Diberdayakan oleh Blogger.

Popular Posts Today

China ramps up cybersecurity efforts, strives to become "Internet power"

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 28 Februari 2014 | 16.01

China is bolstering its efforts on cybersecurity with a new high-level committee that aims to turn the nation into an "Internet power," the country's official state media said Thursday.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is leading the new government body, which held its first meeting on Thursday. Xi was quoted as stating that cybersecurity and information technology had become a matter of national security.

"Without cybersecurity there is no national security, without information technology there is no modernization," Xi added.

Increasingly, China has found itself embroiled in cybersecurity issues. Over the years, the nation has fended off accusations that it carries out state-sponsored hacking attacks. Those allegations reached fever pitch last year when a U.S. security firm claimed it had documented evidence that China's military had spearheaded cyberattacks against the U.S.

The issue was complicated some months later by revelations from Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor, who claimed in press interviews that the U.S. had been hacking into institutions based in Hong Kong and mainland China.

Chinese officials have said the nation is a major victim of cyberattacks. Many of them come from the U.S., but some also originate from South Korea and Germany.

Besides cybersecurity, China's new committee will cover "online content management", the latest sign that the nation is not letting up on its strict censorship of the Internet.

Last November, the government indicated that China would step up regulation of domestic social networking sites, citing possible threats to the nation's stability.

Chinese officials have long been concerned with the way social networking sites can easily spread information, and incite criticism of the government. In response, authorities have launched campaigns cracking down on alleged rumors found on the sites, even jailing users in some case.

Over the long-term, China will need to innovate the way online information is disseminated to properly guide online discussion, Xi said according to official media. The committee will also be led by China's Premier Li Keqiang and propaganda chief Liu Yunshan.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Hulu sells Japan business to focus on US

Hulu has sold its Japanese business to broadcaster Nippon Television Network (Nippon TV) and will focus on its U.S. operations.

The deal is expected to be finalized in spring pending regulatory conditions, the two companies said.

The move marks Hulu's retreat from overseas operations and a refocus on its U.S. business. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"We reached a point in the growth of the business in Japan where we felt the best path forward is to sell the company—Nippon TV is the top broadcaster in Japan, so they are a logical strategic partner," Meredith Kendall, a spokeswoman for Hulu, wrote in an email.

Hulu in Japan launched in September 2011 as its first overseas expansion. The service streams TV shows, films and other content for ¥980 (about US$9.60) per month.

It has 50 content partners that offer more than 13,000 titles and is accessible on more than 90 million devices in the Japan market, not including PCs.

"We're looking forward to adding Nippon TV contents to our service," said a spokeswoman for Hulu's Japan service. "In addition, we are planning to add more Hollywood content and domestic content."

Tokyo-based Nippon TV is a major private broadcaster that marked 60 years on the air in 2013.

The deal is its first foray into the subscription video-on-demand business. The broadcaster will set up a 100 percent-owned subsidiary to operate the Hulu business, according to a Nippon TV spokesman.

"Hulu will be licensing our brand and technology and will continue to provide services to the Japan business—loyal fans of the service will enjoy the same seamless user experience and product innovation they have come to love," Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins wrote in a blog post.

"I'm confident that the Hulu business in Japan is in very good hands, and Nippon TV will take the service to new heights, with the added benefit of allowing us to focus on our growing business here in the U.S."

Hulu does not have any international plans to announce at this time, Kendall said.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

California court rules it's OK for drivers to check mobile maps

An appeals court in California ruled that it is legal for drivers to hold their phone to look at a map application while driving, though they are prohibited from "listening and talking" on the phone unless it is used in a hands-free mode.

Steven R. Spriggs held his mobile phone in his hand to use a mapping application to find his way around the congestion when stopped in heavy traffic. He was spotted holding his phone and pulled over by a California Highway Patrol officer, according to court records.

The official issued him a traffic citation for violating Vehicle Code section 23123 (a), which states that a "person shall not drive a motor vehicle while using a wireless telephone unless that telephone is specifically designed and configured to allow hands-free listening and talking, and is used in that manner while driving."

Spriggs contested the citation and at trial before a Fresno County Superior Court traffic commissioner, he was found guilty of violating the section and fined $165.

In an appeal of the conviction in the appellate division of the superior court, Spriggs argued that he did not violate the statute because he was not listening and talking on the phone by holding it in his hand.

