Bill Gates : People Dying of Malaria Don't Need Google Project Loon

 Google recently unveiled Google Loon, which intends to use hot air balloons 49 feet wide stationed 12 miles above the planet, in order to provide high speed Internet services to regions without adequate broadband infrastructure. While most people around the world, whether they understood the concept or not, were impressed by the idea, Microsoft founder Bill Gates wasn’t. 

The following is an excerpt from Gates’ interview published by Business Week : 

One of Google’s convictions is that bringing Internet connectivity to less-developed countries can lead to all sorts of secondary benefits. It has a project to float broadband transmitters on balloons. Can bringing Internet access to parts of the world that don’t have it help solve problems?

“When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you. When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that. Certainly I’m a huge believer in the digital revolution. And connecting up primary-health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things. But no, those are not, for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we’re going to do something about malaria.

Google started out saying they were going to do a broad set of things. They hired Larry Brilliant, and they got fantastic publicity. And then they shut it all down. Now they’re just doing their core thing. Fine. But the actors who just do their core thing are not going to uplift the poor.”

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Microsoft's Augmented Reality Gaming Glasses Patent Revealed

 Microsoft is jumping on the wearable display bandwagon, but don’t expect a Google Glass competitor. This week the company patented a head-mounted display aimed at bringing augmented reality to gaming.

The fact that Microsoft is planning to make AR goggles was leaked last year, when a 56-page ‘roadmap’ for the Xbox One (pictured below) found its way onto the Internet. Microsoft subsequently confirmed that the roadmap was genuine, but outdated.

Beyond mimicking some of the functions of Google Glass though it was never really clear what exactly the AR glasses, codenamed Fortaleza, were for.

“In one example, a potential player invitation program receives user voice data and determines that the user voice data is an invitation to participate in a multiplayer game,” the patent request continues. “The program receives eye-tracking information, depth information, facial recognition information, potential player head-mounted display device information, and/or potential player voice data. The program associates the invitation with the potential player using the eye-tracking information, the depth information, the facial recognition information, the potential player head-mounted display device information, and/or the potential player voice data.”

Apart from acknowledging that the roadmap leak was real Microsoft has never mentioned the glasses officially and it’s unclear if and when they will do so. Many of the projects rumoured in the roadmap have since been revealed by Microsoft, including new Kinect, Xbox One, and forthcoming entertainment services. 

The patent though, which was only published yesterday, suggests the idea is still well underway. 

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iOS 7 Beta 4 Fixes Charger Hack

 Apple is said to have fixed a powerful charger-based hack, which previously allowed iDevices to be compromised by hackers using a modified power charger in under a minute.

As Reuters reports, Apple said the issue had been fixed in the latest beta of iOS 7, which has already been released to software developers.

“We would like to thank the researchers for their valuable input,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said.  The researchers were Billy Lau, a research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and graduate students Yeongjin Jang and Chengyu Song.

Andy Greenberg, Forbes technology and information security reporter explains that the researchers took advantage of a security flaw in Apple’s developer model, which allows anyone with a developer license to install third-party apps on a registered device.

iOS 7 prompts a new warning message to the user when they plug their iOS device to any device that attempts to establish a data connection informing them that “Trusting this computer will allow it full access to your device and all its data.”

Of course, this leaves iPhones and iPads that won’t get the iOS 7 update vulnerable. According to the researchers, all other versions of iOS can be hacked in this manner.

However, end users will have to wait for iOS 7 before the fix arrives.

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Apple Supplier Report Reveals Plastic Back Casing For Budget iPhone

 Rumblings of a low-cost, plastic iPhone have been popping up on a fairly frequent basis throughout 2013, and today the rumored device is making headlines once again. 

Apple’s future plan to introduce a plastic device is confirmed within this morning’s shocking report into labor abuses at manufacturing partner, Pegatron.

As part of the investigation, China Labor Watch inserted people inside three of Pegatron’s factories. In one of these reports it confirms the future debut of a plastic iPhone:

“Today’s work is to paste protective film on the iPhone’s plastic back cover to prevent it from being scratched on assembly lines. This iPhone model with a plastic cover will soon be released on the market by Apple,”the report explains.

