HC asks govt: How is Google paying tax but Facebook not

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has questioned why Facebook is not paying any service tax when Google is doing so and directed the Centre to file a 'better affidavit' on the issue.

"How is Google paying (service tax), but not Facebook? How is Facebook exempted? We are finding it difficult to understand," a bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Siddharth Mridul said.

The bench also asked whether the government was 'alive' to the issues of sale of data by social medial sites as well as the service of targeted advertisement provided by them.

"Why don't you know all these? Are you alive to these things or is it beyond your comprehension," it asked after advocate Virag Gupta, appearing for former BJP leader K N Govindacharya, raised these issues before the court.

The government, represented by advocate Sanjeev Narula, said that Facebook has no office here while Facebook India has a office in a Special Economic Zone from where it is exporting services and thus, they are exempted from paying service tax.

The bench, however, sought information from the government on what are the remittances being made to Facebook from India and whether the transactions between the website and various Indian companies are in the nature of services.

"Find out what they (transactions) are? Whether they are chargeable and whether the services provided, if any, are by entities in India or from outside. File a better affidavit on the service tax as well as on the social media guidelines," the court said in the pre-lunch proceedings.

It also queried whether the government had come out with an email policy, however, as Narula was not present in court in the post-lunch period, the bench re-notified the matter to October 1 and requested the presence of Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain to assist the court on that date.

Samsung launches its first metal-bodied smartphone Galaxy Alpha at Rs 39,990

NEW DELHI: Samsung has launched its metal-bodied Galaxy Alpha smartphone in the Indian market at Rs 39,990.

The phone will be available in the market starting first week of October. The phone was initially announced in August.

The Galaxy Alpha features a compact body with a metal frame, curved corners and a tactile soft back cover. The phone is also one of the slimmest Galaxy devices ever with 6.7mm thickness. It is very lightweight at 115gram.

Samsung Galaxy Alpha sports a 4.7-inch HD Super AMOLED (720x1280p) display. It is powered by Samsung's Exynos octal core processor featuring 1.8GHz quad-core and a 1.3GHz quad-core processors, and 2GB RAM.

Unlike Samsung's other Galaxy smartphones, the Galaxy Alpha comes with 32GB internal storage but doesn't feature a microSD card slot.

The phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat and comes with Samsung's Ultra-Power Saving mode and S Health application. It sports a finger print scanner, heart rate sensor and private mode, and supports connectivity with Samsung Gear Fit, Gear Live and Gear 2 wearables.

Galaxy Alpha sports a 12MP rare camera and a 2.1MP front-facing camera. The rear camera supports 4K video recording.



In terms of connectivity, the phone offers support for WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC. It comes with an 1860mAh battery.

Samsung Galaxy Alpha will be available in charcoal black, dazzling white, frosted gold, sleek silver, and scuba blue colours.

15 top tech stories of the week

Here's a quick look at what made news in the world of technology in the week just gone by... 

iPhone 6, 6 Plus launch weekend sales hit 10 million, break record - Apple hasannounced it has sold over 10 million new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models, just three days after the launch on September 19. 

At $25 billion, Alibaba's IPO is world's biggest - Alibaba's IPO now ranks as the world's biggest at $25 billion, netting underwriters of the sale a more than $300 million windfall after the e-commerce giant and some shareholders parted with additional shares. 

Infosys vice-presidents get salary hikes of Rs 4-5 crore - Infosys has raised the salaries of its top executives so sharply that some of them are now in the $1-million (Rs 6-crore) compensation club n making them almost unpoachable by even international rivals n and raising the salary benchmark in the Indian IT industry. 

 



iPhone 6 Plus 'bendgate' - When Apple initially unveiled its biggest iPhone to date o the 5.5-inch iPhone 5 Plus o many worried the device would be too big to stuff in their pockets. Now, as it turns out, those who can fit the phone in their pocket are reportedly complaining that the phone bends after being stored there while sitting. Apple broke its silence on complaints about bending iPhones, hours after withdrawing a glitch-ridden software update as the company struggles to restore momentum to the rollout of its latest phones. 

