iPad Pro coming to stores this week!

Sources close to Apple revealed that the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will be available for purchase in 40 country’s starting on this Wednesday, November 11. It will first be available online with retail stores getting the device later in the week.

The supplementary Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard is also said to be available on that very same day.

Price will starts at $799 for the base model, which ships with 32GB of internal memory. For $1079 buyers can opt for the model that rocks both WiFi and cellular connectivity and 128GB of memory.

This new iPad isn’t just a larger screen. This behemoth sports a beautiful high-def 12.9″ screen with enough screen real estate to allow split, “full-screen” multitasking. The multi-touch screen is powered by a next-generation A9X chip that’s 1.8x faster than the A8 before it. The tablet features 10-hour battery life, 8MP iSight camera, Touch ID and four speaker audio.

Crucial Personal Information Released by hackers

In a serious news for concern, the Hackers that stole private customer information from the cheating/dating site AshleyMadison.com just released almost 10 gigabytes of user information from the July security breach.

The data dump includes customer log-ins, "credit card and other payment transaction details” for some of the site’s 40 million users, reports said.

Among some of the details released, a sampling of what some Ashley Madison users were looking for. One user said, “looking for someone who isn’t happy at home or just bored and looking for some excitement.”

Another user was checking for someone “who wants to feel sexy and hot.”

The site, which claims to be “the most famous name in infidelity and married dating,” was planning a $200 million IPO later this year when the breach took place.

Avid Life Media, the company that owns AshleyMadison.com, released this statement shortly after the initial breach on July 20.

“We have explained the fraud, deceit, and stupidity of ALM [Avid Life Media] and their members. Now everyone gets to see their data,” the hackers said, according to Wired.

It was thought that the hackers could turn the data dump into a huge payday, under the right circumstances.

A woman who claimed to have once worked for the hookup site explained what it was like working there, at one point calling it “one of the best companies” she’s been part of, but nothing that there were “many sites dedicated to bringing us down,” and saying the company would “receive death threats constantly.”

Apple discontinues selling the original ipad mini

Apple’s original iPad mini, the only non-Retina iPad still on sale, was quietly removed from Apple’s online store last night, as noted by 9to5Mac. Comparing the iPad section of the store between this morning and yesterday reveals that the first-gen iPad mini has been dropped from the comparison chart, too, leaving the iPad mini 2 and 3, as well as the iPad Air and iPad Air 2 as the current tablet options available to purchase new.

End-of-life for the original iPad mini doesn’t come as a surprise – the device was first released in 2012, and still used the original iPad resolution of 1024×768. It was the first 7.9-inch iPad created by Apple, and while it represented a denser display resolution than had been available on the 9.7-inch iPad with the same number of pixels, it didn’t qualify for Apple’s high-density ‘Retina’ display designation.

Apple Ppay set to come and conquer the mobile payment world

Apple is said to be gearing its employees on how Apple Pay payments infrastruckture will work as it is nearing its launch. Apple Pay is Apple's first attempt into the emerging world of mobile payments. By using an iPhone 6 enabled with near-field communications, or NFC, and your stored credit or debit card information, you'll be able to pay for items with your phone at any store or merchant that supports the technology. Apple Pay is already supported by more 220,000 retailers, according to Apple.


Users can set up Apple Pay through the Passbook app either during the initial iOS 8 setup or via a new Settings section called Passbook & Apple Pay. You can add your credit or debit card details to Passbook through your iTunes account or by scanning in the information using your phone's camera. It is predicted that you'd be able to store up to eight credit and/or debit cards inside your passbook.

Together, Passbook and Apple Pay will be able to keep track of your purchases and other information. You'll be able to view your recent transactions, see your credit card number and unique device account number and contact your bank directly. The service will also offer a quick way to download an accompanying App Store app and give you an option to receive push notifications.

And here's one handy option. If your credit card expires, you don't need to update it on your phone. The card will automatically get updated through your credit card company, and you'll even be told via a push notification that it's been updated, according to the training material.

But what about security? Receipts for any items you buy via Apple Pay will not show your contact details or credit card number but only the last four digits of your iPhone's unique Apple Pay ID. As described by Apple, the Apple Pay ID is a number unique to your device that is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in a dedicated chip on your iPhone.

And where do you turn if you run into trouble paying for a product through Apple ID? Well, it depends on the problem. You can first head over to your local Apple Store where employees can use special software to see if the issue is with the hardware. If not, you'll likely need to to contact your bank or credit card issuer to see if the problem rests on that side of the fence.

