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Trending Hot Photography: Surreal Paintings Cloak People in Landscapes 2014-2015 ,.Berlin, Germany-based artist Moki finds inspiration in Japanese artist Hayao Miyazaki's work (Spirited Away) as well as in nature. Her acrylic paintings are filled with images of northern landscapes or as she describes more specifically as "isolated Scandinavian and Icelandic terrain, a subarctic frozen lake continent, untouched caves and moss meadows, and mountains sculpted into anatomical shapes by wind and water." Moki merges humans with nature, cloaking them in lush green meadows or a calm sea of water. When asked why she combines humans with nature, Moki said, "The beings disappearing in my paintings illustrates the state of mind when you cannot distinguish between you and the other, that feeling of awareness for what surrounds you. Chinese philosopher Zhang Zhou wrote about the Zhuangzi butterfly in one of his books, "Once Zhuangzi dreamt he was a bu...

Google Stars, the long-rumored bookmarking service from Google, has now publicly launched, but with little fanfare. That Google was working to update its bookmarking service has been known for some time. In May, a developer who had been digging into the service leaked a copy of the “Google Stars” extension, as it was called at the time, while it was still being tested. And now, it seems Google has quietly launched the Stars interface for the “Chrome Bookmark Manager” extension on the Chrome Web store. The Next Web was among the first to spot the release yesterday, noting that the new extension will completely replace Chrome’s old bookmarks interface. After installation, Chrome users are able to save bookmarks with a click, organize them and use Google’s search technology to find bookmarks that got buried deeply in their collections. The extension also eliminates the need for manual organization, if you choose, as it’s smart enough to organize bookmarks into automatically gen...

It looks like the curtains have been raised early on Microsoft's attempt to join the wearable game. Windows Central points out that sync apps have appeared in the Mac and Android app stores (update: and Microsoft's), set to personalize and track data for your "Microsoft Band." Rumors had pointed to a fitness tracker more than a watch that could debut within weeks, and judging by the apps that's just what we'll get. According to the Google Play, Windows Phone Store and iTunes listings, the device itself has more in common with Nike's FuelBand than the what we've seen from Apple and Google so far. That includes tracking steps, heartbeat, calories burned and sleep quality. 9to5Mac linked a privacy agreement that goes into even deeper detail about what else it can do, namely display notifications from your mobile device or take notes and set reminders with Cortana. Update: Microsoft confirmed that the Band will go on sale for $199 Thursday in its ...

Google's Nexus 6 : It's a little funny to see Motorola finally crafting a Nexus phone after Google sold it to Lenovo, but hey -- life is peculiar that way. What's more important is that Motorola has taken its responsibilities as Keeper of the Nexus name seriously, and put together a phone that's as big on power as it is big in your pocket. Let's go for a quick tour, shall we? We can sum up the Nexus 6's looks in just a few words: It's a blown-up Moto X. That's really no surprise -- the companies that get to make Nexus phones always put their own personal spin on them -- but we really mean blown-up. Thanks to that hefty 6-inch screen, the Nexus stretches the limits of handheld comfort (at least if you've got hands like mine), even with Motorola's trademark curved back helping it nestle into your palm. Then again, some of you like as much real estate as you can get, so fans of devices like the iPhone 6 Plus and the Galaxy Note 4 will feel at hom...

Most startups strive to obtain a few million users. The really successful ones get tens or hundreds of millions of users. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't think any product is a truly compelling business until it hits 1 billion users. It took Facebook eight years to become that big. The number of products that reach 1 billion users can probably be counted on one hand (Google, Facebook ...). But over the next five years, Zuckerberg says he believes multiple Facebook products will reach that kind of mass scale. WhatsApp, which Facebook recently acquired for $22 billion, already has 600 million monthly active users. Zuckerberg thinks Search, Newsfeed, Groups, Instagram, and WhatsApp all have the potential to connect 1 billion+ people individually, and it's his near-term mission to make sure that happens. "This may sound a little ridiculous to say, but for us, products don't really get that interesting to turn into businesses until they have about 1 bil...

