10 changes Twitter needs to make right now to stop abuse

 Harassment is all too common on Twitter. We have a few ideas the network can use to become a safer space.

Twitter has an abuse problem. Women who deal with harassment every day on the network have known this for years, but now Twitter is finally changing its policies to deal with attackers.

While the platform hasn't yet revealed its changes, Del Harvey, head of Twitter's Trust and Safety Team, told the Associated Press that the network has "suspended a number of accounts related to this issue for violating our rules, and we are in the process of evaluating how we can further improve our policies to better handle tragic situations like this one."
"This includes expanding our policies regarding self-harm and private information, and improving support for family members of deceased users," she continued.
While Twitter rethinks its approach to abuse, we have a few ideas that would make the network a safer space.

Make policies clear

Define abuse: Twitter's definition of abuse is vague and doesn't specify what kinds of behavior the network will and won't allow. The only thing we know for certain is that if I make physical threats or post from multiple accounts, then Twitter considers it abusive. Everything short of that is in this nebulous gray area.
Make the abuse policy easier to find:Yeah, we know that you can report abuse directly from a tweet, but we had trouble even finding Twitter's policy. You've got to click on the Help link--which is not exactly prominent--then scroll down to Safety & Security and click on the abuse link. That's a lot of searching, and it suggests Twitter would rather keep this all on the down-low instead of dealing with it forcefully and publicly.
Treat users with respect: Twitter comes off as condescending in its abuse policy wording. "Abusive users often lose interest once they realize that you will not respond," the company's policy reads. "If the user in question is a friend, try addressing the issue offline. If you have had a misunderstanding, it may be possible to clear the matter up face to face or with the help of a trusted individual." That completely unhelpful advice makes it seem like Twitter would rather not deal with your problems.
Specify penalties: Twitter has a funny way of punishing bullies, at least according to its vague policy: "User abuse and technical abuse are not tolerated on Twitter.com, and may result in permanent suspension." The word "may" is an easy way out. Twitter needs to be clear what actions it will take in what instances.

Streamline the process

Make reporting abuse easier: Last summer, Twitter rolled out an in-tweet reporting button so you can skip the tedious form and report harassment within the app. But that button still forces people to interact with their abusers and view the offending tweets.
Encourage third-party reports: Twitter doesn't like when you report abuse you see but aren't the direct victim of: "We are unable to respond to requests from uninvolved parties regarding those issues, to mitigate the likelihood of false or unauthorized reports. If you are not an authorized representative but you are in contact with the individual, encourage the individual to file a report through our forms." But if Zelda Williams's followers reported her bullies en masse, that could help Twitter's safety team move faster to solve the problem.
Respond faster: Twitter reportedly moves slowly when responding to abuse reports, especially when you're not a celebrity. The network should staff up and stay on top of harassment charges to keep bullies from gaining the upper hand.

Empower users with better tools

Allow IP blocking: People subject to repeated harassment from multiple accounts should have the option of blocking not just the accounts doing the harassing now, but new accounts created from the same IP address. It's too easy for a troll to keep coming back with new accounts.
Beef up user authentication: It's too easy to set up fake accounts on Twitter. One of our staffers has three accounts, and while he's not a bully, an attacker could take advantage of--oh, and they do--Twitter's lack of verification and keep the abuse coming. If you tweet abuse from one account, all of your accounts should be booted.
Disable in-line images on the Web: In Zelda Williams's case, harassers were tweeting her horrible doctored images, which are easy enough to disable in Twitter's mobile apps but impossible to get rid of on Twitter.com. Twitter needs to add that option so users aren't forced to stare at disturbing photos.

 

The coloring book comes to life with Chromville AR app

 In good news for parents who don't like watching their little ones become tablet-clutching screen zombies, games are increasingly merging real-world play with digital experiences. Chromville is an app which brings children's coloring to 3D life with augmented reality, and lets them use their creations in on-screen games.

Designed for children aged 5–12 years old, Chromville consists of Android and iOS apps, along with a series of coloring template pages which can be downloaded and printed off ready for kids to color in. The pages tell the story of a distant world where color is fading away and environment-based characters are losing their power, and only you can save them by coloring them in.
Once youngsters have finished each of their artistic masterpieces, the Chromville app can be used to scan them with a smartphone or tablet. The app then recognizes the coloring pages, and brings them to virtual life on the screen, complete with 3D animations incorporating the children's designs into the story.
As the chapters progress, there are a series of on-screen mini-games which form part of the narrative, and also feature the characters as colored by the user. This is similar to the way in which Lego Fusion incorporates a user's physical construction, and is what sets Chromville apart from other augmented reality coloring apps like ColAR.

In addition to the story aspect of the coloring book app, there's also a customize section which gives children more design freedom. Here they also get the ability to use their creations in other mini-games which are not tied to the Chromville story, such as a World Cup football one.
The Chromville app is free to download from the usual places, and a selection of free coloring pages can be printed out from the Chromville website. There are plans to release paid-for coloring sheets, along with a more educational version of the app designed to help encourage story-telling and narrative writing.

goTenna lets you send text messages when there's no network available

 When a mobile network is down, overloaded or simply out of range, it can be certainly be inconvenient or potentially much worse. goTenna aims to keep mobile devices connected regardless of network status by creating its own network over which users can send messages to each other.

 

goTenna is somewhat reminiscent of the Be-Bound mobile app, which uses SMS messaging to provide internet access when there is no 3G or Wi-Fi availability. Where Be-Bound allows users to use email, check the weather and read the news, amongst other functionality, goTenna was developed with more serious applications in mind.
The device was conceived in the US towards the end of 2012 in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. According to the Federal Communications Commission, the storm knocked out around a quarter of cell towers across a 10 state area, leaving people unable to communicate when it was most critical. Siblings and goTenna founders Daniela and Jorge Perdomo saw that there would be a benefit to people being able to communicate in such situations via their mobile phones regardless of mobile network service.
"Our mission is twofold: to let people communicate whenever and wherever they want, on their own terms, and also to make sure that in times of a true emergency, people are able to reach others around them," says Daniela Perdomo.
Prototype devices were created at Brooklyn hackspace NYC Resistor and continued development was followed by seed funding in late 2013. Investors include Bloomberg Beta, Collaborative Fund, Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and MentorTech Ventures.

The device itself is a 2-watt radio with an antenna and a range of up to 50 miles. It uses low-frequency radio waves to let users send text messages and share GPS locations with another goTenna user. According to the company, the device is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that lasts for about 72 hours with intermittent use or for around 30 hours with constant use. If not in use, it will retain its charge for about a year and half.
goTenna pairs with an iOS or Android device via Bluetooth low energy. Its app will automatically continue to try and send a message until successful and will notify users when a message has been sent. It is possible to send group messages, to send encrypted and "self-destructing" messages to maintain privacy and to "shout" broadcasts to anyone within range.
It's designed to be rugged, weather-proof and dust-proof and, at 5.8 x 1 x 0.5 in (147.3 x 25.4 x 12.7 mm) and 57 g (2 oz), is very portable. In addition to providing a means of communication when cell towers have been knocked out after natural disasters, goTenna can be used at major sports events when networks are overloaded, or when hiking out of network range. It can also be used as a free means of communication with friends or family when on holiday.
goTenna is available for a pre-sale price of US$149.99 per pair, after which they will retail for $299.

