Apple Takes on Instagram with Upgraded iCloud Offering

The new features, which could be announced at Apple's world-wide developer conference beginning June 11, will allow iCloud users to share sets of photos with other iCloud users and to comment on them, these people said.

Currently, users can store only one set of photos in iCloud through a feature called Photo Stream, which is designed to sync those photos to other Apple devices, not share them.

Apple is trying to better compete in the red-hot market for photo sharing, dominated by fast-growing online services such as Facebook and mobile apps like Instagram — which Facebook has agreed to acquire for $US1 billion.

The Cupertino, CalifORnia company is also working on a new feature that will allow iCloud users to sync their personal videos via iCloud, these people said, adding that Apple also plans to allow users to access "Notes" and "Reminders"— two of its apps for jotting down quick thoughts—through iCloud.com. Currently, those items have to be accessed via apps for those features.

These features could come in Apple's next mobile operating system, iOS 6, which Apple is planning to preview to developers in June, the people said.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

The moves amount to the most significant refresh of iCloud since its launch last October. The service is highly strategic for Apple as it tries to satisfy customers who want to access their data across different Apple devices. As of April, more than 125 million Apple device owners had signed up for iCloud.

Yet Apple is rolling out new features cautiously as it worries about the costs of storing huge volumes of user data, the people familiar with the matter said. The company allows users to store music, movies and TV shows purchased through iTunes, along with apps, books and Photo Stream photos for free. After that, they get five gigabytes for free.

ICloud's Photo Stream limits users to accessing their last 30 days of photos, or 1,000 of them, on Apple devices as well as PCs.Its features, after the new sharing and commenting ones, will still remain basic compared with some other photo-sharing services.

When it comes to iCloud as a whole, Apple also limits which iCloud features users can access from a Web browser from any device to keep them buying Apple ones.

Only a few iCloud features, like email and calendar, can be accessed through the iCloud website. The rest work by syncing content to other Apple devices, including iPads, iPhones and its Apple TV box.

Apple executives continue to discuss expanding the number of photos and albums users can store via iCloud to make the service resemble its iPhoto downloadable software, one of the people familiar with the matter said. But it is moving cautiously because of costs.

Source from : The Australian

Google Probe: Meet the FTC’s Secret Weapon

San Francisco — The Federal Trade Commission has hired an outside litigator to lead its antitrust probe of Google, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said Thursday during a visit to the agency’s‘s Western Region office here.

The search giant is getting some serious treatment. This is the first time in at least four years the FTC has had anyone other than internal staff run a major investigation.

The outside litigator in question: Beth Wilkinson. She’s a partner at the international law firm Paul, Weiss and previously helped secure a conviction against Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. She will begin work on the Google case Monday.

“We want to bring in someone who is a world class litigator and has some antitrust experience and the trust of the commission,” Leibowitz told a small group of reporters.

Wilkinson previously chaired the white-collar crime group at the law firm Latham & Watkins. She also worked in-house for the mortgage company Fannie Mae for several years. Wilkinson began her legal career in the U.S. Army, where she achieved the rank of captain and was an assistant to the general counsel of the Army for Intelligence & Special Operations from 1987 to 1991, according to her bio page on the Paul, Weiss site.

Leibowitz announced Wilkinson’s addition to the FTC’s Google investigation team while in San Francisco visiting a number of startups and tech companies including Square, Mozilla and others.

The FTC is investigating Google’s search business for anti-competition infractions. The investigation does not necessarily mean the FTC will sue Google, but it does pave the way for possible litigation.

“In an important case, you want to do a thorough investigation and make sure you get it right,” Leibowitz said Thursday. “It’s sometimes a good idea to bring someone in from outside and we found out Beth was interested in coming aboard. The commission talked about it and we thought it would be great for the consumers we represent.”

Also Thursday, Google agreed to pay a $25,000 fine — less than the cost of a day’s lunch for its employees — for allegedly impeding a Federal Communications Commission investigation into personal emails and other data collected via the company’s Street View cars.

This article source from : Mashable US & World

8 New Apps You Don’t Want To Miss

Keeping up with all the new apps to hit the scene is a tough job. But you’re in luck: You don’t have to, because each week we round up our favorite apps and app updates from the week in this handy roundup.

This week was a big one for some of our favorite services on the web, with big names such as LinkedIn, Skype, Klout, and Twitter launching new apps or updating their current offerings.

iPhone owners with face-unlock envy will love a new app that brings facial recognition technology similar to Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich feature to iOS.

If you’ve always wanted to be a superhero, a new augmented reality app lets you start your crime-fighting career. If you want to be a superhero for nature, another app takes a look at how the earth is changing over time. The app shows dramatic before-and-after shots of places affected by changes in climate, urbanization or just the power of nature.

