Advante360-SEO: June 2014

Monday 30 June 2014

Top 10 technologies for information security in 2014

The top 10 technologies for information security are:

Cloud Access Security Brokers
Cloud access security brokers are on-premises or cloud-based security policy enforcement points placed between cloud services consumers and cloud services providers to interject enterprise security policies as the cloud-based resources are accessed. In many cases, initial adoption of cloud-based services has occurred outside the control of IT, and cloud access security brokers offer enterprises to gain visibility and control as its users access cloud resources.

Oracle to Buy a Software Maker Micros Systems for $5.3 Billion

Mark Hurd, an Oracle president, in 2011.

Oracle’s acquisition machine spun up again on Monday, as the software giant struck its biggest deal in five years. It agreed to buyMicros Systems, a maker of software for restaurants and hospitality providers, for $5.3 billion in cash.

Under the terms of the deal, Oracle will pay $68 a share. That is approximately 18 percent above where Micros Systems’ shares were trading before Bloomberg News reported about a potential transaction last week.

Google Announces Sub- $100 Smartphone

A low-cost smartphone designed by Google will go on sale in India this fall before debuting in other emerging economies, the company announced today.

The phones will be branded “Android One,” after the company’s mobile operating system Android, and will cost less than $100. They are part of a new effort by Google to get devices based on its software into the hands of people who currently lack access to the Internet.

Already, one billion people use phones running Google’s Android software, said Sundar Pichai, leader of Google’s Android division, at the company’s I/O conference in San Francisco today. “Our goal is to reach the next five billion people in the world,” he said.

Why Apple Employees Never Wanted To Have Lunch With Steve Jobs

Former Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is known for instilling Apple's ridiculously high standards when it comes to product design and development.

A large part of meeting those standards involved motivating employees to work hard and be prepared at all times - values that Jobs took very seriously, according to a former employee.

David Black worked at Apple for nearly 12 years in the early 2000s before he left to work on his own startup.

Yahoo in race to buy YouTube content provider Fullscreen

Internet giant Yahoo has put in a bid of around $250 million to buy Fullscreen, a company which creates content for YouTube channels, Britain's Sky News reported on Thursday.

Yahoo is looking to expand its reach to young consumers through the acquisition of the company, which generates more than 3 billion monthly views on Google's video streaming service.

Microsoft may offer Windows 9 for free

Rumor has it that Microsoft will not only release a second update to Windows 8.1 later this year, but will also offer the next iteration, Windows 9, for free (or at a substantial discount).

That's according to a blog post by Russian hacker group WZOR, which reckons that those who have already purchased Windows 8.2 (or Windows 8.1 Update 2) could be in for a treat, but the decision hasn't yet been finalized at Microsoft HQ.

There's also talk of being able to disable Metro (or Modern UI) 2.0 on Windows 9 Enterprise version, a move that may well have been prompted by business users.

5 non tech companies in race to become digital

Some of the well known organizations in the world are weaving digital technologies throughout their operations to drive business and industry disruptions to their advantage. These organizations understand that while it is still early days, there are many significant opportunities to seize. They are beginning to leverage their vast resources and capital not only to react to technology disruption but also to embrace it.

Below are the five non tech companies who are taking digitization to the next level -

Twitter Is Testing A New Feature Called 'Retweet With Comment'

Twitter is experimenting with a new feature that would let you more easily comment on other tweets, according toSarah Perez at TechCrunch.

The "Retweet with comment" feature lets you showcase the original tweet in a Twitter Card, leaving you with a full 140 characters to respond. As of now, your only options for responding to another tweet are to reply, leaving out any reference to the original tweet, or quote the tweet, which takes up a lot of your 140 characters.

The "Retweet with comment" would probably replace the "Quote the tweet" option, which simply lets you add your two cents to the original tweet.

Tech that doesn't let you forget passwords

LONDON: Simple passwords are easy to remember but easy to crack; complex passwords are hard to crack but hard to remember. So what if you can have an authentication system that others cannot crack and you do not forget?

