Newspapers online. 07-26-2013 | Politics Ho

Robots are a common sight in our factories and industrial workplaces, but have yet to make the jump into people’s homes - whether because of cost or they’re not intimate enough to have in the home.

US roboticist Keller Rinaudo, the head of Romotive, has created Romo, an approachable little automaton powered by a device most of us have a strong connection with – our smartphones.

The dongle is plugged into a television's HDMI port, and allows users to stream media from smartphones, tablets and computers.

Launching immediately in the US, the device will cost $35 (£23). There is as yet no word on international launches.

Google also announced an upgraded Nexus 7 tablet, the first to run the new version of the Android system.

Failed attempts Chromecast is Google's latest attempt to gain ground in the television industry.

In 2012, Google faltered in its attempts to make a move into the living room, considered by many experts to be ripe ground for making large profits through advertising.

Google's partnership with Sony, with which it released a £200 set-top box, was poorly received.

That attempt followed an even earlier false start in 2010 when it launched Google TV, a service that was blocked by several TV networks, and suffered greatly from requiring consumers to buy expensive hardware.

More recently, the orb-shaped Nexus Q device, announced last year, fell flat almost immediately - Google pulled it from sale in response to "feedback". With Chromecast, Google is attempting to simplify its large-screen offering, focusing on streaming clips from services such as YouTube and Netflix via a far cheaper device.

The dongle plugs into a television's HDMI port, and uses wireless home internet to link to devices.

However, unlike other similar devices, such as Apple TV, the media is streamed from the cloud, rather than from the mobile device itself.

This, Google said, allowed for higher-quality streaming, and had less impact on battery life.

The search giant was especially keen to stress the dongle's ability to stream across multiple operating systems, be it Android or Apple's iOS.

This aspect in particular is central to Google's core strategy, said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

"It's a big departure from the Nexus Q," she told the BBC. "What it boils down to is a focus around YouTube - and getting people back into that ecosystem.

"If you look at the opportunities around advertising, they're getting eyeballs back to that."

New Nexus

Also shown off at the event was Google's updated Nexus 7 tablet, which will go on sale in the "coming weeks".

The tablet will be the first to run Android 4.3, the latest iteration of the Jelly Bean flavour of Google's mobile operating system.

Among the software's new features will be the ability to set restricted profiles, meaning parents can, for example, only give their child access to certain functions on a device.

"This is part of the next stage of our turnaround plan to increase efficiencies and scale our company," a BlackBerry spokeswoman said.

The company, which last year cut thousands of jobs, recently hinted that more reductions were in the offing.

Last month, BlackBerry reported dismal quarterly results, which triggered a 28 percent plunge in its share price.

Sales of its make-or-break new line of smartphones came in well below some analysts' expectations. The results offered little evidence that the company could quickly win back market share from Apple Inc's iPhone as well as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy devices and other phones powered by Google Inc's Android operating system.

The company, which had roughly 12,700 full-time employees, as of March 2, said the employees being laid off were part of the new product testing unit, a team that supports its manufacturing, and research and development efforts.

BlackBerry recently said it no longer planned to migrate its new BlackBerry 10 operating system across to its Playbook tablet, as the hardware on that device was not powerful enough to provide a smooth experience for users.

Many take this as a sign that BlackBerry plans to phase out the poorly received device. It sold only 100,000 Playbooks in the last quarter.

In contrast, Apple reported earlier this week that it sold 14.6 million iPad tablets in its last quarter.

On Wednesday, the social networking giant had reported profits of $333m (£217m) in the second quarter.

When trading began in New York, Facebook shares were 25.6% higher at $33.30, the highest since May 2012.

Facebook, which is the world's largest social networking company, floated on the Nasdaq at $38 a share last year.

Following the release of the latest results, at least 16 brokerages raised their price targets for the firm.

"Facebook has discovered the formula to begin significantly extracting value from its 1.16 billion global users," said JMP Securities analyst Ronald Josey.

Video ads

A year ago, Facebook had no mobile advertising and many analysts were sceptical about the firm's ability to make money in the arena.

