Nokia to acquire staff and technologies from imaging specialist, Scalado

Rating: Lund base will become Nokia’s imaging software R&D centre

In a very interesting development in the production of imaging software for smartphones, Nokia has announced its intention to acquire Swedish software developers, Scalado. The terms of the transaction are confidential but it is clear that Nokia intends to centre its imaging software R&D around Scalado’s base in Lund. Not only will Nokia acquire Scalado’s technologies and intellectual property but it will also take on the company’s people, too.Commenting on the development, Scalado’s CEO, Håkan Persson, said, “This is a great opportunity for many of our people to show their leadership in imaging and to continue to build its future.”

He continued, “Doing this as part of Nokia, already a leader in mobile imaging, will reinforce the strength of the technologies and competences developed here at Scalado.”

Significantly, Scalado promises to maintain all present customer agreements and obligations. It will also continue to work with existing customers – honouring its delivery and support obligations

Historically, Scalado had connexions with Nokia’s handset competitors such as Motorola and Sony Ericsson, so this may be a reference to Scalado maintaining those links.

Interestingly, Scaldo has produced Windows Mobile versions of some of its imaging apps but it’s not clear if it has developed equivalents for Windows Phone 7.5 (W7 Mango) quite yet.

Curiously the company had recently announced a change of direction, saying on its web site that “We still work with imaging but have changed our focus to benefit the telecom industry and handheld devices.”

It had also been moving away from only providing its technology via OEMs, to putting its products on Google Play and the Apple iTunes App Store.

  

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Anonymous targets Montreal Grand Prix to back students

The global group of computer hackers known as Anonymous threw its support behind Quebec students protesting hikes in tuition fees by threatening to disrupt the Montreal Grand Prix.

The activists, who earlier this month claimed responsibility for downing a dozen Quebec government websites, blasted organizers for intending to run the race in the Canadian province that recently passed an emergency law restricting protests.

Special Law 78, it said, has been "universally condemned by human rights watchers around the world as tyrannical, draconian -- and (has left) Quebec in clear violation of its basic human rights obligations."

"Beginning on June 7th and running through race day on June 10th, Anonymous will take down all the F1 websites, dump the servers and databases -- and wreck anything else F1-related we can find on the Internet," said a statement.

Anonymous, which in 2010 targeted websites of companies such as Visa and Mastercard after they stopped supporting whistleblower Wikileaks, also warned race spectators not to purchase tickets online for the event or risk having their credit card information stolen and posted online for all to see.

The threats came as students and government representatives headed into a second day of talks to end protests that have raged here since mid-February over a plan by provincial Premier Jean Charest to raise rates at Quebec universities by 82 percent to rein in a budget deficit.

Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested and clashes have erupted sporadically as more than 165,000 students have refused to attend class as tens of thousands have taken to the streets.

A tentative deal was reached after marathon negotiations a month ago but soon fell apart, and nightly protests in Montreal and other cities resumed.

Special Law 78 was passed on May 18 in an effort to quell the unrest, but has only served to galvanize opposition to the government.

The measure requires organizers to give police at least eight hours advance warning of times and locations of protest marches, with hefty fines imposed for failing to do so.

Last week, some 1,000 protesters were detained in some of the biggest mass arrests in the province's history.

Meanwhile Tuesday, talks between students and the Quebec government aimed at ending the tuition fees protests appeared to be moving forward.

During a dinner break, Martine Desjardins, president of the Federation of University Students (FEUQ), said she and her colleagues had submitted offers to the government.

"We expect the government to get back to us tonight," Desjardins said without going into details. "It's clear the negotiations will continue tonight."

The discussions between Education Minister Michelle Courchesne and student leaders have been touted as a "last chance" to resolve the conflict before the start of summer festivals and other major tourist draws such as the Montreal Grand Prix.

Going into the session, one of the student leaders, Leo Bureau-Blouin, said he was expecting Courchesne to unveil a new proposal.

"The minister of education said she would present a new offer today. We're hoping that it's significant," Bureau-Blouin said.

Courchesne said she was "satisfied" that the talks were going well.

On Monday Premier Charest met with student leaders for the first time since the crisis erupted, joining the talks to hear their demands.

Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesman for the radical student group Classe, said this showed "that the government recognizes the extent of the crisis" and maybe "a certain sincerity on the part of the government in regards to the negotiations."

