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Differential Privacy for Apple Users

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apple differential privacy

Apple will introduce a differential privacy algorithm to protect user data.

Apple announced it will introduce differential privacy in their iOS and macOS, which means they will securely collect data from their users in order to provide advanced AI services.

Connected technologies are more and more valued in modern life. It impacts not just consumer markets, but also public transport and energy supply.

The new approach in technology helps building insights that were not possible before. Google already collects a large quantity of information from its services. However, many users are concerned about their privacy and want more control on what type of information about them gets to be used by the companies.

Apple’s Approach to AI Systems

Apple wants to build a system that can protect the user’s privacy while collecting information that is useful to developing future features for their services.

An example of how the AI will work is the recommendation for a certain emoticon if the user in question seems to prefer that drawing more than others.

Differential privacy would include collecting data and usage patterns. The private information will be obscured to protect the person. The new system promises to keep individual identities protected.

Apple will use patterns noticed in user collected data to discover general patterns that would later be the foundation of an enhanced user experience.

The company already announced that it will use the data collected with differential privacy methods to enhance the app search. The algorithms will crowdsource deep links’ popularity in order to count the frequency of visits, while never associating the link to one particular user.

How is Differential Privacy Better?

The algorithm will contain hashing, noise injection and sub-sampling in order to secure the privacy of their users.

For example, hashing means scrambling the data before storage, and it and it will make the owner of the data to be difficult to trace.

Sub-sampling is a technique that permits Apple to analyze information directly on the person’s device, extracting only the pattern without any personal details.

Noise injection includes random data injection inside the collected information which will protect against cross-reference.

In comparison, Google’s anonymized data method removes any personally identifying information from the data package before using it. The system has its flows, as in 2007 Austin University researchers managed to connect a Netflix anonymized database with public IMDb information and compromised the identity of a part of the Netflix users.

Differential privacy was built to resists deanonymization attempts and thus can better protect users’ privacy.

Image Source: Wikipedia

The Amazing Google Spaces

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"Google Spaces"

The Amazing Google Spaces

At this year’s I/O conference, Google announced their new services, products, and other projects. Most of the new apps are the developer’s updated versions of other products that are already on the market. This affirmation is true to all of them, except Google Spaces.

What is Google Spaces?

Another social networking app, Google Spaces is ingenious and gives the user an efficient control over conversations and messages.

The feature that differentiates it from other social network services is the focus on personal space. Therefore, users do not feel compelled to devote more time than necessary in the online.

Google designed it to be a place to share experiences. Therefore, the app can be used for book clubs, weekend trips, creating new friends, house hunts, and much more. Google Spaces seems to be the best place to share small projects.

The app has an inbuilt Youtube, Chrome and Google Search that completely improve the user’s experience. A person can search and share information in a smooth manner, without having to switch apps.

Another advantage of the app is that a user can have five or even more sites set on their page – which may prove to be useful at times. Every site is separated from the others. Only a single personal portal is available, but within it, a user can activate as many sites as they like.

The most amazing fact is that the app does not even require a sign-up.

Comments and Criticism

Google already has a lot of social apps and social services that were offered to the public. Hangouts, Google+ and even YouTube have seemed to have covered all existing social situations and communication needs for the company.

Users are overwhelmed with the number of apps developed for their social life.

Another commentary was that the interface is unusual, and sometimes conversation threads were difficult to find. It remains to be seen if Google will take time in dealing with this issues. For the moment, the app is just in testing.

Google Spaces is strictly connected to the Gmail account. The app is available for web, Android, and iOS users.

Because it’s trying to bring forth an entirely new concept of social networking, Google Spaces may be considered difficult to use in the first trial.

However, the company seems to have high hopes for its new project and will make sure to provide tips and tricks that will simplify things for their users and convince them of the new app’s advantages.

Image Source: YouTube

Find My Phone App Says All Lost Phones Are At One House

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"phone tracker"

For both iOs and Android, the Find My Phone app says all lost phones are at one house in Atlanta, belonging to a couple who are not unfamiliar with the issue. In this day and age, it’s not at all safe to deal with someone who believes their smartphone was stolen. It’s their lifeline and, if you took it, things could potentially get really messy.

Michael Saba and Christina Lee have been taking the brunt of the technical issue with phone-tracking apps. For the past year, they have received several visits from angry owners demanding that their phones be returned to them. However, the couple was innocent in the matter, but it wouldn’t be like a guilty thief would admit to stealing it either. That turns matters into a potentially dangerous problem.

