a2z Information: 2013-01-13

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Sharp almost stops iPad screen production, Sources

Sharp has nearly halted production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple's iPad, two sources said, as demand shifts to its smalleriPad mini.

Sharp's iPad screen production line at its Kameyama plant in central Japan has fallen to the minimal level to keep the line running this month after a gradual slowdown began at the end of 2012 as Apple manages its inventory, the industry sources with knowledge of Sharp's production plans told Reuters.

India does not have any law by the name of Cyber Law nor any law called as “The Data Protection Act”. India has one law encompassing IT related crimes, Data Protection related law and Internet related law and that is called The IT Act, 2000. The exact name of the law is “The Information Technology Act, 2000 as amended by the Information Technology (amendment) Act of 2008”. This law has to be read and applied along with The IT Rules.

I have detailed below some of the crimes for which a common man can be punished with imprisonment upto three years or fine up to five lakhs or both. Also, he can be arrested without warrant.

As an industry representative body, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) has been pulling all stops to ensure the safety and security of women working in the IT sector across the country, its chief said on Thursday.

"We are sharing our best practices with our member firms to ensure the safety and security of their women employees in both letter and spirit though we can't claim we have done all that needs to be," Nasscom president Som Mittal told reporters on the margins of an IT event here.

According to the recently published Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2012, 99 percent of newly discovered mobile malicious programs target the Android platform, with a very small amount targeting Java- and Symbian-based smartphones.

2012 was the second year to show explosive growth in Android malware. From a negligible eight new unique malicious programs in January 2011, the average monthly discovery rate for new Android malware in 2011 went up to more than 800 samples. In 2012, Kaspersky Lab identified an average of 6, 300 new mobile malware samples every month.

Search giant Google, considered to be among the most innovative companies in the world, may have as many as one million employees one day, according to its CEO and co-founder Larry Page.

In an interview with Wired magazine, Page said "imagine what we could do if we had a hundred times as many employees."

Despite saying that he dreams of a time when Google will have a million-strong workforce, Page then tempered his statement by adding, "may be it's not important for us to have a million employees, but I like to think that we could build companies that are really scalable to that size."

Samsung is working on a new tablet that will square off against the likes of Apple iPad mini and Google Nexus 7. According to technology news website SamMobile, this device is codenamed Kona and will be retailed as Galaxy Note 8.0. The report says this device will be unveiled at Mobile World Conference (MWC) 2013, scheduled for February 25 to February 28.

The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 is said to have an 8-inch Super Clear LCD display and S-Pen stylus compatibility. The big draw will be Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) out-of-the-box, considering that Google's latest mobile OS is available only on Google Nexus 10, though a few other models can be upgraded later.

"Bob" the software engineer was becoming a modern workplace legend on Thursday as word spread that he had secretly outsourced his own job to China and sat at his desk watching cat videos.
The tale of Bob blazed across the internet after being told in a Verizon security team blog post about the most "memorable" case investigators handled last year.

Instagram might have gotten some crazy backlash from its policy changes back in December, for which they pulled an about face and returned it back to normal. However, a lot users were done with the service at that point, and vowed to switch to an alternative. Then again, that doesn’t seem to be scaring Instagram too much, as the company has reported 90 million monthly active users, as well as 40 million photos being posted per day.

The cloud storage provider MediaFire has finally launched its Android mobile app, and to commemorate the occasion, it is offering users 50 free gigabytes of storage space. The service already offered an iOS app for Apple users on top of its desktop app, both of which also offer the free 50GB. The app offers a handful of features that simplify using the cloud storage service.

The MediaFire Android app includes ads if the user is under a free account, although they can be eradicated with a cheap monthly subscription at $1.50 per month. Still, one can’t complain too much considering the very large amount of free storage the service offers. MediaFire does have a limit on how long it will store files on inactive accounts, however, though users will receive ample time and notifications before the files are purged.

