Virgin Media has won the contract to provide wi-fi to the London Underground.

The contract is only for ticket offices, escalators and platforms because it would have required major construction work to have added connectivity to the network’s tunnels.

From July 2012 all Tube passengers will initially be able to connect to the internet for free.

After the Olympic and Paralympic Games it will be a pay-as-you-go service.

Virgin Media’s mobile and broadband customers will be offered continued access as part of their subscriptions. Other non-paying users will be limited to a site showing online travel information.

The firm said it intended to introduce wi-fi to 80 stations by the summer, and by up to 120 stations by the end of the year.

The company’s chief executive, Neil Berkett, said: “We’ll help people make the most of the city and will continue to evolve the service, ensuring everyone can benefit from a service London will be proud of.”

Transport for London (TfL) estimates that four million people use the Tube every day.

Deep-level deal

London Underground staff will be responsible for fitting the equipment, but the organisation stressed that the cost would be covered by the commercial contract.

“This latest innovation is great news for Tube customers, who now have access to emails, web and social media underground for the first time,” said Gareth Powell, London Underground’s director of strategy and service development.

“It’s also delivered at no cost to fare payers and taxpayers.”

Some overseas networks – such as the Dubai Metro, which contains several underground stations – are able to offer continued access to customers during journeys.

The Chinese telecoms equipment firm Huawei had originally explored an option to install 3G phone and data services throughout the Tube, but TfL opted not to implement its scheme.

It was discovered that the cost of adding antennas to the antiquated system would have been prohibitive because the lack of space between the trains and the tunnels would have made building work necessary.

Virgin Media said it believed that the Tube’s limited wi-fi access would not put customers at a huge disadvantage.

“Every wi-fi station you pass through is going to give you the chance to stay connected, by quickly updating Facebook, Twitter, email and the like,” Kevin Baughan, Virgin Media’s director of wireless told the BBC.

“Even while travelling people will have a great experience.”

A “sophisticated cyber-attack” on the BBC has been linked to Iran’s efforts to disrupt the BBC Persian Service.

In a speech Director General Mark Thompson plans to say that the internet attack coincided with efforts to jam two of the service’s satellite feeds into Iran.

He will say: “We regard the coincidence of these different attacks as self-evidently suspicious.”

Last month Mr Thompson accused Iran of intimidating Persian service workers.

Reporters Without Borders has also complained about Iran’s “cyber-army”.

The latest revelation follows a blog post by Mr Thompson in February in which he complained of the “repeated jamming of international TV stations such as BBC Persian TV, preventing the Iranian people from accessing a vital source of free information”.

In his speech to the Royal Television Society he will note that on the day of the cyber-attack there had also been an attempt to disrupt the Persian Service’s London phone-lines by the use of multiple automatic calls.

“I don’t want to go into any more detail about these incidents except to say that we are taking every step we can, as we always do, to ensure that this vital service continues to reach the people who need it,” Mr Thompson will say.

Some parts of the BBC were unable to access email and other internet services on 1 March. It is understood that the attack may have been caused by its systems being overwhelmed by a flood of external communication requests – a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack.

However, a BBC spokeswoman was unable to provide detail about the incident.

“I’m afraid we can’t comment any further on the details of the attacks than what’s in the extract [of the speech],” a she said.

Cyber-censors

The revelations follow Reporters Without Borders “Enemies of the Internet” report which was released at the start of the week.

The free-speech lobby group reported that Iran and some of the other countries on its register “censor internet access so effectively that they restrict their populations to local intranets that bear no resemblance to the world wide web.”

It added that Iran’s authorities were now capable of blocking ports used by virtual private networks designed to bypass the restrictions.

It also reported that at times of unrest the state had slowed internet connections speeds to make it impossible to send or receive photos or videos.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard created a “cyber army” in 2010. Hundreds of net users have been arrested and some even sentenced to death.

Earlier this month the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also ordered officials to create The Supreme Council of Virtual Space – a body tasked with defining policy and co-ordinating decisions regarding the net.

Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to a request for comment.

The remote code execution vulnerability in the Remote Desktop Protocol can be exploited to run arbitrary code on the targeted Windows system, Microsoft said in its Patch Tuesday advisory, dated March 13. All in all, Microsoft released six security bulletins fixing seven vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, DNS server, Expression Design and Visual Studio.

The RDP patch was the only bulletin rated as “critical” and Microsoft urged administrators to apply the fix immediately. Even though RDP is disabled by default on most Windows systems, the pool of potential victims is still significant because it is used by many businesses to remotely log in and manage machines. Often, an administrator may forget to turn off RDP after using it once for maintenance or troubleshooting.

The exploit, once developed, would succeed even without valid network credentials. This vulnerability is present in all versions of Windows, according to Microsoft. An attacker would be able to install programs, view, change or delete data, and create new accounts with full user rights.

“An unauthenticated remote code execution is pretty much as bad as it gets,” said Dave Marcus, director advanced research and threat intelligence at McAfee Labs.

