Infosys may skip campus hiring: Morgan Stanley

Brokerage firm Morgan Stanley has released a report stating that IT major Infosys will not hire new recruits from college campuses in the remaining half of 2012. The company has also not released its campus hiring plans for the second half of the year.

Such a step clearly indicates the slump that the country's second largest software services company is going through.

While announcing first quarter results recently, Infosys cut its hiring forecast for the fiscal year 2012-13 by 22% as compared to the year-ago period. As compared to 45,000 hirings in 2011-12, the company planned to recruit 35,000 new employees this year.

In the April-June 2012 quarter, Infosys got fewer employees on board due to losses and diminished revenue forecast. It got 9,236 personnel on board in the period compared with 10,676 in the preceding quarter.

The Indian IT industry is going through a tough phase and many new projects have been delayed, according to Morgan Stanley. This has resulted in a decrease in employee utilisation rate and rise in bench strength across several IT companies.

Last month, Infosys changed plans of getting new recruits on board and pushed the joining date for 28,000 employees to mid-2013.

Commenting on the Morgan Stanley report, an Infosys' spokesperson said that the company has not decided about its campus hiring for the next season. "As per Nasscom's directive, IT companies can start campus hiring only in September. Our hiring will depend on business needs and we will have better visibility into it in August," she said.

Google launches Kansas City fiber net, intros Google Fiber TV

Google launched its 1-gigabit-per-second broadband service in Kansas City today and also unveiled a new interactive television service called Google Fiber TV, in a move it hopes will push the broadband and paid TV industries to deploy speedier networks at a lower cost.

Google Fiber TV is a service that provides interactive search for TV that lets you search your DVR as well as content you have on services like Netflix. It will include a DVR with up to 500 hours of storage of shows and movies all in 1,080p High Definition. You can also record up to eight TV shows at once.

Google is charging every home that gets the fiber service $300 for the construction of the fiber link. But the company is waiving that fee for people who sign up initially for the service.

Google is offering three different packages. The Gigabit and Fiber TV service will cost $120 a month and will include 1Gbps connectivity on the upstream as well as downstream. There is no data cap. It also comes with 1 terabyte of Google Drive cloud storage. The TV service will include all the regular broadcast TV channels, hundreds of Google Fiber TV channels, thousands of TV shows on demand, and premium movie channels.

Google didn't say whether traditional cable channels such as Discovery or ESPN will be included in the package. The company will also be giving away free Google Android Nexus 7tablets to everyone who signs up for this service.

The second package is for broadband-only customers. It will cost $70 a month and offer 1Gbps downloads and uploads. It will also provide the 1 terabyte of data storage, as well as a network box for offering the service.

For an introductory period, people who sign up for the two services won't have to pay the $300 construction fee.

The last package is geared toward the 25 percent of Kansas City area people who may not have broadband already. Google will offer this service for a limited time only. It will be free to customers who pay for the $300 fiber installation. And it will include 5Mbps download speeds and 1Mpbs upload speeds for seven years. Customers will have the option to upgrade the service to one of the other packages. Google will allow customers for this plan to pay for the $300 construction fee on a monthly basis -- $25 a month for the first year.

Kevin Lo, general manager of Google Access, said during the unveiling presentation that Google will make the service available to folks in Kansas City, Kan., as well as people in Kansas City, Mo. The company will deploy the network first in "fiberhoods" where there's the most interest from consumers.

Starting today, Google is launching virtual "rallies" in which it's encouraging people throughout these cities to sign up on a Web site. If a neighborhood can get 40 to 80 households to preregister for the service, Google will begin deployments. From there, the company will hook up schools, libraries, government offices, and other publicly accessed buildings to the fiber network.

Google has also established a "fiber space" demonstration center where local residents can make appointments to learn more about the personal and community benefits of having a fiber network.

Google, which announced the project in February 2010, began construction of the network backbone in February. The company had said it expected to launch the network this summer. The idea behind Google Fiber is for the company to build a commercial fiber-based high-speed broadband network that Google and others can use to test new business models and applications that need very fast connections -- upward of 1Gbps. Thousands of cities competed to be the home of the future network. Kansas City won.