Internet companies have been struggling with how to display adverts on smaller screens, as more people use their smartphones to access the web.

Facebook's revenue from smartphones and tablets made up almost half of total advertising revenue in the second quarter. The company is widely expected to launch mobile video advertising in the fourth quarter.

"Facebook's massive audience should be irresistible to brand advertisers as the company preps to launch 15-second video ads, which could be Facebook's next billion-dollar business," said analysts at Jefferies & Co.

Meanwhile, analysts at Morgan Stanley expect video advertisements to boost Facebook's revenues by more than 10%.

In a statement, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said: "The work we've done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future."

According to chief financial officer David Ebersman, 20 billion minutes a day were spent on Facebook in June.

"This quarter marks the end of our first year as a public company and I think we've created a good foundation for the future," said Mr Zuckerberg on a call to discuss the earnings.

Mobile boost

Facebook made $655.6m from mobile ads between April and June - more than 41% of the $1.6bn in overall advertising revenue, compared with 30% for the same period last year. The number of mobile users expanded 51% to 819 million.

"I'd say that Facebook is in a unique position with the ad market right now in that it is very far ahead of any other major ad platform in mobile display advertising," said Clark Fredricksen of research firm eMarketer.

The company has focused on perfecting its ad sales programmes. Last month, it announced changes to its Ads Manager which it said would provide advertisers with better data.

Victims include Nasdaq OMX Group Inc, Visa Inc, Dow Jones Inc, J.C. Penney Co, JetBlue Airways Corp and Carrefour SA, prosecutors said as they announced the indictments on Thursday.

Mark Rasch, a former federal cyber crimes prosecutor, told Reuters that the arrests show that law enforcement is making progress in identifying those responsible for major cyber crimes.

"They involve dozens or even hundreds of people huddled over computer terminals all over the world in a common purpose of stealing of disseminating credit card numbers," said Rasch, who was not involved in bringing the case.

The indictment named four men residing in Russia and one man in Ukraine.

It also cited Albert Gonzalez as a co-conspirator. He is serving 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to helping mastermind one of the biggest hacking fraud schemes in U.S. history, helping steal millions of credit and debit cards. It was not immediately clear how those cases overlapped with the ones announced on Thursday.

In additional to payment car theft, charges in the indictment included allegations that the defendants stole log-in credentials from Nasdaq after playing malicious software on the company's computers around May 2007. A spokesman for Nasdaq could not immediately be reached for comment.

The indictment said that from about August 2005 through at least July 2012 the five men and four co-conspirators ran a high-profile hacking ring that was responsible for several of the largest known data breaches to date.

Prosecutors said they conservatively estimate that the group stole at least 160 million credit card numbers, resulting in losses in excess of $300 million.

The hacking ring sold the payment card numbers to resellers, who then sold them on online forums or to "cashers" who encode the numbers onto blank plastic cards that are used to purchase goods or withdraw money from ATMs in what is known as a debit card dump.

Among the breaches cited in the case, prosecutors charged that the group was responsible for the theft of more than 130 million credit card numbers from U.S. payment processor Heartland Payment Systems beginning in December 2007, resulting in approximately $200 million of losses.

As the court-martial of Private First Class Bradley Manning winds down, prosecutors in closing arguments on Thursday said that the 25-year-old intelligence analyst had betrayed the trust his nation put in him.

"The only human PFC Manning ever cared about was himself," said Major Ashden Fein, the lead prosecuting attorney.

Attorneys for Manning, who faces 21 counts of leaking more than 700,000 documents through the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website, are due to make their closing remarks later in the day.

Earlier in the case they portrayed Manning as well-meaning but naive, intending to provoke a broader debate on U.S. military and diplomatic policy by releasing the documents. The most serious charge he faces, aiding the enemy, carries a life sentence.

The case has pitted civil liberties groups who seek increased transparency into the actions of the U.S. military and security apparatus, against the government, which has argued that the low-level intelligence analyst, who was stationed in Baghdad at the time, endangered lives.

Army Colonel Denise Lind, who is presiding over the trial, early in the proceedings on Thursday denied a request by the defense to find Manning not guilty of five of the counts related to stealing information from government databases.

