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WASHINGTON — Hackers could exploit inflight entertainment systems to fatally sabotage the cockpit electronics of a new generation of airliners connected to the Internet, a US government report warns.

It comes weeks after a co-pilot crashed his Germanwings A320 into the French Alps killing all 150 on board, prompting talk of airliners one day being 100 per cent automated.

Inflight cybersecurity is “an increasingly important issue” that the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] is just starting to address in earnest, said the audit and investigative arm of the US Congress.

“Modern communications technologies, including IP connectivity, are increasingly used in aircraft systems, creating the possibility that unauthorised individuals might access and compromise aircraft avionics systems,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said.

In the past, the electronics used to control and navigate aircraft — known as avionics — have functioned autonomously, said the GAO.

“However, according to FAA and experts we spoke to, IP networking may allow an attacker to gain remote access to avionics systems and compromise them,” the GAO said.

In theory, firewalls ought to protect avionics “from intrusion by cabin-system users, such as passengers who use inflight entertainment systems”.

But four cybersecurity experts told the GAO that firewalls, being software components, can be hacked and circumvented “like any other software”.

The FAA, the aviation authority of the United States, has yet to develop regulations to make “cybersecurity assurance” for avionics part of its process for certifying new aircraft.

FAA officials told the GAO, however, that cybersecurity is an increasingly important concern and that it is shifting its certification focus to address it.

‘No evidence this has occurred’

Gerald Dillingham, a co-author of the GAO report, said the issue particularly affects a new generation of Internet-connected aircraft that includes the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350.

To date, he told AFP, there is no sign that any “bad actors” have successfully planted a virus or malware into an avionics system.

“We don’t have any evidence that this has occurred and we are hoping that raising this question will make it less likely to occur,” he said.

Last month’s Germanwings crash, in which the captain was reportedly locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot, raised the spectre of robots one day taking the place of humans at the controls to prevent a deadly repeat.

Responding to the GAO report, Airbus said it was “constantly assessing and revisiting the system architecture of our products with an eye to establishing and maintaining the highest standards of safety and security”.

“Beyond that, we don’t discuss design details or safeguards publicly, as such discussion might be counterproductive to security,” its Washington spokesman Clay McConnell told AFP by e-mail.

In a statement to US media, Boeing said its aircraft are delivered with more than one navigational system available to pilots.

“No changes to the flight plans loaded into the airplane systems can take place without pilot review and approval,” it said.

“In addition, other systems, multiple security measures, and flight deck operating procedures help ensure safe and secure airplane operations.”

Meanwhile, one of the world’s foremost experts on counter-threat intelligence within the cybersecurity industry, who blew the whistle on vulnerabilities in airplane technology systems in a series of recent Fox News reports, has become the target of an FBI investigation himself.

Chris Roberts of the Colorado-based One World Labs, a security intelligence firm that identifies risks before they’re exploited, said two FBI agents and two uniformed police officers pulled him off a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 commercial flight last week just after it landed in Syracuse, and spent the next four hours questioning him about cyberhacking of planes.

The FBI interrogation came just hours after Fox News published a report on Roberts’ research, in which he said: “We can still take planes out of the sky thanks to the flaws in the in-flight entertainment systems. Quite simply put, we can theorise on how to turn the engines off at 10,688 metres and not have any of those damn flashing lights go off in the cockpit.”

Interviewing for a job? Be prepared. According to a recent jobs outlook report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers the job market for new college graduates appears to be good.

But even with this increase in potential jobs, how do new college graduates ensure they are properly prepared for their first big interview? Here we offer some practical tips for new graduates to help them enter the workforce by being polished, professional and ready to outclass the competition. 

Refining your interpersonal skills 

Two of the most important communications skills to help make a lasting first impression are also the easiest — eye contact and firm handshakes. Because of the constant need to stay in touch, a majority of younger people grew up continuously monitoring their mobile devices. Even in formal settings, it’s amazing to watch so many people looking at their phones instead of having face-to-face conversations.

But not being able to make solid eye contact with a potential employer sends a message that can be interpreted as boredom, disinterest and a lack of trust on behalf of a potential candidate. The same is true of a limp handshake.