New technique could boost internet speeds tenfold

Researchers at Aalborg University, MIT and Caltech have developed a new mathematically-based technique that can boost internet data speeds by up to 10 times, by making the nodes of a network much smarter and more adaptable. The advance also vastly improves the security of data transmissions, and could find its way into 5G mobile networks, satellite communications and the Internet of Things.

The problem with TCP/IP

Data is sent over the internet in "packets," or small chunks of digital information. The exact format of the packets and the procedure for delivering them to their destination is described by a suite of protocols known as TCP/IP, or the internet protocol suite, designed in the early 70s.
Back when it was conceived, the internet protocol suite was a tremendous leap forward that revolutionized our paradigm for transmitting digital information. Remarkably, 40 years on, it still forms the backbone of the internet. However, despite all its merits, few would say that it is particularly efficient, secure or flexible.
For instance, in order for a TCP data transmission to be successful, the recipient needs to collect the packets in the exact order in which they were sent over. If even a single packet is lost for any reason, the protocol interprets this as a sign that the network is congested – the transmission speed is immediately halved, and from there it attempts to rise again only very slowly. This is ideal in some situations and terribly inefficient in others. The issue is that the protocol doesn't have the intelligence to know what the right thing to do is.
Also, although the packets could take a theoretically infinite number of paths to travel between point A and point B in a network, it turns out that data in a TCP connection always travels along the same path – which makes it quite easy for an eavesdropper to spy on your communications.

Network coding – the solution?

An interesting proposal that might offer the solution to these problems is so-called network coding, which aims to make each node in the network much smarter that it currently is. In TCP/IP, the nodes of the network are just simple switches that can only store data packets and then forward them to the next node along their predetermined route; by contrast, in network coding each node can elaborate packets as needed, for instance by re-routing or re-encoding them.
Adding intelligence at the node level may be a truly disruptive change, because it allows for unparalleled flexibility in the way information is handled. For instance, it can take advantage of multipath TCP (implemented in iOS 7) and, on top of it, add an encoding mechanism that further increases security and speed, or even enable data storage right within the nodes of the network.

Researchers Morten Videb and Janus Heide (Photo: Aalborg University)

In a recent study, a team of researchers from Aalborg University (Denmark), MIT and Caltech have built an implementation of just such a protocol, displaying some impressive speed gains. In a demo, a four minute-long mobile video was downloaded five times faster than with the state of the art technology, and was then streamed without interruptions.
"In experiments with our network coding of Internet traffic, equipment manufacturers experienced speeds that are five to 10 times faster than usual. And this technology can be used in satellite communication, mobile communication and regular internet communication from computers," says Prof. Frank Fitzek, who led the study.

How it works

Whether the contents of a packet are part of a YouTube video, a text or a song, they are nonetheless encoded by a string of zeros and ones, which can also be seen as a number in binary format.
In TCP/IP, the nodes of a network treat data packets individually by simply storing their content and relaying it to the next node. But in the protocol developed by Fitzek and colleagues, the content of the packet is seen as an actual number, and packets are processed in chunks. Each node builds a set of linear equations, using both the numbers extracted from the content of the packets and a set of randomly generated coefficients.
Each linear equation forms a "coded packet" where the coefficients are stored inside the coded packet's header, and the unknown variables are the actual contents of the packets, treated as a number. In other words, each coded packet contains partial information on several "standard" packets at once, but multiplied by different coefficients.
As you might remember from high school math, you need N linear equations to solve for N unknown variables. Because each coded packet contains a single equation, this means that the recipient will need N packets (with different coefficients) before it can decode the data.

The system is much safer than the current Internet protocols, because an eavesdropper would need to intercept all the packets to decode the information (Image: Franz Fitzek)

But why go to the trouble of complicating things so much? The answer is that now, unlike with TCP/IP, the recipient doesn't need to receive packets in order. In fact, the order in which packets are received becomes completely irrelevant. All that matters is that the recipient obtains N coded packets, all with different coefficients, so it can solve the equations and obtain the original data.
This flexibility in the order means that the whole system is much more efficient, because all the packets are interchangeable. A lost packet is no longer cause for severe transmission delays as in TCP/IP.
And because the order doesn't matter, the packets can now travel along different paths through the network. This also increases security, because it becomes nearly impossible for anyone to intercept the communication by tapping into a single line.

What's next?

The technology could find application in 5G telecommunications, the Internet of Things, and software-defined networks. Moreover, the intelligence of the network also opens up the possibility of vastly distributed storage solutions directly within the network.
"I think the technology will be integrated in most products because it has some crucial and necessary functions," says Fitzek. "The only thing that can stop the development is patents. Previously, individual companies had a solid grip on patents for coding. But our approach is to make it as accessible as possible."

Amazon reportedly taking on Square with credit card reader

9to5Mac has obtained documents indicating that Staples is poised to start selling a $10 "Amazon Card Reader."

It looks like Amazon is about enter the competitive mobile payments space by introducing its own credit card reader.
That's the assumption being made by 9to5Mac, which has obtained internal Staples documents that seem to show an "Amazon Card Reader" will go on sale in the near future for $10 (roughly £6 or AU$11) alongside existing card readers from Square, PayPal, and Staples' own in-house brand.
Staples is slated to start advertising Amazon's gadget on August 12, according to the document, which suggests the device could go on sale around the same time.
An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the report, stating only that, "We don't comment on rumors and speculation."
But an Amazon card reader is not too big a stretch, given that e-commerce giant just this week launched a mobile wallet app. Amazon Wallet, however, is still pretty barebones -- for now it's just a place to store select gift and loyalty cards.
9to5 Mac points to reports over the past year from various sources suggesting Amazon is moving into mobile card reading. And Amazon has long been eyeing PayPal's digital payments crown -- something clearly signaled by the introduction last year of "Login and Pay with Amazon."

Teen wakes up to smoldering Galaxy S4, dad blames battery

 A 13-year-old in Texas wakes up to smoke and discovers her Samsung phone melting. The culprit appears to be a replacement battery.

If I am awoken by smoke in the middle of the night, I assume the neighbors are having a key party again.
However, one 13-year-old from Texas, says she was woken by a smoky smell and didn't even worry about it. She went back to sleep.
For Ariel Tolfree, though, the smell didn't go away. When she woke up again, she noticed that her Samsung Galaxy S4 was melting under her pillow.
As KDFW has it, Tolfree loves her S4. "It's really, like nice and pretty and, it's, like, high-tech," she said.

Her dad believes the phone overheated, the battery swelled and that was the firestarter.
"We have a reasonable expectation that the products we buy are going to be safe," he said.
For its part, Samsung insisted that it does make safe products. Indeed, it pointed out that this phone's battery was a replacement, not an original Samsung battery.
Ariel Tolfree said that the phone slipped under her pillow during the night. Samsung explained that it has a warning that if you cover your phone with anything that prevents airflow this might, indeed, cause a fire.

This is neither the first nor the last instance of a phone catching fire. Earlier this year, a Maine teen was burned when an iPhone smoldered in her pocket. There was even the claim a few years ago that a Motorola Droid 2 exploded in a man's ear.
Keeping your phone far away from you at night is a first step. But there was an instance a couple of years ago when an iPhone 4 allegedly blew up while charging on a nightstand.
In Tolfree's case, Samsung is examining the phone in an attempt to see what may have happened. The company is also replacing the phone and the bedclothes that were damaged.