She denied a request by the defense to declare a mistrial.

The case, which saw WikiLeaks publish classified files, combat videos and diplomatic cables, serves as a test of the limits of secrecy in the Internet age.

But it has recently been overshadowed to some degree by the case of fugitive U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed to Britain's Guardian newspaper early last month the details of alleged secret U.S. surveillance programs tracking Americans' telephone and Internet use.

The WikiLeaks website has become controversial both for its publishing of secret data and for its founder, Julian Assange, who has been sheltering in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than a year to avoid extradition to Sweden for alleged sex crimes.

Manning was arrested in May 2010 while serving in Iraq.

In February, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges, including misusing classified information, such as military databases in Iraq and Afghanistan and files pertaining to Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Gisserot will take over as general manager from Mark Reilly, who will remain with the drugmaker as a senior member of the management team, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Reilly will still help lead the company's response to the Chinese government's bribery investigation. He has been working at GSK's headquarters on the outskirts of London since arriving in early July for routine meetings, people familiar with the situation said previously.

"From what we understand and have been told by the authorities there are no allegations of wrongdoing against Mark (Reilly)," the spokesman said.

At the same time, travel restrictions on GSK's finance head for China, Steve Nechelput, which had prevented him from leaving the country, are believed to have been lifted, the spokesman added.

Chinese police, who have detained four Chinese GSK executives, allege the drugmaker funneled up to 3 billion yuan ($489 million) to travel agencies to facilitate bribes to doctors and officials.

Only identified about 20 years ago, atmospheric rivers are intense bands of moisture that flow through the air.

Known to be responsible for heavy rainfall, they have been blamed for severe flooding in California and the UK.

The new study suggests that warmer conditions could create more rivers - and make them more severe.

The paper is published by the Institute of Physics in Environmental Research Letters.

Atmospheric rivers are up to 300km wide and can stretch in length for over 1,000-2,000km. They flow invisibly between 1-2.5km above the surface of the ocean.

One atmospheric river is believed to have been behind the violent flooding that hit Cockermouth in Cumbria on 19 November 2009.

The flooding claimed the life of a policeman, PC Bill Barker, who died after a bridge collapsed.

The researchers, led by Dr David Lavers of the University of Iowa, have estimated the staggering volume of moisture carried by this particular atmospheric river.

They calculate that at its peak it was transporting almost 300,000 tonnes of moisture every second.

By comparison, the River Thames carries about 65 tonnes of water through London over the same period.

Remain on course If the rivers make landfall and encounter a steep rise in terrain, the air is forced upwards where it cools and releases the moisture in the form of rain.

On top of that, if the river remains on the same course for 24 hours - as it did over Cumbria in 2009 - it will deliver a continuous flow of heavy rain over the same area.

The most closely-studied atmospheric river, which flows towards the California coast, has been dubbed the "Pineapple Express" because it usually originates from the region of Hawaii.

It has been linked to a number of extremely damaging storms along the US West Coast.

Over the last 30 years, there has been an average of 9-11 of the strongest atmospheric river events hitting Britain every year.

In this latest study, the researchers examined five different modelling scenarios to simulate possible conditions this century and found that a warming climate - which allows the atmosphere to hold more moisture - made the rivers more likely.

Dr Lavers said: "All five models suggest that there could be a doubling of atmospheric river events in the period 2074-99 and most of those could be expected to make landfall in the UK.

The new Nexus 7, featuring a Qualcomm Inc Snapdragon processor and a higher display resolution, on July 30 will be priced at $229 for a basic version with 16 gigabytes of storage. The original year-old tablet started at $199 for an 8 gigabyte version.

The announcement comes a week before its Motorola division is expected to unveil the Moto X smartphone in New York. The Moto X represents the first phone Motorola has developed since it was acquired by Google for $12.5 billion in May 2012, and is central to relaunching the venerable brand into a highly competitive mobile market.

Google and other traditionally non-hardware companies such as Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp have begun making inroads into mobile devices as consumers increasingly access the Web on the go. It introduced its first tablet in June 2012, hoping to replicate its smartphone success in a hot market presently dominated by Amazon's Kindle Fire, Apple Inc's iPad.

