We Are Advertising You!!!

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

Dear Readers, After a huge success of H2K: The Hackers Street android app we have decided to give free advertisement to our clients in the app for free of cost. Soon next version of app going to be launched and in that a new channel would be added with the name "Business Ideas". This channel would give each one of us chance to get publicity through this all new portals.

If you have any blog, website, business, want to give tuition classes, anything you have , we are here to promote you. Simply use the feedback feature if "The Hackers Street" app which is in the setting and write us, else you can tap the button below and directly book your self. Only top 20 advertisers would be entertained for free ads and rest wouldn't be considered as we are not charging anything for this.

As we promised earlier we are trying to give one stop solution to all your needs, so we have taken up this step. If any more changes required write us directly using this app only. We are making the world more secure.

We are bit disappointed with our Indian users as now days we are having queries only for US readers, we really feel awesome to solve queries of my readers but we are seeking more and more queries from Indian readers. Also we are thankful to our US readers to give us rating 5 out of time every time when we help you.

So US readers for few days leave H2K and enjoy our Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to your country. It would be great for both the countries to work strongly.

We are also getting many invitation from US contributors to come there and deliever a 2-3 days session on Cyber Security. Yeah we want to say, "it would be our pleasure to come there and teach you guys", we just need to line up our schedule and would visit your country soon. Bookigs can be done directly using

Invite Kunal

To Contact For Advertisement Tap The Below Image

Click To Apply

If You Dont Have H2K's Official App
Download It

"The Hackers Street"

Still Having Questions..!!! Connect with Admin 

Kunal Vohra Regards Kunal Vohra Director@H2K

Hackers Want Your Medical Information

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

Your medical information is worth 10 times more than your credit card number on the black market.

Last month, the FBI warned healthcare providers to guard against cyber attacks after one of the largest U.S. hospital operators, Community Health Systems Inc, said Chinese hackers had broken into its computer network and stolen the personal information of 4.5 million patients.

Security experts say cyber criminals are increasingly targeting the $3 trillion U.S. healthcare industry, which has many companies still reliant on aging computer systems that do not use the latest security features.

"As attackers discover new methods to make money, the healthcare industry is becoming a much riper target because of the ability to sell large batches of personal data for profit," said Dave Kennedy, an expert on healthcare security and CEO of TrustedSEC LLC. "Hospitals have low security, so it's relatively easy for these hackers to get a large amount of personal data for medical fraud."

Interviews with nearly a dozen healthcare executives, cybersecurity investigators and fraud experts provide a detailed account of the underground market for stolen patient data.

The data for sale includes names, birth dates, policy numbers, diagnosis codes and billing information. Fraudsters use this data to create fake IDs to buy medical equipment or drugs that can be resold, or they combine a patient number with a false provider number and file made-up claims with insurers, according to experts who have investigated cyber attacks on healthcare organizations.

Medical identity theft is often not immediately identified by a patient or their provider, giving criminals years to milk such credentials. That makes medical data more valuable than credit cards, which tend to be quickly canceled by banks once fraud is detected.

Stolen health credentials can go for $10 each, about 10 or 20 times the value of a U.S. credit card number, according to Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence at PhishLabs, a cyber crime protection company. He obtained the data by monitoring underground exchanges where hackers sell the information.

ATTACKS ON THE RISE

The percentage of healthcare organizations that have reported a criminal cyber attack has risen to 40 percent in 2013 from 20 percent in 2009, according to an annual survey by the Ponemon Institute think tank on data protection policy.

Founder Larry Ponemon, who is privy to details of attacks on healthcare firms that have not been made public, said he has seen an increase this year in both the number of cyber attacks and number of records stolen in those breaches.

Fueling that increase is a shift to electronic medical records by a majority of U.S. healthcare providers.

Marc Probst, chief information officer of Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, said his hospital system fends off thousands of attempts to penetrate its network each week. So far it is not aware of a successful attack.

"The only reason to buy that data is so they can fraudulently bill," Probst said.

Healthcare providers and insurers must publicly disclose data breaches affecting more than 500 people, but there are no laws requiring criminal prosecution. As a result, the total cost of cyber attacks on the healthcare system is difficult to pin down. Insurance industry experts say they are one of many expenses ultimately passed onto Americans as part of rising health insurance premiums.

Consumers sometimes discover their credentials have been stolen only after fraudsters use their personal medical ID to impersonate them and obtain health services. When the unpaid bills are sent on to debt collectors, they track down the fraud victims and seek payment.

