Posts tagged German
Google Analytics Gets OK’d In German State
Sep 27th
Google has reached agreement with privacy officials in the German state of Hamburg that will allow website owners to continue using Google Analytics. The accord comes months after Hamburg officials threatened to fine German businesses that used Google Analytics. As part of the agreement, Google has…
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German Rail System to Get Mobile Payments This Year
Aug 26th
Come November, the world’s second largest mass transit company will let its riders pay for trips by waving their cell phones at the terminal. The Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s main railway operator, began implementing its Touch&Travel mobile payments system in 2008 and expects it to be ready within two months.
The system will rely on near field communications (NFC) chips contained in customers’ mobile phones to handle the payment transactions for each trip. Alternatively, riders can pay with their phones by scanning a QR code at the beginning and end point of their ride.
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Touch&Travel mobile apps are available for iPhone and Android-based smart phones. “In addition to using NFC or barcodes to provide location information, smartphone apps can use GPS or the user can type in a location ID number,” writes NFC World. Riders will be billed for their transit usage at the end of each month.
Contactless payments are just one of the many uses for NFC, which is one of the most talked-about technologies of the last year. Some other use cases include exchanging contact information, mobile gaming and unlocking doors, to name a few. Still, mobile payments are perhaps the most anticipated of its future uses, as everybody from banks and credit card companies to Google and smaller tech startups have been preparing solutions in this space.
New York City’s transit system started its own pilot program for mobile payments last year, which lets riders pay for trips with their iPhones. Since the iPhone does not yet support NFC natively, the devices need to be housed in a special casing in order to work with New York’s subway, rail, bus and taxi systems.
Will mobile payments make commuters lives easier or is this just a tech fad waiting to happen? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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Malware Exploit Found for iOS Devices by German Researchers
Jul 6th
Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security issued a warning today that iPhones, iPads and the iPod Touch have a “critical weaknesses,” the Associated Press reports. The malware is delivered by an infected PDF that can affect the user’s device without them knowing. The same a result would occur when a user visits a website with an infected PDF.
This is one of the first malware weaknesses discovered for iOS. Android has an increasing problem with malware and rootkits but so far there has not been a significant weakness exploited on iOS (not counting the 120,000 iPads that were hacked last year that was really more the fault of AT&T than iOS). Is this just the first drip of a coming wave of mobile malware?
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According to a Google Translation of the German Federal Office for Information Security, the exploit will give the attacker administrative privileges over device which would include any data, email or contacts stored on the device. So far there is no official patch available for the exploit from Apple. Yet, if you have jail broken your iOS device there is a patch available through Cydia.
The exploit exists for all iOS devices running version 4.3.3. The agency stated that it
“currently can not exclude that other versions of the IOS operating system are affected by this vulnerability,” (translated from German with Google Translate).
Apple works with Good Technologies to help secure iOS and has been consulted by corporations that focus on mobile strategy such as Juniper. If there is already a patch for this exploit in the Cydia store than it is likely that the security companies like Good and Fingerprint Security (a popular security app for the iPhone) will have the loophole closed relatively quickly.
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Before iCloud is Revealed, Apple Sued by German Developers Claiming Antitrust
Jun 6th
When you are one of the biggest corporations in the world and it is your biggest day of the year, you are a lightning rod of attention, both good and bad.
The Web is buzzing about Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference. Of the topics to be discussed at the keynote, Apple’s newest product – iCloud – is drawing the most attention. In that vein, a German music-streaming startup called Simfy has filed a lawsuit against Apple for allegedly withholding approval of its iPad application because it is a potential competitor to the iCloud streaming service.
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The Next Web was the first to report the Simfy suit. Simfy is claiming that Apple not approving the Simfy app is a violation of antitrust laws. Now, despite all the rumors and anticipation, Apple has not actually said exactly what iCloud is going to be. It could be a lot of things from digital storage to music streaming to an all-purpose personal cloud. We will know exactly what iCloud entails later today during the WWDC keynote.
Simfy offers an on-demand streaming service, much like European counterpart Spotify, and operates in Germany, Austria and Switzerland with plans to expand. Given Spotify’s troubles to reach the U.S. shores, do not expect Simfy to be leaving Rheinland any time soon.
Simfy has an iPhone/iPod version of the app available in Europe. That brings up an interesting question: Apple developers sign an agreement that explicitly says they will abide by the rules, guidelines and practices of Apple App Store approval. If Apple denies a claim for any reason, is there legal recourse? Antitrust is a heavy charge and The Bundeskartellamt is the German equivalent of the Federal Trade Commission as it oversees competition between businesses in Germany.
Apple has had a couple issues with app developers over approvals. In the music streaming department, Apple yanked Grooveshark after complaints from a music label in the United Kingdom. Yet, Pandroa, MOG and Rdio all exist happily in the App Store and do well.
