Friday, 28 November 2014
QUADRATIC EQUATION CALCULATION APP
You will love this!
A lightweight app designed to solve Quadratic equations. It can also tell if the equation can be factorised to a perfect square!
in addition, it has a surprise feature for Nigerian Students - it speaks and understands Pidgin English. Click the link below to download now (about 6MB)
http://depositfiles.com/files/x4px7nx4y
A lightweight app designed to solve Quadratic equations. It can also tell if the equation can be factorised to a perfect square!
in addition, it has a surprise feature for Nigerian Students - it speaks and understands Pidgin English. Click the link below to download now (about 6MB)
http://depositfiles.com/files/x4px7nx4y
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
Recharge your phone in 30 seconds? Israeli firm says it can
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| © Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters A lab worker disconnects from a charger a mobile phone, displaying timer indicating that battery was fully charged under 30 seconds, in Tel Aviv. |
Using nano-technology to synthesize artificial molecules, Tel Aviv-based StoreDot says it has developed a battery that can store a much higher charge more quickly, in effect acting like a super-dense sponge to soak up power and retain it.
While the prototype is currently far too bulky for a mobile phone, the company believes it will be ready by 2016 to market a slim battery that can absorb and deliver a day's power for a smartphone in just 30 seconds.
"These are new materials, they have never been developed before," said Doron Myersdorf, the founder and chief executive of StoreDot, whose investors include Russian billionaire and Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich.
The innovation is based around the creation of "nanodots", which StoreDot describes as bio-organic peptide molecules. Nanodots alter the way a battery behaves to allow the rapid absorption and, critically, the retention of power.
The company has raised $48 million from two rounds of funding, including backing from a leading mobile phone maker. Myersdorf declined to name the company, but said it was Asian.
With the number of smartphone users forecast to reach 1.75 billion this year, StoreDot sees a big market, and some experts think that -- with more work -- it could be on to a winner.
"We live in a power hungry world ... people are constantly chasing a power outlet. StoreDot has the potential to solve this real big problem," said Zack Weisfeld, who has worked with and evaluated ventures in the mobile phone sector globally.
"They still have some way to go, to deal with size of battery and power cycle rounds, but if solvable, it's a very big breakthrough," he told Reuters. A power cycle round refers to the number of times a battery can be re-charged in its lifetime.
Myersdorf said a fast-charge phone would cost $100-$150 more than current models and would ultimately be able to handle 1,500 recharge/discharge cycles, giving it about three years of life.
He hopes to use the same technology to create a car battery that recharges in two or three minutes, rather than current models which commonly need to be charged overnight.
(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Luke Baker and Mark Potter)
SOURCE: MSN
People Are Flipping Out Over This Super-Sophisticated Spy Software
Symantec believes Regin was likely created for cyber espionage purposes by a nation state, although it didn't suggest which government was responsible for it.
“Regin is a complex piece of malware whose structure displays a degree of technical competence rarely seen,” Symantec wrote in a report published on Sunday. “Its capabilities and the level of resources behind Regin indicate that it is one of the main cyberespionage tools used by a nation state.”
Symantec says Regin was first detected in 2008, but disappeared three years later, only to resurface in 2013. Regin has attacked all kinds of businesses, including telecoms, hospitality, and airlines, but nearly half of it targeted private individuals and small businesses. Russia and Saudi Arabia were the two hardest hit countries, each accounting for 28% and 24% of the attacks respectively, but it’s also been spotted in Mexico, Ireland, and India.
In a follow up report on Monday, another IT security lab, Kaspersky Labs, said it’s been tracking Regin for the past two years. It said the victims of Regin were mostly seen in telecom operators, government institutions, multinational political bodies, or financial/research institutions. It says the two main objectives of the attacks were “intelligence gathering” and “facilitating other types of attacks,” with 14 countries being identified as victims of Regin so far. Like Symantec, Kaspersky concluded, it’s likely Regin is “supported by a nation-state.”
Although none of the reports named which nation-state is likely responsible for Regin,Re/code pointed to a couple reports (by The Intercept and the Germany magazine Der Spiegel) as hinting that the NSA and the UK’s intelligence agency GCHQ may have a hand in it.
