Gideon Sundback, inventor of zipper, featured in Google doodle

Gideon Sundback, the Swedish-American electrical engineer, has been featured in a Google doodle today to celebrate his 132nd birth anniversary. Mainly known for his work in the development of the zipper, Soundback was born in Sweden in 1880, later he moved to Germany after finishing his schooling and joined a polytechnic school.

Gideon Sundback emigrated to United States in 1905 and was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company the next year. This was the start of his work with the zipper, Sundback made several advances in the development of the zipper between 1906 and 1914.

In 1914, Gideon developed a version of zipper based on interlocking teeth, the "Hookless No. 2", which was the base of modern metal zipper. He later got a United States patent no. 1219881 for the "Separable Fastener".

Sundback was not only involved in the invention of modern zipper but also created the manufacturing machine for the new zipper. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1951. Gideon died of a heart condition in 1954 and was honoured by inclusion in the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his work on the development of the zipper.

-NDTV

Where do people lose their mobile phones?

Almost 7 million dollars worth of mobile phones are lost around the world each day, a new survey has revealed.

Last year almost 4 million dollars worth of phones were lost in Sydney alone, according to mobile security company Lookout.

The Mobile Lost amd Found survey found the most common places to lose your phone in Sydney is in a coffee shop, a church and a car repair shop. The data also revealed people in Sydney lose their phone once every two years, the Daily Telegraph reported.

But people in Manchester lose their phones more than anyone in the world.

Of the phones that go missing, two out of three disappear between 9pm and 2am, and four phones are lost each day at Niagara Falls.

Lookout analysed data from their 15 million users who had used the company's application to locate their lost or stolen devices in 2011.

-ANI

Soon, mobile phones to be turned into credit cards

LONDON: Under a payment system unveiled any mobile phone can be turned into a 'tap and go' credit card.

Advocates of the technology argue it could mean the end of small cash payments within five to 10 years.

The system, which can be used to make purchases up to 15 pounds, involves sticking a smart card or PayTag - about a third of the size of a normal credit card - to the back of a handset.

To make a payment, the phone is tapped on a specially adapted till. The tag, which contains a microchip, communicates with the till terminal via an antenna to confirm the credit card account of the customer and authorise a payment without the need to enter a PIN.

The system is being launched by Barclaycard, which says it comes with 100 per cent fraud protection, but is likely to be adopted by other major banks.

Previously, only a few hi-tech handsets could be used for tap and go payments, but the new tag means any phone could be.

An increasing number of retailers offer or are introducing tap and go tills, including Waitrose,McDonald's, Boots and Tesco. By the end of this year, London buses will also accept these so-called contactless payments.

"More than half of us say that the item we're most lost without is our mobile phone, so we're giving people the option of using them to make easy, convenient, everyday payments," the Daily Mail quoted David Chan, chief executive of Barclaycard Consumer Europe as saying.

-ANI

Nokia Lumia 900 vs. HTC Titan II

They both have large screens, 4G LTE speeds, and boast-worthy cameras, but if you're only going to buy one, let Jessica Dolcourt guide you.

The Nokia Lumia 900.

It was a good day for Microsoft and AT&T yesterday, when the carrier opened its registers for two 4G LTE Windows phones: the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II.

Both have the most recent version of Windows Phone OS, large screens over 4 inches, and 16GB of storage, with 25GB of extra storage online. Yet the Titan II lives up to its name with a hulk of a body, a mega 16-megapixel camera, and -- at least compared with the Lumia 900 -- a price tag to match.

Until technology advances enough to throw me in your head in a creepy (but useful) "Being John Malkovich" moment, I clearly can't tell you which phone you'd personally prefer. However, I'll tell you which one I'd choose, and hopefully help steer you toward your own conclusion.

The HTC Titan II.

