a2z Information: 2013-04-21

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Apple educates users on in app purchases with new user guide

Along with its refresh of the Featured section in the iTunes App Store, Apple has added a section dedicated to educating people about in-app purchases and what they are exactly. This was most likely added to address the recent fiascos with users accidentally purchasing in-app content on their iOS device.

The user guide, called “Learn more about in-app purchases,” explains what in-app purchases are exactly, and how they work. Plus, it teaches users how to prevent their kids from gaining access to in-app purchases where they might spend a crazy amount of money on virtual goods otherwise.

The US universities produce enough graduates in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) to meet the demand for high-skilled professionals in the country, says a study.

Contradicting the claims of some American companies that the country faces STEM shortage, the study by Washington-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said there are more domestic graduates in these fields than the market can accommodate.

Samsung has overtaken Nokia to become the largest seller of mobile phones in the country's major markets, as consumers lap up its new feature phones and its smartphones continue to do brisk business.

According to market tracker GfK-Nielsen's data, Samsung's volume market share in urban areas in March rose to 31.4%, surpassing Nokia's 30.1%. GfK-Nielsen urban panel tracks sales in 793 cities and towns with a population of over 50,000, which account for more than 70% of India's total handset sales.

Prepare for an influx of lower-cost laptops to make their way into the market. Intel CEO Paul Otellini claims that laptop prices will go down to as low as $200 in the next few months, which makes us reminisce about the netbook days and whether or not Otellini is predicting a comeback for the smaller form factor machines, but that’s not the case here.

Intel’s Dadi Perlmutter, who is the company’s executive vice president and chief product officer, says that these $200 laptops will mostly be running Android, rather than the traditional Windows 8 operating system. The low-cost laptops would also be running Intel’s Atom series of processors, the same chips that were used in a lot of netbooks.

Screen-Shot-2012-06-20-at-12.07.20-PM-563x500

The popular keyboard that lets you use swipe gestures to type out notes and messages, known as Swype, has been invading Android for quite some time, and the feature is included in the latest Android Jelly Bean version, but it seems that the company behind the popular keyboard tech talked business with Apple recently about the possibility of including Swype.

In a recent Reddit AmA, Swype VP Aaron Sheedy answered a question regarding whether or not the company “had any contact with Apple,” and whether or not there were discussions “to see if they might have been interested in licensing” Swype’s keyboard technology. Sheedy was rather vague, and simply said that they have indeed “chatted with them.”

Indian information technology companies are turning venture capitalists in their quest for fresh ideas and technology to help them compete more effectively in a fast-changing business environment. Like multinational technology companies - Cisco, Intel and SAP - which are active investors, Indian firms too are tying up with emerging ventures possessing niche skills or buying stakes in them, thereby gaining access to what could even be blockbuster ideas.

The trend was exemplified earlier this month when Infosys said it has set up a $100 million (Rs 540 crore) fund to invest in startups, besides spotting and funding internal innovation. Similarly, Mahindra Satyam, which has a stated goal of growing faster than the industry, has a $50-million fund exclusively for investments in global technology startups. Wipro, too, is actively looking to partner innovative young companies or buy minority stakes in them.

LG launched its LG Cloud service last year in the United States, South Korea, and Russia. After almost exactly a year of availability, LG has now announced that rolling its Cloud TV service out to over 40 countries. The new countries it will get access to LG Cloud includes locations in Europe, Asia, Central Asia, and Latin America.

The new locations will have access to the service by the end of May. The LG Cloud service is a content streaming service that allows users to stream various content directly to their LG Cinema 3-D Smart TV. The LG Cloud service also provides a place for LG smart TV owners to store entertainment content that can be automatically synchronized between various devices they own such as computers, smartphones, and TVs.

The Great Smartphone Conundrum. The time has come — we're going to have to choose between performance and battery life. Smartphones keep getting faster. If you buy a new high-end phone this year, you'll find it's noticeably more powerful than last year's best gadgets. It will let you run more demanding apps, it will load up web pages more quickly, and it will deliver sharper, more advanced videos and games.

This might not sound like a big deal — aren't new gadgets always faster than old gadgets? Yes, that's true. But what's striking about phones is how quickly they're getting quicker. This year's top-of-the-line phones are likely to be twice as fast as those released last year. And last year's phones weren't slouches — they were twice as powerful as the ones that came out in 2011.

Microsoft Corp priced its $2.7 billion bond offering, sold in the US and Euro markets, as it is rushing in before larger rival Apple Inc looks to raise money from the bond market to fund its mammoth $100 billion capital return programme.

