How To SSH Hop With Key Forwarding from Windows

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In this guide we’ll explain how to SSH to a Linux machine from Windows with your public key, using Putty & Winscp. In addition, we will enable the forwarding option. This will allow you to continue to jump from the machine you’ve connected to with your key, to another machine that supports SSHing with keys. We will not go into how to put your public key on the Linux machine,

Install basic programs/packages

• Obtain the PuTTY package (not just the executable) and install it.
• Optionally obtain the programs WinSCP and mRemote, and install them.

Generate a Key pair

If you haven’t created a key pair yet, and you want to do it from the comfort of your Windows desktop, you can use “PuTTY Key Generator” which was installed as part of the “PuTTY package“:

• Open “PuTTY Key Generator” by going into “Start” -> “PuTTY” -> “PuTTYgen”
• While not required, it is recommended that you change the length of your key from the default 1024. Change the number of “bits” at the bottom from “1024″ to “4096″.
• Click “Generate” and move your mouse around randomly until the bar reaches 100%. This “salts“ your key, so try to make your mouse movements as random as possible.
  
• Once the program is done generating the key,
• On the “Key Comment” line, change it to be something more useful like your name. For example:
  
• While not required, it is highly recommended that you set a passphrase on the private key. This will protect your private key in case some one gains access to it and you will only be bothered with entering once at machine boot up, if you perform all the steps in the guide.
• Click on “Save private key”.

Note: If you already have a saved private key, you can “extract” the public portion by “load”ing it with the generator.

Configuring the Key-quartermaster

The “Pageant” program that was installed as part of the PuTTY package, can store your key/s and give them to mRemote, WinSCP and PuTTY as required.

• Open ”Pageant” from the start menu. (Note: it may run off to the system tray)
  
• If it has run off to the system tray, double click it, to bring up the main window.
• Click “Add Key” and give it your saved Key Pair.
• If need be, provide the passphrase.

Done, from now on, Putty, WinSCP and any program that serves as a fronted for them (like mRemote) will first consult with the Pageant program if there is a key to use for the connection.

Loading Keys automatically at startup (Optional)

The process above needs to be repeated after every machine reboot, as Pageant doesn’t save loaded key configurations. To have it load the configuration automatically at startup, you can use one of the two methods below:

1. Assuming you’ve allowed Pageant to take over the ppk suffix, you should be able to simply add the key files to the Windows “startup” folder.
2. Create a shortcut to the program that passes the key-files as parameters.  For example, the “Target” command for two(2) keys would look like:
   
   “C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY\pageant.exe” “C:\Users\AviadR\Documents\aviad’s 4096.ppk”  ”C:\Users\AviadR\Documents\aviad’s 1024.ppk

• Then, add this shortcut to window’s startup.

Enable SSH Agent forwarding (PuTTY/mRemote)

This configuration is optional, but doing it will allow you once you’ve SSHed into a machine to continue and SSH from it, to the next machine, with the same key. To do this:

• Open PuTTY.
• Under “Connection” -> “SSH” -> “Auth”.
• Check the “Allow agent forwarding”.
  
• Go back to “Session”
• Select the “Default Settings” entry.
• Click on “Save”.
  
• Done.

Enable SSH Agent forwarding (WinSCP)

• In a WinSCP new connection tab, Enable the Advance options checkbox.
• Go to the “SSH” -> “Authentication”.
• Check the “Allow agent forwarding” checkbox.
  
• Go to the “General Options” by clicking on “Preferences” -> “Preferences”.
  
• Enable Putty to be invoked with the  forwarding option by going into “Integration” -> “Application” and appending the “-A” CLI option.
  
• You can now make this the template for subsequent connections by going back to “Session” and typing in, the basic information that you know will be uniform across all connections (if any), like Username, IP, Etc’. Then “save” the session.

Author’s Notes

While purists, will say that any serious SSHing, should be done from a Linux machine, the reality is that Ubuntu’s bug #1 ”Microsoft has a majority desktop market share”, still holds true. maybe one day we’ll move to the Linux desktop completely, but that day will not be today and not for the 35 year old shell.

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Japan sends Robots to Space

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A small humanoid robot that can talk will be sent into space to provide conversational company for a Japanese astronaut on a six-month mission, according to new plans.

The miniature robot will arrive at the International Space Station next summer, a few months ahead of astronaut Koichi Wakata, Japan's Kibo (Hope) Robot Project office said.

At 34 centimetres (13.4 inches) tall and weighing about one kilogram (2.2 pounds), the little android is programmed to recognise Wakata's face and to communicate in Japanese, the project office said, adding that it will also take photos during the trip.

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This drawing sketched by Japanese robot creator Tomotaka Takahashi and released by Kibo Robot Project on November 29, 2012 shows a small robot which will be taken into space with Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. At 34 centimetres (13.4 inches) tall and weighing about one kilogram (2.2 pounds), the little android is programmed to recognise Wakata's face and to communicate in Japanese.

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Microsoft Surface Pro to start at $899

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Microsoft announced Thursday that its Surface Pro, a version of its new tablet aimed at business users, would be available in January starting at $899 for US customers.

The Surface Pro will be powered by an Intel processor and have a full version of the new Windows 8 operating system, which is designed with both PCs and tablets in mind.

"It's a full PC AND a tablet," said a blog post from Microsoft's Panos Panay.

"And all this in a PC that will weigh less than two pounds and be less than 14 millimeters thick. We are excited about both Surface with Windows RT and Surface with Windows 8 Pro."

Microsoft started selling the surface last month in a version aimed at consumers with a mobile-style processor and a tweaked version of its new operating system called Windows RT. It pricing was roughly in line the the iPad, the top-selling tablet.

The Surface Pro will be more expensive, and is apparently aimed at corporate users and those seeking a laptop replacement. The least expensive version with 64 gigabytes of memory will sell for $899, not including the touch cover with keyboard. A 128 GB version will start at $999.

