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IDG NEWS SERVICE – Virgin Atlantic revealed last week that it is testing the use of Google Glass devices among its staff to see how the technology could be used to improve the experience of the airline’s highest-paying passengers.
The Google Glass spectacles include a small screen that can be used to deliver apps, directions, social media streams, and webpages just above the right eye. The wearable computer also allows wearers to take a picture, record a video, and read messages.
Over the next six weeks, concierge staff working in Virgin Atlantic’s Upper Class Wing at London Heathrow’s Terminal 3 will aim to use Google Glass to check-in customers and provide them with flight information, weather and local events at their destination and translate any foreign language information.
In order to make this possible, Virgin Atlantic has integrated Google Glass with a purpose-built dispatch app built by SITA and the Virgin Atlantic passenger service system.
Sony’s SmartWatch
The dispatch app manages all task allocation and concierge availability. It also pushes individual passenger information directly to the assigned concierge’s smart glasses just as the passenger arrives at the Upper Class Wing.
Virgin Atlantic said Google Glass also has the potential to tell staff their passengers’ dietary and refreshment preferences.
The airline is also testing the use of Sony’s SmartWatch 2 over the same six-week time period.
“The fact that air travel has become so accessible has led to some of the sheen being lost for many passengers,” said Dave Bulmad, Virgin Atlantic IT director. “By being the first in the industry to test how Google Glass and other wearable technology can improve customer experience we are…putting innovation at the heart of the flying experience.
Google Glass and other wearables are being tested by an increasing number of businesses, including the New York Police Department, which said last week that it was investigating whether the technology could be used to help enforce the law.
Lyft is raising yet another big round of funding, according to sources. The company, which is seeking to make ride-sharing mainstream in cities across the U.S. and around the world, is expected to use the new cash to fund expansion into new cities and territories.
We’ve heard Lyft has pitched a number of venture firms and late-stage institutional investors, but hedge fund Coatue Management seems to be in the lead for the deal. Coatue has recently invested in hot companies like Box, Snapchat, and HotelTonight, and is part of a growing trend of hedge funds making bets on later-stage startups with traction.
Andreessen Horowitz, which led Lyft’s $60 million Series C round, is also expected to contribute a large chunk of cash. Other investors in Lyft include Founders Fund, Floodgate, Mayfield Fund, K9 Ventures, Ooga Labs, fbFund, and Keith Rabois.
The company was founded as Zimride back in 2007, but it wasn’t until 2012 — when it shifted from long-range to on-demand ride-sharing — that things began to really take off.
With the launch of the Lyft mobile application, it broke new ground in enabling passengers to get rides from other people with a car and spare time on their hands. Due to the success of the on-demand platform, the company rebranded as Lyft and sold its legacy Zimride assets to Enterprise Holdings last summer.
After its initial stint in San Francisco, Lyft began expanding to other cities early last year and now is offering service in 20 markets throughout the U.S. But like Uber, which also offers on-demand rides via mobile app, Lyft has plans to aggressively increase the number of international cities that it operates in beginning this year.
The additional funding will be vital to getting it on the right track toward that goal, as it bulks up operations both in its San Francisco headquarters and in remote offices around the world.
In the meantime, Lyft is trying to get more regulators and local officials comfortable with the idea of letting unlicensed drivers give rides to passengers around town. To that end, it recently hired Google X legal director David Estrada as its VP of government relations.
The company also announced the creation of a peer-to-peer rideshare insurance coalitionthat includes other transportation companies, as well as regulators and insurance providers, to figure out the tricky issue of insurance for its drivers.
Lyft, Coatue, and Andreessen Horowitz all declined to comment.
Out of over 500 million Twitter users, only 30% can boast of knowing their way around Twitter main website without clicking. Though the new Twitter interface is pretty much like the old one, using keyboard shortcuts could prove useful when you want to perform a quick task.
If you use the main Twitter website, we can help you out with some seriously useful keyboard shortcuts. Whether it’s navigational tricks or keyboard actions, these handy shortcuts will save you tons of time.
To view the complete list of keyboard shortcuts from your Twitter account at any time. Click on the Gear Icon on the menu bar and select Keyboard shortcuts.
Twitter is rolling out a new design on the web today that eliminates the pop-up compose window and brings its look more in line with its mobile apps.
We’ve been seeing Twitter test versions of this design for some time now, but this particular one appears to be the test bucket that got the best reaction from users.
It looks, in some ways, a lot like the old version of Twitter — with a profile box and other information presented to the left of the main timeline. One of the biggest changes, of course, is that there is now an inline compose box on the left side, allowing you to pound out tweets without having to deal with the pop-up compose box. The pop up is still accessible via the ‘new tweet’ button in the upper right corner and the keyboard shortcut.
Placing a compose box right in the left column should make the interface feel a bit lighter weight, inviting people to tweet out a bit more than placing it ‘under’ the compose button. I’d guess that this was aimed at converting lurkers to tweeters.
If some of you are looking at this design and thinking ‘hmm, this is how mine has looked for weeks’, then congratulations, you’re in one of Twitter’s test buckets. The company experiments heavily, giving 1% of its users a tweaked or refreshed design and testing how they interact with it before rolling out changes on a wider scale. We’ve been getting reports of this particular design — or one with some of its elements — for a few weeks now.
The alignment of Twitter’s web edition with its mobile versions for iOS and Android certainly makes sense. A large recent release saw major changes in both design and functionality. The web version has lagged a bit behind those releases in the interim, but now feels much more at home.