Ex-Microsoft employee who leaked Windows secrets to be deported to Russia

Feds waited until Alex Kibkalo came to U.S. for conference to arrest him on charges of stealing product activation SDK

A former Microsoft employee charged in March with leaking Windows updates and software that validates product key codes was sentenced to a three-month prison term on Tuesday.
After he serves his sentence, Alex Kibkalo, 34, will be deported to Russia.
Kibkalo was arrested March 19 in Bellevue, Wash. for allegedly leaking pre-release software updates for Windows RT, the tablet-specific operating system, to a French blogger in July and August 2012 -- months before its release. The FBI, which was brought onto the case after a Microsoft investigation, also said Kibkalo provided the same blogger with the Activation Server SDK (software development kit), internal-only code to create the activation systems which validate product keys, Microsoft's primary anti-piracy technology.
Kibkalo, a Russian national at the time working for Microsoft in its Lebanon office, leaked the software to strike back at his employer after receiving a poor performance evaluation.
Kibkalo pleaded guilty to theft of trade secrets on March 31. In return, prosecutors said they would recommend a three-month prison term and order him to pay Microsoft $22,500 in restitution.
Documents filed this week in a Seattle federal court by Kibkalo's attorney provided more information on how Kibkalo was lured to the U.S. from Russia, where he had been working in the Moscow office of Beverly, Mass.-based 5nine Software.
"The Government timed its Complaint and Arrest Warrant to coincide with Mr. Kibkalo's pre-arranged attendance at a technology conference in Bellevue," wrote Kibkalo's attorney, Russell Leonard, in a sentencing memorandum dated June 3.
"He flew into the country (legally on a valid visa) from Moscow (where he lives), checked into his hotel in Factoria and attended several sessions of this professional meeting before being detained by the FBI and whisked away to federal court for his initial appearance (on March 17, 2014)," Leonard continued.
Although the original settlement deal specified that Kibkalo was to pay $22,500 in restitution to Microsoft, that was struck at some point: The judgment filed with the court said Kibkalo was obligated to pay just $100.
As of Thursday, Kibkalo had served 86 days in federal custody; he will be credited with time served, and thus should be released early next week. At that time, he will be deported to Russia, according to the federal prosecutor's sentencing memorandum.
"I deeply regret that I have shared that [confidential] information," Kibkalo wrote in a sentencing letter to the judge. "Having done that I have lost a job, one can only dream about. Moreover, when I have found another interesting job a year after, the echo of my mistake took that from me, too. For sure I was given good lessons, which I deserved."

Microsoft suffered some public relations blowback from the case when court documents revealed the company had examined the Hotmail.com account of Kibkalo's unidentified blogger associate without a court order. Within days, Microsoft retreated from its initial position and promised that in the future it would refer similar cases to law enforcement officials.

Blackphones coming in three weeks, will ship in millions, backers say

Carriers in Europe and the Americas have committed to selling the security-focused smartphones, Silent Circle and Geeksphone say

The Blackphone security-focused smartphone will go on the market in three weeks and "a few thousand" have already been sold through pre-orders, executives from the device's makers say.

Encrypted communications provider Silent Circle and manufacturer Geeksphone introduced the Blackphone earlier this year to give users a way around data collection by governments and private companies. The $629 device, made by a Swiss joint venture called SGP Technologies, runs a custom Android-based OS and was designed from the ground up to prevent hacking. It will offer secure and private voice and video calls, text messaging, and file exchanges, as well as anonymous Internet use, the companies say.

Through partnerships with service providers in Europe and in North, Central, and South America, the companies have commitments to deliver millions of phones, Silent Circle President and cofounder Phil Zimmermann said on Tuesday at MIT Technology Review's Digital Summit in San Francisco. KPN, which has already said it will sell the Blackphone in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, is committing to hundreds of thousands of phones, he said.
The device, along with Silent Circle's service, offers end-to-end encrypted communications from one Blackphone to another. Even if one person doesn't have a Blackphone, communication will be encrypted from the phone to Silent Circle's servers.
Silent Circle doesn't hold the encryption keys itself, so it can't give governments access to users' communications even if asked, Zimmermann said. The phone also keeps carriers and app providers from collecting user information, he said.
"If you get a free service like Facebook, there's a catch. ... If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product," Zimmermann said. "What we're doing here is, we're making you pay for the product." Growing awareness and concern about data-collection practices should help to expand demand for the phone, he said.
The Blackphone is designed to protect users from "driftnet phishing" for user information by organized crime and government entities such as the National Security Agency, but it can't defend against targeted attacks, according to Zimmermann. "If NSA really, really wants to get into just your phone ... they're going to get into your phone," he said.
The companies will update the phones to protect against any vulnerabilities that may be discovered in the future, Geeksphone cofounder Javier Aguera said.
Building an encrypted communications service and a secure phone creates strange bedfellows, according to Zimmermann. A former antiwar activist, he found himself working with former U.S. Navy Seals to form Silent Circle. A hacker who sells zero-day attacks for a living is giving the company advice, he said. And while some people in the NSA probably aren't happy about the prospect of such a device, agencies in the U.S., Canada, and Australia use Silent Circle and are interested in the Blackphone, Zimmermann said. "It depends in which part of these intelligence agencies you're asking," he said.

DoCoMo introduces wearable SIM for network access

Portable SIM card stores authentication information to wirelessly connect any smartphone or tablet to a network with the wave of a hand

Instead of burying them in phones, Japanese mobile carrier NTT DoCoMo wants people to start wearing their SIM cards.
It has developed a SIM card that can wirelessly connect smartphones and tablets to networks and the Internet simply by waving one's hand. The card can also transmit a user's number and other info, separating connectivity from mobile devices themselves.
 Unveiled Tuesday, DoCoMo announced a pocket-sized prototype of the technology that it's calling Portable SIM. Subscriber identities can be instantly transmitted to mobile devices with the prototype. That means users don't have to physically insert SIM cards into phones as they do now.
Aside from linking to phones or tablets via Bluetooth and NFC, the SIM contains a user's phone number, usernames and passwords. DoCoMo said it's the world's first SIM-based authentication device that can provide wireless network access.
The prototype, currently 8 cm long, 4 cm wide and weighing 20 grams, will be shrunk so it can fit into a bracelet-style wearable computer, DoCoMo said. Earlier this year, the carrier announced a health-monitoring wristband and smart clothing.
In a series of demonstrations at DoCoMo headquarters in Tokyo, a staffer held the prototype Portable SIM near a SIM-less phone. By linking the two through an app, the phone could receive a call to the number registered on the Portable SIM.
The process, which took a few seconds, was then repeated with a different SIM-less phone.
In another demo, the Portable SIM was used to link different phone numbers to the same phone -- first a number for personal use, and then one for business. The idea is that the same smartphone could be used with different phone numbers in the SIM depending on the time of day, and each number would also trigger certain apps or other custom settings.
"We were considering what comes next after the smartphone and we zeroed in on what functions were essential to customers," Akira Shibutani, manager of the Advanced Technology Group at DoCoMo's Communication Device Development Department, said in a briefing on the device. "We felt that this boiled down to authentication."
The SIM might also be used to connect to other devices too, including PCs, in-car information systems, public phones or bathroom scales. Travelers, for instance, could leave their smartphone at home but get online by waving their Portable SIM in front of a hotel TV, he said.
"When people use multiple smartphones and tablets, this Portable SIM will be a very convenient way to allow you to link to all of them," Kazuaki Terunuma, managing director of the department, said during the briefing.
DoCoMo, Japan's dominant mobile carrier, has applied for Japanese and overseas patents related to the Portable SIM. It's still in the research phase and is not yet compatible with smartphones or tablets on the market.
The company has not decided when the device might be launched in Japan. Overseas sales are a possibility, but this sort of device would be have to be discussed at international standards forums, DoCoMo officials said.
DoCoMo will show off the Portable SIM prototype at Mobile Asia Expo, which kicks off Wednesday in Shanghai.

