a2z Information: 2012-09-16

Saturday, September 22, 2012

iPhone 5 smuggled to mainland China, but supplies thin

It took little more than five hours for the first Apple iPhone 5 to go on sale in China after being smuggled across the border from Hong Kong, but supplies were short and prices high.

In a crowded building in the southern city of Shenzhen, a salesman stood by as shoppers speaking various dialects scrambled to take photos of three shiny new iPhones on display in his glass cabinet.

"The stock is so limited that people are treating these iPhone 5s like gems," said another cigarette-smoking salesman, surnamed Lin. "I pre-ordered online and got quite a few people to do the same but I could only get a few."

New Apple products are typically rolled out later in mainland China than in Hong Kong, creating a thriving " grey market" for enterprising traders. According to local media reports the iPhone 5 is expected go on sales in China by year-end.

Vendors such as Lin also make a year-round living exploiting the price difference between Apple and other popular brands in Hong Kong, a free port just an hour from Shenzhen with zero-duty on many electronics imports, and China.

Opera Software has updated its Opera Mini browser for Android with new features. The design has also been slightly altered for the better. One of the most important features that the updated app brings is the Smart Page feature. The Smart Page gives instant access to social updates and news from around the world.

The current version of the Opera Mini app is 7.5 and it gives easy access to content of 3 types – social, news and suggested links. The suggested links are displayed following various criteria like local news, events and advertising from Opera’s partners. The news bit is generated based on your usage although it is not exactly clear to me as to how this works.

Amazon.com's Lab126research and design centre has leased big new office space in the heart of Silicon Valley, the latest sign that the world's largest internet retailer is stepping up competition with gadget leader Apple.

Lab126, which designed Amazon's ground-breaking Kindle e-reader and works on the company's Kindle Fire tablets, recently leased more than 500,000 square feet of space in Moffett Towers, an office complex in Sunnyvale, California.

Reliance Communications, India's third-biggest mobile phone carrier, raised call prices by a quarter in four service zones and said it will extend the hike to all zones in the next 30 days, sending its shares to a two-month high.

Reliance Communications increased the base call price to 1.5 paisa a second from 1.2 paisa, the company said in a statement on Friday, citing rising costs and lower competition.

A court order to revoke permits of several smaller rivals will significantly reduce competition in the cut-throat Indian market, giving operators such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone's local unit room to raise call prices.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), in partnership with exchange4media, on Friday released the first mobile advertising spend report for India, which estimates the size of the current spend at Rs 180 crore, and is expected to increase by 40% in the next 12 months.

The National Policy on Information Technology 2012, which envisages the growth of the IT market to $300 billion and creation of another 10 million jobs by 2020, has been approved by the union cabinet.

A statement from the communications and IT ministry said the policy attempts also to leverage India's global edge in information and communication technology (ICT) to advance national competitiveness in other sectors, particularly those of strategic and economic importance.

Alibaba Group, China's biggest e-commerce firm, will spin off the team developing its Aliyun mobile operating system, which Google claims uses aspects of its own mobile operating system Android.

Alibaba Group will invest $200 million in the spin-off as the team developing the mobile operating system expands, said founder and chief executive Jack Ma in an internal memo on Thursday.

The Aliyun mobile operating system hit a snag last week when a planned smartphone launch in Shanghai with Taiwan's Acer was cancelled due to what Alibaba said was interference from Google.

Google Inc said today it will close a music download service in China, further reducing its presence in the world's most populous Internet market two years after the company closed its mainland search engine in a dispute over censorship and computer hacking.

Google said the 3-year-old service failed to achieve the market impact it wanted and will be shut down Oct. 19. The service, which was available only to computers with an Internet address in mainland China, was intended as a legal alternative to Chinese pirate music sites.

State-run BSNL, in partnership with SIS Infosystems, has launched telephones with video calling facility which will primarily be used to set up public Video Call Offices by replacing many of the PCOs.

