2013-02-26

Microsoft Internet Explore 10

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp released Internet Explorer 10 to millions of new users on Tuesday, hoping the latest version of its market-leading browser will win back customers who have migrated to Google Inc's Chrome and help it establish a toe-hold in the fast-growing mobile browser market.

The world's largest software maker, whose Internet Explorer browser elbowed out Netscape Navigator in the early days of the web, said IE 10 is 20 percent faster at downloading sites than its predecessor IE 9 and allows for touch-screen commands.

The browser has been available since late October for users of Windows 8, Microsoft's new touch-friendly operating system, but now becomes available for the 700 million or so users of Windows 7.

Microsoft is hoping PC and laptop users will like the new browser enough to consider buying Windows 8 tablets rather than Apple Inc's iPad, which does not run Internet Explorer.

Various versions of Microsoft's venerable Internet Explorer franchise still dominate desktop browsing, with 55 percent of the PC browser market all together. But it has in recent years lost share to Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome, which now account for 20 percent and 17 percent respectively, according to tech research firm NetMarketShare.

IE 10 running on Windows 8 has got generally good reviews, and has been hailed as the best version of Internet Explorer yet, but it has not been considered decisively superior to Chrome or Firefox.

In the smaller but faster-growing mobile browser market, Apple's Safari is the runaway leader with 61 percent, owing to the popularity of its iPhones and iPads while Google's Android browser has 21 percent.

Tablets running Windows 8, including Microsoft's own Surface devices, have not sold strongly since they were launched last October, restricting IE 10's popularity so far. Only 2.3 percent of computer users are running Windows 8, according to NetMarketShare.

2013-02-23

puttung sensors and mini computers into clothes and accessories aims at creating a more seamless experience with gadgetry

Cybersecurity company Mandiant Corp won plaudits from its peers and made front-page news around the world this week when it published a report that purportedly traced a series of cyberattacks on U.S. companies to a Shanghai-based unit of the Chinese army.

Cybersecurity company Mandiant Corp won plaudits from its peers and made front-page news around the world this week when it published a report that purportedly traced a series of cyberattacks on U.S. companies to a Shanghai-based unit of the Chinese army.

But some hackers have turned the tables on the cyber-expert by creating malicious versions of its 74-page report that were infected with computer viruses. They emailed the tainted reports to their victims this week in a bid to wreak havoc under Mandiant's name.

Though the episode was embarrassing, the company said its systems were not breached. "Mandiant has not been compromised," the company said on its corporate blog.

Mandiant was founded in 2004 by Kevin Mandia, a former U.S. Air Force cyber-forensics investigator who co-authored an influential textbook on the subject. The company made its name by automating processes used to investigate computer breaches.

Mandiant was largely unknown outside the computer security industry until Monday, when it fingered the People's Liberation Army's Shanghai-based Unit 61398 as the most likely driving force behind a Chinese hacking group known as APT1.

China's Defense Ministry issued a flat denial of the accusations and called them "unprofessional." But Mandiant won kudos for the unprecedented level of detail in its report, including the location of a building in Shanghai's Pudong financial hub from which Mandiant said the unit had stolen "hundreds of terabytes of data from at least 141 organizations across a diverse set of industries beginning as early as 2006."

Other security companies that have published reports on cyberattacks have shied away from so clearly identifying their perpetrators.

"It was a wonderful report," said Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, who is now with the Chertoff Group. "Everybody is saying 'it's about time.'"

The report did not identify the victims of APT1 or Mandiant's customers, though the company says it has worked for about 40 percent of the Fortune 500.

When asked why he had decided to go public with this report, Mandia, 42, told Reuters, "There is mounting frustration in the private sector. Tolerance is shrinking. We also have a bunch of employees here who are ex-military who sense that frustration and said, 'Let's push this out.'"

The report comes ahead of next week's annual RSA Conference on security in San Francisco, where Mandiant will showcase its products to help companies identify security breaches.

IPO IN THE CARDS?