Find my Phone and Device Manager both share the problem

The confusion started in February, 2015, when the couple began getting knocks on their door by people searching for their phones. In one month, it occurred four times. All those who arrived claimed that their phone-tracking app has directed them to their house. Some arrived in groups of frantic owners, some even with the police.

According to Saba, they even became persons of interest in the case of a missing teenage girl. Her phone was tracked to their home, and they were forced out of it for one hour while the police searched for both the girl and her phone. Neither was found, in spite of the fact that the app tracked the device down. It becomes something difficult to clarify, and not all worried owners will take a polite explanation at face value.

It could lead matters to escalating. Saba claimed that his biggest fear is that someone more violent and dangerous will show up at their house. There is no telling what they would do, so they can only hope that the person behind their door will accept their explanation. This year has barely begun, and the couple already had two visits at their house.

Since there has been no solution found or help from government agencies, they plan on filing a complaint with their local senator and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Experts believe that there might be issues with the mobile tower triangulation, which the apps use. It could also be a problem with their WiFi router or simply bad data received from the third party app. Whichever the problem is, Saba underlined that this truly shows how unsafe and unreliable such technology can be. They have been getting visits at all hours during the day and night.

At one point, matters could escalate, which places them in danger. However, experts have not been able to offer them an explanation and a solution, so perhaps a ‘For Sale’ sign would be safer.

Image source: gohacking.com

Google To Release New Real-Time Voice Translator

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google-translate

Google is glowing a bit closer to Star Trek’s universal translator with the latest version of its Translate application.

Rolling out over the next few days for ioS and Android clients, the recent edition of Google Translate comes up with two key features – the capability to immediately talk with somebody communicating in a different lingo and the ability to interpret road signs and other pictures into your local dialect.

Both features have been accessible in the Android application to some degree. For instance, Google Translate for Android has since quite a while ago offered real-time translation of conversations. However, Google’s objective behind the recent edition of the application is to improve and streamline the peculiarities so they work all the more rapidly and smoothly without any slack time.

As Google Translate item lead Barak Turovsky wrote in a blog posted on Wednesday: “When chatting with somebody in a different dilect, conversations can… get… realllllllly… sloowwww.”

The recent edition of Google Translate intends to change that. To talk with somebody conversing in an unfimiliar dialect, a user picks his dialect and that of the other speaker. He then taps the microphone icon in the application, begins talking in his local or chose dialect, and afterward taps the mic icon once more. The application will distinguish which of the two dialects is being talked, and afterward the two speakers can carry on their discussion without needing to continue tapping the mic.

In a test of the application’s immediate translation, The New York Times said it did end up being a breakthrough; however, its not sci-fi simply yet. The application fared best with short sentences that did exclude slang, and it worked better when the users gapped between every translation.

Google also has beefed up the application’s capability to translate road signs. Formerly, you’d need to take a photograph of the foreign text to get a translation of it. Now, you just point your cam at the sign and the translated content seems overlaid on your screen – though you’re not connected with the Internet. This feature is made possible courtesy of Quest Visual’s Word Lens application for iOS and Android, which Google acquired when it obtained the company last May.

This feature supports English translated to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Google says its trying to include more dialects.

Since early Wednesday, the overhauled application had not showed up in the App Store or Google Play. Google guarantees that it will pop up throughout the next few days. This additionally will be the first time the iOS version will be furnished with both the conversation mode and the cam translations.

“More than 500 million individuals use Google Translate every month, making more than 1 billion translations a day to more effectively converse and access data across dialects,” Turovsky said. “Today’s overhauls make us one step closer to transforming your smartphone into a universal translator and to a world where language is no more an obstruction to finding data or connecting with one another.”

Microsoft also is probing into the region of automated translation with the newest sample version of Skype Translator. The new version will have the capacity to translate conversations and, eventually, texts in close real-time. At first Microsoft is intending the recent release just at Windows 8.1 Pcs and tablets and just in Spanish and English, so it won’t offer the profundity of Google Translate. However, Microsoft aims to expand Skype Translate to other gadgets and platforms over the long run.

Class-Action Lawsuit Against Apple’s 16GB iPhones Over False Advertising

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Apple Unveils iPhone 6

Apple is recently being sued by fans annoyed about the amount of storage capacity iOS takes up on their iPhones, iPads and iPods.

