Tech News Stop - Sharing by Wasim Akhtar

::::Finally, Professional Social Network LinkedIn Gives Users An iPad App::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1335491699_temp.png" border="0" align="left" /></div>Although the iPad has been available for more than two years, LinkedIn has yet to offer its users a native app despite the fact that mobile engagement has been growing at a fast pace for the network. But last August, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner said that the company is doubling down on its mobile strategy. And the network then debuted new versions of its iPhone and Android apps as well as an HTML5 mobile site. In fact, LinkedIn now says 22 percent of its active members have been visiting on mobile devices. And today, LinkedIn is finally launching its native iPad app to the public. As LinkedIn's head of mobile products Joff Redfern explains, the app was built with the user and tablet interface in mind. Since the iPad has become a leanback experience, LinkedIn wanted to make sure that the app satisfied iPad users' needs. Via the web, LinkedIn noticed that iPad users were visiting the site mostly in early in the morning, which they call a 'coffee session,' and in the evening, between 7 pm and 11 pm. With this data, the company wanted to build an application that allowed professionals to start the day and end the day with LinkedIn.

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Finally-Professional-Social-Network-LinkedIn-Gives-Users-An-iPad-App-11994'>View More</a>

::::Here Are 20 Companies Who Sell Your Data (& How To Stop Them)::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1335492696_temp.jpg" border="0" width="250" height="180" align="left" /></div>Meet the data brokers. There’s a whole industry full of companies who make their money buying and selling our personal information. The FTC is working on busting this dark racket wide open, but in the meantime, they’re out there. Who are they? Can we stop them? Read on to find out. What Are “Data Brokers?” Data brokers scrape public information like names, home addresses and purchase histories, credit card activity and other such sensitive tidbits. Then they sell it. There is nothing at all to like about this. At best, they’re Spam-as-a-Service companies. At worst, they enable violent criminals. It’s mostly marketers who are interested in this information, particularly people who do online targeting. But many of them just sell it to whoever wants it. Here’s a horrifying example of what any crazy person with a credit card can do with this information: 'My husband was killed in March 1987. The person who killed him was tried, and convicted in 1992. The defendant went to jail and was released last July after only serving 18 yrs out of a 25-life sentence. The defendant being savvy and enraged at being incarcerated has been using been [been]verified.com to try to find 'me'.' She goes on to write that BeenVerified.com, as well as “dozens of other companies,” never responded to her attempts to be removed from a database. BeenVerified is one of the most notorious and irresponsible of these companies. Here are many more examples of its sleaziness. The Most-Wanted List There are tons of data broker companies. Here’s a selection to give you a sense of the kinds of language these companies use to describe their products, namely us: <div class="super-pullquote">More Data Brokers: <ul> <li>Intelius</li> <li>Zabasearch</li> <li>Archives</li> <li>PeopleLookup</li> <li>US Search</li> <li>PeopleFinders</li> <li>PeekYou</li> <li>PublicRecordsNow</li> <li>USA People Search</li> <li>Epsilon</li> <li>White Pages</li> <li>MyLife</li> <li>PIPL</li> <li>PeopleSmart</li> </ul> </div>Acxiom- “The 21st Century Marketing Funnel” - “Clean Your List: our data hygiene services start at $25.” RapLeaf - “Upload… your customers’ emails and instantly get age, gender, and more.” - Best part: it asks for your “work email address” before you can use the free trial service. Spokeo - “Not your grandma’s phone book.” - Its listed use cases are “Find Friends,” “Find Family,” and “Identify Unknown Callers and Emails.” I wonder what else you could do with it? PrivateEye - “Billions of Records At your fingertips” - “You don’t have to be a member! Just enter as much info as you have about the person you are trying to find and our People Search Engine will do the rest.” Radaris - “Radaris is a powerful search engine geared specifically to help people find one another easily despite distance and time.” And then there’s the infamous BeenVerified. Just read the whole disclaimer on the footer of the site: Disclaimer: While we are constantly updating and refining our database and service, we do not represent or warrant that the results provided will be 100% accurate and up to date. BeenVerified is a database of publicly available sources of information aggregated for your convenience. BeenVerified does not provide private investigator services and this information should not be used for employment, tenant screening, or any FCRA related purposes. BeenVerified does not make any representation or warranty as to the character or the integrity of the person, business, or entity that is the subject of any search inquiry processed through our service. None of the above-featured companies either sponsor, endorse, or are in anyway affiliated with BeenVerified. You get the idea. What Can We Do About This? On Monday, the FTC released a detailed report calling for Congress to act to give consumers control over the data these companies gather and sell. Sites are currently not required to delete your data upon request. While the government slowly churns toward possibly someday doing something about this, there are companies out there to help individuals delete these records. SafeShepherd is one such company, which deserves specific mention because it does such a good job of explaining the problem it solves. Its basic service is free, and it will find your info, give you privacy alerts and request removal of basic records. You can also pay for a more thorough cleansing. SafeShepherd stays on top of all the data brokers it can find (including all the ones listed above). On average, it finds customers’ info on 11 such sites. Keep in mind, these sites don’t have to comply with removal requests. But there are way too many data brokers to contact them all yourself, and SafeShepherd will keep trying over and over again. For a lasting solution, we’ll need legislation. U.S. citizens who want to require data brokers to delete records on request should contact their representatives.

