WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum: New billionaire once lived on food stamps

 Jan Koum, an immigrant from Ukraine, was so poor as a teenager that he used saved his old Soviet notebooks for school and queued with his mom for food stamps.

Brian Acton lost a small fortune in the dot-com bust and was rejected for jobs at Twitter and Facebook.
Now, the friends behind the hot mobile messaging startup WhatsApp are the newest tech industry billionaires.
Facebook this week bought WhatsApp in a stock-and-cash deal worth up to $19 billion and gave Koum a seat on the social network's board of directors.
Koum signed the Facebook takeover contract at the unused building where he and his mother once queued for food stamps in the Silicon Valley city of Mountain View, where WhatsApp is located, according to Forbes Magazine.
Koum, who turns 38 on Sunday, has described growing up as a rebellious Jewish child near Kiev and having little when he immigrated to California at with his mother the age of 16 just after the Soviet Union's breakup.
His father did not make it to the United States, where the family sought to escape anti-Semitism and oppressive tactics of secret police.
Soviet childhood
"Jan's childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped," Sequoia Capital partner Jim Goetz said in an online post.
"When he arrived in the US as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine."
Koum's mother brought with her a cache of pens and Soviet-issued notebooks to save money on school supplies, according to Forbes magazine.
A self-described trouble-maker at school, Koum had a job sweeping the floors in a grocery store. After his mother was diagnosed with cancer, they got by on disability payments, Forbes reported.
Koum learned computer networking from manuals bought from, and eventually returned to, a used book store, according to the account.
He enrolled in a state university in Silicon Valley and was working on the side with a computer security firm when he met Acton while on assignment at Yahoo in 1997.
Acton was employee number 44 at the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet firm and shared a "no-nonsense" attitude with Koum. Within a year, Koum was working as an engineer at Yahoo and the pair were on their way to being close friends.
Koum eventually chose Yahoo over college. When Koum's mother died of cancer in 2000, his mentor Acton stepped in with support.
Acton, meanwhile, reportedly lost millions investing during the famous dot-com boom that ended with an infamous dot-com bust.
Acton and Koum left Yahoo in 2007 and took a year off, exploring South America and playing the sport of Ultimate Frisbee, according to Forbes.
They both applied for jobs at Facebook after coming home. Both were rejected. In a Twitter post from 2009, Acton said that an effort to win a job at one-to-many messaging service Twitter was rebuffed.
Koum was living off dwindling savings when the iPhone and Apple's online App Store prompted a certainty that an exciting new frontier was opening.
He tapped into the local Russian immigrant community to pursue his idea of a smartphone messaging service synched to people's contact lists.
Koum enlisted Acton, who was jobless and devoting energy to a less promising startup.
Koum and Acton in 2009 founded WhatsApp, which took its name from a play on the phrase "What's Up?"
No Ads
They devoted themselves to a credo of "No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks."
A note stating just that and signed by Acton remains taped to Koum's desk, according to venture capital firm Sequoia, which invested in the startup early.
The "contrarian approach" of gathering no information about users for targeting ads was shaped by Koum's aversion to tactics of secret police in communist countries, Goetz said in an online note.
The formula led to stunning growth to more than 450 million users, with 50 billion messages handled daily
The founders jokingly described themselves at the website as "two guys who spent a combined 20 years doing geeky stuff at Yahoo!"
Koum describes himself in his Twitter account profile with a Kanye West quote, "We on a galaxy the haters cannot visit."
Koum has nearly 12,000 followers at Twitter but follows only "Jesus Christ, Silicon Valley," an account devoted to Internet industry humor.
In a conference call discussing the acquisition, Facebook chief and founder Mark Zuckerberg described Koum as being a "valuable thought partner" for several years.
WhatsApp is a platform for sending images, video, audio, or text messages for free over the Internet using data connections of smartphones.

Nokia working on two high-end Android smartphones: Report

 

Nokia seems to be working on much more than what the rumours suggest regarding its budget Android smartphone. It is now being rumoured that besides the Nokia X (also known as Nokia Normandy), the Finnish firm might also be working on two more Android smartphones.
The two rumoured Nokia handsets are said to include more high-end specifications than what is rumoured for the Nokia X. While the purported Nokia XX will come with better specifications than its single X version, the third handset, which is yet to be allotted a name, is speculated to fall under the firm's flagship line-up with high-end specifications.
Reports from tech.qq.com also mention that these two rumoured Android-based handsets by Nokia would not see the light of day at the MWC 2014 event. This further indicates that Nokia X might only be a mere experiment by the firm to study the market' response for the smartphone, based on which the other two handsets will take shape.
Talking about the Nokia X, it has been understood that the handset is tipped to have entered mass production at a Komarom plant in Hungary.
A Hungarian site claims that the Nokia X entered mass production in the company's Komarom plant a few weeks ago, a plant that notably saw reduction in its workforce as a part of job cuts that the Finnish company announced back in 2012.
The site also suggests that the Komarom plant is manufacturing the Nokia X, previously dubbed Nokia Normandy in multiple colours. Further, the site claims that Nokia X will not feature any Google Services or even support the Play Store, which is very much in-line with earlier reports.

Sony teases something 'extraordinary' for its Xperia event at MWC 2014

 Sony has released a teaser video for its MWC event, scheduled for 1PM IST on 24 February 2014, where it is expected to reveal its new flagship smartphone, the Xperia Z2. The teaser video doesn't really reveal much, and just says "Something extraordinary is coming", and "XperiaDetails 24.02.2014".

The rumoured Sony Xperia Z2 has yet to be hinted at by the Japanese manufacturer, but the device has been the subject of numerous leaks for months now, as a purported device said to be codenamed the Sony D6503 Sirius doing the rounds of the Internet.

Numerous leaks about the Sony 'D6503 Sirius' Xperia Z2 indicate the smartphone will feature a quad-core Snapdragon 800 (MSM8974-AB) chipset clocked at 2.3GHz with Adreno 330 GPU; 3GB of RAM; 5.2-inch full-HD display; a 20.7-megapixel rear camera, and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera

Earlier in February, an alleged video of the yet-to-be-announced Sony Xperia Z2 was released, a two-minutes long video that supposedly showcases the new Xperia UI running Android 4.4 KitKat. The camera interface shown in the video also features the option to record videos in 4K.

Previously leaked screenshots of the camera settings showed off the ability to record 1080p video at 60 frames per second, and a 15.5-megapixels manual mode.

Last month, an XDA developer's forum member had posted a bunch of alleged live images of the rumoured Xperia D6503 'Sirius'. The same XDA developer also published leaked UI screenshots of the Xperia D6503, which showed the alleged Sony device running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean.

Later, a report in January, accompanied by purported screenshots, pointed to numerous Xperia UI changes that are expected to be skinned on top of Android 4.4 KitKat when the device ships.

Some of the features said to be included are 4K recording, Timeshift video, smart backlight control, the presence of two home launchers, USB DAC audio support, and more.

