Chemist Dorothy Hodgkin feted with 'crystal' Google Doodle

Google on Monday honored the memory of British chemist Dorothy Hodgkin with a "crystal" doodle on what would have been her 104th birthday.

 

On its homepage on May 12, the Internet giant marked Hodgkin's birth anniversary with a doodle depicting Hodgkins' work on X-ray crystallography.

 

Clicking on the doodle will take the visitor to a Google Search Results page for Dorothy Hodgkin.

An article on 3DCarShows.com noted that the doodle is live on Google's homepages in Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia,  Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

 

Hodgkin was born on May 12, 1910 in Cairo, Egypt, and was credited with the development of protein crystallography, and received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964 for it.

 

She was the second woman to receive the “Order of Merit” in 1965 after Florence Nightingale.

 

She was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) from the University of Bath in 1978.

 

By using X-ray crystallography, Hodgkin determined the structures of cholesterol (1937), penicillin (1946) and vitamin B12 (1956), which earned her the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1964. — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News

 

source: gmanetwork.com

 

Google still a top pick for Wall Street, despite mobile ad challenges

Google Inc's disappointing first-quarter results left Wall Street unfazed about the internet giant's ability to come to grips with the shift to the fast-growing mobile advertising market.

Google shares were down about 3 percent in early trading on Thursday, and at least 12 brokerages cut their target price on the stock. But most analysts kept a "buy" rating or equivalent on the company's shares.

"Despite an expectations-miss quarter, Google remains one of the best-positioned stocks for many of the secular growth drivers in the Internet space," RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney, who kept his "outperform" rating on the stock, said in a note to clients.

Of the 46 analysts covering Google, 35 have a "buy" or equivalent rating on the stock. Nobody has a "sell".

Google, Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc are revamping their products and advertising business to try to take advantage of a global shift to mobile phones and tablets.

For investors in Google, accustomed to the company enjoying one of the highest ad margins in the business, mobile ads have translated to a steep drop in ad rates.

Advertising rates on mobile phones are typically cheaper than traditional online ads because of their smaller screens. But mobile advertising continues to make up a bigger slice of the revenue of Internet companies.

Google company reported a 26 percent increase in paid clicks volumes but the average cost-per-click declined 9 percent.

"Google remains a core internet holding and we reiterate our "overweight" rating," Morgan Stanley said in a note titled "Keep calm and search on".

Analysts highlighted core revenue growth from Google websites and YouTube, higher contribution from rest-of-world revenue, strong sales of digital apps and content in Google's Play Store and Chromecast TV dongles.

Many also expect Google's Enhanced Campaigns advertisement program and other ad products to improve monetization from mobile and noted management's view that location and other data would help mobile pricing over time.

"We continue to recommend GOOGL due to the strength of the core search business, continued product innovation, and improving monetization, which should allow GOOGL to take a growing share of the desktop and mobile online ad markets," Susquehanna analyst Brian Nowak said.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster also remained upbeat.

"We continue to view Google as the best long term large cap story in our coverage space given the company's focus on innovation," he said.

However, Goldman Sachs, which has a "neutral" rating on Google's shares, said it expected the stock to remain range-bound in the near-term as the market waits for mobile cost-per-click rates to improve.

Google shares were trading at $545.22 shortly after the opening on the Nasdaq after closing at $563.90 on Wednesday. - Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com

Google fixes security hole in GMail

Now it can be told. Google has fixed a potentially serious security hole in its Gmail email service, after a security researcher discovered the flaw.

The Internet giant fixed the flaw within 10 days of being informed by white-hat hacker Oren Hafif, who said the bug involved Gmail's password recovery mechanism.

"(I)f someone got access to your Gmail account, he can 'password recover' his way to any other web/mobile application out there," Hafif said in a blog post.

Hafif said an attacker can send a phishing email customized with the target Gmail user's email address in the URL, with the link referring to a site controlled by the attacker.

But he said Google's team acted swiftly, fixing the matter in 10 days.

"Google security team acted really fast. This issue was fixed in 10 days," he said.

Security researcher Graham Cluley noted the process of stealing the Google password starts with a "fairly normal looking phishing email, claiming to come from Google."

But the link really takes the intended victim to a website under the hacker’s control.

Cluley said the hacker's site quickly performs a Cross-site request forgery (CSRF), "launching a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack which fools Google into believing that the user has requested a password reset, as if they were having trouble logging in."

"Fortunately, Hafif is one of the good guys rather than a malicious attacker, and so he informed Google of the serious security hole," he said. — TJD, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Google eyes television over the internet

NEW YORK CITY - US Internet giant Google is scrambling to deliver pay television online and has met with some content providers on licensing, The Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday.

"If the Web giant goes ahead with the idea, it would join several other companies planning to offer services that deliver cable TV-style packages of channels over broadband connections," the Journal reported.

"Intel Corp. and Sony Corp. are both working on similar offerings, while Apple Inc. has pitched various TV licensing ideas to media companies in the past couple of years," the report said.

Google's effort, if successful, has the potential to seriously undermine the current pay-cable television "ecosystem," it added. — Agence France Presse

source: gmanetwork.com