KnowledgeTalk: June 2014

Monday, June 30, 2014

Quickoffice Will Soon Be Unpublished from App Store and Google Play

Google has officially announced that it will soon be removing Quickoffice app from Google Play and App Store, as the company has merged its features into Google Drive and in the new introduced document editing apps like Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Notably, existing users will have the Quickoffice app in their phone's app drawer, but will receive no further updates.
"With the integration of Quickoffice into the Google Docs, Sheets and Slides apps, the Quickoffice app will be unpublished from Google Play and the App Store in the coming weeks. Existing users with the app can continue to use it, but no features will be added and new users will not be able to install the app," wrote Google on its apps updates page.

Taiwan technology giant Foxconn, the world's biggest components maker, said Monday it has invested around $365 million in a South Korean information technology service provider as it looks to diversify its business.
The firm, also known by its Taipei-headquartered mother company Hon Hai Precision Industry, said the deal allowed it to obtain a 4.9 percent stake in SK C&C Co., a unit of South Korea's third largest conglomerate SK Group.
"This transaction is a win-win strategic partnership for both of our companies as it brings together a unique combination of capabilities to create synergies that will benefit current operations while also supporting efforts to jointly develop new business opportunities," Hon Hai said in a statement.
In the face of growing competition and narrowing margins, Foxconn has been diversifying its businesses into

The day after the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo in a copyright case brought by the nation's major broadcasters, Ely was trying to scoop up Aereo customers by promoting his startup, Simple.TV, on social media. "Former Aereo customer? Join the Simple.TV Family," the company wrote on Twitter on Thursday.
"We're telling Aereo customers: 'Your favorite service is going away. Here's an idea that isn't,'" Ely, who started his company in 2011, said in an interview.
The television establishment still has much to worry about after its Supreme Court victory Wednesday over Aereo, the digital startup that had threatened to upend the economics of the media business.
"Television is a castle filled with money," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the Publicis Groupe's digital marketing unit. "People are trying to get into that castle and take some money."
But while the court's decision broadens the moat, traditional broadcasters still must find ways to defend

Google had previously announced it will be rolling out simultaneous multi-language voice-recognition support to Google Now as early as last week, but has now announced the roll-out of the feature has been delayed to sometime this American summer due to some implementation issues.
The search giant's project engineers have decided to hold back the feature because of software problems discovered in the final testing phase, according to a Google spokesperson speaking to CNET. He said, "multi-language support is complicated stuff and they found some bugs during their final testing phase that they wanted to fix before making the feature generally available."
Google Now's multi-language support allows the feature to recognise seven different languages at one go within a sentence or a phrase. To experience the multi-language support feature in Google Now, users would have to pre-select the desired secondary languages. Notably, Google Now currently supports up to 52 languages and the voice search feature is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS desktops in Google Chrome, and in Search apps for Android, iOS.

In a breakthrough that may help in developing drugs for Alzheimer's and other neurological disorders, researchers have developed a 3D view of an important receptor in the brain.
This receptor allows us to learn and remember, and its dysfunction can result in a wide range of neurological diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia and depression.
The unprecedented view gives scientists new insight into how the receptor - called the NMDA receptor - is structured.
And importantly, the new detailed view gives vital clues for developing drugs to combat neurological diseases and conditions.
"This is the most exciting moment of my career," said Eric Gouaux, a senior scientist with Oregon Health and Science University in the US.
"The NMDA receptor is one of the most essential, and still sometimes mysterious, receptors in our brain. Now, with this work, we can see it in fascinating detail," he said.

Researchers have developed a new smartphone app that monitors your sedentary behavior and motivates you to get up and walk around.
More sedentary time, regardless of physical activity levels, is associated with greater risk for obesity, cardiovascular disease and mortality.
The smartphone-based intervention method, developed by researchers at The Miriam Hospital in the US, can produce short-term reductions in sedentary behavior that may be effective in improving health.
Dale Bond and Graham Thomas lead researchers and faculty in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, working with their colleagues to develop a smartphone app to reduce the amount of time individuals sit or recline while awake.
The smartphone app, "B-Mobile," was tested in a study of primarily middle-aged women who were obese, although the intervention can be applied to those who are not obese.