Once you’re done fighting crime, a updated last-minute hotel app will make sure you find the perfect place to nap before you’re off to your next adventure.

Check out our favorite picks from the week in the world of apps in the gallery above. Have your own favorites from the week? Let us know in the comments.

Miss out on last week’s picks? Check out what made the list last week for more great apps worth checking out.

Source from : Mashable Tech

Spanning Stats Has Scanned 25,000+ Google Drives

Spanning, which already offers a backup service for Google Apps, is now riding the coattails of Google Drive, promising to help people see, “What’s in your Google Drive?”

Two days after the Drive announcement, Spanning released a free tool called Spanning Stats that analyzes your Google Drive account. The company says its report provides data including the percentage documents in your Google Drive by type, the 10 newest and oldest files, how much of the total storage quota you’re using by file type, the 10 biggest files, and the 10 users using the most storage space.

It sounds like there were people who really wanted to see those charts and graphs. The company now says that people have used Spanning Stats to scan 25,000 Google Drives. The app is now listed as one of the top installs in the Google Apps Marketplace and the number one install in the Document Management category.

That probably also reflects the initial excitement about Google Drive. In fact, after the announcement, the the data uploaded to Google Docs by Spanning users exploded — before the announcement, the average amount per day was 5 megabytes, but on the day Google Drive launched it went up to 36.8 megabytes, and then 22.6 megabytes the next day.

Source from : TechCrunch

Yahoo Escalates Patent War With Facebook

Yahoo just took its war of lawsuits with Facebook to the next level, adding two more patent-infringement claims to the 10 it filed for back in March.

The company also accused Facebook of not having a good-faith belief in the counterclaim it filed almost a month ago.

“Today Yahoo! filed additional claims against Facebook in U.S. District Court related to two additional patents on which Facebook infringes,” Yahoo said in an emailed statement.

“As we have stated previously, Yahoo!’s technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. We intend to vigorously protect these technologies for our customers and shareholders.”

In the face of the new claims, Facebook was more succinct: “We remain perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions,” a Facebook spokesperson said, also in an emailed statement. “We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

With the “erratic” dig, Facebook seems to be depicting Yahoo as the tech-company equivalent of a crotchety old man. Considering Yahoo specifically calls out Facebook for using recently acquired patents as the basis of its lawsuit — even though some of the patents in Yahoo’s claim were acquired as well — the image may well stick.

A quick recap: Shortly after appointing former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as CEO, Yahoo warned Facebook that the social network was infringing on its intellectual property — specifically, 10 patents that relate to Internet technologies.

It then went ahead and sued Facebook a few weeks later, becoming something of a tech-industry pariah in the process.

Facebook, rather than try to end the suit with a quick settlement, set out to arm itself for a retaliatory strike. The social network quickly acquired many patents from both IBM and Microsoft. Facebook also countersued Yahoo — saying that it, too, was guilty of patent infringement.

The whole affair would be funny if it wasn’t a symptom of a wider, all-out patent war. In the last year we’ve seen Apple, Google, Microsoft and a host of others sue the pants of each other, and a company that barely does anything can claim to hold a patent on the web itself.

So this latest salvo in the Facebook-Yahoo patent war likely won’t be the last. What’s your take on the ongoing dispute? Sound off in the comments.

This article source from : Mashable Tech

Google Drive Arrives In ChromeOS Developer Channel

Ever since Google released its cloud storage service Google Drive earlier this week, there has been some speculation as to what its integration with ChromeOS, Google’s cloud-centric operating system, would look like. Today, Google released the first developer version of ChromeOS 20 with support for Google Drive. As expected, Google Drive is now deeply integrated into the ChromeOS file manager, though this is clearly just a first effort and still needs quite a bit of work.

The Google Drive integration is rather basic in this first release. Drive currently appears as an additional folder in the ChromeOS file manager. While the file manager now features a column called “available offline,” I wasn’t able to actually find a way to download my Google Drive files to the laptop’s internal storage, though.

There also wasn’t a clear path for uploading files from the file manager to Google Drive (though you can obviously always use the Drive web app to upload and download files). It’s obviously only a matter of time before this functionality becomes available, though. For now, Google Drive’s advanced search features also aren’t available through the file manager’s interface.

Adding support for Google Drive also puts more emphasis on the file manager in ChromeOS. In the early days of ChromeOS, the file manager was more or less hidden from sight. Over time, though, it clearly became obvious to Google that its users weren’t quite ready for an OS without the ability to manage their files in the way they had become accustomed to.

If you haven’t looked at the developer versions of ChromeOS for a while, you will notice that it looks quite a bit different now compared to just a few weeks ago. Google now uses Aura, a hardware-accelerated window manager for ChromeOS, which allows you to open multiple browser windows and not just one window like before. ChromeOS now also features a Windows-like taskbar at the bottom of the screen.

