Tech News Stop - Sharing by Wasim Akhtar

::::Nokia unveils 110 and 112 entry-level dual-SIM phones::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337193125_temp.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px">Nokia has announced two Series 40-based entry-level dual-SIM phones, Nokia 110 and Nokia 112. Both the phones featurs apps to access social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The 110 and 112 come with Nokia Browser, which the company says brings data consumption down by up to 90 percent.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px">The <span style="text-align: left">Nokia</span> 110 features a 1.8-inch (128 x 160 pixels) D5 TFT display, dual-SIM support with Nokia’s unique Easy Swap, VGA camera, microSD card slot,Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, 3.5 mm AV connector. The 110 has 64MB of built-in storage. The 110 comes with 1,020 mAh battery that is rated to deliver up to 10.5 hours of talk time and up to 26.5 days standby.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px">The Nokia 112 has similar set of features – 1.8-inch (128 x 160 pixels) D5 TFT display, dual-SIM support with Nokia’s unique Easy Swap, VGA camera, 32 GB microSD card support,Bluetooth v2.1 with EDR, 3.5 mm AV connector. The device also has 64MB of built-in storage. However, the 112 has a better 1,400 mAh battery, which is rated to deliver 14 hours talk time and up to 35 days standby.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px">The Nokia 110 will be available in single SIM variants as well – Nokia 111 and Nokia 113 – destined for European and Asian markets only. The single SIM variants will sport similar set of features except that they will come with 800 mAh battery. The Nokia 110 has been priced at EUR 35 (roughly Rs. 2,400) and is likely to ship in the second quarter of this year. The Nokia 112 costs EUR 38, which is approximately Rs. 2,600 and is likely to ship in the third quarter of this year. </p>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Nokia-unveils-110-and-112-entry-level-dual-SIM-phones-12445'>View More</a>

::::Genpact acquires Atyati Technologies::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337192884_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div><p> </p><div class="brightcove_wrap"> </div> <p><span style="text-align: left"> Business process outsourcing firm, Genpact Limited has acquired a technology platform provider for the rural banking sector in India Atyati Technologies for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will help Genpact with last mile functionality that allows Indian banks to serve the millions of people who reside in rural areas. This supports the financial inclusion plans of the government of India, the company said in a statement. “Rural India remains an untapped market for banking and financial institutions with opportunities for providers in the banking, insurance and mutual fund sectors.” Atyati’s clients include several of the large Indian public sector banks. Tiger Tyagarajan, president and CEO, Genpact said, “Emerging markets such as India and China are becoming an increasingly important part of our global strategy and we are excited to support these large and critical initiatives of the Indian government and financial sector.”</span></p><p>Backed by one of the biggest deals by government in the PC space, ELCOT by the Tamil Nadu government, Lenovo has clinched the top spot in the India PC market with a 15.8% market share in first quarter of the calendar year 2012 according to a report released by IDC India. Dell secured the second spot with 15% share, followed very closely by HP with a 14.9% share.</p><p>The overall shipments in the Indian PC market during the period also stood at 2.63 million units, registering a sequential gain of 7.7% over the previous quarter while the year-on-year growth was noted to be at 3.5%. Kiran Kumar, senior analyst at IDC said, “The growth in PC volumes are reflective of the rise in consumption levels and investment activity for PCs in the recent past. A spurt in commercial spending was backed by a revival in consumer sentiment towards March”.</p><p> </p>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Genpact-acquires-Atyati-Technologies-12444'>View More</a>

::::Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter::::