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Here-Are-20-Companies-Who-Sell-Your-Data-How-To-Stop-Them--11993'>View More</a>

::::It's Official: Google Has Lost Control of the Android Tablet Market::::

<img src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/files/styles/150_150/public/files/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/500px-android-logosvg-300x300.png" border="0" align="left" />This story was originally published in Silicon Alley Insider. More bad news for Google and Android. Amazon's Kindle Fire now has 54.4% of the Android tablet market in the U.S., according to comScore. This means Google has lost control of the Android tablet market to one of its newest mobile rivals after just a few months. <div align="right"><img src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/files/bizinsider_amzn.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div> Amazon used the base layer of Android to build its own operating system. Google doesn't have its app store or any of its services on the Kindle Fire. Amazon isn't the last company to do this. Phone makers are planning on forking Android, making it more fragmented and ultimately cutting Google out of the loop. The success of the Kindle Fire is proof that you don't need Google to make a popular Android-based device. Silicon Alley Insider is Business Insider's flagship vertical.

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/It-s-Official-Google-Has-Lost-Control-of-the-Android-Tablet-Market-11992'>View More</a>

::::Sunny Leone will sell mobile phones now::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1335491274_temp.png" border="0" align="left" /></div>India's moral police may soon have a tough task at hand with an unknown, small firm launching what would pass off as India's first phone endorsed by a real-life porn queen. Having signed on Canadian porn star of Indian origin Sunny Leone as its brand ambassador,Chaze on Thursday said "the upcoming Bollywood actress" would launch its mobile handsets with "mass appeal". It even released a picture of Leone as if she were at a press event launching the phones since having her to do that at an actual event in New Delhi may well have been fraught with unforeseen reactions. When queried, the PR representatives of Chaze Mobiles, PerceptProfile, revealed the still had been shot during the porn star's "first-ever TVC shoot" for the firm at "exotic locales" ofThailand. The ad will soon be beamed during prime time on Indian television. The imagery and association with Leone who is better known as a porn star than as an actress seems to indicate how Chaze Mobiles wants to position its product in an extremely cluttered low-end handsets market. However, steering clear of Leone's controversial past, the company described her simply as a "rising actress". "I am very excited to be associated with such a young and vibrant brand like Chaze. I chose to associate with 'Brand Chaze' because I am really impressed by Chaze's ideology of bringing out mobile technology for the masses and personally feel connected with their vision," the press release quoted Leone as saying. It remains to be seen how the market takes to Leone-endorsed phones. Boosted by a saucy TVC by Leone, Chaze may well gain an upper hand in the segment still dominated by cheap Chinese phones. Chaze has launched two entry-level models C123 and Jewel; C555 which boasts a "big screen and big sound" (sans any specs whatsoever); C234 (a "touch and type"phone) and C99, a "full soft touch multimedia phone". The company claimed its phones will be powered by "avant-garde features" such as dual SIM, auto call recording, answering machine, multimedia, big speakers, and last, but not the least, a spy camera! All models are priced between Rs 1500 and Rs 3500.