Source from : TechCrunch

Facebook’s Patent Acquisitions? They’re More About Google Than Yahoo

In the past few months, Facebook’s patent portfolio has grown exponentially as a result of acquisitions of patent portfolios from IBM and Microsoft. After acquiring 650 AOL patents and patent applications from Microsoft, the company now has approximately 1,400 patent assets. Amazingly, only 46 of these assets (24 issued patents and 22 published applications) were originally filed by Facebook.

In recent years, Facebook has consistently looked to the outside to augment its IP holdings with strategic acquisitions of patent assets. The company paid 40 million for the Friendster social networking patent portfolio, acquired a group of patents from Walker Digital, and another from Hewlett-Packard. These deals expanded the portfolio to approximately 160 patent assets prior to Yahoo’s lawsuit being filed. After Facebook’s IPO decision, and the subsequent patent suit by Yahoo, Facebook has kicked its patent acquisition program into overdrive.

Many point to the Yahoo lawsuit as the reason for the Microsoft and IBM acquisitions. The the AOL portfolio could useful to Facebook in defending itself against Yahoo. However, now Yahoo is trying to have other patents Facebook bought after being sued by the web portal invalidated because Facebook purchased them specifically to use in a retaliatory counter-suit. In any case, it would have been significantly cheaper for Facebook to settle with Yahoo instead of taking this aggressive approach.

So who is Facebook so worried about that it would spend so much on buying intellectual property? The types of patents being acquired tell part of the story. Facebook has emphasized acquiring older assets, which it could not have developed on its own. Facebook’s oldest patent was filed in 2004, the same year the company was created. A typical patent application currently takes approximately 3-4 years to be issued. Developing a patent portfolio in the social networking space is challenging because the popularity of social networking companies has resulted in the space being littered with both patent and non-patent prior art. As a result, companies, such as Facebook, that initially largely ignored growing their IP portfolios, cannot rely on filing its own applications to develop a substantive IP portfolio.

The IBM and AOL patent acquisitions give Facebook access to IP that is significantly older than Facebook’s own IP. Older patents are subject to fewer prior art, making them more difficult to defend against. In addition, older patents provide leverage for the asserting party by allowing collection of up to six years of damages from the infringer. Such patents are therefore especially helpful in dealing with established parties having significant resources and sophisticated legal teams.

The technology areas of the IBM and AOL patents are also telling. The patents Facebook acquired from IBM are rumored to be in the networking and software space. AOL’s patents are largely directed to email, instant messaging, web browsing, search, ads, mobile, & ecommerce. Together, these are technology areas that Facebook likely never expected to find itself competing in when the company was first founded because it may not have realized that their product would evolve into the messaging/advertising/ecommerce platform that it is today. These are also technology areas that are core to Google, one of Facebook’s biggest threats.

In the past year, Google introduced Google+, a direct competitor and challenger to Facebook. While Google+ has only had moderate success to date, Facebook likely felt exposed against Google’s significantly larger and ever-expanding patent portfolio. These patent acquisitions provide Facebook with some protection as the competition between the two companies heats up. In addition, the rumors of an Android-based Facebook phone have been revived, which could bring Facebook directly into the litigious mobile space, where Google is one of the main players.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that Facebook and Microsoft have worked together with Google in mind. In October 2007, the two companies entered into an Internet advertising partnership. That deal was seen as a way for Microsoft to counter Google’s Internet advertising position. It makes sense that the two companies would again collaborate to respond to a potential threat from Google.

Thus, while the acquisitions may be helpful to Facebook in dealing with Yahoo, it is likely that these acquisitions have less to do with Yahoo than with Facebook’s anticipation of future litigation. Specifically, Facebook appears to be preparing for increased competition with Google. It bears watching whether the companies will look to their patent acquisitions as part of this strategy. Of course, such protection has the added benefit of helping to increase Facebook’s IPO value, making this decision a no-brainer for the company.

Source from : TechCrunch

Justin Bieber Confronts Baby Accuser on Twitter

Although it’s been nearly six months since Justin Bieber was falsely accused of impregnating a fan backstage at a concert, the pop superstar hasn’t quite forgotten the incident.

Bieber took to Twitter on Saturday to call out 20-year-old Mariah Yeater for claiming in October 2011 that he was the father of her child.

The tweet was sent during what Bieber calls “#RandomTwitterHour,” where he sends messages to his more than 20 million Twitter followers about anything he wants.

He tweeted a message that mentioned her by name and included a YouTube clip of Borat — a film and TV character played by actor Sacha Baron Cohen — repeating, “You will never get this. You will never get this. La la la la la.”

Bieber later re-tweeted a message from a fan who applauded his post.

