Quantum computer trips and falls in test against regular PC

Quantum computers are supposed to represent a giant leap in computing speed for complex solutions like voice recognition, but a new study says the technology isn't any faster than a regular computer.

A newly published study in this week's issue of Science found that the hyped, $15 million D-Wave 2 based at the University of Southern California had no quantum leap advantage over a regular PC.

In previous controlled test, D-Wave's owners have demonstrated how its technology can be 3,600 times faster than a classic computer, albeit with a problem the quantum computing was designed to solve.

Google, which owns a D-Box wave, and Microsoft cooperated on this more recent study, and this time researchers put the D-Wave 2 in a fairer fight against algorithms optimized for the PC. The results showed the quantum computer in some instances can actually be 100 times slower than the old PC goat.

Fair fight
Typically all home computers, from the one in a study to the cellphone in a pocket, crunch data though bits encoded as 1s and 0s. A quantum computer on the other hand uses "qubits," which can exist as a 0, 1, or a superposition at the same time to speed up the data-crunching process.

In the published report, lead researcher Matthias Troyer, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said the D-Wave could only solve a few problems five times faster than an ordinary PC. The study also suggests that D-Wave may have chosen not to flex its faster computing speed because the test was not challenging enough.

It's like a laptop that comes with both integrated and dedicated graphics yet a game runs terribly because it doesn't use enough resources to kick in the high-end GPU.

Fighting back
In response to the recently released results, D-Wave founder Geordie Rose described the test as "total bullshit" to Wired. Rose claims the study used questions that were too simple and could be answered by either regular computers or their quantum counterparts but are far too simple for the D-Wave 2.

Rose also quickly pointed out that D-Wave is a "scrappy start-up" and it was miraculous the quantum computer was able to keep pace at all with rival computers that have had years to perfect themselves.

The university researchers, meanwhile, struck back, calling D-Wave's tests designed for qubit-based processing a cop out.

For now there is a lot of arguing on both sides. All the while there is still just as much confusion about the results as there is about how to test the machine in the first place.

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Microsoft's user manual confirms Surface Mini

The Microsoft Surface Mini may have skipped its widely-expected debut at the Surface Pro 3 launch event last month, but at least the elusive tablet found its way into the Pro's user manual.

As discovered by Microsoft blogger Paul Thurrott, there are "Surface Mini references all over" the Surface Pro 3 user guide. Something he describes on Twitter as "hilarious."

A quick look at the manual shows a section reading: "You'll pair your new pen with Surface Mini a little later during setup." That all-but-confirms Microsoft had planned to launch the smaller device last month, but for some reason decided to scratch the Surface Mini from the event at the last minute.

Waiting for Word?
Since the launch event it has been suggested that Microsoft has up to 20,000 Surface Mini units already gathering dust and biding their time for the touch-first version of Microsoft Office to arrive.

Others reports have suggested the firm may not release the device at all.
One thing this little snippet of information does confirm is that the Surface Mini exists. If or when we'll see it is another matter altogether.

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Quantum computer trips and falls in test against regular PC

Quantum computers are supposed to represent a giant leap in computing speed for complex solutions like voice recognition, but a new study says the technology isn't any faster than a regular computer.

A newly published study in this week's issue of Science found that the hyped, $15 million D-Wave 2 based at the University of Southern California had no quantum leap advantage over a regular PC.

In previous controlled test, D-Wave's owners have demonstrated how its technology can be 3,600 times faster than a classic computer, albeit with a problem the quantum computing was designed to solve.

Google, which owns a D-Box wave, and Microsoft cooperated on this more recent study, and this time researchers put the D-Wave 2 in a fairer fight against algorithms optimized for the PC. The results showed the quantum computer in some instances can actually be 100 times slower than the old PC goat.

Fair fight
Typically all home computers, from the one in a study to the cellphone in a pocket, crunch data though bits encoded as 1s and 0s. A quantum computer on the other hand uses "qubits," which can exist as a 0, 1, or a superposition at the same time to speed up the data-crunching process.

In the published report, lead researcher Matthias Troyer, a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, said the D-Wave could only solve a few problems five times faster than an ordinary PC. The study also suggests that D-Wave may have chosen not to flex its faster computing speed because the test was not challenging enough.