Snapdeal, Flipkart not our authorised resellers: Lenovo

 

Chinese smartphone and PC maker Lenovo has issued an advisory cautioning consumers when buying its products from e-commerce companies like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon.in as they are not its authorised resellers.
"What we have noticed in the past few months is that some of these sites, and largely due to a marketplace kind of a set up, there are a lot of resellers that have cropped up, which are selling at very low predatory prices. These we believe may or may not be an authorised or genuine products," said Sudhin Mathur, Director, Smartphones, Lenovo India.
He added that the company has issued an advisory with a list of all authorised stores and genuine partners.
"E-commerce websites like Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon.in are not authorised Lenovo resellers. We encourage you to check your warranty entitlements when you buy from these websites," Lenovo said in the advisory on its website.
In a bid to woo customers, e-commerce companies offer heavy discounts on products, which are often below prices offered in the offline market.
When contacted, Snapdeal said it takes "utmost care" to list products only by those sellers who have the necessary authorisation to sell these products.
"Customers can rest assured that all the products including Lenovo and Toshiba products which are available on Snapdeal.com are genuine and eligible for warranty," a Snapdeal spokesperson said.
According to an Amazon India spokesperson, sellers are "contractually obligated to list genuine products" with manufacturer warranty. This applies to all brands, it added.

Immersion to demonstrate tactile video and wearables experiences at MWC 

 

Near-term and futuristic use of haptics will be experienced across a wide range of applications

News | by CIOL Bureau

SAN JOSE, USA: Immersion Corporation, the developer and licensor of touch feedback technology, will be unveiling new demonstrations at Mobile World Congress designed to show how tactile technology will enhance user experience in next-generation mobile and wearable devices.
The demos highlight applications of haptics in user-created video, tactile ads and entertainment, wearables, mobile user interfaces and gaming.
"Mobile World Congress is a great opportunity for us to pull back the curtain and share new technologies we're investing in to offer haptics more broadly to the mobile ecosystem, including OEMs, advertisers, developers, content owners and publishers," said Dennis Sheehan, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Immersion.
"Our experiential demonstrations use technologies that will reach consumers over the next 1-3 years; we're offering visitors an opportunity to experience how haptics will transform mobile video, ads, entertainment and communications into immersive, multi-sensory experiences."
Tactile Effects in User-Created Video
Tactile effects offer consumers a new way to customize and enhance mobile videos. With tactile effects, users can engage the sense of touch to exaggerate, emphasize and intensify physical feats, incorporate personal commentary and express emotions in personal videos.
Imagine a user adding a haptic heartbeat to a video of a new puppy, or the realistic sensation of rolling up a ramp to a skateboard video. With new Immersion technology, tactile effects can be added into user captured video and shared with others, who can then feel the experience on their own device.
In addition to on-device editing demonstrations, Mobile World Congress visitors will be able to preview Immersion's research and development efforts in sensor-based tactile technology. With sensor-based haptics, data captured from gyros and accelerometers affixed to athletes are translated into haptic tracks, which are then embedded into mobile video.
The unprecedented sense of realism offered by haptics captured by sensor data allows viewers to feel the pavement underneath a skateboarder, the rev of the engine in motocross or the impact of a crash from a BMX rider.
Tactile Ads and Entertainment

User research has shown that incorporating tactile effects into mobile ads and entertainment results in increased key performance indicators, including brand perception, intent to purchase and user engagement.
Additionally, tactile ads and entertainment have been shown to increase long-term recall of content, while providing an opportunity for advertisers and content owners to direct attention and alter media experience.
At Mobile World Congress, Immersion will be demonstrate the latest examples of tactile ads and entertainment, and will preview tools the company is developing for advertisers, publishers and agencies to incorporate tactile effects into mobile content.
Wearables
Tactile feedback provides personal, private and discreet communication between a wearable device and its user. By using Immersion technology, OEMs can create a unique language of communication, based on distinct tactile effects, to provide rich meaningful information to users.
Demonstrations will let visitors feel a wide range of use cases for tactile communications in wearables including rich alerts and notifications, smart home controls, health and fitness applications, and gaming.
Mobile UX and Gaming
Immersion's tactile technology provides OEMs and game developers the opportunity to create a user experience that is branded and distinct, as well as more intuitive. Seemingly simple tactile enhancements go a long way to reduce user frustration and create a rich, delightful mobile user experience.
From chat and messaging applications to camera and video capture, text entry, utilities, and connectivity, Immersion will be demonstrating novel ways that tactile effects can enhance mobile UX. Also on display will be third-party applications using Immersion's Haptic SDK for Android game developers.
The Haptic SDK offers tools and effect libraries that make it easy to incorporate tactile effects into Android games. To date, it has been used to enhance thousands of Android games which, on aggregate, have been downloaded over 80 million times.

NFC Forum to hold 'Spotlight for Developers' in San Francisco on March 21

Will showcases NFC integration in products, services, vertical markets, and software, leading to valuable new opportunities for developers

WAKEFIELD, USA: The NFC Forum, a non-profit industry association that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, will hold a special event for software developers on March 21 in San Francisco, at the Hyatt Fisherman's Wharf.
Developers from all industries are invited to attend and discover where NFC technology and the "Internet of Things" are headed in 2014.

The "Spotlight for Developers" brings together top names in mobile devices, consumer electronics, software, and wireless technology. The event showcases NFC integration in innovative new products, services, vertical markets, and software, leading to valuable new opportunities for developers.
Presenters are leading authorities on smartphone platforms, including Android, Blackberry 10 OS, and Windows Phone.
"With over 500 million NFC devices in the market this year, the development and deployment of fresh, new applications will drive expansion of the NFC ecosystem, and stimulate business and consumer demand," said Koichi Tagawa, chairman of the NFC Forum.
"The Spotlight for Developers is as much an opportunity for NFC Forum members to learn from the developer community as it is a chance to share our expertise and the latest NFC products."
The "Spotlight for Developers" program includes:

• NFC in Action - a look at how NFC technology is currently improving the lives of consumers -- and the bottom lines of businesses -- across several industries, such as air travel and transportation, consumer electronics, and health care

• Technical Specifications -- NFC Forum experts will walk through the most up-to-date technical specifications for developing NFC-supported applications

• Product Showcase -- hands-on looks at the latest products from NFC Forum member companies and attendees

• Attendee Lightning Talks - an opportunity for developers to share their ideas with major players in the NFC space, as well as with peers. Those interested can sign up when registering.

• Networking - ample time for making connections with others, over lunch or at the post-program Happy Hour

Attendance at the NFC Forum Spotlight for Developers is open to all application developers and those interested in learning more about the latest developments in NFC, from the organization driving standards.
At the conclusion of the event, all attendees will receive a custom NFC Forum Developer's Kit to enable them to start working on their own applications. Cost for the event, including lunch, is $75 for non-members of the Forum.

