NDM

Google: 80% of news organisations are targeted by state hackers

More than four-fifths of the world's top media organisations, including the Guardian, have been the target of likely state sponsored hacking attacks, according to research from two Google security engineers.

Presented at the ongoing Black Hat Asia 2014 conference in Singapore, Shane Huntley and Morgan Marquis-Boire's research shows that journalists are "massively over-represented" among the targets of state-sponsored hackers.

While the pair didn't go into detail about their methodology, they confirmed to Reuters that Google "tracks the state actors that attack our users".

NDM

20 best Android apps and games this week

It's time for this week's roundup of the best new Android apps and games. This week sees a mixture of comics, photo-slinging, magazines, basketball, Star Wars and golfing-themed Flappy Birdity.

Prices are correct at the time of writing, with “IAP” indicating whether in-app purchases are used within the app or game. Looking for iPhone and iPad apps instead? That roundup will be published on Monday morning.

I believe that many app creators will be happy to see their created app put up in the top 20 for best android apps, this will give them the confidence to try and improve it and make it better to increase their level of consistensy

Feminism

Example 1

Broadcast

Traditional-female 

This advert is  traditional as it is a make up advert and the audience will know that they are going to see a female character on their as the product is a hair conditioner. This advert does not challenge the gender performance is reinforces it because it has the right character to present a feminine product. 

Alternative female

This advert of women's fitness suggests that gender is only a performance, that chan be challenged. This advert is a fitness advert and the audience would normally suggests that it would have male characters on it, but in this case we have females. This challenges the Butlers theory that gender is a performance as we have women doing something which a male dominant will do.

Traditional - Male 

Insanity workout 

This advert is fully traditional because we would normally see a male character of an fitness advert because they want to show the strong and macho men. This why the use a male character to fully the gender performance because if they had a female on their no male character would watch it and it would have been a alternative advert.

Alternative Male
Mr Muscle

This advert challenges the gender performance, as you can see the advert has a male character using a feminine cleaning product. This advert is showing a male character using a cleaning product challenges the gender performance because people would normally see a female character using cleaning products in the kitchen

Critical investigation

Has new and digital media had an impact upon ownership and control of the media institution(s) involved in your case study area?  Explain in detail any impact and what exactly has changed

Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that allows its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr etc. Users are also able to record and share short videos lasting approximately 15 seconds. Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger and launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012. Instagram is distributed through the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Windows Phone Store. April 10^th 2012 Facebook had announced its buy for Instagram Facebook is paying £629m in cash and stock for the takeover. Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to continue to develop Instagram as a separate brand, allowing it to post to rival networks. The app is free and allows users to apply 17 filters to the pictures they take - changing the colour balance to give the images a different feel - before they are uploaded. 

What impact has there been on the way in which the audience now consume the media products/ texts involved in your case study?  How does it differ from what went before?  Consider (SHEP)

With instagram, marketers have access to a huge audience of 100 million active users snapping over 40 million photos per day and posting 1000 comments per second, Instagram is more than a place for selfies and cat pictures. Since the audience have be a grouping content through a hash tag make it easy for consumers to share photos with your brand by choosing a hash tag that balances individuality with simplicity.

NDM

How to teach a dog to read using an iPad

It was inevitable, really, given the irrepressible rise of the selfie: the day has finally come when we can attempt to teach our canine friends to capture images of themselves.

All the same, I am a little taken aback to find myself smearing my iPad screen with peanut butter and waving it under my pup’s nose.

I am at an iPad class billed as “higher education for your dog”, run by the pioneer of dog-selfie training, New Yorker Anna Jane Grossman. She has teamed up with her childhood friend Nicole Scott, founder of City Dog, and Londoners now have the opportunity to attend one of their iDog clinics.

“These courses are about having fun together, developing the bond between you and your dog, and refining your training skills. Plus you will walk away with a cool party trick,” promises Scott, while Grossman is quick to point out that we are not here to teach our dogs to do useful things, such as online banking.