<h4><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337192756_temp.jpg" border="0" alt="Image" width="300" height="200" align="left" /><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">The Google Search of the future is here. Now. Today. The long-talked-about sematic web — Google prefers “Knowledge Graph” — is rolling out across all Google Search tools, and our most fundamental online task may never be the same again.</span></p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">Starting today, a vast portion of Google Search results will work with you to intuit what you really meant by that search entry. Type in an ambiguous query like “Kings” (which could mean royalty, a sports team or a now-cancelled TV show), and a new window will appear on the right side of your result literally asking you which entity you meant. Click on one of those options and your results will be filtered for that search entity.</span></p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">To understand the gravity of this change, you need to know about the fundamental changes going on behind the scenes at Google Search. As we outlined in our report earlier this year, Google is switching from simple keyword recognition to the identification of entities, nodes and relationships. In this world, “New York” is not simply the combination of two keywords that can be recognized. It’s understood by Google as a state in the U.S. surrounded by other states, the Atlantic Ocean and with a whole bunch of other, relevant attributes.</span></p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">As Ben Gomes, Google Fellow, put it, Google is essentially switching “from strings to things.”</span></p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">To build this world of things, Google is tapping a variety of knowledge databases, including Freebase, which it bought in 2010, Wikipedia, Google Local, Google Maps and Google Shopping. Currently, Google’s Knowledge Graph has over 500 million people, places and things and those things have at least 3.5 billion attributes.</span></p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">That’s a lot of things. According to Google, search users will see these new knowledge graph results at least as often as they see Google Maps in results. In fact, this update will have a greater initial impact than the updates that brought Google Images, videos, news and books, combined. It’s big and it’s probably going to be everywhere.</span></p></h4><h2 style="margin: 24px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">Summaries of Good Stuff</span></h2><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">In addition to the window which will help users find the right “thing,” Google will also surface summaries for things, which, again, will try to be somewhat comprehensive by tapping into the various databases of knowledge. A search for Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance, will return a brief summary, photos of Wright, images of his famous projects and perhaps, most interestingly, related “things.” People who search for Wright are also looking for other notable architects. It’s a feature that may remind users of Amazon’s penchant for delivering “people who liked this book also bought or searched for this one” results.</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">Gomes said that the search results are tailored to deliver information that best relates to the initial search result. So the details delivered about a female astronaut will likely outline her space travel record, because that’s what people who search for her are, according to Google, most interested in.</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"> </p><div id="attachment_934921" class="wp-caption alignright" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 285px"><img src="http://6.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/knowledge_graph-thmbnail-275x202.jpg" border="0" alt="Google Knowledge Graph Example Thumbnail" title="Google Knowledge Graph Example Thumbnail" width="275" height="202" /><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent" class="wp-caption-text">How the Knowledge Graph Works. Click to see full graph example</p></div>Since this is a knowledge graph (“Web” might be a better word), the results are designed to help you dig more deeply into related topics. Google showed us how someone might start by searching for a local amusement park, find an interesting rollercoaster as one of the “things” that relates to the park and end up digging in on details about that coaster and other similar rides. It’s a “skeleton of knowledge that allows you to explore information on the web,” said Gomes.<p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"> </p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">There is the potential, Gomes added, of serendipitous discovery. The more you dig into things, the more things you learn about.</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">Of course, not every “thing” is the right thing. Wikipedia is, for example, a community-sourced encyclopedia that is known for both its breadth and depth of information and the occasional whoppers of misinformation it stores. Google’s Knowledge Graph includes an error reporting system. When users find misinformation, Google will share it with the source and the knowledge graph will get just a little bit smarter</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">For now, though, the Knowledge Graph is not getting any smarter about you. If you search for an ambiguous topic and then guide Google Search to the more defined set of results, the same query later will not go directly to that filtered information — at least not yet. “We don’t have anything to announce for personalization,” said Gomes.</p><h2 style="margin: 24px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent"><span style="font-weight: normal">The Competition</span></h2><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">Google’s chief search competitor, Microsoft Bing, also has millions of entities, but it’s not aiming for the purely semantic model of search results. Instead, Bing execs told Mashable that it’s focusing, in part, on much smaller set of segments that its users typically search on (i.e.: restaurants, hotels, movies) and trying to surface relevant information regarding those segments. A search result for hotels, for example, might include reservation tools. And while Google search now blends in Google+ results, Bing’s latest instantiation has moved social information to the right side of its search results page</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">It’s unclear for now how the Google Knowledge Graph, which pushes aside keyword results in favor of relationships and artificial intelligence, impacts all the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) many web sites have done to push their search rank ever higher. Also unknown is how, if at all, Google’s sea change will impact Google+. Gomes revealed that some Google+ changes were coming “independent of this” update and that Google will be talking about them separately.</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">Eventually, Google’s search will get smarter and will stop asking for your help to understand your query and start answering complex questions like “What is the coldest lake in the world in July?” It doesn’t matter why you want to know that, just that, someday, the right answer will be a click away on Google Search.</p><p style="margin: 18px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent">Google’s Knowledge Graph will roll out across the U.S. (and on all Google platforms: desktop, mobile, tablet) in the coming days. Eventually, it will go global. Give it a try and let us know what you think of the brand new Google Search in the comments.</p>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Google-Search-Just-Got-1-000-Times-Smarter-12443'>View More</a>

