Walkman rocks with Android

1 of 14 from Sony's new -- and old -- Walkmans (pictures)

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Once the vanguard of mobile entertainment, the Sony Walkman is ready to make a comeback -- and Google is playing in the band, adding Android 4.0 to the new Walkman lineup.

Sony says the Android-powered music player will deliver a distortion-killing S-Master Digital Amplifier from Sony and a "richer, bolder, and louder presence." The E470 Series, seen here, has a 2-inch screen and is 7-millimeters thick.

Integrating the Sony Entertainment Network's cloud-based Music Unlimited Service, the new Walkman will give users access to more than 14 million songs. With a monthly subscription, Music Unlimited lets users transfer their music and ad-free radio channels to their Walkman to listen offline. The device supports drag-and-drop transfers of music, photos, videos, podcasts, and playlists from iTunes for Windows via Media Go software or Windows Media Player.

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Third-party iPhone 5 cases spotted in the wild -- again

Apple's next iPhone hasn't even been announced yet, but you can buy a case or two to protect it.

by Adekunle Olumide

  

The rendering of the "iPhone 5" case from TVC-Mall.

(Credit: TVC-Mall.com)

Apple's next iPhone hasn't even been announced, but that hasn't kept third-party case manufacturers from getting products ready to go.

Case in point (pun intended), this new crop of cases that have shown up on Shenzhen, China-based TVC-Mall. Spotted by jailbreak enthusiast blog Cydiablog (by way of Macrumors), these cases promise to fit Apple's next iPhone. That's complete with a rectangular cutout on the bottom, presumably where Apple's reportedly tweaked dock connector will be.

Buyers beware though. TVC-Mall, which makes accessories for numerous technology manufacturers, says there's no guarantee the case will work with Apple's next device.

"Notice: As iPhone 5 has not been unveiled, we can't guarantee this product can be used in iPhone 5," a large, red warning reads. "If you have any questions, please contact our friendly customer service representatives."

Readers might remember that this same thing happened ahead of the iPhone 4S last year. A crop of cases reared up that bore little resemblance to what would end up as the iPhone 4S' design. That included a relocation of the phone's mute switch, and a curved back, two things that didn't materialize.

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As detailed in Forbes last year, numerous case makers who created molds based on rumored specifications got burned. That includes Hard Candy, which dropped a reported $10,000 on molds for wider, thinner iPhones that never came out. The reward, of course, is a potential windfall from sales by early buyers, who get the phone and want an alternative to Apple's Bumpers. For those manufacturers who wait, it can take weeks, or even months to get their first batch of cases out on the market.

Apple's current iPhone, the 4S, was announced and released last October. The company is expected to follow a similar fall schedule with its next model. Despite the "5" moniker making the rounds, that device will actually be Apple's sixth-generation model.

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Experts take down Grum spam botnet, world's third largest

Botnet was responsible for 18 billion spam messages a day -- about 18 percent of the world's spam -- experts tell The New York Times.

by Adekunle Olumide

 Follow @olucapri

Computer-security experts took down the world's third-largest botnet, which they say was responsible for 18 percent of the world's spam.

Command-and-control servers in Panama and the Netherlands pumping out up to 18 billion spam messages a day for the Grum botnet were taken down Tuesday, but the botnet's architects set up new servers in Russia later in the day, according to a New York Times report. California-based security firm FireEye and U.K.-based spam-tracking service SpamHaus traced the spam back to servers in Russia and worked with local ISPs to shut down the servers, which ran networks of infected machines called botnets.

The tech community has stepped up its efforts of late to take these botnets offline. Microsoft in particular has been quite active, using court orders to seize command-and-control servers and cripple the operations of the Waledac, Rustock, and Kelihos botnets.

The takedown of the Rustock botnet cut the volume of spam across the world by one-third, Symantec reported in March 2011. At its peak, the notorious botnet was responsible for sending out 44 billion spam messages per day, or more than 47 percent of the world's total output, making it the leading purveyor of spam.

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Security experts are confident they have stopped the Grum botnet in its tracks.

"It's not about creating a new server. They'd have to start an entirely new campaign and infect hundreds of thousands of new machines to get something like Grum started again," Atif Mushtaq, a computer security specialist at FireEye, told the Times. "They'd have to build from scratch. Because of how the malware was written for Grum, when the master server is dead, the infected machines can no longer send spam or communicate with a new server."

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