That can be a possibility as researchers have claimed that "Facelock", a newly proposed alternative based on the psychology of face recognition, could put an end to forgotten passwords and protect users from prying eyes.

Narendra Modi overtakes White House on Twitter

NEW DELHI: Prime minister Narendra Modi has overtaken the White House in number of followers on Twitter, according to data by Twitter-tracking website TwitterCounter.

The data shows that Modi currently has 4,981,574 followers, pulling in ahead of White House's 4,979,707 followers.

On Facebook, Modi's official page has over 18 million fans.

Modi is now the fourth most followed world leader on Twitter; in May this year, he was at the sixth position.

The list of most followed people on Twitter is headed by US president Barack Obama, who has 43 million followers. Pope Francis, who maintains nine Twitter accounts for each language, has a total of 14 million followers. Indonesia's president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, comes third with 5 million followers.

Hackers attack genealogy website Ancestry.com's servers

Hackers attack genealogy website

Ancestry.com's servers

SALT LAKE CITY: The genealogy website Ancestry.com said its websites were recovering on Wednesday after hackers temporarily shut them down this week in a distributed denial of service attack, but it said no consumer data was compromised.

The Provo, Utah-based company said Ancestry.com and its sister site, Findagrave.com, were targeted on Monday in the attack that flooded servers with traffic and caused them to crash.

In a post on Ancestry's Facebook page on Wednesday, the company said some features had been disabled as a precaution and asked users for patience while the service was completely restored.

Google Play security flaw discovered by researchers

WASHINGTON: Researchers have discovered a crucial security problem in Google Play, the marketplace where millions of Android users get their apps.

Jason Nieh, professor of computer science at Columbia Engineering, said Google Play has more than one million apps and over 50 billion app downloads, but no one reviews what gets put into Google Play anyone can get a $25 account and upload whatever they want. Very little is known about what's there at an aggregate level.

More than 3,00,000 servers still exposed to 'Heartbleed virus': Report

Fully two months after the Heartbleed virus was discovered, up to 300,000 Internet servers are still vulnerable to the OpenSSL attack. The problem is so bad “indicates people have stopped even trying to patch,” Rob Graham, a spokesperson with Errata Security, recently said in a report.

At the heart of the vulnerability is OpenSSL, a widely-adopted security software application used to secure online banking, credit card payments, and other sensitive activities and could have been used in as many as 500,000 websites around the world. ValueWalk reported in April a patch to the vulnerability has since been found and applied to most servers, yet those servers that have been effected may have no way of knowing as the virus leaves no trace of its presence. Those patches are now in question with today’s report.

The dangers of Heartbleed virus

Flipkart to launch DigiFlip tablet on June 26

NEW DELHI: Homegrown online marketplace Flipkart is all set to launch tablet with its own label on June 26.

The Bangalore-based firm, which sells its own brand of electronic and computer accessories like headphones, speakers and pen drives under the DigiFlip range, is expected to launch the tablet under the same label.

While the specification details of Flipkart's device still remain under the wraps, the company is hosting a blogger event on June 26 and has sent out a cryptic invite in form of a jar of tablets.

Hackers steal Dominos Pizza customer data in Europe

BOSTON: Hackers have stolendata on more than 600,000 Dominos Pizza Inc customers in Belgium and France, the pizza delivery company said, and an anonymous Twitter user threatened to publish the data unless the company pays a cash ransom.

Customer names, delivery addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and passwords were taken from a server used in an online ordering system that the company is in the process of replacing, Dominos spokesman Chris Brandon said.

Narendra Modi's pet project GIFT likely to create

10 lakh jobs

GIFT city is a pet project of Narendra Modi. He was monitoring it personally when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) has the potential to generate over 10 lakh jobs by 2022, an official said.

