Microsoft Recognized Teen Prodigy On Life Support

Arfa Karim Randhawa, now 16 years old, was named one of the youngest Microsoft Professionals at age 9 after meeting founder, Bill Gates. After suffering from cardiac arrest on December 22, Randhawa is now in critical condition, and doctors say that she has no hope for survival. 

“Only a miracle will allow my brilliant, genius daughter to live now,” says father Amjad Karim Randhawa who told  that her cardiac arrest was caused by an epileptic attack, which also caused brain damage.

Beginning to show an interest in computers at age 9, Arfa passed a very rigorous Microsoft certification test in 2004, which made her a worldwide celebrity. Arfa’s prodigious actions gave her global media attention, attaining such a credential at such a young age. “Everyone thought the result was wrong,” Randhawa told. 

Also in 2006, Arfa was invited by Microsoft to a keynote session in a Tech-Ed Developers conference in Barcelona, Spain. The theme of this event was “getting ahead of the game” and Arfa was used as an example of such a notion. 

She was also invited by the IT Professionals of Dubai to attend a dinner event where she was presented with several medals and awards for her outstanding achievements. 

Our hearts go out to her family during this difficult time.

Facebook Vs. Google: The Battle For Internet Dominance

Google and Facebook will continue to duke it out over the top spot in the display ad market. Mark Zuckerberg’s social network remains one of the main competitive risks to Google’s absolute dominance of the Internet.

“Facebook has posed serious problems for Google, most notably by walling off the social network’s content from Google’s search engine,” explained Baird’s equity research analysts in a note on Friday.

The problem, for Google, is that its business model relies on its ability to “index the web.”  Thus, when Facebook walls-off its site, it’s essentially blocking a significant, and growing, portion of the web.  “Google’s index has been faced with an ever-increasing blind spot for search,” wrote the analysts.

Google remains the undisputed king of the Internet.  It clearly dominates search advertising, with over 65% of the U.S. market and more than 50% of the global market (Yahoo has 16% share in the U.S. whileMicrosoft’s Bing has been growing fast and now accounts for 14%).  It has one of the fastest growing mobile operating systems, Android, where its share is even larger than in PCs and growing faster thanApple’s iOS.  In 2012, Google will rake in more than $36 billion in revenue.

But Facebook is creeping up.  Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has risen to become the second most important online property, behind Google.  Facebook reaches about 43% of the web over the last three months, according to Alexa, and counts with more than 5% of global page views.  It makes the difference in engagement, though: users spend an average of 24 minutes and 45 seconds on Facebook, compared with 11 minutes and 52 seconds on Google.

LG teases an 84-inch 3D Ultra Definition TV ahead of CES

It appears that LG can’t wait for CES to begin. The brand already previewed a range of 3D monitors and more recently a 55-inch OLED TV, which is the first of its kind. They are at it again and this time giving a preview of the rest of their product line-up for the event. Again previewing what they have lined up for CES, which is another ‘first of its kind,’ LG will unveil an 84-inch ultra definition (UD) 3D TV. With this monstrous television, LG have combined their 3D technology and Smart TV functionality with UD technology.

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Nadir Magsi clinches desert challenge

Nadir, the favourite to win the rally, did not disappoint his home crowd and completed the 194-kilometre track in two hours, three minutes and 40 seconds.

JHAL: Nadir Magsi, driving a 4.5litre Land Cruiser, clinched the A category of the Jhal Magsi Desert Challenge 2011 followed by Qasim Saidhi and Ronnie Patel.

Nadir, the favourite to win the rally, did not disappoint his home crowd and completed the 194-kilometre track in two hours, three minutes and 40 seconds — the fastest time across the four categories. Saidhi recorded a time of two hours, three minutes and 40 seconds while Patel took two hours, six minutes and 35 seconds.

There were few surprises as the three drivers, top in qualifying, completed the podium in their category that saw six of the 13 participants getting a Did Not Finish (DNF) including the Turkish duo of Burcu Cetinkaya and her navigator Cicek Guney.

