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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

Google gives Apps admins a deeper dive on usage info

The changes aim to simplify management and give IT pros a better view of app usage

 Google has redesigned the reports section of the Apps admin console, giving IT staff a lot more details about who's been using the online apps suite and how.

"Starting today, we're introducing a new Reports section to the Admin console to make it easier for admins to manage Google Apps and also gain insights that help their entire organization run more efficiently," product manager Rishi Dhand said in a blog post.
However, Google is giving admins the option to toggle between the old and new reports sections, because some features haven't yet been ported over.
Menu names have changed, as well as how features are grouped together, so Google has provided a table that maps out how the old and new locations match up.
The new Highlights page gives an overview of users' activities, including the number of Docs, Sheets and Slides files created. It also shows the number of Hangouts held and the amount of Drive and Gmail storage used. From here, admins can export reports to Sheets for further analysis.
In the Usage Activity page, admins can get granular data on how employees are using the different apps. They can also shift columns around to customize data views and apply filters to zero in on details, like who has created or shared the most documents.
The Security page shows information like who has turned on two-step verification and how many files have been shared externally, and admins can rearrange and filter data as with the Usage Activity page.
The Login Audit page lets admins see a log with the IP addresses of people trying to access the Apps suite, the dates and whether they were successful. "Admins can use this report to track suspicious activity and take corrective action like resetting passwords," Dhand wrote.
Unlike the old reports, the new section doesn't have data on mobile and Chrome OS users; Google plans to add those soon.

Google gets over 41,000 requests to 'forget' personal data

Google should anticipate what kinds of information people will want removed, says top E.U. data protection official

 Google has already received around 41,000 requests to delete links to personal information from its search results in the three weeks since a key ruling by the European Court of Justice about the so-called right to be forgotten.

On May 13 the court ordered Google to remove links to a Spanish newspaper notice about a mortgage foreclosure against Costeja GonzA!lez, a 58-year-old lawyer, because it infringed his right to privacy. The paper itself was not ordered to remove the information, but GonzA!lez successfully argued that the links displayed by Google to this information about him had become inadequate and irrelevant over time.
In response to the ruling, Google put a form on its website to make it easier for it to process requests to delete links. The search giant, which processes more than 90 percent of all web searches in Europe, described the form as "an initial effort" to comply with the ruling.
Within 24 hours of putting the form online, Google had reportedly received 12,000 deletion requests -- and by Monday, that figure had risen to 41,000, according to a source at the company.
The European Union's highest data protection official sees Google's reaction as a good sign.
"Google is organizing itself, which is welcome, because the ruling means that the search engine needs to anticipate what the reasonable expectation of a consumer might be," Peter Hustinx, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), said in an interview Monday.
There is no absolute right to have information deleted, and Google will have to weigh a number of criteria in responding to the requests to delete links, including relevance of the information, and the time passed since the facts related.
That means Google will have to take a more active approach to managing the personal information in the search results it returns, according to Hustinx.
"Google needs to work out what a reasonable consumer might find out-dated. This is not straightforward and if they do not anticipate, then they will have too many requests," he said
Not everyone is happy with Google's online form for processing deletion requests, which requires applicants to provide proof of their identity including name, address and photo ID. Google said this was to avoid imposters making fraudulent removal requests, but Hamburg Data Protection Commissioner Johannes Caspar said the requirement may itself be in breach of data privacy regulations.
While the May 13 ruling has changed Google's processes, it did not change the law, Hustinx said.
"The European Court of Justice is simply applying existing remedies in the context of a search engine. It is not changing any signposts. It is not as revolutionary as some people have made it out to be. Reaction that 'this is the end of the Internet' is just nonsense," he said.
Hustinx and data protection chiefs from the EU's 28 member states were meeting this week in Brussels to discuss the ruling.
"There is a difficult balance to be struck on a case-by-case basis and we will be discussing what this means for national regulators. Obviously there will be questions about coordination. But the ruling does not mean re-writing history or systematic censorship," he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Start menu allegedly returning to Windows 8.1 in August

After releasing the first Windows 8.1 update earlier this month, Microsoft is now working on the second update that is expected to arrive in August with some much requested features.

