HAPPY NEW YEAR 

Google+ Review One moment

What is google plus for you? What  do you like the most about it?

Apple's change into curved glass screen

Apple patent to reveals plans for the curved glass screen 

The world's biggest data breaches and hacks of 2013

In January this year, The New York Times, having been the victim of persistent attacks, experienced a breach which lasted four months.

A sophisticated Chinese hacking team slipped past security systems in order to deploy 45 custom malware pieces and access the computers of 53 employees -- before moving on to a domain controller, breaching the system, and gaining the hashed password of every member of staff on The New York Times payroll. Eventually, once the breach was discovered, the hackers were dispelled. 

The newspaper said that it may have to do with an investigation carried out in October 2012 concerning a story which said the Chinese Prime Minister had accumulated funds through business dealings. The government official said this accusation was "groundless." However, the publication also pointed the finger at security firm Symantec for failing to protect it against the security breach. In response, the security firm said:

"Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats. We encourage customers to be very aggressive in deploying solutions that offer a combined approach to security.

Anti-virus software alone is not enough."

The Wall Street Journal then came forward, stating that the U.S. publication too had been a victim of attacks designed to monitor reports concerning China, and cyberattacks spanned several years. The WSJ said that "journal sources on occasion have become hard to reach after information identifying them was included in emails," and suggested that information gained by the attackers has worked its way to Chinese authorities, who then took action to silence whistleblowers. 

Game Trailer Time: The Best of the 2013 Spike VGX Awards

The 2013 Spike VGX awards have come and gone. Say what you will about video games award shows — and trust us, plenty of people are — but they do make for an excellent time for developers to show off what they're cooking up across the next few months (or years). To us, at least, it doesn't really matter who wins and loses; the trailers that tease all the hot new games in development are the real prize.

Thankfully, the Spike VGX awards did not disappoint in that regard (although we wouldn't have minded a hint or two of some of the reallyanticipated games in the works like, say, Fallout 4. Or, for that matter, a game or two that everyone doesn't already know about at this point in time.)

So, alas, while many of the new trailers we're about to showcase tease out games that you might already have heard of / are itching to purchase, at least they offer some CG or in-game footage that you might not have previously seen. That's something to celebrate, right? And there's always Tales from the Borderlands, if you really need to get your quick fix from previously unannounced titles.

Without additional ado, we present: The Top Five Trailers You Need To Care About from the 2013 Spike VGX awards.

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Yes, it's South Park doing what South Park does best — mixing semi- (or full-on) grossness with a fair mocking of the fantasy and role-playing genre. This game almost has as many delays under its belt as Kenny has deaths; we're excited to see it come to life if, for nothing else, to prove that it actually has been worked on all these years. That, and we're excited to count up the number of naughty words that might fill an average gaming session with the South Park kids.

Destiny

If you'll allow me to get personal for a moment, I confess that I'm not the biggest fan of the Halo series. Destiny, Bungie's huge sci-fi follow up to their immense, Master Chief-filled franchise, is allegedly a decent departure from that which you're likely used to playing — "mythic science fiction," as it's been described by members of the game's development crew. That excites me, and the concept of its hybrid multiplayer/single-player setup should excite you too, especially the intriguing AI elements that Bungie is slapping into its lovely planet-based combat.

Game of Thrones

Aren't you busy enough, Telltale games? First, The Walking Dead. Then The Wolf Among Us. Now, Tales from the Borderlands and, if that wasn't enough, a new episodic game based on Game of Thrones as well. We're excited, but do forgive us if we wait for the Stannis Season to fire up before jumping in. (Ours is the fury, after all.)

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Whenever we need a quick fix for a gorgeous, gruesome trailer, we turn to The Witcher series. Remember the assassin-on-the-boat cinematic from the previous title? We sure do. The latest trailer for the third game in the gritty series is a wee shy on crazy, barbaric action, but it still sets a fairly imposing scene. You won't see us taking any courtesy boat rides in this title, that's for sure.

Titanfall

Whether you loved MechWarrior, Power Rangers, or Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots in your youth, it's no question that Titanfall has certainly made itself out as one of the likely must-get games on the good ol' Xbox One. Assuming that its mix of giant-painful-robot and guerilla-robot-killing gameplay doesn't fall flat on its metallic face, there's just too much fun to be had by walking around alongside your friends in huge, armored suits, blasting the living daylights out of one another.

If only you could all borrow a page from Transformers and form up into some giant, Devestator/Bruticus killing machine…

Facebook is experimenting with a 'sympathize' button

You must have faced this dilemma a hundred times in the past few years. There are statuses just too sensitive to hit the 'Like' button. How do you react to the news of the death of a friend's aunt on Facebook without looking like a total jerk? With social media increasingly taking over our private space - at the dinner table, during conversations, in the bedroom and at work - the pressure to commiserate is just too great for Facebook to ignore at the moment.

