Thursday, May 31, 2012

Final test version of Windows 8 released

The nearly finished Windows 8 software is available for download in 14 languages
Microsoft on Thursday released the final test version of its next-generation Windows software crafted to power devices ranging from tablets to desktop computers.
"We're thrilled to be at this milestone with the Windows 8 Release Preview," said Windows and Windows Live division president Steven Sinofsky.
The nearly finished Windows 8 software was available for download in 14 languages at preview.windows.com.
Availability of Windows 8 Release Preview marks the final phase of development before the operating system becomes available to makers of computers and other devices.
A "consumer preview" version of Windows 8 was downloaded more than a million times in the 24 hours after its release in February, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 series -- featuring an upgraded cloud computing service -- marks a "rebirth" of its operating system, chief executive Steve Ballmer said last week at a gathering in South Korea.
Ballmer described Windows 8 as the "deepest, broadest and most impactful" Windows software ever created by the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant, after the current Windows 7 sold at unprecedented rates to businesses.
"It's really, in some senses, a dawning of the rebirth of MS Windows... It's certainly the most important piece of work we've done," he said in a speech to the Seoul Digital Forum.
Windows 8 allows users readily to store and share personal data among various devices under the "SkyDrive" cloud computing service. Rivals Apple and Google offer such services.
The new Microsoft system will support a wider range of devices, including touch- and stylus-based smartphones and tablet PCs as well as desktop and laptop machines, Ballmer said.
The software giant has been trying to expand its presence in the booming software market for smartphones and tablets, which is currently dominated by Apple and Google.
Ballmer predicted that the cloud computing market would become dominated by a few big players.
Cloud computing refers to the popular trend of using software as a service hosted online at data centers instead of downloading and maintaining programs in personal machines.
Web-based email services such as Gmail are common examples of "cloud" computing.
"The number of core (cloud) platforms, around which software developers will do their innovation, is not ever-broadening," he said.
"It's really a quite smaller and focused number -- Windows, various forms of Linux, the Apple ecosystem."
In three to five years from now, "there will be just a few ecosystems that really can get the critical mass", he said.
Ballmer estimated up to 500 million users will have Windows systems next year, promising the "best economic opportunity" for device makers and app developers.
Microsoft will also soon introduce Skype powered by Windows 8, Ballmer said. His company last year bought the leading Internet video and voice-calling service for $8.5 billion. Retweet this story

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The Pros And Cons Of Using Cloud Hosting

A cloud hosting plan is a hosting solution where your website is hosted on the cloud. The cloud is basically an interconnection of computer systems or servers designed to work as a single entity. Like any other hosting solution out there, a cloud hosting plan also has come pros and cons associated with it. Let us take a look at what these pros and cons are and how a cloud hosting plan can be the right choice for your website.

Pros of cloud hosting:

There are several inherent advantages of using a cloud hosting solution for your website. These advantages range from cost advantage to efficiency to performance.
Some of these pros associated with a cloud hosting plan are given below:
  • One of the biggest advantage of using a cloud based hosting plan is cost. In case of a cloud hosting solution, you are only charged for the resources that you have utilized; unlike a traditional hosting plan wherein you are charged for the resources that have been assigned to you irrespective of the fact that you have utilized those resources or not.
  • Another thing is that with a cloud hosting plan there are no restrictions with regards to the resources that can be used by your website. For example, if your website get a sudden spike in traffic and you are on a traditional hosting plan; your website would be bogged down because you only have access to the resources that have been assigned to you. This is not the case with a cloud plan because with such a plan you have access to all resources on the cloud and resource usage is governed by the traffic that you get.
  • Since your website is hosted on the cloud, you can gain access to the backend of your website from any place at any time. Also, the reliability of your website is also quite high; since it is quite seldom that whole of the cloud goes down all at once.
  • There are no downtime at all since your website is replicated several times and backed up several times on the cloud. For example in case of a traditional hosting plan if your server fails your website is bound to face downtime. This is not the case with a cloud hosting plan since the failure of one server on the cloud does not affect the rest of the cloud.

Cons of cloud hosting:

Just like there are pros to using a cloud hosting plan, there are a few cons of using a cloud hosting plan too. Let us take a look at what these are and how can they be eliminated:
  • A big problem with using a cloud hosting plan is that if your website’s code is not optimized you might have to pay a lot of money for running your website. This is due to the fact that an un-optimized site would use more resources than an optimized one. The solution to this problem is to optimize the code of your website to generate fewer resource requests.
  • Another problem with using a cloud plan is that it becomes rather difficult to set up your website. For this most of the hosting providers offer free support to help you set up your website and get it running.
These are a few pros and cons associated with using a cloud based hosting plan. Although there are a few cons of using such a plan, the cons can be very easily tackled. Hence, a cloud based hosting plan can be a very useful plan for hosting a website on the internet. Retweet this story

China: The world's cleverest country?

Pupils in Yuexi county, Anhui province
China's results in international education tests - which have never been published - are "remarkable", says Andreas Schleicher, responsible for the highly-influential Pisa tests.
These tests, held every three years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, measure pupils' skills in reading, numeracy and science.

Pisa tests - the Programme for International Student Assessment - have become the leading international benchmark.
The findings indicate that China has an education system that is overtaking many Western countries.
While there has been intense interest in China's economic and political development, this provides the most significant insight into how it is teaching the next generation.
'Incredible resilience' The Pisa 2009 tests showed that Shanghai was top of the international education rankings.
But it was unclear whether Shanghai and another chart-topper, Hong Kong, were unrepresentative regional showcases.
Andreas Schleicher, OECD The OECD's Andreas Schleicher: "Fairness and relevance are not the same thing"
Mr Schleicher says the unpublished results reveal that pupils in other parts of China are also performing strongly.
"Even in rural areas and in disadvantaged environments, you see a remarkable performance."
In particular, he said the test results showed the "resilience" of pupils to succeed despite tough backgrounds - and the "high levels of equity" between rich and poor pupils.
"Shanghai is an exceptional case - and the results there are close to what I expected. But what surprised me more were the results from poor provinces that came out really well. The levels of resilience are just incredible.
"In China, the idea is so deeply rooted that education is the key to mobility and success."
Investing in the future The results for disadvantaged pupils would be the envy of any Western country, he says.
Mr Schleicher is confident of the robustness of this outline view of China's education standards.
In an attempt to get a representative picture, tests were taken in nine provinces, including poor, middle-income and wealthier regions.
Nanjing high school High school students shout slogans such as "I must go to college" in a pre-exam event in Nanjing
The Chinese government has so far not allowed the OECD to publish the actual data.
But Mr Schleicher says the results reveal a picture of a society investing individually and collectively in education.
On a recent trip to a poor province in China, he says he saw that schools were often the most impressive buildings.
He says in the West, it is more likely to be a shopping centre.
"You get an image of a society that is investing in its future, rather than in current consumption."
There were also major cultural differences when teenagers were asked about why people succeeded at school.
"North Americans tell you typically it's all luck. 'I'm born talented in mathematics, or I'm born less talented so I'll study something else.'
"In Europe, it's all about social heritage: 'My father was a plumber so I'm going to be a plumber'.
"In China, more than nine out of 10 children tell you: 'It depends on the effort I invest and I can succeed if I study hard.'
"They take on responsibility. They can overcome obstacles and say 'I'm the owner of my own success', rather than blaming it on the system."
Education's World Cup This year will see another round of Pisa tests - it's like World Cup year for international education. And Mr Schleicher's tips for the next fast-improving countries are Brazil, Turkey and Poland.

