Instagram worth $1 Billion Acquired by Facebook, Good Deal?

Today the owner and C.E.O of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced that they have acquired Instagram for $1 Billion and the team would be merging with the team of Facebook starting from today. In acquisition a corporate takes over the ownership stakes of another company and becomes the new owner of that existing company. Mark today explained in a detailed post on his page at Facebook the reason behind acquiring Instagram.

[learn_more caption=”I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.”] I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook. For years, we’ve focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we’ll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests. We believe these are different experiences that complement each other. But in order to do this well, we need to be mindful about keeping and building on Instagram’s strengths and features rather than just trying to integrate everything into Facebook. That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people. We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook. These and many other features are important parts of the Instagram experience and we understand that. We will try to learn from Instagram’s experience to build similar features into our other products. At the same time, we will try to help Instagram continue to grow by using Facebook’s strong engineering team and infrastructure. This is an important milestone for Facebook because it’s the first time we’ve ever acquired a product and company with so many users. We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together. We’re looking forward to working with the Instagram team and to all of the great new experiences we’re going to be able to build together.[/learn_more]

Instagram one of the most popular online photos sharing app for iOS and Android have more than a million of users in the past one year. Facebook is planning to keep Instagram as it is and not to merge with Facebook. They will be keeping the program independent, so they can expand the network of Instagram, and more people could reach the App. Another reason to keep the App independent is to keep the same API (Application Programming Interface) for Instagram and not to change it.

How To Remove Autorun.inf Virus from Your PC (No Antivirus)

Viruses are the most important part of your life if you own a Windows PC. There are many kinds of different viruses present these days and are affecting the Windows PC from day to day. These days, Anti viruses are also on top. Every new company has launched their Antivirus at a different price, and they offer a trial version before you can purchase the product. The prices are high for some, and for some of the prices are low. Some of the anti-viruses work well on trial, and some are like that. It is very difficult to analyze about which antivirus to use these days.

The technology has advanced so much that we need to keep up to date with our security system so that we don’t encounter any sort of Viruses. Somehow, we get ruled by those viruses, and our Windows PC gets screwed. There are more than a million of viruses present today. The most famous virus present from the windows evolution is the Autorun.inf Virus. This is the sole virus which is present in every Windows PC regardless the fact that you have a great antivirus for the protection of your PC. This virus is one of the top-most virus presents in everyone’s Windows PC. This type of virus is strange virus and cannot be deleted manually. You will need an antivirus to delete it. There are many ways, which state that this can be deleted by showing the hidden files and then boot up in safe mode-login to delete the virus. Once I also encountered this virus on most important drive and I see this type of virus daily at my university when the lecturer is entering the U.S.B into the PC. The person opens his drive and some strange language document opens other than the drive.

This was really a strange thing for me. So I went on Google and searched about this Autorun.inf virus and found out many ways, videos, suggestions, and some antivirus suggestions. In my searching I found out this sole method which really worked for me and it is really easy to use. It requires no anti-virus to delete the Autorun.inf file. All you need to do is follow the 2 steps and the virus will be gone from your PC. Below are the steps for the removal of Autorun.inf virus.

Steps to Follow:

Step 1:

You must know about CMD on your PC. These days, everyone should know about this CMD thing and how to operate it.

Open start>go to RUN> type in CMD.

A new command prompt window will be opened.

Step 2:

Now type in the drive where you got the Autorun.inf Virus. For example you got the virus in C or D or E (depends on the letter of the Drive you have).

Now navigate to that drive by entering the command

C: or D: or E:

Step 3:

Now type in

autorun.inf and press enter.

If you will have the autorun.inf virus file on your particular drive, a notepad file will be opened displaying the commands written in it.

Step 4:

Now close that document and now type in the following command in CMD.

attrib -s -h –r (There is a space between –s –h –r )

After this command, now enter

Del autorun.inf

Step 5:

Now restart your PC and the virus will be gone. To check if the virus is there or not, simply follow the step 1. If you get error like below, so you don’t have an Autorun.inf Virus any more on your PC.

