Google’s Project Loon will Offer Affordable Internet Access to Millions of Indians

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December 17, 2015

Technology giant Google hopes to bring its Project Loon to India, which will offer affordable internet access to millions, soon even as the government holds the view that the project will interfere with cellular transmissions of mobile operators in the country.

Speaking at the Google for India event, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai said: “Project Loon will launch balloons in the sky to help reach out to rural areas.”

What is Project Loon ?

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The service will provide high-speed Internet for the first hour before downgrading to a lower speed post that. The service however will remain free throughout the access period. When asked about the expected speed, Gulzar Azad, Google’s head of access programs – India, refused to divulge details on the speed but said that users will be able to watch HD-quality videos during the first hour, adding that the speed will be faster than what the average speeds in India are.

Google also said that it is expanding its program with Tata Trusts to connect women in rural India through a fleet of Internet bikes. The program has reached 1,000 villages so far and aims at a target of 3 lakh villages nationwide within three years.

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Elaborating the same, Google Vice President (Access Strategy and Emerging Markets) Marian Croak said the company is “passionate” about building and deploying new Internet infrastructure around the world.

“One of the technologies that we have in our portfolio is Project Loon. It’s a project that we are working on with local telcos all across the world. “And we are testing these high altitude balloons which literally act as almost like floating cell towers… To connect people in hard to reach regions that are scarcely populated and we are working to hopefully bring Project Loon to India in rural communities that have very few people connected to the Internet,” — she said.

The statement assumes importance as Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had recently told Parliament that Google’s Project Loon will interfere with cellular transmissions of mobile operators in India.

“The proposed frequency band to be used in the Loon Project of Google is being used for cellular operations in India and it will lead to interference with cellular transmissions,” — Prasad had said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha on December 11.

Also Read : Google Announced A New Project To Provide High-Speed Public Wi-Fi In 400 Train Stations Across India

Croak said the company is working across the world with local carriers, operators and suppliers and does not carry out the project on its own.

Google, under its Project Loon, is using big balloons floating at a height of 20 kilometers above earth surface for transmission of Internet services. It has already tested this technology in New Zealand, California (the US) and Brazil. As per Google, each balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area about 40 kms in diameter using a wireless communications technology called LTE or 4G.

To use LTE or 4G, Project Loon partners with telecom companies to share cellular spectrum so that people will be able to access the Internet everywhere directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices. Google uses solar panel and wind to power electronic equipment in the balloon throughout the day.

Also Read : Top Android Apps that Drain Battery and Use Up all your Data and Storage

So what do you think Google’s Project Loon service, Does it will help us to stay connected to our loved ones from any part of India? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Apple Developing Advanced Display Technology at their New Secret Laboratory in Taiwan

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Sabarinath

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December 16, 2015

Apple is indisputably one of the largest electronics manufacturers in the world, so every component utilized in the iPhone is considered big business. And now Apple Inc. opened a production laboratory in northern Taiwan where engineers are developing a new advanced display technology – reported by Bloomberg.

Apple currently sources the display technology used in their computers from companies like Samsung, Sharp and LG. However, as the company has done in the past with many other components, it’s working on bringing its display development in-house.

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What’s New Advanced Display Technology

At least fifty people are said to be working at the Longtan building, previously used by Qualcomm for its Mirasol efforts, and are developing thinner, brighter, and more efficient LCD screens. Apple has reportedly hired local staff from Qualcomm and Taiwanese display maker AU Optronics of assisting to develop new advanced display technology.

Apple also wants to move to OLED [Organic Light-Emitting Diodes] display technology, according to the report; the Apple Watch is Apple’s first product to feature an OLED screen, with the rest of the company’s product line using LCD at this point.

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Last month Nikkei reported that LG is ramping up OLED production capacity in anticipation of the 2018 iPhone model, while Nikkan Kogyo recently claimed that Japan Display has similar intentions. OLED screens, which don’t require a backlight, can be thinner than LCDs and are more easily curved.

Also Read : Google Says its Quantum Computer is More Than 100 Million Times Faster Than a Conventional PC

What do think about this new advanced display technology developing by Apple? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Why we are Addicted to Facebook ? – Interesting Survey Results

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Sabarinath

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December 14, 2015

Admit it, you’ve thought about walking away from Facebook at one time or another. Perhaps you’ve gone so far as to shut down your account, swearing never to return, only to meekly log back in a week later. Researchers from Cornell University have found four key reasons why people make the pledge not to log in to Facebook but ultimately could not resist the allure of Facebook’s social network. So why we are addicted to Facebook ?

