TI targets enthusiasts with $19.99 mini-computer

Texas Instruments is tapping into the growing trend among enthusiasts who want to make their own wearable devices and small electronics, announcing the Tiva C Series Connected LaunchPad mini-computer.
The $19.99 mini-computer has a microcontroller to which sensors, displays, connectivity and memory components can be independently attached via expansion cards. The expansion cards, called “Booster Packs” by TI, can help in prototyping devices and testing.


The board could help in the creation of sensor gateways, home automation products, and other sensor devices that could serve as data-collection instruments. The board could aid in the creation of “cloud-enabled gadgets,” according to TI. Such cloud-enabled gadgets could include wearable devices, such as health monitors and Wi-Fi-connected electronics.
TI did not return requests for comment on the board’s capabilities.
TI’s new product follows the January releases of Intel’s low-power chip called Edison for wearable devices and Freescale’s Warp board, which has similar expansion functionality.
Gartner in December forecast revenue from wearable electronics, apps and services for fitness and personal health would reach $5 billion in 2016, increasing from $1.6 billion in 2013.
Such boards are good for prototyping and writing software for companies that want to build wearable devices, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64.
But with prototypes, programming can be a challenge because the devices don’t, for instance, provide users with the sort of biometric data they get from devices for sports or health-care use, Brookwood said.
There is a growing demand for semiconductors like microcontrollers used on these boards, IC Insights said in a study released Thursday.
Features on the board include support for ethernet, expandable memory capabilities and support for multiple communications protocols that are relevant in designing wirelessly connected electronics. The board has a 120MHz ARM Cortex-M4 processor, 1MB flash cache and 256KB of SRAM. It has two Booster Pack slots for expandability.
With an MCU, the processing capabilities of the board pale in comparison to Raspberry Pi, which has a faster ARM-based CPU and graphics core capable of rendering 1080p video

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Microsoft adds 'Tell Me' search bar to Excel, PowerPoint Online

Let’s face it—navigating through a maze of menus isn’t what any user wants to do. And that’s why Microsoft is moving its intelligent search box, Tell Me, from Word Online to similar versions of PowerPoint and Excel.

Tell Me is located right in the middle of the Ribbon, in any tab.

Tell Me, fortunately, is a very simple concept: It’s a natural language search box, similar to what you might find in Microsoft’s Bing search engine or Google. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint Online, it sits at the top center of the Ribbon, with the helpful cue “Tell me what you want to do.” Simply type in your request, and it’s off to the races. (As a handy shortcut, you can even type CTRL-‘ (the apostrophe) to auto-place your cursor into the Tell Me field.
Microsoft launched the Tell Me feature in Word Online (formerly the Word Web App) in January.

Tell Me autto-suggests related commands.

“The basic idea is simple. We all know the feeling when we want to do something in, say, Word, but can’t quite remember how to do it,” Christian Braun, a program manager at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could ask the app to help us out? That’s exactly where Tell Me comes in. You tell it what you want to do and it shows you the commands you need.”
Microsoft starts feeding you suggestions with every letter you type, auto-suggesting relevant commands. Think of it less as an automated help tool than as a reminder for the setting or command you know you can do, but simply forgot. (If you do want more help, however, there’s a help link at the bottom of the suggestions, or you can simply type “help”. And if you type “feedback,” you can send a bug report or suggestion.)
Fortunately, you don’t have to know “search-ese” to use Tell Me; the company promises that Tell Me understands a wide variety of inputs suggestions (“add image” or “add pic,” for example) that will translate into the same suggested command. Tell Me will also auto-suggest related commands, even if they’re not directly applicable. And the last five commands you executed are automatically saved.

Yesterday, Microsoft offered Outlook.com first dibs on new advanced rules, before they arrived on the company’s dedicated software. Tell Me still hasn’t arrived on Office 365, but Microsoft’s free Office services on the Web now provide this helpful feature. Microsoft representatives have yet to confirm our guess that that the Web versions of Office are being used  to deploy new features before they arrive on Microsoft’s dedicated software, but this progression of new features seems to indicate that that’s the case

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Windows 9 and 8.1 Update 2 Teased in Leaked Image

Darn those pesky leaks!

Website Myce has acquired a screenshot from well-known Microsoft leaker Faikee that confirms recent rumors of a second update that will take place later this year, and Windows 9 sometime around April 2015. There's also mention of Office 2015 and another platform called Windows 365. Could this latter option be the cloud-based platform we've heard so much about?
According to the Windows 365 status, the platform is in alpha and based on the Windows core. Unfortunately, that's it for details, but speculation points to a monthly subscription like Microsoft's current Office 2013 suite, with an option to pay every three months, six months or annually. This scenario would mean customers have a limited number of seats (like three per license), and will receive constant updates and new releases automatically.
The screenshot, which looks to be a scan of an internal schedule sheet, reveals that Microsoft is currently building Windows 9, Windows Server 2015 and Windows Phone 9, and presumably trying to keep the experience across all three unified. There's also mention of the "Gemini" Office 2013 Modern UI-based apps, which may be in RTM mode as of this article, as well as Windows Phone 8.1.
There's talk that Windows 9 would be free to customers, but that's unlikely given that Microsoft has bills to pay and needs that income. If anything, the Redmond company may follow its Windows 8.1 plans and

customers with Windows 8.1 Update 2 a huge discount, while Windows 7 and Windows 8 customers will have to pay for the full upgrade.

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Secure Mobile Application Development

Mobile Security Challenges

Mobile security challenges stem from change in the threat model associated with the products and services providing mobile applications and interfaces. A threat model is a depiction of a system's attack surface, annotated with possible threats and the ways in which critical assets might be targeted. Threat modeling is the process of analyzing threat information, determining which attack vectors a threat might follow to compromise a system, and putting in place appropriate security controls to protect critical assets.

The relevant security risks and concerns depend on the architecture of the mobile application. For example, a mobile application that only provides the front end to an organization's website will have different security concerns and challenges from an online banking application with a fat client that deals with sensitive financial data.

In general, mobile applications have a different threat model from traditional Web applications.

Changing Attack Profiles

Because of their wide accessibility, both Web and mobile applications face attacks from a variety of directions: malicious mobile users, third-party applications, and users seeking to directly access back-end systems. However, with mobile applications, such attacks have a greater chance of succeeding.

Malicious users. Mobile devices are often lost or stolen, providing malicious users greater accessibility to private user data and critical application credentials. Mobile applications that don't properly manage sessions or that provide local mechanisms for remembering user IDs and passwords are easily compromised. For example, sessions are often left open on mobile applications for long periods of time so mobile users can seamlessly pick up where they left off when bringing an application to the foreground. Not closing open sessions on a regular basis increases the likelihood that a malicious user can gain unauthorized access to critical data and applications. 

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