New More Sophisticated Version Of Mac Defender Malware Detected.

If you thought the Mac virus/malware scene was about to dry up due to Apple’s relatively quick response in regards to the MacDefender malware which would steal credit card information, think again. Mac Security Blog (Intego) has discovered a new version of Mac Defender that ups the ante. Specifically, the old dead giveaway that the software was fake — a Windows screen being the OS X preview — has been replaced with an OS X-style window.

With that said, the people behind this annoying malware still have some work cut out for them — the fonts are all wrong and the alerts are not specific to Mac.

Nonetheless, the risk is still there. If you notice the alert above or see a folder labeled “anti-malware.zip” in your downloads folder, do not install or open it. As of writing, the application is still called “MacSecurity”.

Victory: 3-Year Wireless Plans Ruled Illegal In Europe. 1 Year Plans Now Mandatory.

One of the worst travesties in the mobile world is the existence of 3-year cellular contracts. At one point, the added 12 months gave customers lower prices at the time of sale. Fast forward to 2011, however, and you’ll hear accounts of people paying $300-$400 for a phone even with a 3-year contract. The entire point of early termination fees are to recoup the cost of subsidized phones. Tying into multi-year contracts — longer contracts allow carriers to (in theory) offer better discounts on hardware with the guarantee they’ll more than make up for the relatively small discount over the course of your contract. Unfortunately, carriers have taken advantage of consumers.

But such injustices will soon be a thing of the past as new European legislation put forth by independent governing body of UK telecom, Ofcom, shakes things up quite a bit. First on the chopping block: 3-year contracts.

Apple iCloud Details Trickle Out, Hint At Google’s $100 Million Offer.

Ongoing rumors concerning Apple’s iCloud and Google Music continue as a new report from BusinessWeek sheds light on the future of cloud-based music, Google and Amazon’s ongoing troubles in wooing music labels, and how Apple could shift the balance of power away from Google and back into their court.

As we already know, Amazon and Google’s recently launched cloud-based music storage lockers are pretty basic. They allow users to upload a set amount of music and stream it from a host of web-enabled devices. The biggest problems with the self-upload method is that uploading can take quite a long time, especially if we’re talking about 50+ GBs of music. That’s where Apple’s so called “iCloud” service really pulls away from the pack…

Google To Offer NFC “Stickers” For Non-NFC Compatible Devices.

The recently unveiled Google Wallet has a ton of potential. But what good is a robust digital payment system if an extremely small minority can access it? Thankfully Google and friends have a solution — NFC stickers. Said stickers will be able to be applied to devices without native NFC support and communicate with the host device via the Google Wallet cloud.

Being that such a solution isn’t optimal, users will only be able to attach a single credit card to the Google Wallet. But if hardware manufacturers and retailers team up, we see the list of compatible devices and potential users skyrocketing to the point these makeshift stickers won’t be needed anymore. Nonetheless, the legacy support is a welcome surprise.

T-Mobile Has Yet To Approve Google Wallet On Nexus S

While Sprint customers with Nexus S 4G handsets will be able to get in on the Google Wallet action at launch later this summer, T-Mobile’s own Nexus S customers won’t be as lucky as things stand now.

At today’s Google Wallet unveiling, Google VP of Payments Osama Bedier stated that Google will have to continue working closely with T-Mobile to ensure Google Wallet support moving forward. But if Google Wallet is as awesome as the company makes it out to be, why hasn’t T-Mobile signed on like their enthusiastic competitor, Sprint?

Money. Google having to “negotiate” with T-Mobile has everything to do with who gets paid and at what percentage of any given transaction. By using NFC chips coupled with Google’s services, we can easily see someone in the middle getting left out of their piece of the pie. In order for T-Mobile to sign off on Google Wallet, Google will have to ensure that enough money is routed through T-Mobile’s bank accounts before going elsewhere.

Despite the sour view, the mobile payment scene is much improved over just a few years ago when such features were entering common discussion, and dozens of different parties wanted to implement their own technologies. The only thing the different companies could agree on was that they all wanted money. Trust us, things have come a long way if the companies we saw at today’s Google Wallet unveiling can come together and agree on a basic set of standards.

AT&T Breaks Down Network Allocation Following An Approved Merger.

Should congress allow AT&T to purchase T-Mobile and thereby create an enormous 100 million + strong carrier, the wireless scene in the U.S. will undergo some massive changes. Thus far AT&T has been rather vague (publicly) as to how they will shift networks amongst their newly begotten spectrum as well as what they’ll do with their current waves.

At yesterday’s Barclays Capital Global Communications conference president of AT&T’s business solutions unit, John Stankey elaborated on AT&T’s upcoming plans for all of that T-Mobile spectrum. First and foremost, AT&T is planning on combining both T-Mobile’s and AT&T’s 2G and EDGE networks into one. From there, AT&T will move to repurpose T-Mobile’s current use of the 1700MHz AWS spectrum for the carrier’s LTE/4G network as well as build out on their particular block of the 700MHz spectrum purchased in last years auction. Finally, AT&T will shift T-Mobile’s 1700MHz and 2100MHz T-Mobile 3G networks to their own 1900MHz frequency, which in turn will require new handsets be purchased.

Still unclear, however, is what AT&T plans on doing with T-Mobile’s 2100MHz band which is currently half of the carrier’s dual-channel (up/down) setup with their 1700MHz band.

While the plans do sound nice and admittingly will benefit a fair amount of people, the larger picture is not so great — one major GSM carrier has monopoly written all over it giving AT&T power to push around consumers even more than they do now. I

Web Based WP7 Marketplace To Launch Alongside Mango Later This Summer.

Joing the ranks of Apple and Google, Microsoft will release a web based version of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace alongside the “Mango” update later this summer. The announcement was made by Todd Brix, Microsoft’s senior director of the Windows Phone Marketplace. Similar to the web based Android Marketplace, WP7 users will be able to read reviews, view screen shots, promote applications via social networks, as well as purchase apps for OTA download. Payment will be tied to credit cards associated with your Windows Live ID.

Windows Phone 7 is quickly coming together, but is it enough?