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Blizzard’s Battle.net Gets Hacked

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Mike Morhaime of Blizzard Entertainment has released an announcement that there has been unauthorized access to Blizzard’s internal network.

Morhaime states that they have taken steps to close the breach in security and are now working closely with law enforcement to investigate the situation.Battle.net

It is important to note that Blizzard does NOT believe that any personal information such as credit cards,billing addresses or real names have been compromised. Although they do mention that some internal data was illegally accessed, including a list of email addresses for battle.net users. Information about players on North American servers such as personal security question, Mobile and Dial-In Authentication we also accessed. However, this information alone is not enough to gain access to battle.net accounts.

Passwords to battle.net accounts were also compromised but these passwords are scrambled using Secure Remote Password Protocol (SRP) which protects passwords.
Blizzard cautions that even though the passwords are scrambled you should still consider changing your password.

An automated process will be coming along in the next few days to get battle.net users to change their secret questions and answers.

For more information on this subject please head to the official link below.

http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/important-security-update-faq

Improving Your Wi-Fi Reception

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Whether your struggling with your Wi-Fi connection at home or just want to optimize the connection you already have here are a few steps you can take to improve your Wi-Fi reception.

1. Keep your router in a central location, basically keep your router away from outside walls and if you have a multi-level home, keep the router on the first floor and not tucked deep in the corner of the basement.wifiGraphic

2. Keep away from mirrors, this causes more problems than you would think. All metal surfaces reflect Wi-Fi and mirrors contain a thin layer of metal which can create dead zones.

3. Keep the router off the floor, this is not the greatest location for a router for many reasons, especially Wi-fi reception. Try placing it on a high shelf or at least on top of a desk or table.

4.Check your cordless phones, do you have cordless phones in the home that operate on 2.4 Ghz? If you do, chances are your having issues with your Wi-Fi. Wireless routers and older cordless phones operate on the same frequency and interfere with each other, newer cordless phones work at 5GHz and up and should not cause interference.

5. Keep adapters and routers away from other electronics and power cords as these may hinder your Wi-Fi signal as well.

6. Change your routers broadcast channel, to do this you will need to log in to your router. Here are a few of the default addresses you can use to access your routers settings. You simply enter the following IP addresses into your browsers address bar.

**You will need to get the specific instructions for your router manufacturer in order to locate the area in your router settings that allows you to change the broadcast channel.

Router Address

D-Link 192.168.0.1
3Com 192.168.1.1
NetGear 192.168.0.1
Linksys 192.168.1.1
Mircrosoft 192.168.2.1
Actiontec 192.168.0.1

7.Keep up-to-date, always keep your router and or adapter firmware up-to-date. These firmware releases often fix buggy software problems including reception issues. The same goes with you device drivers.

8. Stick with the same vendor, if you utilize a wireless adapter such as a USB adapter, to receive Wi-Fi then try to utilize the same vendor that made your router. These companies after all designed these components to work together and getting support for either device should be easier since you can go to the same website for all your drivers and firmware.

Android 4.1 Jelly Bean

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Jelly Bean

Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean” is by far the smoothest feeling Android release to date. Not only is the mobile OS easy on the eyes but it also has a lot of nice user interface changes that make life a little easier.

This is a very powerful and responsive mobile OS that offers great competition in the mobile market. I have been following Android since its first release and it has come a long way since the beginning and so have the devices that run it. I feel that this is the best android release yet.

Here are a few new features in Jelly Bean:

-Browser gets enhanced with better performance for HTML 5 animation and video along with an updated JavaScript engine that helps pages load much faster.

– When using Camera you can now swipe to the viewfinder to review photos with out exiting the app and then swipe back to take more photos.

-Another innovative feature is Android Beam, a great way to share photos and videos, simply by touching two Android devices back-to-back.

-Face Unlock is now more accurate and smoother then before and now can require that the user blink to ensure that a live person is trying to unlock the device.

-Messaging collects recipients as chips making it easier to compose new messages.

-Wi-Fi protected setup (WPS) is now supported with button press and PIN support.

These are just a few of the new enhancements in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. For a complete list of features and enhancements head over to the Android website.

Alienware M17x R4

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The Alienware M17x has amazing performance, an HD display and high-definition surround sound for a pretty amazing gaming experience. As always Alienware delivers on eye candy as well by offering up some amazing visual appeal to the hardware itself. This laptop is sure to deliver on power.

Looking like part of the star ship enterprise, it really is a great looking laptop. Everything about the design feels like a gaming laptop from the body and keyboard straight to the specialized software. The Alienware Command Center software allows for some nice customization options that you really don’t see anywhere else. Other nice features include shutting down unnecessary programs and playing certain music when launching your favorite games.

Just as you would expect this laptop has the horsepower to drive today’s demanding games with the 3rd gen Intel i7 at its core and graphics driven by the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX. Display options vary with the 17.3-inch WideFHD 1920 x 1080 120Hz NVIDIA 3D Vision Bundle being the best selection.

Another nice perk with these laptops is that they come without any preloaded software that normally comes with new machines, this is really a nice feature that anyone can appreciate, considering most of us spend the first half hour removing all of it anyway.

The M17x R4 is really an amazing piece of hardware that makes portable gaming a reality. Packing all that power into a tiny shell comes at a price though when it comes to battery life, which is something that engineers will need to improve in the future but this laptop is still a gaming beast and I think well worth the buy.