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Shoes of Prey co-founder Mike Knapp is embarking on his next startup adventure with a new experimental social networking app designed to spark real world conversations and connections with people.

Knapp says he has designed Mottle, a social networking app launched on Wednesday, with one core goal: To drive human connection.

Once you download the app, you login with Facebook and you can see a list of people ranked based on their interests and how close they are to you and also theyre age, Knapp tells StartupSmart.

The only communication possible on Mottleis to send a hello, after which users can speak with each other in a phone chat through the app. Once users hang up, they can rate each other.

People who are inappropriate will have this reflected in their rating, he says.

I wanted a way to be able to have conversations with new people easily, Knapp says.

Its a very experimental app Im hoping that people will enjoy it and use it.

Knapp came up with the idea for it while travelling and meeting different people when he realisedthere needs to be a more meaningful solution to connecting human beings in an increasingly digital and detached world.

Im very interested in human connection and particularly as robotics takes over more jobs and displaces a lot of the economic activity in the world I worry about what will people do, Knapp says.

And talking to each other is something were uniquely capable of doing.

Theres a lot of pain and suffering in the world. My grandmother is in her early 90s and a lot of her close friends have died and having someone to talk to is really important to her.

Knapp believes the app could also be used as an alternative to dating tools like Tinder.

He says Mottle is a low cost way of getting to know someone before wasting time and money on a date with someone you have no real sense of.

I developed it over the last two months pretty quickly and Ive been working on it sort of seven days a week, he says.

Considering the apps experimental nature in getting people to speak to strangers in real life, Knapp says it may be a long journey for people to develop trust in Mottle and see its benefits.

I dont expect it will be a raging success on day one, he says.

However, during Shoes of Preys early days, he says people were similarly reserved about its potential.

When we started Shoes of Prey, people said thats crazy that youre going to design your own shoes on the internet, he says.

Today, the company is a world-renowned brand and it raised $21.3 million in funding last year.

Theres a lot of parallels once you do something the second time, youre familiar with the doubts that can set in and sometimes the hard work thats required to get past certain checkpoints [like registering a business and domain names], he says.

I felt sort of some of the same emotions and feelings [like] youre always doubting is this a good idea? And you talk to people and they think oh, thats a bit strange.

Despite this, Knapp says its crucial to turn up each day and after building Shoes of Prey, he says its exciting to be at the start of a growth journey again.

One learning from Shoes of Prey is dont jump too quickly into being international really work on the core product first, he says.

Knapp hopes the five countries Mottle is available in now will be a good user base to start.

These include Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada and the UK.

While Knapp doesnt have any strong plans for monetising Mottle yet, his aim now is to bring its vision to life and share it with the world.

I want to help people connect with each other [and] to create a sense of community how that translates into a business, Im not sure at this stage, he says.

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Shoes of Prey co-founder Mike Knapp launches social network Mottle, but it won't be a raging success just yet - SmartCompany.com.au

SAN JOSE, Calif.After Facebook's Aquila internet-beaming drone crashed during a test flight last year, the company's engineers realized it would take years before its key strengththe ability to beam internet signals via millimeter wave technologywould be ready.

The reasons for the delay are as much regulatory as they are technical, according to Yael Maguire, the head of Facebook's Connectivity Lab. Speaking at the company's annual f8 developers conference here on Wednesday, he explained that it could take up to 10 years before Facebook can realize the full potential of the drone, which has the wingspan of a Boeing 737 but weighs less than a Toyota Prius. Besides building a reliable plane, the company also has to secure the permits to use the millimeter wave spectrum that will connect it to the ground.

So even as the Connectivity Lab forges ahead on the drone projectit is still testing Aquila prototypes, one of which was on display here (above)it is turning towards other rapid-deployment aeronautical innovations that could help connect more of the 4.1 billion people who Maguire claims don't have reliable internet access.

One of them, nicknamed "Tether-tenna," is a small autonomous helicopter equipped with a tether to a fiber line that can stay aloft for more than a day. It's one of a few tools in Facebook's arsenal to solve the problem that Google, Verizon, and other companies have experienced in their fiber buildouts: delivering fiber to individual homes and businesses is incredibly costly and complicated.

"Connectivity starts with fiber, but it doesn't end there," Maguire said. "Fiber is the backbone," he explained, but it's too expensive and takes too long to expect it to deliver fast and reliable internet in the rural and remote areas where it's needed most. So the idea is that those zones will get wireless links to the closest fiber infrastructure via the Tether-tenna, among other wireless bridges.

Maguire said the Tether-tenna is "just a few years out" from commercial deployment, unlike the 10 years that Aquila will take. It will complement the previously announced Terragraph project, which aims to bring low-cost, ground-based antennas to the rural areas of developing nations. If a Terragraph-served area is affected by a flood or other natural disaster, for instance, the Tether-tenna could quickly step in to fill the void created by the damaged antennas or other internet infrastructure.