New tech, venture capital feed "gold-rush" among India's IT start-ups 

 

In India's IT services outsourcing sector, local start-ups, often backed by U.S. venture capital funds, are nipping at the heels of industry heavyweights such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Infosys Ltd
These nimble start-ups, most of them based in Bangalore, offer niche cutting-edge technology products, solutions and services that traditional outsourcing companies don't offer, or can't offer at competitive rates.
To be sure, Tata Consultancy (TCS), Infosys and Wipro Ltd  still account for the bulk of the $100 billion-plus core IT industry's sales and employ hundreds of thousands of engineers. But as these focus on routine services like application development and IT infrastructure management, the start-ups are stealing a march in newer areas such as cloud computing and mobile technology.
The value of outsourcing contracts for digital technologies - social, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) - is set to soar to $287 billion by 2016 from $164 billion last year, says Rajat Tandon, a senior director at the National Association for Software and Services Companies, an outsourcing sector lobby group.
Start-ups will lead the race in providing solutions based on these SMAC technologies, says the group, which predicts the number of start-ups in India will top 2,000 by 2015, from 450 in 2012.
"There's a gold rush. Start-ups are rushing in to serve markets that were never served before," said Sharad Sharma, co-founder of iSPIRT, a think-tank and start-up consultancy.
HEAD-TO-HEAD
One such relative newcomer is ISGN, a mortgage technology and services company backed by California-headquartered New Enterprise Associates and India's KK Birla group. With a modest workforce of 1,200, the 2007 start-up is already taking business from its bigger, established rivals, winning outsourcing contracts from leading U.S. mortgage companies.
ISGN last year won a $75-$100 million renewal order from one of the top five U.S. mortgage companies which had previously placed work with one of the major Indian IT firms, said CEO Amit Kothiyal, a former Infosys veteran. He declined to give details, citing a confidentiality pact.
"We have a couple of large deals going on right now, where we're competing head to head with some of the traditional Indian IT majors," he added.
India's big outsourcing companies have thrived for years by providing IT and back-office services to global corporations such as Citigroup (C.N) and BT Group Plc (BT.L), tapping a vast cheap local workforce. But they are now coming under pressure from smaller firms with venture capital funding, a technological edge and staffed often by skilled engineers who have quit well paid jobs at the large IT companies to take on the challenge of a new venture.
"Today, the deal isn't about labour arbitrage ... to be competitive, companies need to provide technology, and services become an add-on to that," said Ben Mathias, a partner at New Enterprise Associates' India unit. "Without the technology you lose the competitive edge."
U.S. retailer Target (TGT.N), for example, is working with five Indian start-ups on areas ranging from automating the generation of rotating 3D images to the personalisation of search and product recommendations, said Navneet Kapoor, its India managing director.
Sudin Apte, CEO and founder of advisory firm Offshore Insights said the so-called Global 2000 firms - from the Forbes list of the world's biggest public companies - are expected to spend 15-16 percent of their IT services and outsourcing budgets on SMAC, with India forecast to export $16 billion worth of SMAC software and services in fiscal 2018.

BUSINESS MODEL REVOLUTION

 Reuters spoke to five start-ups, four of which said that more than 60 percent of their revenues came from clients in the United States and Britain, and there's almost always an incumbent IT player they have to compete against.
Client demands range from quick project turnaround and customised marketing solutions to a need for a competitive edge in using digitisation, mobile, social media and other platforms.
The adoption of digital technology has substantially changed business models across the financial services, healthcare, entertainment and telecoms industries, says Sudin Apte, CEO and founder of advisory firm Offshore Insights.
For example, Mumbai-based Emart Solutions, a loyalty management company, won a deal with a global energy company by developing new mobile technology that cut the time needed to process sales data from several weeks to a few seconds, co-founder Srikanth Chunduri told Reuters.
In traditional IT services, affordable options like Zoho, which offers customer relationship management solutions to small and mid-sized firms, prompted EcoMark, a Denver, Colorado-based solar energy firm, to migrate from a similar Salesforce.com (CRM.N) platform, the start-up told Reuters. Zoho, based in Chennai, said EcoMark saved more than $1,000 per month for 30 users by switching to its platform. EcoMark and Salesforce.com did not respond to requests for comment.
"One can't ignore that for every account we speak to there's always an incumbent you have to contend with," said Puneet Jetli, chief operating officer at Happiest Minds, whose investors include Canaan Partners and Intel Capital. Jetli says at least 60 percent of the Bangalore-based start-up's new projects come from companies which are already working with established IT groups, but want a change.

FUNDING INNOVATION

Venture capital funding has long been a missing link for budding tech start-ups in India - from the days when the seven co-founders of Infosys pooled $250, mostly borrowed from their spouses, to start the company more than three decades ago.
The country is now seeing a boom in early-stage investment with a large number of funds, including U.S.-based Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture, Charles River and Sequoia Capital, chasing innovative ideas.
Venture capital funds invested around $190 million in early-stage tech firms in India last year, up by almost a quarter from 2012, according to Hong Kong-based Centre for Asia Private Equity Research Ltd. A total of $623 million has been invested by venture funds in India since 2011, three-quarters of which was used to buy stakes in software services and e-commerce start-ups, data from the research house shows.
"India is undergoing a transformation. The Internet is catching up and is becoming a basic need here. That makes India an incipient market for businesses that leverage that," said Prayank Swaroop, Senior Associate at Accel Partners in India.
The attraction for venture funds was underscored by Facebook Inc's (FB.O) acquisition in January of Bangalore-based Little Eye Labs, a start-up that builds performance analysis and monitoring tools for mobile Android (GOOGL.O) apps. VenturEast Tenet Fund, an early-stage investor in Little Eye Labs, made a return of multiple times its initial investment, people in the industry said. Sateesh Andra, managing partner for VenturEast, which has close to $300 million under management, said returns on Little Eye were "attractive", but declined to give details.
"There's a lot of innovation to come and that can only happen if capital is made available," said Bejul Somaia, India managing director for Lightspeed, whose investments in India range from $1 million to $25 million. "It's encouraging to see that more capital is being made available to fund innovation at a time when these technology platform shifts are underway and as more young entrepreneurs take the risk of starting companies."
The established IT companies are taking note, and are open to partnering with start-ups to reach a wider range of clients, instead of developing all the facilities themselves.
"We proactively deliver value using our start-up ecosystem and innovation, which in turn helps us differentiate from our competitors," said K.R. Sanjiv, Chief Technology Officer at Wipro.

