First operator partner for Ericsson Response SingTel to provide communication.

SingTel’s regional associates AIS, Bharti Airtel, Globe, Telkomsel and Warid to provide local resources to assist with disaster relief efforts.

Ericsson and Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) today announced a partnership to provide emergency communications services to support disaster relief efforts in South and Southeast Asia through Ericsson Response.

This is a world’s first operator partnership for Ericsson Response.

Ericsson Response, a volunteer initiative that supports natural disaster relief and humanitarian operations, works at establishing essential mobile communications to support humanitarian agencies and other partners to carry out their work.

Ericsson Response works in collaboration with several aid agencies, such as the United Nations (UN), to meet their communication needs.

Under this partnership, SingTel will provide satellite services from countries where its regional mobile associates operate.

In addition, the SingTel Group’s associates, Advanced Info Service (Thailand), Bharti Airtel (India), Globe Telecom (Philippines), Telkomsel (Indonesia) and Warid (Pakistan) will provide local resources to assist Ericsson Response’s relief efforts.

This will allow for faster deployment of emergency communications services in the event of disaster.

This partnership supports the SingTel Group’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) regional disaster relief efforts, which include financial assistance, community rebuilding support and communication support for relief workers, in countries the Group operates in.

For communication support, Ericsson Response was chosen as the best partner for implementation.

Mr. Hui Weng Cheong, SingTel CEO International said: “In collaboration with our regional mobile associates and Ericsson, we hope this partnership will help mitigate the effects of disasters in the region and make a difference to the communities in which the SingTel Group operates.”

“We have chosen to partner Ericsson Response because of their expertise in disaster relief, and its existing relationships with the UN, the IFRC, and NGOs in the region.

This partnership is a demonstration of the SingTel Group’s commitment to provide readily available resources towards disaster relief,” Mr Hui added.

Ms. Rima Qureshi, Senior Vice President of Ericsson Group and Head of Ericsson Response, shared that “The SingTel Group is one of Ericsson’s most important global customers and we are honored to be their partner for their corporate social responsibility undertaking in South and Southeast Asia.

We welcome this opportunity, together with the SingTel Group, to support humanitarian operations and the citizens of the region with standby disaster communication services, should the need arise.”

“Since Ericsson Response was founded in April 2000, hundreds of Ericsson employees worldwide have volunteered, trained and deployed in 40 disaster relief operations in 30 countries.

We are ready to use our experience and skill in disaster relief situations wherever and whenever needed.”

In Asia, Ericsson Response has already supported projects in Vietnam, Indonesia and Pakistan.

The team was called on following the Asian Tsunami of 2004.

Other countries where the initiative has been deployed include Haiti, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Panama, Sudan, the US, Turkey, Kosovo and Lebanon.

Ericsson President and Country Manager for Brunei and Singapore, Nicholas Seow (left) and SingTel CEO International, Hui Weng Cheong (right) at the SingTel Bukit Timah satellite earth station showcasing Ericsson Response’s emergency communications equipment and SingTel’s communications resources.

About SingTel

SingTel is Asia’s leading communications group providing a portfolio of services including voice and data solutions over fixed, wireless and Internet platforms as well as infocomm technology and pay TV.

The Group has presence in Asia and Africa with 416 million mobile customers in 25 countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand.

It also has a network of 35 offices in 19 countries and territories throughout Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States.

About Ericsson

Ericsson is the world’s leading provider of technology and services to telecom operators. Ericsson is the leader in 2G, 3G and 4G mobile technologies, and provides support for networks with over 2 billion subscribers and has the leading position in managed services.

The company’s portfolio comprises mobile and fixed network infrastructure, telecom services, software, roadband and multimedia solutions for operators, enterprises and the media industry.

The Sony Ericsson and ST-Ericsson joint ventures provide consumers with feature-rich personal mobile devices.

Ericsson is advancing its vision of being the “prime driver in an all-communicating world” through innovation, technology, and sustainable business solutions.

Working in 180 countries, more than 90,000 employees generated revenue of SEK 203.3 billion (USD 28.2 billion) in 2010.

Founded in 1876 with the headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX, Stockholm and NASDAQ New York.

According to Nielsen in the US, online gaming accounts for 10.2% of time spent on the Web,  says Sergey Golovanov, Malware Expert at Kaspersky Lab.

“Such a statistic certainly provides proof to the fact the online gaming is a growing industry that, in our experience, turns over impressive revenues each year.

The world of online gaming moves very quickly across countries each year new and exciting games are released and the army of players continues to develop.

And as with any online action that shows high activity and growth, the online gaming world has become an attractive one to cybercriminals evident by the recent hack of a popular gaming console which proved detrimental.”