“The new cell phone has not yet been put into mass production, so quantity is not as important,” a worker wrote. “This makes our job more slow paced than in departments that have begun mass production schedules.”

In addition, China Labor Watch’s company profile notes that Pegatron is responsible for building “low-priced plastic iPhones” for Apple, in addition to the iPhone 4, 4S and the 5.

The report accuses Pegatron of violating labor regulations in China, as well as international labor laws and Apple’s own standards. 

Photographs allegedly detailing the new iPhone’s packaging were uploaded to the Chinese forum WeiPhone over the weekend. The name iPhone 5C is printed on the side of the box, possibly leaking the name of the device.

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Alleged Packaging For Budget 'iPhone 5c' Leaked

Apple is expected to launch a new iPhone in the coming weeks. Images and videos of what’s being rumoured to be a budget iPhone – or the iPhone ‘Lite’ – have surfaced online. This new iPhone will reportedly come with a plastic build, 4-inch display and multiple colour options.

Additional proof of this new Apple device has popped up, courtesy of WeiPhone, and potentially shows its final retail packaging. A picture reveals a bin full of boxes indicating this budget device will go under the brand name of “iPhone 5C. ” Some speculation is that the C stands for ‘colour’.

This, or course, is still a rumour until Apple officially announces the device. The new low-cost device could possibly be released in August or September. The WeiPhone forums are a fairly frequent source of Apple rumors, although the site itself does not frequently report on them, making it difficult to determine a steady track record as posting in the site’s forums come from a variety of different posters.

The iPhone 5, which is almost a year old, was the most popular iPhone sold in Apple’s quarter ending June 30, but the 4 (first available June 24, 2010) and 4S (first available October 14, 2011) models sold well in emerging markets, indicating demand for a more updated budget smartphone to go along with the new, rumoured iPhone 5S in the fall lineup.

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Motorola Moto X To Feature Magic Glass

Moto X, the upcoming new Android-based smartphone from mobile phone maker Motorola, is expected to become official on August 1 with some appealing design features packed inside, some of the latest reports via Android and Me founder Taylor Wimberly on the matter suggest. 

The Moto X will come equipped with Moto Magic Glass, a single layer of Gorilla Glass which is molded to a special polymer to make for a continuous surface that wraps around the entire front and edges of the phone. In addition, the Moto X will feature zero gap construction, allowing for a smooth and seamless feel along the backside.

The Android expert also claims that the handset will come equipped with Dual LTE MIMO Smart Antennas to give users the best LTE speeds and reception possible. The Moto X will allegedly contain five antennas total, with two dedicated exclusively to 4G LTE connectivity (not that this matters much to us Indians…).

According to TechnoBuffalo, Google was working with Motorola on a Moto xWatch that would launch alongside the Moto X. The two Moto X devices “definitely integrate in some interesting ways for device authentication,” Wimberly explained.

As usual, it all sounds great, but we’ll have to wait and see how much is accurate when the official word comes next week.

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Nvidia Project Logan Chips For Mobiles Bring PS3-Like Graphics To Your Smartphone

Back in March, NVIDIA showed off its roadmap of its Tegra SoCs and what we can expect from them. Well, it may be late July, and we may be still waiting on Tegra 4 devices to pop up, but NVIDIA clearly hasn’t stopped working. The company recently showcased some of the features in Project Logan, with a large focus on Mobile Kepler.

Today the company revealed that its upcoming mobile chip will utilize the same Kepler graphics architecture found in its latest desktop and laptop GPUs, bringing graphics that exceed PS3 and rival current PCs to smartphones and tablets. Behold Project Logan.

“I think this is the biggest breakthrough in graphics since we introduced the GeForce 256 (graphics chip) 14 years ago,” said Dan Vivoli, senior vice president of corporate and strategic marketing at Nvidia in Santa Clara, Calif., in an interview with GamesBeat. “But this is 400 times more powerful than the original GeForce. This is the most efficient mobile processor ever designed.”

Kepler supports the full spectrum of OpenGL – including the just-announced OpenGL 4.4 full-featured graphics specification and the OpenGL ES 3.0 embedded standard. It also supports DirectX 11, Microsoft’s latest graphics API.

Nvidia’s first Project Logan prototype chips have been back from the factories for only a few weeks, but the company says they are running cool demos such as Ira already.
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