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Baidu Heads To The Cloud
China’s largest search engine Baidu said on Monday that they would provide 30GB of free cloud storage to Android devices built with certain Qualcomm chips, in what’s the latest move by the company to build a presence in the country’s mobile services sector.
Baidu’s limited-time offer applies in China to two of Qualcomm’s latest chips, the Snapdragon S4 MSM 8×25 processor, and the Snapdragon S4 MSM 8x25Q processor. Users activating Baidu’s cloud service will receive 15GB of free cloud storage over the device’s lifetime, and an additional 15GB of storage free for one year.
As of Monday phones containing the chips, from Chinese manufacturers including Lenovo and Huawei, will ship with the free Baidu cloud storage enabled as a result of the partnership with Qualcomm.
Baidu is offering the free storage after the company in September declared China’s mobile Internet space as its next major focus, and announced a $1.6 billion investment to build a new cloud computing center.
Is Windows 8 In High Demand?
Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said on Monday demand for the company’s new Windows 8 operating system, that went on sale last Friday, was running at a higher rate than its last release, Windows 7.
“We’re seeing preliminary demand well above where we were with Windows 7, which is gratifying,” Ballmer said at an event launching new Windows phones.
Windows 7 is the best-selling version of Windows so far, selling more than 670 million licenses in three years since release in 2009.
“Over the weekend we saw an incredible response around the globe to Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface,” said Ballmer, referring to Microsoft’s first own-brand tablet, designed to challenge Apple Inc’s iPad. He did not give out any sales figures.
On Friday, there were moderate lines at Microsoft’s 60 or so stores across the United States for the Surface.
Ballmer was in San Francisco speaking at an event showcasing phones running its new Windows Phone 8 software, which go on sale this weekend.
Microsoft has struggled to make headway in the smartphone market, holding just 3.5 percent of the worldwide market, compared to 68 percent for Google Inc’s Android devices and 17 percent for Apple’s iPhone, according to tech research firm IDC.
The company highlighted how the new phones make use of Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service, enabling users to sync and transfer music, documents and photos between PCs, tablets and the Xbox game console. Microsoft added that it now has 120,000 apps in its online store for phones, still far fewer than the number available for iPhone and Android users.
Is Apple Spying?
Apple, which was in all sorts of hot water when it was caught tracking its users, is up to its old tricks again.
Apple was slammed by privacy experts protested the use of a universal device identifier, or UDID, to track the online preferences of iPhone and iPad users. This made it a perfect target for hackers who broke into digital media firm Bluetoad and made off with close to a million device IDs.
It looks like Apple remains addicted to tracking its users. According to Naked Security iOS 6 has a new tracking system called IDFA, or identifier for advertisers. Like the UDID, the IDFA uniquely identifies your Apple device and any websites that you browse with your iPhone or iPad device can request the IDFA.
While UDID could be tracked to users the IDFA can’t be traced back to individuals, it merely links a pattern of online behaviour with a specific device. In other words, it knows all about you, just not your name.
Fortunately it can be disabled from within iOS, though Apple leaves it enabled, by default and hopes no one will notice. The IDFA acts like a persistent cookie on the phone: allowing advertisers to track user surfing behaviour on their phone and record interactions up to and including purchases or downloads.
Michael Oiknine, the CEO of mobile application analytics firm Apsalar said that IDFA offered many advantages over the discredited UDID. For a start the IDFA is reset when the device, itself, is reset. That will prevent user data from being corrupted when they sell or transfer their phone to a new owner, Oiknine said.
Google Acquires Instagram’s Rival
September 24, 2012 by admin
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Google Inc said it purchased Instagram rival Nik Software, which makes award-winning photo editing application Snapseed, for an undisclosed amount.
Google and Facebook Inc are locked in a battle for social network followers that has increasingly shifted to mobile applications, such as photo editing.
While not as famous as Instagram, available for free on Apple’s mobile devices, Snapseed has won a following for its editing prowess among photographers, despite a $4.99 price tag.
Nik Software says Snapseed has more than 9 million users while Instagram says it has more than 100 million.
“We want to help our users create photos they absolutely love, and in our experience Nik does this better than anyone,” Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president, engineering, said on a Google+ post.
Facebook this year bought Instagram, which made an app for users to add filters and effects to pictures taken on their smartphones, for a cool $1 billion.
“Google’s playing chase up in social,” BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. “It’s yet another tuck in they have done, trying to boost their Google+ offering.”
Snapseed won Apple Inc’s “iPad App Of The Year” award in 2011 for its multitouch photo editing interface.
“We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures,” Nik Software said on its Website.
Google’s Gundotra also said that Google+ had hit over 400 million users this week and had just crossed 100 million
Apple Faces Another Lawsuit
April 30, 2012 by admin
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Apple devices using touch technology infringe on a patent owned by the Pennsylvanian company FlatWorld Interactives, the company stated in court documents filed on last Friday. FlatWorld asked for a permanent injunction that Apple stop infringing, and for sufficient compensation for the infringements, the company’s attorneys said.
The Pennsylvanian designer of touchscreen systems for use in museum displays alleged that Apple knowingly infringed on its patent, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said. The infringing products are said to include the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad.
FlatWorld said Apple’s infringement has been on a massive scale and has caused it irreparable harm. The company demanded a permanent injunction enjoining Apple from continued infringement plus an unspecified amount of damages to compensate for Apple’s infringement. The company is seeking a jury trial.
