BlackBerry will pay you to dump your iPhone for a Passport

By Todd Wasserman

Here's a holiday deal for you: If you trade in your iPhone 6 for a BlackBerry Passport, the company will basically pay you $50.

Starting Dec. 1, BlackBerry will pay customers up to $400 to trade in their iPhones including the 4S, 5, 5C, 5S and 6 models. On top of that, BlackBerry will give an additional $150 (or $200 in Canadian dollars).

In addition, BlackBerry is offering $100 off the purchase of a black $599 BlackBerry Passport. (The markdown doesn't apply to Passports in other colors.) With the discount and the maximum trade-in value for an iPhone, you get $50 along with your new BlackBerry Passport.

In addition, a BlackBerry Z30 goes for $225 on the site, a markdown from the $499 suggested retail price.

The deal is the first of its kind for the holidays, says BlackBerry rep Lisette Kwong.

BlackBerry introduced the Passport in September. Sporting a square display and a width of 3.6 inches, Mashable Tech Editor Pete Pachal called the device "very strange" but also powerful.

After dumping PC business, Sony plans to kill TV and mobile phone line-ups

By Tech 2

Japan’s loss-making Sony plans to slash its TV and mobile phone product line-ups to cut costs, counting on multi-billion dollar revenue surges for its buoyant PlayStation 4 and image sensor businesses over the next three years.

Having lost ground to nimbler rivals like Apple and Samsung in consumer electronics, Sony said on Tuesday its goal for TV and smartphones is to turn a profit, even if sales slide as much as 30 percent.

“We’re not aiming for size or market share but better profits,” Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s newly appointed chief of its mobile division told an investors’ conference. A poor showing by its Xperia smartphones has weighed heavily on recent earnings and Sony said more detail on plans for the unit will be unveiled before end-March.

With cost cuts on the way in some divisions, Sony is also not planning to renew its FIFA soccer sponsorship contract next year, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Under its new three-year electronics business plan, Sony said it was aiming to boost sales for its videogame division by a quarter to as much as 1.6 trillion yen ($13.6 billion). It said that will be helped by personalized TV, video and music distribution services that should lift revenue per paying user.

At its devices division, which houses its image sensor business, Sony said sales could increase 70 percent to as much as 1.5 trillion yen. Sony’s sensor sales are already robust, with Apple using them in its iPhones while Chinese handset manufacturers are increasingly adopting them.

In a similar event last week for its entertainment units, the conglomerate said it was aiming to lift its movie and TV programming revenues by a third over the next three years.

Shares in Sony finished 6 percent higher on hopes that the new measures show a greater sense of restructuring urgency, while the Nikkei 225 index rose 0.3 percent.

“There’s a lot of expectation for Sony now, but nothing is sure until there are results,” said Ichiyoshi Asset Management chief fund manager Akino Mitsushige. “Getting out of the mobile market is an option, but they can’t do that now, so they will need to make some fundamental changes.”

Sony Pictures Network Reportedly Hit by Hackers

By Agence France-Presse

Sony Pictures' computer network has reportedly come under cyber-attack, with hackers threatening to release key information from the Japanese group's entertainment division.

Sony did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. But the news site The Next Web reported that all Sony employees at the Los Angeles unit were ordered home and to stay off the company network.

A source within Sony told the news site that "a single server was compromised and the attack was spread from there."

An image posted on the Reddit social network from an individual claiming to be a former Sony employee showed a page with the words "Hacked by #GOP." It was unclear what GOP stands for, but some reports said the hacker group is called Guardians of Peace.

The posted image said unspecified demands must be met by Sony or important files would be released.

The website Geek.com said the hackers leaked a large file containing with spreadsheets and what appear to be passwords.

"We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning," the message posted on Reddit said.

"We continue till our request be met... If you don't obey us, we'll release the data shown to the world."

The Sony Pictures website appeared to be functioning normally Tuesday.

The Hollywood Reporter said it had confirmed the breach, but said the aims of the hackers were unclear.

A Sony statement to the entertainment publication said: "Sony Pictures Entertainment experienced a system disruption, which we are working diligently to resolve."

Mobile Subscription Near Billion Mark

By The Nigerian Observer

LAGOS – Ericsson, an Information Technology software and infrastructure company in Africa, says that Africa has topped 880 million in mobile subscriptions for the third quarter of 2014.

This was disclosed in Ericsson’s Mobility Report, which was launched recently and made available to newsmen in Lagos.

The Ericsson Mobility Report is a comprehensive update on mobile trends leveraging big data from live networks worldwide.
The report quoted Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson’s President & Regional Head, Sub-Saharan Africa as saying that the increase in mobile subscriptions was due to increased availability of low-cost smart phones in the region.

Jejdling said that these low-cost smart phones had led to a rapid increase in smart phone subscriptions in the region.