GLOBAL EDUCATION RANKINGS

Pisa tests are taken by 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science. Previous leaders in these subjects:
  • 2000: Finland, Japan, South Korea
  • 2003: Finland, Hong Kong, Finland
  • 2006: South Korea, Taipei, Finland
  • 2009: Shanghai, Shanghai, Shanghai
Mr Schleicher, a German based in the OECD's Paris headquarters, has become the godfather of such global education comparisons.
Armed with a spreadsheet and an impeccably polite manner, his opinions receive close attention in the world's education departments.
The White House responded to the last Pisa results with President Barack Obama's observation that the nation which "out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow".
The next round of global league tables will test 500,000 pupils in more than 70 countries - with the results to be published late next year.
Education ministers will be looking nervously at the outcome.
"In the past, politicians could always say we're doing better than last year - everyone could be a success," he says, describing the tendency for national results to rise each year.
The arrival of Pisa tests sent an icy draught through these insulated corridors.
No excuses Perhaps the biggest discomfort of all was for Germany - where "Pisa shock" described the discovery that their much vaunted education system was distinctly average.
Helsinki Finland was the education world leader in rankings a decade ago
And the biggest change in attitude, he says, has been the United States - once with no interest in looking abroad, now enthusiastically borrowing ideas from other countries.
"Education is a field dominated by beliefs and traditions, it's inward looking. As a system you can find all kinds of excuses and explanations for not succeeding.
"The idea of Pisa was to take away all the excuses.
"People say you can only improve an education system over 25 years - but look at Poland and Singapore, which have improved in a very short time, we've seen dramatic changes."
The biggest lesson of the Pisa tests, he says, is showing there is nothing inevitable about how schools perform.
"Poverty is no longer destiny. You can see this at the level of economies, such as South Korea, Singapore."
Fair comparison? A criticism of such rankings has been that it is unfair. How can an impoverished developing country be compared with the stockpiled multiple advantages of a wealthy Scandinavian nation?
Here Mr Schleicher makes a significant distinction. It might not be fair, but such comparisons are extremely relevant. "Relevance and fairness are not the same thing," he says.
South Korea Samsung launch South Korea is identified by the OECD as an example how education can drive economic growth
Youngsters in the poorest countries are still competing in a global economy. "It's a terrible thing to take away the global perspective."
He also attacks the idea of accepting lower expectations for poorer children - saying this was the "big trap in the 1970s".
"It was giving the disadvantaged child an excuse - you come from a poor background, so we'll lower the horizon for you, we'll make it easier.
"But that child has still got to compete in a national labour market.
"This concept of 'fairness' is deeply unfair - because by making life easier for children from difficult circumstances, we lower their life chances."
'Sorting mechanism' So why are the rising stars in Asia proving so successful?
Mr Schleicher says it's a philosophical difference - expecting all pupils to make the grade, rather than a "sorting mechanism" to find a chosen few.
He says anyone can create an education system where a few at the top succeed, the real challenge is to push through the entire cohort.
In China, he says this means using the best teachers in the toughest schools.
The shifting in the balance of power will be measured again with Pisa 2012, with pupils sitting tests from Stockholm to Seoul, London to Los Angeles, Ankara to Adelaide.
"I don't think of Pisa as being about ranking, it tells you what's possible. How well could we be doing?" Retweet this story

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

40 percent of Germany’s electricity demand this weekend, was Solar Produced


After the disaster at Fukishima, Germany vowed to never install a new nuclear station again, immediately decommissioning eight plants. Instead it would turn to renewables to generate the energy required to run the country.
Thanks to the early summer weather experienced over the weekend, Germany’s solar power plants generated a record 22GW in just 24 hours. In fact on Saturday at noon, solar power in Germany provided almost 40 percent of the total power demand in the country.
The 22GW figure, reported by the Head of Germany’s renewable energy agency, Norbert Allnoch, accounts for almost half of national electricity demand and is equivalent to the power output of 20 nuclear power plants.
Coincidentally, the UK Government’s ambition for total solar generation by 2020 is 22GW, a figure which is clearly attainable considering the weather patterns in Germany are very similar to those experienced in the UK.
The German solar market has long been held up as the industry’s leading light, with over 25GW of solar capacity installed to date. Even those in Westminster have been quick to call on the UK solar market to emulate our European compatriot’s success.
Last weekend’s figures demonstrably show how significant a role solar can play in a national energy mix. Following DECC’s recent revisions to the Feed-in Tariff scheme and the admission that solar PV technology will now be included in the Renewables Roadmap, Germany’s solar generation figures should go someway in persuading those in DECC that solar can be a major player in the future of UK energy.
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Samsung to start selling Galaxy S3 in 28 nations


Samsung Electronics\' latest smartphone, Galaxy S3, will be available in 145 nations by July via 296 wireless carriers
This photo, released by Samsung Electronics, shows a display of the company's latest smartphone, the Galaxy S3, during a launch event in London, on May 3. Samsung said it would start selling its newest smartphone in 28 countries from Tuesday as it seeks to cement its position as the world's top-selling mobile phone maker.
South Korea's Samsung Electronics said it would start selling its newest smartphone in 28 countries from Tuesday as it seeks to cement its position as the world's top-selling mobile phone maker.
The Galaxy S3, unveiled in London earlier this month, will hit shelves Tuesday in nations including Britain, France and the United Arab Emirates, the firm said in a statement.
The phone will be available in 145 nations by July via 296 wireless carriers, it added.
The third version of the Galaxy S series offers face-recognition technology and improved voice-activated controls as well as a more powerful processor that lets users watch video and write emails simultaneously.
It also has a 4.8-inch (12.2-cm) screen that is 22 percent larger than the S2, while it can detect eye movements and override the automatic shutdown if the user is looking at the screen.
Samsung, the world's biggest technology firm, shipped 44.5 million smartphones in the first quarter, exceeding the 35.1 million of US rival Apple, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics last month.
It said the Korean firm also overtook Nokia as the biggest maker of all types of mobile phone in the same period.
Samsung is now pinning its hopes on the S3 to further erode its rivals' market share before the expected new version of Apple's iPhone 5 this year. Retweet this story

Britain : Do UK need an Aircraft Carrier?