As notes PC World, the app does have some downsides that might make it less than ideal for certain types of users, including those who often batch upload. The MediaFire Android app does not support multi-file uploading, nor does it integrate to allow direct uploading from the handset’s camera. In addition, free users are limited to a maximum file size of 200MB, although those who upgrade to a monthly subscription can upload file sizes up to 1GB.

Country's fourth largest software services firm HCL Technologies saw its employee strength come down by nearly 150 people to 85,194 people during the October-December 2012 quarter.

The company's employee count stood at 85,335 during the July-September quarter of 2012.

While the company hired 5,136 (gross) employees during the quarter, on a net basis, 141 people left the organisation in the second quarter of 2012-13.

Social networking giant Facebook has opened registration for its third annual Hacker Cup, set to begin from January 25.

The top prize will be $10,000 (approx Rs 5.5 lakh) as against $5,000 (Rs 2.75 lakh) last year and as many 25 of the best hackers will be taken to Facebook's headquarter in USA, a statement said.

The Facebook Hacker Cup is an annual worldwide programming competition where hackers compete against each other for fame, fortune, glory and a shot at the coveted Hacker Cup.

Playing video games may help kids become smarter by boosting their self-esteem and problem-solving skills besides motivating them to exercise, a new Australian study claims.

Researchers Penny Sweetser, Daniel Johnson and Peta Wyeth, from Queensland University of Technology's Games Research and Interaction Design (GRID) Lab, investigated the amount of time children spent watching TV and DVDs compared to video game and computer use.

EBay reported holiday quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations as the e-commerce company benefited from a boom in mobile shoppers, but it gave a 2013 forecast in line with analyst estimates, restraining share price gains.

The stock rose 1 per cent to $53.43 in after-hours trading following the announcement.

Expectations were high ahead of the results because sales data from outside sources suggested strong sales growth from eBay's online marketplace and a solid increase in transactions processed by the company's PayPal payments business.

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokiasaid it will cut over 1000 IT jobs, including 820 employees who will be transfered to HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, as part of an already-announced restructuring.

It said 300 jobs will be cut altogether, and that most of the reductions would be in Finland.

HCL Tech has recently entered into a long-term, global IT infrastructure management outsourcing services agreement with Nokia. The scope of this engagement includes datacenter, network management, end-user computing services and cross-functional service management across Nokia's global IT infrastructure operations. As part of this engagement, HCL will be deploying its MTaaS and MyCloud solutions. HCL has also been delivering global service desk and desktop management outsourcing services for Nokia since 2009.

Handset maker Karbonn Mobileshas tied up with telecom major Bharti Airtel to provide a bundled offer with purchase of its range of smartphones.

"As part of this tie-up, customers buyingKarbonn smartphones like A9+, A15, A21 and A30 can now avail 500MB of 3G data and unlimited 2G on Airtel free for a period of six months since its purchase", Karbonn Mobiles said in a statement.

The limited edition data offer from Bharti Airtel would be auto-activated for all buyers of select Karbonn range of smartphones, it said.

have developed world's first bendable lithium-ion batteries, paving way for flexible mobile devices.

Researchers led by professor Lee Sang-young of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea developed imprintable, fluid-like polymer electrolytes that are used for lithium-ion batteries.

Conventional batteries use liquefied electrolytes and are put into square-shaped cases, which makes them inflexible with risks of explosion. Because of these disadvantages, there have been efforts to develop high-molecule electrolytes.

Cybersecurity is set to be introduced as a subject in universities and technical colleges in keeping with the recommendations of a task force on National Security System.

University Grants Commission (UGC) has written to all the vice chancellors in this respect, asking them to introduce the subject both at under-graduate and post-graduate levels, sources said.

The taskforce, set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2011 to review the working of the national security system, presented its report on May 31 last year.

Personal computer makers, trying to beat back a tablet mania that's eating into their sales, are making what may be a last-ditch attempt to sway customers by mimicking the competition.

Many of the laptops to be unveiled around the world in coming months will be hybrids or "convertibles" - morphing easily between portable tablets and full-powered laptops with a keyboard, industry analysts say.