Facebook expands users' ad targeting profiles with website data

 

Facebook Inc is expanding the internal user profiles that underpin its targeted advertising system, for the first time including personal information based on activities that did not occur within the boundaries of its social network.
While Facebook has long maintained internal profiles of users based on the comments they make and the posts that they “like” within its social network, the company will now flesh out those profiles with information based on some of the external websites and mobile apps its members use, a move that could further inflame concerns about how it treats personal privacy.
The enhanced profiles will allow marketers to deliver more relevant ads, Facebook said in a blog post announcing the change on Thursday. If a Facebook user researches a new television on an external website or inside of a mobile app, their profile might now indicate an interest in televisions and in electronics, making it easier for advertisers pitching electronic devices to reach that user on Facebook.
Facebook already has access to much of this information through tools that it uses to measure the performance of its ads as well as through "plug-ins" that integrate Facebook features on third-party websites, but the company has not until now incorporated the data into its users' ad targeting profiles.
To quell potential privacy concerns, Facebook will for the first time give users the ability to review and edit their internal advertising profiles. By clicking on a button alongside Facebook ads, a user can see all the “interests” on their record, remove unwanted categories and add any desired categories.
Facebook said it will also provide a link to an industry website that will allow users to not have their activities on websites tracked, as well as a link to the appropriate controls within their smartphones to eliminate mobile app tracking.
The new ad capabilities come as Facebook strives to ramp up its advertising revenue amid competition from Google Inc while addressing persistent concerns about personal privacy on the world’s No.1 social network.
In April, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced new features that lets users limit how much personal information they share with third-party mobile apps.
Facebook, Google and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.
In 2012, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

Apple's Swift not so swift after all

Programming language doesn't fare as well as Objective-C in some benchmarks, but Swift's easier syntax gets a thumbs-up

 

Apple cited speed as a key attribute of its Swift programming language when it was introduced last week. But developers who have independently run tests on the new language have found it lacking in performance in some instances.
Apple claimed that Swift outperforms Python when it comes to handling complex object stores and RC4 encryption. So Mac software builder Splasm Software decided to run benchmarks on the language to gauge how well Swift handles tight-looped and scalar data types and arrays.
Without leveraging optimizations in Apple's Xcode tool set, Splasm found that Swift was between six and 40 times slower than Objective-C, Splasm official Keith Gugliotto said. "What we were curious about was for the things that we do in-house, which is a lot of array work and a lot of working with these types of data, was Swift going to be as fast as Objective-C? In our tests, it wasn't."
Even after turning on the optimizations, Splasm found that Swift ran 10 to 20 percent slower than the original test numbers in some cases and 10 to 20 percent faster in other cases. But Swift was still slower than Objective-C. In another test, detailed on the Stack Overflow site for developers, a tester in Finland found that performance was slow when implementing an algorithm in Swift, with C++ and Python vastly outperforming Apple's fledgling language.
Gugliotto cautioned, however, that Splasm's benchmarks do not necessarily represent real-time application usage. "There's a heckuva lot more reasons to use a programming language than its performance," he said. "As long as the performance is relatively acceptable, if the language provides modern [capabilities] and at least allows you to develop quickly relative to other languages, that's a strong case for continuing to use it."
Gugliotto expects Swift's easier syntax will serve as enticement for its adoption, particularly among programmers who are not adept at building with the C language, which has served as a precursor to using Objective-C.
Swift features modern language capabilities, including closures, generics, multiple return types, and namespaces. The language is likely to live alongside Objective-C for years to come, Gugliotto said. "At some point Apple might pull the plug on Objective-C, and at that point we'll make the switch to Swift. [By then], I'm sure performance will be just fine."

Google engineer: We need more Web programming languages

The creator behind Google Dart showed developers at QCon some other nascent Web development languages

 Web applications may one day surpass desktop applications in function and usability -- if developers have more programming languages to choose from, according to a Google engineer.

"You should have more choices of viable languages," said Gilad Bracha, software engineer at Google, speaking to an audience of programmers Wednesday at the QCon developer conference in New York.
"I think the Web platform could make Web applications as good or better than native applications," Bracha said. "Ultimately it has to do that. Otherwise, the proprietary app stores will come and eat us all."
The benefits of Web applications are well-understood by developers. They don't need to be installed and they can work on any platform that supports the Web.
Unfortunately, one of the chief drawbacks is that they don't operate when not connected to a network.
So the ability to run Web apps offline will be critical given that, at least for the foreseeable future, many users will not have constant access to network connections.
"The Web is always available, except when it is not," Bracha said. "It isn't always available in a way that you can always rely on it. You may have a network that is slow or flaky, or someone may want to charge you."
Therefore any Web programming language, and its associated ecosystem, must have some way of storing a program for offline use, Bracha said. The Web programming language in the future must also make it easier for the programmer to build and test applications.
The chief language used today for the Web is JavaScript, which is deficient in a number of ways, such as support for offline usage of apps. And this may remain the case for a while: JavaScript is based on the ECMAScript standard, which can take years to be updated. "It should be easier to do these things," Bracha said.
There are other programming languages being built for the Web but very few are viable -- meaning they aren't well-engineered, lack key features and don't operate efficiently, Bracha said.
One of the reasons that Google started work on the Dart programming language, which Bracha helped author, is to provide the Web with an industrial-strength programming language.
Google did not design Dart "to replace JavaScript, but to give you options," Bracha said.
Bracha pointed to some other lesser-known and still experimental languages that show promise as well.
One was Elm, a functional programming language for building GUIs (graphical user interfaces). He demonstrated how only a few lines of Elm could allow the end user to draw a circle in a browser window using only a mouse.
Elm is designed in such a way that once the code is placed into its Web editor, the results show up immediately in a preview screen, eliminating the need to save the code and run the program in a separate window.
"Try this in Swing," Bracha said, referring to the Java GUI widget toolkit that can be cumbersome to use. Bracha also co-authored the Java Language Specification, so he has some experience in that language as well.
Bracha also demonstrated Lively.

Lively is even more responsive than Elm. The developer, when viewing a draft of their program in the browser, can simply click on any part of the application on the screen and Lively will bring up to the screen the specific object code that rendered the object.
Even the Lively code editor is an object that can be manipulated, allowing the developer to move and manipulate any of the controls.
This approach is far easier to work with than, say, using a standard IDE (integrated developer environment) such as Eclipse, which would require the user to scan through thousands of lines of code to find the section that needed to be modified.
Bracha showed off other responsive languages, Leisure and Newspeak, the latter of which Bracha created.
"Hopefully, this will give you an idea of the wonderful variety of stuff that is out there," Bracha told the audience. "Competition is good for everyone."

Dropbox Acquires Messaging Start-Up DropTalk

 

Dropbox, the file sharing and cloud storage service provider, has recently bought out an early stage startup called Droptalk. The acquisition comes barely days after the announcement that it has crossed the 300 million user mark. Droptalk was working on developing a tool that allowed users to share links privately with friends via a Chrome extension, which would then be followed up by both iOS and Android applications. Incidentally, none of the products were available publicly as Droptalk had only very recently launched its browser add-on in a limited beta.