Spamming conquers iMessage system

The iMessage system that was introduced by Apple is a great way to send texts from one apple device to another without ever the paying fees to your mobile carrier. But over the past year, it has evolve into something of a nuisance. The iMessage has been polluted by spam message. It’s a cheap and easy way for luxury goods spammers to get their junk messages front-and-center on your phone.

A year ago, Tom Landesman—who works for security and anti-spam company Cloudmark—had never seen an iMessage spam. But he and his company now say that, thanks to one particularly aggressive campaign from a junk mailer, it accounts for more than 30 percent of all mobile spam messages.

These kinds of spam campaigns come and go. Cloudmark spotted its first one late last year, when the scammers were flogging imitation designer handbags. Lately, the spammers have been pushing deals on knock-off Ray-Ban and Oakley sunglasses.

Apple’s iMessage system spans across the iPad, iPhone, and Apple’s laptop and desktop systems. That fusion of the desktop and mobile world makes it particularly easy for scammers to write a Mac OS script that can send messages to all types of devices just as fast as Apple will allow. “It’s almost like a spammer’s dream,” says Landesman. “With four lines of code, using Apple scripts, you can tell your Mac machine to send message to whoever they want.”

Most of the time, the spammer will need a phone number to deliver the iMessage spam, but if you’ve added your email address to iMessage, the spammers can get you using that address too. (On your phone, you can see which addresses and phone numbers are associated with your iMessage account by visiting: Settings –> Messages –> Send and Receive)

Apple’s desktop client instantly tells you whether or not the number you’ve entered is registered with the iMessage network, so scammers could use this feature to generate a list of verified iMessages users. As an added bonus, iMessage notifies the scammer whether the message they’ve sent out has been read or not.

It’s very easy for spammers to register an iMessage account. All you need is an email address. We’ve seen spam sent from accounts registered to Microsoft’s hotmail.com system and to Chinese webmail providers such as Yeah.net. “In 10 minutes, if you have a whole bunch of accounts, you’d be able to send a huge volume of messages,” Landesman says.

Because the spam is all traveling on Apple’s network, your mobile carrier can’t do anything about it. That makes the clean-up job an Apple problem. Reached Monday, an Apple spokeswoman didn’t have any immediate comment for this story. But the company has taken some steps.

Read this before you download your next app!

Those exciting and sometimes cool apps you download on your smartphone may be free or very - very cheap, but there is usually a hidden price that you should be aware of: the loss of privacy and data piracy.

The vast majority of the most popular iOS and Android mobile apps collect a variety of personal data from users, including location details, address book contacts and calendar information, according to a just-released survey by Appthority, a company that advises businesses on security.

The report does offer some significant good news. Appthority found that very few of the apps it analyzed carried malware.

Appthority, which says it has a catalog of around two million apps, analyzed a total of 400 of the most popular mobile apps available (based on downloads) in Apple's App Store and Google Play. When it comes to free apps, there was essentially no difference between the two platforms.

However, "paid iOS apps surprisingly collect more data and share that information with more third parties than Android paid apps, making iOS slightly more risky than Android. On the whole, free apps remain the most risky category, exhibiting the greatest number of risky behaviors across both platforms," according to Appthority.

Here's a breakdown of the most frequently collected data:

82 percent of the top Android free apps and 49 percent of the top Android paid apps track user location
50 percent of the top iOS free apps and 24 percent of the top iOS paid apps track user location
You might not expect a flashlight app or a calculator to track your location, but many do.

"One of the main reasons app developers initiate app tracking is to generate supplementary revenue by sharing app user data with advertising networks and analytics companies. In some cases, particularly with free apps, developers are paid based on the amount of data they collect and share about users," explains Appthority.

30 percent of the top Android free apps and 14 percent of the top Android paid apps access user address books
26 percent of the top iOS free apps and 8 percent of the top iOS paid apps access user address books
App developers often transmit users' contacts or even full address books. One reason why is to increase the viral or network effects of the app. In other words, developers want to use owners' contacts to expand their customer bases. However, only a small percentage of the apps Appthority analyzed grabbed calendar or meeting invites.

88 percent of the top Android free apps and 65 percent of the top Android paid apps access IMEI/UDIDs
57 percent of the top iOS free apps and 28 percent of the top iOS paid apps access IMEI/UDIDs
IMEIs and UDIDs are unique serial numbers embedded in mobile phones. Appthority explained the risk associated with IMEI/UDIDs:

"Access to UDIDs is a concern because with a unique device identifier, developers can correlate user behavior across multiple apps (even if they have different usernames and passwords for each of the apps) and then match them to a unique user. While Apple has prohibited iOS developers from using UDIDs as a means to track and identify users, Appthority discovered that the new rule is only enforced on devices which are running the latest version of iOS."