In May last year, Google's Chrome became the most used browser in the world, surpassing Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which had been the leader from ever since one can remember. That's a remarkable achievement, and one man who can take a lot of credit for that is Sundar Pichai, who heads the Chrome and Apps business for Google. Pichai, 40, grew up in Chennai, did a BTech from IIT-Kharagpur , and then went to Stanford University, US, for an MS. He worked in Applied Materials and McKinsey & Co, before joining Google in 2004. Pichai was recently in Bangalore and spoke to TOI about his latest big initiative - Chromebooks , the PC based on the Chrome operating system.

Ten Google Android mobile phone applications, including the Angry Birdsgame, have been found to extract personal information of users like their location, contacts and device identifying details.

The other nine applications include Toss It game, Talking Tom virtual pet, Backgrounds HD Wallpapers, Dictionary.com, Mouse Trap game, Horoscope, Shazam music, Brightest Flashlight and Pandora Internet Radio, the Daily Mail reports.

The list, compiled by Carnegie Mellon University researchers, in Pittsburgh, US, was released after analysing the 100 most popular Androidapplications.

Skype to replace Microsoft Messenger in March

Microsoft on Wednesday sent out word that it will "retire" its Messenger online chat feature on March 15 and replace it with the Skype Internet telephony service it bought last year.

Microsoft sent an email message advising Messenger users to update to Skype using their same account information in advance of the deadline.

PayPal partners with NCR to get into restaurants, gas stations

PayPal took another step in its effort to expand in the physical retail world on Tuesday, unveiling a partnership with ATM company NCR Corp that will get the payment service into restaurants and gas stations.

PayPal, the dominant online payment business owned by eBay Inc, said its mobile service will be integrated with NCR's point-of-sale, or POS, technology to allow diners to pay for their meal at restaurants using a smartphone.

is earnings season, the US technology industry is in an unusual position - dragging corporate America down, rather than lifting it up.

Wall Street expects the tech sector's fourth-quarter earnings to be down 1.1 per cent from a year ago, the first drop since the third quarter of 2009, even though overall S&P 500 profits are still forecast to show growth, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Facebook unveiled plans Tuesday to expand its Web search partnership with Microsoft'sBing as the social network launched its new function for internal search.

"We have a great partnership with the team atMicrosoft and have worked with them for year," Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said. "We have been working with the team there for months to build this out."

Idea launches Android Ivory

Idea Cellular has launched Android-powered smartphone Ivory. The smartphone is based on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS and runs on 1GHz processor.

The 3G smartphone from Idea features a 3.5' Full Touch Bar and offers 4GB internal memory and 512MB RAM. The dual-sim smartphone from Idea is priced at Rs 7,390. Other features of the phone include G Sensor, built-in social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, IMAP, HTML and music video player. Ivory comes in two colour options white and black.

The Head of the Orange said on Wednesday it had been able to impose a deal on Google for generating vast amounts of traffic on its telecoms networks.

Orange CEO Stephane Richard said on France's BFM Business TV that with 230 million clients and areas where Google could not get around its network, it had been able to reach a "balance of forces" with the Internet search giant.

Richard declined to cite the figure Google had paid Orange, but said the situation showed the importance of reaching a critical size in business.

Acer today announced the launch of Iconia B1, its 7-inch tablet unveiled at CES 2013, in India. This device is touted as a GoogleNexus 7 rival and costs Rs 7,999 in the country, thus stepping into the territory captured by Micromax's Funbook series.

Acer Iconia B1 is a tablet aimed at the budget segment and features a 7-inch LCD screen with 1024x600p resolution and 182ppi pixel density and runs on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). It is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, paired with 512MB RAM, and has 8GB onboard storage as well as microSD support up to 32GB capacity.

As funeral services were held for internet activist Aaron Swartz, the debate intensified over what some called a "draconian" US computer crime law used by allegedly overzealous prosecutors.

An online petition calling for the removal of the prosecutors in his case garnered more than 31,000 signatures and some of Swartz's supporters blamed a 1986 computer crimes statute for his suicide.

