Heyzap Is Killing Its Standalone “Social Discovery” Apps For Gamers

Mobile ad network Heyzap is shutting down its standalone applications, company CEO Immad Akund confirmed to us. The iOS application, which previously served as something of an app discovery service for mobile gamers, is already gone from the App Store, and the plan is to do the same with the Android version in the near future, Akund says.

The company, for background, had originally built a mobile social network for gamers where users could “check in” to games through either the Heyzap app, or, with the introduction of the Heyzap SDK (software development kit), check into games automatically via Heyzap integrations.

Heyzap’s own app was expanded back in fall 2012 with a “play with friends” feature, designed to make connecting with other users easier and more social.

At first, the disappearance of the Heyzap iOS app while the Android version remained looked like something that may have been done at Apple’s request, if not pulled by Apple itself. After all, Apple doesn’t care for apps that compete with its own services, like the App Store – especially when those are used to help promote or market applications in a way that could affect App Store rankings. (This policy change took place in fall 2012, in fact.)

Could it be that Apple was done with letting Heyzap fly under the radar until now?

Akund says that’s not the case, even sending an iTunes Connect screenshot (above) to prove it.

Instead, he explains, the company itself decided to pull down its standalone application because the team hadn’t worked on it in over a year, and the app was now causing confusion about what Heyzap is all about. Plus, he says, the social back-end server costs are high and servers require maintenance. Today, Heyzap’s small team is trying to focus on their current priorities, not this older experience.

The app, however, will still work for now for those who have it installed, it’s just no longer available for sale. Meanwhile, the company is now asking its Android app developers how they want to export their leaderboards and achievement data.

“We…didn’t want to remove the Android app till we have a good solution for them,” says Akhund.

The plan is to keep the back-end servers online for a little while, even after the Android app is pulled down from Google Play, but the company doesn’t know right now how long before those servers would be shut down for good.

These days, Heyzap is no longer focused on its standalone “social discovery” platform for apps within standalone applications. Instead, as VentureBeat recently reported, the real business for the company now involves its SDK, which allows developers to target ads to people who like similar games.

 

Heyzap currently reaches around 5,000 games, and has around 450 advertisers, including Kabam, Gree, DeNA, King, Supercell, and Spotify, the report noted. And Heyzap is now expanding into other applications, as well, to offer similar personalized recommendations. According to co-founder Jude Gomila, the company has been profitable this year, with a revenue run rate of $13 million-$14 million, and growing. For comparison’s sake, Heyzap was only doing $1 million per year in April 2013, notes Akhund.

Steve Ballmer Now Owns More Microsoft Stock Than Bill Gates

Bill Gates sold 4.6 million Microsoft shares recently, an SEC filing released today indicates. That action lowered his holdings to 330,141,164 shares in the company. Former CEO Steve Ballmer owns 333,252,990 shares.

The sale therefore dipping Gates’ holdings under those of Ballmer, the second CEO of the company. This is not a surprise.

The handing off of the baton is therefore right on schedule.

What will be interesting to watch will be how quickly Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, can accumulate stock in the company. Various performance bands that comprise a large portion of his compensation could net him nearly nine-figure equity in his first half decade in charge, in addition to his nearly $20 million yearly salary, of which a large portion is shares.

When it comes to any of these three, as I wrote before, they will be “buying all the beers for the next few years.”

Nokia will soon be renamed to Microsoft Mobile

The Microsoft acquisition of Nokia Devices and Services is expected to close later this month and to prepare for the transition a letter has been sent out to Nokia’s supplier base. The letter, which has leaked online, suggests that Nokia Oyj will get a new name: Microsoft Mobile Oy.

The company is going to exist as a fully-owned Microsoft subsidiary and as you would expect it is going to handle the mobile devices production. The letter reveals that current terms and conditions that suppliers were having with Nokia until now will not be changed.

Nokia is keeping its relationship with existing supplier partners, but considering the company’s main operations remain NSN, HERE Maps and Advanced Technology unit, it may not soon need some of them, as most deal with hardware.