It's like a laptop that comes with both integrated and dedicated graphics yet a game runs terribly because it doesn't use enough resources to kick in the high-end GPU.

Fighting back
In response to the recently released results, D-Wave founder Geordie Rose described the test as "total bullshit" to Wired. Rose claims the study used questions that were too simple and could be answered by either regular computers or their quantum counterparts but are far too simple for the D-Wave 2.

Rose also quickly pointed out that D-Wave is a "scrappy start-up" and it was miraculous the quantum computer was able to keep pace at all with rival computers that have had years to perfect themselves.

The university researchers, meanwhile, struck back, calling D-Wave's tests designed for qubit-based processing a cop out.

For now there is a lot of arguing on both sides. All the while there is still just as much confusion about the results as there is about how to test the machine in the first place.

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Smartphones embracing theft defence

SAN FRANCISCO: By next summer, most new smartphones may no longer be quite so attractive to thieves.

Microsoft and Google said Thursday that phones using their operating systems — including handsets produced by big names like Samsung, Nokia and Motorola — will have a so-called kill switch that can render the devices unusable after they have been reported stolen. Apple's iPhone has had a kill switch, called Activation Lock, since September.

The plans for additional security measures come on the heels of new data in New York, San Francisco and London that law enforcement officials believe supports their long-held belief that a kill switch will make smartphones less appealing to thieves, particularly those who intend to resell them on organized black markets.

Comparing data in the six months before and after Apple released its anti-theft feature, police said iPhone robberies in San Francisco dropped 38%. In London, they fell 24%.

READ ALSO: Google, Microsoft smartphones to soon get 'kill switch'
In New York City, robberies (which typically involve a threat of violence) of Apple products dropped 19% and grand larcenies of Apple products dropped 29% in the first five months of 2014, compared with the same time period from 2013, according to a report from the New York attorney general's office, which included data from the New York City Police Department. By comparison, thefts of Samsung products increased 51% in the first five months of 2014, compared to the same period a year ago, the report said.

Samsung introduced a kill switch for its Galaxy S5 device in April, so it will be some time until its effect on theft rates can be evaluated.

A kill switch is software that lets consumers lock down a phone after the device has been reported stolen; users can reactivate the phone only with the correct password or personal identification number. That makes it difficult to sell on the black market.

"The introduction of kill switches has clearly had an effect on the conduct of smartphone thieves," said Eric T Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, in an interview. "If these can be canceled like the equivalent of canceling a credit card, these are going to be the equivalent of stealing a paperweight."

Over the last year, lawmakers across the country have pushed for stronger anti-theft features on smartphones. In May, Minnesota became the first state to require a kill switch on all smartphones sold there. In California last month, senators passed a bill requiring phones sold in the state to include the anti-theft technology. That bill still requires approval from the governor of California, Jerry Brown.

READ MORE: California lawmakers advance smartphone 'kill switch' bill

Earlier this year, more than a dozen companies, including Apple, AT&T, Google, Samsung Electronics and Verizon Wireless, committed to offering free anti-theft software for cellphones by summer of next year.

Microsoft said that it would introduce a kill switch in a future software update for its Windows Phone operating system. Google will also be introducing one in the next version of Android, said Matt Kallman, a Google spokesman. Combined with Apple's iOS, these three operating systems control 97% of the smartphone market, according to comScore.

Other factors could have contributed to the decrease in iPhone thefts. Police and tech companies have tried harder during the last year to educate consumers on additional security measures to protect phones, like setting up passcodes, which can make it harder to gain access to devices so that they can be erased and resold.

In a statement, Apple said that its kill switch software, Activation Lock, was aimed at preventing unauthorized access to users' iPhones and iPads. Apple also said that Find My iPhone, a software feature for tracking lost or stolen Apple devices, has been available since 2009.

READ ALSO: Lost an Android phone? Lookout app will take a 'theftie'

"Apple has led the industry in helping customers protect their lost or stolen devices," said Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman. She said Activation Lock "can help you keep your device secure, even if it is in the wrong hands, and can improve your chances of recovering it."

