After what seems to have been a rather long wait since it was first announced last November, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is arriving in Britain. What’s more, it appears to be exclusive to this country. The handset’s arrival is almost imminent – the date is apparently the 13th February, although as is normal in the mobile phone world, this date is a week later than expected.

Samsung’s telecoms exec Simon Stanford said “After much speculation, we are pleased to announce the availability of the Galaxy Nexus white which follows the great reception the phone has received since it was launched back in November.”

If you buy your handsets online rather than from a shop then the online retailer Clove will be selling a SIM-free smartphone for £498. If you prefer offline retailers then it might be worthwhile contacting a network operator to see when the device will be available there. Experts reckon contract details for the black version of the Galaxy Nexus will be the same for the white version.

The white version is also just the same as the original and features Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), a 1.2GHz Dual-Core Processor, 4.65 inch Super Amoled Screen, a 5-megapixel camera and a  1.3 megapixel camera, 16GB of storage, and Wi-fi, GPS, Bluetooth and NFC. While NFC is a useful addition to the development of handsets such as the Galaxy Nexus, in reality users cannot make use of it in Britain yet; the possibilities are rather limited at the moment.

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Facebook has already discussed proposals with unidentified advertising agencies for displaying what it calls “featured stories” in the news feed seen by users on the site in an effort to tap a new source of revenue, the newspaper cited several people familiar with the plans as saying. Facebook mobile device users are likely to see advertisements in March ahead of its initial public offering, which is expected in May, according to the FT.

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In filing its IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, Facebook provided a long-awaited glimpse into the inner workings of one of the world’s most closely-watched companies. Cecilia Kang and Hayley Tsukayama report:

The government-required filing revealed details about the company that were previously unknown because the firm was private. The paperwork portrays a company that makes the vast majority of its money from selling display ads targeted to its users who have revealed to Facebook much about their lives. Those connections and activities among its 845 million members are an advertiser’s dream, experts say.

The filing stated that Facebook users upload 250 million photos a day, signal that they “like” items posted by friends about 2.7 billion times a day, and have created a web of 100 billion friends and connections on its site.

Last year, the company had $3.7 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profits — astounding figures for an 8-year-old enterprise, though slightly less than what some analysts had expected. Google, perhaps Facebook’s primary rival, brought in just shy of $38 billion in revenue last year. It launched its own a social network, Google+, in June.

Another key question answered by the documents is just how much the firm’s top executives rake in each year. Hayley Tsukayama writes:

The base salaries for all of Facebook’s top executives were divulged in the company’s Wednesday S-1 filing. Here’s how it broke down:

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO: Zuckerberg made a salary of $483,333 in 2011, in addition to a $220,500 bonus for the first half of 2011. He also received “other” compensation — which covers such things as chartered travel costs and security details — that totaled $783,529. Overall, Zuckerberg received $1,487,362 for 2011, excluding his substantial stake in the company.

Effective Jan. 1, 2013, Zuckerberg will reduce his base annual salary to $1. Sheryl Sandberg, COO: As important as Mark Zuckerberg is to Facebook, the S-1 filing also reveals that the company is very concerned about keeping its chief operations office, Sheryl Sandberg.

Losing Sandberg, who has often been identified as the “grown-up” public face of the company, would be a big blow to the social network.

The document also reveals that if Sandberg is “terminated without cause” for a reason other than death or disability, she will be able to vest her stock immediately. Losing Sandberg (or Zuckerberg) is also listed as a risk for the company.

“The loss of key personnel, including members of management as well as key engineering, product development, marketing, and sales personnel, could disrupt our operations and have an adverse effect on our business,” the filing said.

Sandberg had a salary and bonus of $381,966 in 2011, but was also granted about $30 million in stock awards. David Ebersman, CFO: David Ebersman, one of the most important Facebook executives that you’ve never heard of, also made $381,966 in salary and bonuses. With stock, his total compensation comes to $18.6 million.

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More than 60 different policies will be combined into one that will go into effect 1 March, the company said. Google said the new policy will give people more relevant search results and help advertisers find customers. Google has previously faced criticism over the sharing of users data.