::::Government in final stages of protection against cyber attacks: National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337192019_temp.jpg" border="0" align="left" /></div><img src="http://pi.feedsportal.com/r/134204542858/u/53/f/534057/c/33041/s/1f6a6555/a2t.img" border="0" width="1" height="1" />Pointing out that information technology has given power to terrorists and non-state actors,National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon today said the government is "in final stages" of developing capabilities for protecting against cyber attacks. <div id="storydiv" class="storydiv" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px"><div class="Normal" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px"><br />Releasing an IDSA report on cyber security, he said here that the same technology has enhanced the internal security capabilities through cyber penetration and a "democratic society must draw a line between the collective right to security and the individual's right to privacy". <br /><br />"The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) revolution has brought power to non-state actors and small groups such as terrorists. It has given small groups and individuals the means to threaten and act against much larger groups. <br /><br />"Government is in the process of putting in place the capabilities and the systems to deal with this archaic new world of constant and undeclared cyber threat, attack, counter-attack and defence," Menon said. <br /><br />He said the "government is in the final stages of preparing a whole-of-government cyber security architecture." <br /><br />The NSA said 120 countries, including all the major powers, are developing offensive cyber capabilities as well as using cyber espionage and so are smaller powers who see ICT as an "equaliser". <br /><br />"These technologies have also enabled individuals and small groups to use cyber space for their own ends. We in India are subject to unwelcome attention from many of them, state and non-state," he said.</div></div>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Government-in-final-stages-of-protection-against-cyber-attacks-National-Security-Adviser-Shiv-Shankar-Menon-12442'>View More</a>

::::Report: Apple starting production of a 4â€³ iPhone 5 in June::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337191667_temp.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div><p id="yui_3_4_0_19_1337191603483_287" style="margin: 11px 0px 0px; padding: 0px">Wish that iPhone in the palm of your hand was a little bigger? According to the Wall Street Journal, your prayers are about to be answered: The new iPhone 5 will feature a 4-inch display, a half inch larger than current iPhone 4 models — and closer to 4" or larger Android phones that are now commonplace.</p><p id="yui_3_4_0_19_1337191603483_304" style="margin: 11px 0px 0px; padding: 0px">Sources suggest that Apple is ordering large numbers of the larger screens from a number of suppliers, including LG, Sharp, and Japan Display Inc. The same reports suggest that production of the new iPhone 5 will begin in June.</p><p id="yui_3_4_0_19_1337191603483_307" style="margin: 11px 0px 0px; padding: 0px">Any news about the iPhone 5 is welcome, of course — there's little doubt that the device is already the most awaited smartphone of 2012. The report lacks information about other features the phone may have, but its been suggested elsewhere that the iPhone 5 will also feature 4G wireless speeds, a long-awaited upgrade. The iPhone 5 is also expected to use Apple's own military-grade 3D mappingsoftware instead of Google Maps.</p>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Report-Apple-starting-production-of-a-4-iPhone-5-in-June-12441'>View More</a>

::::Pearson Buys Certiport For $140M To Beef Up Its IT Testing Business Globally::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337190935_temp.png" border="0" width="250" height="200" align="left" /></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12.5px; padding: 0px">Pearson, the educational publisher, today made a move to beef up its international professional IT testing business: it announced that it is buying Certiport, a developer, marketer and distributor of certification exams and practice tests for IT and digital literacy skills, for $140 million in cash from the private equity firm Spire Capital Partners.</p><p style="margin: 12.5px 0px; padding: 0px">The deal will give Pearson’s VUE unit, where Certiport will sit, much further reach into the retail distribution of testing services in markets outside of the U.S. and UK: Certiport currently sells its certifications and assessments through a network of 12,000 testing centers operated by 70 partners in 150 countries, serving the range of skills in the world of IT. In all, it delivers 225,000 exams in 27 languages every month, and generated revenues of $48 million in 2011.</p><p style="margin: 12.5px 0px; padding: 0px">Certiport, which was founded in 1997 in Utah, creates certification programs for software from companies like Microsoft, Adobe, HP and Intuit. With Certiport having 60 percent of its business currently outside of the U.S., the deal will mean not only a stronger profile in IT educational services for Pearson, but a window on to a wider geographic footprint, especially in Asia and the Middle East. The existing testing network will also become a channel that Pearson can use to distribute testing and certification content already in its portfolio.</p><p style="margin: 12.5px 0px; padding: 0px">“Certiport is a high-quality company serving the significant demand for foundation IT skills. That need is growing fast and is truly international,” said Rona Fairhead, chief executive of Pearson’s professional education businesses, in a statement.”The combination of Pearson VUE and Certiport will strengthen both businesses and will give us a unique portfolio of technology assessments and certification, serving everyone from a basic word-processing users to technology experts.”</p><p style="margin: 12.5px 0px; padding: 0px">Pearson notes that Certiport’s revenues have been growing at a compound annual rate of 20 percent in the last three years, with the integration costs for Certiport expensed in 2012 and the acquisition showing up in Pearson’s earnings from 2013.</p>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Pearson-Buys-Certiport-For-140M-To-Beef-Up-Its-IT-Testing-Business-Globally-12439'>View More</a>

