BusinessWeek has posted a nice concise report on how secure most passwords are, and how long it takes even hackers to guess it.

As it has been for years, the most popular password is "123456," followed by "password," "12345678," "qwerty," and "abc123."

The following is how long it takes for a hacker to randomly guess your password:

Length: 6 characters
Lowercase: 10 minutes
+ Uppercase: 10 hours
+ Nos. & Symbols: 18 days

Length: 7 characters
Lowercase: 4 hours
+ Uppercase: 23 days
+ Nos. & Symbols: 4 years

Length: 8 characters
Lowercase: 4 days
+ Uppercase: 3 years
+ Nos. & Symbols: 463 years

Length: 9 characters
Lowercase: 4 months
+ Uppercase: 178 years
+ Nos. & Symbols: 44,530 years

Furthermore, the report says it costs a company $10 to take a phone call that will eventually require a password reset.

30 percent of all help desk calls are password related, and 50 percent of all users make their password a "common word or simple key combination."

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According to comScore's latest figures, Google's Android smartphone OS is closing in on RIM's BlackBerry OS for most popular mobile OS in the U.S.

Overall, smartphone ownership has increased 60 percent year-over-year (YoY), to 63.2 million.

Total Americans, aged 13 and up owning mobile phones, jumped to 234 million.

In the smartphone market, RIM remained on the top, at 31.6 percent, taking a -5.7 point change YoY.

Android exploded to 28.7, a 7.3 point change.

Apple kept its ongoing growth, moving .7 points to 25 percent, while Windows fell to 8.4 percent and Palm fell to 3.7 percent.

(via comScore)

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Sprint has unveiled the Kyocera Echo today, an Android device with dual touch screens.

The smartphone goes on sale in the Spring for $200 with contract.

Kyocera, of Japan, is not very well known in the United States although they do make a plethora of feature phones.

The Echo has dual 3.5-inch screens and will allow users to run multiple apps at the same time, or watch videos whilst surfing the Web on different screens, for example.

Another example is splitting the operations of one app, such as having the email inbox on the top screen and the email text in the bottom screen.

The company says the phone will run on Sprint's 3G network, not their WiMax 4G network, but 4G models may come in the future.

Finally, the phone has huge power drain, because of the dual screens, so Sprint is adding a free spare battery in the package.

(Pic via Engadget)

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T-Mobile USA has announced they will offer all their phones, including 4G smartphones, for free over the weekend, as part of a Valentine's Day promotion.

The promotion is in-stores and will include all phones available from the carrier, as long as you sign up for a two-year contract.

Says the company:

Smartphones offer people incredible flexibility to stay connected and express their love to the people that matter most. T-Mobile's Valentine's promotion makes it easier for anyone to get their favorite smartphone and keep connected on America's largest 4G network.

The most expensive phones available as part of the promotion are the myTouch 4G, HTC HD7, T-Mobile G2 and Samsung Vibrant, each of which run on Android or Windows.

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According to a new comScore report on digital trends, email usage has significantly declined, especially amongst teenagers.

From December 2009 to December 2010, overal web email usage declined 8 percent, dragged down by a 59 percent decline among teens aged 12-17.

Users aged 18-24 saw the smallest year-over-year decline, at just 1 percent, while usage among 25-35 year olds fell 18 percent. Usage by 35-44 year olds fell 8 percent and the 45-54 demographic saw a 12 percent decline.

Older people helped buoy the fall, as 55-64 year olds increased usage 22 percent and the 65 and older crowd saw 28 percent growth.

Most of the share lost by email usage, was found by social networking, especially among teens.

(Pic via Crunch)

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PSX-Scene has revealed that Sony is expanding its lawsuit against PS3 hackers, moving on from just Geohot and adding well-known hackers Cantero, Peter, Bushing, Segher, hermesEOL, kmeaw, Waninkoko, grafchokolo, kakaroto to its list.

The company will subpoena a number of sites, like PSX-Scene, Twitter, Github, Slashdot and even YouTube, in an attempt to find the location of the defendants.

Many of the hackers, such as hermes, are not located in the U.S., so it is unclear how Sony will be able to bring them to court.

Github was where hackers shared the source codes. The site was recently sent DMCA takedown notices and removed the code.

You can view all the documents here: Sony Expanding It's Case - Looking For All PS3 Hackers

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Beginning next week, online music service Last.fm will move to subscription-only for mobile users (except for Windows Phone 7 users), moving from the current ad-based model.

The company says ad-based models are no longer "practical" and now mobile users will have to pay to continue their Last.fm service.

Online use will stay free, in the U.S, UK and Germany, adds Matthew Hawn, Last.fm's head of product.

Says Hawn (via BBC):

We think that the best experience is ad-free. It's not that we're losing buckets of money on our service... but we're trying to make rational decisions about our business model.