Mandiant says it begins investigations by installing software it has developed that searches for infections by looking for evidence hackers leave behind. It refers to those digital signatures as Indicators of Compromise, or IOCs.

The proprietary database of those indicators makes up a critical part of the "special sauce" that automates the investigation process and, Mandiant says, enables investigators to root out attackers faster than rivals.

The company has thousands of IOCs in its database, which it is constantly expanding.

"We tend not to take the small jobs. We take the big ones - the ones you would love to read about in the paper, but we keep them out of the paper," said Mandiant's chief security officer, Richard Bejtlich.

Some investors have speculated that Mandiant is preparing for an initial public offering in the next year or so. On Friday, it named Mel Wesley to the post of chief financial officer. Wesley was CFO of publicly held OPNET, which was sold to Riverbed Technology in December for about $1 billion.

Mandia, who raised $70 million by selling stock to Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and One Equity Partners, the private investment arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co, said he is in no rush to go public. "I do not believe we need more capital," he said.

Ted Schlein, a partner with Kleiner Perkins, declined to say if an IPO was in the works, but told Reuters: "They are certainly of the size and they certainly have the operating metrics to be a public company."

Mandia said revenue soared 60 percent last year to about $100 million, and he expects it to climb at about the same clip this year on rising demand for Web-based services that help businesses identify when they have been attacked.

The New York Times and News Corp's Wall Street Journal recently disclosed that they hired Mandiant to investigate cyberattacks. The company has done similar work for Thomson Reuters Corp, parent of Reuters News, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. A spokesman for Thomson Reuters declined to confirm it.

PREMIUM FEES

Mandiant declined to discuss its fees, though analysts say they are among the highest in an industry where rivals include much bigger companies such as Accenture, AT&T Inc, Deloitte, PwC and Verizon Communications Inc, which offer cyber-forensics alongside other services.

Mandiant consultants often bill at rates of $450 or more an hour, said a person familiar with the company. Teams of consultants investigate breaches for weeks and sometimes several months, typically ringing up bills of between $250,000 and $1 million.

John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends for the SANS Institute, says Mandiant can charge a premium partly because it gets strong recommendations from the government and other customers.

There is often a waiting list for its services.

"It's supply and demand. You call Mandiant and Mandiant tells you when they can show up," said the person familiar with the company, who was not authorized to publicly discuss its finances.

Mandiant also competes against CrowdStrike and Cylance, which are run by the founders of a company known as Foundstone, a pioneer in cyber-forensics that had hired Mandia away from the military. He left Foundstone in 2004 to start Mandiant.

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2013-02-22

Google's antitrust case in Europe

EU regulators hope to resolve a two-year investigation into U.S. internet company Google in the latter half of the year, the EU's antitrust chief said on Friday, although a rival expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of any solution.

The European Commission - the EU's executive arm - has been examining proposals put forward by Google to resolve complaints from more than a dozen companies, including Microsoft, that Google was using its market dominance to block competitors.

"We can reach an agreement after the summer break. We can envisage this as a possible deadline," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told a Concurrences Journal conference.

The Commission is closed for its summer break for most of August.

Almunia said there would only be a decision "if everything was okay." Neither Google nor the EU antitrust authority have detailed what concessions the U.S. group has offered. If the EU authority accepts the offer, it would mean no fine for Google.

People familiar with the matter have previously told Reuters that Google offered to label its own services in search results to differentiate them from rival services, and also to impose fewer restrictions on advertisers.

The Commission is expected to seek feedback from Google rivals and other third parties once it completes its examination of the concessions.

However, British price comparison site and Google complainant Foundem had doubts about the efficacy of any proposals from the U.S. company.

"We will withhold judgment on Google's proposals until we have seen them, but everything we have learned about Google makes us sceptical that it would volunteer truly effective remedies until it has been formally charged with infringement," said Foundem Chief Executive Shivaun Raff.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission last month ended its own investigation without any significant action, handing Google a major victory.