Ponemon cited a case last year in which one patient learned that his records at a major hospital chain were compromised after he started receiving bills related to a heart procedure he had not undergone. The man's credentials were also used to buy a mobility scooter and several pieces of medical equipment, racking up tens of thousands of dollars in total fraud.

MEDICARE FRAUD

The government's efforts to combat Medicare fraud have focused on traditional types of scams that involve provider billing and over billing. Fraud involving the Medicare program for seniors and the disabled totaled more than $6 billion in the last two years, according to a database maintained by Medical Identity Fraud Alliance.

"Healthcare providers and hospitals are just some of the easiest networks to break into," said Jeff Horne, vice president at cybersecurity firm Accuvant, which is majority-owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group.

"When I've looked at hospitals, and when I've talked to other people inside of a breach, they are using very old legacy systems - Windows systems that are 10 plus years old that have not seen a patch."

KPMG partner Michael Ebert said security has been an afterthought for many medical providers - whether it is building encryption into software used to create electronic patient records or in setting budgets.

"Are you going to put money into a brand new MRI machine or laser surgery or are you going to put money into a new firewall?" he said.

Still Having Problem..!!! Connect with Admin 

 Kunal Vohra Download Our Official Android App & Get Free Internet

"The Hackers Street"

For Daily Updates 

Know Ur Network...

The first thing you check in the morning the last label you look every night . A few bars representing your signal strength and a letter along  the uppermost right corner of your device... Sometimes saying G sometimes 3G , and their are times when its H or H+..
So what they actually are.. We all know G and 3G but H+ ??  Is it a Hydrogen willing to make  bond ??

Okey it was a silly joke and I know u dint laugh... But at times we actually get confused about what these labels truly represent, well it's not just alphabet soup - each term indicates what kind of data network you're connected to, and these different networks will provide very different internet connection speeds.

So here in this article we'll be having a look at each of the networks currently operating around us... How fast they are and what can you do on them...

Before advancing, it should be known that 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G etc refers to the different generations of wireless communication technology characterized by having a defined range of speed.

GPRS(General Packet Radio Service) 

GPRS is a packet-based* wireless communication service. It is a 2G technology network that support a download speed of up to 114Kbps.
Limitation of GPRS is that GPRS data cannot be sent while a voice call is in progress.

EDGE(Enhanced Data GSM Evolution) 

GPRS and EDGE are both 2G technology but EDGE is significantly faster with a download speed of up to 384Kbps. EDGE is sometimes called a 2.5G network as it also has some characteristics of a 3G network but it doesn't satisfy the specification.

3G

Introduction of 3G network made video calling and seamless streaming of video possible, with download speed of up to 3.1Mbps. 

HSDPA(High-Speed Down-link Packet Access)

It is based on the 3G network and an enhancement to 3G. Thus has a faster speed, download speed can be up to 14Mbps. HSDPA is sometimes called 3.5G.

HSPA+(Evolved High-Speed Packet Access)

HSPA+ is an evolution HSPA(HSDPA&HSUPA). It is a 4G technology that allows download at a rate of up to 168Mbps.

4G LTE(Long Term Evolution)

LTE is a 4G communication standard that supports HD video streaming, download speed as high as 299.6Mbps.

Summary

GPRS(114Kbps) < EGDE(368Kbps) < 3G(3.1Mbps) < HSDPA(14Mbps) < HSPA+(168Mbps) < 4G/LTE(299.6Mbps)

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

Still Having Problem..!!! Connect with Admin
BBM: 7F72A48D


 Kunal Vohra Download Our Official Android App & Get Free Internet

"The Hackers Street"

For Daily Updates 

How to Crack Wi-Fi Passwords—For Beginners!

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

An internet connection has become a basic necessity in our modern lives. Wireless hotspots (commonly known as Wi-Fi) can be found everywhere!

If you have a PC with a wireless network card, then you must have seen many networks around you. Sadly most of these networks are secured with a network security key.

Have you ever wanted to use one of these networks? You must have desperately wanted to check your mail when you shifted to your new house. The hardest time in your life is when your internet connection is down.

Cracking those Wi-Fi passwords is your answer to temporary internet access. This is a comprehensive guide which will teach even complete beginners how to crack WEP encrypted networks, easily.

If it's WPA2-PSK passwords you need to crack, you can use aircrack-ng or coWPAtty.

Table of Contents

1. How are wireless networks secured?
2. What you'll need
3. Setting up CommView for Wi-Fi
4. Selecting the target network and capturing packets
5. Waiting...
6. Now the interesting part... CRACKING!
7. Are you a visual learner?

