Netflix boss Reed Hastings hits out at ISP traffic fees

The head of video-streaming service Netflix has hit out at internet service providers (ISPs) for demanding a fee to maintain video streaming quality.

The company recently "reluctantly" made a deal with US ISP Comcast to make sure its videos were streamed faster and more smoothly.

ISPs argue that data-heavy services should share the cost of providing capacity on the networks.

But campaigners argue that this approach stifles innovation.

Influential figures, including the likes of web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, call for what has been termed "net neutrality" - the principle that all data sent and received using the internet should be treated equally.

Some ISPs said that, for services that put a strain on their infrastructure, content providers should be charged.

Net neutrality supporters say that without rules in place, small or start-up organisations will find it harder to break into the market if they cannot afford to pay for priority service.

'Fight goes on'

This was a point of view supported strongly by Reed Hastings, Netflix's chief executive.

"Some big ISPs are extracting a toll because they can - they effectively control access to millions of consumers and are willing to sacrifice the interests of their own customers to press Netflix and others to pay," hewrote in a blog post.

Amid concerns that it would pave the way for other ISPs to demand the same, he defended his company's decision to strike a deal with Comcast

"Netflix believes strong net neutrality is critical, but in the near term we will, in cases, pay the toll to the powerful ISPs to protect our consumer experience."

But he added: "We will continue to fight for the internet the world needs and deserves."

As well as the Comcast deal, Netflix is also in talks with another major US provider, Verizon.

Verizon - backed by several other ISPs - recently won a a court appeal against new rules from the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) that aimed to ensure net neutrality in the US.

The company said: "The court's decision will allow more room for innovation, and consumers will have more choices to determine for themselves how they access and experience the internet."

The FCC said it would still press for a new law, to "ensure that these networks on which the internet depends continue to provide a free and open platform for innovation and expressions".

Flappy Bird creator says he might bring the game back to app stores

In case you missed out on Flappy Bird and wanted to try the original and not one of the clones, then you might be happy to know that developer Dong Nguyen told Rolling Stone that he is thinking of bringing the app back to iOS and Android app stores.

(Also see: Flappy Bird creator took down game because 'it was just too addictive')

In the Rolling Stone report, Nguyen also talked a little about developing the game. He said he found games like Angry Birds too visually dense, and said he developed Angry Birds as a throwback to an older, simpler era of Nintendo games.

Nguyen took the app down in February citing stress and saying the game was too addictive. At the time, reports suggested that he was earning $50,000 a day from ads being displayed in the app.
(Also see: Flappy Bird's journey from obscurity to fame and ultimate demise)
For a very simple game which featured such "inspired" visuals and had basically no gameplay, that's pretty impressive.

Of course, the app remains available for people who had already installed it on their phones before Nguyen pulled it off the stores, and he's been earning ad-revenues from those users in the interim. Over time though, this might well have dropped down from the heights of the Flappy Bird phenomenon, but it's safe to say that even in a market that's now littered with clones, Flappy Bird's return would probably be news enough to bring in a whole new set of users.

Google acquires Green Throttle Games, a former Bluetooth controller maker

With smartphone makers eyeing the living room, technology companies that are working on products that make it easier to control smart interfaces on large screens are getting picked up by Apple and Google.

A report from Pando Daily on Tuesday says that the recently closed Green Throttle Games' assets and two of the company's three co-founders have been hired by Google.
Green Throttle Games had launched in 2012, as a partnership between Charles Huang of Red Octane (the original creators of Guitar Hero) and Karl Townsend, who worked on the first Palm Pilot.
The company launched an Android Arena app which would pair a game controller to your phone and let you play Android games on the big screen, but it wasn't a big success and closed down four months ago.
The concept might well have been ahead of its time, as the mobile hardware required to power games that can (even in a limited sense) compete with a modern console is only just appearing now. With the hardware to support more complex games, this kind of a solution might find more traction now. Earlier reports suggested that Samsung was considering the company for acquisition in October.
The details of the Green Throttle Games acquisition have not been made public, but according to the report, sources close to the situation say that the acquisition is related to Google working on its set-top box TV.
This is a space Apple has been paying a lot of attention to as well, and aside from investments in content, it also acquired PrimeSense in November, which developed the sensors that Microsoft used for its voice and motion based Kinect technology.
As we earlier speculated, this, and an increased focus on gaming, suggests a growing focus on the television as well.
With the acquisition of Green Throttle Gaming, Google is making it clear that they're not going to sit back and watch either.