In December, Yeater dropped the lawsuit she filed against Bieber after he agreed to a paternity test. The superstar has been relatively quiet about the subject ever since, and it’s unclear why he decided to address her over the weekend.

Source from : Mashable Entertainment

How Does Google Drive Compare to the Competition?

Now that Google Drive is finally a reality, how does it stack up against the cloud competition?

Google’s new cloud-based document and storage solution is priced aggressively and boasts best-in-class integration with other Google services — including Google Docs. As you can see from our hands-on, Google Drive is an impressive product.

Still, the cloud storage and collaboration space is more competitive than ever before. Google faces competition not just from cloud companies such as Box and Dropbox, but from Apple, Microsoft and Amazon as well.

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Storage and Pricing

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Google is pricing Google Drive at a VERY aggressive level. For $30 a year ($2.50 a month), users get 25GB to use for Google Drive and Picasa, plus 25GB of Gmail storage.

This is more than what Amazon and Microsoft charge for an additional 20GB, but less than the price of Dropbox, Apple and Box.net.

For $60 a year ($5 a month), Google offers 100GB of Drive and Picasa storage (plus 25GB for Gmail), which clocks in below Amazon, Apple, Dropbox and Box.net. For penny pinchers, Microsoft’s offer of 100GB of additional storage — on top of the 7 or 25GB that users already get with the service — is just $50 a year.

Dropbox and Box are among the more expensive services.

A 100GB Dropbox account costs more than three times what a Google Drive account costs. In this area, Google is clearly trying to undermine its competition on a per-GB pricing basis.

In the case of Box, the company’s real focus is on business users. Box’s pricing is also significantly higher than Google Drive; however, that differentiation is also part of the company’s focus. As Box has told us on multiple occasions, it wants to replace Microsoft SharePoint in the SMB and Enterprise space. While Google is also looking in this direction, Box has a bevy of services and integrations that are focused on replacing a company’s central file server.

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Upload Limit

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The most limiting factor of the majority of cloud storage and collaboration services isn’t the total amount of storage — it’s the limitations on upload size.

Google has an impressive 10GB limit on files or folders. This is significantly more than the 2GB limit imposed by most cloud services. Only Dropbox’s desktop apps for Mac, Windows and Linux do better. With Dropbox, the only limitation is the size of a storage plan.

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Collaboration and Sharing

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Like Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Box, Google Drive offers in-browser access to files and folders, including document editing via Google Docs.

And like SkyDrive, Box and iCloud, third-party applications can plug into Google Drive to retrieve or store files. This makes keeping apps synchronized across devices and platforms much more seamless.

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Mobile Integration

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Although Google Drive’s Android app is already around, Google is making iOS users wait for access to the app. This is in contrast to Dropbox, Box and SkyDrive, which all offer official or unofficial solutions for multiple mobile platforms.

Amazon and Apple are behind in the mobile access game. Apple makes iCloud exclusively available to iOS 5 users, and Amazon’s Cloud Drive only integrates with Android (and the integration is limited at that).

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Desktop Integration

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Part of the reason that Dropbox has such a loyal following is because of its fantastic Desktop integration. Mac, Windows and Linux users can automatically sync and share files from their native file systems without having to bother with desktop uploads.

This is a similar approach to the one Box has taken with its Box Sync service for Windows, and to what Microsoft employs for SkyDrive for Windows and Mac.

Google Drive’s desktop app works essentially the same as SkyDrive — in other words, it isn’t as tightly coupled with the file system as Dropbox, but it does the job.

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Final Thoughts

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Which cloud storage service an individual or business decides to use is a decision that should encompass more than just comparing specs and pricing. Take time to use a service and see how it integrates into your workflow before plunking down cash on an upgrade.

For users and businesses heavily tied to Google Docs, Google Drive will likely make sense. For those that love Dropbox or need some of Box’s more robust features, Google Drive might not fit the bill. For Microsoft Office users, consider giving Microsoft SkyDrive a try — it works well and also offers online access to basic web and editing apps.

Ultimately, neither offering from Apple nor Amazon is likely to compete with Google Drive — the products are focused on different use cases.

We’d also like to give Canonical’s Ubuntu One a shout-out. We didn’t include it in our direct comparison because of its more limited options, but for Windows and Ubuntu users, its free service is worth a look as well.

Tell us your thoughts on the cloud storage and collaboration space. Does Google Drive have the goods to compete? Let us know in the comments.

Article and thumbnal image, take it from : Mashable Tech

U.S. Escalates Google Case by Hiring Noted Outside Lawyer

Federal regulators escalated their antitrust investigation of Google on Thursday by hiring a prominent litigator, sending a strong signal that they are prepared to take the Internet giant to court.

The Federal Trade Commission is examining Google’s immensely powerful and lucrative search technology, which directs users to hundreds of millions of online and offline destinations every day. The case has the potential to be the biggest showdown between regulators and Silicon Valley since the government took on Microsoft 14 years ago.