"Surface with Windows 8 Pro uses the same familiar elegant design principles as Surface with Windows RT," Panay said.

Chief executive Steve Ballmer has described the iPad challenger -- complete with a built-in stand and ultra thin covers which double as keyboards in a range of colors -- as a tablet that "works and plays."

© 2012 AFP

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US Senate panel passes email privacy measure

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A US Senate panel approved a bill to boost email privacy protections in a vote Thursday that followed widespread uproar over the FBI probe that toppled CIA director David Petraeus.

The measure, which if enacted would require police to obtain a warrant in most cases to access email accounts, drew immediate praise from privacy activists.

The proposal had been pending for some time but garnered increased attention after the resignation of Petraeus earlier this month due to an extramarital affair exposed by a search of his email records.

Senate judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, who sponsored the measure, said it would update a 1986 privacy law as "Americans face even greater threats to their digital privacy."

"After decades of the erosion of Americans' privacy rights on many fronts, we finally have a rare opportunity for progress on privacy protection," the Vermont senator said in a statement.

Leahy's measure requires the government to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause in order to obtain email content from a third-party service provider, with some exceptions in cases of national security or imminent threats.

It also calls for the government to notify an individual whose electronic communication has been disclosed, and provide that individual with a copy of the search warrant used.

Gregory Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the bill offered a historic step forward for privacy rights.

"Our privacy laws are woefully outdated given the rapid advance of technology," he said.

Nojeim said the measure "keeps the government from turning cloud providers into a one-stop convenience store for government investigators and requires government investigators to do for online communications what they already do in the offline world: Get a warrant."

The American Civil Liberties Union also hailed the move.

"This is an important gain for privacy. We are very happy that the committee voted that all electronic content like emails, photos and other communications held by companies like Google and Facebook should be protected with a search warrant," said Chris Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.

"We believe law enforcement should use the same standard to search your inbox that they do to search your home."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation welcomed the move, saying it would "close a dangerous loophole in the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act," which authorities have argued allows them to access private emails that are more than 180 days old without a warrant.

Robert Holleyman, head of the Software Alliance, also praised the panel for "an important step in building trust and confidence in cloud computing and other digital services."

"Law enforcement access and civil protections should be the same for online files and other digital records as they are for papers stored in a file cabinet," Holleyman said.

Petraeus resigned when it became clear that his affair with 40-year-old military reservist Paula Broadwell, his biographer, would become public.

FBI agents stumbled on the liaison after a complaint from Jill Kelley -- a friend of Petraeus -- who told a federal agent that she had received threatening emails, which investigators later traced to Broadwell.

The Leahy measure would need to pass the Senate and the House of Representatives before going to President Barack Obama's desk to be signed into law.

© 2012 AFP

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Samsung launches new Internet-connected camera

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Samsung Electronics on Thursday launched a new Internet-connected camera in South Korea, as the electronics giant intensifies efforts to expand its dominance in the mobile phone market to other sectors.

The "Galaxy" camera, named after the Korean firm's signature smartphone and tablet PC series, enables users to upload photos and videos directly to the Internet without having to hook it up to a computer.

The camera, launched earlier this year in countries in Europe, North America and elsewhere in Asia, is not Samsung's first Internet-connected camera.

But the latest device -- powered by Google's Android software like many key Samsung gadgets including Galaxy S smartphones or Galaxy Tab tablets -- operates more like a smartphone, the company said.

It allows users to download apps aimed at polishing photos or videos, automatically share images stored in the camera with certain mobile devices located nearby, or to have the images automatically stored in a cloud-computing server.

Users have to subscribe to wireless plans to use the gadget, featuring a 4.8-inch LCD touchscreen, a 21x optical lens and priced at about 750,000 won ($691) on the domestic market.

"The Galaxy Camera will open a new chapter of communications -- visual communications," JK Shin, chief of Samsung's mobile unit, said in a statement.

Samsung -- the world's top maker of smartphones and memory chips -- has recently been trying to strengthen its relatively small presence in the global digital camera industry dominated by Japanese giants like Nikon and Canon.

© 2012 AFP

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Japan mobile phone will monitor skin condition

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A mobile phone that monitors the user's skin condition, checking for blemishes and colour, was unveiled in beauty-conscious Japan on Thursday.

The "Hada Memori" (skin memory) programme allows women to keep tabs on their complexion and track changes over time by storing records in the cloud.

Users can also share their data through social networking sites, said IT giant Fujitsu, which plans to use the information to target advertising of beauty products.

A spokeswoman said the skin system comes with a small card that has a 15 millimetre (0.6 inch) hole, which must be pressed to the cheek. The smartphone's camera then takes a picture of the skin and analyses the result.

The Hada Memori is the first of a series of devices that will measure users' stress levels, exercise habits and quality of sleep, helping the company gather a significant pool of health data which it can then sell on.

"We will be able to offer the data to service providers eventually," said Hayuru Ito, senior manager of Fujitsu's strategic planning division.

Fujitsu is aiming to have one million users of the system in the next two years.

© 2012 AFP

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Justin Bieber Meeting With Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

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Justin Bieber got an earful from the online peanut gallery after wearing overalls to a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper last week. Now, Bieber's fighting back.

The pop superstar, 19, donned blue-and-white-striped overalls, a white T-shirt, a backwards baseball cap, and yellow sneakers on Friday to accept the Diamond Jubilee Medal, to continue click here

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Facebook adds iTunes credits in gift service

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Facebook said Monday it was adding Apple iTunes digital credits to its new gift service at the social network.

"Starting today with Facebook Gifts, you can instantly gift your friends iTunes digital gifts and recommend albums, movies, games, apps, and more available on the iTunes Store," a Facebook statement said.

The iTunes "digital gifts" will be available in amounts of $10, $15, $25, or $50. For now, it is available only for US users of Facebook.

Facebook in September added the feature that lets people send cupcakes, coffee, stuffed animals or other gifts to friends at the social network.

Facebook said it was rolling gifts out gradually, starting in the United States.