Computer-generated image issued by the MoD of an aircraft carrier
A major piece of Britain's new one has arrived at a dockyard, China is testing one, but 100 years after the concept was invented, does anybody still need aircraft carriers?
They are floating airfields that can deploy a nation's military might across the world's oceans.
In May 1912, the first plane took off from a moving warship, HMS Hibernia, temporarily adapted for the purpose. The idea of dedicated floating platforms had been mooted in 1909, but it wasn't until 1918 that HMS Argus became the first proper carrier.
Today, ownership of a carrier for fixed-wing aircraft admits a nation to an elite club, but the US has more than everyone else in the world put together.
The UK is currently not a member, but this month has seen a significant milestone on the country's journey to retaking its place.
Part of the hull of Queen Elizabeth has arrived at Rosyth, in Scotland, where it is to enter the dry dock for the rest of the ship's construction. The ship, which left BAE Systems' Portsmouth yard, is due to be finished in 2017 and will be followed by sister ship Prince of Wales.
With a cost of £7bn for ships and the jets they will carry, there have been newspaper columnists arguing that they are both an unnecessary expense and no longer strategically necessary for the UK.
For the Guardian's Simon Jenkins it is the "greatest waste of public money" of any government programme. The Times's Matthew Parris argued that the action in Libya had not shown the need for a UK carrier.
There have been sceptics for some time. In 1981, David Howarth wrote in Famous Sea Battles that "the only practical value of carriers in the future will be in simply existing, not in fighting". To use them in anger would be to trigger a nuclear war, he argued.
But just a year later, the UK's carriers ensured that the Falkland Islands were regained.
Different nations take different approaches to carriers. The US owns 11, or 20 if plane-carrying amphibious assault ships are counted.
Its 10 Nimitz class carriers are floating cities - the size of four football pitches - each housing 5,000 crew and 80 strike jets.
By contrast, Spain and Italy have miniature carriers with around a dozen planes, while China has only one ex-Soviet model, preferring to put its defence budget into missile technology.
After the US, France has the only serious naval aviation, according to IHS Jane's Fighting Ships.
Thailand has a very small carrier, which is not thought to have launched aircraft for some years. India is using the UK's former HMS Hermes and an ex-Russian carrier, and Brazil's is an ex-French vessel.
But does any country need aircraft carriers?
The US doesn't need so many, says Prof Andrew Lambert, a naval historian at King's College London.
USS Makin Island, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, anchored in Hong Kong - the ship resembles a small aircraft carrier The US has amphibious landing ships larger than some nations' aircraft carriers
But for the Americans it is about projecting power around the globe. And they see the aircraft carrier as the best equipment for their global role, Lambert says.
The logic for carriers is very simple. It allows a nation to take air power around the globe without having to worry about countries in between who might refuse the use of ground bases or airspace.
Bosnia was such a case, says former Royal Marine Major-General Julian Thompson.
"The Italians said you aren't going to fly from our airfields or over Italy." And he points out that the only enemy planes shot down by British aircraft since WWII have been by the Fleet Air Arm based on carriers.
But have things changed in the age of the nuclear submarine, precision missiles and the unmanned drone?
Unlike "pointless" frigates, carriers are still as relevant as ever, says Lewis Page, a former naval officer and author of Lions, Donkeys and Dinosaurs: Waste and Blundering in the Military. The drone might be all the rage but you still need somewhere to launch it from.
Nuclear submarines are "excellent" at many things. Their Tomahawk cruise missiles flew hundreds of miles to knock out Colonel Gaddafi's air force.
"But a submarine can't tell you where the targets are. And they can't be easily rearmed apart from at a naval base."
1918: The aircraft carrier Argus - painted in dazzle camouflage - on the Firth of Forth HMS Argus was the first dedicated carrier
Nuclear weapons give a nation "cachet" says Lambert. But carriers give a nation "capability", he argues.
Take a scenario where Iran decides to close the Straits of Hormuz, Lambert suggests. Any such closure would have an immediate effect on world energy supplies.
Iran has about 1,000 fast patrol boats that can offer a new kind of asymmetrical warfare. By operating as a swarm, a frigate or destroyer would be overwhelmed by the sheer number of attackers. Whereas a carrier some way from the threat could pick off the attackers by scrambling its jets.
So it's easy to agree with the naval experts who say you need carriers to be a power on the seas. But does the UK have that need?
As an island, there is a particular case for the UK to have carriers, says Lambert.
"If we're not secure at sea we risk starvation. Out of a population of more than 60 million we can probably feed 25 million ourselves," Lambert says. And 95% of the nation's imports arrive by sea, including much of its energy needs from the Middle East.
But there will be those who would suggest the UK's diminished military power makes carriers unnecessary.
"Any major conflict in the Straits of Hormuz or the Gulf won't be decided by Britain," argues Parris. "It will be decided by the US."
But the UK does take part in coalition actions, and for the advocates its carriers would be one of the things giving it a say.
For a nation with a proud maritime history there's also a question of image. Lambert says naval power is "a quintessential expression of what it means to be British."
Their sheer size as they cut through the ocean, the scream of planes taking off and coming into land, makes them an exciting, visceral experience, says Thompson.
USS Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean The US Nimitz-class carriers are like floating cities
"The deck when launching planes is frenetic and extremely noisy. It's like a ballet - a triumph of everyone knowing their job. If you screw up you can have your head cut off by a rotor blade."
And the powerful imagery and symbolism of carriers will continue to play a part in the debate.

Key naval battles

  • 31BC: Actium - galleys
  • 1571: Lepanto - galleys with guns
  • 1588: Spanish Armada - sailing ships
  • 1905: Tsushima - ironclads
  • 1916: Jutland - dreadnoughts
  • 1942: Midway - aircraft carriers

Flat-top ships of 10,000+ tonnes displacement

Country In service
Source: IHS Jane's Fighting Ships
US 20
UK Two
India Two
Japan Two (helicopters only)
Italy Two
Spain Two
Russia One
China One
Brazil One
France One
Thailand One
South Korea One (helicopters only)

Giant jigsaw puzzle

Construction details
Graphic on A mind-boggling construction job
  • Pieces built at six shipyards around the UK and slotted together at Rosyth in Fife
  • 10,000 workers employed on the £5bn project
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Monday, May 28, 2012

Facebook is making a phone, are you aware?










