Tag: data

Google To Pay €300,000 Fine for Privacy Violations to a French Agency

France’s National Commission on Computing and Freedom (CNIL) threatened Google with a €300,000 fine due to the company’s lack of compliance with a June decision aimed at protecting users’ private data. The French agency that regulates information technology says Google had not satisfactorily responded to its June decision giving the company three months to be more upfront about the data it collects from users.

In a statement Friday, France’s National Commission on Computing and Freedom, known as CNIL, said:

Google hasn’t made requested changes, including specifying to users what it uses personal data for, and how long it’s held. CNIL said it will now launch formal sanction proceedings, a process that could take months.

On the other hand, Google spokesman Al Verney said:

Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with CNIL throughout this process and will continue to do so going forward.”

The National Commission on Computing and Freedom said five other European countries are also taking similar steps in a staggered offensive against Google’s privacy policy between now and the end of July. It said Google has largely ignored earlier recommendations from European regulators. Similar actions are underway in Spain, Germany, Britain, Italy and Netherlands.

September 28, 2013
Aircel to launch its 4G LTE services by December

Aircel is gearing up to launch 4G services between October and December. The launch is expected to revive the otherwise gloomy telecom market.

Aircel, which is looking for a strategic partnership with companies such as MTS India, will invest $500 million to launch TD-LTE services in Chennai.

Aircel will not only launch 4G dongles, but will also provide super fast broadband connections on the basis of 4G technology and would also provide services for education, video on demand and health care. It is creating and leasing its own fiber-optic infrastructure and is more less adapting a model similar to Reliance whose subsidiary InfoTel has obtained 4G licenses in multiple circles.

Notably, Aircel is not looking to be an all India 4G player but it would rather prefer to play a major role in particular circles. In the case of Aircel, that happens to be south India. Aircel has license to operate its 4G services in eight circles.

July 17, 2012
Tata Docomo slashes wireless internet service tariffs by 60% in Bangalore

Tata Docomo, the telecom brand of Tata Teleservices, slashed its tariff plans for Tata Photon Plus postpaid and prepaid customers by up to 60 percent. Tata Photon Plus postpaid users can now avail 6GB of data for Rs. 950, and 11GB data for Rs. 1,200 (both valid for 30 days month).

The other two postpaid tariff plans are Rs. 250 for 1GB (which earlier was priced at Rs. 650) and Rs. 450 for 2GB (which earlier cost Rs. 750). Prepaid users can now get unlimited 2GB usage for Rs. 700.

The operator has also revised its 3G data tariff prices. For 1GB of 3G data, users need to shell out Rs. 255. For 1.5 GB and 2 GB, the operator is charging Rs. 350 and Rs. 450 respectively.

Check out the press release below :

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Tata DOCOMO, the unified telecom brand of Tata Teleservices, has announced irresistible offers for its Tata Photon Plus Postpay and Prepay customers across India. The company is showering its customers with delightful offers of high internet speeds at affordable prices thereby reducing its tariff plans upto 60%

Tata DOCOMO Photon Plus postpay customers can choose from unlimited 6GB usage for only Rs. 950 rental or unlimited 11 GB for only Rs.1200/-. These 2 unlimited plans also offer cash back of Rs 100 per month for 12 months from date of purchase.

Tata DOCOMO entry level packs now cost Rs 250 that offers 1GB of data download as compared to Rs 650 earlier. Likewise Rs 450 pack which earlier cost 750 will offer 2GB

For the first time, Tata DOCOMO introduces Reload packs for Photon Plus Postpay customers with 1GB@Rs 200 & 2GB@Rs 350. What this essentially means, that customers can now continue to enjoy uninterrupted high speed internet post consumption of their data limit.

Tata DOCOMO Photon offers unlimited Internet surfing plans, usage based plans and much more. Prepay customers can now get unlimited 2GB usage on recharge of Rs. 700. There are various prepay plans that customers can choose based on usage and wallet.

Announcing the offers, Mr. A P Sriram, COO, Tata DOCOMO Karnataka Circle said, “These exciting plans for our Tata DOCOMO Photon Plus post-pay and pre-pay customers are the latest addition in our ever-expanding portfolio of differentiated and affordable offerings. We continue to deliver on our promise to provide value for money plans that suit the various needs of our customers. Such offers are an extension of our maxim of providing a refreshing experience to our customers.”

