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- Where Do You Find Your BBM Animated Avatars? Check out BBM-Animated.com
- QNX Car 2 Platform Wins Best of CES 2012 Car Tech Award from CNET
- New BlackBerry PlayBook OS 1.0 Bridge Vulnerability & App World Bug Details
- Is it time for RIM to shine with OS 2.0?
- RIM Details BlackBerry Tag (NFC) Features, Security, & Details (Video)
- RIM Statement on Intrepidous Group Infiltrate Conference PlayBook Vulnerabilities
- Verizon Makes 4G LTE a “Hard Requirement” For All Smartphones
- Notebook Plus 3 Final Free for a Limited Time (Simple PlayBook Text Editor)
- BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB $279.99 @ BensOutlet.com
- More Video Demos of QNX Concept Car & Cut the Rope from CES
- Tell it like it is: Alec Saunder
- Cut The Rope Now Available for the BlackBerry PlayBook
- Virtual Video Tour of RIM’s CES 2012 Booth!
- Latest QNX Car Shown Off On Video – Finalist for CNET’s Best of CES Award
| Where Do You Find Your BBM Animated Avatars? Check out BBM-Animated.com Posted: 13 Jan 2012 02:50 AM PST
RIM introduced a slick new feature in BBM 6.1 that was just released. It allows you to have animated BBM avatars (aka profile pictures). These avatars are GIF files but they need to follow certain specs. Jay pointed out to me that there is already a solid source of animated BBM avatars courtesy of some hardcore BBM users. Check out their gallery at www.bbm-animated.com or let us know where you found your avatars! Personally I have had some great luck just searching for animated forum avatars on Google. If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 13, 2012, 5:50 am. | Where Do You Find Your BBM Animated Avatars? Check out BBM-Animated.com | Leave a comment |
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| QNX Car 2 Platform Wins Best of CES 2012 Car Tech Award from CNET Posted: 12 Jan 2012 04:45 PM PST Congrats to the QNX auto team and the PlayBook OS developers. CNET was really impressed with the new QNX Car 2 Platform which we told you previously was shortlisted for their Best of CES award. Paul pointed out that the Car 2 platform won the CNET Best of CES 2012 award in the Car Tech category which is one of the 10 categories and it is the official awards of the show. You can see the awards presentation below or on CNET's website.
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Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 7:45 pm. | QNX Car 2 Platform Wins Best of CES 2012 Car Tech Award from CNET | Leave a comment |
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| New BlackBerry PlayBook OS 1.0 Bridge Vulnerability & App World Bug Details Posted: 12 Jan 2012 01:17 PM PST
We told you earlier today about the Intrepidous Group who gave a speech at the Infiltrate conference about "several high risk vulnerabilities with RIM’s Blackberry Playbook that allows malicious applications to access personal information, contacts, and emails from connected Blackberry phones." We finally had a chance to chat with both of the principles, Zach Lanier & Ben Nell, working on these vulnerabilities from Intrepidous Group. Both of them have a background in mobile penetration testing and security research and decided to step out of their usual iOS/Android box and test out the PlayBook. What they discovered is two flaws in RIM's usually paranoid security armor that allow them to access data they should not have access to. Both of these vulnerabilities boil down to a lack of proper permissions. The first one relates to the BlackBerry PlayBook and native applications. Developers of native applications on the BlackBerry PlayBook have access to a .ALL file on the QNX file system that enables them to access shared data or files. Essentially there is an information disclosure flaw in this .ALL file which allows native developers to access files they should not have permissions to through this .ALL file which is based on QNX's PPS functionality to access any files in the same directory. This .All file allowed Zach and Ben to access a PlayBook owners bookmarks, Wi-Fi access points, BBM username & info, desktop manager token, and most importantly the BlackBerry Bridge token. This token is what the BlackBerry bridge apps use to communicate/authenticate to the smartphone when the bridge connection is connected and unlocked. The way BlackBerry bridge works is as a sort of proxy server that Zach and Ben say may be loosely based on a Squidlet proxy. This proxy service runs on the BlackBerry PlayBook and terminates encryption while providing an HTTP interface for RIM's bridge apps to access using the BlackBerry Bridge WebKit apps like email, calendar, and BBM. By having access to this Bridge Token Zach and Ben were able to query information from the connected unlocked BlackBerry smartphone. In short the Bluetooth connection and at rest data are secure but by accessing