The B category was won by Rana Sumair Noon with a 3.0litre Toyota Vigo with a time of two hours, 18 minutes and 19 seconds. Syed Asif Imam finished in second place while Abbas Akbar came in third. Four of the 10 drivers in the category failed to finish.

Hasan Ali Magsi topped the times in the C category followed by Mukesh Chawla and Mahmood Majeed while 6 of the 13 participants recording DNFs. Mohammad Rafiq finished first followed by Aminullah Khan and Muhammad Hasnain Haider to complete the winners of the D category, which featured the 1.3litre Jimny, and saw eight DNFs in a total of 15 drivers.

Samsung Files New Patent Dispute Against Apple

Samsung said on Monday that it has filed new patent disputes against Apple in Germany.

The company said that the claims filed on December 16 relate to alleged infringement of patents including those for Samsung’s telecommunications standard technology and user interface.

“(Samsung) made four more claims; two are standard-related patents and the other two are utility patents. And a court said it would make these claims separate from the April lawsuit,” a Samsung spokesman said in a statement.

Both Samsung and Apple have been intertwined in legal disputes involving dozens of cases around the world as they struggle for leadership in the tablet and smartphone market.

Apple accused Samsung in April of copying its iPhone and iPad designs.  Samsung accused Apple of technology patents infringement, rather than design.

An Australian court decided to lift a ban on Samsung’s Galaxy on December 9, allowing the tablet computer to be sold in the country for the first time for Christmas.

A San Jose, California court denied a request by Apple in December to ban the sale of three Samsung smartphones and a tablet computer in the U.S.

The latest dispute with Samsung and Apple is over the way the iPhone maker implements the WCDMA 3G telecom standard.

Sony's PlayStation Vita hits stores in Japan

 Sony's long-awaited PlayStation Vita portable game machine hit stores in Japan on Saturday as thousands of game enthusiasts lined up early in the morning to be among the first to buy it.

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. is predicting brisk sales, even though the launch may have missed some holiday shoppers. A successful debut would help the company offset the rest of its struggling business. Sony projects a loss of more than $1 billion for the fiscal year through March 2012, which would be its fourth straight annual loss.

In Tokyo's Ikebukuro shopping district, some 300 game enthusiasts lined up outside a major electronics chain that opened a few hours earlier than usual for the event. Many of the purchasers had made advance orders on the Internet so they could start playing immediately.

The device is a touch-interface and motion-sensitive handheld seen as a successor to the PlayStation Portable. Gamers can connect over cellphone networks and Wi-Fi hotspots, and use GPS location-tracking technology.

Television footage showed some shoppers unwrapping their new purchases and starting to try them out at the store.

"I'm so happy to see so many people lining up for PS Vita so early in the morning," Sony Computer Entertainment Japan President Hiroshi Kono wrote in his official blog after touring several Tokyo stores. "I can tell they had anxiously waited for today's launch."

For the Tokyo-based electronics and entertainment giant, the Vita is the biggest product launch since the PlayStation 3 console five years ago. It's also accompanied by two dozen software products - the largest number of launch titles in PlayStation history.

The Vita has front and back cameras, a touchscreen in front, a touch pad on the back and two knob-like joysticks. It will enable gamers to play against each other using PlayStation 3 consoles over the Internet-based PlayStation Network, a system that was hit with a massive hacking attack earlier this year.

NFC Technology Heads Toward Intel Inside

Inside Secure is a well-known backer of the technology known as NFC, for near-field communication. Popularizing it has taken some time, but the French chip maker has picked up a prominent endorsement in Silicon Valley.

The company is announcing Wednesday that it has cut a deal to provide technology to Intel, the kingpin in microprocessors that power personal computers. Charles Walton, Inside Secure’s chief operating officer, expects to supply chips to Intel as well as software and other technology that Intel could incorporate into its own chips.

Intel isn’t sharing much in the way of possibilities yet. “We are highly interested” in NFC, an Intel spokeswoman says, “but we are not announcing any product plans at this time.”