Step 1: How Are Wireless Networks Secured?

In a secured wireless connection, internet data is sent in the form of encrypted packets. These packets are encrypted with network security keys. If you somehow manage to get hold of the key for a particular wireless network you virtually have access to the wireless internet connection.

Broadly speaking, there are two main types of encryptions used.

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

This is the most basic form of encryption. This has become an unsafe option as it is vulnerable and can be cracked with relative ease. Although this is the case many people still use this encryption.

WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access)

This is the more secure alternative. Efficient cracking of the passphrase of such a network requires the use of a wordlist with the common passwords. In other words you use the old-fashioned method of trial and error to gain access. Variations include WPA-2 which is the most secure encryption alternative till date. Although this can also be cracked using a wordlist if the password is common, this is virtually uncrackable with a strong password. That is, unless the WPA PIN is still enabled (as is the default on many routers).

Hacking WEP passwords is relatively fast, so we'll focus on how to crack them for this guide. If the only networks around you use WPA passwords, you'll want to follow this guide on how to crack WPA Wi-Fi passwords instead.

Step 2: What You'll Need

A compatible wireless adapter:
This is by far the biggest requirement.The wireless card of your computer has to be compatible with the software CommVIew. This ensures that the wireless card can go into monitor mode which is essential for capturing packets. Click here to check if your wireless card is compatible

CommView for Wi-Fi :

This software will be used to capture the packets from the desired network adapter. Click here to download the software from their website.

Aircrack-ng GUI:

After capturing the packets this software does the actual cracking. Click here to download the software from their website.

• A little patience is vital!!

Step 3: Setting Up CommView for Wi-Fi

• Download the zip file of CommView for Wi-Fi from the website. Extract the file and run setup.exe to install CommView for Wi-Fi. When CommView opens for the first time it has a driver installation guide. Follow the prompts to install the driver for your wireless card.
• Run CommView for Wi-Fi.
• Click the play icon on the top left of the application window.

Start scanning for wireless networks.

CommView now starts scanning for wireless networks channel by channel. After a few minutes you will have a long list of wireless networks with their security type and signal. Now it is time to choose your target network.

Step 4: Selecting the Target Network and Capturing Packets

A few things to keep in mind before choosing the target wireless network:

• This tutorial is only for WEP encrypted networks, so make sure you select a network with WEP next to its name. If you need to crack a WPA encrypted network, follow this tutorial instead.
• Choose a network with the highest signal.
• Each network will have its details in the right column.
• Make sure the WEP network you are choosing has the lowest dB (decibel) value.

Once you have chosen your target network, select it and click Capture to start capturing packets from the desired channel.

Now you might notice that packets are being captured from all the networks in the particular channel. To capture packets only from the desired network follow the given steps.

• Right click the desired network and click on copy MAC Address.
• Switch to the Rules tab on the top.
• On the left hand side choose MAC Addresses.
• Enable MAC Address rules.
• For 'Action' select 'capture' and for 'Add record' select 'both'.
• Now paste the mac address copied earlier in the box below.

We need to capture only data packets for cracking. So, select D on the bar at the top of the window and deselect M (Management packets) and C (Control packets).

Now you have to save the packets so that they can be cracked later. To do this:

• Go to the logging tab on top and enable auto saving.
• Set Maximum Directory Size to 2000.
• Set Average Log File Size to 20.

Step 5: Waiting...

Now the boring part- WAITING!

NOTE: The amount of time taken to capture enough data packets depends on the signal and the networks usage. The minimum number of packets you should capture should be 100,000 for a decent signal.

After you think you have enough packets (at least 100,000 packets), you'll need to export them.

• Go to the log tab and click on concatenate logs.
• Select all the logs that have been saved.
• Do not close CommView for Wi-Fi.
• Now navigate to the folder where the concatenated logs have been saved.
• Open the log file.
• Select File- Export -Wire shark tcpdump format and choose any suitable destination.
• This will save the logs with a .cap extension to that location.

Step 6: Now the Interesting Part... CRACKING!

• Download Aircrack-ng and extract the zip file.
• Open the folder and navigate to 'bin'.
• Run Aircrack-ng GUI.
• Choose WEP.
• Open your .cap file that you had saved earlier.
• Click Launch.
• In the command prompt type in the index number of your target wireless network.
• Wait for a while. If everything goes fine, the wireless key will be shown.