HTC Power To Give initiative aimed at helping find cure for AIDS, Alzheimer's

Taiwan-based mobile device manufacturer HTC has come up with a new initiative: Power To Give (PTG). Under this, the company plans to make use of a part of the processing power of cellphones to power research projects across the globe. The ideology is based on connecting smartphones on a secure computing grid and use the collective power as a whole to power projects in the field of science, astronomy, bio-medicine and physics.

On the official HTC blog, Social Community Manager, Laura Kimball, writes "With HTC Power to Give you can change the world with your smartphone as you sleep. One needs to download the app from the Google Play store."

Kimball adds that once the smartphone is connected to a charger when a user goes to bed, PTG begins to operate after the phone has charged up to 85 percent. The phone is then said to join an enormous secure computing grid, donating a small proportion of its unused processing power. This grid in turn powers research projects by compiling and aggregating scientific research data needed to solve the problems.

Kimball further mentions in another blog entry that HTC has 'teamed up' with Dr. David Anderson, one of the founders and leaders of volunteer computing initiatives for PCs, to develop a volunteer computing platform for Android smartphones based on the BOINC PC platform, a project at University of California-Berkeley. BOINC, middleware platform, is used by research organisations that conduct crucial research.

According to HTC even if one million smartphones connect to PTG, they would provide one petaflop of processing power, which as blog the mentions, would qualify as the 31st most powerful supercomputer in the world. HTC claims the power generated might just help find cures for diseases like AIDS, Alzheimer's and cancer, or generate solutions for providing clean water for people without an access to it.

Of course the HTC Power To Give initiative is not the first of its kind, but probably the first by a major smartphone manufacturer. Other distributed processing networks aimed at solving complex problems or crunching massive numbers exist, such as Folding@Home and SETI@Home, and have in the past leveraged the processing power of smartphones as well.

The HTC Power To Give app is available as a free download for select devices that run Android version 4.3 or later. It can be downloaded from the Google Play store. A list of devices currently supported by the HTC Power To Give app include supporting HTC One, HTC One max, HTC One mini, HTC Butterfly, HTC Butterfly s, Droid DNA by HTC, Google Nexus 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 2, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Samsung Galaxy S3, Samsung Galaxy S4, Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, Samsung Galaxy S4 mini, Sony Xperia Z, Sony Xperia Z1, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, Motorola Moto X, Motorola Moto G, Droid Maxx by Motorola, LG G2 and Lenovo K910. 

Sony Xperia E1 Dual with Android 4.3 now available online at Rs. 9,899

The Sony Xperia E1 Dual is now available through an online retailer at Rs. 9,899. Sony had announced the Xperia E1 Dual alongside the Xperia E1 on 5 March 2014, with the former given a retail availability of 10 March 2014, and the latter single-SIM version given a 25 March 2014 availability. Sony had announced MRPs of Rs. 10,490 and Rs. 9,490 for the Xperia E1 Dual and Xperia E1 respectively.

The Sony Xperia E1 Dual is the dual-SIM (GSM+GSM) variant, and runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out-of-the-box. It features a 4-inch WVGA (480x800 pixel) display with a pixel density of 233ppi. The smartphone is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 (MSM8210) processor, alongside 512MB of RAM. The Xperia E1 Dual comes with 4GB of inbuilt storage, with expandable storage support up to 32GB via microSD card.

The Xperia E1 Dual sports a 3-megapixel rear camera capable of 720p recording, and has no front-facing camera. The smartphone packs a 1700mAh battery that's rated to deliver up to 9 hours of talk time, and 551 hours of standby time. Notably, it features 3G connectivity support. The smartphone weighs in at 120 grams, and has dimensions 118x62.4x12 mm.

The Sony Xperia E1 Dual smartphone is available in three colours - Black, Purple and White - via online retailer Infibeam in India.

Sony claims the Xperia E1 Dual can through its loudspeakers produce up to 100 decibels of volume. Sony also is offering a promotional 30 day free pass for company's Entertainment Network music streaming service.

The Xperia E1 Dual was first announced in January this year, alongside the Xperia T2 Ultra phablet.
Update: Interestingly, the Xperia E1 (single-SIM variant) is also available online, via an e-commerce retailer, ahead of its announced 25 March 2014 availability.

The Xperia E1 features the same specifications as its dual-SIM variant, with the exception of the second SIM card slot. Flipkart has listed it at Rs. 9,990, which is strangely more expensive than its listing of the Xperia E1 Dual.