SOURCE: MSN
Twitter CFO Has Oops Moment by Mistakenly Tweeting About Deal
Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. has tripped up one of its top executives.
Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto yesterday publicly tweeted about a plan he has to buy a company, including how he wanted to help make the deal happen at a meeting in mid- December. The message was posted on the microblogging service before it was deleted, with Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser confirming that Noto was trying to send the message privately.
“I still think we should buy them,” Noto tweeted. “He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 -- we will need to sell him. I have a plan.”
It’s unclear who Noto was trying to send a message to or which company he’s interested in purchasing. Prosser declined to comment further.
The incident shows that even top members of Twitter’s executive team, who are on a mission to better explain the company’s product potential to Wall Street, sometimes have trouble using the service. The slip-up is so common that it has a name -- a “DM fail,” for “direct message fail.”
Such DM fails have happened on a relatively regular basis. In a high-profile Silicon Valley DM fail in 2010, startup investor Dave McClure mistakenly publicly tweeted that another Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, was throwing him under the bus over allegations that he was working with others to control the market for financing startups.
Early Adopter
Improving the way private and public messaging works is one of Twitter’s top goals for its product, executives said at a meeting with investors earlier this month.
Noto, previously a technology banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a former CFO at the National Football League, was an early adopter of Twitter, joining in 2009 when few other bankers used the service. Twitter has since become more acceptable in financial circles, especially when the Securities and Exchange Commission said in 2013 that it was an approved way for companies to distribute new information.
Noto took on the CFO role at Twitter in July. He led the San Francisco-based company’s effort to raise $1.8 billion in convertible debt in September, which Twitter said it would use so it can be opportunistic about dealmaking.
“Anthony’s ability to come up to speed quickly has been just delightful,” Twitter Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo said in an interview in October. “The rigor that he brings to everything he does is fantastic and causes everyone he works with to make sure they’re being just as rigorous as he is. It ups everyone’s game.”
(An earlier version of this story corrected the size of Twitter's debt offering.)
SOURCE: MSN
Smartphone Innovations Could Transform Health Care
Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Twitter Inc. has tripped up one of its top executives.
Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto yesterday publicly tweeted about a plan he has to buy a company, including how he wanted to help make the deal happen at a meeting in mid- December. The message was posted on the microblogging service before it was deleted, with Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser confirming that Noto was trying to send the message privately.
“I still think we should buy them,” Noto tweeted. “He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 -- we will need to sell him. I have a plan.”
It’s unclear who Noto was trying to send a message to or which company he’s interested in purchasing. Prosser declined to comment further.
The incident shows that even top members of Twitter’s executive team, who are on a mission to better explain the company’s product potential to Wall Street, sometimes have trouble using the service. The slip-up is so common that it has a name -- a “DM fail,” for “direct message fail.”
Such DM fails have happened on a relatively regular basis. In a high-profile Silicon Valley DM fail in 2010, startup investor Dave McClure mistakenly publicly tweeted that another Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, was throwing him under the bus over allegations that he was working with others to control the market for financing startups.
Early Adopter
Improving the way private and public messaging works is one of Twitter’s top goals for its product, executives said at a meeting with investors earlier this month.
Noto, previously a technology banker at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and a former CFO at the National Football League, was an early adopter of Twitter, joining in 2009 when few other bankers used the service. Twitter has since become more acceptable in financial circles, especially when the Securities and Exchange Commission said in 2013 that it was an approved way for companies to distribute new information.
Noto took on the CFO role at Twitter in July. He led the San Francisco-based company’s effort to raise $1.8 billion in convertible debt in September, which Twitter said it would use so it can be opportunistic about dealmaking.
“Anthony’s ability to come up to speed quickly has been just delightful,” Twitter Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo said in an interview in October. “The rigor that he brings to everything he does is fantastic and causes everyone he works with to make sure they’re being just as rigorous as he is. It ups everyone’s game.”
(An earlier version of this story corrected the size of Twitter's debt offering.)
