Facebook Inc. priced its shares in its initial public stock offering at $38 late Thursday, setting the stage for its historic market debut Friday. The IPO values Facebook at $104 billion, the largest-ever for a newly public company. The $18.4 billion that Facebook is expected to raise in the IPO itself would be the second-largest […]
SAP’s Afaria mobile device management tool is now available on Amazon Web Services’ cloud, offered as a way to make it easier to start using the platform, SAP said at the Sapphire conference on Monday. The availability of Afaria 7.0 server on AWS gives enterprises a fast and simple way to buy and implement an […]
The Texas Bankers Association’s 128th Annual Convention & Exposition will be held May 9-11, 2012, at the Omni Fort Worth Hotel and Fort Worth Convention Center. Attendees; we are located at Booth 323. Come by and enter for a chance to win a Scotty Cameron Putter. IT Support Services […]
In the last couple of years Barnes & Noble has made some big inroads into the e-book market, cutting into Amazon’s huge lead. As it stands, Amazon still has about 60 percent of the e-book pie, Barnes & Noble has around 25 percent, and Apple sits at around 15 percent, with smaller players like Sony […]
Microsoft plans to release a nearly final version of Windows 8 this summer that will give consumers and businesses their final chance to kick the tires on the redesigned operating system before it’s released for sale, most likely later this year. Windows group president Steven Sinofsky announced the Windows 8 Release Preview at a technology […]
April 19th and 20th | Galveston Island Convention Center at the San Luis Resort, Galveston, Texas. Percento Technologies is sponsoring and will have a booth at the 2012 Texas Credit Union League Annual Meeting and Expo. The event will offer the latest review of best practices, state-of-the-art technology solutions and a look into the future. […]
We hope you’re sitting down, because you’ll need to be to in order to hold the Excite 13 in your hands. Starting at a steep $649 and available June 10th, this is the largest Android tablet yet, featuring a billboard-like 13-inch screen. What’s the point of being 3 inches bigger than the iPad? Toshiba says […]
Apple Inc.’s new iPad was named the best tablet computer in a ranking by Consumer Reports, two weeks after the magazine said the device runs “significantly hotter” than previous models. The new iPad’s high-resolution screen provides the best detail and color accuracy of all tablets Consumer Reports has seen, the publication said today on its […]
Google reportedly plans on launching an online store to sell co-branded tablets running its Android operating system. According to the Wall Street Journal, the tablets will be manufactured by partners such as Samsung and Asus and bear the Google logo. The report cites “people familiar with the matter.” Neither Google nor Asus, one of the […]
Apple Inc’s new iPhone will have a sharper and bigger 4.6-inch “retina” display and is set to be launched around the second quarter, a South Korean media reported on Thursday. Sales of the iPhone, first introduced in 2007 with the touch screen template now adopted by its rivals, account for around half Apple’s total sales. […]
Facebook Inc. priced its shares in its initial public stock offering at $38 late Thursday, setting the stage for its historic market debut Friday.
The IPO values Facebook at $104 billion, the largest-ever for a newly public company. The $18.4 billion that Facebook is expected to raise in the IPO itself would be the second-largest in U.S. history, trailing only the $19.65 billion of Visa Inc. in 2008.
The Facebook pricing comes at a jittery moment for the stock market, which suffered a deep drop Thursday in a continuation of the weakness that has gripped share prices this month.
The Dow Jones industrial average sank 156.06 points, or 1.2%, to 12,442.49. It has fallen 6.3% from its recent peak on May 1. The technology-laden Nasdaq composite, on which Facebook will begin trading Friday, slumped 60.35 points, or 2.1%, to 2,813.69.
Facebook’s debut has dominated Silicon Valley and Wall Street in recent weeks, as the company and the financial markets geared up for the most anticipated IPO since Google Inc. in 2004. >more
The Texas Bankers Association’s 128th Annual Convention & Exposition will be held May 9-11, 2012, at the Omni Fort Worth Hotel and Fort Worth Convention Center. Attendees; we are located at Booth 323. Come by and enter for a chance to win a Scotty Cameron Putter.
