Asus lowers netbook outlook

Taiwanese manufacturer Asus experienced a drop in sales of its Eee PC netbooks in the second quarter of the year, states PCR.

Competition from the iPad was cited by the company at a recent investor conference, according to a Digitimes report.

Asus was largely responsible for creating the netbook category, with the introduction of the Eee PC but since then many other manufactures have introduced similar devices aimed at Internet use on the move, an area also targeted by the Apple iPad.

Samsung may debut a 7-inch Android tablet based on its new Galaxy S line of phones, early next month at a consumer electronics show in Berlin in early September, says MSNBC.

The tablet, which may be called the P1000 Galaxy Tab, is reported to have a front-facing camera for video calls, something lacking in Apple's iPad, but available on the iPhone 4.

It's not yet clear whether the Samsung tablet will go on sale first in Europe, when it will be available in the United States, and what its cost will be.

Hacked smartphones could endanger troops by sending location data to the enemy using mechanisms similar to those employed by recently discovered Android malware, experts say, reports NetworkWorld.

Malicious software that commandeers phone functions could give wartime enemies valuable information about troop locations and movements, according to Hugh Thompson, a software security professor at Columbia University and conference chairman for the RSA Confernece, and Markus Jakobsson, who works on the PayPal online security and malware strategy team.

"Even normal apps can send a lot of information back home," Thompson says, and individual users are generally ill equipped to determine whether these apps represent security risks.