Pulse is a mash up of Nokia Maps, Check-ins, Group Messaging and Media sharing. And if we can believe what Nokia promises, Pulse is first of a series of interconnected apps that will mark Nokia’s foray into social networks. It allows for the user to create custom groups of friends and family (much like Circles on Google+ or Lists on Facebook) and share specific content (messages, photos, and locations) with them.

What is left to be seen now is how Pulse would perform in an ecosystem where services like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Latitude already have a strong hold, given that the feedback to Pulse during the beta test hasn’t been very encouraging (only 3 stars, from 46 reviews). Pulse is right now available for Windows Phone 7, Symbian 3, Meego and as a web based service.

The move is also very clearly indicative of North America’s growing importance as a market for the Nokia+Windows Phone devices, given that Nokia will soon be releasing the Lumia 900 in the North American market. The development of the app has taken place in Boston as well, and not in Finland as it used to be.

The move from Nokia is an interesting one, given how Nokia is getting more into the role of an app-developer, building a new social platform tightly integrated with the Windows Phone, to begin with, and taking head on against existing social giants.

Only time will tell how the story unfolds.

Source: HT Media

Google’s doodle celebrates the renowned physicist who died early due to Wegener’s granulomatosis at the age of 36.

It is a Google tradition to honour famous people and days with a Google Doodle. The last doodle was a video animation on Valentine’s Day.

Source: HT Media

The long awaited software update does bring a slew of improvements to the PlayBook and introduces some features that should have been present a year ago when the device first launched.

PlayBook owners will finally get a native e-mail application, a Personal Information Manager app as well as a contacts app. These are business critical apps for RIM’s core users and available on most competing tablets.

PlayBook OS 2.0 also brings improved BlackBerry Bridge connectivity that will allow recent BlackBerry smartphones to be used as remote controls for the tablet for the playing back of media such as video, slideshows and presentations.

During a demo at last month’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show), Jonathan Wong, Senior Product Manager for RIM, showed me some off the new apps.

The most impressive was Citrix Receiver, which allowed the PlayBook to run Windows applications such as PowerPoint, Office or Outlook.

Also demoed was the Android App Player that should be able to run many Google Android applications on the PlayBook and expand the library of apps for the tablet.

RIM also confirmed that they are going after the best mobile apps in other platforms and getting them ported to the PlayBook so that users will have more options to choose from.

This is great news for existing PlayBook owners, but whether this functionality will make the tablet enticing enough for new customers remains to be seen.

When the PlayBook launched a year ago, it was in a class of its own. It was a handsome, business grade device with a promising new operating system and a fast multi-core processor and a it was designed for enterprise users.

At 7-inches in diameter it is extremely portable, well-built and was nowhere near Apple’s radar as a potential threat. This was because RIM innovated and created its own space without resorting to copying the iPad like many others did.

A year later, the PlayBook may be getting smarter and more useful, but it is also facing a staggering amount of competition from all sides.
Competition has grown

Now Apple is readying to drop the hammer on its next iPad which will take the lion’s share of the attention, and profits, for months after its announcement.

Samsung has the tablet market covered from the 5.3-inch size with their Galaxy Note and all the way up to the 7-inch, 7.7-inch, 8.9-inch and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab sizes.

Most of the other Android tablet makers are fighting it out in the 10.1 screen category but we are seeing growing number of 7-inch tablets come in at lower price points.

Cheaper Android powered eBook readers like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Kobo’s Vox, which look almost identical to the PlayBook, also offer more functionality at a cheaper price, even if they are mainly for reading books.

RIM’s little tablet has one good chance left at making a big impression.

It is make or break time for the PlayBook, and RIM will need to rely on its loyal users to kick start interest in the tablet and its new suite of software apps

Source: HT Media

The servers have been inspected by a team of officers and permission for direct linkage for lawful interception was expected to be issued shortly, a presentation made at the meeting held in the office of the Home Secretary said.

About the Nokia Push Mail, the Department of Telecom also prescribed a similar policy as in the case adopted by the BlackBerry, the presentation said.

The government and BlackBerry manufacturers were in a logjam over its services in India as security agencies had raised a red flag over its operations citing non availability of method to intercept its messenger service and enterprise mail.

