China Mobile-Apple iPhone pact 'very big deal'

China Mobile, the world's largest mobile carrier, has finally inked a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. On Wednesday, the newspaper (subscription required) cited anonymous sources who said China Mobile, which boasts an estimated 740 million subscribers, will announce iPhone availability later this month, most likely at China Mobile's conference, which begins Dec. 18. China Mobile is one of the world's few major mobile carriers that has not sold the iPhone. Investors have been waiting years for the China Mobile deal, believing it would significantly increase iPhone sales in the country and boost Apple's stock price. In early trading Thursday, Apple was up 1.4% to $572.67. The Wall Street Journal's report follows news yesterday that the Chinese government had issued 4G licenses to China Mobile and other carriers, including China Unicom and China Telecom, both which sell the iPhone. Previously, China Mobile had said it would deal the iPhone only when it could offer it on the faster network. Earlier this year, Apple's iPhone was granted a license from government authorities to operate on the 4G network protocol China Mobile will use. "This is a very big deal," said Ben Thompson, an independent analyst based in Taiwan who covers technology on his Stratechery website. "The two pertinent facts about China are that there is tremendous income disparity, and there are a ton of people. So while many Western markets may have a greater percentage of the population that can afford an iPhone, the absolute number of Chinese who are potential customers is very high as well." In the third quarter, the most recently reported by Apple, China was the firm's third-largest market, after the Americas and Europe, with $5.7 billion in revenue, up 6% year-over-year. For the 2013 fiscal year, which ended in September, the Greater China region -- China, Hong Kong and Taiwan -- generated $25.4 billion in revenue, up 13% from the year before and representing 15% of the company's worldwide total. But while a China Mobile deal has huge potential for Apple, its iPhone currently has a much smaller share there than just a few years ago, as cheaper Android phones, most of them made by in-country firms, have captured the bulk of the market. The iPhone 5C, a less-expensive sibling to the flagship iPhone 5S, was expected by some analysts to come in price points competitive with Chinese-made Android smartphones. Instead, Apple stuck to its premium-brand strategy. Even so, researchers believe that Apple will boost market share and rake in revenue from an expansion in the country. "Thanks to its cooperation with China Mobile and the launch of low-cost iPhone, iOS will see a rapid growth in 2014, and ... its market share [in China will] double that of 2013," market research firm IDC forecast in September. Apple has paid more attention to China this year, launching the new iPhones in that market in its initial wave for the first time. According to researcher Canalys, the move paid off, as Apple returned to the top-five smartphone maker list in the third quarter. But when the iPhone debuts on China Mobile, it's inevitable that questions will remain about Apple's ability to grow its share, whether there or globally, said Thompson. "For several years now any questions about Apple's growth prospects have had a simple answer: just wait until they add NTT Docomo and especially China Mobile," Thompson wrote. "Well, they now have, and the only way forward for significant iPhone growth is the long slog of winning new customers. I certainly think Apple is up to it, but there are no more home runs."addons counter strike source portuguese crunchsms for blackberry 8520 Crypted txt drivers wlan usb 2 0 us54gz brazilian kob p4m266a ndmx driver v stream tv card drivers scribblenauts unlimited pc utorrent wake me up when september ends green day alfa network awus036h driver gauntlet dark legacy para pc

Yahoo to encrypt webmail sessions by default starting in January

Yahoo will start encrypting the webmail sessions of its users in early 2014 by making HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) standard for all Yahoo Mail connections. Security experts, privacy advocates and users have asked Yahoo for this feature for a long time. Other major webmail providers already offer it. In November 2012, the Electronic Frontier Foundation with other privacy, security and human rights organizations, sent a letter to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer asking the company to add HTTPS support to its communication services, including email and instant messaging. HTTPS, which combines the HTTP Web communications protocol with the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption protocol, is widely used to secure connections between Web users and websites, and prevents sensitive data from being intercepted and read by unauthorized parties while in transit. Yahoo started rolling out a new Web interface for Yahoo Mail late last year that provided support for full-session HTTPS, but only as an option. In order to enable the feature, users can go in their email account settings and check the "Use SSL" box in the "Security" section. "Starting January 8, 2014, we will make encrypted https connections standard for all Yahoo Mail users," Jeffrey Bonforte, Yahoo's senior vice president of communication products, said Monday in a blog post. "Our teams are working hard to make the necessary changes to default https connections on Yahoo Mail, and we look forward to providing this extra layer of security for all our users." The move comes at a time when there is increased discussion about privacy and security online following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency and the intelligence agencies of other countries are running extensive electronic surveillance programs. Some of the NSA programs revealed by documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden involve the upstream interception of Internet traffic as it passes through global networks, as well as data collection from online services providers including Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL and others. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the NSA collected online address books in bulk from Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook, Gmail and other email and chat programs at Internet access points controlled by foreign telecommunications companies and allied intelligence services. This type of upstream data collection is something that HTTPS can potentially prevent, as long as the implementation is strong enough. The service provider might be later compelled to hand over the decrypted data at its end, but at least in that case the interception would be done with its knowledge. In addition to preventing bulk data collection by government agencies, HTTPS can also prevent hacker attacks, like the theft of authentication cookies over insecure wireless networks or through cross-site scripting attacks. dark colony completo windows 7 safe disk 4 hide resident evil 5 christine unlocker creation pcut 630 driver asus pvr 416 tvfm tuner drivers audible manager for ipad ymf754 r driver itunes helper windows 7 gates of hades drg free graboid video v3 58