"The prime minister spent a half hour with us," said Desjardins, "but he did not have many answers to our questions."

Also Tuesday, Transportation Minister Norman MacMillan evoked the triggering of early legislative elections in July to end the stalemate if the government failed to reach a deal with the students soon.

"I would be a liar if I told you otherwise," he said in response to a reporter's question.

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Google adds canals to map routes

At the moment, waterways in England and Wales are not listed as routes on Google Maps Google Maps users may soon find it easier to plan a trip on some of England and Wales's waterways.

The US search engine has teamed up with the Canal and River Trust, a charity that will be in charge of the two countries' water network from July.

The deal includes updating Google Maps to include 2,000 miles of canal and river paths.

Currently, waterways are not listed on Google Maps as active routes people can use to move about.

"Say, I'm by a canal in Paddington and I want to go to Camden, and I put this information into Google Maps as a walking route - it wouldn't send me to the canal, even though it's a nice green route to get there, it would send me by road," the Trust's spokesman Jonathan Ludford told the BBC.

The charity will be working with Google to identify all the access points to the waterways, as well as all the bridges and tunnels, he added.

Continue reading the main story

A lot of people live by canals, and we want them to use these canals - so to have Google promoting the waterways is a really exciting initiative”

End Quote Jonathan Ludford Canal and River Trust Traffic-free "It's a very exciting project - Google is basically putting the canal network of England and Wales on the map, and people will be able to put in a route and if it's appropriate to go by canal, they would go by canal," he said.

"A lot of people live by canals, and we want them to use these canals - so to have Google promoting the waterways is a really exciting initiative."

Once the data is on Google Maps, waterways will become alternative, possibly traffic-free, routes through towns and cities of England and Wales.

"Canal towpaths offer green routes through our towns and cities, and by working with the Canal and River Trust we're adding towpaths to Google Maps and encouraging people to discover their local waterway," said Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google UK.

In early June, Google demonstrated new mapping technologies at a conference in the US.

But a week later, as Apple unveiled its latest mobile operating system, iOS6, which runs on its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, it emerged that it will no longer include Google Maps software.

Apple instead decided to run its own mapping app, which has a high-quality 3D mode, on the platform.

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UN agency plans major warning on Flame virus risk

BOSTON (Reuters) - A United Nations agency charged with helping member nations secure their national infrastructures plans to issue a sharp warning about the risk of the Flame computer virus that was recently discovered in Iran and other parts of the Middle East.

"This is the most serious (cyber) warning we have ever put out," said Marco Obiso, cyber security coordinator for the U.N.'s Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union.

The confidential warning will tell member nations that the Flame virus is a dangerous espionage tool that could potentially be used to attack critical infrastructure, he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

"They should be on alert," he said, adding that he believed Flame was likely built on behalf of a nation state.

The warning is the latest signal that a new era of cyber warfare has begun following the 2010 Stuxnet virus attack that targeted Iran's nuclear program. The United States explicitly stated for the first time last year that it reserved the right to retaliate with force against a cyber attack.

Evidence suggests that the Flame virus may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.

"I think it is a much more serious threat than Stuxnet," Obiso said.

He said the ITU would set up a program to collect data, including virus samples, to track Flame's spread around the globe and observe any changes in its composition.

Kaspersky Lab said it found the Flame infection after the ITU asked the Russian company to investigate recent reports from Tehran that a mysterious virus was responsible for massive data losses on some Iranian computer systems.

So far, the Kaspersky team has not turned up the original data-wiping virus that they were seeking and the Iranian government has not provided Kaspersky a sample of that software, Obiso said.

SOME SKEPTICAL

A Pentagon spokesman asked about Flame referred reporters to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS officials declined to respond to specific questions about the virus, but an agency spokesman issued a brief written statement that said: "DHS was notified of the malware and has been working with our federal partners to determine and analyze its potential impact on the U.S."

Some industry participants appeared skeptical that the threat was as serious as the UN agency and Kaspersky had suggested.

Jeff Moss, a respected hacking expert who sits on the U.S. government's Homeland Security Advisory Council, said that the ITU and Kaspersky were "over-reacting" to the spread of Flame.

"It will take time to disassemble, but it is not the end of the Net," said Moss, who serves as chief security officer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which manages some of the Internet's key infrastructure.

