The issue of Gmail hacking is creating tension between both Google and China. It is also becoming the issue of countries and people are linking it with the cyber military warfare. As this is the era of technology and war between countries can be done in many ways. The physical presence is no issue these days. The people from U.S.A and China both are getting aggressive and denying each other’s statements.

As we all know that China is an emerging super power and it is the hub of world’s electronics so there is a factor of jealousy among various countries including west. Officially neither Google nor U.S officials are blaming the government of China. There are many rumors regarding this hacking issue but most of them are focused on China.

U.S.A never leaves any issue that is related to its sovereignty and they do certain investigations for getting into the roots of it. Though it is bit difficult to know who is actually behind the hacking scene but every possible step will be taken by U.S and Google with the collaboration of FBI. The two military officers from china have written a paper regarding this issue and they mentioned many things in it.

Senior Colonel Ye Zheng and his colleague Zhao Baoxian said:

“Just as nuclear warfare was the strategic war of the industrial era, cyber-warfare has become the strategic war of the information era, and this has become a form of battle that is massively destructive and concerns the life and death of nations. The targets of psychological warfare on the Internet have expanded from the military to the public”

China is also going through the censorship issue regarding facebook and twitter and from this we can know that there are certain restrictions over freedom of expression in China. We cannot comment on it because this is a personal matter of China and they better know what they have to do with it.

Now let me tell you a bit about the place named as Jinan that is in China and some unknown people are accused from that place for hacking. If you see Jinan from Google earth you will notice that it is same as other cities of China having low level construction. It is also having university and lot of railway lines.

Google says that in Jinan there might be servers of computers who have hacked Gmail accounts or there might be a laptop of a hacker from where Gmail accounts have been compromised. Now this cyber attack is considered as a military cyber war and many of military officials from U.S have accepted this.

Now the investigation is going on and we have to see the real culprit behind this, but as I told you before that this issue has become diplomatic and it might affect various countries relationship because of the involvements of senior U.S officials.

It looks like Russia won’t be banning Skype or Gmail, after all. The Kremlin was reportedly considering blocking both services, along with Hotmail, in response to a major cyberattack that crippled the country’s most popular blog and an independent news site. Some within the Kremlin had believed the services posed a major threat to national security, but some critics had thought the government may have just been looking for an excuse to tighten its control over the Web — ahead of December’s parliamentary elections and next year’s presidential race.

source: AP/HuffPost

Netbook News

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You may recall from yesterday that early adopters were having a variety of issues after activating (or attempting to activate) Sprint’s new Google Voice integration feature. Well, a full day has passed, and we’ve had several calls with GV lead Vincent Paquet as well as Brian Smith, Sprint’s director of product development. Both executives have said that their respective companies have been hard at work on resolutions to each of the issues we outlined Thursday night, and some customers we spoke to yesterday are now back online. Jump past the break for a quick summary of what’s been fixed, and what remains on the to-do list.

Our primary concern yesterday was a voicemail security bug that inadvertently granted management-level access to people that one user called from the Google Voice web app. Google is not commenting on this vulnerability, but has confirmed that it’s not a threat today. The second issue was that some GV customers who were up and running with Sprint integration suddenly found themselves unable to use the service. This issue has been pegged to the removal of an accounting code — GGLVOICE — that some Sprint reps have accidentally removed. The carrier is working to prevent this from occurring in the future, and those already affected should soon be able to call in for support. Next up, some international calls were being processed through Sprint, rather than through GV, even after users activated their integration. This has been tied to the accidental removal of the same accounting code, and Google has offered to reimburse affected individuals (see the update on yesterday’s post for full details).

Finally, many users — notably those on personal accounts with corporate discounts — have been unable to activate GV integration. Sprint has promised a mid-May resolution, and we’ll certainly keep you updated. Users with these issues are still being instructed to share their concerns on the Google Voice Forum, which as of now is finally getting the attention it needs. You can also post a comment below, as both companies have been monitoring here, too. Things are looking much better today than they were yesterday, but our position remains unchanged: Unless you’ve already activated Sprint/Google Voice integration, please stand by until both companies have had a chance to work out these (very significant) kinks. You’ve been able to hold out this long — what’s another few weeks?

