Technology News

Due to a reporting error, the story "Local developer aims to bring mobile apps to Myanmar," that ran on the wire on June 14, misquoted a statement from Htoo Myint Naung.

The Open Data Center Alliance, a customer group that shares tips about cloud deployments and tries to nudge vendors into supplying the products they want, has added big data to the list of IT topics it covers.

Come June 28th, Wall Street outfits including the likes of Citigroup and Bank of America will be under siege -- from fake hackers, that is. Representatives from a total of 40 companies along with the Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission, US departments of Treasury and Homeland Security will take part in Quantum Dawn 2: a simulated cyberattack on faux trading and information systems. Led by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the drill will test the ability of participants to cooperate via email and phone to suss out what's going on and hatch a plan. The exercise will momentarily pause so that those involved can decide on a course of action, and then it'll speed up and model the effects of the decision over a longer period of time. With the recent flurry of hacking incidents and international finger-pointing, something tells us this won't be the last we hear of drills like Quantum Dawn.[Image credit: MoneyBlogNewz, Flickr]Filed under: AltCommentsVia: AllThingsDSource: Reuters

It's been a mere few weeks since Shazam introduced those new location-based and tagging features for the tablet version of its iOS app, but the music-driven service isn't stopping there. Reaching version 6.1 on Apple's platform, today Shazam's universal application is bringing a few more tidbits to both the iPhone and iPad. Handset users, for one, will notice speedier load times within the app and a rather fresh look that focuses on displaying more info on the tab bar -- such as friend tags and chart updates. On the bigger screen, Shazam says it's improved things by allowing users to more easily delete tags from Favorites and by adding under-the-hood tweaks which should make for a smoother experience while browsing the Friends feed.The bigger news, perhaps, is Shazam Pulse, a music discovery tool that's making its way to the iOS app, one which allows folks to quickly see and sample the music currently being tagged by people. It's worth nothing all these new features are available for Shazam and Shazam Encore, so fret not if you have one or the other.Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, SoftwareCommentsVia: Cult of MacSource: App Store (1), (2)

For Nuance, it's not enough that Dragon Mobile Assistant spares Android users from pecking at the keyboard -- with the app's new 4.0 upgrade, those users can sometimes avoid contact altogether. Dragon Mobile Assistant can now detect when you're in a moving car and automatically invoke a Driver Mode that relies solely on voice recognition and feedback, keeping your focus on the road. Accordingly, the upgrade builds in spoken notifications for inbound calls, messages, upcoming meetings and Facebook updates. There's also voice-aware email and customizable wake up commands. All told, 4.0 is a big boost for Android fans who see touchscreens as old hat; if you do, you can grab the update shortly (if not already) through Google Play.Filed under: Cellphones, Software, MobileCommentsSource: Google Play

An anonymous reader writes "Last month, Google revealed that it was planning to finish defining its VP9 video codec on June 17 (today), after which it will start using the next-generation compression technology in Chrome and on YouTube. The company is wasting no time: it has already enabled the free video compression standard by default in the latest Chromium build." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AppleInsider:AT&T starts nationwide FaceTime over cellular rollout  —  AT&T appears to be in the midst of rolling out support for Apple's FaceTime video calling service for iPhone on its cellular network, making good on a promise to support all video chat apps over wireless by the end of the year.

Michael Arrington / Uncrunched:Journalists Need To Start Asking About Storage, Not Access  —  It's becoming pretty clear, particularly from today's Snowden Q&A and the partial transcript from President Obama's Charlie Rose interview, that we're zeroing in on how the government accesses private individual data.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Longer-lasting batteries are crucial for a new crop of wearable computers whose rise may upend Apple and Google's dominance of mobile devices, two of the field's pioneers say.

Roger Cheng / CNET:Ex-HTC execs can't quit phone game, create startup Kazam  —  Kazam is a smartphone manufacturer focused on design, customer service, and the European market.  But the company faces an extreme uphill climb.  —  Two former HTC executives are hoping for a fresh start with their own company.