First off, the Titan II and Lumia 900 are both solid phones. Since Microsoft controls so much of the operating system, there's little variance from device to device. Often, which is the "better" phone comes down to the hardware specs and design, and to slight software perks like some extra camera features. For me, although call quality and battery life are also important, the characteristics that make the most difference are a phone's design, screen, camera, and price. I'll focus on those four traits here.

Design

Anyone who's read my Nokia Lumia 900 review knows that I love the splashy design, especially in bright blue. The contouring is interesting and bold in its minimalism. It's a statement piece.

I also got my hands on the HTC Titan II at CES and again now (in fact, as I write this, the two phones sit side by side on my desk), and I appreciate its design, too. The Titan II isn't actually much taller or wider than the Lumia 900 and it's about the same thickness. Although it's much more buttoned-up than the Lumia 900 in the looks department, HTC gave it some nice contours on the back cover, especially a dimpled, rubberized area that offers a great, tactile grip.

I personally prefer the Lumia 900's design in blue and white (the black color looks more understated), but the Titan II is by no means unattractive.

Screen

The phones' screens share a WVGA resolution (800x480 pixels), but two things make it stand out on the Lumia 900. First, the smaller screen (4.3 inches versus the Titan II's 4.7 inches) makes the display sharper. In addition, the Lumia 900's AMOLED screen material and ClearBlack display technology make blacks look darker and colors pop.

Side by side, with brightness on both screens set to the highest settings, the Lumia 900's display looks richer, deeper, and far more vibrant than the Titan II's. That isn't to say that the Titan II has a subpar display. It's fine, it just doesn't pop.

Comparing screens on the HTC Titan II (left) and Nokia Lumia 900.

Camera

In my view, the Titan II's 16-megapixel camera is HTC's single best argument against the Lumia 900, and not just because the Titan II produces photos with double the megapixels. CNET's Brian Bennett and I independently took photo comparison shots using the Lumia 900 and the Titan II.

We both agree that while the Lumia 900 photos have a yellowish cast, the Titan II's are bluer, perhaps truer to life. I also found the Titan II photos a little darker, but the hues seemed richer, especially indoor shots of living, breathing humans (camera phones are usually really good at washing us out).

Nokia Lumia 900 and HTC Titan II camera face-off (photos)

The Lumia 900, with its 8-megapixel lens and Carl Zeiss optics, did keep more of the photo in focus when it shot. While that's an outcome I personally liked, a shallower depth of field might be something you'd prefer since it keeps the central subject in focus and blurs the rest. You can check out Brian's photo shoot-out here, and in the slideshow above.

Beyond its photo quality, the Titan II also has much more varied photographic options, including panorama mode and burst shots, more effects, smile detection, and red-eye reduction. Nokia's list of settings doesn't strike me as deficient, but HTC has gone above and beyond to give the exacting photographer options to flick through and adjust.

Of course, how useful those options are to you is a valid question. I seldom futz with camera settings, apart from forays into macro mode and night mode. Instead, I generally rely on the smartphone's camera for a quick shot that I pray will come out well using just the automatic settings. It'll either be good enough to e-mail or upload, or I'll fix it in postproduction when I get it on the computer.

If your photographic style is more exacting and you'd rather set up the perfect shot the first time, then I think that the Titan II will make you happier in this arena.

Price

The $199.99 price tag for the Titan II is reasonable by today's smartphone standards, with many high-end phones coming in at between $200 and $300 with a two-year contract. The Lumia 900, at $99.99, however, is a steal. Pricing decisions are negotiated between the carrier and manufacturer, and with the Lumia 900, that means that both have aggressively driven down the Lumia 900's initial asking price.

It's an artificial, arbitrary decision that benefits you, the phone buyer. Unfortunately for HTC, the 16-megapixel camera is the Titan II's one clear selling point against the Lumia 900's price -- or at least until its own price drops. For me that's not enough, but camera buffs might shell out the extra cash or wait for Titan II prices to fall.

My money goes to...

When I add up the design, the screen, the camera, and the price for the two phones, my scale tips in favor of the Lumia 900. It isn't without its flaws, and the Titan II isn't without its charms.

