‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Apps and Software. إظهار كافة الرسائل
‏إظهار الرسائل ذات التسميات Apps and Software. إظهار كافة الرسائل

9/11/2014

Smartwatch Apple Launches Smartwatch, Updates IPhone6 Line




Launches Smartwatch, Updates IPhone Line


It will start with a friend. A friend who lives in San Francisco, maybe. Or who works as a venture capitalist. Or who recently had a birthday.



This friend will be wearing an Apple Watch. And at first, you'll giggle. It's a wrist computer! It looks silly, like something out of Dick Tracy. You'll say something snide, like, "Get a lot of dates with that thing?" The friend will laugh good-naturedly. He'll show you some of the things the Apple Watch can do: Twitter notifications, turn-by-turn directions, conversations 

with Siri. You'll pretend to be wowed. You'll move on to other subjects.




Then, a few weeks later, you'll start seeing more of these goofy-looking watches being worn by actual humans. Your boss will get one for Father's Day. They'll raffle one off at a benefit dinner. A hot woman will be wearing one in a restaurant and, somehow, be pulling it off. People will start talking about it in your earshot. Eh, the battery life isn't great, but it saves me a lot of time when I travel. Oh yeah, I use it to pay for stuff. Did you know you can share your heartbeat with this? 



Better, cooler apps will be built for these watches. Silly apps that let you take selfies and send them places. Useful apps that put vital information on your wrist when you need it. Apps for work, for commerce, for killing time on the subway platform. Then the accessories will come: rich-looking leather bands, gorgeously thin Chanel straps, carrying cases that have an extra battery tucked away inside. You'll get numb to the boxy, geeky look of the watches. Maybe one day, you'll catch yourself admiring one from afar. Is that ... an Apple Watch?

And then, sometime around June, you'll get an unexpected infusion of cash — a security deposit you forgot you'd paid, or a few hundred dollars from your tax return. And you'll find yourself on Apple.com late at night, admiring the watch, wondering if the $349 you'd spend would ever really be worth it.

What the hell, you'll say. Add to cart.

For all the hemming and hawing about the devices Apple released yesterday — the tech specs, the dimensions, the informed analysis of How It Will All Work Together — the most overlooked aspect of the entire day was that Apple gadgets have always been, and will always be, pure fetish objects. Our iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Air purchases may end up helping us be productive at work, or saving us time on the go, but our decision to buy them always starts with the same thought: This looks cool and I want one.

This instinct, and the simple, primordial envy that produces it, is what's made it possible for Apple to sell luxury devices to the masses even in a time of stagnant wages and widening inequality, inspiring millions of people to stretch their budgets in order to accommodate yet another device they can't really afford. It's what's made my first thought, after dropping a $600 piece of metal and glass in the ocean by accident last year, not "Why did I buy a $600 piece of metal and glass that isn't waterproof?" but "Where can I get another one, stat?"

A few months ago, I wrote about wearables — the unfortunately named category to which the Apple Watch now belongs. My prognosis wasn't great. I thought that "despite all the buzz surrounding wearables, it isn’t clear who’s supposed to be buying them," and wondered aloud who, exactly, would be willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for a glorified notifications screen for their wrist.

But I left myself a small opening. The smartwatch, I wrote, "could succeed as a high-end fashion accessory" if designers conspired to turn it from a geek status symbol into something truly trend-worthy.

This is, of course, exactly what Apple wants to do. By putting the Apple Watch in the hands of fashion people rather than just tech and marketing experts, by making it cost $350, by letting third-party designers accessorize the hell out of it, Tim Cook is going to try to turn the Apple Watch into something aspirational — a thing you covet not because it's got an S1 processor or a Taptic engine, but because having it on your wrist will make you feel better about yourself.

I know, a fashionable smartwatch sounds like an oxymoron. But that's the strategy here. And if it works, you'll find yourself succumbing to the pressure eventually — just like you did with the iPhone, just like you did with the iPad, just as you'll do with any number of future Cupertino-conceived gadgets.


The bottom line is that you'll never need an Apple Watch. But you may very well want one. In wristwear, as in computing, Apple's social engineering may matter more than its technical engineering.

6/10/2014

#Google glass


Learn everything about Google Glass including the latest news, Glassware updates, new Explorer Stories, how to keep in touch, and more.





3/02/2014

Largest single personal data hack ever? 360mn stolen account credentials found online

A cyber security firm has reported a “mind boggling” cache of stolen credentials which has been put up for sale on online black markets. A total of 360 million accounts were affected in a series of hacks, one of which seems to be the biggest in history.

Alex Holden, chief information security officer of Hold Security LLC, said that the firm had uncovered the data over the past three weeks.

He said that 360 million personal account records were obtained in separate attacks, but one single attack seems to have obtained some 105 million records which could make it the biggest single data breach to date, Reuters reports. “The sheer volume is overwhelming,” said Holden in a statement on Tuesday.

