Flipboard launches desktop version of its news reader app

Elegantly designed and a joy to use, Flipboard seemed such a perfect fit for tablets and smartphones that the team behind it appeared content with holding back from rolling out a desktop version. Till now, that is. Announcing it as “a major new frontier on our quest to build the world’s best personal magazine,” the Palo Alto-based company on Tuesday introduced Flipboard for desktop.

A beautiful version of Flipboard for the desktop and a major new frontier on quest to build the world’s best personal magazine. The Web evolved, too, with things like responsive design making for easier (and prettier) reading and navigation. The vision of Flipboard founders—to bring a print-like aesthetic to digital content—could finally be realized.

As with developing for iPhone, Android and Windows, the team builds on a platform’s unique attributes while still retaining the heart and soul of Flipboard. With Flipboard everywhere, millions more people can experience it for the first time while current readers can catch up on the news they care about and collect stories into magazines anytime, anywhere.

It seems like the decision to finally launch a Web version came down to factors such as improvements in responsive Web design, which, as the team says, “makes for easier (and prettier) reading and navigation.”

While different in feel to the cross-platform tablet and smartphone versions, Flipboard’s desktop effort still features its familiar clean and uncluttered design, with a mix of text and images that should look great on any screen size.

If you already have a Flipboard account, you can sign in to reach your personalized sections, with articles and display-filling images just a mouse click away.

The team says that to create “optimal layouts and a pacing that feels natural for Web browsing,” it computes “the relevancy of stories and photos and analyze the type of content – such as images or text – that’s on a page.”

It also uses algorithms based on your interests to pull up recommend topics and magazines, hopefully leading you to additional engaging content.

Although you’ll likely prefer using Flipboard on your tablet or smartphone considering the wonderfully fluid interface the mobile versions offer, the new Web-based alternative presents users with an additional viewing option, and for those without a mobile device it offers a first chance to explore a piece of software enjoyed by many and used by millions over the four years since it launched.

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Microsoft Outlook hacked following Gmail block in China

Online censorship watchdog Greatfire says that Microsoft was attacked over the weekend, causing havoc for Chinese users.

Microsoft's Outlook email service was subject to a cyberattack over the weekend, just weeks after Google's Gmail service was blocked in China.

On Monday, online censorship watchdog Greatfire.org said the organization received reports that Outlook was subject to a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack in China. A MITM attack intrudes on online connections in order to monitor and control a channel, and may also be used to push connections into other areas -- for example, turning a user towards a malicious rather than legitimate website.

After testing, Greatfire says that IMAP and SMTP for Outlook were under a MITM attack, while the email service's web interfaces were not affected.

The attack, dubbed "especially devious" by Greatfire, involved a pop-up warning message in the email client. Unlike in the case of browser warnings, users are more likely to quickly click the "continue" button on the message without actually reading the message or considering risk factors -- potentially attributing the warning to a network issue instead and therefore nothing to be concerned about.

Once clicked upon, the user's emails, contacts and passwords could then be logged by the cyberattackers. According to Greatfire, the attack lasted for approximately a day and has stopped -- at least, for now.

According to a report in ZDNet, The cyberattack on Microsoft systems comes after recent MITM attacks which reportedly have taken place against Google, Yahoo and Apple in China. It is only weeks since Google's email client, Gmail, was blocked in the country well-known for its tough censorship laws. Since 26 December, Gmail users in China have been unable to access the service, even if they use a third-party service -- such as Outlook -- to access their messages. Currently, VPN circumvention of the block is the only way to use Gmail.

Due to similarities between other reported MITM attacks, Greatfire has accused Lu Wei and the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) of orchestrating the attack, or having "willingly allowed the attack to happen."

"If our accusation is correct, this new attack signals that the Chinese authorities are intent on further cracking down on communication methods that they cannot readily monitor," the watchdog says.

Greatfire believes that as the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) is directly governed by CAC, the organization should not be trusted by software providers such as Microsoft and Apple, and the firms in question should immediately revoke trust for the CNNIC certificate authority.

Also read:Surface Phone: Microsoft working on breakthrough Windows mobile

Blocks on foreign services have become increasingly common in China over the past few years. The "Great Firewall of China," as China's censorship mechanism is colloquially known, aims to shut down anyone who seeks freedom of speech to criticize the ruling Communist Party. Users of foreign services, such as Microsoft's Outlook or Gmail, are being forced to use local services instead -- which the Chinese government can monitor to weed out signs of dissent.