You may also receive a request to try with more packets. In this case wait until more packets have been captured and repeat the steps to be performed after capturing packets.

BEST OF LUCK!

Still Having Problem..!!! Connect with Admin 

BBM:7F72A48D

 Kunal Vohra Download Our Official Android App & Get Free Internet

"The Hackers Street"

For Daily Updates 

How To Hack WPA/WPA2 Wi-Fi With Kali Linux & Aircrack-ng

       

   Kali Linux can be used for many things, but it probably is best known for its “ability” to hack WPA and WPA2. There are hundreds of tools for windows that claim they can hack into WPA; don’t get them! They’re just scams. There is only one real way to hack into a WPA network, and that is with a Linux-based OS, a wireless card capable of monitor mode, and aircrack-ng. Also note that, even with these tools, Wi-Fi cracking is not for beginners. Hacking it requires basic knowledge of how WPA authentication works, and moderate familiarity with Kali Linux and its tools.

These are things that you’ll need:

• A successful install of Kali Linux (which you probably already have done). If not, follow my tutorial here: http://j.gs/3tUb
• A wireless adapter capable of injection/monitor mode, here is a list of the best:http://blackmoreops.com/recommended-usb-wireless-cards-kali-linux
• A wordlist to crack the handshake password once it has been captured
• Time and patients

If you have these then roll up your sleeves and let’s get to it.

          Important notice: Hacking into anyone’s Wi-Fi without permission is considered an illegal act or crime in most countries. We are performing this tutorial for the sake of penetration testing, and are hacking into our own test router to do so.

By reading and/or using the information below, you are agreeing to
our Disclaimer, which can be found here:http://lewiscomputerhowto.blogspot.com/disclaimor.html

---

Step One:

Start Kali Linux and login, preferably as root.

Step Two:

Plugin your injection-capable wireless adapter, (Unless your computer card supports it). If you’re using Kali in VMware, then you might have to connect the card via the icon in the device menu.

Step Three:

Disconnect from all wireless networks, open a Terminal, and type airmon-ng

This will list all of the wireless cards that support monitor (not injection) mode. If no cards are listed, try disconnecting and reconnecting the card and check that it supports monitor mode. You can check if the card supports monitor mode by typing ifconfig in another terminal, if the card is listed in ifconfig, but doesn’t show up in airmon-ng, then the card doesn’t support it.
You can see here that my card supports monitor mode and that it’s listed as wlan0.

Step Four:

Type airmon-ng start followed by the interface of your wireless card. mine is wlan0, so my command would be: airmon-ng start wlan0

The “(monitor mode enabled)” message means that the card has successfully been put into monitor mode. Note the name of the new monitor interface, mine is mon0.

Step Five:

Type airodump-ng followed by the name of the new monitor interface, which is probablymon0.

Step Six:

Airodump will now list all of the wireless networks in your area, and lots of useful information about them. Locate your network or the network that you have permission to penetration test. Once you’ve spotted your network on the ever-populating list, hit Ctrl + Con your keyboard to stop the process. Note the channel of your target network.

Step Seven:

Copy the BSSID of the target network

Now type this command:
airodump-ng –c [channel] –bssid [bssid] –w /root/Desktop/ [monitor interface]Replace [channel] with the channel of your target network. Paste the network BSSID where [bssid] is, and replace [monitor interface] with the name of your monitor-enabled interface, (mon0).

A complete command should look like this:
airodump-ng -c 10 --bssid 00:14:BF:E0:E8:D5 -w /root/Desktop/ mon0

Now press enter.

Step Eight:

Airodump with now monitor only the target network, allowing us to capture more specific information about it. What we’re really doing now is waiting for a device to connect or reconnect to the network, forcing the router to send out the four-way handshake that we need to capture in order to crack the password.
Also, four files should show up on your desktop, this is where the handshake will be saved when captured, so don’t delete them!

But we’re not really going to wait for a device to connect, no, that would take too long. We’re actually going to use another cool-tool that belongs to the aircrack suite called aireplay-ng, to speed up the process. Instead of waiting for a device to connect, we’re going to use this tool to force a device to reconnect by sending deauthentication (deauth) packets to the device, making it think that it has to reconnect with the router.

Of course, in order for this tool to work, there has to be someone else connected to the network first, so watch the airodump-ng and wait for a client to show up. It might take a long time, or it might only take a second before the first one shows. If none show up after a lengthy wait, then the network might be empty right now, or you’re to far away from the network.

You can see in this picture, that a client has appeared on our network, allowing us to start the next step.

