VERIZON TO INTEGRATE AMERICAN EXPRESS MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM INTO DEVICES

Verizon Wireless and American Express announced on Monday that Verizon Wireless will begin to integrate American Express’ “Serve” mobile payment solution into its phones and tablets. The agreement will allow Verizon Wireless customers to make mobile payments from their phones, provided that they have an existing Serve account. “Our collaboration with Verizon highlights the speed at which Serve is evolving to reach a wide audience,” said Dan Schulman, group president, Enterprise Growth, American Express. “Verizon Wireless customers will soon be able to complement their busy lifestyle with a trusted payment platform that delivers a fast, flexible and secure way to manage their day-to-day mobile purchases, and together we’re taking the necessary steps to make mobile commerce a reality.”

Serve is similar to PayPal and allows users to send or receive money for goods and services. American Express announced the service in March in tandem with Serve apps for Android and iOS.

SONY ANNOUNCES NEW HANDHELD SYSTEM...PLAYSTATION VITA

Details about Sony's new handheld, formerly known as the NGP or Next Generation Portable, have been trickling out for months in the form of spec sheets and fantastic footage of its quad core capabilities. All that, and we still didn't know how much she'd cost or when we could get our grubby paws around one. Thankfully for those tuned in at E3, said mystery is a mystery no more -- the Vita will be listed at $249 for the WiFi-only model, or $299 for the 3G version. Sony's Kaz Hirai confirmed will be available exclusively through AT&T, with both models shipping worldwide toward the end of 2011. For those of you camped out overseas, prices are set for ¥24,980 (WiFi) and ¥29,980 (3G) in Japan, while those closer to that other pond will see tags of €249 and €299.

The device, also known as the PS Vita, offers up six-axis motion sensors, dual analog controls (proper ones, with thumbsticks), front- and rear-facing cameras, an OLED touchscreen, and a touchpad on the back, too. The company showed off a number of top-tier titles, including Uncharted: Golden Abyss, a hack-and-slash RPG called Ruin, a new ModNation Racers, LittleBigPlanet, and Street Fighter x Tekken, each showing off plenty of motion and touch interactivity... things that we couldn't be more elated to try for ourselves in due time. They're all looking quite good, and honestly a bit more advanced than what the 3DS has delivered so far -- for the same money.

AT&T, T-MOBILE AND VERIZON ANNOUNCE MOBILE PAYMENT SYSTEM

The big three, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, along with Barclay and Discover, have announced a new mobile commerce system: Isis. The system will use an app on your phone to send payments to a POS system using NFC technology. The Isis team thinks it has the "scope and scale necessary to introduce mobile commerce on a broad basis." [Engadget]

ADOBE WARNS OF A CRITICAL VULNERABILITY IN READER AND FLASH

Adobe has released a security bulletin warning of a critical, zero-day vulnerability affecting their Reader and Flash player.  Adobe states in the bulletin and unpatched system could "crash [your system] and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.”  According to Adobe the vulnerability affects the following systems:

• Adobe Flash Player 10.1.85.3 and earlier versions for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Solaris operating systems
• Adobe Flash Player 10.1.95.2 and earlier for Android
• Adobe Reader 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX
• Adobe Acrobat 9.4 and earlier 9.x versions for Windows and Macintosh
• Adobe Reader and Acrobat 8.x are confirmed not vulnerable. Adobe Reader for Android is not affected by this issue.

Adobe has promised a fix for this issue by November 9th.  Read below for mitigation instructions for your system.

MITIGATIONS: 

Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x - Windows
Deleting, renaming, or removing access to the authplay.dll file that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x mitigates the threat for those products, but users will experience a non-exploitable crash or error message when opening a PDF file that contains Flash (SWF) content.

The authplay.dll that ships with Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows is typically located at C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 9.0\Reader\authplay.dll for Adobe Reader or C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\authplay.dll for Acrobat.

Adobe Reader 9.x - Macintosh
1) Go to the Applications->Adobe Reader 9 folder.
2) Right Click on Adobe Reader.
3) Select Show Package Contents.
4) Go to the Contents->Frameworks folder.
5) Delete or move the AuthPlayLib.bundle file.

Acrobat Pro 9.x - Macintosh
1) Go to the Applications->Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro folder.
2) Right Click on Adobe Acrobat Pro.
3) Select Show Package Contents.
4) Go to the Contents->Frameworks folder.
5) Delete or move the AuthPlayLib.bundle file.

Adobe Reader 9.x - UNIX
1) Go to installation location of Reader (typically a folder named Adobe).
2) Within it browse to Reader9/Reader/intellinux/lib/ (for Linux) or Reader9/Reader/intelsolaris/lib/ (for Solaris).
3) Remove the library named "libauthplay.so.0.0.0."
[Adobe]