People can click on icons that look like bow-wrapped boxes to select gifts from an array of merchants, then send friends virtual cards either as private messages or for posting in public timelines at Facebook pages.

Facebook shares were up 7.9 percent at $25.91 in afternoon trade, hovering around the highest levels since late July. Facebook shares fell by half after an offering price in May of $38 amid concerns about revenue growth.

© 2012 AFP

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Is Facebook going like Google on User privacy Information

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Two privacy advocacy groups urged Facebook Inc on Monday to withdraw proposed changes to its terms of service that would allow the company to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram, eliminate a user voting system and loosen email restrictions within the social network.

The changes, which Facebook unveiled on Wednesday, raise privacy risks for users and violate the company's previous commitments to its roughly 1 billion members, according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.

"Facebook's proposed changes implicate the user privacy and terms of a recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission," the groups said in a letter to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg that was published on their websites on Monday.

By sharing information with Instagram, the letter said, Facebook could combine user profiles, ending its practice of keeping user information on the two services separate.
Facebook declined to comment on the letter.

In April, Facebook settled privacy charges with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that it had deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. Under the settlement, Facebook is required to get user consent for certain changes to its privacy settings and is subject to 20 years of independent audits.

Facebook, Google and other online companies have faced increasing scrutiny and enforcement from privacy regulators as consumers entrust ever-increasing amounts of information about their personal lives to Web services.

Facebook unveiled a variety of proposed changes to its terms of service and data use polices on Wednesday, including a move to scrap a 4-year old process that can allow the social network's roughly 1 billion users to vote on changes to its policies.

If proposed changes generate more than 7,000 public comments during a seven-day period, Facebook's current terms of service automatically trigger a vote by users to approve the changes. But the vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

The latest proposed changes had garnered more than 17,000 comments by late Monday.

Facebook also said last week that it wanted to eliminate a setting for users to control who can contact them on the social network's email system. The company said it planned to replace the "Who can send you Facebook messages" setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.
That change is likely to increase the amount of unwanted "spam" messages that users receive, the privacy groups warned on Monday.
Facebook's potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people's personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.

In January, Google said it would combine users' personal information from its various Web services - such as search, email and the Google+ social network - to provide a more customized experience. The unified data policy raised concerns among some privacy advocates and regulators, who said it was an invasion of people's privacy.
"As our company grows, we acquire businesses that become a legal part of our organization," Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an emailed statement on Monday.

"Those companies sometimes operate as affiliates. We wanted to clarify that we will share information with our affiliates and vice versa, both to help improve our services and theirs, and to take advantage of storage efficiencies," Noyes said.

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How to Change the Default Save Location for Office 2013

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The new version of Office comes complete with SkyDrive integration, but sadly SkyDrive is the default save location. Here’s how to make your Office apps save documents to your PC by default instead of SkyDrive.

How to Change the Default Save Location for Office 2013

Open any one of the office programs and click on the File menu item.

Then click on Options.

Now head into the Save settings.

On the right hand side you will see a check box labeled “Save to computer by default”, check it and then click OK.

That’s all there it to it, now when you go to save a document it will default to your PC.
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Japanese High tech toilet

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They are found in more than two-thirds of Japanese households and visitors to the country have marvelled at their heated seats, posterior shower jets and odour-masking function.

But for the company that has sold over 30 million high-tech toilets, commonly known as Washlets, global lavatory domination remains elusive, especially among shy US consumers.

"It's because of the cultural taboo over talking about toilets," said Hiromichi Tabata, head of the international division at Washlet-maker TOTO, a company that also makes bath tubs, kitchen taps, basins and plumbing fixtures.

"Americans avoid talking about those kinds of things so we can't expect success from word-of-mouth, even if they recognise our products are excellent.

"Many celebrities say they love the Washlet when they visit Japan, but the fervour is temporary," he added.

Pop diva Madonna gushed about Japanese culture during a 2005 visit and pointed to the Washlet as a key draw, saying "I've missed the heated toilet seats" -- the kind of free marketing most companies dream about.

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Hiromichi Tabata, head of the international division at Washlet-maker TOTO, introduces the 'Neorest' at its head office in Tokyo. In the full-year to March 2012, TOTO posted a net profit of 9.27 billion yen on global sales of 452.7 billion yen, up 4.4% from a year earlier.

For a nation that claims globally recognised brand names such as Sony and Toyota, the Washlet's relative lack of overseas presence comes as a surprise to many foreign visitors, even if they're initially baffled by its dizzying array of functions and Japanese signage.

In technology and hygiene-obsessed Japan, where restaurants provide a steaming hot towel for customers' hands, they're found in public toilets, office lavatories and over 70 percent of Japanese households.

"We thought that Japanese people, who are clean freaks, would like the idea of the Washlet," said spokeswoman Atsuko Kuno.

But when it hit the market in the booming 1980s, the high-tech toilet wasn't an immediate success in conservative Japan either.

Some viewers were irate over a 1982 television commercial for the newly-released Washlet which featured a girl trying to wipe black paint off her hand with paper, making a mess in the process.

"Paper won't fully clean it," she told viewers. "It's the same with your bottom."

But the provocative marketing eventually paid off by putting the unique toilets into the minds of consumers.

TOTO designed its Washlet by asking hundreds of its employees to test a toilet and mark, using a string stretched across the bowl and a piece of paper, their preferred location for the water jet target area.

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Hiromichi Tabata, head of the international division at Washlet-maker TOTO, speaks at the company's head office in Tokyo. Despite the Washlet's relatively expensive price tag, TOTO executives figure that liberal Europeans are a hugely promising bet.

The Washlet's functions, laid out on a computerised control panel with pictograms, include water jets with pressure and temperature controls, hot-air bottom dryers and ambient background music.

Another function produces a flushing sound to mask bodily noises -- a hit among the easily-embarrassed -- while some models have a lid that automatically swings open when users enter the restroom.

Others feature seats and lids that glide back into horizontal position, possibly solving gender battles over flipped-up toilet seats in the home.

