September 01, 2006, 3:33 PM PDT
2007 Land Rover Range Rover Supercharged
Posted by: Wayne Cunningham

We complained about the interior appointments of the 2006 Range Rover Sport, so Land Rover sent us its 2007 Range Rover Supercharged to show us that it does indeed know how to make people comfortable. (For those who insist that Land Rovers aren't about being comfortable, there's a lot that's changed since 1967.) The meaty but refined body style remains the same from 2006 to 2007, complete with side vents on the engine compartment to let the car's massive power plant breathe. Our Range Rover is the Supercharged model, with a 4.2-liter engine making 400 horsepower. This power moves the big car adroitly in traffic and lets it easily stroll up the steep hills of San Francisco. We felt the supercharger add its considerable boost at higher RPMs, making acceleration from stop initially slow. As with the 2006 models, an HSE version will be available with a nonsupercharged 4.4-liter V-8, which is good for 305 horsepower.

Our test model is painted in Giverny Green Metallic, a nice deep sage color, with neatly matching interior upholstery. The power-adjustable seats move every which way, including moving the headrest up and down. Although it doesn't exactly float over potholes like the 2007 Mercedes Benz S550, the stiffer suspension damps out the bumps very well. The Range Rover includes Land Rover's Terrain Response System, which is standard on all 2007 Range Rovers. A large knob on the console lets the driver easily set the car's electronic road-handling for a variety of terrain, including paved roads, snow, and rock crawling. This Range Rover further holds up Land Rover's impressive off-road pedigree with hill descent control, locking differential, and an optional rear electronic differential to complement the standard center e-differential.

Electronics abound in the cabin of this high-end Land Rover, with a crisp-sounding Harman Kardon Logic7 stereo, Bluetooth phone connectivity, navigation, and rear-seat DVD entertainment. We're usually impressed with Harman Kardon systems, and this one produces audio with great clarity, with three speakers in each front door, a midrange on the dash, two speakers in each rear door, and a subwoofer. Digital signal processing lets passengers adjust the sweet spot around the cabin via an intuitive diagram on the car's LCD. However, the speaker arrangement doesn't lend itself to a full surround-sound experience, with the audio primarily emanating from in front of the driver and passenger. And Land Rover is still behind the times with the six-disc CD changer, which relies on a glove box-mounted cartridge system, instead of the more modern in-dash CD changer found on many other luxury cars. The system does play MP3s, although it doesn't display ID3 tag information, showing file and folder name instead. Similarly, the rear-seat DVD system has its media loaded into a cargo area-mounted changer, a fault that is only mitigated by the fact that six movies can be loaded in, ensuring a day's worth of travel entertainment.

We like the Bluetooth integration on the Range Rover, which effortlessly paired with our phone. It allows voice-command dialing, even accepting a spoken string of numbers, and has message and SMS capability. The GPS system is adequate, although it uses the same interface as on the 2006 models, which we haven't found to be particularly intuitive. In our quick first look drive, we couldn't find a zoom control that would allow us to select a destination from the map, but its points-of-interest database helped us find the location we wanted. A big plus with the Range Rover is that all of its cabin systems are controllable from the touch-screen LCD, as opposed to the multiple interfaces in the lesser Land Rover models we've seen previously. Our test model carries a price tag of about $95,000, comparable to luxury sedans we've reviewed. And even though the interior lacks in a few areas, the 2007 Range Rover Supercharged goes places where luxury sedans can't follow.

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September 01, 2006, 3:17 PM PDT
OpenID, a potential cure for Website password overload
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

On my computer, I keep a Word file where I store my various Web site passwords. It is 102 pages long, because every time I visit a new site that requires a login and password, I write the combo down in my file.

This has got to stop. For one thing, it is terribly inconvenient. I'm sick of filling out a form when all I want to do is experiment with a new service. For another, it's unsafe. Not only does my one Word file hold almost all my passwords (I keep bank and commerce passwords separate), but since most of the passwords are the same, should one of these services get hacked, the password uncovered would give access to dozens of other sites. Sure, there are software utilities that can create and track unique passwords for me (like RoboForm, which I've recently started to use), but I wager that most Web browsers use the same user ID / password combination at every site they visit.

There's an emerging solution to this, called OpenID. The concept is that you create one master identity online, at a site that you use a lot and tend to remain logged in to -- like a social network or your personal blog. When you need to identify yourself to another new site, you point that site towards your main identity-providing site, where you're already logged in. You main site sends the new site login credentials, so the new site now knows who you are.

For users, it's not a dissimilar concept from Microsoft's failed Passport scheme, but there is one key difference: There's no one site that holds all users' identities. Any site can become an OpenID provider, and users can choose one they trust. Don't trust Google? Then how about eBay, or perhaps MySpace?

OpenID was created by Brad Fitzpatrick, now at blog company Six Apart, as a way to link users on the various Six Apart platforms together. It's been primarily used so far to verify the identity of people posting comments on blogs, but it can be use more generally. For example, the photo sharing site Zooomr [blog post] uses OpenID as a login method. Wikipedia has a list of other sites that use OpenID.

If you don't have a personal page or don't use a site that serves up OpenID authentication, you can create an identity at myopenid.com. Hopefully some big sites that are popular with consumers will become OpenID providers.

