Facebook Is Creating Location-Sharing App

Facebook is developing a new app that keeps track of user location, and reports that information to friends when they're nearby, according to a report.
The app will be released mid-March, and will run even when it isn't open on users' phones, Bloomberg reports. For example, Facebook user Shirley may get a notification that says Bob is around the corner — even if neither of them happens to be using the app at that time.
Facebook is showing a keen interest in location-sharing. The company tested a “Find Friends Nearby” feature in its mobile app last June. Designed to facilitate meeting new people, users can quickly add the "John Smith" they meet at a party, without confusing him with the dozens of other John Smiths on Facebook.
Friendthem, another company, accused Facebook of stealing the idea, however; and shortly after, the social-network giant removed the feature from its mobile app.
Facebook's new app would be similar to location-sharing apps, Glancee and Highlight, and would run in the background of users' phones. Highlight, for instance, analyzes users' Facebook information to let them know when they're near friends, as well as when they're close to people with whom they share mutual friends or similar interests on the site.
Facebook acquired Glancee last May. The company's staff joined Facebook, and at the time indicated that it would be creating products for the site's community as a whole. Members of Glancee's engineering team are a part of the group creating the new app, Bloomberg reported.

Tegra 4-powered Project SHIELD Visits the ‘Badass Crater of Badassitude’

Maybe you’re just tired after a marathon Borderlands 2 session. Maybe you need to answer nature’s call. Whatever the reason, never again will you have to worry about losing precious gaming time just because you have to go “Away From Keyboard.”
Project SHIELD will soon redefine what it means to be AFK with its ability to stream your high-end PC games straight to our Android-powered mobile gaming device. Now you can continue playing your game from the comfort of your couch or, well, anywhere else you might find yourself sitting in your house.
What you see below is a demo of Project SHIELD running the ‘Badass Crater of Badassitude’ level of Borderlands 2 from a GeForce-enabled PC. This particular rig happens to be a Falcon Tiki PC running a GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, allowing us to run the game with the graphics settings cranked all the way up.
Booting up your Tegra 4-powered Project SHIELD is as simple as turning on a smartphone or tablet. Streaming a PC game is just as easy: fire up the SHIELD Android app and tap a few buttons. Within a matter of seconds you’ll be back in the action with all the graphical bells and whistles you’re used to on your PC.

There's A Major Flaw In Zynga's Plan To Fix Itself

Zynga has a plan to fix itself that involves becoming a more mobile-focused company and putting more resources behind the "With Friends" brand.
It has no choice but to figure out mobile. Zynga's mobile users are growing three times faster than its web users. Meanwhile, Zynga's Facebook users have dropped 16% from last year to Q2 this year.
But creating more "with friends" branded games might not be the smartest strategy. Zynga has only ever had one real success in that category, Words with Friends. The rest of its attempts have gone bust.

Words With Friends currently has about 5.7 million daily active users (DAUs), according to AppData. But every social game it has launched since, Hanging with Friends, Scramble with Friends and Matching with Friends, have petered out.
"None of those games are or have been successful," a source close to the company says. "Scramble DAU is down almost 50% over several months and Matching With Friends couldn't hold on to #1 spot for more than two days."

Zynga has tried replicating its smash hits before without much luck. Farmville, which first put the gaming company on the map, has led to a slew of other "ville" attempts, like Castleville, Cityville, YoVille, PetVille and FishVille. Most have not been able to attract the same user-base as Farmville.
"The 'With Friends' network is the same strategy as ville games," says the source "Pick a franchise that has one hit and double down on the franchise as each game performs worse and worse."
What should really have Zynga concerned, and has gone unsaid by the Journal, and others, is that Zynga has never built its own successful mobile game. It bought Words with Friends. It bought Farmville. It bought Draw Something, which was a successful mobile game.
Even if it doubles down on a semi-successful brand, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be able to build a successful mobile game.