Notes to Editor

About Tata Teleservices Limited

Tata Teleservices Limited is one of India’s leading private telecom service providers, having a pan-India presence across all of India’s 22 telecom Circles. The company offers integrated telecom solutions to its customers under the unified brand name Tata DOCOMO and operates its wireless networks on GSM, CDMA and 3G technology platforms. Tata Teleservices Limited, along with Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited, operates in more than 450,000 towns and villages across the country. After its collaboration with Japan’s NTT DOCOMO in November 2008, Tata Teleservices launched 2G GSM services under the Tata DOCOMO brand name in all the 18 telecom Circles where it received spectrum from the Government of India, in June 2009. Since then, the Company has established a strong brand connect for Tata DOCOMO in India and has been at the forefront of redefining the telecom experience in India, launching innovative products and services that have impacted Indian consumer lifestyles. TTL is the clear market leader in the enterprise space as well, and has market leadership in many product lines, such as mobile broadband with the Photon family of wireless access devices. TTL’s bouquet of telephony services includes mobile services, wireless desktop phones, public booth telephony and wireline services.

For details, visit www.tatateleservices.com and www.tatadocomo.com.

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July 3, 2012
McAfee Shares Vision for Bringing Mobile Devices into the Security Infrastructure (PR)
McAfee has developed a three sided plan to ensure the future of mobile devices in the corporate environment. This plan was developed to help users secure their devices as the mobile malware market has seen an exponential growth in the last quarter. Read the Press Release for more details.

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McAfee, today shared its vision for securing mobile devices in corporate environments. The three-pronged approach for protecting mobile devices, mobile data, and mobile applications, is designed to help businesses and consumers manage their devices securely, as the threat environment quickly evolves.

Attacks on smartphones are becoming more common, and according to McAfee Labs, new malware targeting Android devices jumped 76 percent in the last quarter. The need to secure mobile devices from attacks has never been more important. IT security operations that were once smooth-running have recently come under intense pressure to adopt new technologies and fully support completely new platforms, operating systems, and architectures. McAfee is developing products and strategies to allow businesses to bring these consumer devices securely into the IT infrastructure.

“Mobile device adoption is exploding, and unfortunately, so are the threats targeting mobile platforms. If McAfee’s historical experience analyzing threats on numerous platforms is any indication, we believe that the emerging mobile malware we are seeing today is just the beginning,” said John Dasher, senior director, mobile security for McAfee. “It’s a whole new world, and a challenge for IT to craft security policies that make sense while updating their infrastructure. At McAfee, we’re working hard to create new technology to help enterprises address the challenge of securely incorporating these new mobile platforms into their environment.”

New Endpoints, New Challenges

Traditional endpoints relied mostly on email and web for application framework. Mobile has a whole new freedom in custom applications. But each new application – either public or private – introduces new threats and risks to corporate IT. Today, challenges include the consumerization of IT, mobile platform diversity that includes iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone, and an explosion of applications. Additionally, most Android-based devices have a slightly different implementation of the OS making software development and support that much harder.

McAfee is unique in being able to bring mobile devices into the security infrastructure. With a broad portfolio of security technologies including anti-malware, data loss prevention, application security, web protection, and more, McAfee has the technology needed to securely welcome these new endpoints. McAfee® ePolicy Orchestrator® security management software, which covers more than 30 million endpoints today, and McAfee Global Threat Intelligence, support and work across these integrations.

McAfee’s Three-Pronged Approach to Mobile Security
- Protecting Mobile Devices — With data and device protection for today’s most popular mobile devices, McAfee provides a complete security solution that embraces mobile device diversity. To meet this challenge, McAfee offers the following:
- Protecting Mobile Data — Protecting sensitive corporate data is a requirement. McAfee can ensure that only those devices with encryption access the corporate network and data. McAfee offers
- Protecting Mobile Apps – Beyond traditional email and web, mobile apps are readily available and proliferating by the millions. McAfee sees this as potentially the biggest threat vector of the future.
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September 29, 2011
Microsoft Ready To Distribute The Cloud To Your Home

The cloud is a hot topic today. Not only is it popular, it literally generates a lot of heat. Data-centers are a huge investment and require a lot of power to run the machines as well as to keep them cool. On a very basic level, a computer efficiently converts electricity to heat, while processing some data, the same way a car engine converts petrol to heat, while also turning the wheels of the car.

This analogy has led researchers at Microsoft to come up with the idea of distributing the physical hardware of the cloud from a single data-center into multiple smaller installations that could replace the furnaces in a house or office building. These data furnaces would consume electricity and crunch numbers while simultaneously using the excess heat for spatial or water heating.

Using the data furnaces would have a number of advantages over conventional furnaces. Typically, the exhaust air from a computer is between 100 to 120 degrees fahrenheit. For homeowners, this exhaust air can be used to heat rooms as well as water for washing clothes. For company’s that build and operate data-centers, the physical cost of setting up the building as well as the cost of cooling the servers would be zero. In this situation, provided the companies pay for the electricity and Internet costs (which they would have to pay for anyways), everyone wins.

