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Today’s Latest News
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Indian app software market will cross $227 m this year: Gartner
The Indian application development software market is expected to cross $227 million in 2012, a 22.6 per cent rise over 2011.
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Amazon’s 6 Sept event: Is there a new Kindle on the way?
San Fransisco: Amazon.com Inc is having a press conference on 6 September near Los Angeles, said an invitation sent out on Thursday by the world’s largest Internet retailer.
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Apple, Samsung infringed each other's patents: South Korea court
SEOUL: Samsung Electronics Co's flagship Galaxy smartphone looks very similar to Apple's iPhone, but the South Korean firm has not violated the iPhone design, a Seoul court ruled on Friday.
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How ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help
New Delhi: India blocked 245 web pages for provocative content on Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of hate messages and lessen communal tensions in the country, and suggested via an official release on the website of the Press Information Bureau that more could follow.
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Facebook reorients itself for a small-screen, mobile world
MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA: At Facebook's headquarters here, mobile devices are everywhere. The first thing visitors do is sign in on iPads at the front desk.
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Indian app software market will cross $227 m this year: Gartner
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The Indian application development software market is expected to cross $227 million in 2012, a 22.6 per cent rise over 2011.
Growth will be driven by evolving software delivery models, new development methodologies, emerging mobile application development and open source software, according to a study by research and analyst firm Gartner.
Emerging trends
“Application modernisation and increasing agility will continue to be a solid driver for app development spending, apart from other emerging dynamics of cloud, mobility and social computing,” said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner.
“These emerging trends are directing app demand towards newer architectures, programming languages, business model and user skills,” he added.
According to Gartner, cloud is changing the way applications are designed, tested and deployed, resulting in a significant shift in app priorities. About 90 per cent of large, mainstream enterprises and government agencies will use some aspect of cloud computing by 2015. Gartner predicts that mobile AD projects targeting smart phones and tablets will outnumber native personal computer projects by a ratio of 4:1 by 2015. Emerging mobile applications, systems and devices are transforming the app development space rapidly, and are one of the top three CIO priorities at the enterprise level.
The research also found that CIOs expect more than 20 per cent of their employees to use tablets instead of laptops by 2013, hastening the process of change as app tools and applications evolve to address the requirements of these new devices.
Open source software
Gartner expects open source software to continue to broaden its presence and create pressure on market leaders during the next 3-5 years. It predicts that at least 70 per cent of new enterprise Java applications will be deployed on an open source Java application server by 2017-end.
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Featured Technology Talk
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MRF’s Formula 2000 racing car unveiled
Formula One driver Narain Karthikeyan unveiled MRF’s Formula 2000 racing car at the Express Avenue Mall here on Friday, before driving it around the mall.
The car is designed by Dallara of Italy, powered by Renault of France and built by Jayem Automotives (Coimbatore). The Formula 2000 racing car has a six-speed sequential gear box with a top speed of 240 kmph.
Speaking at a packed press conference, Narain praised the continuing high standards of MRF. “MRF has been at the forefront of promoting racing in single-seaters. The Formula 3 type car is on par with those in Europe,” he said.
On racing around the mall, Narain termed it a “unique experience.”
MRF Ltd. Managing Director Arun Mammen said 20 Formula 2000 cars would be used for the MRF International Challenge scheduled to be held on October 27 and 28 as a support race for the Formula One Grand Prix in New Delhi.
The race, Mammen explained, would consist of four rounds and 10 races. While the second race (December 1 and 2) would be a support race for the FIA GTI Championship event, the final two rounds would be held in Chennai from February 1 to 3 and February 8 to 10.
“Both Indian and international drivers will participate in the Challenge, which will be Asia’s premier one-make racing series,” he said.
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Amazon’s 6 Sept event: Is there a new Kindle on the way?
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San Fransisco: Amazon.com Inc is having a press conference on 6 September near Los Angeles, said an invitation sent out on Thursday by the world’s largest Internet retailer.
Amazon did not reveal the nature of the coming announcement, but the event is being organised by the company’s Kindle business, which includes its dominant e-book offering and devices such as e-readers and the Kindle Fire tablet computer.
“There’s been a lot of rumors about another potential Kindle tablet,” said Pete Finalle, a tablet analyst at Frost & Sullivan.
Amazon launched its first tablet, the seven-inch Kindle Fire, in September 2011, its first foray into a market that is still dominated by Apple Inc’s iPad. Since then, Google Inc has launched a seven-inch tablet called Nexus 7, which has been selling well.
“The existing Kindle Fire is due for an update given Google’s new tablet,” Finalle said. “The hardware could use a refresh.”
Apple is holding a major event on September 12, a source told Reuters recently, with the company expected to unveil its latest iPhone at that time.
There has been speculation for more than a year about a larger Amazon tablet that would compete directly with the iPad, with multiple blogs saying the device is code-named Hollywood.
“It might be beneficial for Amazon to have more than one tablet device in their repertoire,” Finalle said. “Having a larger tablet that comes in at a lower price point than Apple’s iPad would be particularly beneficial.”