Chrome Web Store now lets developers sell extensions and themes

Google on Tuesday announced new developer tools and services for the Chrome Web Store, with the aim to help automate the publishing process, and monetise products. The update is focused on easy app, extension and theme management options for developers.

The search giant made the announcement on its Chromium Blog, in a post titled 'New monetization and publishing options in the Chrome Web Store'.

With the changes, developers can now be able to offer packaged apps as free trials. Packaged apps are those apps created by the developer that do not use browser action or page action, and are capable of running offline. Chrome Web Store managed in-app purchases have also been added to packaged apps.

The Google Chrome update also brings along the option for the developers to sell their Chrome extensions and themes. While themes can only be paid for up-front, extensions can be offered as free trials, or subscriptions. Also new to extensions is Chrome Web Store managed in-app purchases.

Easy payment options for apps, extensions, and themes have also been included, ditching the old method of using payment tokens for each sale.

Google has also improved the developer dashboard, where they can now enable or disable products (including in-app products), provide localized descriptions, and set prices for different regions, with the Chrome Web Store managing the licensing.

However, the managing licences of the extensions and themes remain with Google. Additionally, the developers will now be able to "programmatically create, update and publish items in the Web Store" via the newly expanded Chrome Web Store API. Google adds, "If you have an automated build and deployment process, we hope you will be able to use this API to integrate the Web Store publishing flow into your existing process."

Last month, Google announced its partnership with VMWare, a US firm which is known to offer cloud software and virtualisation services, to help users access Windows through Chrome OS. The access to Windows OS is possible through virtualisation software dubbed VMware Horizon DaaS (Desktop as a Service) paired with VMware's Blast HTML5 technology, which will help users manage their Windows desktop, data and other applications through their Chromebooks and Chrome OS machines.

Google planning 'performance boosting thing' for next Android version

Google, on the Android Open Source Project forum, has marked 'performance boosting thing' for a future release.

Android users who get upset by the slow performance of their devices might be relieved once the next iteration of the operating system releases, as it is to bring a 'performance boosting thing'.
One of the forum members of the Mountain View giant's Android Open Source Project (AOSP) forum, named Amit, raised an issue about the slow performance of Android devices (smartphone and tablets). Notably, the forum member suggested Google to introduce a 'performance boosting thing' in the next version of Android.

In response, Google's Project Member marked the issue for future release, which suggests that the search engine giant might roll out an update for RAM management to boost the performance of the device.

Amit on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) forum said:

hi guyz,
thanks for the awsome android.
my feature request is about performance. I have used many of the android versioned mobile phone and tabs. in all that i noticed about the performance factor. Can u guyz add some performance boosting thing on the next version or any update to existing. i want to open 10+ apps, active few ones and mostly inactive. when 5+ apps of size about 2gb its starts hanging or slowing down the running speed. can u make some redesign or something that will increase the performance using lesser ram use.
my request feature is about ram consumption. Please make it in the update so the phone can produce much fast performance.
hope u consider this.
ty again for the gr8 android.
Cheers to u !!

As of now, there is no comment from Google on the issue except the 'future release' mark.
Earlier, Nexus 5 smartphone was noted to be affected by a battery drain issue, which Google claimed was due to high CPU usage of the 'mm-qcamera-daemon' process that led to the battery dying sooner than expected.

A Google Project Member on the Android Open Source Project forum confirmed that the issue would be fixed in the next maintenance update. However, the project member did not provide an estimate for when the maintenance update will be rolled out for the Nexus 5.

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Saavn launches carrier billing on Airtel and Vodafone for Android users

South Asian Audio Video Network (Saavn), the digital music streaming service provider, on Wednesday announced the introduction of a carrier billing service for its mobile subscribers using the Android app.

Carrier billing is now available to mobile subscribers for the paid music subscription service, Saavn Pro. The company has tie-up with its participating carrier partners, including bigger carriers like Airtel and Vodafone, for the service billing.

Android device users on these networks can now pay for the access to Saavn Pro service with their prepaid carrier balances or postpaid accounts. Prepaid (non-subscription) users of Saavn Pro will also have the access to same features as already subscribed users of the Pro service. The offline content is maintained on the prepaid listener's device and it gets reactivated with payment.

Airtel or Vodafone subscriptions can purchase Saavn Pro in increments of 1 day, 1 week, or 1 month without a subscription, and without a credit or debit card. The service is available for Rs. 5 for a single day's access, Rs. 30 for a week, or Rs. 110 for a month, for all users who have updated to the latest version of Saavn for Android (version 2.7).