"We're rolling out a new main privacy policy that covers the majority of our products and explains what information we collect, and how we use it in a more readable way," said Alma Whitten, Google's director of privacy, product and engineering.

The single privacy policy will apple to Google search, Gmail, YouTube and Google+, its social networking site. The main change applies to users who have Google accounts. "If you're signed into Google, we can do things like suggest search queries, or tailor your search results, based on the interests you've expressed in Google+, Gmail and YouTube," the company said, explaining the changes.

The revision comes after Google's previous attempt at social networking, Buzz, was shut down. The company was criticised for inadvertently revealing users' most e-mailed contacts to other participants through the Buzz platform.

Last year, Google and the Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement to prevent Google from misrepresenting how it uses personal information and from sharing a user's data without approval. Google said it had been in touch with regulators over these latest changes to its privacy policy, which will apply globally, according to the Associated Press news agency.

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Everyone wants to download or save favorite videos from YouTube. Aiseesoft Free YouTube Downloader is the best free YouTube Downloader tool, which allows you download desired online videos from YouTube, MetaCafe, Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace, i’Film and many other online video websites in your local computer with high speed.

It provides two ways to download online videos. You can use it by ‘Add Task’ option directly, or use Internet Browser to navigate YouTube videos. It is free and supports multi-threads for every downloading task.

Step 1: Launch ‘Aiseesoft Free YouTube Downloader’ (Start -> All Programs -> Aiseesoft -> Aiseesoft Free YouTube Downloader -> Aiseesoft Free YouTube Downloader)

Step 2: Click on ‘New Download’, for adding new task.

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Your desire video is downloaded in destination folder. You can download more than video at the same time. I hope this tutorial helps you to downloading online videos from YouTube. Share this tutorial within your social circle and do not forget to give us feedback

 

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Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has achieved 95 percent of its targets for year 2011, the PTA said on Friday. According to a statement a special meeting of PTA reviewed the progress of target and goals set for its divisions for the year 2011. The meeting was chaired by Chairman PTA Dr. Mohammad Yaseen and attended by Dr. Khawar Siddique Khokhar Member (Technical) and senior PTA officials.

During the meeting Divisional heads presented progress of tasks allocated to respective Division for the previous year. During this meeting the authority also approved the tasks assigned to each Division for the year 2012. The Authority was pleased to note that more than 95% of the targets and goals were achieved during the year 2011.

Chairman PTA Dr. Mohammad Yaseen expressed his satisfaction over the achievement made during the year 2011 and appreciated the performance of PTA employees for their dedication and hard work which made it possible to achieve such a high percentage of success. He directed all PTA employees to work with the same zeal and further improve PTA performance and raise the success bar even more high.

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Researchers have exposed a security hole in the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. The vulnerability has to do with the BlackBerry Bridge software that links the device with a user's phone. This software could be used to get unauthorised access to corporate email messages.

When Research In Motion (RIM) launched the PlayBook last year, it didn't have a built-in way to access email or calendars. Instead, users were expected to link the PlayBook with a BlackBerry phone via bridging software that connects the two devices wirelessly. Although less convenient than native functions, the set-up was thought to be inherently more secure since the information was never actually stored on the tablet.

That may have been a tad optimistic. A pair of researchers now say they've successfully hacked into a PlayBook using the supposedly secure BlackBery Bridge Bluetooth connection. Although the hack requires some special conditions, it hits RIM on its biggest strength compared to other devices: security.
Zach Lanier and Ben Nell of Intrepidus Group were the ones who found the Bridge's weak spot. They included it in their Blade Runner-themed presentation at the Infiltrate security conference last week in Miami Beach, FL, first reported by ThreatPost.