Yahoo buys out Bangalore startup Bookpad - Yahoo has bought Bangalore-based Bookpad, a startup that's barely a year old and founded by three youngsters who passed out of IIT-Guwahati over the past three years. The precise value of the deal could not be ascertained, but sources said it's a little under $15 million (Rs 90 crore). 

Bash: A bug worse than Heartbleed - A security flaw discovered in one of the most fundamental interfaces powering the internet has been described by researchers as 'bigger than Heartbleed', the computer bug that affected nearly every computer user earlier in the year. 

Next-generation Android One phones coming in December - Enthused by the initial response to Google's Android One, handset makers Karbonn, Spice and Intex are gearing up for round two with a slew of smartphone launches beginning December this year. 




HTC launches India's first 64-bit Android smartphone - HTC has announced Desire 820 and Desire 820q smartphones in the Indian market. The phones will be available early November and pricing will be announced closer to the launch. Do check out our first impressions of Desire 820. 

Jolla smartphone comes to India - Finnish smartphone maker Jolla has launched its Jolla smartphone at Rs 16,499 in India.The company has inked an exclusive partnership with Indian e-commerce company SnapDeal to introduce the smartphone in the country. Do check out our first impressions of the phone. 

Sony launches Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact in India - Sony has launched its new flagship smartphone Xperia Z3, and its compact variant Xperia Z3 Compact in India. The Xperia Z3 will be available at Rs 51,990 while the Z3 Compact is priced at Rs 44,990. Do read our reviews of the Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z3 Compact. 

Second-generation Moto X goes on sale in India - Motorola's latest smartphone, the second-generation Moto X, is now available in India. Like other Motorola smartphones, the new model is available only via e-commerce website Flipkart in the country. 

Apple users fooled into burning iPhones in microwaves -Trolls at online imageboard 4chan spread a hoax on the internet, saying that the iOS 8 update includes a feature that allows an iPhone's battery to be charged when put in a household microwave. 

Google's Nexus 6 to be a bigger version of Moto X (Gen 2) - Google's next-generation Nexus phone, expected to be the Nexus 6 or Nexus X may turn out to be a big-screen version of Motorola's second-generation Moto X, as per a new report. 

Apple iPhone 5S price dips below Rs 35,000 in India - iPhone 5S, the top Apple smartphone last year, is now available in India for less than Rs 35,000 on e-commerce websites. The unofficial price drop comes soon after Apple announced the big-screen iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. 

Microsoft keen to team up with India: Satya Nadella - On the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a pitch for "i-ways for a Digital India" and asked industry captains to seize the initiative, the Hyderabad-born chief executive of Microsoft has offered a partnership to help accelerate the country's growth.

Hackers exploit 'Shellshock' bug with worms in early attacks

BOSTON: Hackers have begun exploiting the newly identified 'Shellshock' computer bug, also known as Bash, using fast-moving worm viruses to scan for vulnerable systems and then infect them, researchers warned on Thursday. 

'Shellshock' is the first major internet threat to emerge since the discovery in April of 'Heartbleed,' which affected encryption software used in about two-thirds of all web servers, along with hundreds of technology products. 

The latest bug has been compared to 'Heartbleed' partly because the software at the heart of the 'Shellshock' bug is also widely used in web servers and other types of computer equipment. 

According to security experts, 'Shellshock' is unlikely to affect as many systems as 'Heartbleed' because not all computers running Bash can be exploited. Still, they said the new bug has the potential to wreak more havoc because it enables hackers to gain complete control of an infected machine, which lets them destroy data, shut down networks or launch attacks on websites.

The 'Heartbleed' bug only allowed hackers to steal data.


The industry is rushing to determine which systems can be remotely compromised by hackers, but there are currently no estimates on the number of vulnerable systems. 

Amazon.com and Google have released bulletins to advise web services customers how to protect themselves from the new cyberthreat. A Google spokesman said the company is releasing software patches to fix the bug. 