This shows that new digital media is improving, you can tell from the way way they are including animals into the new type of app, a lot  of dog owners with ipads will enjoy this app because it will give them a chance to create a stronger bond with their pet. This could benefit apple financially because it is a very interesting and smart app.

NDM

Yahoo, Google and Apple also claim right to read user emails

Microsoft is not unique in claiming the right to read users' emails – Apple, Yahoo and Google all reserve that right as well, the Guardian has determined.

The broad rights email providers claim for themselves has come to light following Microsoft's admission that it read a journalist's Hotmail accountin an attempt to track down the source of an internal leak. But most webmail services claim the right to read users' email if they believe that such access is necessary to protect their property.

Microsoft's own terms of service allow the company to access content"when Microsoft forms a good faith belief that doing so is necessary [to] protect the… property of Microsoft". It made use of that right to read the email of an un-named journalist who had allegedly taken possession of the source code to Windows 8 thanks to an internal leak at the firm.

Following the revelation that Microsoft could, and did, read users' email,the firm's deputy general counsel told the Guardian that it would be tightening up its privacy policy. The new rules require an internal and external legal team to review any internal requests for access, and commit the firm to increased transparency over future requests.

I believe some people will not like the fact that their email are being monitored and watched by Microsoft because they want their own privacy, this will make Microsoft less unique from trying steal other companies ideas. This connotes that Microsoft are running out of originality.

NDM

Bill Gates: Microsoft would have bought WhatsApp too

Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates, says that Facebook and Google weren’t the only companies interested in acquiring WhatsApp: Microsoft was also “willing” to buy the messaging app.

Facebook bought the five-year-old WhatsApp cross-platform text message replacement app, which sends messages via phones’ data connections rather than SMS, for $19bn in February. WhatsApp is Facebook’s biggest acquisition and showed the importance of the drive to mobile from the desktop for the social network.

WhatsApp rebuffed a $1bn offer from Google in April last year prior to the social network’s bid. Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg said that WhatsApp was on track to connect 1 billion people which is what made it valuable.

“Microsoft would have been willing to buy it, too. I don’t know for $19bn, but the company’s extremely valuable,” Gates, 58, told Rolling Stone in a wide-ranging interview covering technology, climate change and God.

I believe that if Bill Gates purchased whats app it would have financially benefited more , unfortunately he was too late to buy it. I think that if Bill Gates purchased whats app he could have added more of his creativity to the app, making it attract more people to download it thus making more money.

NDM

Microsoft's $2.5bn question: what if it doesn't release Office for the iPad?

It may be one of Microsoft’s biggest squandered opportunities.

Tired of waiting for Office to be optimised for their mobile gadgets, a growing contingent of younger companies is turning to cheaper, simpler and touch-friendly apps that can perform word processing and other tasks in the “cloud” - on internet-based systems.

Take Artivest Holdings, a New York-based financial services startup that sells alternative investment products. The New York-based company uses an app called Quip, which combines word processing and messaging, to handle all but the most sensitive legal and financial files.

“There are no more Microsoft Word documents being circulated. If someone emails me a Word document, I’ll tell them to put it in Quip,” said Artivest’s chief investment officer David Levine. 

“If I’m walking to and from home, or going to an appointment, I can review or edit on my iPad. Not being tied to my desk, that’s a big pro,” he said. 

The speed with which apps like Quip have been adopted is forcing Microsoft to intensify its efforts to bring the powerful but ageing Office software suite to tablets and smartphones, according to people close to the company.

NDM

Internet of things: funding to double, David Cameron announces

Funding for research into using the internet to improve everyday devices will more than double as part of efforts to make the UK a world leader in digital technology, David Cameron has announced.

The prime minister announced an extra £45m to develop the "internet of things" as he arrived in Germany for the CeBIT 2014 trade fair.

He is attending the event in Hanover – where he is due to hold talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel – as Britain is the official "partner country" of the event.