Now that Facebook is a public company, CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be pressured to boost mobile revenue.
A week after Facebook's bungled IPO comes fresh news to tantalize, or torment, the company's investors. The social-networking behemoth may be making a phone.
Facebook hopes to release its own smartphone by next year, according to a New York Times report quoting anonymous sources at the company and others who have been briefed on Facebook's plans. Facebook has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone, the report said.
We've heard this before. In 2010, TechCrunch reported that Facebook was building software for a phone and partnering with a third party to make the hardware. Citing their own sources, tech blog AllThingsD said last year the phone was code-named "Buffy" and would run on a version of Android modified to integrate Facebook's services.
But Sunday's Times report added new specifics such as an interview with a former iPhone engineer who said he recently met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who "peppered him with questions about the inner workings of smartphones," including the types of chips used. "It did not sound like idle intellectual curiosity, the engineer said."
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the report Monday. The company had referred the New York Times to a previous statement that said in part, "We're working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers."
A Facebook-built smartphone could allow users to more seamlessly send messages, post updates and share photos or article links. Although it makes apps for iPhones and iPads, Facebook is still not integrated into Apple's mobile operating system, for example.
The news arrives amid speculation that Facebook, facing new pressure as a public company, will need to develop fresh sources of mobile revenue and exert greater control over its mobile products as users spend more time networking on phones or tablets instead of laptops or desktops.
"Mark (Zuckerberg) is worried that if he doesn't create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms," a Facebook employee told the New York Times.
It also comes days after rival Google closed its $12.9 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a deal that could let Google make its own smartphone, too.
Many tech bloggers believe such a move would be a bad idea for Facebook, in part because there's no clear-cut consumer need for a Facebook phone.
Henry Blodget of Business Insider wrote that Facebook would face stiff competition in the hardware business, an area where it has no experience and where profit margins are historically low.
"So instead of building a phone, which seems like a desperate move, Facebook should partner with every operating system and carrier and hardware maker it can to try to embed this social platform within every mobile platform," Blodget said. "And it should build great apps to float on top of these systems."
In a post titled "It'll Be A Miracle If The Facebook Phone Doesn't Suck," TechCrunch's Alexia Tsotsis was more blunt.
"Making phone hardware is hard work, much harder than anything Facebook has ever attempted in the past," she wrote.
"Basically, there are a million ways this project will fail, and just one way it will work: Facebook ostensibly could succeed by tapping into the opening in the mobile market where people want an alternative to poorly designed Android phones — targeting people who would buy something other than an iPhone if the price point was $150 less and the design were at least a little bit more ambitious than what is currently available on Android."

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Browser wars flare in mobile space







An employee stands next to a giant screen for \
The browser wars are heating up again, but this time the fight is for dominance of the mobile Internet.
Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo! are all in the struggle, along with the Norwegian-made Opera browser and the open source Firefox software from Mozilla.
The motive behind the wars is not just bragging rights. The company that controls the mobile Web can direct users to its websites, and importantly, gather data that can be used in targeted advertising.
"The browsers need to be present on the mobile device for survival," said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Opus Research.
"Everyone is trying to manage their strategy in this multiscreen and multiplatform world."
Research firm StatCounter found that global access from mobile devices, not including tablets, doubled in the year to January to 8.5 percent of all Internet usage.
Google stepped up its effort earlier this year by releasing a full version of its Chrome browser for mobile devices, which will over time replace the unnamed browser on devices powered by Google's open Android platform.
The Google-Android browser by April had grabbed 21.5 percent of the mobile Web, overtaking Opera, the early leader that had 21.3 percent, according to StatCounter.
"Chrome is definitely the up-and-comer because of Android, and it has a lot of momentum on the PC," Sterling said.
Running third was Apple's Safari, the default browser on iPhones, with 20 percent. Nokia, BlackBerry and a few others hold small shares.
When tablets are included, Apple is the dominant player with 63 percent, according to data from Net Applications' NetMarketShare survey, but Android is gaining with nearly 19 percent.

A South Korean customer uses an Apple iPad 2
A South Korean customer uses an Apple iPad 2 at a branch of KT, a Korean partner for iPhones and iPads at downtown Seoul in 2011. Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo! are all in the struggle for mobile Web dominance, along with the Norwegian-made Opera browser and the open source Firefox software from Mozilla.
The push by Google meshes with its strategy of gathering information about users across platforms, so that someone searching on a mobile device might get an ad on a PC, or vice-versa.
And Google just completed its $12.5 billion deal to buy mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility, freeing the California company to build its own handsets that play into the strengths of its software.
"Everybody wants to have that first point of contact with the user to control the experience from that point, capture certain data and direct them to services," said Al Hilwa of the research firm IDC.
"It's all about control, about who is further up on the stream of data."
Meanwhile Microsoft, in its effort to get a share of the mobile space, is pushing its own Internet Explorer browser for devices running Windows, but critics say the software giant is limiting compatibility.
Mozilla's Harvey Anderson complained in a blog post that Microsoft is limiting the "advanced" capabilities for outside software, effectively shutting out browsers like Firefox.
Anderson said Microsoft in its new Windows 8 devices was signaling "an unwelcome return to the digital dark ages where users and developers didn't have browser choices."
Yahoo! became the latest to boost its effort in the mobile space, introducing its Axis browser designed for mobile devices.
"It is meant to replace Safari," Yahoo! product management director Ethan Batraski said of Axis. "You will never have to use Safari ever again."
Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Capital who follows Google, said the Internet search giant will also introduce a version of Chrome for the Apple operating system.
Schachter said in a note to clients that Google benefits from Chrome by reducing the payments from "traffic acquisition costs" and that a Chrome browser for iPhones and iPads could "meaningfully" reduce what Google pays Apple.

