Technology news

• ​Former CBA IT exec charged with bribery

  17-03-2015 23:47 via zdnet.com
  
  In a joint investigation between NSW Police and the FBI, a former CBA IT executive has been charged with allegedly receiving more than $1.5 million in suspected corrupt payments.
  
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• Google X boss says company should have curbed Glass hype

  17-03-2015 23:04
  
  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc was wrong to let expectations about its Glass wearable gadget get overheated, the head of the Google X research lab said on Tuesday. The Internet company did not do enough to make clear that the $1,500 computer that mounts to a pair of eyeglasses was merely a prototype and not a finished product, Google’s Astro Teller said during a talk at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin. “We allowed and sometimes even encourage
  
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• Starbucks #RaceTogether campaign mocked

  17-03-2015 21:59 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A Starbucks PR campaign to unite customers with conversations about race appears to have backfired, as the company's big roll-out was mocked on Twitter.
  
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• Buffett's childhood home offered for his annual meeting

  17-03-2015 21:44
  
  OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Some fortunate Berkshire Hathaway investors at this year's annual meeting will get the chance to sleep in the same bedroom Warren Buffett did as a boy.
  
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• Analysis - Alibaba investors face lock-up battered but largely unbowed

  17-03-2015 21:43
  
  By Jessica Toonkel NEW YORK (Reuters) - As Alibaba was preparing to sell shares to U.S. investors for the first time, Jerry Verseput tried to persuade his clients not to throw money at the giant China-based e-commerce company because he thinks IPOs are a gamble, especially those with a lot of hype. For the two clients that insisted on buying stock, Verseput made sure they only invested less than one percent of their assets in the IPO. Alibaba opened on Sept. 19 at $92.70, ended its first day at
  
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• The latest way to pay someone from your phone: Facebook

  17-03-2015 21:39
  
  NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook's Messenger app will soon let you send your friends money, the latest in a crowded field of services aimed at an increasingly wireless and cashless generation.
  
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• Facebook to allows users to send money to friends through Messenger

  17-03-2015 21:08
  
  (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said it is adding a new feature to its messaging app that allows friends to send and receive money through it. Users can tap or click a dollar icon in a new chat window to send money to their friends, after they link a Visa or MasterCard debit card issued by a U.S. bank to their accounts.
  
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• This is Microsoft's entire cloud universe on one slide

  17-03-2015 20:24
  
  One slide at the presentation of Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Cloud+Enterprise Division at Microsoft resumed beautifully the extent of Microsoft's clout in cloud.Vaid was a keynote speaker at the DCD event in CeBIT 2015 in Hannnover and was particularly candid and open about what the company learnt since starting doing business on cloud.The company currently offers more than 200 cloud services in more than 90 countries worldwide. It serves more than a billion customers and a whopping 2
  
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• Microsoft opens kimono on its servers and a UPS killer

  17-03-2015 20:21
  
  Microsoft has disclosed some interesting details about what makes up its own data centres and one particular piece of hardware that may well make business for UPS vendors slightly more complicated.Kushagra Vaid, GM, Server Engineering, Cloud+Enterprise Division at Microsoft revealed that the company swapped its data centre technology roughly every three years. The current Gen5 data centre has achieved a PUE (power usage efficiency) of only 1.07 on 15MW.He also presented a Microsoft-designed powe
  
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• Bacteria programmed to find tumours

  17-03-2015 20:14 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Tal Danino opens Ted 2015 with a talk about programmable bacteria that can find tumours in the liver.
  
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• Facebook to let users send money to friends via Messenger

  17-03-2015 20:01
  
  NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook users in the U.S. will soon be able to send their friends money using the social network's Messenger app.
  
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• Review: Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X review

  17-03-2015 20:01
  
  IntroductionNvidia has maxed out its Maxwell graphics architecture and this is the result: the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X. The most powerful consumer GPU we've ever seen.Brilliant. That means, once again, we can trot out the familiar "fastest graphics card ever" headline, right?Well… no. There's actually a bit of a distinction between the fastest single GPU and the fastest graphics card – the two do not necessarily mean the same thing. But we'll come to that in a bit.What we do hav
  
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• Review: Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X

  17-03-2015 20:01 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  IntroductionNvidia has maxed out its Maxwell graphics architecture and this is the result: the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan X. The most powerful consumer GPU we've ever seen.Brilliant. That means, once again, we can trot out the familiar "fastest graphics card ever" headline, right?Well… no. There's actually a bit of a distinction between the fastest single GPU and the fastest graphics card – the two do not necessarily mean the same thing. But we'll come to that in a bit.What we do have
  