Angry Birds Space Targeted for New Android Malware LeNa

These days Malware with Virus is increasing like fire on a wood. Like this, Malware and Viruses are growing on Android. On Tuesday, Look Out Mobile Security Company that protects Android OS reported that the old Malware named as LeNa (Legacy native) got updated to root the victims Phone without his permission remotely. The previously known Malware LeNa uses exploit called “GingerBreak” which attempts to gain root access of an Android Phone without a user’s permission.  According to Tim Wyatt, the engineer at Look Out Security reported that the exploit, LeNa, hides in a JPG image file in the users Phone and then communicates with the command and control center allowing full root access to the users Phone.

The exploit GingerBreak attacks from the second home of alternative third party Apps market. Till now this exploit hasn’t been found in the Google Play Market. The playload is said to be appeared in the most famous and one of the top 10 games called Angry Birds Space. The exploit is not present in the official App of Angry Birds Space; the exploit is present in the copy version of the Angry Birds Space. If you are planning to download Angry Birds Space from the Google Plat Market, you will be safe because this Malware hasn’t arrived in the Play market yet. You can be affected with this Malware by downloading the Angry Birds Space version from some other third party Market because this exploit has reached third party Markets.

To stay safe from all of these Malwares, download some good and reliable antivirus suite for your Android Phone like Look Out mobile Security and AVG. Be alert of malicious activities on your Phone and always download Apps from reliable sources and websites. Keep in mind that Android Phones are subjected to different Kinds of Malwares, Viruses day by day. Android is a free developing platform that why we encounter many viruses from time to time. These days not only Android Phones, Apple’ MAC OS X is also being targeted with Malware. These days nothing is safe. We have to keep an eye on our products. If we don’t care about our things, we will be subjected to all of these Malwares and Viruses releasing from month to month.

OS X Becomes the Part of Fastest Growing Botnet Flash Back Trojan

This might sound strange that in this post PC era, we have got more than 600,000 MACs, which are infected and controlled by Flashback Trojan’s The number of infected MACs has increased from 550,000 to 600,000 in no time. This piece of information was founded by a Russian anti-virus vendor, Doctor Web. They conducted a research on the spreading of the Trojan BackDoor.Flashback that affects the computers running OS X.

Systems get infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system. JavaScript code is used to load a Java-applet containing an exploit. Doctor Web’s virus analysts discovered a large number of web-sites containing the code.

We are living in a post PC era where anything can happen at any time and without a reason.  The evolution of PC era was said to be safe some unknown time. Like this till few years ago MAC, the finest creation made by Apple was said to be free from all the viruses, malwares, and everything. It was also believed that to make something bad for a MAC, you need some high skills, and the procedure was very difficult. On the other hand, to make a virus for PC was really easy. So, PC’s got high number of viruses and many of the PC users got affected due to revolution of Trojan Viruses. Now nothing is safe. Not even the OS X versions running on Apple Computers are safe. Few months back the evolution of Viruses got increased in OS X, and we came across many new viruses like Flash Virus, Malwares, and many more for OS X. After the viruses was confirmed; Apple pushed out updates regularly to encounter these viruses and Malwares.

Deviation of these viruses have affected over more than half-million Macs around the globe. The highest number of Macs that were affected are said to be present in Cupertino where Apple’s Head Quarter is present. The number of infected Macs in U.S.A is said to be 57% whereas the 20% infected Macs are said to be in Canada and remaining 33% is said to be in other cities.

Over 550 000, infected machines running Mac OS X have been a part of the botnet on April 4. These only comprise a segment of the botnet set up by means of the particular BackDoor.Flashback modification. Most infected computers reside in the United States (56.6%, or 303,449 infected hosts), Canada comes second (19.8%, or 106,379 infected computers), the third place is taken by the United Kingdom (12.8% or 68,577 cases of infection) and Australia with 6.1% (32,527 infected hosts) is the fourth.

Below you can see the detailed map with the location and percentage of the infected MACs around the globe.

