Mega Route

A woman holds a Catalan separatist flag in Barcelona on Friday Regional President Carles Puigdemont told the crowd that he believed Catalonia would be taking its first steps as a sovereign nation. Thousands of extra police have been drafted in from across Spain as the government seeks to stop the ballot. Google has deleted an app used to direct voters to polling stations. Phone users in the region who try to download the app from Google Play get a message saying it is not available locally although those who already have the app can still use it. The corporation said it was complying with a court order.Catalonia, a wealthy region of 7.5 million people in north-eastern Spain has its own language and culture, and a high degree of autonomy, but is not recognised as a separate nation under the Spanish constitution. Pressure for a vote on self-determination has grown over the past five years but in the 2015 regional election, won by an alliance of pro-independence parties, about 40% o

Photo credits: GETTY IMAGES  Apple's Facial ID system relies on two types of neutral networks. According to a guide released by the firm , One of which has been specifically trained to resist spoofing attempts. But a consequence of the design is that it behaves like a "black box". So, while Apple says Face ID should be able to distinguish between a real person's face and someone else wearing a mask that matches the geometry of their features, it will sometimes be impossible to determine what clues were picked up on. Face ID is far from being the first facial recognition system to be built into a mobile device. But previous technologies have been plagued by complaints they are relatively easy to fool by with photos, video clips or 3D models shown to the sensor. This has made them unsuitable for payment authentication or other security-sensitive circumstances. In publishing its Face ID documentation more than a month ahead of the iPhone X going on sale, Apple is ho

Bloody Moon

  According to reports, Finland’s Rovio, creator of the popular smartphone game “Angry Birds” saw its shares take off in its stock market debut Friday, adding tens of millions of euros to its market value within minutes of trading. A day after Rovio set its share price at the very top of its target range at 11.50 euros, the stock went well beyond 12 in early Helsinki stock exchange business, giving the company an overall value of around 950 million euros ($1.1 billion). Some 78 million shares changed hands on the pre-list market in early dealings, pending their expected move to the main market next week. “We feel extremely happy and honoured to have received so much interest towards Rovio’s IPO both by Finnish and international investors,” Rovio’s CEO Kati Levoranta said in a statement. She added that Friday’s listing “is an important milestone in developing Rovio into an even stronger games-first entertainment company”. The offering consisted of new shares and a portion marketed by

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has revealed he uses an Android-powered smartphone, rather than a Windows one. According to him, "Recently, I actually did switch to an Android phone," he said, speaking on Fox News Sunday. Microsoft's own Windows-powered phones have failed to make a significant impact on the smartphone market, which is dominated by devices running Google's Android operating system. However, Mr Gates said he had installed lots of Microsoft apps on his phone. When asked whether he also had an iPhone, perhaps as a secondary device, he replied: "No, no iPhone." He did not reveal which particular smartphone he currently uses. Microsoft struggled to make a success of its own mobile operating system, Windows Phone. In 2014, the software giant paid $7.2bn (£5.5bn) for Nokia's handset business, but Windows-powered phones accounted for fewer than 1% of global smartphone sales in 2016. Microsoft's latest operating system, Wind

With a charge on countries including Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt to champion next generation technologies in terms of use and adoption, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is hoping to complete all standardisation around the Fifth-Generation (5G) networks by 2019. ITU Secretary-General, Houlin Zhao, who revealed this on Monday, while declaring open the 2017 edition of the Telecoms World Conference in Busan, South Korea, with the theme: Digital Transformation, Global Opportunity, countries, especially in the African region to brace up for disruptions.He revealed that the world is gradually shifting from 3G; 4G and focus now is on 5G, which he said would make technology stronger. According to him, the technology, ‘‘5G is not finalised yet. ITU is working to improve its parameters and fix spectrum for it. Though some countries, including Korea, are already test running the technology, the standardisation will be fixed at the Plenary Assembly of Radio Communica

Beach day Photo by Ryan Christodoulou on Unsplash

Tree, water, lake, boat and grass Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

  Amazon has announced new versions of its Echo smart speakers that promise improved sound and voice recognition. The basic model also allows its shell to be changed to give it different looks - a feature already offered by Google's rival Home device. A larger Echo Plus adds a "home hub", letting it control smart light bulbs and other third-party products without a separate data-linking device. And the Echo Spot has a screen, making video calls and camera feeds possible. Amazon has never released sales figures for the earlier Echo line-up. But researchers suggest it and its smaller sibling the Echo Dot have been the best selling devices of their kind. The Echo family accounts for 75% of the US market for internet-connected speakers with built-in smart assistant functionality, estimated Consumer Intelligence Research Partners earlier this month. It suggested 15 million devices had been sold to date. Colour choices The new Echo is smaller than its predece

  Twitter has announced it is trialling a new 280-character limit to allow users to "easily express themselves" - but the site's users have been predictably snarky. The fun started when Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey took to the social media platform on Tuesday to announce the change. "This is a small change, but a big move for us. 140 was an arbitrary choice based on the 160 character SMS limit. Proud of how thoughtful the team has been in solving a real problem people have when trying to tweet. And at the same time maintaining our brevity, speed, and essence!" At the moment, the 280-character limit is just a trial for some members, and the company has not said whether it will roll out the change more widely.