“ The increased availability of low-cost smart phones in Sub-Saharan Africa will lead to a rapid increase in smart phone subscriptions in the region, “ he said.

He said that the report revealed that proliferation of mobile technology continued at a rapid pace and would see 90 percent of the world’s population over six-year-old having a mobile phone by 2020.

The Ericsson president said that despite the increased rate of sales, there was still room for growth in the sector as many users had yet to make the switch to the more feature-rich, internet-friendly option.

The report predicted a strong uptake in the coming years as the number rises from 2.7 billion smart phone subscriptions today to the forecasted 6.1 billion in 2020.

It also said that video was the largest and fastest growing segment of mobile data traffic in 4G-dominated networks, which currently constituted 45 percent to 55 percent of mobile traffic.

In terms of future outlook, the report estimated that mobile video traffic would increase tenfold by 2020, and ultimately constitute around 55 percent of all mobile data traffic in the year.

“Video is increasingly appearing as part of other online applications such as news and adverts, and on social media platforms and the devices used are also evolving.

“ Many have larger screens, enabling higher picture quality for streamed video, which results in video being consumed on all types of devices and in higher quantities both at home and on the move,“ the report said.

Google Glass commercial launch postponed to 2015

by: John W Arthur

Google Glass is one of the most anticipated technologies in the market, but it is falling off support in the current times. People’s losing interest in the Google Glass force the company to delay the commercial launch of the device for 2015.

Google Glass is a smart-wear that has been announced by Google X division and it delivers information through the small glass in front of the right eye. The Google Glass comes with RAM of 2GB and it has an internal on-board storage of 16GB that allows the users to store appropriate data in the device.

The device powered with Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 Dual core processor with 2100 mAh battery and has various sensors such as gyroscope, proximity, magnetometer and other necessary sensors. In order to control the Google glass, a small touch pad as well as voice commands is provided by the Google. It also comes with 5 MP camera and it records video at 720p resolution.

Chris O’Neill, Glass Head of Business Operations, said to Reuters,

“We are completely energized and as energized as ever about the opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent. We are as committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to take time and we are not going to launch this product until it’s absolutely ready.”

In the Google X division, Google Glass was one of the first products in the range. The other development projects that come under the Google X division also include a self driving car of the company. Although the response for Google Glass has been low in the market, the head of the Google X division, Chris O’Neill is still optimistic about the product and believes that fans would appreciate it once launched.

It can be bought at the price of $1500 but the market launch of the device has been pushed back further. There is a great doubt looming in the company’s mind about the potential demand of the device and interest of the fans and hence, the launch date has been pushed further.

According to a latest survey among the app developers, it has been found out that they have lost interest in the development process of the device since it carries too many shortcomings and moreover, people have a little interest in it. Tom Frencel, the CEO of Little Guy Games group stated, “If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There’s no market at this point.”

Google Glass believers losing faith

ALEXEI ORESKOVIC, SARAH MCBRIDE AND MALATHI NAYAK

After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.

After two years of popping up at high-profile events sporting Google Glass, the gadget that transforms eyeglasses into spy-movie worthy technology, Google co-founder Sergey Brin sauntered bare-faced into a Silicon Valley red-carpet event on Sunday.

He'd left his pair in the car, Brin told a reporter. The Googler, who heads up the top-secret lab which developed Glass, has hardly given up on the product - he recently wore his pair to the beach.

But Brin's timing is not propitious, coming as many developers and early Glass users are losing interest in the much-hyped, US$1500 test version of the product: a camera, processor and stamp-sized computer screen mounted to the edge of eyeglass frames. Google itself has pushed back the Glass roll out to the mass market.

Google CEO and co-founder Sergey Brin models a Glass prototype at Google I/O 2012.

While Glass may find some specialised, even lucrative, uses in the workplace, its prospects of becoming a consumer hit in the near future are slim, many developers say.

Of 16 Glass app makers contacted by Reuters, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects.

Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps on the official web site include Facebook and OpenTable, although one major player recently defected: Twitter.

Sergey Brin sporting Google Glass at during New York Fashion Week in 2013.

"If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, the Chief Executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook Inc-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift.

Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.

And a Glass funding consortium created by Google Ventures and two of Silicon Valley's biggest venture capitalists, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, quietly deleted its website, routing users to the main Glass site.

Google insists it is committed to Glass, with hundreds of engineers and executives working on it, as well as new fashionista boss Ivy Ross, a former Calvin Klein executive. Tens of thousands use Glass in the pilot consumer program.

"We are completely energised and as energised as ever about the opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent," said Glass Head of Business Operations Chris O'Neill.

Glass was the first project to emerge from Google's X division, the secretive group tasked with developing "moonshot" products such as self-driving cars. Glass and wearable devices overall amount to a new technology, as smartphones once were, that will likely take time to evolve into a product that clicks with consumers.

