Techno-News Blog

by ALEXIA TSOTSIS, Tech Crunch

Lots of bold moves coming out of Twitter before the holiday vacation. The latest, and most subtle, is the offering of more granular search terms for advertisers to promote tweets against in its ‘Promoted Tweets’ product. As of today, Twitter will now let Promoted Tweets customers match their tweets to Twitter searches via exact match, phrase match, and basic keyword matching. More importantly for customers, people promoting tweets will now have the ability to use something called “negative keywords,” i.e. pick the words they don’t want to advertise against. This solves a huge relevancy problem as far as ads on user-generated content are concerned. For example, I would probably guess that advertisers would start with something like “all of the curse words” as negative keywords.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/13/twitter-adds-more-keyword-targeting-options-and-trending-topic-matching-for-promoted-tweets/

by Cormac Foster, ReadWrite enterprise

OptioLabs has just released OptioCore, a secure version of Android, to handset makers. It’s pretty cool, but does it mean Android is ready for the enterprise? From a security standpoint, Android has always been a case of untapped potential. On one hand, it’s an open and popular operating system, which means it’s a prime target for hackers. According to researchers from Georgia Tech, 2013 will be the year mobile malware gets serious, and Android is vulnerable. Google’s App Verification Service, which is supposed to identify harmful applications upon instalation, is kind of a flop, and the majority of users don’t install any third-party antivirus software. On the other hand, Android’s dominance and openness also creates a market for third parties to try to fix these problems, and that’s just what Optio Labs, created by Allied Minds, claims to have done. The mobile device management and security firm has recently released a hardened version of Android that includes a bunch of baked-in security features – and not just malware detection.

http://readwrite.com/2012/12/13/super-secure-optiocore-android-wants-to-invade-the-enterprise

by Fredric Paul, ReadWrite Mobile

Money will never be the same. The rise of e-wallets, mobile payment services and e-coupons won’t put an end to old-fashioned money – though checks are quickly becoming an endangered species. But as e-payments become safer, cheaper, easier to use and more trusted, their use is expected to skyrocket. This ReadWrite infographic offers some key data points on the path to digital money.

http://readwrite.com/2012/12/13/the-wallet-revolution-infographic

by David Zax, Technology Review

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is collaborating with component suppliers to test TV set designs. Though rumors have long been sprouting about an Apple television set in the blogosphere, a Journal report has a different pedigree. As The Verge puts it, it’s “often the first sign that Apple is serious about a new product.” Still, one of the WSJ’s sources cautions: “It isn’t a formal project yet. It is still in the early stage of testing.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/508691/apple-testing-tv-designs/

By Jessica Leber, Technology Review

Samsung Electronics is a company at the top of its game, having become the world’s leading smartphone manufacturer in the last year. Samsung is doubling down on technology investments in its competitor’s backyard, including two new R&D buildings in Silicon Valley that will house 2,000 staff and a recently announced startup accelerator. Leading this effort is Young Sohn, who started at Samsung in August as president and chief strategy officer.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508306/the-man-looking-to-turn-samsung-into-a-silicon-valley-trendsetter/

by Dan Reisinger, Technology Review

There’s a general feeling in the mobile market that Apple is the world’s most innovative company. Those same folks tend to believe that Samsung is a close second. Admittedly, making that argument makes some sense. Looking around the mobile space, Apple’s iPhone 5 looks to be the most innovative option available. After all, it combines aluminum and glass to create a nice, appealing design. Meanwhile, Samsung’s Galaxy S III combines a huge display with sleek lines to appeal to customers. But further inspection reveals that Apple and Samsung might not be the most innovative mobile companies. In fact, the firms that are thinking outside the box might just be operating overseas. Yota Devices is one of those companies. Recently profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the company is poised to release an Android-based smartphone next year that has not one, but two, screens.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/508706/real-mobile-innovation-might-be-happening-outside-of-cupertino/

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

This summer, Google revealed a novel response to the challenges of finding information using a small, mobile screen: Google Now, an app that tries to anticipate your needs and offer information such as transit schedules precisely when you need them (see “Google’s Answer to Siri Thinks Ahead”). Now Grokr is making a similar experience much more widely available with an app for the iPhone. If Google Now was a test of the idea of using sensors and other data sources to predict what information a person wants at a particular moment, Grokr could amount to an even bigger experiment. Google Now is so far available only to the small fraction of Android users with the latest version of the operating system, while Grokr can be installed by any iPhone user. (The app is pending Apple’s approval, but Grokr expects it to be available this week).