The appellate division upheld his conviction, holding that the statute was not "designed to prohibit hands-on use of a wireless telephone for conversation only," but "outlawed all 'hands-on' use of a wireless telephone while driving."

The Court of Appeal of the State of California, Fifth Appellate District, ruled Thursday that based on the language of the statute and its legislative history and subsequent legislative enactments, Spriggs was right, and reversed his conviction.

"Had the Legislature intended to prohibit drivers from holding the telephone and using it for all purposes, it would not have limited the telephone's required design and configuration to 'hands-free listening and talking,' but would have used broader language, such as 'hands-free operation' or 'hands-free use,'" the court observed.

The court said that this intent of the statute was not surprising as most wireless telephones were only telephones, rather than electronic devices with multiple functions, when the law was enacted in 2006.

The government had argued that because under section 23123 (a) a driver may not use a cell phone unless it is used in a hands-free manner, the section is violated when a driver holds a phone and looks at a map application while driving. The statute would not be violated if the driver looked at a map application as long as the mobile phone was mounted and the application was activated using the phone's hands-free capability, it said.

The court said that subsequent enactments, including a 2012 amendment to a statute to prohibit text messaging while driving without the use of voice-activated, hands-free devices, has led it to conclude that section 23123 (a) does not prohibit all hand-held uses of a mobile phone.

The state's attorney general's office can appeal the ruling.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Server market revenue down 4.4 percent in Q4

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 27 Februari 2014 | 16.00

Even as server shipments went up, revenue in the market declined in last year's fourth quarter, as demand for higher-end systems remained weak, according to research firm IDC.

During the period, server revenue decreased by 4.4 percent to US$14.2 billion. This marked the fourth consecutive quarter the server market has shown a year-over-year decline.

Although server shipments increased 8.2 percent to 2.5 million units, the growth came from lower-end x86 "volume systems". In contrast, middle and high-end systems saw sharp drops in revenue.

Server demand, however, could pick up in the first quarter, when a refresh cycle is expected to begin, IDC said on Thursday. To tap the market, vendors will have to focus on building systems geared toward serving the mobile Internet, social networking and cloud computing, the research firm added.

In the fourth quarter, Hewlett-Packard held a statistical tie with IBM for the position of top server vendor by revenue. In server market revenue, HP had a 26.9 percent share, just a 0.1 percentage point ahead of IBM. HP had a 5.7 percent year-over-year growth, while IBM witnessed the biggest drop among the top vendors, down by 28.5 percent on diminishing demand across its server products.

But like in the previous quarter, the biggest growth came from the "ODM Direct" segment, a grouping of emerging server vendors. These original design manufacturers are made up of Taiwanese firms such as Compal, Inventec and Quanta Computer that are selling systems directly to major cloud providers such as Amazon and Google.

During the quarter, the ODM Direct segment grabbed a 6.4 percent share, with a 47.3 percent year-over-year growth. The market share was high enough to rank this segment in the fourth place, behind Dell which had a 14.5 percent share.

Growth in the ODM segment will help the server market recover and push it closer to making up for sales lost in high-end systems, IDC added.


16.00 | 0 komentar | Read More

Some users take a dim view of the web, survey finds

The information management system known as the web turns 25 this year. Its birthday, however, may not be celebrated by everyone.

Fifteen percent of Internet users said it has been bad for society, according to the Pew Research Center, in the first of several reports commissioned to look at the rise of digital technologies. Six percent of users said it was bad for them personally, based on data from telephone interviews with roughly 1,000 adults, according to findings released Thursday.

What's driving those icky feelings? The Washington, D.C.-based think tank says it did not follow up with respondents about their answers, but the research group has seen a number of issues over the years that tend to gnaw at people about online life, said Lee Rainie, director of the center's Internet and American Life Project.

Chief among them: An increasing digital divide between "haves" and "have-nots"; online bullying; using the web to communicate only with like-minded people; its ability to spread misinformation; the loss of privacy; and narcissism.

And, the loss of real human contact in favor of virtual interactions.

To be fair, 76 percent of respondents said the Internet was good for society. Ninety percent said it was good for them personally. And though it may be bad for some, that hasn't stopped the majority of people from logging in. Nearly 90 percent of American adults now use the Internet, Pew said, a new high and up from 66 percent in 2005, and a mere 14 percent in 1995.