This was first reported by The Huffington Post which quoted a Facebook engineer as saying that the social network has "informally experimented with an alternative to 'like' - specifically, the 'sympathize' button".

The demand and need for a button less upbeat than the 'Like' is ever growing since users complained of the awkwardness of 'liking' someone's sombre status - the death of a pet, the rant against a parent or a traumatic break up. Between a comment and being seen as an insensitive idiot - the options are limited at the moment.

How do you react to the news of the death of a friend's aunt on Facebook without appearing to be a total jerk?

The report said that another Facebook engineer, Dan Muriello, said at aCompassion Research Day event, if a person chose a negative emotion like 'sad' or 'depressed' from Facebook's fixed list of feelings, the 'like' button would be relabeled 'sympathize.'

Facebook toyed with a 'sympathize' button at their hackathon but the 'dislike' button might not happen anytime soon.

The Huffington Post quoted a Facebook spokesman as saying that some of their best ideas came from hackathons.

"The many ideas that don't get pursued often help us think differently about how we can improve our service," he said.

Earlier, product engineer Bob Baldwin had said that the 'dislike' button wasn't happening any time soon. If Facebook can stick to it's words, it's a great decision, really. A dislike button on a social networking site that has hundreds of thousands of young users - many of them struggling with body image issues - will be a trigger for negativity.

Facebook mothers will be a formidable group that will put up a spirited fight with the 'dislike' button linked to their daily stream of baby pictures. If you weren't born during the World War II, simply imagine 'disliking' a baby's photo.

New keyboard case turns your iPhone into Blackberry

Washington, Dec. 9 (ANI): A new device has been launched for iPhones aimed at making typing a lot easier.

American Idol host and serial reality TV producer, Ryan Seacrest, has invested one million dollars in the Typo keyboard, an accessory that is trying to make typing easy.

According to Mashable, the case snaps on to the top of an iPhone and turns the touch screen keypad into one that resembles the BlackBerry's qwerty keyboard.

The Typo Keyboard priced at 99 dollars targets those who carry two phones: one for typing and another an iPhone for most everything else.

The keyboard, which works when Bluetooth is enabled, adds less than 1 inch (2.54 centimetres) to the iPhone's length, the report added. (ANI)

iSPY: Apple Stores switch on iBeacon phone sniff spy system

Apple has switched on its controversial iBeacon snooping system across 254 US stores.
The fruity firm's iSpy network allows Apple to watch fanbois as they walk around an Apple store and then send them various messages depending on where they are in the shop.

This might come in handy when visiting an Apple store, for instance, which is offering the latest iStuff. Glance in its direction or wander past and your iPhone will suddenly spring to life, filled with messages about products you haven't bought yet Apple's iBeacon transmitters use Bluetooth to work out customers' location, because GPS doesn't work as well indoors. This functionality was quietly snuck into iOS 7. To take part all you need to do is download the Apple Store app and agree to let it track your location.

Apple claimed iBeacon offers "a whole new level of micro-location awareness, such as trail markers in a park, exhibits in a museum, or product displays in stores".
What that really means is that whenever you visit somewhere armed with iBeacon transmitters, your iPhone will bombard you with unwanted messages.
Luckily, there's a way to avoid the all-seeing eye of Cupertino: just switch off location services and you can go about your shopping trip without being surveilled.

According to AP, the flagship store on Fifth Avenue, New York City, was first to switch on its system on Friday and by this point every fruity outlet will have gone live. ®

Browser fun

Top 7 Reasons Why you should eat APPLES

Briefly Difference between Window 7 and Window 8

Forumswindows8.com, the self-proclaimed largest Windows 8 help and support forum on the Internet, is filled with posts on such subjects as how to try to terminate a process in the Windows 8 task manager when access is denied and the state of Winodws 8 HP printer drivers. These hard-core Windows 8 early adopters group recently polled their users. And, 50,000 votes later, they found that their memberships' favorite Windows operating system was overwhemling Windows 7.

The breakdown for favorite version of Windows, from top to bottom, was Windows 7: 53%; Windows 8: 25%, XP: 20% and Other: 2%. Research house Gartner wouldn't argue. In a Webinar, Gartner analysts Steve Kleynhans and Michael Silver argue that if your company is still using XP you want to upgrade to Windows 7 and not be distracted by Windows 8.

Kleynhans said, "Get Windows 7 done, and then you can start to experiment and dabble with Windows 8, but don't let Windows 8 derail your Windows 7 upgrade project." He continued, “"We really don't think Windows 8 will get significant traction as a PC OS in a corporate environment." Gartner's clients are certainly following that course. Those who plan on upgrading are are moving to Windows 7 and plan to skip Windows 8 for PCs entirely.