Graph Search for powerful data mining

When a high-profile public figure living in Hong Kong hired the security company Trustwave to test if its experts could get his passwords, they turned to Facebook. While the dangers of sharing too much data on Facebook are well-known, it is surprising how little data can give hackers a foothold. The man gave Trustwave's team no-holds barred permission to try and snatch his data, a so-called "Red Team" test. "We found out through Facebook who his wife was," said Jonathan Werrett, a managing consultant for Trustwave's SpiderLabs in Hong Kong. "We found out through her likes -- her public likes -- that she ran a pilates studio. We could then send a phishing email to her based around the fact that she ran a pilates studio that was hiring." The man's wife opened an email with a video demonstration of the bogus job candidate conducting a class. The malicious attachment infected her computer with malware, which gave Trustwave's analysts access, known as a spear-phishing attack. The computer she was using was a hand-me-down from her husband. The passwords he wanted to protect were in the Apple computer's keychain, so the hacking exercise "turned out to be a lot easier than we otherwise expected," Werrett said. Mining small details from Facebook has become even easier with Graph Search, the site's new search engine that returns personalized results from natural-language queries. Graph Search granularly mines Facebook's vast user data: where people have visited, what they like and if they share those same preferences with their friends. Graph Search immediately prompted warnings from security experts, who said its powerful data aggregation abilities could make people uncomfortable even though the exposed data is public. For penetration testers as well as bad guy hackers, Facebook is invaluable for spear-phising attacks. But Werrett and his colleague, SpiderLabs security analyst Keith Lee in Singapore, wanted an automated way to quickly amass information using Graph Search. So Lee wrote "FBStalker," a Python script he and Werrett debuted Thursday at the Hack in the Box security conference in Kuala Lumpur. In its current form, FBStalker runs in the Chrome browser on OS X, entering queries into Facebook's Graph Search and pulling data. They used FBStalker in the attack against the man in Hong Kong. Even if a person's profile is locked down to strangers, their friends' open profiles can be examined, giving an indication, for example, who the person may be close with. FBStalker uses Graph Search to find photos in which two people are tagged in, comments on profiles and more. An analyst could do that by manually using Graph Search, but it would require going through hundreds of pages of comments, Timelines and photos, Werrett said.realtek hd audio driver win xp asus a8v vm motherboard driver averatec 3280 series drivers skype for sony ericsson k770i xh1154 modem driver minecraft cracked version 1 8 1 of uc web browser for mobile tango for macbook air ecs a929 audio drivers pa3416u 1mpc drivers