The world wide web is thought to be conceived by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, who introduced the concept of a "distributed hypertext system" which could link files together in an expanding network. The web is different from the Internet, which is the underlying network or infrastructure that the web sits on top of.

Many of the activities the people report to Pew involve the web, the group said, even if respondents do not necessarily know that is the layer of the Internet they are using.

The Internet, and the Web built on top of it, has radically altered the way many people live their lives, partly by making information access and interpersonal connections easier. Perhaps irrevocably so.

But assessing the technology's "good-ness" or "bad-ness" is subjective, because different people use the Internet for different purposes, and they view the trade-offs differently.

It can help people become more productive, but the Internet can also be addictive, said Roger Kay, founder of Endpoint Technologies Associates, who studies market issues related to the Internet.

Kay compared the Internet to driving a car. It can be liberating, but also confining, he said, if people cannot pull themselves away, like being stuck in a car in traffic.

And it's a double-edged sword. Social media channels like Twitter have been credited for helping to support political activism during events like the Arab Spring protests, but Reddit also came under fire during last year's Boston Marathon bombing for spreading false information about suspects.

Despite concerns over the Internet's ability to bring out the worst in people, Pew found the online world to be more friendly than menacing. Seventy percent of Internet users said they had been treated kindly or generously by others online. And roughly two-thirds of people said online communications has strengthened their relationships with family and friends.

Though the way it is accessed will continually change, the Internet is likely here to stay. Just over half of Internet users said the Internet would be, at a minimum, very hard to give up, Pew found, compared with 38 percent in 2006. Respondents also said it would be harder to give up the Internet than to give up TV.


16.00 | 0 komentar | Read More

The 'Internet of things,' beyond the hype at Mobile World Congress

If you want to find out how the so-called Internet of things is shaking up the tech industry, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the place to be this week.

The phrase is becoming more than just hype. On display here at the show are a dizzying variety of networked wearables, car safety and infotainment systems, home monitoring technology and SIMs (subscriber identity modules) for all sorts of consumer and industrial appliances.

As businesses including telecom companies, car manufacturers, software-as-a-service vendors and networking equipment makers connect devices at an increasingly rapid pace, they are not only offering new services, but also disrupting their own industries.

Industry leaders speaking in panel sessions and keynotes at the show talked about the rate of change in breathless terms.

"There's no stopping it," said Joe Tucci, CEO of EMC. "The Internet of things is coming, and you better disrupt or prepare to be disrupted."

The term "Internet of things" emerged as a buzzword over the last year or so to describe the phenomenon of network-connected sensors incorporated into devices, such as thermostats, that in the past were standalone appliances.

"It's about connecting things together through sensors in a way that helps the consumers," said Cisco Systems' CEO John Chambers.

"Think about what you can do for the person watching TV at home when you can put sensors in the shoes of his favorite basketball team or in the basketball," Chambers said. Applications could include displaying analysis of patterns of play and ball movements, he noted.

Chambers even used a broader term, the "Internet of everything," including both smartphones and other mobile computing devices as well as Internet-connected appliances.

"When I came to Cisco there were about a thousand things connected to the Internet, now there are 10 billion; by the end of the decade there will be 500 billion," Chamber said.

Vendors need to make sure they are building products on a consistent underlying architecture, Chambers said. "The trick for winning in the home is to make things easy for the consumer to connect everything."

A similar scenario is true for business, Chambers said.

"When you can offer customers a consistent architecture, you reduce their capital expenditures for them," by simplifying operations and management of equipment infrastructure and related business processes, Chambers said.

There are incentives for vendors to do this.

"The financial rewards here get very large," Chambers said.

A wide range of industry insiders agree.

"Just about every business will become an IoT [Internet of things] business," said Jahangir Mohammed, CEO of Jasper Wireless. "The benefits are so profound that it is inevitable that this will happen."

By connecting devices over the Internet and wirelessly over mobile networks, companies can manage a wide range of new services for their customers, Mohammed said.

This is why Google announced in January that it would pay more than US$3 billion for Nest's smart thermostat and smoke alarm technology, Mohammed said.

"The thermostat is the product but the service is the core," Mohammed said.

Jasper offers cloud-based software and services to enable network operators deliver machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity and diagnostic and management applications to companies in a variety of vertical markets.

For example, its Connected Car Cloud, announced Tuesday at the show, is designed to let car makers offer a range of safety, security and infotainment systems. Jasper also announced a Global SIM (subscriber identity module), designed to allow international distribution, activation and management for any device into which the SIM is embedded.