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Another 72-hour Great Online Shopping Festival

Even as the likes of Flipkart clocked sales of $100 million in under 10 hours thanks to its amazing discounts on the Big Billion day sale, the Google-promoted Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF), which kicked off on intervening night of Tuesday and Wednesday, promises to be another mega show. More than 5 million potential shoppers have already visited the site gosf.in to register themselves for the 72-hour online shopping festival that has 450 vendors this time, up from 250 last year and just 90 in 2012 when the festival was for just 24 hours.

Last year, 2 million users had visited the site and the merchants registered twice the growth on their daily average sales and this year most partners are expecting three times the sales.

Nitin Bawankule, director for e-commerce and online classifieds at Google India, told FE he saw the GOSF as a trend line for what is going to happen in the e-commerce industry the following year. For instance at last year’s GOSF, “we saw 45% of the users coming from mobile phones. At that time the e-commerce players were getting less than 20% of the transactions through mobile phones. So we told the merchants to develop their mobile platforms like apps,” he said. Most e-commerce firms now see roughly 45% of users coming on mobile platforms.

While the country’s largest e-commerce player Flipkart will not be part of GOSF, Google has managed to ensure its flagship Nexus 6 phone will be available at GOSF. Under the arrangement Google has, the Nexus 6 was to be sold in India only through Flipkart.

“The big boys might have grown indifferent but for most of the smaller players and offline players this still generates a lot of traffic and revenues. This has been working very well for them,” eTailing India founder Ashish Jhalani told FE.

However, other big e-commerce players such as Amazon.in, Snapdeal.com, Shopclues.com and Jabong.com are all geared up for the Google-promoted event. Google itself on Tuesday announced the launch of Google Chromecast in India at R2,999, to be sold on Snapdeal.com and select Airtel stores across India from Wednesday.

A continuing trend is that mobile phones still contribute 20% of e-commerce sales even if the price cuts have eased. Last year both mobile phones and laptops saw discounts of 6% on average during GOSF. According to Bawankule, discounts have ceased to be the reason for shoppers to buy online; rather, it is convenience and choice.

Also read: Early investors in Indian e-commerce book huge profits

Google also has a special section offering products at Rs 299 with free shipping and cash on delivery to attract first-time buyers, who comprised over 30% of customers last year. And that should net more customers.

“During the three-day GOSF period, we are expecting a 400% increase in traffic and 300% increase in revenues,” said Rohan Bhargava, co-founder, CashKaro.com, one of the participating merchants.

TheElectronicStore.in, part of India’s brick-and-mortar retailer The Mobile Store, believes that if you can’t beat them, join them. After earlier protesting against the discounts offered by online players, The Mobile Store is participating this year. It would be hoping to get results similar to Shopclues.com, which reported a triple-digit increase in sales and nearly 1.5 lakh new customers in the event. The company is expecting traffic to surge by 120% and 180-200% rise in sales over GOSF 2013.

According to Bawankule, last year GOSF saw women’s participation of around 40%. In a recent study conducted by Google, it found that by 2016, of the 100 million shoppers that it is expecting online, 40% will be women.

http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/tech/google-72-hour-sale-set-to-be-another-mega-online-shopping-fest/17449/

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Early investors in Indian e-commerce book huge profits

MUMBAI: Amid all the cash burn and eye-popping valuations, early investors in India's burgeoning e-commerce sector are beginning to book profits. TOI has learnt that Bengaluru-based venture fund Kalaari Capital may be in the process of executing a secondary sale of shares worth $100 million (Rs 610 crore) in Delhi-based Snapdeal.

The e-tailer's bigger rival, Flipkart, saw a similar secondary transaction a few months back, revealed sources. Early backers of the country's largest e-commerce player like Accel Partners part-sold their shares in a $150 million (Rs 910 crore) round. This round also saw some investors and employees in Myntra, which was bought out by Flipkart earlier this year and became its shareholders, selling their shares.

A secondary sale is when an existing investor sells shares to a new one or the promoter at the company's current valuation. The money does not come into the company's coffers. Secondary deals have been common among private equity funds in India, but are comparatively rare for venture capitalists.

Vani Kola, MD at Kalaari Capital -- which is now a shareholder in Flipkart as an early Myntra investor -- did not respond to a query from TOI regarding the secondary transaction at Snapdeal. Accel Partners also did not offer any comments till the time of going to press about selling shares in Flipkart.

One of the first investors in Flipkart back in 2009, Accel had put in a million dollars in the company, which is now valued at over $10 billion. Kalaari, which first invested in the e-tailer as IndoUS Ventures, has in all put $25 million (Rs 150 crore) in Snapdeal over the past five years and holds around 14% stake in the online commerce player.