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• Infiniflash could make hard disks (and tape) redundant

  17-03-2015 19:37
  A couple of weeks ago, Sandisk, the storage vendor better known for its memory cards, announced the release of a new product, called Infiniflash, one that promises to commoditise flash within the enterprise.Sandisk claims that the enterprise storage array provides 5x the density, 50x the performance and 4x the reliability of traditional hard disk drive arrays while consuming just a fifth of the power.Make no mistake, this product is squarely aiming at the massive legacy installation of spinning
  
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• HP debuts ultra-cheap tower servers for small businesses

  17-03-2015 19:18
  
  Budget conscious small and medium sized businesses have a couple of new server options from HP as part of its growing Compute portfolio.The two new tower servers take the form of the HP ProLiant ML10 v2 and ProLiant ML110 Gen9 with prices starting at just $300 (around £203, or AU$393) and providing increased productivity and reduced overall costs.ProLiant ML10 v2 is an entry-level 10 series tower server with an incredibly low initial price for those looking to tighten the purse strings. It has
  
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• 'Kardashian' game maker Glu creating Jenner sisters game

  17-03-2015 19:04
  
  BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Glu Mobile is keeping up with the Kardashians.
  
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• LinkedIn bolsters big data recruitment through Careerify acquisition

  17-03-2015 19:00
  LinkedIn's big data recruitment strategy has stepped up another notch after it acquired a Canadian software startup known as Careerify.First reported by TechCrunch, Careerify will close down two of its software products as part of the move, yet a third product focused on employee referrals will remain open to existing customers. However, LinkedIn will not allow any new users to sign up.The two Careerify products that have been culled are an employer branding software product to help firms appear
  
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• GOP says Obama aides meddled in 'net neutrality'

  17-03-2015 18:50
  
  WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Republicans on Tuesday accused independent regulators of bowing to White House pressure on "net neutrality," citing thousands of emails and other documents that show close coordination between the Federal Communications Commission and senior aides to President Barack Obama.
  
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• SAP sees procurement services as the cloud's silver lining

  17-03-2015 18:49
  
  By Harro Ten Wolde HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Business software maker SAP is betting its development of online corporate purchasing services for its multinational customers can boost revenue and profits as it shifts its core business onto the cloud. Steve Singh, head of SAP's recently created Business Network division for cloud-based procurement services, says that by making a dent in the several trillions of dollars in total which big companies spend each year on purchasing goods and ser
  
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• U.S. FCC inspector general reviewing net neutrality process

  17-03-2015 18:28
  
  The Federal Communications Commission's inspector general has opened an investigation into how the agency arrived at its new rules for Internet service providers, U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz said on Tuesday. The office of the FCC inspector general recently informed Chaffetz's House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that they are investigating the process through which the FCC arrived at new "net neutrality" rules, the Republican lawmaker t
  
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• Hong Kong for work? A travel playlist from the head of Apple's Beats

  17-03-2015 18:17
  
  By Burt Helm NEW YORK (Reuters) - Before headphones and speaker company Beats Electronics was sold to Apple for more than $3 billion, the company faced a crossroads: It had parted ways with partner Monster Electronics in 2012 and needed new manufacturing partners. Luke Wood, then the chief operating officer and now the company's president, found himself travelling to Hong Kong every six to eight weeks to negotiate deals with Asian suppliers. "Hong Kong has this raw entrepreneurial spir
  
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• Nvidia reveals the price of the Titan X, the world's fastest GPU

  17-03-2015 18:14
  Back at GDC Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun dropped into Epic Games' press conference for an impromptu tease of the Titan X, Nvidia's next GPU (Ok, it was obviously pre-planned).Now, speaking at GTC (confusingly similar in name to GDC) Jen-Hsun has dropped a bunch more details, including the price of the X - $1000 (around £678, AU$1313) - and confirmed that it will go on sale March 18.For that price you'll be getting which packs in 8 billion transistors, 3072 CUDA cores, 7 teraflops and 12GB of RAM. In oth
  
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• Windows 10's biometric security recognizes fingers, faces and eyes

  17-03-2015 18:08
  
  Others have pioneered fingerprint-based authentication, but Microsoft is going much bigger than that for its biometric security in Windows 10.The company today announced "Windows Hello" and Passport, two Windows 10 security features it hopes will help kill the password for good.Here's what we want to see at IFA 2015We know more about Windows Hellot, biometric authentication that can use not just your fingerprints, but also your face or iris to recognize you.Special hardware requiredExi
  
