Facebook’s mobile app just grew a keen sense of hearing. Starting Wednesday, the app has the ability to recognize music and television shows playing in the vicinity of users.
The feature is designed to make it easier for users to share. When users begin to write a post, the Facebook app will offer to include information about music or shows playing in the background. “We want to help people tell better stories,” said Aryeh Selekman, the product manager who led the development of the feature. “I hope there are people who love the feature and post more.” If Facebook users share more about themselves, that can boost the value of ads targeted at some of its 1.28 billion users.
Read moreInternet speed will forcibly decrease to subscribers of mobile operator Yota when downloading torrents and using VPN connection.
Yota representatives declared that essential restriction in traffic peer-to-peer and through VPN transfer is waiting for smartphones and tablets mobile Internet users. Unlike other content, torrents downloading speed and sites loading through VPN won't exceed 32 kilobits per second. According to representatives of the company, such decision is caused both technological and the ideological reasons. Torrents downloading leads to the whole capacity of the channel capture by a small amount of "resource-intensive" users, because of what other subscribers who need 3G for voice calls suffer.
Read moreSamsung Electronics is working to use biometric sensors in its mobile security system which the company expects to be available even for low-end smartphone models, an executive said Monday.
“We’re looking at various types of biometric [mechanisms] and one of things that everybody is looking at is iris detection,” Samsung’s senior vice president Rhee In-jong told analysts and investors at a forum in Hong Kong. Rhee spearheads the development of Samsung’s mobile enterprise software called Knox. Biometric authentication in mobile devices today consists mainly of using a user’s fingerprint as a scanner. Samsung first adopted fingerprint scanning into its smartphones with the Galaxy S5 launched in April, about seven months after Apple’s iPhone 5S.
Read moreCisco’s chief executive has written to President Barack Obama warning of a collapse of trust in US technology after evidence emerged showing the National Security Agency breaking into his company’s equipment.
In a letter John Chambers called for “standards of conduct” to rein in government surveillance so that national security objectives do not interfere with the US’s leading position in the global technology market. The letter was dated the day after pictures circulated on the internet showing NSA staff opening boxes of Cisco gear so that the US security agency can monitor internet traffic after the equipment has been shipped to customers. Mr Chambers complained that the NSA actions would undermine confidence among customers of US technology firms.
Read moreComments on Friday by a top Russian telecoms official, suggesting that the country might soon block access to Twitter, met with a swift wave of condemnation — including from other government officials — providing a rare window into differences of opinion inside the Kremlin over how best to censor voices of dissent.
In an interview with a local newspaper Friday, Maxim Ksenzov, deputy head of the government’s telecommunications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, called Twitter a “political” tool that undermines the state’s authority. “We can block Twitter or Facebook tomorrow for several minutes,” Ksenzov said. “We do not see any risks in that.”
Read moreThe Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal that would ban Internet providers from blocking or slowing down access to websites but may let them charge content companies for faster and more reliable delivery of their traffic to users.
The vote, not surprisingly, fell along party lines, with Wheeler and fellow Democrats Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel approving the plan and Republicans Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly rejecting it. The action opens a four-month comment period for companies and members of the public to weigh in on the plan. After that, the FCC will write the final rule. Responding to vocal public opposition to his proposal, Wheeler defended the new regulations, saying they are intended to preserve an “open” Internet and would prevent discrimination of content.
Read moreAbsolute Internet traffic increases at 20% -40% every year and the amount of absolute bandwidth utilized by the encrypted traffic is doubled in this period.
According to the Global Internet Phenomena report, published by Sandvine, a Canadian broadband management company, the amount of absolute Internet traffic increases significantly each year. The wake of surveillance revelations leaked by Edward Snowden became reason that bandwidth utilized by the encrypted traffic has been increased at 2 times in North America and at 4 in Latin America. A new report released by Sandvine indicates that BitTorrent loses its popularity in the USA but it continues its growth in Europe. The encrypted traffic growth was recorded in 2014 compared with last year.
Read moreThe European Union court decision that Google users have the "right to be forgotten" is already causing problems for the search engine. In just a short 48 hours since the ruling was handed down, an ex-politician and convicted pedophile have asked Google to remove links to their stories from the site, a request the court says they must honor.
The politician is planning to run for office once more, and wanted stories about his prior behavior in office (which we can assume was not to the taste of his voters) removed from search. The pedophile has asked links to websites about his conviction to be removed, meaning it would be harder for neighbors and potential landlords to check into his criminal history before inviting the man to a location potentially surrounded by children.
Read moreThe British government claims that the purpose of surveillance is to display the online trends in cities around the world.
According to Edward Snowden British authorities spy on what people are doing on some of the world’s most popular social media sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc. Nevertheless, he denies spying on specific users. The latest information from the National Security Agency was obtained by NBC News with journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was the first to report on Snowden’s documents about NSA and United Kingdom espionage while on the staff of the Guardian. NBC doesn’t mention when the information was received.
Read moreBlink, a mobile messaging application that lets users share self-destructing messages, has been acquired by Yahoo. The app competed in an increasingly crowded space alongside Snapchat, of course, but also newer entrants like Frankly, Confide, Wickr, and others. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
All seven Blink team members, including the founders, will now be joining Yahoo. Blink is a product of Meh Labs, a company founded by ex-Googler Kevin Stephens and Michelle Norgan. Originally, the startup had been focused on a location-based service called Kismet which grew popular around the time of SXSW 2012, when apps like Highlight and Banjo were starting to take off.
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