Step Nine:

leave airodump-ng running and open a second terminal. In this terminal, type this command:
aireplay-ng –0 2 –a [router bssid] –c [client bssid] mon0The –0 is a short cut for the deauth mode and the 2 is the number of deauth packets to send.
-a indicates the access point (router)’s bssid, replace [router bssid] with the BSSID of the target network, which in my case, is 00:14:BF:E0:E8:D5.
-c indicates the clients BSSID, noted in the previous picture. Replace the [client bssid] with the BSSID of the connected client, this will be listed under “STATION.”
And of course, mon0 merely means the monitor interface, change it if yours is different.

My complete command looks like this:
aireplay-ng –0 2 –a 00:14:BF:E0:E8:D5 –c 4C:EB:42:59:DE:31 mon0

Step Ten:

Upon hitting Enter, you’ll see aireplay-ng send the packets, and within moments, you should see this message appear on the airodump-ng screen!

This means that the handshake has been captured! You can close the aireplay-ng terminal and hit Ctrl + C on the airodump-ng terminal to stop monitoring the network, but don’t close it yet just incase you need some of the information later.

Step 11:

This concludes the external part of this tutorial. From now on, the process is entirely between your computer, and those four files on your Desktop. Actually, the .cap one, that is important. Open a new Terminal, and type in this command:
aircrack-ng -a2 -b [router bssid] -w [path to wordlist] /root/Desktop/*.cap

-a is the method aircrack will use to crack the handshake, 2=WPA method.
-b stands for bssid, replace [router bssid] with the BSSID of the target router, mine is 00:14:BF:E0:E8:D5.
-w stands for wordlist, replace [path to wordlist] with the path to a wordlist that you have downloaded. I have a wordlist called “wpa.txt” in the root folder.
/root/Desktop/*.cap is the path to the .cap file containing the password, the * means wild card in Linux, and since I’m assuming that there are no other .cap files on your Desktop, this should work fine the way it is.

My complete command looks like this:
aircrack-ng –a2 –b 00:14:BF:E0:E8:D5 –w /root/wpa.txt  /root/Desktop/*.cap

Now press Enter.

Step 12:

Aircrack-ng will now launch into the process of cracking the password. However, it will only crack it if the password happens to be in the wordlist that you’ve selected. Sometimes, it’s not. If this is the case, then you can congratulate the owner on being “Impenetrable,” of course, only after you’ve tried every wordlist on the internet!

Cracking the password might take a long time depending on the size of the wordlist. Mine went very quickly.

If the phrase is in the wordlist, then aircrack-ng will show it too you like this:

The passphrase to our test-network was notsecure, and you can see here that aircrack found it!

If you see a message similar to this, then your tests have penetrated the network. Tell the owner that he needs a stronger password!

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

Still Having Problem..!!! Connect with Admin
BBM: 7F72A48D


 Kunal Vohra Download Our Official Android App & Get Free Internet

"The Hackers Street"

For Daily Updates 

BlackBerry Passport review

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

“BlackBerry is still around?”

I’ve heard that question quite often the past few weeks, as I’ve been using the BlackBerry Passport. Contrary to what many people in my social circle believe, BlackBerry is indeed still around and is ready to make itself relevant once again.

For years, BlackBerry tried to fight the iPhone, but that was a battle it brutally lost. Now it's leaving that fight behind and going back to its roots: making tools for getting work done. The ideal BlackBerry user doesn't have time to play games, doesn't have time to send Snapchats, and doesn't have time for any nonsense. This person only has time for business. BlackBerry actually has a name for these people: “Power Pros.” The Passport is for Power Pros.

Consumers long ago abandoned BlackBerry smartphones for greener, app-filled pastures years. But even the company’s traditionally strong enterprise position is being overtaken. Why carry a BlackBerry I don't enjoy using when I can access all of my company's data and tools on the iPhone or Android phone I already have? BlackBerry's response: double-down on productivity all over again.

The $249 ($599 unlocked) Passport is the biggest, squarest, most in your face BlackBerry the company has ever produced. It’s the culmination of everything BlackBerry has ever done, a productivity powerhouse more comfortable in the boardroom than in the living room. (It even looks like it’s wearing a suit.) Other smartphones are often criticized for not being efficient productivity tools, but the Passport’s sole focus is on getting work done.

BlackBerry says the Passport will put it back in the fight, back in the boardroom, and back in the jacket pocket of a Brooks Brothers suit. But for more than one reason, there might not be room in there for the Passport.