Microsoft, which is raising 550 million euros ($715 million)in Europe and $1.95 billion in the US market, is one of many US corporations taking advantage of low interest rates to borrow money.

Fred Amoroso is resigning effective immediately, the struggling internet company announced.

Amoroso will be replaced in the chairman role by director Maynard Webb Jr on an interim basis until the company's annual shareholder meeting on June 25.

Amoroso, a former IBM Corp executive, will remain on the board of directors until the meeting, Yahoo said.

In a statement on Thursday, Amoroso said he had informed the Yahoo board when he became chairman in May 2012 that he intended to serve only one year "in order to help Yahoo during a critical time of transformation."

Radius Search The Milestone that will Change the Sales Scenario in India

Dataguru.in, leading sales solution providers in India launches Radius Search. A feature that will change the game for the sales professionals in India. Radius Search is first of its kind to be launched in India.

Its an unique solution which helps sales professionals to locate their target companies and executives within a specific radius. Now profiling and targeting can be more focused and efficient with Radius search.Dataguru.in believes in constant and continuous innovation. They had been the pioneers to address the ever increasing needs for information in India and thus through its innovation and research & development has come up with this application to enhance the capability of sales professionals.

Oracle has announced the India availability of its SPARC T5 and M5 servers, powered by the new T5 and M5 microprocessors. The company claims SPARC T5 to be the world's fastest processor with up to 3x faster application performance than IBM or any other competing platform.

The new servers join Oracle's existing entry-level SPARC T4 servers. The company is targeting telecommunications, government, healthcare and financial services verticals for these new servers.

Despite having the third-highest mobile phone shipments after Samsung and Apple, and being one of the highest selling telecom equipment vendors, Huawei's brand and image are nearly non-existent.

A notion the company plans to fix in this year, armed with a billion dollars for brand promotion. Huawei will spend 2% of its revenue on promoting the company's image in 2013 and plough back variable portions of profits it makes on specific products into advertising them, said Shao Yang, chief marketing officer, device segment.

McAfee today announced the addition of identity and access management solutions to its Security Connected portfolio. The solutions that were previously sold and developed by Intel include McAfee Cloud Single Sign On and McAfee One Time Password. McAfee also introduced a new McAfee Identity Center of Expertise, staffed with experts in identity and cloud security to assist users with questions pertaining to identity and access management issues, such as architecture requirements and best practices.

Even as the growth of online retail start-ups has been hampered by regulations and fund crunch, a group of e-commerce entrepreneurs are sidestepping these issues by targeting a completely different section—the enterprise market.

Enterprise clients are fast becoming a lucrative market for online ventures in India like OfficeYes, Printland, Printvenue, eSupply and 1click1call, among others. Industry experts say the improvement in connectivity and infrastructure across the country has had a big role in the development of this business model.

The workplace - no matter what cheerful HR experts tell us - isn't a place of untrammelled joy, neither should it be.

There's work, and there's fun. But, of course, stress at workplace is one thing and depression - a serious clinical condition - quite another. The Economic Times reports that "employee depression" brought about by job-related uncertainties is a growing trend in Indian ITcompanies. There's the obvious but important point to be made here that genuine cases of job related depression must be dealt with sensitively by employers.

Samsung said that unexpectedly high demand for its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4, was behind shipping issues that delayed scheduled sales in the US market.

"We are experiencing difficulty in boosting supply in the short term because pre-order demand has been far stronger than we anticipated," said Lee Don-Joo, head of sales and marketing at Samsung's mobile unit.

Apple announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference will take place in San Francisco in June.

In an unusual move, Apple gave a one-day notice that tickets would go on sale for what is considered a must-attend event for software wizards interested in conjuring up applications for iPhones, iPads, iPods, or Macintosh computers.

The 5,000 tickets made available to WWDC here last year sold out in about two hours despite the price of $1,600 each.

Amazon.com will release a set-top TV box later this year that will stream video over the internet, challenging Apple Inc's Apple TV device and a similar gadget sold by start-up Roku, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

The box will plug into TVs and give viewers access to Amazon's digital video content, which the company has been expanding, BloombergBusinessweek said, citing three unidentified people familiar with the project.

Google India, today, announced the top travel trends for this summer - a unique perspective on the hottest travel trends, based on searches conducted in India. These trends highlight the adventurous spirit of young Indians who are increasing searching for activities like scuba diving and snorkelling and want to explore beyond the conventional destinations. With more and more young Indian's coming online, they are increasing searching for new things to do while travellingand explore newer destinations which are rich in cultural heritage as well as give them a chance to discover their adventurous streak.

