Facebook buys fitness app firm

Facebook has added a Finnish firm that makes a fitness tracking app to its ever-increasing portfolio of purchases.

Helsinki-based ProtoGeo created the Moves app that uses a smartphone's built-in sensors to track activity and calories burned.

The acquisition offers the social network an entry into the burgeoning health technology market.

Other recent purchases include mobile messaging firm WhatsApp and virtual headset maker Oculus.

Facebook did not reveal how much it paid for ProtoGeo, which has fewer than 10 employees, but it is believed to be a fraction of the price it has paid for more high-profile firms recently.

It paid $2bn (£1.1bn) for Oculus VR and spent $19bn (£11.3bn) on WhatsApp.

Targeted ads
In a blogpost the fitness firm moved to reassure its users about the purchase.

"For those of you that use the Moves app - the Moves experience will continue to operate as a stand-alone app, and there are no plans to change that or co-mingle data with Facebook."

Meanwhile Facebook said of the purchase: "The Moves team has built an incredible tool for the millions of people who want to better understand their daily fitness activity, and we're looking forward to the app continuing to gain momentum."

The app runs in the background of users' phones, using location data to monitor activities through the day.

The free app has been downloaded more than four million times for both iPhone and Android phones, according to the firm.

Many of the big technology firms are seeing money to be made from health technology. There is a range of fitness bands and smartwatches on the market already.

Apple is rumoured to be on the verge of launching its own smartwatch with fitness features and Google last month launched software for wearables.

But for Facebook, the purchase of a fitness app is likely to be all about new data which will allow it to better target adverts, thinks Alys Woodward, an analyst with research firm IDC.

"They want to know more stuff about what people do and where they are. This is useful information even if they don't tie it back to the individual," she said.

Alerts over faulty Apple and Samsung handsets

Apple and Samsung have issued alerts about faults on some of their phones.

Apple has begun a replacement programme for some of its iPhone 5 handsets that have a faulty sleep/wake button.

Separately, Samsung has revealed that some of its flagship Galaxy S5 handsets have been shipped with a non-functioning camera.

It said anyone who bought an S5 with a faulty camera should contact Samsung's customer service or their mobile operator to get the phone replaced.

Serial numbers
Samsung said it had found a "very limited" number of handsets had been shipped with the fault. It said it had traced the cause of the problem and had taken steps to ensure it did not re-occur in future production runs.

"We have discovered that the issue has been seen in a very limited portion of early production Galaxy S5 units, and was caused by complications in the Read Only Memory component which stores the information necessary to operate the camera," Samsung said in a statement.

Samsung declined to say how many handsets were affected but did say that the faulty handsets had been reported in the US and several other countries.

Apple said a "small percentage" of iPhone 5 handsets were affected by manufacturing problems that meant its sleep/wake button stopped working or only worked intermittently.

It said it would replace the sleep/wake mechanism in affected phones free of charge. To help customers it has set up a webpage on which they can enter the serial number of their phone to see if it is in the affected batch.

The faulty button is believed to affect iPhone 5 handsets manufactured before May 2013.

The replacement programme begins in the US on 28 April and rolls out worldwide on 2 May. Customers with affected handsets can either post their device to an Apple repair centre or drop it off in person.

Microsoft must release email data held on Dublin server

A judge in the US has ordered Microsoft to hand over a customer's emails, even though the data is held on a server in Ireland.

Microsoft has previously taken steps to reassure customers that data held on servers abroad should not be subject to search warrants by US authorities.

It follows concerns about data privacy after allegations of US spying by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The judge said warrants for online data were different to other warrants.

The search warrant, which was issued to Microsoft by US authorities, sought information associated with a customer's email account including the customer's name, credit card details and contents of all messages.

Microsoft said that the account was hosted on a server in Dublin and therefore the search warrant was not valid as the data was outside of the US.

'Government disagrees'
Judge James Francis in New York said that this was true for "traditional" warrants but not for those seeking online content, which are governed by federal law under the Stored Communications Act.

He said the warrant should be treated more like a subpoeana for documents. Anyone issued with a subpoena by the US must provide the information sought, no matter where it was held, he said.

