Instagram adds direct messaging

Photo and video sharing app Instagram has added direct messaging to its service in a nod to the success of rivals such as Whatsapp and Snapchat.

Instagram Direct lets users send a picture or video to up to 15 people, without it appearing to the public.
Only someone a user "follows" on the service could send them a direct image, founder Kevin Systrom explained.
He dismissed suggestions that the app may soon add a Snapchat-style "disappearing" photograph option.
But the new Instagram features do borrow various popular aspects from its rival:

• images and video can be sent to individuals or a group
• the sender is notified when the content has been viewed
• small amounts of text can accompany the message

Only images and video from people a user already followed on Instagram would be automatically shown, Mr Systrom said, but other users could send content that would appear only when the recipient agreed to view them.

 

Jack Kent Analyst

He added that Instagram would not monitor messages for explicit or offensive content - but that the usual reporting methods would apply to private messages as well as those shared publicly.

Mr Systrom did not elaborate on whether the feature would be used to deliver advertising directly to user's private inboxes.
IHS mobile analyst Jack Kent told the BBC that making money from the feature would be a secondary concern to Instagram - which is owned by Facebook - at this stage.
"When you look at Facebook's wider strategy with new services and features, the first goal isn't necessarily monetisation," he said.
"It's building on maintaining scale. With these new features, it's about maintaining and growing the audience."
Messenger threat Instagram was bought last year by Facebook for $1bn (£629m), at a time when it shared only photographs, often with "artistic" filters applied.
Gradually, the app has grown - the most significant addition being the option to share 15-second video clips, emulating Twitter's short video service, Vine.
It has also added advertising into users' feeds.

Snapchat's Evan Spiegel is reported to have rejected a $3bn takeover offer from Facebook

But it is instant messaging that has Instagram and Facebook looking over their respective shoulders.
According to reports, one of the most popular apps, Whatsapp, has grown to boast 350 million active users worldwide - compared with Instagram's 150 million.
Other competitors, such as Viber and Kik, have also gained rapid popularity. Snapchat, an app in which messages "self destruct" after 15 seconds or less, reportedly turned down a $3bn takeover offer from Facebook.
Furthermore, some studies have suggested that teenagers are moving away from Facebook, frustrated that a social network that was once dominated by their peers now attracts their parents.
Mr Kent said Thursday's Instagram announcement was all about maintaining and growing an audience by incorporating features users are have started to use elsewhere.
"Instagram so far has been built on public profiles," he said. "But more recent successes in the social networking space have been around private interaction."
Twitter, which has had direct messaging since its inception, recently expanded its offering to allow the private sending of images and other media.

Bots take up 61% of web traffic

If you are visiting this page the chances are that you are not a human, at least according to research.

A study by Incapsula suggests 61.5% of all website traffic is now generated by bots. The security firm said that was a 21% rise on last year's figure of 51%.
Some of these automated software tools are malicious - stealing data or posting ads for scams in comment sections.
But the firm said the biggest growth in traffic was for "good" bots.
These are tools used by search engines to crawl websites in order to index their content, by analytics companies to provide feedback about how a site is performing, and by others to carry out other specific tasks - such as helping the Internet Archive preserve content before it is deleted.
Fuzzy data To generate its report, Incapsula said it observed 1.45 billion bot visits over a 90 day period.
The information was sourced from 20,000 sites operated by its clients.
Dr Ian Brown, associate director at Oxford University's Cyber Security Centre - which was not involved in the study - said the figures were useful as an indication of the growth in non-human traffic, even if they were not accurate to the nearest decimal place.
"Their own customers may or may not be representative of the wider web," he told the BBC.
"There will also be some unavoidable fuzziness in their data, given that they are trying to measure malicious website visits where by definition the visitors are trying to disguise their origin."
Impersonator bots Despite the overall growth in bot activity, the firm said that many of the traditional malicious uses of the tools had become less common.

A rise in botnet traffic may force website operators to invest in more servers

It said there had been a 75% drop in the frequency spam links were being automatically posted. It suggested this was in part down to Google's efforts to make it harder to carry out the practice.
It also said it had seen a 10% drop in hacking tool bot activities, including the use of code to distribute malware, to steal credit cards and to hijack and deface websites
However, it noted that there had been an 8% rise in the use of "other impersonator bots" - a classification including software that masquerades as being from a search engine or other legitimate agent in order to fool security measures.
It said these bots tended to be custom-made to carry out a specific activity, such as a DDoS attack - forcing a server to crash taking a website or service offline by flooding it with traffic - or to steal company secrets.
Activity by "good bots", it added, had grown by 55% over the year. It suggested this might be because the legitimate services were sampling the net more frequently. This might, for example, allow a search engine to add breaking news stories to its results more quickly.
Dr Brown noted that these extra visits were likely to put website operators under more strain, meaning they would have to buy more computer servers to handle the extra traffic. But he played down the risk.
"While the trend will increase the costs of website operators, I think that, at this scale, it's something they can cope with," he added.

Southampton University supercomputer

The supercomputer will allow academics to work on more projects at faster speeds

A £3.2m supercomputer, one of the most powerful in the UK, has been installed at the University of Southampton.

