Apple seeks Android source code from Google

In its patent war with Samsung, US technology titan Apple seems to have finally taken the fight to Google. The company founded by late visionary Steve Jobs has asked a US court to direct the world's biggest internet search company to handover the source code of its Android operating system.

According to a news report in Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple told the US court that Google is "improperly withholding" data that it requested in the pre-trial information sharing stage. Apple has sought this information in the second-patent infringement case it has filed at the San Jose court. As per the court filing, the iPhone maker has argued that Android is used in all of Samsung's allegedly infringing products and "provides much of the accused functionality."

The latest development in the war between Apple and Samsung comes in the lawsuit that includes patent violation charges on phones like iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III.

However, a lawyer for Google (but who also represents Samsung in the case) told the court that the Tim Cook-led company made this "strategic decision to keep Google off the complaint." He said that the internet search giant does not have the same legal rights as the Apple and Samsung in this case "with respect to reciprocal discovery," the report states.

Apple and Samsung are embroiled in a patent battles across various parts of the world. One of the biggest judgements in the matter came last year, when a US jury concluded that Samsung has violated Apple patents and awarded the latter $1.05 billion. However, this sum was slashed later to $450.5 million by the court and a new date to determine final damages in the case was set.

Nasscom to offer up to Rs 2cr funding to 500 tech start-ups

 Nasscom, which recently launched its '10,000 start-ups' programme, announced inviting applications from innovative technology start-ups across the country. 

The association has already received over 1,000 applications from budding start-ups since the launch of the programme and is expected to receive 5,000 applications in the next eight weeks. 

Nasscom President Som Mittal told reporters that applicants should log on to start-up portal www.10000startups.com. Nasscom will shortlist 500 entrepreneurs who will be eligible for funding of Rs 25 lakh to Rs 2 crore through the leading angel investor networks of the country. 

Selected start-ups will be offered three to four months of incubation along with co-working space at affordable cost. 

Under the programme, for which Google, Microsoft and others have partnered with Nasscom, 10,000 technology start-ups will be funded in 10 years. 

"We expect 15 of these start-ups will be billion dollar companies," he said. 

The programme is expected to increase start-up funding by 10 times, seed funding by 20 times and start-up jobs by five times. Nasscom expects over 500,000 jobs will be created at the start-up level itself. 

The selected start-ups will be provided with a start-up kit worth Rs.10 lakh comprising free business tools from Microsoft, AWS and Google. 

Nasscom signed MoUs with Hyderabad Angels as funding partner and with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and IIIT Hyderabad as incubators to collaborate and support the creation of an ecosystem to foster technology entrepreneurship. 

"We have to create an environment where that early stage funding comes in," Mittal said, adding that such early stage funding by professionals is lacking in the country. 

Andhra Pradesh has been identified as an important start-up hub. The number of start-ups in India has risen from 162 in 2006 to 450 in 2012. 

Stating that massive markets erre emerging for start-ups in India, he said that internet users were expected to rise to 650 million by 2025 while wireless users are likely to reach one billion. 

Global opportunities are $17 billion in big data and $50 billion in enterprise mobility by 2015 and $50 billion in enterprise SaaS by 2025.

Samsung announces Galaxy Mega 6.3 and Mega 5.8

Samsung has expanded its Android smartphone lineup with the addition of Galaxy Mega series. The South Korean manufacturer has announced two phones under this range, namely Galaxy Mega 6.3 and Galaxy Mega 5.8. Both the smartphones run on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), which is presently available on only a few devices.

Galaxy Mega 6.3, as the name suggests, features a 6.3-inch TFT HD display and is powered by a 1.7 GHz dual-core processor. This device has 1.5GB RAM and comes in 8 and 16GB memory options, with microSD card support up to 64GB. This phone can connect to the internet over 2G, 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi networks and transfer data via Bluetooth 4.0, microUSB 2.0 and NFC. The manufacturer has strapped an 8MP camera with LED flash on the back of the device, whereas a 1.9MP shooter on the front.

The smaller device in the line-up, Galaxy Mega 5.8, touts a 5.8-inch TFT touchscreen and runs on a 1.4GHz dual-core CPU, coupled with 1.5GB RAM. This phone is available with only 8GB internal storage and supports microSD cards with capacities up to 64GB. Connectivity features in the device include 2G, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0. On the back of this smartphone is an 8MP shooter with LED flash, while a 1.9MP unit is used on the front panel.

There is no word on pricing, though the company says both devices are expected to launch in May.

"We are aware of a great potential in the bigger screen for extensive viewing multimedia, web browsing, and more," said JK Shin, CEO and head of IT & mobile business, Samsung Electronics. "We are excited to provide another choice to meet our consumers' varying lifestyles, all while maintaining the high-quality features of the award-winning Galaxy series."

3 ways to send self-destructing emails

In the era of Snapchat and Poke, self-destructing messages on smartphones and tablets are the new fad. However, such self-deleting messages are not limited to handheld gadgets only. You can now send self-destructing messages via good old email too. Yes, there are a number of services in the market that let you send messages to others which get deleted once they read it.

Here are three online services that enable you to send self-destructing emails.

OneShar.es

This is an easy-to-use service which actually gives you a URL for the whatever message you have typed. And once the URL is opened for the first time, it gets invalidated and no one can again use it. And this service promises that the message is deleted from their servers too, which makes it a trust worthy service.

Privnote

It's a pretty interesting concept on which it works. All you are supposed to do is go the website, type in the content that you wish to share, and click on Create Note button. Once done, it would give you a link which can be used in your email. The reader would click on this URL to read the message and once he/she reads it, the URL will get expired.