"We are as committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to take time and we are not going to launch this product until it's absolutely ready," O'Neill said.

Brin had predicted a launch this year, but 2015 is now the most likely date, a person familiar with the matter said.

GLASS SELLING... ON eBAY

After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.

Google dubbed the first set of several thousand Glass users as "Explorers". But as the Explorers hit the streets, they drew stares and jokes. Some people viewed the device, capable of surreptitious video recording, as an obnoxious privacy intrusion, deriding the once-proud Explorers as "Glassholes".

"It looks super nerdy," said Shvetank Shah, a Washington, DC-based consultant, whose Google Glass now gathers dust in a drawer. "I'm a card carrying nerd, but this was one card too many."

Glass now sells on eBay for as little as half list price.

Some developers recently have felt unsupported by investors and, at times, Google itself.

The Glass Collective, the funding consortium co-run by Google Ventures, invested in only three or four small start-ups by the beginning of this year, a person familiar with the statistics said.

A Google Ventures spokeswoman declined to comment on the number of investments and said the Web site was closed for simplicity. "We just found it's easier for entrepreneurs to come to us directly," she said.

The lack of a launch date has given some developers the impression that Google still treats Glass as an experiment.

"It's not a big enough platform to play on seriously," said Matthew Milan, founder of Toronto-based software firm Normative Design, which put on hold a Glass app for logging exercise and biking.

Mobile game company Glu Mobile, known for its popular Kim Kardashian: Hollywood title, was one of the first to launch a game on Glass. Spellista, a puzzler released a year ago, is still available, but Glu has discontinued work on it, a spokesman for the company said.

Another developer, Sean McCracken, won US$10,000 in a contest last year for creating an aliens-themed video game for Glass, Psyclops, but Google never put it on the official hub for Glass apps, making it tougher to find. He has quit working on updates.

Still, there are some enthusiastic developers. Cycling and running app Strava finds Glass well-suited for its users, who want real-time data on their workouts, said David Lorsch, vice president of business development. And entrepreneur Jake Steinerman said it is ideal for his company, DriveSafe, which detects if people are falling asleep at the wheel.

PIVOTING AWAY

In April, Google launched the Glass at Work program to help make the device useful for specific industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing. So far the effort has resulted in apps that are being tested or used at companies such as Boeing and Yum Brands' Taco Bell.

Google is selling Glass in bulk to some businesses, offering two-for-one discounts.

CrowdOptic, which uses Glass as portable computers for surgeons and other people out of offices, is currently in use at 19 US hospitals and expects that to grow to 100 hospitals early next year, said Chief Executive Jon Fisher.

Alex Foster began See Through, a Glass advertising analytics firm for business, after a venture firm earlier this year withdrew its offer to back his consumer-oriented Glass fitness company when it became clear no big consumer Glass release was imminent.

"It was devastating," he said. "All of the consumer glass startups are either completely dead or have pivoted," to enterprise products or rival wearables.

Samsung Hunts Next Hit With Internet Push as Phones Fade

By Jungah Lee 

Yoon C. Lee, a Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) executive, is giving a tour of his U.S. home in Oakland. He shows off his living room and foyer, then takes a look outside to check the garden. He considers turning on the sprinkler system before deciding the plants have enough water.

The thing is, he’s not actually in California. He’s 8,000 miles away with a reporter in a Seoulconference room. Lee, a tall, 49-year-old, is at a huge table fiddling with a Galaxy S5 phone that’s streaming live video from the U.S.

This is Samsung’s next big bet as it works to build a future beyond mobile phones, where earnings are tumbling. Lee and his colleagues are trying to create another hit from what’s known as the Internet of things, technology that stitches together phones, cameras, sprinklers and roads. If they succeed, the effort could propel sales of the company’s electronics, appliances and chips for a generation; if they fail, the troubles will likely deepen.

“Imagine if all the dumb things around you can be connected,” said Lee. “For Samsung, this is a big new opportunity, a huge paradigm shift. It will benefit us across all businesses.”

Samsung’s Internet push comes just as Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. and dozens of others are sizing up the same opportunity. Tech’s giants are all vying for leadership and collaborating where necessary. The market for the Internet of things is projected to hit $7.1 trillion by 2020, according to the research firm IDC.Photographer: Woohae Cho/Bloomberg

In a sign of how seriously Samsung is taking the effort, the company is transferring about 500 engineers from its mobile-phone division and allocating them largely to the Internet initiative, according to people familiar with the matter. The shift also reflects recognition that the Suwon, South Korea-based company needs another hit after smartphones, they said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters.

“This is a must-have market for Samsung,” said Neil Mawston, executive director of the research firm Strategy Analytics. “The Internet of things will be too big to ignore.”