Samsung said in a statement that it would continue to work closely with the carriers, Schneiderman in New York and George Gascon, San Francisco's district attorney, toward preventing phone theft.

The CTIA, a trade organization for the wireless industry, had been resistant to calls for legally requiring kill switches. But Jamie Hastings, vice president of external and state affairs for CTIA, said Thursday that the group was helping solve the problem of phone theft by offering resources that educate consumers.

For example, it created a website, beforeyouloseit.org, that has information about anti-theft apps people can install. "We remain committed to helping law enforcement and consumers deter smartphone thefts," Hastings said.

Gascon has been one of the most vocal supporters of a kill switch. He and Schneiderman collaborated to form the Secure Our Smartphones initiative to press businesses to create a technical way to dissuade thieves from stealing phones.

Gascon said plenty of work remained. He said he hoped all manufacturers would include a kill switch turned on by default on all smartphones so consumers did not have to figure out how to use it. In the iPhone, for example, it is not turned on by default.

"Many consumers might not be tech-savvy enough to do this," Gascon said. He added that he still thought it was necessary for there to be laws requiring kill switches in phones, similar to how seatbelts eventually became legally required inside cars.

READ ALSO: 12 ways to back up and restore phone contacts

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Logitech Powershell Controller + Battery review

After Apple's introduction of support for gaming controllers with iOS 7, the Logitech Powershell Controller + Battery was one of the first gaming controller accessories available in the market.

Powershell was launched in Indian market earlier this year at a price of Rs 8,995 and offers console-style game controls on iPhone 5S, iPhone 5, or iPod touch running iOS 7. It also extends the battery back-up with the built-in battery pack and improves the sound experience. We used the device for a few weeks and here's what we think about it.

Look and feel

Logitech Powershell Controller + Battery is made from plastic and is not very heavy at 120gram. However, it does become a bit bulky after sliding in iPhone. Also, at 7.8-inch, it is difficult to carry the Powershell in one's pockets.

The shell sports a rubbery finish with a textured pattern at the back to improve grip. The back also features contour lines to give the user's fingers rest while playing games. It features a G logo that lights up when you're charging it.

The front features a D-Pad, four face buttons and a recessed Pause button, and a slot for iPhone/ iPod touch with a lightning connector. The face buttons offer good tactile feedback, while the same cannot be said about the D-Pad which needs to be pressed hard to use. There are slots for speaker outlet which means one can amplify sound output from iPhone's speaker.

The top edge sports shoulder buttons. Even the shoulder buttons get stuck at times and are cumbersome to use. There's a spring-loaded power/ sleep button located next to the D-Pad to access iPhone's volume rocker and mute switch.

To use iPhone's headphone jack, Logitech offers a rubber adapter with the Powershell. A micro-USB port is also located at the bottom edge for charging the Powershell's battery. There's a switch at the left edge to turn on charging function of the shell.

Usage and performance

It is easy to plug in and use the device with iPhone. You just slide it in and mount it on the lightning connector to attach it. Games that are supported will automatically recognise the connector and enable its controls. It is worth pointing out that not all games are supported. You can check the supported titles on Logitech's website.

Some of the popular games that it supports include Asphalt 8, Dead Trigger, Dead Trigger 2, Ms Pac-Man, Limbo, Cro-Mag Rally and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas among others. The list is increasing as more developers join Apple's MFi (Made for iPhone) programme.

We played the retro Pac-Man game and found using the controller better than the touchscreen. However, the stiff D-Pad is a dampener. Even Asphalt 8 works pretty well with the Powershell and controlling the game with a D-Pad instead of the phone's accelerometer offers the feel of a hand-held console, and a better experience overall.

The pain point is, however, First-Person Shooters or FPS games. Since the Powershell doesn't feature an analog stick, you'll need to use the phone's touchscreen to aim (in tandem with other buttons for movement) while playing the games. While playing Dead Trigger 2, we encountered this limitation as we had to use the touchscreen to aim and D-Pad for movement. This hampers the gaming experience, and plays a spoilsport. Not quite acceptable when the device is priced at Rs 8,995.

The Powershell houses a 1500mAh battery that can fully charge an iPhone 5 in about an hour and a half. You can also charge the phone while playing games.