Business continues to be robust for the toilet maker, whose rivals in the key domestic market include Lixil Group.

In the full-year to March 2012, TOTO posted a net profit of 9.27 billion yen ($114 million) on global sales of 452.7 billion yen, up 4.4 percent from a year earlier.

But only about 14 percent of that revenue figure was from overseas sales.

Despite the challenges in reaching foreign consumers, tapping the hotel market has met with some success, executives say, while China and other East Asian nations have seen growing demand "because they have cultures similar to Japan", Tabata said.

Localising products is also key.

Washlets sold in tropical markets such as Indonesia don't come with heated seats and blast lukewarm water into users' nether regions instead of the hot spray offered in chillier climes.

Despite the Washlet's relatively expensive price tag -- the cheapest sells for about $900 -- TOTO executives figure that liberal Europeans are a hugely promising bet, especially now that a Swiss rival is selling a similar product.

"We expect Europe will eventually get used to the idea of a heated toilet seat with warm water," Tabata predicted.

Monday is World Toilet Day, a day designed to raise awareness of the plight of people around the world without access to adequate sanitation. 

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IMF chief says SMS tax could help Philippines

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International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde urged the Philippines on Friday to tax mobile phone messages to shore up state funds in a country sometimes called the world's text message capital.

Such a tax could boost proceeds from revised "sin taxes" set to be passed by the country's parliament, she told a news conference during an overnight visit to Manila.

Lagarde said Vice-President Jejomar Binay told her telephone coverage in the country of nearly 100 million people has reached to 112 percent, thanks to the popularity of mobile phones for sending short messages cheaply.

"(This) clearly satisfies one of the two criteria for what we call a good taxation... a very broad base," she told reporters.

However she said the government must be the one to decide what kind of taxes it imposes.

Surveys have credited the Philippines as being the most prolific country in sending SMS messages with the average mobile phone user sending 600 messages a month. Each message now costs just a peso (2.40 US cents).

A hugely unpopular bill to levy a five-centavo tax on SMS messages has already been defeated in parliament in 2009.

The government, which hopes to balance the national budget in 2016, instead turned to proposing higher taxes on alcohol and tobacco, which would have the added benefit of combating the health hazards of smoking.

The government says this "sin tax" could be passed next week despite opposition stalling ahead of the May 2013 elections.

© 2012 AFP

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Free Mini ipad

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Get this end of year free mini ipad, is give away from dooulect technology company to our reader.
to be elegible for it now.




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Camera that can see through your skin,around corner

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Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, have discovered a new physics trick. While it’s not exactly Superman vision –– yet — the camera developed by Ori Katz, Eran Small and Prof. Yaron Silberberg sees through objects using a simple light bulb, a standard digital camera and the basic technology found in everyday digital projectors.
Their camera can see through nearly opaque surfaces such as skin or frosted glass — even around a corner into another room if the door is open.

Other scientists around the world have produced similar results, but only when using laser technology and not in real time.
While the applications are far down the road, the new discovery points the way to non-invasive cancer diagnostics. Katz, a post-doctoral student, tells ISRAEL21c that biopsies could be circumvented if this approach is further developed by the medical imaging industry.
The international press has gone wild over the idea, stirring much exhilaration among the inventors.
“Every time someone wrote on a website that we developed ‘Superman vision,’ it made me more excited,” admits Katz, who will be continuing his research in Paris for the next few years. “Even if it is not applied one day in medicine, we had to do what we did because it’s very cool.”
Making sense of the fog
Their trick hinges on the camera’s ability to see through any object that can scatter light – including skin. Though skin doesn’t look transparent, light passes through it. This is more obvious when you hold a flashlight to your hand in the dark. Where you can see the light shining through, this is an example of scattered light.

An illustration of how the device “sees” around corners.

Katz explains: “Light is a sort of radiation. The general public doesn’t see it that way; they see it as just regular light. We used regular light from a halogen lamp to be able to see through most of the materials that we encounter today. Most of them are not transparent when we look at them, like our skin or an eggshell.
“The problem is that they are absorbing light, and then the light is scattered. Just like when you look at fog. Microscopically, fog is transparent but the movement [of the fog] prevents you from seeing through it,” he explains.
Until recently scientists did not fully understand the way the light is absorbed by these objects and then scattered away. But new technologies allow physicists to amplify what they are seeing to find patterns.
They reasoned that if light is scattered in wave patterns when it passes through “turbid” materials (which absorb light but let light pass through, like frosted glass), it should scatter according to the material’s shape and size. Applied in reverse, one could image the object’s appearance by re-creating the original pattern. This is the basis of a new field called “wave front shaping.”
“Once we’ve learned the patterns — the way a material or object scatters the light — we can apply the inverse scattering pattern using a big crystal and a small LCD screen,” says Katz.
“We are not doing any magic,” he assures. “In the past we didn’t think the scattered light carried any information because it was scattered too many times.”
Spy glasses?
Spies around the globe will be pleased to know this device can be put together for a few hundred dollars by “hacking” a digital projector, says Katz. The equipment he used cost about $10,000, but for novelty purposes it can be done for much less. Which is another appeal to the technology – it’s simple, straightforward and relatively cheap.
Katz does not expect wave front shaping to replace an MRI, but theoretically, it could be used to non-invasively “see” through the skin to identify malignancies instead of a surgical biopsy.
Intriguingly, the same approach can provide a peek around corners. “The surface of the wall is not as smooth as a mirror, yet it scatters and scrambles all the directions of the light. We took a small portion of the wall, learned its properties, and now we can use it as a mirror,” he says.
But before you quit your day job to take on the next Mission Impossible or superhero job, take note that the team was only able to see through a small patch of material, with poor contrast and fuzzy resolution. “There are still lots of obstacles to overcome using our technique,” admits Katz. Retweet this story