Google closes in on mastering mobile

Google may be the Internet company getting closest to figuring out mobile -- with a slew of mobile YouTube users and increasing smartphone ad clicks -- but it still hasn't quite mastered it yet. On Thursday, during the search company's quarterly earnings call , the company said mobile advertising is on the rise, with 33% of clicks on Google ads coming from smartphones and tablets. Smartphone click traffic jumped 105% year over year, but tablet click traffic jumped even more -- a whopping 339% increase over the previous year over year, the company said. On top of that, Google CEO Larry Page reported that more than 40% of YouTube's traffic comes from mobile users. In 2011, the figure was just 6%. "We are closing in on our goal of a beautiful, simple and intuitive experience regardless of your device," Page said in a statement on Google's third-quarter earnings. With its highly popular Android mobile platform, where Google search is the standard, Google has a distinct advantage in the mobile world, where every Internet company is laser focused these days. With an increasing number of social networking users accessing their favorite sites from smartphones and tablets, companies need to figure out how to generate revenue from users on the go. Basic advertising tends to look clunky on smaller devices, taking up too much space and frustrating users. That's left social networks looking for other ways to pull in mobile revenue. Facebook, for instance, listed mobility as one of its primary risks in documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange COmmission before its initial public offering in 2012. More than a year later, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg calls Facebook a mobile company, citing mobile growth as a major contributor to its increase in sales and profits earlier this year. Facebook's advances in the mobile market also have helped push the company's stock price up to its $38 IPO price for the first time since the company went public in May 2012. However, industry analysts have said Facebook has made big advances in tackling mobile but the company hasn't conquered it. Neither has rival Google, although it is getting closer. "I don't think anyone has mastered mobile yet. It's mostly voodoo and smoke and mirrors," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "Google is doing better than anyone else really but that's largely because they have a lock on advertising. They control most Internet ad models, which allows them to capture a disproportionately large share of every medium, including mobile." Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, noted that Google's quarterly mobile numbers look impressive, but the company was starting from a small base so the growth seems extra impressive. tachyon the fringe full version pitch perfect guitar tuner v 1 20 ms 6533e video driver dx ball 2 game minitool partition wizard home edition 7 install flash player exe firefox omnipage pro 12 0 globe trotter hsdpa driver diamond dt 588 drivers expedia streets 98

Facebook's Sandberg says teen decline exaggerated

Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg said rumors that the social media company is falling out of favor with teenagers have been greatly exaggerated. Despite reports that teens are dumping Facebook for other sites like Instagram and Snapchat, Sandberg said the social network's teen user base is stable, according to a report in All Things D. "The vast majority of U.S. teens are on Facebook," Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer, said in the interview. "And the majority of U.S. teens use Facebook almost every day." Earlier this month, David Ebersman, Facebook's chief financial officer, stirred up a talk when he said, during the company's quarterly earnings call, that the social network is struggling to keep teenagers' attention. "We did see a decrease in [teenage] daily users [during the quarter], especially younger teens," said Ebersman, who went on to call the network's teen user base "stable." This isn't a new problem , but it appears to be getting worse for Facebook, which originally was launched for college students. Now, Facebook appears to be getting more traction from users with gray hair than those facing mid-term exams. "I think [Sandberg] is covering," said Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research. "I think teens are using Twitter and Instagram more. I have six teens, and I can say from experience they're losing interest [in Facebook]." Why aren't Kerravala's kids using Facebook more? It's because he's on Facebook, and for teenagers, having Mom and Dad using the same site detracts from any site's cool factor. "Sure, I think it's because I'm on Facebook," Kerravala said. "I think Facebook is now thought of as an older generation tool. They don't want parents, grandparents, teachers, etc., seeing what they are posting. Teens want a closed community of other teens." Christian Perry, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said the social networking market is swimming with options, from which teenagers can choose. Sandberg, according to the report, admitted that's an issue, saying, "One of the challenges we face right now is that we're a decade old. That means that we're not the newest. And often, particularly in our space, newer things are shinier and cooler." At 10 years old, Facebook is not the new kid on the block. Instead, sites like Facebook-owned Instagram, along with Snapchat and Twitter, are capturing a lot of users' -- especially younger users' -- attention.. . . . . . . . . . "Others are ready to step into a void that might occur when Facebook loses its allure for teens," said Perry. "Then factor in some of the unique mobile-driven social media alternatives, and Facebook is no doubt facing competition out there."

