Category: News

WASHINGTON: Uncle Sam is watching you...every electronic step you take, every digital move you make. The world woke on Friday morning to news that the US government's surveillance of people is much broader, wider, and deeper than initially thought and extends beyond America - into the whole world. For the last six years, the secretive National Security Agency (NSA) has been able to pluck data - including e-mails, videos, pictures, social networking details, and connection logs - from the main servers of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook, Skype and other leading US tech companies. Its collection of metadata from Verizon is just the tip of the iceberg that is drifting towards the Obama administration. The newly disclosed US program, leaked by a disgruntled insider in the government, is named PRISM,…

NEW DELHI: The CEOs of Facebook and Google on Saturday categorically denied that the US National Security Agency had "direct access" to their company servers for snooping on Gmail and Facebook users. But both acknowledged that the companies complied with the 'lawful' requests made by the US government and shared user data with sleuths. In a post titled "What the ...?" Google's official blog, CEO Larry Page wrote, "We have not joined any program that would give the US government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday." A few hours later, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded. "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our…

[caption id="attachment_231" align="alignnone" width="585"] Pakistan's new IT minister has warned that Google could be blocked in the country if it fails to remove objectionable material from YouTube.[/caption]   ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's new IT minister has warned that Google could be blocked in the country if the company fails to remove blasphemous and objectionable material from its video-sharing website YouTube. Minister of state for IT and telecommunication Anusha Rahman Khan made the remarks on her first day in office yesterday while talking about Pakistan's efforts to end a nine-month ban on YouTube for hosting clips from the controversial film "Innocence of Muslims." Google, the parent company of YouTube, had rejected requests from the previous Pakistan People's Party-led government to remove the objectionable material and Khan said she hoped the company would listen…

Today in international tech news: A German court tells Google that it'll have to clean up autocomplete; Amazon workers strike in Germany; and following last week's news of a record-breaking cyberheist, people question the wisdom of outsourcing jobs dealing with sensitive financial information. A federal court in Germany has told Google that it must remove offensive or defamatory suggestions from its autocomplete function when it receives a complaint. The case that prompted the ruling started with a German businessman who, upon culling through Google.de, found that he was associated with scientology and fraud. (He was apparently neither a scientologist nor a scumbag.) The court said that a person's privacy is violated when Google's autocomplete function, which offers suggestions on not-yet-completed search terms, links said person to something that isn't true.…

[caption id="attachment_225" align="alignnone" width="585"] Agence France-Presse, June 10, 2013[/caption]   Apple, aiming to overcome recent missteps and keep its cutting-edge reputation, is expected to unveil a streaming music service along with fresh hardware and software at an annual conference on Monday. Speculation that Apple will provide developers with a look at an online radio service heightened Friday with reports that the California company had inked a content deal with Sony Music. Universal and Warner music groups are already said to be on board with Apple, and enlisting the Japanese entertainment giant would mean that all three major music labels have been won over to the service. "They need a streaming audio service to remain at the forefront of their customers' music experience," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin. "People are moving…

[caption id="attachment_220" align="alignnone" width="585"] Mobile Shopping[/caption]   Even as Indians are increasingly taking to smartphones but they still prefer websites for online shopping than using shopping applications on the device, according to a survey. Close to 25 percent of smartphone-users in country prefer to shop online than use shopping apps, a study by research firm Nielsen said. "When it comes to accessing content on the smartphone, there has been an increasing preference for apps over websites. However, in the shopping genre, the smartphone audience still prefers websites," the study said. "Shopping apps are still in a very nascent stage with just 3 percent of smartphone users accessing them. On the other hand, 1 in 4 (25 percent) smartphone users access shopping websites at least once a month, clearly indicating a…

[caption id="attachment_216" align="alignnone" width="585"] ESPNCricinfo iPhone app revamped in time for ICC Champions Trophy[/caption]   ESPNCricinfo has released a major update to its iPhone app hours before the Champions Trophy begins in England on Thursday. The version 3.0 of the app, redesigned from the ground up, is a big improvement on the earlier versions, and suffers from none of the lags that affected the performance of its predecessor. NDTV Gadgets had early access to the app a few days before its release, and we were quite impressed by the UI. While the app takes some time to load and fetch data on first launch, almost everything beyond that is pretty snappy over Wi-Fi as well as 3G. The stories now include a quick summary, a (human) edited version to provide…

[caption id="attachment_213" align="alignnone" width="585"] Opera Mini[/caption]   Opera Software has released Opera Mini 4.5, the updated version of its mobile browser, for feature phones that support Java apps. The update brings a refreshed look and feel with touch enhancements for supported phones. The browser now comes with a download manager through which users can pause, resume and manage downloads, getting the ability to control downloads on their phones. The browser also offers a privacy mode that allows users to browse the web without storing form details and browsing history. Users can open a new Private tab for the same. "Getting online is a must in the modern world, and the kind of equipment you choose to use should not stand in the way of having a first-class browsing experience," says…

The dedicated storefront on Amazon's Digital Video Games Store is designed to highlight games that can get lost in the din dominated by developer powerhouses. [caption id="attachment_209" align="alignnone" width="440"] (Credit: CBS Interactive)[/caption] Independent game developers surely have wished they could lob their own angry birds at juggernaut game makers dominating the market and keeping their own products off players' radars. Amazon today launched an Indie Games Store to address just that problem. A new category on Amazon in the Digital Video Games Store, it is designed to help indie developers get better exposure for PC, Mac, and browser-based games. For gamers, it means a new way to discover gems. The storefront has features and promotions like Indie Spotlight, which is just what it sounds like: a focus on individual developers,…

The social network says it's been listening to what advertisers want, so it's consolidating some forms of advertising. [caption id="attachment_202" align="alignnone" width="585"] Facebook Ads Product Manager Fidji Simo speaks about consolidating ad products.(Credit: Donna Tam/CNET)[/caption] MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Facebook wants to make it less confusing for marketers to advertise on the social network, so it's killing some ad units and consolidating others, the company announced Thursday. "What we want to do is take the guesswork out of the process," Fidji Simo, a product manager for ads, said during a press event at Facebook's headquarters. The company is rolling out several changes in the next couple of months to its 27 types of advertising, including the elimination of Facebook questions, online local offers, and the individual page posts ads. [caption…