Google Maps, already the de facto standard for online and mobile maps, is breaking new ground with added capabilities announced on Wednesday at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco.
Maps will get 3D views, speech recognition, enhanced voice search capabilities and will leverage artificial intelligence, among other things. Google Maps for mobile is also being enhanced.
The headquarters of Unit 61398, center, in Shanghai. The unit of the People’s Liberation Army is believed to have resumed its attacks on American companies and government agencies.
WASHINGTON — Three months after hackers working for a cyberunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army went silent amid evidence that they had stolen data from scores of American companies and government agencies, they appear to have resumed their attacks using different techniques, according to computer industry security experts and American officials.
It is not clear precisely who has been affected by the latest attacks. Mandiant, a private security company that helps companies and government agencies defend themselves from hackers, said the attacks had resumed but would not identify the targets, citing agreements with its clients. But it did say the victims were many of the same ones the unit had attacked before.
The hackers were behind scores of thefts of intellectual property and government documents over the past five years, according to a report by Mandiant in February that was confirmed by American officials. They have stolen product blueprints, manufacturing plans, clinical trial results, pricing documents, negotiation strategies and other proprietary information from more than 100 of Mandiant’s clients, predominantly in the United States.
According to security experts, the cyberunit was responsible for a 2009 attack on the Coca-Cola Company that coincided with its failed attempt to acquire the China Huiyuan Juice Group. In 2011, it attacked RSA, a maker of data security products used by American government agencies and defense contractors, and used the information it collected from that attack to break into the computer systems of Lockheed Martin, the aerospace contractor.
The board of Yahoo, the faded Web pioneer, agreed on Sunday to buy the popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash, the companies announced Monday, a signal of how the company plans to reposition itself as the technology industry makes a headlong rush into social media.
The deal would be the largest acquisition of a social networking company in years, surpassing Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram last year.
For Yahoo and its chief executive,Marissa Mayer, buying Tumblr would be a bold move as she tries to breathe new life into the company. The deal, the seventh since Ms. Mayer defected from Google last summer to take over the company, would be her biggest yet. It is meant to give her company more appeal to young people, and to make up for years of missing out on the revolutions in social networking and mobile devices. Tumblr has over 108 million blogs, with many highly active users.
Nokia has just launched its Lumia 925 smartphone at an event in London. In terms of specs however, it seems a lot like the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 928.
One of the biggest changes that Nokia has made to the smartphone is terms of size and design of the body. This is only 8.5mm thick and weighs 139 grams. The Lumia 920 was much heavier and thicker at 185 grams and 10.7mm.
The other big change is the body finish. The smartphone has an aluminum frame, which runs around the outside of the body, and polycarbonate back body.
As far as other features are concerned not much has changed. It has 4.5-inch screen with AMOLED display with 1280×768 pixels resolution. It has a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, and 16GB storage space. The Lumia 920 also has a 4.5-inch screen with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor.
The camera lens is 8.7 megapixels and has Image Optical Stabilisation and Carl Ziess optics and flash. The front camera is 1.2 megapixels. It has wireless charging as well.
This is a 4G smartphone, supports Bluetooth 3.0, NFC, USB 2.0 and WiFi.
Nokia also displayed its new Smart Camera mode which comes with a lot more editing options. These include:
Best Shot: Let’s users choose the best image from 10 frames.
Action Shot: Users can add multiple frames to an image in order to add a sense of motion to their photo.
Motion focus: Motion blur in the background. The option allows users to change the various degrees of motion blur here from low to high.
Change Faces: Choose difference faces from different frames. Helps users ensure that people looks less weird in pictures.
The remove objects option: Let’s you get rid of photo bombers.
Lumia 925 will only be available in grey and black metallic colors. For a colourful body, users will have to purchase an additional sleeve that attaches to the rear of the device (like the Lumia 720). They’ll be available in red, yellow, black, and white.
The Nokia Lumia 925 is expected to start selling in June first in UK, Germany, Italy and Spain with Vodafone and other operator and retail partners; and in China with China Mobile and China Unicom, followed by the US with T-Mobile. It will be priced at around 469 EUR before any local taxes or operator subsidies. No word on India pricing or launch.
Google Unifies Cloud Storage Across Gmail, Drive and Google+: Now Offers 15GB Of Free Space
Integrating of various services into one has been the new mantra of tech giants such as Google and Microsoft. In the not so distant future, we could see these companies unifying all of their service into one big mother service, with which users will be able to perform all tasks quickly and with ease.
Leaving the imagination beside, Google has announced that it will be combining the free cloud storage offered Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos. This means 10 GB of storage space for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, will be unified to give 15 GB of unified storage space.
This move does simplifies things for the user, as he or she wont have worry about how much you're storing and where. Let it be photos, emails or other files everything can just be shared in a single unified 15 GB storage space.
Before, users could by extra storage space, with plans starting at $4.99/month for 100 GB. However, this meant 20 GB limit for Gmail. Now the users will be able to use full 100 GB for Gmail as well, since the partitioning of storage space for Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos, has been removed. Users will be able to buy up to up to 16 TB of space. Changes to Google Drive storage will roll out over the next couple of weeks, according to a post by Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management, Google. Google Apps users will also be getting a shared storage space of 30GB for Gmail, Drive and Google+ photos, according to the post.
