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 THE TECH CHRONICLES
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Microsoft today introduced new features in its Bing application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that compete head to head with Google Inc., as the software giant works to make up ground in the search and mobile spaces.

Most noticeably, the Redmond, Wash. company said in its corporate blog post that the new version of its search app would include visual scanning features similar to those in Google's Goggles app, which for now only works on smart phones that run on its Android platform.

"Use the camera on your iPhone to scan the barcode of any product or the cover art of books, CDs, DVDs, or video games," the Microsoft post reads. "You'll see descriptions, and often reviews, prices, and links to merchant websites. This feature makes it easy to comparison shop for your favorite products or just find a place to buy that book your friend won't shut up about."

By way of comparison, Goggles can, in many cases, recognize and provide information about things like landmarks, wine labels, barcodes and book titles. It can also automatically store or dial up contact information pulled from a business card, or jump to a URL that appears in a photo.

When The Chronicle ran a story last month about visual search, Microsoft declined to discuss what it was doing in this realm.

But it was clear the company was at work on the problem. At its public TechFair in Mountain View earlier in May, a Microsoft researcher showed off software that allowed the user to drag and drop an image into the application that instantly pulled up pictures with similar characteristics.

The upgraded Bing app also includes new social features, including the ability to show status updates from a user's friends on Facebook and Twitter, as well as relevant search results from within their social networks.

Finally, Microsoft said the new app includes improvements to its Movies and Shopping sections, including more video trailers, show times, product prices and store links.

Microsoft has been laser focused on getting its search engine onto mobile platforms. The company offered players of the popular mobile music game Tap Tap Revenge a free song if they downloaded Bing onto their iPhone or iPad. Similarly, anyone who recently sampled a free Microsoft application that streams the top 100 songs for every year back to 1947 was gently but persistently reminded to download the Bing app as well (even, it should be noted, if they'd already done so).

WoW Server Status: WoW Server Status Down with WoW Forums Up

WoW Server Status: WoW Server Status Down with WoW Forums Up: The WoW Server Status is Temporarily down and the Wow Forums are up to find the reason for the WoW servers status to go down. The ongoing status on the WoW servers is that the WoW servers are temporarily down and sources claim that the WoW server would remain close for 24 hours. The reason for the WoW Server Status to go down is said to be the addition of a new chapter named Cataclysm.

The WoW fans would be upset with this news that the WoW servers status would remain down for 24 hours. The WoW Forums are up for resolving the problem but the Wow forums would get the solution as the WoW Server Status would get the additional new chapter from the company.

The fix for this problem should be up in a short period of time as the WoW server status issue is not liked by it the World of Warcraft (WoW) fans. We will keep you updated with more updates



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WOW Forums 

WOW Server Status 

Symantec Finds 44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials 

WOW Forums

Symantec glitch breaks World of Warcraft 

World of Warcraft fans using Norton Anti-Virus had a nasty surprise last week: a false positive which broke the game. 

World of Warcraft might be an addictive time-sink, but would you class it as malware? If you work for Symantec, the answer might be yes - albeit unintentionally.

As reported over on Computeractive, the security software vendor responsible for Norton Anti-Virus admitted late last week that a bad definition update had been sent out which caused files required by the overwhelmingly popular World of Warcraft massively multiplayer online role-playing game to be detected as malware - and quarantined or deleted accordingly, making the game unplayable.

Blaming "a human analyst" who "made a mistake, [looking at the files] in isolation," Symantec was alerted to the issue on its product forums - and quickly repaired the update, pushing out a fixed version which removed the false positive.

Interestingly, product manager Kevin Haley used a statement to press regarding the issue to admit what users of signature-based anti-virus packages have long known: false positives are extremely common, with Norton Anti-Virus suffering between "ten to forty" such events every single month, but as the majority of them affect rare or unpopular software users are not often inconvenienced. Nevertheless, the company is said to review every single case of false positives "at a vice-presidential level."

Haley was quick to point fingers at his company's competitors, claiming that while the WoW gaffe was embarrassing it paled into insignificance compared to rival McAfee's recent blunder which saw the important Windows system file svchost.exe detected as a virus and quarantined - leaving users' PCs in an unbootable state.

While losing the ability to play a game may only seem like a complete disaster if you're totally addicted, it's still an embarrassment for Symantec - and yet another mark against the approach taken by traditional signature-based anti-virus packages.

Do you believe that the entire anti-virus industry needs a massive overhaul? Should companies be looking towards alternative technologies in order to avoid the harm caused by false positives? Share your thoughts over in the forums.

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WOW Server Status

World of Warcraft's Remote Auction House enters beta 

Symantec Finds 44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials 

Symantec Finds 44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials

Researchers at Symantec have discovered a server hosting 44 million online gaming account credentials -- but that is only part of the story.

Just as interesting as the massive amount of data is their discovery of a Trojan being used to verify the data's validity.

"What makes this unique is not just the number of stolen accounts, but the way the criminals behind this server are going about checking the validity of the accounts," blogged Eoin Ward, with Symantec Security Response. "Enter Trojan.Loginck, which has been created for the specific purpose of verifying their status as active."

The program checks the log-in details by attempting to log in to gaming sites using the computers it has infected. If it succeeds, "it will update the database with the time it logged in and any user credentials," Ward wrote. The value of the information can range from $10 to an asking price of $28,500 for an advanced "World of Warcraft" account.

"Most botnets have the ability to download and run files, so why not push a custom piece of malware to each bot?" Ward blogged.

Read more about the stolen credentials and the Trojan here.

See Also :

WOW Server Status 

World of Warcraft's Remote Auction House enters beta 

 

WOW Server Status

Good and bad news about WOW server status for players of World of Warcraft. For 24 hours the game servers in the United States will stop. We assume that WOW Europe will stop too, but so far there is no confirmation. The reason is the Cataclysm update.


Given the radical nature of this expansion and to start the real Beta Test, World of Warcraft closed for 24 hours where changes will be uploaded for the Cataclysm update, but for now, not for normal users.

That means that the steps for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm are progressing and that, little by little, we will see more news on WOW Forums.


See Also :

Symantec Finds 44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials 

World of Warcraft's Remote Auction House enters beta