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Google Wants to Make Authentication More Strong: Acquires SlickLogin

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The search engine giant Google is acquiring an Israeli developer of sound-based password – SlickLogin. It’s an ‘acqui-hiring deal’, which implies that the firm’s staff and knowledge will be unified into Google.

SlickLogin is a start-up behind the technology that allows websites to authenticate a user’s identity by using sound waves. The technology works by playing an individually generated, nearly-silent sound from computer speakers. The sound is picked up by an app on the Smartphone used by the person. The app analyzes the sound and transmit a signal back to verify the identity.

The sound-based password technology can be used either as a substitute for a password or an additional security layer. Instead of forcing users to insert in a long code, the firm sends the verification information through sound waves. The acquisition was confirmed by SlickLogin on its website on Sunday but no financial details were disclosed.

The firm announced the acquisition with the statement that, “Today we’re announcing that the SlickLogin team is joining Google, a platform that shares our core beliefs that logging in should be easy instead of frustrating, and verification should be effective.” One of the three founders, Xinhua also stated that , “We couldn’t be more excited to join their efforts.”

SlickLogin launched just five months ago at TechCrunch Disrupt where the firm gave a demo of its sound-based password technology. The company’s motto is to enable end users to log-in easily into those websites which are password protected by using a uniquely generated sound.

SlickLogin hasn’t launched any commercial product, so we can say that the deal actually means an acquisition of the technology itself by Google. Today, many firms have been adopting a two-step authentication for users and the steps include matching their name and the password along with a second layer of verification.

According to the analysts, firms like bank and other government possessions were keen to use even more secure methods to protect their users against any piracy or data theft. According to them, the more individually a technology identifies the user, the safer the system would be.

Let’s wait and watch, what’s the search engine giant has to offer us!!!!

IBM’s Cost Cutting Plans Reached Indian Shores: To Cut Few Hundred Jobs

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When Indian Tech companies are hiring a large number of candidates, several MNCs in India are repatriating employees into other divisions or letting go of them in sizable numbers.

IBMs cost-cutting plans, “resource actions”, reached Indian shores this week and at least a few hundred job cuts are warn of by insiders at the Big Blue’s unit. The company has already asked about 40 employees at its Systems Technology Group to resign, as per the sources. STG is well-known as IBM’s hardware division.

IBM is said to have more than 100,000 staff in India which is the largest presence of the giant outside the US. According to the Chief Financial Officer of IBM, Martin Schroeter – the hardware business, which includes mainframes, storage and servers, was facing some difficulties and would see few job cuts.

Sources in the company said that IBM had been qualified for a large job cut in April last year but the dismissals were not effected and staff was told that they wouldn’t receive any hikes in salaries till December 2013. The employees at STG who were asked to leave were also asked to return laptops within two hours, said a post.

But this was shocking that they were asked to surrender their official laptops within 2 hours and leave. The employees were told STG business has been suffering from huge financial woes and several middle level executives have resigned in the last few weeks. Last month a news also broke that the company agreed to sell its low-end server business against $2.3 billion to Lenovo.

IBM reported a 5% fall in revenue in the December quarter and the company also plans up to 15,000 cuts worldwide in the first quarter. This is of course a bad news for the employees in IBM as it’s very difficult to find and get a good job.

Intel Corporation Takes ‘Intel Inside’ to Cloud: To Head Off Competition

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Intel Corporation, an American multinational semiconductor chip maker, is taking its ‘Intel Inside’ into cloud computing.

Intel Inside marketing campaign goes cloud computing to give smaller rivals a tough competition. The giant said that the data center service providers would begin offering their clients details about the Intel chips. The company wants to help customers make smart buying decisions by providing them appropriate information.

The awesome thing about cloud computing is that you don’t have to think what kind of hardware is used to run your virtual machines. Intel is all set to take its long-running processor in the cloud world. It controls nearly all of the server market and is driven not to hand over ground to Advanced Micro Devices.

Raejeanne Skillern, the marketing director Intel, said in an interview, “Strengthening awareness of the features, quality and impact of Intel technologies is a challenge to competing vendors and architectures.”