Last fall, an Internet worm called Morto used RDP to attack Windows machines by brute-forcing passwords on Administrator accounts using a list of commonly used passwords. The worm highlighted that machines that can be accessed remotely are usually poorly secured, often with weak passwords or no VPN protection in place, said Kurt Baumgartner, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.

Businesses that enabled network level authentication (NLA) with RDP are at significantly less risk, because of the additional authentication layer present. However, NLA is native only on Vista and later versions, including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Administrators would need to install separate client software to make NLA work on XP systems.

Even though there are no exploits in the wild targeting the vulnerability, Microsoft anticipated one would be developed within the next 30 days.

Ben Greenbaum, a senior principal software engineer at Symantec’s Security Intelligence Group recommended that administrators check and verify that RDP is disabled on systems that don’t need remote access.

In other update news, Adobe released a security update for Cold Fusion 9.0.1 and earlier for Windows, Mac OS, and Unix, earlier in the day. The security vulnerability could be exploited to result in a denial of service attack. Instructions for applying the hotfix were included in a separate tech note.

The issue was flagged as “important,” meaning that if successfully exploited, attackers could potentially access confidential data or somehow compromise the computer’s processing resources. Even though Adobe has yet to see exploits in the wild targeting the flaw, the Product Security Incident Response Team ranked the patch as a “priority 2″ fix. The update should be installed “soon,” or within 30 days, according to Adobe

HTC’s new flagship One X mobile phone was announced at mobile world Congress last week, as a part of the new range of handsets – all bearing the same ‘One’ family name

This hands-on review of the soon-to-be-released mobile, complements the ITProPortal.com hands-on walkthrough in both pictures and video.

The phone will arrive with a familiar shape and design that is now synonymous with the Taiwanese handset maker, in a lightweight polycarbonate unibody form, rounded edges, and a shape with origins that could be traced back as far as 2007, with the HTC Touch.

HTC’s One X design is both simple and effective, with a look that immediately makes you think of HTC – in much the same way as Apples’ phones always look like an Apple phone.

Screen

The 4.7-inch screen of the mobile supports a full high definition resolution of 1,280 by 720, with the inclusion of the second generation of Corning’s Gorilla Glass. This is 30 per cent thinner, than the previous version of the tough glass. It is only the fourth handset from HTC to support this larger screen size, along with being the first to contain a HD screen.

HTC’s One X display hasn’t been completely, flatly, embedded into the handset’s chassis, instead it has a slightly-rounded lip that joins the side of the phone’s body – where it has been stated to ITPP that “the screen melts off to the side”, which we would agree. This, offers up much more of a premium feel, instead of the sharp edges that could have finished off the phone’s design.

We found the display itself to be responsive to the touch, with actions being carried out very fast indeed, which is partly thanks to the substantial processor on board. This is coupled with the screen being both a clear and bright LCD. HTC adopted this display technology when they dropped AMOLED, back in 2010, in favour of the LCD format.

On the rear of the phone, towards the base, are pogo pins, for use with docking stations and similar accessories but details of these haven’t been released as yet.

Camera

The back also houses an 8megapixel camera, with a F2.0 aperture and a 28mm lens that’s standard across all the One range; capturing 40 per cent more light than the f/2.4 lenses and we can testify to the fact that it does take a good picture.

A part of the new HTC Sense 4 user interface is a feature, known as ‘ImageSense’. This is backed by a dedicated HTC ImageChip, which allows for a number of new camera abilities, such as capturing a picture in 0.7 seconds and being able to record a 1080p video. The latter of which also offers still-picture capture, at the same time as filming – without any shutter noise. We tried this feature out and it does work well, along with fast image capture and a continuous-shooting mode, too.

Operating System

HTC has included the Android ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ 4.0 OS on the HTC One X. This is a good fit for the device and an expected one too, where the company’s rivals aired their new models running ‘Gingerbread’ 2.3, with the promise of an update. However, HTC has still missed some tricks with the platform.

On the base of the screen are still touch sensitive buttons, for back, home screen and to see all the running applications. These are actually a part of the new OS and are integrated into the display. They don’t really need to be there on the One X, but have been included anyway and this does seem a little redundant.

The argument could be made that the One X was already some way along in the development stage, when Google included this ability in the operating system and it was all too late to change the hardware. Only time will tell, if HTC will adopt Androids’ features in their handsets or just stick with the status quo of touch sensitive buttons.

Processor

Running the mobile phone is the Nvida Tegra 3 quad core 1.5GHz CPU, with a 12 core graphics processor. The American version won’t run from such a CPU, due to the LTE requirements of the handset and a Qualcomm dual core variant has been added, instead.

This quad core processor works very well on the handset, whilst performing tasks in a fast and efficient manner. A fifth 500Mhz companion processor actually does most of the work and a lot of the time too, even when playing the likes of full 1080p HD video. This will keep down the high-performance power drain on the 1800 mAh battery, which most people will assume will go hand-in-hand with a powerful chipset, of this nature.

We didn’t see many instances of the other cores being used on the One X, but we are guaranteed  they are only brought in when truly necessary. On that note, ITProPortal isn’t entirely convinced by the need for quad core processing in a mobile phone, but we are aware there are those that will want the most powerful and the fastest device on the market.