In its May 2011 spam report, Kaspersky reported that 4.67% of all phishing emails that occurred were intended to steal passwords for the popular free online game RuneScape.

As a result, this platform made its debut in the top 10, straight in at number 3 way ahead of Warcraft which is the most popular online game in the world.

And this is just one example.

Kaspersky Lab has noticed that online games nowadays are of more interest to cybercriminals than social networking sites such as Facebook which is certainly a startling realisation that the company emphasises requires action.

“Despite this, often consumed by the excitement of the game itself, many online gamers do not realise the crucial importance of effective security around gaming.

And it is with this exact premise in mind that Kaspersky Lab continues to support the rAge expo as it is a well respected technology event that provides the perfect platform to engage.

With gamers to educate and offer the insight needed to ensure a safe and uninterrupted gaming experience,” says Golovanov.

“Security education across industries remains a key focus for Kaspersky Lab. We have identified the gaming industry as a sector that remains fruitful among cybercriminals and are proud to be a part of this event.

As it allows us the opportunity to educate and make an important and beneficial difference to the world of online gaming,” concludes Golovanov.

The online retailer has released no details ahead of Wednesday’s press conference in New York, but the device is reportedly called Kindle Fire, to tie in with its existing ebook reader.

Amazon is set to join the tablet wars as it launches a rival to Apple’s best selling iPad, a device that has made digital tombstones of all the competition so far.

If the Fire does prove to be an iPad rival it will pitch the brainchildren of Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, two of Silicon Valley’s most innovative tech giants.

Against each other in a battle analysts say will present the biggest challenge yet to Apple’s dominance of the tablet market.

With so little detail available Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg said he was reluctant to speculate too much. “But it feels like something big is about to happen,” he said.

The retailer is the biggest online books seller and the US’s second largest seller of music online after Apple’s iTunes, and it has been increasingly building up its online movies and TV sales and rentals business.

The company signed a deal with Fox this week that it said means it now offers more than 11,000 movies and TV shows available via its Amazon Prime service.

“Amazon has tremendous reach. That makes a huge difference,” says Gartenberg.

The retailer has a very different approach to Apple, he said, but that is what may make them Apple’s biggest threat to date.

Amazon is also competing with Apple to offer a cloud based media storage service that would allow customers to access anything they buy on any device connected to the internet.

Amazon has its own app store already and access to the purchasing habits of its millions of customers and their credit card accounts.

“The Kindle for Amazon was about selling books and magazines. Apple’s business is about selling devices. You are looking at very different approaches,” he said.

Amazon hopes its brand recognition and loyal book-buying customer base will enable it to do battle with Apple, which produced 75% of the tablets sold this year.

As a first step in the partnership Canon will work with Oracle to integrate its business copiers and printers with the software giant’s database and server products.

Canon subsidiary IT Solutions will sell a new platform that easily links products like Canon’s image Runner Advance copiers with Oracle’s database.

Web Logic and other offerings, the two companies said Monday.

The new platform will go on sale from January in Japan and in the first half of the year in the US and Europe.

Japanese companies such as Canon are traditionally strong in developing advanced hardware.

Canon also makes steppers for mass producing integrated circuits and is a leading producer of high end cameras but are weaker when it comes to software.

But software and databases are becoming a crucial part of the business copier and printer industry, where documents are increasingly stored and processed digitally.

In the future, the company said it will work with Oracle in developing middleware for its online storage service, and the two companies will also work together to further develop and refine the Java programming language.

Canon has long used Oracle’s Java as the basis for a third-party application development platform with its multifunction copiers, and the new joint development will extend that partnership, Canon spokesman Gota Fumoto said.

Canon said the tie-up will offer business solutions that include optical character recognition for saving documents and advanced features for combining and splitting PDF files.

Tapping your forearm or hand with a finger could soon be the way you interact with gadgets.

US researchers have found a way to work out where the tap touches and use that to control phones and music players.

Coupled with a tiny projector the system can use the skin as a surface on which to display menu choices, a number pad or a screen.

Early work suggests the system, called Skinput, can be learned with about 20 minutes of training.

“The human body is the ultimate input device,” Chris Harrison, Skinput’s creator, told BBC News.

Sound solution

He came up with the skin-based input system to overcome the problems of interacting with the gadgets we increasingly tote around.

Gadgets cannot shrink much further, said Mr Harrison, and their miniaturisation was being held back by the way people are forced to interact with them.

The size of human fingers dictates, to a great degree, how small portable devices can get. “We are becoming the bottleneck,” said Mr Harrison.

To get around this Mr Harrison, a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon and colleagues Desney Tan and Dan Morris from Microsoft Research, use sensors on the arm to listen for input.