"Exits of early investors via secondary transactions is a very healthy trend and fills the last mile of the investing ecosystem. Exits are the lifeblood of venture capital and have been an issue in India. So this is an encouraging development and shows maturation of the process,' said Avnish Bajaj, MD at early-stage VC fund Matrix Partners India.

Sources privy to the matter told TOI that Kalaari, an early-stage $160 million fund, was likely to shed a small single digit stake, giving it a windfall return nearly the size of its current fund. Sources said the secondary deal was being done at a higher valuation to the SoftBank round which valued Snapdeal at around $2 billion. The Japanese telecom and internet giant, which pumped $627 million into the company, owns about 32% in Snapdeal.

Also read: Amazon Drone to fly soon for delivery

The exact size of these secondary deals at Snapdeal, Flipkart and Myntra and the identity of the buyers could not be ascertained immediately.

Silicon Valley fund Bessemer Venture Partners, another early investor in Snapdeal, part liquidated its shareholding in the company, booking gains on its investment during the SoftBank round itself.

The country's top online commerce players including Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have been bleeding on account of their frenetic growth and discounting to lure customers on to their platforms. TOI carried a report last week stating that almost a billion dollars in investor money was being guzzled up by the larger e-tailers collectively on account of advertising, discounting and increasing their employee strength. Flipkart and Snapdeal alone have raised about $3 billion this year from investors.

Also read: Another 72-hour Great Online Shopping Festival

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Job Applications Fell Down in US

WASHINGTON — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits slipped below 300,000 last week, after having spiked above that level in the prior week for the first time in nearly three months.

According to report, Weekly applications fell 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 297,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose 4,750 to 299,000.

Applications are a proxy for layoffs. As fewer people seek unemployment benefits, it suggests that employers are holding onto more workers and potentially looking to bolster their hiring.

Applications have been under 300,000 for 11 of the past 12 weeks, an unusually low level that suggests employers are anticipating stronger economic growth. The four week average for jobless claims has plummeted 9 percent over the past 12 months.

Such sharp declines in applications are unlikely to continue, analysts said. But at sub-300,000 levels, they point to better job gains in the Labor Department’s employment report, said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

“The trend probably has now flattened off, but at an extraordinarily low level, consistent with very strong payroll numbers,” Shepherdson said.

The decline in application for unemployment benefits has been matched by a surge in hiring.

Employers have added an average of 228,500 jobs a month this year, putting 2014 on pace to be strongest year for hiring since 1999. That’s up from an average of 194,000 last year. The unemployment rate has fallen to a six-year low of 5.8 percent, down from 7.2 percent just a year ago.

The November jobs report being released Friday is expected to show gains of 225,000 last month, according to the data firm FactSet.

The payroll processer ADP said Wednesday that private companies added 208,000 jobs in November.

Even with gains this year and five years removed from the end of the recession, nearly 9 million people are out of work. Before the recession began in 2007, there were 7.6 million unemployed Americans. Less than a quarter of the people counted as jobless by the Labor Department are collecting unemployment benefits.

The recent job gains have not lifted wages by much, stifling the potential for the economy to grow more quickly. Average hourly pay rose 3 cents in October to $24.57. That’s just 2 percent above the average wage 12 months earlier and barely ahead of a 1.7 percent inflation rate.

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Google told to expand right to be forgotten

Google is under fresh pressure to expand the "right to be forgotten" to its international .com search tool.

A panel of EU data protection watchdogs said the move was necessary to prevent the law from being circumvented.

Google currently de-lists results that appear in the European versions of its search engines, but not the international one.

According to the report in BBC News, The panel said it would advise member states' data protection agencies of its view in new guidelines.

Source: BBC News

At present, visitors are diverted to localised editions of the US company's search tool - such as Google.co.uk and Google.fr - when they initially try to visit the Google.com site.

However, a link is provided at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen offering an option to switch to the international .com version. This link does not appear if the users attempted to go to a regional version in the first place.

Even so, it means it is possible for people in Europe to easily opt out of the censored lists. The data watchdogs said this "cannot be considered a sufficient means to guarantee the rights" of citizens living in the union's 28 member countries.

A spokesman for Google said: "We haven't yet seen the Article 29 Working Party's guidelines, but we will study them carefully when they're published."

Balancing act

The right to be forgotten was established in May by a ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union.

It said a Spaniard had the right to stop an article referring to his financial troubles appearing in Google's results, bearing in mind the event had happened 16 years before and he had put his troubles behind him. The decision did not affect the article actual presence on the net.

