Zuckerberg on internet.org, WhatsApp and the NSA

Reaching a billion Facebook users was not only a huge milestone in the company's history, says Mark Zuckerberg delivering the keynote speech at this year's Mobile World Congress, but it offered the social network the opportunity to ask itself the question: "what are we really here to do?"

Answering that question was easy because the company's mission has always remained the same -- "the vision was that someday someone should help to connect everyone in the world," Zuckerberg said -- and now Facebook had the done the groundwork it can be proactive about tackling its grander, wilder long-term goals.

This is the starting point from which internet.org came about, says Zuckerberg, with the aim to "create an in-ramp for the internet".

"People talk about there being five billion phones in the world," he said, and it's presumed that these will eventually all be smartphones. But this in itself, he added, "carries this implicit assumption that people are going to have access to the internet". At the moment, universal connectivity is not something the world is on track to achieve unless something significant changes.

The majority of the world's population, around 80 percent, is covered by a 2G or 3G connection, but it's affordability that's the biggest problem, Zuckerberg said. Not even affordability in its most basic sense, but the idea that people might have a couple of spare expendable dollars every month and they need a good reason to spend those dollars on data. People can't necessarily be persuaded to buy a data contract, as they don't see why they would need it. But offer them access to Facebook and WhatsApp and that becomes something desirable.

Zuckerberg believes there's a basic package of text-based services that should be universally available, a bit like the service provided when you call 999. "We want to create a similar dial tone to the internet," he said, and from there people will have the options to buy access to other less vital services.

"Things like messaging, social networking and search are portals to more content," he said, pointing out that Facebook has turned into a way for people to discover new things they want to read, watch or download. As such it's working with the government in Rwanda to deliver customised edX courses in an internet.org initiaitive called SocialEDU -- somethingWired.co.uk predicted back in November.

"Connectivity is not an end in itself -- it's what connectivity brings," said Zuckerberg, and Facebook even commissionedDeloitte to conduct a report to better understand the value of that connectivity. It found that if you increase access to the internet, you can potentially provide 100 million jobs and lower the infant mortality rate.

Facebook has not only worked on its own app to make it more efficient, reducing the average amount of data people used up on it from 14MB per day a year ago to 2MB today -- it has already begun working with other companies to make the delivery of services cheaper and more efficient.

Through a new internet.org Innovation Lab on the Facebook Campus built by Ericsson that simulates network conditions typically found in growth markets, developers will be able to test their apps in real-world conditions. Already it's hosted a hackathon with companies such as Twitter, Spotify and Ebay to help them better understand the data issues their customers are dealing with.

"No one company can change the way the internet works by itself," said Zuckerberg, emphasising that internet.org is a coalition across the industry. Facebook is not doing this alone, but does "have perspective thanks to building the most used app in the world".

Just as Facebook took time to evolve into the profitable social network we know today, it will also take time to achieve the goals of internet.org, but Facebook is in it for the long-haul.

"I think we're probably going to lose money on this for quite a while," said Zuckerberg, but he adds that was the case with social networking in the early days too, which was something that didn't bother him at the time. "I never real cared," he said. "I just believed it was this important thing."

Over the next year, Facebook hopes to form between three and five new partnerships with companies that are serious about internet.org's mission to take part in a trial, and hopefully in a year or so, there will be a systematic programme that can others can utilise. It would involve a basic model starting off with services like Facebook and Messenger, which partner companies will then be able to customise as they see fit. "Once we can make a profitable model that works for people [...] we think it's going to be a pretty easy thing to add weather and food prices and Wikipedia. "This is a long term thing for us," he adds. "I would hope that in the next ten years we can really make progress on connecting the rest of the world."

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How to identify malicious Android apps on Google Play

"How do I know that the new installed app behaves as described?" asks Andreas Zeller, professor of software engineering at Saarland University. So far experts have identified so-called malicious apps by checking their behavior against patterns of known attacks. "But what if the attack is brand-new?" asks Zeller.

His group seems to have found a new method to answer all these questions. Zeller summarizes the basic idea as follows: "Apps whose functionality is described in the app store should behave accordingly. If that is not the case, they are suspect."|

His research group has named the software based on this idea "Chabada". For every app, it analyzes the description of its functionality that can be read in the app store. With methods from natural language processing, it identifies the main topics, for example "music". After that, Chabada clusters applications by related topics. For instance, the cluster "travel" consists of all apps that deal with traveling in some way. Using program analysis, Chabada detects which data and services are accessed by the apps. Travel apps normally access the current location and a server to load a map. So a travel app secretly sending text messages is suspicious.