"We will convert existing Public Call Offices (PCOs) to VCOs with these phones. People will be able to make voice calls to any phone and video calls to any other IP (internet based) phone," BSNL Chairman and Managing Director R K Upadhyay told reporters here.

The highly famous ':-)' emoticon, that is used by web and text users all over the globe, has marked its 30th birthday, a computer scientist who created the iconic "smiley face" has said.

The computer symbol for "not serious" or now more generally "happiness," made up of a colon, dash and a right parenthesis, was born into existence at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982, after it was posted on an online bulletin board by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Scott Fahlman.

Know why Samsung is waiting for iPhone 5 launch

It is not just the Apple fanboys who are eagerly awaiting the iPhone 5 to launch. Apple's arch rival Samsung too is waiting to get its hands on the iPhone 5 . However, rather than comparing its capabilities with its flagship Galaxy S III, the South Korean manufacturer is waiting to see how many of its patents does the new iPhone violate.

According to Foss Patents, a blog that covers news about wireless patents and mobile devices, Samsung has filed a case management statement with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple. In the filing, the company said that it is certain Apple iPhone 5 will infringe upon eight of its patents, just like the previous iPhones.

Millions of iPhone customers may soon find themselves losing touch with an old friend: Google Maps.

On Wednesday , Apple released a software update for the iPhone that, among other changes, replaces theGoogle maps that have been on the phone since 2007 with Apple's own maps. The early feedback from reviewers and early adopters of the new software is that it is attractive but suffers from holes and glitches.

For example, some have found that searches for an in-town destination can pull up an entirely different city, and there is no built-in information about public transportation.

Yahoo! Inc rose after saying it's returning to shareholders most of the proceeds from the sale of half its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, allaying concern that the money would be spent on takeovers.

The US Internet company will return $3 billion after using $646 million for buybacks in recent months, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said on Tuesday in a statement. Shares rose 1.4% to $15.91 at the close in New York.

The combined serial inkjet and page printers, copiers and multifunction products (MFP) market in the country totaled 7,15,202 units in the second quarter of the year, a 6.8 percent increase over the year-ago period, according to research firm Gartner.

The total end-user spending stood at USD 208.1 million, up 35 percent from the same period last year, Gartner said in a statement.

"The MFP market growth here has been driven by the banking, financial services and insurance, education and government sectors," Gartner research analyst Amrita Choudhury said.

Scientists are developing a new ultrathin lens which could lead to smart phones as thin as a credit card.

The new lens is flat, distortion-free and so small that more than 1,500 would fit across the width of a human hair - capable in the future of replacing lenses in applications ranging from cell phones to cameras to fiber-optic communication systems.

In a study published in journal Nano Letters, Federico Capasso and colleagues explained that the lenses used to focus light in eyeglasses, microscopes and other products use the same basic technology dating to the late 1200s, when spectacle lenses were introduced in Europe.

Online payment service provider E-Billing Solutions (EBS) today said it will work as the first channel partner for global online payment providerPayPal in the country.

"Through this strategic partnership, over 5,000 EBSonline merchants can instantly add PayPal as a payment option to their EBS merchant account and sell to PayPal's 113 million active accounts in 190 markets," the company said in a release here.

Microsoft says it has fixed security bug in Internet Explorer

Microsoft Corp said it has fixed a security bug in Internet Explorer that hackers exploited to attack some customers.

The attacks prompted the German government and security experts to urge people to temporarily stop using the browser.

The software maker said late on Wednesday that the permanent repair to the software, used by hundreds of millions of people, would be released on Friday. A majority of Microsoft Windows users have their computers set to automatically download that update.

Technology player HCL Technologies has entered into a five-year, multi-million dollar deal with Freescale Semiconductor, a provider of embedded processing solutions. Under the pact, HCL will serve as an exclusive technology partner for Freescale, managing and strategically transforming its end-to-end corporate IT Infrastructure landscape.

The way you engage with email - checking, reading, responding - tells a lot about you, according to researchers who believe that the patterns can be matched to bird-like behaviour.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow and the University of the West of Scotland examined different patterns and behaviours of emailing, and matched them to typical bird-like behaviours, according to a statement from the University of Glasgow.