New Self Destructing Photo App on the rise

A new mobile application called Phantom is offering a way to post personal photos and videos to blogs and social media sites, like Facebook or Twitter, which “self-destruct” like they do in Snapchat, while also offering controls that limit the number of people who can view the content, and more.

The idea to allow for ephemeral sharing on Facebook and other sites is interesting, though the number of controls Phantom offers makes it a bit more cumbersome to share that content in the first place.

The app, available on both iOS and Android, lets you snap a photo or record a video, or select an item from your smartphone’s gallery, then mark it up with commenting and drawing tools that are very similar to those found in Snapchat. But instead of just offering a timer function to control how long the image or video is visible to a friend after it’s shared, Phantom also lets you configure how long the content will live, period, as well as how many viewers it can have.

That way, you can set the content to expire after a certain amount of time, no matter how many people have seen it or not. And by limiting the number of viewers, you have more control over how widely a piece of content spreads.

Of course, Snapchat does this too, in its own way – by sending your photo or video just to a selection of contacts, you’re already indicating how many people should see the content you’re sharing. But Phantom big difference is that it’s designed to work with more public networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, WordPress and Blogger. And via a “More” option, you can also share to Tumblr, Pinterest, Whatsapp, LINE, Telegram, Movable Type, iMessage/SMS or email.

However, because of the many settings Phantom offers, there’s a learning curve to using the app, and that can slow things down. The uploading process of saving the media to Phantom’s servers is a little slower than I’d prefer to see, too.

Recipients are given a link along with a mosaic image preview. But to open the image, they have to use the Phantom iOS or Android application.

Take A Screenshot, Get Banned

“It’ll be impossible to copy or save the image, because those functions will be disabled while viewing, and user has to keep touching the screen while viewing the image,” explains Phantom’s creator Osamu Date of Phantom’s privacy settings. “Furthermore, the screenshot function will be disabled on an Android devices while view is in progress.”

Phantom also takes a harder line against taking screenshots of other users’ images. Those who do will be automatically banned from Phantom, and will be reported to the user whose privacy was violated.

The idea for Phantom comes from “LinX Corporation,” a big name for what’s really a one-person, bootstrapped startup out of Tokyo, run by founder Date.



The app was actually launched a few months ago, but hasn’t really done much press it seems.

My guess is that they’re having a hard time reaching the international audience, thanks to language barriers and other communication differences. The website is in Japanese. And the email I received suggested I contact Date, “Representative Director of LinX Corporation,” which doesn’t exactly sound like a startup. But I decided to reach out anyway, because I was interested in this idea of controlling the exposure of your content before publishing to big-name social media.

PC will never extinct

A Gartner report produced in July shows that he personal computing market will experience a “relative revival” this year.
By “relative revival” Gartner means the PC market will continue to decline in 2014, just not as much as it did in 2013 (slowing 2.9% versus 9.5%, respectively.) The real revival may happen in 2015; that’s when Gartner sees PC sales actually increasing again – jumping 5.3 per cent.
Yahoo Finance contributor Henry Blodget said, “This is far from a revival. We’re talking about a market that was the entire computing market fewer than 10 years ago.”
The latest in wearable technology? The smartshoe
Still, Blodget said that as long as people need to go to work every day, personal computers will live on. “Lots of CEOs talk about, ‘Hey, I run the whole company on my smartphone,’” he said. “It’s because they don’t actually have to do any work.”
The smartphone may be fine for a CEO who is delegating work, but someone who is creating and using spreadsheets or typing and emailing all day still needs a computer and will for some time, in Blodget’s view.
“For a long time [to come] we are going to use a keyboard and a big screen at work,” says Blodget. “So, the idea that the PC is dead is crazy.”
It may be that one day soon, your “PC” will be powered by a smartphone or a tablet, but that’s a long way off.
For now, tablet growth is slowing. Gartner does predict tablet sales will continue to grow in 2014 with shipments expected to increase 23.9%. It is a testament to just how explosive the growth of the tablet has been that Gartner is characterizing that as a “slowdown.”
But “slowdown” actually may not be a strong enough word. Best Buy (BBY) CEO Hubert Joly recently told news site Re/Code that tablet sales are “crashing.”
According to Joly, the problem facing tablets is innovation. “Once you have a tablet of a certain generation, it’s not clear that you have to move on to the next generation,” he told Re/Code.
Tablets 'to overtake PCs by 2015'
It’s actually the same problem that once faced PCs. Joly credits a large part of the PC resurgence at Best Buy to the fact that Microsoft stopped supporting old versions of Windows, which drove people to upgrade.
So far, the shifting PC versus mobile landscape has spelled good news for some of the biggest names in tech – regardless of whether they’re betting on hardware, software, PC or mobile.
Take hardware-maker Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). The company recently saw revenue grow in its PC unit for the first time in years. The shift was so inspiring it led CEO Meg Whitman to declare the company would double down on hardware. HP stock is up about 30 per cent year-to-date.
On the software side, no one is benefitting more than Google (GOOGL). The company’s Android software remains the undisputed king of mobile computing. The number of shipped devices running Android will jump 30 per cent in 2014.
Microsoft sues Samsung alleging contract breach
Even the oft-maligned Microsoft (MSFT) may have finally caught a break. According to Gartner, “Windows phones will exhibit strong growth from a low base in 2014, and are projected to reach a 10% market share by 2018 — up from 4 per cent in 2014."
And of course – there’s Apple (AAPL). The company – which integrates hardware and software to a level no other company has yet mastered – is still seeing growth. Shipments of devices running iOS will jump 15 per cent in 2014.
So with all of this in the mix – it’s hard to predict what exactly the future of “personal computing” will look like. According to Blodget, “The jury is still out,” and it may be a while before we get a verdict.

