Microsoft Corp. has made it harder to monitor calls and chats over its Skype phone service in China, a freedom of expression advocacy group said, as the Chinese government steps up censorship of the Internet.

Skype said on Monday it had ended an eight-year joint-venture with Hong Kong-based TOM Group - 51 percent owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing - and found a new partner in China.

"After careful analysis of the new Skype, we believe that Microsoft have lifted all censorship restrictions on their China product," the advocacy group, GreatFire, said on Wednesday.

"All user calls, chats and login information are encrypted and being communicated directly to Microsoft via HTTPS. This is a complete about-face for Microsoft from the TOM-Skype era, when all information was processed by TOM and stored by TOM on servers located in China with absolutely no privacy controls in place."

A Microsoft spokeswoman in China declined to comment and a public relations official at Skype's Asia-Pacific regional office could not immediately be reached.

Skype's new partner in China is Guangming Founder (GMF), a joint-venture of Beijing-based newspaper Guangming Daily and the Founder Group, a Beijing technology conglomerate established by Peking University, according to the new GMF-Skype website.

The Skype-TOM partnership has come under criticism from rights groups for allowing censorship and surveillance. Studies have shown the TOM-Skype service was subject to blacklisted keyword checks that could trigger monitoring of its users.

New censorship measures
Foreign Internet companies must tread a careful path in China to exploit bountiful business opportunities without compromising a carefully-nurtured image as champions of open societies and free speech.

In 2010, Google conducted a partial pull-out from China on the basis of censorship and after it suffered a serious hacking episode that the company said emanated from China.

Google's search market share in China fell to 1.7 percent last month from 12 percent in August 2010, although its Chinese business has benefited from strong demand for its Android software.

Websites such as those of Facebook Inc., YouTube - which is owned by Google - and Twitter Inc. are all blocked in China by what is known as the "Great Firewall".

The ruling Communist Party sees censorship as key to maintaining its grip on power, recognising that social media offers a platform for citizens to air grievances and criticism of the government, a potential trigger for social unrest.

The government unveiled new measures in September threatening jail for spreading "rumours" online. The measures mostly target domestic Internet services such as Sina Corp's Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblogging service.

Outside China, Skype's security and privacy protection have been under the spotlight following revelations, disclosed by Edward Snowden in his leaks of U.S. National Security Agency documents, that the online communication service was part of the NSA's Prism programme to monitor communications through some of America's biggest Internet companies.

For Reference:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/microsoft-forms-new-skype-partnership-in-china-makes-censorship-harder-report-451919

Sony seems to be gearing up for the launch of the "mini" version of their flagship smartphone, Sony Xperia Z1, which apparently will not be named "mini" as per sources. The company is reportedly planning to call it the Sony Xperia Z1S, and according to recent reports, it is due for release in Q1 2014.

According to Phonearena the price of the Z1S is expected to be 3600 Yuan (translating to roughly Rs. 37,000).

So far, with the numerous leaks, all the specifications of Sony Xperia Z1S seem to have been enumerated. The smartphone will reportedly sport a 4.3-inch HD display, which is smaller than the Xperia Z1's 5-inch screen. Other than that, the Z1S is expected to be powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor as the Xperia Z1, and include the same 20.7MP camera with the Sony G lens. The smaller Xperia Z1S seems to be slightly thicker than the Z1, at 9.4mm, and it is said to pack a smaller 2300mAh battery.

Most of the other specifications, like 2GB of RAM, 16GB of inbuilt storage with microSD support up to 64GB, and the Adreno 330 GPU, are the same as the Xperia Z1.

In the second week of November, the Sony Xperia Z1S was officially listed on the Sony mobile website, before being quickly pulled. Soon after, a gallery of leaked pictures of the alleged Sony Xperia Z1S was also doing the rounds of the Internet, showing a model number of D5503.

The Sony Xperia Z1 was first unveiled at IFA Berlin in September, before being launched in India in the same month. The dust resistant and waterproof smartphone was launched at a price of Rs. 44,990. We expect Sony to follow a similar timescale with the release of the rumoured Xperia Z1S in India, shortly after its expected global release in Q1 2014.

For Reference:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/sony-xperia-z1s-gets-pricing-and-availability-details-in-latest-leak-450985

Google boss Eric Schmidt said Monday that the tech giant had developed new technology that makes it harder to find child sexual abuse images on the web.

Writing in British newspaper the Daily Mail, Google's executive chairman said more than 100,000 searches would no longer feature such material in their results.

The restrictions will initially apply to English-speaking countries but will be expanded to the rest of the world and 158 other languages within six months.

The announcement comes ahead of Monday's Internet Safety Summit at Prime Minister David Cameron's Downing Street office, where Google and Microsoft will be joined by other Internet firms.

In July, Cameron urged search engines to go further in blocking surfers from accessing illegal images.

Schmidt wrote: "While society will never wholly eliminate such depravity, we should do everything in our power to protect children from harm."

He said that in the last three months, Google had put more than 200 staff working on developing new technology to tackle the problem.

"We've fine tuned Google Search to prevent links to child sexual abuse material from appearing in our results," he wrote.

"While no algorithm is perfect and Google cannot prevent paedophiles adding new images to the web these changes have cleaned up the results for over 100,000 queries that might be related to the sexual abuse of kids.

"We will soon roll out these changes in more than 150 languages, so the impact will be truly global."
Schmidt said warnings from the California-based Internet giant were now showing at the top of results for more than 13,000 searches. The alerts also make clear that child sexual abuse is illegal and give advice on where to get help.

