Technology Effect

Google acquires social games website SocialDeck Internet search giant Google has acquired social games website SocialDeck for an undisclosed amount, in a move to strengthen its social networking service. The transaction comes within days of Google’s acquisition of Angstro, which makes applications to discover new photos on Facebook and create a real-time social address book. Going by reports, the deal is one of several acquisitions in the past month through which Google is hoping to build a social networking service to counter rival Facebook. SocialDeck has announced on its website that it has been acquired by Google. “SocialDeck has been acquired and we have joined the Google team. We started this company with the goal of connecting friends through social games on all kinds of exciting new mobile devices,” the company stated on its website yesterday. SocialDeck, a Canadian start-up, has launched several games titles for Facebook, Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s ...

'Priority Inbox', new Gmail feature to sort out bologna Bangalore: Google has come up with a new Gmail feature in beta that will target the unimportant mails. The feature called 'Priority Inbox' will sort incoming e-mail into three sections, "important and unread," "starred," and "everything else", reports Michelle Meyers of Cnet. According to Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen, Priority Inbox targets mail that isn't outright spam "but isn't very important." It separates the important stuff from the "bologna," or "bacn", an email which has been subscribed to but is often unread by the recipient for a long period of time. The new feature takes its cues from things like whom the users e-mail the most and what messages are open and replied to rather than being skipped over. Gmail users are likely to get feature over the next week or so. The feature is getting good reviews from those who have t...

MICROSOFT SURFACE - NEW GENERATION OF PC

Indian firms confident to deal with external cyber threats New Delhi: A majority of Indian companies are confident of dealing with the cyber security threats, says a survey released by financial advisory firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt Ltd. Unlike last year when many companies had done less investments on security due to economic downturn, organisations have gradually started to focus on employees and other internal security challenges, along with external threats. Out of the 62 organisations surveyed, 66 percent said they are confident in their ability to thwart external attacks. Thirty two percent of the respondents, however, believed that their information security professionals lack competencies to handle existing and foreseeable security requirements. Last year's edition of security survey had found that companies spent less on security. The damages done by last year's budget cuts are reflected this year's responses. Although 48 percent believe they are...

Tech evolution, smart attacks, Indian cos key concern: Survey New Delhi: Rapid evolution of technology and more sophisticated ways of attacking the company data like spam, are some of the key concerns of Indian companies when it comes to securing information, says consulting firm Deloitte. In its Global Security Survey 2010 - India Report, Deloitte said 47 percent of the respondents in India considered more and more sophisticated threats as a major barrier that the organization faced. About 40 percent of the respondents said rapid pace of technology evolution was also a concern, it added. "Organizations are trying to spend their information security budgets wisely. They want to obtain high security levels at a reasonable price and are positioning themselves for an optimistic, but still uncertain future," Deloitte India Senior Director Sundeep Nehra said. The report surveyed 62 Indian companies across financial services, healthcare, telecom, technology, manuf...

Now, swimming robots will clean the oil spill: MIT “Bangalore: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently announced the development of a prototypical robot called Seaswarm. Here's a new way of looking at oil spill clean-up: Forget the big ships, massive work crews and hefty price tags. It's a new way of looking at oil spill clean-up. These robots can find the oil as their own. And when they reach the site of an oil spill, they talk to their robot friends to figure out the best way to get the whole thing mopped up. The $20,000 robots will be unveiled officially to the public on Saturday at an event in Venice, Italy, and will be ready to deal with oil spills in about a year."We're hoping that spillage like what we've seen with Deepwater Horizon will not occur again, but oil leakage constantly happens and that's really what motivated us. When you drill offshore, you always have leakage. And you can imagine a team of robots waiting around the corn...

‘Scientists Concerned About Environmental Impact of Recycling of E-Waste Much of the world's electronic waste is being shipped to China for recycling and the cottage industry that has sprung up there to recover usable materials from computers, cell phones, televisions and other goods may be creating significant health and environmental hazards.Scientists from China and the United States have identified numerous toxic elements in the emissions from an e-waste recycling workshop in southern China, which uses low-tech methods to separate reusable electronic components from the circuit boards. It is not an isolated case, the scientists point out; such methods are used all over China. Results of their study have been published in the journal Atmospheric Environment. "The most immediate problem is the health of the workers and the people who live in the city," said Bernd R.T. Simoneit, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University and one of the authors of the study. ...