Japan's largest solar and wind power project breaks ground

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Seven Japanese companies have been celebrating the ground breaking of their solar and wind power project at a ceremony held today at the project site in Midorigahama, Tahara City, Aichi Prefecture in Japan.
With a PV capacity of 50MW and a wind capacity of 6MW, the companies claim that the project represents Japan's largest solar and wind power project to date. The project is being built on 800,000 square metres of land on a site which has been selected due to its "top level" daylight hours and wind velocity. Total annual output has been estimated at approximately 67,500MWh which is said to be enough to power 19,000 homes or 90% of Tahara City's households. Retweet this story

Facebook new product: threading comment

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Yet more tinkering is taking place over at Facebook HQ where the social network's dev elves are trying out threaded commenting on Facebook pages.
You won't see the tests on any personal Facebook profiles, only a selection of brand pages will have the option to in-line reply to specific comments - just as you can on Reddit, for example.
As well as the threaded comments, Facebook's trying out a new way of ranking the comments under each status, so that the 'most engaging' ones show higher up (i.e. the ones with the highest number of comments) show higher up the thread.
Because it's all just a test, Facebook hasn't said exactly which pages will see the new commenting system, nor whether it will roll out to all Pages in the coming weeks.

Threading the needle

Although you can currently tag a person in a comment by typing their name prefaced by the @ symbol (a la Twitter), until the new changes roll out there's no handy way to start and keep a conversation going in the comments under a status.
Like many Facebook updates, we can't understand why this didn't come in earlier; that's a feeling that does not apply to promoted posts for users though, Retweet this story

Music streaming in 2012

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The growing popularity of internet music services like Spotify has sent the number of streamed tracks up by almost 700 per cent in the UK.
In an interview with The Guardian, David Joseph, chairman and chief executive of Universal Music UK and Ireland revealed that over 7.5 billion tracks have been streamed this year.
During the whole of 2011 only 1.1 billion tracks were streamed through the likes of Spotify, Deezer and Last.fm, representing a seismic shift in the way Brits are consuming music.
The Guardian points out that another 250 billion songs have been viewed through YouTube this year.

Break on through

The streaming figures are juxtaposed with Joseph's concerns about the falling number of UK breakthrough artists (defined by 100,000 album sales) his year.
Nine new acts (potentially rising to 12 or 13) attained the 100,000 mark in 2012, according to Joseph, falling from 19 in 2011. Are the higher streaming numbers affecting album sales?
Joseph said: "There are two or three more acts to break but it doesn't look like reaching 19," claiming 20+ is the expected norm.
"Considering this is our lifeblood it is of concern to us, and something we focus on every day," he added.
Despite the concerns over breakthrough acts, singles sales in the UK are, this year, at the highest level this century, according to the UK's Official Charts, buoyed by improved digital download figures. Retweet this story

iPhone 5S to be launched early 2013

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The iPhone 5 may still be fresh out the oven, but whispers have already begun to surface that an iPhone 5S successor could go into production as early as next month.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times estimates that full commercial production of the rumoured iPhone 5S will begin as early as Q1 2013, with the December run only expected to return between 50,000 and 100,000 units.
The paper claims that Apple has put its foot on the gas for the next iteration of the popular handset, due to low yield rates of the iPhone 5 on the assembly line. Because of the fragility of the parts used to make the device, many break before they even see the light of day.

So soon?

Such an early release of the iPhone 5S remains unlikely, however. The iPhone 5 has had barely enough time to gather dust on shop shelves, let alone pull in the masses of revenue Apple has still to make from it.
A Q1 2013 release of the 5S would also raise questions over Apple's upgrade process.
Then again, the Cupertino-based giant has surprised us before: earlier this month Apple brought us the new iPad 4 and the iPad mini just eight months after the release of the iPad 3 in March.
Nevertheless, it's more likely that the iPhone 5S will hit stores in the latter part of 2013, following the trend set by the iPhone 5 and 4S. It's even possible that Apple will skip the iPhone 5S and hop right on to the iPhone 6.
Needless to say, TechRadar will be keeping a close eye on this story and will bring you the latest developments as they emerge. Retweet this story

Black berry 10 will be lunched january 30, 2013

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RIM has finally confirmed a launch date for BlackBerry 10, with January 30 2013 the date to mark in your diary.
Two BlackBerry 10 smartphones will also be unveiled at the global event, with the release date for the hard- and software to be announced at the same time.
The global launch event will happen simultaneously in multiple countries around the world.

About time

The new OS was originally meant to launch this summer, before being pushed back to the end of the year and finally to early 2013. Looks like RIM has finally hit a deadline.
You can detect just a hint of quiet desperation in CEO Thorsten Heins' press-released quote, which concludes, "We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world."
No wonder; RIM's handsets have been struggling in this new post-iPhone world, with sales and market share dropping off a cliff in the last few years and prompting one analyst to deem BB10 "dead on arrival".
As for the hardware, we're expecting to see the long-rumoured BlackBerry L-Series get its official reveal, focusing heavily on the touchscreen side of things, with the N-Series phone rocking RIM's traditional (and excellent) physical keyboard. Retweet this story

HTC and Apple reach global settlement

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Taiwan's leading smartphone maker HTC said Sunday it has reached a global settlement with technology giant Apple, bringing an end to all outstanding litigation between the two companies.

The deal includes a 10-year licensing agreement over patents, HTC said in a statement, without providing further details.

"HTC is pleased to have resolved its dispute with Apple, so HTC can focus on innovation instead of litigation," HTC CEO Peter Chou said in the statement.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said: "We are glad to have reached a settlement with HTC."

"We will continue to stay laser focused on product innovation."

HTC and Apple were locked in more than 20 cases in the world including some pending the ruling of the International Trade Commission of the United States, according to an HTC official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Technology giants have taken to routinely pounding one another with patent lawsuits. Apple has accused HTC and other smartphone makers using Google's Android mobile operating system of infringing on Apple-held patents.

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A boy looks at a MacBook Air announcing the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. HTC claimed in a suit that MacBook Air had infringed on two patents it acquired from Hewlett-Packard last year related to computer networks, Taipei-based Apple Daily reported.

