Just 15 mins of exercise a day can help smokers kick the butt

London, April 23 (ANI): Smokers who exercise are likely to find it easier to quit successfully, say researchers.

A team of scientists at the National Health Research Institute and China Medical University Hospital in Taiwan studied the health and habits of 434,190 people in Taiwan from 1996 to 2008.

Getting just 15 minutes of exercise a day made smokers 55 per cent more likely to quit than people who weren't active at all.

They also found that active smokers were 43 per cent less likely to relapse when they did quit.

Life expectancy was found to increase by 5.6 years on average, and the risk of death was reduced by 43 per cent, putting them at the same level as sedentary non-smokers.

Even if they didn't quit, the benefits of an active lifestyle were obvious, with life expectancy in smokers getting 30 minutes of exercise a day increasing by 3.7 per cent.

"Our message is to quit and exercise - to do both is the best," Professor Chi Pang Wen, who presented the data at the World Congress of Cardiology meeting in Dubai, told Digg.com.

"We want smokers to do as much exercise as possible," he said, but added that even small amounts of activity - like a 15 minute walk every so often - was better than nothing. (ANI)

StumbleUpon Hits 25 Million Users , And is Gaining 1 Million a Month

StumbleUpon passed the 25 million user mark earlier this week — that’s about one million users every month since it announced it had reached 20 million users in October. 

The discovery service has existed in some form since 2001. It accepted its first round of funding in 2006, was purchased by eBay in 2007 and became independent again in 2009.

At that point, it had about 5.5 million registered users. It’s been growing at a lightning rate since, nearly quadrupling its userbase in three years.

“For all intents and purposes this is a new company since the spin out from eBay,” StumbleUpon VP of Business Development and Marketing Marc Leibowitz tells Mashable. “Virtually all of the 120 employees we have today have joined since then [when there were about 30 employees].”

Leibowitz also cites the launch of a web-based service and mobile apps as contributing to StumbleUpon’s post-eBay growth. Previously, StumbleUpon had been available solely through a browser extension, and it didn’t launch its Android and iOS apps until August 2010 — fairly late in the mobile game.

Today, about 20% of the 1.2 billion Stumbles made per month are made on mobile phones.

StumbleUpon is not yet a mainstream social network. Its 25 million users pale in comparison to Twitter’s 140 million accounts, Facebook’s 901 million users or Tumblr’s 53 million blogs.

BranchOut, a startup that builds a LinkedIn-style social network on Facebook, recently reached as many users in about two years as StumbleUpon has in 11 years.

But at its current growth rate, StumbleUpon could be on its way to some major mainstream recognition.

The recommendation engine, by one StatCounter study’s measure, is already responsible for referring more traffic to websites than any other social network in the U.S. It has more than 75,000 advertisers. And its users are active — according to Leibowitz, on average they spend about seven hours every month hitting the Stumble button.

Meanwhile, StumbleUpon has been busy building features that already come with mainstream social networks. A redesign in December added brand channels, which are somewhat equivalent to Facebook brand pages in that they create a profile for marketers separate from personal profiles. About 250 organizations have launched free channels since.

StumbleUpon also plans to launch an API that helps power third-party products’ recommendation features. The company also wants to create international versions of its own discovery engine (only 15% of Stumblers are currently based outside of North America). Meanwhile, you can expect to see more social features.

“I think StumbleUpon is often the source of content that goes viral on other social networks,” Leibowitz says. “But I don’t think we’ve done a great job of creating a viral loop.

“Content is launched into other social networks, but we don’t do a particularly good job of capturing the content around that into StumbleUpon.”

Not updated your computer anti virus, Conficker targets Microsoft Windows Operating systems

Are you using weak passwords or have not updated your computer anti-virus? Well, there's something to worry about and that threat comes from Conficker, a computer worm that targets Microsoft Windows Operating systems. 

Microsoft Corp released the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 12 (SIRv12), which found that theConficker worm was detected about 220 million times worldwide in the past two-and-a-half years, making it one of the biggest ongoing threats to enterprises. The study also revealed the worm continues to spread because of weak or stolen passwords and vulnerabilities for which a security update exists. 