A legal claim [PDF], filed in California by Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara, and claimed the OS utilizes so much flash memory that the publicized gadget storage is deceptive.

The sueball was heaved at Cupertino in support of owners of 8gb and 16gb ithings. It asserted that Apple does not do what’s needed to caution people that their new ithing may not hold as much music, applications and video as projected.

“[Apple] neglects to reveal to shoppers that as much as 23.1% of the publicized storage limit of the gadgets will be devoured by iOS 8 and distracted when customers buy gadgets that have iOS 8 installed,” allege the claimants, who both live in Miami, Florida.

“Sensible buyers don’t expect this obvious inconsistency between the promoted level of storage and the available storage limit of the gadgets, as the OS and other storage capacity inaccessible to customers involves a phenomenal percentage of their gadgets’ constrained storage limit.”

Orshan purchased a 16gb iPhone 5s in February last year and upgraded to iOS 8 in October, and Endara grabbed a 16gb iPhone in December with the OS officially installed.

Despondent with the quantity of space taken up by the firmware, they are suing Apple for infringing California’s truth-in-publicizing laws, keeping in mind a dream of claiming a $5m-plus payout for Americans with an iPhone, iPad or iPad of 8gb or 16gb storage limits, and were able to upgrade to iOS 8.

Strangely, the legal claims Apple supposes it can escape with the discrepancy in storage limits by offering space in its iCloud service – yet notes “clients of its gadgets [cannot] access cloud storage from other sellers,” which isn’t completely accurate: ask Box, Google Drive et al.

The suit comes after a complaint recorded against Apple over the company’s treatment of music files on iOS gadgets. That suit, which included proof from late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, was rejected by a US jury.

Microsoft Set To Launch Windows 10 With A New Browser, Spartan, Would Retain IE

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microsoft-to-launch-own-browser

Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 10 would launch with an entirely new web browser code-named Spartan, according to an anonymous report.

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has reported that this new browser is a total departure from the Internet Explorer mindset. She said that the “lightweight” browser would have a look and feel similar to that of Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers. But her sources also suggested that the new Spartan browser will be offered alongside IE when Windows 10 debuts next year.

While Chrome and Firefox lead on desktops and Apple’s Safari along with Chrome and Android’s default browser are smartphone browser leaders, Internet Explorer is no longer the force it once was. Once there was a time when IE handled about 90 percent of all web traffic on desktop and laptop machines, but according to research outfit Net Applications, its share has now dropped to 58 percent. On mobile, its share is less than 2 percent.

Spartan attempts to address both of these worlds, smartphone and desktops. Windows 10 is designed to be cross platform and would run across a wide range of devices and therefore, the new browser Spartan will be available on phones and tablets as well as laptops and desktops. It’s not clear up till now that whether Spartan will run on Android, Apple’s iOS or any other operating systems that compete with Windows, but there is a good chance that it might.

Mojang Collaborates with TellTale for “Minecraft: Story Mode”

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Minecraft game

Mojang, the developer of Minecraft declared that minecraft will soon get its adventure story treatment.

The famous independent game developer will work together with Telltale Games for the creation of the “Minecraft: Story Mode”. The two companies will design a new game similar to the “The Walking Dead”.

The new “Minecraft: Story Mode” would be a narrative game series which would come out as a standalone product.  The company intends to roll out the game for Xbox One, Play Station 4, Play Station 3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices. The game is scheduled to launch in the beginning of 2014.

Mojang informs that they are not planning to launch any official story for Steve in order to describe the character of Minecraft. They would merely offer numerous stories among which gamers would be able to choose their favorite story.

The only objective of the company is to develop a cool game. Therefore, Telltale’s series plans to incorporate new characters along with popular themes.  The amalgamation of Telltale’s typical adventure game style and Minecraft story model will provide an amazing experience to the gamers.

A few months ago, Microsoft gave $2.5 billion to acquire Minecraft.  However, the agreement settled on the 9th of November. Thus Far, the game developer company sold around 54 million copies of the game all around the globe.

MSN App Is Now Available Android, iOS & Amazon Platforms

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msn-app

Microsoft has ported some of its purchaser applications to run on ios, Android and Amazon devices, completing on its late vow to make select applications accessible on contending versatile stages.