Chikafumi Hodo / Reuters:Third Point raises Sony stake, presses entertainment spin-off  —  (Reuters) - New York-based hedge fund company Third Point said on Tuesday that it had raised its stake in Sony Corp and asked for an opportunity to present its proposal for a partial spin-off of the company's entertainment unit to Sony's board.

A story published to the wire on June 12, Is Microsoft's Office 365 Bet Starting to Pay Off in Enterprise Adoption?, mischaracterized the relationship of Veyance Technologies to Goodyear. Veyance is a manufacturer for Goodyear.

Due to a reporting error, the story "Local developer aims to bring mobile apps to Myanmar," that ran on the wire on June 14, misquoted a statement from Htoo Myint Naung.

NewsGator has upgraded its Social Sites enterprise social networking (ESN) add-on for SharePoint to make the software better able to tailor the content, notifications and capabilities it displays for each user.

Due to a reporting error, the story "Local developer aims to bring mobile apps to Myanmar," that ran on the wire on June 14, misquoted a statement from Htoo Myint Naung.

A story published to the wire on June 12, Is Microsoft's Office 365 Bet Starting to Pay Off in Enterprise Adoption?, mischaracterized the relationship of Veyance Technologies to Goodyear. Veyance is a manufacturer for Goodyear.

Sprint Nextel sued Clearwire and Dish Network on Monday in a bid to block Dish from taking over Clearwire, Sprint's majority-owned network partner.

Due to a reporting error, the story "Local developer aims to bring mobile apps to Myanmar," that ran on the wire on June 14, misquoted a statement from Htoo Myint Naung.

A story published to the wire on June 12, Is Microsoft's Office 365 Bet Starting to Pay Off in Enterprise Adoption?, mischaracterized the relationship of Veyance Technologies to Goodyear. Veyance is a manufacturer for Goodyear.

Lean storage techniques will keep a lid on storage investments over the next few years, though the world's enterprises still are on track to buy 138 exabytes of storage system capacity in 2017, IDC said.

Apple didn't try to fix or raise the prices of electronic books when it entered into the market in 2010, according to Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue. Rather, he says, the company was only working to ensure a profit for itself.

Yahoo has just joined Apple, Microsoft and Facebook in revealing just how many government requests for data it's received in the past six months. Marissa Mayer and General Counsel Ron Bell noted in a Tumblr post that the search giant received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests, "inclusive of criminal, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and other requests," between December 1st, 2012 and May 31 2013. This statistic gives Yahoo the crown for the most inquiries from Uncle Sam between Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. According to the Mayer and Bell, the majority of requests relate to "fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations." Naturally, Yahoo notes that it can't specify how many FISA requests are in that figure due to their classified nature, but it "strongly urge(s) the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue."Mayer and Co. also announced that they'll issue their first "global law enforcement transparency report," later in the summer, which will include data on the first half of 2013. It's not a one-time occurence either -- the firm plans to update the dossier twice each year.CommentsSource: Yahoo (Tumblr)

Kaylene Hong / The Next Web:Yahoo discloses government data requests, will introduce transparency reports from this summer  —  Yahoo has spoken up to clarify claims made over the US government's PRISM program two weeks after the news broke.  CEO Marissa Mayer said Yahoo received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests …

Alexis Santos / Engadget:Microsoft offering Surface RT tablets for $199 to educational institutions  —  If you thought Microsoft's effort to push Surface RT tablets into classrooms would stop with a 10,000-unit giveaway, you'd be mistaken.  Ryan Lowdermilk, a technology evangelist for the company …