Then as now, the core question is whether power was abused. The agency’s inquiry has focused on whether Google has manipulated its search results, making it less likely that competing companies or products appear at the top of a results page.

A spokeswoman for Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., declined to comment.

Federal Trade Commission officials cautioned that no decision had been made about whether to bring a formal case against Google. But the hiring of Beth A. Wilkinson, a former Justice Department prosecutor who played a lead role in the conviction of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, immediately catapulted the investigation to another level. The agency has hired outside litigators only twice in the last decade.

“It’s a watershed moment when you hire someone like this,” said David Wales, a former Fed-eral Trade Commission official now in private practice with Jones Day. “This shows Google that if it doesn’t give you the remedy you want, you’re going to litigate.”

Several antitrust experts compared the hiring of Ms. Wilkinson — who has brought about 40 major cases in government and private practice and won them all — to the government’s hiring of David A. Boies to represent it against Microsoft.

“It increases the likelihood that there will be a case,” said Douglas Broder, a law partner at K&L Gates in New York and the author of several textbooks and articles on antitrust law.

The Microsoft case in the late 1990s transformed the tech industry, reining in its most powerful company and allowing for the rise of new companies like Google. Now Google wields the same sort of power that Microsoft once did, and is under the same sort of scrutiny.

It has been involved in one privacy controversy after another over the last year. Indeed, the announcement of the hiring of Ms. Wilkinson — made by the Federal Trade Commission’s chairman, Jon Leibowitz, at a meeting in San Francisco with reporters — eclipsed Google’s formal response earlier Thursday to a fine by the Federal Communications Commission for obstructing a separate investigation.

“In an important case, you want to do a thorough investigation,” Mr. Leibowitz said, calling Ms. Wilkinson “a world-class litigator.”

Ms. Wilkinson is a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss in Washington. She previously worked at Latham & Watkins, where she was co-chairwoman of the white-collar crime practice group. Her work at the F.T.C., which will be part-time, begins on Monday.

“Technology is transforming our society,” Ms. Wilkinson said in an interview. “It affects people at every level. As a mother, I see it with my kids. As a professional, I see it affecting our work. And in society, it impacts privacy, competition, our interactions with other people — just about everything.”

She added: “Working on the investigation will be a great challenge. I don’t underestimate Google.”

No one else was underestimating it Thursday either.

Mr. Broder said antitrust cases charging the abuse of a monopoly are difficult to prove.

“There is a lot of very complex economics involved,” he said. “It can be done. But Google will undoubtedly bring to bear tremendous resources itself.”

Any decision about filing a suit is likely to be months away.

Article and thumbnail image, source from : NY Times

Google Actually Sells a Service: Sketchup is Going to Trimble

Google announced Thursday that it was selling 3D modelling tool SketchUp — an unusual event for the tech giant known more for aqcuiring companies than for selling them.

Trimble Navigation is purchasing the platform for an undisclosed amount of money.

Google acquired SketchUp in 2006 and has used the tool to design building models within Google Earth.

“In its time at Google, SketchUp has become one of the most popular 3D modeling tools in the world,” SketchUp wrote on its official Google blog. “With over 30 million SketchUp activations in just the last year, we’re awfully proud of our accomplishments. But there’s still so much we want to do, and we think we’ve found a way forward that will benefit everyone—our product, our team and especially our millions of users.”

SEE ALSO: SketchUp Is Google’s First Divestment Ever, And It Made A Profit

Trimble, the new parent of SketchUp, makes surveying, mapping and marine navigation equipment. SketchUp says Trimble’s commitment will help the platform return to its core communities — both veteran and new modelers, designers and makers — which it calls its heart and soul.

SketchUp says it will keep the free version of the platform, which is used by a wider audience.

Do you think SketchUp will be better served by Trimble, a more niche parent company than Google? Sound off in the comments.

Source from : Mashable Tech

Facebook App Fosters Community for Breast Cancer Patients

A new Facebook app, Circle of Support, provides a rare support community for people living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC).

This secure Facebook community allows people suffering from MBC to share their struggles and receive support from their friends and family. Recent research by Genentech, the company that created the app, shows many MBC patients feel their needs are not met and others around them do not understand what they are experiencing.

“The Facebook app was designed as a part of this overarching program to provide additional support for people with MBC,” Susan Willson, a spokeswoman for Genentech told Mashable. “As a company, we felt there was more we could be doing outside of the lab to support people with the disease. We wanted to match the innovation inside the lab with innovation outside of the lab.”

With the new Facebook app, an individual living with MBC can select Facebook friends who they would like to invite to join their support network. The patient can chose suggested support activity ideas — such as weekly phone calls, movie outings, prepared meals or going for a manicure — that friends and family can see they are seeking and subsequently provide.