The court added that judgements about other complaints would need to balance "sensitivity for the data subject's private life [against] the interest of the public in having that information".

The European Commission later clarified that search engines would have to delete information if they had received a request from the person affected by the result and had judged that it met the court's criteria for deletion. In cases where search engines decide not to remove the links, the person involved can take the matter to their local data watchdog or the courts.

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Alibaba turned singledom into the world's biggest online shopping holiday

Five years ago, Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that went public in September with the biggest IPO ever, co-opted the date. In a bid to increase sales in the lull between China’s Golden Week national holiday in October and the Christmas season, Alibaba started to offer deals on its online shopping platforms, touting the day as an excuse for self-gifting and personal indulgence.

In 2009, consumers spent 50m yuan (£5m) and 27 merchants offer discounts.

In 2012, Alibaba, which acts as an online marketplace similar to Amazon or eBay, trademarked several terms relating to Singles Day.

In 2013, 20,000 retailers took part, and Singles Day sales overtook Cyber Monday’s $1.46bn (£0.92bn) worth of sales by 8.42am. Over the whole day, consumers spent $5.8bn -- far more than the combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales from all US companies.

And this year looks set to trump that. According to an Alibaba-related Twitter feed, which is live-tweeting the shopping frenzy, consumers spent 1bn yuan (£100m) in the first three minutes and $1bn (£630m) in the first 17 minutes. Within the first hour, shoppers had spent more than $2bn. Read detailed article.

According to a report, There is a vast potential for the e-commerce sector to grow in India with the implementation of the Digital India programme, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communications & IT Minister, said at the 10th national summit on E-governance & Digital India organised by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) in New Delhi yesterday.

Prasad said, “I see a vast opportunity for e-commerce…I see almost an explosion of various kind of availability of services through e-commerce.”

Retail exports (e-tailing) is a growing sector in India and e-commerce plays a key role in it. According to the Federation of Indian Exporters Association (FIEO), e-commerce exports from India in 2013 are estimated at around $1 billion and expected to grow over 100% in 2014.

Meanwhile, more and more people in India are trying to sell their products online. According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, people in rural India are looking up to the success of e-commerce-based companies such as India’s Flipkart and China’s Alibaba. He said, “We can have couple of Alibaba(s) in coming future if we are able to rollout this [Digital India] programme very well.”

The Digital India programme aims to improve Internet and telecom connectivity in the rural parts of India in three years. According to official sources, around 50,000 panchayats currently have access to the Internet through optical fibre network. The Digital India programme targets expanding it to over 2,50,000 panchayats by 2016-17.

Prasad also said that there is a need to encourage electronic manufacturing in India. At present, India imports electronic goods worth $100 billion annually and it is estimated to grow to over $400 billion by 2020, which will be more than India’s fuel imports. Prasad said that the government is providing incentives to companies and urged domestic manufacturers to produce low cost smartphones to help people in the rural parts get access to e-governance and other online services.

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Centre names 3 black money account holders in affidavit to SC: TV reports

NEW DELHI: The Union government has named three persons who are black money account holders in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, TV reports said.

According to television reports on Monday, the three persons named are Pradip Burman, director of the Burman Group, Pankaj Chimanlal Lodya, a Rajkot-based bullion trader and Radha S Timblo, a Goa-based miner and owner of Timblo Pvt Ltd.

The television reports also indicated that four members of the Congress party, including a former minister of the previous UPA regime, are under investigation, and added that their names may be revealed after the probe is completed. Among the four Congress party members are two belonging to powerful political families in the state of Maharashtra, the television reports further stated.

Last week, it was revealed that the Centre was likely to tell the apex court the names of the people against whom strong evidence exists of stashing away black money in Swiss banks in a major step in its crackdown on India's parallel economy.

On Monday, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi is reported to have submitted a supplementary affidavit in the apex court detailing plans to submit the list of names in a sealed envelope.

The court is due to continue hearings on a petition on black money the following day.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is moving fast to repatriate hundreds of billions of dollars in slush funds or black money stashed abroad, as part of a wider clampdown on corruption that he promised during his election campaign.

The government is building pressure particularly on Switzerland, seeking details of Indians who have parked unaccounted for money in Switzerland's highly secretive banks. It has quickly implemented a Supreme Court directive to set up a high-powered special investigation team, headed by retired judge M B Shah, to look into the issue.

While there are no official estimates, Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington-based think-tank, has estimated that Indians had parked USD 462 billion in overseas tax havens between 1948 and 2008.