A number of auto makers announced connectivity technology this week.

"Consumers expect to have the same connected experience with their cars that they have with the mobile phones," said Stephen Odell, president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Ford Motor.

Ford's new Focus, unveiled at the show Tuesday, has technology to help drivers park their cars. It also lets parents adjust various features when their children drive the car, for example, preventing the radio volume from being turned on full blast.

The car's MyKey system restricts the top speed and maximum volume of the radio. All this is being done through special sensors and the Sync 2 system being rolled out in the new models.

"Experts think that connectivity will be a key factor in assessing cars," Odell said. "We saw this coming and that's why Ford introduced the Sync systems in 2007."

Ford worked with companies including Microsoft and AT&T to deliver some of the automation and communications features in the Focus line.

As vendors jostle for position to take advantage of new opportunities, they will form partnerships, noted Bob Sell, chief of Accenture's Communications, Media & Technology group.

"New types of partnerships will arise, friends will become and enemies and enemies will become friends," Sell said, "We're going to have to be flexible in this period of transition."

Large carriers will have to work with younger, nimbler companies to bring new services to subscribers, said Timotheus Hotttges, CEO of Deutsche Telekom.

Operators are going to have build what you could call sockets, working with smaller, new companies that have new applications to let them plug into their architecture, to enable new types of application, Hotttges said.

Deutsche Telekom Tuesday said that through a deal with PayPal, it will let mobile users purchase goods and get billed on their regular mobile phone accounts.

A wide variety of other vendors here this week showed or announced services and products that fit the Internet of things concept. Here's just a few more:

—China's Huawei announced the TalkBand, priced at 99 (US$136). It offers up to seven hours of calling on one charge and a 1.4-inch flexible OLED display. It supports Android 2.3+ and iOS 5.0+ compatible devices and offers NFC syncing. It's also designed to track activity time and progress, including steps taken, miles covered and calories burned.

—French tablet maker Archos showed off its version of Bluetooth Low Energy, used in devices to monitor and control smart devices around the home. Its range of products shown at Mobile World Congress, including cameras, weather stations, movement detectors, door and window sensors and power switches, will go on sale in April.

—Sierra Wireless debuted the Linux-based Legato platform, designed to simplify and accelerate the development of machine-to-machine (M2M) applications.

—Samsung has put sensor technology into all three Galaxy Gear devices it showed off this week, to allow for heart-rate monitoring. The sensors work with a health app to measure data over time. Samsung said health tracking was a top customer demand for the devices.


16.00 | 0 komentar | Read More

Samsung debuts new Exynos chips, questions linger on 64-bit plans

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 26 Februari 2014 | 16.01

Samsung announced new 32-bit Exynos chips for smartphones and tablets with six- and eight-CPU cores, but left questions hanging on when the company will launch its first 64-bit chip.

The new chips were revealed after Samsung teased a new chip called Exynos Infinity in a Twitter campaign in the days leading up to the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona. Samsung launched the Galaxy S5 smartphone, which it initially announced with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor, though the new Exynos eight-core chip will also be used, according to media reports.

Samsung's eight-core Exynos 5 Octa 5422 is targeted at "premium" smartphones and tablets, while the six-core Exynos 5 Hexa 5260 chip is designed for mid-range phones, the company said in a statement. The chips are based on the older ARM processor architectures called Cortex-A15 and A7, which are usually used in 32-bit mobile devices.

The new Exynos chips are not 64-bit, which keeps the company behind Apple, which caught device makers off guard by putting the first 64-bit A7 chip in the iPhone 5S in September last year. Intel and Qualcomm also launched 64-bit chips at MWC. No 64-bit smartphones outside the iPhone 5S have been announced, though handsets are expected to trickle into the market starting in the second quarter of this year.

Samsung in Twitter messages said the new chips help "innovation and performance come together," and accelerate "possibilities and discovery." Samsung also tried to drum up excitement around the chip by offering a Galaxy tablet as a prize in a contest for those who tweeted #ExynosInfinity.

Samsung's eight-core Exynos 5 Octa 5422 is similar in design to the Exynos 5 Octa 5410, an eight-core chip which was used in the recent Galaxy S4 smartphone, and another eight-core chip, the Exynos 5 Octa 5420, which was part of developer boards. The new chip is 34 percent faster than predecessors, Samsung said. It has four high-power cores for data intensive tasks, while the four low-power cores handle mundane tasks like phone calls, text messaging and music playback.