Google, at its I/O 2014 keynote address, announced new additions to its ecosystem such as Android Auto, which has been tailored to work with cars; the refreshed Android TV, majorly optimized for TV-watching, and revealed more details about Android Wear (initially announced in March), a version of the operating system customised for wearable gadgets such as smartwatches.
Now, a new report indicates that the Mountain View giant seems more determined to control the new - Android Auto, Android TV and Android Wear - platforms rather than keeping it open to be customised by the OEM partners.
Arstechnica in a report has quoted Dave Burke, Head of Android Engineering and Nexus Program who said, "The UI is more part of the product in this case. We want to just have a very consistent user

Sony Corp is confident its TV division will move into the black this financial year after a decade in the red, even if it falls short of its volume sales target, the head of the newly independent division said on Monday.
Masashi Imamura told a media round table that the TV business, which will become a separate subsidiary of Sony Corp on July 1, had reduced fixed costs during the last financial year, and profitability was now in sight.
He said Sony this year would be able to absorb the impact of any fluctuations in emerging market currencies, a factor he blamed for the unit's failure to make a profit last year.
Sony has forecast an 18.5 percent rise in TV sales to 16 million units this year from 13.5 million units a year ago, an increase that analysts said was well above the industry's average growth forecasts.

How Apple Got Its Groove Back

More than a week after Apple's WWDC keynote, I'm still trying to wrap my brain around everything that was announced.

I went into San Francisco's Moscone Center West expecting to see the Cupertino company unveil iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite, a few new features, maybe some new hardware. I didn't expect Apple to introduce app extensions for iOS 8, third-party keyboards, an SDK for home automation and health and a ton of features to make it easy to shift between a Mac and iOS device.

Oh yeah, and there was also a new programming language. Holy cow.

Second acts in business can be hard to pull off, especially when you've been as successful as former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

But just months after stepping down from his post, Ballmer, serving as the commencement speaker for the 2014 graduating class at the University of Washington on Saturday, has given us a hint at what his next act might be: motivational speaker.

Before his speech, Ballmer, who graduated from Harvard University as an undergrad, but dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, was given an honorary Doctorate of Science degree.

In Commencement Speech, Obama Unloads on Climate Change 'Deniers'

Giving the commencement address at the University of California at Irvine on Saturday, President Obama openly mocked the climate science and policy positions of many Republican lawmakers, without naming any names.

This was the first time that Obama had launched such a frontal assault on those who are trying to stymie his efforts to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming, such as carbon dioxide.

On June 2, the Obama administration introduced draft regulations to reign in emissions from existing power plants in the U.S. by 30% below 2005 levels by the year 2020. Many Republicans denounced these

Glympse, a location sharing platform that has integrated its real-time mapping and tracking service into messaging apps, cars, wearables and other services, is today announcing a financing round of $12 million. CEO and co-founder Bryan Trussel tells me the company will use the money mainly to staff up the business to deal with the interest it’s been getting from outside companies for more deployments.

“We have enormous inbound interest in our platform and partnerships, and we need to make sure we scale to meet that demand without losing our focus,” he says.

The company already works with a list of recognisable names such as Verizon Messages, BlackBerry and Samsung, who use its tech in their messaging apps: BMW, MINI, Ford, GM, Jaguar, Land Rover,

Google seems to be continuously working on its Google Now service as the firm is now being said to be testing a new feature that would analyse information from users' Gmail conversations to create relevant reminder cards.

First reported by Android Police, it has been understood that Google Now, if authorised, can now pull information from a user's Gmail conversation threads that detail any outing or planned event, and automatically create a reminder card that the user can view. Users would also be asked whether to create the same event on the Google Calendar associated with the user's Gmail account.

This feature seems an extended version of the already-present Google Now feature that extracts flight or hotel reservation data from Gmail accounts and shows as a card. The extension of this feature to Google Hangouts or other services or the roll-out of the same is not yet clear.