Nokia has been rumored to be working on a smartwatch, but we don’t know if the company is going to keep the development.

Google under fire from European media tycoon

Axel Springer publishes more than 200 newspapers and magazines including German papers Die Welt and Bild. It also has a significant online presence and television and radio interests.

Mr Dopfner’s letter was published in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper – which is not published by his company – in response to a column by Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

Mr Schmidt’s column had referred to the advertising relationship between Axel Springer and the search company. He described how the relationship had been challenging at times but how now they had “walked down the aisle” and signed a multi-year deal.

Mr Dopfner acknowledged that he was pleased at the marketing relationship between the two companies and an admirer of Google’s entrepreneurial success but went on to say that the company had little choice but to engage with Google as “we know no search engine alternative to increase our online reach”.

Global monopoly

The company makes 62% of its profits from digital business, he said, and the internet is a great opportunity, but he explained that he was concerned about the role Google plays online.

He referred to a long-running dispute between Google and the European Commission, which involved accusations that the search company gave favourable treatment to its own products in search results.

Mr Dopfner said the resulting agreement between the two parties was not a compromise but instead the Commission had “sanctioned the introduction of a business model, which in less honourable circles is called extortion”.

Mathias Dopfner was very critical of Google’s wide reach in his letter

He said the agreement would still allow Google to discriminate against competitors in search results. At the time Google said its proposals to change the way search results were ranked were fair and wide-reaching.

Mr Dopfner went on to say in the letter that large technology companies like Google are far more powerful than people realise.

“With the exception of biological viruses, there is nothing with such speed, efficiency and aggressiveness that spreads like these technology platforms, and this also lends its creators, owners and users with new power.”

He compared the company to the state monopolies that ran the German postal and telecoms services: “Today there is a global network monopoly. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that there are transparent and fair criteria in Google’s search results.”

Superstate

Mr Dopfner’s comments were not just restricted to Google – the founder of social network Facebook also came under fire. He explained that he’d been at a conference when someone asked Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook stored data and protected users’ privacy.

“And Zuckerberg said: ‘I do not understand your question. Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear.’

“Again and again I had to think about this sentence. It’s terrible. I know it is certainly not meant that way. This is a mindset that was fostered in totalitarian regimes not in liberal societies. Such a sentence could also be said by the head of the Stasi or other intelligence service or a dictatorship.”

Turning his attention to Google founder Larry Page, Mr Dopfner said: “He dreams of a place with no privacy laws and without democratic accountability.”

Referring to comments Mr Page had made about the company wanting to develop ideas but being unable to because they were illegal, Mr Dopfner said: “Does this mean that Google is planning to operate in a legal vacuum, without the hassle of anti-trust and privacy? A kind of superstate?”

He finished the letter with a warning to Google that in the history of economics monopolies do not survive long.

SpaceX launches station cargo flight

US company SpaceX has launched its latest re-supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

The California firm’s Falcon-9 rocket successfully executed its ascent from Cape Canaveral, Florida, deploying the Dragon freighter on a path to the orbiting platform.

The capsule is carrying just over two tonnes of food, equipment and science experiments.

These stores are expected to arrive at the ISS on Sunday.

Astronauts will use a robotic arm on the station to reach out and grab the Dragon, pulling it into a free berthing position.

The crew will then be able to remove the freighter’s contents.

This is the third cargo run being made by SpaceX under its $1.6bn contract with the US space agency (Nasa).

The US government handed the task of re-supplying the ISS to the private sector following the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.

Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corporation has a similar contract to SpaceX.

Friday’s launch looked marginal for much of the day. Meteorologists had forecast only a 40% chance of favourable conditions.

But despite some threatening cloud, the Falcon got away exactly on time at 15:25 local time (19:25 GMT).

A camera mounted on the exterior of Dragon relayed video of the entire nine-minute ride to orbit.

Pictures also showed the freighter deploy its solar panels.

Dragon must now raise its altitude to bring it into the vicinity of the space station where Nasa astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata can do their grab manoeuvre.

This particular mission has drawn interest because SpaceX again used the launch to try to advance the technology needed to recover and re-use Falcon rocket parts.

