Turkish agency blamed by U.S. companies for intercepted Web pages

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An agency of the Turkish government deployed a deceptive version of some Google Inc web pages, possibly to monitor activity by its employees, major Internet companies said on Thursday.The reports are the latest in a series of incidents in which hackers or governments have taken advantage of the loose rules surrounding the standard security for financial and other sensitive...

Read More..

Huawei launches the Ascend P1 in the U.S. for $450 through Amazon

Despite its attempts to attract new customers with high-end phones, Huawei (002502) remains relatively unknown to U.S. consumers. The company is looking to change that and on Thursday announced the availability of the Ascend P1 smartphone. The Android-powered device is equipped with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and an 8-megapixel rear camera. The handset...

Read More..

Relive Every Great Moment of 2012 in Just 4 Minutes

The ball has dropped which means it's time to begin alphabetizing your New Year's resolutions. But before welcoming in 2013 and throwing out last year's memories, take one last chance to relive all the glorious, splendid, heartbreaking, tragic, viral, sweet, crazy and fantastic moments of the past 12 months.[More from Mashable: Google Wants You to Add to Its Global New Year’s Resolution Map]From...

Read More..

Tubular raises $2.5 million to serve burgeoning YouTube industry

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Tubular, a small San Francisco start-up that provides analytics for YouTube content creators, has raised $2.5 million in venture capital in the latest sign of how far the business ecosystem has evolved around the Google-owned video repository.YouTube was once known as Wild West of online video, but over the past two years Google has focused on raising the quality of YouTube...

Read More..

Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned...

Read More..

FTC tightens rules protecting children's online privacy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government announced tighter rules on Wednesday to protect children's online privacy by restricting the collection of data, like the child's location, unless parents consent.The actions by the Federal Trade Commission mark an update to rules that were based on the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, developed when most computers were big beige boxes sitting under...

Read More..

Vatican takes first spot in Internet domain name draw

The Vatican has come out in first place in a long-awaited draw to expand the Internet address system with new domain names that go beyond the usual .com, .org or .net endings.ICANN, the corporation that oversees the Internet address system, announced this week the domain name .catholic written in Chinese characters will be the first bid it considers in a drive to expand and reorganize sites on the...

Read More..

Vatican says pope beats Justin Bieber on re-tweets

Pope Benedict, white-haired, 85, and a neophyte to social media site Twitter, has beaten out 18-year old heartthrob Justin Bieber to set a percentage record for re-tweeting by his followers, the Vatican said on Thursday.The Vatican newspaper said that as of noon Italian time on Thursday the pope had 2.1 million followers on Twitter, eight days after his first tweet was sent.While Canadian singer-songwriter...

Read More..

Google Enterprise boss says company is ‘doubling down’ on business services, targeting Microsoft

In an interview with AllThingsD, Amit Singh, Google’s (GOOG) VP of Enterprise, said the company is embracing the consumerization of the enterprise in 2013 based on the successes its seen with Google Drive and Google Apps this year. Singh says Google is finally confident that it can deliver enterprise services and tools that rival those of Microsoft (MSFT) with cloud applications that scale better...

Read More..

Delays litter long road to vehicle rearview rules

 In the private hell of a mother's grief, the sounds come back to Judy Neiman. The SUV door slamming. The slight bump as she backed up in the bank parking lot. The emergency room doctor's sobs as he said her 9-year-old daughter Sydnee, who previously had survived four open heart surgeries, would not make it this time. Her own cries of: How could I have missed seeing her? The 53-year-old woman...

Read More..

Chipmaker Marvell loses $1.17 billion patent verdict

A federal jury on Wednesday found that Marvell Technology Group infringed two patents held by Carnegie Mellon University, and ordered the chipmaker to pay $1.17 billion in damages.The award is one of the largest by a jury in a U.S. patent case, and is nearly twice Marvell's profit in its latest fiscal year. It followed a month-long trial in the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, the home of Carnegie...

Read More..

Phablet wars heat up with ZTE’s quad-core Nubia Z5

2013 is shaping up to be the year of the “phablet” with virtually ever major handset maker preparing to challenge Samsung’s (005930) impressive Galaxy Note lineup. While there’s no clear definition on how large a phablet is, most tend to have screens that hover in the 5-inch range, though Huawei’s upcoming 6.1-inch smartphone will only push that boundary. ZTE’s newly announced Nubia Z5 packs a 5-inch...

Read More..

Temple Run was downloaded more than 2.5 million times on Christmas Day

Millions of men, woman and children awoke on December 25th to find a smartphone or tablet under their Christmas tree. After opening these gifts, users are typically quick to fire up their new devices and download the most popular apps. Keith Shepherd, founder of Imangi Studios, announced on Wednesday that the company’s Temple Run game saw unprecedented attention on Christmas Day. The executive revealed...

Read More..

Meeting delay a sign of cooling US-Vietnam ties

The U.S. and Vietnam, former enemies who share concerns about China's rise, are finding that one issue — human rights — is keeping them from becoming closer friends.Stress between the nations is clear from a delay in an annual meeting between Washington and Hanoi on human-rights concerns. Such consultations have been held every year since 2006, but the last ones in November 2011 produced little, and...

Read More..

Court OKs sale of U.S. government-backed A123 to Chinese firm

China's largest auto parts maker got court approval on Tuesday for its controversial purchase of A123 Systems Inc, a bankrupt maker of electric car batteries, but the judge said he was troubled that a U.S. rival might be working to kill the deal.A123, which was partly funded with U.S. government money, was sold at an auction on Saturday for $256.6 million to Wanxiang Group of China, which outbid Johnson...

Read More..

Google explains cause of massive Gmail, Chrome outages

Users took to social networks on Monday to vent their displeasure with Google (GOOG) following a 40-minute disruption of service affecting the company’s Chrome Web browser and Gmail service. It was previously unclear what caused the services to simultaneously crash and some suspected the company was hit with a denial-of-service attack. Google engineer Tim Steele took to the company’s developer forums...

Read More..

Facebook helps FBI bust cybercriminals blamed for $850 million losses

 Investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and aided by Facebook Inc, have busted an international criminal ring that infected 11 million computers around the world and caused more than $850 million in total losses in one of the largest cybercrime hauls in history.The FBI, working in concert with the world's largest social network and several international law enforcement agencies,...

Read More..

As China handset makers upgrade chips, pressure remains on profit margins

Chinese mobile phone makers chasing market share with lower prices in the world's biggest smartphone market will see their margins continue to be pressured as they upgrade to quad-core chips to satisfy demand from users for faster speeds and flashier graphics.Most smartphones now are equipped with single and dual-core chips, but Chinese handset makers are planning quad-core powered devices as consumers...

Read More..