A mobile phone vendor arranges used and dummy Facebook capable mobile devices
A mobile phone vendor arranges used and dummy Facebook capable mobile devices to attract costumers at a shopping mall in Jakarta in February 2012. The battle for control of the mobile Web raises questions about Facebook, which is groping for a mobile strategy after a troubling response to its massive share offering.
But Apple can tweak its strategy without competing head-on against Google, Sterling said. He said Apple's Siri voice assistant and its new maps software offer a type of search. And as tensions rise with Google, it could change the Safari search engine to Microsoft's Bing, or another.
Analysts say it remains unclear to what degree device makers will try to block out competing browsers, and if this will trigger a government response. In the 1990s, Microsoft's efforts to lock out competing browsers prompted actions on both sides of the Atlantic.
The battle for control of the mobile Web raises questions about Facebook, which is groping for a mobile strategy after a troubling response to its massive share offering.
One report said Facebook was eyeing Opera, which could solve some of the perceived problems for the social network giant by offering a platform to get better data on mobile usage for targeted advertising.
"It wouldn't surprise me" if Facebook were to acquire or tie up with Opera or develop its own browser, Hilwa said.
Another player to watch, said Hilwa, is Amazon, which has developed its own browser for the Kindle Internet device -- a move that can also steer users various services, earning cash along the way.
Hilwa said Amazon, like the others, is pursuing a strategy that includes hardware and software, but can also sell goods and services.
"They have content, they sell stuff, they have Web services," he said. "They have a lot of assets and have been successful. I would watch them."
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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Yahoo! ditches digital newsstand for iPads


Yahoo! logo
Yahoo! shuttered its fledgling digital newsstand for iPads on Friday in what it said was the start of a product purge intended to make the floundering Internet pioneer more nimble.
Yahoo! shuttered its fledgling digital newsstand for iPads on Friday in what it said was the start of a product purge intended to make the floundering Internet pioneer more nimble.
Livestand was launched in November as a way to turn tablet computers into personalized magazines rich with stories, images and video suited to individual tastes.
It was intended as a platform to allow magazine or newspaper publishers big or small to deliver content matched with the interests of people who log into the Yahoo! online venue.
"It's a digital newsstand, your digital newsstand," a Yahoo! executive said at the unveiling last year.
Livestand was among the first products to be targeted for elimination under the auspices of a turn-around plan outlined by executives of the Sunnyvale, California-based company.
"We've decided to discontinue or consolidate a number of products across Yahoo!'s technology platforms over the course of 2012," a message at the company's corporate blog explained.
The process includes scrutinizing "what's working and what isn't."
Livestand for iPad didn't make the cut despite positive feedback from users, according to Yahoo!
"We have learned a lot from Livestand and are actively applying those insights toward the development of future products that are better aligned with Yahoo!'s holistic mobile strategy," Yahoo! said.
"We are pivoting to a mobile-products-first development model and there's no doubt that one of the biggest, if not the biggest, priorities for us is to innovate for the mobile user." Retweet this story

China fund may help Alibaba in Yahoo! bid: report


Alibaba head office building
Chinese workers walk out from the Alibaba head office building in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province on May 21. China Investment Corporation is in advanced talks to add up to $2 billion to the Alibaba Internet Group's efforts to buy back a stake from struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo!
China Investment Corporation is in advanced talks to add up to $2 billion to the Alibaba Internet Group's efforts to buy back a stake from struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo!, the New York Times reported.
The newspaper cited an unnamed source on Thursday as saying that Alibaba is in discussions with several potential partners, including Singapore's Temasek, Russia's DST Global and the US Blackstone Group, on buying back the shares.
Alibaba hopes to raise a total of around $4.6 billion.
After more than a year of negotiations, Yahoo! agreed to sell its stake in Alibaba, China's top e-commerce player, for at least $7.1 billion, the companies announced Sunday.
The transaction will be carried out in stages, with the first step calling for a repurchase by Alibaba of up to one-half of Yahoo!'s stake, or approximately 20 percent of Alibaba's total shares.
Yahoo! would receive from Alibaba approximately $7.1 billion, composed of at least $6.3 billion in cash proceeds and up to $800 million in newly-issued Alibaba preferred stock, the firms said. Retweet this story

Friday, May 25, 2012

The Growing Vietnam's new technology entrepreneurs want to go global


Scooters in Ho Chi Minh City
When the PC game Dien Bien Phu 7554 was launched six months ago, its Vietnamese developers Emobi Games felt a great sense of triumph and achievement.
Hailed as "first next-gen box game" made in the country, Dien Bien Phu 7554 was also the first Vietnamese PC game to be built in modern 3D graphics.
"Up to now, what most companies do is import foreign-made games and reversion them for the Vietnamese market, " says Nguyen Tuan Huy, director of Emobi Games.
"Our aim is to get Vietnamese gamers to play Vietnamese games."
It took Mr Huy, 32, and his team two years to develop the game, the plot of which is based on the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu that saw the end of the French occupation of Vietnam in 1954.
In this offline game, players take on the roles of Vietnamese soldiers fighting a "sacred war" to free their land.
Screenshot Dien Bien Phu 7554 is a PC game based on the famous battle of that name that saw the end of the French occupation of Vietnam in 1954
However, despite the seemingly winning combination of nationalistic pride and modern 3-D technology, Dien Bien Phu has failed to bring in any profit.
Having sold only 5,000 copies in Vietnam and 500 overseas, Emobi Games generated an income of only 1bn Vietnamese dong ($50,000), roughly 6% of the investment put into the game.
"The Vietnamese public still don't have much trust in domestic products," admits Nguyen Tuan Huy.
But he insists that for him and his team, the game remains "our success".
"We have proved that Vietnamese can be innovative and original," Mr Huy says.
Emobi Games developers are currently working on another product - 2112, this time an online game.
Growing pains Nguyen Tuan Huy and his 28-strong team represent the new generation of Vietnamese entrepreneurs who are not afraid of challenges and who are quick to embrace global trends.
Emobi Games's Nguyen Tuan Huy Nguyen Tuan Huy: "The Vietnamese public still don't have much trust in domestic products"
Vietnam has moved a long way from being a technology backwater to become one of the fastest growing IT markets.
Thinh Nguyen, a former Silicon Valley executive, who has been working in Vietnam for the last decade, says the changes have been "staggering".
Mr Thinh left Vietnam in 1975 when the war ended, but came back to start up Pyramid Software Development in Ho Chi Minh City in 2002. He since sold the company and is now working as a consultant.
"Ten years ago, you could count the number of IT companies using your fingers," he says.
Now there are more than 750 software companies employing some 35,000 people. Among them, 150 are outsourcing firms.
Industry sources suggest that Vietnam is currently among the top five outsourcing destinations in Asia.
Vietnamese companies are manufacturing software and games for foreign companies, and are starting to export mobile phone apps overseas.
A young population and cheap labour costs are two major advantages that many start-ups have been tapping. The government in Vietnam has also been very encouraging, seeing information technology as beneficial for the country's economy.
Back to school Charles Speyer, co-founder of Glass Egg Digital Media, a console game art outsourcing company, says the environment has been "very friendly for software companies".
"We received our licence after less than a week," he says.
"At Glass Egg we have always had to train our 3D artists, but there are good coders coming straight out of school in Vietnam."
However Mr Speyer warns that although there is a lot of potential, the innovation industry in Vietnam will take some time to develop because of the inadequate education system.
"The education system is not geared towards creating innovators and that does not seem to be changing any time soon under the current government guidelines."
IT veteran Thinh Nguyen appears to be more cautious.
Thinh Nguyen Thinh Nguyen believes that a lack of investment and qualified employees are standing in the way of Vietnam's success
"Vietnamese start-ups do have great potential," he agrees. "But the truth is their competitiveness is still very low."
In Mr Thinh's opinion, lack of investment and limited human resources pose the main obstacles in the innovation process.
"Mobile apps are one thing, but international-standard products require a lot of investment and many more developers than there are at the moment."
With nearly 100,000 IT postgraduates, questions arise over how computer companies in Vietnam can still be short of staff.
But this is the reality, and the reason is Vietnam's people policy, explains Nguyen Long, an up-and-coming software developer.
At 23 and still a student, Mr Long has already developed 17 apps for Blackberry, including SayIt, a voice recognition app.
While Vietnamese developers do have "brilliant and original ideas", he says, they don't receive much support - including from the government.
"I want to continue my path and eventually to open my own company," he says.
"But at the moment it looks like my future will be outside Vietnam." Retweet this story

