Face - the new credit card

Your face is the new credit card

No more swiping cards! A new technology that allows customers to use their facial features instead of swiping a credit card to purchase goods has been developed by a Finnish company. 
The technology provided by Uniqul, works by recognizing the customer's face and then linking it to the individual's bank account . So instead of swiping a credit card to purchase goods, the customer gazes into a camera. 
Uniqul claims its service is secured with military-grade algorithms , 'The Australian' reported . Uniqul's Ruslan Pisarenko said the technology — which is due to roll out next month — has the ability for transactions to be completed instantly and can even distinguish between identical twins, 'News Limited Network' reported. According to Pisarenko, "the face is a PIN and it's more like a complete way to identify a person.

But in some cases where the system is not 100% accurate, it will ask a person to input their PIN as security," he said. There is no payment card involved, nor is a mobile or wallet needed. Customers sign up to the technology by registering their identification and bank details. Once the items are scanned through the customers' details will flash up on a screen and they click "OK" to confirm the transaction. 
The new tech is similar to facial recognition identification which is used by international travellers at airports in Australia. The company is getting ready for deployment of the system in Helsinki, news website goodnewsfinland.com reported. 
The company said its patent pending technology allows to reduce time spent on transactions close to zero seconds.

Applying passport through smartphones

Apply for passport through your smartphones

Applicants will soon be able to apply for passports through their smart phones, a senior official said. 

"Applicants can fill details on passport applications through mPassport Seva App. We are working on this and are hopeful it will be launched in next few months," Joint Secretary (Passport Seva Project) and Chief Passport Officer Muktesh Kumar Pardeshi told reporters. 

The "mPassport Seva"--an android App, developed by the Ministry of External Affairs was earlier launched in March. 

The App which can be downloaded at www.passportindia.gov.in, as of now is providing smart phone and tablet users with a variety of services including passport application status, tracking, locating the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) and general information on various steps involved in obtaining a passport. 

Speaking after inaugurating the passport office CCTV control room at Regional Passport Office at Secunderabad, Pardeshi said the Ministry of External Affairs is likely to issue over 85 lakh passports by the end of this year as compared to 74 lakh issued during last year. 

"Between January to June 2013, 37 lakh passports were issued and by this year end. We hope to issue over 75 lakh passports through Passport Offices in India while another 11-12 lakh passports through missions/embassys abroad," he said. 

The passport seva project has been declared as winner for e-India public choice award 2013 under government to citizen service category, he said.

Touchscreens to identify fingerprints

Touchscreens to identify fingerprints-coming soon:

A new touchscreen display, which is capable of identifying fingerprints, is closer to reality. 

Not only will the display redefine online security but could revolutionise the way in which humans and computers interact in the public sphere. 

Current touchscreens emit light but are not able to sense it, which makes it impossible to identify fingerprints unless a supplemental sensor is added. 

Researchers Christian Holz of the Hasso PlattnerInstitute in Germany told New Scientist that these touchscreens cannot scan fingerprints and fingerprint sensors are not able to show images. 

Holz and fellow researcher Patrick Baudisch's prototype uses a glass screen, made up of millions of 3-millimetre-long optical fibres that have been bunched together vertically. 

From an image projector that is mounted below the glass, each fibre is able to pipe out visible light rays. 

Meanwhile, from a source adjacent to the projector, an infrared light bounces off the fingerprints and back down to an infrared camera.

Apple -- big-screen iPhone

Apple testing big-screen iPhone, 13-inch iPad: WSJ

Apple's iPhone 5 has the smallest screen among all flagship smartphones, even though it is the biggest amongst iPhones. However, that may change soon, as the company reportedly is testing larger screens for both iPhones and iPads. This has been reported in The Wall Street Journal, which cites officials at Apple suppliers involved in the process.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Apple has asked suppliers for prototype iPhones with screens measuring over 4-inch. The report, which cites officials at Apple suppliers as sources, also says that Apple has called for iPad display designs that measure just under 13-inch.

iPhone 5, the biggest smartphone in Apple's line-up, has a 4-inch screen, while the full-sized iPad has a 9.7-inch display.
"The tests with suppliers seem to suggest that Apple is exploring ways to capture diversifying customer needs at a time when many mobile device makers offer smartphones and tablets in various sizes," says the report. However, it also adds that it remains unclear if the iPhonemaker will actually bring these devices to the market, as it often tests different designs for its products.

Apple suppliers reportedly began manufacturing the next-generation iPhone last month. WSJ says that the company has told Hon Hai Precision Industry to start shipping the model in late August. It is also said to be working on a cheaper iPhone that will come in multiple colour options and have a starting price tag of $349.

It is rumoured that Apple will begin manufacturing the fifth-generation iPad by the end of this month. The refreshed tablet is said to have the same 9.7-inch screen size as its predecessor, but a thinner display and slimmer profile.

'Lighter‘ Facebook - India, Brazil

'Lighter‘ Facebook coming soon for India, Brazil

 Facebook has been quietly working for more than two years on a project that is vital to expanding its base of 1.1 billion users: getting the social network onto the billions of cheap, simple "feature phones" that have largely disappeared in America and Europe but are still the norm in developing countries like India and Brazil.

Facebook soon plans to announce the first results of the initiative, which it calls Facebook for Every Phone: More than 100 million people, or roughly 1 out of 8 of its mobile users worldwide, now regularly access the social network from more than 3,000 different models of feature phones, some costing as little as $20.

Many of those users, who rank among the world's poorest people, pay little or nothing to download their Facebook news feeds and photos, with the data usage subsidized by phone carriers and manufacturers. Facebook has only just begun to sell ads to these customers, so it isn't making money from them yet.