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508636/the-iphone-gets-an-answer-to-google-now/

By Rachel Metz, Technology Review

Lumi is the latest venture from two of the three founders of Last.fm, a popular Internet radio service that keeps track of what you listen to and then recommends new tunes based on your tastes. Similarly, Lumi is a browser plug-in that tracks the websites you visit and suggests other sites it believes you’ll enjoy. This service is now in a private alpha test with around 1,000 users, including me. It doesn’t require the user to do anything beyond installing the plug-in (it works on Firefox, Safari, and Chrome). You can then navigate the Web normally—and when you want to see Lumi’s suggestions, you simply log in on its site and take a look.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508356/lumi-a-useful-web-recommendation-engine/

By Phil Muncaster, Technology Review

Taiwanese chip giant MediaTek today launched the world’s first quad-core “system on a chip” for smartphones. The new chip, the MT6589, is cheaper to manufacture—which will help lower the price of smartphone hardware globally. MediaTek is probably the most ubiquitous Asian tech business you’ve never heard of. The firm’s processors go into everything from mobile phones and optical storage systems to digital TVs and networking equipment. As Asia’s largest mobile-chip company, it counts Samsung, Sony, LG, and Huawei among its clients, and with the pending acquisition of smaller local competitor MStar Semiconductor, it will soon become the fourth-largest fabless chip maker globally by revenue.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/508696/new-quad-core-mobile-chip-will-mean-cheaper-high-end-smartphones/

by the BBC

A currency exchange that specialises in virtual cash has won the right to operate as a bank. Bitcoin-Central got the go-ahead thanks to a deal with French financial firms Aqoba and Credit Mutuel. The exchange is one of many that swaps bitcoins, computer generated cash, for real world currencies. The change in status makes it easier to use bitcoins and bestows national protections on balances held at the exchange.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20641465#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by the BBC

By logging what’s being done on different gadgets, profiles can be drawn up of users. Adverts could soon be following people around the different gadgets they use. Although tracking ads follow people as they browse different websites, Drawbridge uses statistics to do the same across devices. It gathers information on which gadgets are being used and what is being done with them to build up “anonymous” profiles of different users. The statistics generate a probability for which profiled user might be on that smartphone, tablet or laptop.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20638132#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

By Leo Kelion, BBC

IBM says it has developed a chip that makes it easier to shuttle data about via pulses of light instead of using electrical signals. The firm says it should offer a way to move large amounts of information between processors in computer servers at higher speeds than at present. These provide computing power and data used by apps and other net services. One third-party expert said the significance of the innovation was that it was much cheaper than other options.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20646933#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by the BBC

If the police do not have an official social media presence, unauthorised channels will spring up in their place, the report says. Police forces with strong social media presences have better relationships with the citizens they are policing, researchers claim. Their study involved several European countries. They found that in countries where the police social media presence was less strong, “unofficial” pages were popular. One Facebook page containing news about the police in Berlin had 15,000 members, the report said. The research project is part of the work of a group called Composite (Comparative Police Studies In The EU).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20641190#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by Chuck Raasch, USA Today

Authors Smolan and Erwitt are shipping 10,000 copies of Big Data to opinion leaders around the world, hoping it sparks a global conversation about the oceans of data humans are swimming in. “Big data” is a label affixed by software engineers, computer scientists, and social scientists, a description of the revolutionary ability to detect, corral and compare data on scales few even dreamed possible at the beginning of the century. Copies of the book were sent to everyone from President Obama to Justin Bieber. “We need to have the smartest people on earth aware of, and talking about this” Smolan says. Smolan and Erwitt say “big data” have launched technological immortality, where “each of us now leaves a trail of digital exhaust, an infinite stream of phone records, texts, browser histories, GPS data, and other information, that will live on forever.” Others say a new kind of human is evolving from the data soup.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/04/big-data-explosion/1729535/

by HPC Wire

From predicting the path of severe weather to creating drugs that combat disease, big data is critical to the discoveries that improve human life. However, the current production of digital data exceeds the ability to move it over computer networks. A new Indiana University-business collaboration is changing that dynamic. A recent networking breakthrough from IU researchers, in collaboration with Orange Silicon Valley and DataDirect Networks, showed that data sharing can be faster and more efficient over wide area networks (WAN). The team performed the world’s first demonstration of RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) across a wide area network using the Lustre file system.