Google is now ready to put the network into action. Earlier this summer a set-top box displaying the company's logo made it through the Federal Communications Commission's approval process.

news.cnet.com

Grooveshark is an acquisition target

Avi Faliks, an executive with investment firm Spring Mountain Capital, has approached the often-sued music service Grooveshark about an acquisition, numerous sources familiar with the deal told CNET.

According to sources, Faliks planned to hire Gary Stiffelman, the influential entertainment attorney who has represented Lady Gaga, Trent Reznor, and Justin Timberlake, to act as a go-between with the labels. The idea was to learn whether execs from the record companies would accept his plan for a revamped Grooveshark, one that wouldn't enable people to share unlicensed songs. If the labels signed off, Faliks would try to get them to drop their lawsuits.Faliks spoke with leaders from Grooveshark and parent company Escape Media about a plan to take the service more mainstream -- that is, make it less of a magnet for copyright lawsuits. Grooveshark, which enables users to share music with one another, has at one time or another been sued for copyright infringement by multiple music publishers as well as three of the four major record companies.

He doesn't appear to have gotten very far, however. Grooveshark and Escape Media haven't shown much interest to this point, the sources said. According to one source, Grooveshark is waiting to hear from another unnamed suitor. Stiffelman and Faliks never responded to an interview request. A representative from Grooveshark declined to comment.

Believe it or not, the circling of Grooveshark may mean that interest in Web music services is heating up, though it's hard to understand why. Earlier this month, Beats Electronics acquired MOG, an also-ran player among subscription music services for a paltry $14 million. Spotify, one of the leaders in subscription music, is reportedly trying to raise $220 million investment on a jaw-dropping $4 billion valuation.

But here's the rub: few, if any, of these services are believed to be profitable.

Meanwhile, Grooveshark is taking steps to dispose of some of the litigation hanging over its head. The music service has recently paid at least some of the money it owed the recorded-music division of EMI, home to such acts as the Beatles and Coldplay, and the one major label that had licensed music to Grooveshark.

In April, EMI sued Grooveshark claiming that the music service failed to pay down the $450,000 it agreed to pay as part of its licensing agreement with the label. That action has now been settled. A representative from EMI Music declined to comment.

Grooveshark also settled a copyright complaint filed in January by music publisher Yesh Music, records show.

Based in Gainesville, Fla., Grooveshark enables users to upload songs to the site for others to stream. Executives say they remove pirated songs as soon as they're notified by copyright owners. The company said because it is an Internet service provider, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe harbor provision protects it from liability for copyright violations committed by users.

The company won an important court decision in one of two copyright cases filed against it by Universal Music Group, the largest of the top record companies. UMG sued Grooveshark in New York state court and argued that songs recorded before 1972 were not protected by federal copyright law, which might have meant no DMCA protection for Grooveshark for those songs.

But the judge said there was nothing to indicate that Congress meant to strip pre-1972 recordings from federal protection.

These are interesting turns of event for the company because the word about Grooveshark in recent months is that it was running short of cash. Grooveshark is juggling at least three different court cases and litigation of this kind is expensive. Earlier this year, we saw MP3tunes.com collapse under the weight of its legal costs. The cloud music service fought a long-running copyright battle with EMI before filing for bankruptcy protection in May.

http://news.cnet.com

APC releases bootloader, kernel and ROM for $50 motherboard

APC has released the APC ROM, kernel and bootloader for its cut-price Android device.

APC's $50 motherboard featuring an 800MHz VIA processor caused a stir earlier this year when the firm played up its support for Google's Android operating system. Now APC, which is being pushed by chip vendor VIA, has released a ROM, kernel and bootloader for its low cost motherboard.

The firm said, "Our efforts are focused on creating the most stable and user friendly Android experience for APC and with this release we are aiming to provide developers with the tools you need to begin creating new and exciting apps for our Android environment. At the same time we understand the desire and passion that exists from the hacker and developer communities and we want to allow you the freedom to experiment with installing other distributions to match your needs."

APC has also said it intends to support the use of other operating systems on the APC motherboard and has made the technical drawings available for those that want to build systems with it.

While the APC motherboard hasn't been greeted with the same level of enthusiasm as the Raspberry Pi, it is still a very cheap computer that has 512MB of DDR3 RAM and 2GB of flash storage onboard. Given that APC has also included a microSD slot, there's ample room to support a full-fledged Linux distribution.