Suppliers of chips to smartphone makers are taking the unusual step of helping customers procure other phone components such as speakers and camera lenses in a bid to win more business in an increasingly competitive sector.
Demand for smartphone chips, needed to support capabilities ranging from voice recognition to flash photography, is growing in part due to a spurt in the low-end but feature-packed phone segment.

As phone makers rush to push out more budget handsets with features formerly reserved for premium models, they need to keep their costs in check as they incorporate more chips into their lower-tier models.

The spotlight on costs has ramped up competition among chipmakers like Qualcomm Inc and MediaTek Inc.

In 2013, Oculus VR's booth at Electronic Entertainment Expo, the gaming industry's biggest annual convention, was relegated to a far corner of the showfloor near the restrooms.
What a difference a year makes. At the 2014 expo this week, the startup, which Facebook bought in March for $2 billion, drew crowds of oglers for its latest virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift.

The change is a sign of the rising interest in virtual reality platforms among publishers and developers, who hope the years-old technology - which creates a 360-degree view that immerses players in fantasy settings - can finally become a viable platform to reverse shrinking video game industry revenues and draw a new generation of users.

Some consolidation afoot in the world of enterprise video. Imaging giant Canon is buying Milestone Systems, a startup from Denmark that has developed software for video surveillance systems.

Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, the companies say. Milestone, founded back in 1998, had raised $25 million from Index Ventures, and according to its latest financials, it posted net income of €4.6 million ($6.2 million) on revenues of €54.6 million ($74 million). The acquisition is being made through Canon’s European subsidiary.

While publicly traded Canon has a recognisable brand in the consumer market for things like cameras and printers, it also has a strong line in enterprise products, covering things like imaging devices for particular verticals like the medical industry. The Milestone purchase will be used to build out a new market in this latter category.

CTQuan, the Chinese equity crowdfunding site for startup companies, has raised roughly $4 million in a new round of financing, TechCrunch has learned.

The Beijing-based company (and CrunchBase content partner) is similar to AngelList in its offering of investment information and a directory of Chinese startup companies, syndicated investment vehicles (which the company calls dynamic funds), and even its own fund for investments.

The company’s most recent financing, like its previous capital infusions, came from undisclosed angel investors in China. “I tried to stay away from traditional VCs,” says Li. “What we’re targeting is to replace them in early stage funding.”

eBay’s focus on international expansion continues: yesterday its PayPal division announced PassPort, aimed at attracting more international sales, and today eBay is announcing the acquisition of machine translation technology from a company called AppTek. From our understanding, eBay is acquiring the talent and the IP from Virginia-headquartered AppTek, but another division of its business focused on voice technology will continue on, possibly still under the AppTek name. However, those specifics are still to be determined.

Eight people from AppTek’s 10-person team will join eBay, including one co-founder. (The other will remain with AppTek to run the remaining business unit.) In the near term, eBay will continue to serve AppTek’s customers, largely government contracts, by licensing the technology.

Fab.com’s David Lapter Joins MakeSpace As CFO

MakeSpace, the NY-based startup that thinks of itself as a Dropbox for physical objects, has recently announced that it secured Fab.com CFO David Lapter as new Chief Financial Officer, and SVP of Business Operations.

Lapter is a serial startup CFO, and most recently comes from Fab.com where he joined in 2011. At the time, the ecommerce platform was but a few months old. Fab.com now brings in revenues of over $100 million globally.

Before Fab.com, Lapter was CFO and EVP of business operations at KickApps, as well as CFO at CTSpace. Both companies were acquired during his tenure at them.

Here’s what MakeSpace CEO and founder Sam Rosen had to say in a prepared statement:

Bringing David on board to help guide our growth is a huge win as we scale locally in New York and accelerate our expansion to new markets. I’m ecstatic to welcome David as an integral part of our management team and I look forward to working alongside him to implement our long term strategic vision for the company.