AMD has released the latest beta driver of its Catalyst software, making its Mantle API a reality for those with supported graphics cards.
AMD’s Catalyst 14.1 beta driver was expected last week, although a few glitches delayed the release. Over the weekend, AMD published the beta driver to its Web site. Note that you’ll need to uninstall the current driver before installing the beta.
AMD is positioning Mantle as a low-level API optimized for its own hardware, offering significantly better performance than the generic DirectX API that powers both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards and integrated CPU/GPU chips, known as APUs. (For more, see our earlier deep dive into Mantle technology.)
So far, just one game, EA’s Battlefield 4, has been optimized for Mantle, although a tech demo of an upcoming game, Star Swarm, has also been released. According to AMD, gamers who load the new beta Catalyst driver should see up to 45% improvement in frame rate running Battlefield 4, and 200% when using the driver and playing the Star Swarm demo. A few other games, including the Thief reboot and Wing Commandercreator Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen, will also support Mantle, the developers have said.
PCWorld hasn’t had a chance to test Mantle yet, but real-world tests conducted by Anandtech showed gains of up to 30 percent when running Battlefield 4 on an Intel i7 4960x CPU. Naturally, because the Catalyst driver is a beta, future improvements are expected.
The new driver also includes support for AMD’s “frame pacing” technology, which smooths the handoffs between multiple GPUs working together in a Crossfire alignment to an “even and regular pace,” according to AMD.
AMD says that the following graphics cards will support the new Catalyst driver, and by extension, Mantle: the AMD Radeon R9 and R7 cards, plus the Radeon HD 8000 and 7000 series, and as well as the A10-7000 and A8-7000 APUs. Don’t expect to see the same dramatic gains in frame rate using the older cards, however, AMD warns—you’ll have to wait for future updates to see those improvements.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) said Monday that it plans to require vehicle-to-vehicle communications in future generations of cars, eventually making the technology as ubiquitous as seat belts.
Specifically, the DOT said that it will prepare a report on its findings on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications for publication in the coming weeks. That report will become the foundation for a new V2V regulatory framework, to be published later.
Google has said that its self-driving cars will use V2V communications in addition to its LIDAR systems.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the DOT, “will then begin working on a regulatory proposal that would require V2V devices in new vehicles in a future year, consistent with applicable legal requirements, Executive Orders, and guidance,” the DOT said in a statement Monday. The DOT said it believes that the signal this announcement sends to the market will significantly enhance development of this technology and pave the way for market penetration of V2V safety applications.
Vehicle-to-vehicle communications refers to the emergence of Wi-Fi-like radios that could be mounted in cars and communicate with one another. Also known as Dedicated Short-Range Communications, V2V car-mounted radios would constantly communicate with other vehicles within range, providing speed and directional data to other cars’ safety and navigation systems. The idea is that a car racing around a blind curve would “know” that a car was heading in the opposite direction, or a car would receive warnings that cars ahead were coming to an unexpected stop.
In August, 2012, DOT launched what it called the Safety Pilot “model deployment” in Ann Arbor, Mich., where nearly 3,000 vehicles were deployed in the largest-ever road test of V2V technology. DOT testing demonstrated the interoperability of V2V technology among products from different vehicle manufacturers and suppliers and has demonstrated that they work in real-world environments, it said.
“V2V crash avoidance technology has game-changing potential to significantly reduce the number of crashes, injuries and deaths on our nation’s roads,” said NHTSA’s acting administrator, David Friedman, in a statement. “Decades from now, it’s likely we’ll look back at this time period as one in which the historical arc of transportation safety considerably changed for the better, similar to the introduction of standards for seat belts, airbags, and electronic stability control technology.”
At this point, the DOT doesn’t envision that the V2V data would do anything more than sound an alert, rather than trigger the braking or steering systems. The DOT also said that the data would not be used to track drivers. “In fact, the system as contemplated contains several layers of security and privacy protection to ensure that vehicles can rely on messages sent from other vehicles and that a vehicle or group of vehicles would be identifiable through defined procedures only if there is a need to fix a safety problem,” the DOT said.
This enthusiastic wing-pup may someday be out of a job, if V2V systems start communicating location and speed data directly from car to car.
Vehicle communications systems have been in place for some years, with bus systems in London, the San Francisco Bay Area’s BART system, and others broadcasting their estimated times of arrival at the next station, based upon their location data. It’s this vision of the future that Scott F. Belcher, president and chief executive of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), said he endorsed.
“Thanks to the strong commitment by U.S. DOT and automotive leaders, and years of investment by countless innovators and industry pioneers, the vision of ‘talking’ cars that avoid crashes is well on the way to becoming a reality,” Belcher said in a statement. “And we’re not just talking about cars talking to cars, but about cars talking to bikes, trucks talking to motorcycles, and even buses talking to pedestrians. This promises to significantly reduce the number of deaths and injuries on our nation’s roads while unleashing a new wave of innovation from advanced traffic management systems and smart mobility apps to real-time traffic, transit and parking information. We look forward to working with U.S. DOT, the automakers, and high-tech industry to ensure that issues such as security and privacy are addressed as we work toward full scale adoption of this life-saving technology.”
Germany’s federal prosecutor is considering if there is enough evidence to warrant a formal, criminal investigation into the German government’s alleged involvement in the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) data collection program, a spokeswoman said Monday.
Privacy and human rights campaigners including the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), the International League for Human Rights (ILMR) and Digitalcourage on Monday filed a criminal complaint against the German federal government and the presidents of the German secret services for their alleged involvement in illegal and prohibited covert intelligence activities, they said in a news release.