Karen Renaud, senior lecturer in the School of Computing Science, said: "Email has rapidly become a vital business communication tool and a lot of people we spoke to say they would not be able to do their jobs without it."

Samsung has started taking pre-orders for the Galaxy Note II in India on its official e-store. Buyers are required to pay a sum of Rs 5,000 in advance to book the phablet, while the rest has to be paid within fifteen days of official launch of the device in the country. Samsung has not revealed the cost of the Galaxy Note II in the country as of now.

Galaxy Note II will be shipped on first-come-first-serve basis, depending on the timing for completing the full payment. The South Korean manufacturer will ship a free desktop dock with the Galaxy Note II for free to those who pre-order the device early. Only those who make full payment within the first three days of the launch of the phablet will be awarded the free desktop dock.

Salesforce.com unveiled on Wednesday a new software suite that reflects the company's aggressive push into fields like marketing and human resources as it battles heightened competition from rivals.

CEO and founder Marc Benioff announced the new products at the company's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, promising to bring about a "social revolution" to how large companies use software to manage their business.

Private US networks vulnerable to cyber attack, Pentagon

Privately-owned U.S. computer networks remain vulnerable to cyber attacks, and many U.S. companies are not doing enough to protect them, Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Wednesday.

"I hope this isn't one of those situations where we won't do what we need to do until we get slammed," Carter told the annual Air Force Association conference.

The German government urged the public on Tuesday to temporarily stop using Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer following discovery of yet-to-be repaired bug in the web browser that the software maker said makes PCs vulnerable to attack by hackers.

The security flaw, which affects hundreds of millions of Internet Explorer browser users around the globe, publicly surfaced over the weekend.

Luxury labels demonstrated the instant selling power of social media during London Fashion Week like never before with videos broadcast live online to the world from shows crammed with tweeting, blogging designers, editors and celebrities.

Retail clothing chain Topshop reached the largest online audience for a live-streamed London fashion show on Sunday, with two million viewers tuning in from more than 100 countries to see Topshop Unique's latest collection.

Asus has announced the launch of Transformer Pad TF300TG tablet in India. Transformer Pad TF300TG is powered by quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 4-Plus-1 1.2GHz processor.

The 3G tablet comes with a 10-inch 1280x800 IPS display, 1GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage.

For connectivity, the tablet supports Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. The tablet running onAndroid 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has a 8-megapixel rear, 1.2-megapixel front camera.

Apple's stock closed above $700 for the first time on Tuesday, the day after it announced that orders for its iPhone 5 topped 2 million in the first 24 hours.

Shares closed at $701.91 Tuesday, up $2.13 from Monday's close. They rose as high as $702.33 in afternoon trading Tuesday.

The rally in Apple's stock price puts the company's market value at $658 billion.

A recycling ATM offers gadget freaks the option to trade in their discarded mobile phones for cash, rather than dumping them when they go in for the latest model.

Californian company ecoATM has rolled out the machine that is sophisticated enough to see if a screen is cracked, evaluate unwanted goods for resale and recycling - hoping to inspire people to go green.

Huawei, the China-based telecom giant, said that it was testing a 4G phone on Airtel's network and might launch the device as early as December.

"The actual launch date depends on the network service provider, which in this case is Airtel. But we are ready with our phone ( Ascend P1 LTE). If operator is ready, we can launch the phone by the end of this year," said Victor Shanxin, president for Huawei devices in India. He did reveal any expected price that consumers would have to pay for the phone.

Sony is introducing a smaller, slimmer and lighter version of its PlayStation 3 home console ahead of the year-end holidays as it gears up for growing competition in games from smartphones.

The announcement Wednesday from the Japanese electronics and entertainment company comes a day ahead of the annualTokyo Game Show, where game makers show their wares.

BPO major Genpact has said it has signed a master partnership agreement withCalypso Technology to implement the latter's capital markets software platform for global clients.