The researchers applied this approach on 22,521 apps from the Google Play Store. With a purpose-built script, they had downloaded the 150 most popular apps in the 30 categories from Google Play during spring and winter of last year. Chabada then analyzed them. Finally, the computer scientists from Saarbruecken investigated the 160 most significant outliers to verify Chabada's selection. The result: It had detected 56 percent of the existing spy apps, without knowing their behavior patterns beforehand.

How important the researchers' efforts are is shown by a news item published by the Russian software company "Doctor Web" at the end of June last year. It reported that the company had discovered various malicious apps on the "Google Play" platform. Downloaded onto a smartphone, the malware installed other programs, which secretly sent text messages to expensive premium services. Although Doctor Web, according to its own statement, informed Google immediately, the malicious apps were still available for download for several days. Doctor Web estimates that in this way up to 25,000 smartphones were used fraudulently. "In the future Chabada could serve as a kind of gatekeeper, ensuring that malicious apps will never make it into an app store", Zeller explains.

The computer scientists from Saarbruecken will present their new approach at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) in Hyderabad, India at the end of May. Already in March, Google security researchers will be meeting with the Saarbruecken team. Google has also already invited Zeller and his colleagues to have Chabada analyze the whole Google App Store.

Mega Android releases this week – new features, but the same great Android Collectible feel

Are you ready for the biggest Android release yet? At almost 10-inches tall we would like to introduce Mega Android. Dead Zebra and Andrew Bell’s new Android Collectible vinyl robot that absolutely dwarfs their popular, you might even say famous, Android Mini Series. For now, Mega Android comes in original green or, in the tradition of true Android customization, as a blank slate so that you can decorate him as you choose.

A new Android release is nothing without new functionality, but you’re in luck there too, as Mega Android’s body opens up and can be used to store stuff. I’m thinking cookies.

Mega Android can be yours for $69.99 from a few different stores, or save $5 to get the blank slate. Order yours up today for shipment next week from Cardboard Spaceship, Menace Inc. or My Plastic Heart.

What Android collectibles, or toys, do you have kicking around? Did you cash in on the $5 Android plushy on Amazon?

Can Satya Nadella give Microsoft the edge it lacked during Steve Ballmer years?

 Microsoft on Tuesday announced thatSatya Nadella was its next leader, betting on a longtime engineering executive to help the company keep better pace with changes in technology.

The selection of Nadella to replace Steven A Ballmer, which was widely expected, was accompanied by news that Bill Gates, a company founder, had stepped down from his role as chairman and become a technology adviser to Nadella.

John W Thompson, 64, a member of the Microsoft board who oversaw its search for a new chief executive, became the company's chairman, replacing Gates.

"During this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella," said Gates, who remains a member of Microsoft's board. "Satya is a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together."

In a statement, Nadella said, "Microsoft is one of those rare companies to have truly revolutionized the world through technology, and I couldn't be more honored to have been chosen to lead the company."

In Nadella, Microsoft's directors selected both a company insider and an engineer, suggesting that they viewed technical skill and intimacy with Microsoft's sprawling businesses as critical for its next leader. It has often been noted that Microsoft was more successful under the leadership of Gates, a programmer and its first chief executive, than it was under Ballmer, who had a background in sales. Ballmer, 57, said in August that he was stepping down.

Nadella, 46, from Hyderabad, India, is only the third chief executive of Microsoft, an icon of American business that has struggled for position in big growth markets like mobile and internet search. The company has correctly anticipated many of the biggest changes in technology —- the rise of smartphones and tablet computers, to use two examples —- but it has often fumbled the execution of products developed to capitalize on those changes.

It remains to be seen whether Nadella's technical background, along with the closer involvement of Gates in product decisions, will give the company an edge it lacked during the Ballmer years. Microsoft said in a statement that Gates will "devote more time to the company, supporting Nadella in shaping technology and product direction."

Relinquishing his role as chairman will allow Gates to spend over a third of his time with product groups at Microsoft, "substantially increasing my time at the company," he said in a video made for the news of Nadella's selection. Gates said that Nadella asked him to make the change in his duties at Microsoft.

"I think he's the right person for the company right now," Frank Artale, a former Microsoft manager who works with Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm in the Seattle area, said of the selection of Nadella. "A strong technical leader is truly needed there."

Nadella is a contrast to Ballmer in other ways. Most recently the executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise businesses, Nadella peppers his conversations and speeches with technical buzzwords that people outside the industry would most likely find impenetrable.