APC's problem is that ever since it went public the firm has stopped taking pre-orders for the device. With Raspberry Pi production ramping up, consumers looking for a capable, cheap little computer might be forced to look away from APC's system board towards the Raspberry Pi.

Black Hat: Shark-bitten security researcher takes another chomp out of Oracle database

A researcher scored again against Oracle's database by demonstrating at the Black Hat security conference Thursday an exploit that would allow him to take control as an administrator.

David Litchfield, a researcher at Accuvant Labs, demoed what he called the PWNORACLE exploit against the Oracle 11g database, earning applause from his audience, some of whom also photographed the exploit code he projected on-screen.  In 2010 at a Black Hat event, Litchfield showed how to subvert security in the 11g database by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities.

This week's Litchfield demo was part of a larger presentation about Oracle database flaws pertaining to indexes.

Litchfield said he has already reported the vulnerability he discovered to Oracle and "thought they would have fixed it by now."

Litchfield -- whose arm was bandaged due to a mild shark bite from a great white shark sustained while photographing underwater from a protective cage -- emphasized during his talk that Oracle has shown "marked improvement" in holding down vulnerabilities found in its database versions over the past two years.

Still, the recent push from Anonymous to break into databases means that security managers need to "understand how hackers break in," Litchfield said.

Apple Mountain Lion OS Offers Features for Small Businesses

Although Microsoft’s Windows operating system is still used in the vast majority of businesses, creative professionals and those working in design industries are partial to Apple computers and the operating system, and small and midsize businesses are increasingly adopting it for their own devices, particularly Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS, as use of the iPad tablet has exploded among small businesses.

With the release of OS X Mountain Lion, Apple’s latest version of their OS, there are a host of updated features that can serve midmarket companies well. The software update, which is available as a download from the Mac App Store for $19.99, requires Lion or Snow Leopard (OS X v10.6.8 or later), 2GB of memory and 8GB of available space, and is available at no additional charge from the Mac App Store to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Mac system from Apple or an authorized Apple reseller on or after June 11.

Chief among these are productivity enhancements to the Notification Center, which streamlines the presentation of notifications and provides access to alerts from Mail, Calendar, Messages, Reminders, system updates and third-party apps, as well as iCloud integration, for the setup of those applications, in addition to keeping everything, including iWork documents, up-to-date across all a company’s devices, including the iPad. The Dictation application allows users to dictate text anywhere the user can type, whether using an app from Apple or a third-party developer.

With IT departments growing increasingly concerned about malware disrupting (or shutting down) the network, Apple’s new Gatekeeper platform, which makes downloading software from the Internet safer, could be of interest to small businesses with limited IT resources. On the communications front, Apple’s all-new Messages app, which replaces iChat and brings iMessage to the Mac, allows users to send messages to anyone with an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or another Mac, a boon for companies that are increasingly reliant on instant collaboration and messaging to run their operations.

Rounding out the software update is a system-wide Sharing application, to make it easier to share files and media content without having to switch to another app; the update also features one-time sign-on and integration with social media services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Vimeo. With small businesses increasingly reliant on social media to save on advertising costs and drum up new business, Apple has responded to this need with enhanced Facebook integration, which now includes the ability to post photos, links and comments with locations from third-party applications and automatically add Facebook friends to Contacts, as well as update the company’s Facebook status from within the Notification Center.

Data Center Virtualization – The Benefits

Why would you elect for data center virtualization when a traditional server configuration will do? Those familiar with data center virtualization often posit several benefits over more traditional server configurations. Specifically, those benefits include the utilization of all assets, greater redundancy, and simpler administration. In this article, we’re going to look at the interaction of the three above, as well as considering specific administration situations. We’ll look at price-performance increases, as well as diving deep in to security benefits.

What good will data center virtualization do me?

Data center virtualization is cheaper than purchasing equivalent traditional-configuration hardware, as redundancy elements allow for less expensive component choices. This cheap multiple – and geographic – redundancy opens a doorway to extremely powerful serving. But what sort of price-performance increases can we see?