GIFT city, which is being developed by the Gujarat government, aspires to cater to India's large financial services potential by offering global firms a world-class infrastructure and facilities.

NASA To Launch Experiments of 11-year-old Indian Student In Space

An 11-year-old Indian student from the UAE scaled new heights in the world of science. Prerna Pai has got her two experiments approved by the US space agency NASA. The experiments will be launched into space under the space agency's programme for budding young scientists.

Two experiments of the seventh grader at Sharjah's Delhi Private School (DPS) are among the 100 selected experiments that will be fired into space by NASA on June 26, said a media report.

See The Hidden Meanings Inside 17 Tech

Company Logos

Everyone recognizes Amazon's famous logo. But did you know there are three different symbolic messages tucked within it?

We picked 17 tech company logos that have hidden, subtle, or otherwise clever messages inside their famous brand marques. They include a Facebook logo that secretly indicates another company it hoped to kill, a message you won't get unless you understand Morse, and an actual cryptogram.

In Sony's Vaio logo, the letters V and A represent an analog waveform and the I and O represent a binary code.

Image credit: Sony

Facebook Places was Facebook's now defunct response to the check-in app Foursquare. Note that the red arrow is pointing at a number four ... an indicator of its intended target.

See The Hidden Meanings Inside 17 Tech Company Logos

Image credit: Facebook

We love the Skitch logo because it looks like the feathers on an arrow, but those fletchings double as an S and its reflection.

Image credit: Skitch

Cisco's logo represents a digital signal that happens to take the form of the Golden Gate bridge, which is in San Francisco, the city after which the company is named.

Image credit: Cisco

You've probably noticed that Amazon's logo contains a yellow arrow that doubles as a smile, but did you also notice that it points from A to Z?

Image credit: Amazon

The squares in data analytics company Eighty20's logo represent binary code: The top line, 1010000, represents 80 and 0010100 represents 20.

Image credit: Eighty20

Sure, the logo for Twitter cofounder Biz Stone's Q&A app Jelly looks like a jellyfish. But it's also a brain.

Image credit: Jelly

Nintendo's Gamecube logo is famously clever: It's not just a cube within a cube, it also shows the letter G enclosing a C in negative space.

Image credit: Nintendo

The U.S. Cyber Command incorporated a 32-character code inside the gold inner rim of its seal. The link at the bottom of this image reveals its meaning.

Image credit: U.S. Cyber Command

See what the U.S. Cyber Command's code means

Document maker Quip's logo is obviously a Q, but it's also a pen poised to write on a piece of paper.

Image credit: Quip

Microsoft XNA is a developer tool for games. The logo contains a mashup of the Morse code for XNA."— · · —" means X, "— ·" means N, and "· —" means A.

Image credit: Microsoft XNA

The Ubuntu operating system logo actually represents three people holding hands and looking upward.

Image credit: Ubuntu

Google's "Picasa" name is a play on the concept of a home for your pictures. Casa is Spanish for house, and there is a house inside the colored camera shutter leaves in the logo.

Image credit: Google

OK, so Claimair's logo is obviously a paper airplane. But it's a brilliant visual pun: This company helps you with the paperwork when you have to bring a complaint against an airline.

Image credit: Claimair

Rdio's logo uses the negative space inside the "d" and the "o" to show a semibreve and a crotchet, two common musical note symbols.

Image credit: Rdio

Hotel Tonight's logo is either a bed or a lower-case "h," depending on how you look at it.

Image credit: Hotel Tonight

Just In Case's clever logo consists entirely of negative space representing a bundle of documents tied up in legal ribbon.

Image credit: Just In Case

Is Facebook the next Google?

Facebook is massive and it's growing fast. The social network has seen a steady rise in mobile use, with active users doubling from roughly 500 million in early 2012 to nearly a billion this year.

Key to the social network's growth is its piggy backing on the spike in mobile web access - as the world moves away from computers to phones, Facebook is taking advantage with the hope that it can emulate Google's success in mobile form.

