a2z Information: 2012-12-16

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Instagram abandons changes to its ads policy

Instagram has abandoned wording in its new terms-of-service agreement that sparked outcry from users concerned it meant their photos could appear in advertisements.

In a blog post, the popular mobile photo-sharing service says it has reverted to language in the advertising section of its terms of service that appeared when it was launched in October 2010.

Google's online Play shop of applications for Android-powered smartphones and tablets is growing fast, a report released Thursday by market tracker Distimo said.
The aggregate daily revenue at Google Playshops across the 20 largest countries where they are available climbed 43 percent during the past four months, while sales at Apple's online App Store increased 21 percent.

Tata Communications will focus on cost reduction and cost rebalancing across the portfolio due to uncertain global economic outlook, according to a top official of the company.

"... given the uncertainties in the near term global economic outlook, we will focus on cost reduction and cost rebalancing across the portfolio," Tata Communications Managing Director and group Chief Executive Vinod Kumar said in an interview to Tata groupwebsite.

Samsung is reportedly working on a mid-range device called Galaxy Frame that will be showcased during the Mobile World Congress in February 2013. The device will share features with Galaxy Ace and Galaxy Mini, as per a report in tech news site SamMobile.

The upcoming Galaxy Frame is expected to hit the shelves in the first quarter of the next year. The report also says that Samsung will launch this smartphone in only one colour - Pearl White.

The telecom department (DoT) is set to approve Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) demand that it be allowed to test voice services on its upcoming fourth generation (4G) networks.

The DoT wing looking into this has recommended that RIL be allowed to test 10,000 connections (for 4G voice services) and the company be allotted these many mobile numbers.

Social networking site Facebook may be redesigning its 'Timeline' feature, as the firm confirmed it is experimenting with new ways of laying out users' pages.

"This is a new design Facebook is testing with a small percentage of people to make navigating timeline even easier," a Facebook spokesperson told ABC News.

Tabs are back with this new look, doing away with front-and-center thumbnails for 'friends' and 'photos,' a move that may further bury some marketing efforts for brands that rely on apps.

Charging your smartphone while driving could become a simple process within a year by using a special wireless mat without any need for cables or adaptors.

Japanese auto giant Toyota plans to introduce the system for mobile devices in 2013 in its new car, using a charging standard known as Qi.

According to analysts the feature was likely to become mainstream in the months to come, 'BBC News' reported.

Samsung Display has said it will unveil a flexible HD screen for smartphones during the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2013. The company's upcoming flagship device, Galaxy S IV, is expected to have an unbreakable display and speculation is rife that this screen may also be flexible.

Representatives of the South Korean company's display manufacturing division told technology website CNET that this screen will be 5.5-inch long (diagonally) and have resolution of 1280x720p, with pixel density of 267ppi.

Management consultant David J Anderson, who specialises in efficient software development methodologies, thinks that India's $70 billion IT services exporter industry may need to take a hard look at what they do and how they do it, before it is too late.

In an interview Anderson tells Indu Nandakumar that Indian IT services companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services are very close to losing the labour arbitrage advantage - an area where competing countries such as China, Argentina, Peru and Chile will soon have an upper hand. The sector needs to be more efficient and its ever swelling workforce more productive to retain the edge as world's preferred outsourcing destination. Excerpts:

IT services major Cognizant has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire six companies of Germany-based C1 Group, a move that will strengthen its revenues in Germany andSwitzerland by about $ 100 million.

C1 Group is an independent consulting and IT services firm based in Hamburg, Germany.

The six companies acquired by Cognizant are btconsult, C:1 Solutions, psc Management Consulting, C:1 SetCon, Enterprise Services AG and C:1 Holding.

Google Maps boosts iOS 6 upgrades

Upgrades to Apple's iOS 6 have increased by 29 per cent after Google Maps were made available on the operating system, it has been claimed.

Mobile advertising service MoPub said that adoption of iOS 6 increased by around 13 per cent last week, but there was a bigger increase at the weekend.

MoPub monitors 12,000 iOS apps and said that the percentage of users running those apps on iOS 6 increased by 29 per cent in the five days after Google released Google Maps for iPhone, the Telegraph reports.

Times Internet today launches itimes.com, India's first interest network which empowers users to create interests or follow their favourite interests. The site has shifted its focus from general social networking towards interest networking centered around relevant topics and content.

"Times Internet has over 32 million visitors every month who interact with our varied content offerings.Itimes.com is oriented around building communities around the topics people care to read about. It's an interesting proposition and we hope that it will engage users and help create and curate relevant content" saidSatyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet.