What are some of the factors that prevent users from logging off of Facebook permanently? A newly published paper from Cornell Information Science researchers explores that question and points to four themes that significantly influence the likelihood of a return to Facebook. Written by Information Science and Communication Researcher Eric Baumer, along with Ph.D. student Shion Guha, Emily Quan, MPS ’15, and professors David Mimno and Geri Gay, “How Social Media Non-use Influences the Likelihood of Reversion: Perceived Addiction, Boundary Negotiation, Subjective Mood, and Social Connection” was published Dec. 3 in Social Media + Society.

If you have thought about leaving Facebook, you’re not alone. Popular media and academic researchers alike have recently become interested in people who don’t use technology. This includes people who intentionally avoid social media like Facebook, as well as those who simply don’t have access. In many cases, though, there’s not a clear split between users and nonusers. People who leave social media and then return, what Baumer and colleagues term “social media reversion,” provide the opportunity to understand better what’s at stake when people use – or don’t use – sites like Facebook.

Survey Report – Why we are Addicted to Facebook ?

Using survey data provided by 99daysoffreedom.com – an online campaign that encouraged participants to log off Facebook for 99 days – the Cornell researchers honed in on those who made the pledge but ultimately couldn’t resist the allure of Facebook’s social network. The group’s research found four main factors that led to reversion:

Perceived addiction – Those who feel that Facebook is addictive or habitual were more likely to return, according to the group’s research. One participant described this habitual aspect by saying, “In the first 10 days, whenever I opened up an internet browser, my fingers would automatically go to ‘f.'”
Privacy and surveillance – Users who felt their Facebook activity was being monitored were less likely to revert, while those who use Facebook largely to manage how other people think of them are more likely to log back in.
Subjective mood – In a good mood? You’re less likely to renege on your pledge to stay off Facebook.
Other social media – The group found that Facebook users were less likely to log back in if they had other social media outlets – like Twitter, for instance. Those who reflected on the appropriate role for technology in their social lives were more likely to revert. In many of these cases, people returned to Facebook but altered their use, for example, uninstalling the app from their phones, reducing their number of friends or limiting the amount of time spent on the platform.

The team’s findings were drawn from more than 5,000 surveys issued to participants by Just, the Dutch creative agency that founded the 99 Days of Freedom project. These surveys were sent to project participants on days 33, 66 and 99 and were intended to gauge each user’s mood throughout the Facebook detox. A sampling of this data was then shared – with permission from Just and the survey respondents – with the Cornell research team.

“These results show just how difficult daily decisions about social media use can be,” says Baumer. “In addition to concerns over personal addiction, people are reluctant about corporations collecting, analyzing and potentially monetizing their personal information. However, Facebook also serves numerous important social functions, in some cases providing the only means for certain groups to keep in touch. These results highlight the complexities involved in people’s ongoing decisions about how to use, or not use, social media.”

Do you agree with above survey reports and also why are you addicted to Facebook ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

MIT Researchers Developed Untraceable SMS Text Messaging System that’s Even More Secure than Tor

By

Sabarinath

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December 12, 2015

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a new untraceable SMS text messaging system, that is even more secure than the Tor anonymity network. MIT researchers claims that using this untraceable SMS system users can create truly anonymous communications.

A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) who developed this untraceable SMS text messaging system says — “it provides a strong mathematical guarantee of user anonymity, while, according to experimental results, permitting the exchange of text messages once a minute or so.”

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The researchers have named this untraceable SMS system “Vuvuzela”, which is a reference to the noise-making devices used by fans at football matches around the world. The idea behind the system is that, like a stadium full of vuvuzelas, it creates a lot of spurious “noise” that makes it difficult to pinpoint the sound being made by any individual vuvuzela.

How Untraceable SMS System Works

In its basic structure, the system sends messages through three different servers that are each designed to unwrap three different levels of encryption. While this obviously makes it harder for someone to intercept a message and to see its sender and recipient, CSAIL says that an adversary who compromises the integrity of the first server can still “know that two users whose messages reached the first server within some window of time have been talking.”

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And this is where they so-called vuvuzela techniques help. When the first server receives a message, it will simultaneously send out a series of “dummy” messages to other locations with encrypted destinations. Once the second server receives the actual message, it also sends out its own dummy messages at the same time it passes on the message to the third server. The idea here is that even if a person has compromised part of the process, they will still find it impossible to discern who is sending and receiving messages.

“So statistically, it’s almost impossible for the adversary to determine even whether any of the messages arriving within the same time window ended up at the same destination,” — CSAIL explains. “Those statistical guarantees hold even if two of the three servers are infiltrated. As long as one of them remains uncompromised, the system works.”