However, there was a climbdown by the government on intercepting mail sent through BlackBerry Enterprise Services (BES) which decrypts the messages and sends it to email server of the service provider where it remains stored in decrypted form. Then the message is pushed to the BlackBerry device in encrypted form.

The DoT secretary informed that currently there are about 5000 Enterprise Servers for BES. Director Intelligence Bureau Nehchal Sandhu noted that these are communications between the employees of the enterprise only and, therefore, are not of “high concern” for security or Intelligence agencies.

“However, it was decided to obtain list and location of the servers from telecom service providers,” the presentation said.

RIM representatives had explained that BlackBerry mobile device sends the encrypted email which is sent to BES located with the service provider.

The government had said the onus of giving access to security agencies to monitor the information on these smart phones lies with the service providers.

According to the licensing conditions, the service providers are liable to put in a mechanism to allow security agencies to intercept any conversation or message of any subscriber whenever required.

As telecom service providers like Airtel, Vodafone, RCom, the Tatas and the government-run BSNL and MTNL are offering BlackBerry services, it is the responsibility of these operators to ensure that the security agencies get access to all services they offer.

RIM has its operations in 175 countries

Source: HT Media

The newspaper says six manufacturers, including a flashlight manufacturer, got as far as preliminary approval before their applications were challenged.

Cai Zhiyong, whose company is based in east China’s Zhejiang province, said he applied to register iPhone as a trademark for his lamps and flashlights in 2010, but was recently asked to provide supporting evidence in the final disclosure stage.

“Apple objected to our application on the last day of the three-month disclosure that began in June 2011,” Xu Jie, a lawyer representing Cai’s company based in the manufacturing town of Yiwu said.

On Friday, Xu received a letter from the trademark office of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce demanding the applicant provide supporting evidence within a month.

Apple held Cai’s firm had infringed upon its trademark and should therefore withdraw the application.

“The debate focused on whether iPhone had gained certified status as a ‘famous brand’ under protection from China’s law of trademarks,” Xu said.

The law prevents “famous” brand names from being registered under other categories.

“Famous as it is today, we cannot assume iPhone was already an officially recognized ‘famous brand’ back in 2010,” Xu said.

He said it took him by surprise when he found, at Cai’s request in 2010, that Apple had not registered its trademarks in all of China’s 45 commercial categories, a practice other transnational companies follow.

“It seemed to me that Apple did not care much about the China market. So the dispute was caused by Apple’s brand strategy flaws,” he said.

“My big clients, mostly manufacturing firms based in Yiwu, almost always register their trademarks in all product and service categories to protect and nurture their brands.” Xu expected the dispute to last two to three years.

This is the second legal battle for Apple as already it is facing a similar case related to its iPad as its brand rights are claimed by some local company.

Based on this officials in several provinces began pulling out iPad out of the apple store shelves.

Chinese courts will hear an iPad trademark dispute between Apple and the Shenzhen-based Proview later this month.

Feng Xiaoqing, an intellectual property rights specialist, told China Daily that flaws existed in the implementation of Apple’s brand strategy.

“Many Chinese companies face the same situation overseas as well,” he said.

Source: HT Media

It all comes together at an air force base in Kamra in northern Pakistan, where avionics engineers — when they’re not working on defense projects — assemble the PACPAD 1.

“The original is the iPad, the copy is the PACPAD,” said Mohammad Imran, who stocks the product at his small computer and cell phone shop in a mall in Rawalpindi, a city not far from Kamra and the home of the Pakistani army.

The device runs on Android 2.3, an operating system made by Google and given away for free. At around $200, it’s less than half the price of Apple or Samsung devices and cheaper than other low-end Chinese tablets on the market, with the bonus of a local, one-year guarantee.

The PAC in the name stands for the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex, where it is made. The PAC also makes an e-reader and small laptop.

Such endeavors are still at the pilot stage and represent just a sliver of the military’s business portfolio, which encompasses massive land holdings, flour and sugar mills, hotels, travel agents, even a brand of breakfast cereal.