Xiomi comes clean on spying allegations

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi is reassuring users by opening up the truth about its server operations in the wake of spying allegations last month.

Xiaomi's global vice president Hugo Barra told The Wall Street Journal that users’ personal information is not stored on the server in Beijing that sparked cyberspying rumors last month, and that Xiaomi only stores personal information on different servers with users’ permission.

The rumors had begun when a user posted online in mid-July that his RedMi Note smartphone was “secretly” connecting to a server in Beijing, although he had turned off the data backup functions. The server was connecting to his phone’s media storage application, so he believed his photos and other data were being sent to Beijing. With consumers already wary in general about data privacy, the allegations took off across the Internet.

Xiaomi reacted quickly. Chinese and U.S. tech firms have been on tenterhooks over cyberspying allegations in the past year, as their governments battle out what some have likened to a “digital cold war.”

Barra, who left Google for Xiaomi in 2013, told the Journal that the server in question in Beijing stores no user data and only connects to users’ phones for services such as downloading themes and apps. If users choose to back up their data with Xiaomi’s cloud service, their data is encrypted and stored in different servers located in China and other countries, he said.

“The Xiaomi servers the device was connecting to in this post are part of our infrastructure used for push services and downloading of static application data – and not Mi Cloud servers (which have a different IP address),” he wrote in an emailed response. Mi Cloud is Xiaomi’s cloud data backup service.


Barra also posted a less-detailed Q&A last week saying the user’s post was “severely misinterpreted” and that Xiaomi did not upload personal information without the permission of its users.

Regarding allegations that the Beijing server was automatically connecting to a user’s smartphone media storage application, Barra said the server was not connecting to photos and other data, but to the device’s download manager.  The download manager runs in the media server system process and accesses the media storage data base to store downloaded files, he said.

“The Media Storage application also handles photos, which incorrectly led to the impression that photos are being uploaded, which is not the case,” Barra wrote. “The connection to the IP address shown in the post is only being used for the Download Manager push service.”

Malaysia ranked highest in online shopping take up

According to a research done by TNS on the study of online shopping behaviour in Southeast Asia for Google, more Malaysians will take to shopping online with two out of five Malaysians (43 percent) - who have never purchased online before - will start in the next 12 months.

Google Malaysia industry head Shylendra Nathan said a major factor behind the move to shop online was to save time and should present "a major opportunity for Malaysia's retail industry to reach and influence shoppers online. "The two out of five (43 percent) of Malaysians who have never shopped online and who expect to start in the next 12 months closely matches the rest of the region: the Philippines reported lowest at 40 percent and the highest figure is from Indonesia with 46 percent indicating they intend to switch to online shopping within a year."

He said half of these new online shoppers' first purchase will be clothing. Malaysia's percentage is higher than all the other countries in the survey, with the lowest reported number coming from Singapore at 31 percent. 

Overall, South East Asia looks like a great place to run an online clothes store, with this survey revealing that apparel is by far the most popular online shopping - for example, clothes are bought nearly three times as often as mobile phones or books, said Nathan.

He said consumers in Malaysia and the rest of the region do not place price as the most important factor in their online shopping experience.

When Malaysians were asked what was the single more important factor in shopping online 'saving time' was mentioned as often as 'price,' said Nathan and that this trend was repeated with shoppers across all countries surveyed except Singapore. 