MBC, an advanced form of the disease with no cure, means the cancer has spread from the breasts to other parts of the body. Patients with MBC often do not relate to the movement behind the Pink Ribbon and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, because they have no shot at survival. More than 155,000 people in the U.S. are living with the aggressive cancer.

“It was an area that really needed a light shined on it,” Willson says. “The great survivor stories come from women living with a different experience.”

SEE ALSO: How a Social Network Helps Families Coping With Autism

Genentech’s embrace of Facebook is unusual among pharmaceutical companies. Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca shut down their Facebook pages last year, when Facebook began requiring pharma brands to allow open comments. Others, such as Janssen UK’s Psoriasis 360 page, have shut down because they require too much maintenance.

Do you think Circles of Support taps an unmet need for patients with MBC?


Source from : Mashable Social Media

Google Translate Draws 200 Million Users Each Month

Google announced on Thursday that its popular language translator service Google Translate now boasts 200 million monthly users, many of whom are accessing it outside the U.S. and via mobile devices.

The news — which comes just two days before Google Translate’s sixth anniversary — shows an increasing desire to communicate with others regardless of language, not only online but offline too.

Google Translate allows users to access and interpret webpages on servers thousands of miles away. The company started to offer a basic translating service in 2001 for eight languages and later expanded to more languages in 2003.

SEE ALSO: 20 Strange and Hilarious Google Street View Sightings

“But at that time our system was too slow to run as a practical service—it took us 40 hours and 1,000 machines to translate 1,000 sentences,” Franz Och, principal scientist at Google, said in a company statement. “So we focused on speed, and a year later our system could translate a sentence in under a second, and with better quality. In early 2006, we rolled out our first languages: Chinese, then Arabic.” The service now offers 64 languages, including many with a small web presence such as Bengali, Yiddish and Esperanto.

In addition to the 200 million monthly active users on translate.google.com, consumers are also accessing Google Translate in other ways, such as via Chrome, mobile apps and YouTube.

More consumers are also accessing Google Translate while traveling than ever before. The company reported its mobile traffic to the service has more than quadrupled year over year. Meanwhile, more than 92% of traffic from Google Translate comes from international users outside the U.S.

Usage is so high that it translates the equivalent of 1 million books each day.

“We imagine a future where anyone in the world can consume and share any information, no matter what language it’s in, and no matter where it pops up,” Och said. “We already provide translation for webpages on the fly as you browse in Chrome, text in mobile photos, YouTube video captions, and speech-to-speech “conversation mode” on smartphones. We want to knock down the language barrier wherever it trips people up, and we can’t wait to see what the next six years will bring.”

Thumbnail via iStockphoto, franckreporter.

This articel source from : Mashable Tech

Google Adds a ‘Share’ Button for Google+

Lost amid the hysteria over Google‘s powerful new Drive cloud-storage service was another product introduced by the Mountain View tech giant on Tuesday — a Google+ “Share” button.

The new button enables website operators to more easily encourage visitors to spread content among connections on Google’s social network. It’s the latest step in integrating the social network with content across the web. The Share button joins the already existing +1 button, which enables Google+ members to indicate that they — for lack of a better term — like a page or an article.

“When your visitors come across something interesting on your site, sometimes you want to encourage a simple endorsement (like +1),” Google+ product manager Rick Borovoy wrote in a blog post introducing the new feature. “Other times, however, you want to help visitors share with their friends, right away. Today’s new Google+ Share button lets you do just that.”

When visitors click the button, they have the option of sharing a page with specific people or Circles in their network. Like with the +1 feature, the new button switches from red font on a light background to light font on a red background after being clicked. Users can click the button multiple times, however, to share repeatedly or in different contexts with different segments of their network.

The Share button is now available globally. How do you add it to your site? Visit the Google Developers’ site or get the code here.

Source from : Mashable Social Media

SketchUp Is Google’s First Divestment Ever, And It Made A Profit

Google’s sale of a previously purchased arm of the company this morning, 3D modeling software SketchUp to Trimble, isn’t just something it does “every now and again”. It’s actually Google’s first divestment ever, according to two sources, and we’re hearing the search giant made a profit, as it sold SketchUp for more than it bought it for back in 2006.

This could signal a sea change in how Larry Page executes his vision for a leaner, more focused Google. The company frequently shuts down extraneous products, but that requires redistribution of their team members internally. If it’s now willing to sell them instead, Google could streamline around the theme of making user’ lives more convenient, while making some money at the same time.

It wasn’t that SketchUp wasn’t working. It had 30 million activations since joining Google as part of @Last Software in March 2006. But it just didn’t fit with the direction Google is heading in. It’s a relatively niche product for architects and the construction industry, game developers, and film makers. It doesn’t fit with last years theme of inherently social product that could be tied to Google+, or this years plan to simplify everyone’s lives.