The terms of the Dropbox-Droptalk deal were not disclosed. Droptalk was founded a year ago by a team of ex-engineers from Facebook and LinkedIn, with the idea of changing the way people communicated and got their work done. In a post on the Droptalk blog, the team writes, "With Droptalk all your communications happened in the browser, tablet or phone, eliminating the need for emails. What's more is anytime you updated your shared folders in the cloud, everyone else in the conversation could see the updated version and go directly to the document or link right in the very same thread."
Perhaps there are reasons outside the name which spiked up Dropbox's interest in Droptalk. In addition, to web sharing features, the tool also synced via the cloud, where users could see who was uploading what files or updating them to the common folder. This was combined with a message-like interface. Droptalk was working on integrating mobile messaging with cloud storage combined. Droptalk's team, comprising Rakesh Mathur, Ashish Bhardwaj, Anand Prakash, Manveer Chawla and Nirmesh Mehta, will be joining the Dropbox team.
In the blog, which detailed the acquisition of Droptalk, the team further writes, "As part of our transition to Dropbox, we are no longer accepting new beta signups. We would like to thank all the people that took part in our beta and gave us valuable input. We are grateful for your support and we will keep you updated as we join forces with Dropbox to make collaboration easier for everyone. Our team will be joining Dropbox today."
It is important to remember that Dropbox had recently acquired the workplace chat solutions provider Zulip, as well as personal photo-stream app Loom and collaborative document tool Hackpad.

Nokia Buys Australian Telecommunications Firm Mesaplexx

  

Finnish telecom giant Nokia on Thursday said it has completed the acquisition of the Australian company Mesaplexx Pty Limited in order to boost its radio capabilities in the networks business.

Mesaplexx has unique know-how in developing compact, high performance radio frequency (RF) filter technology for the mobile industry.
"The Nokia Flexi family of radio access base stations offers cutting-edge solutions that balance energy efficiency, power output and form factor. Adding the very advanced Mesaplexx technology can enhance them further, potentially reducing small cells form factor by 30 per cent or more," Nokia said in a statement.
Nokia said it is continually improving its radio systems whilst making them smaller, lighter and more efficient.
"Those familiar with radio technologies know that while there has been a lot of progress in recent years, filters are one area where new innovations can still yield significant improvements in performance," Mobile Broadband at Nokia Executive Vice President Marc Rouanne said.
Every base station needs RF filters to ensure that spectrum can be shared within the same geographical area and that the same antenna can serve for both transmit and receive purposes.
"The Mesaplexx expertise could help improve radio performance, leading to higher capacity and more efficient networks. This technology would also help reduce overall cost and power consumption and keep radio signal loss to a minimum," Nokia said.

Google Play Movies & TV App Update Brings Offline Playback to Chromebook

 

Google on Friday introduced a new Google Play Movies & TV Chrome app with offline playback mode for Chromebook owners. It means that users will be able to watch movies and TV shows on their Chromebook even in the absence of Internet.
Unfortunately the feature is limited to Google Chromebook users and doesn't extend to Chrome browsers on other platforms. However, Chrome users can still use this official extension (download) to view, manage or purchase content from it.
In addition to offline mode, the Google Play Movies & TV app also brings Info Cards and an improved Chromecast and local playback experience. Chromebook users can use Chromecast button to send video wirelessly to a larger display.
Notably, Google has rolled-out Google Play Movies 'info cards' feature to all 69 countries it provides the service, including India. Earlier the info cards feature was limited to users in the US and UK markets.
Once the card identifies the actors in the video, it will show a circle around their faces with the additional information. The cards are similar to the Google Now cards but they aren't a part of it.
Users can also get information about the songs being played in a movie or TV show. Tap on the screen to pause playback and once the song is identified, cards will show the song's title, artist, along with where it can be downloaded on Google Play.
At present there are only a limited number of movies and TV shows currently supporting the info cards. These info cards are compatible with devices running on Android 4.0 or higher.

Facebook, Google Must Abide by Our Privacy Rules: EU

 

 

Companies based outside the European Union must meet Europe's data protection rules, ministers agreed on Friday, although governments remain divided over how to enforce them on companies operating across the block.

The agreement to force Internet companies such as Google and Facebook to abide by EU rules is a first step in a wider reform package to tighten privacy laws - an issue that gained prominence following revelations of U.S. spying in Europe.
Vodafone's disclosure on Friday of the extent of telephone call surveillance in European countries showed the practice was not limited to the United States. The world's second-largest mobile phone company, Vodafone is headquartered in the United Kingdom.
"All companies operating on European soil have to apply the rules," EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding told reporters at a meeting in Luxembourg where ministers agreed on a position that has also been backed by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ).
Germany and the European Commission, the EU executive, have been highly critical of the way the United States accesses data since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden last year revealed U.S. surveillance programmes.
Disclosures that the United States carried out large-scale electronic espionage in Germany, including bugging Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone, provoked indignation in Europe.
"Now is the day for European ministers to give a positive answer to Edward Snowden's wake-up call," Reding said.
Commenting on Vodafone's disclosure, she said: "All these kind of things show how important it is to have data protection clearly established."
The reform package, which was approved by the European Parliament in March, has divided EU governments and still needs work to become law despite Friday's progress.
While ministers also agreed on provisions allowing companies to transfer data to countries outside the European Union, there was no decision on how to help companies avoid having to deal separately with the bloc's 28 different data protection authorities.
That issue was thrown into stark relief by a ruling from Europe's top court requiring Google to remove links to a 16-year-old newspaper article about a Spanish man's bankruptcy.
The search engine has since received tens of thousands of requests across Europe, and under current rules has to deal with each national authority.

A 'one-stop-shop' arrangement would allow companies to deal exclusively with the data protection authority in the country where it has its main establishment. But governments are concerned about a foreign data protection authority making binding decisions that they would then have to enforce.
For example, if a complaint originated in Denmark against a company based in Ireland, the Danish authorities would have to implement a decision by the Irish data protection body, something that is both legally and politically difficult.

Nasa Beams HD Video From Space Via Laser

 

 

 

 

 

 US space agency Nasa said Friday it has successfully beamed a high-definition video from the International Space Station to Earth using a new laser communications instrument, a technology demonstration that could help fundamentally change the way of communication in future deep space missions.

The transmission of the 175-megabit video entitled "Hello, World," took only 3.5 seconds, which corresponds to a data transmission rate of 50 megabits per second and would have taken more than 10 minutes using traditional downlink methods, Xinhua quoted Nasa as saying.
The entire video test, which occurred Thursday, lasted 148 seconds, the agency said.
Nasa said the technology demonstration called Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) focused laser energy to reach data rates between 10 and 1,000 times higher than current space communications, which rely on radio waves.
"Because the space station orbits Earth at 17,500 miles per hour, transmitting data from the space station to Earth requires extremely precise targeting," the agency said in a statement. "The process can be equated to a person aiming a laser pointer at the end of a human hair 30 feet away and keeping it there while walking."
To achieve this extreme precision during Thursday's demonstration, Nasa said the OPALS locked onto a laser beacon emitted by the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory ground station at the Table Mountain Observatory in Wrightwood, California.
"It's incredible to see this magnificent beam of light arriving from our tiny payload on the space station," said Matt Abrahamson, OPALS mission manager at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"We look forward to experimenting with OPALS over the coming months in hopes that our findings will lead to optical communications capabilities for future deep space exploration missions," he added.

After 'Godzilla Attack!' US Warns About Traffic-Sign Hackers

 

 

 

  

 

After hackers played several high-profile pranks with traffic signs, including warning San Francisco drivers of a Godzilla attack, the U.S. government advised operators of electronic highway signs to take "defensive measures" to tighten security.