Conversely, a firm handshake implies confidence, collaboration and a willingness to get down to work. In every interview, college graduates should master these basic interpersonal skills that say you are the right man or woman for the job.

Digital footprint

With more employers routinely checking out the online presence of a potential job candidate, a digital footprint can come back to haunt someone more than ever. That’s why serious graduates need to think twice before posting that picture of winning a beer pong championship on social media.

Whether it’s removing any potential image challenging pictures and inflammatory posts or whether it’s simply changing your account settings to private, college graduates need to think of themselves as a brand and always present the best image on all social platforms.

The social interview

More and more companies are conducting interviews at lunches, dinners or in other off-site locales. But be aware that these seemingly less formal interviews are often used as a barometer to observe how a job candidate handles his or herself in a social setting.

This is where elbows should never meet white tablecloths, where closed mouth chewing will be noted and where a mobile phone should never be seen or heard. Also, make sure you never make this most common dining faux pas — snagging the roll of a dining partner. Always remember BMW — your BREAD is on the left, your MEAL is in the middle and your WATER is on the right.

Personalised correspondence

Recently a colleague told a story of a job prospect sending an interview query about an open position. The candidate noted how, after exhaustive research into their company, he realised he was the perfect fit for them. The only problem? The query letter was addressed to one of the prospect’s main competitors, indicating a multiple cut and paste approach in creating a “personal” cover letter.

Graduates, be warned. Take the time to tailor your correspondence to the company where you truly feel you’d like to be employed. And ensure your correspondence is grammatically correct and properly proofed.

Thank you cards

Whether you are thanking your grandmother for the graduation check or sending a note of gratitude to a potential employer for a recent job interview, take the time to say thanks in a handwritten and timely card. It will impress!

Does quality still matter in 2015 if 95 per cent of the population is satisfied with the digital contents it is living with?

Audiovisuals today are almost entirely digital. The under-30 generation actually knows nothing else and does not lose sleep over analogue to digital comparison. For them this is just not relevant. As for those who lived the revolution that took the world from analogue to digital, circa 1985-1995, they are still amazed by the change. Now that written communication and financial transactions are also well on the way to becoming almost exclusively in the digital domain, one has the right to stop and wonder what happened to quality on the way.

For many digital is equivalent to quality. This is a misconception. Digital is just what you make it. Its main and huge advantage over analogue is that it will stand the test of time if well-kept and is easier to replicate and to exchange, remaining unaltered in such cases. Other than that you can have poor quality digital just like you can have poor quality analogue.

More than 30 years in the digital audiovisual age you still find exaggeratedly compressed MP3 music that does not sound good and amateur photos that are a real eye-sore. Cheap office scanners, some costing JD40 or less, create poorly digitised documents and low-end mobile devices playback music that should not be called music at all.

Look, for example, at great analogue printed photographs taken by real artists in the pre-digital era. I was admiring one of Ansel Adams photos taken in the 1950, a black-and-white landscape titled Golden Gate Headlands. The stunning definition, the subtle and smooth shades of grey, the tones, everything in the shot tells you that they didn’t need any megapixel count back then to come up with superior quality photographs.

The same kind of thinking applies to music. Fervent audiophiles still listen to recordings made between 1965 and 1980, the golden era of analogue vinyl stereo records. They swear that this gives them the greatest listening pleasure.

Does this mean that analogue is superior to digital and that we can’t get top quality with digital? Of course not. Digital can equal and even surpass analogue — but at a price!

Today’s technology can produce sound that exceeds what even the best human ear can perceive and images that challenge reality in terms of definition, sharpness and true-to-life colours. Unfortunately the tools that you need for that are not only expensive but aren’t always convenient to use.

A top-end sound adapter for computer costs at least JD200 and requires delicate settings to work, plus maybe some extra cabling. On the other hand the built-in sound adapter found in the average laptop costs JD5 to JD10 and requires no special settings to function.

A high-end full-size pro DSLR Nikon camera, for example, with the lenses to match, will set you off some JD4,000 to JD5,000, not to mention that you have to put up with its size and weight. Otherwise you’d be shooting with your smartphone most of the time. I know of people who are fortunate to own both kinds of devices but who use their smartphone camera most of the time simply because of the convenience it offers.