"This is definitely a positive element to HTC, especially when it is being knocked by poor sales," Mars Hsu of Grand Cathay Securities told AFP.

"Unlike the lawsuits between Apple and Samsung focusing on the alleged infringement of iPhone outlook, the suits with HTC are more related to alleged technology infringements," he said.

Apple won an order last December from the US International Trade Commission, which issued a "limited exclusion order" directing that HTC stop bringing offending smartphones into the United States effective on April 19.

In May, US mobile carrier Sprint said it had to delay the introduction of an Android smartphone from HTC after the devices were blocked by US customs in the first enforcement of a win in a trade complaint by Apple.

HTC's net profit in the three months to September tumbled 79.1 percent from a year ago to Tw$3.9 billion ($133.1 million), down sharply from Tw$18.64 billion.

Revenues totalled Tw$70.2 billion, meeting the lower side of the Tw$70 billion-Tw$80 billion range it had previously forecast. The revenues marked a sharp decline of 48 percent from a year ago when they were Tw$135.82 billion.

In the latest of the series of lawsuits between the two companies, HTC in July said it was suing Apple in a district court in Florida but declined to elaborate as the case had entered formal litigation proceedings.

According to the Taipei-based Apple Daily newspaper, HTC claimed in the suit that Apple's MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iPhone have infringed on two patents it acquired from Hewlett-Packard last year related to computer networks.

But HTC hailed a victory in July as a British court ruled that it did not infringe on Apple's photo management patent while deeming three other Apple patents -- for slide-to-unlock, multi-touch and multilingual keyboard capability -- invalid.

HTC sells its own smartphones and also makes handsets for a number of leading US companies, including Google's Nexus One.

The company has recently unveiled a new series of smartphones to compete with US technology giant Apple and South Korea's Samsung, which separately launched the iPhone 5 last month and the Galaxy Note II in late September.

© 2012 AFP

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Australian wins $208k from Google for gang links

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Google was ordered to pay Aus$200,000 (US$208,000) in damages to an Australian man Monday after a jury found the Internet giant defamed him by publishing material linking him to mobsters.

Milorad Trkulja, an entertainment promoter who is now 62, was shot in the back in 2004 in a crime that was never solved.

He accused Google of defaming him with material he said implied he was a major crime figure in Melbourne and had been the target of a professional hit.

Searches of his name brought up references to the city's gangsters including crime boss Tony Mokbel and a now defunct site called "Melbourne Crime" chronicling gang-related incidents.

Google denied publication in the Supreme Court of Victoria, saying it had innocently disseminated material published by others, and also disputed that the material conveyed the defamatory implications claimed by Trkulja.

But a jury ruled in his favour, finding the Internet firm had been on notice and failed to act on the issue from October 2009, when Trkulja's lawyers wrote to them demanding action over the "grossly defamatory" content.

Judge David Beach ordered Google to pay Trkulja Aus$200,000, likening their role in publication to a library or newsagent, which have "sometimes been held to be publishers for the purposes of defamation law" in Australia.

"Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article," Beach said in his judgement.

"While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation."

Beach said the jury was "entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request".

Trkulja, who argued that his reputation was central to his work and had been seriously damaged by the defamatory material, had already won Aus$225,000 from Yahoo in an earlier case on the same matter.

© 2012 AFP

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Internet in Space, outside the earth(DTN).

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The interplanetary internet has been used by an astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS) to send commands to a robot on Earth.

The experimental technology, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocol, could be a future way to communicate with astronauts on Mars.
Currently, if there is a problem when data is sent between Earth and Mars rovers, information can be lost.
The DTN could offer a more robust way to send data over the vast distances.
The European Space Agency (Esa) and Nasa conducted the experiment in late October.
ISS Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams used a laptop with DTN software to control a rover in Germany.
The DTN is similar to the internet on Earth, but is much more tolerant to the delays and disruptions that are likely to occur when data is shuttling between planets, satellites, space stations and distant spacecraft.
The delays can be due to solar storms or when spacecraft are behind a planet.
"It's all about communicating over large distances, because the 'normal' internet doesn't expect that it may take minutes before something is sent for it to arrive," Kim Nergaard from Esa told the BBC.
The work on the DTN was first proposed a decade ago by Vint Cerf - one of the creators of the internet on Earth.
The technology was first tested in November 2008, when Nasa successfully transmitted images to and from a spacecraft 20 million miles away with a communications system based on the net.
Space network The system uses a network of nodes - connection points - to cope with delays. If there is a disruption, the data gets stored at one of the nodes until the communication is available again to send it further.
This "store and forward" mechanism ensures data is not lost and gradually works its way towards its destination.

Curiosity sends data to Earth via one of the two Mars orbiters

"With the internet on Earth, if something is disconnected, the source has to retransmit everything, or you lose your data," said Mr Nergaard.
"But the DTN has this disruption tolerance, and that's the difference - it has to be much more robust over the kind of distances and the kind of networks we're talking about."
Currently, to communicate with Curiosity, the latest rover that landed in Gale Crater on the Red Planet on 6 August, Nasa and Esa use what is called "point-to-point communication".
"Normally, the rover on the surface of Mars is commanded directly from Earth, or in some cases using spacecraft orbiting Mars as data relay satellites - but it's still considered single point-to-point communication," said Mr Nergaard.
"It's not built-up as a network. There are several rovers on the surface of Mars, many spacecraft orbiting Mars, but they are all seen as individual items.
"But the idea is that in the future rovers on Mars and spacecraft orbiting it will be treated as a network, so that you can send things to the network just as you send things using the internet on Earth.
"It will still be via radio waves, but over different frequencies, to allow you higher data rate communication than the ones used today."
Nasa's Badri Younes said that the test was a success, and it demonstrated "the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot". Retweet this story

China will launch next manned spaceship in 2013

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China plans to launch its next manned space mission in June next year, state media reports.