The complaint also targeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the German Minister of the Interior as well as U.S., British and German secret agents who are all accused of violating the right to privacy and obstruction of justice by cooperating with the NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ to electronically spy on German citizens, they said.
According to the groups, these activities are felonies and violate German criminal law. “With this criminal complaint, we hope to finally initiate investigations by the Federal Prosecutor General against the German government,” they said.
However, for the moment it remains unclear if the group’s effort is going to have the intended effect.
The Federal Prosecutor General of the Federal Court of Justice, located in Karlsruhe, did not yet receive the group’s criminal complaint, a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor said. But when they do, it wouldn’t be the first, she said, declining to reveal how many complaints related to the NSA affair the federal prosecution had received.
The agency has taken very seriously the media reports about alleged mass monitoring of phone calls and emails from millions of German citizens as well as reports on the alleged spying of the chancellor’s mobile phone, she said.
Therefore, the attorney general has asked the relevant federal authorities to share their knowledge about the operations to achieve a secure factual basis for examining the initial suspicion, she said. But because not all the necessary comments are available it is too early to make a final decision about a formal criminal investigation, she said.
The groups called it “unacceptable that the public offices have not helped in the investigation of these crimes even if the spying is widely visible.” They also asked to hear Snowden as a technical expert and witness, and called on German citizens to file similar criminal complaints with the federal prosecution.
The criminal complaint follows similar complaints filed in France and Belgium, the campaigners said. In August, the French public prosecutor started a preliminary inquiry into allegations that the NSA spied on French citizens with its Prism program.
Microsoft is almost ready to put Windows XP out to pasture, but the popular operating system refuses to die. The latest worldwide numbers from Net Applications show Windows XP market share actually grew by 0.25 percentage points in January, compared to the month previous.
This is the first time Windows XP has gained in market share based on Net Applications’ freely available data, which reaches back to 2009.
We’ve dropped a line to Net Applications to see if the company has any explanation about why Windows XP might have bounced back in January, and we’ll update this story accordingly.
With the deadline for Windows XP’s end of life looming in April, it’s tempting to see the old system’s apparent resurgence as an embarrassment for Microsoft as Windows 8 stumbles in the market place. But could there be another, less sinister reason for the bounce?
In December 2013, the browser usage numbers from Net Applications showed Windows XP with a 28.98 market share. But check out the next pie chart…
The surge may not be real
First, if you look at the top of Net Applications’ report for January 2014 it says, “This report contains preview data that has NOT been reviewed by Quality Assurance.” So there’s that.Also, StatCounter, a a competing metrics service, registered a 0.64 percent decline for Windows XP during the same time. So who should we believe?
Perhaps neither. There are problems with how Net Applications and StatCounter measure market share. Both companies rely on browser hits to determine OS popularity, so the companies are really counting the number of Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 computers that go online during a given month.
That method may be generally accurate since today’s PCs (including Windows XP machines) are essentially web browsing machines. But when you’re looking at modest gains for a particular flavor of Windows, relying on browser data may not be perfectly trustworthy.
One month later, Windows XP shows a modest surge, possibly explained by people digging out old machines from closets to work on them before the XPocalypse.
But what if it’s true?
Assuming Net Applications is spot on, it’s also easy to see why a bunch of Windows XP machines might suddenly go online. As I wrote above, Windows XP’s end of life is just around the corner on April 8. When that happens, Microsoft will cease delivering security patches for the system.
So enterprises and small businesses may be yanking old Windows XP machines out of closets, warehouses, and backrooms as they take stock of company hardware and any data stored on antiquated computers.
Factor in curious home users wondering if they can upgrade their machine to Windows 8 or install a Linux variant on their aging hardware, and it’s easy to see where the modest uptick came from.
That’s all speculation mind you, but it makes a certain amount of sense.
The XP problem
Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that Windows XP still has a massive install base, second only to Windows 7. It’s likely there will still be a huge user base for Windows XP later in 2014, and tech companies are preparing to support the system in a limited fashion after April.
To help out Windows XP users who refuse to quit, Google will support Chrome for Windows XP until April 2015. And Microsoft says Windows XP’s anti-malware engine will continue to get updates until July 14, 2015. But security software can only detect malware attacks, and won’t permanently fix any critical flaws after April 8—and there will be flaws in Windows XP, bet on it.
If you do plan on sticking with the aging OS, we’ve just published a primer on what you should do to remain as safe as possible with Windows XP. But if you’re able to quit the system, you should do so very soon.
The planned overhaul of the European Union’s copyright laws has been set back by a month as a public consultation was extended.
The European Commission had asked for feedback by Feb. 5, but following strong lobbying from all sides, has decided to extend that to March 5. The internal market department said that some interested parties had asked for more time to finalize and submit their contributions. The E.U. faces problems with the cross-border provision of services. Not all online services are available to consumers in all member states. In some instances, even if the “same” service is available in all E.U. countries, consumers can’t access the service across borders. “They can only access their ‘national’ service, and if they try to access the ‘same’ service in another member state they are redirected to the one designated for their country of residence,” reads a Commission document.
The consultation comprises 80 technical questions leading some critics to say that it is beyond the understanding of the average citizen.
Question 11 asks if the provision of a hyperlink leading to a work or other subject matter protected under copyright should be subject to the authorization of the rightholder. Question 12 asks if viewing a webpage “where this implies the temporary reproduction of a work protected under copyright on the screen and in the cache memory of the user’s computer should be subject to the authorisation of the rightholder.”