Mobile internet demand boosts

Allot Communications (ALLT.TA) (ALLT.O), which supplies technology that allows telecoms operators to monitor and allocate bandwidth, posted a forecast-beating rise in quarterly profit as revenues rose more than 40 percent, helped by surging demand for fast internet on mobile devices.
However, the initial positive reaction that sent Allot's Tel Aviv shares 2.7 per cent higher by the close was tempered by concern over deal flow and the company's simultaneous announcement of its second acquisition in four months.
Allot's Nasdaq-listed shares slid 7 percent to $22.96 in early trading after Chief Executive Rami Hadar told a conference call that while deal flow was healthy, the deal-closing process is taking longer because of pricing issues in a challenging economic environment.
"They had a great quarter," said Northland Capital Markets analyst Catharine Trebnick, who rates Allot as "market perform" with a $28 target. "But investors are confused."
She cited worries over longer contract negotiations as well as the announcement that it plans to buy Israeli start-up Oversi Networks for $16 million in cash.
Traditional telcos and mobile operators are experiencing high demand for bandwidth because of strong sales of iPhones, iPads and Android-based mobile phones and devices, but providers are seeing revenue declining as unlimited data plans have grown more popular.
"Allot is benefiting from growth in mobile data and growth in data traffic in general," Nachum Falek, Allot's chief financial officer, told Reuters on Tuesday, adding that much of the rise in investment in expanding networks' bandwidth comes from streaming movies and video clips.
Video, Falek said, is likely to account for 60 to 70 percent of traffic in the next few years, up from 42 percent currently.
Allot's equipment allows telecoms providers to monitor data traffic and allocate bandwidth to where it's needed most - users streaming video at the expense of a slightly longer wait for another customer expecting a large file via email, for example.
"You want to see streaming video without buffering, but you don't mind getting an email a second later," Falek said.
Europe is Allot's largest market, and it also sells to Asia and Latin America. However, the company sees the United States as a key growth driver after a U.S. court ruling two years ago that allowed Internet service providers to slow traffic to sites such as YouTube or Hulu.
"The United States is a huge market in terms of opportunity," Falek said.
Allot earned 15 cents per diluted share excluding one-off items in the second quarter, compared with 10 cents a year earlier. Revenue rose 43 percent to $26.4 million.
The Israeli company was forecast to earn 14 cents a share on revenue of $25 million, according to Thomson Reuters IBES estimates.
Its planned purchase of Oversi, a provider of media caching for Internet video, follows its acquisition of Ortiva Wireless in May and is expected to close in the third quarter.
In addition to cash, Allot will pay up to $5 million based on Oversi's performance in 2012. Oversi is expected to contribute $2 million to Allot's quarterly revenue and reduce earnings per share by 2 cents in the fourth quarter before breaking even by the first quarter of 2013, Allot said.

Obama Campaign Releases Mobile Voter Engagement App

Obama For America released the iPhone version of a voter engagement app today with the Android version set to be released soon. The app is meant to bolster the campaign’s grassroots efforts, 100 days out from November’s presidential election.
The app synchronizes with Facebook, Twitter, email and SMS, as well as a web app, Dashboard, on the OFA website. The campaign is billing the smartphone app as a tactic that will allow organizers, volunteers and voters to better engage with the campaign.
The app also streams campaign news, provides volunteer opportunities, allows for easy social media sharing, provides information on voting locations and registration information. There’s a function for users to see the latest voter ID laws in their state and a place to report voting problems or abuse. Users can also donate to the campaign using the app.
It shares nuggets of campaign PR for users to utilize in campaigning on behalf of OFA stream via the app, such as how middle class tax relief affected Florida voters, for example.
This allows users of the app to essentially become their own campaign headquarters. They can download the names of voters in their neighborhood from campaign HQ via the app, then share this information using the app back to the campaign.
The Dashboard, a web app users can synch to their smartphone apps, allows users to Connect via Facebook and then engage in campaign actions, such as volunteering or hosting an event.
“We designed our new app to help break down the distinction between online and offline organizing, giving every supporter the same opportunities to get involved that they would find in a field office,” said Deputy Campaign Manager for Obama for America Stephanie Cutter in a statement.

The Mac's mobile-only future

Let's look at what's happened to the Mac platform over the last several years.