EU regulators have said Google may have favored its own search services over those of rivals, copied travel and restaurant reviews from competing sites without permission, and placed restrictions on advertisers and advertising.

Nevada legalizes first interstate online poker

(Reuters) - Nevada has become the first U.S. state to legalize interstate online poker and allow state-to-state gaming agreements, beating New Jersey to the punch and putting in place a potential nationwide framework for Internet wagering.

Republican Governor Brian Sandoval signed the landmark bipartisan bill into law on Thursday, authorizing his office to enter into agreements with other states that will in effect allow Nevada-based companies to host interactive gambling for residents of other states.

A number of companies have already been granted Nevada licenses for online poker, but were prepared to be limited to serving Nevada residents. Applicants include social gaming leader Zynga Inc. Shares in Zynga leapt as much as 7.4 percent on Friday.

With the bill, Nevada - home to Las Vegas, the world's second-largest gambling hub -wants to pave the way for national Internet wagering even though efforts at federal regulation have stalled. Established companies including MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts hope they can add new customers and pitch online players to come to Vegas.

"This bill is critical to our state's economy and ensures that we will continue to be the gold standard for gaming regulation," Sandoval said in a statement after signing the bill on Thursday.

The bill removes a provision requiring federal legislation or Department of Justice approval before online gaming licenses are made active, according to Nevada's statement.

Nevada Assembly Majority Leader William Horne, a Democrat from Las Vegas, told Reuters that he expects online poker to be the first of multiple online gambling offerings to residents of other states.

"Initially it'll be starting with online poker, but certainly the infrastructure is set up for various interactive gaming," Horne said.

"There are approximately a half-dozen companies already licensed to do this in our state," Horne added. "We anticipate that to grow significantly."

Horne said it is too early to say how much Nevada, which relies heavily on tourists spending money at its resorts and in its casinos, will see in the way of revenue from its initiative, which relies on compacts with other states.

"We recognize that online gaming worldwide has generated in excess of $5 billion," Horne said. "Going forward we anticipate being competitive in this area."

Nevada's legislation comes as New Jersey -home to Atlantic City - considers a similar move to legalize online gambling. Republican Governor Chris Christie rejected a measure earlier this month that would have allowed Internet gambling, but has said he would consider approving such a law if it was framed properly.

A RISING TIDE

Many industry players hope that a tide of such proposed legislation will sweep through states across the country, opening a massive new online market.

The bills follow a 2011 declaration by the U.S. Justice Department that only online betting on sporting contests broke federal law. That opened the door for states to legalize some forms of online gambling.

Although widespread legalization appears years away at the minimum, obtaining a license in Nevada would be a meaningful start for the nationwide aspirations of entrants such as Zynga, especially if they can offer games to those in other states.

Zynga, which runs one of the world's largest online communities of poker players, is hoping that a lucrative real-money market could make up for a steep slide in revenue from games like "FarmVille" that are losing players but still generate the bulk of its sales.

The Nevada signing came after a joint Judiciary committee hearing on Thursday morning and approval by the legislature in the afternoon.

(Repo

2013-02-20

Start-up Pinterest wins new funding, $2.5 billion valuation


Pinterest, which allows users to create online bulletin boards based on various themes such as travel, decorating, or sports, said in a statement it would use the new capital to build new features, beef up its infrastructure, and make "strategic acquisitions of both talent and technology."
Long-short hedge fund Valiant led the investment round, joined by existing investors Andreessen HorowitzBessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital. Valiant has invested in several consumer-Internet companies in the past, including search engines Google and Baidu.
News of the funding round was first reported by AllThingsD.
Pinterest is part of a group of start-ups that offer twists on Internet networking among various groups. They typically have little discernable profit or revenue, but have landed some outsized investments from venture capitalists.
The group includes private social-network Path, which raised $30 million at a valuation of $250 million last year; question-and-answer site Quora, which raised $50 million at a $400 million valuation last year; and microblogging service Twitter, which raised $400 million in new funding and another $400 million to buy out existing investors at an $8 billion valuation in 2011.
Since Facebook Inc's May initial public offering, which saw the stock fall far below its offer price before rebounding in recent months, many investors have cooled on consumer-focused Internet companies.
But Pinterest's rapid growth since its 2010 launch may make it an exception. It now has 48.7 million users globally, according to consultancy comScore.
The company last raised money in May 2012 at a $1.5 billion valuation in a round led by Japanese e-commerce site Rakuten Inc.

