Google Docs goes down for hour

Alphabet Inc. handed procrastinators a good excuse not to work Friday. Its Google Drive Web-based productivity tools went down for almost three hours.Google acknowledged the outage in a tweet just before noon PT. By 2:30 p.m., “Google Docs” was the top trending item on Twitter. Google said service was restored a few minutes later.The Google Apps status dashboard showed service disruptions impacted Google Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides on Friday. Alphabet didn’t respond to a request for comment.

For some, this meant early Friday drinks, watching baseball playoff games, and trying to avoid other ways of doing work. Microsoft Office still appears to work just fine.

“Our preliminary diagnosis is that this was caused by a code push which behaved differently in widespread use than it had during testing,” Google said in an emailed statement.

 The main website for Google Drive and Slides, the presentation counterpart to Docs and Sheets, at first appeared to be unaffected but later also went down. Classroom, which is used in schools, also went down, according to the company.

"Google Drive, Docs editors and Classroom have been restored for 99.5% of affected users as of 1:01 PM Pacific, and for the remaining 0.5% of users by 2:10 PM Pacific," Google said in a statement. "During the event, our top priority was to restore service."

During the disruption, users who tried to open documents, spreadsheets and presentations from Google Drive were greeted with error messages. Others were unable to load Google Drive's website at all.

Facebook tests a dedicated shopping field

Facebook’s where people spend their time on mobile, and now it’s working on several new features to give shopping sites a cut of the attention. The most eye-catching is a test of a Shopping feed that aggregates posts and photos about products on sale from different retailers. It’s also beefing up the fast-loading “immersive ads” it started testing last month by letting merchants host whole product catalogs on the pages that load inside Facebook instead of kicking users to a mobile browser.

This is all part of Facebook’s goal to consume the shopping experience. Today’s corporate blog post also mentioned its in-feed Buy button, carousel product ads, and new Shopping sections of mobile Pages that’s designed to be an alternative or supplement to retailers needing their own mobile commerce apps or sites.

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Google Spearheads Effort to Hook Mobile Web on Speed

Google on Wednesday announced speeded up Mobile Pages, or AMP, an open source initiative to accelerate mobile internet page loading.

The objective is to have internet pages with wealthy content — equivalent to video, animations and graphics — paintings along sensible advertisements and load instantly, with one code running across a couple of platforms and devices.

The assignment will use AMP HTML, an open framework in line with existing internet technologies, which we may just developers build light-weight internet pages.                                                                                              Read more...

Microsoft Pushes Deeper Into Linux, Containers, IoT

Microsoft announced a slew of corporate cloud answers at Tuesday”s AzureCon.

“The worth for IoT is in control, knowledge sequence and analysis, and Microsoft is it sounds as if development a cloud carrier that may do all three, and wrapping it with enterprise-level security,” acknowledged Rob Enderle, primary analyst at the Enderle Group.

Microsoft announced a new open Azure Container Service that may let enterprises deploy and configure Apache Mesos to cluster and time table Dockerized apps across a couple of virtual hosts.It may be to be had for preview through year end.

“I discovered it appealing that [Microsoft is] going to send Linux cluster container control on Linux forward of Windows,” acknowledged Al Hilwa, studies program director at IDC.

This is “definitely the recent Microsoft looking not easy to be as platform-agnostic as it would in the cloud so as now no longer to be left behind,” he told the E-Commerce Times

                                                                                                                            Continue Reading...

Facebook Tests New Button-Pushing Plan

Facebook on Thursday announced a pilot examine of “Reactions,” some way to respond to posts at the network in a more nuanced way than its Like button allows. The recent feature is reside in Spain and Ireland.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg up to now alluded to the eventual touchdown of a Like alternative, despite the fact that he stated it’s going to now no longer be a much-requested Dislike button.

Facebook had excellent reasons to withstand a Dislike button, with all of its attendant negativity.

The new Reactions bar addresses the spirit of the user requests with a “more expressive Like button,” stated Chris Cox, leader product officer at Facebook.

Posted by way of Chris Cox on Thursday, October 8, 2015

Besides Like, users can select emoji to specific several other sentiments by way of soaring or long urgent at the Reactions bar. The to be had feelings are Like, Love, HaHa, Yay, Sad and Angry.

Anticipate the Negative

The Reactions bar can even additionally advertise more certain studies and serve as a device to quash negative ones.

It can even additionally assist save you Web bullying by way of alerting Facebook when anything is out of order, in keeping with Tony Lee, social media lead at 5W.