SAMSUNG latest Galaxy App to rival App Store

SAMSUNG is coming up with a cool looking Samsung Apps store after redesigning the user interface and giving it a new name – Samsung Galaxy Apps — as it seeks to put the focus on exclusive content, discounts and promotional offers. The Korean company’s app store is accessible on all of its Galaxy smartphones and tablets. The company says that gives it a reach of over 130 million users, but few are likely to have given it much consideration since Google Play is a far bigger draw on Android devices with its wider range of apps.

Samsung is seemingly aware of that issue, and it claims that Samsung Galaxy Apps store features “hundreds of exclusive apps” that are designed specifically for Galaxy devices. These ‘Galaxy Specials’ take advantage of Samsung’s SDK to work with features like multi windowing, the S Pen and the Samsung ‘home appliance’ network. The revamped app store also sports a cleaner look by organizing apps by popularity and date, while there is a section that highlights Galaxy Specials.

Samsung blamed “weak demand” for its third straight quarter of profit decline and, as Stratechery points out, one of the company’s chief issues is that it competes solely on price and not differentiated software, as Apple does. The revamped app store may be an effort to change that, but since it is living in the shadow of Google Play, it seems unlikely that this will make much difference for Android device users.

The store is, however, likely to become more important as Samsung pushes its Tizen devices — the first of which is due to launch in Russia this year.

BBM Messenger is now on Windows Phone

The arrival of the once famous Blackberry Messenger (BBM) on Windows Phone takes it to the another level. BlackBerry teased the launch of its BBM messaging service on Windows Phone back in February, and now users can finally get their hands on a beta version, the company announced today.

The app boasts a native experience that makes use of the Windows Phone user interface and focuses on three areas: Contacts, Chats and Feeds. Swiping left and right will move you between the three pages, while common actions are found at the bottom of the page, and additional controls can be accessed in the menu through the button with three dots.

One of the more unique features BBM for Windows Phone has is the ability to pin a contact to the Start menu for easy access — when you select that BBM contact right from the Start menu, you’ll be taken directly to a chat window with them.

Similar to other iterations of the app, users can chat with one or many BBM contacts and have the ability to share pictures, voice notes, contacts and location. However, the beta version is still lacking stickers — which BlackBerry finally introduced earlier this year – BBM Voice, BBM Channels and location sharing powered by Glympse. BlackBerry says these will be landing in the “coming months.”

There is also a feature known as BBM Groups, which not only has a private group chat, but a shared photo album where group members can chat about pictures, as well as shared calendars and shared lists.

BBM features feeds too, which lets you see when contacts update their status or profile photo (think Facebook updates in a chat app). If you want to chat with your friends about their latest updates, you just have to tap on their name to be redirected to a chat.

BlackBerry is opening up the beta version of BBM for Windows Phone so users can test it and provide feedback, but if you’re waiting for the full release, the company advises you to wait “just a bit longer.” Check for the link to test the BETA version below:

https://beta.webapps.blackberry.com/bbmforwindowsphonebeta/

Apple wants a retrial against Samsung

Apple is requesting a retrial after a Californian jury ordered Samsung to pay the US company $119m (£71m) in damages for infringing two of its patents. Apple had been seeking damages of $2.2bn after accusing Samsung of copying five patents including the "slide to unlock function". The US company also filed a permanent injunction to prevent Samsung using the patents it was found to have infringed. Samsung filed court documents too but the contents have not been made public.

During the original trial Apple had accused Samsung of "systematically" copying features distinctive to its iOS software. Samsung denied that it had copied Apple patents and said it was Apple who was doing the copying. The jury found that Apple had infringed some Samsung patents and awarded $158,000 in damages to the South Korean firm. Although the jury found in Apple's favour in respect of two of the patents, the damages awarded were much lower than the company had been seeking.
"The figure would appear to reflect the jury's belief that Apple's settlement claim was unfairly inflated. Samsung argued all along that it should be far lower than the $2.2bn sought, not least because some of the patents were never even incorporated into the iPhone's software," he said.

This latest legal step is an attempt by Apple to have its damages award increased but it would require a new trial. Intellectual property analyst Florian Mueller thinks any new trial is unlikely to happen before an appeal of the original ruling. These requests by Apple mark the latest instalment in a series of legal battles over intellectual property that the world's top two smartphone makers have been fighting for years across many countries.

Two years ago, a separate jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $930m after finding it had used Apple technology. That verdict is still being challenged by Samsung. But Mr Mueller thinks Apple may be suffering "litigation fatigue", he pointed out that Apple has not filed a US case against Samsung in more than two years. Apple recently settled a patent row with Google. 

The two companies had filed several lawsuits against one another but they agreed to dismiss these cases and said they would work together in "some areas of patent reform".