Google, which gets the lion's share of its revenue from online and mobile advertising, wants the aggressively priced Nexus tablets to be a hit as more users would mean increased exposure for its ads.

Its Nexus line of devices, which include smartphones and tablets made by partners like Samsung Electronics' and HTC, also serve as references for manufacturers across the globe adopting its Android mobile software system.

On Wednesday, Android and Chrome chief Sundar Pichai told reporters that, since its launch, the Nexus 7 line alone has accounted for greater than 10 percent of all Android tablets sold.

The bug - which was first publicised earlier this month - allows attackers to install code on to phones running Google's mobile operating system and then take control of them.

Symantec said its researchers had found two apps distributed in China that had been infected using the exploit.

Google has already taken moves to tackle the problem.

A fortnight ago it released a patch to manufacturers, but it will not have been sent to all handset owners yet.

Google also scans its own Play marketplace for the exploit, but this will not protect consumers who download software from other stores.

Premium texts The vulnerability was first reported by security research firm BlueBox on 3 July.

All Android apps contain an encrypted signature that the operating system uses to check the program is legitimate and has not been tampered with.

But BlueBox said it had found a way to make changes to an app's code without affecting the signature.

It warned the technique could be used to install a Trojan to read any data on a device, harvest passwords, record phone calls, take photos and carry out other functions.

According to Symantec, hackers have now exploited the flaw to install malware called Android.Skullkey, which steals data from compromised phones, monitors texts received and written on the handset, and also sends its own SMS messages to premium numbers.

It said the Trojan had been added to two legitimate apps used in China to find and make appointments with a doctor. "We expect attackers to continue to leverage this vulnerability to infect unsuspecting user devices," its report warned.

"Symantec recommends users only download applications from reputable Android application marketplaces."

The firm added that affected users could manually remove the software by going into their settings menu.

One telecoms consultant said the news highlighted the difficulty Google had in distributing changes to Android.

"When Google releases its updates, manufacturers want to check them and then network operators also want to certify the code as well," said Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight.

"It's a consequence of having so many different firms making Android devices, with most running their own user interfaces on top.

While investors marked up Apple shares as the company sold more of its iPhones than expected, the stock rally may prove short-lived as demand for its products fades in China. Analysts predict Apple will lose market share in the world's leading smartphone sector.

"There's some cannibalization of Apple's market share from competitive mid-tier models that cost a lot less and perform as well, from vendors such as Xiaomi and Vivo," said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura in Hong Kong, referring to rival Chinese models.

Salespeople at several electronics shops in Hong Kong said South Korea's Samsung was a bigger hit with consumers as it offers more products. Some display counters didn't carry any Apple devices.

"Samsung products have enjoyed greater sales than Apple as many mainland (Chinese) tourists tend to buy Samsung due to a greater variety of models with a wider price range," said a saleswoman at a Hong Kong computer centre. "That's why we stock more Samsung products."

SLIPPING DOWN

In the first quarter of this year, Apple ranked top in Hong Kong with 46 percent market share in smartphones, though that was down from 54 percent in the last quarter of 2012, according to market research firm Canalys.

Even without releasing a new product, Apple sold 31.2 million iPhones in its fiscal third quarter, around a fifth more than analysts had predicted. But revenue from all Apple products in Greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, slumped 43 percent from the previous quarter and was down 14 percent from a year earlier - worrying in a region where smartphone penetration is still low.

Greater China accounted for 13 percent of Apple's sales, or $5 billion, in April-June - down from nearly 19 percent in the previous quarter. Hong Kong was a particularly weak spot. "It's not totally clear exactly why that occurred," CEO Tim Cook said on a conference call with analysts.

"In the past three months, the number of mainland Chinese consumers of Apple products dropped about 50 percent," said Sunny Tang, a salesperson at another Hong Kong electronics store that sells Apple products. "Android (Google's operating system in many Samsung phones) is much better than Apple, and in that period Samsung released at least five phones and tablets."