Facebook highlights news with updated rankings

Facebook is retooling its ranking system to make some news articles appear more prominently at the expense of other content such as certain photos, the company announced Monday.    How an article might appear on Facebook's News Feed under new rankings announced Dec. 2, 2013. No longer just a site for connecting with friends, Facebook lately has been showing off its digital newspaper ambitions. Just last week, for instance, it was revealed the company was testing a new feature to let users save article links to a list for later reading. And when Facebook redesigned its News Feed earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company was trying to give its billion-plus users the "best personal newspaper they could find." The new rankings are designed to make high-quality content appear more prominently in Facebook's central News Feed, Facebook's engineers said in the company's announcement. How Facebook defines "high quality" is a little obscure, though it appears to be related to how often articles are clicked on on mobile devices and whether the link is for a news article versus a buzzy photo. "Starting soon, we'll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high-quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile," the company said. As a result, users may start to notice more links to news articles in the News Feed, the company said, particularly on mobile devices, and fewer meme photos. Following the changes, Facebook will be emphasizing a certain type of content. Stories devoted to the disastrous Healthcare.gov website from The Atlantic and The Washington Post were highlighted in Facebook's announcement. Additional articles related to the primary story may also appear after people click on the first link, Facebook said. The update is also meant to highlight articles generating the most chatter on Facebook. To do that, the company has updated its "bumping" system so that some stories with new comments will occasionally resurface in the News Feed. The new ranking capitalizes on the growing trend of people getting their news from Facebook and other social sites. Average referral traffic from Facebook to media sites tripled in the past year, the company reported on Monday. Some of Facebook's biggest competitors are growing more active in the business of news delivery. Twitter now has an experimental account called Event Parrot designed to keep users informed via direct message. Yahoo has hired TV news anchor Katie Couric to reinvigorate its original news programming, and Google News displays stories according to users' interests. For Facebook's new ranking system to succeed, however, the company must balance the more carefree way some people use the site with its more serious news ambitions. Apparently, the company sees an opportunity to provide news to its users and keep them there at the same time. "Today's update to News Feed ranking recognizes that people want to see more relevant news and what their friends have to say about it," the company said.. . . . . . . . . . . .

Microsoft-branded tablet 'makes sense,' analyst says

A Microsoft-branded tablet makes sense if the tablet is focused on the same market as the $200 Kindle Fire, analysts said Monday. Microsoft is expected to divulge its tablet plans at an event in Los Angeles late Monday afternoon. Informed sources have offered some details in various reports. Among other things, it's been said that partner Barnes & Noble would make the Microsoft-branded device, possibly giving it Xbox-like capabilities. But Barnes & Noble said earlier Monday it is not participating in the event, throwing weight on rumors of an Xbox device. "If Microsoft concentrates on the same market as Kindle Fire and not a general-purpose tablet market, then this [tablet] makes sense," said Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates. With rumors pointing to an Xbox tablet, Gold added, "that makes some sense since Microsoft has a pretty good franchise going with Xbox and has some diehard gaming fans." Microsoft could easily subsidize the cost of the tablet, making the money back with revenue from sales of services, e-books and apps, and with revenue from ads sold for Bing search results, analysts said. "Add to this tablet an ability to play online games through the Xbox network, and you could have a very interesting play for a Windows 8 tablet running RT or an optimized version of RT, more likely," Gold said. But will this tablet sell? "It won't sell in huge volumes, but selling a few million devices when you are starting from zero isn't bad," Gold added. "And the continuing revenue stream for content is good as well." Gold said he'd be interested to see what kind of ARM chip is inside the device. "It's likely that this device will have a more modest chip to keep battery life long, since you don't need all that horsepower for content consumption and even gaming, given that most of the gaming would be via the Web," he said. Much of the focus on Windows RT tablets has been on devices that will feature higher-priced, quad-core ARM chips from Nvidia and Qualcomm. Nvidia has provided such a chip for the Asus Windows RT tablet shown recently at Computex. If Microsoft modifies its branded Windows RT tablet, it's unclear that the expected device will be compatible with other tablets running Windows RT, analysts said. Could it be purpose-built, such as an e-reader or a gaming device, with restrictions on its use? That seems likely, three analysts said. Tom Mainelli, an analyst at IDC, said that Microsoft has made it clear that Windows RT, as it is being sold to OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) "shouldn't be treated as a budget tablet ... Microsoft has been obsessed with the level of performance of the iPad at Apple, so Microsoft has tightly regulated its Windows RT tablets with OEMs." Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at ZK Research, was less optimistic than others about the prospects of the yet-to-be announced Microsoft tablet. It will be hard for Microsoft to make much of a difference in the market, he said.. . . . . . . . . . "The new tablet will have to offer something uniquely different to take a chunk of share," said Kerravala. But judging from early reports of what Microsoft is expected to unveil, he added, "I don't believe that's there." Kerravala also said he doubts that some kind of Xbox experience would do much to help sales of the new tablet. "The Xbox audience is not a good group for tablets," he said. "Gamers want a 65-inch TV, not a mobile device." Historically, gamers have "never been great for mobile devices," Kerravala added. Mainelli said that whatever Microsoft announces, "I hope it doesn't disappoint because they had everybody in the industry running at full speed the last three days" since the launch event was first disclosed.