Intel advances next phase of Big Data intelligence with solutions offering real time analytics

Outlines growth strategy driven by market leading solutions

NEW DELHI, INDIA: As growing volumes of enterprise data continue adding pressure on datacenters worldwide, Intel India outlined its growth charter backed by Intel's most advanced Big Data solutions delivering real time Analytics to enterprises in India.
Announcing the launch of the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 product family, Intel elaborated its roadmap for these solutions in India with specific focus on verticals like retail, healthcare and manufacturing in the first phase of growth.
Big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are providing enormous opportunities for many organizations to grow as they create revenue-generating services from the information they are able to derive.
The Indian Big Data industry is expected to grow to $1 billion in 2015 at CAGR of over 83 percent from 2012-15. The Big Data industry in India is gaining traction with IT services/analytics providers offering business centric solutions.
"Organizations that leverage data to accelerate business insights will have a tremendous edge in this economy," said Rajiv Bhalla, director- Market Development, Intel South Asia. "The advanced performance, memory capacity and reliability of the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family enables IT organizations to deliver real-time analysis of large data sets to spot and capitalize on trends, create new services and deliver business efficiency."
With up to 80 percent higher performance and up to 80 percent lower four year total cost of ownership than alternative RISC architectures2, the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family also achieves twice the average performance and has four times the I/O bandwidth of the previous generation.
This is the true payoff for enterprises investing in big data processing with solutions that analyze increasingly larger volumes of more complex and diverse forms of data and provide real-time insights into results.
Bhalla said: "The new Intel Xeon E7 v2 processor family is built on an open source framework that allows third parties the flexibility of creating an application layer themselves thereby giving Intel the unique technology edge of allowing IT managers to have better control over their internal IT systems and processes. We are confident that this advantage coupled with the robust support from the ecosystem will help us take this solution to enterprises in the coming years."
Ganapathy Subramanian, VP, Customer Engagement and Strategic Projects, SAP Labs India, said: "The ongoing engineering collaboration between Intel and SAP plays a key role in the delivery of next-generation in-memory computing with SAP HANA. The Intel Xeon processor E7 family complements the SAP HANA platform, delivering high performance and reliability to our customers.
"Our customers use the solution to extract more value from their business data and improve agility and responsiveness to the market with real-time business decisions. With the next generation Intel Xeon E7 v2 processors, we look forward to delivering significant improvements in processing capabilities and feature enhancements for SAP HANA customers."
The big data technology and services market is expected to grow 27 percent annually through 2017 to reach $32.4 billion. A leading driver of this growth is the immense amount of data coming from connected devices making up the IoT, which is projected to grow to 30 billion devices by 2020.

Mark Zuckerberg explains why Facebook acquired WhatsApp

Read more at: http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/287599/mark-zuckerberg-explains-facebook-acquired-whatsapp?utm_source=referrence_article

Mark Zuckerberg explains why Facebook acquired WhatsApp

Read more at: http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/287599/mark-zuckerberg-explains-facebook-acquired-whatsapp?utm_source=referrence_article

Google starts rolling out a new YouTube interface

 YouTube is rolling out a new design with cleaner interface which makes finding playlists easier. The new design will be rolled out worldwide over the next few days.

YouTube has launched a new center aligned user interface similar to its mobile app. The update also brings better playlist management options and makes the service more accessible.

The new interface has a center-aligned look which focuses more on videos. Two links at the top of the screen allow users to navigate between recommended videos and their subscriptions. The 'guide' which has your subscriptions and playlists is displayed more prominently next to the YouTube logo in the center of the screen.

What's more the new interface allows users to watch videos right within the guide screen, from their own curated lists or from channels that they have liked. Personal playlists have a better editing screen as well. For Example, clicking the 'Like' button next to your favorite musicians' favorite videos playlist, will automatically add that playlist to your collection.

The new interface also brings easier Playlist management options. Now, when you create a playlist, YouTube will pop up a new page that lets you organize your videos. The new design will be rolled out over the next few days for users worldwide.

Google had released a new update earlier this month for YouTube that shows the top music videos from the artist's official YouTube channel. The results will appear from random YouTube users as well as from other video sites, though the results from other sites are shown in a much smaller thumbnail.

Recently, YouTube started monitoring video views to avoid artificial inflated video counts. The Google-owned company says that it will take the accuracy of interactions like comments, views or likes "very seriously" as artificially inflating counts mislead fans about the popularity of a video.

Android phones using Bing search under threat

 Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) has alerted all users, who own an Android smartphone and use Microsoft's Bing search on their phones, against a 'suspicious activity.'

CERT-In has issued an advisory to Android smartphone users who use Bing as their search engine. The advisory says, "Arbitrary code execution vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Bing for Android which could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and install arbitrary APK (Android application package file) on Android devices."

The cyber security agency has classified the threat as “medium.” The agency further alerted the users that the threat could lead to a possible virus attack which could “compromise” sensitive information stored on the phone.
Microsoft Bing 4.2.0 and prior versions have been reported to be vulnerable to the attack. The agency has suggested users using Bing, to upgrade their Bing apps to the latest 4.2.1 version and also use an anti-virus app on their phones.

Giving more info on the vulnerability, CERT-In says, “a flaw has been reported in Microsoft Bing for Android which could trigger while handling DNS (Domain Name System) responses on a secure network. An attacker could leverage this issue to executing arbitrary code within the context of the application. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to install arbitrary APK files via vectors involving a crafted DNS response, leading to the compromise of the device and resulting in information disclosure.”

Google unveils 360-degree online view of Indian monuments

 The panoramic views of Indian monuments are live on Google Maps and Google Cultural Institute.

Google India and the Archaelogical Survey of India who recently teamed up together in order to create 360-degree online views of almost 100 national monuments have unveiled the project, the Ministry of Culture said in a press release today.

From today, people from around the world will be able to explore the Taj Mahal and other national Indian monuments online through Street View.
The project aimed to create a panoramic imagery of the "nationally important" monuments like Taj Mahal, Humayun's Tomb, Khajuraho, Red Fort and Agra Fort, etc. In order to make India's 100 most important heritage sites more accessible for the world, ASI teamed up with Google. The search giant says that it aims to share more of the Indian culture and heritage with people around the world.
“Today, this partnership with Google makes it possible for billions of people across the world to see and explore our magnificent heritage, to take a walk at the Rock Cut Jain Temple, to marvel at the Nagarjuna Konda Buddhist Stupas and to relive history in Fatehpur Sikri." Union Minister of Culture, Smt. Chandresh Kumari Katoch said.
Speaking to the press, Rajan Anandan, Vice President and Managing Director, Google India said, “ Google is deeply committed to helping preserve and showcase cultural heritage across the world. India is unique in terms of the sheer wealth of heritage and iconic historical monuments, and it has been our privilege to work with the ASI in collecting new 360-degree photos of 30 Indian heritage sites. We hope the imagery will help make India’s heritage and culture more accessible to people at home and abroad.“
So far, Google has released the first set of 360 degree online images of 30 monuments and will slowly keep adding other heritage sites. The annoucements for new releases will be made on Google Maps and Google Cultural Insitute sites.
Google uses street view cars to take multiple photographs of streets and buildings and attaches them together to create a panoramic views of these places.
Here's the map of the areas in the world which can be viewed through Google's Street View.

In order to view these monuments in a 3D view, go to Google Street View and search for the monument. Here's how Taj Mahal looks on Street View.