Verdict

At a price of Rs 8,995, we won't recommend this connector. It is too expensive for what it offers. There's limited support for games; the missing analog stick hampers FPS gaming experience and the D-Pad is cumbersome to use. Also, you'll need to carry the headphone adapter and that is another part you'll have to worry about not losing. We'd suggest waiting for other more evolved options.

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Android 5.0 to make apps faster, increase battery life

NEW DELHI: It looks like the next version of Android will be based on a new runtime that will allow apps to run faster and use less battery.

ART or Android Runtime will be the default runtime when the next version of Android or Android 5.0 releases, as per developers at XDA, who spotted the presence of the new runtime in the operating system's code.

ART will replace Dalvik, the current runtime that allows apps to run in the software environment.

With ART, apps will run faster, and will be more efficient. However, the install time would increase and apps will take up more space.

READ ALSO: Google drops a tasty hint that Android 5.0 is coming soon

It is worth pointing out that Google had shipped Android 4.4 with the ART runtime compiler. It was not the default option though developers could switch to it through the Developer Options settings. Google had said that the new runtime was a work in progress.

While most apps are said to be compatible with the new runtime, developers may need to optimize their apps for ART before its release.

It would be interesting to see if Google makes any announcements about the new release of Android during the upcoming Google I/O event on June 25.

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BlackBerry results fuel recovery hopes

BlackBerry Ltd has posted a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss as the troubled smartphone maker's turnaround efforts started to pay off, raising hope that its chief executive can deliver on a pledge to return the company to steady profits.

John Chen, who took the reins at BlackBerry seven months ago, has worked rapidly to trim costs, giving the Waterloo, Ontario-based company more time to stabilize its struggling handset business and earn more money from services and software.

BlackBerry shares surged more than 10% after the company said it spent less cash than many expected in its fiscal first quarter, ended May 31, and its gross profit margin rose.

"The short trade is over in this name, for now," said BGC analyst Colin Gillis. "They've got enough liquidity, and they've given us clear profitability targets."

BlackBerry said its low-cost Z3 smartphone was selling well in Indonesia and that its services business, which manages its own and rival mobile devices on the internal networks of large organizations, had won back some customers from rivals.

BlackBerry has more than halved its workforce over the last two years as part of a do-or-die push to turn its business around after losing ground to Apple Inc's iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co devices that run on Google Inc's Android system.

Chen wants BlackBerry to remain a competitor in the smartphone segment, but he is focused on its services business, which made up 54% of revenue in the quarter, up from 26% only a year earlier. The company works with hundreds of large companies and government agencies to securely manage their networks.

As the company rolls out new phones later this year, its revenue growth is likely to be driven more by its smartphones, but the services business is likely to drive higher margins, Chen told reporters.

There are early signs of recovery in BlackBerry's hard-hit hardware business. On a call with analysts, Chen was upbeat on the Z3, which was launched in Indonesia earlier this year. He said demand was strong and inventory has run low at some points.

The Z3 was built under a partnership forged last year with FIH Mobile, the Hong Kong-listed unit of Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn Technology Co Ltd, to help design, manufacture and sell devices.

As part of the deal, BlackBerry no longer pays the full upfront costs for parts used in its devices. Instead, Foxconn, the trading name of Hon Hai Precision Industry, takes a share of profits on each device in return for taking on the risk of inventory management.

Chen, who showed off BlackBerry's soon-to-be-launched Classic and Passport devices at its annual shareholder meeting in Waterloo on Thursday, said he expects the popular BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, chat service to begin to generate $100 million in revenue in the next fiscal year.

Quarterly numbers
Excluding special items, the company drew down $255 million in cash in its first quarter, much less than the $784 million it used in the fiscal fourth quarter. Cash rose to $3.1 billion from $2.7 billion on a sequential basis, helped by the sale of real estate and a tax refund. BlackBerry's Nasdaq-listed shares closed 9.7% higher at $9.09 on Thursday.

"We're encouraged by the stabilization and are increasinglycomfortable BlackBerry will successfully emerge from this massive reclamation project," Oppenheimer & Co analyst Ittai Kidron wrote in a note.