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• Sony's PlayStation Now is coming to the UK, and you can register now

  17-03-2015 17:43
  Sony will bring its cloud-based gaming service PlayStation Now to the UK this Spring, on a limited beta test. To stand a chance of getting early access you'll need to be a UK-based PS4 owner with a PlayStation Plus membership. You can apply to be considered by signing up at www.playstation.com/psnow. Anyone who registered but is not selected will be kept informed when the service does eventually launch. PS Now will come to other Sony devices down the line, but the company says anyone looking to
  
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• Microsoft to offer biometric sign-in for Windows 10

  17-03-2015 17:02
  
  Microsoft Corp will introduce an automatic biometric sign-in option with its Windows 10 operating system due out later this year, the first time it has offered such a service widely across devices. The feature, called Windows Hello, means users will be able to scan their face, iris or fingerprint to verify identity and access Windows phones, laptops and personal computers. Microsoft, which announced the feature on Tuesday, said users' biometric data would be stored locally on the device and
  
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• Huawei, SAP work on Internet of Things development

  17-03-2015 16:20 via zdnet.com
  
  Research centres in China and Germany will investigate IoT.
  
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• Coffee and code: Software giant opens Silicon Valley cafe

  17-03-2015 15:54
  
  SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Silicon Valley has no shortage of coffee shops where sleep-starved programmers and eager entrepreneurs sit hunched over laptop computers and talk about ideas for launching the next Google or Facebook. Now a giant tech company is opening its own cafe for the same clientele.
  
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• Russian mobile firm MTS sees 2015 sales growth slowing

  17-03-2015 15:53
  
  Russia's top mobile phone operator MTS said revenue growth would slow marginally this year but warned that macroeconomic volatility could prompt it to revise its guidance. The company posted an almost 92 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit, hit by a slump in the rouble because of lower oil prices and a conflict in Ukraine. In Russia, its biggest market, sales growth is seen at more than 3 percent against 5.6 percent last year. It's less than last year but compare it with the mark
  
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• South Korean web giant Naver arrives in Brazil

  17-03-2015 15:30 via zdnet.com
  
  The company launches operations in the country as part of a strategy to expand in Latin America
  
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• How Facebook is speeding up the Presto SQL query engine

  17-03-2015 15:00 via zdnet.com
  
  Test figures published by social network Facebook are designed to show the results of a series of advances in the Presto open-source query engine, including a new ORC reader.
  
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• Dropbox badge and commenting to help businesses collaborate

  17-03-2015 15:00 via zdnet.com
  
  Dropbox for Business is pushing its badge and commenting feature out to wider availability after being in beta phase since early December.
  
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• Female senior partner: No discrimination at investment firm

  17-03-2015 14:55
  
  SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — One of the most powerful women in venture capital and a well-respected tech investor says she never saw or experienced gender discrimination at the firm at the center of a $16 million gender bias lawsuit.
  
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• 'Terminator' printer 'grows' objects

  17-03-2015 14:52 via bbc.co.uk
  
  A new method of 3D printing that uses light and oxygen to 'grow' solid objects was inspired by the Terminator 2 film.
  
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• ​US jury clears Apple of infringing five patents once held by Nokia

  17-03-2015 14:30 via zdnet.com
  
  A jury has knocked back a claim by a patent licensing firm that was seeking damages from Apple over five Nokia patents.
  
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• Rise of China tech, internet surveillance revelations form background to CeBIT show

  17-03-2015 14:29 via zdnet.com
  
  Beyond the gadgets on display, the Hannover show reflects a big shift of focus in the international tech scene.
  
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• Google app store gets more oversight

  17-03-2015 14:12
  
  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is tightening supervision of its freewheeling Play store, forming a special team to screen new apps for malware and sexually explicit material, and strengthening its age-based rating system. The change brings Google Play, a bazaar for digital games, social media apps and entertainment software, closer to Apple Inc's tightly controlled App Store. Google, whose Android software runs most of the world's smartphones, and the iPhone a
  
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• Ford turns back to Microsoft to build connected-car services

  17-03-2015 14:10
  
  By Paul Lienert DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co is turning to one of its early technology partners, Microsoft Corp, to help expand the automaker's connected car services. Among the features that Ford plans to offer later this year through its new Service Delivery Network is the ability to automatically update its new Sync 3 infotainment system wirelessly. The service will run on Microsoft's cloud-based Azure platform. Ford's cloud-based service will enable the company to gather
  
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• Will British consumers follow Microsoft's Band?