FlatWorld was founded in January 2007 by Slavko Milekic, a professor in cognitive science and digital design at the University of the Arts in Pennsylvania, in order to commercialize his touch screen patent, the filing said.
Milekic filed a provisional patent application on August 28, 1997, claiming priority from that date in his definitive patent application, according to the court documents. He applied for his patent on June 12, 1998 and was granted it as U.S. patent 6,920,619 on July 19 2005, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Social Networks Go Verified Accounts
February 23, 2012 by admin
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Celebrities and other public figures will soon have the ability to verify their accounts and display a preferred “alternative name,” TechCrunch reports.
In an effort to stop impostors, Facebook will reportedly soon allow celebrities and other public figures to verify their accounts in much the same way that Twitter does.
The social network will begin notifying public figures with many subscribers that they can verify their accounts by submitting an image of a government-issued ID, allowing them to display a preferred pseudonym instead of their birth name, according to a TechCrunch report. Facebook will then manually approve the “alternative names” to confirm they are the real stage names or pen names.
Facebook users must be chosen to participate in the program; there is no way to volunteer for verification. However, unlike Twitter, verified accounts will not receive a special badge indicating verified status.
Verification will allow celebrities to be more readily accessible to fans when using their stage names instead of what is officially listed on their birth certificates. The program will also gain more prominent placement in the “People To Subscribe To” section.
The U.S. Is Falling Behind
February 16, 2012 by admin
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The U.S. government is losing a race in cyberspace — a social-networking race for the hearts and minds of the Internet community, a computer security expert said Wednesday.
Other countries — and many companies — are using social-networking tools to their advantage, while the U.S. government has taken tiny steps forward, said Rand Waltzman, a program manager focused on cybersecurity at the U.S.Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The Chinese government pays citizens to patrol social-networking sites and dispute negative talk about all levels of government or any aspect of Chinese life, and companies such as Dell and Best Buy are training workers to respond to complaints on Facebook and other social-networking services, Waltzman said at the Suits and Spooks security conference in Arlington, Virginia.
U.S. regulations prevent the government from undertaking similar campaigns, he said. “Any time you want to go to the bathroom, you need presidential approval,” he said.
The U.S. will not be able to protect its residents if it cannot engage in its own covert social-media operations, Waltzman said.
Waltzman told about a U.S. special forces unit in Iraq in 2009 that attacked an insurgent paramilitary group, killed 16 of the members of the group and seized a “huge” weapons cache. As soon as the U.S. unit left the scene, the Iraqi group returned, put the bodies on prayer mats, and uploaded a photograph from a cheap mobile phone, he said. The group put out a press release in English and Arabic.
Websites ‘Leaking’ User Info To Other Firms
October 19, 2011 by admin
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Many top websites share their visitors’ names, usernames or other personal information with their partners without alerting users and, in some cases, without knowing they’re doing it, according to a new study from Stanford University.
Many websites “leak” usernames to third-party advertising networks by including usernames in URLs that the ad networks can see in referrer headers, said the study, released Tuesday by Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. While there’s a debate in legal circles whether usernames are personal information, there’s a growing consensus among computer scientists that Web-based companies can use usernames to identify their owners, said Jonathan Mayer, a Stanford graduate student who led the study.
“The vast majority of usernames are unique,” he said. “Given the prevalence of social networking, often times, once you have a username for a social network, you then also have a person’s real name, possibly a photo, possibly more.”
Other websites share first names, email addresses and other information with advertising or other partners, Mayer said at a privacy conference in Washington. Those identifiers “get associated not just with what you’re doing right now, but get associated with what you’ve done in the past, and what Web browsing activity you may have in the future,” he said.
India Wants To Monitor Twitter & Facebook
August 13, 2011 by admin
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India’s Communications Ministry has received a request from the Home Ministry to monitor social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook amid fears that the services are being used by terrorists to organize attacks.
The request suggests that the Indian government is trying to expand the scope of its online surveillance for national security purposes.
Telecommunications service providers in India provide facilities for lawful interception and monitoring of communications on their network, including communications from social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, in accordance with their license agreements, Milind Deora, the minister of state for communications and IT, told Parliament, according to the country’s Press Information Bureau.
But there are certain communications which are encrypted, Deora said Friday.
The government did not provide details of what encrypted data they would like to have access to. A spokesman for the home ministry said on Monday that additional
information can only be provided in Parliament while it is in session.
Under new rules to the country’s IT Act that came into force earlier this year, websites and service providers are required to provide government security agencies with information on private accounts, including passwords, on request without a court order.
Most companies, however, are not willing to share information with law enforcement agencies unless they have a court order.
Twitter states in its guidelines for law enforcement that “non-public information about Twitter users is not released unless we have received a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process document.”
Transcenic Sues AOL, Google and Microsoft
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It appears that Google and Microsoft are being taken to court for infringing on Transcenic’s patent whose technology allows users to navigate street-level views of cities.
Transcenic requested that a Delaware court for an injunction to inhibit Google, Mapquest and Microsoft from continuing to infringe on their patent and asked the court to award them monies for patent infrigment. Transcenic specifically stated in court documents that AOL’s Mapquest’s 360, Google’s Streetview, Google Earth and Microsoft’s Streetside copies its technology which covers systems for capturing and navigating within panoramic images.