"We don't actually know how widespread this is. This is probably one of the most difficult-to-measure bugs that has come along in years," said Dan Kaminsky, a well-known expert on Internet threats. 

For an attack to be successful, a targeted system must be accessible via the internet and also running a second vulnerable set of code besides Bash, experts said. 

"There is a lot of speculation out there as to what is vulnerable, but we just don't have the answers," said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust. "This is going to unfold over the coming weeks and months."

Attack on devices Joe Hancock, a cybersecurity expert with insurer Aegis in London, said in a statement that he is concerned about the potential for attacks on home broadband routers and controllers used to manage critical infrastructure facilities. 

"In some areas this will be a challenge to fix, as many embedded devices are not designed with regular updates in mind and will never be able to be patched," Hancock said. 

HD Moore, chief research officer with security software maker Rapid7, said it could take weeks or even months to determine what impact the bug will have. 

"At this point we don't know what we don't know, but we do expect to see additional exploit vectors surface as vendors and researchers start the assessment process for their products and services," Moore said in an email. "We are likely to see compromises as a result of this issue for years to come." 

Linux makers released patches to protect against attacks on Wednesday, though security researchers uncovered flaws in those updates, prompting No. 1 Linux maker Red Hat to advise customers that the patch was 'incomplete.' 

"That's a problem. It's been a little over 24 hours and we're still in the same boat," said Mat Gangwer, lead security consultant at Rook Security. "People are kind of freaking out. Rightfully so." 

Worms



Russian security software maker Kaspersky Lab reported that a computer worm has begun infecting computers by exploiting 'Shellshock.' 

The malicious software can take control of an infected machine, launch denial-of-service attacks to disrupt websites, and also scan for other vulnerable devices, including routers, said Kaspersky researcher David Jacoby. 

He said he did not know who was behind the attacks and could not name any victims. 

Jaime Blasco, labs director at AlienVault, said he had uncovered the same piece of malware, as well as a second worm seeking to exploit 'Shellshock', which was designed for launching denial of service attacks. 

'Heartbleed' is a bug in an open-source encryption software called OpenSSL. The bug put the data of millions of people at risk, as OpenSSL is used in about two-thirds of all websites. It also forced dozens of technology companies to issue security patches for hundreds of products that use OpenSSL.

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact review: The no-compromise mini

Almost all big phone makers now offer compact versions of their flagship smartphones. While these phones share the premium name, most of them are mid-range offerings with much inferior hardware. So, if you longed for a flagship Android phone with compact form factor, there were hardly any options. Sony's Xperia Z1 Compact was one of the first aberrations and it won't be wrong to say that it was in fact the first 'real' high-end compact Android phone.

The company is back with the Xperia Z3 Compact, as it aims to take the experience to the next level coinciding with the release of its new flagship, Xperia Z3. We've been using the phone for a couple of weeks and will help you in deciding if it's a good buy.

Build & design
In terms of design, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is loyal to the company's OmniBalance' design philosophy which is minimalist, yet premium. The phone looks very similar to the Z1 Compact but is almost 1mm slimmer and weighs less (129gram vs 137gram). A major change visible change is that the phone's frame is covered with translucent, silicon material. Just like the Xperia Z1 Compact, the Z3 Compact's frame is also made of metal but the silicon material hides it and gives the phone a softer feel. The edges as well as corners are rounded.



Xperia Z3 Compact also features a glass panel at the back, just like some other premium Xperia phones. We found Sony Z3 Compact's back prone to smudges and even scratches so you'd be better off with a protective guard or cover.

The Xperia Z3 Compact has a water and dust-resistant body (IP65 and IP68). Sony says that the phone can be kept under 1.5m of fresh water for up to 30 minutes. Sony has used protective flaps over all ports (barring the headphone jack) to achieve this. Some users may find it cumbersome, but the flaps offer a big utility.