The Iridis4 has 12,200 processors, each of which can perform a trillion calculations per second - a measurement referred to as a "teraflop".
The IBM machine also has a million gigabytes of disk space and 50 terabytes of memory.
Home computers generally have between 500GB and 2TB of disc space and about 4GB to 6GB of memory.
There are 1,024 gigabytes in a terabyte.
The university said the new machine would allow academics to work on more projects at faster speeds.
'Top 10' Pro vice-chancellor Prof Philip Nelson said: "Staying ahead of the game in high performance computing [HPC] is vital to help the university stay competitive.
"Simulation and computation enabled by HPC are recognised globally as the third pillar of modern research and this investment will ensure we remain world leaders in this field."
Iridis4 will be used for a range of research, including engineering, archaeology and medicine, as well as computer science.
The world's most powerful computer is China's Tianhe-2, which can perform 33,860 trillion calculations per second.
The university said its new computer ranked among the top 10 in the UK.
The most powerful is at the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Warrington.
Others are based at the University of Edinburgh, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and the United Kingdom Meteorological Office.

London Chess Classic, Viswanathan Anand in quarters London Chess Classic

LONDON: Former world champion Viswanathan Anand found his way to the knockout stage in the London Chess Classic with an easy draw against tailender Andrei Istratescu of France in the fifth round of the preliminaries that concluded at the Olympia.

After scoring three wins in the first four games itself, Anand was destined to move to the quarterfinal stage in this 16-players event spilt in to four groups.

With one round still to come in the prelims, Anand is likely to head his 'A' group with 11 points in his kitty under the Soccer scoring system in place here.

Michael Adams of England trounced compatriot Luke McShane and joined Anand on 11 points and the two meet in the next round to determine the group winner.

Traditionally a super tournament, the London Classic this time became a Rapid tournament as the world championship was held just two weeks before its commencement.

Anand will play as black against Adams in the decider for the first place in the last round having promoted himself to the knockout quarterfinals in the 16-players event split in to four groups.

Among other groups, Russians Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Svidler looked poised to qualify from the 'B' group while in the 'C' group Boris Gelfand of Israel and Hikaru Nakamura of United States already made the cut like Anand and Adams.

The situation in the 'D' group is also clear with Nigel short of England hitting form and the two qualifiers from here are Fabiano Caruana of Italy along with the English Grandmaster who holds a high repute.

Google removed privacy feature from its Android mobile software

SAN FRANCISCO: Google has removed an experimental privacy feature from its Android mobile software that had allowed users to block apps from collecting personal information such as address book data and a user's location.

The change means that owners of smartphones using Android 4.4.2, the latest version of the world's most popular operating system for mobile devices released this week, must provide access to their personal data in order to use certain apps.

A company spokesman said the feature had been included by accident in Android 4.3, the version released last summer.

"We are suspicious of this explanation, and do not think that it in any way justifies removing the feature rather than improving it," said Peter Eckersley, technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital rights website first publicized the change in a blog post on Friday.

Android users who wish to retain the privacy controls by not upgrading to Android 4.4.2 could be vulnerable to security risks, Eckersley said. "For the time being, users will need to chose between either privacy or security on the Android devices, but not both."

Many third-party apps for Android devices, such as music-identifying service Shazam and popular smartphone flashlight apps, require access to personal information that does not always have an obvious connection to the app's functionality, such as phone call information and location data.

The privacy feature allowed users to pick and choose which personal data a third-party app can collect, Eckersley said. Users had to install a special Apps Ops Launcher software, which was created by another company, in order to access the hidden privacy controls.

Android software was loaded on 81% of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the third quarter, according to industry research firm IDC. Apple's iOS, the software used on the iPhone, had 12.9% market share.

Privacy has become an increasingly important issue as smartphones, which are loaded with consumers' personal information, become the primary computing device for many consumers. In November, Google agreed to pay a $17 million fine to settle allegations that it secretly tracked web users by placing special digital files on the web browsers of their smartphones.

Lumia 1520, 1320 in India on Dec 16

NEW DELHI: Nokia is sending invites for a Lumia focused event scheduled for 16 December 2013 in New Delhi, where it's expected to launch its new large screen phones, namely the Lumia 1520 and Lumia 1320, that were unveiled during Nokia World, in October.

Nokia Lumia 1520 is already listed on Nokia's India website with a 'coming soon' tag.

Lumia 1520 is a high-end phablet and the first Windows Phone device to feature a 6-inch full HD display and a quad-core processor. The device will compete against the likes of Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z Ultra and HTC One Max in the Indian market.

The Lumia 1520 sports a 20MP PureView camera with OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation) and is powered by a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 chipset. The handset comes with 2GB RAM, 32GB expandable storage, a 3,400mAh battery, NFC and wireless charging. Nokia had announced a $749 price (excluding taxes) for the device at its global launch, so the phone could be priced upwards of Rs 45,000.

The Lumia 1320, on the other hand, features an inferior 720p 6 inch display. It is powered by a 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset. The handset comes with 1GB RAM, 8GB expandable storage, and a 3,400mAh battery. It sports a 5MP rear camera and a VGA front camera. Nokia had said that the Lumia 1320 would start shipping in Q1 2014 at an estimated price of $339 (excluding taxes and subsidies).

NASA has successfully transmitted data between the moon and Earth

NASA has successfully transmitted data between the moon and Earth, using laser beams sent from this device. The transmission set new communication records with download rates of 622MB per second