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Sunny-Leone-will-sell-mobile-phones-now-11991'>View More</a>

::::Micromax launches A50 Ninja Superfone::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1335491616_temp.png" border="0" align="left" /></div>Micromax Informatics Limited has expanded its Superfone smartphones portfolio in the country with the addition of another budget phone A50 Ninja.  A50 runs on Android version 2.3.6(Gingerbread) with a processor speed of 650 MHz .The phone features a 7.9 cms multi-touch capacitive screen. The dual-SIM Micromax A50 sports a 2.0 MP camera.  Priced at Rs 4,999, Micromax A50 Ninja comes with an Artificial Intelligence Speech Handset Assistant (AISHA). AISHA is a voice recognition tool through which users can search on Google, view stock market details, know phone status, movie reviews, make calls, read news of desired locations, know horoscopes etc.  Key specifications *7.9 cm capacitive touch screen  *Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread  *Artificial Intelligence Speech Handset Assistant, AISHA  *Dual SIM, 3G  *Wi-Fi, GPRS connectivity, Bluetooth  *2.0 MP rear camera  *Gravity Sensor  *Memory storage expandable Up to 32GB by SD card

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Micromax-launches-A50-Ninja-Superfone-11990'>View More</a>

::::Firefox 12 released with UAC-less update system on Windows::::

<img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1335407508_temp.png" border="0" alt="Image" width="250" height="150" align="left" />Mozilla announced today the availability of Firefox 12, a new version of the popular open source Web browser. The release brings some minor incremental feature improvements, a number of fixes under the hood, and a significant change to the browser’s update system on Windows.Ever since Mozilla transitioned Firefox to a shorter development cycle, the organization has been working tomake browser updates less intrusive and more seamless. The eventual goal is to make updates completely silent, performing them in the background without user intervention.Mozilla is reportedly on track to deliver silent updates in Firefox 13, the next major version. The Firefox developers have been working to implement some of the underlying technical changes that are needed to support the functionality. One of those changes, which is included in Firefox 12, is a new update system that will be used on Windows.In order to make updates silent, Mozilla has to first find a way to avoid the intrusive User Access Control (UAC) prompt. The UAC dialog is shown during the update process because the updater needs elevated privileges in order to modify the Firefox program files on the filesystem. The dialog requires user intervention, which makes it an obstacle to seamless updates. The new updater in Firefox 12 on Windows no longer requires the UAC dialog.There are a number of different approaches that software applications can use to avoid triggering the UAC dialog during updates. Google’s Chrome Web browser, for example, installs itself in the user’s home directory rather than a destination on the filesystem that would require elevated privileges to modify. Mozilla was reluctant to take that approach for various security reasons, and opted instead to build their updater on top of a service.A “service” on Windows is a kind of headless background task. Mozilla’s new update service, which is called MozillaMaintenance, has a high enough privilege level to be able to modify the Firefox files without needing a UAC prompt. Mozilla used a special access control entry to configure it so that it can be initiated by unprivileged applications.This means that the conventional Firefox updater can instruct the service to launch and perform an update without user intervention. When the MozillaMaintenance service is launched with a command to perform an update, it will perform the task and then terminate itself; the service itself doesn’t remain in the background when it’s not needed. In unusual cases where the service can’t be installed, the conventional UAC-dependent updater will continue to be used.

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Firefox-12-released-with-UAC-less-update-system-on-Windows-11979'>View More</a>

::::Though risks are minimal, one in five Mac computers found to contain Windows malware::::

<img src="http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/top-win-malware-on-macs.jpeg" border="0" alt="top-win-malware-on-macs" width="350" height="200" align="left" />Security firm Sophos on Tuesday indicated that a surprisingly high level of malware has been found on Mac computers — the firm’s research revealed that one in every five Mac computers is harboring some kind of Windows malware. Of the 100,000 customers sampled through Sophos’s antivirus offerings, 20% of users were found to be carrying one or more instances of Windows malware. The firm highlighted that Windows malware on a Mac won’t cause any harm, however, unless the computer also runs a Windows partition in addition to OS X. The company’s research found that just 2.7% of Macs that installed the company’s free anti-virus software were infected by OS X malware. Nearly all of the OS X malware discovered was an iteration of the “Flashback” trojan called “Flshplyr.” Sophos said that cybercriminals may find Macs to be targets because OS X users are less likely to be running an anti-virus software, however Macs can get viruses and the right software can keep a user’s computer safe. A second pie chart follows below. <img class="size-full wp-image-136788 aligncenter" src="http://www-bgr-com.vimg.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/top-mac-malware3.jpeg" border="0" title="top-mac-malware3" width="500" height="315" />   <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheBoyGeniusReport/~4/ZavUKaNBp8c" border="0" width="1" height="1" />

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Though-risks-are-minimal-one-in-five-Mac-computers-found-to-contain-Windows-malware-11978'>View More</a>