Thursday, 20 November 2014
WhatsApp Adds Encryption to Secure Text Messages
If you’ve been worried just a bit about who may be able to read your text messages, the latest move from WhatsApp could help ease your concerns.
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| © andrey_l / Shutterstock encryption-key |
In what is likely the largest deployment of strong encryption technology ever, the Facebook-owned messaging service added the ability to encrypt the billions of messages sent by its half-billion users each day, making them virtually unreadable to would-be eavesdroppers, including government agencies. WhatsApp has added encryption technology called TextSecure developed by Open Whisper Systems, a team of open-source software developers. The move was announced in an Open Whisper blog post.
The latest version of WhatsApp for Android includes the technology for one-to-one messages. Support for group chats and media messages is still in development, as is support for other mobile platforms, like iOS. “We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default,” the firm said.
The addition of strong encryption will likely add some new threads to the larger policy discussion around the use of strong encryption by consumers in their everyday communications. Last month FBI Director James Comey strongly criticized Apple for implementing strong encryption on its iMessage platform, which runs on iPhones, iPads and Macs. In a speech last month Comey said the agency isn’t “always able to access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism.” He asked Apple and Google to reverse their stance on baking strong encryption into their messaging products, and also called for new laws to facilitate wiretapping.
One interesting encryption technique that TextSecure employs is the generation of a new key for every message, a technique called Forward Secrecy. That means even if eavesdroppers manage to break the key on one message, they have to go through the trouble to break the key for each additional message to capture an entire conversation. Typically conversations are encrypted to a single key exchanged between two users.
WhatsApp is used more widely outside the U.S. than within it, meaning its addition of strong encryption is likely to rankle law enforcement agencies in other countries, and of course the U.S. National Security Agency.
SOURCE: MSN
Messaging App Viber Takes A Step Into Social Networking With New Public Chats Feature
A lot of messaging apps have been highlighting how their services are a great way for people to directly communicate with their friends directly, in opposition to the bare-all nature of social networks like Facebook. But today Viber, the messaging app with 209 million users, is taking a different approach: it is launching Public Chats, giving users a way of using its direct messaging and voice services app to broadcast to the world at large.
Public Chats will see the introduction of live conversation streams — from celebrities, or as CEO Talmon Marco told me, other interesting people “like taxi drivers!” — that will be open for any follower to see, but not necessarily participate in. Users will only be able to jump in and talk in Public Chats if the account in question is in their contacts.
(And then, those comments will become a part of the public stream.)
It gives Viber, which was acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year for $900 million, a little social media spin, and at the same time helps differentiate it from the rest of the crowded messaging app pack, which is led by the likes of Facebook (Messenger: 500m users; WhatsApp: 600m); but also includes a number of other very popular apps like WeChat (600m users); Line; and many more.
Public Chats is launching with a list of “global celebrities” signed up, including Perez Hilton, YouTube sensation Tyler Oakley, singer-songwriter Pixie Lott, international DJ Paul van Dyk, digital fashion innovators Next Model Management, European football channel COPA90.
Speaking while in New York for one of the two events that Viber organised to announce this news (in NYC and London), Marco tells me that it’s been optimised first for Android devices but will work on other native Viber apps, versions 5.0 or higher. You select the Public Chats bar from the main menu, then the “compass” icon to find a list of available Public Chats to follow, then you follow them.
Marco would not comment directly on whether any of Public Chats’ early adopters are getting paid to be on the service but the process at least made it sound like some of them were signing up as another way of extending their social media reach to those who opt to use Viber as their communications platform of choice.
“We spoke with a bunch of people and some offered to participate,” he said. “Generally we are looking for those who can create interesting chats — not just celebs but others like taxi drivers or bloggers, people whose conversations we feel would be interesting.” And, presumably, okay with having their conversations, or a part of them, made public for 209 million people to see.
Right now, there is no option for everyone to enable their streams to become part of the public mix but those who feel their chats are Public Chat-worthy can email publicchats@viber.com and “We’ll take a look at it,” he says. “Our intention is to open the service more after it is rolled out. As a beta product we want to have greater control at first.”