Now you must be wondering how these Botnet thing works. We have collected some information on this Botnet from Wikipedia for your information. We got our hands on a picture posted on Wikipedia, which explains clearly about how this thing works. We believe that a picture is worth a thousand words.
The method is quite simple. To make sure that you don’t get affected from this Flashback Trojan, we would suggest you that check for updates on your OS X from time to time and stay away from the links of which you are not aware of. THese days these type of links are on top which help the hackers to inject the viruses in your system.

china-iphone 4

Infantile Rescued from a Well in China with the help of an iPhone

We have seen in past that an iPhone has helped the police to locate a thief with the help of Find My iPhone service introduced by Apple. This time an iPhone helped the Fireman in China’s Yunnan district where a Two-year old toddler was stuck in a 40-foot well. While conducting the rescue operation, the kid failed to attach with the rescue cable designed for adults. Then the team of fire fighter lowered an iPhone to get the visual of the situation and they can perform the action more precisely.

china-iphone 4

The report comes from a British News Website; Telegraph reported that the emergency services were called after the crying of a child was heard by the villagers near China’s Mengzi City.

During the tricky rescue operation the young boy kept slipping out of rescue harnesses that were designed for adults.

But in a twist of ingenuity, the team lowered an Apple iPhone with a video camera allowing them to see the boy’s position.

The close-up recordings are used to better position the ropes around his small body, allowing them to pull the distressed child to safety.

When the child was retrieved from the 40-foot well, he was taken to hospital immediately for further care. No major injuries were reported. You can see the video below of the complete rescue work done by the Fire Fighters to rescue the Toddler from the 40-foot well.

Video:

All we can say is special thanks to Apple for making an iPhone and the Fire Fighters for using an iPhone to save the life of that toddler. This isn’t the initial time we would be hearing about an iPhone saved a life. In past iPhone’s Find My iPhone service has been useful for police to track down the thief’s. This must be the first time for the Fire Fighters to use an iPhone to save a small life.

via cultofmac.

facebook_for_ios

Facebook’s iOS Universal App Updated for Retina iPad With New Features

One of the most popular and active social web App got updated today on the platform of iOS, which runs on Apple iDevices to a new version of 4.1.1. This new update of Facebook App brings many new exciting features with it and got some bugs/issues fixed in this new version.  Undoubtedly, the Facebook App is the buggiest App ever you would have used in your life on an iOS platform. Since the day of launch, until now, Facebook has released many new versions of its App for iOS platform and in every update; some sort of issue is fixed.

Recently, they rolled out an iPad app which made Facebook App go Universal in the App Store. This means that the Facebook App is compatible on both, the iPhone and the iPad with some bugs like usual. Any ways the App is made by humans and to err is human, so we can expect some issues in the App. That is normal. Now with the new version of 4.1.1, the developers of the Facebook have brought in some nice changes, improvements, and support for new languages.

facebook-4.1.1-ios-app

The developers of the App have updated the App for the support of the New iPad which was launched few weeks back by Apple, and it is now available worldwide at Apple Retail Stores. They also have added support for Czech, Danish, Greek, Indonesian, Malaysian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Portuguese (Portugal) and Thai languages. The best thing is that they have added a feature in which you can go offline in Chats. Below is the full change log of Facebook’s new Version:

In this release, we added some features and fixed some bugs so now:
– You can go offline in chat
– The right profile picture appears for everyone
– Your list of friends always includes all your friends
– In sets of photos, your name is displayed correctly
– Photos of people who like Facebook Pages load correctly
– Your friend-request notification only lights up if you have a request
– You can change your language to Czech, Danish, Greek, Indonesian, Malaysian, Norwegian (Bokmal), Portuguese (Portugal) or Thai
– If you’ve got a new Retina iPad, you’ll see a crisp, high resolution interface

Above is the full change log of Facebook’s Universal App. This universal App is free of cost and available on iTunes Store for Download for free. You can head over to this link and download the App for free. If you got the App installed on your iPad/iPhone, simply head over to the App Store on your device, open update section, find Facebook and press update.