April 19th and 20th | Galveston Island Convention Center at the San Luis Resort, Galveston, Texas.
Percento Technologies is sponsoring and will have a booth at the 2012 Texas Credit Union League Annual Meeting and Expo.
The event will offer the latest review of best practices, state-of-the-art technology solutions and a look into the future. If you plan to attend, feel free to stop by to talk and visit with us. And don’t forget to throw your buisness card into the bowl for a chance to win an Scotty Cameron Scotty Cameron Studio Select.
MIT‘s Computer Science and Artificial Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which I toured Friday, is piled high with all kinds of hardware, including laptops, unmanned submarines, and mechanical limbs. But when it comes to equipping robots with artificial eyes and ears, robotics hackers are clearly enamored with the Kinect motion-sensing controller and sensors like it.
The Kinect motion-sensing controller is attached to the head of the humanoid PR2 robot as it tries to bake cookies. It’s also attached to a robotic wheelchair, as well as unmanned vehicles for exploring the ocean and the air. For robot builders, Kinect’s depth camera provides a relatively cheap set of eyes–crucial to giving them more autonomy–that plug in nicely to onboard computers.
“Kinect costs $150 and replaces $7,000 in sensors,” said mechanical engineering student Mario Bollini. And plugging the control into a robot–Bollini is working with Willow Garage’s PR2 robot–and writing software for it is straight-forward, he said.
In another effort, the Kinect motion-sensing controller is attached to a wheelchair to improve automated navigation. Researchers are writing algorithms that would allow a person to teach the wheelchair the ins and outs of a nursing home by following a person around or taking voice commands.
The depth camera of Kinect can also be used to navigate environments where robots can’t take advantage of GPS. The Robust Robotics Group at MIT and a team at the University of Washington have equipped a quadrotor, which is a four-propeller helicopter, with a Kinect motion-sensing controller to create a three-dimensional map of a location, which could be a building post-earthquake.
As the system flies around, the Kinect sensor sends out an infrared beam and, based on the reflections, can start to build, point by point, a colored map of an indoor or outdoor space in software. The cameras also allow the quadrotor to avoid colliding into other objects.
All that sensor data requires some hefty onboard processing. The Robust Robotics Group’s machine, which is about as wide as a pizza box, has two computers, including one that’s about as powerful as a laptop processor, according to a researcher.
Giving robots a better way to understand their environment with off-the-shelf products is helping lead to more capable robots. iRobot CEO Colin Angle said because of its low cost and capabilities, the sensor in the Kinect controller is “incredibly disruptive” because of its consumer electronics price.
For its part, Microsoft is trying to attract more developers to use Kinect for robotic applications and is upgrading the hardware so that it can better “see” very close objects rather than have to rely on a separate sensor.
“Microsoft will continue researching even better Kinect hardware. This means that 3D depth data is now here to stay, so sharpen up your 3D geometry skills and get cracking on applications that take full advantage of these new devices,” said Trevor Taylor, program manager for Microsoft Robotics in a recent blog.
Congratulations to Allegiance Bank Texas’, Scott Lester, WINNER of the Percento Technologies drawing at the 2011 IBAT’s 37th Annual Convention, this week at the Westin La Cantera Resort in San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Lester won $100 Cash Gift Certificate.
LAS VEGAS–Facebook‘s online privacy woes are well-known. But here’s an offline one: its massive database of profile photos can be used to identify you as you’re walking down the street.
A Carnegie Mellon University researcher today described how he assembled a database of about 25,000 photographs taken from students’ Facebook profiles. Then he set up a desk in one of the campus buildings and asked willing volunteers to peer into Webcams.
The results: facial recognition software put a name to the face of 31 percent of the students after, on average, less than three seconds of rapid-fire comparisons.
In a few years, “facial visual searches may become as common as today’s text-based searches,” says Alessandro Acquisti, who presented his work in collaboration with Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman at the Black Hat computer security conference here.
As a proof of concept, the Carnegie Mellon researchers also developed an iPhone app that can take a photograph of someone, pipe it through facial recognition software, and then display on-screen that person’s name and vital statistics.
