FACEBOOK TO PLAN SOLAR PLANE BASED INTERNET SERVICES IN INDIA

Social media giant Facebook is interested in testing internet services through solar-powered plane in India and other telecom connectivity technologies it is developing.

“We are really in development of technologies at connectivity lab. We are not yet launching any pilots. We will in the future, and we are entirely open to launching it in India because there is such a great opportunity in India to connect the unconnected,” Facebook Vice President of Internet.org Chris Daniels said.

He said the company is working on alternate internet technologies other than traditional ways of providing connectivity including solar planes and satellites.

“The reason why planes are interesting is that you can have solar powered planes that stay very high in the sky and provide connectivity. Plane can have broad area. That plane can be fuelled by the sun, does not need to have generator or physical infrastructure on the ground. That’s potentially an attractive way through which we can provide connectivity,” he said.

Facebook expects technologies to bring down the cost of internet significantly.

Web-based companies including Facebook that provide messenger and internet-based calling service have been at loggerheads with telecom operator as it is cutting in to their revenues.

Facebook is now attempting to make truce with telecom operators through its programme internet.org. Under this, it in partnership with telecom operators is providing free access to some basic websites to customers.

In India, Facebook launched internet.org with Reliance Communications.

“Internet.org is a customer acquisition tool. There is a 40 per cent increase in data customers for operators who have turned on internet.org. The fundamental thing that we can do to help operators is to bring them more paying customers. That’s the model which supports their business model and network roll out,” Daniel said.

Telecom operators have been demanding that there should be revenue sharing model between web-based companies providing messaging and calling services as they invest massively on building network to provide connectivity to the people.

Daniel said such demand does not “make sense at higher level. People are paying for data when they find value in internet. We are trying to help them find value in internet.”

The internet.org platform includes Facebook messenger but the social media firm has turned off VoIP or internet-based calling function due to concerns raised by telecom operators.

“Taking into consideration business model concerns that operators have around VoIP, it is not a free basic service which we have chosen with them (operators) to include in Internet.org,” Daniel said.

Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Daniels both praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for use of internet.

“In India, it’s interesting to see how Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi used internet as a campaigning tool,” Zuckerberg said.

Daniel said that Facebook is inspired by hearing “Prime Minister Modi’s Digital India initiative. I think government in India has done a really fantastic thing in embracing connectivity as one of the key pillars.”

He further said: “There are things that we can do to collaborate with Indian government is providing e-government services through internet.org and we have already begun to that with Andhra Pradesh.”

Facebook has second largest user base in India after the US. By the end of September 2014, Facebook had monthly active user base of about 112 million and 52 million daily active users.

Globally, the company has 1.35 billion users, while the daily active users are 864 million.

SNAPDRAGON 3 D AUTHENTICATION TECHNOLOGY

                                          To watch how it works click here.
The mobile revolution has touched nearly every facet of modern life. Reaching for our smartphones or tablets is now often the first—or only—step we take for everything from depositing a check and ordering groceries to keeping track of our pets and children. With so much sensitive data shared among these devices and various sites, robust mobile security is more important than ever.

As an industry leader, Qualcomm Technologies is committed to providing a comprehensive solution for mobile security. Doing that means staying ahead of the curve as technology quickly advances. That’s why we’re proud to announceQualcomm Snapdragon Sense ID 3D fingerprint technology, the latest in cutting-edge biometric fingerprint authentication. Snapdragon Sense ID is the first comprehensive mobile biometric solution based on ultrasonic technology.

It’s a step up from traditional fingerprint authentication, which relies on capacitive touch-based sensors. Our ultrasonic-based technology is engineered to capture three-dimensional acoustic detail within the outer layers of skin, enabling superior image quality for more accurate capture and recognition of unique and subtle fingerprint characteristics. The resulting image data is much less likely to be spoofed, which is a common challenge for capacitive-based sensors.

Snapdragon Sense ID has a number of distinct advantages over legacy capacitive touch based fingerprint solutions:

• More Accurate and Consistent

Capacitive touch-based sensors use electrical current to create an image of the user’s fingerprint. Because of the limitations of capacitive sensors, only a surface-level impression of the fingerprint is captured. Instead, using high-frequency sound waves, Snapdragon Sense ID can create a highly detailed 3D image of the unique and subtle features of a user’s fingerprint by penetrating the outer layers of the skin. In effect, these sound waves fill the intricate nooks and crannies of the skin, resulting in an incredibly detailed map of the ridge endings, bifurcations, and even sweat pores that make each individual fingerprint so unique.

Snapdragon Sense ID ultrasonic technology is designed to scan through common contaminants like sweat, lotion, and condensation. This means a more consistent and accurate scan, even when you're on the go.

• Cooler Devices

Snapdragon Sense ID is also designed to scan through most device materials, including device cover glass, aluminum, stainless steel, sapphire, and plastics. This opens up opportunities for device manufacturers to create sleek new phone designs and to place the fingerprint sensor in new areas of the device.

• More Secure

Because Snapdragon Sense ID can create a more accurate map of the fingerprint, it enables improved biometric authentication. Snapdragon Sense ID technology is more difficult to spoof—or to trick the scanner into authenticating a copy of the user’s fingerprint —than capacitive-based solutions, which only reflect the outer surface of the fingerprint.

Security and user privacy is enhanced by Snapdragon Sense ID also because of its integration with the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Universal Authentication Framework (UAF) biometrics standard. FIDO helps to facilitate secure online communication among connected devices, including mobile devices with Snapdragon Sense ID and any number of online services that also utilize the FIDO standard.

Another way that Snapdragon Sense ID and FIDO are designed to help secure your personal data is by enabling secure authentication on the device, rather than up in the cloud. Qualcomm Security Solutions are all made to protect personal data on device and to do as much security-related processing on the device as possible, so your personal data never has to leave the well-protected Qualcomm SecureMSM foundation. Snapdragon Sense ID is designed to authenticate you there on your device and send the trusted authentication signal using the FIDO protocol to the other FIDO enabled services.

Most likely all of us have experienced forgetting our password and not being able to access an account when we really needed to. Having to remember multiple usernames and passwords is a hassle. Snapdragon Sense ID is designed to help address that problem by providing a much more convenient password-less user experience. Users don’t need to remember every password, instead they just tap their finger to the phone.

• More Comprehensive

Incorporating the Qualcomm Biometric Integrated Circuit (QBIC), custom sensor technology, algorithms managed by Qualcomm SecureMSM technology, Nok Nok Lab’s S3 Authentication Suite, and the FIDO UAF standard, Snapdragon Sense ID truly is the mobile industry's first comprehensive ultrasonic fingerprint solution.

• Availability

Snapdragon Sense ID 3D fingerprint technology is designed to be compatible with Snapdragon 400 series, 600 series and 800 series processors and is first being introduced in the Snapdragon 810 and 425 processors. You can expect to see Snapdragon Sense ID in commercial devices in the second half of 2015.