New leaked Nokia X pictures reveal Windows Phone-inspired UI

 

New pictures of the rumoured Nokia's Android smartphone, dubbed as the Normandy a.k.a Nokia X A110, have leaked on the web. Unlike the previous leaks, new pictures give us a better view of UI and build of the phone.

The Nokia X A110 seems similar to the company's Asha budget smart feature phone series. It has volume buttons and a lock screen button on the right side of the handset. As you can see in the images below, the rear camera has no Nokia branding. The UI is very different as it features Windows Phone live tiles layer. There's a shortcut for Store, but it's not clear whether it will direct to Google's Play store or a separate app store.

 Nokia is likely to add its HERE maps suite instead Google's Maps. The company may add its own music service as well. The Nokia X A110 will be available in single and dual-SIM versions.

 

Nokia has already started building hype around its Android smartphone. The company on its Chinese Weibo page and Conversation pages posted teaser images of the much-awaited smartphone.

Nokia is expected to officially announce the Nokia X A110 at the forthcoming MWC event in Barcelona.

Google unveils 3D smartphone technology project

 

Google has announced a new research project which aims to bring 3D technology to smartphones. The project is called Project Tango. Google hopes that it will make way for applications that might include indoor navigation for the blind and more immersive videogames.

The company has developed a prototype smartphone which is equipped with a collection of cameras, sensors and chips that create a three-dimensional map of user's surroundings.
The search giant has said that it would provide the prototype to outside developers so that they are encouraged into writing new applications.
According to project leader Johnny Lee, the goal of the project is to incorporate robotics and vision-processing technology and give mobile devices a human-scale understanding of space and motion.
"What if you could capture the dimensions of your home simply by walking around with your phone before you went furniture shopping?" Google said on its Project Tango web page.
When it comes to games, the technology could be used for "playing hide-and-seek in your house with your favourite game character.
The smartphones are equipped with sensors which make over 1.4 million measurements per seconds, updating the position and rotation of the phone. Google has partnered with researchers from the University of Minnesota, George Washington University, German tech firm Bosch and the Open Source Robotics Foundation, among others.

Delhi University students develop app for uncommon languages

 

 

 

NEW DELHI: The Indic Language Application, when it goes live, may not help you discuss the geopolitics of oil in Ladakhi or Mao Naga (also called Imela) but you should be able to swear in them. After he discovered in school that he could impress friends by writing their names in different languages, Vikalp Kumar, 21, learnt eight. That interest has translated into a rather unique conservation effort for "lesser-known" languages at Delhi University's Cluster Innovation Centre.   A team of four undergraduates, including him, are gathering words from native speakers and will make that corpus—with audio versions—available through a web application. So far, it has completed work on two languages—Ladakhi and Mao Naga. More are in the works.

Vikalp, originally from Chennai, speaks Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, English and Sarazi (or Saradzi)—spoken in one district in Kashmir and possesses a "workable understanding" of Persian and Sanskrit. Initially, he was thinking large-scale—"We wanted to cover South Asia."

As mentor and coordinator of BTech in Humanities, Sukrita Paul Kumar's job was to keep ambitions realistic. An editor for the People's Linguistic Survey of India, she knew just how massive an undertaking this project was. The students found out soon enough—spadework alone took a semester; the questionnaire took three months. Typically, this sort of exercise would claim large chunks of funds and field visits. The team found ways around both.

Delhi's 'melting-pot' status helped. "There are speakers of 80 northeastern languages in Delhi," says Vikalp. They found some through friends and student associations. Containing over 2,600 English words (covering 30 topics) and phrases in English, the questionnaire is circulated among native speakers of a language for the closest equivalents in it.

In September 2013, members of Ladakhi and Kargil student associations participated in what Vikalp calls a "rapid vocabulary collection workshop." In about four hours, 2,500 words in Ladakhi were "collected"—"enough for a basic dictionary"—and recorded. He found speakers of Dhatki, from in Sindh in Pakistan, at the South Asian University in Delhi.

Technology allowed Vikalp to cross borders. He contacted a speaker of Khowar (from Chitral, near Swat Valley) in Islamabad through Facebook. Words are "collected" by email and recordings, by instant messenger, Whatsapp. "When we have about five languages," says Kumar, "We can go public."

But the app isn't another online dictionary. It has songs, subtitled videos and indicates the geographical spread of a language. "There aren't equivalents for all English words. In Sarazi, there's 'here', 'there', 'yonder' and 'out-of-sight' instead of 'front', 'back' etc," explains Vikalp, "Some languages have words for 'uphill', 'downhill', 'upper-stream' and 'lower-stream', others don't." "You can see how geography influences language formation," adds Kumar.

Himanshu Patel and Vivek Shekhar worked on "geography, culture and politics" for the first semester. The 'tech' team—Himanshu and Leelambar Soren—had to teach themselves Flash from internet tutorials; help was also sought from linguistics departments within and outside DU.

In his fourth semester, he's taking a few courses in linguistics from the university department—BTech in Humanities runs in the meta-college system allowing him to pick what he likes. A bachelor's degree isn't offered in it at any college. 

Vote on Account 2014: Changing facets of Indian technology sector

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/30459338.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Vote on Account 2014: Changing facets of Indian technology sector

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/30459338.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Half of UK consumers concerned about mobile security

Half of UK customers fear for the safety of their mobile data, a survey has found 

 

Half of UK consumers are worried about the security of their mobile data, and over a third (35 per cent) would blame their mobile operators for any data breaches that they suffer.

Mobile security has been under intense scrutiny in recent weeks following the revelations the NSA mined smartphone data from apps including Angry Birds.

Out of the 1,922 consumers surveyed by F5, two thirds (65 per cent) stated that security is more important to them than access to the latest devices.

However, despite the constant stream of high-profile mobile security stories and increased sharing of data on mobile devices, around half (49 per cent) admit that they don’t know how to protect their phones from malicious threats.

With mobile users over three times as likely to blame their mobile operators (35 per cent) than the providers of services such as Facebook, Gmail or banking apps (10 per cent) or handset manufacturers (4 per cent), operators have to take customer security much more seriously. This is compounded by the fact that 52 per cent of consumers would switch providers after a major data breach.

Leonid Burakovsky, Senior Director of Strategic Solutions at F5 Networks said: “The message is clear: comprehensive multi-layer security should be an integral part of any LTE enrolment. Many consumers now hold mobile operators liable for security breaches. Failure to act could hit the bottom line and trust in the mobile ecosystem to deliver new - revenue generating - services like mobile commerce or mobile health.”
“LTE networks are inherently less secure than their 3G and 2G predecessors. This can open mobile networks up to a greater number of very real threats, meaning the onus will be on mobile operators to increase their efforts to protect users, network and applications.”