Let’s not mince words: the BlackBerry Passport looks like a giant square drink coaster. It’s big: 5.03 inches tall, 3.55 inches wide, and 0.37 inches thick. It’s heavy: 6.91 ounces. It's odd-looking: it's as if a classic BlackBerry spent some time in a medieval torture device and got stretched it out in all four corners. It’s actually very close to the same dimensions of an international passport, surely not by accident. It’s heavier and wider than both the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus. Needless to say, the Passport is awkward to use and awkward to carry in your pants' pocket. I can hardly use it in one hand, and I dropped it more than once in the the few weeks I’ve been using it. I can't use it efficiently when I'm holding a cup of coffee in the back of a Town Car, nor can I cruise through my inbox while holding onto a railing on the subway.

All its size and weight does make the Passport feel sturdy. Its stainless steel frame and matte plastic construction are durable and functional, if not exciting. Even though I dropped it more than once, my review unit still looks like it just came out of the box. Power Pros can't get anything done if their iPhone or Galaxy phone breaks when they drop it, and BlackBerry is well aware of that. The Passport doesn't need a clunky Otterbox to make sure it survives.

THE PASSPORT DOESN'T NEED A CLUNKY CASE TO SURVIVE A FALL

  

The Passport’s awkward dimensions are to accommodate its square display. It’s a high-resolution, 4.5-inch, 1,440 x 1,440 pixel IPS LCD with a dense 453PPI. It looks great: viewing angles are tremendous, colors are accurate, and pixels are invisible to my eyes. BlackBerry designed this display for reading and you can see a lot of stuff on it.

It’s a very purpose-built screen for doing business-y things like reviewing spreadsheets and slide presentations. But that makes it not very good at many of the other things that we use our smartphones for today. It’s much easier to navigate a spreadsheet or browse a webpage with the Passport, but reading my Twitter feed requires a lot of scrolling, and videos have annoying black bars eating up half of the display above and below the content.

Below the screen is what makes the Passport a true BlackBerry: it has a honest-to-goodness physical keyboard, something no other modern device offers. It’s a throwback to the keyboards that made BlackBerry smartphones so popular in years past, and BlackBerry says it’s essential for efficient productivity on the go. But the Passport’s three row layout isn’t as good as the older designs. It’s too wide, making it all but impossible to type the simplest words with one hand. And for some reason, the spacebar is jammed up into the third row of letters, splitting the keyboard and causing all kinds of confusion for my thumbs. I never got used to it and I remain a far faster and more accurate typist on a good virtual keyboard. It’s not clear to me why BlackBerry didn’t just make the Passport slightly longer to accommodate a fourth row of keys — it’s already a big phone, another quarter-inch wouldn’t make much of a difference in size but would go a long way to improving the keyboard.

The keys are at least clicky and responsive, and the keyboard does have a few unique tricks up its sleeve. The surface of the keyboard is actually sensitive to touch, so you can scroll through web pages or emails by just gliding your thumb across the keys. It’s a weird, satisfying feeling to scroll with the keyboard and it keeps my fingers from blocking the content I’m looking at on the screen. The keyboard can also be used to move the cursor around when typing, but it's just easier to use the touchscreen for that.

I NEVER FELT COMFORTABLE WITH THE PASSPORT IN MY HANDS

For all that BlackBerry has done to make the Passport a productivity tool, its design felt like it was fighting me more often than it was helping me. Between the awkward dimensions and odd keyboard layout, I never felt comfortable with the Passport in my hands and never felt comfortable getting work done on it. Being comfortable with your tools is essential for a Power Pro: it should get out of my way and just let me get done what I need to get done. Too often, the Passport didn't get out of my way. 

The Passport does all its work on BlackBerry 10.3, a refinement from earlier versions of BlackBerry 10 - it looks nicer, performs better, and is generally just better to use. But it still relies on a lot of gestures and swiping, many of which aren’t intuitive, and it’s not an easy operating system to learn and quickly get proficient with.

BlackBerry 10 centers around the Hub, which is a great idea executed poorly. The idea is to group all of the notifications and messages you receive into one place — essentially a notification center on steroids. But it doesn’t always make sense to have all of your Twitter or Facebook messages, work emails, personal emails, Foursquare alerts, text messages, and BBMs in the same place. Marking all of those read requires a long press on a tiny date and then another button press after that, and many times it just didn’t work. The Hub can show me my upcoming calendar appointments, which is super useful, but I can’t choose which calendars to display there, so all of my shared Google calendars show up in it. That’s not productive at all.

