Computer security specialists showed off a homemade drone aircraft Friday capable of launching airborne cyber attacks, hijacking mobile phone calls, or even delivering a dirty bomb. Rich Perkins and Mike Tassey built the bright yellow Wireless Arial Surveillance Platform in a garage from a used US Army target drone that they customized to find mobile phones and Internet hotspots. "It will fly a plotted course and return to base," Perkins said while showing the WASP to AFP at a DefCon hackers gathering ...

Google has released Google Maps Navigation for South Africa for Android phones. Maps Navigation integrates features from Google Maps with satellite navigation and uses a phone's internet connection to provide turn–by-turn navigation. Phones must be running at least Android version 1.6. Not only is it free, feature rich and increadibly useful, but Google has added a real kicker with this product in that Maps Navigation can still do its thing if your phone loses its internet connection. "Once you’ve connected ...

A gaming sensation from a hip little Canadian outfit that is as strange and eerie as it is wonderfully engrossing: old skool graphics and amazing soundtrack, looks like your old Atari, runs on an iPad. Now, before we even begin with this review, I’d like to point out that I am in no way a serious gamer at all. I don’t own any consoles and the last game I finished was Half-Life…the first one (what a game). Reason being that ...

In an acrimonious case of the pot calling the kettle a patent bully, Google's top lawyer slammed Apple, Oracle, Microsoft and other companies, accusing them of using "bogus patents" to wage a campaign against the Internet giant's Android mobile platform. This has sparked a sniffy response from the accused, and blistering attack from anti-software patent activists. In a blog post, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer David Drummond said Google's rivals were seeking to "make it harder for manufacturers ...

The much-anticipated new generation of Sony's PlayStation handheld gaming console, Vita, will not hit shops outside of Japan until well after the all-important festive season shopping stampede. So scratch that one from your letter to Father Christmas. It will go on sale by the end of this year in Sony's home market, followed by releases in the US and European markets in early 2012 said Kazuo Hirai, executive vice president. Timelines for developing markets were not announced. Hirai, seen as the likely ...

Many Britons are welded to their smartphones 24 hours a day and refuse to turn them off in cinemas and theatres, according to a study Thursday showing how the devices are changing social behaviour. Research for telecommunications watchdog Ofcom showed that more than a third of adults and a majority of teenagers say they are highly addicted to devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, often referred to as 'CrackBerry' by users for this reason. Users are more likely than owners of ...

The developer of popular fantasy swords, sorcery and demon-hacking game Diablo III will be running an official online auction house allowing players to trade items they find or win while gaming, even paying in via real currency. Further, players can convert the virtual money they earn in the game into hard cash. Activision Blizzard announced this at a press event at its headquarters in California on Monday, kicking off what is likely to become the big gaming trend of 2011. The ...

Taiwanese tech manufacturing giant Foxconn, hit by a spate of suicides and reports of worker abuse at its Chinese plants, plans to replace 500 000 workers with robots in the next three years, Chinese state media reported Monday. Foxconn, the world's largest maker of computer components, which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, plans to use one million robots to do "simple" work, China Business News quoted chairman Terry Gou saying. Gou announced the plan to 10 000 staff at a ...

Sony Computer Entertainment has bought the studio behind hit videogames "inFamous" and "Sly Cooper." Sucker Punch Productions will be part of game development operations of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios and make games exclusively for PlayStation 3 videogame consoles, according to SCE. "We've enjoyed an incredible relationship with Sony that has allowed us to combine our creative design capabilities with their guidance to make some of the best franchises to hit the PlayStation platforms," said Sucker Punch managing partner Brian Fleming. "Equally important, ...

Nintendo has announced it will be cutting the price of its 3DS handheld game console. In the US it's been slashed from US$250 to US$170, in Japan prices fell by 40%, and in Europe the cuts are expected to see at least a third taken off. A price drop for a console isn’t new; every videogame console has been discounted at some point in its life cycle. Doing so within a four month window? Not unprecedented, but unusual, especially for Nintendo. ...