The former head of Google Wallet and longtime PayPal exec, Osama Bedier, is this morning revealing his new company Poynt, a “future-proofed” payment terminal that combines an Android-based tablet with a hardware docking station, and includes support for all modern payment technologies, including traditional magstripe cards, EMV (chip and pin), NFC (Google Wallet and Apple Play), Bluetooth, QR codes, and beacon technology, in an all-in-one device sold at cost. Palo Alto-based Poynt has raised a Series A round led by Matrix Partners, which includes participation from Webb Investment Network (founded by Visa board member Maynard Webb), Nyca Partners (founded by former Visa VP Hans Morris), and other angels. The size of the round is undisclosed. Explains Bedier, he saw the opportunity to enter the payments market himself as the U.S. finally got on board with the transition to EMV, which will, as of October 2015, include a liability for merchants whose payment terminals don’t suppor...

MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange), the coalition of retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap and others, who are backing a mobile payments solution CurrentC meant to rival newcomer Apple Pay, has been hacked. The data breach involves the theft of email addresses, but the CurrentC mobile application was not affected, the company confirms to TechCrunch. Within the last 36 hours, MCX says it learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the email addresses of some of its CurrentC pilot program participants and other individuals who had expressed interest in the app. The group has now notified its merchant partners about the incident and is communicating directly with those individuals whose email addresses were involved, a company spokesperson tells us. At this time, it appears that only the emails of these early mobile app testers have been stolen, which is not as significant a data breach as having payment data or other personal information taken, like home addresses or p...

Google has released its Fit app, which acts as a central storehouse for activity recorded via your Android device, and via apps that use the Google Fit SDK introduced at the I/O developer conference back in June. The dedicated Android app is pretty spare, but it provides a way for users to see an overview of their collected health and fitness data in one central location. The Google Fit app doesn’t present me with much as of right now, but it uses your device’s sensors to tracking walking and other activity, and you can manually enter information about workouts not tracked, or your height and weight. Heart rate info from compatible devices, including Android Wear smartwatches, are also fed to the app. In short, it’s a competitor to Apple’s Health application, but with a very different approach to UI that appears to want to aim for simplicity above all else. Google Fit also has a web-based destination at Google.com/fit which doesn’t appear to be live just yet, and it’s likely...

Detecting cancer could be as easy as popping a pill in the near future. Google’s head of life sciences, Andrew Conrad, took to the stage at the Wall Street Journal Digital conference to reveal that the tech giant’s secretive Google[x] lab has been working on a wearable device that couples with nanotechnology to detect disease within the body. “We’re passionate about switching from reactive to proactive and we’re trying to provide the tools that make that feasible,” explained Conrad. This is a third project in a series of health initiatives for Google[x]. The team has already developed a smart contact lens that detects glucose levels for diabetics and utensils that help manage hand tremors in Parkinson’s patients. The plan is to test whether tiny particles coated “magnetized” with antibodies can catch disease in its nascent stages. The tiny particles are essentially programmed to spread throughout the body via pill and then latch on to the abnormal cells. The wearable device then “...

New Call Telecom, the sixth-largest Internet service provider in the UK, has bought India-focused instant messenger and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) company Nimbuzz. The deal is worth approximately $250 million. Nimbuzz, which is headed by IIT Delhi graduate Vikas Saxena, has more than 200 million registered users. The greatest pie of 20% comes from India. Company officials have confirmed the deal but refused to comment on the amount transacted. Nimbuzz claims to have a rapidly expanding user base with subscribers in more than 200 countries and a strong mobile advertising business. Saxena, who has earlier been associated with companies like Bharti Airtel and Aircel, said that the deal will help Nimbuzz expand, especially in new areas of technology. As per media reports, New Call Telecom will own about 70% stake in Nimbuzz, which currently has a revenue projection of about $15 million per annum. "We see huge potential in India's nascent internet, broadband, ...