The first and most obvious is in the downtime costs. This is a major consideration for many global enterprises – if their users can’t access applications or data, all of those users automatically become unused assets for the duration of getting access back on-line. For a company with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, a relatively short downtime period could post an opportunity cost in the tens of millions of dollars. So, having reliable 24/7 access through a virtualization layer ensures that all human assets are able to perform all the time (with an extremely high probability – F5 claim 99.9999%), saving this money. That’s millions of dollars which can be invested in your server infrastructure – further increasing the power and performance of the virtualization layer.

The second price-performance benefit comes in the server capabilities itself. If applications are configured for clustered or distributive computing, they will perform at a much greater rate – probably only limited by the throughput bandwidth of the system. That’s a pretty big contrast to traditional servers, which can weaken and buckle at peak request times.

Something else that can be done away with is the need for complete and constant replication across servers. Each server only requires a part-copy of the currently-threaded application or database. Not only does that save on inter-server bandwidth and administration, it also provides a higher error recovery rate. If each server only has a thousandth of a file at any one moment, the failure of a few will probably not affect the integrity of that file to any great extent.

Security

Traditional server security relies on multiple (redundant) security layers to delay or halt intrusions swiftly enough for data to be manually protected from attackers. This is precisely the same within a virtualised system – except that, rather than each server requiring its own security configuration and administrator, a single security portfolio will do.

Data center virtualization security is traditionally affected through access-based controls, as successful intrusions are hard to track inside the system itself (more on that next article). These could be:

• Client verification, such as passwords, login data and SSL credentials
• Device verification (if your organisation only permits logins from specific configurations of device), such as operating system checking, firewalls, antivirus settings
• Expected encryption types, such as AES
• User permissions – not all users should be able to log on to all parts of the system, and this can be verified against a central permissions database. For instance, not all employees who need access to printers and word documents should be able to access your server.
• Application permissions – similarly, not all applications should be able to make changes to all parts of the system. For example, cookie disabling or registry editing deprecation.

What is more, cloaking technology can hide the individual IPs of servers in a virtualization system – which is much harder to do if all requests are routed via a single server IP.

So, we’ve seen that data center virtualization systems offer a host of benefits above and beyond traditional server configurations. In a previous article, we had seen some of the drawbacks, and which of those can be tackled.


Pamela Faber

Google unveils handwriting recognition system for smartphones

Even the most nimble-fingered of us can sometimes struggle to type accurately on our smartphone's touch-screen, so now Google has introduced a new feature it hopes will make it easier to search when on the go: handwriting recognition.

It may sound like a throwback to old PDA days, where users were frequently confounded by the near-impossible task of learning to write characters the mobile device could interpret while clutching a fiddly stylus. But Google hopes its system will be more intuitive and needs little more than the users' fingers.

Users will have to turn on the handwriting option by visiting Google's homepage and adjusting the settings, either via the tab near the bottom of the page or by the gears icon on some tablets.

They should then be able to simply write out the phrase they want to search on any where on the screen, and hey presto, Google will find it – at least that's what it claims.

“Write a few letters and you’ll see autocomplete options appear below the search box,” explained Rui Ueyama, a Google software engineer on a company blog. 

“If one of the options is what you’re looking for, just tap it to search. For longer queries, you can continue writing and use the arrows next to the autocomplete options to move the right one into the search box.”

Google reckons that the system works best – surprise, surprise – on its own technology, so Android users running Chrome should find it most accurate. But it has also been designed to work on Apple's iOS5 and later devices.

Microsoft resolves two-hour Azure outage in Europe

Microsoft says it has resolved an outage of its Azure cloud computing service that impacted some European users for more than two hours on Thursday.

Microsoft has released scant details as to what caused the outage, but the company first reported the issue shortly after 11 a.m. ET and announced on its Azure service blog its resolution shortly after 1:30 p.m. The company says the disruption impacted hosted services, but not storage accounts or running applications.

In March, Microsoft offered credits to customers impacted by the "Leap Day" Azure outage, which occurred on Feb. 29 this year. A software bug exposed code that did not account for this year's Leap Day, which only occurs every four years and caused the system to believe it was failing. That issue took more than 13 hours to resolve.

