BlackBerry Messenger Will be a Free App on Android and Iphone this summer.

Blackberry Announces Summer Release Of BlackBerry Messenger For iPhone & Android

 BlackBerry announced on Monday at its 2013 BlackBerry Live keynote address that it will finally be releasing it Blackberry Messenger (BBM) for iPhone and Android over the summer.

 

 

At the BlackBerry Live conference in Orlando, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced that BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the popular service that has long allowed BlackBerry users to chat and share voice notes, images and video, will now be cross-platform with free apps for iOS and Android.

Heins reportedly called it a “statement of confidence.”

There are certainly some trade-offs in this decision,  but I call it a smart move to keep BlackBerry users from defecting. Even though Heins has been bragging about the success of the company’s current line of phones and its new operating system, BlackBerry is no longer the behemoth it once was.  So one problem with the old BBM model is that there has been a shrinking pool of people for BlackBerry users to chat with via BBM. Now, with a cross-platform product, BlackBerry users will have plenty of iOS and Android users to communicate with.

There are already competing cross-platform apps including Whatsapp, Skype and — to a certain extent — Facebook .

Features

The first version of the Android and iOS apps, available this summer, will include the following features, according to a BlackBerry blog post.

• Live BBM chats
• Multi-person chats
• Voice note sharing
• BlackBerry Groups, where BBM users are able to set up groups of up to 30 people and share calendar, photos, files and more

Risks and benefits

The obvious risk in making BBM available to other platforms is that it means that BlackBerry users who love BBM more than BlackBerry itself are now free to abandon the device and switch to an iPhone or Android device. That could cause BlackBerry to lose some customers, especially young people in the U.K. and other countries where BBM is quite popular. I don’t think it will have much of an impact in the U.S. (I rarely see young people with BlackBerries these days) and even where BlackBerry is strong, it could also serve as an incentive for some to stay with BlackBerry because their BBM product just got a lot more useful.

One thing it does do is make BlackBerry more relevant. People are talking about it and thinking about it and BlackBerry users can now use BBM to reach out to their friends who are Android and iOS users.

BBM popularity

BlackBerry claims to have more than 60 million active BBM users with “more than 51 million daily active users who are connecting with friends or colleagues an average of one and a half hours every day.” BBM users send and recieve more than 10 billion messages a day, which, according to the company is “nearly twice as many messages per user per day as compared to other mobile messaging apps.”

Islamic group promises to resume U.S. bank cyber attacks

An Islamic group that has claimed responsibility for several waves of attacks on major U.S. banks since last September has promised to resume its assault next week using a lot more firepower.

The group that calls itself the Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam claimed to have given a preview of what's to come in launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of a number of banks and credit unions on Monday. Targets included Bank of America, PNC Financial, Capital One Financial, Union Bank, Zions Bank, Citizens Bank, Peoples United Bank, Patelco Credit Union and University Federal Credit Union.
Which banks were struck and the extent of the disruption were not clear. However, Ronen Kenig, director of security solutions at Radware said Thursday at least seven banks suffered outages that lasted from a few minutes to several hours. He refused to name the banks.

 The group generally uses compromised servers in hosting companies that are often located in the U.S., Kenig said. In the latest attacks, the servers were infected with a "shell booter," which essentially enables the attackers to flood a site with bogus traffic in order to overwhelm its servers.
Maximum traffic in the latest attacks reached more than 100 gigabits per second, far exceeding the maximum of 60 to 70Gbps in previous assaults, Kenig said. The reason the attackers have achieved such traffic levels is through the use of servers instead of compromised PCs, which have far less firepower.
The hosting companies whose servers have been compromised are legitimate businesses unaware of their complicity, Kenig said. Radware has been notifying the companies.
Despite knowing about the attacks in advance, the banks and security vendors have failed to stop them not because of a lack of technology, but because of a lack of cooperation among all the affected parties, Kenig said.
"The entire security ecosystem still does not deal with these attacks as it should," Kenig said. Hampering efforts is a lack of information caused by the reluctance of banks and vendors to share data.