The problem, as they describe it, is a bug that exposes the Bridge's authorisation token, which is normally in a protected file, to anyone who knows where to look. "Think of it like this," Lanier told Mashable, "the Bridge apps on the PlayBook are glorified web browsers. They use a session token, much like a browser talking to a web application would, to assert their authorisation with the BlackBerry Bridge service. Due to a bug in TabletOS, this session token is accessible in a file that is readable by any user, including unprivileged applications and processes."While that sounds bad (and it is), the danger is limited in two key ways:

The user must be using BlackBerry Bridge to expose the token (unless the phone has no password set — then it can be used anytime).There must be some kind of malicious app already on the PlayBook to exploit it.

The hypothetical hacker doesn't actually have to be physically close to the PlayBook in question. Lanier confirmed to that the only thing necessary is malware on the tablet designed to exploit the token. If that's the case, once the bridge is engaged and the bad app is running, every email and calendar appointment is potentially in the hands of hackers.

The good news is that the security hole will be patched in PlayBook 2.0, RIM's software update that will also finally bring native email to the tablet. RIM knew about the flaw through Intrepidus Group and issued the statement: "There are no known exploits and risk is mitigated by the fact that a user would need to install and run a malicious application after initiating a BlackBerry Bridge connection."

Nonetheless, the news is yet another stumble for the PlayBook which launched to tepid reviews, experienced sluggish sales and was recently discounted to US$299 for the 16GB model (it originally sold for US$499). To add insult to injury, studies show many businesses plan to go with the iPad for their tablet needs, even at the enterprise level.

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Google India and Facebook India on Monday again told the Delhi High Court that it was impossible for them to control content with billions of people accessing the websites. The court adjourned till Jan 19 the hearing related to allegedly objectionable content on 21 websites.

Senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for Google India, said that the summons issued to social networking sites by a metropolitan magistrate showed complete lack of understanding about how the online system worked.

He argued that the issue was related to the freedom of speech. "The issue relates to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression, and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China," he said.

Arguing that Google India and Google Inc. were different entities, he clarified: "It has nothing to do with Google India directly or indirectly, I am not responsible for it."He submitted that the petitioner company had no control over websites where the objectionable material was posted. "I am only a search engine, the offending materials of websites have nothing to do with me," he said.

"Google India is neither a search engine nor a web hosting site and was a distinct legal entity from its US-based holding company Google Inc., a search engine," he added. Advocate Hariharan, appearing for complainant Vinay Rai, said that Google Inc. and Google India were the same.

He said they (Google India) said they were only concerned with marketing but their documents said that they carried on business of production and development of internet programme and software programme. Business of advertisement was only a small part. The court was hearing the petition filed by Facebook and Google, challenging a trial court's summons.

Rai had requested the court to remove objectionable contents from 21 websites. Among these, 12 websites are of foreign-based companies. Metropolitan Magistrate Sudesh Kumar earlier summoned the accused companies to face trial for allegedly committing the offence punishable under Indian Penal Code sections 292 (sale of obscene books and material and 293 (sale of obscene objects to young person).

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Last year in December, an FIR was registered with the circle against a man identified as Sheikh Samir Mir, who lives in DHA Phase I. The case was lodged by a well-known businessman, Fazal Karim Dadabhoy. According to him, Mir hacked into the Facebook account of one of the women in his family and uploaded her pictures on other websites. “Mir not only hacked the Facebook account but also misused it and posted pictures on other websites,” said Dadabhoy.

The FIA began an investigation against Mir and some Facebook accounts of his friends. It was discovered that Samir Mir and his friends had created three more Facebook accounts by the names of well-reputed women. Earlier this week, an FIA team raided Mir’s house, but he escaped. The officials seized his laptop, cell phone and other belongings as evidence. Mir is still on the run. The deputy director of the Cyber Crime Cell, Arif Hanfi, said that his men were trying to catch Mir, who has acquired protective bail. He pointed out that it does not affect his arrest.

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KARACHI: Warid Telecom launched Warid Ezee Connection, empowering its retailers to further enhance the customer experience. Warid new customers can get the prepaid number of their choice from any designated retail outlet across Pakistan. Leading the market with customised products and services, Warid manages the product portfolio of over 60 value added services based on IVR, SMS, MMS and GPRS platforms.

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