According to Kleynhans, “Windows 8 will get 20% to 25% of the corporate user base, at most, before it's replaced with whatever comes next.” In short Windows 8 adoption "will look more like Vista, [and] it won't have the installed base that we've seen with Windows 7 or XP." Why? Because Windows 8 is a “plumbing" upgrade. This is an upgrade that drastically changes the technology without adding significant improvements. In particular, he thinks most users and IT departments will find the interface formerly known as Metro to be too different to find favor and Windows 8's use of two different interfaces to be too confusing for most users.

That's not what the Windows 8 forum survey found though. Their list of weaknesses in Windows 8 started with price: 35% followed by system requirements: 26%; incompatibility 25%; Windows freezes 20%; and only then does the interface show up with 18%.. A close reading of the forum's messages find that their members really do feel that Windows 8 will be over-priced and they're finding lots of hardware driver and software incompatibility problems.

These results aren't surprising. These are users who've already committed to Windows 8. From the start, they've accepted that Metro is not going to be anything like the Windows 7 Aero interface. Gartner's users have no such commitment.

That said, the Windows 8 fans don't love the Metro user interface either. In their ranking of favorite Windows 8 features, Metro came in the lower-end of the pack. In order, their top favorite features were: Fast boot and shutdown, 55%; Easy installation, 50%; Internet Explorer 10, 35%; Restart/Restore capabilities, 28%; Built-in application integration, 26%; Windows Explorer, 25%; App Store, 23%; and then Metro at 22%.

Forumswindows8.com also asked their membership which mobile operating system they'd rather buy. The winner? Android with 42%, followed by Windows Phone 8, 29% and iPhone, 22%. This does not bode well for Microsoft making any progress in the smartphone market.

On the other hand, Microsoft did at least have the support of this Windows 8 fan group when it came to tablets. 35% of them would rather have a Microsoft Surface than an Android tablet, 33%, or the hated Apple rival iPad with 26%.

Windows 8 will arrive for the general public on October 25th. As I predicted before, and I'll predict again, Windows 8 is going to be dead on arrival. Leave aside Gartner's predictions, if even people who are passionate about Windows 8 prefer Windows 7 by two to one, well, what more need be said?

Apple spent over $60 million on U.S. lawyers against Samsung

(Reuters) - Apple Inc has paid its leading outside law firm approximately $60 million to wage patent litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in a California federal court, according to Apple legal documents filed late on Thursday.

Apple and Samsung are engaged in global litigation over each other's intellectual property. The two mobile technology rivals have gone to trial twice in the last two years in a San Jose, California federal court, and juries have awarded Apple a total of roughly $930 million.

In court filings, Apple asked U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to order Samsung to pay $15.7 million of the total amount Apple has spent in legal fees.

"Awarding fees to Apple 'flows quite naturally' from the jury's willfulness verdict as well as Samsung's extensive record of willful, deliberate, and calculated decisions to copy the iPhone, in blatant disregard for Apple's IP," Apple's attorneys said in its filing.

Apple could not immediately be reached for comment, and Samsung declined to comment.

In its fee motion, Apple said it has paid the Morrison & Foerster law firm approximately $60 million through last month, not counting lawyers who had billed less than $100,000 on the case.

Apple received "a significant discount" on Morrison & Foerster's standard rates, it said, because of its longtime client relationship with the firm. In addition, Apple expected to pay its other main outside firm, WilmerHale, approximately $2 million in fees for a week-long damages retrial that took place last month.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc vs. SamsungElectronics Co Ltd, 11-1846.

(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

Now Twitter to be available on mobile phones without Internet

 Twitter Inc is tying up with a Singapore-based startup to make its 140-character messaging service available to users in emerging markets who have entry-level mobile phones which cannot access the Internet.

U2opia Mobile, which has a similar tie-up with Facebook Inc, will launch its Twitter service in the first quarter of next year, 

Users will need to dial a simple code to get a feed of the popular trending topics on Twitter, he said.

More than 11 million people use U2opia's Fonetwish service, which helps access Facebookand Google Talk on mobile without a data connection.

Twitter, which boasts of about 230 million users, held a successful initial public offering last month that valued the company at around $25 billion.

U2opia uses a telecom protocol named USSD, or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, which does not allow viewing of pictures, videos or other graphics.

"USSD as a vehicle for Twitter is almost hand in glove because Twitter has by design a character limit, it's a very text-driven social network,

Eight out of 10 people in emerging markets are still not accessing data on their phone, he said.

U2opia, which is present in 30 countries in seven international languages, will localize the Twitter feed according to the location of the user.

"So somebody in Paraguay would definitely get content that would be very very localized to that market vis a vis somebody sitting in Mumbai or Bangalore," he said.

The company, whose biggest markets are Africa and South America, partners with telecom carriers such as Telenor, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel Ltd. U2opia usually gets 30 to 40 percent of what users pay its telecom partners to access Fonetwish.