The mobile-phone unit is faltering as Apple offers bigger screen iPhones similar to Samsung’s marquee Galaxy range and Chinese newcomer Xiaomi sells stylish phones at low prices. In the most recent quarter, Samsung’s mobile profit tumbled 74 percent, dragging net income down by 49 percent from a year earlier.

Shares of Samsung rose 1.4 percent to 1,211,000 won as of 12:24 p.m. in Seoul. The stock has dropped 12 percent this year compared with a 3.4 percent decline in the benchmark Kospi index.Photographer: Woohae Cho/Bloomberg

An employee demonstrates using the air conditioner control function of the Samsung...Read More

Samsung’s Scale

The Internet of things represents the third revolution ininformation technology, after the PC and the Internet, Michael Porter and James E. Heppelman wrote in this month’s edition of the Harvard Business Review. Its implications go beyond the increasing number of smart, connected products in the world and are much more than simply a way to transmit information, they wrote.

With more everyday things connected to the Internet, products will have expanded capabilities and the data they generate may change how companies compete and the boundaries of competition, Porter and Heppelman said.

The Internet push is one of the first major initiatives under Lee Jae Yong, who has taken more of a leadership role since his father, Chairman Lee Kun Hee, was hospitalized in May. The heir apparent, 46, has to calm investor concerns over the business outlook and his leadership skills.

Though Samsung Electronics is best known for its mobile phones, the Suwon, South Korea-based company makes everything from televisions and computers to washers, dryers and ultrasound machines. It’s part of Samsung Group, South Korea’s biggest conglomerate, that sells insurance, builds ships, makes howitzers and operates a theme park too.

Software Weakness

Samsung Electronics’ latest push is designed to capitalize on its scope and strengths. Software engineers from the mobile unit are able to work directly with the development teams for TVs, vacuum cleaners and other appliances.

“Samsung, Apple and Google are all envisioning a world where things such as mobile devices and household goods surrounding us will speak to each other,” said Ko Seung Hee, a Seoul-based analyst at SK Securities Co. “Unlike the others, Samsung can offer a complete line-up of devices and appliances and that’s Samsung’s biggest strength.”

Samsung’s weakness has been software, which is important because it binds together the Internet of things. Google’s Android operating system, given away to phonemakers including Samsung, Xiaomi and Lenovo Group Ltd., is the most widely used on mobile devices. Apple’s operating system, which it doesn’t share, has most of the rest of the mobile market.

Tizen Development

Samsung has been working with Intel Corp. (INTC) to develop its own operating system, Tizen, though the effort has gained little traction. The Korean company is using Tizen in its smartwatches and cameras as it seeks to reduce its reliance on Google.

“Samsung could divorce Google at some point, but considering their own respective interests, they need to sustain the marriage for a while,” said Claire Kim, a Seoul-based analyst at Daishin Securities Co.

Samsung has also joined Thread Group, led by Google’s Nest Labs, which builds new home automation standards. It also signed a global patent-licensing agreement in February with Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), which holds one of the biggest pools of patents in connected devices, to share technologies over the next 10 years.

Samsung has no illusions about the challenges ahead. Rivals have tried cracking the market for the Internet of things for more than a decade.

Allocating Capital

The Korean company also has an advantage that may help it avoid getting dragged down by falling mobile profits. It’s always been run like an investment company, allocating capital to promising ventures so it can build replacement new businesses for the old ones. It’s managed business cycles for eight decades, picking out the next opportunity as existing businesses fade. Now it sees its mobile-phone fortunes waning and is shifting to the Internet of things.

Acquisitions, new plants and a push to integrate manufacturing are the core of the plan. In August, the company bought SmartThings, a startup that makes mobile applications to remotely control household devices. In October, it also announced plans for a $15 billion chip plant in South Koreato make more advanced chips for wearable and connected devices.

Innovation Museum

To demonstrate the Internet of things, the company is using its Samsung Innovation Museum, a glass-walled building across from its headquarters, about 30 miles south of Seoul. The five-story, 11,000 square-meter structure looks a bit like New York’s Guggenheim museum, painted almost entirely in white with words carved into the walls: ‘smart living’ and ‘inspiring others.’

In an open space on the second floor, booths stand side by side. Each is decorated with different interiors to show off connected life in hotels, planes, shopping malls or living rooms.

In the hotel booth, you can check in by pressing a key-patterned button on an Android smartphone without having to wait in line. Upon entering the room, the window blinds automatically roll up and the television turns on.

In the booth for home technology, lights, appliances and a robot vacuum cleaner are all connected online to mobile phone app. The idea is you can flick on the lights, warm the oven or even clean your living room from your phone before you come home. Samsung has started offering a rudimentary version of the service in Korea and will expand it globally.

“Our first mission is to bring your home to your connected life,” said Lee at Samsung. “At least, you will never have to drive back home for two hours wondering if you have forgotten to lock your door or turning off your gas stove.”