Apple supplier Foxconn freezes hiring at largest plant



TAIPEI/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc's manufacturing partner Foxconn Technology Group has frozen hiring at a Shenzhen plant that makes gadgets including the iPhone 5 and put the brakes on recruiting for other factories across China, but said the move was not linked to any single client.
Foxconn, which runs a network of factories across the world's No. 2 economy that make products for tech companies from Hewlett Packard to Dell, sought to pour cold water on a Financial Times report that it had imposed a hiring freeze while it slows production of Apple's latest smartphone.
"Due to an unprecedented rate of return of employees following the Chinese New Year holiday compared to years past, our company has decided to temporarily slow down our recruitment process," the company said in a statement.
"This action is not related to any single customer and any speculation to the contrary is false and inaccurate."
Like other Chinese contract manufacturers, Foxconn relies on a large number of migrant laborers from across the country, who journey home for the most important holiday of the year. Many do not make it back to work, but Foxconn spokesman Louis Woo said this year they saw as many as 97 percent of employees return.
Apple sold a less-than-expected 47.8 million iPhones in the 2012 holiday quarter, fanning fears that its dominance of consumer electronics is on the decline as Samsung Electronics Co and other manufacturers that use Google Inc's Android software gradually gain market share.
The iPhone is Apple's most important product, accounting for half its revenue. The company's shares slipped almost 2 pct on Wednesday to $451, and are down about 34 percent from their September peak above $700, as investors fret about sliding margins and intensifying competition.
IMPLICATIONS FOR APPLE
Apple watchers often take cues from its component suppliers and manufacturing partners. In January, CEO Tim Cook took the unusual step of warning investors that it is difficult to extrapolate from limited "data points".
RBC estimates that just 70 to 80 percent of Chinese workers return to factories it tracks.
"This year we believe the return rates have been closer to 90 percent, which may minimize the need to hire," RBC analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a Wednesday research note.
"Given the timing of the freeze, it may have more to do with higher return rates of employees versus what was expected by Foxconn and other supply chain companies."
Foxconn's latest statement contradicts another Foxconn spokesman, Liu Kun, who is cited in the newspaper on Wednesday as saying, "Currently, none of the plants in mainland China have hiring plans."
A check on Foxconn's recruitment website on Wednesday showed the company's Taiyuan and Hangzhou plants were hiring. But its factory complex in the southern city of Shenzhen is its single largest production base.
The Shenzhen plant "is not hiring at the moment because workers' return rate after Chinese New Year is very high this year, reaching 97 pct", Woo said.
"We replenish each year depending on the return rate."

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang joins Lenovo board as observer



HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lenovo Group said Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang is to join its board as an observer, as the world's No. 2 maker of PCs expands its mobile business to tap global demand forsmartphones and tablets.
Yang, who co-founded Yahoo! in April 1995 and served as chief executive from June 2007 to January 2009, will not be able to vote or have any of the other rights of a director, Lenovo said on Wednesday.
The Hong Kong-listed company will pay Yang $61,875 per year and offer equity rights with a value of $135,000 in return for attending board meetings and providing views.
Yang, 44, resigned from Yahoo's board last year when he also stepped down from the boards ofAlibaba Group Holding and Yahoo! Japan.
Lenovo, the second-biggest smartphone vendor in China, is stepping up its expansion in the business.
In its October-to-December third quarter, Lenovo shipped 9.4 million phones, including 9 million smartphones, mainly in China where its smartphone business was profitable for the first time.