BlackBerry's gross profit margin rose to 46.7% in the quarter from 33.9% a year earlier, and it reported net income of $23 million, or 4 cents a share, compared with a loss of $84 million, or 16 cents, a year earlier.

Excluding a one-time noncash accounting gain and certain restructuring charges, the loss was $60 million, or 11 cents a share. Analysts, on average, had expected a loss of 25 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Quarterly revenue dropped to $966 million from $3.07 billion a year earlier.

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How Google is trying to get women into tech industry

MOUNTAIN VIEW: Diana Navarro loves to code, and she's not afraid to admit it. But the 18-year-old Rutgers University computer science major knows she's an anomaly: Writing software to run computer programmes in 2014 is — more than ever — a man's world.

"We live in a culture where we're dissuaded to do things that are technical," Navarro said. "Younger girls see men, not women, doing all the techie stuff, programming and computer science."

Less than 1% of high school girls think of computer science as part of their future, even though it's one of the fastest-growing fields in the US today with a projected 4.2 million jobs by 2020, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This week Google, with a driverless car and web-surfing eyeglasses under its belt, has given Associated Press an early look at how it's trying to change the gender disparity in its own workforce, and in the pipeline of potential workers, by launching a campaign called 'Made with Code'.

The initiative begins with an introductory video of girls — silly, serious and brave — meeting President Obama, painting over graffiti and goofing around. The narrator says: "You are a girl who understands bits exist to be assembled. When you learn to code, you can assemble anything that you see missing. And in so doing, you will fix something, or change something, or invent something, or run something, and maybe that's how you will play your bit in this world."

A website features female role-model techies who write software to design cool fabrics or choreograph dances. There are simple, fun coding lessons aimed at girls and a directory of coding programmes for girls. The search giant is also offering $50 million in grants and partnering with Girls Who Code, a nonprofit launched in 2012 that runs summer coding institutes for girls, including the one that helped focus Navarro's passion for technology.

A preview test run of Google's online coding lessons this week was deemed "awesome" by Carmen Ramirez y Porter, 11. "It's not very complicated. It's easy and fun and really cool to see how it turns out when you finish," she said.

National Center for Women & Information Technology CEO Lucy Sanders, a leading advocate for women in computer sciences, sees the Made With Code initiative as a pivotal moment in what has been a long-term challenge of getting more girl geeks growing up in America.

"It used to be that as a computing community we didn't really talk about gender issues. But now we're really pulling together, from corporations and startups to nonprofits and universities," Sanders said. "I'm very optimistic."

There's plenty of room for change.

Female participation in computer sciences has dropped to 18%, down from 37% in the 1980s, and only 7% of US venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Just 20% of the 30,000 students who took the Advanced Placement computer science test last year were girls, according to a College Board analysis, which showed no girls at all took the test in Mississippi, Montana or Wyoming.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, one of the earliest Google employees, points to societal and economic drawbacks if women are not participating in the booming tech economy.

Also, she said, "I miss having more women counterparts."

Tech firms are overwhelming male — Yahoo on Tuesday released a report showing 62% of its global employees are men. At Google, about 70% of the roughly 44,000 people it employs throughout the world are men. This year, the search giant commissioned a nationwide study to find out why so few women pursue technology careers, asking 1,600 people about whether they were encouraged to study computer sciences and had opportunities to learn to code.

Their findings, shared with the AP this week in advance of public release: Girls have little exposure to technology and computer sciences. That doesn't mean they're not interested, however. If parents, friends and teachers encourage their daughters to pursue computer sciences, schools offer more courses and more role models step forward, the field can be leveled.

But to capture girls, it's got to be fun.

That's the plan for a Made With Code kick-off event in New York Thursday for 150 girls, where indie rockers Icona Pop will perform and coders will demo how they make everything from animated movies to designer fabrics with software. Actress Mindy Kaling, who is the event's master of ceremonies, said she fights gender bias in Hollywood, but when a techie friend told her about Silicon Valley's gender gap "it was staggering."

"Just as television and movies need to reflect their audience, I think it's important that people who create technology reflect the diversity of people who use them," she said.

Chelsea Clinton, who is representing the Clinton Foundation at Thursday's event, said she got her own first computer in 1987 from Santa Claus.