Swartz, who was just 14 when he co-developed the RSS feeds that are now the norm for publishing frequent updates online and went on to help launch social news website Reddit, hanged himself in his New York apartment on Friday.

nc took the wraps off a new search tool on Tuesday that lets people trawl their network of friends to find everything from restaurants to movie recommendations, an improvement that's likely to increase competition with review websites like Yelp and potentially even GoogleInc. The so-called graph search marks the company's biggest foray into online search to date, though it displays only information within the walls of the social network rather than links to sites available across the Internet.

Facebook Inc

CEO Mark Zuckerbergsaid on Tuesday the No. 1 social network's new search fea

ture will initially focus on helping users sort through photographs, people, places and other content that has been shared with them.

The feature, which Facebook is calling " graph search," is not a way to look up content on the Internet, Zuckerberg added.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Why pixels do not count in cameras

I have been seeing manufacturers offer ever-larger pixel counts for newer models. Nikon's D5100 is still in the lineup alongside the newer and less expensive D3200. The D5100 has 16.2 megapixel sensor, the D3200 has a 24.2 megapixel sensor.

Shouldn't that make the D3200 the better camera? But, it doesn't , which serves to point out why you can't shop for a camera based on the number of pixels. It's largely meaningless when it comes to image quality.

Recently, Nvidia unveiled a platform for gaming called Project Shield. It had an interesting feature. The console could sync with a PC running on its Tegra graphics processing unit and could beam the game from your PC onto your television.

This marks a shift in how traditional hardware functions are changing. Traditionally, graphic cards were processors whose sole function was to ensure that graphics were processed on them rather than giving the load to the PC's processor. The PC's processor would then be able to co-ordinate the non-graphics part of the software. With Project Shield, the graphic card takes on some of the processing cores on the hardware to play the game on your TV.

gdom has seen the biggest drop in Facebook users to a figure of 600,000, a 2.88 percent drop, according to data given by monitoring firm called SocialBakers.

The problem may be because of confusion over the site's privacy policies and 'Facebook fatigue' - a condition described as having too much friends, according to experts, reports the Daily Mail.

According to Stuart Miles of website Pocket Lint, Facebook needs a makeover to attract users back to its site, and it needs to be more relevant and useful again. Also, the increasing size and the advertisements on the site has put off many users, said Miles.

India's top software services provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said demand in the key US market is strong across its business segments, with regional banks stepping up spending on technology.

The US Department of Homeland Security warned that a security update of Oracle's Java software for web browsers does not do enough to protect computers from attack, sticking to its previous advice that the programme be disabled.

"Unless it is absolutely necessary to run Java in web browsers, disable it," the Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in a posting on its website.

ows Phone 8-based devices are populating retail stores. The latest to arrive is the much-hyped Nokia's flagship smartphone, Lumia 920, launched last week. HTC 8X and HTC 8S also run on Windows Phone 8. They have a fewremarkable features that will give a good competition to the seemingly runaway popularity of Android-based devices.

Space for kids on your phone
How often children have taken your phone, and without your knowledge changed the ringtone, dialled your boss, downloaded games, and worse, strayed into murky corners of cyberspace? Kids Corner, an innovative feature of Windows Phone 8, lets you stay in peace. From the Start screen go to the Kids Corner. Choose the features and apps the child can access. The home screen remains password protected.

You undoubtedly know people are so smitten with their smartphones and tablets that they experience separation anxiety when asked to put them away, even if it's just long enough to get through dinner. But that is nothing compared with the angst they feel when their devices' batteries are getting low.

The market for mobile power sources has grown exponentially in the last two years, with more compact and more powerful options available that allow you to recharge hundreds of times. Which one is best depends on how much power you want on hand and how much weight you are willing to carry.

By now, most of the world knows what an iPhone is - and people know it typically doesn't come cheap.

That is the problem Apple faces. Analysts say it must decide whether to keep catering to the high end of the phone market, reaping fat profits from relatively few sales, or to offer something cheaper to compete with lower-cost alternatives like Samsung's phones.