The Web Is Dying; Apps Are Killing It

By CHRISTOPHER MIMS

Tech’s Open Range Is Losing Out to Walled Gardens

The Web—that thin veneer of human-readable design on top of the machine babble that constitutes the Internet—is dying. And the way it’s dying has farther-reaching implications than almost anything else in technology today.

Think about your mobile phone. All those little chiclets on your screen are apps, not websites, and they work in ways that are fundamentally different from the way the Web does.

Mountains of data tell us that, in aggregate, we are spending time in apps that we once spent surfing the Web. We’re in love with apps, and they’ve taken over. On phones, 86% of our time is spent in apps, and just 14% is spent on the Web, according to mobile-analytics company Flurry.

This might seem like a trivial change. In the old days, we printed out directions from the website MapQuest that were often wrong or confusing. Today we call up Waze on our phones and are routed around traffic in real time. For those who remember the old way, this is a miracle.

Everything about apps feels like a win for users—they are faster and easier to use than what came before. But underneath all that convenience is something sinister: the end of the very openness that allowed Internet companies to grow into some of the most powerful or important companies of the 21st century.

Take that most essential of activities for e-commerce: accepting credit cards. WhenAmazon.com made its debut on the Web, it had to pay a few percentage points in transaction fees. But Apple takes 30% of every transaction conducted within an app sold through its app store, and “very few businesses in the world can withstand that haircut,” says Chris Dixon, a venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz.

App stores, which are shackled to particular operating systems and devices, are walled gardens where Apple, Google , Microsoft and Amazon get to set the rules. For a while, that meant Apple banned Bitcoin, an alternative currency that many technologists believe is the most revolutionary development on the Internet since the hyperlink. Apple regularly bans apps that offend its politics, taste, or compete with its own software and services.

But the problem with apps runs much deeper than the ways they can be controlled by centralized gatekeepers. The Web was invented by academics whose goal was sharing information. Tim Berners-Lee was just trying to make it easy for scientists to publish data they were putting together during construction of CERN, the world’s biggest particle accelerator.

No one involved knew they were giving birth to the biggest creator and destroyer of wealth anyone had ever seen. So, unlike with app stores, there was no drive to control the early Web. Standards bodies arose—like the United Nations, but for programming languages. Companies that would have liked to wipe each other off the map were forced, by the very nature of the Web, to come together and agree on revisions to the common language for Web pages.

The result: Anyone could put up a Web page or launch a new service, and anyone could access it. Google was born in a garage. Facebook was born in Mark Zuckerberg ’s dorm room.

But app stores don’t work like that. The lists of most-downloaded apps now drive consumer adoption of those apps. Search on app stores is broken.

The Web is built of links, but apps don’t have a functional equivalent. Facebook and Google are trying to fix this by creating a standard called “deep linking,” but there are fundamental technical barriers to making apps behave like websites.

The Web was intended to expose information. It was so devoted to sharing above all else that it didn’t include any way to pay for things—something some of its early architects regret to this day, since it forced the Web to survive on advertising.

The Web wasn’t perfect, but it created a commons where people could exchange information and goods. It forced companies to build technology that was explicitly designed to be compatible with competitors’ technology. Microsoft’s Web browser had to faithfully render Apple’s website. If it didn’t, consumers would use another one, such as Firefox or Google’s Chrome, which has since taken over.

Today, as apps take over, the Web’s architects are abandoning it. Google’s newest experiment in email nirvana, called Inbox, is available for both Android and Apple’s iOS, but on the Web it doesn’t work in any browser except Chrome. The process of creating new Web standards has slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, companies with app stores are devoted to making those stores better than—and entirely incompatible with—app stores built by competitors.

“In a lot of tech processes, as things decline a little bit, the way the world reacts is that it tends to accelerate that decline,” says Mr. Dixon. “If you go to any Internet startup or large company, they have large teams focused on creating very high quality native apps, and they tend to de-prioritize the mobile Web by comparison.”

Many industry watchers think this is just fine. Ben Thompson, an independent tech and mobile analyst, told me he sees the dominance of apps as the “natural state” for software.

Ruefully, I have to agree. The history of computing is companies trying to use their market power to shut out rivals, even when it’s bad for innovation and the consumer.

That doesn’t mean the Web will disappear. Facebook and Google still rely on it to furnish a stream of content that can be accessed from within their apps. But even the Web of documents and news items could go away. Facebook has announced plans to host publishers’ work within Facebook itself, leaving the Web nothing but a curiosity, a relic haunted by hobbyists.

I think the Web was a historical accident, an anomalous instance of a powerful new technology going almost directly from a publicly funded research lab to the public. It caught existing juggernauts like Microsoft flat-footed, and it led to the kind of disruption today’s most powerful tech companies would prefer to avoid.