Other questions ask respondents if they have faced restrictions when trying to resell legally-purchased digital files such as MP3s or ebooks.
“It is a well known fact that these types of consultations are often only answered by the ‘usual suspects’, namely advocacy organizations that closely follow the copyright discussions and hence do not feel daunted by the extreme technical nature of the questions,” said Caroline De Cock, coordinator of the Copyright for Creativity Coalition (C4C).
LIBER, an organization that represents the library community, has also created a guide to help people answer the consultation. “Responding to the consultation is critical because its outcomes will affect anyone who works with researchers, or who cares about future library services and access to cultural heritage,” said the organization in a statement.
The consultation has since received thousands of responses. Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier said on Twitter on Friday that there had been “strong interest” in the consultation.
He was scheduled to make a presentation on the subject on Wednesday, but that is now thought to be postponed.
Meanwhile the European Parliament is expected to formally adopt Tuesday a new law on collective management for copyright and related rights and multi—territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the E.U. Although the Commission says this Collective Rights Management Directive is a welcome step in the right direction, it says the consultation is necessary in order to further improve copyright for the Internet Age.
IDG NEWS SERVICE – Google Now is moving out of the lab and onto the desktop in the beta version of Chrome.
Starting this week, Chrome beta users can view Google Now “cards” within the notifications area on Windows, Mac, and Chrome OS. The cards should show up automatically if you’re already using Google Now on Android or iOS, and have signed into Chrome with the same Google account.
Google Now is a virtual assistant that tries to anticipate the information you want, such as the weather, traffic, travel details, and upcoming reservations. Much of that information is based on activity from your Google account. For example, Google Now can detect flight confirmations in Gmail and notify you about any delays; it can also look at your Web searches to infer what breaking news topics you’d be interested in.
The service first launched for Android in 2012, making its way to the iPhone last April as part of the Google Search app. There have been hints of a desktop version since early last year; last month, it finally launched as an experimental feature—not enabled by default—within Chrome Canary. While the feature rolls out to the Chrome beta channel this week, it’s already available through theChrome dev channel.
The arrival of Google Now is the search giant’s biggest step yet toward a convergence of Chrome and Android. Google has said that it won’t merge the two platforms anytime soon, but that it wants to have a more consistent experience across both platforms. Along that line, Google recently started letting Chrome developers create standalone Web apps for Android.
Having Google Now in Chrome could be useful for certain things, such as traffic on your upcoming commute or reminders of when to leave for your next appointment. But it could also be a nuisance for less important things such as sports scores.
If you’d rather not see Google Now notifications, click the bell icon in your notification area (lower-right corner in Windows, upper-right on Macs), then click the gear icon in the Notifications Center and uncheck the “Google Now” box.
IDG NEWS SERVICE – If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, might the folks in Cupertino be pleased when they see the latest version of North Korea’s home-grown operating system?
Version 3.0 of Red Star Linux presents users with a radical refresh of its desktop design, one that closely resembles Mac OS X. The new look replaces the Windows 7-like desktop that was used in version 2.0 of the software. The Korea Computer Center (KCC), a major software development center in Pyongyang, began developing Red Star about a decade ago. Version 2 is 3 years old and version 3 appears to have been released in the middle of last year.
The world has gotten its first look at version 3 thanks to Will Scott, a computer scientist who recently spent a semester teaching at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). The school is North Korea’s first foreign-funded university and many of the lecturers come from overseas.
Scott said he bought the operating system at a KCC dealer in the capital city and the screenshots he provided were of the basic version 3 software without any modifications.
While most North Koreans are restricted from accessing the Internet, many can get access to a nationwide intranet through universities and public libraries. The intranet offers websites for domestic institutions and is heavily skewed towards offering information, educational materials such as PDF versions of books and scientific papers, and government propaganda.
Red Star Linux includes a web browser based on Mozilla that has been re-branded “Naenara,” or “My country.”
It also includes a copy of Wine, a Linux application that provides an environment under which Windows software can be run.
Is longer a secret, it’s been over a decade since Windows XP came into being. It’s true, time has changed; newer technologies has been introduced, even the guys up there are already getting tired of it. Yet, I want to stick with Window XP.
What you are asking for is quite a difficult one. Microsoft has already decided to end it’s support for the OS come April, 2014 and to continue using it, will open your PC to various security vulnerability. Psst! Listen to my brief advice and implement it with caution. I really understand why you might not be able to give up your Windows XP. Your business may depend on a specialized application that won’t run on Windows 7 or 8. Or you may not be able to afford a new PC and your old one isn’t powerful enough for an upgrade. Perhaps you’re just stubborn.
Reluctantly, I’m going to advise you on protecting a Windows XP computer after Microsoft’s updates stop. But I give this advice with a warning: This is not perfect protection. You’ll be better off giving up on XP.If you absolutely can’t or won’t give up XP, consider disconnecting that particular PC from the Internet. Use it the old-fashioned way: as a truly personal computer with no connection to the outside world. Then buy another PC or a tablet for email and browsing.
If that isn’t practical, follow these suggestions to make your XP computer more secure:
Get a full security suite: A simple antivirus program won’t be enough. Buy a heavy-duty suite with a two-way firewall and exploit protection in addition to antivirus. I like Kaspersky Internet Security, but there are several solid security suites, as we found in our recent roundup.
Get a second opinion: Now that you have a powerful security suite, don’t trust it. Augment your regular antivirus program with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free. Run it once a week to scan for malware that your suite may have missed.