No financial details were disclosed. Under the terms of the agreement, Genpact's Enterprise Applications Services (EAS) group will be able to provide a range of support services including implementations and upgrades for the Calypso Trading and Risk Management application software suite utilised by major financial institutions globally, Genpact said in a statement.

An Inter-Ministerial group on Internet governance will shortly be set up, a government official today said.

"We are forming an Inter-Ministerial Group (IMG) so that all concerned to Internet governance views are taken and a consensus can be made up...it will be formed in a few weeks time," Department of Electronicsand IT (DeitY) Senior Director Govind said during a discussion on Internet governance.

The IMG will comprise of all the concerned ministries, including the Department of Telecommunications.

Public cloud computing market likely to grow 19.6 percent globally this year, Gartner

The public cloud computing services market is expected to grow 19.6 per cent to reach $ 109 billion globally this year on the back of infrastructure as services area, which is the fastest-growing area at 45.4 per cent, research firm Gartnersaid today.

"The public cloud services market is forecast to grow 19.6 per cent in 2012 to total $ 109 billion worldwide... infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is the fastest-growing segment of the public cloud services market and is expected to grow 45.4 per cent in 2012," Gartner said.

Twitter on Tuesday unveiled a series of design updates, a new app for the iPad and new versions of the application for other mobile devices.

"Starting today you can make your presence on Twitter more meaningful with new Twitter profiles," the company blog said.

"Upload an all-new header photo on mobile apps for iPad, iPhone and Android or twitter.com, and the same image will appear whenever anyone views your profile on the web or these apps. You can upload your header photo, which appears above your Tweets, to express yourself instantly, anywhere."

Yahoo has closed a $7.6 billion deal that includes selling half its stake in rapidly growing Chinese company Alibaba Group.

The resolution announced Tuesday comes four months after Yahoo Inc. and Alibaba outlined the details of the complex deal.

Alibaba is paying $7.1 billion to buy back Yahoo's 20 percent stake in the company and an additional $550 million to cover revised technology and licensing agreement. Yahoo will retain a roughly 20 percent stake in Alibaba.

Microsoft has urged users of Internet Explorer to step up security measures following news of a vulnerability in the browser, while some security experts urged users to switch browsers.

Microsoft issued a security bulletin late Monday saying it was investigating reports of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, and 9 which could allow hackers to take over a computer.

"Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks that attempt to exploit this vulnerability," it said, while urging its users to tighten security by adjusting settings on the Web browser and downloading a temporary software patch.

Some experts said, however, that switching browsers may be a better option.

LG Electronics will stick to its previous sales target for 2012 smartphones and handsets, in the hope new product launches revive sales momentum later this year after weak sales in the first half, its head of mobile business said on Tuesday.

Park Jong-seok, president of the South Korean firm's mobile business, also told reporters that LG was not considering using different operating systems such as Microsoft's Windows for its phones. LG on Tuesday introduced a new smartphone running on the Android platform.

LG sticks to Android, no plans to use Windows Phone 8

Google searches for SMBs ignored by Indian IT companies like Infosys, Wipro

Google is eating into the market of Indian IT services providers by aggressively selling its products and technology solutions to small and medium businesses, which are estimated to spend $15 billion (Rs 80,000 crore) on technology by 2015.

From word processing and email to storage and enterprise search, Google is using every tool in its armoury to get the business of SMBs, some 1,000 of whom are already on its client roster. Operating in India since 2008, Google counts VoltasBSE 0.12 %, Yebhi, Nilkamal, Hiranandani and India InfolineBSE 3.16 %among some of its wins in the space.

Engineers are developing a new technology which would allow you to 'smack' the screen of your mobile and silence its ringing.

Software giant Microsoft has patented the idea, suggesting it will find its way onto Windows Mobile phones soon.

The 'whack-based audio control module' sits at the centre of the phone, and awaits a suitable 'whack', to tell it to be quiet, the Daily Mail reported.