She did note that one option is to include Inside Secure’s technology as part of what Intel calls reference designs, which are typically functioning combinations of chips and circuit boards that laptop computer makers and others can use as a model to create their own products.

Intel’s move follow endorsements of NFC by players such as Google and Nokia for use in smartphones. Besides Inside Secure, major suppliers of NFC chips include NXP Semiconductors, which is based in the Netherlands.

Now, Intel is not a big player in phones, despite years of efforts. But that could change, and in the meantime there are also frequently overlooked applications that involve laptop PCs, Walton says.

Where the most-discussed use of NFC is in smartphones as a replacement for credit cards in retail stores, there are also person-to-person applications that aren’t usually done with plastic. For example, someone with an NFC equipped smartphone could transfer information or payments directly to another person with an NFC-equipped phone–or a portable PC.

Many applications for NFC, Walton says, have been slow to develop because operators of cellphone networks are hoping to get a cut of transactions, a possibility that hardware makers are not exactly keen on.

But he is hopeful that moves by companies like Intel–which has long held influence over the evolution of technology standards–could help break the logjam. “We are just thrilled to be working with them,” he says.

PTCL launches broadband package for students

Pakistan Telecommunication Company (PTCL) has launched a Broadband Student Bundle Package with free voice minutes included. The Student Bundle Package with PSTN includes 1Mbps broadband connectivity with unlimited downloads, 150 voice minutes and the buzz entertainment portal for PKR 999 per month. PTCL has taken this initiative kee ping in view the need to provide youth with economical access to high speed broadband internet, thereby expanding their knowledge, skills and productivity.

Facebook introduces suicide prevention tool

Facebook launched a new suicide prevention tool on Tuesday, giving users a direct link to an online chat with counsellors who can help, the company said.

Friends are able to report suicidal behaviour by clicking a report option next to any piece of content on the site and choosing suicidal content under the harmful behaviour option, Facebook spokesman Frederic Wolens said.

Facebook will then email the user in distress a direct link for a private online chat with a crisis representative from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as well as the group’s phone number.

The new tool gives people who may not be comfortable picking up the phone a direct avenue to seek help.

“This was a natural progression from something we’ve been working on for a long time,” Wolens said.

Users also have the ability to report suicidal behaviour by going to the site’s Help Center or search for suicide reporting forms. They can also use reporting links around the site.

Worried friends who reported the behaviour will also receive a message to say it is being addressed, Wolens said.

Facebook, the most popular Web-based social networking site, has more than 800 million active users worldwide. The Palo Alto, California-based company was co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004.

The new suicide reporting tool will be made available to people who use Facebook in the United States and Canada.

Wolens said that all reporting on the site is done anonymously and so a distressed user will not know who reported the suicidal content.

Nearly 100 Americans die by suicide every day, according to the Surgeon General of the United States.

In the past year, more than 8 million Americans 18 or older had thought seriously about suicide, according to a blog post by the Surgeon General accompanying the release of the new Facebook tool.

Steve Wozniak: Steve Jobs’ deal made me cry

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak told Radio 4 this morning that the company he set up with the late Steve Jobs stood out from the relaxed Californian counter-culture due to Jobs’s corporate aspirations.

He told Evan Davis, who also presents tonight’s BBC Two documentary Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy, that Steve Jobs had always wanted to run people and be seen as an important thinker, and developed a conservative streak as Apple’s success grew.

“I was so close to Steve Jobs I could never really see the transition,” Wozniak said. “I just wanted to be in engineering only – I never wanted to run a company, never wanted to run things, step on other people – Steve very clearly did, and wanted to be a top executive and a really important thinker in the world.”

The comments align with the ruthless image of Jobs presented in the TV documentary. Jobs, for instance, tricked a young Wozniak into writing code for a computer game but pocketed the majority of the payment for the project from Atari himself. Wozniak admits on the programme that he cried when he heard about Jobs’s scam following the release of a book on Jobs.