This has “ominous risks for privacy” says Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University. Widespread facial recognition tied to databases with real names will erode the sense of anonymity that we expect in public, he said.
Another test compared 277,978 Facebook profiles (the software found unique faces in about 40 percent) against nearly 6,000 profiles extracted from an unnamed dating Web site.
About 1 in 10 of the dating site’s members–nearly all of whom used pseudonyms–turned out to be identifiable.
Facebook isn’t the only source of profile data, of course. LinkedIn or Google+ might work. But because of its vast database and its wide-open profile photos, Facebook was the obvious choice. (Facebook’s privacy policy says: “Your name and profile picture do not have privacy settings.”)
Facial recognition technology, which has been developing in labs for decades, is finally going mainstream. Face.com opened its doors to developers last year; the technology is built into Apple’s Aperture software and Flickr. Google bought a face-recognition technology in the last few weeks, and Facebook’s automated photo-tagging has drawn privacy scrutiny.
In the hands of law enforcement, however, face recognition can raise novel civil liberties concerns. If university researchers can assemble such an extensive database with just Facebook, police agencies or their contractors could do far more with DMV or passport photographs–something that the FBI has been doing for years. (The U.S. Army partially funded the Carnegie Mellon research.)
Acquisti is the first to admit that the technology isn’t perfect. It works best with frontal face photos, not ones taken at an angle. The larger the database becomes, the more time comparisons take, and the more false-positive errors arise.
On the other hand, face recognition technology is advancing quickly, especially for nonfrontal photos. “What we did on the street with mobile devices today will be accomplished in less intrusive ways tomorrow,” he says. “A stranger could know your last tweet just by looking at you.”
Google’s Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed.
The cars were supposed to collect the locations of Wi-Fi access points. But Google also recorded the street addresses and unique identifiers of computers and other devices using those wireless networks and then made the data publicly available through Google.com until a few weeks ago.
The French data protection authority, known as the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recently contacted CNET and said its investigation confirmed that Street View cars collected these unique hardware IDs. In March, CNIL’s probe resulted in a fine of 100,000 euros, about $143,000.
The confirmation comes as concerns about location privacy appear to be growing. Apple came under fire in April for recording logs of approximate location data on iPhones, and eventually released a fix. That controversy sparked a series of disclosures about other companies’ location privacy practices, questions and complaints from congressmen, a pair of U.S. Senate hearings, and the now-inevitable lawsuits seeking class action status.
A previous CNET article, published June 15 and triggered by the research of security consultant Ashkan Soltani, was the first to report that Google made these unique hardware IDs–called MAC addresses–publicly available through a Web interface. Google curbed the practice about a week later.
But it was unclear at the time whether Google’s location database included the hardware IDs of only access points and wireless routers or client devices, such as computers and mobile phones, as well.
Anecdotal evidence suggested they had been swept up. Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy and Technology and co-chair of an Internet Engineering Task Force on geolocation, said her 2009 home address was listed in Google’s location database. Nick Doty, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley who co-teaches the Technology and Policy Lab, found that Google listed his former home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle.
“It would be helpful to have some clarity about why and how (a hardware address) got in there so people can act accordingly,” says Soltani, the security researcher.
Google declined repeated requests for comment for this article over a period of more than a week. In a statement last month, the search company said only that “we collect the publicly broadcast MAC addresses of Wi-Fi access points,” which addressed only current and not past practices.
Google does not provide any method, sometimes called an opt-out mechanism, that would allow people who don’t want their unique hardware IDs in the database to remove them. Instead of using Street View cars, Google new “crowdsources” its location database by using Android phones.
The most likely explanation of how the Wi-Fi devices were included is the simplest: Just as an accident of programming led to Street View cars collecting (in relatively few cases) the contents of unencrypted wireless communications, client hardware addresses were also vacuumed up. Then they were added to Google’s geolocation database, which was publicly available without access restrictions until late June.
Wi-Fi-enabled devices, including PCs, iPhones, iPads, and Android phones, transmit a unique hardware identifier to anyone within a radius of approximately 100 to 200 feet. If someone captured or already knew that unique address because they had access to the device, Google’s application programming interface, or API, revealed where that device was located, a practice that can reveal personal information including home or work addresses or even the addresses of restaurants frequented.