The 3.5mm headset jack is placed at the top on the Xperia Z3 Compact, while the micro-USB and microSD card ports are placed at the left edge under a flap.Another flap on the same edge hides the nano-sim card slot. It also features a dock connector.

The typical watch crown-shaped, metallic power button is at the right edge along with the volume rocker key. The keys offer good tactile feedback although the volume rocker key could have been a little longer. Sony Z3 Compact sports a hardware button for the camera and is also located at the right edge. The key offers two-stage press similar to camera shutter keys to allow users to focus with soft press and shoot by pressing the key further.



The front of the phone is dominated by its 4.6-inch display. It's interesting to see how Sony has managed to fit in a slightly bigger display and has still managed to retain the dimensions of the Xperia Z1 Compact. The Z3 Compact also comes with two front-facing speaker outlets. Thankfully, these are very subtle and you may not even realise that they're present till you look carefully. The screen is slightly prone to smudges.

Barring the smudge prone front and back panels, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact exudes a premium feel and is also good to hold and use. The phone is available in red, green, black and white colour options.

Display

Sony Xperia Z3 Compact sports a 4.6-inch TRILUMINOS display with a resolution of 720x1280p and pixel density of 320ppi.

While the phone doesn't sport a full-HD display, the bright and vivid panel makes up for it. We would have to say the Z3 Compact's display is a delight to look at with its extremely wide viewing angles, optimum brightness levels, and almost perfect colour rendering.

Text and graphics look really crisp and sharp and outdoor legibility was also good. It won't be wrong to say that the Z3 Compact's display is one of the best among the ones we've seen.

Software
Xperia Z3 Compact runs Android 4.4 KitKat. Sony has skinned the user interface and has added its own apps for music, videos and gallery. The Indian edition of the phone also comes with additional content stores for downloading music and streaming TV shows.

Xperia Z3 Compact also has a separate Games Store and What's New apps, which show curated content (such as apps, music, games) that users can buy.

Sony's UI skin is not very heavy and doesn't hog on system resources. The experience of navigating across the UI was very smooth.


The UI elements, including the notifications tray, app launcher and settings menu have been skinned and look good. The transition effects visible during launching and minimising apps are also pleasant to look at.

Xperia Z3 Compact features Sony's Xperia keyboard which offers a fast typing experience and even offers a Swype-like mode for entering words by sliding fingers across keys. We found the typing experience to be swift and intuitive.

The app switcher button also gives access to small apps, which can float on top of other running apps. The phone ships with some small apps,including a browser, timer, calculator and screen grabber. One can download additional small apps from the Play Store, or even turn a widget into a small app.

While small apps are useful on large screens, they make the screen look crowded on small screen phones like the Z3 Compact. It's good that Sony still offers an option to users.

We'll have to say that we found Sony's UI skin less intrusive and well-balanced. It is among our favourite Android skins.

Camera
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact sports the same 20.7MP rear camera with Sony's G lens that the company offers on the Z3. While the megapixel count remains almost the same as that of Xperia Z1 Compact, the camera module has been enhanced. Sony has increased the maximum ISO sensitivity setting from 6400 to 12,800 for enhanced low-light images. The phone also has a new wide-angle, 25mm camera lens to capture more area.



The camera app offers a plethora of settings in addition to Sony's Superior Auto mode that chooses the best settings as per the ambient light.

We recommend the Superior auto mode for taking pictures unless you want to control granular settings. In that case, you can use the Manual mode.



You also get different scene options and the ability to switch the resolution of the pictures. Scene modes also include night mode, anti-motion blur, high sensitivity and backlight correction HDR, among others.

The other modes that the app offers include Timeshift burst, Timeshift video, Sound Photo, Multi-camera, Sweep Panorama, AR Effect, Creative effect, Background defocus, Face in, Social Live and Picture Effect. The time shift video helps you create time-lapse videos while background defocus lets you take DSLR-like bokeh pictures with defocussed background. The Multi-camera mode lets you hook other Xperia devices (phones or tablets) or a Sony Wi-Fi/NFC camera and record the same scene with multiple cameras.



