New Out of Box Software (NOOBS) has been developed with first time users in mind.

"We don't want people to put their Raspberry Pi down in horror after five minutes," says the team.

Partners will ultimately start offering SD cards pre-installed with NOOBS, but the download link at http://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads exists for now.

The Pi makers recommend installing NOOBS onto a 4GB (or larger) SD card.

Upon first boot up users have a choice of operating systems to install, including Raspbian, Pidora and two flavours of XBMC.

NOTE: Raspbian is a free operating system based on Debian optimised for the Raspberry Pi hardware. The Raspbian teams says that it provides "more than a pure OS" as it comes with over 35,000 packages of pre-compiled bundled software.

According to the development team, when you boot up for the first time, you'll see a menu prompting you to install one of several operating systems into the free space on the card.

"Afterwards, the NOOBS remains on the SD card and allows the user to switch to a recovery interface (hold shift during boot up) if things go horribly wrong. Users can also opt to switch to a different operating system, or overwrite a corrupted card with a fresh installation," says the team.

Last month the Foundation announced its first official Raspberry Pi camera board. In February it revealed an even cheaper version of its low-cost, ARM-based miniature computer, priced at $25 (£16), excluding tax and shipping.

Two pieces of news in this arena have broken from two different sources today.

Intel this week has used its appearance at Computex Taipei to announce a new breed of Ultrabook and so-called "2-in-1" form factor devices (they mean a PC laptop when you need the full keyboard and tablet when you don't) -- to be powered by the incoming 4th generation Intel Core Processor family, formerly known as Haswell.

So basically Haswell (sorry, Intel 4th generation) powered devices will sport 22nm Tri-Gate chips which are said to offer as much as 50 percent additional battery life compared to Ivy Bridge -- there's double the graphics performance too for good measure.

Massive development says Intel

Intel claims to have achieved such lower power consumption rates here that this launch should be regarded as just about the most dramatic and sizeable roadmap development in the firm's history.

Intel executive VP Tom Kilroy said Intel has more than 50 different 2-in-1 designs in the pipeline across a range of price points based on the company's 22nm Silvermont microarchitecture.

Kilroy asserts that, "We made one of the most seismic changes to our roadmap ever to build these new Core processors that deliver the stunning performance of the PC and the mobility of a tablet in one device."

Kilroy also showcased progress in bringing human-like senses to 2-in-1 and other Intel-based devices through the addition of touch, voice and facial recognition and other technologies. Known as "perceptual computing" in Intel terminology, these technologies are designed to make interaction with devices natural, intuitive and immersive.

IBM and AT&T also plug in

In an unrelated by coincidentally aligned announcement today, IBM has said that it is working with AT&T to enables enterprises to conduct comprehensive testing and analysis of their apps' network and battery usage on mobile devices, and make necessary changes; creating higher-quality, better performing mobile apps.

IBM clients will be able to determine how their enterprise mobile app is performing on any wireless network -- and then subsequently work improve performance through development tools.

In a break out session at the company's Innovate 2013 conference today in Orlando, IBM senior VP Robert Le Blanc explained to the Computer Weekly Developer Network that developers do not typically program with battery life in mind as their core application need, so this development will be important in terms of helping to create apps that function better in terms of their power consumption demands.

The integration of AT&T's Application Resource Optimizer (ARO) with IBM's software development solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM) expands the development capabilities of the IBM MobileFirst strategy.

Open source tool to fix power bottlenecks

"ARO tackles a fundamental coding challenge developers face today - finding and fixing performance and power bottlenecks that detract from a great user experience," said Carlton Hill, vice president of developer services at AT&T. "ARO can help developers create apps that conserve battery life, load pages faster and consume network resources in a smarter way, all of which improve the customer experience."

NOTE: AT&T's ARO is a free, carrier-agnostic, open source diagnostic tool that enables developers to analyse the performance of their apps, whether they be business or consumer apps.

So today ARO is said to be used by more than 1,500 developers, and users are seeing better results across the board, from a 35 percent reduction in excess data usage to apps that run up to 60 percent faster. Improving app performance and creating better customer experiences, ARO saved more than 500 terabytes of data in its first year.

Undetectable inefficiencies

ARO enables developers to diagnose previously undetectable inefficiencies in app-to-network interaction. It can identify the events happening at multiple layers within an app and pinpoint inefficient resource usage -- and IBM also says that ARO can then make specific recommendations on how developers can optimise their apps to improve performance, speed and battery utilisation.

According to IBM, "A sluggish, battery-draining and high data-consuming app can cripple customer relationships and an enterprise's ability to conduct business. By testing for these pitfalls early, businesses will now be able to develop apps that are battery life and data network friendly, increasing customer use and satisfaction."

Kristof Kloeckner, general manager IBM Rational Software has underlined comments which explain that built on an open source platform and independent of any specific wireless carrier, ARO provides direct feedback to developers about how their app is behaving on any network...