The Amazon event will be held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, the invitation said.
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Apple, Samsung infringed each other's patents: South Korea court
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SEOUL: Samsung Electronics Co's flagship Galaxy smartphone looks very similar to Apple's iPhone, but the South Korean firm has not violated the iPhone design, a Seoul court ruled on Friday.
The South Korean ruling comes as the two technology titans are locked in a high-stakes global patent battle that mirrors a fierce rivalry for industry supremacy between two companies that control more than half the world's smartphone sales.
The Seoul court ruling on Friday comes ahead of more crucial U.S. verdicts. Nine jurors began deliberation on Wednesday in California in one of many disputes between the two firms around the world that analysts see as partly aimed at curbing the spread of Google Inc's Android, the world's most used mobile software.
"There are lots of external design similarities between the iPhone and Galaxy S, such as rounded corners and large screens ... but these similarities had been documented in previous products," a judge at the Seoul Central District Court said on Friday.
"Given that it's very limited to make big design changes in touch-screen based mobile products in general ... and the defendant (Samsung) differentiated its products with three buttons in the front and adopted different designs in camera and (on the) side, the two products have a different look," the judge said.
The judge said it was difficult to say that consumers would confuse the iPhone with the Galaxy given they clearly have the respective company logos on the back of each model, and consumers also factor in operating systems, brand, applications, price, and services when buying a phone.
The judge ordered Samsung to immediately stop selling 10 products, including the Galaxy S II, and also banned sales of four Apple products, including the iPhone 4 and iPad 2.
The court ruled that Apple infringed on two of Samsung's wireless technology patents and was ordered to pay Samsung 40 million won ($35,400). Samsung was fined 25 million won for violating one patent relating to so-called bouncing-back function used when scrolling electronic documents.
The compensation sought by both Apple and Samsung in South Korea is small due to the relatively small size of the market.
The wrangle was triggered by Apple's lawsuit in April last year claiming Samsung slavishly copied Apple's smartphones and tablets. Samsung has countered that it simply developed its own "unique" products in a bid to "best the competition," and that Apple actually owes money for using its patented technology.
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TECHNOLOGY
"Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve."
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McAfee Offers New Privacy Protection to Android Device Users
New features in McAfee’s Mobile Security software are aimed at keeping dangerous Android apps from stealing personal information.
McAfee is expanding its mobile security solution with privacy features to protect Android tablet and smartphone users from apps that may look to access personal information on their devices.
At a time when the number of cyber-attacks on Android-based devices is skyrocketing, McAfee’s Mobile Security software also reports to the user apps that may be associated with risky Websites or may be sending personal information to those sites, according to McAfee officials. The new App Alert feature does this by checking the apps against a URL reputation database, which is part of McAfee’s Global Threat Intelligence Network, according to company officials.
The goal of the security software, announced Aug. 20, is to protect users from viruses, identity theft and financial fraud, all of which are becoming increasing concerns, given the rapidly growing use of mobile devices for everything from paying bills and shopping online from their smartphones and tablets to accessing social networks, and the number of users that aren’t savvy to how permissions of them by apps can hamper security.
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Famous Scientist
Beatrice Tinsley
Beatrice Muriel Hill Tinsley (27 January 1941 – 23 March 1981) was a New Zealand astronomer and cosmologist whose research made fundamental contributions to the astronomical understanding of how galaxies evolve with time.
She was born Beatrice Muriel Hill in Chester, England in 1941, the middle of three sisters, and emigrated to New Zealand with her family following World War II. The family lived first in Christchurch, and then for a longer time in New Plymouth. Her father was a clergyman and Moral Re-Armer and later Mayor.
While studying in Christchurch, she married physicist and university classmate Brian Tinsley, not knowing that this would prevent her from working at the University while he was employed there. They moved in 1963 to the United States, to Austin, Texas, but she was similarly restricted there.
In 1974, after years of attempting to balance home, family and two commuting careers, she left her husband and two adopted children to take a position as assistant professor at Yale. She worked there until her death from cancer in the Yale Infirmary in 1981. Her ashes are buried in the campus cemetery.
Tinsley attended New Plymouth Girls' High School, then studied at the University of Canterbury where she completed a B.Sc. and then a Master of Science degree in 1961, with First Class Honours in Physics. Her PhD was awarded by the University of Texas in Austin in 1966, with the thesis Evolution of Galaxies and its Significance for Cosmology.
Tinsley completed pioneering theoretical studies of how populations of stars age and affect the observable qualities of galaxies. She also collaborated on basic research into models investigating whether the universe is closed or open. Her galaxy models led to the first approximation of what protogalaxies should look like.
In 1974 she received the American Astronomical Society's Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy, awarded for "outstanding research and promise for future research by a postdoctoral woman researcher", in recognition of her work on galaxy evolution.
In 1977, Tinsley, with Richard Larson of Yale, organised a conference on 'The Evolution of Galaxies and Stellar Populations'.
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How ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help
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New Delhi: India blocked 245 web pages for provocative content on Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of hate messages and lessen communal tensions in the country, and suggested via an official release on the website of the Press Information Bureau that more could follow.