Twitter's doing what it's supposed to: coaxing more people into using its high-speed social snark service... just maybe not as fast as some would like. According to Twitter's third quarter financials -- in which the company met or exceeded most milestones Wall Street types were hoping for -- 13 million people started using the service over the past three months, bringing the total to a whopping 284 million monthly active users. Not too shabby, right? That's up pretty substantial over last year, too. The potentially hairy issue is that Twitter brought 16 million people onboard last time it dropped numbers, and 14 million the time before that. Couple that with the fact that Twitter expects to rake in slightly less money next quarter than analysts expected, and you've got more than a few people concerned that Twitter's growth is winding down. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo remarked to CNBC after the results dropped that those user numbers are "priority number...

he biggest thorn in its side has obviously been the allergic reactions to, and the subsequent recall of, its Force fitness tracker. Despite having spent the better part of 2014 without its flagship model on store shelves, the company still holds a lead over its competitors in market share. And now it's hoping to extend that lead with an all out assault on the activity tracking market. Today the company is announcing not one, but three new devices that are set to be released over the next several months. The Charge is the replacement for the Force. All of the same features are on-board, including caller-ID functions. Plus Fitbit has finally unlocked the secret to automatic sleep tracking. That means the days of remembering to tell your Fitbit when it's bedtime are over. The design has changed slightly since last year, and it's now made of a softer rubber with a slightly textured surface. But for the most part, the Charge is a direct clone of the Force. It's roughly th...

When Apple held one of its big keynotes last week, it was easy to think of it as "iPad day." Sure enough, the company announced some upgraded tablets, but it was a desktop, of all things, that stole the show. Though the new 27-inch iMac with Retina display has the same overall design as Apple's previous all-in-ones, it ushers in a 14.7-million-pixel 5K display with screen resolution of 5,120 x 2,880. That's seven times as many pixels as 1080p, and 67 percent more than you'll find even on a 4K panel. I'm not exaggerating when I say there's nothing like it. As it is, you'd be hard-pressed to find a 4K all-in-one, and meanwhile, here's this machine from Apple, with enough pixels to view a 4K video at full resolution, and still have room left onscreen for other stuff, like the Final Cut Pro dashboard. Needless to say, it's in a league -- and price class -- of its own. Starting at $2,499, it's more expensive than almost any other all-in-one on ...

Petrobras, the $84 billion quasi-state Brazilian oil company, is down 16% as the market opens. And it may very well be an ugly trading day until the close. This latest selloff can be traced back to last night, when Dilma Rousseff won a second term as Brazil's President. Wall Street was pulling for center-right candidate Aecio Neves. But if you've been following the Petrobras story, you know that it's been selling off for some time. The stock is down 24% over the last three months. Short-sellers like Jim Chanos - who says the company is a "scheme not a stock" - have been laying out the bear thesis for the company for some time, too. Basically, the government has been forcing Petrobras to absorb the cost of energy subsidies it was giving Brazilians. "They [the Rousseff regime] were doing fiscal policy through the development bank and through Petrobras," said economist Claudio Loser, founder of researcher Centennial Group. "The company ha...

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the biggest IT services provider in India. They have managed to take the lead over companies like Infosys and HCL in a big way. Now the company is eyeing to accumulate more wealth from emerging businesses. TCS has said there is big opportunity in the Big Data, Cloud and mobility business. They have said that the company can earn up to 5 Billion USD in the next 3-4 years from these businesses. Cloud, Big data and mobility have grown in a large manner in the world as well as India. The mandate is growing by the day, as businesses and people are looking towards them and steadily demanding for services around them. This is a big opportunity for IT services companies like TCS to quickly adapt and procure a solid spot in the eco system. This will enlarge their gamut and also get the company ready for the next level. "The way to look at it is that, when I originally said it, I said that over the next three to four years we will do $5 billion ...

Facebook released an application that lets people create virtual "rooms" to chat about whatever they wish using any name they would like. "Rooms" software introduced in the US and Britain for iPhone made its debut as Facebook tries to make peace with people unhappy that real identities are mandated for profiles at the world's leading social network. "One of the things our team loves most about the Internet is its potential to let us be whoever we want to be," said a blog post from Facebook's Creative Labs. "That's why in Rooms you can be 'Wonder Woman' - or whatever name makes you feel most comfortable and proud." Virtual rooms become home to feeds of pictures, videos, and text. The application puts a smartphone spin on chat forums that were popular venues for online discourse in early Internet days. "Forums, message boards and chatrooms were meeting places for people who didn't necessarily share geographies...