Bharti Airtel and Microsoft announced a partnership, wherein consumers in the country can get discounts on purchase of Xbox games and Airtel high speed broadband connection.

As part of this combo offer, consumers buying an 'Xbox 360 4GB Kinect' console or taking a new Airtel high speed broadband connection can save up to Rs 15,500, a joint statement by the two comapnies said.

This combo includes 10 Xbox 360 games, 12-month free Xbox LIVE gold membership and up to Rs 4,888 offer on the existing or new Airtel broadband connection, it said.

IT and telecom solutions provider Tech Mahindra has acquired a Sweden-based Type Approval Lab for undisclosed amount which will help it strengthen lab presence in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions.

The lab was part of Sony Mobile Communication's internal test function and now will help Tech Mahindra establish its first European test lab with multi-million dollar infrastructure, Tech Mahindra said in a release.

Nintendo aims to sell 9 million Wii U consoles in FY14

Nintendo on Wednesday said that it expects to sell 9 million of its new Wii U game consoles in the year to next March 31, after a disappointing start since their launch in November.

In the latest business year that ended on March 31, the creator of Super Mario sold 3.45 million of its successor to the hit Wii. It initially forecast sales of 5.5 million but later lowered that to 4 million.

Nintendo, which began by making playing cards in the late 19th century, is counting on the Wii U, its first console in 16 years to come with a dedicated Super Mario game title, to revive its fortunes as sales of the six year-old Wii slacken.

Sets a record for IT Services growth in first full financial year Every employee received shares at the same price as founders

Happiest Minds Technologies, a next generation IT Solutions & Services company today announced its achievements for the first full financial year 2012-13 that closed at the annualized run rate of $20 million. Focusing on disruptive technologies as its core strategy, Happiest Minds now has 45 customers across US, UK, India, and SE Asia.

Internet security software company VirnetX has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, saying the software giant's Skype service violates six of its patents.

VirnetX said Microsoft infringed on patents outside the limited license deal that the software giant reached with VirnetX after purchasing Skype.

According to research firm ISI Group, most of VirnetX's revenue has come from a 200 million dollars patent-infrigement-related settlement reached with Microsoft in 2010, Fox News reports.

Amazon TV set-top box rumored to be in the works

Amazon has been investing a lot of its resources into the TV business. Just a few days ago, it launched 14 new original series, with their pilot episodes being available for free for any user. Now it looks like Amazon will be diving even deeper into the TV business by releasing a TV set-top box in the future. According to Business Week’s sources, Amazon will be introducing its very own set-top box come this fall.

The set-top box will be deeply integrated with Amazon’s video selection, including its Instant Video service, and its collection of other video on-demand products. It will do wonders in getting Amazon more business for its Instant Video service as well as getting more viewers for its original series. It would also help it compete against other video-streaming services, like Netflix.

Twitter begins internal testing on two-factor authentication tool

Amidst all of the recent Twitter accounts being breached by hackers, Twitter is tipped to be working on a two-factor authentication system to better protect its users. According to Wired, Twitter is currently performing internal tests on the two-factor authentication system and when the tests are complete, the new feature will be shortly distributed to Twitter’s users.

In the past week alone, several Twitter accounts belonging to important news sites and big name figures were compromised. The Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit for all of the attacks, including the attacks on several of CBS’s official accounts, including 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and CBS Denver. It also hacked into FIFA’s official Twitter account, Joseph “Sepp” Blatter’s account, and The Associated Press’s official Twitter account.

Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it has launched a sub-power management IC embedded with a DCDC step-down convertor and LDO (Low Drop Out) for use in mobile products such as cellular phones and smartphones that realizes high efficiency at a light load.

Toshiba: Sub-Power Management IC for Mobile Products (Photo: Business Wire)

The new product 'TC7732FTG', increases the coil drive frequency from the widely used 2MHz to 4MHz, making it possible to use a smaller packaged 1.0ìH coil that takes up less space.

Asus India has unveiled FonePad tablet with 7-inch screen in the country. The device is priced at Rs 15,999 and will be available at Croma stores and Asus retail showrooms across the country. The manufacturer also sells Google Nexus 7 tablet in India, starting at Rs 18,999.

Announced in February 2013 at Mobile World Congress, Asus FonePad also offers voice calling functionality. It has display resolution of 1280x800p and 216ppi pixel density and features an IPS panel. The device is powered by a 1.2GHz Intel Atom processor coupled with 1GB RAM and comes with 8GB onboard storage, with microSD support up to 32GB.

DigitalOptics Corporation (DOC™), a wholly owned subsidiary of Tessera Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSRA) has announced that Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has signed a multi-year license for DOC’s Face Detection and Face Tracking software. This software will be used in Samsung Galaxy S® 4 smartphones.