What will convince us of the usefulness of a quad core, is if more applications are written to take advantage of a processor of this nature. Nvidia has their own section on the Android Market/Google play, entitled TegraZone, with games written soley for the Tegra chipsets. If there are more useful and processor resource hungry apps here, the more likely we are to be convinced of a quad core need, in the mobile space; think HD video editing, Adobe Photoshop for Android and similar apps.

Audio

In August 2010, HTC announced a partnership with Dr Dre Beats Audio company with a reported heavy investment. Since then we have seen two handsets from this venture, the Sensation XE and then XL. These devices have integrated bespoke sound chips and audio profiles, which when used with a Dr Dre set of headphones change the sound to match the high quality of the headphones.

This has now been brought over to all of the One family of mobile phones, but it’s unsure whether Dr Dre headphones will accompany the One X, S or V – but hearing this feature in action, ensures us the integration is worth it and it sounds great.

Other abilities to the new Sense 4.0 user interface relate to a different multi app interface, from the one seen in ICS; the integration of Dropbox; an active lock screen with access to the likes of Facebook status and a rich HTML5 web browser.

Final Thoughts

On the whole, the HTC One X is a fast, high-end handset and one we found works well, as it should do – with all that it has inside. We can’t fault many aspects of phone, other than the lack of foresight of the Ice Cream Sandwich features and possibly the lack of a microSD card slot, but there is 32GB of internal storage and 25GB of on-line Dropbox access.

There are five big differences between the iPad 2 and the New iPad, all of which when considered together make for a compelling argument for the new iPad.

The screen for a start is the main selling point of the tablet. Apple crammed four times more pixels on the same surface area delivering what it calls a “retina display” experience albeit for tablets rather than smartphones. At 2,048 by 1,536 pixels, it sports by far the highest definition screen of any mobile device on the market.

Having to deliver four times more pixels means that Apple had to opt for a more powerful graphics processing subsystem and it did so by doubling the amount of cores for the GPU, from two to four. Apple has yet to confirm whether it stuck with the PowerVR SGX543 core on the iPad 2 or whether it went for something beefier.

Apple also swapped the sub-standard camera on the iPad 2 for one that can finally rival those on smartphones including the iPhone 4. The five-megapixel iSight camera includes the same improvements – such as 1080p video recording – as on the iPhone 4S with a lower pixel count.

Another significant feature added to the new iPad is the fact that it now comes with 4G LTE connectivity but with some limitations like the fact that 4G has yet to take off in the UK and that compatibility is still an important issue.

The fifth difference is pricing; that of the iPad 2 has been slashed by £70 to £329 while the new iPad costs the same as the old one, £399.

According to a Bloomberg report, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruled during an ongoing patent lawsuit filed by Apple that the companies must reveal details surrounding Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Judge Posner also supported Apple’s request to see documentation related to the development of Google’s Android platform.

Apple has been on a patent lawsuit spree over the past few years against mobile phone manufacturers. In 2010, Apple filed the lawsuit against Motorola, alleging that the company copied Apple’s signature touchscreen interface and other mobile technologies. Motorola has since countersued.

The judge approved Apple’s request issued on Friday, March 2. The data in question will show how much Google believes Motorola devices are worth. The devices feature technology that Apple claims infringes on its patents.

“The Android/Motorola acquisition discovery is highly relevant to Apple’s claims and defenses,” said Apple lawyers told the judge during the request for more information on March 2.

The companies will participate in two trials starting in June that will go in front of different juries. The first case will focus on Apple’s six patents, while the second case will focus on Motorola’s three, Bloomberg said.

In August 2011, Google announced it would be acquiring Motorola for $12.5 billion. Although the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission have since approved the deal, approval is still pending from various countries, including China, Israel, and Taiwan.

Jack shift

Released in late February, the Raspberry Pi has been developed to be a cheap computer that will help children and other beginners get to grips with computer programming.

The machine is available in two models. A model “A” without networking and a model “B” that comes with a network jack.

However, Raspberry Pi announced on its blog that some of the parts making up the first batch of the model Bs had been accidentally switched in the Chinese factory where they are being made. Production has been outsourced to China in a bid to keep costs of the bare-bones machine in check.

The component in question is a specific type of ethernet jack or connector.

Unfortunately, the factory soldered on the wrong type of jack which, if left in place, would leave the gadget unable to connect to a computer network.

Sold out

Swapping the wrong jacks for the right ones on the boards that were already made up was a “minor problem to fix”, said Raspberry Pi. However, it added, there might be a delay for future gadgets as it sought sources of the correct component.

Large stocks of the wrong component had been built up as production got going, it said, and these were now being swapped for the right ethernet jack.

“We are very, very sorry,” wrote Raspberry Pi community manager Liz Upton on the organisation’s blog.

The bare-bones computer project has proved hugely popular and the websites of two of the firms contracted to build the machines crashed when the Pi went on general sale. All three firms that signed up to distribute the machine have sold their initial stock.

Anyone wanting to buy one can now only register their interest rather than place an order and wait until more stock is received.