Saavn Pro is the company's offline music listening product which makes listening to online music ad-free. All of the music genres available on Saavn, such as film, bhangra, devotional, ghazals, pop, and more, are available for offline listening, as are tracks in multiple languages, including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and English.

"This new billing option enables millions of Saavn Android users to access our premium music experience in a quick and effortless way. Previously, Saavn Pro was available only to credit and debit card account holders," said Paramdeep Singh, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Saavn.

The company had launched its Saavn Pro service back in July 2013. The service initially offered a 30-day free trial, after which users could subscribe to Saavn Pro for Rs. 220 per month directly through their Google account. The company also offered a Lite version for Indian consumers at Rs. 110 per month. 

 

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European security firms capitalise on paranoia post surveillance debacle

European IT security firms have flocked to the world's biggest high-tech fair with hopes of benefiting from the fallout from shock revelations of mass US and British spying.

Exactly a year ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel vaunted her new, ultra-secure Smartphone at the opening of the same fair, the CeBIT, in the northern city of Hanover.

Revelations that US intelligence allegedly eavesdropped on her mobile phone conversations and hoovered up vast amounts of online data and telephone records from average citizens have since sent shockwaves around the world.

German firm Secusmart, which provides the security features for the German government's telephones, says it has now been approached by several other governments.

Secusmart chief Hans-Christoph Quelle declined to name the governments in question but stressed his business had seen a knock-on effect from the leaks by rogue US analyst Edward Snowden.

"Our core product is mobile voice encryption. And mobile voice encryption was a nerdy feature," the head of the 2007-established company said in an interview at the five-day CeBIT with AFP.

But he added: "Snowden has already changed things because at that time (in 2013 when Merkel showed off her new phone) everybody thought that only mobile networks are unsecure.
"But we learned with Snowden that all voice calls are unsecure."

Secusmart has this year teamed up with Britain's Vodafone to create an app to allow businesses to keep all telephone communications, including conference calls, secure.

Thanks to this new app, as well demand for the ability to ensure conversations are kept safe having increased "dramatically", Secusmart is banking on 20-percent growth, Quelle said.

It is far from alone in eyeing new business in the wake of the Snowden leaks.

Among CeBIT's sprawling layout, one entire hangar-like hall has been turned over to IT security, with around 500 companies offering specialised solutions, many from Europe and Asia.

By casting doubt on the confidentiality of data in the digital world, the scandal over mass spying "has shown consumers everywhere in the world the importance of protecting data," Dieter Kempf, head of German IT industry lobby BITKOM, told AFP.

According to the European Information Technology Observatory, a platform managed by a subsidiary of BITKOM, two thirds of European companies want to invest in security measures.

'Wake-up call'

Security analyst Oliver Rochford at the Gartner research company said the spying scandal and the debate it had whipped up would "offer opportunities" to those European companies with products ready to hit the market.

He also spoke of a "wake-up call" for Europe, a phrase also used during a visit to the CeBIT by EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who is responsible for digital agenda issues.

However, cashing in on the scandal that started with revelations about a mass spy programme by the US National Security Agency, is a delicate path for IT companies to tread.

"Don't sell with fear," warned Michael Goedeker, pre-sales director for British company Sophos.
"A lot of folks that we talk to have become very suspicious and don't really know quite what to do because the trust is not really there," he added.

According to US-based technology and market research company Forrester Research, the US high-tech sector the first to be hit in terms of a loss of confidence could lose up to $180 billion (130 billion euros) in sales by 2016.

As the World Wide Web notches up its 25th birthday, some companies are promoting the regional anchoring of digital data as one way to reassure consumers.

At CeBIT, German operator Deutsche Telekom targeted medium-sized companies with an offer including its "Made in Germany" cloud where its remote data storage centres are located in the country.

The telecoms giant has also teamed up with two other leading German providers of electronic messaging to ensure securer mails between the three, in an initiative christened "Email Made In Germany".

The debate triggered by Snowden's leaks about privacy has been heated. But Tom Reuner, a UK-based analyst at Ovum, pointed out that companies have to make choices in their IT spending.
"For large companies, of course, there's a lot of investment in (security). But it's like insurance, are you willing to pay the premium?

"Not always," he said.

New chip that turns cellphones into lens-less projectors

How about impressing your client with a presentation that is projected on a conference room wall by your cellphone? Here comes a technology that can convert your phone into a projector - one that shows a bright, clear image on a wall or a big screen.