DOC’s Face Detection and Face Tracking software is part of DOC’s FaceTools™ suite, which also includes Accurate Eye Tracking and Face Recognition, Smile and Blink Detection, among others. With FaceTools, end users can automatically identify individuals, capture fast moving objects, use enhanced user interfaces via real-time tracking of pupils, and take flawless pictures even under sub-optimum light or color balance conditions. This software is compatible with all application processors and can be optimized for power consumption and increased performance via custom hardware blocks, such as the DOC advanced hardware image processing (AHIP) embedded in Fujitsu’s discrete image signal processors (ISPs).

PC maker Hewlett-Packard India unveiled its latest range of Officejet Pro X 500 series printers, which the company claims is the world's fastest desktop printer.

"HP's Officejet Pro X 500 series is recognised as the world's fastest desktop printer by Guinness World Records," HP Printing Systems PPS Director Nitin Hiranandani told reporters here.

Powered by HP PageWide Technology, the company said HP's Officejet Pro X Series can deliver professional documents at up to 70 pages per minute in General Office mode. They deliver high-quality documents at up to twice the speed and half the cost of colour lasers, he added.

Last week, Cisco Systems' chairman and CEO John Chambers named Padmasree Warrior and Pankaj Patel as possible successors when he retires as CEO in two to four years. That has sparked off the question - could there be more such CEO contenders at other global tech giants?

At Microsoft, Hyderabad boy Satya Nadella manages a $19-billion division that builds and runs its computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services. He is president of Microsoft's server and tools business.

Small businesses are using low-cost marketing tools on the internet to gain customers in global markets. These companies that sell a range of products such as apparel, home accessories and party supplies use products such as Google keywords with budgets as low as $3 (Rs 150) a day.

"We have received over 200 sales leads via Google in six months," said Tenzin Thargay, founder of Mumbai-based GetMy-Meal .in. In Jodhpur, Bharatplaza.com, which makes wedding suits, has built up revenues of Rs 10 crore with customers spread across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia without appointing any local sales managers.

Samsung's latest flagship Galaxy smartphone goes on sale this week, as the South Korean giant seeks to cement its lead over faltering rival Apple in an increasingly saturated market.

The Galaxy S4, armed with eye motion control technology that will pause a video when the user looks away, comes with a faster chip and is thinner and lighter than the Galaxy S III.

Can a philosophy that reads, 'Employees First, Customers Second' ever help a company's revenue to increase fivefold? Vineet Nayar, vice-chairman and joint MD of HCL Technologies Ltd who architected this unconventional strategy tells Viren Naidu why the time now is right to put the 'human' back in 'human resource'

'Employee first, customer second' has become a global phenomenon and set a benchmark for good people-management practices. What was the philosophy behind this?

US immigration bill could hurt growth of Indian IT

Low cost efficiency put India's outsourcing companies at the heart of global business and created a multibillion dollar industry that for years has skated over criticism it was eliminating white collar jobs in rich nations. Now, the industry's long-held fears of a backlash are being realised in its crucial US market.

Provisions in an overhaul of US immigration bill will close loopholes that allow outsourcing companies, Indian and American, to pay guest workers in the US at rates often below wages for equivalent-level Americans. The proposed changes are in line with President Barack Obama's vows to make it tougher for US companies to replace American workers with cheaper labor abroad, either by opening factories overseas or subcontracting their work to outsourcing companies.

Blip: iTunes finally lets you buy now, download later

Here's an update that's arrived a lot later than it probably should have. iTunes users who want to grab entire seasons of TV shows or music box sets now have the option to make their purchase and then download at a later date.

On buying movie, TV and music bundles, you'll be given the choice to hit either "Download" or "Later", meaning you can buy on your phone and then watch via the Cloud as soon as you get in. No waiting around.

Today users of PCs working with NVIDIA GeForce graphics processors will be finding an update available to them, this software download continuing a legacy of similar pushes by the company to keep up-to-date with the latest top-tier gaming titles on the market. The NVIDIA GeForce 320.00 beta drivers appearing on machines this week are being pushed both automatically – through users’ notification pop-up system in Windows – and through NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience application. The NVIDIA GeForce Experience is another effort by the company to connect their graphics development team to the end user in as simple a form as possible.

Salesforce connects CRM with social listening

Salesforce.com has launched a social advertising application that connects social ads with CRM and social listening – the ability to monitor what's being said about a company or brand on the internet.

Named Salesforce Social.com, it is part of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The company says it can be used to power social ad campaigns on Facebook and Twitter using real-time customer and social listening data.

