Researchers develop new technique that can quash cyber crimes

Researchers have developed an effective way to trace anonymous emails and quash cyber crimes in the bud.

Tests showed their method is very accurate, unlike many other methods currently in use. It can provide presentable evidence in courts of law, the journal Digital Investigation reports.

"In the past few years, we've seen an alarming increase in the number of cyber crimes involving anonymous emails," says study co-author Benjamin Fung, professor of Information Systems Engineering at Concordia University and an expert in data mining.

Data mining is extracting useful, previously unknown knowledge from a large volume of raw data. "These emails can transmit threats or child pornography, facilitate communications between criminals or carry viruses."

While police can often use the IP address to locate the house or apartment where an email originated, they may find many people at that address, according to a Concordia University statement.

Nokia CFO sees long Symbian sales ahead

Nokia Oyj reinforced its commitment to its legacy Symbian smartphone platform on Wednesday, sending its shares higher.

Nokia said in February it would replace its Symbian platform with Microsoft's Windows Phone over the coming two years, creating uncertainty among investors over the future of its Symbian workhorse.

"We will of course utilise the long-tail of Symbian as long as it gives us profitable margin," Nokia's Chief Financial Officer Timo Ihamuotila told a UBS Technology Conference.

"So the transition period 2011-2012 relates to product creation transition, not sales transition as such," he said.

Ihamuotila said sales of products have often lasted longer than expected in the mobile industry.

Shares in Nokia rose more than 3 percent on Ihamuotila comments, dragging STOXX 600 European Technology Index 0.1 percent into the black.

Chinese voices find outlet in microblogs

Yu Jianrong has spent years advocating the rights of China's rural poor and denouncing lawless officials, but five months ago he took a step that expanded the reach of that campaign exponentially.

Since opening a Twitter-like microblog account in October, the outspoken professor has emerged as a trail-blazer in harnessing the medium -- which barely existed here a year ago -- as an avenue for public expression.

And as the country's docile parliament meets this week in Beijing, online voices like Yu's are increasingly stirring the real public debate -- and they are voices the ruling Communist Party will have to listen to, experts say.

A professor of rural issues at a top state think-tank in Beijing, Yu, 48, has deftly walked a fine line to highlight perhaps China's hottest political issue today -- the depredations suffered by the country's lower classes.

"Current technology has altered the social environment. Everyone has a microphone. Everyone is a news headquarters," Yu, a former lawyer, said of microblogging in a recent Chinese media interview.

From his digital soapbox, Yu, who is invited to address officials across the country on proper governance, has publicised his lecturing of authorities who mistreat or suppress the populace.

Making human-like robots for easier interaction with people

Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that when robots move in a more human-like fashion, people find it easier to interact with them and mimic them.

“It’s important to build robots that meet people’s social expectations because we think that will make it easier for people to understand how to approach them and how to interact with them,” said Andrea Thomaz.

For the study, Thomaz and student Michael Gielniak asked how easily people could recognize what a robot called Simon was doing by watching its movements.

“Robot motion is typically characterized by jerky movements, with a lot of stops and starts, unlike human movement which is more fluid and dynamic,” said Gielniak.

“We want humans to interact with robots just as they might interact with other humans, so that it’s intuitive.”

They asked humans to perform the movements they saw Simon making.

Bloggers call content regulation a gag on freedom

A proposed government move to regulate content on blogs has ignited a firestorm of protest from the blogging community which is accusing the government of restricting free speech and acting like the guardians of a police state.

At the heart of the issue is the Indian IT Act which was amended in 2008 to incorporate the much-needed changes to clarify the legal position of intermediaries or those who provide web-hosting services, internet service providers and online auction sites.

However, the term intermediaries, for some reason, was also broadened to include blogs, though they neither provide the same kind of services like the ISPs nor have large-scale commercial interests. The law stated that the government should clarify the rules under which the intermediaries should function and the list of prohibitions applicable to them.