What rules now and in the overwhelming number of cases and situations today is practicality, not quality. Speed, cost, social networking, the urge to send and to receive quickly, to copy and to communicate, they all have priority over sheer quality. The latter remains an exception.

How often do you listen to music sitting comfortably in your quiet living room, doing absolutely nothing else? Virtually never, or so rarely these days. Most of the time you’d be driving, chatting with friends, reading, working, jogging, texting, etc. Who then cares if the music you are listening to is less-than-perfect in terms of sonic quality? Given the context and the listening environment you wouldn’t be able to tell average MP3 from pristine uncompressed 96KHz 20-bit audio.

WASHINGTON — Children just hate all vegetables, no matter how tasty you make them, right?

Wrong, says an influential study out recently that found US children in Massachusetts ate up to 30 per cent more vegetables when school dinners were made more palatable with the help of a professional chef.

The research, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association’s website, provided an encouraging sign in the battle to fight childhood obesity.

But it also found that the presentation of fruits and vegetables did not have a long-term impact on their consumption.

“The results highlight the importance of focusing on the palatability of school meals,” said lead author Juliana Cohen of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University.

“Additionally, this study shows that schools should not abandon healthier foods if they are initially met with resistance by students.”

About 32 million children eat meals at American schools each day and many low-income students get up to half their daily calories from school meals.

Researchers conducted their trial during the 2011-2012 school year among 14 elementary and middle schools in two urban, low-income Massachusetts school districts.

A total of 2,638 children participated in the study.

The findings “really illustrated that through persistence, school-aged children can learn to like healthy whole grains, fruits and vegetables, especially if they taste good,” said senior author Eric Rimm, a professor at Harvard.

NEW YORK — No doubt you’ve run across your share of PDF documents in your work and personal life. Adobe’s Portable Document Format has become a common way to publish newsletters, instruction manuals and even tax forms. Creating your own PDF document is easy, with features built into major Web browsers and Apple’s Mac system, or available through an array of free Windows apps.

So why pay $156 or a more a year for Adobe’s Acrobat DC service? You get those free capabilities in one place, plus features for filling out forms, appending digital signatures and making changes on the go.

The basics 

Many people already use Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader for reading documents. But to create documents, you need to pay for Acrobat, or use a free PDF creator from an outside party. 

Not all PDF creators are the same, though. Some convert text to graphics, for instance, so you’re unable to search documents later. And editing capabilities tend to be limited and cumbersome.

I create a lot of PDF files instead of printing out records. 

Free tools are typically adequate for that, but Acrobat is much easier for rotating and reordering pages and combining multiple PDF documents into a single file. Acrobat also makes it easy to edit text and convert documents back to their original form, whether that’s in Word or a Web page.

Adobe Systems Inc. also makes an iPad version, though with fewer features. Versions for iPhones, Android and Windows Phone devices have even less. Files you create and edit will sync through Adobe’s Document Cloud storage service. All this comes with Acrobat DC.

Forms and more

My favourite tool is the Fill & Sign app for iPads and Android tablets. Take any form, such as a school permission slip for your kid. 

You simply snap the form with your tablet’s camera and enhance the image using technology Adobe borrowed from its Photoshop editing software. You can do more than standard cropping. 

Let’s say you snapped the form on your lap, so the page is curved rather than flat. On the app, you mark where the corners are, and the document magically stretches out so that it looks flat, as though scanned in. 

Then, you can type text, check boxes and even add your signature.

This can be useful for all the forms I hate filling out and mailing. And for forms that come in electronically, I can skip the printer.

But going paperless isn’t easy. I’m months late in mailing a housing form because I couldn’t find a stamp. 

Fill & Sign would be great, but there’s no place I could e-mail that form to, nor would a parent necessarily know where to e-mail a permission slip that’s designed to be handed in.

Plus, you can get this app for free. All the subscription does is integrate the feature with others in the package.

Signs and tracks 

For small business owners and others who deal with contracts, Adobe offers tools for sending out forms for signing — even to those who don’t have Acrobat. Signers can draw signatures with their mouse or type their names in a signature-like font (it’s not your actual signature, but Adobe says it’s legally binding). Tools help you track who’s already signed which documents. This also leaves a legal audit trail.