The Exynos 5 Hexa 5260 has six cores, broken up into two high-power CPUs running at up to 1.7GHz and four low-power CPUs. The chip is 42 percent faster than dual-core Exynos counterparts, the company said.

The new chips can support 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution displays, and is equipped with technology to reduce the power consumed by screens. The eight-core chip can support 16-megapixel cameras, and render 4K video when connected to external displays. The six-core chip is capable of 1080p video.

The chips have CPU cores based on ARM designs. The high-powered cores are based on the Cortex-A15 processor technology, while the low-power ones are based on Cortex-A7. The chips have an implementation of ARM's Big.Little technology, in which chips have an optimal balance of performance and power-saving features to extend the battery life of mobile devices.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

360 million account credentials found in the wild, says security firm

A cybersecurity company said Tuesday it has obtained a list of 360 million account credentials for Web services, likely collected through multiple data breaches.

Analysts with Hold Security came across the credentials during their work over the last three weeks while studying underground forums where stolen data is for sale, said Alex Holden, chief information officer with the Wisconsin-based company.

"This month has been very fruitful for hackers," he said in a phone interview.

One batch of 105 million details, discovered about 10 days ago by the company, included email addresses and corresponding passwords, but it isn't clear what Web services the credentials unlock, he said.

It is possible the data came in part from data breaches at dating or job-related sites, which would have large numbers of users, although it has not been confirmed, he said.

"We don't know who has been breached," Holden said. "Ultimately, we are trying to figure out who the players are."

Those who are unemployed and using job sites could be more vulnerable to spam and phishing schemes since they are more likely to respond to offers or to emails from people they don't know.

Hackers frequently collect logins and passwords by compromising computers with malicious software. But Holden said that method of attack is unlikely due to the "sheer amount of data" and considering how many computers would have to be exploited.

The volume of data collected is "a sign that hackers are switching their tactics," focusing on large stores of data such as those held by companies rather than targeting individual users.

Data security has become a hot-button issue after the breaches at the retailer Target and Neiman Marcus, both of which have said malicious software was installed on their point-of-sale terminals and collected shoppers' unencrypted payment card details.

Other companies, including hotel management company White Lodging Services and the arts and crafts store chain Michaels, are investigating possible breaches after fraud was detected on payment cards used by their customers.

Hold Security has also found 1.25 billion email addresses circulating among hackers, with a batch of 156 million addresses collected on Friday, Holden said. The list, he said, would be useful for spammers. Data thieves often try to sell such email lists on underground forums.

Holden's company sells a paid service that alerts companies when analysts find their stolen data.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

In appeal, Apple says e-book ruling will harm consumers

Apple had no knowledge that publishers were engaged in a conspiracy in December 2009 or at any other point, the company said in its appeal against a district court ruling which found Apple and five major U.S. publishers had conspired to fix ebook prices.

The district court's findings show that Apple offered a retail business model to the publishers that was in the company's independent business interests "and was attractive to the publishers, who were frustrated with Amazon," Apple said in a filing Tuesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

"....it was not unlawful for Apple to take advantage of retail market discord by using lawful agency agreements to enter the market and compete with Amazon," Apple said in the filing. The discord over Amazon.com's ebook pricing had reached the point where some publishers had by September 2009 begun delaying some ebook versions of new releases, a practice known as "windowing."

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled last year that Apple and the publishers had conspired to raise prices in the ebook market to counter Amazon.

The U.S. Department of Justice and 33 states and U.S. territories brought a lawsuit charging that Apple and the publishers conspired to raise ebook prices in 2010.

The publishers allegedly teamed up with Apple to counter Amazon's strategy to lower substantially the prices of newly released and best-selling ebooks to US$9.99, a price that the publishers saw as a challenge to their traditional business model, the DOJ said in its complaint in 2012.

The district court's decision was based "on a fundamentally incorrect theory of antitrust liability," Apple said in the filing. The court had acknowledged that the "record is equivocal on whether Apple itself desired higher ebook prices than those offered at Amazon," yet found that Apple entered into a conspiracy with the publishers at initial meetings in December 2009, the company said.

As Apple prepared to launch in 2010 its iPad and the iBook store, it proposed to the publishers "an agency model," which would allow each publisher to set its own prices and provide Apple with a 30 percent commission, similar to the commission it was earning in its App Store.