BSNL to launch Fibre to Home for high speed internet

BSNL here would launch by this month-end 'Fibre to Home' (FTH) facility for customers seeking internet, telephone and TV channels' access.

A high speed up to 100 mbps on internet would be given with FTH in which customers could download a movie in just one minute, a BSNL spokesman said today quoting Senior General Manager G C Pandey.

Besides, most of the popular TV channels, and landline phone services were annexed with FTH, he said.

In a move that will bring cheer to over one lakh employees, software major Infosys is evaluating a salary hike and this could come into effect from the third quarter, according to people familiar with the development.

The people ET NOW spoke to said that the top management is "seriously evaluating" salary hikes for employees and that imminent salary hikes has been communicated informally by senior managers to employees. Also, that expectation is running very high internally on these possible hikes.

Tech Mahindra today said it has acquired 51 per cent stake in Gurgaon-based mobile application firm Comviva from Bharti Group and other shareholders for Rs 260 crore.

Tech Mahindra, which offers software and billing systems to telecom players, acquired 31 per cent interest from Bharti which would still be left with 20 per cent post completion of the deal.

US daily deals site Groupon may set up customer support centre in Chennai

Groupon Inc, based in President Obama's hometown Chicago, is testing the waters to set up a customer support centre in Chennai, ignoring the anti-outsourcing noises that have surrounded the hotly-contested presidential election in the United States.

The daily deals site, which sells discount coupons of local merchants, is experimenting with the suitability of Chennai as a base to run email-based services to support its subscribers in the United States and Canada, senior executives of the company said. Groupon, a former internet darling whose business model is now under fire, has some 400 customer service executives based in Chicago.

Despite the sharp 20.7 million fall in telecom subscriber base last month, the first time since the mobile revolution in 1997, the industry is expected to touch 1,042 million users by the fiscal-end, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) has said in its monthly report.

The telecom subscriber base fell to 944.81 million in August from 965.52 million in August, according to Trai data.

The new wireless subscribers for the fiscal are also likely to decline by nearly 14%, CMIE said. The agency attributes mobile number portability as one of the reasons for declining new subscriber additions.

The telecom subscriber base fell to 944.81 million in August from 965.52 million in August, according to Trai data.

Britain's KloudPaD, a mobile electronics convergence brand, is ready with its non-GSM based wireless open phone memmoo network for consumers in Kerala.

This was announced at the Emerging Kerala investor meet that concluded at Kochi Friday by the inventors - two brothers - who hail from Thiruvananthapuram but are now based in Britain.

"This is the world's first social network mobile phone without a GSM architecture and can be operated at one tenth cost of existing mobile networks. This is an open network and is called the memmoo network," said Aromal Jayaraj, co-founder and director of KloudPaD.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system that uses dashboard-mounted smartphones to help drivers avoid red lights and reduce fuel consumption.

The app called SignalGuru predicts when a traffic signal is about to change, and the speed that should be driven when approaching an intersection in order to cruise through without stopping.

"The stop-and-go pattern that traffic signals create increases fuel consumption significantly," said Emmanouil Koukoumidis, the scientist behind the app.

Consumers' increased reliance on social media ratings and reviews will see enterprise spending on paid social media ratings and reviews increasing, making up 10 to 15 per cent of all reviews by 2014, a study by research firm Gartner said today.

However, analysts predict that increased media attention on fake social media ratings and reviews will result in at least two Fortune 500 brands facing litigation from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the next two years.

Apple said that it received over 2 million advance bookings for iPhone 5 within the first 24 hours of pre-orders. This is double the number of pre-bookings the company received for the iPhone 4S last year.

Philip Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Apple called the customer response "phenomenal."

The government has drawn a blueprint for developing the next generation of supercomputers that could be 61 times faster than existing machines.

Telecom and IT minister Kapil Sibal is understood to have written to Prime MinisterManmohan Singh sharing the roadmap to develop "petaflop and exaflop range of supercomputers" at an estimated cost of Rs 4,700 crore over 5 years.

Pages

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Friday, September 21, 2012

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Tuesday, September 18, 2012