One of the key features is actually an old feature of Windows that will be making a comeback: the Start menu. After bringing the Start button back in the first update, Microsoft will now bring back the entire Start menu in the second. The menu will be familiar to anyone who has used Windows 7 and will also feature some live tiles on the side.
Along with the Start menu, another feature being added is the ability to run Windows 8 modern style applications within windows on the desktop side. This will let you run your modern apps without having to go over to the other side and not have them take your entire screen. This will definitely help those who run a mix of modern style and traditional Windows apps simultaneously on their system.
These features were said to be part of Windows 9 that will be arriving next year but it seems Microsoft is pushing for an early release.

Solar powered schools in Kenya, courtesy of Samsung

Massive corporations are known to launch charitable initiatives (they are tax write offs, after all), and Samsung has decided to start an interesting one of their own.

This past Tuesday, May 20th, Samsung made their own charitable gesture by opening the first internet school in Kenya that runs entirely on solar energy.
Called the Hope for Children Initiative, Samsung contributed a Solar Powered Internet School, or, SPIS, to the Arap Moi Primary School in Kenya.
What is an SPIS? It is basically a massive technological hub that is retrofitted inside a shipping container. It makes transportation of the school much easier. The metal of the shipping container is durable and provides decent enough insulation for the equipment inside, which is fairly substantial.
Lining the innards of the SPIS are 24 laptops, an all-purpose printer, a 50-inch electronic board server, internet access, and, perhaps the neatest feature: solar panels. What’s interesting about these panels is that they are constructed out of rubber as opposed to glass, for greater durability. All of the products inside are, of course, manufactured by Samsung and have been optimized to work with the Solar technology.
Internet service is being provided to the SPIS with compliments of Safaricom, for five years.
In areas with access to electricity, Samsung also provides “Smart Schools”, which come with Galaxy tablets, internet, and e-board servers.
What do you think of Samsung’s charitable contribution? Do you hope that other companies will follow suit?

Google Camera update brings 16:9 mode, self timer

Google recently updated the stock camera app in Android with a completely redesigned version. Unfortunately, the update got rid of half the features in the camera app, and it didn’t have a lot to begin with.

The latest update attempts to fix that but doesn’t really try too hard. One of the features that was taken away and is back now is self timer. You can now choose from 3 or 10 seconds timer options. The white balance option is still missing and you can forget about having things like ISO, shutter speed and metering options.
One change Google made in the new app was to show full 100% output from the image sensor in the viewfinder. This meant that phones with 4:3 sensor (which is almost all of them) would show a smaller preview than before with a large shutter button on the side. Those who are clueless about how sensors work complained about how the viewfinder was now smaller than before, even though it was actually showing them more area now than before. You can read through all the negative reviews for the app on the Play Store and see that 90% of the complaints are about the viewfinder.
So to appease the uninformed, Google has brought back the 16:9 crop as an option. You can now select it from the resolution settings and not only will it show a 16:9 preview, thereby taking up the entire screen (the shutter button becomes translucent) but unlike before, the images taken are also in 16:9 (and at a lower resolution) so at least you get what you see.
Other additions are some new panorama modes. If you go to the Panorama mode, you will find that other than the standard horizontal panorama, you can now also take a vertical one, square and circular panorama. Time taken to process these images, even on the Nexus 5, is still too large, though.
The update is now rolling out on the Play Store and should be available for download soon, if it’s not already.
Play Store

Windows Phone finally gets an official file manager

We knew that Microsoft was working on a native file manager for its Windows Phone eco-system and the app is now officially available from the Windows Phone Store. The Redmond giant had recently enabled the APIs for file picker and file access for third party developers, and it was about time the company built its own app.

The app is dubbed ‘Files’ and can be used to access all the data stores on your phone and SD card. You can also use the app for browsing, searching or launching files. The file manager gives you the ability to share multiple files, create folders to organize your files, copy, move, rename or even delete your existing data.
Microsoft might include the ‘Files’ app in its future Windows Phone update, but for now, you can head on to the Windows Phone Store

Top 5 Battery Saver Apps for Android

 

 

  I love my Android phone. It does everything I want it to, be it playing those intense games with out of the world graphics, music or videos. And yes, I even use it to make call sometimes. It’s just incredible thanks to those powerful processors these days.