Today's Azure issue was just one of several outages that occurred on Thursday. Google Talk users lamented on Twitter about an outage that impacted "a majority of users," the company said. Disgruntled chatters were silenced on the social media network when Twitter itself fell victim to an outage around midday.

Other cloud providers have suffered outages in recent months, including SalesForce.com and Amazon Web Services.

BMC pushes for new water billing software

A decade ago, the Brihanmumbai (Greater Mumbai) Municipal Corporation (BMC) modernized water billing by introducing a piece of software. Today, it is planning to make substantial changes in it to make the billing process for metered water connections a consumer-friendly process. 

To bring in the changes, the BMC has roped in engineers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, as advisors. 

Confirming the development, Rajiv Jalota, additional municipal commissioner, told TOI, "We are planning to bring changes to the water billing software. Our focus will be on addressing the grievances of consumers as far as water bills are concerned." 

While tests are underway, the BMC says it will take more than a year for the upgraded software to be introduced. The reason it cites for this is that old data available with the hydraulic department will have to be integrated with the new software. 

Since the billing process at present is a much-criticized one, the upgraded software would be designed keeping in mind consumer needs. Till date, the BMC does not have a proper redress cell. After the software is developed, people can register complaints online. After a complaint is registered in the server, it will send automatic instructions to the terminal at the complainant's end for a ticket to be issued; the ticket will be a physical record of the complaint and can also be used to monitor its status. At present, the BMC has no system for monitoring complaints. A civic official said that after the software upgrade, this problem will be taken care of and the time taken to address a complaint can be monitored. "Such a system is already functioning in Hyderabad," a senior official said. 

A key feature that would be added to the software is spot billing. This will enable the water supply department to immediately issue bills after taking metre readings. "At present, after a reading, it takes 15-20 days for the bill to be issued," the official said. "If we can manage to start the spot-billing system, it will be of great help to consumers. Once this feature is activated, the metre reading data can be fed into the software, which will process the bill instantly. The bill will be fed into our main server for a permanent record." 

HCL Infosystems acquires educational content provider Edurix

IT firm HCL Infosystems has acquired educational content provider Edurix, a move that will help strengthen its education and learning business.

Edurix is a part of Attano Media and Education and designs content for the K-12 education segment.

The business transfer between HCL Infosystems and Attano has been completed and included transfer of all fixed assets, intellectual property rights (IPR) and human resources of Edurix, HCL Infosystems said.

"The acquisition will help us expand the in-house content capability for HCL Learning and supplement our current offerings across various segments like K-12, higher education and career development centre (CDC)," HCL Infosystems Senior VP and HCL Learning Head Anand Ekambaram said.

This also brings in the capacity to develop and customise content for tablets, dongles and online platforms, he added.

Edurix has about 160 employees in its two offices in Mumbai and Chennai. The integration of the Edurix's business and teams with HCL Infosystems are currently underway.

"Content differentiation, combined with our technology capabilities, will ensure that we provide the best learning solutions to our institutional and individual customers," he said.

Apart from strengthening its operations in India, the acquisition will facilitate HCL Learning's access to international markets, especially in emerging markets like South East Asia, West Asia and Africa.

Though Ekambaram declined to comment on the financial details of HCL Learning, he said the business has been registering good growth and has booked over 3,300 classrooms under the 'Digischool solutions' in January-March 2012 quarter.

In April this year, the company has launched two versions of its tablet PC -- MyEduTab -- to provide educational content on the move to students.

"The acquisition will also help us expand our retail offering as students will now have access to richer content based on animation etc on their tablet PCs," he said.

MDM moves beyond mobile devices into Macs

MobileIron today announced that its mobile device management (MDM) tool now supports the new OS X Mountain Lion operating system for Macs, released on Wednesday. The company cited fast adoption of Macs in business as the reason it moved out of its mobile-only roots (iOS, Android, and some lesser-used mobile OSes). "Forrester Research forecasts that enterprises will spend $19 billion on the Mac and iPad in 2012, with that number increasing to $28 billion in 2013," MobileIron noted.

The management capabilities MobileIron offers IT for OS X Mountain Lion are minimum passcode and password requirements, Wi-Fi and VPN configurations, authentication certificates (for users, apps, and devices), email configuration, remote lock and wipe, and removal of enterprise provisioning information when retiring Macs. Although OS X Server provides these same capabilities for Macs and iOS devices, it requires that IT have a separate server than what is used for managing other devices and doesn't provide as much management capability as available in an MDM tool such as MobileIron's.