"We seem to be getting to a point where every time new malware is discovered it's branded 'the worst ever,'" said Marcus Carey, a researcher at with cyber security firm Rapid7.

Organizations involved in cyber security keep some of their communications confidential to keep adversaries from developing strategies to combat their defenses and also to keep other hackers from obtaining details about emerging threats that they could use to build other pieces of malicious software.

Meanwhile on Tuesday Japanese security software maker Trend Micro Inc said it had discovered a complex cyber campaign to steal information using a piece of malicious software dubbed IXESHE. It had infected government computers in major East Asian countries along with Taiwanese electronics manufacturers and German telecommunications firms operating across Asia.

Trend Micro officials declined to identify the targets or say who they suspect was behind IXESHE (pronounced "i-sushi").

IXESHE infected PCs with tainted PDF files sent to victims via email, then stole large quantities of data from the PCs and sent it to servers in countries including Taiwan, the United States, South Korea, Brazil, Italy and Japan.

"The amount of data that the adversaries exfiltrated from these systems is astounding. These systems have essentially been colonized," Trend Micro Vice President Tom Kellermann said in an interview.

(For more details on IXESHE, see Trend Micro's report at http://www.trendmicro.com/cloud-content/us/pdfs/security-intelligence/white-papers/wp_ixeshe.pdf )

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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Microsoft tablet risks alienating PC makers

NEW YORK (AP) — With the unveiling of the Surface tablet, Microsoft is heading into unusual territory: competing with its partners, the very same companies that make Windows PCs. But Microsoft has little to lose, since PC manufacturers are having little success with their own tablets.

With the unveiling of its tablet this week Microsoft Corp. is taking up the competition with Apple Inc. and its iPad by borrowing a page from Apple's playbook. It is keeping both software and hardware development under the same roof.

"If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the compliments from Microsoft poured down like a torrential storm on Apple last night," said analyst Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets.

Even Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's famously tough-talking CEO sounded downright Zen and Apple-inspired as he introduced the Surface.

"We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when all aspects of the experience — hardware and software — are considered and working together," he said at Monday's launch event in Los Angeles.

That's a new philosophy for Microsoft, a company accustomed to writing the software, charging loads of money for it, and letting others design the hardware. Microsoft has sold hardware before, most notably the Xbox game console, which is essentially a PC. But when it ventured into the game console market, it wasn't directly treading on the toes of the big PC makers who buy Windows from it. (The exception was Sony, which makes both PCs and PlayStation consoles.)

With Surface, Microsoft faces the challenge of selling the soon-to-be-launched Windows 8 to PC makers who want to make tablets, while at the same time selling tablets directly to consumers.

Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura Securities said Microsoft's hardware partners "are no doubt unhappy" about the prospect of competing with Microsoft's tablets, particularly since Microsoft set a high bar with Surface.

Surface will come in two versions, both with screens measuring 10.6 inches diagonally, slightly larger than the iPad. One model will run on phone-style chips, just like the iPad, and will be sold for a similar price. Another, heavier and more expensive model, will run on Intel chips and be capable of running standard Windows applications.

Ballmer suggested that Microsoft is making hardware so it can kick-start Windows tablets and make sure they're competitive right from the get-go. But the company's long-term goals are unclear. Will Microsoft keep making tablets, or will it declare victory at some point and leave the field to its hardware partners?

One sign of limited long-term commitment to making its own tablets is that Microsoft will be selling the tablets only from its own stores and website. That might leave space for other manufacturers to sell Windows tablets through Best Buy and other electronics stores.

Google Inc. is in a similar position. It makes Android, the software that powers most iPad competitors. But it has also acquired Motorola Mobility, a company that makes Android tablets and phones, so now finds itself competing with hardware partners like Samsung and HTC.

But Google has made clear that it will treat Motorola as a separate, "arms-length" business, and that it made the acquisition to get hold of Motorola's patents, which will provide legal cover not just for Google, but for other manufacturers who make Android devices.

Microsoft's position is complicated by the possibility that consumers will favor its tablet over other Windows tablets for exactly the reasons Ballmer articulated: it's made by the same company that wrote the software. That puts an end to the old Windows PC support runaround, where PC makers blame Microsoft for product failures, and Microsoft blames the PC makers. If something's wrong with Surface, buyers will know who to call.