Law enforcement efforts would be seriously impeded and the burden on the government would be substantial if they had to co-ordinate with foreign governments to obtain this sort of information from internet service providers such as Microsoft and Google, Judge Francis said.

In a statement to Reuters, Microsoft said: "A US prosecutor cannot obtain a US warrant to search someone's home located in another country, just as another country's prosecutor cannot obtain a court order in her home country to conduct a search in the United States.

"We think the same rules should apply in the online world, but the government disagrees."

Microsoft logo

Internet Explorer bug lets hacker control your PC

Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) is racing to address a weakness in its popular Web browser that security experts at FireEye (FEYE) revealed over the weekend. The researchers discovered that hackers have exploited the bug and created a new type of attack.This is how it works: Hackers set up a website that installs malware when you visit it. If you're duped into visiting the website while using the Internet Explorer program, malware seeps into your computer and gives a stranger total control. You might not even notice.
"I'd say someone taking control of your computer is just the beginning of the worst case scenario," said Adrian Sanabria, a security expert with 451research.com. "Because then they steal your info, get access to your email, etc."
Related story: Cyber insurance bridges the gap between physical and digital
That's where the real danger lies. Anyone in control of your computer can spy on everything you do. If it's a PC at work, hackers can reach into anything an employee has access to.
It's worse for those using Windows XP, because Microsoft no longer supports that operating system with security patches. To them, Microsoft says: Go upgrade to Windows 7 or 8.1.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommends that people ditch Internet Explorer until there's a patch -- or install special software in the meantime instead.
But this bug is more omnipresent than it seems. Lots of machines use Windows -- bank ATMs, point of sale systems, restaurant seating tools -- and Internet Explorer is their default browser. If hackers manage to send them to a bad website, that machine is now under their control. It won't be easy, but it's possible.
"You don't think of them as Windows PCs running software," said Paco Hope, a consultant with software security firm Cigital. He advises that businesses talk to equipment vendors to determine how vulnerable they are.
Because this attack relies on a few of Internet Explorer's extra features, there's a relatively easy fix: Just disable them. FireEye advises disabling the Adobe (ADBE) Flash plugin. While Microsoft works on patching the bug, its engineers suggest running your browser in "Enhanced Protect Mode." But computer experts say that will likely ruin your online experience.

Google: Self-driving cars are mastering city streets

Over the past year or so, Google has been fine-tuning how the software running its fleet of automated vehicles handles the complexities of stop-and-go driving in heavily populated areas.
"A mile of city driving is much more complex than a mile of freeway driving, with hundreds of different objects moving according to different rules of the road in a small area," Chris Urmson, the head of Google's self-driving-car project, said Monday in a blog post.
Urmson said engineers have improved the cars' software to recognize situations like pedestrian traffic, buses, stop signs held by crossing guards and hand signals made by cyclists.

And, he says, self-driving cars have the potential to handle all of that even better than we do.
"A self-driving vehicle can pay attention to all of these things in a way that a human physically can't -- and it never gets tired or distracted," Urmson wrote. "As it turns out, what looks chaotic and random on a city street to the human eye is actually fairly predictable to a computer."
The CNN 10: Meet the future of driving
Since 2011, when self-driving vehicles became street-legal in Nevada, Google has logged nearly 700,000 miles with the cars, mostly on highways. The only reported accidents have happened when one of the cars was being driven by a person, or they were the fault of another driver.
Autonomous cars are also now legal in California, Florida and Michigan, although all states still require a human driver behind the wheel.
Google has been testing the cars around its Silicon Valley headquarters in suburban Mountain View, California.
There's more to learn before testing them in another city, Urmson wrote, "but thousands of situations on city streets that would have stumped us two years ago can now be navigated autonomously."
The cars' technology includes a laser radar system and a laser-based range finder that lets software create detailed 3-D maps of the surroundings.
In a YouTube video also posted Monday, one of the cars is shown recognizing and changing lanes in a construction zone, negotiating a railroad crossing and making a right turn at an intersection crowded with cars, cyclists and pedestrians.
"With every passing mile we're growing more optimistic that we're heading toward an achievable goal -- a vehicle that operates fully without human intervention," Urmson wrote.