social networks, text -- email remains an invaluable if sometimes infuriating way of communicating from mobile devices. You can filter out spam, something Gmail excels at, but there's still a huge volume of legitimate email to deal with.

A lot of companies have taken a stab at improving the email experience. Gmail recently started categorizing emails automatically and putting them in different tabs in your inbox, like social, promotions and updates.

The popular third-party app Mailbox used folders and gestures to make sorting through emails easy. That company was snapped up by Dropbox. Inbox seems to be heavily influenced by Mailbox's time-saving, reminder-centric approach (not to mention its name). It also borrows some neat features from Google Now.

Inbox works by grouping similar messages together, like bills, in what Google calls "Bundles." You can schedule a bundle to only show up at specific intervals, say once a week. There's no need to read all the words in an email just to get to the juicy bits. Inbox will highlight what it thinks are the key parts of an email, like contact information, confirmation numbers or photos.

It's also tapping Google for related information to save you a trip to the search engine. For example, if you've set a reminder to call the dog groomer, the business's contact information will show up automatically.

Messages can be turned into reminders, reminders can be snoozed, and important emails "pinned" while the rest are whisked away.

Inbox is currently only invite only. It is available as and iOS and Android app, as well as a desktop view (for Chrome browser users only).

My Personal Heros and Role Models

 

We all have people who inspires us and to some extent even shape our lives or the way we react to things. these Role Models cut across every walk of life, from Musicians to Politicians, Scientists to Clergy men to name but a few. Below is a list of some of the great men I personally consider my Role Models these men inspires me a lot, But mind you they are both dead and alive!

 

(1) Steve Jobs

(2) Bill Gates

(3) J.F Kennedy

(4) Nels Bohr

(5) Albert Einstein

(6) Schrodinger

(7) Galileo Galilei

(8) George Simon Ohms

(9) Michael Faraday

(10) Sir Isaac Newton

(11) Julian Asange

(12) Kofi Awoonor

(13) 2face Idibia (2baba)

(14) Léopold Sédar Senghor

(15) Nelson Mandela

 (16)  Prof. Wole Soyinka

 

 

 

Who is Role Model and hero?

 

 

image credit: quantum-networks.blogspot.com

Wonder Why The USA Has One Of the Intelligence Community?

                                                              CIA, NSA, FBI
The  United States of America has one of the best Intelligence gathering community in the world, intelligence is  a serious and crucial element of the US government. They are three major agencies that manage the intelligence of the US government, they are other ones like the Department of Home Land Security and State based Security agencies like New York Police Department (NYPD), Boston Police Department (BPD) etc. Chief amongst these are:

The National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency

( CIA ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are agencies of the

American government that are concerned with security,

intelligence, and law enforcement respectively. Each agency has a

specific area of focus, although they do occasionally cooperate on

cases to share information which could lead to a breakthrough. The

staff of each agency are highly trained specialists in their field, and

people interested in pursuing careers at these agencies usually

attend top tier schools.

 

The CIA gathers information internationally which is relevant to

American security. The CIA also has the ability to evaluate the

information and take action if the information suggests that the

United States may be at risk. The CIA operates around the world,

using a series of agents on the ground to relay information back to

the central offices in Virginia. CIA agents often cooperate with

other international intelligence agencies, especially wartime allies. If

terrorists are planning an attack on the American government from

outside the United States, for example, the investigation would be

handled by the CIA.

 

The FBI is a domestic law enforcement agency. The FBI also gathers

domestic intelligence, and works to put a stop to threats from

within the United States. As the premier law enforcement agency in

the United States, the FBI assists local police in handling major

cases, and also has a sophisticated evidence lab. Law enforcement

agencies can send material for analysis to the FBI if their local labs

are not equipped to handle it. Major murder cases, crimes which

cross state boundaries, and kidnappings are all under the

jurisdiction of the FBI. If someone within the United States was

planning to do something that threatened American security, it

would be under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

The FBI also handles domestic surveillance. If the CIA wants

information on individuals within the United States, they must go

through the FBI to obtain it. The FBI maintains federal watchlists,

most wanted documentation, and surveillance services on

suspicious individuals inside the United States. FBI agents are

distributed around the country in local bureaus to assist local law

enforcement in enforcing the laws of the United States and to

neutralize threats to American security.

The NSA is probably the least known and most poorly understood

government intelligence agency. The NSA is actually combined with

the Central Security Service (CSS), and it is primarily a cryptological

organization. NSA employees decrypt foreign intelligence, generate

encryption keys to secure American information, and handle data

processing for the United States government. The mission of the

NSA is “information assurance .” Information assurance refers to

breaking foreign intelligence codes while retaining the security of

American information, which is accomplished through encryption,

secured computer systems, and access control.

The NSA handles most American computer intelligence and

decryption, and has also contributed significantly to computer

technology around the world. Early computers were developed in

the offices of the NSA, and the NSA continues to innovate in the

technological field. NSA agents are primarily found in the head

offices of the organization in Maryland, although they also work

closely with the United States Armed Forces to secure military

information on bases and in the battlefield.

 

What is your country's Intelligence Department or Community called?