So rather than sink it in the deadpool, Google sold it to someone that can actually use — Trimble, a mapping, surveying, and navigation equipment company. Analysts speculated that Google paid $45 million for SketchUp in 2006. As Trimble called the acquisition of the product “immaterial”, and therefore less than 5% of its annual revenue, it couldn’t have paid more that $90 million for it. That would mean Google could have made up to $45 million in profit on the sale, though its likely closer to a few million.

Early this year Google shut down its photo editor Picnik and open sourced its Android stargazing app Google Sky Map. If the company had to do it again, maybe it’d sell them off instead.

This strategy of divesting successful but outlying products meshes with why we’ve heard Google didn’t buy Instagram. While initially vaguely interested in buying the photo sharing service, we hear Google walked away before talks went past the coffee table stage. That’s because buying Instagram for a high price just to fracture focus by running it independently didn’t align with Page’s game plan.

I often hear that headcount bloat and disorganization in the ballooning Google disgruntles employees and makes them flee for startups. The inefficient bureaucracy, lost transition time , and expensive counter-offers it has to make to get talent to stay are running up costs for Google while slowing it down. While no one wants to see their co-workers shipped out of the Googleplex, it may be wise for Google to sell the meat instead of just trimming the fat.

Update : Okay so it turns out Google’s done this spin off thing once before, with Wideorbit. But for what it’s worth that sale was “assets” and not a single product. So yeah*

Source : TechCrunch

Did Samsung Stage ‘Wake Up’ Protest at Australian Apple Store?

A group of black-clad protesters recently gathered outside an Apple store in Sydney, Australia, and shouted — apparently to the customers inside — to “wake up.” The stunt is suspected to be part of Samsung‘s campaign to promote the Galaxy S III smartphone.

Captured on video by blogger Nate “Blunty” Burr and reported by Australian site Mumbrella, a black bus with the words “Wake Up” prominently painted on the side pulled up beside the Apple Store. Several people wearing black clothing then exited the bus, held up signs that also said “Wake Up” and, to hammer the point home, they all shouted the phrase over and over again.

In addition, the words “Wake Up” are visible beneath the huge swimming pool of Bondi Icebergs, a well-known sports club in Sydney. There are also reports of several billboards with the words in Australia, and this Australian website, clearly tied to the same campaign, is counting down to … something.

SEE ALSO: Behold the Exynos 4 Quad, the Chip That Powers Samsung Galaxy S3

The site is reportedly registered to New Dialogue, a company that is now known as the Sydney ad agency Tongue. Given the rate of the countdown, it should run to zero in about nine days. That matches up closely with an event Samsung has planned May 3 in London.

Samsung has already teased the Galaxy S III (although not directly) with another ad, which implied that iPhone owners are sheep. Samsung took a similar tack with its Super Bowl ad to promote the Samsung Galaxy Note.

What do you think of this new campaign? Is it clever or off the mark? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Source from : Mashable Business

Facebook Share Suspension Sets IPO Rumours Running

Facebook has suspended trading of its shares on the private secondary market until the end of the week, raising expectations that it will shortly file for its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO).

Shareholders can still place buy and sell orders, but the transactions will not be approved by the social network's lawyers until January 27, according to US reports.

The pause in trading is not the first from Facebook – the company has previously put a stop on transactions in order to assess its shareholder profile. However, the company is expected to make its IPO in the third week of May, so the suspension adds to a growing body of evidence.

Companies are not requires to suspend their trades before an IPO, but often do so before material announcements in order to protect themselves against potential claims of insider dealing.

Facebook is renowned for closely guarding the details of its financial performance, but would have to divulge key figures in IPO documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by the middle of next month, if it is to meet that target.

When it finally comes, the flotation is expected to value the business at about $100bn (£64.4bn), making it the biggest technology flotation in history.

Source from : The Telegraph

US Marine Discharged After Trashing Obama On Facebook

Marine Corps Sgt. Gary Stein received an “other-than-honorable” discharge on Wednesday after he criticized United States President Barack Obama on Facebook, according to Capt. Brian Block, a Marines spokesman.

On the Armed Forces Tea Party Facebook page, Stein had previously referred to the President as a liar. He also alluded to the fact that he would not follow certain orders that were issued by the president.

“I took an oath to the Constitution, not to the politicians, and I will not obey unconstitutional (and thus illegal) and immoral orders,” Stein wrote on his personal Facebook page.

The “other-than-honorable” discharge that Stein received is given to people serving in the Marines who commit a “serious offense” that significantly differs from they type of conduct expected of a Marine.

The events that culminated in Stein’s discharge began in January, when he called Obama a liar and referred to the President as “the ‘Domestic Enemy’ our oath speaks about.” In March, he also questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate.