A new light-bending silicon chip has been developed by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) that acts as a lens-free projector and could one day end up in your cellphone.
The new chip eliminates the need for bulky and expensive lenses and bulbs as used in traditional projectors.

"This chip uses a so-called integrated optical phased array (OPA) to project the image electronically with only a single laser diode as light source and no mechanically moving parts," explained Ali Hajimiri, Thomas G. Myers professor of electrical engineering at Caltech.

The beauty of the new chip is that it is small, can be made at a very low cost and opens up lots of interesting possibilities.

Hajimiri and his team bypassed traditional optics by manipulating the coherence of light - a property that allows the researchers to 'bend' the light waves on the surface of the chip without lenses or the use of any mechanical movement.

"By changing the relative timing of the waves, you can change the direction of the light beam," Hajimiri added.

Using a series of pipes for the light - called phase shifters - the OPA chip slows down or speeds up the timing of the waves, thus controlling the direction of the light beam.

The timed light waves are then delivered to tiny array elements within a grid on the chip.

The light is then projected from each array in the grid, the individual array beams combining coherently in the air to form a single light beam and a spot on the screen.

As the electronic signal rapidly steers the beam left, right, up, and down, the light acts as a very fast pen, drawing an image made of light on the projection surface.

"The new thing about our work is really that we can do this on a tiny, one-millimetre-square silicon chip. We can do it very rapidly to form images since we phase-shift electronically in two dimensions," said Behrooz Abiri, a graduate student in Hajimiri's team.

"In the future, this can be incorporated into a cellphone. Since there is no need for a lens, you can have a phone that acts as a projector all by itself," Hajimiri told the gathering at the Optical Fiber Communication (OFC) conference in San Francisco recently

Flipkart says more than 20 percent of its orders are via mobile phones

Country's leading e-commerce player Flipkart on Wednesday said it is receiving over 20 percent of its orders from mobile phones on the back of growing penetration of smartphone users who prefer buying merchandise through m-commerce mode.

 

 

"More than 20 percent of our orders are coming from mobile at present. And we see a lot of mobile users, who place orders, are from non-metro cities where we see a lot of potential for growth," company's Director (Mobile Marketing) Mausam Bhatt told reporters in Chandigarh.
 
Mobile users currently prefer to order mobile phones, tablets, cameras, footwear and apparels, he further said. "Increasing smartphone penetration and lower cost of devices has further contributed to growth of m-commerce," he added.

Quoting a report of Boston Consulting Group, Bhatt said at present 45 percent online consumers in India use only their mobile devices to access the Internet which is expected to increase to 60 percent over the next three years.

Sensing immense potential in m-commerce, Flipkart had launched its first Android-based mobile application in September last year to allow smartphone users to buy products online. It launched its iOS-based application in December.

"Through this app, users can check prices instantly using voice search and barcode scanning and can also share product information with friends easily through call, SMS, email, etc," he said, adding that the company would soon roll out Windows Phone-based mobile application.

He further said that easy payment options like cash on delivery available on Flipkart's mobile site, mobile shopping was now the preferred way to shop for a growing base of customers.

"In just last three months alone, we have seen more than 2.5 million downloads of our mobile application," he added.

Home-grown e-commerce major Flipkart has now plans to sell furniture, white goods including TV, refrigerators, washing machines through its website.

"We will soon introduce furniture, white goods as new product category," he said.

He said the market size of e-commerce is expected to reach $76 billion by 2020. Last year, the e-commerce market stood at $1.6 billion.

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Capcom Pro Tour year-long SF tournament announced in partnership with Twitch

Capcom, in partnership with Twitch, has announced the Capcom Pro Tour, a year-long fighting game league featuring Super Street Fighter IV AE ver. 2012 and Ultra Street Fighter IV (upon its release this June) that culminates with the grand finals at the Capcom Cup in December 2014.

With the partnership, live streams of the Capcom Pro Tour tournaments (whether online or offline) from across the year will be available via the Capcom Fighters Twitch channel.
Twitch made the announcement on Monday on its blog, while Capcom quietly posted the news on Saturday, on the new Capcom Pro Tour website.

Introducing the Capcom Pro Tour, Capcom's Combofiend released a YouTube video on Monday. He described how the Capcom Pro Tour would feature premier events, ranking tournaments, and online tournaments.According to Capcom, the Pro Tour will help "support tournament organisers, while delivering increased production values, supplementary video content, and new opportunities for players, content creators and sponsors."