But, there is one thing we all hate. The poor battery life it comes with. No doubt mobile companies have raised the bar with bigger & beefier batteries but that’s not doing justice to be frank. Smartphones with powerful processors, amazing display & various sensors have gone on to become more & more power hungry. Few android phones don’t even make it through a day with normal use forget about gaming & videos. Now imagine you have a great jet plane but no fuel to fly. It’s somehow same with these smartphones as well. They are all incredible smartphones full of amazing features but we use it miserly due to poor battery life.
Well guys, here I have prepared a list of top 5 battery saver apps for android which will increase your phones battery life & you won’t need to carry your charger all the time -

Juice Defender:

A complete package, Juice Defender tops my list for its sheer customization options. It has various profiles like balanced, aggressive, extreme, customize & advanced. These profiles can be set according to ones needs & requirements. It helps increase the battery life significantly.
What’s special about Juice Defender is that it automatically manages most of apps installed on your android phone including 3G/4G & other connectivity options causing lesser battery consumption. It gives you options to control almost everything on your smartphone be it Apps, CPU Speed, Wi-Fi or Mobile Data.
It’s free to download with basic features but you need to pay if you want to use additional features and guys, its worth!
Key Features:

• 2G/3G auto toggle
• Wi-Fi auto control
• Multiple Battery Profiles
• Battery Widgets
• CPU Scaling

Battery Doctor:

It has one of the simplest UI you can find amongst all the battery saver apps. It’s free to download & incredibly easy to use. There are various power saving modes like work, class & sleep which can be scheduled for activation. It also has automatic brightness control to reduce battery consumption. It can estimate the remaining battery life/levels more accurately than any other app in the play store. It also reads your usage pattern & accordingly shows the power remaining. Its
A key feature that sets Battery Doctor apart from others is it’s the task killer that comes with it. It can be used to kill unnecessary apps running in the background causing battery drain.
Key Features:

• Simple UI
• Task Killer
• Accurate Power Estimation
• Schedule Power Saving Modes
• CPU Management (rooted phones only)

Du Battery Saver & Widgets:

DU Battery Saver is another free to use but powerful app which if used properly can extend your smartphones battery life. It has SMART PRE-SET MODES which with its Intelligent Mode Switching ability changes according to your usage. It can even be customized giving you flexibility with the settings. Its One Touch feature can automatically change according to requirement/preference & can kill the apps that drain battery when you are running low on power. There is also option to control the CPU frequency to save battery life. It also comes with many useful widgets which provide quick access to the app settings. And yes, it is fully customizable as its Custom Made is also available for personalization.
Key Features:

• Smart-Pre Set Modes
• Auto Clear Apps
• CPU Frequency
• One Touch Widget

Go Battery Saver & Power Widget:

A great battery saver app by Go Dev Team which is free of cost & does what it says. GO Battery Saver comes with ONE CLICK OPTIMIZATION which contains various pre-defined power saving modes giving you an extended run. It also has the customization options which you can use to set the apps according to your personal use & preferences. It continuously checks for the apps that suck more juice. This app also gives you an exact estimate of the time your smartphone can run for when certain functions like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth are shut down. Its Smart Tab can be used to define an app or task that will turn on at a time of your liking.
Key Features:

• Accurate Battery Time Estimation
• One Click Battery Consumption Optimization
• Smart Tab Feature
• Charging Maintenance

Easy Battery Saver:

This app is specially designed to save battery reading your usage patterns. It has features which help you save battery by optimizing various features of your phone like Network Modes, Wi-Fi, Display & lots more. There is various power saving modes like General Saving Mode, Intelligent Saving Mode, Super Saving Mode & Advanced Customization Mode which give you plenty of freedom to choose your preferred settings to run you phone longer. The Super Saving Mode is unique as it takes care of your phones stand by time so it won’t die anytime soon. Its free to install from the Play Store.
Key Features:

• Various Power Saving Modes
• Simple UI
• List of Real-time Running Items Consuming Battery