'Flappy Bird' Is Dead, Long Live 'Splashy Fish'

In one of the strangest, most interesting gaming stories of the mobile era, Dong Nguyen, creator of #1 hit Flappy Bird, deleted the hugely profitable game from the app store this past weekend. Nguyen claimed the game had caused him personal stress due to making him an instant celebrity, and that it was chronically addictive and harmful to players.
But naturally, there are dozens, if not hundreds and thousands of other mobile developers who would love nothing more than to get players hooked on their games, become famous and make loads of money in the process. That’s why before and after Flappy Bird was taken down, the market has been flooded with clones of the game, which in itself was somewhat of a clone of 2011′s Piou Piou.
They range from games replicating the simplistic tap-to-dodge concept (Ironpants) to the new #1 game in Apple's AAPL -1.16% iOS store, Splashy Fish, nearly an exact clone of Flappy Bird, except changing the titular flapper from fish to fowl, and setting the game underwater. It rocketed to the top of the charts nearly as soon as Flappy Bird went offline, as consumers apparently wanted more or less an exact copy of the beloved, deceased game. Italian developer Massimo Guareschi spent three days making the game, and was more than happy to fill the void. Just 15 hours after its release, Splashy Fish reached #1.

This is astonishing, and also horrifying.
I’ve always spoken out against the prominence of cloning in the mobile scene, but it’s usually been against companies like Zynga or King ripping off their most famous games from smaller developers or already established hits. Now we have a rise of “the little guy” trying to rip-off fellow little guys, and the wake of this Flappy Bird drama, it’s the worst I’ve ever seen it.
Four of the top ten games in the app store right now are Flappy Bird clones, a game which was itself already a clone. The rest of the top 100 chart is full of aforementioned “big name” clones like Clash of the Clans and Candy Crush, not to mention probably another half dozen Flappy Bird knock-offs by the time you reach the end.
I have to wonder what, if anything, can be done to clean up the mobile scene. There’s a reason that “core” gamers want to be disassociated from mobile, despite the massive downloads and huge profits associated with the top games. Nearly all of the most popular games are stolen, cloned or modified from existing games, but in a way that isn’t say, DOOM influencing all future first person shooters. Rather, Candy Crush simply is Bejeweled with candy, or Splashy Fish is an underwater carbon copy of Flappy Bird.
This sort of cloning usually just isn’t possible in traditional game development on PC and consoles. Generally, big name games cost far too much to simply be replicated by competition. And when it’s more indie developers making games that can get cloned? Usually the offending party is run out of town by fans (see DayZ vs. WarZ).
There’s nothing like that happening in mobile. The audience there just doesn’t care. They have zero qualms about downloading an obvious rip-off of Flappy Bird the second the game was taken down, so long as they can continue playing. Splashy Bird replacing Flappy Bird as the top mobile game would be roughly equivalent to Activision releasing a new mech and wallrunning based shooter called “Giantdrop” a few weeks after EA’s Titanfall comes out.

Nearly complete creative bankruptcy among the top games is why “core” gamers often want nothing to do with mobile. That scene makes “our” scene look bad, like going to an art museum and seeing coloring book pictures with Comic Sans captions on the walls next to classic masterpieces. If The Last of Us is the Mona Lisa, Flappy Bird is a Garfield cartoon hanging next to it. And somehow it’s getting more attention.
If this sounds arrogant or bitter, perhaps it’s because I’m a bit angry given recent events. We just saw Irrational Games close down, the studio behind BioShock Infinite, an incredible work of video game art which sold millions of copies, but perhaps not enough to justify its budget. Contrast that to the overnight success of Splashy Fish’s Massimo Guareschi, a man who spent three days cloning a clone, and will now probably become a millionaire with the month.
With mobile, the problem is that many of these game concepts are so simplistic, that who’s to say what makes a clone a clone? While Splash Fish is obviously a direct copy, is Ironpants just as bad, even if the art is different? Does Candy Crush have the right to copy a concept Bejeweled invented and owe nothing to them? Does anyone actually have a case against Zynga, who has cloned practically every game they’ve ever made, or do they have to literally copy and paste source code to be considered a thief?
These are questions that nobody seems to want to sort out, and certainly not Google GOOG +0.15% or Apple who make a cut of all these huge selling games no matter if they’re clones are not. So far, the only option is for whoever made the game originally to sue a hugely successful developer or corporation, and likely spend a fortune to ultimately gain nothing. At this point, the market just seems to be resigned to clones. Dong Nguyen showed no interest in hunting down his copiers, just like the creator of Piou Piou had no interest in going after Nguyen. This is just the way it works now, it seems. But it’s awful, and mobile can do better.
The mobile scene is an area with enormous potential for creativity, but truly original games are getting smothered by mindless clones, or they’re getting cloned themselves. The scene often strangles its own best minds, or corrupts them until they give in and start copying their own competitors. It needs to change, and this endless sea of flapping animals seems like a good place to start.

 

Want to land an IT job in 2014? It helps to be a Linux pro

Joint Linux Foundation/Dice report claims Linux expertise remains in strong demand for 2014, commanding top pay and perks

 

The Linux Foundation and tech recruitment firm Dice pair up each year to produce the Linux Jobs Report, where around 1,000 corporate hiring managers and 4,000 Linux professionals are surveyed to learn what's been going on in the Linux job market.
The 2014 edition of the report makes clear that Linux is not only an in-demand job skill for IT, but one that commands better pay and more job perks than other jobs in the same field.
The first and most striking claim in the report is how the search for Linux talent has intensified, with both recruiters and Linux pros reporting major activity on that front. Of hiring managers polled, 77 percent have "hiring Linux talent" on their to-do lists for the year (up from 73 percent last year), and more than 90 percent of all hiring managers plan on hiring Linux talent of some kind in the next six months.
The report also emphasized how tough it was to find suitable Linux talent; again, 90 percent of the managers polled mentioned it was either "somewhat difficult" or "very difficult" to find experienced Linux talent. Likewise, 75 percent of the Linux professionals polled claimed they'd been contacted by a recruiter in the past six months, and more than half had been contacted six or more times.
Just saying "Linux expertise" doesn't describe what exact skill sets are in demand, but the report goes into some detail. The most in-demand Linux skills included sys admins, Linux application development, and system engineering.
Some additional detail here might have helped, since "Linux application development" could cover any number of things. Sarah Conway, PR manager for the Linux Foundation, explained the definition of the category this way: "We didn't ask [the respondents] to clarify the types of Linux applications, but we can assume this is largely focused on enterprise apps to support servers and data centers."
To top it all off, the report claims Linux pros can command top salaries and work perks (such as telecommute options and paid training). Around one-third of the employers polled said they are willing to offer such incentives to attract talent, and around 20 percent of the Linux pros polled say they were offered such perks by a prospective employer.
There's little question that folks with IT jobs are enjoying lower rates of unemployment and better salaries than their non-IT counterparts. But not all IT jobs are created equal, and the goalposts move from year to year. Mobile, Web development, and QA testing, for instance, are big draws right now.
Linux, though, counts as its own domain and may map into other domains as well. It's not hard to see how Linux skills are needed for industrial-strength Web development jobs, for instance. But there's little question that demand for pure Linux skills -- the foundational "heavy lifting" of IT -- will remain strong, especially with the growth of related markets like cloud computing.

New website helps users opt out of smartphone tracking

 Summary: Smartphone users who are worried about the increased use of location tracking in airports, malls etc can register their phones on the Smart Store Privacy website, where many of the leading tracking companies will enable them to opt out.