... and it is this intelligence which (in theory) allows them to test and deliver apps with improved battery life, faster response times, and more efficient network handling.

Locating power and data drains

In addition to graphically presenting network, device, application and user behaviors and interactions, ARO also applies radio and power models to provide feedback about exactly where power and data drains are happening.

So now you know why IBM pours so much effort into explaining its "mobile-first" concepts and methodologies.

With this view, directly from customer usage models, business analysts will (in theory) be able to plan for new requirements, developers will (hopefully) understand which areas need improvement around network and battery usage -- and finally, testers will be able to communicate defects information with the operations team.

All in all, application battery performance just got sexier for everyone.

Although WordPress is considered a mature platform, regular updates address serious security vulnerabilities that could be used by an attacker targeting a WordPress site.

WordPress vulnerabilities are even more of a threat when combined with recent large-scale brute-force attacks which target WordPress websites.

In this blog, I'll cover examples of both.

Considerations for developers

Vulnerabilities and brute-force attacks are important considerations for developers as well as anyone that hosts a website on wordpress.com or who uses the platform on a different host.

Steps can be taken to help secure WordPress installations which ensure systems aren't compromised and that damage is minimised if a compromise does occur. These precautions can also prevent a vulnerable server from becoming part of a botnet used to launch further scans or malware.

Vulnerabilities may be in WordPress core and plugins

Attackers commonly abuse third-party WordPress plugins which contain vulnerabilities.

As recently as April 2013, vulnerabilities affecting the WordPress Super Cache and W3 Total Cache WordPress plugins (related to caching and website optimization) gained attention and developers have since updated their respective plugins (See the WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache pages for updated version information).

Successful exploitation of these critical flaws may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary PHP code on a vulnerable system. To avoid being victim of attack, users and developers should examine WordPress plugins carefully and completely remove unwanted or unnecessary plugins. Third-party plugins may be updated at any time while a major WordPress version update is usually available every six months.

Many organisations opt-out of automatic WordPress updates and work with developers to manually deploy new versions at the appropriate time to perform additional testing. This patch and update schedule is virtually continuous and difficult to maintain, but it is necessary to maintain an acceptable level of security.

Brute-force attacks

In April 2013, WordPress websites suffered from a large brute-force targeting campaign. It is reported that a botnet consisting of more than 90,000 servers is being used to scan the Internet for WordPress websites and is attempting to log in to the administrator's account using a list of commonly used passwords.

Servers using simple passwords such as "123456" or "qwerty" would quickly fall victim to this attack. If an attacker successfully logs in, a backdoor is installed for future use.

Compromised websites may then be used for other activities, such as scanning for more WordPress sites and participating in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
To protect against brute force attacks, use long passwords that include a combination of uppercase and lowercase characters as well as symbols (#$%^&@), and rename the Administrator's account to something other than "admin". On top of that, developers should consider renaming the Administrator's account to something other than "admin".

By default, WordPress does not limit incorrect logins!

By default, WordPress does not limit incorrect logins, which allows an attacker to make a large number of attempts in rapid succession. This ability increases the odds that an attacker will correctly guess the password. Several WordPress plugins limit the number of login attempts, but plugins themselves generally increase the attack surface an attacker has at his or her disposal, and may inadvertently allow access via other means.

Securing access to /wp-admin/ (Administrator's login area), using alternate database prefixes, securing wp-config.php and disabling file editing are recommended to mitigate effects of a potential attack.

Given the potential for harm in using outdated software, WordPress exploits will become more of an issue in the future. Resources like The Exploit Database which track and list a variety of exploits targeting a multitude of WordPress plugins are great information mines for developers looking to proactively avoid attacks.

Watch this space!

Updates to this free Linux-based operating system are scheduled approximately every six months -- and each Fedora release is said to represent the culmination of work by 'hundreds' of engineers and 'thousands' of contributors.

With this beta release download, the software is "relatively stable", but the team says that real-world usage reports from users are important as they help identify any lingering bugs so they can be addressed before it is more widely distributed.

NOTE: Schrödinger's Cat illustrates the principle in quantum heory of superposition, proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935.

Included in this release of Fedora is the Developer's Assistant tool. This is intended to serve those learning the ropes of software development.

"This tool helps you to get started on a code project with templates, samples, and toolchains for the language of your choice - and helps you push code out to GitHub when you're ready," says the team.

Also in the mix are a variety of tools for 3D printing - ranging from software for creation of 3D models, to tools for generating and sending code to send to 3D printers.

IMAGE: The Gnote is a note-taking application that you can use to build a personal database of notes and to track your to-dos -- it automatically saves your notes with no intervention from you and has a rich search interface.

The official release blog reads as follows, "Make your machines work for you - not the other way around. Whether you have one, or one too many machines, Fedora 19 provides a variety of improvements to the management of the operating system, including the boot process, recovery from failures, migration of systems, and more. Tools for diagnosis, monitoring, and logging enable you to be proactive, not reactive, leaving you with more time to spend doing the things you love to do."