Update: Sprint customers on corporate and government accounts (paid for by your employer) are currently not eligible for integration. Eventually, Sprint will enable integration for some of these companies on a case-by-case basis.

Google Voice Forum

The latest version of Google’s Chrome shows the potential of HTML5.

Early adopters can now get a sneak peek at the future of the Web by downloading the latest prerelease, or “beta,” version of Chrome, Google’s Web browser. One of the most interesting new features is an ability to translate speech to text—entirely via the Web.

The feature is the result of work Google has been doing with the World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML Speech Incubator Group, the mission of which is “to determine the feasibility of integrating speech technology in HTML5,” the Web’s new, emerging standard language.

A Web page employing the new HTML5 feature could have an icon that, when clicked, initiates a recording through the computer’s microphone, via the browser. Speech is captured and sent to Google’s servers for transcription, and the resulting text is sent back to the website.

To experiment with the voice-to-text feature, download the latest beta version of Chromehere. Then go to this webpage, click on the microphone, and start talking. You’ll probably find the results mixed, and sometimes hilarious. Using the finest elocution I could muster, I read the opening passage of Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road: “The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless.” I got error messages several times in a row (“speech not recognized” or “connection to speech servers failed”). Once, I received this transcription: “9 sounds good restaurants on the world there’s nothing to do with fam vans island.”

The new feature derives in large part from experiments Google conducted through its Android operating system for mobile devices. For more than a year, saysVincent Vanhoucke, a member of Google’s voice recognition team, Android app developers have been able to integrate voice recognition into their apps using technology provided by Google. This has provided Google with useful voice data with which to train its voice-recognition algorithms. Today, some 20 percent of searches on Android phones are conducted using voice recognition, says Vanhoucke: people use voice recognition to write texts, send emails, or conduct searches. “It has really opened up interesting new avenues,” says Vanhoucke.

However, unlike desktop voice-to-text software, which first accustoms itself to a user’s voice, Chrome is trying to churn out text from voice without prior training.

”

I suppose if they keep track of [the] IP address, they could adapt” to a given user’s voice, says Jim Glass, a speech recognition expert at MIT. Glass notes that the mobile phone provides an acoustic environment very different from that of a laptop or desktop computer; for one thing, a phone’s microphone is reliably placed right at the user’s mouth, unlike computer microphone setups in homes or offices. “This is the beta version of Chrome,” says Glass. “They’ll be collecting data, and we can be sure they will be refining their models–that’s the nature of the speech-recognition game.”

Even if it’s rough around the edges, sometimes the technology impresses. I tried once again and got back “the final warning sounds of the dress rehearsal at laurel players with nothing to do with stand there.” Not so bad. And the Chrome app nailed it to a letter when all I said was “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Third-party programmers have also begun creating Web pages capable of using the new feature of Chrome. Already available for trial is a browser plugin called Speechify that lets you search Google, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon, and other sites using voice with Chrome.

Other inventive uses could soon follow. “Games could be taking keyboard, mouse, touch, accelerometer, and speech input together,” says Karl Westin, an expert on HTML5 who works for Nerd Communications, based in Berlin, Germany. “Having an aeroplane game where you could actually scream ‘up, UP, UUUPPP!’ could be fantastic.”

But the technology is more than just a toy—it also points the way to a much more capable Web. HTML4, the last major version of the HTML language, emerged in 1997. Since then, plugins like Silverlight and Flash have added media-processing capabilities to the Web. But HTML5 enables media playback and offline storage via the browser.