“For the primary time in Facebook”s history, there could also be some way to come across Web bullying prior to it gets out of hand”.

Theoretically, Facebook can step in when it notices a pointy uptick in negative reactions to a specific user”s content, in keeping with Lee.

Cyberbullying invokes worry via hateful messages and images, and “these opportunities for negativity already exist,” noted April Masini, writer of Ask April.

Facebook”s Reactions emoji might curtail the impulse to make long-winded and pointed comments by way of giving other folks an strategy to simply sign in their overall sentiment.

Looking at the Reactions bar from every other angle, the new emoji at the panel can even additionally make Facebook more interactive.

Each of the sentiments represented opens up the prospect of a lot more discussion than a Like button alone, Masini pointed out.

Reasons At the back of Reactions

The new Reactions bar must make communique “more emotional and no more technical,” noted Justin Garrity, president of Postano.

“Today, when somebody posts about a private tragedy, and you need to enhance it, it feels wrong to click the Like button,”. “I think those new features supply ample emotional features as well as Like to more correctly display the form of enhance one friend has for another”s post on Facebook.”

Beyond fulfilling its users, the Reactions bar will feed Facebook”s giant information projects with new intelligence, stated 5W”s Lee.

“Facebook is already the industry leader in offering free, top-quality analytics to corporations — and Reactions buttons will be every other layer,” he said.

Ads Up

By attractive users to pump new streams of insights into its giant information machines, the Reactions bar can even additionally make Facebook”s ads platform an even more helpful tool for advertisers.

“Facebook Commercials is already the maximum accurate and cost-effective web advertising and marketing in the market,” stated Lee. “The user reactions can theoretically upload more relevancy and accuracy to the A/B testing, extra making Facebook the industry leader to measure a virtual campaign”s effectiveness.”

It”s a large win for advertisers and social visualization platforms like Postano, which now can thing in mood, stated Garrity. “Showing Love is a lot more robust than Like, and if an ad is making users Angry, it may well be a excellent indicator to reconsider the ad.” 

Microsoft Lumia 950, Lumia 950 XL With Windows 10 Mobile, 'Liquid Cooling' Launched

The waiting is finally over! Microsoft on Tuesday at its “Windows 10 devices briefing” event unveiled the two flagship smartphones. Both the handsets run Windows 10 Mobile, the mobile edition of the company’s latest operating system.

The two smartphones, platform lead devices for Windows 10 Mobile, were unveiled by Microsoft’s Panos Panay, the new head of engineering of the firm’s premium devices division. The Lumia 950 will start from $549, while the Lumia 950 XL will start at $649 – both will become available in November.As for the specifications, the Microsoft Lumia 950 sports a 5.2-inch QHD display with a pixel density of 564ppi. It is powered by a hexa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC, and 32GB of internal storage.

The Microsoft Lumia 950 XL, on the other hand, sports a 5.7-inch QHD display with a pixel density of 518ppi. It is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC. It also comes with 32GB of internal storage.

The biggest surprise with these new devices, arguably, was the inclusion of new "liquid cooling" technology.  Microsoft blew by this bullet point on one of its slides, but it's one that will surely be of interest to PC fans. For high end gaming PCs liquid cooling is a long-standing solution for dissipating heat faster than is possible with a pure air convection solution.  The idea is to flow liquid by some hot component (say your GPU and CPU chips via a metal heatblock.  The evaporated fluid (typically some sort of inert/nonconductive coolant) is then ciruclated to a condenser, where a fan blows air to push out the heat and condense the cooling fluid.   While such systems are common in the gaming space and are even found in some gaming laptops.  Under load, or when using certain functions (e.g. the GPS), modern smartphones can get quite hot, particularly the battery and system-on-a-chip (SoC).  Presumably Microsoft is utilizing some sort of internal capillary system with an inert, evaporative closed cooling loop.  

Both phones are dual SIM enabled and have 4G support. In addition, the phones use UCB Type-C, and support Qi wireless charging and fast charging, to give 50 percent battery in half an hour. Another useful feature is Glance Screen, which lights up only a few pixels on your screen when your phone is in standby mode, so you can see your notifications without turning on the display while also saving battery life. There's also the new Iris Scanner on both phones, nestled next to the front cam, which scans your eye to unlock your phone. And last, but not least of the hardware, there's an all -new liquid cooling system that Microsoft has implemented from their tablets. That would make them the first smartphones with that kind of tech.