The list was published sometime last month and comments were invited from members of the public, bloggers and other members of the intermediaries group. ‘Intermediaries’ include web hosting providers which would include companies like Amazon , cyber-cafes, payment sites like Paypal , online auction sites, internet service providers like BSNL , Airtel etc.

Blogs also fall in this category as networked service providers. The due diligence specifies that the intermediaries should not display, upload, modify or publish any information that is ‘harmful’, ‘threatening’, ‘abusive’, ‘harassing’, ‘blasphemous’, ‘objectionable’, ‘defamatory’, ‘vulgar’, ‘obscene’, ‘pornographic’, ‘paedophilic’, ‘libellous’, ‘invasive of another’s privacy’, ‘hateful’, ‘disparaging’, ‘racially , ethnically or otherwise objectionable, ‘relating to money laundering or gambling’.

Seven upcoming super-tablets

The iPad came, saw and conquered in 2010, establishing the tablet as a mainstream tech gadget. To the extent that this year most of the talk in tech town has been of tablets, with every manufacturer worth their salt announcing plans to release some sort of tablet or the other in an attempt to carve out a slice of the tablet cake.

And unlike last year when most seemed to be trying to play catch-up with Apple's uber tablet, with what many critics described as “oversized Android smartphones,” this time there are a number of contenders across different platforms (including a revamped Android one), each claiming to add a new dimension to the tablet experience. Adding to the tablet fun is the fact that Apple itself has launched the second version of the iPad.

Yes, if 2010 saw the tablet clouds gather, 2011 is going to see them rain down with a vengeance. And while it is no easy task to choose between the dozens of tablets that have either just hit the market or are expected in the coming days, we reckon the following seven are likely to grab the most attention:

Apple iPad 2: Act Two
Release date: March 11(International)

Yes, the appearance of Steve Jobs on stage might have overshadowed the iPad itself, but there is no doubting that the new iPad does improve the original one in more than one way, even though it retains the same screen size and resolution. There is greater processing speed beneath the hood thanks to the dual core A5 processor, better graphics, a gyroscope and something we had been predicting all along — dual cameras for video calling.

But those are just specs — where the iPad really scores is in the fact that it retains its very sleek design (it is now slimmer than the iPhone 4) and the brilliantly intuitive interface, courtesy iOS. Top that off with the fact it still serves up more apps than any other tablet and has managed to maintain its astonishing ten hour-plus battery in spite of the graphics and processing boost, and you can see why it is likely to remain the tablet to beat. A smart folding cover will be sold alongside, giving Apple a headstart over third-party accessory vendors. Some negatives remain; the cameras are not the greatest in town and it still does not have a memory expansion slot.

Google's Cloud Connect to save MS Office work automatically

Each time you open a new Word file in Microsoft Word, from now on, there won't be any need to save your work every few seconds, for fear of losing all your data with a power cut or a computer hang. Google's newly launched Cloud Connect toolbar for Microsoft apps, sits inside a MS Word, Excel, or Powerpoint application.

Available for free download, the toolbar enables users to directly save their MS Office work into Google's server farms located all over the world, from any device. Google's strategy to embed its apps inside MS Office suite, which forms almost a third of its $62 billion annual sales will be a direct hit into Microsoft's prime bread source after Windows, if successful.

Once logged in to a Google account, the toolbar automatically keeps saving any document being currently worked upon on to a Google server farm. The catch is that your PC should once in a while be connected to the internet, to get it synced with the cloud.

"We will keep documents on the cloud till eternity for a user, as long as his or her Google account is active," Shan Sinha, Product Manager, Google Apps told ET from Google's Mountain View headquarters. Won't saving a large amount of private documents of users, create legal issues for Google? "All documents are stored in an encrypted fashion, and only people with the document's weblink would be allowed to view or edit," he says.

The Cloud Connect initiative by Google is a step ahead of its Docs offering, which failed to pick up enthusiasm in many markets, as people are still hooked on to MS Office applications. Microsoft holds almost 90% market share in Office applications. The advantadge Cloud Connect toolbar offers users is that, once synced, all MS Office data sitting in a home or office PC, can be accessed from anywhere in the world through iPads , smartphones or PCs.