It isn’t that today’s kings of the app world want to quash innovation, per se. It is that in the transition to a world in which services are delivered through apps, rather than the Web, we are graduating to a system that makes innovation, serendipity and experimentation that much harder for those who build things that rely on the Internet. And today, that is pretty much everyone.

Facebook said to plan site to rival Microsoft Office

Laura Mandaro

SAN MATEO — Facebook is secretly working on a new company-focused website that's designed to compete with Microsoft Office, LinkedIn and offerings from Google, reported the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the matter.

The new product, dubbed Facebook at Work, would allow users to chat with their colleagues, connect with professional contacts and collaborate over documents, wrote the FT on its website late Sunday.

A spokesperson for Facebook (TICKER: FB) didn't immediately respond for a request for comment.

Though it would look a lot like the Facebook site used by more than 1 billion people, Facebook at Work would allow users to keep their personal profile separate from their work identity. Facebook staff, many of whom use the site in their daily work, have long kicked around the idea of spreading it to other companies, wrote the FT. The new site is now being tested with some companies.

A site that would allow users to chat in select groups and collaborate over shared projects would be a direct competitor to Microsoft (MSFT). Microsoft's Office 365 offering, which operates off the cloud, includes Yammer — an internal corporate chat service that it bought in 2012 — as well as OneDrive and SharePoint for document sharing. Google GOOG is also a fierce competitor in the shared documents space with Google Drive. LinkedIn's LNKD main selling point is its ability to connect users with future jobs, employees and clients. And several private companies also compete in this space, including cloud file-sharing site DropBox and corporate chat site Slack.

Facebook updated its privacy policy, but do consumers care? Jefferson Graham went to the "Let's Make a Deal," set to ask contestants, as they waited to get into the show.

Facebook is unlikely to charge for the service initially, reported the FT. It may try to appeal to companies that have tried to cut down on the time their employees spend on personal social media by an outright Facebook ban.

Amazon Moves to Extend Cloud-Computing Dominance

By QUENTIN HARDY

James Hamilton, a senior executive overseeing Amazon Web Services, at a company conference in Las Vegas last week. CreditAmazon Web Services

LAS VEGAS — Most people know about Amazon’s ambitions to sell you everything from books and movies and smartphones to power tools and auto parts.

Less understood outside the technology industry is just how aggressively the company is also trying to become an important technology provider to other organizations, its aspirations just as big as those of Microsoft, IBM and Google.

Amazon Web Services already provides so-called cloud computing services at low prices for customers including the Central Intelligence Agency and Netflix. At a conference here last week for the web-services unit, company officials explained that Amazon was now trying to get more tech dollars from business customers by also offering services and processes that make it a competitor to traditional suppliers of business technology like Oracle.

Offering more capabilities to customers is a big deal for Amazon. A report last month by the Synergy Research Group said Amazon’s web-services unit has about a 27 percent share of the worldwide market for cloud infrastructure services. Microsoft is second with about a 10 percent share.

But there are indications that a pricing war and more focus from competitors could dig into Amazon’s lead. There are even concerns that the unit’s revenue growth has stalled in recent quarters.

What makes Amazon unique in the fight to own the computing cloud is what it’s not — a traditional tech company with a long history of providing products and services to business customers. Finding a way to deliver services over the Internet that behave like databases and other traditional software products will be critical to keeping its lead because older tech companies like Microsoft are already capable of doing it.

Amazon Web Services is banking on help from its customers to make its ambitions work. “Ninety percent of our development is deep, sophisticated corporate users telling us what to build next,” said Adam Selipsky, the unit’s vice president for products.

On Wednesday, the unit announced that in 2014 it had released 442 new products for its global network of computers and software, a 60 percent rise from all of 2013. It later raised that number to 449, including faster ways to write and publish software.

The lower number “was so this morning,” said James Hamilton, the enthusiastic executive who oversees the development of A.W.S. “This is a different world,” said Mr. Hamilton, a veteran of decades in companies like IBM and Microsoft before he joined the unit in 2008. “The speed is unbelievably different. We don’t slow down as we get bigger.”

But the unit could face challenges in its efforts. It has already had to deal with embarrassing system failures and changed its policies to suit national governments. Moreover, its parent company, Amazon, has returned less in profits in its 17-year life as a public company than cloud competitors like Google and Microsoft earn in a single quarter. If Wall Street grows tired of Amazon’s continued losses, it could also pinch A.W.S.

Amazon is not the only big tech company trying to lure businesses to the cloud. Microsoft, Google and IBM are all trying to get business customers to rent their cloud services rather than buy software, servers and networking gear.

Just a few years ago, public clouds like Amazon’s were considered experimental turf for tech start-ups. Today, companies like Johnson & Johnson, Intuit and General Electric are among the unit’s customers. In the past year, A.W.S. says, the amount of data it stores has grown 137 percent. It sells twice as much of its basic computing as a year ago.