One weird thing, for new users, is that instead of logging into an OpenID-using site (like Zooomr) with a user name and password, you just give it your personal OpenID URL -- and no password. Then your browser pops over to your authenticating site (like myopenid.com) to verify that you want to use your persona on the new site. This is bound to initially confuse people, and since users may not be asked for a password, it can also appear to be less secure, although it is not.

OpenID is not yet in wide distribution among consumer sites, neither is it yet simple enough for most consumers to use. But it's a very big step towards solving the problem of Web password overload, and I hope it evolves quickly into a consumer-friendly identify management platform.

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September 01, 2006, 3:10 PM PDT
Garmin announces wide-screen Nuvi 660
Posted by: Bonnie Cha

And the GPS hits just keep on coming. Today, Garmin officially announced its Garmin Nüvi 660. It's a souped-up version of the company's previous all-in-one travel assistant, the Nüvi 350, adding a 4.3-inch touch screen, integrated traffic capabilities, Bluetooth, and an FM transmitter. It comes preloaded with maps of the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and you can add Garmin's travel-friendly apps, such as foreign language dictionaries. The Nüvi 660 is expected to ship sometime this month for--gulp--the hefty price of $1,076.91.

Source: Gizmodo

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September 01, 2006, 12:13 PM PDT
Windows Vista RC1 scales back UAC warnings
Posted by: Robert Vamosi

In Windows Vista RC1, Microsoft made significant progress in responding to tester complaints regarding its User Account Control (UAC). The security feature, which stops a user from continuing with a task until either a dialog box is answered (in Administrator mode) or permission is obtained from an administrator (user mode), received much attention in popular media outlets. As a security editor, I didn't find it all that intrusive, much like running a personal firewall on your system. In fact, the more you use Vista, the fewer the instances of UAC would appear. Nonetheless, Microsoft has decided to scale back the features requiring UAC in the latest release. In RC1, the following instances are where UAC will not interrupt you: an administrator can delete a shortcut from a desktop without a prompt; a user can copy files to newly formatted hard drives; nonadministrators can manually install high-priority security updates from Microsoft without a prompt; users can view firewall settings and connect to a network. It also is absent when Windows Defenders requires a signature file update, when you open Scanner and Camera control panels, and when executing a Media Center "express" setup.

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September 01, 2006, 10:14 AM PDT
SanDisk introduces Sansa c200 series
Posted by: Jasmine France

SanDisk announced today a new color-screen flash MP3 player, the c200. As has become standard for SanDisk players, this new device features an ultracompetitive pricing scheme: $79.99 for the 1GB version and $99.99 for the 2GB. With prices like these, it's no wonder SanDisk enjoys the number two spot in the U.S. MP3 player market. Here are some more details about the c200 series:

• 1.4-inch color LCD (128x98 pixels)
• Built-in Micro SD expansion slot
• Supports MP3 and WMA, including DRM-10
• FM tuner with 20 presets
• Voice recorder
• User-replaceable battery rated for 15 hours
• Displays photos and album art
• Measures 1.3 by 3.1 by 0.6 inches
• Weighs 1.5 ounces
• Available in October

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September 01, 2006, 9:30 AM PDT
God's MySpace: MyChurch.org
Posted by: Rafe Needleman

Wide or narrow? That's the question you might want to ask when you join your next social network. Is it wide, potentially exposing you to people you otherwise wouldn't meet, or is it narrow, limiting your connections to a particular group but allowing you to explore the group in more depth?

A new service, MyChurch.org, is a narrow social network. The site was created so that churches could add social networking to their own online and social programs, giving both a church's congregants and the "unchurched" a place where they could meet each other (and church officials) and do standard social network stuff: make friends, get dates, chat about things, and show off their photos.

MyChurch is more of a sales strategy than a clever new technology. Unlike the beautiful and highly interactive Faces.com social network I covered yesterday, MyChurch feels like a very spare version of MySpace. From a social perspective, it's more like Facebook--it lets you go deep into a particular community, rather than broadcasting your personality to the entire world. MyChurch is probably a great business (churches can pay extra for additional bandwidth, storage, and services), but it's hardly a technical breakout. Although there is one very clever feature: users can invite all their MySpace contacts with one click, cofounder Joe Suh told me.

What about MyMosque or MySynagogue? Suh has no immediate plans to reach out to other religions, but there are companies, such as Simpatico Networks, that build social networks for different religious groups (Simpatico is not, however, focused on individual church communities). Even more general social network software and services can be had from PeopleAggregator, which lets any group set up its own online community, or from several other companies, such as Alstrasoft, Small World Labs, Social Platform, and Sparta Social Networks.

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September 01, 2006, 9:15 AM PDT
AT&T hack leads to phishing attack
Posted by: Robert Vamosi

Earlier this week, CNET News.com reported that someone hacked into a database and stole information for about 19,000 customers of AT&T's DSL service. Now, San Francisco Chronicle reporter David Lazarus reports there's more to the story. In a Chronicle story today, Lazarus details how the initial breach led to a subsequent follow-up phishing attempt targeting the same group of 19,000. The hacking victims, whose social security numbers and other personal information were not part of the initital database breach, were sent phishing e-mails ostensibly from the AT&T DSL store with details regarding recent purchases. The customers were told there was a problem processing their orders and were asked (via a phishing site) to submit more information. The phishing attack part of the story was not made public by AT&T, although the company did send out a warning to potential victims earlier this week. The database attack occured at a third-party site that partnered with AT&T to sell its DSL equipment.

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