I happen to use a smartphone camera frequently, so to me picture quality is important. However, I'd enjoy using the Lumia 900 on an everyday basis more, mostly because of screen quality and a unique design I can really connect with. HTC has a lot to offer Windows Phone users, but in this head-to-head, Nokia's efforts in creating a unique Windows Phone experience that's priced to sell have certainly paid off.

-CNET

Indian designer develops Morse-based texting for deaf phone users

An accompanying application, MorseTrainer, has been designed to teach deaf-blind users Morse code, and to use it without having to rely on smartphone keyboards, which can be difficult to see. – AFP Photo 

An Indian graduate student has development a mobile phone application that enables people with sight and hearing impairments to send and receive text messages.

The PocketSMS application was developed for Android smartphones, which are generally cheaper than Apple’s iPhones. The application converts text into Morse code vibrations so that users can “feel” the message.

Regular mobile phones already use vibrations to alert users to incoming calls or messages. Anmol Anand, a graduate student at the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University in Delhi, realised that the same vibrations could also convey text message content.

He used the open source Google App Inventor to write a new application to covert each letter in a text message into Morse code — in which each letter corresponds to a set of a short and long tones — and then used the phone’s hardware to vibrate for each letter.

An accompanying application, MorseTrainer, has been designed to teach deaf-blind users Morse code, and to use it without having to rely on smartphone keyboards, which can be difficult to see.

Text messaging is growing in importance as a tool for safety and social inclusion. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo late last year, for instance, a group of deaf users protested for their safety late last year when the government shut down text messaging services, the BBC reported.

In Uganda, the National Association of the Deaf is working on a project in which hearing students and deaf students learn how to send text messages together.

“We saw that deaf kids were not integrating,” said education consultant Sacha DeVelle, who was volunteering in Kabale with the charity Cambridge to Africa.

When teachers began showing pairs of hearing and deaf students how to send text messages, deaf children became far more integrated into the school community. “It encourages them to go on and do what they want to do, [for example] go to university or set up a shop,” DeVelle said.

Anand’s collaborator, Arun Mehta — president of the Bidirectional Access Promotion Society (BAPSI) — said that internet access is just as important for the disabled as everyone else.

He said that the introduction of text-to-speech screen reading software had meant that “the gap between the sighted and the blind has shrunk dramatically. We would like to do that for the deaf-blind too.”

Inclusive technology can help disabled people take part in everyday life, said Mohamed Jemni, a computer scientist at the School of Science and Technology in Tunisia.

Jemni says he is now testing an application to turn text messages into animated avatars which “sign” the message visually. He said the underlying software could be customised to suit national sign languages in use around the world. — www.scidev.net

'Killing' it: Game developer makes it big with Mafia Farm

Lahore-based Mindstorm Studios gets a developer contract with giant 6waves.

In a move that will earn Pakistan recognition in the global app world, leading publisher of mobile and social gaming applications 6waves will market made-in-Pakistan games developed by Mindstorm Studios – on Apple’s app store under its label.

The Lahore-based game developer Mindstorm Studios made its name in the social role playing market with its debut game Mafia Farm.

Mafia Farm – launched around Christmas last year –reached the number two spot on Android and also claimed a spot in Apple’s top 20, CEO Babar Ahmed said. It did well enough to attract catch the eye of top market players including 6waves, he added.

The idea behind the game was to do a mashup of popular genres farming and crime, while giving it a funny spin with unique character development, Ahmed said. “People seemed to like the idea and the game took off,” he added.

More than 70% users gave it a 5-star rating while the average rating stood at 4.3 on the Android marketplace. Rated 4+ in the App Store, Mafia Farm, as of March 29, was 23rd in role playing games, according to topappcharts.com – a third-party website that maintains charts of top apps in the App Store.

During initial marketing, Ahmed said, the game reached the top 20 overall apps spot in America on the iOS, and the top second trending app spot on the Android.