MobileIron is not the only company to support both Macs and mobile devices for security management, but it is the first major MDM vendor to do. Symantec's Altiris and Centrify's Centrify Suite, for example, have recently added Mac and iOS support to their Windows-oriented client management tools, a response to the fact that businesses increasingly are supporting endpoint diversity rather than insisting on a Windows monoculture.

And MobileIron earlier this year developed APIs to let Microsoft System Center 2012 manage mobile devices through MobileIron's server, so Windows admins could manage mobile devices through the familiar System Center console.

That follows a trend of expanding System Center beyond Microsoft's Windows focus led by Quest Software, which offers both OS X and mobile (iOS and Android) add-ons to System Center. (Dell agreed to buy Quest earlier this month, bulking up its system management portfolio, which also includes Kace.) Symantec recently bought Odyssey Software for its System Center add-on for iOS and Android, but it does not support OS X. Meraki offers an MDM tool that can also manage Macs and Windows PCs if you install a client on them.

Apple too has increasingly moved to make OS X more enterprise-friendly, following the strategy used in iOS to make the iPhone and iPad trusted devices in most businesses. For example, OS X Mountain Lion has exposed its FileVault whole-disk encryption capability to third-party management tools, so companies can now manage Mac encryption through a central tool, rather than manually configure each Mac. Last year's Mac operating system, OS X Lion, added support for XML-based configuration profiles similar to those used in iOS that let third-party tools, as well as OS X Server, manage Mac settings over the air. This year's OS X Mountain Lion also adds support for FIPS 140-2 security, required by many government agencies and high-security businesses.

InfoWorld.com

Apple to spend $356 million on security company AuthenTec

In a deal that should help Apple boost its enterprise security offerings, the iPhone maker is planning to buy mobile security company AuthenTec for $8 per share or a little over $356 million, AuthenTec said on Friday.

AuthenTec provides security software and hardware for mobile phones, PCs and networks, according to the company's website.

Earlier this month, AuthenTec closed a deal with Samsung that would put its QuickSec VPN security into new Android smartphones and tablets.

The Florida company's products and technologies are used in "hundreds of millions of devices", and AuthenTec said it has shipped more than 100 million fingerprint sensors for integration in a wide range of portable electronics including over 15 million mobile phones. Other customers include Motorola, Nokia, Lenovo and LG.

AuthenTec entered into a merger agreement plan with Apple and Bryce Acquisition Corporation, a Delaware corporation that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, on July 26, according to the company's 8-K filing with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The plan is to make AuthenTec a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple, according to the filing.

Both companies also entered an intellectual property and technology agreement that provides Apple with the right to acquire non-exclusive licenses and certain other rights on hardware technology, software technology and AuthenTec's patents, according to the document.

For the right to acquire those licenses and other rights, Apple will pay $20 million. And Apple will have 270 days to choose to license hardware, patents or software on a perpetual non-exclusive basis for a total sum of $115 million.

"Biometrics will certainly be a key component of computing security going forward, not just for traditional PCs but for phones and tablets too," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president of consumer technologies and markets at Gartner.

The acquisition not only allows Apple to move ahead technologically, but also provides Apple with patents in an area that is increasingly shaping the mobile business, she said.

The companies also signed a development deal under which AuthenTec will provide one-time engineering services to Apple for product development which costs Apple $7.5 million, according to the filing. The newly developed product are to be owned by Apple.

Apple could not immediately comment on the acquisition plans.

Apple working on Google Glass rival?

Oh sure, you want to know about the latest iPhone 5 rumor or if Apple really going to come out with an Apple TV that's not just a little black box, but what's more exciting still is that Apple's taking out patents on wearable computers, ala Google Glass.

According to Patently Apple, a site that tracks Apple's patents, Apple has been toying with the idea of wearable computers since at least 2006. Indeed, wearable computers are far from a new idea. I first played with them in the 90s. But those were niche devices. It wasn't until Google showed off with Google Glass in June 2012 at Google I/O that the idea of a heads-up computer display in your glasses captured the publics' imagination. 