"If allowed to stand, the ruling will stifle innovation, chill competition, and harm consumers," Apple said in the filing. It has asked the appeals court to overturn the district court's judgment and injunction and enter judgment for Apple, or grant a new trial before a different district judge.

Its entry into the ebooks business created a competitive market where output grew and average price dropped, and changed a market where Amazon had dominated by "controlling" nine out of every 10 ebook sales, Apple said.

Self-published ebook sales got a boost from Apple's model, which Amazon immediately emulated, as self-publishers were eager to retain 70 percent of an ebook's price, which was twice the amount Amazon previously offered, Apple said in the filing.

The DOJ and Amazon.com could not be immediately reached for comment after business hours.

The appeals court refused earlier this month to stay during appeal the appointment by the court of an "external compliance monitor" to review Apple's antitrust compliance and training policies. The ruling, however, set boundaries for the monitor with whom Apple had many issues.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Report: Yahoo may be developing its own search engine (again)

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 01 Februari 2014 | 16.01

In an effort to wiggle free of its pre-existing search agreement with Microsoft, Yahoo is fast-tracking an effort to develop search technology, according to a report.

Recode.net reported Friday that Yahoo has launched two projects, "Fast Break" and "Curveball," with an eye toward—eventually—developing a search engine, the site reported. But the timing is extremely aggressive: just three to four months to build out the programs, the site reported.

What Curveball and Fast Break are isn't known. But what's been much more obvious is how Yahoo has chafed under the terms of its contract with Microsoft. 

Under a 2009 search agreement that began in February 2010, Microsoft guaranteed

Yahoo a certain amount of revenue per search on its properties for 18 months. That was compensation for Yahoo's exiting search and signing a deal for its sites to be powered by Microsoft's Bing search technology. 

However, Microsoft then fell almost continually short of its obligations under the deal, prompting Yahoo executives to note, in earnings report after earnings report, that Microsoft wasn't meeting its commitment. In April of last year, Yahoo and Microsoft agreed to a one-year extension of the deal, but only in the United States. That deal would expire on April 1, 2014—about the time that "Fast Break" and "Curveball" would be scheduled to be completed.

And as for Yahoo's thoughts on search? This week, Yahoo's Mayer was asked about reviving either its own internal search program, or resurrecting "Panama," a 2006 ad program designed to more accurately weight paid ads on a number of characteristics, rather than just on advertiser bids.

"Overall in terms of search, we completed the transition this past quarter of our Panama platform so and by in large part it is now been shut down," Mayer said during a call in conjunction with Yahoo's fourth-quarter earnings. "As we mentioned in the previous question, search is very strategic for us. We're long in search and we do intend to continue to invest in the search user experience and in really making sure that Yahoo users on the network ultimately, really gather tremendous experience."

Is Yahoo developing a full-fledged search engine? The aggressive timing of the programs would seem to argue against it. Yahoo's search strategy, since the Bing transition, has been to encourage users to "search" by showing them articles and other topics related to what they've viewed before.

It does make sense to monetize ads by leveraging what Yahoo knows about a given user's searches to show more related content. In any event, it looks like Yahoo will show off its next-generation search strategy near or at the end of March.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Facebook gears up for its 10th birthday

Facebook will celebrate its 10th birthday on Tuesday, an occasion likely to spur an outpouring of reflection on its past and speculation about its future.

Mark Zuckerberg launched "Thefacebook" from his dorm room at Harvard University on Feb. 4, 2004. The site was conceived as a way to connect students, and let them build an online identity for themselves.

It has since expanded to cover a large swath of the planet, with more than 1.2 billion people—one-seventh of the world's population—using its site on a monthly basis, according to the company's own recent figures.

Zuckerberg reflected on the 10-year milestone at an industry conference in Silicon Valley this week. Not surprisingly, at the start he never envisioned Facebook becoming so large or influential. After launching the initial version, "it was awesome to have this utility and community at our school," he said at the Open Compute Project Summit.

He figured at the time that someone, someday would build such a site for the world. "It didn't even occur to me that it could be us," he said.

Since then, Facebook's site and its business, now a public company, have changed dramatically. There are now more than a trillion status updates, text posts and other pieces of content stored within its walls—the company is trying to index them as part of its Graph Search search engine.