But the countries in which the simple phone software is doing the best - India, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil and Vietnam - are among the fastest-growing markets for use of the Internet and social networks, according to the research firm eMarketer.

Like many other giants of the technology industry, Facebook is struggling with the seismic shift of its customers away from computers to mobile devices and erosion of profits that can bring.

Last year, the company overhauled its apps for Apple iPhones and Android-based smartphones to improve mobile access and introduced new types of ads that nudge users to install a new game or other apps on their phones. But customer growth in developed markets like the United States has still slowed dramatically because just about everyone who wants to be on Facebook has already joined the network.

Analysts say that Facebook has a powerful opportunity to win the long-term loyalty of millions of new global users by giving them their first taste of internet through Facebook on a simple cellphone.

"In a lot of foreign markets, people think that the Internet is Facebook," said Clark Fredricksen, a vice president at eMarketer.

Those users, the company hopes, will become more attractive to advertisers as their incomes grow and they gain broader access to the Web.

The feature phone project was driven by a small group of people who joined Facebook in 2011, when it purchased a startup called Snaptu. The team had to re-engineer Facebook's software to drastically shrink the amount of data sent over slow cellular networks. They also had to find a way to quickly display familiar Facebook features like chat and photos on phones with very basic computing power and low-resolution screens.

"We actually run the apps on our servers," said Ran Makavy, who was chief executive of Snaptuand now runs Facebook's feature phone project. "The result was something that looks almost like a smartphone app."

The software has features that are common in more advanced versions of Facebook, including sticker-size emoticons in chat and Instagram-style filters to dress up photos. (Facebook for Every Phone can be used by feature phone customers anywhere, including those in the United States. It can be downloaded from Facebook using the phone's mobile browser or obtained from app stores operated by the phone maker or independent companies like Getjar.)

Brian Blau, who studies consumer technologies at the research firm Gartner, said that given Facebook's mission of linking the entire globe through its service, it needed to reach out to the least tech-savvy customers.

"They talk about socially connecting the world together," he said. "They can't do that until they connect people who don't have smartphones or computers."

To understand how far Facebook has come in its approach to mobile devices, consider this: until two years ago, the only way to sign up for the service was through a Web browser, which is much slower to use than an app. Facebook originally viewed phones as mostly useful for posting status updates, not as a primary way to access the service, said Javier Olivan, who heads Facebook's growth team.

Eventually, the company realized that tens of millions of people in developing countries were eager to try Facebook but had no access to a computer, nor could they afford the $600 iPhones or $40-a-month data plans common in the developed world.

"It became very obvious that the next wave of users would come on mobile only," Olivan said in an interview last week.

To go after those customers, Facebook spent a reported $70 million to buy Snaptu, an Israeli company that had begun to offer primitive versions of Facebook and other apps on simple cellphones.

The acquisition "unlocked an opportunity for us," Olivan said.

From virtually no users on feature phones a couple of years ago, the company has grown to 100 million active users. Facebook declined to offer any specific predictions about the growth of its service on either smartphones or feature phones.

The immediate prospects are modest of making money from feature phone users. During the first quarter of this year, Facebook got only 24 percent of its $1.5 billion in revenue from outside of the United States, Canada and Europe. It is just beginning to ramp up its mobile advertising revenue, which was 30 percent of its overall global ad revenue in the first quarter. Those mobile ads are not as profitable as desktop ads, whose growth is flat.

The company will report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, but analysts expect that developed markets will be the biggest source of Facebook's revenue and profit for a long time.

Still, there is a longer-term business opportunity, for both Facebook and its phone industry partners, as mobile usage grows in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Latest Tech News: 5G technology

Huawei working on 5G technology:

As people across the world get used to the fourth generation (4G) mobile technology, Chinese equipment maker Huawei Technologies  has said it is working on the fifth generation (5G), which is likely to be available for use by 2020. 

The company said presently 200 people are working on the project and it has earmarked a specified amount for the research and development of the technology. It, however, refused to share details about the amount to be spent for the development of the technology. 

Huawei Technologies official Wen Tong said that by 2020, there will be billions of connections and 5G can provide massive connectivity. The technology will enable people to have a fibre network like user experience on a wireless connection. 

It can provide speed of 10GBps, which is 100 times faster than the mobile technology used these days, Tong added. 

South Korean giant Samsung has also announced that it has successfully tested 5G technology and it will be ready for commercial roll-out by 2020. 

Mobile operators across the world have started moving towards the high-speed long term evolution (LTE) or 4G networks and Huawei provides equipment to 85 such networks. 

The company is also undertaking a trial run to test the speed on its 4G technology on high speed MagLev train in Shanghai. 

Huawei has deployed an LTE network to support wireless connectivity on the train, which runs between the centre of the Shanghai district to the International Airport. The total length of the track is 31km and the train achieves a speed of up to 431km per hour. 

The company said on that speed, its 4G technology can provide a download speed of up to 50MBps.

Launching of Moto X phone on August 1

Google to launch Moto X phone on August 1

Google's Motorola division appears set to unveil its much anticipated Moto X phone on August 1 at an event in New York City.


Email invitations sent to the media displayed the Moto X name in bold letters. The invitation depicted several youths holding the Moto X, the first smartphone Motorola has developed since its 2012 acquisition by Google.

Motorola, which Google bought for $12.5 billion, has steadily ceded market share to Apple and Samsung Electronics, with most of its latest phones garnering relatively lukewarm receptions.

The Motorola business has been a drag on Google's profit margins, with Motorola's second-quarter losses totaling $342 million.

A Web page to respond to the invitation said, "Come experience the new Motorola. No Stage. No crowds." The page asks guests to select one of several "sessions" to attend at different times at an address in mid-town Manhattan.

In May, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside said at the AllThingsD technology conference that the new Moto X phones would be built in the United State.