New Memory Chip which Stores Data with Light

A light-based memory chip that stores data permanently is a new development from University of Oxford and other scientists at the universities of Karlsruhe, Munster and Exeter. Taking materials already used in CDs and DVDs, the researchers say this chip is likely to significantly ramp up the speed of our modern computing.

As it is, computers now slow down to allow for electronic data to move between the processor and the memory. "There's no point using faster processors if the limiting factor is the shuttling of information to-and-from the memory -- the so-called von-Neumann bottleneck," said Professor Harish Bhaskaran, the research leader, in the release. "But we think using light can significantly speed this up."

Simply bridging the processor-memory gap with photons isn't efficient, though, because of the need to convert them back into electronic signals at each end. Instead, memory and processing capabilities would need be light-based too. Researchers have tried to create this kind of photonic memory before, but the results have always been volatile, requiring power in order to store data. For many applications -- such as computer disk drives -- it's essential to be able to store data indefinitely, with or without power.

Using light instead of electricity to move information between a computer’s memory and its processor could lead to much faster and more energy-efficient computers (see “Intel’s Laser Chips Could Make Data Centers Run Better”). But right now it is necessary to convert the optical signals to electrical ones and store the data electronically, which is relatively slow compared with the speed of today’s processors. The new “all-photonic” memory, which takes advantage of the same materials used in rewritable CDs and DVDs, is a step toward systems that achieve more efficient data transfer and storage, according to the technology’s inventors.

In the near term, a memory technology like this could be used to augment the performance of data centers and thus expand the kinds of applications possible thanks to cloud computing. Several major computing companies are developing systems for moving light around a chip using waveguides, or from one chip to another using optical cables like those common in the telecommunications industry. The technology is still far from commercialization. The researchers only demonstrated the ability to read and write several bits. More research and development will be needed to understand how exactly it can or should be applied.

Facebook to launch satellite to expand Internet access in Africa

Facebook said it would launch a satellite in partnership with France’s Eutelsat Communications to bring Internet access to large parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

The satellite, part of Facebook’s Internet.org platform to expand internet access mainly via mobile phones, is under construction and will be launched in 2016, the companies said on Monday.

The satellite, called AMOS-6, will cover large parts of West, East and Southern Africa, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. The project will be conducted under his Internet.org initiative that aims to bring Internet access to the two-thirds of the world that have been unable to receive it. Among other projects include using solar-powered drones to beam out Internet signals to rural areas, and the set-up of the Innovation Lab to mimic real-world connectivity issues for developers to test their app’s performance.

“To connect people living in remote regions, traditional connectivity infrastructure is often difficult and inefficient, so we need to invent new technologies,” Zuckerberg said.

"Over the last year Facebook has been exploring ways to use aircraft and satellites to beam internet access down into communities from the sky," Mr Zuckerberg wrote.

In a statement, Eutelsat said users on the ground would be able to use "off the shelf" products to access the service when it launches in the second half of 2016.

"The capacity is optimised for community and Direct-to-User Internet access using affordable, off-the-shelf customer equipment," the company said.

"Eutelsat and Facebook will each deploy Internet services designed to relieve pent-up demand for connectivity from the many users in Africa beyond range of fixed and mobile terrestrial networks."

Facebook has nearly 20 million users in major African markets Nigeria and Kenya, statistics released by it showed last month, with a majority using mobile devices to access their profiles.The company opened its first African office in Johannesburg in June.

Android Vulnerability - "Stagefright"

Stagefright is a remotely exploitable software bug that affects versions 2.2 ("Froyo") and newer of the Android operating system. It allows an attacker to perform arbitrary operations on the victim device through remote code execution and privilege escalation. Security researchers demonstrate the bug with a proof of concept that sends specially crafted MMS messages to the victim device and in most cases requires no end-user actions upon message reception to succeed, while using the phone number as the only target information.

The underlying attack vector exploits certain integer overflow vulnerabilities in the Android's core component called "Stagefright",  which is a complex software library implemented primarily in C++ as part of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and used as a backend engine for playing various multimedia formats such as MP4 files

Stagefright 2.0 is finally back in the ranks of Android vulnerability, causing over 1bn Android devices to be hacked easily through a remote server execution. Stagefright bug was first encountered in 2008 when the hacker can easily hack the device and get access to internal resource and execution by simply exploiting the media handling capabilities of the Android devices. The first Stagefright bug enabled hackers to send an MMS message and take control of the device.