 Airports, malls, large stores and even London litter bins have been caught tracking people via the Wi-Fi signals broadcast by their smartphones, and presumably national spying agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ are doing it too. The obvious solution is to turn Wi-Fi off when you leave your home or office. However, now there's a website, smartstoreprivacy.org, that could help, though so far it's US-only.

The beta website has been set up by the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), a Washington, DC-based think-tank, and The Wireless Registry, which describes itself as the first global registry of wireless names and identifiers. Smartphone users must go to their Smart Store Privacy website and register their smartphone's MAC address to opt out of tracking.
Of course, it only works with companies and organisations that have signed up and agreed to follow the FPF’s new Mobile Location Analytics Code of Conduct. The FPF says this includes Aislelabs, Brickstream, Euclid, iInside, Measurence, Mexia Interactive, Path Intelligence, Radius Networks, ReadMe Systems, SOLOMO, and Turnstyle Solutions. These handle tracking for a lot of major retailers. However, as AdAge has pointed out, the list does not include Nomi, or Sensity Systems, which installed the light-related tracking sensors at Newark Airport.
Coverage does not extend to smaller stores -- and, presumably, other businesses -- that have their own tracking systems. These may include motion sensors, Bluetooth wireless tracking, and other approaches.
A year ago, the US Federal Trade Commission recommended that any company that tracked users via their smartphones should inform them about the data they are collecting, but it's not a legal requirement. The least that should be required by law is a notice similar to the ones that many companies post about their use of CCTV, and the FPF is working on "model signage".
Whether it will work is another matter. The privacy effort is similar to the Do Not Call Registry for US telephone marketing, and the UK's Telephone Preference Service (TPS). Although these bodies are pathetically toothless, they might reduce the number of unwanted calls. However, companies that want to abuse their efforts generally manage to find ways round the rules.

Canonical announces first Ubuntu smartphone manufacturers

 

 The wait is almost over. On February 19, Canonical announced that it had signed agreements with mobile device manufacturers Spain's bq and China's Meizu to bring Ubuntu smartphones to consumers around the world.

The first native Ubuntu smartphones will be shipping this year.

In a teleconference, Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu and Canonical's founder, said that development programs have already begun with the partners to provide smartphones with a superior user experience on mid- to high-end hardware for consumers around the world. These devices will be available to buy online through bq, Meizu, and Ubuntu.com.

Ubuntu Touch: The next hot smartphone operating system Gallery

Meizu is a successful high-end smartphone manufacturers with 600 retail stores and a global presence in China, Hong Kong, Israel, Russia and Ukraine. In January, the company announced its strategy to expand into other international markets as well as to ship phones in America later in 2014 and Ubuntu will be a key part of this expansion.
Bq is a European manufacturer of multimedia devices. In 2013, the company shipped almost 1.5 million devices and, in less than a year, has become the Spain's second biggest seller of unlocked smartphones. Bq will bring Ubuntu onto its latest hardware specifications. If that's correct, the first bq Ubuntu smartphone will use a 1.5 GHz Quad Core Cortex A7 as its processor. “Ubuntu’s ongoing success with PCs, as well as the huge support it has gained for its mobile proposition, provides the best opportunity to bring an alternative platform to market on our hardware,” said bq CEO Alberto Mendez in a statement.
Shuttleworth did not give any hardware details about these devices. He did say, however, that Canonical is working with these partners to ship the first Ubuntu devices on the latest hardware in 2014. Ubuntu has also received significant support from the world’s biggest carriers, some of which intend to work with OEM partners to bring phones to market this year. Engineering prototypes will be shown at Mobile World Congress (MWC) next week in Barcelona Spain.
Shuttleworth also noted that major carriers, such as Vodafone, T-Mobile USA, Deutsche Telekom, and Verizon, have all shown their support for Ubuntu and an alternative operating system for the mobile market. In the short term, Canonical's goal is to become the number three mobile operating system after Android and Apple iOS.
Mark wants the company to be more than number three in the long run. "We think convergence is the next disruption for the mobile market," Shuttleworth said. "We think you'll be able to do personal computing on any device, We believe we're better positioned to take advantage of this change than any other vendor and we think we can capitalize on this." He observed that the still-born Ubuntu Edge project showed that people want to be able to do computing in the same way on whatever device is at hand.
Shuttleworth also believes that Google with Project Ara and Apple with its 64-bit A7 iPhone processor also see convergence as the big disrupter for the mobile market.
As for the rest of the mobile OS competition, Shuttleworth doesn't think Microsoft Phone or Blackberry is well positioned to take advantage of this change. As for the Samsung-backed Tizen operating system, he doesn't see this Linux-based mobile operating system as being any kind of threat. Indeed, Japan's largest carrier, NTT Docomo, no longer plans to release a Tizen-based smartphone in the Japanese market.

He continued, Canonical is also working with a breadth of independent software vendor (ISV) partners, including The Weather Channel, GrooveShark, Evernote and more, to bring the best applications and services to Ubuntu. The goal, Shuttleworth said, was to have the top 50 Android and iOS apps running on Ubuntu when the device starts shipping later in 2014.
Shuttleworth concluded, “The mobile industry has long been looking for a viable alternative to those that reign today. Ubuntu puts the control back into the hands of our partners and presents an exciting platform for consumers, delivering an experience which departs from the tired app icon grid of Android and iOS and provides a fluid, content-rich experience for all.”

Microsoft rechristens 'SkyDrive' as 'OneDrive'

 

 Microsoft just announce the awaited replacement name for SkyDrive, its cloud storage service.

 As first spotted by Rod Trent at Windows ITPro, the new name is "OneDrive." Microsoft is confirming the new name in a January 27 blog post.

OneDrive.com, a preview site, notes that "OneDrive is coming soon."

"Get ready for an even better place to store and share your favorite things across all your favorite devices," reads the text on the site. "OneDrive is everything you love about SkyDrive and More and it's coming soon."

There's an email sign-up for notification about OneDrive. A pointer to a new "OneDrive blog" sends readers to a blog populated with articles about SkyDrive.

Microsoft announced last July it would be rebranding SkyDrive, its cloud storage service, following its loss of a trademark battle with British Sky Broadcasting Group over the "Sky" name.

The new name for SkyDrive Pro, by the way, is OneDrive for Business, per Microsoft's blog post.

This isn't the first time Microsoft is being required to change one of its brands because of a naming dispute.

In 2012, Microsoft dropped the "Metro" name which it had been using to refer to its new design language and user interface for Windows and Windows Phone. Company officials said Metro was just a codename, even though it was widely used in marketing and other materials. Microsoft officials never said that the reason for discontinuing Metro was due to a trademark dispute, but many company watchers believe a dispute with retailer Metro AG led to Microsoft's decision to steer clear of Metro.

Microsoft recently applied for a trademark for "Mod," which some believe could be its planned replacement for Metro.