THE HUB IS A GREAT IDEA EXECUTED POORLY

BlackBerry 10’s take on widgets is like a combination of Android’s widgets and Microsoft’s Live Tiles, but it’s less useful than either. Recent apps show up in a grid on the homescreen, but they aren’t permanent and it’s never clear where the last app I used will land. And if I open the camera, many of my recent apps will shut down on their own accord.

 BlackBerry Passport

The major new feature in BlackBerry 10.3 is the virtual assistant, BlackBerry’s take on Siri, Google Now, and Windows Phone’s Cortana. It can do most of the things you expect a virtual personal assistant to do: add reminders, send emails, look up sports scores, search the web, and make calendar appointments, all with just your voice. BlackBerry’s voice parsing technology is actually pretty good, but the system itself is slower than the assistants on other platforms. It doesn’t do any of the predictive stuff that Google Now and Cortana provide, but it’s a solid first effort.

BlackBerry 10’s biggest fault has always been its lack of third-party apps, and BlackBerry is smartly outsourcing this problem for the Passport. The Passport can run Android apps, so BlackBerry has preloaded the Amazon Appstore on it, providing access to wealth of apps that were never available to BlackBerry users before. Oddly, the BlackBerry App World remains on the device, but BlackBerry says that will be focused on productivity apps while the Amazon store handles the rest.

Having the Amazon Appstore on the Passport is a huge improvement for BlackBerry’s app situation — there are far more apps in it than BlackBerry’s App World ever had. And many of them run just fine on the Passport’s square display — I was able to cruise through my news feeds in Feedly and read articles in my Pocket queue without any issues.

MANY ANDROID APPS RUN JUST FINE ON THE PASSPORT, BUT INSTALLING THEM IS A CHORE

 But actually installing apps from the Amazon store is a chore: it requires no less than three taps on different install buttons, at least two loading bars, and a fair amount of patience before you can actually use the app you're trying to install. It definitely feels like the Band-Aid solution that it is. And Amazon is still missing important apps, such as Instagram and Snapchat, plus none of Google’s excellent Android apps are available. That’s probably not a problem for the users BlackBerry is targeting with the Passport, but it is for the rest of us. 

BlackBerry is also trying to rectify accessing your work email, documents, and communications across the various devices in your life with BlackBerry Blend. Blend lets you connect your iPad, Android tablet, Windows PC, or Mac to your BlackBerry via USB, Wi-Fi, or cellular networks and access your BBM messages, email accounts, calendar and other things without picking up your phone. It’s designed to keep everything segregated — your work email and calendar never integrate with your personal ones and no work data gets stored on the computer or tablet. BlackBerry wasn’t able to provide a way for me to test Blend in time for this review, but the demo I was shown performed as promised. It’s something that will likely make IT managers at BlackBerry’s corporate customers happy, if not the BlackBerry users themselves.

Like the Passport’s hardware design, BlackBerry 10.3 got in the way of me being productive more than it helped me. I can’t archive anything in the email app, which is soul-crushing for this Gmail user. Collaborating on Google Drive documents with my colleagues is all but impossible on the Passport. I also can’t confer with my coworkers on the Passport with our group chat app of choice (Slack), so it was difficult to fully integrate it into my mobile workflow.

Performance-wise, the Passport has the most powerful hardware that BlackBerry has ever brought to the table.

Still Having Problem..!!! Connect with Admin 

 Kunal Vohra Download Our Official Android App & Get Free Internet

"The Hackers Street"

For Daily Updates 

Nokia saw the future, but couldn't build it.

By "Kunal Vohra", Director@H2K

Everything that Apple and Google are today, Nokia wanted to become

There was once a time when my search for a new phone would start (and likely finish) with a visit to Nokia.com. The Finnish company had the widest choice, the best designs, and the most respected brand around the world, so it was pretty hard to pick a bad phone from its catalog. Try doing the same thing today, however, and you’ll find every link on the Nokia homepage pointing to Microsoft’s Mobile Devices division — the new incarnation of the Nokia most of us knew and loved. It’s a vastly different mobile world we’re living in now, but what’s most striking about it is that Nokia saw it all coming.