A senior official in charge of the manned space programme said the three-person crew could be made up of a woman and two men.
China became only the third country to independently send a person into space in 2003, after the US and Russia.
The launch plan follows the flight of the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, which returned to Earth in late June.
The Shenzhou 9 took part in the country's first manual space docking mission, a major milestone in China's ambitious space programme.
It also carried China's first female astronaut, Liu Yang.
According to Niu Hongguang, deputy commander-in-chief of the manned space programme, next year's mission could happen as early as June, but back-up launch windows have been identified for July or August.
China plans to develop a full orbiting space station by 2020 and has also raised the possibility of sending a man to the moon.
There has been discussion of China joining the International Space Station project, but this is considered unlikely given political tensions between Beijing and Washington. Retweet this story

Japan plans new carrier rocket launch in 2013

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Japan is planning to launch its new carrier rocket in summer of 2013, national space agency JAXA said, according to RIA Novosti.
JAXA's goal is to have an inexpensive rocket to launch compact low-cost satellites into orbit. It will replace the M-5 rocket, a similar vehicle that carried out seven successful space missions between 1997 and 2006. The three-stage solid-fuel launcher is designed to lift more than 2,600 pounds to low Earth orbit. The M-5 rocket could haul about 4,000 pounds to a similar orbit.
However, the launch of the Epsilon will cost about $48 million compared to the M-5, which carried a $70 million price tag for each launch. Retweet this story

UK to increase its Space budget spending

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Chancellor George Osborne has increased spending on space technology by £60m per year over the next two years.

The investment is part of a plan to increase the UK's contribution to the European Space Agency.
The government hopes this will attract more hi-tech jobs and contracts to Britain.
Overall spending in civil research has, however, declined by 5% in real terms since 2010 - a reduction which is set to continue.
Mr Osborne made the announcement in a speech to the Royal Society, calling for a national debate on where the UK can lead the world in scientific excellence.
The European Space Agency (Esa) investment will lift UK's contribution to the Paris-based organisation by an average of 30% at a time when many other nations are struggling to meet their contributions or even reducing them.
By increasing its contribution, the expectation is that the UK will get more research contracts in return and this will increase the competitiveness of British space companies, enabling them to win future orders in what is a growing global market for products and services.
Recent data have shown that the UK space industry recorded a total turnover of over £9.1bn in 2010/11, representing an average annual growth rate of 7.5% since 2008/09.
While other sectors have shrunk during the recession, these figures gave Science Minister David Willetts powerful ammunition to persuade the Treasury to back space as a key sector for further growth.

"We have underestimated the strength of our space industry," he told BBC News. "In fact, we are a global player in satellite and telecommunications technology. This additional investment is a signal to Esa and commercial companies that we are going to continue to support space science and technology."

Sir Martin Sweeting, the executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, which specialises in manufacturing small spacecraft, welcomed the chancellor's announcement, saying: "The UK space industry is a world leader and has been one of the fastest-growing parts of the economy over the past decade.
"Today's announcement will help to maintain the UK's lead in this rapidly growing market."
The commitment to Esa will see the agency base its satellite telecommunications headquarters in the UK, expanding its recently opened technical centre in Harwell, Oxfordshire.
In his speech, Mr Osborne set out seven further areas where the government thinks Britain is a world leader and can and must go further: computing, synthetic biology, regenerative medicine, agricultural science, energy storage, robotics and advanced materials including nanotechnology.
The chancellor said he believes science is important in helping to rebalance the UK economy.
Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering (Case), said he was pleased to see that Mr Osborne was taking such a close personal interest in science.
"The commitment to new spending on scientific infrastructure is important, as part of the UK's push to be a modern, high-tech economy," he said.
"We hope that George Osborne carries on and turns this commitment into a sustainable, long-term one, along with addressing the cut that inflation has made in the 'flat cash' settlement. Using the £4bn revenue from the forthcoming 4G spectrum auction provides the perfect opportunity to do this, as we and Nesta have called for in our 4Growth report."
Funding for civil research has however been frozen since the chancellor's autumn statement in 2010.
In real terms, the science budget is being cut by 2.5% each year and in two years' time will have been reduced by 10% relative to 2010.
The chancellor also slashed capital spending by research funders by 41% - the money for maintenance and upkeep of the UK's labs and equipment. The cut of £1.6bn has been slightly clawed back by Mr Willetts, who has persuaded the chancellor to set up new research institutes, such as a graphene centre and a computer hub announced last year.

Investing in space technology is seen as one path to re-balance the British economy

Scientific bodies want to encourage Mr Osborne to continue to spend more on science and so are publicly supportive.
But privately, many are concerned that an ever-shrinking pool of funding has to be spread ever thinner on research areas that catch the eye of the chancellor and science minister at the expense of fields that are less politically appealing but nonetheless important for the UK's science base.
Some are wondering whether this tactic will see a shift away from the time-honoured tradition of allowing scientific experts to decide how research funding should be spent, the so-called Haldane Principle, and back toward an ill-fated attempt by the Labour Party in the 1970s to "pick winners".
Commenting on George Osborne's speech, Shadow Minister for Science and Innovation Chi Onwurah MP said: "In 2010, the Tory-led government pledged to protect science spending, given its importance to future growth and rebalancing the economy, but they have broken their promises.
"Departmental science spending fell by 7.6% in the first year of this Parliament alone and total spending on science last year is down by 6.4%. If the reduction continues at this rate, science spending will be down by a quarter over the life of the Parliament."
Liberal Democrat peer and member of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Lord Willis said: "To listen to a well-informed and pro-active speech from the Chancellor is warmly welcomed.
"The challenge now is to back his eight technology transfer priorities with significant new resources - otherwise we will fail to meet the challenges he has rightly identified."
That was a view echoed by the President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse who jokingly said it was now time for Mr Osborne to "put his money where his mouth is" after the Chancellor had finished his speech. Retweet this story