Oracle agreed to buy Eloqua, a maker of marketing automation software that listed on the Nasdaq in August, for about $810 million, underlining Oracle's efforts to drive growth through cloud-computing services.

Eloqua makes software to enable businesses predict and grow revenue by monitoring and measuring marketing and sales initiatives. The companyhas over 1,000 customers including Cisco Systems, Dell and the Miami Heat and Sacramento Kings teams in the NBA.

The $23.50 per share offer represents a 31 per cent premium to Eloqua's close on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.

Facebook on Thursday began testing the feasibility of charging to guarantee that messages from strangers make it into inboxes of intended recipients at the social network.

The Facebook Messages test, limited to the United States, lets a sender pay a dollar to make sure an electronic missive is routed to someone's "inbox" even when the person isn't in their circle of friends.

Facebook messaging system was billed as being designed to deflect seemingly unwanted correspondence into an "other" folder that can be ignored.

Exhorting the need to have a robust cyber security system in place, DRDO chief V K Saraswat today said the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) alongwith other premier institutes is developing India's own operating system (OS), which is likely to be ready in next three years.

"One of the major elements of cyber security is having our own operating system because today we are dependent on all OS systems which are imported whether it is based on Windows, Linux which is likely to be having malicious worms/things and hence it is essential that we have our own OS," the DRDO Director-General said here.

Tata Consultancy Services said its Rs 1,350 crore software development campus in West Bengal will be functional by the end of 2014-15 and will employ 16,500 IT and BPO professionals.

The campus is spread over 40 acres of land near in Rajarhat, near Kolkata.

"Our growing presence in Kolkata continues to be of strategic importance for our overall business growth.

HP has unveiled a new line-up of Windows 8-based consumer PCs, including All-in-Ones, ultrabooks and hybrid laptops that can be turned into tablets. These products come with the manufacturer's proprietary technologies, such as Snapfish for images and Meridian for music.

The all-new Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 features a 14-inch multitouch HD display and offers battery life of up to five hours. This powerful notebook comes with subwoofer with Beats Audio and optional AMD graphics with 2GB of graphics memory.

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia and Neel Naicker today launched Asset Management Platform (AMP) Technologies in India. The company will provide a platform to deliver investment performance analytics in the real estate space.

The AMP platform is a set of products and services designed to allow commercial real estate investors, owners and operators aggregate and access to investment information from any PC, laptop, tablet or mobile device, said a company release.

Every post on a social media platform draws comments that are up for public scrutiny, and therefore, managing it can be a good tool to align your career. ET suggests how you can do that.

Put up a Good Profile

Pallavi Bhatt, an HR official in a Bangalore-based retail firm, scans through LinkedIn profiles of probable candidates before an interview. "He should state his deliverable and achievements clearly," says Bhatt.

Google is turning on a "scan and match'' service for Google Music users to store copies of their songs online, offering for free what Apple charges $25 a year for.

The service, which launched Tuesday, cuts uploading time for those who want to save their music libraries online. It scans a user's computer and gives them online access to the songs it finds, as long as they match the songs on its servers. Otherwise, it will upload songs to a user's online locker.

Google killing online privacy, choice

A few years after it was founded, Google adopted a list of guiding principles it titled, "Ten things we know to be true." No.4 was "Democracy on the web works."

That's a worthy sentiment - though a bit surprising coming from the web's emperor.

For that, arguably, is what Google has become. Its search engine accounts for nearly 80 per cent of all web searches in the United States - and a remarkable 98 per cent of searches from mobile devices. In that role, Google is not just an eponymous verb but perhaps the most central conduit of information in the nation - and, indeed, on the planet. No other search engine comes close.

Twitter said on Tuesday the number of active users of the service has topped 200 million, in a sign of the sizzling growth of the microblogging platform.

News of the milestone came in a tweet, of course, from the official Twitter account: "There are now more than 200M monthly active @twitter users. You are the pulse of the planet. We're grateful for your ongoing support!"

The number was the first official estimate from Twitter since it claimed 140 million active users.

Facebook to bring video ads to news feed, Report

Facebook is set to unveil a new application in the first half of next year that would stream video advertisements in users' news feed, Ad Age reported, citing several industry executives who have been briefed on the company's plans over the past few weeks.

Video ads would be available on both the desktop as well as on mobile phones apps and tablets, according to Ad Age.