He also said Google had developed technology that allowed illegal videos to be 'tagged' so all duplicate copies can be removed across the web.

"We welcome the lead taken by the British government, and hope that the technologies developed (and shared) by our industry will make a real difference in the fight against this terrible crime," said Schmidt.

For Reference:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/internet/news/google-develops-new-algorithm-to-block-100000-search-queries-for-child-porn-447430

Google's Android platform was used on four out of five smartphones sold worldwide in the third quarter, while Microsoft's Windows Phone showed strong gains, said a survey out Tuesday.

Android's market share rose to 81 percent, extending its lead over Apple's iOS, used on its iPhones, according to the IDC survey. Android's share a year ago was 74.9 percent.

Even though iPhone sales grew 25.6 percent from a year earlier, the growth was slower than the overall market and Apple's share fell to 12.9 percent from 14.4 percent in the same period last year.

Windows Phone emerged as the number three smartphone platform with a market share of 3.6 percent, up from two percent a year earlier.

Windows Phone sales grew 156 percent, with more than 90 percent made by Nokia, the Finnish group whose handset division is set to be acquired by Microsoft.

BlackBerry, meanwhile, saw its troubles deepen, as its market share fell to 1.7 percent from 4.1 percent a year ago. BlackBerry sales fell 41.6 percent from a year ago despite the introduction of the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

The overall market for smartphones grew 39.9 percent year-over-year in the quarter, to 261 million units.
The average sales price of a smartphone fell 12.5 percent in the quarter to $317, IDC said.
"Android and Windows Phone continued to make significant strides in the third quarter. Despite their differences in market share, they both have one important factor behind their success: price," said IDC analyst Ramon Llamas.
"Both platforms have a selection of devices available at prices low enough to be affordable to the mass market, and it is the mass market that is driving the entire market forward."

IDC noted that Apple's market share was likely affected by weak sales ahead of the introduction of two new iPhone models in September, at the end of the quarter. But it sold nine million of the new devices in the first weekend, suggesting a strong fourth quarter, IDC said.

IDC said larger devices called phablets accounted for 21 percent of the smartphone market, up from three percent a year ago.

"Almost all successful Android vendors have added one or more five- to seven-inch phablets to their product portfolios," said IDC's Ryan Reith.

"We believe the absence of a large-screen device may have contributed to Apple's inability to grow share in the third quarter."

For Reference:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/android-on-81-percent-of-new-smartphones-windows-phone-share-grows-idc-q3-445339

High-tech product manufacturers from sectors like aerospace engineering are shifting their focus towards India from China due to the increasing cost of production in the neighbouring country, EEPC said on Tuesday.

"Costs of manufacturing (in China) are no longer cheap the way they used to be, with their banking under stress and the pressure on the government to cut rebates.

"Chinese firms are no longer the top contenders for the global outsourcing. This gives the Indian engineering sector an opportunity," EEPC India Chairman Anupam Shah said in a statement.

Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) said be it an aerospace engineering firm in Germany or an instrumentation giant in Canada, world leaders in high-tech manufacturing are shifting focus to outsourcing their critical supplies to India.

It said that to cash-in on this sentiment, the council is organising a mega event in Mumbai in January next year to showcase India's manufacturing prowess in high-tech items.

"The India Engineering Sourcing Show, with projected participation of the world's top 300 buyers is billed as an international platform for clinching multi-million dollar deals," it said.

The four-day show will start from January 22.

The External Affairs Ministry is also being roped in for seeking larger participation through Indian missions in countries like Italy, Poland and Mexico.

The engineering sector has emerged as the largest contributor to India's total merchandise exports followed by gems and jewellery, textiles and chemicals.

The shipments are expected to reach USD 63 billion in the current fiscal, it added. The US and Europe together account for over 60 per cent of India's total engineering exports.

For Reference:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/others/news/india-the-new-hub-for-high-tech-manufacturing-with-low-costs-eepc-441904 

US software giant Microsoft has developed a new cost-effective sign language translator that converts signs into spoken and written language - and vice versa.

In collaboration with researchers in China, Microsoft created the Kinect Sign Language Translator, a prototype system that understands the gestures of sign language and converts them to spoken and written language, and vice versa.

The translator uses a computer and a Kinect camera that recognises signing gestures, then gives a spoken and written translation of languages for people who can hear.

The system captures a conversation from both sides: the deaf person is shown signing, with a written and spoken translation being rendered in real-time, while the system takes the hearing person's spoken words and turns them into accurate, understandable signs.

The system takes a person's spoken words and translate them into accurate signs carried out by an on-screen avatar.

Originally developed for gaming, the Kinect's sensors read a user's body position and movements and, with the help of a computer, translate them into commands.

It has tremendous potential for understanding the complex gestures that make up sign language and for translating the signs into spoken or written words and sentences.

"We knew that information technology, especially computer technology, has grown up very fast. So from my point of view, I thought this is the right time to develop some technology to help (the deaf community)," said Professor Xilin Chen, deputy director of the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Chen has spent much of the past decade studying sign language recognition, hoping to devise a way to enable signed communication between people with hearing loss and their hearing neighbours.

"That's the motivation," Chen said.

The project was a collaboration between the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Union University, and Microsoft Research Asia.

For Reference:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/others/news/kinect-sign-language-translator-developed-by-microsoft-chinese-researchers-441458