Last month, signs on San Francisco's Van Ness Ave were photographed flashing "Godzilla Attack! Turn Back" and highway signs across North Carolina were tampered with last week to read "Hack by Sun Hacker."
The Department of Homeland Security's Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT, this week advised cities, highway operators and other customers of digital-sign maker Daktronics Inc to take "defensive measures" to minimize the possibility of similar attacks.
It said that information had been posted on the Internet advising hackers how to access those systems using default passwords coded into the company's software. "ICS-CERT recommends entities review sign messaging, update access credentials and harden communication paths to the signs," the agency said in an alert posted on Thursday.
Jody Huntimer, a representative for Daktronics, declined to say if the recent attacks involved the bug reported by ICS-CERT.
"We are working with the ICS-CERT team to clarify the current alert and will release a statement once we have assessed the situation and developed customer recommendations," Huntimer said via email.
Krebs on Security, a widely read security blog, posted a confidential report from the Center for Internet Strategy, or CIS, which was sent to state security officials. It warned that the pranks created a public safety risk because drivers often slow or stop to view the signs and take pictures.

CIS also predicated that amateur hackers might attempt to hack into other systems in the coming weeks following the May 27 release of "Watch Dogs," a video game from Ubisoft focused on hacking critical infrastructure.
"CIS believes it is likely that a small percent of Watch Dog players will experiment with compromising computers and electronic systems outside of game play," the report said.

 

Theo smartphone case packs wirelessly charged backup battery

Designers at Theo Elements are looking to swell the ever-growing ranks of 3rd-party wireless charging solutions on the market with Theo Power – a case fitted with a both wireless charging technology and a removable back-up battery pack.

• 
• 
• 

Theo Power currently exists as a set of test models ready to work with the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the iPhone 5/5s. The designers are aiming to raise enough funds via Kickstarter to get the product to market later this year.
The unit consists of three components: the case itself, a removable battery, and a charging pad. It's reinforced for physical protection and works with Qi-standard charging, the most common market standard for wireless charging technology on the market today. LG’s Nexus 5, HTC’s Droid DNA, and the Nokia Lumia 920 are all examples of phones that have Qi-standard wireless charging abilities built in.
Similar to the Duracell Powermat, Theo Power incorporates a battery into the design. In this case it's a slimline 1500 mAh battery (for reference, the Galaxy S4 works has a 2600 mAh battery and the iPhone 5s uses a 1560 mAh battery) that can be charged simultaneously with the phone, though the company says that its "Smart Charge" functionality will ensure that the device is charged first. The battery can also be removed from the case and charged separately, or the case and phone can be charged via both a cable and wireless charging to significantly reduce charging time.
The system also allows the case/battery to be used for charging any other device you’ve got on hand – just so long as the cord matches your port. For example, the iPhone 5/5s Theo Power case can also charge the iPad Air or iPad mini. Reserve battery levels are monitored through LED indicators on the front of the case.

Theo Power can be ordered in advance of shipping for $50 through the product’s Kickstarter page. The company has set an estimated delivery date of July 2014 for the first batch of cases. Nearer the end of the year, Theo Power will go on sale for $119.99 if it hits its crowdfunding goals.

 

Scientists from CERN and MIT launch encrypted email service

The privacy of the data that we put online has been a hot topic over the last year. In order to protect against unwanted snooping, a group of scientists has created a new secure email service. ProtonMail provides end-to-end encryption, meaning that even the company itself can't even see the content of your messages.

• 
• 
• 

The service started being developed in 2013 by a group of CERN scientists who wanted a more secure and private internet, in part as a response to the Edward Snowden leaks. "We began thinking about this problem long before the Snowden leaks, but the leaks were what drove us to take action, as they truly demonstrated how much online privacy had eroded," company co-founder Andy Yen told Gizmag.
The company is advised by the MIT Venture Mentoring Service and is developed, in part at MIT. Earlier this year, ProtonMail was a semi-finalist in the 2014 MIT 100K Startup Launch competition. The initial team, however, was formed via a CERN Facebook group made-up of scientists from CERN that, in some way, wanted to help improve society.

The group held "hackathons" to work on the idea, and much time was spent identifying the problems with existing means encrypting email and trying to find solutions. "What we quickly found out was that existing solutions were much too complicated to be used by the general public and this led us on the path towards creating an easy-to-use solution," explained Yen.
One of the other difficulties the group encountered was getting web browsers to manage the encryption process. The team found that its approach to the encryption of data required a lot of processing power and that web browsers tended not to be "high performance" enough to carry it out. As such, a great deal of work was undertaken to ensure that the encryption process could be made to work on all types of devices, and on older browsers.
ProtonMail uses end-to-end encryption. "End-to-end encryption basically means the user's data is encrypted before it leaves their computer and can only be decrypted by the recipient," says Yen. "With this system, the ProtonMail servers never have access to unencrypted user data and cannot actually read any of our users' emails."

ProtonMail touts a number of other features that are used to improve its security. The company is incorporated in Switzerland and has all of its servers based there too, allowing its users to benefit from that country's strict privacy laws. IP addresses are not logged and no personal information is required in order to sign up for an account. For paid accounts, users can pay with Bitcoin, and even cash.
The term "NSA proof" has been used widely elsewhere to describe ProtonMail, but it's a term that Yen is not keen on. "We don't like the term because our goal is not to guard against only the NSA," he points out. "There are many other organizations we also want to protect against. People often ask us if ProtonMail is 100 percent secure, and our answer is that it is impossible to have 100 percent security. What ProtonMail does is makes mass surveillance by organizations, such as the NSA, so difficult that it is no longer practical."

Samsung unveils first Tizen-based smartphone

 The South Korean firm, probably best known for its popular line of Galaxy smartphones, has unveiled its first device to run the open source Tizen OS. The handset, known as the Samsung Z (no Android, no Galaxy), looks solid on the spec sheet and will launch first in Russia.

The handset is powered by an unspecified 2.3 GHz quad core CPU, backed up by 2 GB RAM and with 16 and 32 GB storage options, as well as a microSD card slot for expansion up to 64 GB. The device is packing 8 MP and 2.1 MP cameras on the front and rear, and a range of sensors including an accelerometer, gyroscope, fingerprint scanner and heart rate sensor.
The smartphone’s biggest hiccup is its somewhat disappointing 4.8-inch 1280 x 720 display. This isn’t quite a flagship device, so it’s understandable that not all the hardware will be high-end, but it would have been nice to see a full HD offering on Tizen’s first proper outing.
The handset runs on Tizen 2.2.1, features LTE connectivity and is kept running by a 2,600 mAh battery. Though a battery of that size seems generous for a device carrying a 720p screen, with no details on the CPU, it’s not possible to say what sort of battery life that will translate into.

The device’s faux-leather back clearly references the company’s popular Android-powered Galaxy range, but the styling is less accomplished with square shoulders and a bland design language. It’s a clean look, but there’s nothing particularly high-end about it. On the plus side, the handset comes in at a trim 8.5 mm (0.33 in) and weighs just 136 g (0.3 lb).
Looking past the hardware, what’s easily the most interesting thing about the device is its software. Tizen OS is an HTML5-friendly, open source platform steered by Samsung and Intel, and designed to be scalable over a range of devices, from smartphones to laptops and beyond.
Though there is some significant buzz surrounding the software, it’s difficult to see it seriously competing with the likes of Android and iOS, whose superior app selection and years of fine tuning make them near impossible to match at this point. Samsung seems to be aware of this issue, offering special promotional offers to new developers and hosting local app challenges in Russia and other CIS countries around the device’s launch.
As previously stated, the Samsung Z will hit Russian shores first, launching in two colors (black and gold) in Q3 2014. Though we do know that the device will see wider release in the future, there’s no word yet on what it will actually cost.