Ronan de Renesse, an analyst at Analysys Mason, said Microsoft can afford to alienate PC makers when it comes to tablets, because they've captured such a small share of the market. Samsung Electronics and AsusTek Computer Inc. are the only PC makers who have appreciable market share in tablets, and they only make up 10 percent or so, by his estimate. Other major competitors to the iPad are Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook.

"Microsoft's move in creating its own tablet is the sign that PC manufacturers have lost the game," Renesse said. "The big question is, if Surface becomes as successful as the iPad, will Microsoft choose to stop licensing Windows on tablets?"

Microsoft's partners are mum. Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer, both of which make PCs and tablets, had no comment on Microsoft's announcement. Samsung did not respond to requests for comment.

___

AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

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Analysis: With Siri and new alliances, Apple takes on Google search

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When Apple Inc sends out its coveted invitations to major events, one CEO has always been making the guest list of late: Jeremy Stoppelman.

The co-founder and chief executive officer of consumer review website Yelp Inc has never taken the stage at these gatherings, but his company has become an important weapon in Apple's arsenal as it steps up its assault on ally-turned-rival Google Inc.

Yelp and a handful of other major consumer content sites, including movie reviewer Rotten Tomatoes and restaurant reservation service OpenTable, will be helping to power Apple's Siri, the voice-activated iPhone personal assistant, in the new mobile operating system iOS6.

The relationship between Apple and Yelp illustrates the power struggle over how people find what they are looking for on the Internet. Much more than just a clever feature, Siri is emerging as a key tool for what some in the industry call "casual search" - quickly finding routine information such as a restaurant location.

This can bypass Google and other traditional search engines. That serves the interests of Apple, which sees an opportunity to muscle in on its rival's core business and build related advertising revenue.

Siri is also a potential lifeline for Yelp and other content companies, which have found themselves competing with Google.

"Google is a direct competitor to Yelp, and I am sure Yelp is aware of that," said Larry Cornett, founder of product strategy firm Brilliant Forge and former head of consumer products at Yahoo Inc. Yelp, which depends a lot on Google for traffic, will probably be "ecstatic" about the direct traffic it will get through Apple's upcoming version of Siri.

Google still reigns supreme in search, loved by consumers for its relevant results and advertisers for its reach. Deep-pocketed rivals, particularly Microsoft Corp with its Bing search engine, have tried in vain for years to reduce Google's dominance.

Rather than compete with Google on keyword search - which would mean battling algorithms refined by the millions of searches performed every day - Apple is taking a different tack by focusing on a subset of the search universe that users are mostly likely to scour while they are out and about.

That includes restaurants, movies, sports, business listings, maps and locations - where quick, digestible bite-sized results are desired, rather than the more involved research that users perform with Google. The increasing use of mobile devices for accessing the Internet only plays into this trend.

Advertisers value these searches, which are closely linked to location, time and intent, said David Tennenhouse, venture capitalist with New Venture Partners and former CEO of A9.com, the search unit of Amazon.com Inc.

"You can think of this as cream-skimming," Tennenhouse said. "Can I skim off some of the most valuable searches? There is a huge range of value here."

The stakes are high, said Oren Etzioni, a search and artificial intelligence expert at the University of Washington's computer science department.

"Google is very difficult to dislodge on the desktop," he said, "but mobile search is a very different beast, and the jury is still out on the question of who the ultimate winner in mobile (search) is."

'TRUSTED PERSONAL ASSISTANT'

Apple and Google are increasingly at odds, largely due to the rivalry between the iPhone and Google's Android smartphone software. As the rivalry escalates, Apple is systematically dialing back its reliance on Google services - most recently by announcing it is going into mapping big-time.

Siri is still in a beta or "trial" version, and users have criticized failings such as misinterpreted words, odd results and incomplete data. But Apple is betting that the fast-evolving technology will improve enough over time to spearhead its foray into Google's domain.

Google is still available on the iPhone, and users can even ask Siri specifically to search it for answers. Apple's strategy, however, is to reduce Google's relevance on its devices as it doubles down on the investment in the voice-enabled software, experts said.

The company's goal is to build Siri into a "trusted personal assistant," Tennenhouse said.

"The disintermediation of Google by Apple is really a matter of Apple putting together a front end, which happens to be Siri for now, and linking it directly to the high-frequency searches," said Roger Kay, technology analyst with EndPoint Technologies. "And in doing so, bypass the general search mode and more importantly, bypass Google's advertising pages."