Android: The Way Forward

Google certainly hasn’t been sitting idle since its developer event last week. Instead, it has started to push an update to Google Play Services out around the world for all devices running Android 2.3 or better. Aside from a few outliers, that’s the vast majority of phones and tablets running Android; Google’s way of improving Android without actually pushing a new version of Android.

The company did the same last year as it attempted to reduce the version fragmentation issues that have proved troublesome. This time around, devices are getting Google Play Services 5.0, which brings several new things to Android, no matter how old your device is. Included in the update are “Android wearable services APIs, Dynamic Security Provider and App Indexing, whilst also including updates to the Google Play game services, Cast, Drive, Wallet, Analytics, and Mobile Ads,” according to Google.

I’ve already seen the benefits Google Play Services 5.0 brings with the “Save Game” function in Play Games. It was getting old having to restart at the first level of a game when switching devices; something I do often for review purposes. (Note: I currently have the $299 Huawei Ascend Mate2 in hand; stay tuned next week for my thoughts on this 6.1-inch handset.) Updated APIs for wearable devices are also welcome since Android Wear devices will be in consumer’s hands later this week.

In fact, Google released the first Android Wear apps for smartwatches not long after the Play Services update was pushed. Two-dozen apps initially hit the Play Store but more have already been added. Many include simple notifications from their previously existing apps but some also include more functionality: Allthecooks Recipies shows step-by-step instructions and full ingredients lists on the watch; swiping a step on the watch advances the recipe on your connected phone or tablet. It’s a clever implementation.

Also clever is how Google addressed battery life with Android L, the next version of its mobile software. The company took a long, hard look at how different hardware components use power and it created special APIs and services for developers to use that can save battery life. In a standard browsing test, Ars Technica found that a Nexus 5 phone could run for 36 percent longer with Android L than with Android 4.4 KitKat. Simply upgrading to Android L could add more time for your phone or tablet to run while off the charger.

UK Cinema will impose ban on Google Glass

Google Glass has been available in the UK almost a week, but the largest cinema group in the region is already stating that the wearable tech will not be welcome in most of their represented establishments.

The Cinema Exhibitors Association, which represents the interests of around 90 percent of UK cinema operators, is putting the kibosh on Glass before it has a chance to take hold.

“Customers will be requested not to wear these into cinema auditoriums, whether the film is playing or not,” CEA chief Phil Clapp told The Independent.

The Independent also notes that individual theater chains are also planning to implement a ban on the device, which won’t be able to be worn “once the lights dim.”

The main concern here is that Google Glass, basically being a camera you wear on your face, is perfect for those looking to record and distribute pirated copies of newly released films.

Google’s suggestion when it comes to handling Glass in movie theaters is the same one they’ve had when it comes to Glass and any ‘electronic-free’ zone – treat Glass like a smartphone. If you’re somewhere where smartphones are frowned upon, Google Glass is likely frowned upon too.

“We recommend any cinemas concerned about Glass to treat the device as they treat similar devices like mobile phones: simply ask wearers to turn it off before the film starts. Broadly speaking, we also think it’s best to have direct and first-hand experience with Glass before creating policies around it. The fact that Glass is worn above the eyes and the screen lights up whenever it’s activated makes it a fairly lousy device for recording things secretly,” says Google.

Google’s “don’t knock it till you’ve tried it” defense is unlikely to sway many in the industry, who feel that Glass is a perfect vehicle for piracy.

Glass is likely to receive similar treatment in theaters across the US. The famously strict Alamo Drafthouse, known for its focus on forcing proper moviegoing etiquette, recently banned Glass in their theaters once the lights dim.

Android New Release is a market conqueror

All of us thought that  Android 4.4 KitKat was a major change when it came out late last year, but the still unnamed L release of Android puts that to shame. Despite not telling us the codename (Lollipop?) or the version number (5.0?), Google demoed an updated UI called Material Design and a plethora of new features. You won’t be able to get your hands on the final version of L until this fall, but Apple is going to have its work cut out for it competing with the new Android, even after its lauded iOS 8 announcement. Here’s how Android is evolving and what that means for the iOS vs. Android matchup coming later this year.

Material Design
Material Design is the name of Google’s new interface guidelines — much like Microsoft and Metro — and it’s a radical departure from Android of the past. It adopts the color palette from Google Now with blues, muted greens, and red, but white is still the dominant color. It provides a more lively tapestry on which to paint the updated Android interface.