Engineers had fitted landing legs to the vehicle’s first-stage – the segment that gets the rocket up off the ground.

Normally, this stage is discarded at about 80km in altitude, almost three minutes into a flight, whereupon it begins a destructive dive back through the atmosphere.

Following first-stage separation on Friday, however, the lower rocket segment was commanded to relight some of its engines to slow its fall to Earth.

It was then supposed to deploy 7m-long legs to execute a soft “landing” – although for this test, the attempted touch-down was actually to be done out over the Atlantic Ocean.

Initial data suggested the early phase of the descent was well controlled. Further data gathered via a tracking plane will need to be studied to learn exactly how the stage performed as it made its final approach towards the water’s surface.

Chief designer at SpaceX, Elon Musk, said there was a heavy swell at the time, so it was unlikely that the stage could be recovered.

“Even though we probably won’t get the stage back, I think we’re really starting to connect the dots of what’s needed,” he told reporters.

“There’s only a few more dots that need to be there to have it all work. I think we’ve got a decent chance of bringing a stage back this year, which would be wonderful.”

The goal – if all testing goes well – is to try to return a Falcon first-stage to a remote piece of land at the Cape.

Onboard cameras captured the nine-minute ascent

The second-stage falls away after Dragon separates to begin its orbit-raising manoeuvres

The landing legs are the 7m-long triangular features at the base of the first-stage

 

Free wi-fi hotspots pose data risk, Europol warns

 

Sensitive information should not be sent over public wi-fi hotspots, to avoid hackers stealing it, Europe’s top cybercrime police officer has warned.

Troels Oerting, head of Europol’s cybercrime centre, told BBC Click people should send personal data only across networks they trusted.

He said the warning was motivated by the growing number of attacks being carried out via public wi-fi.

Europol is helping a number of countries after such attacks, he said.

Stolen data

“We have seen an increase in the misuse of wi-fi, in order to steal information, identity or passwords and money from the users who use public or insecure wi-fi connections,” he said.

“We should teach users that they should not address sensitive information while being on an open insecure wi-fi internet.

 Sensitive data should only be swapped via home networks

“They should do this from home where they know actually the wi-fi and its security, but not if you are in a coffee shop somewhere you shouldn’t access your bank or do all of these things that actually transfer very sensitive information.”

Mr Oerting said Europol, which helps co-ordinate investigations into organised crime across Europe, was assisting several member states who had seen attacks carried out on wi-fi networks.

The attackers were not using novel techniques, he said, but relied on well-known approaches that attempt to trick people into connecting to a hotspot that, superficially, resembles those seen in cafes, pubs and restaurants and other public spaces.

‘Man in the middle’

The attacks meant that data swapped when people communicate with a bank, shop via the web or log in to social media sites could be captured by attackers.

“Everything that you send through the wi-fi is potentially at risk, and this is something that we need to be very concerned about both as individual users but also as police,” he told Click.

Mr Oerting’s warning comes only a few months after the European parliament turned off its public wi-fi system after it was discovered that a “man-in-the-middle” attack was being perpetrated via the service.

As its name implies, in this attack thieves attempt to insert themselves between users and a hotspot to gather all data passing between the two points.

The warning was echoed by Charlie McMurdie, former head of the UK’s cybercrime unit and now a senior security analyst at PWC.

“A lot of mainstream criminals have identified there are easy opportunities and vulnerabilities just walking down the street and exploiting wi-fi networks that exist in every coffee shop,” she said.

Rogue hotspots

Large companies were also falling victim to this type of crime, said Ms McMurdie, because they were not watching out for the rogue hotspots that are regularly turning up.

Sometimes, said Ms McMurdie, attackers used hotspots to get at particular individuals rather than to grab all the data flowing from everyone using a public network.

Everyone needed to be aware of what they were putting at risk when they use wi-fi networks and the data it can potentially hand over to criminals.

“There is the need for raising awareness of what the vulnerabilities are and what you should be doing to protect yourself whether you’re on the move or in a physical location,” she said.