“The insight we had was that more and more people were spending all their time in the browser,” says Google’s Brian Rakowski, group product manager for Chrome. E-mail and instant messaging increasingly take place in browsers rather than in separate e-mail or AIM applications. “We’d like it to be case that you never have to install a native application again,” says Rakowski. “The Web should be able to do all of it.”

source: technology review

For all the android lovers and especially those who were keenly waiting on the latest Gingerbread android 2.3 edition, the wait is finally over!

Mobilink indigo has exclusively launched the much awaited and the most talked about Samsung Nexus S powered by Google’s latest and fastest Gingerbread software.

The Samsung Nexus S has the latest and fastest Gingerbread software(Android 2.3) and Samsung’s superior curve design rolled into one smooth gadget. It also has a remarkable 4 –inch Super Clear LCD display, a fast 1 GHz processor, 5 MP camera and comes pre-installed with all your favorite Google apps.

To further enhance  the experience, all Mobilink indigo customers who buy the Samsung Nexus S now will enjoy 3 months of unlimited GPRS for free along with a premium leather case and car charger for their Nexus S!

Price:

Mobilink indigo is offering Samsung Nexus S at Rs. 43,999/-

Terms and Conditions:

• You can buy Samsung Nexus S from Mobilink Service Centers
• Limited time offer
• This offer is valid for both indigo and JAZZ customers
• Handsets will exclusively be available through selected Mobilink Sales & Service centers only for a period of 30 days from launch
• Free GPRS offer will remain valid for all handsets sold in the first 30 days only. All purchases during this period will be eligible for 3 months free GPRS (Free GPRS offer valid only in Pakistan)
• Subscribers with BlackBerry services are not eligible for 3 months free GPRS

@HTC (Twitter)

We were just wondering what Google was doing with that super-fast gigabit network it promised to set up in one lucky city and here’s finally a fresh development. The winner has been chosen and it’s Kansas City, Kansas. Having the winning community in its own state will be quite the bitter pill for the people of Topeka to swallow, as they actually renamed their town to Google, Kansas, just to try and appease the Mountain View overlords. Hey, we’re sure Google knows best! An agreement has now been signed to roll out the fiber goodness in Kansas City, which should result in gigabit service becoming available to locals in 2012. A press event is scheduled for 1PM ET, which will be livestreamed at the YouTube link below, and you can check out the announcement video after the break while you wait.

Update: That livestream is rolling, folks! Google’s reps just said “this is the beginning and not the end.” Kansas City, Kansas, will be just the first market where this 1Gbps goodness will be installed. Guess there’s hope for the rest of us yet.

The Official Google Blog, Google (YouTube)

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Well, it looks like the spectre of Buzz will be looming large over Google for some time to come — the company has just reached an agreement with the FTC that will see it receive independent privacy audits every two years for the next twenty years following a ruling that found Google violated its own privacy policy with the service. In a blog post today, Google also says that it will now “ask users to give us affirmative consent” before it makes any changes in how it shares their personal information, and it adds that it would like to “apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz.” As for the FTC, chairman Jon Leibowitz describes the settlement as a “tough” one, and says simply that “when companies make privacy pledges, they need to honor them.”

Official Google Blog, FTC

So Microsoft doesn’t like anticompetitive behavior, huh? Since when? Brad Smith, General Counsel for the Redmond rabblerousers, has posted a lengthy blog post outlining Microsoft’s concerns with “a pattern of actions that Google has taken to entrench its dominance” in online search and ads, which he claims is detrimental to European consumers. Funnily enough, half the post is about Google’s legal issues in the US, but we’ll set that aside for now. What this boils down to is that Microsoft is finally taking the gloves off — Google accused it of pushing other companies to do its dirty work — and is now adding its name to the list of objectors to Mountain View’s stranglehold on search in Europe. The European Commission is already taking a regulatory looksee at Google’s tactics, so this isn’t sparking off a new investigation, but it does add the glamor of two big names locking legal horns yet again. Hit the source link for Brad’s exposition of Google’s villainous wrongdoings.

CNET

Microsoft on the Issues