China :: Science & Technology

Add to My Stories Sony claims hackers that broke into its PlayStation Network last week are unlikely to have stolen customers' credit card details from its servers because the data was encrypted. The news reduces, but doesn't eliminate, the chances that thieves might use tens of millions of people's personal banking information.Sony said in a blog post on Wednesday that while it had no direct evidence the data was even taken, it cannot rule out the possibility. Encrypted data: Sony has claimed hackers that broke into its PlayStation Network last week are unlikely to have stolen customers' credit card details SO WHAT WAS STOLEN? Sony said it believed hackers have obtained the following details from its PlayStation Network users: Name Address details including postcode, city and country Email address Date of birth PlayStation Network / Qriocity passwords and login Handle / PSN online ID The Japanese firm did not say how strong the encryption was, and it is possible for h...

A few days ago, I was at Great Wall Clubs Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing and I heard a speech from Michael Song, CEO of Sky-mobi. And I immediately knew what meant by talking up ones share price. Hangzhou based Sky-mobi runs an App Store over feature phones. (Most of these use Mediaktek chipset.) It is the largest of its kind in China. In the twelve months ended March 2010, the company has over Rmb 540 million revenue and over Rmb 120 million in operating profit. But it was not well received in Nasdaq. Its share price plunged 33% off its IPO price (US$8) on its first day of trading ( Sky-Mobi, a Disappointing IPO ) The speech is about Songsexperience of getting his company listed in Nasdaq mainly focus on the last few months.Michael said how he addressed investors greatest concerns: 1) operators. In the past, Sky-mobi suffered whenever operators tighten their user protection policies. Song said they are cooperating with the operators. 2) Tencent. Investors are concern if...

A few days ago, I was at Great Wall Clubs Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing and I heard a speech from Michael Song, CEO of Sky-mobi. And I immediately knew what meant by talking up ones share price. Hangzhou based Sky-mobi runs an App Store over feature phones. (Most of these use Mediaktek chipset.) It is the largest of its kind in China. In the twelve months ended March 2010, the company has over Rmb 540 million revenue and over Rmb 120 million in operating profit. But it was not well received in Nasdaq. Its share price plunged 33% off its IPO price (US$8) on its first day of trading ( Sky-Mobi, a Disappointing IPO ) The speech is about Songsexperience of getting his company listed in Nasdaq mainly focus on the last few months.Michael said how he addressed investors greatest concerns: 1) operators. In the past, Sky-mobi suffered whenever operators tighten their user protection policies. Song said they are cooperating with the operators. 2) Tencent. Investors are concern if...

Angry ____. Most people in todays society would fill in the blank with Birds. The phenomenon of the Angry Birds game/now entertainment brand is mind boggling. It has amassed 140 million downloads and now ranks as the top sellinggameapps of all time. In March, Rovio, the Finnish computer game developers behind Angry Bird s, raised US$42 million in a round of funding from Accel Partners and Atomico, and has estimated revenues of US$50-70 million. I spent some time with Peter Verstabacka, the maker or what they call the Mighty Eagle of Rovio Mobile, was a rock star at this years GMIC conference in Beijing. Peters Story Success Came after 51 Projects Peter has over 20 years experience in the mobile industry. He built and expanded the HP Mobile E-Service Bazaar, a global eco-system. As part of the program, he ran a competition sponsored by Nokia and HP to build the best multi-player game with the first Nokia smartphones. The competition was won by Niklas Hed and two friends. Peter later ...

Jason Baptiste, co-founder and CEO of New York-based startup OnSwipe , has a slide in the pitch presentation that he does for VCs and others interested in the company that simply says: Apps are bull****. Thats a succinct expression of OnSwipes view on apps for content. Baptiste believes that dedicated iPad and mobile apps make sense for games or specific tasks, such as looking for a restaurant, but for content, they suck, he says. So OnSwipe gives publishers the ability to mimic many of the user interface and features that apps provide, but on the open web and it wants to do the same thing for advertisers too. For a company that hasnt even been around a year, OnSwipe has had a pretty exciting life so far. It started as an experiment launched last June, a WordPress plugin that would allow bloggers to make their websites look nice on the iPad. Baptiste and his co-founder Andres Borreto, who lived in Miami, and a programmer in Mexico came up with the idea and created it in a matter of m...

Let me first get this out of the way: I know the term cloud is overused, and systems like Amazon Web Services are vastly different than so-called consumer-cloud services like Gmail and Amazons Cloud Drive. But with all the bad news about recent outages from Amazon , the high-profile consumer data breaches like that from the Sonys Playstation Network and continuing disruptions to services like Tumblr , its time to ask: Could consumers start to lose confidence in the cloud? While theres no real hard data today about whether consumers are losing confidence in the cloud other than possibly looking at trending of search terms about major outages I have to wonder if the continuing string of outages, breaches and overall high-profile downtime is starting to tarnish the larger cloud brand. After all, chances are, at some point most consumers have been affected, either by downtime to a favorite service or something more serious like a data loss or (God forbid) their personal data compromised;...

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by FOMO If Allen Ginsberg was born 60 years later, its safe to say that Howl , the seminal poem he wrote in 1955 about the Beat Generation, may have been a bit different. He may have instead worried about what MTV calls FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out. Its not exactly news that the Millennial Generation (loosely defined as people born between 1980 and 2000) spend a lot of time on websites like Facebook , Tumblr , and Twitter . But according to recent findings from a study conducted by MTV, for todays young people, the constant social networking isnt all fun and games. While more than half of the Millennials polled by MTV agreed with the statement what I post online defines who I am, a full 66 percent of them also said they find it exhausting to always be on. And simply walking away from the computer doesnt always alleviate the tension. MTVs research confirmed that unplugging often leads to FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out: 58 percent of...