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Installing an RPM Package on Ubuntu Linux

Install an RPM Package on Ubuntu Linux

Installing software on Ubuntu usually entails using Synaptic or by using an apt-get command from the terminal. Unfortunately, there are still a number of packages out there that are only distributed in RPM format.
There’s a utility called Alien that converts packages from one format to the other. This doesn’t always mean that an rpm will work on your system, though. You will need to install some prerequisite software packages in order to install alien, however. These packages include gcc and make.
Run this command to install alien and other necessary packages:
sudo apt-get install alien dpkg-dev debhelper build-essential
To convert a package from rpm to debian format, use this command syntax. The sudo may not be necessary, but we’ll include it just in case.
sudo alien packagename.rpm
To install the package, you’ll use the dpkg utility, which is the internal package management tool behind debian and Ubuntu.
sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb
The package should now be installed, providing it’s compatible with your system. Retweet this story

How Do Linux File Permissions Work?

HTG Explains: How Do Linux File Permissions Work?

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If you’ve been using Linux for some time (and even OS X) you’ll probably have come across a “permissions” error. But what exactly are they, and why are they necessary or useful? Let’s take an inside look.

User Permissions

Back in the day, computers were massive machines that were incredibly expensive. To make the most out of them, multiple computer terminals were hooked up which allowed many users to go about their business simultaneously. Data processing and storage was done on the machine, while the terminals themselves were little more than a means of viewing and inputting data. If you think about it, it’s pretty much how we access data on the “cloud”; look at Amazon’s Cloud MP3 system, Gmail, and Dropbox, and you’ll notice that while changes can be made locally, everything is stored remotely.

(Image: Zenith Z-19 “dumb” terminal; credit: ajmexico)
In order for this to work, individual users need to have accounts. They need to have a section of the storage area allotted to them, and they need to be allowed to run commands and programs. Everyone gets specific “user permissions,” which dictates what they can and cannot do, where on the system they do and do not have access, and whose files they can and cannot modify. Each user is also placed into various groups, which grant or restrict further access.

File Access


In this wacky multi-user world, we’ve already set up boundaries as to what users can do. But what about what they access? Well, every file has a set of permissions and an owner. The owner designation, typically bound when the file is created, declares which user it belongs to, and only that user can alter its access permissions.
In the world of Linux, permissions are broken down into three categories: read, write and execute. “Read” access allows one to view a file’s contents, “write” access allows one to modify a file’s contents, and “execute” allows one to run a set of instructions, like a script or a program. Each of these categories are applied to different classes: user, group, and world. “User” means the owner, “group” means any user who is in the same group as the owner, and “world” means anybody and everybody.

Folders can also be restricted with these permissions. You can, for example, allow other people in your group to view directories and files in your home folder, but not anyone outside of your group. You will probably want to limit “write” access to only yourself, unless you’re working on a shared project of some sort. You can also create a shared directory that allows anyone to view and modify files in that folder.

Changing Permissions in Ubuntu

GUI
To change the permissions of a file you own in Ubuntu, just right-click the file and go to “Properties.”

You can change whether the Owner, Group, or Others can read and write, read only, or do nothing. You can also check a box to allow execution of the file, and this will enable it for the Owner, Group, and Others simultaneously.
Command-Line
You can also do this via the command-line. Go to a directory that has files in it and type the following command to view all files in a list:
ls -al

Next to each file and directory, you’ll see a special section that outlines the permissions it has. It looks like this:
-rwxrw-r–
The r stands for “read,” the w stands for “write,” and the x stands for “execute.” Directories will be start with a “d” instead of a “-“. You’ll also notice that there are 10 spaces which hold value. You can ignore the first, and then there are 3 sets of 3. The first set is for the owner, the second set is for the group, and the last set is for the world.
To change a file or directory’s permissions, let’s look at the basic form of the chmod command.
chmod [class][operator][permission] file
chmod [ugoa][+ or –] [rwx] file
This may seem complicated at first, but trust me, it’s pretty easy. First, let’s look at the classes:
  • u: This is for the owner.
  • g: This is for the group.
  • o: This is for all others.
  • a: This will change permissions for all of the above.
Next, the operators:
  • +: The plus sign will add the permissions which follow.
  • -: The minus sign will remove the permissions which follow.
Still with me? And the last section is the same as when we checked the permissions of a file:
  • r: Allows read access.
  • w: Allows write access.
  • x: Allows execution.
Now, let’s put it together. Let’s say we have a file named “todo.txt” that has the following permissions:
-rw-rw-r–
That is, the owner and group can read and write, and the world can only read. We want to change the permissions to these:
-rwxr—–
That is, the owner has full permissions, and the group can read. We can do this in 3 steps. First, we’ll add the execution permission for the user.
chmod u+x todo.txt
Then, we’ll remove the write permission for the group.
chmod g-w todo.txt
Lastly, we’ll remove the read permissions for all other users.
chmod o-r todo.txt
We can also combine these into one command, like so:
chmod u+x,g-w,o-r todo.txt

You can see that each section is separated by commas and there are no spaces.
Here are some useful permissions:
  • -rwxr-xr-x : Owner has full permissions, group and other users can read file contents and execute.
  • -rwxr–r– : Owner has full permissions, group and other users can only read file (useful if you don’t mind others viewing your files.
  • -rwx—— : Owner has full permissions, all others have none (useful for personal scripts).
  • -rw-rw—-: Owner and group can read and write (useful for collaboration with group members).
  • -rw-r–r– : Owner can read and write, group and other users can only read file (useful for storing personal files on a shared network).
  • -rw——- : Owner can read and write, all others have none (useful for storing personal files).
There are a few other things you can do with chmod – like setuid and setgid – but they’re a little in-depth and most users won’t really need to use them anyway.