July 27, 2011
Vodafone To Release Its Webbox Soon

First unveiled in South Africa in February, Vodafone’s Webbox is to be release in India soon. The device, which looks like a QWERTY keyboard, connects to any television set via standard RCA cables and converts the attached TV into a monitor. This setup can then be used to browse the web, read e-mail and perform simple computing tasks.

The device offers internet access via a Vodafone SIM card that supports 2.5G and EDGE networks. When connected, the home-screen offers users the ability to browse the web using an android version of Opera Mini 5.1, which compresses data by upto 90% to ensure fast loading pages. The device also boasts the ability to send and receive SMS and E-Mail messages, listen to FM radio as well as music, view photos in the photo gallery, edit documents with the built in text editor and integration with social networks.

The Webbox is expected to retail for Rs. 5800/- which includes a 12 GB data plan for free. You can see a demo of the device in the video below.

July 22, 2011
Apple May release an iPod Touch 3G, Data only

Looks like Apple might bring a total of three new things to the Table this September. New iPhone 5, revised iPad 2 ( 3) and a totally new iPod 3g?. Yes you read it right, several sources including a dutch website claim that Apple will release a 3G iPod touch this year. Similar to the iPad , the iPod touch 3G will only be able to use the onboard radio for data connectivity and not to make phone calls.

But we know there is always a work around for that, right?

So essentially a total of three totally revamped iOS devices are heading your way in September. We sure hope you start saving up!

[Read]

July 9, 2011
Liquid Robotics to Launch Wave Gliders to collect Oceanographic Data

Liquid Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup, makes remote controlled robots that cruise the open ocean and gather data. The company plans to collect this data and offer it up to consumers on the web. The machines, called Wave Gliders, can keep track of all sorts of data including whale songs, wave heights and the presence of nearby ships. The company plans to sell these robots to governments, research institutions and energy companies for between $1,50,000 and $5,00,000 a piece depending on the included components.

The wave glider features a 6-foot, 10-inch-long floating section equipped with solar panels, a battery and sensors. Tethered 23 feet below the float in the water is a similarly sized glider with metal wings and a rudder that propel and steer the device.

The inventor of the device, Robert Hine, originally made the device for a friend who wished to study whale songs off the coast of Hawaii. He started designing and fabricating the machines in 2005, taking every other week off from his job as a semiconductor engineer. He experimented with different Electric Engine designs, but they all failed. After much research, he came up with a design that harnesses the natural energy in waves, like a sailboat harnesses the wind.

The gliders ‘wings’ use the up and down motion of the waves to propel the device forward at a pace of around 1.5 miles per hour. Operators are able to map out a route and have waypoints transmitted to the robot via satellite. It then uses GPS signals to follow the programmed route. The robot is unable to remain still but can criss-cross the same area.

Because the gliders are essentially floating platforms that can be programmed to go anywhere, there are many possible uses. They can measure ocean and air temperature to help predict storms and water currents and wave height for shippers trying to determine the safest route for their vessels. They also can help oceanographers monitor whales and other aquatic life. In crowded areas like the Gulf of Mexico, gliders could collect location, speed and destination information for ships—information that now is sent through radio signals—and display the information on a map. There are less obvious uses as well. Mr. Vass imagines equipping gliders with cellular towers to provide coverage in the middle of oceans. Also, gliders could be programmed to dispense fish food, creating fish farms that move around at sea.

Liquid Robotics isn’t the only company that makes unmanned sea vehicles for data collection. iRobot Corp., creator of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, makes a glider that collects information up to 3,000 feet under water, surfacing from time to time to transmit its findings and collect new instructions. The Slocum glider from Teledyne Technologies Inc. works in a similar way. Both gliders can collect information from far deeper in the ocean than the one from Liquid Robotics, but aren’t able to transmit data continuously.

July 7, 2011
SEGA – The Latest Victim of Hackers

SEGA Corp, makers of games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Comic Zone, was the victim of a large scale attack on its Sega Pass website. The database of its Europe based website has been hacked and the personal information of all its 1,290,755 registered users has been stolen.

On Friday, the company sent an e-mail to all the affected users, who are mostly based in Europe and North America, that their member’s e-mail ids, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were obtained, however no payment details were compromised as the company used external payment providers. The company also warned users that if they used the passwords for other online services then they needed to change them immediately.

No hacker group has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack but LulzSec, the group behind the recent attacks on Sony, the FBI and CIA websites among others, had this to say:

[quote]@Sega – contact us. We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down.[/quote]

These attacks leave us wondering about the motives of these hacker groups. Are they trying to improve online security or is this just an in-your-face I can do whatever i want type raid?

June 20, 2011
Google, Yahoo and Bing lauch schema.org as Partners

The three biggest names in the search engine industry have joined hands to launch a new project called schema.org which will help improve search results. The site consists of a common set of HTML tags that webmasters would use to mark up structured data on their sites.