For Viber, the motivation for doing this is two-fold. It’s about using popular people to bring more engagement to Viber, and more new users to the platform. But it’s also about differentiating itself from the mass of other messaging services out there.
“This is not Twitter,” he says. “The idea is that if you know Pixie Lott, she can add her to your Public Chat and the world can see” what you say to her, and what she says back to you.
To be clear, this is not about Viber finding ways of serving ads, Marco insists. Unlike Snapchat, which is pushing ahead on its advertising services, “We are not,” he says. “This is just additional content on Viber. There will be no ads in in Public Chats.”
Interestingly, that doesn’t preclude deals that brands might cut directly with Public Chatters, similar to what happens in Instagram or Twitter with certain stars using their feeds to promote certain products. “Of course, you can put in an ad if you want for, say, Coca-Cola. But it’s your content, your chat, and we are never going to introduce things like that ourselves.”
SOURCE: MSN
The Mac’s Second Act: From Obscurity to Ubiquity
When Apple announced its most recent earnings, the big surprise was the performance of a product which, while once synonymous with the whole company, had become a footnote to many: The Mac.
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| © Provided by Recode Original Apple Mac |
In fact, Mac sales in the quarter ended Sept. 30 were so strong that the venerable computer brand reached its best market share since 1995, and logged an 18 percent growth in revenue from the same quarter last year.
But, while the size of the quarterly jump was unexpected, nobody who has been paying attention should have been shocked. If you just look around you, at least in the U.S., it’s hard to miss the fact that the Mac has been on the rise for years. Whether at the office, at a coffee shop, a college campus, an airport or a conference, Macs seem to be everywhere today.
And for those of us who were around tech in the late 1990s, that’s pretty remarkable. Back then, the Mac had fallen far behind Windows machines, especially in software, and seemed doomed. People who used them were few and far between, and were viewed as, well, strange. Spotting a Mac in the wild was like spotting a rare bird.
In fact, in July 1997, just days after Steve Jobs became CEO to once again lead the company he co-founded, I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal that said: “… unless you’re emotionally devoted to the Mac, or are in a particular business or school market where the Mac’s advantages and specialized software make it a compelling choice, I can’t honestly advise you to buy another.”
Now I believe it’s the best line of computers on the market, and I consider one model in particular — the thin, light and rugged MacBook Air — to be the best consumer laptop ever made.
In short, the Macintosh computer, like Apple itself, stands as a stark contradiction to the idea that there are no second acts in American life.
The Mac’s rebound has its limits. Its sales are still dwarfed by those of Windows computers, partly because it’s a premium-priced machine. The least-expensive full-featured Mac, the 11-inch MacBook Air, starts at $899. By contrast, you can get an acceptable, full-featured Windows PC for $300 to $600.
The original MacBook Air was debuted in an office envelope.
And Apple today isn’t mainly a Mac maker. Its principal product is the iPhone, which accounts for the vast majority of its revenue and profits, and of its public identity.
The Mac is a $24 billion annual business, which is quite large by most standards. But the iPhone was a $102 billion business in fiscal 2014, both up 12 percent from the prior year.
Still, the rebirth of the Mac has been amazing, especially among younger users, tech-savvy people, and influential groups like journalists and public figures. If, like me, you do a lot of public speaking, it’s not unusual to look out over an audience and see rows and rows of glowing Apple icons on the upturned lids of laptops, and only a handful of Windows PCs.
As the computer market has gone through its worst stretch ever, with sales in recent years flat or declining, the Mac has been the exception. Apple says it has gained market share for 33 of the last 34 quarters.
That doesn’t mean that the majority of computers around are Macs. Far from it. But even walking into a room and noticing that, say, a third of the laptops are Macs, is a sight that I, and many others, wouldn’t have thought possible 17 years ago.