Microsoft Office in Android and iOS in 2013

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Microsoft is reportedly in the process of porting its Office productivity suite over to iOS and Android devices. This isn't the first we've heard of Office Mobile, nor has Microsoft officially confirmed the news, but screenshots and inside information have all but tipped the release as imminent. It will ship first to iOS and then Android, starting in early 2013, perhaps as early as February.
This information comes courtesy of The Verge, which received its intel "through several sources close to Microsoft's plans." As The Verge tells it, Office Mobile will initially be offered as a free app that allows iOS and Android users to view Microsoft Office documents (Word, PowerPoint, and Excel). Using it will require a Microsoft account.
Those with an Office 365 subscription will be able to edit documents in Office Mobile, and there will be an option to purchase a subscription from within the app. Look for this to include basic editing functions and not the full assortment of tools available in the desktop version.
As previously mentioned, iOS users get first dibs on Mobile Office, either in late February or early March of next year. An Android release is scheduled for May. Retweet this story

Is Apple losing Innovations?

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Apple, the world's biggest and perhaps most admired company, seems to have lost some of its luster.

Despite the hugely successful launch of the iPhone 5 and iPad mini tablet, shares in the California tech giant have slid some 20 percent from all-time highs, and analysts are questioning whether Apple remains the leader in "innovation."

A flubbed mobile maps program and a major shakeup in key management have also tarnished the image of the firm that had seemed nearly invincible just months earlier.

A more competitive landscape for mobile phones and tablets, including the surge in devices using the Google Android operating system, have also changed the outlook for Apple.

Last month, Apple parted ways with Scott Forstall, the executive in charge of mobile software, following embarrassments over its glitch-ridden maps program, as well as John Browett, who headed Apple's real-world shops.

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Customers shop at an Apple Store in Los Angeles, California, on November 2. It was reported that lines at Apple stores nationwide were short as the new iPad mini and 4th generation iPad went on sale.

Some analysts say the company lacks the vision and commitment to excellence after the death last year of its admired chief Steve Jobs.

Apple stock hit a record high above $700 in September, but have since slumped more than 20 percent to $547.06 on Friday.

"Investors are confused and have lost faith in Apple management," said Trip Chowdhry, analyst at Global Equities Research.

"Apple today is not as customer centric as it used to be, and the rate of innovation is declining when the rate of innovation of competitors has dramatically risen."

Others argue that it is too soon to say Apple has peaked.

Charles Golvin at Forrester Research said that in a season filled with product launches from Amazon, Motorola, Nokia and others, Apple has been able "to exert a superior gravitational pull on its customers and partners than its competitors."

And Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps said Apple "is entering the 2012 holiday season with its strongest product lineup ever, with wider retail distribution than it has ever had.

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A customer is seen holding the new Apple iPhone 5 smartphone in a telephone operator's shop in Rome, Italy, on September 28. The new iPhone 5 broke records in its launch weekend with sales above five million but the figures were below some forecasts and pressured the company's share price.

"Apple is already leading every game it plays. But these products will maintain Apple's momentum," she added.

Yet Apple has lost market share both in the tablet market, which it created with the iPad, and in smartphones.

Research firm IDC said Apple held a 50.4 percent of the tablet market in the third quarter from more than 65 percent in the second quarter, as rivals like Amazon and Google gained in the growing market.

IDC's Tom Mainelli said many consumers interested in buying a tablet "sat out the third quarter" waiting for the new iPad mini.

"We expect Apple to have a very good quarter. However, we believe the mini's relatively high $329 starting price leaves plenty of room for Android vendors to build upon the success they achieved in the third quarter," Mainelli said.

In smartphones, it was a similar story with Android grabbing 75 percent of the market and the Samsung Galaxy S3 getting the crown as the world's top selling smartphone, based on surveys.

IDC said Apple's smartphone market share slipped to 14.9 percent in the third quarter from 16.9 percent the prior period.

Even though the figures came as Apple launched the iPhone 5 -- which combined with the iPhone 4S, outsold the Samsung flagship -- the news was sobering for the Cupertino, California firm.

Many analysts remain bullish on Apple and say the recent stock slump is nothing to fret over.

"The selloff in Apple's stock in recent weeks has spooked investors but this correction is similar to the three others experienced over the past 13 months, all of which proved to be attractive buying opportunities," said Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets.

Gregori Volokhine of the investment firm Meeschaert said one problem for investors is that Apple, because of its huge success in recent years, has become the largest holding for nearly every investment fund in the US and elsewhere.

That means any move is likely to be amplified as investors follow the trend.

"Having too much of one stock means portfolio managers will sell on declines to reduce exposure," Volokhine said. "It's a vicious circle."

© 2012 AFP

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The new Master Card, has a screen and keybaord

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A credit card with an LCD display and built-in keyboard has been launched in Singapore by Mastercard.

The card has touch-sensitive buttons and the ability to create a "one-time password" - doing away with the need for a separate device sometimes needed to log in to online banking.
Future versions of the card could display added information such as the remaining balance.
The card will be available from January before being rolled out globally.
Many of the world's banks require customers to log in to online banking by using a small security device to generate a one-off password.
Bulky token While considerably more secure than typical static username and password log-in systems, many people find using security tokens cumbersome given the need to keep it with them in order to use online banking.
Mastercard's interactive card aims to solve that issue.
"We brainstormed on ways to make it convenient and yet secure for customers," said V Subba from Standard Chartered Bank, which is collaborating with Mastercard.
"The question was: instead of sending customers another bulky token, could we replace something which already exists in the customer's wallet? That was when credit, debit and ATM cards immediately came to mind."
Eventually, the card could display information such as loyalty or reward points or recent transaction history.
Improving the portability of secure banking is a continuing priority for the world's credit card firms.
Last year, Visa announced a similar card with interactive functions.
However, smartphone manufacturers will be hoping that enhanced credit cards will be quickly replaced by NFC - near-field communication - alleviating the need for physical payment cards altogether. Retweet this story

Aircrafts you will be seeing in 2050

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