this Bluetooth token a native developer can query the bridge for data that they should not be able to. Zach and Ben have confirmed that this issue has been fixed in the current PlayBook OS 2.0 beta and RIM confirmed as much in their statement to us. Still Zach and Ben speculate that RIM has simply moved this token to a different location or stored it in memory which means the potential for this creeping up again is possible in conjunction with another permissions backdoor or escalated privileges access. They are currently starting their analysis of PlayBook OS 2.0 and plan on researching this further including the entropy of the Bridge token and how it is structured. During their research Zach and Ben also found that there was a bug in App World that relates to both smartphones and PlayBooks. As we have seen before the purchasing process and authorization is totally separate from the download. When you submit credentials and purchase an app or game RIM simply provides the app back a public download link to a file whether it be the appropriate .BAR or .COD files. These download links are sequential which means that you can create a script to easily download all of the files for apps and games in App World. RIM told the researchers that it was aware of this and responded with something along the lines of "The onus for licensing is up to the developers." I am really hoping that changes because as QNX and BlackBerry gets more popular developers are going to look for a standard for application licensing. The main thing to take away is that this Bridge token vulnerability and .ALL information disclosure bug are no longer exploitable by native apps in OS 2.0. The .ALL PPS function will still exist but it no longer allows the same access to the Bridge Token. On the other hand users of OS 1.0 may want to keep a close eye on what native apps they download for the PlayBook. Zach and Ben told us that they made RIM aware of the .ALL and App World issues back in October and told them about them discovering the bridge token through the .ALL information disclosure about a week ago. According to Ben & Zach RIM does not plan on putting out a security advisory for this and as you can see from their statement RIM believes has "been resolved with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0." They also confirm what we learned that there are "no known exploits and risk is mitigated by the fact that a user would need to install and run a malicious application after initiating a BlackBerry Bridge connection with their BlackBerry smartphone." Thanks to Zach Lanier & Ben Nell for sharing their side of the story. At the end of the day I believe this will all help RIM continue to improve the security on the BlackBerry PlayBook. If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 4:17 pm. | New BlackBerry PlayBook OS 1.0 Bridge Vulnerability & App World Bug Details | 3 comments |
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| Is it time for RIM to shine with OS 2.0? Posted: 12 Jan 2012 12:42 PM PST
Beating a broken record, we all know OS2.0 is long overdue,the changes and upgrades RIM has implemented should have been baked in since the release. But now that CES 2012 is starting to wrap up, Gizmodo has labelled the PlayBook and OS2.0 the biggest surprise at CES. In an article they ran earlier this week you could see their pleasure in it, and now it is receiving some positive press! Praise like this is exactly what RIM needs to help create a more positive brand movement. I am curious to see how many people feel the same way. Source: Gizmodo If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by Fubaz for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 3:42 pm. | Is it time for RIM to shine with OS 2.0? | 18 comments |
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| RIM Details BlackBerry Tag (NFC) Features, Security, & Details (Video) Posted: 12 Jan 2012 11:31 AM PST We heard about BlackBerry Tag from RIM awhile ago but they did not offer much detail. Until now NFC has sort of stayed dormant on BlackBerrys with OS 7.0. That is where OS 7.1 comes in with quite a few more functions with device to device communications. With OS 7.0 you could only read NFC tags. With BlackBerry Tag in OS 7.1 it actually creates a quick Bluetooth secure connection between the devices to share data. Here are some of the things that you can do with it:
RIM also details the security of BlackBerry tag and I am sort of glad that by default it has NFC off when the device is locked or the backlight is off. Here are some details beyond the proximity requirements:
Check out the video below to see how it works! Desktop Video Link | Mobile Video LinkCheck out more details on RIM's blog announcement If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 2:31 pm. | RIM Details BlackBerry Tag (NFC) Features, Security, & Details (Video) | 2 comments |