MakeSpace is a service that lets you tag and store items that you own with the help of an app and MakeSpace’s on-demand pickup and drop-off service. Not only does it save the user time commuting to

As a result of a new partnership between GoPro and BMW, it’s never been easier to record your hoonage antics. Select late-model BMW cars will soon be able to control GoPro cameras directly from the dash. Just click record on the dash of the car and the connected GoPro cameras click to life.

Starting in July, the owner of a 2012 or later properly equipped BMW or Mini will be able to control Wi-Fi-enabled GoPro cameras. The GoPro app has to be installed on an iPhone connected to the BMW. Once connected, the driver can select the GoPro app through the BMW ConnectedDrive or Mini Connected menu. From there, the driver can view the camera’s field of view and control recording. The camera streams near-live video to the dash while the vehicle is stationary. But once the tires spin, the preview clicks off.

A couple of years ago, a list of the world’s top startup ecosystems compared cities like Berlin, Tel Aviv, and London to get at what made startups successful. There wasn’t enough data to compare Asia at the time, but there’s one city in the region that’s quietly been developing into another important tech hub: Seoul.

When you first think of South Korea, you might think of Samsung, the singer/songwriter PSY, or even the occasional K-drama. Take a closer look and you’ll find that 80 percent of the population are LTE users, the country is among the top three in terms of mobile app revenue, or that it’s been ranked first by Bloomberg’s Global Innovation Index (based on things like density of public tech companies).

Just two weeks after Apple announced its upcoming Health app for iOS 8, Google is reportedly preparing to launch a similar service called Google Fit.

The search giant will debut a health platform at its Google I/O conference for developers later this month, according to Forbes. Google Fit is rumored to collect and aggregate data from fitness trackers (think Jawbone and Fitbit), as well as other health-related apps.

The move would directly compete with Apple's new Health app (and HealthKit for developers). The concept behind Google Fit is similar to Apple's Passbook app, the iPhone's virtual pocket for items such as

A European USB iPhone charger sold between October 2009 and September 2012 "may overheat and pose a safety risk", says manufacturer, Apple.
The US firm is offering to exchange the defective items free of charge.

In an advice note, the company urges those who own the adapter to stop using it, although it says the malfunction only occurs in "rare cases".

The model was sold in 37 countries, including some countries in Africa and Asia, but not in the UK.

Apple
Apple released an image explaining how to identify the adapter
The item was shipped with iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S models, and was also sold as a separate accessory.

Its model number is A1300 and it features the letters "CE" in solid grey.

It was sold in the following countries:

Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Vietnam
This is not the first time Apple has exchanged USB adapters. In 2008, the company offered to exchange defective iPhone 3G chargers in the US, Japan, Canada and several Latin American countries.

Apple has also offered to replace counterfeit or third-party iPhone chargers sold to customers in China, amid concerns over safety.

Stalker: A creepy look at you, online

While you were having a latte and hunting for a Tinder date on your local coffee shop's open Wi-Fi, you were giving away your personal information.

Want to know how much? Stalker will tell you.Stalker is a tool created by security firm Immunity Inc. to demonstrate the hazards of connecting to insecure public Wi-Fi networks.

When you connect to a public network in a place like a coffee house, hackers that are logged onto the same Wi-Fi network can intercept your Web traffic from unencrypted websites. Sites that begin with "http://" are unencrypted and less safe. Sites that begin with "https://" are encrypted and generally considered more secure.
If hackers can see what you're doing online, your personal details are then up for grabs. We're talking about items like everyone you've checked out on Match.com, or the music you're listening to on Pandora (P) (neither site is encrypted).
What Stalker really demonstrates is how easy it is to compile a creepy profile of a person, composed entirely of information they've unknowingly shared.
"So, for example, you may say, 'my ZIP code is 33139,' if you're near Miami Beach, or another app may say you're 38 years old," said Alex McGeorge, security researcher at Immunity Inc. "In isolation, these don't really make too big of a difference, right? ...But when taken together, it can make a pretty scary profile for a lot of people."