  17-03-2015 14:00 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Microsoft is about to launch the Band in the UK - a device which combines the features of a smartwatch with a fitness tracker.
  
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• VIDEO: Hands-on with an Apple Watch rip off

  17-03-2015 13:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Celia Hatton gets her hands on a Chinese Apple Watch rip off - but is it fooling anyone?
  
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• Five ways the Nintendo NX console can triumph as successor to Wii U and 3DS

  17-03-2015 13:39
  
  On 17 March, 2015, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata announced that the Japanese gaming giant is busy working on a new "dedicated game platform" codenamed NX. At that time Nintendo's current console the Wii U would be at least four years old, and their handheld console the 3DS nearly six. The announcement was made to assure consumers that Nintendo's commitment to dedicated gaming hardware is still paramount to them, and Iwata was at pains to say so. Nearly two and a half years
  
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• Coming to a theater near you: esports

  17-03-2015 13:29
  
  LOS ANGELES (AP) — Competitive gaming is ready for its close-up.
  
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• Russia's MTS sees net profit drop by almost 92 percent in fourth quarter

  17-03-2015 13:08
  
  MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's top mobile phone operator MTS said on Tuesday its net profit in the fourth quarter of last year dropped almost 92 percent to 1.6 billion roubles, partly hit by foreign exchange losses. MTS, part of the Sistema conglomerate, said it expected total 2015 revenues to rise by more than 2 percent compared to an increase of 3.1 percent last year. MTS also forecast a 2015 margin on operating income before depreciation and amortisation of more than 40 percent. (Reporting
  
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• Nintendo to develop mobile games

  17-03-2015 13:02 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Nintendo is collaborating with Japanese developer DeNA to create new games for smartphones, the firm has announced.
  
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• IBM aims to help firms mine nuggets from Twitter

  17-03-2015 12:38 via zdnet.com
  
  IBM makes available two cloud-based services designed to help businesses learn about its customers from Twitter
  
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• ​Google fixes Android 5.1 memory leak - but when will users receive it?

  17-03-2015 12:09 via zdnet.com
  
  Google has fixed a severe memory leak issue affecting the latest version of Android 5.0 Lollipop.
  
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• Super Mario to go mobile as Nintendo ventures into smartphone games

  17-03-2015 11:42
  
  By Teppei Kasai TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd will venture into smartphone games, heeding calls from investors to boost revenue by taking iconic characters like Super Mario to players increasingly shunning its consoles. Nintendo, which already warned its annual operating profit would halve on weak console sales, said on Tuesday it was teaming up with online gaming firm DeNA Co Ltd to develop and operate gaming apps. "This will allow us to build a bridge between
  
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• Review: Fuji XP80

  17-03-2015 11:22 via feedproxy.google.com
  Introduction and key featuresCamera reviewsBest compact cameraBest waterproof cameraRugged cameras make good holiday and family cameras because they can handle anything you're likely to throw at them. The Fuji XP80 is waterproof (down to 15 metres), shockproof from a height of 1.75 metres, freeze proof down to -10 degrees celsius as well as dust and sand-proof. Often, these kind of credentials come at the expense of decent image quality, but the XP80 is equipped with a 16.4 million pixel 1/2.3-i
  
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• ​Apple tipped to open Android trade-in program ahead of Galaxy S6 launch

  17-03-2015 11:11 via zdnet.com
  
  Apple sets its sights on Android switchers with a new trade-in program that may scoop up Galaxy S5 owners eyeing an upgrade to the soon-to-launch Galaxy S6.
  
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• India's Snapdeal to invest up to $200 million to improve deliveries

  17-03-2015 10:20
  
  (Reuters) - Ecommerce company Snapdeal.com will invest $150 million (101 million pounds)-$200 million to strengthen its delivery network in the next financial year, an executive said. The SoftBank backed company had invested in a minority stake in logistics company GoJavas, Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal, said on Tuesday. He did not say how much the investment was worth. ...
  
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• Japan's Nintendo to develop smartphone games with online firm

  17-03-2015 09:40
  
  Japan video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd and online gaming firm DeNA are teaming up to develop smartphone games featuring the likes of Super Mario, in a bid to retain users increasingly shunning their console and browser-based games. As a result, Nintendo will acquire a 10 percent stake in DeNA while DeNA will acquire a 1.2 percent stake in Nintendo. The companies will jointly develop and operate gaming apps, including those with Nintendo's iconic game characters, for smartphones.
  
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