Speaking of tracking, another feature keeps track of who’s read or downloaded your document. Your recipients can no longer pretend they didn’t get it. Recipients can’t decline the tracking, which feels creepy, though they are notified if you opt for detailed tracking.

Pricing

The standard subscription starts at $13 a month, with a one-year commitment. 

A Pro subscription, at $15 a month, gives you additional features, including the ability to compare two versions of a document. If you just want it for a month, though, the subscriptions cost $23 and $25, respectively. 

You can also buy the Mac or Windows version the traditional way, for a one-time fee that starts at $299 ($139 for upgrades), but you don’t get all of the mobile, storage or tracking features. With the subscription, you can sign in on two PCs at a time, with no limits yet on mobile.

Acrobat DC does a lot, but the price tag will limit its appeal to small businesses and households with lots of forms to fill and sign.

SAN FRANCISCO — On the one hand, or wrist, there may be an eye-catching Apple Watch, while the other will sport with more discreet jewellery packed with Internet Age smarts.

Jawbone had that vision of the wearable computing trend in mind late Wednesday when it ramped its UP family of lifestyle-tracking bands and teased a coming model that enables American Express users to tap and pay at shop checkout counters.

“People often wear a watch at the same time they are wearing bracelets,” Jawbone vice president of product management and strategy Travis Bogard told AFP at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

“We can now put technology into those situations in a way that doesn’t disrupt how you would wear it. Then you can collect that information and do interesting things with it.”

A UP3 bracelet that tracks heart rate along with activity and sleep is shipping after a delayed release while technicians improved water resistance.

Jawbone introduced another new Up band with an overhauled design and almost half the mass of its predecessor.

Bogard showed off a coming flagship UP4 model with sensors capable of measuring heart rate and other biometrics, and which could be used at checkouts that have American Express contactless payment systems.

“We have created a seamless payment experience all in the tap of a wrist,” said Leslie Berland, executive vice president of digital partnerships and development at American Express.

UP4 will be priced at $199 when it is released in the middle of this year, according to Bogard. The lowest priced UP model is $49.

In time with smartwatches

Bogard was undaunted by the pending arrival next week of Apple Watch, which unofficial estimates indicate has about a million pre-orders and could ignite the smartwatch market.

“Those are really daytime wear,” he said of smartwatches.

UP bands are designed to be jewellery that “disappears on the body” while being worn all day every day, using sensors to track activity, sleep and more.

The bands synch to smartphones and feed what they learn to the Internet cloud, where “smart coach” software provides personalised advice for healthier lifestyles.

Jawbone has focused on creating a platform that can synch to applications tailored for an array of smartwatches from major players including Apple, Huawei, Asus, LG and Motorola.

Data gathered by wearable computing devices can be used by “smart coach” to coax or nudge users towards lifestyle goals from losing weight to drinking more water or getting to sleep earlier.

“Data is good, understanding is better,” Bogard said.

Technology Holy Grail

While Jawbone believes people will want UP hardware, it has made the platform open so developers can synch devices, applications or services to the system.

“One thing that differentiates tech companies from competitors is being a platform,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau told AFP.

“That is something of a Holy Grail. Getting to that point and kick-starting an ecosystem is really lucrative, and could be for Jawbone.”

Having services, applications, smartwatches and more tuned to its platform diversifies opportunities for Jawbone to make money.

Gartner has found that while people have been showing interest in wearable computing, it hasn’t translated into massive mainstream purchasing.

“I think that the Apple Watch is going to pique people’s interest and they will pay more attention to wrist wearables,” Blau said.

The analyst doubted there would be a quick shift to people using watches, bracelets or other wearable computers as wallets since it is already easy enough to use credit cards for purchases.

Overall, it remains early days for wearable computing with innovations on the horizon including virtual or augmented reality head gear and sensors or chips embedded in clothing fabric, according to the analyst.

“The wearables industry is only just getting started,” Blau said.

“The conundrum the wearables industry is in today is which will stand out as the next platform or the next spot on the body where people will wear things.”

I have often wondered about a lot of things. Like for instance: Do we automatically attain maturity, as we grow older? Are we becoming a less tolerant society? Can respect be demanded and not earned? Is anger not a sign of weakness? Does yelling at someone, in private or in public, demean that person, or the yeller? Does raising your voice make you right? 