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| RIM Statement on Intrepidous Group Infiltrate Conference PlayBook Vulnerabilities Posted: 12 Jan 2012 10:05 AM PST
Earlier this morning we were contacted by a rep who wanted to put us in touch with the Intrepidous Group who just gave a speech at the Infiltrate conference (Miami Beach). They claim that they have identified "several high risk vulnerabilities with RIM’s Blackberry Playbook that allows malicious applications to access personal information, contacts, and emails from connected Blackberry phones." I am still waiting to hear back from them about the vulnerabilities but until then I reached out to RIM to see what they had to say. Here is RIM's response:
In other words it looks like RIM is saying that it is an issue with the current PlayBook OS but would require a user to install malicious software which is not as simple as it sounds. It should be interesting to see how this plays out. I have read some of the intricate details RIM has put into the security of the PlayBook and its Bluetooth bridge connection which makes me wonder what attack vector Intrepidous Group is using. Developing… If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 1:05 pm. | RIM Statement on Intrepidous Group Infiltrate Conference PlayBook Vulnerabilities | 5 comments |
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| Verizon Makes 4G LTE a “Hard Requirement” For All Smartphones Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:54 AM PST
This goes hand in hand with what we heard previously about the BlackBerry Colt being scrapped because it did not have LTE. Jessica from CNET is reporting that Verizon is taking a hard line on 4G LTE. From now on "nearly all" of their smartphones, hotspots, tablets, and netbooks will have LTE. That includes Windows Phone and BlackBerry. The only exceptions are things like Verizon push to talk phones which are 3G-only for now. This is all coming from Keith Lampron, Verizon’s associate director of device marketing, who says Verizon is committed to driving 4G and "paving the way here for the rest of the world on LTE." That really dials up the pressure on RIM to bring a BlackBerry 10 phone with LTE to market ASAP. Hopefully we are also going to see a 4G LTE PlayBook very soon! Thanks BP for the tip! If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 12:54 pm. | Verizon Makes 4G LTE a “Hard Requirement” For All Smartphones | 3 comments |
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| Notebook Plus 3 Final Free for a Limited Time (Simple PlayBook Text Editor) Posted: 12 Jan 2012 09:32 AM PST
Terrence let me know that Hedonsoft has released Notebook Plus 3 Final in App World this week. The best part is that it is free for an unspecified limited time. Notebook Plus 3 is a simple UTF-8 text editor which allows you to read any UTF-8 files no matter what their extension (.txt, .html, .php, .js, .css etc.). It also has built in insert tags for HTML, PHP, and JavaScript. All in all Notebook Plus 3 is a worth free download from App World If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 12:32 pm. | Notebook Plus 3 Final Free for a Limited Time (Simple PlayBook Text Editor) | Leave a comment |
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| BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB $279.99 @ BensOutlet.com Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:56 AM PST
There have been many discounts on the 16GB BlackBerry PlayBook but usually the 32 and 64GB models were not as low. ShvartzBerry let us know that BensOutlet.com is selling the BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB model for $279.99. This is just a tad bit cheaper than the across the board $299 price RIM is currently selling all models for. Check it out at BensOutlet.com If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 11:56 am. | BlackBerry PlayBook 32GB $279.99 @ BensOutlet.com | One comment |
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| More Video Demos of QNX Concept Car & Cut the Rope from CES Posted: 12 Jan 2012 08:08 AM PST
CES is still going strong in Vegas and we have more videos for you to ogle. We already showed you video of the QNX powered Porsche Carrera but now we have some more. Paul from QNX pointed out to us that The Verge has some more footage of the cars interface hands on:
We also have Diana, the Chief Revenue Officer from Zeptolabs, showing off Cut the Rope on the BlackBerry PlayBook during CES: Desktop Video Link | Mobile Video LinkIf you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 11:08 am. | More Video Demos of QNX Concept Car & Cut the Rope from CES | One comment |
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| Tell it like it is: Alec Saunder Posted: 12 Jan 2012 07:14 AM PST