Combining British ingenuity with German engineering would put the two countries at the forefront of a new technology-based "industrial revolution", he suggested.

The prime minister said: "I see the internet of things as a huge transformative development – a way of boosting productivity, of keeping us healthier, making transport more efficient, reducing energy needs, tackling climate change.

NDM

Instagramming North Korea

David Guttenfelder has visited North Korean more than any other western photographer, regularly visiting in the past decade. Instagram, he says, has become just as essential as his work for Associated Press. 

AP’s chief Asia photographer, Guttenfelder says that using a phone camera allowed his to take less formal shots that felt less invasive, and more intimate, particularly since North Korea lifted its own smartphone ban in March 2013.

His follower account has grown from around 100 this time last year to more than 300,000 now.

NDM

What is Apple CarPlay?

Apple has launched its assault on the in-car technology market by announcing a product called CarPlay, which it hopes will integrate the iPhone, Apple maps and Siri into the car dashboard.

Announced at the Geneva International Motor Show, CarPlay is the next evolution of Apple’s iOS in the Car, which connected iPhones to car stereos via the now obsolete docking connector that featured on iPhones and iPods up until the release of the iPhone 5 with the newer, smaller Lightning Connector.

What is it?

CarPlay is a more advanced way to connect an iPhone to a car’s entertainment and information systems, allowing access to a variety of the smartphone’s functions including music, messaging and navigation.

How does it work?

Like existing cars with iPod or iPhone connections, cars fitted with the new Apple CarPlay will connect to iPhones using the Lightning Connector, pulling data and information directly from the iPhone and charging it in the process.

The iPhone can be controlled via voice, or through the car’s native touchscreen interface mounted in the dashboard or with traditional buttons including those mounted on the steering wheel.

i believe that many apple users will enjoy the fact that you can connect your  iphone to a cars entertainment and information system. Also i believe that apple could make more money after people start buying those type of cars.

NDM

Blackphone: can a mobile ever truly be hack-proof?

Encryption and security specialists Silent Circle has teamed up with Geeksphone, a joint project between security-conscious developers, entrepreneurs and ex-special forces operatives, to launch a new mobile phone that claims to give users back control of their data and lets them “determine what data they want to reveal, rather than be forced”.

On the face of it, the Blackphone does exactly that. For $629 (£377), customers get a smartphone that includes one year’s subscription to secure communication service Silent Circle and a virtual private network (VPN) for secure browsing, a ”remote wipe” anti-theft feature, a firewall and a year’s subscription to 5GB of secure cloud storage.

It also has no sign-up process, no ecosystem like Android or iPhone has (although it runs a modified Android OS) and a Blackphone specific app-store that is on the way, although users can still download apps from the Google Play Store or third party apps unrelated to Google.

NDM

Facebook 'in talks to buy drone satellite firm'

Facebook is reportedly in discussions to acquire Titan Aerospace, a manufacturer of drones, for around $60m.

Titan Aerospace specialises in solar-powered, very high flying drones capable of staying airborne for five years at a time, positioned as a more cost-effective alternative to orbital satellites dubbed as “atmospheric satellites”.

The talks, confirmed by technology site TechCrunch, indicate that Facebook is likely interested in these satellite alternative drones that fly as high as 20km in altitude as part of its Internet.org initiative.

NDM

Batman: Arkham Knight announced

Interestingly, the game will be available on PC, PS4 and Xbox One only. “We’re excited to be developing the game for next-gen platforms,” said game director, Sefton Hill. “[It] has allowed us to bring to life the design elements that we envisioned from the beginning such as the Batmobile and how it augments Batman’s abilities, to the fully detailed and realized Gotham City.”

Released in 2009, Arkham Asylum provided an authentic vision of the Batman universe and was acclaimed for its smooth controls and accessible combat mechanic. Co-written by DC author Paul Dini the story captured the gothic darkness of the best Dark Knight comics. The sequel, Arkham City, expanded the action to feature a whole area of Gotham, but retained the original’s style and atmosphere.