The military is powerful, its businesses are rarely subject to civilian scrutiny, and it has staged three coups since Pakistan became a state in 1947. Many Pakistanis find its economic activities corrupting and say it should focus on entirely on defense.

“I just can’t figure it out,” said Jehan Ara, head of Pakistan’s Software Houses Association, said of the PACPAD. “Even if they could sell a billion units, I can’t see the point. The air force is supposed to be protecting the air space and borders of the country.”

Supporters say the foray into information technology is a boost to national pride for a country vastly overshadowed by archrival India in the high-tech field. Tech websites in the country have shown curiosity or cautious enthusiasm, but say it’s too early to predict how the device will perform. Skeptics claim it’s a vanity project that will never see mass production.

Only a few hundred of each products has been made so far, though a new batch will be completed in the next three months.

“The defense industry is trying to justify its presence by doing more than just produce weapons,” said Ayesha Siddiqa, author of Military Inc., a critical study of military businesses. “Some smart aleck must have thought we can make some money here.”

PAC’s website at http://www.cpmc.pk says the goal is “strengthening the national economy through commercialization” and lauds the collaboration with China — something that likely resonates among nationalists.

China is regarded as a firm ally by Pakistan’s security establishment, whereas the U.S., despite pouring billions of dollars in aid into the country, is seen as fickle and increasingly as an enemy.

These perceptions have heightened as the U.S. intensifies drone attacks on militants based in the Pakistani borderlands. But the military is also a target of those militants. In 2007 the base at Kamra, home to 12,000 workers and their families, nine people died when a cyclist blew himself up at the entrance.

PAC officials suggested the program that produces the PACPAD was modeled in part on the Chinese military’s entry into commercial industry, which lasted two decades until it was ordered to cut back lest it become corrupted and lose sight of its core mission.

The tablet and other devices are made in a low-slung facility, daubed in camouflage paint, near, a factory that produces J-17 Thunder fighter jets with Chinese help.

“It’s about using spare capacity. There are 24 hours in a day, do we waste them or use them to make something?” said Sohail Kalim, PAC’s sales director. “The profits go to the welfare of the people here. There are lots of auditors. They don’t let us do any hanky-panky here.”

PAC builds the PACPAD with a company called Innavtek in a Hong Kong-registered partnership that also builds high-tech parts for the warplanes.

But basic questions go unanswered. Maqsood Arshad, a retired air force officer who is one of the directors, couldn’t say how much money had been invested, how many units the venture hoped to sell and what the profit from each sale was likely to be.

The market for low-cost Android tablets is expanding quickly around the world, with factories in China filling most of the demand. Last year, an Indian company produced the “Aakash” tablet, priced at $50, and sold largely to schoolchildren and students.

Arshad said a second-generation PACPAD would be launched in the next three months, able to connect to the Internet via cell phone networks and other improved features. He said the Kamra facility could produce up to 1,000 devices a day.

During a brief test, The tablet with its 7-inch screen appeared to run well and the screen responsiveness was sharp.

“It seems good, but operation-wise I have to look into it,” said Mohammad Akmal, who had come to the store in Rawalpindi to check the product out. “Within a month or so, we will know.”

Source: HT Media

The newspaper did not say when Fujitsu would launch the products in Europe’s fast-growing and high-margin mobile device market, but said the company is targeting a “double-digit” market share in the next three to five years.

Japanese handset makers have struggled to compete in European markets, in part owing to a focus on technology for the domestic market. But the company’s new handsets and tablets use technology it has developed that can be used globally, according to the FT.

“The Japanese market has been in a silo from a technology and design perspective, but Fujitsu is bringing out a global product,” Robert Pryke, the company’s director for mobile phone business in Europe, was cited as saying in the article.

Source: HT Media

“This was the most extensive and flagrant incidence of social media hacking to be brought before British courts,” said Alison Saunders, London’s Chief Prosecutor. “Fortunately, this did not involve any personal user data being compromised.”

Facebook first became aware of a security breach in its internal network in April and called in the FBI. The U.S. agents established the source of the hacking was based in Britain and British police raided Mangham’s home in June.

Mangham said he had previously helped search engine Yahoo Inc improve its security and wanted to do the same for Facebook. However, prosecutors rejected his explanation.