Android is still adhering to flat design, which is the trend, but it’s layered flatness. Google describes this as a take on stacks of paper, but a digital paper that can shift and morph into different shapes. The new SDK will allow developers to describe the way UI elements are layered (an elevation value), which can be used to render parts of an app as if they are floating just above another. Android L renders subtle shadows on the edges that give a feeling of depth without cluttering the screen. Every little change in the new Android UI also comes with some sort of animation, even if it’s fast. Ideally, there won’t be any more hard transitions.

How does this compare to Apple? Cupertino has taken a lot of heat for its iOS 7 redesign, but it’s slowly winning people over. iOS 8 continues the trend of flat design with the transparent glass effect. Design is a pretty subjective thing, but you have to admit Google is doing some very interesting things with Material Design.

Performance
Apple made a big fuss about the new Metal graphics API included in iOS 8, which will allow developers to design games that run considerably faster. The Swift programming language was also rolled out for iOS devs to create more streamlined apps. It all adds up to faster apps. Android response? A new runtime and the Android Extension Pack (AEP).

Google developed the AEP in partnership with Nvidia. It was demoed on the Nvidia Tegra K1 at I/O, but it should run on all ARM chips. AEP is a collection of extensions for OpenGL ES that adds features like tessellation and compute shaders that close the gap between mobile graphics and DirectX 11 on PCs. Google didn’t list any performance numbers, but Mountain View has another trick up its sleeve in this department.

Android L is the end of the line for Dalvik, the virtual machine in Android that compiles Java from apps into native code. Dalvik is what’s called a “just in time” compiler — you run an app, and it compiles the code as you go. The replacement for Dalvik was included in KitKat as a beta feature — the Android Runtime or ART. A device using ART compiles Java into native code upon installation and caches it, which makes all apps and games faster, piping the bits right to the hardware. Apple’s famous responsiveness advantage might be going away.

Power saving
In all these years, Google has neglected to create a basic battery saving mode for Android. A number of OEMs have done it on their own, like Samsung with its Ultra Power Saver Mode on the Galaxy S5. However, Android L is going to have Project Volta. This is a major change to the way Android manages battery life.

Project Volta will include an easy-to-use setting that users can flip on to down-clock the CPU, disable background data, and tweak other settings to save power. Google claims this feature can add another 90 minutes of life to a Nexus 5, which lasts about a day as it currently stands. That’s not a huge difference, and Apple has always been able to tout its superior battery life thanks to a more restricted app model.

Facebook reveals truth about user information

Facebook has openly revealed that since last summer it's been fighting a court order that required it to disclose all social-media information involving hundreds of people.

"This unprecedented request is by far the largest we've ever received -- by a magnitude of more than ten -- and we have argued that it was unconstitutional from the start," Chris Sonderby, Facebook's deputy general counsel, wrote in a statement Thursday.

Advertisements

The situation raises concerns over privacy in the digital age, when much of a person's sensitive information is often available online and on mobile devices. This week, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected warrantless searches of cell phones, saying the practice went against the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure. The court added that modern cell phones are "not just another technological convenience."


Facebook, the largest social network in the world, asserted that the search was "overly broad" and allowed the government to keep the seized photos, private messages, and other information indefinitely. It has called for the government to return the data and claimed the search ignored the Fourth Amendment.

Facebook, as well as other tech companies like Google and Apple, discloses data on the number of search warrants, subpoenas, and emergency disclosures requests it receives from government bodies. Facebook said that from July to December 2013, it received 12,598 total requests from US law enforcement, requesting information from 18,715 users or accounts. In all, some data was produced from 81 percent of the requests, Facebook said.

ASUS Fonepad 7 to Challenge the phablet market

ASUS Fonepad 7: a Brand New mobile Experience

The ASUS Fonepad 7 is the newest and improved version of the manufacturer's Fonepad-Padfone which was launched early this year (not to be confused, though, with the ASUS manufactured Google Nexus 7). The reason why it is called this way is because the device, like its predecessor, is both an Android tablet and a smartphone at the same time. This Taiwanese phablet was announced during the IFA Consumer Electronics Show in Berlin, Germany. As the name already is suggesting, it comes with a 7 inch display with 1280x800 resolution. As for the design, it shows a plastic back surface, available in a variety of colors, instead of the aluminium back cover of the original version.

A smartphone in the body of a tablet

This cheap tablet from ASUS joins together the qualities and features of a smartphone (including phone calls) with the portability and a size which make it look more like a tablet. The device is powered by Intel's Atom Z2520 1.2GHz Dual-Core processor and runs on Android 4.3 JellyBean but is expected to update to the Android KitKat version soon. The phablet also has front facing speakers, for more involving and enjoyable video watching and game playing experiences, and features two cameras, a front facing 0.5 MP one and a 2 megapixels rear camera. The internal 8GB storage can be expanded up to 64GB.

