Microsoft opens door to Android, Apple phone apps

Microsoft Corp is making it easier for apps written for rival Google Inc's Android and Apple Inc's iOS systems to work on Windows phones, in a bid to attract users to its unpopular mobile devices, the company's operating systems chief said on Wednesday.

The move marks a radical shift in strategy for the world's biggest software company, which still dominates the personal computer market but has failed to get any real traction on tablets and phones, partly because of a lack of apps.Microsoft has found itself in a circular trap, as many developers will not build apps for Windows phones which have few users, and few people want the phones which have fewer apps than Android or Apple phones.Getting apps built for Android and iOS onto its phones and tablets could be a shortcut to breaking out of that trap."Microsoft is making a major play to win back developers," said Forrester analyst Michael Facemire. "They’ve opened up the once-impenetrable castle walls."

Speaking at Microsoft's developer conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Executive Vice President Terry Myerson said developers will be able to use the vast majority of their Android code to turn their apps into Windows-compatible versions, which will work on Windows phones running a special subsystem.

The apps will technically be Windows apps and available only through Microsoft's online app store. The apps would automatically use Microsoft's services such as Bing maps, rather than Google's services, as an app would on an Android phone. That is a crucial distinction because Google gets revenue from ads on services rather than from the Android system itself.

Myerson also announced a surprise move to make it easier for iOS developers to make Windows apps, saying that Microsoft's developer software will be compatible with Objective C, the main programming language used by Apple.Google declined to comment. Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Microsoft, which bought Nokia's handset business last year, has only 3 percent of the global smartphone market. By contrast, Android phones, led by Samsung (005930.KS), control 81 percent of the market and Apple 15 percent, according to Strategy Analytics.

Microsoft is scheduled to release its new Windows 10 operating system this summer, which for the first time will run across PCs, tablets and phones. It said on Wednesday it is aiming for one billion devices running Windows 10 in two to three years time.

Its new browser will arrive as Microsoft Edge, replacing the waning Internet Explorer, when Windows 10 is released, the company said.

Car-to-Car Communication: A simple wireless technology promises to make driving much safer.

Fig: Using Wifi Technology

         Hariharan Krishnan hardly looks like a street racer. With thin-rimmed glasses and a neat mustache, he reminds me of a math teacher. And yet on a sunny day last September, he was speeding, seemingly recklessly, around the parking lot at General Motors’ research center in Warren, Michigan, in a Cadillac DTS.

          I was in the passenger seat as Krishnan wheeled around a corner and hit the gas. A moment later a light flashed on the dashboard, there was a beeping sound, and our seats started buzzing furiously. Krishnan slammed on the brakes, and we lurched to a stop just as another car whizzed past from the left, its approach having been obscured by a large hedge. “You can see I was completely blinded,” he said calmly.

          The technology that warned of the impending collision will start appearing in cars in just a couple of years. Called car-to-car or vehicle-to-vehicle communication, it lets cars broadcast their position, speed, steering-wheel position, brake status, and other data to other vehicles within a few hundred meters. The other cars can use such information to build a detailed picture of what’s unfolding around them, revealing trouble that even the most careful and alert driver, or the best sensor system, would miss or fail to anticipate.

          Already many cars have instruments that use radar or ultrasound to detect obstacles or vehicles. But the range of these sensors is limited to a few car lengths, and they cannot see past the nearest obstruction.

          Car-to-car communication should also have a bigger impact than the advanced vehicle automation technologies that have been more widely heralded. Though self-driving cars could eventually improve safety, they remain imperfect and unproven, with sensors and software too easily bamboozled by poor weather, unexpected obstacles or circumstances, or complex city driving. Simply networking cars together wirelessly is likely to have a far bigger and more immediate effect on road safety.

          Creating a car-to-car network is still a complex challenge. The computers aboard each car process the various readings being broadcast by other vehicles 10 times every second, each time calculating the chance of an impending collision. Transmitters use a dedicated portion of wireless spectrum as well as a new wireless standard, 802.11p, to authenticate each message.

          Krishnan took me through several other car-to-car safety scenarios in the company’s parking lot. When he started slowly pulling into a parking spot occupied by another car, a simple alert sounded. When he attempted a risky overtaking maneuver, a warning light flashed and a voice announced: “Oncoming vehicle!”.

          More than five million crashes occur on U.S. roads alone every year, and more than 30,000 of those are fatal. The prospect of preventing many such accidents will provide significant impetus for networking technology.

          Just an hour’s drive west of Warren, the town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has done much to show how valuable car-to-car communication could be. There, between 2012 and 2014, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the University of Michigan equipped nearly 3,000 cars with experimental transmitters. After studying communication records for those vehicles, NHTSA researchers concluded that the technology could prevent more than half a million accidents and more than a thousand fatalities in the United States every year. The technology stands to revolutionize the way we drive, says John Maddox, a program director at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.

          Shortly after the Ann Arbor trial ended, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it would start drafting rules that could eventually mandate the use of car-to-car communication in new cars. The technology is also being tested in Europe and Japan.

          There will, of course, also be a few obstacles to navigate. GM has committed to using car-to-car communication in a 2017-model Cadillac. Those first Cadillacs will have few cars to talk to, and that will limit the value of the technology. It could still be more than a decade before vehicles that talk to each other are commonplace.

Linux makers release patch to thwart 'Ghost' cyberthreat

Red Hat Inc and other makers of the widely used Linux operating system for business computers updated their software to thwart a serious new cyberthreat they warned could allow hackers to gain remote control of their systems.

The previously undisclosed vulnerability, dubbed "Ghost," is deemed critical because attackers could exploit it to covertly gain complete control of a targeted Linux system, according to cybersecurity firm Qualys, which uncovered the bug.

To highlight the severity of the risk, researchers identified a way to craft malicious emails that could automatically compromise a vulnerable server without the email even being opened, said Amol Sarwate, director of engineering with Qualys. The firm has not released that code and has yet to develop other methods for attacking other types of Linux systems, including servers that run websites.

Sarwate knows of no cases in which hackers exploited the Ghost vulnerability to date, but suspects that motivated hackers could figure out how now that the bug has been disclosed."We were able to do it. We think somebody with good security knowledge would also be able to do it," he said.

The vulnerability is caused by a security flaw in the open-source Linux GNU C Library, which is used by Red Hat and other Linux software makers, according to Qualys. It is called GHOST because it can be triggered by what are known as gethostbyname functions.

Qualys uncovered the bug following discoveries last year of high-profile vulnerabilities, including Heartbleed and Shellshock, which were caused by security flaws in other kinds of widely used open-source software. "It won't be as widespread as those flaws, but it is widespread enough that IT operations at many companies are scrambling to patch," said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer of security software firm Veracode.

Red Hat, the No. 1 provider of Linux software to businesses, recommends that customers update their systems "as soon as possible to mitigate any potential risk," said company spokeswoman Stephanie Wonderlick.

Xiaomi to set up research & development centre in India

Chinese handset maker Xiaomi will set up a research and development unit in Bangalore, its first such facility outside of its home country, as it looks to beef up presence in the booming Indian smartphone market. 

The company, which expects the centre to be operational in the next few months, will focus on localizing its products and features for the Indian market through the unit. 

"We have always stated that India is one of our most important markets. We are in process of signing the lease on a facility in Bangalore, which will be our R&D unit. This is the first one outside China," Xiaomi India head Manu Jain said. 

Work on the facility is expected to commence by the end of March and in the next few months, it will be operational