“He said he wanted a mini project and chose Facebook because of its high-profile internet presence,” prosecutor Sandip Patel told London’s Southwark Crown Court.

“The prosecution does not accept that the defendant’s actions were anything other than malicious.”

The court was told Facebook spent $200,000 in dealing with his actions, the Press Association reported.

Judge Alistair McCreath told Mangham his actions were not harmless and had “real consequences and very serious potential consequences” which could have been “utterly disastrous” for Facebook.

“You and others who are tempted to act as you did really must understand how serious this is,” he said.

Source: HT Media

“Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability, to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications,” Cisco said on Wednesday.

Cisco launched its apppeal in the EU’s General Court in concert with Italian fixed-line and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) telephone provider Messagenet SpA, a Skype rival.

Microsoft said it was confident the decision would stand up on appeal.

“The European Commission conducted a thorough investigation of the acquisition, in which Cisco actively participated, and approved the deal in a 36-page decision without any conditions,” a spokesman said.

The Luxembourg-based General Court generally backs the Commission in antitrust cases, but it has on occasion overturned decisions.

Nevertheless, challenging the Commission’s decisions in EU courts is risky, with the last successful appeal dating back to 2002.

“It is a huge uphill battle; there has only been one successful appeal by a third party against a merger cleared by the EU Commission, but if the companies can raise good arguments, it may stand a chance,” said an antitrust lawyer who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the case.

The court, known then as the Court of First Instance, annulled in 2006 the Commission’s clearance of the 2004 merger between the Sony Music and BMG record labels after a challenge by Impala, an independent group of music producers. However, Europe’s highest court subsequently overturned the ruling.

Cisco said it has asked for the court to speed up the process, which would still run to about a year.

Cisco, whose core business is routers and switches that manage the Internet, is betting on future growth in video, which Chief Executive John Chambers has said will be the future of communication.

Cisco argued that Microsoft’s plan to integrate Skype exclusively into its Lync Enterprise Communications Platform could lock-in businesses that want to reach Skype’s 700 million account holders to a Microsoft-only platform.

“Imagine how difficult collaboration would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others,” Cisco said.

According to Cisco, interoperability between devices and systems is key to speeding up innovation, creating economic value and increasing choice for users.

The video communications market is also very lucrative, with double-digit growth expected to continue through 2015, according to Infonetics research.

Microsoft gained EU approval in October last year to buy Skype for $8.5 billion in its largest-ever acquisition.

Investors initially questioned the wisdom of Microsoft’s acquisition, especially its high price tag, but have been warming up to the decision, thinking Microsoft would be making a smart move buying advanced communications technology it could put into its products, along with acquiring a ready base of users.

Skype, which appointed ex-Cisco manager Tony Bates as its chief executive officer in 2010, popularized the VoIP method of using a computer as a telephone. It is the clear leader in the market, with 145 million users who sign in at least once a month.

The European Commission has said it did not see any competition concerns arising from the deal because there were numerous players in the market, including Google Inc (GOOG.O).

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission cleared the deal in June.

Source: HT Media

A program used to generate random number sequences for encrypting digital information worked properly 99.8 percent of the time, meaning that two out of every thousand “keys” wouldn’t thwart crooks or spies, the report warned.

“We found that the vast majority of public keys work as intended,” said a report based on work by a team of US and European researchers led by Arjen Lenstra of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL).

“A more disconcerting finding is that two out of every one thousand RSA moduli that we collected offer no security.”

Online rights champion Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) supplied key data for the research, and said that Lenstra’s team found tens of thousands of keys that essentially failed to guard data in supposedly encrypted online sessions.

“The consequences of these vulnerabilities are extremely serious,” the EFF’s Dan Auerbach and Peter Eckersley said in a blog post.

“In all cases, a weak key would allow an eavesdropper on the network to learn confidential information, such as passwords or the content of messages, exchanged with a vulnerable server.”

Hackers could also pose as trusted websites, such as an online bank, in what are referred to as man-in-the-middle attacks, according to the EFF.

The non-profit EFF said it is working “around the clock” with EPFL to warn operators of computer servers using encryption keys offering no protection.

Source: HT Media