The trending Hot upcoming and uplifting 2015 Garnering comparisons to Star Trek's starship Enterprise, the SeaOrbiter is the brainchild of French architect Jacques Rougerie. Set to begin construction this spring, the 190-foot-tall semisubmersible vessel will be the culmination of nearly 30 years of Rougerie's research and development. Six of the SeaOrbiter's 12 floors are below sea level, allowing for uninterrupted underwater observation. Although the ship's main mission is to research the biodiversity and climate of the sea, the real goal for Rougerie is to give the public a better understanding of how crucial the ocean is to Earth's well-being. Ninety-nine percent of the $50 million project was financed through the French government and private companies. To get people more involved, Rougerie is crowdfunding the last 1 percent of the project. "The more humans understand about the underwater world, the more respect they will have for it," he says. ...

A doctor who had recently returned from Guinea has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus, The New York Times reported Thursday evening. Dr. Craig Spencer has been placed in isolation at Bellevue Hospital as health workers attempt to find others he may have been in contact recently, The Times reported. Spencer, 33, returned from Guinea ten days ago after a stint working with the group Doctors Without Borders. "It is our understanding very few people were in direct contact with him," Mayor Bill de Blasio said, according to NY Daily News. "Every protocol has been followed. We're hoping for a good outcome for this individual." The doctor took the subway to a bowling alley in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Wednesday, then returned home via taxi, according to NY Daily News. He self-quarantined himself at his apartment soon after he became symptomatic. New York City health officials have been preparing for the possibility of Ebola patients in the city for...

A three-year-old girl child studying in a private school in Bangalore was allegedly sexually abused in her nursery class on Tuesday, police said. The principal of the private school where the alleged rape took place had earlier on Wednesday said that the institution would abide by the law and use all of its resources to nab the perpetrators of the crime. "We went through all the CCTV recordings, we are sure there was no outsider entry into the school. The police have examined each area of the school campus and have been provided all records for investigation. We take the safety of students very very carefully," she said. The three-year-old girl child was allegedly sexually abused Tuesday in her nursery class, police said on Wednesday. "We have registered a criminal case late Tuesday on a complaint by the victim's father that his young daughter was sexually abused in the Orchid The International School premises," Police Inspector T.C. Venkatesh told ...

Google has introduced a new email app, from the same team that builds Gmail, but intended as something completely different from Gmail. Inbox is the app, and it looks like it might owe some inspiration to Mailbox, and to Google Now. The new Inbox app is available to a limited user group only, and will be expanding its user pool via an invite system similar to the one that Google used for Gmail. It is available cross-platform, however, as an app for iOS, web and Android. You can also email Google at inbox@google.com to request access, if you don’t like your chances of getting an invite from a friend. What Inbox does differently than Gmail is present you with your information in a way that’s aimed at making content contextually relevant, instead of just presented as it comes in. Email’s evolution has resulted in an unwieldy system – what began as system for occasional correspondence from a single virtual location is now something with take with us everywhere, with a volume that ...

Twitter announced the launch of a new service called Digits, aimed at application developers looking for a simpler, password-free login option for their mobile applications. The news was revealed this afternoon at Twitter’s first annual developer conference called Flight, which served not only as the launchpad for a suite of tools aimed at mobile application developers, but also an apology of sorts to the developer community as a whole after years of pushing them and their ideas away as Twitter tried to reassert control over its product and platform. Digits is one of many new products announced today, which also included a tool set called Fabric, and new features for other Twitter products like MoPub, its advertising platform, and crash reporting service Crashlytics. However, Digits is a timely offering, as the world of messaging apps has exploded following the high-profile acquisition deal which saw Facebook buying Whatsapp, and the larger trend toward simpler, and even anony...

The 16th Mumbai Film Festival, popularly called MAMI, has ended and cinephiles now have the depressing task of re-adjusting to the real world. I watched 22 films over 7 days at the festival, and the task of choosing my favourites was harder than I thought it'd be. Here is my short-list of the 5 best films that I watched, in descending order of greatness: 5. Schimbare (Directed by Alex Sampayo) (Spanish) Literally meaning 'the change' in Spanish, Schimbare is an intense, slow-burn thriller that left me white-knuckled till 20 minutes after the film had ended. It opens with a couple, Luis (Luis Zahera) and Elvira (Candela Pena), driving across Romania. Their cryptic conversation makes it known to the viewer that the couple is up to no good. When a mysterious phone call results in them having to kidnap a little girl, the tension between Luiz and Elvira threatens to derail the operation, whatever it is. Sampayo is more interested in portraying the here and now than he...