"Ultimately computer science is helping to create the future," she said. "So when we think about the future, we know we need to be doing more in this country and around the world to ensure that girls and women see computer sciences as real, viable options for them."

Entrepreneur Dez White wasn't necessarily pursuing a tech career when she asked a patron at her family's restaurant to teach her to write software. She just had an idea for an app and wanted to make it.

"It was very hard for me to get my head around it," White said. "I didn't go to Stanford for code."

Today, she hires coders for her firm Goinvis, which sells privacy apps that allows users to send texts that self-destruct at a set time and emails that disappear from an inbox after they're opened.

But in addition to her day job, as a successful female African-American entrepreneur, she realizes she needs to be a mentor as well.

"I think young women don't even realize computer sciences are an option. It's not laid out like nursing and social work," she said.

Next year, she's planning to organize a technology retreat for high school girls, and she tries to hire women for her growing company.

"It's hard. We have to really look. Their numbers are very, very slim," she said.

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How Google is trying to get women into tech industry

MOUNTAIN VIEW: Diana Navarro loves to code, and she's not afraid to admit it. But the 18-year-old Rutgers University computer science major knows she's an anomaly: Writing software to run computer programmes in 2014 is — more than ever — a man's world.

"We live in a culture where we're dissuaded to do things that are technical," Navarro said. "Younger girls see men, not women, doing all the techie stuff, programming and computer science."

Less than 1% of high school girls think of computer science as part of their future, even though it's one of the fastest-growing fields in the US today with a projected 4.2 million jobs by 2020, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This week Google, with a driverless car and web-surfing eyeglasses under its belt, has given Associated Press an early look at how it's trying to change the gender disparity in its own workforce, and in the pipeline of potential workers, by launching a campaign called 'Made with Code'.

The initiative begins with an introductory video of girls — silly, serious and brave — meeting President Obama, painting over graffiti and goofing around. The narrator says: "You are a girl who understands bits exist to be assembled. When you learn to code, you can assemble anything that you see missing. And in so doing, you will fix something, or change something, or invent something, or run something, and maybe that's how you will play your bit in this world."

A website features female role-model techies who write software to design cool fabrics or choreograph dances. There are simple, fun coding lessons aimed at girls and a directory of coding programmes for girls. The search giant is also offering $50 million in grants and partnering with Girls Who Code, a nonprofit launched in 2012 that runs summer coding institutes for girls, including the one that helped focus Navarro's passion for technology.

A preview test run of Google's online coding lessons this week was deemed "awesome" by Carmen Ramirez y Porter, 11. "It's not very complicated. It's easy and fun and really cool to see how it turns out when you finish," she said.

National Center for Women & Information Technology CEO Lucy Sanders, a leading advocate for women in computer sciences, sees the Made With Code initiative as a pivotal moment in what has been a long-term challenge of getting more girl geeks growing up in America.

"It used to be that as a computing community we didn't really talk about gender issues. But now we're really pulling together, from corporations and startups to nonprofits and universities," Sanders said. "I'm very optimistic."

There's plenty of room for change.

Female participation in computer sciences has dropped to 18%, down from 37% in the 1980s, and only 7% of US venture capital deals go to women founders and CEOs. Just 20% of the 30,000 students who took the Advanced Placement computer science test last year were girls, according to a College Board analysis, which showed no girls at all took the test in Mississippi, Montana or Wyoming.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, one of the earliest Google employees, points to societal and economic drawbacks if women are not participating in the booming tech economy.

Also, she said, "I miss having more women counterparts."

Tech firms are overwhelming male — Yahoo on Tuesday released a report showing 62% of its global employees are men. At Google, about 70% of the roughly 44,000 people it employs throughout the world are men. This year, the search giant commissioned a nationwide study to find out why so few women pursue technology careers, asking 1,600 people about whether they were encouraged to study computer sciences and had opportunities to learn to code.

Their findings, shared with the AP this week in advance of public release: Girls have little exposure to technology and computer sciences. That doesn't mean they're not interested, however. If parents, friends and teachers encourage their daughters to pursue computer sciences, schools offer more courses and more role models step forward, the field can be leveled.

But to capture girls, it's got to be fun.