• A modern file system - ZFS - promised and then killed.
• A doubling-down on 1980's HFS+ that locks it in.
• A storage black box - Core Storage - that outside developers can access only through limited APIs, unlike earlier options.
• 2 OS versions - Lion and Mountain Lion - with NO kernel investment. The aging Mach kernel was never designed for multi-processor systems and doesn't scale well beyond 4 cores.
• Focus on Macbook hardware, not desktops.
• Cancelling almost every "enterprise" product, including servers and storage arrays.

The Mac is now Apple's poor relation: a few billion in revenue and margin; but not strategic in an Apple world dominated by iPhones and iPads. That's why Mac investment has gone to mobile devices that don't scale. They don't need to: the money is in mobile, not desktops. Which is fine if Macbooks do everything you need.
Implications

• Forget about a new Mac Pro. Grand Central Dispatch - which was supposed to make the Mac's Mach kernel work with manycore systems - hasn't seen wide enough adoption to warrant more work.
• Forget about significant enhancements to the OS X kernel. What you see is what you'll be getting for years to come.
• Apple's Mac application ambitions will scale down too. You can always get more jelly beans in a big box than a little one, so the days of using Final Cut Pro to produce Hollywood movies are coming to a close. If you can't do it on a top of the line MacBook Pro, you can't do it on a Mac.

The Storage Bits take
All this is bad news for people, like FCP editors, who've invested years in learning the Mac and their key apps. But you aren't the future of the Mac, so get over it.
From a financial perspective this all makes perfect sense. Which is why finance people seem to be such jerks: they don't count the human cost of their "rational" decisions.
People who supported the Mac platform over the last decade will feel burned by the Mac's shrinking role. Apple could afford to invest in the Mac, and they do, but in shiny hardware rather than state-of-the-art software that consumers don't understand.
I've worked in corporate engineering groups for a couple of decades, through many product and budget cycles. And following the money tells you what's really going on.
Apple has given up competing with Windows. Will that damage their mobile aspirations? Probably not, but the Mac is becoming an appliance, not a general purpose personal computer.

Opera reaches 200M active users

The mobile browser company says it has reached the milestone of 200 million users, a massive increase year over year, as users in Africa reach out to social networks and more.

The combined number of mobile users around the world using the Opera Mini mobile Web browser has hit 200 million users per month for the first time, the Norway-based company said today.
At the same time, users in Africa are leading the uptake in mobile browsing thanks to Facebook, despite the social network's monthly active users remaining mostly flat month-on-month in the past quarter at 955 million.
The makers of the Opera browser have released their monthly State of the Mobile Web report, which looks at its product usage across more than 50 countries.
Out of the 200 million users, Opera Mini -- for non-smart devices or "feature" phones -- has 92 percent of all users at 183 million, while Opera Mobile -- designed for smartphones -- has the minority 8 percent at 17 million.
Opera Mini users alone accounted for more than 115 billion pageviews in 2012, an increase of more than 55 percent year over year.
Opera said it reached its milestone in June, thanks to a surge in users in Africa. Facebook tops the charts in all African countries where Opera has a presence, with the exception of Algeria, Angola, and Guinea, where Google stands at the top of the charts.
While Africa continues to develop, slower mobile networks still make loading pages a tedious process. Opera changes this by using data compression technology, similar to how BlackBerry devices work when browsing and sending and receiving e-mail.
Opera Mini is famed for its data compression, which squeezes data by as much as 90 percent -- a highly useful function in areas of the world, such as Africa, that have limited mobile connectivity over vast spaces. In June, Opera Mini users generated over 2.01 billion megabytes of data, but would have stood at 20 petabytes if the data were uncompressed.
The firm showed in May that usage of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile users grew steadily, despite a couple of dips in the process. Compared to May 2011, usage was up from 47 percent on last year's report. However, Opera Mini retains the lead over its smartphone counterpart with 36 countries on the continent more than doubling their use of the data-squeezing browser.