Yahoo Inc is rolling out a revamped look for its website aimed at making the Web portal more modern and attractive to users.


Yahoo Inc is rolling out a revamped look for its website aimed at making the Web portal more modern and attractive to users.
"We wanted it to be familiar but also wanted it to embrace some of the modern paradigms of the Web," Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said on NBC's "Today" show on Wednesday.
"One thing that I really like is this very personalized newsfeed, it's infinite and you can go on scrolling forever," she said.
In a blog post, Mayer said the company will begin introducing the changes over the next few days, with more changes and improvements expected in the coming months. The endless newsfeed containing stories, pictures or video is similar to feeds on Facebook Inc as well as Twitter.
Mayer also said in her blog that the website would feature newly designed applications, allow users to log in with their Yahoo or Facebook IDs and would work well on smartphones and tablets.
Yahoo is one of the world's most-visited online properties, but revenue has declined in recent years amid competition from Google and Facebook.
Yahoo has also been beset by internal turmoil that has resulted in a revolving door of CEOs.
Mayer, 37, took over after a tumultuous period at Yahoo in which former CEO Scott Thompson resigned after less than six months on the job over a controversy about his academic credentials, and during which Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang resigned from the board and cut his ties with the company.
Yahoo's 2012 revenue was $5 billion. It has been flat year over year, off from some $6.3 billion in 2010.

2013-02-19

Sina Corp posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue and profit amid concerns about the slowing growth of Chinese online advertising.


(Reuters) - Sina Corp posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue and profit amid concerns about the slowing growth of Chinese online advertising.
Shares in the company, which runs China's largest online portal and the Twitter-like "Weibo" microblogging platform, climbed 6 percent to $56.50 after-hours. They have fallen 13.4 percent since the start of the fourth quarter, underperforming a 2 percent rise in the Nasdaq.
Net profit fell 74 percent in the fourth quarter to $2.4 million, or 3 cents per share, from $9.3 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier. But excluding certain items, non-GAAP earnings were $9 million, or 13 cents a share, versus $14 million or 21 cents a share a year earlier.
That surpassed an average forecast for 5 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
China's online advertising market grew 46.8 percent in 2012, but that was down from 57.6 percent in 2011, according to technology research firm iResearch. The softer advertising market, due to a weaker economic environment, has also hit Sina peers Baidu Inc and Sohu.com Inc.
Analysts say Sina's new "Weibo" advertising products have drawn muted sales.
Sina said it expects first-quarter adjusted net revenue to range between $115 million and $119 million, in line with average predictions on Wall Street for about $117 million. It forecast advertising revenue of $94 million to $96 million this quarter.
Advertising revenue came in at $110.7 million in the fourth quarter, versus a previous company projection for between $110 million and $112 million.
It posted overall fourth-quarter net revenue of $139.1 million, versus an average forecast for $133.9 million according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Non-advertising revenue decreased 4 percent to $28.5 million.
In the fourth quarter, Sina rolled out two Weibo monetization products aimed at increasing sales on its highly popular social media website.
One of the products gives advertisers a chance at promoting their tweet among users who are not following them, while the other is a platform that links popular microbloggers with advertisers.
Sina's push to monetize Weibo comes as Tencent Holdings' mobile social messaging product, WeChat, is beginning to cut into the popularity of Weibo, analysts said.

Bill Gates said he was not satisfied with the company's pace of innovation over the last few years, and that it had mishandled its early mobile strategy