At the end of the year, at the Capcom Cup grand finals, a total of 16 spots will be set, with two ways players can qualify. While players that win a premier event will instantly qualify for a spot, the remaining spots will be determined with a ranking system, with points earned during ranking events.

Ranking events will include trade shows, as well as independent tournaments that are managed and streamed separately from the Capcom Pro Tour. Tournament organisers can also apply to become a ranking event.

There will be a total of 10 premier events in the Capcom Pro Tour, and the remaining six spots will be determined using ranking system. More details about the three additional premier events will be announced at a later date.

Describing the significance of the Capcom Pro Tour, Victor "Victheslik" Denchartphan, Twitch's FGC (fighting game community) specialist, said, "The fighting community has always been a huge part of the world of competitive gaming, but has lacked global leagues and structure which other e-sports communities have benefited greatly from. What Capcom is setting out to achieve by organizing a year-long pro tour in tandem with leveraging the Twitch community is definitely going to change the face of the fighting game scene."

Current line-up of premier events

• Final Round (March 14-16 - Atlanta, GA, USA)
• NorCal Regionals (April 18-20 - Sacramento, CA, USA)
• Southeast Asia Majors (June 20-22 - Singapore)
• Community Effort Orlando (June 27-29 - Orlando, FL, USA)
• Evolution Championship Series (July 11-13 - Las Vegas, NV, USA)
• The Fall Classic (October 10-12 - Raleigh, NC, USA)
• DreamHack Winter (November 27-30 - Jönköping, Sweden)

Current line-up of ranking events

• SoCal Regionals (February 28-March 2, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
• PAX East (April 11-13 - Boston, MA, USA)
• E3 (June 10-12 - Los Angeles, CA, USA)
• San Diego Comic Con (July 24-27 - San Diego, CA, USA)

Cellphone addiction may damage parent-child bond: Study

Do you often play games, check emails or respond to office calls on your cellphone while with family on a dinner? According to a study, this phone addiction can damage your emotional bonding with your children.

In a first-of-its-kind study to examine how children behave while adults are on cellphones, researchers from Boston Medical Centre studied 55 parents while they had food at a restaurant with children.

The study found that one in three parents used their cellphones almost continuously during the meals.

"A lack of eye contact and interaction with children can reduce the bond with them," alerted Jenny Radesky, a behavioural paediatrics expert.

According to the study, almost 73 percent of the adults used their phone at least once during each meal.

More than 15 percent of parents used their cellphones towards the end of the meal, and continued to use it until they left the restaurant, said the study.

Also reported by the study, was when parents spent a long time looking at their phones, their children had a tendency to seek attention.

"Parents who were highly absorbed in their devices seemed to have more negative or less engaged interactions with children," Radesky was quoted as saying.

Children became distracted and wanted to know why the parents were using their phones during the family time.

This could cause problems with the child's development and reduce the level of bond between a parent and a child, said the findings, to be published in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics

Smartphones could soon help diagnose diseases in realtime

Apart from helping us with road directions, finding a favourite food joint, photo-sharing and chat sessions, smartphones could soon diagnose diseases for us in realtime.

Researchers from the University of Houston are developing a disease diagnostic system that offers results that could be read using only a smartphone and a Rs. 1,200 lens attachment.

This new device relies on specific chemical interactions that form between something that causes a disease - a virus or bacteria, for example - and a molecule that bonds with that one thing only, like a disease-fighting antibody.

A bond that forms between a strep bacteria and an antibody that interacts only with strep, for instance, can support an iron-clad diagnosis.

"The trick is finding a way to detect these chemical interactions quickly, cheaply and easily. The device involves a simple glass slide and a thin film of gold with thousands of holes poked in it," explained Jiming Bao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Houston.

The device starts with a standard slide covered in a light-sensitive material known as a photoresist.

It uses a laser to create a series of interference fringes - basically lines - on the slide, and then rotates it 90 degrees and creates another series of interference fringes.

The intersections of these two sets of lines creates a fishnet pattern of UV exposure on the photo-resist. The photo-resist is then developed and washed away.

While most of the slide is then cleared, the spots surrounded by intersecting laser lines - the 'holes' in the fishnet - remain covered, basically forming pillars of photo-resist.

The end result is a glass slide covered by a film of gold with ordered rows and columns of transparent holes where light can pass through. These holes are key to the system.

The device diagnoses an illness by blocking the light with a disease-antibody bond - plus a few additional ingredients. Here is where the smartphone comes in.