Number of Opera mobile product users

(Credit: Opera)

Since the 2011 revolution in Libya, Opera said that north African country has grown the most out of any country in Africa in user numbers, page views counted, and data consumption.
The country, which suffered through Internet shutdowns and online oppression and censorship, saw a 323,000 percent increase in mobile users, a 1.8 million percent boost in page views, and a 1.5 million percent jump in data usage.
Mobile remains an important medium for those in politically troubled areas of Africa, such as the Ivory Coast, which showed a massive growth in users; a 600 percent rise in users in one year, while page views grew by 744 percent. Data outpaced the growth in pageviews by 760 percent, which as Opera noted, shows that Africans are browsing larger, richer, and more advanced pages.
"For many of them, a browser is more than a tool to 'browse the web'. Sometimes it's a school when you can afford none, sometimes it's the only line to an outside world shut off by an oppressive regime," said Opera chief executive Lars Boilesen. "We want to make a difference in the world, not only on the web."

 

Cell phone battery catches fire, burns hacker's tail at Defcon

A cell phone battery spontaneously caught fire today, burned through a Defcon attendee's back pants pocket, and fell on the floor, creating burn spots on a carpet and leaving a burn-hole in the attendee's chair.
The man, who asked not to be identified, was not harmed but his trousers were ruined. He told that he was sitting in a session at Defcon around 11:30 a.m. PT when he started to smell something burning and felt some heat underneath him on his seat. He stood up to find that his back left pocket was on fire.
"I smelled the burn, the smoke, and I stood up and could literally see flames," he said. "I tried to tap it out (with a hand) and it fell to the floor. It burned right through the backside."
The battery, which he said goes with a Droid Bionic smartphone that was not in the pocket, was still burning on the ground. He kicked it and it rolled and burned another spot into the carpet. He then left the room to get help as people around him began taking photos.
His derriere probably would have been scorched as well if he hadn't had his plastic hotel room key-card in between him and the battery. "My hotel key saved my butt," he said, laughing.
A woman who was taking video of the event for Defcon was seated on a platform about 20 feet away and had a good view of what happened. "I saw something glowing out of the corner of my eye," she said. "A guy's butt was in flames."
The rest of the session was canceled and the room was evacuated. The man said he had nothing else in his pocket but the battery and the hotel card key, and that he had no idea why the battery would have started to heat up.
The phone make and model isn't confirmed yet.
A Motorola representative provided this statement when asked for comment: "Motorola Mobility's priority is the safety of our customers. All Motorola products are designed, manufactured, and tested to meet or exceed international and local standards for consumer safety and performance. We will will look into this matter immediately."
The cause of the overheating remains a mystery.
Don Bailey, a mobile expert at Capitol Hill Consultants, said batteries can heat up if the metal leads touch something conductive. "Something as simple as steel wool can cause a short between the leads on a cell phone battery," he said.
It could been a bad battery, or the man could have damaged the battery somehow. But if there was no metal in the pocket at the time, it's likely the culprit was some conductive material, such as steel wool from a brush used to clean metal, that had somehow worked its way into the fibers of his pocket, Bailey said. "It's rare for manufactured batteries like these to have that kind of a failure."

These are the burn marks that were left on the floor after the incident. The chair was removed right after the accident.

Hackers build private 'Ninja Tel' phone network

Hackers built their own GSM network at Defcon, Ninja Tel, and distributed customized Android phones with fun apps.