As was widely reported in the days that followed, most websites blocked were not related to the ethnic clashes in Assam.
Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, analysed the sites which were listed by the government. In his analysis, 33% of all blocked addresses were on Facebook, 27.8% on YouTube, 9.7% on Twitter and the rest were spread over a number of different websites including Wikipedia, Firstpost.com and TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com.
Prakash says, “I don’t believe that the decision to block sites was politically motivated, but I do believe that in trying to prevent harm, the government has gone overboard.”
He also writes in his analysis, “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.”
Prakash also pointed out, “There are numerous egregious mistakes. Even people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, and it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care.”
Of course, India’s overall record on Internet censorship isn’t great, with the current laws encouraging Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down content without investigating individual cases properly. And that is not even taking into consideration official government orders, such as this decision to block websites.
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Facebook reorients itself for a small-screen, mobile world
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MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA: At Facebook's headquarters here, mobile devices are everywhere. The first thing visitors do is sign in on iPads at the front desk. Employees at the campus coffee shop use iPads as cash registers. Instead of sending emails, Facebook employees prefer to use the company's messaging system, which pops up new messages on both mobile devices and PCs.
Mobile is clearly on the company's mind, especially now that people are spending more time using Facebook through mobile apps than on computers. And on Wall Street, investors are putting pressure on Mark Zuckerberg's social network to master the mobile world so it can speed up growth and lift its sagging stock.
But the challenge for Facebook, along with other companies like Google that got their start on the Web, is figuring the best way to serve ads to mobile users without cluttering up their small screens and driving them away in frustration. For now, mobile ads bring in less money than standard Web ads, so the shift to mobile threatens to undermine Facebook's revenue.
Facebook's executives say the company is diving deep into mobile, starting with new versions of its apps for the iPhone and iPad, which it released Thursday. Users had complained that the apps were sluggish; more than half of those who rated Facebook's iPhone app in the Apple App Store gave it one star out of five. The new apps are faster because they were rewritten in the native programming language of Apple's devices, replacing most of the Web-based technology used in previous versions.
The apps are part of what Facebook executives say is a transformation into a "mobile first" company. Developing mobile products has been made a priority, they said in recent interviews, and every team inside the company has been reorganized with the goal of inserting mobile into its DNA.
"We have basically retooled and focused the company around mobile," said Mike Schroepfer, vice president for engineering of Facebook. "It's been a huge change."
As part of the reformation, product teams have been arranged so that they now make mobile versions of new features at the same time that they are developed for the main website. Before, the company would make new features for the website, then a core mobile team would follow up with translations for mobile devices.
Facebook is also trying to spread mobile expertise throughout the company. Its top engineers hold training sessions every week for 20 employees at a time, teaching them how to program for Apple and Android devices. About 100 engineers are now working on Facebook's mobile products, according to Cory Ondrejka, chief of mobile engineering.
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Tips to make your browser secure
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Browsers may be among the most commonly used applications, but they also offer the greatest number of attack options for dangerous content on the net.To keep viruses, worms and other malware away from your computer when surfing,it's crucial to configure your browser for security.
The firewall on a DSL router is a good first step for protecting the computer during surfing, says Marco Rinne from the computer portal chip.de. But that doesn't hold true if your browser is out of date: “Internet Explorer 6 and 7 or Firefox 2 no longer satisfy current security standards,” he says. For optimal protection, he therefore urgesusers to keep theirbrowsers updated.
There are numeroussecurity tools already present in Firefox and Internet Explorer. The pop-up blocker,for example, prevents more than justannoying ads. It alsothrottles other windows that can be used to sneak malicious software onto PCs. Phishing filters protect personal dataagainst theft.
Firefox offers additional configurationoptions underthe Settings item in the Security tab of the Options dialog box: thisincludes the ability to block risky or forgedwebsites.It's also a good idea to prohibit websites from installing add-ons on their own. Similar settings are possible under Internet Explorer in the Security tab of the Internet Options dialog box, accessible from the Tools menu.
Computer owners should also activate all options for warning against attacks, advises Markus Linnemann, managing director of the Institute for Internet Security (ifis) at the Polytechnic University of Gelsenkirchen in Germany. This applies in particular to warnings about suspicious content to be displayed using ActiveX, Flash, or JavaScript.
Yet the warning mechanism on most browsers alone isn't usually enough, Linnemann says. Those who wish to be especially careful can, for example, use the Firefox add-on 'No Script,' which blocks all active content of a website by default and allows the user to decide which should be permitted. The problem is that most users are unable to determine which content represents a threat to their computer, Rinne msays.
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the average soccer ball is made up of 32 leather panels and held together by 642 stitches
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Cartoon of Technology
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Volkswagen’s Polo, Vento may soon cost 3% more
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German auto-major Volkswagen is planning to increase price of its flagship hatchback Polo and mid-size sedan Vento by up to 3 percent, sources said.
“The company will increase the price of Polo and Vento models by one to three per ent soon,” sources told PTI.
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“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
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