(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp Chairman Bill Gates said he was not satisfied with the company's pace of innovation over the last few years, and that it had mishandled its early mobile strategy.
"We didn't miss cellphones, but the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership. It's clearly a mistake," Gates, Microsoft's former CEO, said in a rare interview with CBS.
Gates hedged questions on whether he was happy with Chief Executive Steve Ballmer's performance. He said Ballmer had achieved a lot but that both he and Ballmer were not satisfied.
"(Ballmer) and I are two of the most self-critical people I know," Gates said.
"There are a lot of amazing things that Steve's leadership achieved — Windows 8, the Surface computer, Bing, Xbox. Is it enough? No. He and I are not satisfied that in terms of breakthrough things we are doing everything possible."
Ballmer took over as Microsoft's CEO in February 2000. The company's shares have dropped 45 percent since then.
A former senior Microsoft executive, Joachim Kempin, said in a book he wrote about his time at the company that Ballmer was not the right leader for the world's largest software company but held his grip on it by systematically forcing out any rising manager who challenged his authority.
His criticism echoes that of investor David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, who called for Ballmer to step down in 2011.
Microsoft has faced criticism for its latest Windows 8 versions for different devices, while its Bing search engine has won only a small market share.

2013-02-18

GaN --- Gallium nitride


Gallium nitride (GaN) is a binary III/V direct bandgap semiconductor commonly used in bright light-emitting diodes since the 1990s. The compound is a very hard material that has aWurtzite crystal structure. Its wide band gap of 3.4 eV affords it special properties for applications in optoelectronic,[4][5] high-power and high-frequency devices. For example, GaN is the substrate which makes violet (405 nm) laser diodes possible, without use of nonlinear optical frequency-doubling.
Its sensitivity to ionizing radiation is low (like other group III nitrides), making it a suitable material for solar cell arrays for satellites. Military and space applications could also benefit as devices have shown stability in radiation environments.[6] Because GaN transistors can operate at much hotter temperatures and work at much higher voltages than gallium arsenide (GaAs) transistors, they make ideal power amplifiers at microwave frequencies.




Laytec Upgrades In-Situ GaN LED Monitoring System

Feb 18, 2013
The firm's latest UV pyrometer incorporates real-time UV emissivity correction for enhanced accuracy of gallium nitride surface temperature during the growth of complex LED structures
In an ideal world, LED manufacturers would know the emission wavelength of the final device during MOCVD growth.

Today, according to the Solid State Lighting road map, the wavelength variation across a wafer should be less than 1 nm. This means a less than 1 K (10C) variation of the GaN surface temperature during InGaN MQW growth.

LayTec’s Pyro 400 is widely used for enabling fab-wide GaN surface temperature uniformity in many LED manufacturers production lines.

Meanwhile, more complex LED structures and tighter cost reduction targets need even more advanced in-situ metrology. Figure 1, below, shows such an example; ternary InGaN and AlGaN layers cause emissivity changes that lead to 0.7 K error of the UV pyrometry reading.



Figure 1: Effect of changing emissivity to UV pyrometer temperature reading: up to 0.7 K errors show up without emissivity correction during growth of a GaN/AlGaN-GaN-SL/InGaNMQW/ GaN structure

LayTec‘s answer to this challenge is the Pyro 400 Gen 2. Along with in-situ UV pyrometry the new generation tool includes real-time UV emissivity correction for enhanced accuracy of GaN surface temperature during growth of more complex LED structures.

A further challenge to reliable GaN temperature control in HB-LED production is the view-port coating.

Figure 2 shows its effect just before maintenance; the UV transmission of the view-port is significantly reduced and an uncorrected UV pyrometer would give a -10 K temperature artefact. Pyro 400 Gen 2 solves this problem,too. Laytec claims the tool automatically senses and corrects these coatings and enables a long-lasting 24/7 accuracy in HB-LED emission wavelength.



Figure 2: GaN MOCVD view-port before (red) and after maintenance (blue): the transmission at the 400nm detection wavelength of a UV pyrometer is suffering from the window coating (red). The resulting -10K artifact is avoided by Pyro 400 Gen2

Last, but not least, an assisting infrared pyrometer has been integrated into Pyro 400 Gen 2 for simultaneous monitoring of wafer pocket temperature throughout the full LED growth run.

Chinese telecommunications company Huawei said on Monday it had not worked with an institute in Singapore on any projects in the specialist field of an American engineer who died mysteriously last year shortly after leaving the institute.


SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Chinese telecommunications company Huawei said on Monday it had not worked with an institute in Singapore on any projects in the specialist field of an American engineer who died mysteriously last year shortly after leaving the institute.
Britain's Financial Times said on Saturday that Shane Todd had been working on "what was apparently a joint project" between Singapore's Institute of Microelectronics, or IME, and Huawei shortly before he died last June.
His parents have said he was murdered because of his involvement in the project, which they say involved exporting sensitive military technology to China.
IME declined immediate comment.
Singapore police said they were still investigating the death of Todd, 31, and would submit their evidence to a coroner. Singaporean pathologists concluded in an autopsy last June that he died by hanging in his Singapore flat.
"IME approached Huawei on one occasion to cooperate with them in the GaN field, but we decided not to accept, and consequently do not have any cooperation with IME related to GaN," Huawei said in a statement.
Todd's area of expertise was Gallium Nitride (GaN), an advanced semiconductor material which has both commercial and military purposes. It is used in things from blue-ray disc players to military radars.
Huawei said that the development of GaN technology was commonplace across the telecommunications industry.
Reuters reviewed evidence the family presented supporting its theory a few weeks after his death, including emails, other documents and photographs.
Interviews with the family, colleagues and friends revealed conflicting views on Todd's state of mind before his death, the nature of his work and how he died.
Colleagues said that he was increasingly depressed in his last few months, but said that his concerns appeared to centre on a sense of failure about his work, and an ambivalence about returning to the United States.
Researchers in unrelated fields have also questioned how, if his work was so sensitive, he was able to take home computer files from his office. His family retrieved a hard drive which included work files in his flat.
IME is part of a network of research institutes managed by government-run Agency for Science, Technology and Research, or A*Star.
A former A*Star researcher now working in the United States pointed out that IME and other A*Star institutes were not military research organizations.
"AFRAID"
At the heart of the family's theory is that Todd was concerned for his safety because of a project with a Chinese company. They believed, through information from his colleagues and from his computer files, that the company was Huawei.
Reuters can't independently corroborate their views about the role of Huawei or the circumstances of Todd's death.
Huawei is one of the world's largest telecommunication equipment companies, but has been blocked from some projects in Australia and deemed a security risk by the U.S. congress on the grounds that its equipment could be used for spying.
Huawei has routinely denied such accusations and has said it is not linked to the Chinese government.
Todd's parents said in interviews in July that Singapore police and IME had failed to properly investigate his death after his body was found hanging from a door in his Singapore apartment on the evening of June 24, two days after he quit IME.
Singapore police say they have handled the case as they have handled other cases, and their procedures follow high international standards. They said in such cases of unnatural death, "no prior assumptions" were made about the cause.
The parents did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment on the Financial Times report but Todd's mother, Mary, said in a telephone interview with Reuters last July that he had been scared.
"I had been talking to him for months for at least an hour every week and he told us he was afraid of being murdered because of his contacts with the Chinese government," she said.
"He quit his job because of it."
Huawei declined to say whether they had been working on other projects with IME. Colleagues said shortly after Todd's death that he had told them at one point he had been working on a project with Huawei but that it was not sensitive or high-level in nature.
One described it as carrying out "measurement test reports" of semiconductors.
The Financial Times said that Todd had been involved in proposing a joint project with Huawei. While it did not say whether the project was approved, it quoted his parents as saying that subsequently he complained to them of being asked to do things with a Chinese company he did not identify that made him uncomfortable.

2013-02-17

meteor in russian injured 1000

CHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - Thousands of Russian emergency workers went out on Saturday to clear up the damage from a meteor that exploded over the Ural mountains, damaging buildings, shattering windows and showering people with broken glass.

Divers searched a lake near the city of Chelyabinsk, where a hole several feet wide had opened in the ice, but had so far failed to find any large fragments, officials said.