Now, Apple seems to be taking the idea of "iGlasses" seriously. Besides their 2008 patent for an iPod Video Headset Display, Apple has just been granted two new heads-up display patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).

The first, which Apple applied for in 2011, is for Video Telephonic Headset, was granted earlier in July. This has been followed quickly by another patent,  Display Resolution Increase with Mechanical Actuation. Behind that dull as dishwater title, you'll find an even drier description, but when all is said and done it's describing a glasses-like display that's meant to deliver a Retina Display to its wearer with a tiny battery.

It doesn't require a hardware engineer to see where Apple is going with this. Google is expected to release a developer release of Google Glass in early 2013. I expect Apple to follow up with its own HUD device, the iGlasses, Apple hasn't laid claim to this trademark... yet. I'm going to be keeping an eye on it.

Today, the hardware wars are over tablets and smartphones. Tomorrow, it will be HUDs. 

zdnet.com

Facebook to open mobile engineering hub in London

The social networking company Facebook is to hire an engineering team for a new technology hub in central London, the first to be based outside the US.

In a blogpost, Facebook software engineer Philip Su, who will lead the new engineering office, said that London was a "perfect fit" as it is a "global hub with a vibrant local start-up community with lots of great technical talent".

Based in Covent Garden, the new hub will focus on building products for mobile platforms, Su said.

On its job postings, Facebook has vacancies for a software engineering manager and engineers that focus on Android, developer platforms, mobile and building systems.

The social networking company is also looking to hire a data mining specialist for custom market insights to "measure the value and effectiveness of brand advertising on Facebook".

Other positions in its "monetization" category include an audience researcher and a creative strategist.

Before Facebook's IPO, Computing questioned the firm's strategy to focus on mobile given the severe challenges it was already experiencing with its desktop advertising model.

The opportunity for advertising on mobile is widely thought to be significantly lower than on desktop, but many of Facebook's 900 million members prefer to access its services through smartphones and tablets.

Facebook's announcement comes a day after Amazon revealed plans of a new technology hub to be based near London's Silicon Roundabout.

Paula Byrne, who will head up the new centre next to the Barbican, said that Amazon chose London as it is a "hotbed of tech talent".

Digerati Technologies Announces Enhanced USA VoIP Service

Digerati Technologies has announced the expansion of its product portfolio with the addition of an enhanced USA VoIP service.

Thanks to this latest offering, businesses can now reduce calling costs in the USA. In addition, they can also take advantage of Digeratis Only in The Cloud communication services.

The company’s cloud dialer is sold with VoIP minutes of use, so the enhanced USA VoIP product highly complements this application, said Arthur L. Smith, CEO at Digeratis.

“The combination of these two products is what we are all about, combining cloud applications with telephony services for an end-to-end solution that helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) move beyond traditional telephony and into the cloud for their communication services,” he said.

The company’s new product increases the value proposition of its cloud-based applications such as its predictive dialer -- the cloud dialer, which aims to meet the demands of businesses with call center or telesales departments.

Automatically, the solution initiates an outbound call, distinguishes between a live person answer and an answering machine or voicemail system, and then transfers “live” calls to a call center agent.

The cloud-based system increases sales productivity and the products of Digerati’s Only in the Cloud suite are designed to meet the needs of businesses seeking simple, flexible, and cost effective communication solutions while delivering on reliability and performance, according to company officials.

Additionally, the company’s new routing and rating system provides an ability to obtain the lowest cost route for calls in the USA and Canada by local exchange provider.

Digeratis cloud-based services include a fully hosted IP/PBX, VoIP transport, SIP trunking, data storage, and customized VoIP solutions for specialized applications.

Recently, Digerati Technologies announced the launch of a telesales campaign for Verizon with Beyond Contact Centers.

tmcnet.com

Nokia quietly kills Linux-based Meltemi, report says

Nokia has decided to nix plans to launch a new software platform for feature phones, according to a new report.

The mobile company was working on a new software platform called Meltemi to replace Series 40, Reuters is reporting today, citing sources. However, the platform, which was Linux-based,has been quietly discontinued by the company. Reuters' sources did not say why Nokia made the decision.