The campaign namely “Intel Cloud Technology” expands on an agreement with Amazon Web Services last year. The aim was to provide the specifications about the different kinds of Intel chips used in AWS services. Amazon has long been appreciated for informing customers about cloud.

The marketing campaign was not just a shallow one, Intel would appear to be able to justify the promised performance differential by using Intel silicon in cloud applications. Rackspace, AWS, Virtustream and Expedient were all used as examples in the briefing materials.

Today, market is obsessed by ‘higher performance’ like things and there’s no scope for low quality materials. Hence, companies, big or small, are trying their best to offer cutting-edge solutions to the customers at best possible price.

Whatever the main reason behind turning cloud computing, high-quality and higher performance is always appreciated. The extra information always help customers avoid making wrong buying decisions.

Adobe Photoshop Entering into 3D Printing with Shapeways and MakerBot Integration

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Today, everything has started going three-dimensional with 3D printers taking charge for high-end printing. This lets you produce some artfully designed 3D type products or whatever your imagination can perceive. Adobe is entering into 3D printing today, i.e. on Thursday, with a news update to Photoshop CC. The graphics editing program is adding in a new 3D-printing tool to make it simple for anyone to take a model.

You just have to put some finishing touches and get your imagination printed. Through it already includes some 3D modeling features, the platform does not expect most of its users to start building objects from starting. Instead, the tool is meant to make the platform a better option for those who are just trying to print a preexisting model.

3D printing isn’t a straightforward task, as it takes a while to install and you will need various programs, but it can be done with some time and effort. Adobe is adding a lot of features to make printing a model easy. The automatically generated temporary support will not let the model falling apart and it will also make sure that it does not breakdown during printing.

Adobe is going to work with MakerBot and Shapeways in order to make the platform more advanced so that Photoshop can automatically generate previews. The previews will let the users know how a model will look when it’s made by the printer. Another feature called ‘printer-specific preview’ will also be available for 3D Systems’ Cube printer.

The 3D modeling options in Photoshop have been vastly improved in CS6, with more instinctive onscreen controls that gives ability to produce models from flat photographs, artwork, or your imagination. Other newly added features consist of a new pencil tool for Illustrator, to make drawing freehand lines and curves much easier. Typekit, font tool of Adobe, is now bringing its fonts to the desktop and InDesign is getting better with EPUB support and simplified hyperlinks.

As a part f this update, the platform is also resetting all of its Creative Cloud’s 30-days trials. So, if you have ever signed up for a trial since its launch, you are eligible to start another free 30-day trial. According to Adobe, it’s time to give users another chance to try the most recent versions before committing to a subscription.

This update comes for free as Photoshop CC is part the subscription service of Adobe and will be made available for download today.

So, get ready to put your imaginations into reality!!!!

R Chandrashekhar – the Next President of NASSCOM, India

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The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) announced former telecom secretary R. Chandrashekhar to be the next president. He took over as president of a this well-recognized body representing the $108 billion Indian IT-BPM industry on Sunday. He succeeds Som Mittal, who has been the part of NASSCOM from 2007-13. The announcement was made during an Executive Council meeting held at Pune on Sunday.

R. Chandrashekhar said, “I feel privileged and look forward to lead the platform in its next journey of achieving vision and mission of $300 billion revenues by 2020. The opportunities are countless at this particular juncture and the future looks very positive for the Indian IT-BPM industry.” He also added that our industry is evolving dramatically in terms of scale, innovation and complexity.

Mr. Krishnakumar Natarajan, Chairman NASSCOM said commenting on the announcement, “We are privileged to have Mr. Chandrashekhar and look forward for his share to build a world class innovative industry. His capability and experience in building feasible ecosystems will help us cope up with the latest market trends and drive the transformational agenda.”

Mr. Chandrashekhar has extensive experience of planning and implementing policies and action plans to promote the growth of the IT industry. He was the chairman, telecom commission and secretary of the department of telecom till March last year. He also held many key assignments, both at the Center ann State level.

As far his accomplishments are concerned, he had established the first department of Information Technology in India in Andhra Pradesh and worked as its secretary from June, 1997 to December, 1999. A Msc graduate in Chemistry from IIT-Bombay, Chandrashekhar also received a M S degree in Computer Science from the well-known Pennsylvania State University, US.