The scarcity of evidence on the ground fuelled scores of conspiracy theories over what caused the fireball and its huge shockwave on Friday in the area which plays host to many defense industry plants.

Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky told reporters in Moscow it could have been "war-mongers" in the United States. "It's not meteors falling. It's a new weapon being tested by the Americans," he said.

A priest from near the explosion site called it an act of God. Social media sites were flooded with speculation about what might have caused the explosion, if not a meteorite.

"Honestly, I would be more inclined to believe that this was some military thing," said Oksana Trufanova, a local human rights activist.

Asked about the speculation, an official at the local branch of Russia's Emergencies Ministry simply replied: "Rubbish".

Residents of Chelyabinsk, an industrial city 1,500 km (950 miles) east of Moscow, heard an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave that blew out windows and damaged the wall and roof of a zinc plant.

A fireball traveling at a speed of 30 km (19 miles) per second according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail visible as far as 200 km (125 miles) away.

NASA estimated the meteor was 55 feet across before entering Earth's atmosphere and weighed about 10,000 tons.

It exploded miles above Earth, releasing nearly 500 kilotons of energy -about 30 times the size of the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in World War Two, NASA added.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

DIVERS SEARCH LAKE

Search teams said they had found small objects up to about 1 cm (half-an-inch) wide that might be fragments of a meteorite, but no larger pieces.

The Chelyabinsk regional governor said the strike caused about 1 billion roubles ($33 million) worth of damage.

Life in the city had largely returned to normal by Saturday although 50 people were still in hospital. Officials said more than 1,200 people were injured, mostly by flying glass.

Repair work had to be done quickly because of the freezing temperatures, which sank close to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) at night.

Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov inspected the damage after President Vladimir Putin sent him to the region.

His ministry is under pressure to clean up fast following criticism over the failure to issue warnings in time before fatal flooding in southern Russia last summer and over its handling of forest fires in 2010.

Putin will also want to avoid a repeat of the criticism that he faced over his slow reaction to incidents early in his first term as president, such as the sinking of the Kursk submarine in 2000 which killed all 118 people on board.

($1 = 30.1365 Russian rouble

2013-02-16

Top 10 stories from the week of Feb. 11:

Top 10 stories from the week of Feb. 11:

1.) Salesforce CEO Benioff Invites Laid Off Yammer Employees to Work for Him

2.) Microsoft Could Make Billions From Office for iPad

3.) Apple Working on Fix for iOS 6.1 Passcode Hack

4.) American Express Cardholders Can Now Tweet to Buy

5.) HBO to Finally Let Subscribers Stream HBO Go to TV Over AirPlay

6.) A Big Year for Apple’s iPhone in India

7.) Bill Gates on Philanthropy, Steve Jobs and the Microsoft Product That Never Was

8.) Yes, Intel Is Building a Web TV Service (A Box, Too)

9.) The Cloud’s Dirty Little Secret

10.) Apple MacBook Pros With Retina Display Get Faster, Cheaper

For more of the week in review, you should follow us on Facebook and Twi

2013-02-13

Join Google + with President Obama

State of the Union: Fireside Hangout with President Obama

Tomorrow, February 14, 4:50 PM On Thursday, February 14th, President Obama will join the latest in a series of "Fireside Hangouts" – a 21st century take on FDR’s famous radio addresses – to talk about his State of the Union Address.

During the +Google+ hangout, the President will answer questions from Americans across the country about the issues and policies laid out in the speech.

How you can join: Right now, you can submit a question for the President and vote on your favorites on the White House +YouTube Channel: http://at.wh.gov/hC22N

On Tuesday, February 12th at 9:00 p.m. ET, watch President Obama's State of the Union Address on the +The White House Google+ page and at http://youtube.com/whitehouse

Then, be sure to watch the hangout live on Thursday, February 14th at 4:50 p.m. ET on the +The White House Google+ page and at http://youtube.com/whitehouse

Learn more about the State of the Union Address and how you can get involved at http://wh.gov/SOTU

#firesidehangout #sotu