Mindstorm’s other games also paved the way for company’s successful entry in role playing games market. Mindstorm Studios games have been downloaded and played by over five million customers.

“We have cracked the top 10 list across global app stores with Whacksy Taxi, Farm Break, and Mafia Farm,” Ahmed said. “Another one of our products, Wordity, outsold scrabble for a few weeks in the UK and was the number one word game in UK for a while,” he said.

Mindstorm attracted global recognition after its former publisher Abu Dhabi Media Company got the licence from International Cricket Council to develop the official game for 2011 Cricket World Cup, a game previously made by leading game developers Electronic Arts United States’ and UK’s Codemasters.

The game received millions of hits during world cup and the company made good upfront money, according to Ahmed, but the game did not perform well in the market due to lack of a freemium monetization model. The number of downloads were only in thousands, Ahmed said, because the game was priced at $10 – prompting them to reshape their model.

In today’s world, people expect to get content for free and pay for in-app/game purchases if they get hooked, Ahmed said.

Explaining the freemium (free plus premium) model he said, the idea is to give the game away for free to minimise the adoption barrier and see if people like it. “You then design the game content such that after playing the game for a little while, you encourage the user to make a purchase within the game for content, items, levels, etcetera,” he added.

Ahmed refused to share his revenues from Mafia Farm but hinted that the company’s revenue growth rate is in multiples of hundreds for the current financial year.

While Mafia Farm earned great success, the company is set to launch another product under the label of 6waves shortly.

“Kingdom of Heroes is our next mobile social title,” he said, “where you play the role of an army commander building your medieval base and kingdom and hiring epic heroes into your army to invade opposing lands.” The company will shortly launch this game under the 6waves label on the Apple store and under its own label on the Android marketplace.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4th, 2012.

'Creepy' stalking app pulled from appstore

An iPhone application, which allowed users to stalk women nearby using location-based Facebook and Foursquare, has been pulled from the iTunes app store by its developer after an outcry of criticism.

The “Girls Around Me” app utilised publicly available data from the check-in service from the social networking sites to show where women had checked in nearby before Foursquare yanked the Girls Around Me app’s access to its data, which in turn led to the app’s developer removing it from iTunes as it didn’t work properly. 

“This is a violation of our API [application programming interface] policy, so we''ve reached out to the developer and shut off their API access,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Laura Covington, a Foursquare spokeswoman as telling the New York Times. 

In addition to showing on a map women who had checked-in to locations nearby using Foursquare, the app also let users view Facebook information of those ladies if they had tied their Facebook account to their Foursquare account and if their Facebook account privacy settings were lax enough to allow any user to access it. 

US technology blog Gizmodo labelled the “Girls Around Me” app the “world’s creepiest”, as did The New York Times Bits blog, which said it “definitely” won the prize for being “too creepy”. 

As far as Fairfax Media has been able to trace back, the app was first publicised in the technology space on March 30 this year by the Cult of Mac blog, whose news editor, John Brownlee, wrote that it was “as innocent as it is insidious”. 

“It is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears,” Brownlee wrote. 

“It is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers,” he said 

In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, the company behind the app, O.O.O. SMS Servicies, defended its creation, saying it was designed to make “geo-social exploration of popular venues easy and visual”. 

“We follow the geo-social trend for mobile devices that is supported by numerous location sharing services, networks and apps,” the company said. 

The company also pointed out that it was “impossible” to search for a particular person in the app or to track their movements. 

“The app just allows the user to browse the venues nearby, as if you passed by and looked in the window,” O.O.O. SMS Services said. 

It also added that the app had been available for “several months” and had been downloaded more than 70,000 times. 

“Since the app’s launch we’ve seen numerous positive comments from users who claimed that the app helped them to discover ‘hot spots’ – venues that are popular among girls or boys. 

“Since the app’s launch till last Friday nobody ever raised a privacy concern because, again, it is clearly stated that Girls Around Me cannot show the user more data than what Foursqure or Facebook already does,” it added.