Stagefright 2.0 is security vulnerability made of two holes in Android that can allow an attacker to take over a Smartphone via an MP3 or MP4 video.The vulnerability lies in the processing of metadata within the files, so merely previewing the song or video would trigger the issue. Since the primary attack vector of MMS has been removed in newer versions of Google’s Hangouts and Messenger apps, the likely attack vector would be via the Web browser.Mark James, security specialist at ESET said: “Visiting a website and previewing an infected song or video file could enable the attacker to gain access to your mobile device and run remote code, in theory allowing them full access to your device enabling them to do whatever they wish ... including installing other malware, or just harvesting your data for use in identity theft.”The vulnerability affects even those smartphones that have had the original Stagefright bug patched, such as Google’s Nexus devices and Samsung’s Galaxy S6 series. 

If your device is vulnerable, keep an eye on news from your handset manufacturer for updates which might patch the vulnerabilities.

Alphabet replaces Google's 'don't be evil' slogan with 'do the right thing'

Alphabet, which took over as Google’s new holding company on Friday, has dropped the tech giant’s “Don’t Be Evil” mantra from its code of conduct.

Alphabet Inc. posted a new code of conduct for its employees Friday, after Google completed its transformation into a holding company. There were few substantive changes in more than 20 documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission; the Alphabet code of conduct, posted on its website, is among them.

Google's code of conduct, of course, is best-known for its first line, which was also included in Google’s 2004 filing for its initial public offering: “Don’t be evil.”

Alphabet’s code doesn’t include that phrase. Instead, it says employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries “should do the right thing – follow the law, act honorably, and treat each other with respect.”

“Don’t be evil” marked Google’s aspiration to be a different company. But the phrase also has been held up by critics who say Google has not always lived up to it.

Google’s code of conduct is much longer than Alphabet’s. It includes idiosyncracies about drinking alcohol at work (OK but not too much) and taking pets to the office (dogs are cool but cats are discouraged).

The Alphabet code sticks to the basics: avoid conflicts of interest, maintain integrity and obey the law.

To be sure, the vast majority of Alphabet employees will still be Google employees, part of the core search-and-advertising unit that is the new holding company’s biggest division. Those workers are still covered by Google’s code of conduct and the “Don’t be evil” motto.

Ultimately, whether it's "Do the Right Thing" or "Don't Be Evil," there's a fundamental belief at Google that the company is the moral arbiter of what a just future should look like.

Bye bye GOOGLE , hello Alphabet

GOOGLE HAS REORGANIZED itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.

“What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google,” Google co-founder Larry Page said in a blog post .“This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead.”In other words, Google will continue to run internet-centric services such as Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android. But “moonshot” projects such as the X Lab and the Calico life extension project will operate as somewhat separate entities.
As for the actual structure of Alphabet, it will be comprised of a smaller version of Google, which will be slimmed down to include the company’s core businesses. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, these businesses include “search search, ads, maps, apps, YouTube and Android and the related technical infrastructure.” Alphabet will also contain other business like Fiber, Nest, and Calico.

Google shareholders will receive one share of Alphabet stock for every Google share they previously held. For those fearing a weird shakeup on Google’s masthead, you can relax; CEO Larry Page, CFO Ruth Porat, President Sergey Brin, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, and chief counsel David Drummond will all be retaining their positions at Alphabet.
Later this year, Google intends to implement a holding company reorganization (the "Alphabet Merger"), which will result in Alphabet owning all of the capital stock of Google. Alphabet will initially be a direct, wholly owned subsidiarGoogle. Pursuant to the Alphabet Merger, a newly formed entity ("Merger Sub"), a direct, wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet and an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Google, will merge with and into Google, with Google surviving as a direct, wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Each share of each class of Google stock issued and outstanding immediately prior to the Alphabet Merger will automatically convert into an equivalent corresponding share of Alphabet stock, having the same designations, rights, powers and preferences and the qualifications, limitations and restrictions as the corresponding share of Google stock being converted.

Organized Cyber Crime

Organized crime is a category of transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals, who intend to engage in illegal activity, most commonly for money and profit.

Technology has allowed users worldwide an ease of access from online banking to instantaneous communication via email or phone. Criminals have also benefited from those same technological innovations, giving them a greater access to victims and targets, worldwide communication, and minimizing attribution. Cybercrime is an area that has flourished, as it requires little resources, no traveling, and a skill set that is readily available to learn. This has made cybercrime a serious threat to both national and international security. In 2014, McAfee estimated that the cost of global cybercrime is 0.8% of global GDP that’s over $400 billion USD in losses to cybercrime. Furthermore, unlike in traditional criminal activity, organized cyber-criminal groups prefer to remain unknown, which makes tracking cybercrime activity incredibly difficult.