The Root or Super-User and System Files


Nowadays, we don’t always run systems that have multiple users. Why should we still worry about permissions?
Well, Unix and its derivatives – Linux, OS X, among others – also distinguish between things run by the user, things run by an administrator or with admin privileges, and things run by the system itself. As such, things that are integral for the system need admin privileges to be changed or accessed. This way, you don’t mess up anything accidentally.
In Ubuntu, to make changes to system files you use “sudo” or “gksudo” to gain the equivalent of Administrator privileges. In other distros, you switch to “root” or the “super-user” which effectively does the same thing until you log out.
Be aware that in both of these circumstances, changing file permissions can lead to programs not working, unintentionally changing file ownership to the root user (instead of the owner), and making the system less secure (by granting more permissions). As such, it’s recommended you don’t change permissions for files – especially system files – unless it’s necessary or you know what you’re doing.


File permissions are in place to provide a basic system of security amongst users. Learning how they work can help you set up basic sharing in a multi-user environment, protect “public” files, and give you a clue as to when something goes wrong with system file ownership.

Related Article: Install an RPM Package on Ubuntu Linux Retweet this story

Google in patent fight with Oracle




Oracle building

Google did not infringe patents owned by software developer Oracle, a jury in a California court found on Wednesday.
The Silicon Valley giants had fought over whether Google used Oracle's Java programming language in its Android mobile operating system.
Two weeks ago the same jury ruled that Google infringed Oracle's copyright, but could not agree whether Google's actions constituted "fair use".
The internet search giant maintains Android was built "from scratch".
Oracle sued Google in August 2010, saying Android infringed its intellectual property rights.
Google said it does not violate Oracle's patents and that Oracle cannot copyright certain parts of Java, which is an "open-source", or publicly available, software language.
Without a finding against Google on the "fair use" issue, Oracle cannot recover the up to $1bn (£637m) in damages it was seeking.
The case focused not on using the Java programming language itself, but rather the use of 37 application programming interfaces (APIs) which help developers create software on the platform.
With internet innovation moving fast, it is common for software writers to adapt APIs that mini-programs use to "talk" to one another.
The jury concluded that Google infringed on 37 copyrighted APIs but it also agreed that Google demonstrated that it was led to believe it did not need a license for using Java.





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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Are the police tracking your calls?







 Whom you text and call and where you go can reveal a great deal about you, says Catherine Crump.

Do you know how long your cell phone company keeps records of whom you text, who calls you or what places you have traveled? Do you know how often cell phone companies turn over this information to the police and whether they first ask the police to get a warrant based on probable cause?
No, you don't. Not unless you work for a cell phone company or a law enforcement agency with a specialty in electronic surveillance. You aren't alone: Congress and the courts have no idea either.
The little we do know is worrisome. The companies are not legally required to turn over your information simply because a police officer is curious about you. Yet wireless carriers sell this information to police all the time.

Catherine Crump
As far as the cell phone companies are concerned, the less Americans know about it the better.
Whom you text and call and where you go (tracked by your cell phone as long as it's on) can reveal a great deal about you. Your calling patterns can show which friends matter to you the most, and your travel patterns can reveal what political and religious meetings you attend and what doctors you visit. Over time, this data accumulates into a dossier portraying details of your life so intimate that you may not have thought of them yourself. In comparison with companies such as Facebook and Google, which collect, store and use our information in one way or another, cell phone companies are less transparent.
U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, co-chairman of the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, recently requested that cell phone companies disclose basic statistics on how our personal data is shared with the government. Let's hope the companies are forthcoming -- but don't hold your breath.
To be sure, there can be legitimate reasons for law enforcement agents to track individuals' movements. For example, when officers can demonstrate to a judge that they have a good reason to believe that tracking will turn up evidence of a crime. But with a surveillance technique this powerful, the public has a strong interest in understanding how it is used to ensure that it is not abused. While the details of individual investigations can legitimately be kept secret, the public and our elected representatives have a right to know the policies in general so their wisdom can be debated.
Cell phone companies have long concealed these facts, and they're fighting vigorously to keep it that way. In California, the cell phone industry recently opposed a bill that would have required companies to tell their customers how often and under what circumstances they turn over location information to the police, complaining that it would be "unduly burdensome."
What little has come to light so far about the companies' practices does not paint a comforting picture. Addressing a surveillance industry conference in 2009, Sprint's electronic surveillance manager revealed that the company had received so many requests for location data that it set up a website where the police could conveniently access the information from the comfort of their desks. In just a 13-month period, he said, the company had provided law enforcement with 8 million individual location data points. Other than Sprint, we do not have even this type of basic information about the frequency of requests for any of the other cell phone companies.
The poorly understood relationship between cell phone companies and police raises grave privacy concerns. Like the companies, law enforcement agencies have a strong incentive to keep what is actually happening a secret, lest the public find out and demand new legal protections. More than 10 years ago, the Justice Department convinced the House of Representatives to abandon legislation that would have required law enforcement agencies to compile similar statistics, arguing that it would turn "crime fighters into bookkeepers."
The excessive secrecy has frustrated the ability of the American people to have an informed debate on just how much information police should have access to without judicial oversight or having to show probable cause. It has also prevented Congress and the courts from effectively addressing these intrusive surveillance powers. That is not how our system of government is supposed to work.
It would not be difficult for the carriers to tell customers how their data is collected, stored and shared. In fact, an internal Justice Department document from 2010, dislodged through a public records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, showed the data retention policies of all major carriers on a single piece of paper. The phone companies have all created detailed handbooks for law enforcement agents describing their policies and prices charged for surveillance assistance, a few dated versions of which have seeped out onto the Internet.
If the cell phone companies can provide this information to law enforcement agencies, they can and should provide basic information about their sharing of data with law enforcement to their customers, too. While law enforcement sometimes argues that making members of the public aware that cell phone companies can track them will make it more difficult to catch criminals, it is too late in the day for that argument now that cell phone tracking is a staple of television police procedurals.
Why aren't these policies available on the companies' websites? With such information, consumers could vote with their wallets and punish those companies that don't protect privacy. Keeping their customers in the dark about surveillance is better for business, it seems.
We pay the cell phone companies to provide us with a service, not keep tabs on us for the government. And yet the companies that now have access to some of our most private information refuse to reveal even the most basic facts about their policies? We deserve better.