In addition to viewing your traffic, Stalker collects your cookies -- small bits of data stored in your browser or apps that are used for targeting advertising.
Putting Stalker to the test: To test stalker, CNNMoney created a fake character, Sally Jones (she was actually a stick figure). Sally has the digital footprint of an average urban 20-something: accounts on Facebook (FB, Tech30), Instagram, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Pinterest, Tinder, Match.com, and Pandora. She shops on the Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) app and she has a Gmail account. McGeorge also created an account for her on OkCupid, just to maximize the odds that a stick figure might find love online.
We set Stalker loose on Sally.
In 10 minutes, the hacking tool created what looked like a social network profile for Sally, but it was full of information most people would not opt to share with total strangers.
The photo section was populated with images of people that Sally had reviewed on the dating apps. Her full name, age and ZIP code were readily available. All the websites she had visited were listed and her Instagram user name appeared.
McGeorge says that this was actually far less information than Stalker had previously been able to gather, because many sites started taking encryption much more seriously after the Heartbleed hack.
Still, the best way to protect yourself is to never do anything you wouldn't want to share in public while connected to insecure Wi-Fi.

Google’s Push Past Search

As a recent analysis indicated, Google’s traditional search is not working on mobile as well as it did on the desktop web. Sifting through organic search results on a mobile device is a sub-optimal experience, especially when compared to the push notifications and personalized streams of cards that have made mobile apps from Facebook, Twitter and Tinder so habit-forming and successful.

Google is getting well ahead of its mobile organic search problem, especially on Android where it has full control of the end-to-end mobile experience. Google has strung together push notifications, a stream of predictive answers and an answer box in an attempt to answer a search query three times before showing organic search results.

Who owns a restaurant reservation?
Is it the restaurant, having set aside a table as a courtesy for a particular guest? Is it the guest, who made the reservation and can use it - or not - at will?

Or is it the entrepreneur who pays workers to frantically redial reservation lines at the moment when prime tables are made available, snagging them under false names and marking them up for sale?

This is the crux of the restaurant industry's debate over selling reservations for cash, a smoldering issue being reignited by mobile apps that do just that.

Nowhere is the competition for tables more cutthroat than in New York City, where a black market in restaurant reservations exists online. But since February, several new apps have taken the fight to the streets:

Microsoft has finally started rolling out the remastered Skype 5.0 app for iPhone with improved features. The firm announced and detailed the same earlier this week.

"We were excited to use your feedback to remaster the app around you, to help you connect with your friends and family simply and quickly," stated Gary Wong from Skype on the official blog post.

Microsoft explains that the Skype 5.0 app for iPhone has been rewritten 'from the ground up,' and is 'over 5 times faster than the old version.' It includes smoother scrolling, transitioning and animations without hurting battery life and overall performance.

Beats Electronics has launched its first wireless earphones, designed for sporting activities and workouts. The Powerbeats2 Wireless is described as lightweight, durable, and sweat-resistant, and was inspired and co-designed by US basketball star LeBron James.

The Powerbeats2 Wireless is a set of earbuds with flexible earhooks for a comfortable and secure fit. The earbuds are joined by a wraparound cable with an inline remote and mic for making handsfree calls, changing the volume and skipping tracks. The Powerbeats2 use a Bluetooth 4.0 connection to play music from a smartphone or tablet up to 9 metres away.

Each earbud has dual drivers and lets in ambient sound for safety while exercising. The rechargeable battery on the Beats Powerbeats2 Wireless earphones offers up to six hours of playback time, and can be charged

The Redmond giant is considering the expansion of its recently launched virtual assistant - Cortana, and to that end, is evaluating the merits of bringing it to other platforms like Android and iOS, apart from other form factors, like desktops, vehicles, and kiosks.
Cortana is currently available as part of the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview in the US in beta mode. Microsoft also has plans to release it to China and UK in the second half of 2014, while it might reach other countries by 2015.

On Thursday, speaking at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, Marcus Ash, Windows Phone Group Program Manager, said Microsoft wants Cortana to be "pervasive" across regions, devices and platforms.