"One of the advantages of this system is that the results can be read with simple tools," said Richard Willson, Huffington-Woestemeyer professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

A basic microscope used in elementary school classrooms provides enough light and magnification to show whether the holes are blocked.

With a few small tweaks, a similar reading could almost certainly be made with a phone's camera, flash and an attachable lens.

This system, then, promises readouts that are affordable and easy to interpret. There are some technical hurdles to clear before the system can be rolled out, Willson noted.

One of the biggest challenges is finding a way to drive the bacteria and viruses in the sample down to the surface of the slide to ensure the most accurate results.

But if those problems are overcome, the system would be an excellent tool for health care providers in the field, said the research published in the journal ACS Photonics.

Vodafone India says 2G and 3G tariffs will converge in the near future

Betting big on 3G adoption with increasing penetration of smartphone users, Vodafone India on Tuesday said the 2G and 3G tariffs will converge in the near future, although there is little scope for further cut in 3G rates.

As per the company, when it launched 3G services in 2010-11, the 3G tariffs were 6 to 7 times higher than 2G, but this difference has now been reduced to just 1.5 times.

"We brought down the 3G data prices around four months back and we except 2G and 3G prices will converge in near future," Vodafone India Business Head (Delhi) Subrat Padhi said in New Delhi.

He said the convergence will take place either by an increase in 2G rates or decrease in 3G rates while asserting that there is little scope for further cut in data rates.

"The data prices in India are already one of the lowest in the world," he said.

Taking the lead to reach out to the smartphone users in Delhi and National Capital Region (NCR), the company Tuesday launched 'Be Smart' mobile Internet initiative, which is focussed at tapping non-3G users.

The company has around 92 lakh users in Delhi and NCR and only around one-eighth of them use 3G currently. The 3G data users are growing at over 100 percent on year on year basis.

"A visible spurt in the demand for smartphones indicates a growing need for high speed connectivity. Basis our insights, we feel there is tremendous potential for customers using latest technology enabled handsets to adopt 3G on their phones to get the best experience," Padhi said.

The company, which has around 25.7 percent revenue market share in Delhi and NCR, has over 4,000 3G sites in the region.

uTorrent app for Android updated with new features and redesigned interface

BitTorrent on Monday updated its popular torrent client app for Android - uTorrent. The latest updatebrings to uTorrent to version 2.03, which comes with new features alongside a refreshed design.

The uTorrent user interface is now similar to the recently updated BitTorrent app for Android. With the updated app, now users can select files to download within a torrent. The similar feature was recently updated in the BitTorrent app version 2.09.

Other than the download selection integration in the update, the updated uTorrent app now lets users choose the torrent download (storage) location even after torrents have started. User can now choose to delete the torrent alone, or just its files, or both. Additionally, it lets the user save network data with a new Wi-Fi only option for download.

The 2.03 update for uTorrent improves the overall stability and fixes bugs for the app, just like the BitTorrent 2.09 update. The torrent client app essentially lets you find and download files directly to your smartphone or tablet.

The developers of the number one torrent app on Google Play store are the famous BitTorrent Inc, which according to the company also holds first position with its BitTorrent client on desktops worldwide.

Last year in November, BitTorrent had also updated the Sync for iOS app since it was first released in August of the same year. The updated BitTorrent Sync app for iOS sports a new design, improved connection speed, iOS 7 compatibility, and a native iPad interface. The iOS app even lets users send and sync files in other apps, and save media from Sync folders direct to the iOS device's camera roll.

Airtel announces hike in fixed line broadband rates from April

Airtel's fixed-line broadband customers will have to shell out more for Internet services from April, as the service provider has hiked the charges by up to 40 percent in certain plans.

The operator has informed its customers that the increase in broadband rates would be effective from their next billing cycle in April.

Due to an increase in input cost, the rent will be revised from Rs. 250 to Rs. 349 with effect from 17 April 2014, the company said in a communication to a customer.

In another communication to a customer, the company mentioned that from April 23, the rental will be increased from Rs. 850 to Rs. 949.

The company in the plan also informed customers about increasing minimum speed of broadband to 512Kbps from 256Kbps.

When contacted, an Airtel spokesperson said, "Tariff rationalisation is a continuous process and a function of market dynamics. This price revision of our broadband plans is in line with the increasing input costs that have a direct impact on the final prices."

Airtel is the second largest provider of fixed line broadband service with 1.39 million customers, according to Trai data for December month.