Use Firefox or Chrome: An out-of-date browser is an open door for malware, and any version of Internet Explorer that runs on XP is very out of date indeed. But the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome can still run on your machine.
Protect your browser: Scripts are a dangerous malware delivery system, and the right browser add-ins can block them. And yes, you can tell the add-ins to make exceptions and allow scripts from sites that you trust. If you use Firefox, install NoScript Security Suite. For Chrome, go with NotScripts.
And remember that eventually, the security suites and browsers will stop supporting XP, as well. This can’t go on forever.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/mHXbQ4PeNLI?feature=player_embedded On Sunday night, about 110 million people turned on their TVs to watch a series of lavish, expensively produced 30-second skits interspersed with live footage of men throwing a ball around. Fox Sports charged up to $4.5 million for each ad spot this year, with companies like Anheuser-Busch, Chevrolet, and Pepsi coughing the record-breaking figure. But one of the most notable ads was created by a 15-person tech startup called GoldieBlox, which makes engineering toys for little girls. The San Francisco-based company announced four days ago that it won Intuit’s Small Business, Big Game challenge, landing one of the year’s most coveted advertising spots.
(GoldieBlox’s Super Bowl ad also helps distract from its legal battle with the Beastie Boys, who are suing the company for using an unauthorized parody of “Girls.” The Super Bowl ad played a cover of “Cum Feel The Noize” by Slade that was, presumably, licensed and paid for.)
It’s extremely unusual for such a small company to advertise during the Super Bowl, but what makes GoldieBlox’s spot, which features a hoard of little girls turning their boring pink toys into a rocket and launching it into space, especially interesting is that it serves as an antidote to the outrageous sexism constantly on display in each Super Bowl’s commercials. Of course, it also gives Intuit a chance to boost its image without having to figure out how to make a commercial about tax software interesting.
It’s still too early to tell which ads will make this year’s list of the worst offenders, but based on Twitter reactions, SodaStream and Volkswagen are in the running to earn that dubious distinction. Here’s a list of last year’s creepiest spots, including Carl’s Jr’s desperate attempt to make fish sandwiches sexy.
Some consolidation in the world of mobile commerce. Monitise, a UK-based company that works with the likes of Visa to build and roll out mobile payment solutions, has acquired mobile commerce technology provider Pozitron for $100 million in an all-share deal. This is about inorganic expansion: Pozitron is based in Istanbul, Turkey and is most active in its home market and the Middle East, two regions where Monitise has been less strong.
Other acquisitions at Monitise to push geographic expansion have included Clairmail in 2012 for $173 million to expand into the U.S. market. It’s not the only one: in 2011, Visa acquired Fundamo for $110 million to expand into Africa and other developing world markets.
“This acquisition of Pozitron further reinforces our leading position as a global technology enabler at the heart of the Mobile Money ecosystem,” Monitise Group Chief Executive Alastair Lukies said in a statement. “It comes at a time when we are seeing increasing demand for interoperable Mobile Money services as payments become more digital by the day, not only in Turkey, Europe and the Middle East but also around the world.”
Mobile payments is still a relatively nascent part of the world of commerce. In the U.S., although there were some $4.6 trillion in transactions made in 2013, only around $150 billion were made via mobile devices, according to the Electronic Transactions Association. The thinking here is to tap into the already-strong market ($150b being nothing to sniff at) while positioning for a time when mobile will hold a much larger share.
Pozitron says that it works with some 30 enterprises in telecoms, retail and pharmaceuticals with Turkish Airlines, eBay, ING, BNP Paribas, GlaxoSmithKline and Hepsiburada.com (“Turkey’s equivalent to Amazon”) among its customers, along with a number of large, regional banks. For its part, Monitise says some 24 million consumers use solutions based on its technology, which lets them ‘bank anywhere’, ‘pay anyone’ and ‘buy anything’. Some $50 billion in transactions pass through its systems every year.
Pozitron, founded in 2000, is not your typical startup in Silicon Valley fashion: it had no venture backing (“no VCs” in the words of Monitise’s spokesperson) and is being acquired as a “profitable, debt free” company, but with only $3.8 million in cash. One of its biggest shareholders was it co-founder and CEO, Fatih İşbecer, who now becomes CEO, Middle East & Africa at Monitise. All 130 employees are coming over along with the deal.
It’s a very good news story for the startup scene in Turkey all the same. With the country seen as the doorway to doing business across the Islamic world, VCs like Earlybird are now jumping in with two feet: the Berlin-based investor recently closed a $130 million fund to back startups in Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe.
The details of the deal lay out that the $100 million will only be payable after three years: Monitise will pay £24 million initially based on Monitise’s closing share price of 66.5p on Friday 31 January, 2014, and will then give a three-year earn-out of up to £36 million based on achieving “aggressive” performance targets.
We got an information from a reliable source that IBM is currently looking for a program manager for Central East West Africa and North Africa Diversity. Applicants must attain the qualifications stated in the job details below.
Job description
The Diversity Program Manager has responsibility for engaging with the Country General Manager, HR Leader, the broader HR team and Diversity stakeholders to define the diversity business case; to formulate the strategy and oversee actions that deliver results in line with the global diversity and inclusion strategy; to understand and implement all Equal Opportunity (EO) compliance requirements that are in line with IBM global strategy and local country/region legislation. In this role the individual is responsible as the geo focal point for planning and hands-on executing on all global and local constituencies/ EO focus areas as they relate to CEWA(Central East West Africa) and NA(North Africa).