Canada's constitution bars authorities from forcing Internet providers to turn over the identities of customers without a warrant, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday in a decision that better protects online anonymity.

Privacy advocates say the ruling makes unconstitutional a Conservative government bill currently before Parliament that would broaden the ability of police to monitor online traffic. The legislation, which would amend existing laws covering search warrants and other investigative techniques, is intended to combat cyberbullying, but critics say it would allow excessive online spying.
The high court handed down an unanimous ruling on Friday in the case of Matthew David Spencer, convicted of possessing child pornography by a Saskatchewan provincial court.

A federal judge said LinkedIn Corp must face a lawsuit by customers who claimed it violated their privacy by accessing their external email accounts, downloading their contacts' email addresses and soliciting business from those contacts.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, found that while customers consented to LinkedIn's sending an initial "endorsement email" to recruit contacts, they did not agree to let the professional networking website operator send two reminder emails when the initial email is ignored.

This practice "could injure users' reputations by allowing contacts to think that the users are the types of people who spam their contacts or are unable to take the hint that their contacts do not want to join their

Facebook successfully defended itself against a lawsuit that claimed the social media company infringed on patents held by a Dutch programmer who launched a website called "Surfbook" more than a decade ago.

A holding company called Rembrandt Social Media had alleged that a now-deceased Dutch computer programmer, Joannes Van Der Meer, developed and patented methods for running a Web-based personal diary before Facebook came into existence in 2003. But Van Der Meer's website, Surfbook, never got off the ground.

Facebook said the patents should never have been issued to Van Der Meer, in part because they described methods that would be obvious to people in the trade.

The Federal Communications Commission is setting out to unravel the mystery behind the Internet traffic jams bogging down the delivery of Netflix videos and other online content.

The inquiry announced Friday by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will dissect the routes that video and other data travel to reach Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon.

This crucial handoff of content has gained more attention in recent months as Netflix Inc. and other critics have accused the two Internet service providers of deliberately slowing incoming traffic from websites unwilling to pay for a less congested entry point.

If Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is the star of the Internet video-streaming phenomenon, then Roku CEO Anthony Wood is the best supporting actor.

Both men play pivotal roles in popularizing technologies that are shaking up the entertainment and broadband industries.

While Hastings gets marquee billing for building an Internet video service with 48 million worldwide subscribers, Wood has quietly worked behind the scenes making Roku streaming devices that make it easier and more enjoyable to watch Netflix's vast library of movies and TV shows.

This isn't the first time Wood, 48, has helped change the way that people watch TV. In the late 1990s, he invented one of the first digital video recorders and started ReplayTV - a company upstaged by fellow DVR pioneer TiVo Inc.

US President Barack Obama plans to appoint a Madras University graduate and alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology as a member of the National Science Board of National Science Foundation.
The proposed appointment of Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, Senior Vice President of the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development at Arizona State University (ASU), was announced by the White House Friday with 15 other key administration posts

"Our nation will be greatly served by the talent and expertise these individuals bring to their new roles. I am grateful they have agreed to serve in this Administration, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead," Obama said.

The Daily Show’s Jason Jones had a segment on the show last night that highlighted so-called “discrimination” against Google Glass wearers. And I was the butt of a lot of its jokes. The show invited me on after I was assaulted while wearing Google Glass in the Mission District of San Francisco.

I won’t spoil the segment, so be sure to watch it before scrolling further:

Rather than respond to the show’s criticisms of Glass (because, let’s face it, they have a point), I thought it would be fun to shed light on what it’s actually like to film a segment on The Daily Show.

Microsoft’s case to prevent the United States government from using search warrants to demand data that is not stored in the United States has picked up a number of high-profile backers, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Verizon, AT&T, and, recently, Apple and Cisco.

The final two filed a joint amicus brief, which details their protest of the practice. Microsoft lost its initial suit, as it expected, and has refiled the case. I reached out to both Apple and Cisco for additional comment.