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Google Buys 49% of a German Solar Power Plant
Apr 9th
Google has long been committed to renewable energy resources – though how much of that is for environmental as opposed to monetary reasons is difficult to say. However, their green initiative investments have remained almost entirely in the United States. Now that’s changed, thanks to Google’s recent investment of 3.5 million euros in a German power plant.
The investment, which translates to approximately 5 million U.S. dollars, represents a buyout of 49% of the company’s ownership. The solar plant itself is located in Brandenburg and was completed at the end of 2010, shortly after which it was purchased by Capital Stage AG (with the exact purchase price being left undisclosed). Capital Stage AG has also purchased several other German solar farms, and now own a total of 14 across Italy and Germany.
While it’s uncertain precisely how Google’s investment funds will be used, the figures indicate significant backing that, should Capital AG follow its recent trends, will likely mean further expansion of the plant itself. There is plenty of room for expansion, with the power plant resting on a 47-acre property. The plant currently generates, 18.64 MW of power, well more than most other solar farms (many of which generate power in the 5 to 10 MW area).
The investment itself, while official as an offer from Google, has yet to be ratified by the German government. Before the transaction is officially complete, the competition authorities will have to grant formal approval. Standard closing procedures cannot be started until such approval has been granted.
Google has invested over 100 million U.S. dollars in clean energy to date, but almost the entirety has been in the U.S. This includes the approximately 40 million dollar investment in two North Dakota solar farms in 2010. The German solar plant purchase represents the first million-plus investment in clean energy for Google outside of the United States.
[via Capital Stage AG and Tech Crunch]
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Google Buys 49% of a German Solar Power Plant
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Google Buys German Reverse Engineering Company
Mar 3rd
Google is a monolithic entity – so big and so powerful that it trumps competitors (except Bing, which is gaining) by its mere presence, with so many resources that it can buy out any company it wants (except Groupon, who didn’t think $6 billion was good enough) without blinking. It’s no shocking matter, then, when Google buys another company. However, the “shopping habits” of this industry leader can give us substantial hints on what’s to come. So what, exactly, does the acquisition of the German company “Zynamics” mean?
Image via the Zynamics Site
Zynamics is a company specializing in “reverse engineering,” or understanding and manipulating software that doesn’t have available source code. While this can technically mean closed-source software with hidden code, it far more commonly means malware. This is best shown in the Zynamics lineup of products, which includes BinDiff (dissects executable files), PDF Dissector (looks through PDF files for malicious software), BinNavi (looks through binary code), and BinCrowd (a database for reverse engineering data).
It’s quite evident that malware is the focus, but to what end? Google could implement the Zynamics team and products in any number of Google divisions, including the Chrome browser (which already focuses heavily on security), the Chrome OS (which relies on being the most secure operating system on the market), the search team (which recently released new levels of malware protection), and more. In any case, it will be interesting to see how the resources are utilized and exactly what angle Google uses to benefit users.
Google hasn’t given us any more detailed information, but a representative stated that, “We’re delighted to have the Zynamics team on board,” specifying the usefulness of Zynamics’s “tools and skills in fighting malware.”
[via Mashable]
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Google Buys German Reverse Engineering Company
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The Wiki Strikes Again: German Official Drops “Dr” After Wiki Investigation
Feb 22nd
The revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have been dubbed by some to be “Wiki Revolutions” because “just as people can self-organize to contribute to Wikipedia…they can participate in social change and coalesce into revolutionary movements as never before.” Now, it seems that wikis may not only be behind toppling governments, but also stripping plagiarizing government officials of their educational titles.
This week, German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has said he would remove the “Dr” from his name while a plagiarism investigation of his PhD took place. Where did this investigation originate? Wikia, the for-profit wiki project started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
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According to a Wikia spokesperson, the whole thing “started with Guttenplag, the Wikia site that users set up to record instances of plagiarism in the doctoral thesis of German Defense Minister Guttenberg.” Apparently, the site grew rapidly to more than 1,130 pages of content and 1.5 million pageviews per day, forcing Guttenberg to respond publicly.
Global political leaders are used to worrying about wikis — from the ‘Controversy’ sections of their Wikpedia biographies to the still-ominous Wikileaks (which incidentally is not a wiki, considering it is closed and non-collaborative).
But now they have a bit more to be concerned about — having their academic qualifications publicly discredited by the new "plagiarism wikis" we’ve seen popping up on the Wikia platform.
The newest incarnation of the “Wiki Revolution” doesn’t stop there. Apparently, Muammar al-Gaddafi’s son has become the next target, with users questioning whether or not his thesis is authentic or plagiarized.
The empowering effects of the Internet have started to rear their head beyond badmouthing brands. Where else might we see the power of the people manifest into real world effects? Will investigative journalism be, in some ways, replaced by a crowdsourced, wiki-based future where the general population takes on these sorts of questions?
Wikia says that this “could very well be the start of a global trend” and that it will be keeping an eye out for further developments, noting that its platform supports multiple languages and could spread to more regions.
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