Key Responsibilities
To maintain a close relationship with the HR team on Diversity and EO related matters
Ensure the Diversity and EO Strategy is executed in line with Diversity and EO Function expectation
Provide Subject matter expert (SME) support to council executive sponsors for internal and external diversity meetings
Provide SME support for Diversity-related EO compliance requirements to local management team
Facilitate and support Business Resource Groups
Where applicable, manage and support the Global work-life fund dependent care programmes
Accountable for constituency/ focus area budget allocation /tracking/forecast and assessing return on investments
Accountable for Management Self-Assessment (MSA) submission and EO/business controls documentation. Ensure tight Business controls execution and to comply with IBM internal control requirements
Provide diversity metrics as required by clients with support from CEE(Central East Europe)/MEA(Middle East Africa) Diversity Leader
Develop a full-year Diversity event schedule in collaboration stakeholders
In collaboration with the region and country teams manage branding in marketplace including events, awards, advertising, board appointments, government recognition at an Country level
Ensure integration of diversity into all core HR Functions: recruiting, Business and , Technical Leadership, Recruitment, Learning and other Talent programmes
Requirement
Bachelor’s Degree
At least 3 years experience in Client management – to build collaborative relationships with key clients to drive positive outcomes for diversity and inclusion strategy in CEWA and North Africa
At least 3 years experience in Strong project and programme management techniques
At least 3 years experience in Implementing HR Programs and Policies and Strategies
At least 3 years experience in analysing financial reports related to diversity spending and analyse employee data as applicable to prioritised Diversity areas
At least 3 years experience in EO compliance legislation in CEWA and NA is essential. Demonstrated ability and experience to plan and execute Diversity-related initiatives to mitigate compliance risk
English: Fluent
Preferred Requirement
At least 4 years experience in Client management – to build collaborative relationships with key clients to drive positive outcomes for diversity and inclusion strategy in CEWA and North Africa
At least 4 years experience in Strong project and programme management techniques
At least 4 years experience in Implementing HR Programs and Policies and Strategies
At least 4 years experience in analysing financial reports related to diversity spending and analyse employee data as applicable to prioritised Diversity areas
At least 4 years experience in EO compliance legislation in CEWA and NA is essential. Demonstrated ability and experience to plan and execute Diversity-related initiatives to mitigate compliance risk
IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.
Part of the problem with any powerful technology is how it is perceived. It might be something that is too early for its time or it may just need those years of development and use for the market to catch up to its potential. That is true of graph databases like Neo4j, which now has a new graphical interface that helps people map relationships between different people, places or things.
There is one simple way to think about graph databases, said Emil Eifrem, CEO of Neo Technology and one of the original developers of the graph database technology. And that is to explore how graph databases treat relationships as first-class citizens. The knowledge is all about relationships. When more connections are made, the view fills out. Graph databases find the relationships, the missing pieces that help form connections.
Graphs databases are still known by relatively few people, but they are gaining acceptance as the use cases increase. The reasons are clear when you consider how much data is now getting created. With that scaling comes a growing demand for new types of analytics capabilities.
Graph databases are becoming more popular for the varied amounts of data they aggregate and analyze. They treat everything as a node. That might be things like a street light or people. The properties of a graph database describe the nodes. A graph database also has “edges” that connect the nodes and properties, defining the relationship between them. The value is derived when analyzing the patterns between the nodes and the properties.
Neo Technology has put a heavy emphasis on the user interface to make it more accessible and easier to query and build graphs from large data sets. It took the developers 10 years to get to Neo4j 1.0, said Eifrem. They built it to be fully transactional and ACID compliant, meaning transactions are processed reliably. But it lacked a decent user interface. So that became the focus as they developed the 2.0 release.
In this new version, the goal is to make it possible for developers to create their own recommendation engines using visual guides and simple queries. Cypher, the query language, has been updated and streamlined, making it more accessible to someone like a business analyst. It also now supports labels that refer to subsets of nodes in a graph, introducing a form of schema into the technology. This means that the data can be indexed better, allowing the developer to tell the database more about the data. https://www.youtube.com/embed/qbZ_Q-YnHYo?feature=player_embedded
Snap-Interactive uses Neo4j to build social graphs that find the patterns in the data to recommend potential matches on dating sites. Graph databases also apply to network and data center management. A cloud infrastructure, for example, is a connected system. The shape of the data can help track the root cause analysis of a data center outage.
Neo4j is the most popular graph database, said Matt Aslett, a research director for data management and analytics at 451 Research. But these are early days and there are competitors like Objectivity and established providers such as Teradata that have layered a graph capability to its Aster database.
Orchestrate takes a different approach, Aslett said. They are doing it in reverse. They have a single API that allows the user to sync multiple databases with its service that has a graph capability. It does not layer on top of the existing database. Instead, it syncs with the existing database. In Orchestrate they get the graph capability, which is connected to the pre-existing database.
Time To Visualize
Data has been locked up in rows and columns on a spreadsheet for years but that has to change as we increasingly need to visualize what the data means. There is just too much of it for our minds to comprehend unless it is shown in some way through pictures and graphics.
The visualization in Neo4j helps show the relationships between different data sets that you can’t get by only looking at the code. This visualization capability is supported with Cypher, the query language developed by Neo4j. Each query represents an interaction that is shown in the visualization.
Traditional SQL engines are not meant to collect data and seek out relationships. They are instead designed more for transaction-oriented systems. Graph databases handle the loads with far more ease as they model, store and query the data. Everything is connected. A relational database will often deteriorate in performance over time as the data set grows. It may be a result of joined tables or queries that rely on joins. This can make it quite slow as opposed to a graph database that is densely connected and easily queried.