This begs the question: Can anyone - including Google - stop the Facebook juggernaut from taking over the internet?

"The internet is very clearly going to become mobile-first, and Facebook is well placed to be a big part of this phase of the internet," says Mark Holden, Head of Futures at Arena.
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Why did Facebook buy WhatsApp? Currently, Facebook is in an aggressive acquisition stage as it seeks to build a constellation of must-have apps. It's clear that buying up popular apps such as WhatsApp is a key part in Facebook's plan to take control of the mobile web.

Jason Mander, Global Web Index's Head of Trends explained to TechRadar, "Looking at WhatsApp's user base shows why the acquisition was such a smart move. Fast-growth nations dominate the list of countries with the highest usage levels, with the figure hitting 50%+ of the online populations in Hong Kong, South Africa, Malaysia and Singapore."

The acquisition of WhatsApp has given Facebook two major advantages, believes Brian Taylor, Digital MD at Jaywing.

"It's removed a serious competitor threat," he explained. "Where Facebook owns 'capturing our moments', WhatsApp dominates one-on-one communication, particularly in emerging markets across Asia."

It's also about access to real-time data. "WhatsApp allows Facebook to see huge amounts of demographic and behavioural data as it happens," says Taylor.
"While monetisation is not stated as a priority at present, the move will undoubtedly unlock huge amounts of insight Facebook can offer to advertisers at a later stage."

How does advertising help Facebook? Facebook has a natural advantage over Google since it's based on real people, not the anonymous cookies Google relies on.

"Most advertising networks know very little about their users, making it very difficult for them to place effective ad units," notes Lorry Destainville, head of product development at Glow Digital Media (Glow) and a global provider of Facebook technology solutions.

"This is where Facebook excels - by using its knowledge of user identity, it has fundamentally redefined ad targeting, enabling relevant ads to be delivered to users as they scroll uninterrupted through their newsfeed."

Another thing that has to be factored in is that if you deal with Facebook, you deal with huge numbers.

"Facebook's a platform with over 1.28 billion highly engaged monthly users. This is too good an opportunity for retailers to miss out on," says Declan Kennedy, CEO of StitcherAds, whose SaaS platform allow retailers to target specific adverts at specific Facebook users at specific times, and even on particular devices.

But Google dominates mobile ad revenue However, the latest data from eMarketer shows that Google gets 47% of global mobile ad budgets, while Facebook has just 22%.

"Google has a much more diversified base of mobile revenue," says Aaron Goldman, CMO of Kenshoo, and author of 'Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google'.

"It makes money from mobile search ads, display ads, video ads, and in-app ads. It also owns Android and makes money through the Google Play store when people download apps.

"Google is far more dominant on mobile than Facebook. Comscore reports that across mobile web and apps, Google properties (27.7m) reach a third more monthly unique mobile users than Facebook do (18.3m). Facebook is rated third behind Yahoo - and is about equal to BBC sites and apps.

Should Facebook fear Google+? Probably not. "In the specific space Facebook occupies, there are few that can compete," says Vikas Shah, president, TiE Manchester and visiting professor of entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan.

"Users have a huge amount of familiarity and emotional equity in the platform, and to break this you cannot just create something which is a little bit better, such Google+. It has to be something which is a significant leap ahead - and at this stage in the game, something which is perhaps beyond current platform comprehension."

That's bad news for Google, whose position as the arbiter of the internet is coming under increasing pressure.

"Google has more than just a 'challenger' brand struggle on its hands - it also has a cultural and attitudinal shift to make to get the next wave of consumers to adopt and then maintain its platforms," says Taylor.

"Google continues to force the issue by baking in '+1' and social proof into its search results and YouTube-owned platform, which will gradually force brands into adopting and utilising its network as consumers follow."

Can Facebook break China? Despite being banned by the 'great firewall', Facebook can - and is - breaking China. "Each month, 16% of China's adult internet population say they use Facebook, with millions of Chinese networkers turning to Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and proxy servers in order to bypass the government's restrictions," says Mander.