According to the report, quarterly detections of the Conficker worm have increased by more than 225% since the beginning of 2009. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, Conficker was detected on 1.7 million systems worldwide. 

A whopping 92% of Conficker infections were a result of weak or stolen passwords, and 8% percent of infections exploited vulnerabilities for which a security update exists. 

"Conficker is one of the biggest security problems we face, yet it is well within our power to defend against," said Tim Rains, director of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, in a release. "It is critical that organizations focus on the security fundamentals to help protect against the most common threats." 

The report also revealed that many of the threats often referred to as Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are no more advanced or sophisticated than other types of attacks. In most cases, these attacks leverage known vectors such as exploiting weak or stolen passwords and vulnerabilities for which security updates exist, but their efficacy lies in the persistence and determination in trying different tactics to compromise the target. This is why these types of threats are referred as 'Targeted Attacks performed by Determined Adversaries', rather than APTs. 

"Labeling cyberthreats as 'advanced' is often times misleading and can divert organizations' attention away from addressing basic security issues, which can prevent more common threats from infiltrating their systems," Rains said. 

Microsoft recommends that users adhere to the following security fundamentals to help ensure they are protected: 

· Use strong passwords and educate employees on their importance. 

· Keep systems up-to-date by regularly applying available updates for all products. 

· Use antivirus software from a trusted source. 

· Invest in newer products with a higher quality of software protection. 

· Consider the cloud as a business resource. 

"With organizations being presented with significant amounts of data and reports on cyberthreats, the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report gives us good perspective on recent trends in the global threat landscape," said Bob Rodger, global head of IT Infrastructure Security at HSBC. 

sunny Leone will sell mobile phones now

India's moral police may soon have a tough task at hand with an unknown, small firm launching what would pass off as India's first phone endorsed by a real-life porn queen.

Having signed on Canadian porn star of Indian origin Sunny Leone as its brand ambassador,Chaze on Thursday said "the upcoming Bollywood actress" would launch its mobile handsets with "mass appeal". It even released a picture of Leone as if she were at a press event launching the phones since having her to do that at an actual event in New Delhi may well have been fraught with unforeseen reactions.

When queried, the PR representatives of Chaze Mobiles, PerceptProfile, revealed the still had been shot during the porn star's "first-ever TVC shoot" for the firm at "exotic locales" ofThailand. The ad will soon be beamed during prime time on Indian television.

The imagery and association with Leone who is better known as a porn star than as an actress seems to indicate how Chaze Mobiles wants to position its product in an extremely cluttered low-end handsets market. However, steering clear of Leone's controversial past, the company described her simply as a "rising actress".

"I am very excited to be associated with such a young and vibrant brand like Chaze. I chose to associate with 'Brand Chaze' because I am really impressed by Chaze's ideology of bringing out mobile technology for the masses and personally feel connected with their vision," the press release quoted Leone as saying.

It remains to be seen how the market takes to Leone-endorsed phones. Boosted by a saucy TVC by Leone, Chaze may well gain an upper hand in the segment still dominated by cheap Chinese phones.

Chaze has launched two entry-level models C123 and Jewel; C555 which boasts a "big screen and big sound" (sans any specs whatsoever); C234 (a "touch and type"phone) and C99, a "full soft touch multimedia phone".

The company claimed its phones will be powered by "avant-garde features" such as dual SIM, auto call recording, answering machine, multimedia, big speakers, and last, but not the least, a spy camera! All models are priced between Rs 1500 and Rs 3500.

Google Has Lost Control of the Android Tablet Market

This story was originally published in Silicon Alley Insider. More bad news for Google and Android.

Amazon's Kindle Fire now has 54.4% of the Android tablet market in the U.S., according to comScore. This means Google has lost control of the Android tablet market to one of its newest mobile rivals after just a few months.

Amazon used the base layer of Android to build its own operating system. Google doesn't have its app store or any of its services on the Kindle Fire.

Amazon isn't the last company to do this. Phone makers are planning on forking Android, making it more fragmented and ultimately cutting Google out of the loop.

The success of the Kindle Fire is proof that you don't need Google to make a popular Android-based device.

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