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Is China becoming the biggest app market for smartphones?

At some point in the past few months, China's billionth mobile phone customer switched on his or her handset for the first time.
The mobile network growth here has been remarkable, with some 80 million new subscribers coming online every year for the past decade.
But in some ways the real communications revolution has only just begun.
This year, China will overtake America as the world's biggest smartphone market.
And for many Chinese, the smartphone offers them their first personal route to access the internet - by some estimates 40% of those connecting to the web in China now do so solely via a mobile phone.
That offers IT developers, and mobile phone app makers in particular, an extraordinary opportunity.
'No better place' In a small Shanghai office, with a few dozen employees beavering away at their computer screens, Guanxi.me is one startup company joining the gold rush.
Mobile phone It's estimated that 40% of those connecting to the web in China now do so solely via a mobile phone
"There's no better place to be than China," chief executive Alvin Wang tells me.
"There'll be an extra 200 million new smartphone users in the next 12 months. We want to be on those phones."
The app Alvin is developing allows users to build social networks and then, using geo-location data, track and meet those contacts in the real world.
"People are social animals but today's technology is more geared to replacing face-to-face contact. We want to enhance and increase face-to-face contact," Alvin says.
Guanxi.me is free to download, and that's important in China.
Here, smartphone users are much less likely to pay to download an app than their Western counterparts.
Cheryl Wu Cheryl Wu is a typical young Chinese smartphone user
Cheryl Wu is typical of many young smartphone users in China.
She has a job in real estate and spends her evenings meeting and socialising with friends; posting, tweeting and messaging her way through her nights out using a series of apps on her smartphone.
All of those apps, though, have been downloaded free of charge.
She particularly likes the Weishin voicemail app she tells me, because it's fun, convenient and free.
'In-app' sales So how, then, do you make money as an app developer in China?
One way is to try to target "in-app" sales; give away the app for free, get users hooked, and then sell them the chance to enhance their experience for a small fee.
It's a model used most successfully by the bigger developers of mobile games technology and the idea is simple.
Although users in China may be willing only to pay a few cents for the enhanced service, when you're talking millions of users, that can soon add up to a lot of money.
But for non-gaming app developers, advertising revenue is the way forward, and July Cheng, a young mother based in Shanghai, is showing how easy it can be.
Her home-made app, developed for her twins, has become a surprise overnight success with tens of thousands of downloads.
July Cheng and family Young mother July Cheng developed her children's flashcard app for her twins; she now makes more than $1,000 a month
For each one, July is paid a commission from the pop-up-ads linked to the app, and she now earns more than $1,000 a month this way.
"You just need one mobile phone, one PC and your good ideas," she tells me.
The holy grail for app developers, though, may well be finding ways to hitch a ride on China's booming luxury brand sales.
Apps like Guanxi.me have valuable social networking databases that could prove very attractive to high street retailers.
Couple that with the phone's geo-location data, and suddenly the mobile phone offers advertisers a way to get personalised offers into the hands, or onto the smartphone screens, of customers at the moment they pass by the shop door.Copy cats
This kind of technology is being developed in many markets, of course, but it is in China, with the sheer scale of the mobile market and the country's booming sales of luxury brands, that the opportunities might prove the most attractive.
One major challenge remains however, and it's an old one: the country's notoriously weak protection for intellectual property.
"Once you start to become successful, your app will be copied," Michael Clendendin from industry analysts Red Tech Advisors tells me.
"I've no doubt about that, so the only way for you to survive in China is to try to pre-empt that by partnering with one of the bigger companies that might steal your app."
That will need to change if China is really going to unlock the creative potential offered by its ever growing mountain of mobile hardware.
Guanxi.me's Alvin Wang thinks it will, in part because Chinese companies will themselves join the chorus of international voices demanding a strengthening of legal protection.
"It's going to take a little time, I'm not saying overnight this is going to be the oasis for intellectual property protection," he says.
"But over next five to 10 years, there will be an increasing awareness from government, and pressure from Chinese companies themselves, to make sure real innovation is protected." Retweet this story

Monday, May 21, 2012

Sheryl Sandberg, the Woman Behind Facebook's Business Model




Facebook's initial public offering would not have been possible without her. Sheryl Sandberg translates the ideas of chief executive Mark Zuckerberg into reality and profit. 


As chief operating officer of the social networking site, 42-year-old Sandberg makes sure that the numbers add up and the company grows. 


To develop a business model and steer Facebook into the future, Zuckerberg - then in his early 20s - hired the long-time Google manager as "adult supervision." 


When Sandberg arrived, Facebook had about 66 million users. Today the number is more than 900 million. Much of the credit for Facebook's huge and seemingly effortless expansion to annual revenues estimated at nearly $4 billion goes to her. 


"Without her we would just be incomplete," Zuckerberg was quoted as saying in an article published by Bloomberg Businessweek last year, in which Sandberg admitted crying on the job and being consoled by him. 


According to Facebook's initial public offering prospectus, Sandberg was the company's top earner last year. Although her base annual salary is listed at $296,000 dollars plus an $86,000-bonus, she has also received a large parcel of Facebook shares valued at $30.5 million. 


Sandberg grew up in Miami. Her mother worked as an English teacher and her father as an ophthalmologist. While studying at Harvard Business School in the early 1990s, she attracted the attention of Lawrence Summers, then an economics professor at the elite institution. Summers became her mentor, and when he was named the chief economist at the World Bank in 1991, he recruited her as his research assistant. 


Summers became treasury secretary under US President Bill Clinton in 1999 and made Sandberg, not quite 30, his chief of staff. When the Democrats lost the 2000 presidential elections, she joined Google. 


After serving more than six years there as vice president for global online sales and operations, she sought a promotion to chief operating officer. But as Google expert Ken Auletta wrote in the US magazine New Yorker, Google's bosses had other ideas. 


So Sandberg was ready for new challenges when she met Zuckerberg, a Harvard University dropout. 


Sandberg is capable of heading any company she wanted to, Zuckerberg told Businessweek. She and Zuckerberg have something in common from student days. 


Like Zuckerberg more than a decade later, Sandberg had managed to cause Harvard's computer system to crash. She had entered too much data for a project on violence against women. 

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