Of course, flying helicopters (even pilot-less ones tethered to the ground) costs much more than flying a fixed-wing craft like the Aquila. Maguire claimed that the Terra-tenna and other projects will improve the price, performance, and speed of internet connections, but one thing Facebook hasn't talked much about in its infrastructure unveilings is the profitability of its designs, other than to say they're part of the company's general mission to connect more people to the internet.

And even as Facebook continues to experiment with planes, helicopters, and Terragraph (which is now in testing mode here in San Jose, just a few blocks from where Maguire was speaking), it still cannot avoid the need to build more fiber. So it is doing that, too: a recently announced project in Uganda involves building a 448-mile fiber line to provide backhaul connectivity covering more than 3 million people.

But perhaps more than any technical or regulatory challenge, the company's mission to deliver better internet access to underserved areas is also threatened by broader social and economic factors. By some estimates, more than two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities by 2050, up from just over half today. So many of those 4.1 billion people without access will simply move to better-connected urban areas over the next 10 years, before Aquila and Terra-tenna get the chance to really soar.

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Facebook Really Wants to Beam Internet From Planes - PCMag India

SAN JOSE, Calif.In true Silicon Valley tradition, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the company's annual developer conference on Tuesday by sharing his vision for the future of the world's largest social network, but not before acknowledging that Facebook's new features sometimes fall short.

Zuckerberg took the stage here one day after a Cleveland man, 37-year-old Steve Stephens, posted a video of himself on Facebook announcing his intent to commit murder and then shooting and killing an elderly man.

"We have a lot of work, and we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this from happening," Zuckerberg told the audience. Facebook has often been criticized for how it polices its live videos, which have featured footage of other controversial shootings in the past. On Monday, the company said Stevens's account was not disabled until two hours after it first received notice of inappropriate content, and pledged to quicken its response times.

But even as it acknowledges missteps in how it filters the billions of photos and videos on its platform, Facebook appears to have no plans to pause the stream of new ways for people to share them, especially if you own an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Starting today, you can download a beta version of the new Facebook Spaces, a one-stop app for sharing photos, videos, and other content with friends online.

Designed to be used with the Touch controllers, Spaces lets you create an avatar of yourself, complete with custom eye colors, hairstyles, and facial features. The avatars can then create and enter virtual rooms with other avatars that your friends create, joining in activities as diverse as playing tic-tac-toe (by drawing your own 3D game board with a virtual marker) to putting yourself in the middle of a 3D video.

"We're all about extending the physical world online," Zuckerberg said. "Augmented reality is going to help us mix the physical and digital in all new ways."

Zuckerberg has been extolling the social capabilities of VR for more than a year, including offering an early demo of what became Spaces at last year's gathering of developers for the Oculus platform. While Spaces itself is in an early beta, and only available to the tiny subset of tech early adopters who own expensive Rift headsets, it's clear that VR, not text-based status updates, is the way of the future for Facebook.

Still, there are a few ways for people who don't have a headset to participate in Spaces. You can make video calls via Facebook Messenger directly from Spaces while you're in VR, and your non-VR friends can even experience many of the same photos and videos from within their Messenger app, including 360-degree videos and 3D drawings.

On stage in San Jose, Facebook's head of VR, Rachel Franklin, made it clear that Spaces is a "very early version" of what she hopes will eventually be a new way for people to connect online. Franklin, who was previously executive producer of The Sims, noted that Spaces can already access Facebook's entire library of 360-degree videos. She said the company plans to expand it to other VR platforms in the future, although it's unclear when it will come to cheaper and less powerful headsets like the Samsung Gear VR.

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Facebook Brings Social VR to Oculus Rift - PCMag India

Reports that the National Security Agency infiltrated bank servers through a Swift service bureau highlight a recurring concern for financial institutions about the unintended consequences of U.S. government snooping.

The leaks that came out late last week from a hacking collective called Shadow Brokers indicate that the NSA exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows systems to break into servers at EastNets, a Dubai company that provides outsourced Swift connectivity to 260 financial institutions and corporations.

From there, Shadow Brokers documents suggest, the NSA was able to access computers used by some Middle Eastern bank members of Swift, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The NSAs goal, according to The New York Times, was to track money movements and thereby gain insight into potential terrorist groups or government officials.

The most immediate danger for U.S. banks (and any Windows user, for that matter) that the weaknesses in Microsoft code still exist, rendering every internet-connected computer running Windows open to hacking has passed. Microsoft said patches for all the vulnerabilities were issued more than a month ago, so any company that is up to date on Windows patching is safe from these.