Nadella, who has been married for 22 years and has three children, counts cricket and poetry among his hobbies. In an email to Microsoft employees on Tuesday morning, he wrote that he is "defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning."

"I buy more books than I can finish," he wrote. "I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things."

Nadella showed ambition early in his career. He received degrees in engineering and computer science, then earned a master's degree in business administration from the University of ChicagoBooth School of Business while working full time at Microsoft. He flew to Chicago from Seattle to attend classes on the weekend, according to Steven Kaplan, a professor at the school who taught Nadella in a course on entrepreneurial finance and private equity.

"He is take charge, smart, but in a likable way," Kaplan said, adding that Nadella received an A in the course.

Now, Nadella is known as a cerebral, collaborative leader with a low-key style that differs from Ballmer's bombastic manner. While many executives within Microsoft tend to be polarizing figures, Nadella appears to be well liked in much of the company. Still, those who know Satya Nadella say that he is not a pushover as a boss.

"Managers have to keep proving themselves every day," Artale said.

Nadella's star at Microsoft rose considerably in the past several years as he took charge of the company's cloud computing efforts, a business considered vital as more business customers choose to rent applications and other programmes in far-off data centers rather than run software themselves.

For years, Microsoft did not pay enough attention to how the cloud -— primarily through services offered by Amazon, its crosstown rival -— was attracting the creativity of a new generation of developers. When he got control of the division that included Microsoft's cloud initiatives, Nadella changed that. He began meeting with start-ups to hear more about what Microsoft needed to do to become more responsive to their needs.

"When you look at the most exciting things happening in tech, all the platform shifts happening and disruption — social, mobile, cloud — Microsoft has not even been part of the conversation until recently," said Brad Silverberg, a Seattle-area investor and a former Microsoft executive. "With Satya's leadership, Microsoft is doing interesting things in cloud."

As chief executive of the entire 100,000-person company, Nadella has to grapple with a much broader set of challenges in markets in which he has little experience, like mobile devices. He inherits a deal to acquire Nokia's mobile handset business, along with 33,000 employees, and a wide-ranging reorganization plan devised by Ballmer and still in progress.

In an interview in July, Nadella was supportive of the reorganization plan, which he predicted would allow Microsoft to adapt to changes in the market more quickly than in the past. "It's not like our old structure didn't allow us to do some of this," he said. "The question is whether you can amplify."

When Nadella joined Microsoft in 1992, it was still a scrappy, relatively small software company led by Gates that was just beginning its greatest years of growth. His familiarity with the company's history and culture was said to have been an important factor in Gates's comfort with Nadella as chief executive, according to someone briefed on the search for a new leader who asked for anonymity because the process was private.

But in an interview in April, he said the most important factor in Microsoft's ability to remain a growing business in the future was its ability to become a player in what he called new paradigms in computing, like cloud computing.

"That is, you could say, the existential issue for us," Nadella said.

"I think that with any new paradigm there will always be a couple of new players who come at it," he continued. "But to me the thing that is perhaps more interesting and challenging, and gets me excited, is, hey, how can we renew ourselves?"

In his statement Tuesday, Nadella said: "The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly."

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Stratasys Launches Multi-Material Color 3D Printer

Stratasys is shaking up the 3D printing game withtoday's introduction of the first and only machine that combines color with multi-material 3D printing.

The Objet500 Connex3 Color Multi-material 3D Printer is more than just a mouthful—it features a unique triple-jetting technology, which allows for an almost unlimited combinations of materials and color. It pops out a finished product, no assembly or painting required.

"Stratasys's goal is to help our customers revolutionize their design and manufacturing processes," CEO David Reis said in a statement. "I believe our new [printer] will transform the way our customers design, engineer and manufacture new products."

The team at Wisconsin's Trek Bicycle beta tested the printer, building accessories like bike chain stay guards and handlebar grips for assessment ahead of production.

According to prototype development group manager Mike Zeigle, the printer augmented their usual time-consuming process with "fast, iterative, and realistic prototyping and functional testing."

And the vibrant colors helped, too. Like any old inkjet printer, the Objet500 uses three color materials—VeroCyan, VeroMagenta, VeroYellow—to produce hundreds of color combinations.

Those colors are transferred to photopolymer supplies like digital materials, rigid, rubber-like, transparent, and high temperature ingredients.

More palettes are expected in the second quarter of the year, including rubber-like Tango colors, ranging from opaque to transparent colors for use in the automotive, consumer, sporting goods, and fashion markets.

As a multi-purpose 3D printer, the Connex3 is "in a league of its own," said Igal Zeitun, vice president of product marketing and sales operations. "[It enables] you to dream up a product in the morning, and hold it in your hands by the afternoon, with the exact intended color, material properties and surface finish."