Mr. Som Mittal, said “It has been pleasure working with NASSCOM over the past 6 years and it was an outstanding phase of my life that has witnessed superb growth in the industry in a challenging environment. We all are excited to have Mr. Chandrashekhar as his deep knowledge and leadership will help us accelerate out platform in emerging areas.”

Hope, NASSCOM will achieve its transformational agenda soon in the leadership of Mr. Chandrashekhar and our country will reach a sky high position in tech.

Indian Government Websites: An Open Invitation to Cyber Criminals

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If you are a cyber-criminal – Indian government websites could be an open invitation!!!! Surprised?

Top government agencies have put vast amount of valuable personal information online, with little privacy to access. These websites are attracting criminals looking for official data and contact information of top business and political people. There’s hardly any provision to prevent the misuse and everything is open for all.

A gold mine of database, including information of Indian Citizens – some of country’s wealthiest residents, is available for misuse. A digital security expert – Binoo Thomas, at McAfee Labs said, “If I want to target someone, I have easy access to so much information that shouldn’t have been in public. I would say, hackers with good engineering skills will be able to dig out the information of any person. It’s not restricted to just celebrities, but can be anybody.”

Hackers would simply need to use Internet to get personal details of some richest people as many of them have their complete contact details. Sometimes, the database is searchable by name itself. You can search for any famous surname and there will be the complete information – contact number and resident address. Isn’t it a big loophole in security system of the country? Isn’t it a threat?

According to Indian authorities, cyber attacks on government websites in the country are increasing. Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) report revealed the increase – including cyber strikes on both financial and government networks. The targeted websites are used widely by the government and other industries on the subcontinent.

Identity theft – it’s has been on the rise. As the authorities have been pushed to function with more transparency, leading to misuse of data by some illegal communities. Data controllers are in violation of data protection principles. There are certain rules regarding the publication of data, but they have to be strictly followed in order to maintain a high level of privacy and security.

High-end technology – India does not have any compilation of privacy law, giving rise to cyber crime and other illegal activities. J Satyanarayana – Secretary at the department of information technology, said, “We need to think on this problem according to the drafted privacy law. Our view of privacy has been different both traditionally and culturally but we welcome a more explicit understanding of the law.” He also told that the provisions for data protection comes under Section 43A of the IT Act.

It’s high time for India to decide on a standard protocol and to decide on who shall have access to government information and who shall not. The growing threat to Indian government websites has to be checked.

Indian IT Companies are Busy with High-tech Santa Claus: Check it Out!!!

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Are you enjoying the festive season? The IT companies are enjoying too.. and their employees, they have a better reason to celebrate. IT companies are playing high-tech Santa Claus for their staff and communities and spreading a good cheer.

Google presented a choice between Nexus 5 phone and a Nexus 7 tablet to its employees as a holiday gift this year. The staff get to choose between these two smart gadgets, last year the company gave Nexus 7 tablets to their official family.

The head of corporate communications at Google India, Paroma Roy Chowdhury said, “All Googlers on the rolls of the company qualify for this holiday gift. Last year, the giant gave Nexus 7 tablets. This year, Google is giving the latest version of it, along with the option of a phone.”

Vmware Inc, an American software company that offers cloud and virtualization software and services, has given $100 to each of its employees. They don’t get the money directly, but in the form of a code that they can redeem for their charity.

Another company that develops financial and tax preparation software, Intuit Inc is playing secret Santa Clause to the Missionaries of Charity in Delhi – Jeevan Jyoti Home. Celebrating a festival with some charity can be a brilliant idea.

MD of Intuit India – Nikhil Arora said, “We are doing an initiative ‘make-a-wish’ for 73 children who shared their dream with me during my visit. Their wishes were heartwarming for simple gifts like clothes, toys, books, stationary, candies, cookies, cakes and balloons.”

Let’s talk about Yahoo that held a grand year-end party last week for its more than 2,000 employees and their families at the beautiful KTPO convention center in Whitefield. The event stated and 5 pm and ended with exciting gala dinner.

Almost every IT company has turned out to be an exciting platform for this festive season and celebrating it by presenting gifts to its employees.

Hope, the excitement will remain same in the coming year…..