But the U.S. governments insistence on using so-called back doors to access financial and customer information remains a concern. The same tools the NSA uses to prop open doors to such information could be used by cybercriminals and nation-states with more sinister motives. And it also raises privacy issues for companies and consumers that dont want the government watching their every move.

Governments are constantly going after different networks for espionage and national security purposes, said John Carlson, chief of staff at the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, an industry trade group. Thats a reality we recognize.

The NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. A financial industry cybersecurity trade group is "asking for clarification" from the agency about undisclosed software vulnerabilities it may be exploiting.The FS-ISAC, whose more than 7,000 financial services members share information with each other about cyberthreats, does not have an official position on whether the NSA should be using back doors for this type of monitoring, but Carlson noted the instabilities this kind of activity causes.

We would want the government to disclose zero days a type of vulnerability in software "so those can be fixed and mitigated, he said. Theres been dialogue in the past about governments buying up zero days so they can use them for espionage and national security purposes; that puts information at risk.

Asked if the FS-ISAC was talking to the NSA about this, Carlson said: Were asking for clarification. We havent gotten answers. (The spy agency did not respond to an email from American Banker requesting comment.)

Concerns about back doors came up last year when the FBI wanted Apple to give it a key to unlock all iPhones, ostensibly for the sole purpose of viewing the San Bernardino shooters calls. Apple refused, and the government found another way to unlock the phone.

It also arose in the financial industry two years ago when a startup software company called Symphony balked at providing regulators with a back door to the instant messages of its Wall Street clients. (They worked out an agreement through which a copy of all messages is kept by a third party.)

Traces of spyware

Shadow Brokers leaked a spreadsheet on Friday that indicates the NSA was able to access and infect with its spyware computers run by several bank clients of EastNets, including Qatar First Investment Bank, Tadhamon International Islamic Bank and Noor Islamic Bank.

Later the same day, EastNets issued a statement denying it had been hacked.

Reports of an alleged hacker-compromised EastNets Service Bureau network are totally false and unfounded, the company said in its press release. The EastNets Network internal Security Unit has ran a complete check of its servers and found no hacker compromise or any vulnerabilities.

The firm said its Swift service runs on a separate secure network that cannot be accessed over public networks.

The photos shown on Twitter, claiming compromised information, are about pages that are outdated and obsolete, generated on a low-level internal server that is retired since 2013, EastNets stated. It said it can confirm that no customer data was compromised in any way.

EastNets continues to guarantee the complete safety and security of its customers' data with the highest levels of protection from its SWIFT certified Service bureau," Hazem Mulhim, CEO and founder of EastNets, said in the statement.

The hacking tools that Shadow Brokers said the NSA used to monitor the Middle Eastern banks also appear to be outdated. The group pointed to seven vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows software that were used to break into servers.

In a blog post early Saturday, Microsoft said those vulnerabilities had all been patched more than a month earlier. (Deviating from its normal practice, Microsoft did not disclose who found the vulnerabilities. This has led to speculation about possible collusion between the NSA and Microsoft.)

Microsoft declined to comment further. EastNets could not line up an executive by deadline.

In a statement provided midday eastern time Monday, Swift said it has "no evidence to suggest that there has ever been any unauthorised access to our network or messaging services.

Persistent vigilance

For now, the industry is watching this case closely.

Were still trying to understand the impact to the financial sector, said Carlson at the FS-ISAC.

We think the potential impact of the disclosures to this sector is relatively low but warrants attention," Carlson said. "Well be playing close attention to this.

Bankers, he said, should keep their systems up to date in the meantime.

Its very important to make sure all their systems are patched and that third-party providers patch their systems as well, Carlson said. There may be patches individual firms have not executed.

He also stressed the importance of having layered defense and redundant systems.

The biggest buzzword would be persistent vigilance, Carlson said. You have to be constantly vigilant about these kinds of threats. Adversaries will be looking to exploit any vulnerability out there and its up to firms to be constantly on guard, educating users on best way to defend the organization. Its part and parcel of our digital economy.

Penny Crosman is Editor at Large at American Banker.

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Alleged NSA hack of Swift service bureau revives 'back door' debate - Information Management

Foreign Policy (blog)

Trove of Stolen NSA Data Is 'Devastating' Loss for Intelligence Community Foreign Policy (blog) On Friday, the mysterious group known as the Shadow Brokers released a large number of sophisticated, refined capabilities most likely developed by some of the NSA's top hackers the Tailored Access Operations group, known as TAO. Those capabilities ... What you need to know about that latest NSA data dumpRecode Hacker Documents Show NSA Tools for Breaching Global Money Transfer SystemFortune What Windows users should know about the latest bugs revealed by NSA leakersWashington Post New York Times -TechNet Blogs - Microsoft -PCWorld -Medium all 398 news articles »

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Trove of Stolen NSA Data Is 'Devastating' Loss for Intelligence Community - Foreign Policy (blog)