http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2012-12-03/indiana_university_moves_big_data_faster.html

by John Koetsier, Venturebeat

Facebook might have almost fully penetrated core markets such as the U.S. and Europe, two regions in which the world’s largest social network’s growth is slowing. But there’s still plenty of room to grow in the MENA regions: the Middle East and North Africa countries. And Facebook is growing rapidly in that part of the world with a population of about 400-500 million people: 29 percent growth in 2012, according to a new infographic from Socialbakers.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/07/facebook-growing-fast-in-the-middle-east-and-africa-with-plenty-more-opportunity-infographic/

By ROY FURCHGOTT, Gadgetwise

The revamped iTunes — iTunes 11 — has been lauded for its spare design and for taking what some iTunes users have called a bloated program back to the basics. But other people may miss classic elements that have disappeared. The good news is that not all of them are really gone. Some are just hidden or renamed. You can get those back easily if you want to. Below are a few examples. (Other features that few people — except me, apparently — had used, such as cover flow and the ability to open multiple iTunes windows, are unlikely to reappear, said Apple.)

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/how-to-restore-old-itunes-features-to-new-itunes/

by RIP EMPSON, TechCrunch

While organized hackathons and startup-building events have begun to sprout up across the globe thanks to companies like AngelHack and Startup Weekend, university-focused hackathons remain underrepresented. General Catalyst, the veteran venture capital firm based in Massachusetts and Palo Alto, wants to change that. General Catalyst, in partnership with hacker event specialist Signalfire, has organized the University Hacker Olympics, an invitation-only competition that aims to be the largest university hackathon held to date.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/with-nationwide-university-hackathon-general-catalyst-aims-to-give-students-early-intro-to-startup-life/

by NATASHA LOMAS, Tech Crunch

Google has announced a change to Google Apps for Business — ending the free version of the product, offering only its Premium version which costs $50 per user, per year, regardless of the size of the company. The change was announced on Google’s Official Enterprise blog. Existing Google Apps for business users who have free accounts get to carry on without paying the subscription fee but businesses wanting to sign up from now with have to pay. Google Apps refers to Google’s suite of web-based software services — which includes Gmail webmail and Drive for cloud storage and collaborative documents. Google is still offering individuals free versions of these software products, when they create a Google Account, but businesses no longer have a free option.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/google-kills-free-google-apps-for-business-now-only-offering-premium-paid-version-to-companies-of-all-sizes/

by Dan Rowinski, ReadWrite Mobile

Earlier this week, mobile analytics company Flurry reported on the massive growth it sees in the mobile app economy. Flurry tracks 250,000 apps from 85,000 developers, a massive slice of the app industry. In November, Flurry recorded a trillion app events (an event is when someone completes an action within an app, like recording a song). Flurry also recorded 60 billion user sessions (tracked by when a user opens and then closes an app). This data produces the classic “hockey stick” that charts explosive growth. Flurry then notes the amount of time people spend with their mobile apps per day in relation with the Web and television. Apps are catching up, Flurry says, with 127 minutes of app usage per day, in comparison with 70 minutes of Web and 168 minutes of TV (I would like to meet some of these people who use apps for more than two hours a day). Gaming dominates mobile usage (one reason Rovio does so well with Angry Birds) followed by social networking then entertainment and utilities.

http://readwrite.com/2012/12/07/the-era-of-easy-riches-in-mobile-apps-is-over

By Ernesto Priego, Inside Higher Ed

As a researcher interested in the digital humanities and as a blogger, editor and academic blogging and social media workshop facilitator, I have observed different shades of digital literacy levels. I have witnessed it not between groups from different countries, disciplines or institutions, but within self-contained groups or communities that are often assumed to have the same skill sets or more or less similar degrees of access to infrastructure, financial means, education, and connectivity amongst others since these groups’ members belong to the same organisation, faculty or department. That members of the same organisation should not be assumed to necessarily have the same digital skills or level of access to said skills, education or resources is precisely one of the motivations for this post.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/university-venus/various-shades-digital-literacy-new-digital-divides