Banks have sought help from the U.S. government in battling the assaults, which some defense officials have blamed on the Iranian government. Several affected banks, including PNC, SunTrust Banks and BB&T, have asked the government to stop or at least lessen the severity of the attacks.

Microsoft fined $731 million by European commission

 

Failure to include browser choice costs computer giant dear

Europe's antitrust chief on Wednesday announced a $731 million fine on Microsoft for its failure to include a browser choice page in its upgrade to Windows 7 in 2011.

The browser choice screen was set as a requirement by the European Commission following an anti-competitive ruling against Microsoft in 2009.Despite Microsoft saying the omission was an oversight due to a "technical fault," Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia charged the company for failing to live up to the terms of the 2009 settlement.
The Commission has increasingly used settlements to solve antitrust cases rather than punitive fines. But this is the first time it has fined a company for failing to honor commitments. Almunia seems keen to send the message that settlements must be followed to the letter.
This is something Google will be keeping an eye on as it tries to settle its own antitrust case with the Commission. Failure to live up to commitments is very serious "whether intentional or not," Almunia said.
The fact that Microsoft cooperated with the Commission as soon as the omission was noticed was a mitigating factor, he said. Microsoft agreed to include the browser choice screen after it was found to have breached European Union competition laws by bundling its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows OS.
However following the upgrade in 2011, the browser option page disappeared. It was not until July 2012 that it was restored after authorities contacted the company. Rival browser developer Mozilla estimated that the omission of the browser choice screen cost them around 8.8 million downloads of Firefox.Almunia could have imposed a fine of up to 10 percent of Microsoft's global annual revenue.

How a New Software Program Can Bring the World Together

 James lives in Hawaii and his mother lives in Korea.  James speaks English (he never learned Korean), and his mom only speaks Korean.  They communicate perfectly.

Elad lives in Israel. His grandmother lives in Austria. Elad speaks no German and his Grandmother speaks no Hebrew.  They communicate perfectly.



What these individuals (and close to 60 million others around the world) share, is a remarkable, free software program called Babylon.
    Babylon may well be the most advanced translation software in the world, and it's a must-have for anyone whose life extends beyond the borders of their own language--or those who want it to.
Once you download it, you can highlight any text in practically any program, and its instantly translated into the language of your choice.   You can use it to translate a website, email, word doc, pdf, and virtually any document in any format you can think of.
You can compose a document in your native language, and Babylon will instantly translate it into another before you send it.
The program translates 75 languages, including: Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindu, and Russian.  It also includes up-to-date encyclopedias, dictionaries, and spell checkers.
Babylon is a long way from early translation software that would, more often than not, generate an unreadable babble of grammatically incoherent text that was better suited for generating laughs than comprehension.  Babylon's ability to understand and translate is state-of-the art.  In fact, businesses are adopting Babylon as the standard when it comes to translating commercial communications and other important documents.
Babylon is also a great tool for people who are learning another language.  Use it anytime you encounter a word or passage you don't understand.
What users rave about most is the program's ability to open up a different world to them. Whether it's surfing a news site in a different country, or being able to properly communicate with a family member or friend oversees, Babylon can make it happen.
Best of all, Babylon is free! To get your free copy, visit Babylon.com.

The World's Richest Tech Billionaires: Familiar Faces As Zuckerberg Drops Down List

In a year when the members of the Forbes Billionaires List had their combined net worth rise more than 15% since 2012 to $5.4 trillion, the world’s wealthiest technologists underperformed.

Among those with lighter pockets is Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Last year when Forbes valued his fortune, Facebook was still a hot private company with all the buzz and anticipation of a potential initial public offering in its future. Things didn’t turn out quite that way, as the stock tumbled along since its May 2012 IPO. It is now far from its sub-$20 price point, which it hit in August, but still not back up to the original $38 offering price. As a result, the hoodie-wearing 28-year-old’s net worth fell $4.2 billion from 2012′s $17.5 billion valuation, dropping him 31 places on this year’s list to No. 66 out of 1,426 billionaires. Among the wealthiest in tech, Zuckerberg falls from the sixth richest individual to the ninth.