The company was slow to react to the important mobile market, and when it went public in 2012 investors were skeptical it would be able to monetize its service on smaller screens. But this week it reported that more than half its ad revenue now comes from mobile devices.

All the while, Facebook is making its ad business smarter, using targeting tools to show ads it deems most relevant.

The company is also experimenting with new ways to present content. Next week it will release Paper, an iPhone app that provides a new way to share photos and published articles.

It's part of a larger effort Facebook hinted at this week to release a variety of standalone apps for different tasks.

The company is also trying to bring the Internet to more people in the world, an effort that's part philanthropy and part business sense as Facebook aims to reach its next billion users. Asked this week why he launched the project, called Internet.org, Zuckerberg suggested he feels a weight of responsibility.

"There aren't that many companies in the world that have the resources and the reach that Facebook has at this point," he said.

The company hasn't said yet how it plans to celebrate the anniversary, except that it will talk about how it has "changed the world" in the past 10 years, and what the next decade might hold in store.

It's not the only milestone Zuckerberg has coming up: In May, he'll celebrate his 30th birthday.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More

Verizon to stream Super Bowl over LTE Multicast -- for a lucky few

Verizon Wireless will fulfill a vision it revealed a year ago by streaming the 2014 Super Bowl live via an LTE broadcast, though it will only reach an invited audience at a Verizon event in New York.

LTE broadcasting, which Verizon calls LTE Multicast, delivers content to multiple subscribers at once rather than sending it in a separate stream to each user. This can prevent buffering and delay for subscribers, reduces congestion, and makes more efficient use of a carrier's radio spectrum. One place where the system may be useful is at large events where thousands of people are interested in the same types of content, such as instant replays at sporting events.

Verizon Wireless saw potential for LTE Multicast with the Super Bowl, the biggest annual sporting event in the U.S., and Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said as much at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2013. He talked about it with the commissioner of the National Football League, a longtime Verizon Wireless content partner, during a keynote address there.

"We'd love to be able to broadcast that Super Bowl to everybody, mobile-ly, in the 2014 time frame," McAdam said.

Not everyone will get the stream this year—far from it—but Verizon will provide an LTE Multicast of Sunday's game as part of a special event in New York's Bryant Park to showcase the emerging technology. It will deliver a stream of the Fox Sports broadcast of the Super Bowl, along with streams of a Twitter feed and game statistics, to a few hundred Verizon guests and media at the park, Verizon Wireless spokeswoman Debi Lewis said. The Super Bowl will be played just a few miles away, at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium.

The carrier has been demonstrating LTE Multicast to the public all this week at the park, using prerecorded video instead of live streams. With it, they are showing off the potential to stream feeds from different camera angles in the same app.

Verizon's live Super Bowl demonstration will come soon after other breakthroughs for LTE broadcasting. Korea Telecom launched the technology commercially this week, in partnership with Qualcomm and Samsung, and Australian carrier Telstra recently demonstrated it in a stadium during a soccer match.

LTE broadcasting isn't just for localized content at an event. It could be used for any stream of content in high demand, including software updates, over an entire national network. To offer it, carriers need to set aside a portion of their spectrum, which can be allocated back to regular service when needed. Mass software updates might take place overnight when demand for network capacity is relatively low, Qualcomm has said.

Verizon is committed to the technology and plans to have it enabled throughout the national Verizon LTE network in the third quarter, Lewis said. But because it's a new way of using cellular networks, LTE broadcasting requires building an ecosystem of devices, network capabilities, applications and content partnerships, she said.

Specifically, LTE broadcasting requires software at cell sites, plus chipsets and middleware on devices for picking up the broadcasts, and apps to present the streams, Lewis said. Verizon is also talking with various partners about content that might be delivered by this method.

One piece that's already there, in many cases, is hardware. One device being used in the Bryant Park demonstration is a commercially available Samsung Galaxy Note III tablet based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 chipset and equipped with LTE Multicast middleware supplied by Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 800 has been shipping since last year. Another device was a tablet reference design based on a chipset from LTE chip specialist Sequans Communications, which is also shipping LTE broadcast-capable chipsets commercially.

Verizon rival AT&T also plans to use LTE broadcasting. It will use spectrum acquired from Qualcomm that once was used for Qualcomm's discontinued FLO TV mobile broadcasting service. Last September, AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said the company's LTE broadcast infrastructure would be "mature in scale" within three years.


16.01 | 0 komentar | Read More
techieblogger.com Techie Blogger Techie Blogger