Dozens of cybercrime groups have reached the level of sophistication where their technical capabilities are on a par with those of a nation-state, it has been claimed. Gangs are capable of building complex systems aimed at stealing money and intellectual property on a grand scale, costing almost the same to the global economy as counterfeiting or the narcotics trade.

For example, an organized crime group might spread malware which steals bank account details from an infected PC. That same malicious software would also use affected machines to carry out a denial of service attack against the bank in order to distract the bank's security team while the gang cleans out bank accounts using the stolen account credentials.

Cybercrime can be expected to grow, as is allows criminals to remain relatively anonymous, requires little to no transportation, has a high rate of return, and unlike other criminal activity, like drug trafficking, cybercrime has no enforceable international norms or laws to prosecute criminals. Add to this more businesses and individuals moving to information to online service platforms, and developing countries looking to grow their technology sector, giving an influx of users and victims for cybercrime. Cybercrime has serious implications on national, personal, and economic security.

Project Loon is being developed by Google X

Project Loon is a research and development project being developed by Google X with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high-altitude balloons placed in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 32 km (20 mi) to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds.It was named Project Loon, since Google itself found the very idea of providing internet access to the remaining 5 billion population unprecedented and "crazy.

The balloons are maneuvered by adjusting their altitude to float to a wind layer after identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Users of the service connect to the balloon network using a special Internet antenna attached to their building. The signal travels through the balloon network from balloon to balloon, then to a ground-based station connected to an Internet service provider (ISP), then onto the global Internet. The system aims to bring Internet access to remote and rural areas poorly served by existing provisions, and to improve communication during natural disasters to affected regions.

Google says these balloons can deliver widespread economic and social benefits by bringing Internet access to the 60 percent of the world’s people who don’t have it. Many of those 4.3 billion people live in rural places where telecommunications companies haven’t found it worthwhile to build cell towers or other infrastructure. After working for three years and flying balloons for more than three million kilometers, Google says Loon balloons are almost ready to step in.

Designing of Loon :

The inflatable part of the balloon is called a balloon envelope. A well-made balloon envelope is critical for allowing a balloon to last around 100 days in the stratosphere. Loon’s balloon envelopes are made from sheets of polyethylene plastic, and they measure fifteen meters wide by twelve meters tall when fully inflated. When a balloon is ready to be taken out of service, gas is released from the envelope to bring the balloon down to Earth in a controlled descent. In the unlikely event that a balloon drops too quickly, a parachute attached to the top of the envelope is deployed.

Each balloon can provide connectivity to a ground area about 40 km in diameter using a wireless communications technology called LTE. To use LTE, Project Loon partners with telecommunications companies to share cellular spectrum so that people will be able to access the Internet everywhere directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices. Balloons relay wireless traffic from cell phones and other devices back to the global Internet using high-speed links

Supporting Digital India is no way related with Internet.org

Digital India is an initiative of the Government of India to ensure that government services are made available to citizens electronically by improving online infrastructure and by increasing internet connectivity. It was launched on 1 July 2015 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The initiative includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed internet networks. Digital India has three core components. These include.

· The creation of digital infrastructure
· Delivering services digitally
· Digital literacy

Digital India is a purely Prime Minister Modi’s initiative for the betterment of India to have a digitally connected country. As science and technology have become an important part of a country’s growth, the importance of making India into a Digital India is very much concerned by the Prime Minister. Digital India is no way related with Zuckerberg’s Internet.org.

Rumours have been started to spread that Mark Zuckerberg is silently promoting his Internet.org (now called as FreeBasics).Blaming an engineer for the "mistake", Facebook said the product in no way connects to or registers support for Internet.Org.

"There is absolutely no connection between updating your profile picture for digital India and registering support for Internet.Org," Facebook said in a statement.An engineer mistakenly used the words "Internet.Org profile picture" as a shorthand name he chose for part of the code, it added.

"But this product in no way connects to or registers support for Internet.Org. We are changing the code to eliminate any confusion," the statement said.

Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics

Internet.org was launched on August 20, 2013. At the time of launch, Facebook's founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a ten-page whitepaper he had written elaborating on the vision. In the paper, he wrote that Internet.org was a further step in the direction of Facebook's past initiatives, such as Facebook Zero, to improve Internet access for people around the world. He also said that "connectivity is a human right."