The best phone in the world today is dressed from head to toe in aluminum and has an outstanding camera that protrudes from its body. So did the Nokia N8 in 2010. The iPhone that’s collecting all the plaudits and sales now is basically the fulfilment of a vision Nokia had half a decade ago: combine the best camera with the best build materials and let others try to match you. The only thing Nokia didn’t do right with that phone was its software. The N8 design was ready to go in early 2010, when it would have been among the first with 720p video recording, but repeated delays of the new Symbian version pushed its release to September. The hardware was getting kneecapped by the software, which a Nokia employee told me at the time was being developed in separate silos that wouldn’t be integrated into a single operating system until the final weeks before launch.

  "It's big!" He says with a smile. "But it's also beautiful and very thin this time."

No, those aren’t the words of Apple’s Phil Schiller describing the iPhone 6 Plus; they are the proclamations of Anssi Vanjoki while presenting the Nokia E7 at Nokia World 2010. The E7’s 4-inch screen was considered large for its time, but Nokia knew where our preferences were heading. Watch the rest of its presentation from that September 2010 gathering and you’ll also hear of personalized location-based services not unlike Google Now. "And it is a space that we intend to own," said Executive VP Niklas Savander at the time. As wildly optimistic as that may sound in hindsight, it was a justifiable ambition for a company that was the leader in mobile mapping and navigation services, even if its software left something to be desired.

NOKIA’S BIGGEST FAILURE WAS AN UNWILLINGNESS TO EMBRACE DRASTIC CHANGE

Nokia’s biggest failure was an unwillingness to embrace drastic change. The company sowed the seeds for its self-destruction when it made "the familiarity of the new" the tagline for its big Symbian upgrade those many years ago. It feared alienating current users by changing too much, so it ended up with a compromised mess of an operating system that wasn’t fit for the future. Even as it was making one mistake, however, Nokia was keenly aware of the threat of another.

Jumping to Android was widely advocated as a quick shortcut to making Nokia’s software competitive, but Anssi Vanjoki dismissed that idea as a short-term solution that was no better than "peeing in your pants for warmth in the winter." I was among those who thought him wrong, but the recent financial struggles of HTC, Motorola, and Sony have shown him to be more prophetic than paranoid. Nobody outside of Google, Samsung, and Microsoft (by virtue of patent royalty payments) is making real money off the sales of Android phones.

THE NOKIA N9 WAS A REVELATION, BUT MEEGO WAS NEVER GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE

Eventually, Nokia’s hand was forced into making a switch and it chose Microsoft’s Windows Phone as the platform to build its future on. That construction project is still going on, though it no longer carries the Nokia name. Before Windows Phone, we got a glimpse of what might have been with the introduction of the Nokia N9. It ran the open-source MeeGo OS that Nokia was developing as a successor to Symbian, and it infused a breath of fresh air into both hardware and software design for phones.

The N9’s unibody was so desirable to look at and delightful to the touch that it spawned a family of Windows Phone progeny that continues today with the Lumia 730. The multitasking overview and switcher of the N9 has also been widely emulated in devices of all creeds and operating systems, and so has its double-tap-to-wake functionality. That phone was, and remains, a revelation. Still, MeeGo development wasn’t proceeding as quickly as new Nokia boss Stephen Elop had wished, and there was no app ecosystem to speak of, so the N9 and its kind were banished in favor of the more pragmatic Microsoft-led approach.

  Nokia's 2007 vision of the future was remarkably similar to Apple's.

The list of things Nokia saw coming but failed to adapt to is regrettably long. Another instance where Anssi Vanjoki seemed to exaggerate was when he predicted that DSLRs would be replaced by cameraphones. I mocked his outlandish claim then, but to look at the new iPhones, the Panasonic CM1, and Nokia’s own Lumia 1020, there are now certainly enough excellent options to make at least a few people drop the bulky dedicated camera. Nokia is, of course, not unique in its anticipation of future trends, but it has been better at it than its epic fall from dominance would suggest. Like Palm with webOS, Intel with Mobile Internet Devices, and even Xerox with the graphical user interface, Nokia has repeatedly demonstrated that being first to a good idea is no guarantee of commercial success.

BEING FIRST IS NO GUARANTEE OF SUCCESS

Before the iPhone had apps and Android got Maps, Nokia phones had both. Today there isn’t a flagship smartphone without either a metal or faux metal finish. If only Nokia’s software were as good as its foresight and hardware, my visits to its homepage would still be producing the same frisson of excitement that they once did. Instead, I’m left staring vacantly at the four squares of the Nokia apocalypse that join up to form the Microsoft logo.

Still Having Problem..!!! Connect with Admin 

 Kunal Vohra Download Our Official Android App & Get Free Internet

"The Hackers Street"

For Daily Updates