MSN News, Food and Drink, Weather, Sports, Health and Fitness, and Money can be downloaded for free from Google Play and the application stores worked by Apple and Amazon, Microsoft said Thursday, including that the climate application will be accessible to ios users “in the advancing months.”

These applications have been accessible to Windows 8 and Windows Phone users since September, when Microsoft said it was reviving the MSN brand. That recovery included taking Bing applications and providing for them the MSN moniker. The MSN entry was likewise patched up to incorporate simpler access to Microsoft administrations like Skype and Outlook and substance from media organizations like The Wall Street Journal and CNN. Around then, Microsoft likewise said that before the year’s over a few applications would be revamped to run on other versatile Oses.

The applications were based particularly to run on every stage, Microsoft said. A few applications utilization gimmicks found in their local Oses. Case in point, the Fitness application permits iphone users to track workouts utilizing Apple’s Healthkit technology. Other application gimmicks incorporate the capacity to get to news stories from an assortment of productions through the News application and permitting people to redo the Money application with data on their stocks and speculations.

Under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has become more open to building renditions of its product for contending stages. Microsoft’s updated Dynamic CRM application that consolidates the Cortana individual colleague is one late illustration. Windows Phone users were offered access to this peculiarity to start with, with accessibility for ios and Android to follow in six to 12 months.

Nadella’s vision likewise underlines creating items that concentrate on portable and cloud advances, with Thursday’s news fitting this subject. At the point when a user gets to the MSN applications with their Microsoft account, any progressions they make or data they store will be recorded in Microsoft’s cloud and reflected in whatever device they utilization.

The applications open extra people to the MSN gateway, Microsoft said. Msn.com positions number 32 among the top worldwide destinations went by, as per Web movement examination organization Alexa. The one-month rank is ascertained utilizing a mix of normal every day guests and site hits over the previous month.

BLACK FRIDAY: IOS OUTRUNS ANDROID

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apple-ios-android

On the day of “Thanksgiving” remarkable lead in purchasing has been shown by the devices having iOS, on the devices running on Android. The iOS users made more purchases on Black Friday as compared to the Android users. One of the pioneers and leading company in the world of Computers, “IBM” reported a sale of 20 percent made by the iOS users leaving the Android behind with the sale of 5.6 percent only.

In spite of a leading market holder of 80 percent, Android users spent an average of $101.8 while the iOS users made up to an average of $127.3 purchase. The statistical data collected by the IBM also showed that the iOS users acquired 35.7 percent of the online traffic for the shopping websites while Android stands at 15.9 percent.

On this statistical data, Mr. Jay Henderson, director of IBM Smarter Conference said “Apple has a strong hold on online shopping. iPhone and iPad buyers tend to be slightly more affluent and more comfortable with technology.”

Google Presents Inbox For Gmail: A Thread Based App For iOS & Android Users

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google-launches-new-app-for-email

Google Corporation. has launched a brand new email client application for Android and iOS that will redefine the way we will email. Mailbox by Gmail application allows you signal and receive emails much like threaded text conversations. The application is yet only provided on invite basis, and it is likely to achieve the planet customers soon. Gmail, that has half a billion customers on its booty and an ever increasing user rate of just one million each week, always keeps customers up on and on with accumulated additional features.

You will find a large quantity of features that Gmail has introduced directly into this update. Memory joggers could be set very easily about this application. You may also setup occasions to transmit within the mail. There’s lots of scope for arranging mails according to the preferred time using these additional features around the application. The brand new tag to which emails could be effectively organized and clustered is known as ‘bundles’. With bundles, customers can segregate the mails in sections for example promotions, travels, or something that suits the benefit from the user. We have seen the application is extremely focused to user convenient design.

There’s additionally a further step taken when it comes to the custom keyword search within the mailbox. Now you can explore for something, and obtain associated with Google to locate particulars. To have an instance, if you are planning to choose a celebration, you can type the title from the event inside your mail application, and obtain memory joggers about this from Gmail, also other relevant details about the big event for example address, or timings, with the Google internet search engine. The internet search engine will be from the Gmail application.

Because the primary utilisation of the application would be to serve mails, in and outgoing, there’s more enjoyable put into the mailing services. It can make the procedure much more simpler compared to previous Gmail. On invite, this particular service could be received after queuing up by delivering a mail to mailbox@gmail.com.

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