Photo credits: GETTY IMAGES The US president accused the social network of "collusion" on Twitter, branding it "anti-Trump". He made the same claim against the New York Times and the Washington Post. Facebook will shortly hand over 3,000 political adverts to congressional investigators probing alleged Russian meddling in the US election. The site believes the ads were probably purchased by Russian entities during and after the 2016 presidential contest. Facebook, Twitter and Google have been asked to testify before the US Senate Intelligence Committee on 1 November about the allegations of Russian interference. Facebook and Google have confirmed they have received invitations to attend the committee hearing, but none of the social media giants have yet said they will be present. In a Facebook post responding to President Trump's criticism , CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was striving to make "a platform for all ideas". He said that aside from "pr

Photo credits: AMAZON Amazon and Google have clashed publicly after access to YouTube was pulled from one of the online retailer's devices. On Tuesday, YouTube stopped working on Amazon's Echo Show, a voice-controlled assistant with a screen that can display information and videos. Both companies issued statements criticizing one another. Amazon said Google had blocked YouTube on Echo Show "without explanation". Google said the Echo Show delivered a "broken user experience". While the Echo Show could play videos from YouTube, it did not provide all of YouTube's functions such as the ability to subscribe to channels or serve up video recommendations. Google said in a statement: "Amazon's implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon. "We've been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time, working to

  Telecoms operators under the aegis of Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), is seeking better working environment for service providers in the country, and described the present operating environment as harsh, thereby limiting upgrades and expansion. ALTON made this call at the 81st edition of Telecom Consumer Parliament (TCP), organised by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), in Lagos with the theme: “Celebrating the Telecom Consumer.” ALTON’s Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo, an engineer, who made this call, said the challenge of site closure needs to be addressed, noting that the Ogun State Government had shut down 25 telecommunication sites for various reasons.”Consequentially, this will affect the quality of service of telecom consumers,” he said in reaction to a complaint by a telecom consumer in Ogun State. “The average consumer will blame the service providers for the connection experience, but we know the impact closure of sites does hav

  The Nigeria government through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) will be promoting 10 startups at this year’s Gitex technology expo and conference holding in Dubai from October 8-12.    The country’s tech-ambassadors were carefully selected after a highly competitive process anchored by the Office for ICT Innovation & Entrepreneurship (OIIE) which is an arm of the NITDA.   The 10 are: Nicademia, SIX, Tattara, Accounteer, Beat Drone, Cloudoria, Dropque, MyPadi, Ward Monitor and MTK e-Learning will join their peers from over 60 countries at the second edition of the Gitex Startups Global Movement  which was launched last year at Gitex to be a global rallying ground for funding startups and exposing innovators to mentors and venture capitalists. Gitex is the premier yearly technology event in the Middle East, Asia and Africa hosting over 185, 000 visitors from more than 140 countries. This year’s edition holds October 8-12 at the Dubai World Trade

An end-to-end technology solution provider, BCX, has inked a partnership deal with networking giant CISCO.This partnership is in the introduction of a new business solution that is programmed to help customers reduce the total cost of running their businesses by as much as 70 per cent. The Managing Director, BCX Nigeria, Ayo Adegboye, while addressing technology companies at the business collaborative forum in Lagos, explained that most businesses driven by technology, invest so much in IT, without achieving the commensurate returns on investment.He said the situation, has grounded several businesses in the past, while some are still struggling to make ends meet, adding that the best way to address it was for businesses to embrace innovation that would drive growth and returns on investment. “It is for this reason that BCX and Cisco have collaborated to provide new model of business solutions that will cut down cost of running businesses, as much as 70 per cent,” Adegboye said. The

   YouTube announced that the YouTube Go app previewed at the recent Google for Nigeria event is now available for initial public download in Nigeria. YouTube has been re-imagined to meet the needs of the next generation of users in YouTube Go, which is available for initial download in the Google Play Store. YouTube plans to continue to learn from our users to improve the app over time. Speaking on the announcement, Johanna Wright, VP Product Management at YouTube, said: “YouTube Go has been designed to take into account the challenges faced by YouTube users in countries like Nigeria, such as data cost and connectivity. With YouTube Go, we are making it possible for everyone in Nigeria to be able to discover videos that they love, regardless of their network status or data consumption preferences.” With more Nigerians coming online every year, and most of them only using their mobiles for internet access, we are working hard to make products that are tailored to Nigerians’ specific