“We are announcing schema.org, a new initiative from Google, Bing and Yahoo to create and support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages,” Google said in its blog yesterday.

Site owners can now learn about structured data and improve how their sites appear in major search engines. The site aims to be a one-stop resource for webmasters looking to markup their pages.

This is not the first time the three companies have partnered up. In early 2006 they came together to create sitemap.org, which helped standardise sitemap protocols.

June 3, 2011
Apple camera patent will stop Smartphone pirates dead in their tracks

Apple inc. filed a patent yesterday, that they could actually potentially use. Pairing an infrared sensor with the camera already on board, portable devices could receive data from transmitters placed on strategic locations at copyright events.

These transmitters would prevent the camera from recording and would instead show, watermarks, blank screen and even warning messages to the smartphone user.

[Patently Apple]

[US Patent Office]

June 3, 2011
iDVM is the Digital Voltage meter companion for your iDevice

iDVM Digital Multimeter — the world’s very first iDevice-enabled voltmeter, from Redfish Instruments. Designed specifically for auto/ electrical engineers in mind the Device uses Ad-hoc wireless network to connect with whatever iDevice you have. Once you’ve purchased the multimeter and downloaded the accompanying iDVM app, you’ll be able to gather electrical measurements from up to 30 yards away from your target, log data over extended periods of time and export your findings in spreadsheet or graph displays.

Priced at just $220 (Inr 10,000)

Press Release

Redfish Instruments Introduces World’s First iPhone-Enabled Wireless Multimeter

SANTA CRUZ, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Redfish Instruments, Inc., a provider of iPhone- and iPad-enabled electronic test and measurement equipment, announced today the introduction of the iDVM™ Digital Multimeter. The iDVM multimeter wirelessly connects to an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch via an ad hoc wireless network allowing users to acquire, visualize, and share electrical measurement data on their Apple devices. The iDVM app can be downloaded free from the Apple App Store.

According to Patrick O’Hara, Redfish Instruments’ president and CEO, “The unique pairing of the iPhone or iPad with a digital multimeter provides a user experience that is truly revolutionary. Not since the advent of the LCD has the multimeter been so substantially enhanced.” Regarding the market opportunity, Mr. O’Hara commented, “The iPhone and iPad provide a known user interface that permits customers to interact with electronic test and measurement tools that was not possible prior to this post-pc era. We believe that our new iDVM voltmeter is the first of many new uses for this tremendous interface; we’re excited to be an early pioneer.”

Traditionally, multimeters have not provided an easy method of exporting or saving data. The iDVM permits a user to log data over an extended period of time using the iPhone or the iPad as the storage device. For example, service engineers can use the iDVM to collect data and store it in a report for submission to their clients, or keep the data on the voltmeter for their own records. Using the GeoTag feature of the iPhone or iPad, service engineers can even identify their location as part of the data. The iDVM is built in the USA using all USA-made parts, and uses rechargeable batteries.

The iDVM was designed for a wide range of users-from automotive technicians, to advanced embedded systems engineers, to electrical or building contractors, to field service workers.

May 18, 2011
Nintendo to launch next Wii in 2012 and show it at E3 2011 (PR)

Nintendo just put an end to all rumors about the next WIi. The company will show the new Wii at E3 2011 and will make it available in 2012.

What could Nintendo possibly bring to the gaming experience this time ?

Press Release

April 25, 2011

To whom it may concern:

Re: Wii’s Successor System

Nintendo Co., Ltd. has decided to launch in 2012 a system to succeed Wii, which the company has sold 86.01 million units on a consolidated shipment basis between its launch in 2006 and the end of March 2011.

We will show a playable model of the new system and announce more specifications at the E3 Expo, which will be held June 7-9, 2011, in Los Angeles.

Sales of this new system have not been included in the financial forecasts announced today for the fiscal term ending March 2012.

April 25, 2011
Microsoft finds the cause of Phantom Data Bug in WP7- blames third parties

Is your Windows Phone device randomly sending and receiving data , Microsoft is aware of it. Apparently, there’s a “third party” that’s responsible for the misbehavior, and Redmond’s already reached out to help ’em make the necessary fixes.

The Full Statement

“We have determined that a third-party solution commonly accessed from Windows Phones is configured in a manner that potentially causes larger than expected data downloads. We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes, and are also pursuing potential workarounds to address the configuration issue in case those are needed. At this point in our investigation, we believe this is responsible for most of the reported incidents.

We are investigating additional potential root causes for the remainder of the reports.

A small (low single-digit) percentage of Windows Phone customers have reported being affected.

We are continuing to investigate this issue and will update with additional information and guidance as it becomes available.”

Via : Engadget

January 20, 2011