That's the plan for a Made With Code kick-off event in New York Thursday for 150 girls, where indie rockers Icona Pop will perform and coders will demo how they make everything from animated movies to designer fabrics with software. Actress Mindy Kaling, who is the event's master of ceremonies, said she fights gender bias in Hollywood, but when a techie friend told her about Silicon Valley's gender gap "it was staggering."

"Just as television and movies need to reflect their audience, I think it's important that people who create technology reflect the diversity of people who use them," she said.

Chelsea Clinton, who is representing the Clinton Foundation at Thursday's event, said she got her own first computer in 1987 from Santa Claus.

"Ultimately computer science is helping to create the future," she said. "So when we think about the future, we know we need to be doing more in this country and around the world to ensure that girls and women see computer sciences as real, viable options for them."

Entrepreneur Dez White wasn't necessarily pursuing a tech career when she asked a patron at her family's restaurant to teach her to write software. She just had an idea for an app and wanted to make it.

"It was very hard for me to get my head around it," White said. "I didn't go to Stanford for code."

Today, she hires coders for her firm Goinvis, which sells privacy apps that allows users to send texts that self-destruct at a set time and emails that disappear from an inbox after they're opened.

But in addition to her day job, as a successful female African-American entrepreneur, she realizes she needs to be a mentor as well.

"I think young women don't even realize computer sciences are an option. It's not laid out like nursing and social work," she said.

Next year, she's planning to organize a technology retreat for high school girls, and she tries to hire women for her growing company.

"It's hard. We have to really look. Their numbers are very, very slim," she said.

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Techies ditch phones, tablets at 'digital detox' camp

Tired of the social media treadmill and hoping to unplug for a couple days? Consider this fast-growing summer camp three hours outside of San Francisco, where the first ritual involves handing over your personal electronics to volunteers in white lab coats.

Camp Grounded, now in its second year, offers hyperconnected attendees a brief respite from the incessant noise of Facebook, Twitter and a plethora of other media relentlessly battling for their attention.

The rules of this "digital detox" camp are clear: No work talk, no alcohol, no first names or discussion of ages, and most importantly, no phones, computers, tablets or watches.

Co-founder Levi Felix, who goes by the nickname "Fidget Wigglesworth," has stressed it is not just an experience for tech workers, although current and former Facebook Inc, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp employees were represented. This year, campers ranged from hipster college grads to recent retirees, he said in an interview Reuters at the Navarro, California camp.

The project has gained rapid popularity, reflecting a growing need to unwind from the stresses associated with the Bay Area's tech boom. From just one weekend in the summer of 2013, this year's has grown to three consecutive weekends with several hundred people attending each session.

To be sure, the experience is limited to those who can afford it — it costs $570 for camping, meals and activities.

"I don't remember the last time I went for four days without checking a notification," said Facebook designer Connie Yang, who tried out Camp Grounded this month.

Yang, who described the experience as "powerful," said she intends to check her phone far less frequently. She may even experiment with incorporating new product ideas into the Facebook experience to help people "scale back."

In recent years, the unplugging movement has been gathering steam, although it has been criticized by the press for stirring "postmodern techno-anxiety" and failing to recognize the positive impacts of technology. Each March, thousands of people unplug from their devices for 24 hours, as part of an event organized by nonprofit organization Reboot.

Brian Solis, a principal analyst for Altimeter Group specializing in digital trends, expects that experiences like Camp Grounded will become more commonplace.

"If these technologies don't have your attention, they can't scale," he said, describing the camp as a potential antidote.

Solis said it's unlikely that tech companies will tinker with products to make them any less habit-forming. But he predicts that consumers will increasingly crave experiences that help them "reset" for a more balanced lifestyle.

David Stewart, founder of SocialStudio, a company making social media applications, said it can be a challenge for developers to strike a balance between engaging users and spamming them with notifications.

The former vice president of product management at Microsoft-owned Yammer said he was not surprised that the digital detox camp was teeming with techies. Stewart himself attended Camp Grounded in early July.

"People designing addictive products are the most aware of the occasional human need to be free from them."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/followceleb.cms?alias=Facebook Inc,Microsoft Corp,Google Inc,Connie Yang,Brian Solis

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