Series 40 was first introduced in 1999. The platform, which runs on some of the top feature phones in the world, proved wildly popular. Earlier this year, in fact, Nokia celebrated the sale of the 1.5 billionth Series 40 device. However, the software was getting old, and Nokia reportedly felt that it needed to offer up something new. Meltemi was that something new.

Feature phones might not get much attention in today's increasingly smartphone-focused mobile market, but they are vastly important. More feature phones are sold each year than smartphones, and in emerging markets around the world, they're still very popular. Nokia has long relied upon feature phones to drive its business.

However, things are changing for Nokia. The company is having an increasingly difficult time selling devices and it recently reported a whopping $1 billion loss during the second quarter. It's possible that Nokia ditched Meltemi simply to save its much-needed cash.

That said, it's important to note that Nokia never confirmed that Meltemi even existed, and the company has stayed tight-lipped on any questions inquiring about a Series 40 replacement. So, if it did, in fact, kill Meltemi, Nokia won't have much explaining to do.

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Kipon Electronic Adapters Let You Mount Canon EF Lenses on Sony NEX and Micro Four Thirds Cameras

(Image source: Kipon.)

Kipon, a China-based photography accessories maker, has announced that it has developed two electronic adapters (EOS-NEX and EOS-m4/3) that allow users to mount Canon EF lenses on Sony Alpha NEX and Micro Four Thirds-based camera bodies. It’s unknown if they permit autofocus control, but if they do, they would be the first adapters that allow full electronic communication between Micro Four Thirds and NEX bodies and non-system lenses (in this case, Canon EF lenses) for aperture and AF control.

Currently, Kipon is already selling non-electronic versions of the adapters on eBay.

(Image source: Kipon.)

While this may entice MFT and NEX mirrorless camera owners to try out Canon EF lenses, it’s unlikely that existing Canon EOS users would pick up a MFT and NEX body, now that the Canon EOS M mirrorless system camera is announced. Canon also offers an optional EF-EOS M mount adapter for those who wish to use their Canon EF and EF-S lenses on the EOS M.

Pricing and availability information of Kipon's new electronic adapters are unavailable at the moment.

Source: Kipon.

Arkadin Launches Cloud-Based Video Conferencing Service

In an effort to meet the growing demand for mobile, face-to-face meeting services, Arkadin (News - Alert) has launched a new cloud-based video conferencing service, available in both a desktop and room-based model.

The demand for cloud-based personal collaboration is increasing rapidly among small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB), up to large enterprises, according to industry analysts.

“Cloud-based conferencing solutions, like ArkadinVideo, offer a combination of strong performance, easy deployment and affordability. This is a compelling benefits package that brings high quality video conferencing within the reach of small, medium and large enterprises around the world – even in a challenging economic climate,” said Ira M. Weinstein, senior analyst and partner atWainhouse (News - Alert) Research. “Organizations seeking to conduct high impact visual collaboration without incurring a significant up-front cost should consider these solutions.”

Company officials said ArkadinVideo –offered via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS (News  - Alert)) delivery model – can be used over any Internet connection through one-click access from desktops or mobile devices. Up to nine video displays are available for multiple participants to connect from any computer type or legacy end-point.

The video platform is based on Vidyo’s (News - Alert) Adaptive Video Layering architecture, and its Scalable Video Coding (SVC)-based technology, which eliminates the need for the MCU infrastructure required in legacy models with speeds 25 times faster than available through legacy solutions, according to Olivier de Puymorin, CEO and founder of Arkadin.  

“In a highly mobile, global workplace, video conferencing is fast becoming a must-have day-to-day productivity tool,” Puymorin said in a company statement. “Our new generation Vidyo solution is perfectly aligned with market trends toward flexible cloud-based services that offer greater simplicity, availability and scale than the far more expensive and complex legacy systems. Businesses of all sizes finally can extend the productivity benefits of face-to-face communications beyond senior executives to their entire workforce.”

The video conferencing service also includes an interface with audio and video controls from any device. Businesses can also institute “reservationless” meetings for quick meeting access from anywhere. The service connects from any mobile device running Android (News - Alert) or IOS operating systems.

ArkadinVideo is available in Asia Pacific countries including Singapore, Japan and Australia.

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