US-based HP today said it expects PCs with Windows 8 operating system to contribute 25-30 per cent to its computer sales next year.

"Windows 8 is a relatively new platform... if 25-30 per cent of the sales came from Windows 8, we would be very happy," HP India president - printing and personal systems, Rajiv Srivastava said.

He added that the company is witnessing strong migration to Microsoft's new operating system but more from individual customers than enterprises.

Indian IT bellwether Infosys has been named as one of the liaison service outsourcing firms by the Chinese commerce ministry for its capabilities, performance and strong growth, an official said.

"Infosys is the only Indian firm to be included in the list of 100 key liaison service outsourcing firms by the China's ministry of commerce," the global software major said in a statement here.

Alcatel-Lucent is better armed to confront another year of weak demand for telecom equipment after signing a 1.6 billion euro financing deal and starting massive cost cuts, its chief executive said.

In an interview with Reuters, chief executive Ben Verwaayen said the loan from Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs, under which the group's 29,000 patents and US business will be put up as collateral, would give him more time to deliver a promised turnaround.

Seems, Samsung's SmartTVs are not smart enough on security front. Malta-based research company ReVuln has found a security hole in Samsung's SmartTVs, which allows hackers to watch and hear conversations of the people in the television's surroundings using the product's camera and mic. Not only this, the gaping security flaw allows hackers to access all files in any connected USB drive, browse the web, change channels or make video calls.

ReVuln has uploaded a video, named 'The TV is Watching You', showing how it exploited the security loophole in a Samsung SmartTV to compromise the product. The company has said it has not informed the South Korean manufacturer of the issues in its range of SmartTVs.

The IT sector hit a trough in 2012 as things across the global scenario exhibited a slowdown, said Infosys Co-Chairman Kris Gopalakrishnan. "It takes time for the slow down to impact IT sector because in some way it is a support sector," he said.

Gopalakrishnan also feels that 2013 will be a much better year for the IT sector. "If things do not deteriorate further, nothing untoward happens in Europe or the fiscal cliff in US is managed, I believe 2013 could be a better year," he said.

Two years ago, the chief financial officer of India's largest IT exporter, S Mahalingam had said in an interview to The Economic Times that margins were critical for the company's business, but that was not the only focus.

"We have an ideal margin in our mind that suits our business mix. But our aim goes beyond margins. Our focus is on becoming a full services play across the globe," he had said then. TCS had reported a strong operating margin in the preceding quarter which was just a few notches short of Infosys, the most profitable top-tierIndian IT player.

More Indians are turning to the ubiquitous mobile phone for quick advice on how to treat common aches and pains, as scores of new utility applications are developed for smartphones across the country. From migraine to toothache to the best options on plastic surgery, consumers are downloading specialised apps that offer advice on demand from qualified doctors.

Struck by a bout of migraine recently, 23-year-old Natasha Menon downloaded an application for her Android phone from a Bangalore-based company Healthcare Magic instead of visiting a neighbourhood doctor. "I could get a doctors advice in just a couple of hours, a hospital visit would have taken longer for sure," says Menon, who is a Bangalore-based content writer.

Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia is in talks with its partners to develop a tablet that will help it take on market leader Apple's iPad.

The company is in talks with Microsoft,Qualcomm and Compal Electronics to manufacture a 10-inch tablet running onWindows RT, says Taiwan-based tech website Digitimes, quoting supply chain sources. This rumoured Nokia slate is 'likely' to be showcased at Mobile World Congress, to be held in Barcelona in February, says the post.

Zen Mobile has announced the UltraTab A700 3G, the company's first 7-inch tablet to feature 3G calling and data connectivity through an onboard sim-card slot and data card support. The company has tied up with online retailer Homeshop18 to offer the device at a special introductory price of Rs 9,499.

The all-new UltraTab A700 3G, running onAndroid 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), boasts of a 1.2GHz Cortex A8 processor and has 512MB RAM. Powered by a 3,000mAh battery, the device has 4GB internal memory and supports 32GB TF card. Zen UltraTab A700 3G has a 1.3MP camera in the front and weighs 345grams. Connectivity features in this tablet include 3G, 2G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, host USB, microUSB,

Indian internet users are now searching more for utilitarian services like banking, shopping and travel compared to entertainment in previous years, Google Indiasaid.

While unveiling its annual Zeitgeist list this year, Google India Vice-President and Managing Director (Sales and Operations) Rajan Anandan said, "utilitarian services drove search volumes".