Apple reported that, for its fiscal fourth quarter ending Sept. 27, it sold 5.5 million Macs, up from about 4.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Analyst firm IDC says Apple took 6.9 percent of the worldwide PC market, becoming the No. 5 vendor globally. And it reached 13.4 percent of the U.S. market, becoming the third-biggest-selling computer line here. That’s well below Hewlett-Packard, at 28 percent, and Dell, at 24 percent, but a triumph for a computer for which consumers typically spend more than $1,000.
Interestingly, considering its high price, Apple claimed that Mac sales were especially strong in emerging markets.
Contrast that with the situation in December 1997, when CNET reported IDC figures showing that Apple had sunk to eighth place from fifth worldwide, and to ninth place from fifth in the U.S. Worldwide sales had plummeted 31 percent, while the PC market as a whole had risen 16 percent.
“The Mac is still really important to us,” says Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Yes, we care about iPhones and iPads, and the new Apple Watch. But we care about the Mac just as much.”
I attribute the rebirth of the Mac to three main factors: Steve Jobs, the Internet, and blunders by Microsoft.
Jobs saved the Mac in several ways. First, he cut most of the confusing plethora of Mac models, killed non-Mac products like the Newton and printers, and focused on building just one good laptop and desktop for consumers, and one good laptop and desktop for “pro” users, like graphic designers.
Second, he replaced the Mac’s by-then-antiquated operating system with a modern, powerful software platform called OS X, which is still in use. This move allowed the Mac to compete head to head with Windows, which had become polished and powerful.
Third, he drastically overhauled the hardware, introducing the iMac and MacBook lines, which were hits that were widely emulated throughout the industry.
Early iMac
Fourth, he moved the Mac to standard Intel processors, so the computer could gain new power and features from the chip leader’s prodigious research and development.
Fifth, beginning in 2001, he opened the highly successful global chain of Apple retail stores, which showcased the Mac and introduced it to buyers of Apple’s other products. Before that, Macs had often been tucked into the back shelves of computer retailers.
Finally, while preserving its distinctiveness, he made the Mac more compatible with the Windows world. He scrapped the computer’s oddball ports and connectors for standard ones, like USB. He altered the software so it could recognized Windows file extensions. And, once the switch to Intel was made, he introduced Boot Camp, a free feature that allowed Macs to run Windows, to give customers confidence they’d still be able to run some crucial Windows program when they needed it.
The Internet also played a big part in the Mac’s revival. After years of neglect and falling sales, many third-party software vendors had stopped making programs for the Mac and focused exclusively on Windows. But as users turned increasingly to the Web as their main activity on computers, the Mac suddenly became an equal. Apple introduced its own browser, Safari; and Google’s popular Chrome browser, and others, run great on Macs.
Finally, Microsoft helped. In the very beginning of the second Jobs era, it lent Apple money to stay afloat, for complex reasons that included, in part, the belief that the Mac would never be any real threat. Much more importantly, two of its last three versions of Windows — Vista and the current Windows 8 — have proved unpopular with consumers, making the Mac a more attractive alternative. In fact, Windows 8, which works best with costly touchscreens, has helped push the price of the sleekest Windows laptops into Mac territory, erasing some of the Windows PC’s price advantage.
This past quarter of huge gains for the Mac may be a fluke. And the Apple computer will never, I suspect, be the world’s biggest seller. But for years now — well before this last blockbuster quarter — it has been pulling off a resurrection few would have expected in the dark days of the late ’90s.
iPhones may soon come with Beats Music already installed
Since Apple nabbed Beats earlier this year, we've been wondering what would come of the latter outfit'sstreaming service. Financial Times reports that the folks in Cupertino plan to lump Beats Music (or whatever it'll be called in the future) in to iOS. Yes, this means that the app will already be installed on that new iPhone or iPad when you unbox it, attempting to get a leg up on the likes of Rdio and Spotify from the jump. The report says the usual "people familiar with the matter" look for the move to happen as soon as March -- perhaps around the same time as the debut of the Apple Watch. As you might expect, you'll still need a subscription to access Dr. Dre's library of tunes, but the app itself will already be there. Of course, this could also end badly: we all remember what happenedlast time Apple put something on our phones we didn't want. I reached out to Apple on the matter and it declined to comment.
SOURCE: MSN
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