Kashmiri girls develop app for Android

A group of four Kashmiri girls, studying engineering in a Punjab college, claim to have developed an Android application (app) that will help their institution become a paper-free campus.

The girls, pursuing an engineering degree course in Aryans College of Engineering near here, said official notices and other communication meant for students can be accessed by students of the institution from the app instead of checking the paper notices.

The students -- Rumaisa, Zeenat, Sadiya and Yusra, all Bachelor of Technology students at Aryans -- are from the Kashmir Valley. They developed the app under the guidance of their teachers, especially head of department, projects, Manpreet Mann.

"Notices intended for students belonging to the college will be uploaded in students' login. This has eliminated the need of notice boards in the college. All the official notices for the staff will be uploaded in the staff login.

"The outsiders will be able to see all the necessary information about Aryans Group of Colleges and the updates about the events happening in the college," the girls told media here.

Called the 'Aryans Android App', it can be downloaded on mobiles having Android version 2.3 and above.

Complimenting the students for developing the app, Aryans Group of Colleges chairman Anshu Kataria said the students would be encouraged further for technological development.

Kataria announced that the college has decided to sanction an amount of Rs.1 lakh to the students for any other joint project.

Twitter buys 900 IBM patents

Twitter has bought 900 patents and signed a cross-licensing agreement with IBM, making peace with Big Blue and bulking up on its intellectual property portfolio as it takes on larger rivals Google and Facebook.

The agreement comes after International Business Machines accused Twitter in November - on the eve of its high-profile initial public offering - of infringing three of its patents. At the time, it underscored how few patents the six-year-old social media company possessed in relation to more established rivals.

A cross-licensing agreement will help safeguard Twitter against similar claims in the future.

IBM is one of the industry's largest research spenders and stockpilers of intellectual property, a consistent leader in US patent filings and the owner of some 41,000 patents.

Twitter is following on the heels of Facebook, which itself faced similar claims before its own 2012 IPO. The world's largest social network has since gone on a patent-buying spree, acquiring intellectual property from tech bellwethers, including Microsoft Corp and IBM.

"This acquisition of patents from IBM and licensing agreement provide us with greater intellectual property protection and give us freedom of action to innovate on behalf of all those who use our service," Ben Lee, Twitter's legal director, said in a joint statement with IBM on Friday.

Satya Nadella: Journey from Hyderabad to Seattle via Manipal

Many in NGO circles in Hyderabad and Delhi still remember B N Yugandhar. He was Prime Minister's special secretary and known for his NGO leanings. Ultimately, this 1962 batch IAS officer landed in the Planning Commission as a member. On Friday, when TOI caught up with him outside his modest house in the swanky Sagar Society of Banjara Hills, he was just returning from his evening walk.

"I know why you have come, but can I talk to you after a few weeks? I can't be talking about him at this juncture," Yugandhar said leaning on his walking stick. Those who know the family say that Satya Nadella has inherited his father's genes. Satya is extremely hard working, thinks out of the box but is simple. "He may not be going around with a jhola like his father, but is a humble, soft-spoken guy," says a former classmate from the Hyderabad Public School from where Satya passed out in 1984.

Unlike most people who get carried away by career and success, Satya still keeps in touch with his school friends. Nadella had last come to Hyderabad for the 90th anniversary celebrations of HPS in 2013, and had shared fond memories of his cricketing days in the institution, his friends said.

"He's come to HPS whenever we have invited him to be part of all our celebrations including the alumni meet three years ago. Last year, he also brought in his Microsoft team to interact with the students of the school who were working on a Microsoft project," Faiz Khan, secretary of the HPS board of directors, said.

His classmate, M Chandrasekhar, former CEO of an IT firm in the city, said that as a boy Nadella was very helpful.

"He was very friendly and jovial. He was also a bright student. We studied together for about five years and there was not one single person who had issues with him in class," Chandrasekhar recalled. His classmates whom he visits and hangs out with when he's in the city, said it was an honour that their friend was assuming such an infl uential post in corporate America.



"The last time he was in HPS, he told us that Microsoft would come up with a better search engine than Google," Khan said. "He is a man who has never forgotten his roots. Perhaps that's what has lifted him to his present victory," Khan said. In the neighbourhood that Satya's parents live, nobody knows him but everybody knows papa Yugandhar. "We are aware that their son works for Microsoft in the United States but know nothing else," said one of the neighbours, a family member of another retired bureaucrat. On being told that Satya could be the numero uno at Microsoft, the neigbour's eyes popped out. A few neighbours said they felt proud after learning that someone 'so big' lived here. "We will keep our eyes open the next time he is here. After all, he has made all of us so proud," said Srinivas, a local youngster.

 

Friends from Manipal—where he did his engineering—have equally fond memories of him. "Satya was pretty much aware of where he wanted to be as far as his career was concerned even 23 years ago,'' said Ganesh Prasad, one of his batchmates at Manipal Institute of Technology. Prasad, who is the CEO of Mocha Merlot, recalled Satya being a very passionate, friendly and driven person.

When Prasad spoke to Nadella a few months back about his CEO prospects, he was understandably understated. "He (Satya ) said, 'it is too premature. Got a long way to go'," which showed that though he was confi dent, he was not taking anything for granted. Even today I don't think till the final announcement comes he will open the champagne bottle. He just is that kind of a person and that streak has been with him from the beginning,'' said Prasad.

Satya—registration number 8419218—was MIT's 1988 batch electronics and communication engineering graduate and today is the most discussed alumni after his name cropped as one of the frontrunners to succeed Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO.

He was the toast of the 1988 batch's silver alumni reunion in December last at Manipal.

9 Facebook Pages You Won‘t Believe Have Millions of Likes

We all "like" Facebook Pages for two main reasons: to show support and to get news. It makes sense, then, that some pages have more likes than others.

What doesn't make sense is the arbitrary way in which the Facebook community decides which pages to like and which to ignore. For every "I F*cking Love Science" providing useful and interesting information regularly, there are dozens of pages with just as many likes that provide much less intriguing content.

Watch out, the Pebble app store for iOS and Android drops on Monday

Owners of the Pebble Smartwatch will be able to access thousands of compatible apps for the device in one place, when the awaited app store for iOS and Android devices lands on Monday.
Following the release of the attractive Pebble Steel this week, the start-up confirmed that it's ready to unify access to all of the compatible applications.
Until now, users have only been able to access the apps through third party sites on their mobile devices.
The launch of the Pebble app store will enable smartwatch owners who're paired up to the handset via bluetooth to download and install new apps in just a couple of touchscreen taps.

Yelp on your wrist

The store will bring access to thousands of apps, including the likes of Yelp, Foursquare, ESPN, Pandora and, of course, the classic Mario watchface.
"Putting finishing touches on the Pebble appstore over the weekend—check us out on Monday! Looking good so far," the company tweeted on Friday evening.
Device owners should anticipate access to the app store from Monday.

In Depth: Are biometrics the future for mobile authentication?

Past attempts to introduce biometrics into business have proved futile. When laptops featured fingerprint scanners years ago, one expert was able to bypass security using a gummy bear.
But now, improved and more accurate touch scanners are bringing biometrics back into the security domain. The convenience of Apple's iPhone TouchID technology has appealed to the mass market, making it increasingly likely to appear in a corporate setting.