GEAK may be focusing its attention on wearable tech like the Ring and Watch, but it still has a pair of new offerings for those who like old-fashioned smartphones: meet the 5-inch Eye and 5.8-inch Mars. Both are tailored to photo junkies with 13MP, backside-illuminated rear cameras as well as strong front cameras that shoot at 8MP (Eye) and 2MP (Mars). Differences between the handsets revolve mostly around performance and screen size. The Eye keeps things modest with a 720p IPS display, a quad-core MediaTek MT6589, HSPA+ data, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Spring for the extra-large Mars and you'll upgrade to a 1080p IPS LCD, a Snapdragon 600 and 2GB of RAM. Either way, you won't be paying a lot for the imaging prowess -- when pre-orders start on June 25th, GEAK will ask ¥1,999 ($326) off-contract for the Eye and ¥2,999 ($490) for the Mars. Just don't expect either to leave China when there's no word of international plans.Filed under: Cellphones, MobileCommentsVia: Engadget Chinese (translated)Source: GEAK (1), (2)

mask.of.sanity writes "Hundreds of organizations have been detected running dangerously vulnerable versions of SAP that were more than seven years old and thousands more have placed their critical data at risk by exposing SAP applications to the public Internet. The new research found the SAP services were inadvertently made accessible thanks to a common misconception that SAP systems were not publicly-facing and remotely-accessible. The SAP services contained dangerous vulnerabilities which were since patched by the vendor but had not been applied." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hannah Karp / Speakeasy:Samsung to Give Away 1 Million Copies of Jay-Z's New Album … As the Miami Heat faced off against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 of the NBA finals Sunday night, a curious TV ad aired near the end of the second quarter featuring rap star Jay-Z in a studio, riffing with a cast …

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:Yahoo Offer to Buy Contact Startup Xobni Is at a Price of $30M to $40M  —  According to numerous sources close to the company, Yahoo is offering to pay $30 million to $40 million for the maker of address book apps and plugins.  —  That's below the more than $40 million raised …

Mitch Lasky / BizPunk:Should Venture Capital Fund Games Companies?  —  Kim-Mai Cutler wrote an interesting piece in Techcrunch this week about venture financing and the games business.  Greatly simplified, her main thesis is that venture capital may not be the best vehicle for financing video game companies.

It's Monday, and you know what that means; another Engadget HD Podcast. We hope you will join us live when the Engadget HD podcast starts recording at 9:30PM. If you'll be joining us, be sure to go ahead and get ready by reviewing the list of topics after the break, then you'll be ready to participate in the live chat.Filed under: Home Entertainment, HDComments

(Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp on Monday said it has sued Dish Network Corp to block its tender offer for Clearwire Corp, escalating a takeover battle that also includes Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank Corp.

Runefox writes "Cerulean Studios, the company behind the long-lived Trillian instant messaging client, has released preliminary specifications to their proprietary "Astra" protocol, now named IMPP (Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol), which provides continuous client functionality as well as mandatory TLS encryption for clients. According to their blog, Cerulean Studios' motivation for the release is to promote interoperability among the throngs of IM services and clients available by allowing others to also use the protocol. Future concepts include federation with XMPP. While the documentation is in an early state and the protocol is claimed to still be in development, it is hoped that it will help decentralize the very heavily fragmented messaging ecosystem. It's implied that, in turn, greater options for privacy may become available in the wake of the PRISM scandal via privately-run federated servers, unaffiliated with major networks, yet still able to communicate with them." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Due to a reporting error, the story "Local developer aims to bring mobile apps to Myanmar," that ran on the wire on June 14, misquoted a statement from Htoo Myint Naung.

A story published to the wire on June 12, Is Microsoft's Office 365 Bet Starting to Pay Off in Enterprise Adoption?, mischaracterized the relationship of Veyance Technologies to Goodyear. Veyance is a manufacturer for Goodyear.

A story published to the wire on June 12, Is Microsoft's Office 365 Bet Starting to Pay Off in Enterprise Adoption?, mischaracterized the relationship of Veyance Technologies to Goodyear. Veyance is a manufacturer for Goodyear.

Due to a reporting error, the story "Local developer aims to bring mobile apps to Myanmar," that ran on the wire on June 14, misquoted a statement from Htoo Myint Naung.