There Really Is a Reason This Brand Sent Its Skincare Product Into Space

Hey, look guys -– a tricked-out mini-spaceship sailing 23 miles above earth! Also, go wash your greasy faces.

Personal care company Kiehl’s has made the connection between outer space and men’s skin care in a social media-based contest and a cheeky science-fair-on-steroids video that debuted this week.

So…what is the connection? There truly is one, promises Kiehl’s and its advertising agency, so try to keep up, OK?

One of the main ingredients in Kiehl’s Oil Eliminator, a new product in the heritage brand’s male-targeted line, is aerolite, one of the lightest man-made materials on the planet, also known for its porousness. NASA has used a formulation of aerolite in its space missions, including on the Mars Exploration Rover, for collecting space dust and insulating spacecrafts.

Netflix's war of words on Internet service providers has scored its first victory.

The FCC will begin looking at the network connection agreements between companies like Netflix and Verizon, a move that could mean more scrutiny over how data is sent to Internet users.

The move has no regulatory ramifications right now, but could mark the FCC's intentions to broaden the scope of how it regulates the flow of data on the Internet.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said during an open meeting on Friday that the commission wants to learn more about these deals, but said it had no current plans to regulate the activity, according to a report from The Hill.

With World Cup coverage underway, people from all over the world are tweeting about the same topic in many different languages. Twitter wants to make it easier for everyone by bringing mobile translations to its iOS app and is looking to Bing to lead the way.

The two companies are joining forces to bring translated tweets to iOS apps, according to a CNET report. After downloading the Twitter iOS update, users can click a translate button within each tweet to have it displayed in their native language.The concept isn't entirely new. In 2012, Twitter tested a Bing Translator feature that automatically translates tweets into other languages.Most recently, Bing brought its translation tool to Android.

Startup Gamifies NYC Driving for DOT Pilot Program

Dash is working to not only integrate the consumer driver's experience of connected cars with fluid and fun interactions — via app-to-vehicle CPU — but the Manhattan-based startup has now signed a deal with the New York City Department of Transportation to help bring its vision to the realm of municipal traffic strategy.

Beginning this summer, Dash expects to install its data tracking-and-analysis technology in up to 500 NYC volunteers' automobiles as part of a year-long pilot program called Drive Smart, funded by a $1 million federal grant and overseen by the city DOT.

Most of us have become accustomed to the amazing imagery of the world available on Google's Street View, but a new site promises the same kind of virtual tourism from the aerial perspective of drones.

Launched back in April by Switzerland-based Jan Hiersemenzel, TravelByDrone is a site that harnesses the power of YouTube and Google Maps to allow you to explore the planet via recorded drone footage.

An interactive Google Map of the world features pins displaying logos that indicate that drone footage is available. By clicking on one of the pins, you're immediately shown YouTube footage of the geographic area

iOS 8 to Bring Safari's Saved Passwords to Third-Party Apps

Apple is reportedly adding a new feature to its mobile OS, which will allow apps to access login credentials stored in Safari to automatically fill in username and password information in third-party apps.

Right now, Safari can store passwords and other login information in its keychain, and automatically fill them in when you log in to a service from within the browser. But if you try to log in to the same service using a third-party app, you need to manually type in your information.

Nokia's Here Announces Acquisition of Predictive Analytics Firm Medio

On Thursday Nokia-owned Here mapping firm announced plans to acquire Medio Systems, a Seattle-based company that Here says is 'a pioneer in the emerging field of real-time predictive analytics.'
Nokia's Here says that building on Medio's 'smart data' asset will enable it to create contextual maps and location services that change according to the situation to provide highly personalized and predictive experiences for people and businesses.

This, according to Here, could mean delivering individual restaurant recommendations to someone ready for lunch, giving drivers routes that match their driving style based on real-time conditions or helping businesses personalize their customer offerings.

Just ahead of the event, serial tipster @evleaks has revealed the purported specifications of the expected new Galaxy Tablet S series, rumoured to feature 8.4-inch and 10.5-inch variants with OLED displays.
The event will start at 4:30am IST on June 13 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Last month, the South Korean giant had sent out invites for the 'Samsung Galaxy Premiere 2014 Tab Into Colour' event.