Self Destructing Message

This service lets you send mails anonymously as well as generate links for the messages. Then you need to click on the drop down and choose the seconds (number of seconds till which the reader can have the message open), type your message and click on Create Message button. Your self-destructing message is now ready.

Soon, replace your passwords with thoughts

You may be spared from typing pesky passwords in the future!

Instead of typing your password, you may only have to think about it, thanks to a new wireless headset device developed by researchers. 

Remembering passwords for all your sites can get annoying. There are only so many punctuation, number substitutes and uppercase variations you can recall, and writing them down for all to find is hardly an option. 

Researchers at the University of California Berkeley School of Information developed the device that explores the feasibility of brainwave-based computer authentication as a substitute for passwords. 

By measuring brain-waves with bio-sensor technology, researchers are able to replace passwords with "passthoughts" for computer authentication, website 'Mashable' reported. 

A USD 100 headset wirelessly connects to a computer via Bluetooth, and the device's sensor rests against the user's forehead, providing a electroencephalogram (EEG) signal from the brain. 

The NeuroSky Mindset looks just like any other Bluetooth set and is more user-friendly, researchers said. 

Brainwaves are also unique to each individual, so even if someone knew your passthought, their emitted EEG signals would be different. 

"Other than the EEG sensor, the headset is indistinguishable from a conventional Bluetooth headset for use with mobile phones, music players, and other computing devices," according to the researchers. 

Participants, in a series of tests, completed seven different mental tasks with the device, including imagining their finger moving up and down and choosing a personalised secret, the report said. 

Simple actions like focusing on breathing or on a thought for ten seconds resulted in successful authentication. 

"We find that brainwave signals, even those collected using low-cost non-intrusive EEG sensors in everyday settings, can be used to authenticate users with high degrees of accuracy," the researchers concluded. 

Moonshot 1500: A small server, but a big step for HP

Hewlett-Packard just had its most innovative moment in years. How do we know this? Well, the company has ushered forth a new creation under the Project Moonshoot banner, created a scripted webcast to accompany the product, and even had guys who would normally wear suits dress down in sports coats and jeans to model the product, thus underscoring its hipness.

What HP has built is a new server — the HP Moonshot 1500. It's special because it runs on Intel's low power Atom chips, which usually go into mobile devices. As a result, HP has been able to design an entire computer server that's about the size of an envelope and then pack hundreds of these together into a single system that basically functions as an ultra compact supercomputer. According to HP's stats, the new server uses 89% less energy, takes up 80% less space, and costs 77% less than more traditional server designs.

The HP Moonshot 1500 both is and isn't revolutionary. To its credit, HP has pushed compact server designs to the extreme and crammed an awful lot of computing power in a small amount of space. This type of system has been designed for web and cloud computing companies that tend to buy thousands upon thousands of servers and need them to run as efficiently as possible. By using smartphone instead of beefier server chips, HP has provided a product that can handle the lightweight task of feeding up Web pages without consuming a lot of electricity. (Such a server would not be as well suited to, say, processing millions of transactions or large calculations.)

The problem is that most web giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google already design their own servers and have an Asian contract manufacturer produce them. HP, though, might have a strong play if you look longer term. It's basically betting that more traditional companies will come to want and need similar computing systems as the web giants. Overall, HP wants to convey that it's an innovator again.

H-1B workers‘ shortage exaggerated

As the wrangling over immigration reform intensifies in the US Congress, the tech industry is lobbying hard to raise the limit on H-1B visas, which allow non-US citizens with advanced skills and degrees in "specialty occupations" to work in the country for up to six years. 

Demand is so great that the annual cap of 65,000 was hit last week, just days after the application period opened. Technology companies support raising the H-1B quota almost five-fold, to 3,00,000, arguing universities are just not turning out enough American math and science graduates and they need to cast their net abroad to stay competitive. 

Yet some US tech workers and academics say that the shortage of talent is exaggerated, that many of the jobs could go to out-of-work computer professionals in the United States, and that the programme serves mainly as a source of cheap labour. 

The 2,00,000-member US chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers rejects the claim of a broad shortage of tech workers and opposes more H-1Bs. 

"What these companies are doing is to replace Americans with lower-cost foreign workers," says Russ Harrison, senior legislative representative at the IEEE. 

Rather than more H-1B visas, the group favours giving foreign workers permanent residency, which Harrison said would help boost wages and increase job mobility for newcomers. 

In Silicon Valley, stories of ferocious competition for engineering workers and a lack of qualified job-seekers abound. 

Tech companies point to an unemployment rate of around 3.5 percent for those with advanced computer and math experience, less than half the national rate, though in line with other professional occupations. 

But wages in the tech industry are rising more slowly than those in the economy as a whole. For example, pay for applications software developers, a specialty in high demand, have risen just 8.9 percent in the five years through mid-2012, compared with a 12.5 percent increase for all occupations in the US economy. 

"It is extraordinarily unlikely for a severe shortage to happen in a way that doesn't result in very large wage increases," said Kirk Doran, an economist at the University of Notre Dame who studies immigration and labour. 

"We know what a labour shortage looks like: there should be both much lower unemployment than other professions and much higher wage growth. If either of these are not present, then I don't buy the shortage hypothesis." 

Others say that when industries grow fast, wage growth can be stifled because of an influx of relatively inexperienced and lower-paid workers. 

"Even if you look at data from one year to the next, it may not tell you what you think," said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy, a think tank backed by the pro-entrepreneurship Kauffman Foundation and others. He says sub-industries sometimes move from one category to another one, and that industries are growing more specialised, complicating the data.