Boot up: Office on iPad?, Google DNS hijacked, WhatsApp declares, and more

Plus Android patent suggests radial UI, Chromebook v Windows 8.1, the mobile money nothing, and more

Alert the news agencies! Someone made a contactless transaction! Photograph: Frank Baron

 

A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Techblown team

Microsoft CEO Nadella may unveil Office on iPad on March 27 >> ZDNet

Microsoft has scheduled a March 27 press briefing in San Francisco with news "focused on the intersection of cloud and mobile computing." Nadella will be providing the opening remarks.

According to several sources of mine, Microsoft's latest timetable calls for the company to finally introduce the long-rumored Microsoft Office for iPad suite of applications before the end of March 2014. This March 27 event sounds like it might be the time and place.
The suite for the iPad is rumored to include only Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and possibly no other Office client apps. It is expected to be downloaded from the Apple Store but most likely to require a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, similar to the way Office Mobile for iPhone works.
Wouldn't take away from Microsoft tablet sales, because they're tiny; would add to Office sales, because the iPad comprises a sizeable market. What would it do to the tablet market, though?

Google's public DNS hijacked for 22 minutes >> Softpedia

On Sunday, BGPmon, a network monitoring and routing security company that monitors the Internet for Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) attacks, revealed that Google's public DNS service had been hijacked.
The attackers hijacked the 8.8.8.8/32 DNS server for approximately 22 minutes. According to BGPmon, networks in Brazil and Venezuela were impacted. A screenshot published by the company shows that the traffic was redirected to BT Latin America's networks.
BGPmon has noted that the potential for misuse in the case of such hijackings is "huge," especially since many certificate authorities don't do their job as well as they should.

Concerning.

Google patent reveals new radial menu design for Android >> Patent Bolt

One of Google's latest inventions generally relate to graphical user interfaces involving a radial menu. The radial menu may be a circular menu configured to include a set of menu items corresponding to commands, functions or options that are activated upon selection within the radial menu.
In some configurations, a radial menu is a circular menu configured to include a set of menu items corresponding to commands, functions or options that are activated upon selection within the radial menu. For instance, a radial menu is graphically depicted as a circle shape with respective segments dividing the circle shape. Each segment of the circle shape may be associated with a command, function or option for the radial menu.

Setting the record straight >> WhatsApp blog

Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible: You don't have to give us your name and we don't ask for your email address. We don't know your birthday. We don't know your home address. We don't know where you work. We don't know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that.
If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn't have done it.

Chromebook desktop versus Windows desktop: can you tell the difference? >> EIUTC

The Chromebook is fine for lighter duty tasks but I much prefer Windows 8.1 for heavier editing tasks I routinely complete be it word processing, image editing, audio editing for podcasts, or editing video screencasts for YouTube. When the real work needs to be done I reach for a Windows 8.1 device with the complete power of all the Office applications, not apps.
Part of this may be out of old habits but I do not think so. I have given the Chromebook a thorough testing over the past three months and would say it meets about 80% of my needs. It is the other 20% that I have to find workarounds for or resign myself to switching devices.
I do like the Chromebook for light duty tasks, is boots lightning fast (7 seconds) and the updates are much smaller and faster than Windows updates. I do however have equivalent Windows devices that boot nearly as fast and offer more functionality. Given that my Windows 8.1 devices also run the Chrome browser I am not really giving anything up when using Windows, in fact, I gain functionality while still having access to all the Google goodies via the Chrome browser.

UK Visa cardholders made 94.3m contactless purchases in 2013 >> Mobile Money Revolution

The card companies are desperate to show that consumers are embracing contactless payments. These latest figures do show the habit is growing, but it's still a niche activity.
UK spend for 2013 was over £618m, with £82m being spent in December alone.
The number of purchases in Europe in 2013 was 340.1m, with Poland leading the charge...
There are now 32.1m Visa contactless cards in circulation in the UK, and 80.6m in Europe.
The average UK purchase value in 2013 was £6.09.

Ultra-niche. Average weekly spend in UK retail in December 2013 was £8.8bn

Android phone battery suffering? Here's a simple fix >> ZDNet

Android phones are good smartphones, but they occasionally suffer from the nasty "Sudden Battery Drain Syndome." That's the situation where the phone battery, with no different use by the owner, suddenly drains for no apparent reason. It turns out this is often caused by Google, and there's a simple way to halt the drain.
The battery drain doesn't happen often, but when it does it has the ability to leave you high and dry with a dead Android phone. You likely aren't doing anything differently when it strikes, so it's unexpected. This can have serious consequences, especially for workers needing to stay in touch with the office.
This situation hits fast, and there's usually no warning the battery is draining to a critically low level. Often, the first warning that something is amiss is a critical battery warning from the phone.
It turns out that often this situation is caused by Google. Online research shows the culprit is often either Google Services or Play Services. Google Services is the background task on Android phones that keeps all of the company's services in sync and updated. This covers Gmail and the Chrome environment, among other services. Play Services is the background task that interacts with Google's Play Store, to keep installed apps updated in particular.
For some reason, these services sometimes get "stuck" doing their jobs, and this results in a big power drain on some phones. Perhaps the service is constantly polling user phones, resulting in a rapid drain on the battery.
Solution: reboot the phone, apparently. (Would have been good to know where the "online research" is that has established this.)

Silicon Valley's youth problem >> NYTimes.com

Fantastic essay on the split between "useful" and "want to do" by a 20-something who is in the thick of it:

In pursuing the latest and the coolest, young engineers ignore opportunities in less-sexy areas of tech like semiconductors, data storage and networking, the products that form the foundation on which all of Web 2.0 rests. Without a good router to provide reliable Wi-Fi, your Dropbox file-sharing application is not going to sync; without Nvidia's graphics processing unit, your BuzzFeed GIF is not going to make anyone laugh. The talent — and there's a ton of it — flowing into Silicon Valley cares little about improving these infrastructural elements. What they care about is coming up with more web apps.

Long but very much worth it.

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