LOCAL IS KING

Marketing research firm eMarketer forecast 30 percent growth in the U.S. search advertising market to $19.5 billion this year from $15 billion in 2011. Google accounts for about three-quarters of that market.

The company has a lesser, but still substantial, hold on the mobile advertising market. That generated $1.45 billion last year, with Google controlling about half, while Apple had 6.4 percent, eMarketer said. It expects the total market to be worth $2.6 billion this year.

Apple devices running the company's iOS operating system are the biggest source of Google's mobile revenue, generating roughly 40 percent of the total, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

Mobile search has long been focused on local information, such as finding which local stores have discounts or which French restaurant in the area is the best-rated. But no one has yet been able to develop the content fully.

Google signaled its seriousness about the sector when it bought Zagat last year and vowed to make the popular dining ratings authority a cornerstone of its local information offerings. In late 2009, Google was in talks to acquire Yelp for at least $500 million, according to news reports at the time, but no deal resulted.

Yelp is now one of the few websites that is deeply integrated into iOS, featured not only in Siri but also in business listings for Apple's new map service.

Yelp's Stoppelman said the mapping integration was key, as searches are often location-based. He also says the Yelp app on the iPhone can readily integrate user reviews into the search functionality.

"Google just doesn't have that data," he said. "Yelp has the most word of mouth."

But Apple's success in search hinges almost entirely on the success of Siri.

Voice-recognition technology is not new, and users have so far not taken to it in great numbers. Google added this capability in its flagship Web search engine and its Android phones far earlier than Apple, but it is unclear how many people use it.

Whether Siri will be the answer also remains to be seen, New Venture Partners' Tennenhouse said. "The test always is: If you were to take this away from people, will they feel impoverished?"

(Additional reporting by Sarah McBride; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Martin Howell and Lisa Von Ahn)

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SKorea sees big demand for fastest mobile network

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea is forecasting blistering growth in the use of a network technology that gives the fastest speeds for connecting to the Internet from a mobile device.

South Korea, already known for having the world's speediest fixed-line broadband Internet, was not the first to use the fourth generation mobile technology known as Long Term Evolution. The United States already eclipses South Korea in the number of LTE smartphone users.

But the proportion of the population using it is higher and rising faster in South Korea than in any other part of the world as mobile operators are making a big push to attract subscribers.

Some 7 million South Koreans, or about 14 percent of the population, are already using LTE smartphones. That is forecast to jump to about 30 percent of South Koreans within a few months. The proportion in the U.S. is less than 5 percent.

Based on subscriber targets laid out by South Korea's three mobile operators, the number of South Korean smartphone users accessing the Internet with LTE is expected to reach 15 million by the end of this year.

South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute said the number of LTE smartphone users will surpass 33 million in 2013.

That explosive growth means that by next year, most South Korean mobile phone users will be able to download multimedia content and stream videos at a faster speed than other countries.

Companies offering LTE claim it can stream data as much as five times faster than 3G networks. Those claims are often based on test conditions and the actual performance is likely to be less than that though still noticeably faster than 3G.

South Korea's smartphone market was kickstarted by the iPhone's launch in 2009 and expanded at a furious rate. The number of smartphone users reached 26 million as of April, allowing over half of the population to surf the web and download mobile applications on the go.

Around 20 million of them are still using the 3G mobile communication network, which gives a moderate Internet speed and will work fine for most basic functions, such as web surfing.

Market experts and industry officials believe smartphones that support the 4G mobile communication standard will become mainstream in South Korea as early as the end of this year and well before other countries.

That is not necessarily because South Koreans have insatiable demand for high-speed mobile Internet.

In the saturated mobile market, the main operators SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. are splurging on marketing expenses to attract new subscribers.

They are giving generous subsidies to LTE smartphone subscribers while cutting down on subsidies for older devices.

"South Koreans usually get a new mobile phone in every one and a half or two years. When they get a new handset, they get the latest phone in part because device subsidies are given to the new models only," said Song Young-keun, a senior researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.

With Apple Inc. yet to give access to LTE on its iPhone, most LTE handsets are manufactured by South Korean companies: Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc. and Pantech Co.

Although Apple's iPad supports LTE in the United States, the tablet computer is not compatible with South Korean LTE networks.

The country's small size also allows quick completion of nationwide network coverage. All three operators completed nationwide LTE coverage earlier this year.

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