-Agency

Facebook plans to add 'Hate' button: Report

People on Facebook generally hit the like button whenever they come across something of their interest, but what about posts and updates that turn them off? What actually they do in such cases?

Many a time, people simply ignore when they do not like something on Facebook. But what if you find a hate button next to the like button? Interesting.

According to a report from TechCrunch, a technology website, Facebook is considering a "Hate" button. It said, "According to Facebook’s S-1 filing, users are now generating 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day. With the Hate button, Facebook expects to at least double that."

TechCrunch quotes their sources at Facebook saying that Mark Zuckerberg is estimating 2 billion Hates on the first day.

The new move is being planned because Facebook studies have shown the sad fact that people hate things more on the Internet than they like.

However, there is some internal debate on whether the new button be called "Hate" or "Dislike."

Other buttons under consideration are the "Meh", "Love" and "Who Cares," says the report.

As this story was posted on TechCrunch on April 1 and IBNLive couldn't independently verify the authenticity, there is a likelihood that it can very well be a April Fool's Day hoax. But the 'dislike' button is one of the most requested for Facebook features.

-TechCrunch

Facebook plans to create new 'search engine'

Social networking giant Facebook is reportedly planning to create a new search engine which would help people to navigate on the website better.

A Bloomberg Businessweek report said the firm has deployed two-dozen Facebook engineers onto the ambitious project, which aims to improve the search engine currently available on the social network.

According to the report, the project is led by former Google engineer Lars Rasmussen.

The magazine's unnamed sources said that the project is "to help users better sift through the volume of content that members create on the site, such as status updates, and the articles, videos, and other information across the Web that people "like" using Facebook's omnipresent thumbs-up button".

According to The Telegraph, Facebook has done very little to improve its search engine, which currently lets people find other users, brands, status updates and some wider web results, through a long-standing partnership with Microsoft's search engine, Bing.

It has yet to properly focus its attention on the small search engine box situated at the top of each users' page.

Meanwhile, Facebook has declined to comment on the matter.

-ANI

Twitter hit by bug that 'unfollows' people

Micro-blogging site Twitter is affected by a bug, which has caused tweeters to ‘unfollow’ fellow users without their permission. The bug is causing Twitter users to randomly unfollow people without account holders’ prior consent or knowledge. The company has admitted that there is a problem and its spokesperson assured that their “team is working to fix it.”

The company has advised affected people to visit its support page and go to fellow tweeters’ profile pages to check whether they are still following them or not.

Thousands of users have been tweeting about their experiences of the unfollow bug and conveying their reaction to it.

“I wonder how many businesses, personal, and casual relationships are strained by the bug haphazardly unfollowing. It causes us to give pause and question the stability of the Twitter infrastructure, usage of my personal data and social network, and what important messages I may have missed from my trusted Twitter network,” The Telegraph quoted Labour MP and fanatic tweeter, Tom Watso, as saying.

-ANI

Girls Around Me: An App Takes Creepy to a New Level

Another day, another creepy mobile app. Here is one that allows you to find women in your area. It definitely wins the prize for too creepy.

Girls Around Me uses Foursquare, the location-based mobile service, to determine your location. It then scans for women in the area who have recently checked-in on the service. Once you identify a woman you’d like to talk to, one that inevitably has no idea you’re snooping on her, you can connect to her through Facebook, see her full name, profile photos and send her a message.

When you sign up for the Girls Around Me application, you are asked to log in to Facebook, giving the service your personal information, too. After connecting to Facebook, the app asks for everything, requiring people to share their basic information, profile information, photos, information people share with them and e-mail address. It will also ask permission to access your data when you are not using the app and post status updates, photos and more on your behalf.

“This would be a very different application if it didn’t link back to Facebook, which is the treasure trove of information. With that link, this app could easily be a “let’s stalk women” app,” said Elizabeth Stark, a lecturer in law at Stanford who teaches about privacy on the Internet.