China will be a key market to watch: Services like Tencent's WeChat already have huge followings in China and are now looking to expand elsewhere. Facebook's presence in this market will become crucial to it maintaining a global dominance - and its weapon is WhatsApp.

"Instagram and WhatsApp may act as trojan horses to help Facebook develop a bigger footprint in Asian territories that may be dominated by other social networking or mobile platforms," says Holden. "In fact, the potential to build a user base in China, even if a minority one, may be one of the most strategically valuable parts of the WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions."??

Facebook vs Google: Chalk and cheese? It's easy to get carried away with Facebook's rapid growth, but there are big differences with Google.
"They are being driven from two entirely different places at the moment," says Will McInnes, the CMO at social media analytics company Brandwatch.
"Google is primarily driven by data. It's like an incredibly intelligent piece of string that both guides and follows you throughout your day. Facebook is primarily driven by engagement, by providing spaces where we can spend time engaging with other people and content. Its places are much more defined - its website, its mobile app, Instagram."

What about Android? For all of Facebook's growth in mobile, Google is hardly a bystander.

"Facebook doesn't own the operating system layer of our smartphone experiences - Google, Apple and Microsoft play a far bigger role here," says Holden.

"The launch of Facebook Home, which intended to change this, hasn't been widely adopted and many Home users didn't react well to Facebook 'invading' the OS experience on their phone."

Now in over 50% of phones in the UK, Android is all about built-in Google services. "Google services are right at the very heart of how we use our mobiles, through search, Google Now, the app marketplace, native applications, mapping and, naturally, the requirement to link every Android device to a Google user ID," says Holden.?

How often do you go online on a smartphone or tablet without using Google search, Youtube, Gmail or Google Maps?

Is Facebook the last 'large amorphous social network'? Facebook's success could be its downfall. Over 11 million users have deserted Facebook, according to Marco Nardone, CEO of Unii.com, a new social networking platform for students launched in May last year.

"I see social media running the risk of becoming too diluted," he says.

"Despite Facebook's strong following, it is an impossible task to try and satisfy everyone's needs. There's a real thirst for something that promises to be much more targeted, much more niche and most importantly, more private.

"Features on Unii.com - which has attracted 165,000 active users, or 10% of students - include society management, opinion polling and photo and content sharing on a private platform, aren't on Facebook and never can be - they're just too specific to a core target market.

Could Facebook soon dominate search? "Facebook is certainly seeing increased mobile adoption and they have a robust understanding of people's interests, likes, and connections, so in theory, Facebook search has the potential to surface more relevant results than Google," says Anders Rosenquist, director of emerging media at creative agency Possible.

However, it's not about beating Google - and those that buy ads on both platforms would prefer that no-one 'wins'.

"It's easy to view Facebook and Google solely as competitors, but they can complement each other - for example, search campaigns tend to perform better when run in conjunction with Facebook campaigns," says Rosenquist.

The next billion? What Facebook's aggressive focus on mobile is really about is 'the next billion' - people in developing countries and fast-growing economies that are connecting to the internet for the first time. Crucially, they're doing that from a smartphone, not a PC.

"The next billion want what we want now," says McInnes. "The difference is they see the world more clearly and more practically - connectivity changes their lives more profoundly. And they live with more constraints, so they favour simplicity and in particular mobility.

"Google and Facebook have different strategies. Facebook prefers to partner with existing mobile networks and either buy-up or mimic the push-to-talk messaging that could dominate - especially in Asia.

"Google remains well placed to dominate mobile again in Africa, because Android as a free, open source OS is likely to be the default for many new smartphone users in Africa, who make their first internet connections via a smartphones, not desktops," says Holden.

With Facebook betting on virtual reality with Oculus Rift and Google dead-set on the internet of things through Waze and Nest, it's what comes after the smartphone that could decide this battle.