To be sure, it’s not always easy to learn a target’s MAC address. It’s generally not transmitted over the Internet. But anyone within Wi-Fi range can record it, and it’s easy to narrow down which MAC addresses correspond to which manufacturer. Someone, such as a suspicious spouse, who can navigate to the About screen on an iPhone can obtain it that way too.
Kim Cameron, Microsoft’s chief identity architect until earlier this year, had long suspected that Street View cars vacuumed up the hardware addresses of devices using a Wi-Fi connection. In a June 2010 essay that analyzed an independent report (PDF) of Street View data collection, Cameron said he believed that Google recorded the locations and MAC addresses of far more than just fixed Wi-Fi access points.
Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said he has concerns about the legality of intercepting the hardware addresses of devices using Wi-Fi connections.
“The fact that other companies such as Skyhook may have engaged in this behavior, which seems to be Google’s best defense, doesn’t make it lawful,” Rotenberg said. “What it does suggest is that there’s more to the investigation of Street View.”
In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission ended its investigation of Street View’s accidentally-broad data collection last October without levying a fine.
Congratulations to Integrity Bank’s Hazem A. Ahmed, WINNER of the Percento Technologies drawing at the 2011 IBAT Leadership Conference last week at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Ahmed won the Kodak PlaySport Zx5 Video Camera.
The Internet’s overseers today approved a plan to dramatically expand the number “generic top-level domains,” or GTLDs, as soon as the end of 2012. There are only 22 such GTLDs today–others include .edu, .mil, and .biz–but the expansion could add dozens or potentially even hundreds more.
Among other implications, that means new opportunities and new complications for trademark holders.
“It opens up [what's] the right of the dot,” said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, speaking at a press conference in Singapore after the ICANN board‘s vote. “When you think .com, .net, think .open to new ideas.”
The move will give a completely new look to Internet addresses. Domains can range from broad terms such as .auto to specific ones such as .canon.
Thus, the blessing and the curse that are new GLTDs: companies get new opportunities to reinforce their brand names, but at the same time it means trademark holders could face expensive new challenges in defending their trademarks.
ICANN has worked to mitigate these issues, for example with a trademark clearinghouse to track registered names. And there are consequences that extend as far as ICANN canceling a contract with a registrar that cooperates with a “bad actor,” said outgoing ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush.
“We’ve created brand-new system to allow…a very rapid takedown” of a domain found to be infringing trademarks, Dengate Thrush said. “The tradeoff is…if someone brings a case, it’s got to be argued and proved to a pretty high standard.”
Likely new domains for which ICANN expects applications include .eco, .green, .berlin, and .paris, ICANN said, and the new system accommodates names written in native scripts such as those used in China and Japan.
ICANN will accept applications from registries that want to operate new top-level domains from January 12, 2012 to April 12, 2012. It’s not for the faint of heart: There’s an application fee of $185,000, it costs $25,000 a year to operate the registry, and other fees are possible, too.
Those fees are very significant. Trademark holders wanting to protect their intellectual property might feel obliged to try to set up a registry of their own to ward off a new class of cybersquatters. And in some cases, rights to a TLD registry might be decided through an auction, which potentially could increase costs in an unpredictable way.
But it’s a big opportunity, too, for those who want their names in the public eye. Web addresses could get more of a brand-name look, and e-mails could carry more weight as being from a specific company.
Matthew Sammon, a partner at patent and trademark law firm Marks & Clerk, looks at the sunny side.
“Large companies like Coca-Cola and Google have been waiting years for this opportunity to fully brand their web addresses. We’re likely to see every brand that can applying for their own domain suffix,” Sammon said. “The lengthy and costly procedure involved in the application for the new domain suffixes should help to keep would-be cyber-squatters out of the process.”
MIT
LAS VEGAS–
Google’s Street View cars collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world, a practice that raises novel privacy concerns, CNET has confirmed.
Forget being limited to .com, .net, and .org.