Internet.org is a partnership between social networking services company Facebook and six companies (Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Opera Software, Nokia and Qualcomm) that plan to bring affordable access to selected Internet services to less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of Internet access.

While Facebook’s free service Internet.org faced criticism in India, it appears that the social network hasn’t given up on it yet. It has now decided to rebrand the product to ‘Free Basics by Facebook’.

Briefing a group of Indian journalists at Facebook Headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Chris Daniels, the vice-president of Internet.org said that Free Basics has been launched with the addition of a small set of services across 19 countries — including India — developed on an open platform with new partners. Facebook has an ongoing tie-up with Reliance Communications in India to provide services through internet.org.

The new Free Basics branding will not change the accessibility of Internet.org. Current users of the Android app will be able to continue using it without any interruption. The Web version of Internet.org will redirect to FreeBasics.com. The Internet.org program is also open to all developers, with the 60 new services launched being available in 19 countries.

By Facebook's estimation based on triangulation of data from ISPs, the company's own user database among others, internet.org has thus far enabled access to hitherto unconnected users at a rate of 50% faster accessibility through the access to free and basic services, he said. Many of such users had, Facebook claims based on data, moved on to access the wider internet through paying their service provider further for data plans.

The INTEL Compute Stick

The Intel Compute Stick is basically a mini-computer that connects to a HDMI port (like the one on your TV) and was first unveiled at CES 2015.While the Intel Compute Stick can fit in the palm of your hand, it's what we fit inside of it that is truly remarkable. A quad-core Intel® Atom™ processor and your choice of operating systems: Windows* 8.1, Windows® 10 or Ubuntu* 14.04 LTS.

The Windows version includes 2 GB memory, 32 GB of on-board storage and comes with McAfee® Antivirus Plus for comprehensive protection from Trojans, viruses, spyware and more. The Ubuntu version has 1 GB memory and 8 GB of on-board storage. Both devices come with Wi-Fi* and Bluetooth* for connectivity, a USB port to connect peripherals and a micro SD card slot for additional storage.

Intel gave it plenty of visibility with the release of its Compute Stick early this year, and Lenovo joined this week with its announcement of the Ideacentre Stick 300. Now French device maker Archos, which has tried valiantly to make a name for itself with Android and Windows tablets and the like over the years, is jumping in quickly with a stick of its own.

A bit of a turf war is emerging between Windows-based stick PCs and Google-related OS flavors. Dell's Wyse division has offered an Android PC stick since early last year, and Asus is producing a Chromebit stick running the search giant's Chrome OS. Intel also offers a Linux edition of the Compute Stick, though at $110, it's still pricier than Archos' PC Stick, which doesn't have an official release date yet.

Support Digital India

At the Facebook HQ, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CEO took part in a public Q&A and vowed their support to the Digital India initiative. Both of them changed their Facebook profile pictures to Digital India filter and people are following the same course.

By converting your Facebook profile pictures into the hue of Indian flag, you are unknowingly casting your vote to support Internet.org. Internet.org defies the basic idea of net neutrality (read free and open internet).

You may think this tricolor filtered profile picture is a gesture to support Digital India. However, it is not. Here seems to be a hidden agenda behind Zuckerberg's support for Digital India, and that is Internet.org– Facebook's much-criticized anti-net neutrality project – which has now been renamed to "Free Basics."

Yes, in the name of Modi's Digital India, Zuckerberg is silently promoting his Internet.org Campaign, which will potentially kill the Internet freedom in the Country.

Facebook, in collaboration with six companies, including Samsung, Media Tek, Software Nokia, Opera, Ericsson, and Qualcomm, launched Internet.org that aims at providing Free Internet services to developing nations.This move by Facebook is not exactly what it looks like. It actually is a blow to our Internet freedom and Net Neutrality, the one we are fighting for long.

Here's Why:

· The Facebook's free Internet service will be available to Reliance users only.

· Internet.org gives 'free access' only to Facebook and its 50 partner websites, which limits Internet users to stick to those services only.

· This Facebook Project is not giving Free Internet to people, instead giving free access to manipulated-Internet that Facebook wants users to see.

Isn't this violation of Net Neutrality? When Internet provider will decide what we are going to see on the Internet.

Issues:

· Death of Start-ups. With this move, we closed doors for another FlipKart or SnapDeal.

· Death of Small businesses. Local businesses will not grow, as the site who will pay more will be part of Facebook's free Internet project.

· Your Internet Remote in Facebook’s Hand. With internet.org, you are indirectly giving Facebook more power to control what you can access on the Internet.