These and many such queries plague me as I see more and more bad mannered people around me. Folks who think their opinions are superior, so they cut others off in mid sentence during a disagreement. They talk in a monologue and if anyone challenges their views they resort to offensive language. They think their beliefs are the best and they interpret everything to their own advantage while being inflexible to any other version. 

These are not necessarily public figures but ordinary people like you and me who transformed themselves into demagogues at the drop of a hat. To the outside world they appear to be balanced and even meek individuals but within their homes, the mask comes off, and they spout extreme radicalism of thought. Whether it was politics or religion, they believe in exclusion rather than inclusion. 

I have an uncle who lives in the United States. He is in his early eighties and migrated to America fifty years ago. Even though he has been living abroad for such a long time, he follows everything that goes on in India — his home country. Despite the difference in time zones, he watches the Indian news channel on his television relentlessly from morning till evening. If there is even a mention of the political party that he is opposed to, he starts swearing at the idiot box. He saves his choicest curses for the Indian leader of opposition and if his long-suffering wife intervenes to ask him to calm down, he shouts at her too. 

I have never seen an angrier old man. He starts a discussion but does not allow anyone to participate in it, especially women, who according to him, should be seen but not heard. If a debate becomes a bit heated with the other party supplying sensible arguments he halts it by yelling. 

“Enough! I don’t want to hear another word. You know nothing. Nonsensical people!” he belts.

An awkward silence usually follows that. 

This entire thing came as a big surprise to me because I assume that men of a certain generation are very courteous and have good manners drilled into them. I would of course benchmark them against my own father, who had never spoken in a higher decibel to anyone on the planet, be it man, woman or child. When I was growing up, he encouraged freedom of thought and any conversation, however trivial, was incomplete, without all of us chipping in with our two bits worth.

The last time I was in America, my uncle was deriding Bapu Mahatma Gandhi and I could not bear it. 

“He was a foolish old man,” he announced. 

“I do not agree with you,” I said. 

“Good thing he was shot,” he continued. 

“Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth,” I quoted. 

“Who said this?” he thundered.

“German physicist Albert Einstein,” I stated. 

“As stupid as the Italian Sonia Gandhi,” he declared. 

“Where you going?” he hollered at my retreating back. 

“Long walk to freedom,” I retorted, lengthening my stride. 

PARIS — Researchers said Wednesday a lab-manufactured antibody “significantly” reduced HIV blood levels in a small but promising human trial, and caused no harmful side effects.

The virus-suppressing action did not appear to last, however, and some patients developed resistance to the agent, said the authors of the research published by Nature.

This meant the designer molecule dubbed 3BNC117 may be best used in combination with other drugs, said the team — while highlighting the promise of a new, immunotherapy-based approach to fighting HIV.

“This represents potentially a new class of drugs with activity against HIV,” study co-author Marina Caskey of New York’s Rockefeller University told AFP.

“It is possible that 3BNC117 and antibodies like it will boost the patient’s own immune responses, leading to better control of their infection.”

So-called monoclonal antibodies like 3BNC117 which are cloned from a single parent immune cell, hold the promise of actually killing HIV-infected cells.

Currently, cocktails of antiretroviral drugs are used merely to suppress replication of the virus for which no cure or vaccine exists.

Antibodies remain active in the body for longer than daily-dose antivirals, said the scientists, and may be administered with longer intervals in between, perhaps once every few months.

The new agent, cloned from a cell taken from an HIV-positive person, was given to 12 uninfected volunteers and 17 infected with HIV.

Each received a single, intravenous shot in doses ranging from 1 to 30 milligrammes per kilogramme of bodyweight, and were monitored for 56 days.

All eight individuals given the highest dose showed “up to 300-fold decreases” in the amount of virus in their blood, said the US-German research team.

The viral load was lowest about a week after treatment, and remained “significantly reduced” for 28 days.

In four of the eight high-dose volunteers, viral loads were below starting levels by the end of the eight-week trial period, but resistance to the antibody developed in the other four, said the scientists.

This meant the molecule would likely not be effective on its own, and would have to be used in a combination with other drugs.

Outside experts described the findings as promising, but said a working antibody treatment for HIV was likely years away.