“He was always focused on ‘if you can build things and sell them you can have a company’ and ‘the way you make money and importance in the world is with companies’,” Wozniak said. “He wanted to be one of those important people in the world.”

Invisible computing and mind reading movies shown at SIGGRAPH

A robotic cook, a colouring book that comes to virtual life and movies that read your mind are some of the innovations on show at a cutting-edge computer technology exhibition in Hong Kong this week.

The first Hong Kong edition of the SIGGRAPH expo of computer graphics, interactive technology and digital media brings together developers, distributors and resellers from around the world.

But while most of the conference is about business, some of the most interesting and just plain bizarre gadgets are not for sale.

The "emerging technologies" hall is where the real boffins from universities and research laboratories strut their stuff with prototypes fresh off the drawing board, in the name of science rather than profit.

Mark Billinghurst, director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, said the research was breaking down the physical and mental barriers between humans and computers.

"What the emerging technologies show is how the technology can be used in different playful and artistic ways," he told AFP as the three-day expo in Hong Kong’s convention centre opened Tuesday.

"We’re entering an era now of, I guess you would call it invisible computing, where I can interact with the real world like I normally would and the computer monitors what I’m doing and reacts automatically.

"No longer do we have this separation between the user and the computer like we had 20 or 30 years ago."

His colleagues’ contribution to the exhibition includes a system that instantly turns pages from a child’s colouring book into three-dimensional computer animation.

"That’s really fun for children because they can easily colour and then they can see their colouring image come to life," Billinghurst said.

Similar "augmented reality" technology is already common in everyday life, from Nintendo’s Wii game console to fighter pilots’ heads-up displays.

Unlike virtual reality, which aims to replace the real world with a digital one, augmented reality seeks to enhance reality by seamlessly mixing it with computer-generated information and technology.

One of the simplest new prototypes on display at SIGGRAPH is a vibrating phone that allows users to tickle each other through the touch screen.

"That’s really fun because normally when you play with your friends at a remote distance you can’t touch them or feel them, but with this you can have that physical contact," Billinghurst said.

Another highlight is a thought-controlled movie program that can respond to brain impulses. Depending on the electrical currents on the scalp, it can show more or less violence, for example.

"The movie adapts to your behaviour and shows you more of that content, so that’s one way you can have a movie that responds to you," Billinghurst said.

Other innovations include polychrome paper that changes colour in response to the warmth of touch, a dress that turns transparent when the wearer’s heartbeat increases, and three-dimensional, interactive wall-art.

"This is the type of thing that you might see in a ‘Terminator’ movie," said Billinghurst, referring to a "telepresence" robot that sends tactile feedback about its surroundings via a vibrating belt worn around the controller’s waist.

Its developers at Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan have given it the not-so-catchy name of NAVIgoid: Robot Navigation with Haptic Vision.

Co-developer Dzmitry Tsetserukou--a towering, bespectacled man from Belarus --wobbles backwards and forwards as he maneuvers the robot with his body.

Wraparound dark glasses allow him to see images transmitted from the robot’s "eyes", while the belt delivers sensory information about obstacles.

Japan launches its 2nd spy satellite this year

TOKYO (AP) — Japan successfully put a spy satellite into orbit on Monday and expects to complete its network of intelligence-gathering satellites with another launch next year.

Japan's space agency, JAXA, said the launch from the remote southern island of Tanegashima went off without a hitch and the radar-equipped satellite is functioning properly. It was the second launch of the year, following a successful liftoff in September.

Officials refused to provide details of the satellite's capabilities.

Japanese media reports say it will augment the optical satellites Japan has already launched by providing data of what is happening on the ground at night or through cloud cover.

Japan launched its first pair of spy satellites in 2003, prompted by concerns over North Korea's missile program. It currently has four optical information-gathering satellites in orbit, though the latest of those is not fully operational yet.

It previously launched two radar intelligence satellites, but both malfunctioned.

The satellite launched Monday is expected to begin gathering intelligence in a few months, an official with the Cabinet Satellite Information Center told The Associated Press. He requested anonymity because details of the program are classified.