Google acquires Israeli security start-up SlickLogin

 

Internet giant Google is acquiring SlickLogin, an Israeli developer of sound-based password alternative, in an "acqui-hiring deal".
This means SlickLogin's staff and knowledge will be integrated into Google. The start-up confirmed the deal on its website on Sunday.
"Today we're announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google," Xinhua quoted the three founders of the young start-up as saying. They added that Google "shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating... We couldn't be more excited to join their efforts."
SlickLogin was founded less than a year ago. The company is based on a novel idea to enable end users to log-in easily into password-protected websites by using a uniquely generated sound.
The company is yet to launch a commercial product and accrued clients, so the deal actually represents an acquisition of the technology itself.
No financial figures of the transaction were disclosed.

Sony sells its MP3 player wrapped in a waterbottle

 

Sony Corp has come up with an innovated form of campaign for selling its waterproof MP3 player. Its latest MP3 player comes wrapped within a waterbottle. The MP3 player is said to be launched a few days ago. The MP3 player called W Walkman has a storage capacity of 4 GB.
The promotional campaign suggests the MP3 player can come in handy for athletes and swimmers who are more prone to sweat and water

Small device to enable download of 40,000 songs in seconds

 

Your Internet speed complaint may soon become a thing of past.
IBM on Thursday announced it has achieved a new technological advancement that will help improve Internet speeds to 200-400 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) at extremely low power.
That makes possible downloading of 4K ultra-high definition movie or 40,000 songs in a few seconds.
The speed boost is based on a device made in IBM Labs that can be used to improve transferring Big Data between clouds and data centers four times faster than current technology. The device was presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.
The company is using the technology to develop advanced communications platforms expected to be announced later this year.
To support the increase in traffic, scientists at IBM Research and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have been developing ultra-fast and energy efficient analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technology to enable complex digital equalization across long-distance fiber channels.

Cricket taught me teamwork, leadership, says Satya Nadella

 

 

A poetry aficionado and a cricket fan, Microsoft's new CEO India-born Satya Nadella learnt lessons in teamwork and leadership by playing the gentleman's game.

The 46-year-old Hyderabad-born Nadella , who takes the reins of the world's largest software services from Steve Ballmer, played cricket as a part of Hyderabad Public School team.
"I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career," Nadella said after he was named the CEO of Microsoft.
He also enjoys watching Test cricket. "This is the longest form of any sport in the world. I love it. There's so many sub-plots in it, it's like reading a Russian novel," he said.
A father of three, Nadella also finds reading poetry of Indian and American poets relaxing.
"It's like a code. You are trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple lines of poetry and you still get the essence, so it's that compression," he said.
Talking about his experience at Microsoft, Nadella said he joined the software firm because he saw how "Microsoft empowers people to do magical things and ultimately make the world a better place".
"Many companies aspire to change the world. But very few have all the elements required: talent, resources and perseverance. Microsoft has proven that it has all three in abundance," he said.
Nadella said he "always wanted to build things".
"I'm a learner. I think the thing that I realised is, what excites me is that I'm learning something... I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things," he said.
And one gets to know his zest for learning when he says: "I used to fly to Chicago Friday nights, attend classes Saturdays and come back to Redmond to work during the week."
It took him two-and-a-half years, but he finished his master's degree.

 

 

IBM to cut 15K jobs, lay-offs start from Bangalore

 

 

Technology firm IBM has started a restructuring process, which would see as many as 15,000 jobs being cut globally, including India, Brazil and the European region.
"The estimate of jobs cut globally is 15,000," International Coordinator at the Alliance@IBM (official IBM employees union) Lee Conrad said.
Last month, the US-based firm had said its top executives will forego their bonuses and the company will initiate a $1 billion restructuring programme in the Q1 2014 as it grapples with declining sales of servers and storage systems.
Though the exact number of job cuts in each of the geographies is not clear, the impact could be huge in India as IBM has over one lakh employees in the country.
Globally, IBM employs over 4 lakh people.
"(There are) no number yet on India job cuts. We do not have a clear number of employees by location because IBM does not disclose that data," Conrad said adding that the IBM Global Union Alliance will be meeting soon to discuss its respsonse.
When contacted, an IBM India spokesperson said: "As reported in our recent earnings briefing, IBM continues to rebalance its workforce to meet the changing requirements of its clients and to pioneer new, high value segments of the IT industry."
The spokesperson further said: "To that end, IBM is positioning itself to lead in areas such as Cloud, Analytics and Cognitive Computing and investing in these priority areas. For example, we have recently committed $1 billion to our new Watson unit and $1.2 billion to expand our Cloud footprint around the world."
According to sources, over 50 employees at IBM's Systems Technology Group (STG) in Bangalore were handed pink slips on February 12 as part of its global 'Resource Action' or restructuring programme.

Cyber attack on bitcoin a big warning to currency's users

 

A massive cyber attack from unknown sources that has been spamming bitcoin exchanges is highlighting some of the dangers people can encounter when they exchange cash for digital currencies like the bitcoin, experts said on Wednesday. The attack, which is technically known as a distributed denial of service attack, involved thousands of phantom transactions, forcing at least three of the online platforms that store bitcoins and trade them for traditional currencies to halt withdrawals of bitcoins until they can determine which transactions were real.
It showed that bitcoin, which exists solely in cyberspace and operates on a software code written by an unknown programmer or group of programmers, is as vulnerable to such an assault as any other Internet-based business. It exposes the higher risks involved in owning and trading the instrument compared with the dollar and other traditional currencies. Bitcoins slumped in value as a result of the disruptions.
"Bitcoin is still an experimental protocol in its infancy," said Micky Malka, a venture capitalist who is on the board of Bitcoin's trade group, the Bitcoin Foundation.
"It will grow and mature over time," he added. "No one should be investing an amount they cannot afford to lose."
This week's attack was not the first, said Andreas Antonopoulos, chief security officer for blockchain.info, a website that tracks bitcoin activity and provides online storage services for bitcoin users.
Antonopoulos is also a member of a group of core bitcoin programmers and is part of an emergency response team of programmers who have been working to fix the flaws in the code governing some bitcoin transactions that the attackers were exploiting. He said that work that should be completed by the middle of next week, echoing an estimate provided by a spokeswoman for the Bitcoin Foundation who said its core developers were all participating in the effort to fix the code.
Bitcoin is a decentralized digital system of value transfers that is not governed by any central bank, company or government. No assets back the bitcoin, whose value has fluctuated widely as its visibility has increased. Last September, a bitcoin was worth around $150. By late December the value was near the $1,000 mark.
Regulators around the world are struggling how to categorize the bitcoin. Some want to call it an asset class, others a commodity. Bitcoin users call it a currency and many advocate for its mass adoption, claiming it can help solve problems created by expensive and time-consuming bank transactions.
Early adopters also liked the anonymity bitcoin has offered, since it can be transferred between users without any exchange of personal identification information. However, moves by various authorities to pursue bitcoin users who they say have laundered money using the currency and attempts to regulate bitcoin exchanges could soon lower the level of anonymity in transactions.
On Tuesday, Slovenia-based Bitstamp became the second major bitcoin exchange to halt customer withdrawals in the past several days, citing "inconsistent results" and blaming a denial-of-service attack.
That was a day after Mt. Gox, based in Tokyo and the best-known digital marketplace operator, said a halt on withdrawals would continue indefinitely. Traders reacted to the halt by sending the bitcoin value to its lowest level in nearly two months.
A Bulgaria-based bitcoin exchange also had to halt withdrawals, Antonopoulos said.
The price of bitcoins, which have gained wider acceptance in recent months, dropped in the wake of the attacks from around $850 late last month. On Wednesday, they were quoted down nearly 2 percent for the day at $656 per coin on the bitcoin tracking website CoinDesk.
"Anyone who plays in this space, you better have a plan for when an attack happens because it's going to be a when, not an if," said Brian Krebs, a Washington-based cyber security expert who runs the blog KrebsOnSecurity.com.
The lesson for investors was that the bitcoin wasn't as liquid as initially advertised, said Jason Scharfman, a financial due diligence expert and managing partner at consulting firm Corgentum.
"These types of attacks, they're effectively freezing some of the accounts because the exchanges don't want to pay out to the wrong person," he said. "If something's frozen or there's a question about me being able to redeem my bitcoins, the value of them drops."
"Does this spook financial investors?" he added. "The answer is yes."
Scharfman said one way to mitigate the risks of such attacks would be to spread holdings of bitcoins out among several different online storage facilities. That way if one were attacked the other might still have a chance at being safe.
Scharfman said the more regulatory scrutiny that bitcoin exchanges received, the safer they were likely to be.
"Regulation will sort of normalize which exchanges are the most secure. They'll mandate security measures and smaller exchanges just won't be able to afford it," he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In new profile feature, Facebook offers choices for gender identity