It seems like only yesterday when Google Street View was only available in a small number of areas around the world, but now Google has announced that Street View has creeped its way into 50 countries, and the Street View cars have covered over 5 million miles of roadway — that’s a lot of fuel.

Google launched Street View in 2007 in five cities in the US, but the service has spread to 50 countries, Hungary and Lesotho being to the two most-recent additions. The search giant also announced that they have expanded Street View coverage in Poland and Romania, as well as “other locations around the world.”

Over the past few years, select companies, including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and HCL Technologies, among the country's top-tier IT exporters have been reporting a superior financial performance than the rest.

But how big is this gap and will these companies be able to retain their lead in the coming quarters? An analysis of the performance of the country's top four IT exporters over the last five fiscal years reveals that TCS and HCL Tech gained over 300-400 basis points in their respective shares of aggregate revenue, while Infosys and Wipro suffered an erosion in their shares.

It seems that Apple’s iCloud service and the iTunes Store are experiencing yet another outage. Apple’s system status webpage confirms that some users may experience issues with account & sign in for iCloud as well as purchases for iTunes. Other users are also reporting problems with Game Center and Apple ID.

Apple doesn’t mention how many users are affected, but simply that “some” users may be affected. The outages appear to be affecting multiple iCloud services including Mail, Find my iPhone, and third-party apps attempting to access iCloud credentials. Other users are simply receiving an error message when attempting to access any iCloud service.

In Greek mythology, there were two Titan brothers: Prometheus and Epimetheus. Prometheus means "fore-thinker," and Epimetheus "after-thinker." Prometheus, who gave humans fire, represents the progress of civilisation, while Epimetheus represents backward thinking, staleness and indecision. Nokia used to be, and can be again, a fantastic example of what Prometheus symbolises.

Nokia originated in 1865 as a pulp-making enterprise, far removed from its present occupation. But you will appreciate the foresight of its founders. Nokia entered the sphere of modern technology in 1902 with electricity generation. In 1992, it redesigned its logo to include the iconic words "Connecting People." This is when they exited from all other businesses except one — telecommunications, which they pioneered.

Android 5.0 Launch Delay? Don’t Count on It is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.

A new rumor surfaced claiming that Google is planning to delay Android 5.0 by two to four months, a move that means Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will miss Google I/O in May.

Western Digital has just begun shipping a new 2.5-inch internal hard drive that’s only a mere 5mm thick. The company is calling it the UltraSlim, and it packs in 500GB of whatever you can stuff in it. the new drive will fit in any standard 2.5-inch drive bay, but will take up less vertical space than a typical 9.5mm drive.

The drive will be a part of Western Digital’s Blue series of hard drives, and the 5mm drive is able to be so thin because of a tiny edge connector that combines both power and the SATA transfer interface, which leaves more room for the hardware to do its thing. Although, with its 5mm form factor, everything is squeezed in there rather tightly.

Amidst Congressional debate on the comprehensive immigration reform, a top US Senator has accused big Indian IT companies - TCS, Infosys and Wipro - of abusing the H-1B visa system.

"There are some specific abuses of H-1B," Senator Richard Durbin, said during a Congressional hearing on immigration reform by the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday, during which the lawmakers discussed threadbare the H-1B visa issues.

I want an Android phone with good battery life. I make a lot of phone calls, and I would like to stay connected to the internet at all times, whether it is to browse the web, check emails, or watch videos. I also use Facebook and Twitter a lot. Could you please suggest a handset?

—Rohan Shetty, Amrita Parab, Amarjit Singh

Android devices are known to be juice guzzlers, and battery life is one of the biggest concerns for most users on this platform. You didn't specify a budget, so here are three models in different price ranges that might meet your needs...

As the book “The New Digital World” is published this week by Google’s Eric Schmidt and co-author Jared Cohen, a transcript of a “secret” meeting held between the two men and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has come to light. The transcript of this meeting – as well as the audio (uploaded this week) has been being mined by the public, revealing notes such as the one appearing today involving “internet educated youth” as spoken about by both Assange and Cohen.

The Associated Press’s Twitter account was hacked today after a tweet was sent out from the account that read, “Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured.” The Associated Press responded shortly after saying that its Twitter account had been compromised, and now the account has been suspended, but it should be back up shortly after Twitter and the AP resolve the issue.

The fake tweet was noticed by the AP fairly quickly, and several of their other Twitter accounts tweeted out that the hacked AP tweet was indeed bogus. However, many people were quick to shoot down the claim anyway, since the tweet wasn’t in AP style formatting in the first place, and no other mainstream news outlets were reporting on it.

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