Seven years after the Objet Connex Multi-material 3D printing platform was introduced, the newest model—the Objet500 Connex3—is available for $330,000 online and via Stratasys's worldwide reseller network.

"In general and with the Connex technology in particular, we will continue to push the envelope of what's possible in a 3D world," Reis said.

Stratasys last year acquired desktop 3D printing company MakerBot for $403 million.

Check out the Stratasys Objet500 Connex3 printer in the video below. Also see The Strange Side of 3D Printing.

LAMBORGHINI ANKONIAN CONCEPT

The Lamborghini Ankonian is an aggressive concept designed by Slavche Tanevsky that looks like a mixture between the Reventon and a batmobile. Slavche is a student at the Munich University who decided to take the design of the Reventon to the next level and give it a more aggressive and unique design.

This concept would have a more environment friendly status and with the complex looking body it could be easily used in the next Batman movie. The car features OLEDs embedded between the surfaces which function as headlights and has a garnishing of GT proportions.

The Lamborghini Ankonian gets his name from a bull type famous for black hair and in order to get this impressive look, its designer got some help from other professional designers from Lamborghini and Audi.

Microsoft reportedly courting Sundar Pichai as next CEO

A new report claims that Google’s head of Android Sundar Pichai is a favorite candidate for the position of Microsoft CEO.

The report comes from Silicon Angle, which claims that negotiations with the Google executive are “in full swing.” Editor-in-Chief of the publication John Furrier said on Twitter that talks with Pichai “are so under wraps,” which, if true, could explain why we haven’t heard Pichai’s name in connection with Microsoft before now.

The most recent reports from publications including Bloomberg, Re/code, and The New York Times say that Microsoft executive Satya Nadella is the current front-runner for the Microsoft CEO position. Others in the running have included Ford CEO Alan Mulally, former CEO of Nokia (and former/future Microsoft employee) Stephen Elop, and Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg. Mulally and Vestberg recently their respective boards they have no intention of leaving their positions, and it appears Elop is no longer a lead candidate.

MICROSOFT COULD REALLY MOVE THE BALL DOWN THE FIELD WITH SUNDAR PICHAI

“Microsoft could really move the ball down the field with Sundar Pichai in creating a new open operating system model for cloud, mobile, and social,” chief analyst at Wikibon Dave Vellante said in a statement to Silicon Angle. “The market has been looking for a CEO who can balance the role of leading the enterprise transformation while keeping that consumer momentum with xBox [sic] and reboot mobile. Pichai is the total package of technology leadership and business acumen.”

This isn’t the first time Pichai has been rumored to leave Google. He was once reportedly courted byTwitter, but stayed on with Google after the company paid him $50 million to stay.

Pichai joined Google in April 2004, and has headed up many divisions in the company from Chrome and Chrome OS to Gmail and Maps. He’s also credited as a driving force behind Google Drive.

Most notable, though, is that Pichai is currently the senior vice president of Android, Chrome, and Apps. It’s hard to imagine that, given the recent moves by Google to strengthen Android, Pichai would step away to head up another company. The new agreement with Samsung could mean Google, and therefore Pichai, will have a greater influence over the future of the mobile platform. It’s hard to imagine anyone stepping away with such an exciting opportunity before them.

WHEN’S THE LAST TIME YOU WERE EXCITED BY WINDOWS PHONE?

Pichai would be leaving Google and all of its Googliness behind for a completely different corporate culture in Microsoft. Even from just the product side he’d move from heading up two ostensibly open-source projects in Android and Chrome to the locked-down Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox.

Perhaps a person like Pichai is what Microsoft needs to inject new life into the company. With the exception of the Xbox, few recent Microsoft products really resonate with users. When’s the last time you heard anyone get excited over using Word or Excel? And with the exception of Nokia’s excellent hardware, when’s the last time you were excited by Windows Phone?

With everything he’s learned at Google, Pichai has the potential to make Microsoft exciting again. But Android and Chrome are already interesting, with some exciting possibilities in the future.

Not to mention the fact that Google has plenty of money to offer Pichai to stay if it comes down to that again. Microsoft has deep pockets, too, so it’s hard to say what the outcome will be if the two companies start a bidding war for the executive.

With all the reports floating around, we’ll probably find out who the next Microsoft CEO is within the next few weeks. There’s only one thing we know for sure about the position: whoever takes over has a huge battle ahead of them in mobile with Android and iOS dominating the market.

Do you think it makes sense for Pichai to move take over as Microsoft CEO?