As sensors become more widely used in wearables such as Google Glass, the demand for graph databases will increase. It will be important to correlate the data from any number of sensors that might be in a house, a car or city street. There will also be the need to analyze increasing amounts of text from medical records, contracts, etc.
It will be a long time before relational databases ebb into oblivion. But their role is no longer universal. Graph databases are here to stay and for now Neo4j is setting the standard for the rest of the market.
“There is a tipping point but that will take some time,” Aslett said.
If you are residing within Australia, Nigeria, India, Russia or anywhere else around the world, wanting to own a U.S bank account or localized accounts in EURO, CHY, GBP and JPY. The Payoneer service is a secure and convenient service that allows you to send and receive funds globally.
This is nothing like PayPal or the likes. These are fully functional bank accounts in your name. You can withdraw your funds from an ATM or make payments online with your Payoneer debit card.
Payoneer debit card
As a resident of Nigeria (or any other country) you can own a U.S Checking Account that provides you with a US collection account that can be used to receive payments from US companies directly to your Payoneer account.
These payments can be withdrawn using your Payoneer debit card or used to make other payments online.
Payoneer Global Payment Service
Furthermore, Payoneer allows account holders to own, receive and make payments in other localised currencies using the Global Payment Service.
There are two types of receiving accounts:
Local receiving accounts – let you get paid by local bank transfer from companies in different countries as if you had a local bank account in that country. Receiving local accounts include:
USD Receiving Account (United States)
EUR Receiving Account (Europe)
GBP Receiving Account (United Kingdom)
CHY Receiving Account (People’s Republic of China)
JPY Receiving Account (Japan)
Wire (SWIFT) receiving accounts – let you get paid by wire transfer worldwide. You can use wire (SWIFT) receiving accounts to receive payments from companies located in countries where local receiving accounts aren’t supported.
Payoneer Debit Card
Payoneer allows you to receive ACH / Direct Deposit transfers from cooperate organizations such as eBay, Fiverr, Amazon, Upwork, etc. The debit card makes it easy and convenient to perform various transactions online such as purchasing or paying for services online and can be used in any ATM globally that accepts MasterCard.
You can request for a separate debit card for all your currencies. Depending on your location, your debit card is shipped between 2-5 weeks.
Setting Up your Payoneer Account
Creating a Payoneer account is easy. You can start by simply creating an account on the Payoneer website. But the easiest method to get your account approved and verified is going through a third party.
Co-operations such as Amazon, SeoClerks and Fiverr allows you to receive funds through your Payoneer account. Hence, providing you with a unique link to setup of your Payoneer account. In this tutorial, I will be walking you through on how to setup your U.S bank account and get your Payoneer card using Infolinks.
A scanned copy of a government-issued ID (any of Driving licence, Passport, National ID or Voter’s Card will be fine)
Setting Up your Infolinks Publisher’s Account
Infolinks is a media advertisement partner that allows you to share advertisement revenue by implementing the infolinks publisher code on your website or blog. If you don’t already own one, proceed to Gmail to create a free email account. Then visit Blogger.com to start a free blog powered by Google.
When all is set, proceed to Infolinks Publisher’s account setup, and enter your website/blog (e.g. website.blogspot.com) address in the specified input box. FIll the remaining info and complete the setup by implementing the Infolinks code on your website/blog (See how to add custom widget on Blogger to add your Infolinks code on the Blogger platform).
Request your Payoneer Debit Card
I believe you have already setup your email address and created an Infolinks publisher’s account. Now, proceed to your Infolinks payment setting:
Enter your contact details and click next
Select Payoneer pre-paid debit card as your payment method
Immediately beneath this area, you will find a notification box prompting you that no Payoneer account is associated with your infolinks account. Kindly, follow the Creat account link and fill the form at the Payoneer website. This process will require your email address and a government issued ID. If you do not have any of driving licence, national id or passport you can select National ID and use your voters’s card later.
Note: Ensure that your billing address is valid and correct. To be on the safer side, visit the nearest post office to get details of your mailing address.
At this point a confirmation message will be sent to your email. Sit back and wait for 2-5 business days for your Payoneer account to be reviewed and approved.
Once your account is approved you will receive a congratulation email!
Your Payoneer Debit card will arrive your mailing address within 2-5 weeks. Once you receive it, you can proceed to your Payoneer account to view your status and activate your card.
Setting Up your U.S Bank Account
A free U.S checking account will be created for you the moment your debit card request is approved. This account is used to receive payments from US companies directly to your Payoneer account.
Check your email inbox for an email from [email protected] containing the following message:
Dear FirstName,
Welcome to the Payoneer US Payment Service.
This service provides you with a US collection account that can be used to receive payments from US companies directly to your Payoneer account!
Your US Payment Service information: BANK NAME: Bank Of America ACCOUNT TYPE: CHECKING ACCOUNT #: ***-***-***-***-***-*** ABA # (Bank Routing Number): ####-##### Please Note: Your US Payment Service has not yet been verified. In order to ensure that payments you receive are funded to your account without delay, you’ll need to verify your service by completing the following steps:
Click here to complete the US Payment Service Questionnaire Click here to submit a copy of your government-issued photo ID
Kindly, follow the links provided in the email to submit your US Payment Questionnaire and a scanned copy of your government-issued photo ID respectively.
Wait for a message similar to this one:
Congratulations! Your U.S Bank Account is ready to be used. You can use this account to receive funds from various U.S co-operation including Paypal and Amazon.