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So what do you think about this new advanced SMS privacy proofing method. We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Watch How Chrome Dominates Over Internet Explorer and Other Browsers in Last Seven Years

By

Sabarinath

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December 11, 2015

Lets start a story, once their was a king named Internet Explorer, who ruled the mighty kingdom, internet. When he start to rule, everybody though he was unbeatable but IE never saw a backdoor invasion of another foreign king, Google Chrome to his land. Gradually with Chrome’s new mode of approach and developmental activities, Chrome dominates majority of kingdom. But IE still fighting to get back his position and everybody knows where it will end.

Also Read : Meet Codie – Rolling Robot Toy That Teaches Kids Progamming Concepts

Internet Explorer was was once the king of browsers, controlling more than 50 percent of the market for many years. But release of firefox in 2012 changed that, but even its prominence didn’t last particularly long.

But when Google Chrome was released in September of 2008, it started to dominates over Internet Explorer and Firefox faster than anyone expected.Now, seven years on from its release, Chrome is used by more than 43 percent of Web users across desktop and mobile, according to Statcounter.

Here is a video created by Youtuber Viktor Bohush, beautifully illustrates the domination of Chrome as it slowly took over the market over the space of the last seven years.

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It’s incredibly zen with that soundtrack, and shows some interesting points — such as when Internet Explorer fought back briefly in 2013 and grew its share — as well as how Chrome accelerated over the years. Google Chrome has come a long way since its humble beginnings, and has even pushed Mozilla into crisis as it attempts to stave off stagnation.

Chrome Dominates Over IE and Firefox

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Which browser are you using and Why you think Chrome is better than any other browser available today? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Meet Codie – Rolling Robot Toy That Teaches Kids Progamming Concepts

By

Avinash A

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December 11, 2015

There are many ways one can learn programming concepts, like from books, from ebooks, from interactive online tutorials, from videos etc. But you ever think to learn programming concepts from a robot. So now its time to change the mode of learning to future generation. Meet Codie – a rolling and programmable robot which is controlled via a mobile application for iOS or Android.

Codie was developed by Codie Labs, which was founded in February 2013 by serial entrepreneur András Holló and a friend he met in university, Ádám Lipécz with an idea of giving a simple introduction to programming concepts to children ages 6 through 15 through an easy-to-use app interface involving colorful drag-and-drop blocks that represent various actions you can take with the robot.

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The robot itself has a wooden exterior, two treads that allow to easily traverse flat surfaces (and some less-than-flat ones), and custom internals that include proximity sensors, a microphone and line readers that can “see” any graphical markings on the ground. An LED light on the top of the robot can also be customized to display different colors, using the mobile application.

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Coide, as the robot is called, gets around pretty quickly. He’s as fast as a little race car, and can be controlled either through the programs a child writes in the app or through a manual interface that includes an on-screen joystick that you can use to direct his movements.

What Codie Do?

To write a program, kids drag blocks onto the app’s screen to dictate actions like “move,” “turn,” “decide,” “wait,” “sound,” and more. The blocks are connected with arrows, and, when tapped, kids can also customize the actions themselves in more detail to do things like adjust the speed, distance, color, brightness and much more.

codie robot app — Image Credits : TechCrunch

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In addition, the programming language teaches larger coding concepts like “if, then, else…” decisions, or looping, for example.When you have completed a program, you can give it a name and save it for future use.

Holló tells us Codie Labs raised funding for the project from an institutional investor in Hungary and an individual angel, totaling $250,000 USD. The startup also ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo this spring which reached $96,000 and allowed them to sell over 500 robots via pre-orders.

He says that most of those robots will be shipping by Christmas this year, or early 2016. The robots themselves are $199 euros (or roughly $216 USD.)

https://youtu.be/Jj5GKCavdeM

Also Read : New Study Claims Merely Visiting Piracy Sites can Place a User’s Computer at Risk

So what do you think about this programming buddy Codie. Does it will a proper coding tutor for kids? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

[Infographic] New Study Claims Merely Visiting Piracy Sites can Place a User’s Computer at Risk

By

Sabarinath

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December 11, 2015

Did you ever think how piracy sites are monetizing their websites and how much they are earning in a year. Shockingly now it proven that piracy sites are making about $70 million a year by spreading dangerous malware all over the internet through pirated files like stolen movies and television shows, cracked softwares and applications etc. And interesting fact is that merely visiting piracy sites can place a user’s computer at risk

According to a new study report, called ‘Digital Bait‘ commissioned by the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA) and conducted by cyber security firm RiskIQ says that after examining a sample of 800 piracy sites dedicated to distributing stolen movies and television shows, the found that one out of every three content theft sites contained malware. The study also found that consumers are 28 times more likely to get malware from a content theft site than on similarly visited mainstream websites or licensed content providers.