While the event is just few hours away, @evleaks has listed almost all the purported specifications of both variants. From the list of specifications, it seems that both the anticipated Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and Galaxy Tab S 10.5 will run Android 4.4 KitKat out-of-the-box. Also, both the as-yet-unannounced

Google, after introducing its Instant Buy API on Google Wallet a year back for Android users, has now made the same available for Apple iOS apps.

The developers can now include the option of Google Wallet's checkout in their apps, enabling users to make a purchase in just two clicks. The Instant Buy API lets users access and store their payment information on Google's private servers, which eliminates the need of them inserting the crediting card numbers and other data every time to make a purchase online.
Google passes the user's payment information to the merchant site only after the user decides to complete the order. The firm does not charge anything for this service from the Apple iOS users, reports Techcrunch.

Facebook Inc is expanding the internal user profiles that underpin its targeted advertising system, for the first time including personal information based on activities that did not occur within the boundaries of its social network.
While Facebook has long maintained internal profiles of users based on the comments they make and the posts that they "like" within its social network, the company will now flesh out those profiles with information based on some of the external websites and mobile apps its members use, a move that could further inflame concerns about how it treats personal privacy.

The enhanced profiles will allow marketers to deliver more relevant ads, Facebook said in a blog post announcing the change on Thursday. If a Facebook user researches a new television on an external website

You have to be careful before liking a picture on Facebook or sending a tweet while you are wearing this dress. Scientists at New York University have designed a dress that gradually turns transparent as the wearer's online activity increases.
Which means that at the end of the day you might end up exposing your whole body - if you are an avid social media user.

"x.pose is a wearable data-driven sculpture that exposes a person's skin as a real-time reflection of the data that the wearer is producing," the designers behind the project, Pedro Oliveira and Xuedi Chen from New York University, were quoted as saying.

Facebook says it’s bringing more data into its interest-based ad targeting — specifically data from non-Facebook websites and mobile apps.

So even if your profile doesn’t say anything about your love of (say) soccer, and even if you haven’t Liked any soccer-related Pages on Facebook, the social network can still see that you’ve visited soccer-related websites and target ads accordingly.

In a blog post, the company describes this as “a type of interest-based advertising” that’s already practiced by “many companies”:

SiSense, a business intelligence startup that is among those making big data analytics accessible to ordinary business users (and not just data scientists) is today announcing more funding: a $30 million Series C round led by DFJ Growth — the VC’s arm dedicated to later-stage investments that recently announced a new fund we understand to be totalling over $500 million (in May, its size was ‘only’ $470 million).

Others backing the startup include existing investors Battery Ventures, Genesis Partners and Opus Capital. SiSense, which was founded in 2004, has only recently been stepping up its game in terms of outside

Earlier this year, during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, we told you about Mozilla's plans to bring smartphones into even the poorest regions by introducing a $25 dollar device.

Now the organization has launched a major new effort in that plan by announcing plans to bring its low-cost smartphone to India in the next few months.

"The platform will give us an edge in upgrading buyers from feature phones to smartphones while making it

The teams have arrived. The players are ready. The eyes of the world have turned to Brazil to watch the world's most popular sports tournament. On Thursday, the fans will enter Arena Corinthians in Sao Paolo, Brazil, to watch Brazil and Croatia take the first shots in a month-long clash of nations — four years in the making.

The number of E3 2014 announcements has not only affected the console and PC gamers but has also bought seven new games for the mobile gamers courtesy Gameloft. The games include Spider-Man Unlimited, Modern Combat 5: Blackout, Ice Age Adventures, Asphalt Overdrive, Cars: Fast As Lightning, Dungeon Gems, an Rival Knights.

While we have already discussed Spider-Man Unlimited in our previous report in detail, the two other games that have been highlighted are Asphalt: Overdrive and Modern Combat 5: Blackout.

The Asphalt: Overdrive is a spin-off arcade racing game and is based on missions in order to unlock new

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