Need Help?
If you want us to help you setup your U.S Checking Account or request for a Payoneer debit card. Contact us here.
The global innovation company headquartered in Armonk, NY is looking for an IT Specialist/Architect for it’s branch in Lagos.
The job is available for holder of Technical Diploma and equivalent. Full job details are provided below.
Job description
Lab Services IT Specialist /Architect Enterprise Content Management : SWG (Soft Ware Group)Services specialist with deep skills in one or more of the following areas : SWG Services specialist with deep skills in one or more of the following areas : WebSphere Application Server, MQ, Message Broker/WebSphere Enterprise Service bus (IIB) or equivalent product area, The person should have experience performing complex installations, Tuning, troubleshooting, architecture, solutioning, estimation, scoping, implementation, client communication
The candidates should executed a minimum of one project in any one of the above products or equivalent non IBM Product Should be willing to travel at short notice, will involve upto 50% travel Local pay scale Experience in banking and telco domain will be desirable
Responsible for the solution construction, implementation and systems integration, delivering high quality solutions to clients in response to varying business requirements. Tasks performed include integrating hardware, software, and network solutions. Identify project requirements, developing solution delivery, which may include vendors and subcontractors. Apply their IT Specialist skills in an internal or external customer billable services and implementation environment. IT Specialist – Technical Solutions Support Specialist Responsible for the support of solutions, implementation and systems integration, delivering high quality solutions to clients in response to varying business requirements. Tasks performed include integrating hardware, software, and network solutions. Identify project requirements, developing solution delivery, which may include vendors and subcontractors. Apply their IT Specialist skills to support the operation and maintenance of customer solutions. Responsible for providing IT services in a billable project/engagement or providing technical support in a sales organization. As an individual contributor or member of a team, performs a technical role in support of the solution construction, implementation, and system integration in a technology/industry specialty or product sales. The IT Specialist assists in delivery of high quality solutions to clients in response to specific business requirements. Develops technical skills and absorbs professional knowledge quickly. Performs assigned technical tasks including study, analysis, programming, product installation. The IT Specialist has specific product, technology, or industry-related specialized skills and works with proposals, requirements, designs, implementations and production projects/engagements. May use tools to analyze and implement portions of a customer solution.
Required
Technical Diploma
At least 1 year experience in Basic Understanding of the zOS Platform
At least 1 year experience in 1st line support to zOS customers
English: Fluent
Preferred
At least 2 years experience in Basic Understanding of the zOS Platform
At least 2 years experience in 1st line support to zOS customers
IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.Apply Now or View Company’s Profile
Starting from December last year, Google has acquired at least six robots companies or companies creating technologies used in the development of robotics. The acquisition of Boston Dynamic (the creators of Big Dog) on December last year and the recent acquisition of DeepMind Technologies has made a few people to wonder about Google’s actual intentions for buying all those robots.
Former Google Android lead and current Google Robot Guru Andy Rubin‘s list of acquired companies reads a bit like a baseline robot kit:
While we are well aware of Google’s interest in self-driving cars, the robot end-game is unclear. Sure, you can build an army of C-3POs, but for what?
Well, robots are excellent at repetitive tasks, like changing the settings on millions of computers so that they have Google.com as their home page and Google as their default search engine. Would these Google Robots invade homes to make the change or would Google offer it as a service? Send us your computer and our robots will “fix” them.
No one knows. Until then, I offer you the comic guesswork above.
Microsoft’s cloud chief, Satya Nadella, will lead the company as its next chief executive, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Microsoft’s board is “preparing to name” Nadella chief executive, Bloomberg reported Thursday afternoon. Nadella, whose official title is executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, had been one of the front-runners in the race to replace current chief executive Steve Ballmer, who said last August that he planned to step down within a year.
But the board is also considering replacing Bill Gates as chairman of the company, Bloomberg reported, ousting the company’s co-founder and possibly replacing him with John Thompson, Microsoft’s lead independent director. If Gates is to go, as PCWorld suggested last year, it would remove two of Microsoft’s iconic employees from the software giant.
The problem with replacing Ballmer or Gates, is that no one executive at Microsoft has traversed the range of the company’s products, which include consumer businesses like the Xbox, cloud services such as Azure, the company’s Windows business, server and development services like Visual Studio, and an emerging mobile business, too.
Nadella, 44, is an Indian-born engineer with degrees in electronics, computer science (from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee), and business administration (from the University of Chicago). Nadella has worked since 1992 at Microsoft, and is credited with launching BizTalk, Microsoft’s Commerce Server, and Microsoft’s Office Small Business products.
However, Nadella is most famous for having overseen Microsoft’s online initiatives, where he transformed Windows Live Search into Bing. The market share for Microsoft’s search offering stands at 18.2 percent, according to Microsoft’s recent earnings.
One problem that naysayers point to: Nadella has no experience as a chief executive, unlike internal rivals like Tony Bates, who ran Skype, and external candidates like Alan Mulally of Ford, who took himself out of the running in early January, saying he was committed to Ford.
So far, Ballmer’s commitment has been to a “devices and services” strategy. If Nadella is named CEO, its unclear whether he’d commit to that direction. On the other hand, his track record indicates that he can fulfill at least one half of that strategy.
Google Now is a virtual assistant that tries to anticipate the information you want, such as the weather, traffic, travel details, and upcoming reservations. Much of that information is based on activity from your Google account. For example, Google Now can detect flight confirmations in Gmail and notify you about any delays; it can also look at your Web searches to infer what breaking news topics you’d be interested in.