Good quality and comfortable portability

The Fonepad 7 is packed with some great features such as SonicMaster speakers, for high quality audio delivery, and the Audio Wizard, which allows users to customize the sound of movies and games. Up to 30 hours battery life on 3G talk time and 10 hours for video playback dramatically increase the portability of the tablet. Moreover, you can get access to the ASUS WebStorage no matter where you are, as long as you are connected to the internet, with 16GB allocated cloud storage space. You can also use it as a wireless sharing device thanks to Miracast, which allow for wireless content sharing with other mobile devices or HDTV.

Specification and Features list

Processor: Atom Z2520 1.2GHz Dual-Core
RAM Memory: 1GB
Storage: 4 or 8GB; 16GB One Year ASUS Webstorage Space
Rear Camera: 2 mega-pixels
Front Camera: 0.5 mega-pixels
Operating System: Android JellyBean 4.3

NSA can trace your phone even when turn off

Whether you consider Edward Snowden a traitor or a patriot, before he hit the news, most people didn't give much thought to government spying on everyday citizens. During a recent interview, he said that the NSA has the ability to spy on your smartphone, even if it's turned off.

Yes, this is exactly what you think it means. The NSA can listen to your conversations and use your camera when you powered off your phone. Sounds crazy but it can happen.

The most likely way is with a type of invisible spying app. Spying apps aren't anything new; everyone from corporations to hackers to jealous exes use them.


This spying app though doesn't just steal your surfing history, text messages and photos. It also gives the NSA full access to your phone's microphone and camera.

Your phone basically becomes a bug that tells the NSA everything going on around you. Any conversation you have or any embarrassing thing you do, the NSA will have it recorded.
The worst part is that even if you turned the phone off to be safe, it wouldn't really be off. The app makes your phone pretend to be off - it turns off the screen, ignores incoming calls and doesn't respond to button presses - but the spying will still be going on.

Now, if you wanted to have a sensitive conversation without worry, you could remove the phone's battery. Then the phone would really be off. But, some phones, like the iPhone, don't have a removable battery.

Here's when you get to feel like a spy. To truly turn off an iPhone you have to know how to use the "device firmware upgrade" or DFU, mode. This is what Apple and developers use to install iOS updates, jailbreak a phone or unlock a SIM card.

Don't worry, you're not doing any of that. You just want to really turn off your iPhone.
To get into DFU mode, you'll need an iPhone, USB cord and a computer with iTunes installed.

First, connect the iPhone to your computer using the USB cord and start iTunes. Once iTunes is running, go to the iPhone and hold down the Power button for three seconds, then press the Home button. Hold both buttons and count to 10 seconds.

The phone's screen will go black, but keep holding the buttons. After the 10 seconds are up, let go of the Power button, but keep the Home button pressed.

Hold the Home button for another 10 to 15 seconds. When you see a pop-up message in iTunes, you know you're successfully in DFU mode. Got to http://bit.ly/1nfZ83T to watch a video of these steps in action.

When you're ready to get out of DFU mode, hold the Home button and Power button until the Apple logo appears. Then let the phone start like it normally would.

Of course, this turning on and off procedure is a complete hassle. So you might think it's better to keep the NSA or anyone else from putting the spy app on your phone in the first place. Good idea, but it's going to be tricky.

The NSA or anyone else after you could slip a spy app on your phone disguised as another legitimate app. This is easier to do on Android phones because they can download apps from third-party sites and Google Play's review policy is very relaxed.

Apple gadgets can only download from the Apple App Store, and the nefarious would have to get the app past Apple's reviewers. That's harder, but still isn't impossible.

Another concern is that the NSA knows undiscovered bugs in operating systems and common programs that lets it collect data without anyone knowing. It turns out the NSA was exploiting the Heartbleed bug to spy on people, so it isn't that farfetched. And it's just about impossible for you to stop.

In the worst case, the NSA could pull the same trick it allegedly uses with American-made routers heading overseas. The NSA intercepts a router shipment, puts a backdoor in the software, packages the routers back up and sends them on. Then it can spy on any networks the routers connect to.

I doubt the NSA is doing that to phones coming into the U.S. - it would be a logistical nightmare if nothing else - but you never know.

If you're really worried about the NSA and spying apps, you might want to look into the new Blackphones. These Android-based phones are built from the ground up with security and privacy in mind.

Of course, once on the market, a Blackphone will set you back $630, so it isn't for the faint of heart or light of wallet. It might worth it, though, if it keeps the NSA out of your life - for now.