 

 For the first time, Facebook Inc (FB.O) is letting users of its online social network identify themselves as a gender other than male and female.
The basic user profile for members in the United States now includes a customizable category among the gender types that users must select, the world's No.1 Internet social network announced on Thursday, the day the feature became available for U.S. members using the site's English-language version.
Those who select that option can select up to 10 gender identifications, including "transgender," "intersex" and "fluid."
The company said it worked with a leading group of gay and transgender advocacy organizations to come up with the selection of identity options.
Until now, Facebook's 1.23 billion members could only select male or female for their genders, which Facebook requires users to state in their profiles. Users of rival Google Inc's (GOOG.O) Google+ social network already had an "other" option for gender.
Facebook said users also can control the audience who can view a custom choice, noting the challenges that some people may face in publicly sharing their gender identity.
Users can also choose the personal pronoun to which they are referred publicly. A message on Facebook might now invite a user's friend to write a birthday message on "their" wall, instead of "his" or "her" wall.
"We want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self," Facebook said.

Hackers try to hijack Facebook, other high profile domains through registrar

Some registration information for facebook.com was changed, but the domain was not redirected to an unauthorized server

 

 The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a group of hackers that has hijacked other high-profile domain names, managed to change the domain registration information for Facebook.com, but failed to redirect the domain to a different server.

The hackers posted screen shots Thursday on Twitter from what appeared to be the administration panel of a San Francisco-based company called MarkMonitor that manages domain names on behalf of large enterprises. The company's services focus on online brand protection and anticounterfeiting.
MarkMonitor's domain management service "ensures domains are safe with a 'hardened' portal and a full suite of premium security solutions, including advanced security measures at the registrar level -- and, security services to lock domains down to the registry level," the company's website says.
It seems that SEA targeted MarkMonitor in order to attack Facebook in particular as the company celebrated its 10th anniversary Tuesday. The group used the MarkMonitor control panel to modify the WHOIS information for facebook.com, changing the domain's contact address to Damscus, Syria.
The hackers failed to modify the domain's DNS (domain name system) settings and point the website to a server under their control, as they did in the past with the domain names of other companies. That's because facebook.com has a registry lock in place, a feature that requires additional human-based verification at the registry level for making changes to a domain name. The registry for the .com TLD zone is VeriSign.
It's not clear how SEA obtained access to the MarkMonitor control panel, but from other screen shots published by the hackers, the panel also gave them access to the domain names of Amazon, Google, Yahoo and many other well-known companies from different industries.
Domain whois queries for amazon.com, google.com and yahoo.com all show MarkMonitor as the registrar, but like facebook.com, all of those domain name have the "clientUpdateProhibited" flag which indicates the presence of a registry lock. This means SEA wouldn't have been able to hijack those domain names either.
MarkMonitor, which is owned by Thomson Reuters, did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking more information about the attack.
Facebook declined to comment, but its domain's whois information was quickly corrected following the incident.
SEA's modus operandi involves launching spear phishing attacks against employees of the companies they target in order to obtain sensitive credentials. Spear phishing is a targeted form of phishing, which involves tricking people into divulging their login information or installing malicious software.
In August the hacker group used phishing to compromise a reseller account at an Australian domain registrar and IT services company called Melbourne IT. The hackers used the account to change the name server records for several domains including nytimes.com, sharethis.com, huffingtonpost.co.uk, twitter.co.uk and twimg.com.


Last month they managed to post rogue messages on the official Microsoft and Office blog sites after first gaining access to the email accounts of some of the company's employees.
SEA normally hijacks domain names in order to deface the websites they target and display pro-Syria messages to their visitors, as group publicly supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government. However, this kind of attack can also be used for more nefarious purposes. Instead of political messages, attackers could display a phishing page to steal user credentials or serve exploits to infect computers with malware.
Security experts repeatedly advised companies to protect their domain names by putting registry locks in place for them. VeriSign offers this service for domain names in the .com, .net, .tv, .cc and .name TLD zones.

Sony sells PC business, cuts 5,000 jobs

      

Sony announced a series of major changes Thursday and warned of a loss of $1 billion this year as it struggles to get a turnaround plan back on track.

 

Sony said it was selling its loss-making Vaio PC unit, spinning out its television business and cutting 5,000 jobs.

The Japanese electronics group said it expects to lose 110 billion yen ($1.1 billion) for the year ending March 31. The forecast was a surprise, and a sharp downgrade from its previous estimate of 30 billion yen profit.
Sony (SNE) has been dogged for years by poor results in its legacy consumer electronics, PC and television businesses, which face increased global competition and low margins.
After a brief return to profit last year, things are now so bad that Moody's has decided that Sony is no longer worthy of an investment-grade credit rating. The agency downgraded Sony to junk last month, warning that profitability would likely remain "weak and volatile." Fitch made the same move in late 2012.


Sony said Thursday that private equity group Japan Industrial Partners will buy the Vaio PC business. While no price was disclosed, Sony shares had risen throughout the day on reports that a deal was near.
After a banner year in 2013, the stock has dropped 11% so far this year -- a move that has largely mirrored the Nikkei.
The company also detailed a plan to spin out its TV division by July. Operating the business as a subsidiary should allow it to turn a profit during fiscal year 2014, Sony said.
The changes announced Thursday will cost 90 billion yen and reflect an admission that the company's turnaround strategy under CEO Kazuo Hirai was falling short of expectations.
Even as the company restructured and cut costs, Hirai had resisted any reduction in Sony's wide-ranging product line. Instead, Sony executives have tried to make improvements in mobile devices and games.