Photo by Tatyana Dobreva on Unsplash

Tunnel in Italy

Photo credits: GETTY IMAGES Corporate finance giant Deloitte suffered a cyber-attack that compromised confidential data, including the private emails of some of its clients, the company has confirmed. Its system had been accessed via an email platform and "very few" clients had been affected, Deloitte said. The Guardian reported the attack had been discovered in March but could have happened months earlier. Deloitte said it had contacted those whose data had been accessed. It did not confirm exactly how many people had been affected or how much information had been compromised. Deloitte carries out auditing, consultancy, tax and financial advice services for clients worldwide. For the year ending on 31 May, it reported revenues of of $38.8bn (£29bn). Prof Alan Woodward, cyber-security expert at Surrey University, told the BBC  that private email addresses alone were valuable data for hackers. "Many people expect their email address to be in the publi

Photo credits: REUTERS Hackers working for the so-called Islamic State are bad at coding and hiding what they do, suggests research. They produce buggy malware and easily crackable encryption programs, said senior security researcher Kyle Wilhoit at security conference DerbyCon. In particular, he called three attack tools created by one large IS hacker collective "garbage". Their poor skills meant IS groups had switched to online services and the dark web for attack code, he said. While IS was very proficient at using social media as a recruitment and propaganda tool, its cyber-attack arm was nowhere near as effective, said Mr Wilhoit, a cyber-security researcher at Domain Tools, while presenting his work at the conference in Kentucky. "ISIS is really, really bad at the development of encryption software and malware," he told tech news outlet The Register, adding that the vulnerabilities found in all the tools effectively rendered them "completel

Photo credits: AFP PHOTO / Maxim ZMEYEV Russian officials and Orthodox priests on Tuesday unveiled a statue in Moscow of inventor Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose iconic AK-47 assault rifle has claimed countless lives worldwide. A priest sprinkled holy water on the seven-metre tall statue of Kalashnikov gripping his deadly creation, which will now loom over motorists from a traffic island in one of the sprawling capital’s central thoroughfares. Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky praised the inventor and called the rifle — which has been reproduced an estimated 100 million times worldwide — a “cultural brand for Russia.” Kalashnikov had “the best traits of a Russian: an extraordinary natural gift, simplicity, integrity,” Medinsky said. Born in a Siberian village in 1919, Mikhail Kalashnikov died in December 2013 in Izhevsk, the capital of the Russian republic of Udmurtia, where he lived. Kalashnikov came up with the idea of inventing a new automatic rifle that could work in all conditi

Photo credits: AFP PHOTO / SONNY TUMBELAKA Nearly 50,000 people have evacuated their homes for fear of an imminent volcanic eruption on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, disaster officials said Monday. Mount Agung, 75 kilometres (47 miles) from the tourist hub of Kuta, has been shaking since August and threatening to erupt for the first time in more than 50 years. The disaster mitigation agency said 48,540 people had fled and the number was expected to rise because more than 60,000 people lived in the danger zone. “There are still people who don’t want to be evacuated,” Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, an agency spokesman, told a press conference. “The reason is firstly, the mountain hasn’t erupted yet. Secondly, they are worried about their livestock.” Officials announced the highest possible alert level on Friday following the increasing volcanic activity, and told people to stay at least nine kilometres (5.6 miles) from the crater. Trekking tours on the mountain have been banned but

Nigeria’s desire to meet and surpass next year’s 30 per cent broadband penetration target will be one of the reasons for participating in the 2017 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecoms conference in Busan, South Korea. The yearly event kicked off today in Busan, 325 kilometers away from Seoul, South Korea and 520 kilometers away from President Kim Jong-Un’s Pyongyang, North Korea. The 2017 conference, which has its theme as ‘Digital Transformation, Global Opportunity,’ is a unique international platform for influential figures from government and industry to connect with tech SMEs and entrepreneurs, to exhibit and explore partnership solutions, investment opportunities, shared ideas and best practices. Organised since 1971 by ITU, the United Nations specialised agency for ICTs, the conference and exhibition also serve as a vehicle for countries, organisations and individuals to woo investors to their economies. As such, Nigeria, whose delegation is led by the Minist

Photo credits: AFP PHOTO / Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS Police on Monday arrested a 20-year-old man in Wales in connection with the London Underground train bombing this month, bringing the number of people in custody to four. The man was arrested before dawn by counter-terrorism officers in the Welsh capital Cardiff and has been taken to a police station in London for questioning. Police did not name the suspect but said he was arrested under the Terrorism Act. An 18-year-old man, Ahmed Hassan, was charged on Friday with attempted murder and the use of explosives. Two other men, aged 25 and 30, who were arrested in Newport in Wales last week, are still being questioned. Placed on a packed train during morning rush hour, the improvised device injured 30 people when it went off despite apparently malfunctioning. The attack in Parsons Green, a quiet residential area, caused panic among commuters and some were hurt in a stampede as people fled the scene. The Tube bombing was the fifth terror a

Eagle Photo by Harald Hofer on Unsplash