And analysts believe the pace is picking up across the handful of big tech companies providing cloud services. “Two years ago, public clouds were maybe 2 percent of all computing workloads,” said Lydia Leong, a senior analyst at Gartner. “Now they are more than 10 percent. By 2018, it will be more than 50 percent.”

In addition to parading mainstream companies across the stage at its conference, Amazon released a type of database aimed straight at the core business of Oracle, the world’s largest database company. Oracle declined to comment on Amazon Web Services.

Johnson & Johnson announced from the stage that it would install 25,000 cloud-connected A.W.S. computers that offer a range of standard software, like Microsoft’s Office suite.

Mr. Selipsky said J&J had helped Amazon shape its desktop product, which was initially announced a year ago. Although A.W.S. is known mostly for selling basic computing services, he said that future products would include sophisticated software around managing user behavior, software for compliance in regulated industries like finance and migration of existing software running on corporate computers to the cloud.

By running the customers’ software within their own data centers and listening closely to their needs, cloud companies learn more quickly about customer behavior, figuring out which incremental improvement they can immediately deploy across their networks. And then they can turn around and give those customers exactly what they want.

At least, that’s what the cloud tech companies like to argue.

“The cloud is cheaper, but that isn’t really what is driving companies into it,” said Greg De

Michillie, the director of Google’s cloud business for corporations. “They want to be more experimental, faster, data driven. This is part of a larger change inside companies.”

Facebook new ‘Data Use Policy’: 5 important things worth knowing

By Josh Durso

Facebook has taken a lot of criticism over the years for the privacy of their users on the site. It stemmed from users having a lot of information used that technically belonged to them – which they shared, and the way Facebook executed the notification of that collection. In simple terms, many of those individuals who felt Facebook went too far with their reach for information, or data collection, were even more outraged by the way Facebook explained themselves, or how frequently privacy policies were updated.

This week, Facebook took a step to quell some of the frustration from users in the privacy policy. In a policy that many felt was over-complicated and far longer than necessary, Facebook cut it down dramatically and restructured the entire interface of how users read the privacy policy. The company created a “Privacy Basics” page that explains the basic nuts and bolts of privacy on Facebook. It begins to define what privacy is, explains what information is being collected and used, and then who is using that information.

That being said, there are still a lot of questions, and at the end of the day – a few areas of focus that users should keep a close-eye on moving forward. Some of them are more basic, but others show just how far reaching Facebook truly is.

First off, remember – Facebook – much like real estate is focused on “location, location, location.” Recently, the social network began allowing businesses and companies to advertise depending on your location – instead of just targeting general ads at users based on things they do on their computer. That being said, Facebook made it clear in their old and new privacy policies that anything with a locating device inside of it – related to your computer, or mobile device – will be used to track your location. This includes the GPS on your smartphone, Bluetooth devices, and Wi-Fi signals.

Second, Facebook is collecting information from the other sites you visit as well. Essentially, any site that allows you to use Facebook – as a login method – is fair game. That means Facebook is collecting a lot of user information from third-party sites as well that aren’t affiliated with the company beyond login credentials. Don’t forget about Instagram, and the other apps that Facebook owns and operates, too.

Third, is related to ad targeting. Basically, Facebook can and will – unless you opt out – target ads based on your browser history, and will use what are called “cookies” to make that happen.

See Also: Facebook Messenger for iOS tracks more private data than you expect

Fourth, Facebook is monitoring and collecting everything. Messages, status updates, anything you create, share, comment, like, link, or otherwise while using the social network adds up to one thing: Information that Facebook has no shame about collecting and using for their own benefit.

See Also: Facebook simplifies Privacy Basics with skeptical elements

Lastly, is a new tool that Facebook has been working on for a while. The tool gives users the opportunity to buy things from other websites right on the site. Participants in this new shopping and buying system should keep in mind that their information is being held by the giant that is Facebook. That includes your credit card information and spending history.

Source: Facebook

Facebook: You post it, we can see it, and that's that

By Zach Miners

Facebook lets its users control whether other people can see the information they post, but when it comes to controlling what Facebook itself gets to see, privacy-conscious users are out of luck.

In fact, Facebook doesn't think it would make sense to let users do that.

“With most online services, there’s an understanding that when you use those services to share information, you’re also sharing information with the company providing the service,” said Matt Scutari, manager of privacy and public policy at Facebook.

“For users who are truly concerned with sharing their information with a particular platform, honestly, you might not want to share information with that platform,” he said, speaking during a conference on digital privacy in Palo Alto, California, on Friday.

“I don’t think there are many services out there who could claim they’re not using your information that you’re sharing with them for any purpose. They have to at least use that information to provide the service,” he added.

Scutari was responding to a question from the audience about what tools, if any, Facebook might provide to people who want to post and share information but keep it from Facebook itself.