The company does note that Xbox Live users will still be able to access the service for free, as well.

Adds the company:

On the Last.fm website an ad-supported, free-to-listeners model is what supports our online radio services in the US, UK and Germany. In other markets and on emerging mobile and home entertainment devices, it is not practical for us to deliver an ad supported radio experience, but instead, we will migrate to what we believe is the highest quality, lowest cost ad-free music service in the world.

We believe our radio -whether it's a personalised station or artist and tag radio – is the best in the world and we're proud of the depth and range of our catalogue of music from major labels, indies and unsigned artists. We're committed to building Last.fm into a bigger service that gives listeners the best music discovery experience anywhere while financially supporting and promoting the artists who make the music we love.

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An Iranian official said that the country must investigate claims that the Stuxnet worm could have caused major harm to its first nuclear power station.

Mohammad Ahmadian, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said that reports of damage to the country's Bushehr plant were a malicious campaign by countries hostile to Tehran's nuclear program.

"Many of these discussions raised in the media and world public opinion about the Stuxnet virus are an effort to create concern among the Iranian people and people of the region and delay the work of the nuclear power plant," he said.

"Therefore it is necessary that experts in the field investigate to see how much truth there is in these discussions."

Analysts believe that Stuxnet was a successful attack by the United States and/or Israel on the Iranian nuclear program, which both suspect has a goal of creating nuclear weapons. Iran has given mixed reports on the true impact of Stuxnet on its systems since the story emerged publicly.

Russia's NATO ambassador created headlines recently when he said the virus could potentially lead to a "new Chernobyl". Russia supplied the fuel for the Bushehr plant, and despite the alarming comment on a new Chernobyl-like incident, Ahmadian indicated that there is no significant delay as a result in the start-up of the plant, which will supply electricity to the country's national grid.

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A man is facing jail time for stealing thousands of pounds worth of virtual pokers chips from an online poker website.

Ashley Mitchell admitted in court to stealing more than 400 billion virtual chips after breaking into the systems of Zygna, an online gaming outlet. The 400 billion virtual chips had a face value of about $12 million (£7.4 million).

Mitchell had managed to gain £53,000 from the theft by selling the stolen virtual chips using a series of online accounts on social networking sites. He charged £430 per 1 billion virtual chips.

He posed as an administrator for the Zynga Poker game between June and September of 2009, before he gained access to the company's computer systems and carried out the electronic theft.

After realizing the amount of chips that had gone "missing", Zynga set up a sting which tracked down Mitchell. He pleaded guilty to five charges brought under the Computer Misuse Act and the Proceeds from Crime Act. He was remanded until a date was fixed for sentencing.

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Grand Theft Auto developer Gary Penn told Gamasutra about how the original Grand Theft Auto video game title was almost canned during development.

The GTA series has been one of the biggest stories of the video games industry so far, with the Grand Theft Auto IV title selling a huge 17 million copies within two years of its commercial release. Earlier versions of the title also had strong sales across gaming platforms over the past decade.

All of that came very close to never happening. In fact, it was something that was then considered a kind of "bug" in the game that convinced the developers to continue with it and set its tone.

"It never really felt like it was going anywhere. It was almost canned. The publisher, BMG Interactive, wanted to can it," Penn said. "There are probably two key things it fell down on; two critical things. One of them is stability, which is a really boring one, but it crashed all the f---ing time. So even if you did get something in the game, you couldn't really test it."

Penn explained that the other key problem with the original Grand Theft Auto was the vehicle component of the game. "There was a point in it where you used to have a button for opening the doors, and it was just rubbish," he said. "I can't remember if this is true because we used to joke that you even had to start the engine. It was awful; it was too sim-y."

One day while testing the project, the police characters in the game began to behave erratically, and this amused and inspired the developers to keep going with it.

"Then one day, I think it was a bug, the police suddenly became mental and aggressive, and that was an awesome moment because suddenly the real drama where, "Oh my God, the police are psycho...they're trying to ram me off the road."

The original Grand Theft Auto title is available for free.

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Sony Ericsson has finally confirmed the Xperia Play, placing an ad during the Super Bowl, at the price of $6 million for the 1 minute spot.

The PlayStation phone will be formally unveiled at the Mobile World Congress on February 13th, running an Xperia Arc custom interface, on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Sony's Xperia Play has a 4-inch display with 854x450 resolution and will be powered by a Sony Bravia engine for smoother video playback.

Under the hood, the device runs a single-core Snapdragon processor clocked at 1GHz, an Adreno 205 GPU and 512MB RAM.

As is standard, the smartphone/handheld will have 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, and an FM receiver plus transmitter.

Physically, the smartphone has 4 buttons, Back/Menu/Home/Search, a 1500mAh battery, USB port, microSD slot and 5MP camera which lacks 720p recording.

"Android is ready to play:"

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