Hiring Alec Saunder was probably one of the best decisions RIM made last year. The CBC, which is a major news network in Canada, sat down with him for an interview. I have to say the CBC’s questions were right on point and thought Alec answered them honestly. The interview starts off by Alec being asked about the last year and all the things that went wrong for RIM, while Alec does provide a typical punch line we’ve all gotten accustom to hearing, he does explain that perhaps people need to stop acting as though all 75 million subscribers are all going to dump RIM tomorrow. He also points to the fact the company is still making money with all the loom and gloom predictions everyday…….as well the company has no debt he points out. Alec also talks about RIM's app attraction strategy, which boils down to attracting applications that will help sell the devices and then looking to bring unique applications from the general marketplace to the platform as well. He seems to understand that big name applications will help bring the masses to look at the platform and unique apps will help with making customers who purchase the product get more satisfaction out of it. So if that's the strategy, when can we expect Netflix? My interpretation of his answer was basically when Netflix feels there is enough demand from the platform or a desire to create one. Personally, I think Netflix needs to get off its butt and support all mobile devices. You can't tell me it's based on market size cause last time I check RIM was still doing far better than Windows. He also points to some of the challenges developers have faced due to multiple products lines and says RIM plans to address this with BB10 phones going forward. This likely means a reduction in the handset portfolio and I think this is the right direction going forward. Lastly, when asked if the PlayBook should have been released without an email client his answer is "that was ancient history, I wasn’t part of the company back then. [Laughs]." His answer seems to lean towards the product being held back but like he said its history now and its time (media and bloggers) to move on and see where the platform goes from here. My take is that the problem wasn’t so much the lack of email, rather it was how the product was marketed and the inability of RIM to effectively tell the PlayBook story or lack of a story. If RIM can find another version of Alec Saunder that specializes only in marketing they will have all the right pieces in place to attract consumers from other platforms to have a look at RIM. Overall it was an interesting interview and I suggest you read it for yourself by clicking the link below to make your own conclusion. I also posted a couple of the questions and answers directly below that I found interesting. Full Article Link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/01/11/f-rim-blackberry-ces.html Interview Transcript (Partly): CBC News: We can't really start talking without addressing 2011, which was not a good year for RIM. Saunders: Without sounding like a Pollyanna, a lot of the time people get the story wrong. 2011 was the year where we added 25 million customers, we continued to be profitable, we don't have any debt on the books. Let's not paint the picture that the company is another Nortel, because it just isn't in that situation, and app developers need to know that. A lot of people look at us and say, "Should I build applications for RIM?" Yeah, you should; there's 75 million customers you can target. This is not a company that is in a situation where we're not going to be here next week. We are, we're going to be here for a very long time Q: Was it too expensive to develop for RIM, or were the tools hard to use? A: The thing with developers is if you can make it easy to target a platform, then you'll get people wanting to jump on board. Fundamentally, developers are creative people. We're interested in discovering new things and building out new capabilities for customers. One of the problems that hasn't been previously dealt with on the RIM platform is there have been many, many form factors for the devices, many different phones. So with BlackBerry 10, we're minimizing that. We're taking steps that will allow developers to create applications that will run on any of our form factors with little or no modification. It's a big step forward. It will allow them to focus on the things they do best, which is the creativity that surrounds building applications as opposed to making sure it works on every single platform. That's a common problem across the industry. If you look at the Android platform, there's an awful lot of energy that gets put into ports for Android applications. We talked to one Android developer about six months ago about building onto our platform and he said he had 23 different [modifications] to be on a large enough base in the Android ecosystem. It's an endemic problem in the industry and we're working really hard to solve it in BlackBerry 10. Q: Is there a certain category of apps you're concentrating on trying to get onto BlackBerry devices? A: First and foremost, nobody can argue that BlackBerry isn't the best communications-oriented device today. One of our biggest focuses is getting those communications apps for people who are doers as opposed to viewers onto the platform. We're doing a very good job of that today. There are really two categories of applications. One of them is the category of applications that [sell] the device. We have an effort underway at getting those sorts of applications onto the platform and it [was] being addressed by a business development team inWaterloo [yesterday]. There's another team that's focused on getting a market onto the platform. There are tens of thousands of applications that are unique in the market today and we're focused on getting them onto the platform as well. So one is an outreach program that's targeted at lots and lots of developers, and the other is a very focused business development sales-oriented effort to get those key applications. Q: RIM announced PlayBook 2.0 software here at CES, so the device is finally getting features like native email and calendar. Should the device have been released without such apps? A: That was ancient history, I wasn't part of the company back then. [Laughs] Q: But was it bad a idea to release it without those apps? Did it hurt the BlackBerry brand? A: I think that when people buy a new platform, what they're looking for is to get applications on that platform. Today more than ever, these are small computers and a great deal of their value derives from the applications that are on them. So when we go to market with any device, if you look at how classic platform launches occur, you try to line up developers so that they have their applications available at launch with the device. Developers want to do that, by the way, because they look at the amount of money the company is spending on launching a device and say, "Hey, if we can draft in behind that, we'll do better." Years of experience have shown that if you can get an application into the market at launch, then you'll do better, so that's what our focus is. When those BlackBerry 10 devices launch, we're going to have a wave of applications drafting in right behind it.
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Posted by celticboi for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 10:14 am. | Tell it like it is: Alec Saunder | 4 comments |
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| Cut The Rope Now Available for the BlackBerry PlayBook Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:41 AM PST
The time has finally come! We have heard that Cut the Rope was coming to the BlackBerry PlayBook since the Marmalade SDK. RIM even showed it off at BlackBerry DevCon 2011 in San Francisco. In case you have not played it before Cut the Rope is a fun physics game that has you… cutting ropes and guiding candy to the Om Nom. You can pick up Cut the Rope for the BlackBerry PlayBook in App World for $2.99 NOW! If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by the BerryReview Team for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 9:41 am. | Cut The Rope Now Available for the BlackBerry PlayBook | 2 comments |
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| Virtual Video Tour of RIM’s CES 2012 Booth! Posted: 12 Jan 2012 06:35 AM PST Feel like you are missing out by not being at CES? RIM has us covered with a virtual tour of their booth at CES so you can see exactly what you are missing. Desktop Video Link | Mobile Video LinkIf you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 9:35 am. | Virtual Video Tour of RIM’s CES 2012 Booth! | 2 comments |
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| Latest QNX Car Shown Off On Video – Finalist for CNET’s Best of CES Award Posted: 12 Jan 2012 05:50 AM PST
We already heard that RIM and their subsidiary QNX are showing off a new QNX concept car with their CAR 2.0 system at CES. We have not seen any high quality previews until Paul at QNX pointed out this high quality one done by Antuan Goodwin at CNET. There are some great tidbits here with the car concept looking very similar to the PlayBook and even showcasing App World in cars. Check it out below: Desktop Video Link | Mobile Video LinkPaul also pointed out that the QNX Concept Car at CES is shortlisted for the Best of CES award by CNET with voting ending today at 11AM pacific time. You can vote yourself here! If you liked this article, you might find these interesting:
Posted by Ronen Halevy for ©BerryReview, January 12, 2012, 8:50 am. | Latest QNX Car Shown Off On Video – Finalist for CNET’s Best of CES Award | 10 comments |
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Either way it looks like they are having fun out there!
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