A tap with a finger on the skin scatters useful acoustic signals throughout the arm, he said. Some waves travel along the skin surface and others propagate through the body. Even better, he said, the physiology of the arm makes it straightforward to work out where the skin was touched.

Differences in bone density, arm mass as well as the “filtering” effects that occur when sound waves travel through soft tissue and joints make many of the locations on the arm distinct.

Software coupled with the sensors can be taught which sound means which location. Different functions, start, stop, louder, softer, can be bound to different locations. The system can even be used to pick up very subtle movements such as a pinch or muscle twitch.

“The wonderful thing about the human body is that we are familiar with it,” said Mr Harrison. “Proprioception means that even if I spin you around in circles and tell you to touch your fingertips behind your back, you’ll be able to do it.”

“That gives people a lot more accuracy then we have ever had with a mouse,” he said.

Early trials show that after a short amount of training the sensor/software system can pick up a five-location system with accuracy in excess of 95%.

Accuracy does drop when 10 or more locations are used, said Mr Harrison, but having 10 means being able to dial numbers and use the text prediction system that comes as standard on many mobile phones.

The prototype developed by the research team sees the sensors enclosed in a bulky cuff. However, said Mr Harrison, it would be easy to scale them down and put them in a gadget little bigger than a wrist watch.

Mr Harrison said he envisages the device being used in three distinct ways.

The sensors could be coupled with Bluetooth to control a gadget, such as a mobile phone, in a pocket. It could be used to control a music player strapped to the upper arm.

Finally, he said, the sensors could work with a pico-projector that uses the forearm or hand as a display surface. This could show buttons, a hierarchical menu, a number pad or a small screen. Skinput can even be used to play games such as Tetris by tapping on fingers to rotate blocks.

Mr Harrison would not be drawn on how long it might take Skinput to get from the lab to a commercial product. “But,” he said, “in the future your hand could be your iPhone and your handset could be watch-sized on your wrist.”

Computer hacker Albert Gonzalez has been jailed for 20 years in the US for his part in stealing the details of more than 130m credit and debit cards.

One judge described the crime as “the largest and most costly example of computer hacking in US history”.

The 28-year-old pleaded guilty to three cases of fraud at his trial last year.

Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years for the first two cases on Thursday, and 20 years and one day on Friday for the third. The terms will run concurrently.

The judge in the third case said he had to serve the extra 24 hours because the crime had been committed when he was working for the US Secret Service as an informant, reportedly receiving as much as $75,000 a year.

As part of a plea agreement, Gonzalez also agreed to hand over $1m that he had buried in his parents’ garden, a condo in his hometown of Miami, a car, a diamond ring and several expensive watches.

‘Powerful message’

Gonzalez was accused last August, along with two Russian co-conspirators, of hacking into the payment systems of retailers.

They targeted more than 250 US companies including payment processor Heartland Payment Systems, food and drink store 7-Eleven and American supermarket Hannaford Brothers Co.

Gonzalez was found to have used SQL injection attacks to exploit weaknesses in payment software programmes and access data, stealing millions of customer card details.

He blamed “curiosity and addiction” for his crimes.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Department of Justice said that on a daily basis “cyber criminals try to steal the debit and credit card numbers of unsuspecting American consumers.”

“These sentences – some of the longest ever imposed for hacking crimes – send a powerful message to hackers around the globe that US law enforcement will not allow them to breach American computer networks and payment systems, or illegally obtain identities.”

Amichai Shulman, chief technology officer of cyber security firm Imperva, warned that hackers “continue to put up a persistent and very real threat to enterprise systems”.

“The current data security spend is focused on enterprise networks, yet the Gonzalez attacks took distinct advantage of weaknesses in the database and applications. This is an industry-wide problem.”

Source:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8588642.stm

TOKYO (AFP) — A Japanese research team has revealed it had created a technology that could eventually display on a computer screen what people have on their minds, such as dreams.

Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain, they said in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the US magazine Neuron.

While the team for now has managed to reproduce only simple images from the brain, they said the technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other secrets inside people’s minds.

“It was the first time in the world that it was possible to visualise what people see directly from the brain activity,” the private institute said in a statement.

“By applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams.”

When people look at an object, the eye’s retina recognises an image that is converted into electrical signals which go into the brain’s visual cortex.

The team, led by chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, succeeded in catching the signals and then reconstructing what people see.

In their experiment, the researchers showed people the six letters in the word “neuron” and then succeeded in reconstructing the letters on a computer screen by measuring their brain activity.

The team said that it first figured out people’s individual brain patterns by showing them some 400 different still images.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hjZBkNJ5qofmg0Qw3vHSfpNdKPfQ