"Google's 2012 Zeitgeist reflects data from 1.2 trillion searches in 146 languages globally. With 137 million users, India is the world's third largest Internet market and is a good barometer of trends in Indian society as a whole," Anandan told reporters here.

RBI's decision to keep key interest rates unchanged in its mid-quarter montetary policy review would not hamper growth, Genpact Vice Chairman Pramod Bhasin said.

"I don't think so... Our industry does not directly depend on RBI rates. It depends on the impact of those rates on the economic environment around us, but I really feel in India that we are back on an upswing," he told reporters on the sidelines of the Third Knowledge and Professional Services Summit here.

Smartphone photo sharing service Instagram on Monday refined its privacy policy to clear the way for sharing data with Facebook, which bought the company earlier this year.

"Nothing has changed about your photos' ownership or who can see them," Instagram said in a blog post.

"Our updated privacy policy helps Instagram function more easily as part of Facebook by being able to share info between the two groups."

Since the 1960s, robots have assumed major roles in industrial manufacturing and assembly, the remote detonation of explosives, search and rescue, and academic research. But theY have remained out of reach, in affordability and practicality, to most consumers.

That, according to Andrew Ng, director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab, Stanford University, California, is about to change. One big reason is the mass production of smartphones and game consoles, which has driven down the size and price of robotic building blocks like accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors.

Samsung has added another couple of big screen phones to its line-up with the unveiling of rumoured Galaxy Grand and its dual-sim version Galaxy Grand Duos. The company announced the launch of the two new smartphones with a post on its official blog, Samsung Tomorrow. It also said that the dual-sim variant will arrive in the market first, followed by its sibling.

The all-new Galaxy Grand has a 5-inch WVGA TFT screen and is powered by Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). This smartphone runs on a dual-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz and has 1GB RAM. Samsung has continued with the design language it introduced in the Galaxy S III in this smartphone as well.

The newly-released Google Maps for iPhone has been downloaded more than 10 million times within just 2 days of its launch at the App Store.

Jeff Huber, Google's senior vice president of Commerce & Local, confirmed the news on a post on Google+.

"We're excited for the positive reception of Google Maps for iPhone around the world. Congratulations to the Maps Team on the recognition for the passion and hard work they poured into it, for this release and over the last 7+ years," CBS News quoted Huber, as saying.

The hiring outlookand the growth of jobs in the new year will be a mixed bag, reflecting the performance of various sectors in the year gone by.

Companies in sectors like fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), retail, healthcare and pharmaceuticals remain optimistic and will continue to hire in increasing numbers next year, but banking and financial services, information technology-enabled services (ITeS) and automobiles are likely to create fewer jobs with companies continuing with a cautious and conservative approach towards new hires.

A security loophole in Samsung devices running on the Exynos 4 System on Chip (SoC) has been found. This flaw is in the kernel and hands over the access of the physical memory of the phone to any user and opens it up to malware.

A developer who goes by the name Alephzain on the forum XDA-developers came across a flaw in his Samsung Galaxy S III while trying to root it. He posted, "The good news is we can easily obtain root on these devices and the bad is there is no control over it."

It is absurdly easy to get hacked. Chances are most people will get hacked at some point in their lifetime. The best they can do is delay the inevitable by avoiding suspicious links, even from friends, and manage their passwords. How do you come up with different, hard-to-crackpasswords for every website and still remember them all? Here were some tips from Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer at WhiteHat Security, and Paul Kocher, who runs Cryptography Research.

Fake phones losing sheen in Chinese market

Cheap mobile phones that closely resemble high-end globally-recognised devices are slowly fading out from markets across China, and are being replaced by brands looking to break into the budget phone market.

In south China's Shenzhen city, known as the "birthplace of counterfeit phones," shops with "for rent" signs can be seen everywhere, the China Daily reported Monday.

Although the city has long been known as one of the country's top sellers of electronic products, government data indicates that more than 3,500 shops, most of which were mobile phone dealers, have closed and retreated from the market.

Networking equipment company Cisco Systems has hired Barclays to sell its Linksys home router unit, a report said.

The business, which Cisco acquired for $500 million in 2003, will likely be valued for less because it has low margins, according to Bloomberg.

The sale is part of Cisco's strategy to shed its consumer unit and focus on its software and technology services businesses.

Infosys, India's No. 2 software services provider, may cut its revenue forecast next month as US business clients defer spending and balk at signing big deals.

The outsourcing icon, which has missed its own revenue guidance in three of the past four quarters, has struggled as its big customers cut costs, and analysts have criticised management for sticking with a rigid pricing policy when competitors have offered more flexible plans.