Worries about low-cost competition weighed on Apple's stock on Monday after reports that the company had reduced orders of screens for the iPhone 5, suggesting that demand for the phone could be weaker than expected. The company's shares dropped 3.6 per cent for the day to close at $501.75; they have slid 29 per cent from their high in September.

Broadband penetration will exceed 650 million households across the globe, with nearly 430 million to have a data network this year, a report has said.

The white paper, titled 'Trends, Technologies, and Ecosystems: Evolution of the Digital Home' by Parks Associates, cited strong consumer demand for new technologies and devices.

However, it also showed consumers are reluctant to incur additional service fees, especially as they receive multiple offerings from many different providers, the Enterprise Innovation reports.

Nearly a year after it announced its bid to go public, Facebook faces the ultimate burden of the information age: how to help its users find what they are looking for amid the billions of pictures, likes and status updates they post every day.

Ferreting out treasure from junk is its biggest challenge - and potentially its most lucrative opportunity, a chance to topple Google from the throne as the king of search.

Does It Really Take A Government To Launch Cloud Based Cyberattacks

U.S. financial institutions are apparently the main targets for hackers bent on disrupting the banks' online business, combining old tools and new tricks to muster a whole new class of zombie computers into attacking bank servers. But even as banks level accusations of state-sponsored hacking, the identity of the attackers is still not entirely clear.

Certainly the banks and their allies in the U.S. government haven't been shy about calling out the attackers. Last week the bank security experts were concluding publicly that the nature of the attacks meant that it could not be anything less than a state-sponsored cyberattack from one of the U.S.'s biggest bogeymen, Iran.

The Persecution Of Aaron Swartz

On Monday, the U.S. government dropped its charges against Aaron Swartz following his suicide. Swartz was charged in 2011 with illegally downloading 4.8 million academic papers from the digital database JSTOR over MIT's network using fake credentials.

For that, Swartz faced up to 35 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines.

Since he died before the case went to trial, the feds dismissed the case according to standard procedure.

Swartz has been fondly remembered as a brilliant programmer, activist, leader and folk hero, not to mention a beloved human being. But in considering the crimes with which he was charged, try to leave aside the many things that made Swartz exceptional. He was simply a citizen of a country proud of its freedom of information.

Tech Blogs 100 percent Confident That They Totally Don t Know What Facebook Will Announce Tomorrow

Facebook is gathering the world's press to its Menlo Park, California, headquarters on January 15 for a very special, very huge announcement. Like, mega huge. Like, the-world-will-never-be-the-same huge. And because it is not yet tomorrow, at this point, today, nobody actually seems to know exactly what Facebook will announce, and this is what the tech blogs want you to know, which is that they have no idea what Facebook will announce tomorrow, and they want you to know that.

In fact they are so determined to inform you about how completely they don't know that they are reporting on this, over and over again, because they want you to know this so badly. Toward that end, they now are listing all the things that they don't know whether Facebook is going to announce.

MIT To Launch Internal Investigation Following Death Of Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz, Internet activist, pioneer and innovator, died on Friday. He was 26.

Swartz committed suicide in his New York apartment, according to his family.

(For more on the case, see The Persecution Of Aaron Schwartz, by ReadWrite's Jon Mitchell.)

Swartz was best known for creating RSS when he was 14 and later as a founding member of Reddit and Demand Progress.

Swartz was facing legal challenges in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts from an incident in 2011 following the unauthorized download of 4.8 million scientific and literary papers from the digital database JSTOR through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If found guilty, Swartz could have faced 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The Real Problem With The Windows 8 User Interface And It Isn t Touch

I just finished setting up my second Windows 8 computer. The first one, a Lenovo Yoga ultrabook/tablet, has a touchscreen. The second one, a Lenovo desktop tower, is hooked up to a standard Dell flat-panel LCD monitor that I bought a few years ago.

While I installing the last piece of software on my new tower, I read Brian Profitt’s ReadWrite post about the current infatuation with touchscreens (see Hey PC Industry: Stop Being So Damn Touchy-Feely).