Lately, the company has been trying to improve its controls for sharing among friends. In September it introduced a “privacy checkup” feature. And just this week it released arevamped privacy policy designed to be easier to use. The company also gives users information about how their data is used for advertising. But it has never offered users tools to limit what data Facebook can ingest when they share.

Data collection—what companies collect, and how it’s used—is an area of concern for Internet users in general, highlighted by some dramatic findings in a recent Pew survey.

Facebook does have a team of employees tasked with looking at privacy issues related to its products, features and tools. The team has a number of programs in place, including daily surveys of users and talks with people in other countries to get their views on privacy, Facebook said on Friday.

U.S. PLANS TO BUILD WORLD’S FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTERS WITH $425 MILLION

By WSKG

The U.S. Department of Energy will spend $425 million to research and construct supercomputers, such as NASA’s “Discover” machine seen here. Photo by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

The U.S. government wants to take back the crown for world’s fastest supercomputer, and they’re willing to spend the money to do it — twice.

The Department of Energy announced a $425 million budget Friday that will be allocated towardsresearch and construction of supercomputers. A $325 million deal with IBM and Nvidia will see the creation of two new supercomputers that would each claim the title of fastest in the world; with $100 million going towards the research into the future of supercomputer science.

The two supercomputers, “Sierra” and “Summit,” will be built to work at almost double and triple the speed, respectively, of China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer. Sierra, which will be used for nuclear weapons simulations, will clock in at 100 petaflops, while Summit, which will be stationed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee for civilian research, will perform at 150 petaflops. Tianhe-2, currently the world’ fastest, operates at 55 petaflops.

The rest of the budget will go towards research into “extreme scale supercomputing” technology, that aims to prepare for future supercomputer construction. The program, named FastForward2, looks to develop chips, memory and other technology that would allow the next generation of machines to operate at more than 20 to 40 times faster than today’s models.

“High-performance computing is an essential component of the science and technology portfolio required to maintain U.S. competitiveness and ensure our economic and national security,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said in a release. “DOE and its National Labs have always been at the forefront of HPC and we expect that critical supercomputing investments like CORAL and FastForward 2 will again lead to transformational advancements in basic science, national defense, environmental and energy research that rely on simulations of complex physical systems and analysis of massive amounts of data.”

The post U.S. plans to build world’s fastest supercomputers with $425 million appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Cellphone data may be feds' air raid targets

By USA Today

Using devices mounted on aircraft flying high overhead, the federal government is gathering data from the mobile phones of thousands of innocent Americans in “a high-tech hunt for criminal suspects,” according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The program, run by the Justice Department's U.S. Marshals Service since about 2007, operates Cessna aircraft equipped with devices that mimic the cellphone towers of large telecommunications firms and trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information, reported the newspaper, citing people familiar with the operations.

The program operates from at least five metropolitan-area airports, and the flying range of the planes covers most of the population. The airports were not identified in the Journal story.

The technology is aimed at locating cellphones linked to people under investigation by the government, including fugitives and drug dealers, but it collects information on cellphones belonging to individuals who are not criminal suspects, said people familiar with the program. The device determines which phones belong to suspects and “lets go” of the non-suspect phone.

Calling it “a dragnet surveillance program,” Christopher Soghoian, chief technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “It's inexcusable, and it's likely — to the extent judges are authorizing it — they have no idea of the scale of it.”

The technology used in the planes are 2-foot-square devices that can scoop the identifying information and general location from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight. The paper's sources wouldn't discuss the frequency or duration of the flights but said they occur on a regular basis.

A Justice Department official neither would confirm nor deny the existence of the program, saying that discussion of such matters would allow criminal suspects or foreign powers to determine America's surveillance capabilities. The official said Justice Department agencies comply with federal law, including by seeking court approval.

The program is similar to a National Security Agency program that collects millions of Americans' phone records, in that it scoops up large volumes of data to find a single person or a few people, the Journal reports. The government has justified the NSA phone records collection program as a minimally invasive way to hunt terrorists.

Some of the devices on the Cessnas are known to law enforcement officials as “dirtboxes” because of the initials of the Boeing Co. subsidiary that produces them — Digital Receiver Technology Inc.

Cellphones are programmed to connect automatically to the strongest cell tower signal. The device used by the Marshals Service falsely identifies itself as having the closest, strongest signal, thus forcing all phones that can detect its signal to send in their unique registration information.

Having encryption on a phone, such as that on Apple Inc.'s iPhone 6, does not defeat the process.

Phone companies are cut out in the search for suspects. Law enforcement has found that asking a company for cell tower information to help locate a suspect can be slow and inaccurate. This program allows the government to get that information.

People familiar with the program told the Journal that they do get court orders to search for phones, but it isn't clear whether those orders describe the methods used because the orders are sealed.