Sony Xperia Z3 Compact takes great pictures in daylight and good quality noisy pictures in low-light conditions. The Superior Auto mode has improved and is more consistent when it comes to focusing but low-light pictures still look over processed because of the noise reduction. By default, photos are taken in 8MP resolution.

Pictures show accurate colours, incredible amount of detail, great contrast and pretty good white balance.

The phone supports 4K video recording. The 4K (or movie hall-quality) recording gives you extremely high-resolution videos. No doubt, this makes the phone future proof (at least for some time!), but there are very few monitors or TVs that can support the playback of this video, at this time. We also found that the phone got a little warm while capturing videos in this mode.

The phone's 2.2MP front camera takes good quality selfies and is good for video chats.



Overall, we feel the Xperia Z3 Compact has one of the best smartphone cameras available right now.

Performance
Sony has made no compromises with the Xperia Z3 Compact when it comes to hardware. The phone comes with a 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor and 2GB RAM. The phone comes with 16GB internal storage and a microSD card slot that supports cards up to 128GB. The user gets 11.57GB of free space.

Thanks to all the power under the hood, we did not notice any stutter or lag while launching and switching between apps, editing photos, browsing the web, clicking pictures, watching high definition videos or playing graphics-heavy games.

In terms of synthetic benchmarks, it scored 18,182 in Quadrant Standard, 40,837 in AnTuTu, 2553 in Geekbench 3(Multi-core) and 58.5 in NenaMark 2. Some benchmark scores are comparable to that of HTC One (M8) and higher than Sony Xperia Z2. We don't endorse benchmark tests and do not ​recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.



We were able to play videos of popular file formats without any hiccups. Additional file formats can be played through third party video player apps.

The sound output through the phone's front-facing stereo speaker grills was also loud and clear, a much needed change from the less loud output of previous-generation Xperia phones. Thanks to the new positioning of the speaker outlets, sound doesn't get muffled when the phone lies on its back.

Call quality was very good and the phone works well even in weak signal areas. We also observed that the phone catches signal even weak Wi-Fi signals. It also supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which means it will work new routers capable of offering higher transfer speeds.

The phone comes with GPS and A-GPS for navigation and maps and was easily able to lock a signal. It also comes with NFC connectivity to initiate file transfers to other NFC-enabled phones and receive data from NFC tags. It worked as promised.

The phone comes with a 2600mAh battery with a claimed standby time of up to 920 hours and talk time of up to 14 hours on 3G. With moderate to high usage, including about one to two hours of making calls, playing games, checking Twitter and Facebook feeds, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, the Xperia Z3 Compact will easily last you a full working day, even if you put the screen brightness at the highest level and keep 3G turned on. It delivered a total backup of about 13.5 hours with screen-on time of 3.5 hours on a typical work day.

You can boost the battery backup by using Sony's Stamina mode that shuts down battery-draining apps and data transfer when the screen is turned off and starts them again when it is turned on.

Gaming

We did not experience any lag whatsoever and were able to play graphics-intensive games like Riptide GP2 and Asphalt 8 without any frame drops or delays. The phone is a smooth performer when it comes to gaming.

Xperia Z3 Compact also supports PS 4 Remote Play, acting as a remote screen to connect to and control games on Sony PlayStation 4 gaming console. You'll need to put both of the devices on the same Wi-Fi network. You can attach the phone with the PS4 controller through an adapter and make it a portable console.

Verdict
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact is without doubt the best compact smartphone available at the moment. It comes with top-of-the-line hardware, a brilliant display, fluid user interface, an incredible camera and delivers punchy performance. Having said that, at Rs 44,990, we feel that the phone is overpriced, especially with some current and last generation premium phones available online at a much lower price.

So what are the other alternatives? If you're open to a non-Android phone, Apple iPhone 5S is still one of the best smartphones available in the market. It has a great camera, impressive build quality and features like a fingerprint sensor but has a smaller (4-inch) display, and a battery that doesn't last a full day. The phone is now available at prices close ti Rs 35,000, online.