::::Nvidia CEO: We're Bringing GPUs into the Cloud::::

<div class="custm_img_blk"><img src="http://www.techgig.com/files/photo_1337167504_temp.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" align="left" /></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">"Computer graphics is at the cusp of being revolutionized again," thanks to the ability to do fluid and light simulations on graphics chips, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said at the opening of the company's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) today. Huang showed new applications of GPUs in gaming, announced two new Tesla GPU boards aimed at high-performance computing, and demonstrated GPU cores in the cloud.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">Huang started by talking about computer graphics, and the company's recently announced 28nm Kepler architecture. He called the latest<span>GeForce GTX 690</span> "the world's most advanced graphics board, based on two Kepler GPUs" (technically the GK104).</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">He showed a number of traditional gaming demos, but I was more interested in the demo of real-time ray tracing on the board.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">This technology will expand over the next few years, and as a result, computer graphics will look nothing like the simple shading we see in console and PC games today.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">"Kepler is a big deal for computer graphics, but an even bigger deal for high-performance computing," Huang said. It has major advances, including a streaming multiprocessor core called SM; and the new SMX architecture, which has 192 cores and is three times more energy efficient than the architecture used in the company's previous Fermi chip. Another feature is Hyper-Q, which allows 32 work queues, which lets multiple CPU cores send much more work to the graphics processor, and thus keep the graphics cores busy all the time. Finally, it has "dynamic parallelism," where the GPU cores themselves can create work within their threads, based on their own results.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">These features will make Kepler particularly suited for high-performance computing. As an example, he introduced a demo of an n-body simulation. With Fermi, the company had shown a demo of 20,000 bodies interacting with each other, but with Kepler, it showed a demo of 280,000 bodies interacting, revealing a very fast simulation of the interactions between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. On Fermi, the demo could show one million particles per second, while on Kepler the demo could handle 10 million particles per second.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">For this market, Huang announced two new boards. First up is the single-precision Tesla K10, out now and aimed at imaging, signal and seismic applications, with three times the performance and 1.8 times the memory Bandwidth of the previous boards. This is slated to be followed in the fourth quarter by the double-precision Tesla K20—aimed at fluid dynamics, finite element analysis, and financial and physics applications—which adds the Hyper-Q and dynamic parallelism features.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">"We're going to put the GPU into the cloud," Huang said. Kepler is the first GPU designed for cloud computing, he said. That's because it offers a virtualized GPU, low-latency remote display features in that it no longer needs to be physically connected to a display, and low power so it can run in distributed data centers. The virtualized GPU is the core of this, as until now GPUs had to be dedicated to a particular application.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">One application for this is the "BYOD" movement where companies allow users to bring their own devices to work, but allow them access to virtual machines in a private cloud with streaming applications.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">Citrix and other companies today allow for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) with products such as Xen Desktop. But until now, such devices have used software-based GPUs because GPUs cannot be virtualized. Now, the company has introduced the virtual GPU hardware in Kepler, along with driver and software that works with Citrix's solutions, allowing power users and designers to have a remote GPU dedicated to their environment. Huang demoed this with Citrix Xen Desktop running Windows on an iPad with GPU acceleration.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">In another demo, a computer graphics artist from Industrial Light and Magic used a MacBook Air to access a Windows machine on a server running Autodesk's Maya modeling software.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">He then showed a wall of 100 different machines all accessing the GPUs from a single server.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-family: arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 21px; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px">A Cisco representative talked about a new version of Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) that supports Nvidia's virtual GPUs technology. Huang added that the GeForce Grid, a method for streaming video games over the cloud, is more convenient. </p>

<a href='http://techgig.com/tech-news/editors-pick/Nvidia-CEO-We-re-Bringing-GPUs-into-the-Cloud-12437'>View More</a>