Apple’s new Swift language explained: A clever move to boost iOS, while holding Android apps back

18
inShare

While Apple’s WWDC keynote yesterday was full of exciting new changes and features, one piece of news caught everyone off guard: With iOS 8 and OS X 10.10, and the the latest version of the Xcode developer tools, Apple has introduced a whole new programming language called Swift. According to Apple, Swift will make it a lot easier and more fun to develop apps for both iOS and OS X — in contrast to the current language, Objective-C, which has been likened by esteemed programmers to pulling teeth. Swift will also apparently bring a significant performance boost over Objective-C programs.
While Apple is being fairly coy about the exact reasoning behind the launch of Swift, it’s probably to reel in more developers, who will then create more apps, ensuring the continued dominance of iOS app ecosystem. But hey, we’re getting ahead of ourselves: What is the Swift programming language, anyway? And how can switching to a new programming language provide a massive 50% performance boost over a language that is already considered to be pretty fast?

What is Swift?

A small example of some Swift source code

For a start, the Swift language bears no relation to the Swift (A6) CPU architecture or the existing Swift parallel scripting language. Obviously, when Apple decides on a name for a product, it doesn’t let existing products or trademarks get in the way.

In the words of Apple, Swift is like “Objective-C without the C.” The introduction to Swift on the Apple developer website outlines Swift as safe, concise, and interactive (your code is interpreted and rendered in a live “Playground” view in the Xcode IDE).

In this context, “safe” mostly refers to the fact that the language is type safe — but thanks to type inference, type declarations are less onerous, making Swift more concise than C or Objective-C. The Switch statement is also is also safer and easier to use than the C counterpart. The two-phase initialization process for classes, slightly tweaked from the Objective-C way of doing things, also improves safety. Along with type inference, Swift also introduces very concise closures (lambdas).

A larger Swift source code sample, this time showing the Switch statement. It’s fairly human-readable, even for non-programmers.

On the compilation and runtime side of things, Swift targets the same Cocoa (OS X) and Cocoa Touch (iOS) APIs, and uses the same LLVM as Objective-C. Swift code can co-exist with Objective-C code in the same project, encouraging adoption.

A deep analysis of Swift is beyond the scope of this story, but in general it shares a lot of similarities with other modern languages, such as Rust, with a lot of popular ideas and patterns that have been assimilated from other languages. There will be a lot of cries that Apple copied/imitated/ripped off other languages — but ignore them. When it comes to programming languages, this kind of imitation and embrace-and-extent evolution is the norm, and a sign that everything is working as intended.

For programmers and the otherwise technically inclined, Apple has published a free 500-page Swift Programming Language book if you want to learn more about the language. You’ll need an Apple Developer account (free) to download the beta of Xcode 6, which fully supports Swift.

 Swift performance, compared to Python and Objective-C

Will Swift apps be faster than Objective-C apps?

On stage at WWDC, Apple’s Craig Federighi showed some interesting graphs that appeared to show a huge 40-50% performance lead for Swift over Objective-C. He did not say that apps written in Swift would be faster than Objective-C, though. And he was very picky about which benchmarks he showed. In reality, Swift is very unlikely to be significantly faster than Objective-C. They are both statically typed, compiled languages — using the same LLVM compiler, no less. To obtain such a graph, Apple probably had to choose an Objective-C feature that is known to be slow/buggy — or intentionally optimize a Swift feature, purely for the sake of producing a pretty graph.

We look forward to doing some real benchmarking in the coming weeks and months, though, as Swift apps start pop up on the App Store.

Why did Apple release Swift?

It all boils down to this question. Why, with a huge pool of developers who are already very knowledgeable in the ways (and quirks) of Objective-C, is Apple releasing a new programming language? Doesn’t the world already have enough programming languages? Why didn’t Apple choose another modern language, like Rust or Go?
There are a variety of possible answers, depending on how cynical you are. The nicest explanation is that Objective-C is a horrible language to learn — and so the introduction of Swift will massively increase the number of developers who are happy and willing to develop iOS and OS X apps. (The counterpoint to this is that we may then see a lot more junk apps in the App Store.)

The LLVM logo

A more complete explanation is that Objective-C is an old language — it just had its 30th birthday — and so it does make sense to introduce a newer language that more closely conforms to the modern methods of app development. As a corollary to this, Apple is the creator and curator of Swift, meaning it has a lot more flexibility to add and change functions as time goes by, rather than being forever shackled by the Objective-C framework. Think of it as an investment in the future.
The cynical explanation is that Apple wants to use its heft to weaken the Android app ecosystem. Thanks to their shared support for C, and tools to port Objective-C to Java, it’s currently fairly easy to port an app from iOS to Android. Porting Swift apps to Android, on the other hand, would be a lot more time consuming.
In reality, it’s probably a mix of all three reasons. Ultimately, there are a lot of good reasons for creating your own, tailor-made programming language. The difficult bit is in getting people to use and embrace the new language. Apple, with its captive army of millions of developers, certainly won’t have that problem.

 

                  AMD Launches New Mobile APUs

                                                

The new APUs supports 12 compute cores, Ultra HD resolutions and the Heterogeneous System Architecture

inShare

Following Intel’s announcement earlier this week, arch rival AMD has announced the new Kaveri line of APUs at Computex in Taipei.

Bernd Lienhard, Corporate Vice President and General Manager, Client Business Unit, AMD, said, “With a combination of superior total compute performance, stunning graphics and efficient power usage alongside industry-first technologies, these new APUs set a new bar for cutting-edge consumer and commercial PCs.”

As with the desktop version, the mobile Kaveri APU also features AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, which enables gamers experience high-performance video games with Mantle, a tool for alleviating CPU bottlenecks such as API overhead and inefficient multi-threading. Mantle, which is basically AMD's answer to Microsoft's Directx, enables improvements in graphics processing performance. AMD claims that Kaveri teamed with Mantle enables it to offer built-in Radeon dual graphics to provide performance boosts ranging from 49 percent to 108 percent.

The Kaveri mobile APU architecture features up to 12 compute cores—four CPU plus eight GPU—to deliver better performance and responsiveness on devices across various workloads and applications. It also supports Ultra HD (UHD) 4K resolutions and new video post-processing enhancements that can upscale HD 1080p videos to 4K quality on UHD-enabled monitors and TVs.

The new Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) allows the CPU and GPU to work together by quickly dividing and directing the tasks toward the appropriate cores and reducing the fetch cycles from the system memory. Analysts expect that HSA can be a potential game changer for AMD once the software platform makers start creating software that can take advantage of the new architecture.

In other news AMD announced new x86 AMD Embedded G-Series system-on-chip (SoC) for embedded applications, including early adoption by HP for thin client deployment in healthcare, finance, education and retail, as well as Advantech for industrial applications in rugged environments.

AMD Embedded G-Series platform, ships with features such as  error-correction code (ECC) memory support, dual- and quad-core variants, and a discrete-class GPU and I/O controller on the same die. The new G-Series processors are pin-compatible across the AMD G-Series SoC and works at around 5W TDP.

AMD has not announced pricing of the new SKUs. Broad availability is forecasted for Q32014.