You can also choose to wait for the iPhone 6 but we expect the phone to be priced about Rs 10,000 higher than the Xperia Z3 Compact.

If you don't want to look beyond Android, the metal-bodied, Samsung Galaxy Alpha is also expected to be available soon.

Don't want to spend a lot and still need a good compact smartphone? The Xperia Z1 Compact is still a great option.

Why Apple's response to iOS 8.0.1 glitch matters

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple's response to a high-profile gaffe involving its iPhone software may be more important than the glitch itself. 

As the giant tech company scrambled to fix a software glitch that left some of its new iPhones unable to make calls, some analysts said that Apple is doing the right thing by quickly acknowledging and apologizing for the problem — which it was slower to do with earlier iPhone problems. 

Apple released a new update late that the company said would repair the problems caused by software it released Wednesday morning. And it repeated an earlier apology to owners of its newest iPhones who were affected by that buggy release. 

"There's a certain perception that Apple has to get things right, and when they don't, the whole company gets questioned," said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel. "But they came out and said 'We apologize; we're working 24/7 to fix it.' I think that's what matters." 

Apple's stock fell nearly 4% Thursday, leading a broader decline in technology shares, a day after the company was forced to withdraw an update to its new iOS 8 mobile software because of glitches that primarily affected customers who had purchased its new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models. The 6 Plus phone has also been the subject of social media reports that its extra-large shell is vulnerable to bending. 

In a statement Thursday, Apple defended its manufacturing standards and said bending "is extremely rare" with normal use of an iPhone. The company said just nine customers had contacted Apple to report a bent iPhone 6 Plus since they went on sale Friday. 

Later in the day, Apple released a new update, dubbed iOS 8.0.2, which it said would fix the problems caused by the iOS 8.0.1 update that it released on Wednesday. "We apologize for inconveniencing the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users who were impacted by the bug in iOS 8.0.1," the company said in a statement. 

A day earlier, the company had also apologized "for the great inconvenience experienced by users" and vowed to work "around the clock" to fix the problem. 

Cupertino-based Apple has said it sold a record 10 million of the new iPhone models over the weekend, in what the company has called one of the biggest product launches in its history. It also reported this week that nearly half of all iPhone and iPad users had upgraded to the new software known as iOS 8. 

That new software contains a number of new features and is more complex than earlier versions of iOS, analysts said. Apple released the 8.0.1 update on Wednesday to fix some flaws that were detected after iOS 8 was released - only to find the 8.0.1 update created problems of its own. The new problems included interference with calling and with a feature that lets people unlock their phones with their fingerprint. 

That's not uncommon, according to veteran tech analyst Ross Rubin of Reticle Research. "All major companies have released fixes that they've had to pull because of unforeseen side-effects," he added. 

As for the bending issue, Rubin said the iPhone 6 Plus is "a large, thin device. That's not to say customers should treat it gingerly, but it's still an electronic product and it's an investment, and it should be treated as such." 

Apple is held to a higher standard by many consumers, analysts said. But Milanesi said she thought the company suffered more harm a few years ago, when it was slow to acknowledge complaints about poor reception and dropped calls that affected new iPhone 4 models when they were released in 2010. The company eventually offered a fix for the problem, after then-CEO Steve Jobs initially suggested users just needed to hold the phone differently. 

"There wasn't any of that this time," Milanesi said. She noted that Jobs' successor, CEO Tim Cook, had also taken responsibility and apologized for initial problems with Apple's Maps software when it was first released. 

Meanwhile, one analyst said Thursday's stock sell-off was more likely related to broader market concerns than investor unease about the new iPhones. 

"Earnings is what drives the stock the most," said Walter Piecyk of BTIG Research. "It's too early to say what the impact's going to be, but it does not appear to be something that would impact the company's ability to deliver on earnings" in the next two quarters. 