Also Read : What Are Phishing Scams And 10 Tips To Avoid Them

How Malware is Delivered from Piracy Sites

According to the study, about 45 percent of malware payloads found on the sample piracy sites are make its way on to a user’s device through a ‘drive-by-download‘, which means malware downloaded invisibly in the background and didn’t require user to confirm the downloads. That means merely visiting piracy sites can place a users’ computer at risk because users didn’t need to need to download media or click on any popup advertisements to become a victim. The remaining 55 percent of the malware lured users with fake prompts for requests such as Flash downloads and anti-virus updates and interestingly many of these prompts look virtually identical to prompts from the actual legitimate providers of such services.

“It’s clear that the criminals who exploit stolen content have diversified to make more money by baiting consumers to view videos and songs and then stealing their IDs and financial information,” — Executive Director of DCA Tom Galvin said in a statement.

Also Read : What Is DDoS Attacks And How Does It Works ?

Types of Malware Infected from Piracy Sites

Over half of all malware detected was classified as
Trojans by RiskIQ’s malware analysis tools. ‘Trojan’ is the general term for any malware that secretly installs itself to open unauthorized access to a computer.

Malicious adware and toolbar software were
the next most prevalent types. The definition of
Adware can range from benign to annoying to malicious. Adware detected by the anti-virus tools in this study was weighted toward the malicious end of the spectrum.

And lastly they also found ‘Other’ minor categories and instances where an exploit kit was detected but the malware type was not determined.

Once the malware is in place, criminals are able to steal bank and credit card information, find and share private information, lock a computer and demand a ransom or even take control of the computer to commit acts of fraud while framing the owner of the computer. According to RiskIQ, each month 12 million U. S users were being exposed to malware attacks from specific piracy sites they visited in the Sample Content Theft Group, based on Alexa traffic data and RiskIQ’s measure of malware incident rates.

Content theft, or piracy as it’s commonly known, poses a serious and under appreciated threat to Internet users by exposing them to harmful malware that can lead to identity theft, financial loss, and computers being taken over by hackers. So be careful while surf online.

Also Read : What Is SQL Injection Attack And How Does It Works ?

Check out two infographic provided as study report in brief :

Also Read : The Anatomy Of A Data Breach

If you want to know more, you can read the study on DCA’s website.

So now onwards simply avoid malicious piracy sites and protect yourself. Don,t be a victim because one of the most interesting claims in the study is that content theft sites are 28x more likely to contain malware than a legitimate site.

Also Read : What Is XSS Attacks And How Does It Works ?

So what do you think about the study report. Does it be helpful for you to stay safe while browsing the web ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Meet World’s First Android Smartphone With Massive 10000 mAh Battery

By

Avinash A

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December 10, 2015

Android Smartphone With Massive 10000 mAh Battery

Nowadays its not big a deal to find a Android smartphone with a battery of upto atleast 3000 mAh, which provide all all-day battery life. Now its time to forget them, here comes a new Android smartphone with massive 10000 mAh battery. Yes you heard it right, 10000 mAh , looks like it will deliver all-week battery life. Neowin posted some exclusive images, a Chinese smartphone maker, is set to announce this new smartphone called Oukitel K10000.

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While majority of the smartphone users carry a power bank with them in case the smartphone battery drains out due to heavy use, Oukitel has created a handset which alone features almost thrice the battery of Samsung Galaxy Note 4. The highlight of the Oukitel K10000 is its 10000mAh battery capacity, which is strides ahead from the current flagship high-end smartphones including Samsung Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Active, and also the battery-centric Gionee Marathon M5 smartphone, which comes with 6000mAh battery capacity. The battery life of the handset has not been mentioned as yet.

Specifications of 10000 mAh Battery Beast

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Neowin posted some exclusive images of this new coming massive 10000 mAh battery powered beast. According to Neowin Oukitel K10000 have a metal top, side and bottom build with dual speakers and USB connectivity at the bottom. Neowin also claims to have confirmed specifications from the company, and says the Oukitel K10000 will run Android 5.1 Lollipop out-of-the-box, and feature a 5.5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) resolution display. It is said to be powered by a quad-core MediaTek MT6735 SoC clubbed with 2GB RAM. The LTE-enabled smartphone comes with 16GB inbuilt storage, houses 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front facing camera onboard. The company is yet to launch the handset and reveal the full list of specifications in public.

For now, some of the smartphone with a large battery capacity are the Celkon Millennia Q5K Power and Gionee’s Marathon M3 smartphone with 5000mAh battery, Lava Iris Fuel 20 with 4400mAh battery, Karbonn Alfa A120 with 3000mAh battery. Among the flagship models from popular smartphone makers, Samsung is leading the way with its Galaxy S6 Active, which is backed by a 3500mAh battery.

So what you think about this new 10000 mAh battery powered beast ? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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