State-owned BSNL will shortly award a crucial equipment contract to China's Huawei for expanding its countrywide core Internet network, that may stoke fresh security concerns over procurement of telecom gear from Chinese vendors.

Top executives with direct knowledge told ET that BSNL's core IP network will be capable of handling data, voice and video traffic, and would be the principal communications backbone carrying sensitive personal information of Indian citizens for a host of central broadband initiatives like the national optic fibre network (NOFN), the National Knowledge Network and the government's ambitious Aadhar program that plans to give a unique identity to the country's 1.2 billion residents.

India is no more a preferred investment destination for global telecom operators looking to expand to new markets as the regulatory environment here is uncertain, industry body GSM Association said.

"You do see foreign acquisitions and investments in mobile. It is changing and clearly it is not focused on India now, while it was very much focused on India in the past," GSMA D-G Anne Bouverot said. She said despite global economic slowdown, around five telecom operators and even some companies operating in India, are looking to invest and expand their business to new countries. India, however, will have to wait till investor faith in the country is restored, she added.

CensusInfo India, a new user-friendly database software to help people access, use and understand the statistical data of India's latest population and housing census, was launched in the capital on Monday.

"The CensusInfo India software is an innovative and flexible database technology. It helps the public to easily access, use and understand the statistics provided in the population and housing census, 2011, and reduces the burden of statistical drudgery," register general and India's census commissioner C Chandramouli said.

US technology giant Amazon has devised a new motion-sensor technology for an airbag that can protect your gadgets including smartphones, cameras and tablets from cracking when dropped. The system uses motion sensors, already built into most smartphones, to detect when a phone has been dropped and the mini airbag is then deployed before it hits the floor.

A traditional airbag in cars is deployed upon impact, cushioning the passengers' heads as they are thrust forward. The phone system hopes to use similar techniques to prevent damage to the mobile upon inevitable impact.

In about five years, you may be able to feel the touch of a Banarasi or a Kanjeevaram sari through your smartphone screen before buying it online, claims IBM.

This year the technology giant's Five in Five list talks about five such innovations that "have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years," IBMsaid.

The 2012 list focusses on one element of the new era, the ability of computers to mimic the human senses in their own way, to see, smell, touch, taste and hear, it added.

Think before you click on links appearing on mobile devices on online buying of Christmas and New Year gifts as social networks and malicious mobile apps, among others, are the most common ways of attack by cyber criminals, says security software maker McAfee.

"Scammers use channels like Facebook andTwitter just like email and websites to scamconsumers during the holidays," said the '2012 Holiday Shopping Study', conducted online among over 1,100 Indian adults.

Chip maker Intel said it sees "renewed vigour" forms and designs of computing devices like tablet PCs and convertibles in 2013 as input methods like voice and touch gain traction.

"Intel foresees a renewed vigour in computing in 2013 in the highly connected multi-device landscape. Traditional input devices like keyboards and mouse will be challenged by new input methods like voice and gesture recognition," Intel South Asia Director (Marketing) Sandye Aurora told reporters here.

Tablets, convertibles and newer devices will enter the market blurring the boundaries between PCs and tablets, he added.

Intel, which has a lion's share in the global computer chip market, will launch its fourth generation of Intel Core processor family in 2013.

This, it claims, will bring faster, thinner, lighter, cooler and more secure systems with built-in graphics.

"The new generation of processors will significantly boost performance of devices from mobiles totablets to Ultrabooks. As the world of personal computing continues to evolve, Intel will be at the forefront of advancements," he said.

In March this year, Intel had partnered with handset maker Lava to launch XOLO X900, which marked the chip maker's global foray into the smartphone segment. Also, lighter and less power consuming laptops -- Ultrabooks -- based on Intel processors hit the global market.

"Ultrabooks were launched in later part of the year and we think 2013 will be the year, we get to truly understand their potential. We will also see device makers bringing out ultrabook convertibles (which converts into a tablet)," he said.

Also, Intel will focus on the National Digital Literacy Mission in India, its initiative with industry body Nasscom and other industry players, to create a digitally literate population in the country.

"Intel has impacted over 1 million learners through its Intel Easy Steps Digital Literacy programme in India in 2012. We remain committed to working with the ecosystem and will work towards fulfilling the government's vision of having one e-literate person per household by 2020," Aurora said.

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Saturday, December 22, 2012

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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Wednesday, December 19, 2012