‘Effective and safe’

“We have been able to show for the first time that monoclonal antibodies against HIV can significantly reduce levels of the virus in blood,” Caskey said by e-mail, and that it is “safe to be administered in humans”.

Monoclonal antibodies, used in treating cancer, have proven difficult and expensive to produce for HIV.

In nature, antibodies identify and latch on to foreign agents like bacteria and viruses, tagging them for attack by the immune system.

The AIDS virus, however, constantly mutates to elude antibodies — including the potent “broadly-neutralising” (bNAb) type of antibody produced by only 10-30 per cent of HIV-infected people but only after many years by when it is too late.

By cloning bNAbs, scientists hope to treat HIV infections before the virus mutates.

In this Phase I clinical trial, 3BNC117 was active against 195 of 237 HIV strains.

But resistance is a problem, said Caskey — as with existing antiretrovirals that need to be used in combinations of different drugs for the same reason.

“One antibody alone, like one drug alone, will not be sufficient to suppress viral load for a long time because resistance will arise,” she said.

Besides the possibility of HIV treatment, the study also raises prospects for a vaccine.

“If researchers can induce an uninfected person’s immune system to generate potent antibodies such as 3BNC117, it might be enough to block the HIV infection before it can be established,” said a university statement.

The next step, said Caskey, is to test whether 3BNC117 can maintain undetectable blood levels of HIV in patients during a pause in antiretroviral therapy, as well as tests of its function in combination with antiretrovirals.

“In parallel, we are discussing studies to evaluate if 3BNC117 would be effective in preventing HIV, but time and additional resources are still required to implement such studies,” she said.

Commenting on the study via the Science Media Centre, infectious diseases expert Andrew Freedman of Cardiff University said the results suggested the treatment “might prove useful in combination with drug therapy as a means of achieving better long-term control or even cure of HIV infection”.

San Jose Mercury News (TNS)

SAN JOSE, California — Instant messages can feel trite and impersonal, but new apps can make it easier to express emotions beyond a text or emoji.

Facebook recently opened up Messenger to app developers, and there are already more than 40 ways for people to show their feelings with the click of a button. Want to make someone smile or laugh? Send a GIF or e-card. Feeling old? Create a selfie with wrinkles. Got the urge to serenade a lover? Turn text into a song. Angry or frustrated? Add fire effects to an image.

It may seem like silly fun, but companies that created these apps say they’re also part of an effort to breathe emotion into electronic communication that can feel impersonal and cripple face-to-face conversations.

Magisto CEO and co-founder Oren Boiman has seen it happen in restaurants where two people are sitting next to one another, but their eyes are fixated on their smartphones as they text. When you converse, Boiman said, it’s about more than just the words — there is also emotion conveyed through hand gestures and facial expressions.

“There’s almost a battle to restore everything that we lost. Plain text is in a way the most efficient and the worst way of communication,” he said.

It’s also hard to read emotion through an instant message, he said. Even the phrase “You’re really funny, you know?” is ambiguous in a text where sarcasm is hard to read.

So the Menlo Park company developed an app for Messenger called Magisto Shot, which Boiman said is meant to help people show how they feel.

You can take a photo, select a “vibe” — such as happy, sad, scary, love, hyper, funny and scary — and Magisto Shot then adds music, filters and effects based on the mood, turning the image into a short video you can send via Messenger.

“We want to help people express things that we almost forgot that we do with human communication,” Boiman said.

Showing people how you feel along with making statements about what’s happening is an important part of language, said linguist John McWhorter, an associate professor at Columbia University.

Since texting mimics spoken language, he said, people are not content with statements that don’t convey more than just information.

“Nobody would have expected that the telegrams that we send to each other today are actually very warm, spontaneous and human compared to anything anybody could have imagined 20 years ago,” he said.

Concert pianist Bob Taub knows firsthand how music can sway people’s emotions. Taub is the president and CEO of MuseAmi, a New Jersey company, that also created a Messenger version of its app Hook’d.

The app allows people to select a song based on their mood, record themselves singing with the backtrack of the songs like they’re a lead singer, add effects and then send the video clip to a friend through Messenger. If they’re feeling like a boss, they can pick the song “All About that Bass” by Meghan Trainor, or if they’re feeling sexy they can sing along to “Let’s Get It On”, by Marvin Gaye.