Apple said users affected by the software glitch can connect their phone to a Mac or Windows computer and download a file to restore an earlier version of the iOS 8 software. 

Apple offered a Web page with instructions. 

The company's stock ended Thursday down $3.88 at $97.87. Earlier this month, it hit an all-time high of $103.74.

Social media consulting company Hootsuite joins $1billion club

SAN FRANCISCO: Hootsuite, a Canada-based social media consulting and analytics firm, said that it has raised a fresh $60 million in investments, giving it a reported value of $1 billion.

The Vancouver-based firm said the latest round of financing led by a large Boston-based asset manager included existing investors Accel Partners, Insight Venture Partners and OMERS Venture, along with Silicon Valley Bank.

The latest investment brings Hootsuite's total financing to date to $250 million.

The news website Re/Code, citing sources familiar with the deal, said the new financing values Hootsuite at $1 billion.

Hootsuite, which calls itself "the world's most widely used social relationship platform," is known for its social media 'dashboard' that allows corporate users and others to manage and monitor Twitter and other social media posts, to help in marketing and branding.

"This financing will help us scale even faster on a global level and bring the most innovative products to market," Hootsuite chief executive Ryan Holmes said.

The company also announced it acquired Zeetl, a social telephony company, to integrate new voice technology into its platform.

"Acquisitions form an important part of our growth strategy," Holmes said.

Hootsuite has some 10 million users, including 744 of the Fortune 1000 companies, which manage their social media programs across multiple social networks from its dashboard.

Zeetl allows companies to respond to consumer complaints on social media by offering a private voice channel over Twitter or Facebook.

BlackBerry Passport loses limelight to Blend

TORONTO: BlackBerry's launch of its square-screened Passport device may have grabbed headlines this week, but it was the tech company's lower-profile roll out of the new Blend feature that appears to be garnering the plaudits. 

Even as reviewers and analysts were torn on the prospects of the unconventionally shaped Passport, they were brimming with praise for Blend, which lets users seamlessly bridge messaging and content between a host of devices irrespective of operating systems. 

"While the new Passport device attracted the most attention, to us the announcement of BlackBerry Blend is more important," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue in a note on Thursday. 

He noted that Blend is one of the key elements of a strategy aimed at adapting to the needs of large companies, where workers are pushing for flexibility to use devices of their own choice. 

BlackBerry, under the leadership of new chief executive John Chen, has been altering its focus. Chen wants BlackBerry to be a competitor in the smartphone arena, but is also building on its strengths in areas like mobile data security and mobile device management. 

"Blend underpins BlackBerry's enterprise strategy," said RBC's Sue, noting that recent acquisitions give BlackBerry a further boost in the enterprise market. 

Earlier this month, BlackBerry acquired Movirtu a UK-based mobile technology start-up whose software allows users to have multiple phone numbers on the same device. This followed its acquisition of voice and data encryption firm Secusmart in July. 

The Blend system allows a user to get message notifications, read and respond to work and personal email, text and other messages, while also accessing files, calendars, contacts and other media, on whatever device one is using. 

The system works across operating systems including Apple's Mac OS, Microsoft's Windows platform and tablets powered by Google's Android software. 

Scotiabank analyst Daniel Chan said he sees the software as a unique product that could allow developers to build Blend functionality into their mobile apps. 

"Blend has the potential to turn into a secure communication gateway to all the devices in users' lives," Chan wrote in a note, adding it could turn into a revenue stream as BlackBerry would charge service fees for access to corporate data. 

Other analysts were also upbeat about the new feature. 

"This could bring considerable appeal to enterprise users who use different platforms on multiple devices, yet want to quickly access email, text, calendar, etc," said Cormark's Richard Tse. 

Attention is now focused on BlackBerry's quarterly results on Friday, which will give shareholders a sense of the progress being made in BlackBerry's turnaround efforts. 

The volatile stock was down 2.5% in midday trading on Thursday, after closing roughly flat on Wednesday, following the launch of Passport and Blend.