Stein was discharged because of a Defense Department rule that forbids US citizens serving in the armed forces to participate in certain forms of political activity and activism, including publishing partisan content.

Stein believes he has behaved appropriately, because the Facebook group page he posted the offending content on states that members “do not represent, and are in no way affiliated with the military, or United States Armed Forces.”

“If I am guilty of anything it would be that I am American, a freedom loving Conservative, hell bent on defending the constitution and preserving Americas greatness,” posted Stein.

Recently, Stein asked this question on his personal Facebook :

“Does 15 words on a private Facebook forum, that I agree we’re tasteless, merit ruining a honorable 9 year career that ends in just over 90 days?”

How would you answer? Tell us in the comment section below.

Source from : Mashable Social Media

When You Put Everything on Facebook, You Have a Consequence

When Denise Abbott’s 13-year-old daughter Ava wouldn’t stop talking smack and stirring up drama on Facebook, the Ohio mother decided to employ a punishment to fit the crime.

Abbott replaced her daughter’s profile picture with a photo of the girl with a red X layered over her mouth. “I do not know how to keep my… I am not longer allowed on Facebook or my phone. Please ask why, my mom says I have to answer everyone that asks,” read a message accompanying the picture.

Abbot says the move was an appropriate punishment for the social media generation.

“When you put everything on Facebook, you have to realize there’s a consequence for all of your actions,” she told a local NBC affiliate.

It’s the second high-profile instance of “Facebook parenting” to arise over the past couple months. In February, a North Carolina father named Tommy Jordan posted a video to YouTube of himself shooting several rounds into his teenage daughter’s laptop after she wrote a disrespectful Facebook post about her parents. That video went viral in a major way, spawned numerous spoofs and gained Jordan a significant level of Internet notoriety.

Mom Uses Facebook to Epically Put 13-Year-Old Daughter in Check [VIDEO]

When Denise Abbott’s 13-year-old daughter Ava wouldn’t stop talking smack and stirring up drama on Facebook, the Ohio mother decided to employ a punishment to fit the crime.

Abbott replaced her daughter’s profile picture with a photo of the girl with a red X layered over her mouth. “I do not know how to keep my… I am not longer allowed on Facebook or my phone. Please ask why, my mom says I have to answer everyone that asks,” read a message accompanying the picture.

Abbot says the move was an appropriate punishment for the social media generation.

“When you put everything on Facebook, you have to realize there’s a consequence for all of your actions,” she told a local NBC affiliate.

It’s the second high-profile instance of “Facebook parenting” to arise over the past couple months. In February, a North Carolina father named Tommy Jordan posted a video to YouTube of himself shooting several rounds into his teenage daughter’s laptop after she wrote a disrespectful Facebook post about her parents. That video went viral in a major way, spawned numerous spoofs and gained Jordan a significant level of Internet notoriety.

Many parents and commentators praised Jordan for taking a stand against a generation of spoiled and digitally immersed kids, while others condemned him for borderline child abuse. According to Abbott, however, methods like hers and Jordan’s aren’t just fluke anomalies.

“You have to adapt your parenting skills with the times,” she told NBC.

Do you think Denise Abbott used an effective and fair parenting method, or was her daughter’s punishment an over-the-top humiliation? Let us know in the comments.

Source from : Mashable US & World

Twitter, Times Square Billboard Call for an End to Malaria

In honor of World Malaria Day, April 25, advocates for the end of the disease are campaigning on the social web with the hashtag #endmalaria — the very hashtag responsible for propelling Ashton Kutcher (@AplusK) to become the first Twitter user with more than 1 million followers in 2009.

Lady Gaga-backed tech startup Backplane created public service announcements, featuring the vocal stylings of Somali-born singer K’naan. Backplane hopes to use its social media expertise to propel Malaria into Wednesday’s most-viral conversations.

The above PSA, recorded by K’naan, highlights that Malaria is the most deadly disease in the world, killing one child every minute. That adds up to 1,500 children dying each day and 655,000 people dying each year. The campaign also points to the mosquito, the insect usually responsible for spreading the disease, as the most deadly creature in the world.

Kutcher wasn’t the last celebrity Twitter user to take the fight against Malaria to Twitter. Major Twitter personalities, such as Perez Hilton, David Arquette, Shaquille O’Neal, K’naan and Interscope artists The Kin are tweeting about the disease Wednesday.

The End Malaria message is also being featured on the NASDSAQ billboard in Times Square.

World Malaria Day was established by the World Health Assembly in 2007. The theme of this year’s awareness campaign is “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria,” reflecting the 33% drop in Malaria related deaths in Africa in the past decade.

Do you think Twitter is the best platform to spread awareness of Malaria? Let us know in the comments.

Source from : Mashable US & Wordls