Hackers who spent their teen years phone-phreaking -- breaking into telephone networks and making free calls -- have created their own GSM network at Defcon and are using creative and silly apps on highly customized Android phones.
The Ninja hacker group is giving the phones away to people who have contributed to the community, and to their lucky friends. The phones and accompanying lanyards serve as "badges" that provide entrance to the annual Ninja party tonight. (Defcon attendees can also get in by donating blood or signing up to donate bone marrow, or donating money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.)
The phones are HTC One V phones running Android 4.0.3. Calls can be routed over the private GSM network or over Defcon's Wi-Fi network. The network is not encrypted and there is no emergency call phone number.
The "Ninja Tel" network is "the biggest open BTS (base transceiver station) network ever," said Ninja Michael J.J. Tiffany. BTS networks are designed to allow for software-based switching technology that can be housed in small spaces, such as a van.
The Ninja Tel van, complete with official looking logo and hard-hat wearing workers, has a GSM base station; a 12-foot antenna; networking and Web app servers; and other equipment and is parked in a large room at Defcon. The project took about 10 months to complete, Tiffany said.
There are 650 phones on the private network, with people making phone calls, texting, chatting, holding conference calls, and playing a sword-fighting game. There are additional apps being created by people who are using the phone through Android's IDE (Integrated Development Environment).
People choose their own phone number and username and can have their photos taken so that their face shows up in everyone's contact list. Once the customized Ninja SIM card is inserted, a special terms of service written by a Ninja who is a lawyer is displayed and the phone receives a call with a fun welcome message recorded by Pat Fleet, who is the voice of AT&T.
The interface has a retro look and feel with screens reminiscent of the yellow pages and other classic elements, created by Pinguina, a designer at Universal. Ninja attention to detail is seen in every interaction, such as the sword sound that's made by the phone when the screen is unlocked.
A popular app is BoozeFone, a play on MovieFone, which gives options such as press 1 for Vodka, 2 for Jack Daniels, and 3 for PBR and has a humorous recorded audio message for each. People can notify the system that they have booze and what type, and when someone calls in and requests that item the two will be connected.
There is a vending machine app that interacts with customized Coke machines to dispense swag, but Tiffany declined to say exactly what, not wanting to spoil the surprise for people using the machines at the party.
Ninjas declined to say how much the operation cost for the phones and all the equipment, paid for and otherwise supported by Facebook, Zynga, AllJoyn, and Lookout, whose workers worked on the Android development.
"The goal was to create a network that could be explored to give people an experience they haven't had since we were kids," Tiffany said. "It's not just a phone network. It's a phone network that has a lot of goodies.... We laid down the infrastructure and people are bringing the party to this network. It's an interactive experience."
Given that it is a hacker conference it's no surprise that people are trying to hack the network and take it down, but so far there has been only one known attempt to jam the network, and it failed, Tiffany said.
Creating a phone network purely for play is classic hacker MO and, in particular, typical of this group.
"We are a constructive group," Tiffany said. "We have a name and we did it not by being bad. Not breaking anything or taking anything down. We're creating our own network. That's Ninja style."

Mobile Apps Are Winning Now, But HTML5 Will Win The Future

HTML5 is a new technology that allows developers to build rich web-based apps that run on any device via a standard web browser.
Many think it will save the web, rendering native platform-dependent apps obsolete.
So, which will win? Native apps or HTML5?
A recent report from BI Intelligence explains how we think HTML5 will win out, and what an HTML future will look like for consumers, developers, and brands.

Here's the pros and cons of each that matters: 

• Features: This is a big problem with HTML5 right now. There are some things HTML5 simply can't do. This should change as HTML5 evolves. Advantage: Apps

• User experience: On this score, so far, native apps win. This is because HTML5 technology still isn't evolved enough, and also because you can do more with native code. Advantage: Apps

• Monetization: With app stores and native apps hooked into services like iTunes that have your credit card, native apps are just much easier to monetize than HTML5. Advantage: Apps

• Cost: HTML5 apps are cheaper to make because they're cross-platform. If you want to build an app on every platform, you need to build it almost from scratch. Advantage: HTML5

• Distribution: This could be a wash, but we'll award it to HTML5. Some people are very happy with the native/app store distribution model. But ultimately the more open web model will let more people have distribution. It will also reduce the power of gatekeepers like Apple. Advantage: HTML5

In full, the special report analyzes:

• What HTML5 is, giving an overview of how it is a technology done by committee

• Why the HTML5-vs-Apps debate matters, breaking down its impact on distribution, monetization, platform power and network effects, and functionality.

• The pluses and minuses of HTML5 vs. native apps, comparing each by cost, user experience, features, distribution, and monetization.

• How and when HTML5 will take over, laying out how it has all the hallmarks of a disruptive technology.

• The success of an HTML5 pioneer, The Financial Times.

• What an HTML5 future will look like, with the promise of richer and more interactive experiences.