But my experiences have convinced me that the ride into the new Windows 8 world is not going to be that bad. And more to the point, the touchscreen interface isn't the biggest issue.

Touch Is Not the Problem

The problem is not that Microsoft is dragging us kicking and screaming into the world of touch interfaces.

Look, who is ruling the phablet market

Phablets, a cross between a smartphone and a tablet, are gaining popularity globally as consumers opt for bigger screens to perform multimedia functions.

Here are some companies that will likely benefit or feel the impact of the fast-growing phabletmarket, which analysts expect to quadruple in value to $135 billion in about three years:

Winners
Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Lenovo Group, Asustek Computer, Google (Android software runs on most of these devices), Nuance Communications(develops Swype software for keypads, enabling easier text entry on larger screens), Nvidia (CPU), Qualcomm (CPU)

Open access activist and internet hero Aaron Swartz dies

Internet activist and programming star Aaron Swartz has died, his family has confirmed, committing suicide in New York while facing a potential $1m in fines and up to 35 years in prison over federal charges around computer hacking. Swartz died on Friday at the age of 26, his uncle and his legal team independently confirmed to MIT’s The Tech.

The programmer was integral in creating RSS, and created a company that later merged with popular internet destination Reddit. However, more recently he was investigated for hacking JSTOR, the subscription-based journal service, and extracting its database with the intention for public release.

In the not-so-distant future, couch potatoes will be waving, pointing, swiping and tapping to make their TVs react, kind of like what Tom Cruise did in the 2002 movie "Minority Report." That's the vision of TV manufacturers as they show off " smart TVs."

The sets will recognize who's watching and will try to guess what viewers want to see. They'll respond to more natural speech and will connect with your smartphone in a single touch.

Oracle Corp said it is preparing an update to address a flaw in its widely used Java software after the US Department of Homeland Security urged computer users to disable the program in web browsers because criminal hackers are exploiting a security bug to attack PCs.

"A fix will be available shortly," the company said in a statement released late on Friday.

Company officials could not be reached on Saturday to say how quickly the update would be available for the hundreds of millions of PCs that have Java installed.

Inside a small bungalow on the street separating Kansas City, Kansas, from its sister city in Missouri, a small group of entrepreneurs are working on their ideas for the next high-tech startup, tapping Google Inc.'s new superfast Internet connection that has turned the neighborhood into an unlikely settlement dubbed the ``Silicon Prairie.''

The home on State Line Road is one of several startup-friendly locations that have sprouted up in Kansas City in recent months. The catalyst is Google Fiber, the search-engine giant's fiber-optic network being tested in the Kansas City area that advertises speeds of up to a gigabyte per second a rate that massively exceeds the average Internet speeds at homes hooked up with cable modems.

CES isn’t short of product launches, and if you want to keep up you need the right tools. For 2013, the SlashGear team tried out a new workflow: carrying Samsung’s Galaxy Camera and doing as much of our uploading of photos and video wirelessly. We’d already been impressed by the Galaxy Camera in our review, but taking the Android-powered point-and-shoot out into the field for what’s arguably the toughest assignment on a tech-head’s calendar really put it through its paces. Read on for our full report.

Nokia's stronger-than-expected quarterly results mean the mobile phone maker now has breathing space and better options to help it claw back a place alongside Samsung and Apple in the smartphone market.

The Finnish handset maker, whose fall from market leader to loss leader was so bad its chief executive said two years ago it was on a "burning platform", may even be in a position to list or sell its Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) arm at a premium, instead of having to auction assets cheaply as had been feared.

Trai, Telcos like Airtel, Tata Tele lost over 13m customers in Nov

The country's telecom subscriber base fell by over 13 million to 921.47 million at the end of November 2012 due to "large-scale disconnection by operators."

The user base stood at 935.18 million at the end of October 2012.

All the operators lost users in November 2012, barring Reliance Communications, Loop and HFCL, which added a total 1,35,519 new subscribers.

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Saturday, January 19, 2013

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Touch Is Not the Problem

Monday, January 14, 2013

Sunday, January 13, 2013