Black money arises mainly from incomes not disclosed to the government usually to avoid taxation, and, sometimes, because of its criminal links. About a third of India's black money transactions are believed to be in real estate, followed by manufacturing and shopping for gold and consumer goods.
Earlier, the BJP government had told the apex court that it could not disclose the names of those who have deposited money in banks abroad as it this would jeopardize tax agreements with nations providing those names to India.

There were murmurs of protest within the ruling BJP that not disclosing names would hurt the party's image after it had made bringing back black money, a key issue in a general election that it won by a landslide. The Centre's stand also drew a strong response from the Congress, which accused it of hypocrisy.

Turning the tables on the Congress, finance minister Arun Jaitley had recently said the disclosing of names of people holding black money accounts will embarrass the opposition party.

The Congress had hit back, daring the government to come out with complete information without indulging in "selective leaks" and pointing out that "the Congress is not going to be blackmailed under any such threat".

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SEO will not Die until Search Engines Exist

SEO will not die until search engines exist especially popular search engine like Google which keeps on changing its algorithm frequently. There may be good and bad times for the SEO people to apply their tactics on the websites which may give them positive or negative response depending on their way of using strategies.

There are significant changes happening in the search engine algorithms in recent years which are aimed to produce quality results for the people who are looking for the best websites on the search engine results page.

SEO people must concentrate on the good SEO practices that actually work on search engines. ‘Content is King’ strategy is the best and working for all the websites which are using unique and useful content. Rather than saying SEO, we can say keyword stuffing is dead as many websites are penalized by Google which fill its pages with keywords that they target.

SEO is changed, its standards are alternated from time to time. Now it is not an old link building style, it has been substituted with other result oriented techniques. Search engines have a very good relation with the website that includes recent, suitable and trustworthy content which focused around the related topic and keyword of the business to help searchers to find your website.

Search Engine Optimizers Back in Action

Despite being tumbled, scared and shaken by most powerful search engine algorithms like Google’s Panda and Penguin from last one year, SEO world is back in action with good grip on the search engines. There were no expected results coming on, even people did not had any idea about what is happening in the background, how the search result rankings and SERPs are sorted in popular search engines. Many companies were looking for an alternative and many of them adopted to best of their knowledge.

There are rumors on the internet showing scary articles and infographic images which say about the death of SEO. Many bloggers wrote on a topic of ‘SEO is dead’, but the real thing is SEO is not dead and never it is. These articles are published to get publicity over the web. There is a lack of truth in those articles. People are reading, liking, sharing and commenting on those articles so they are spreading all over the web to get a lot of engagement from users.

Following statements are strong reasons which clarify the above topic

     • Search engines will display results based on words that we enter in the search box

     • And the resulted websites are sorted through an algorithm

Above two statements are good enough to say that websites still need search engine optimization to be visible on the internet. If websites won’t use good SEO strategies, they still have a chance to be penalized by major search engines such as Google. That means website should and must practice good SEO techniques to generate more business.

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Groupon Joins Online Discounts Fight after Flipkart and Snapdeal

Online shopping platform Groupon has joined the bandwagon of large format e-tailers such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon to launch new offers ion a variety of products this festive season to maximize its sales. The online shopping site, which largely gets customers for its offerings in travel and food segments, has expanded its daily deal list to close 1500 offers with discounts ranging from 20-80%.

To be competitive and relevant during the festival season, when there is an onslaught of offers by other-etailers, Groupon has laid emphasis of four categories - electronics, home and kitchen, lifestyle, footwear and fashion. While the offers on electronics have been increased to 270, there are 220 offers in the home and kitchen segments while footwear, which is one the fastest moving segment on other platforms, the offers have been increased to 70 products like lotto, Adidas, Tortoise, Carlton on sale.

It's Flipkart vs Snapdeal vs Amazon and now, Groupon

According to a report in The Finantial Express, An official of the company said that Indian festival season is all about eating and shopping and Groupon accordingly is looking at bundling the two experiences for is customers with mouth watering offers. The last years popular steal deal that gave its buyers option to buy a bag with three hidden products may also make a come back while offerings on groceries, that give cash to buyers has also been started.

On mobile phones, one of the hottest selling products online this year, Groupon is offering discounts between 25-50% on some of the phone from Zync, Gionee, LG, Iphone and Micromax.  It has also enlarged its offering on fashion products having few exclusive deals with men and women fashion brands.

While the company has not set any target for sales this festive season, it is expecting that it would better than last year. The company is also banking on the buzz generated by e-tailers such as Flipkart to get enhanced sales on its own platform by promising a better experience for customers.

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