“We’re marrying [messaging] and [music] in the social media platform to allow people to infuse their messages with more personal character through singing and videos,” Taub said.

There are also plenty of apps on Messenger meant to make people laugh.

As GIFs became more popular online, Camoji founder Carlos Whitt said that the company saw an opportunity to create a tool that would allow people to create their own GIFs using a camera and filters such as “drunk”, “cool blue”, “strobe” and “censored”.

“If you talked to the average person on the street and ask how to create an animated GIF, most of them would have no idea,” he said. “We wanted to build the simplest and most playful tool out there for creating animated GIFs.”

The San Francisco start-up has tried creating several apps before meant to create simple and fun experiences that could connect people together. But the idea of a GIF camera just clicked.

“At a bar you show it to someone and they instantly smile. As soon as we saw that, we knew that we were on to something,” Whitt said.

Brussels — The EU on Wednesday formally charged US Internet giant Google with abusing its search engine’s dominance and launched a sensitive probe into its omnipresent Android mobile phone operating system.

On the first count, the Commission said it had sent a formal “Statement of Objections” to Google, charging it with “systematically favouring its own comparison shopping product in its general search results pages”.

“The Commission’s preliminary view is that such conduct infringes EU anti-trust rules because it stifles competition and harms consumers.”

If found at fault under EU anti-trust rules, a company faces a fine of up to 10 per cent of its annual sales — in Google’s case, $66 billion in 2014.

The Commission said it would continue to examine three other areas of concern — copying of rivals’ web content, exclusive advertising regimes and undue restrictions on advertisers — which were identified in probes dating back to 2010.

In a potentially hugely important development, it also announced a separate investigation into Google’s Android system which dominates the global mobile phone market.

“The investigation will focus on whether Google has entered into anti-competitive agreements or abused a possible dominant position in the field of operating systems, applications and services for smart mobile devices,” the statement said.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Android was hugely important and it was vital it be open to all.

“Smartphones, tablets and similar devices play an increasing role in many people’s daily lives and I want to make sure the markets in this area can flourish without anti-competitive constraints imposed by any company,” she said.

Ten weeks to respond 

Google accounts for about 90 per cent of the EU search market and now has 10 weeks to reply on the search count.

Vestager told a press conference that the door remained open to an amicable settlement and she called on Google to take every opportunity to discuss the issues with Brussels.

In two blog posts in response, Google said that in search, there was in fact “more choice than ever before”.

“While Google may be the most used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways — and allegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide of the mark.”

The company said its Android system had been a key driver of innovation and had benefited others, not hindered them.

“We look forward to discussing these issues in more detail with the European Commission over the months ahead,” the post said.

Competitors who feel they have been harmed by Google’s behaviour welcomed the decision.

“The Commission’s actions are significant steps towards ending Google’s anti-competitive practices which have harmed innovation and consumer choice,” industry group FairSearch said.

“Google’s abuses have devastated rivals, from mapping to video search to product price comparison,” said the group, which counts Microsoft, Nokia and Trip Advisor as members.

Microsoft, which the Commission has fined more than 2 billion euros in a series of competition cases, separately said “every company needs to obey the same legal rules of the road”.

Vestager visits US

Vestager leaves later Wednesday for the United States where the EU investigation into Google has become politically sensitive as the 28-nation bloc negotiates a massive trade liberalisation accord with Washington.

US critics say the EU is being selective in targeting Google and significantly, the US Federal Trade Commission dropped its own probe of the company in 2013, saying it had done enough to meet complaints.

The European Commission, which polices EU competition policy, launched an initial investigation into Google in 2010 following complaints from rivals such as Microsoft and Trip Advisor that it favoured its own companies when customers ran searches.

Vestager’s predecessor, Joaquin Almunia, made three attempts to resolve the dispute but in each case intense pressure by national governments, rivals and privacy advocates scuppered the effort.

With the issue turning into a lightning rod for critics in Europe on a wide range of issues from the EU-US trade talks to privacy, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in November that search engines be separated from their commercial services businesses.

In a statement ahead of the vote, the US mission to the EU “noted with concern” the parliament’s resolution and urged that the case against Google “not be politicised”.