Ms. Stark added that Foursquare has a responsibility to inform their users of the ramifications of linking accounts that are tied to location. “If users are given the clear choice to be on this app, then that should be their decision, but it seems that this is not the case,” she said. “In many cases there really is an education issue here, where users of these services don’t understand the ramifications. This is a perfect example of an easy way to stalk people.”

The app, which was first discovered by the blog, Cult of Mac, is built by a company called SMS Services O.o.o., which is based in Russia. Although the app maker knows a lot about its users, the company seems to have done a fairly good job of obscuring itself online.

After publication of this article, Laura Covington, a Foursquare spokeswoman, said in statement: “This is a violation of our API policy, so we’ve reached out to the developer and shut off their API access.” The application is still available for download in the Apple iTunes Store.

Facebook and Apple did not respond to my questions of whether the app is granted too much permission and if it goes too far in its data collection.

The app says it also allows you to search for men nearby, but by default, it searches for women as its name implies. Although the app is a free download, after a few searches it requires people to buy more “energy” to continue searching for people in the area.

SMS Services O.o.o. has built other apps in the past, including CoinKeeper, a finance management app.

-NyTimes

Facebook, lawmakers warn employers not to demand passwords

(Reuters) - Facebook and lawmakers have warned employers against requesting Facebook passwords while screening job applicants, a controversial practice that underscores the blurring distinction between personal and professional lives the era of social media.

The practice has reportedly grown more commonplace as companies increasingly regard profiles - or embarrassing photos from wild nights out - as windows into a prospective employee's character.

On Friday, Facebook Inc's Chief Privacy Officer, Erin Egan, posted a note warning that the social networking company could "initiate legal action" against employers that demand Facebook passwords.

Also, lawmakers in several states and in Washington said they would introduce bills to prohibit companies from vetting employees by demanding access to private accounts.

Leland Yee, a California state senator, told Reuters on Friday he introduced legislation that would prohibit companies in the state from soliciting Facebook passwords from job applicants. The Associated Press reported that lawmakers in Illinois and Maryland were also considering similar moves.

"Employers can't ask in the course of an interview your sexual orientation, your age, and yet social media accounts may have that information," Yee said.

"Employers have legitimate questions about a person's job performance, but they can get that information the regular way, without cutting corners and violating people's privacy."

Egan said in a post on Facebook's website published on Friday that the social networking company has seen in recent months "a distressing increase in reports of employers or others seeking to gain inappropriate access to people's Facebook profiles.

"We don't think employers should be asking prospective employees to provide their passwords because we don't think it's the right thing to do.

"But it also may cause problems for the employers that they are not anticipating. For example, if an employer sees on Facebook that someone is a member of a protected group (e.g. over a certain age, etc.) that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don't hire that person."

OPEN UP YOUR MAIL

The issue bubbled up this week after the Associated Press reported that employers are increasingly asking to look at content job applicants have uploaded to their digital accounts, regardless of whether that content is shared or not.

In the case of the Maryland Department of Corrections, job applicants were asked to browse through their own Facebook accounts with an interviewer present, the AP reported.

The ACLU, which previously criticized the Maryland state government's online vetting, called the practice "an invasion of privacy" in a statement this week.

"You'd be appalled if your employer insisted on opening up your postal mail to see if there was anything of interest inside," said ACLU attorney Catherine Crump.

"It's equally out of bounds for an employer to go on a fishing expedition through a person's private social media account."

Facebook's outspoken stance on the issue cast it in an unfamiliar but welcome role.

Hundreds of users cheered Egan, applauding a company that has been repeatedly criticized for bungling privacy issues over the years, especially when changing privacy settings without duly notifying users.

By Friday afternoon, close to a thousand users had "Liked" Egan's post and many users left positive comments.

Yet there were still a few cynics.

"FB you're talking out of both sides of your mouth," wrote Facebook user Ron Carrubba. "Now how about fixing your other privacy issues in the application itself?"