“These mind boggling figures are not meant to scare you and they are a product of multiple breaches which we are independently investigating. This is a call to action,” he added.

Hold Security said that as well as 360 million credentials, hackers were also selling 1.25 billion email addresses, which may be of interest to spammers.

The huge treasure trove of personal details includes user names, which are most often email addresses, and passwords, which in most cases are unencrypted.

Hold Security uncovered a similar breach in October last year, but the tens of millions of records had encrypted passwords, which made them much more difficult for hackers to use.

“In October 2013, Hold Security identified the biggest ever public disclosure of 153 million stolen credentials from Adobe Systems Inc. One month later we identified another large breach of 42 million credentials from Cupid Media,”
 Hold Security said in statement.

Holden said he believes that in many cases the latest theft has yet to be publically reported and that the companies that have been attacked are unaware of it. He added that he will notify the companies concerned as soon as his staff has identified them. 

“We have staff working around the clock to identify the victims,”
 he said. 

However, he did say that the email addresses in question are from major providers such as AOL Inc, Google Inc, Yahoo Inc, and Microsoft Corp, as well as “almost all” Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit organizations. 

Heather Bearfield, who runs cybersecurity for an accounting firm Marcum LLP, told Reuters that while she had no information about Hold Security’s findings, she believed that it was quite plausible as hackers can do more with stolen credentials than they can with stolen credit cards, as people often use the same login and password for many different accounts. 

“They can get access to your actual bank account. That is huge. That is not necessarily recoverable funds,”she said. 

The latest revelation by Hold Security comes just months after the US retailer Target announced that 110 million of their customers had their data stolen by hackers. Target and the credit and debit card companies concerned said that consumers do not bear much risk as funds are rapidly refunded in fraud losses.

Reuters / Kacper Pempel

2/21/2014

Will #WhatsApp Reach 1 Billion Users Faster Than #Facebook Did?

It appears that the billion-user club is about to get a new member.

Facebook announced the acquisition of messaging app WhatsApp on Wednesday, a deal worth up to $19 billion in cash and stock that puts serious muscle behind Facebook's international reach.
In a call with investors to outline the acquisition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and whatsapp CEO Jan Koum hinted multiple times that they expect WhatsApp to become a billion-user platform, a milestone that Facebook eclipsed less than 18 months ago.

"WhatsApp is the only widely used app we've ever seen that has more engagement and a higher percent of people using it daily than Facebook itself," Zuckerberg said on the acquisition call Wednesday, noting that WhatsApp has doubled in size over the past year. "Based on our experience of building global services with strong growth and engagement, we believe WhatsApp is on a path to reach over one billion people in the next few years."
WhatsApp has already over 450 million monthly active users (320 of which are daily active users), and the company claims it is adding more than one million new users per day. For comparison purposes, Twitter added nine million new users in the entire Q4 2013; Facebook did better, adding 40 million in the same three month period, but growth is slower for a company with a billion-plus users already under its belt.
Facebook reached one billion in October 2012, roughly eight and a half years after launch. Could WhatsApp hit one billion even faster?
Assuming the company continues to add one million users per day, then yes. Much faster, actually.
WhatsApp is on pace to reach one billion users in August of 2015, approximately a year and a half after being acquired by Facebook. At that time, WhatsApp will be a little more than 6 years old, achieving the billion user milestone more than two years faster than Facebook did.


Of course, WhatsApp's trajectory is likely to change over time. Just like other consumer services like Facebook and Twitter, growth may slow as the user base gets larger and new users are harder to find.
Regardless of the timing, Zuckerberg seems poised to own two separate billion-user brands in the near future, and he's understandably excited.
"Services in the world that have a billion people using them are incredibly valuable," he said.
For $19 billion, we'd certainly hope so.

4/11/2013

How #Gmail Has Evolved Over the Years #gmail



How Gmail Has Evolved Over the Years



Gmail turned 9 this month, and before we know it, it will be heading off to middle school. It's grown up fast. In fact, it knows 57 languages now — the latest one being Cherokee.
Google's email platform has greatly evolved since its inception, with a lot of user feedback taken into account.
"Gmail was inspired by one user’s feedback that she was tired of struggling to find emails buried deep in her inbox," the company said on its official blog. "So we built a new email that leveraged the power of Google Search. You told us you were tired of spam, so we set to tackling that, and today your feedback makes it possible for Gmail to filter out well over 99% of incoming spam."


The company posted on Wednesday an infographic outlining how it's changed in time.
We almost forgot we had to wait a whole two years for GChat. Not to mention you had to be invited to sign up for an account by an existing user for the first three years. And although Gmail got its first Android app in 2009, the site didn't officially leave its beta test phase that same year.
For a full look at how the platform has evolved, check out the infographic below (click to enlarge) and let us know in the comments what you'd like to see from Gmail in the future.


Mashable composite, images via iStockphoto, kemie, and logo courtesy of Google