The company in February also become the first operator in the country to have more than 200 million subscribers. Airtel said in a statement said that it "has crossed the 200 million mobile subscriber mark in India, further consolidating its leadership position in the world's second-largest mobile market."

The company is in its 20th year of telecom services. Airtel got its first permits for mobile telephony in November 1994 and started services in 1995. Airtel is the largest telecom operator in India, in terms of both customers and revenue. It is the fourth-largest mobile operator in the world by subscribers.

All New HTC One brochure purportedly leaked with name, specifications

Several mysteries surrounding the All New HTC One have now been confirmed, if a leaked brochure from Australian carrier Telstra is to be believed.

The leaked Telstra pricing plan brochure sourced by GSMArena indicates that the new flagship will indeed be named the All New HTC One (M8), and will feature a 5-inch full-HD scratch resistant display. Other than that, the mystery around the dual-camera lens has also seemingly been cleared through the brochure, with a name to the feature - Duo Camera.

This feature will reportedly bring improved low-light capabilities and will let the user select the focus of a shot after it's been taken. It will also enable the highlighting a specific area of a shot in a 'bokeh' effect, soften the background, and allow the user to add 3D effects.

Additionally the leaked brochure indicated that the All New HTC One (M8) will flaunt the latest Sense 6.0 UI and dual "BoomSound" speakers. 

So far, the leaked part of the brochure revealed only a few details of the All New HTC One (M8), and it will be interesting to see if HTC has managed to hide some details about the flagship smartphone before it launches the event scheduled for 25 March 2014.

The smartphone has been leaked in different ways already. Earlier on Tuesday, the device was leaked in a purported walkthrough video which indicated the device will run Android 4.4.2 KitKat and will feature HTC's new Sense 6.0 UI.

The uploader of the purported walkthrough video also claimed that the All New HTC One will come in three storage variants - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB.

In addition, another report by PhoneArena claims that the new flagship smartphone from HTC will come with wireless charging support. However, the report further speculates that the alleged wireless charging feature might be via a bundled accessory.

What if it were possible to watch your thoughts flashing before your eyes? It might soon become a reality. A neuroscientist and a videogame developer have created a system to do exactly that.

A new system developed by Philip Rosedale, creator of the famous game 'Second Life', and Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California San Francisco, combines brain scanning, brain recording and virtual reality to allow a user to journey through a person's brain in realtime.

The duo demonstrated this 'glass brain' at the South by Southwest (SXSW 2014) Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, on 10 March 2014.

"We have never been able to step inside the structures of the brain and see it in this way. It is biofeedback on the next level," Gazzaley was quoted as saying.

During the demonstration, Rosedale wore a virtual reality headset through which he could explore his wife's (Yvette) brain in 3D as flashes of light displayed her brain activity from the EEG.

A projection screen showed a similar view to the audience at SXSW.

The 'glass brain' did not actually show what Yvette was thinking - the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals merely painted a picture of her brain activity more broadly.

Despite this initial limitation, Gazzaley's team ultimately hopes to get closer to decoding brain signals, and then displaying them using the virtual reality system.

People with traumatic brain injury or other neurological problems could visualise how their condition is affecting their brain activity, and then learn how to correct it.

New computer modelling technique may aid cancer treatment

Scientists claim to have developed a first-of-its-kind computer model for simulating cancer tumour growth and treatment.

The model could act as a first-line assessment of potential treatments, without side effects for the patient.

The computer model developed by a University of Adelaide researcher simulates the growth of tumour from single cells and the effect of cancer treatments such as radiation at the nano-scale level.

The model is attracting interest from around the world as a first-line assessment of potential treatments, researchers said.

"Unlike other cancer models, this model simulates the tumour growth and effects of various treatments, right through to the probability of survival of cells and whether they have been destroyed by the treatment," said Michael Douglass, from University's School of Chemistry and Physics.

"We model individual radiation particle interactions on scales smaller than the size of a water molecule," said Douglass.

"We simulate the resultant biological damage to each cell in the tumour and how the cell repairs its DNA after being exposed to radiation," he said.

The model is now being used to study new cancer treatment techniques such as the use of gold-nanoparticles to reduce the radiation dose needed to destroy tumours, and so reduce or eliminate acute radiation side-effects.

"The beauty of this model is that we can investigate the actions of new treatments such as gold nano-particle therapy to see what happens when we can't look at it experimentally.

"The processes are happening on such a small scale that computer modelling is the only way of understanding how they are working," Douglass said.

He said the model can be used to investigate what will happen with any therapy so that a potential treatment can be verified.