In 2012, Microsoft's Rick Rashid blew an Asian audience away with a live translation of his speech into Mandarin. On Monday, Bing added some of that technology to Bing Voice Search, to cut down the processing response time of voice input into Windows Phone by half, while improving accuracy at the same time.

Much of Rambus' past is associated with lawsuits, but the company is moving forward with dispute settlements.

If, like many, you use Evernote as a sophisticated to-do list, the latest update to the essential software and service is about to dramatically increase its usefulness. Reminders give Evernote a full suite of alarm and notification features, ideal for turning static notes into dynamic action items.

While Pelican Imaging's 16-lens array camera will only reach mobile devices in 2014, the company doesn't want to wait to show what its technology can do in practice. It just posted a clip suggesting that the camera's whole-scene focusing and depth mapping could come in handy at a wedding. A guest could not only capture pristine snapshots of the occasion, but create 3D-printed figurines of the bride and groom while they're still at the reception. Is this a niche case? You bet -- but it reminds us that Pelican's array could make an impact well beyond our photo albums. Catch the full video after the break.Filed under: Cellphones, Cameras, NokiaCommentsSource: Pelican Imaging

TOKYO (Reuters) - New York-based hedge fund company Third Point said on Tuesday that it had raised its stake in Sony Corp and asked for an opportunity to present its proposal for a partial spin-off of the company's entertainment unit to Sony's board.

Scott Webster / CNET:Sprint expands LTE footprint by 22 markets  —  The carrier extends its faster 4G to new cities and towns, bringing its grand total to 110 areas.  —  Sprint confirmed on Monday that another 22 markets have officially started seeing the network's 4G LTE data speeds.

By Clara MoskowitzSpace.comNASA has picked eight Americans, a mix of scientists and military pilots, to begin training for future space missions that may one day launch them all the way to Mars. The new class includes four men and four women who will join the 49 active astronauts at the agency's astronaut corps at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.The new U.S. space travelers, which NASA unveile...    

Sprint Newsroom:Sprint Files Lawsuit Against DISH Network Corporation and Clearwire Corporation Citing the Illegality of the DISH Tender Offer for Clearwire  —  If Completed, Tender Offer Would Violate Delaware Corporate Law, Sprint's Bargained-For Rights and the Rights of the Strategic Investors Under the Charter and Equity Holders Agreement

By Clara MoskowitzSpace.comNASA has picked eight Americans, a mix of scientists and military pilots, to begin training for future space missions that may one day launch them all the way to Mars. The new class includes four men and four women who will join the 49 active astronauts at the agency's astronaut corps at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.The new U.S. space travelers, which NASA unveile...    

Internet firms are to meet ministers at No 10 amid calls for more to be done to block images of child sex abuse and to stop children viewing pornography.

(Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp has filed a lawsuit against Dish Network Corp and Clearwire Corp to prevent the completion of Dish's offer for Clearwire's shares.

Reuters:Sprint files lawsuit against Dish and Clearwire  —  (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp has filed a lawsuit against Dish Network Corp and Clearwire Corp to prevent the completion of Dish's offer for Clearwire's shares.  —  The lawsuit details how Dish has “repeatedly attempted to fool Clearwire's shareholders …

Sprint warned Clearwire in early June that it viewed Dish's latest attempt to buy it as illegal, and now the carrier is following up with legal action. Big Yellow has just announced that its filed a lawsuit against Dish and its acquisition target in Delaware, as it believes the buyout would violate state law and the rights of shareholders and investors in both itself and Clearwire. The Now Network is asking the court to prevent the completion of the deal, rescind certain parts of the agreement and seek "declaratory, injunctive, compensatory and other relief." In the outfit's own words, the suit "details how DISH has repeatedly attempted to fool Clearwire's shareholders into believing its proposal was actionable in an effort to acquire Clearwire's spectrum and to obstruct Sprint's transaction with Clearwire." Stand back folks, the legal fireworks are just starting.Filed under: SprintCommentsSource: Sprint

Sharp puts a record-sized TV on sale in Europe, but its 1080p resolution means owners will need a relatively large room to be able to watch it.