Today's PickHandpicked worldwide tech news by our editors.
Indian IT, BPO face threat from insiders
Times of India |23 hrs ago India’s growing outsourcing sector faces security threat from company insiders, a survey by global audit firmPricewaterhouseCoopers and the Data Security Council of India shows. Nearly 90% of all security breaches at 13 small, mid-sized and large IT/ITeS companies in 2009-10 was an insider job, the survey shows &ndash.. more
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Nvidia powers 'fastest notebook ever'
Times of India |23 hrs ago Nvidia has announced the world's fastest notebook graphics processing unit (GPU) GTX 580M running on Alienware's new M18x notebook.The first notebook PC to.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
FB to launch Facebook Credits for Indian users from July 1
Economic Times |23 hrs ago Facebook will introduce 'Facebook Credits' through which users can spend virtual currency across various games or applications they use on the popular webs.. moreLike This 1 | 0 Comments
Microsoft Research is building an "Inspiration Engine" for Windows Phone
Read Write Web- Top News |23 hrs ago According to a reports via BGR and DigiTimes, the next versions for the Windows Phone operating system following the 'Mango' release are code-named 'Tango'.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
Nokia, govt team up to create entrepreneurs
Times of India |23 hrs ago Ministry of Science and Technology's Technology Development Board (TDB) will launch a 'Knowledge to Wealth' initiative with mobile phone giant Nokia next m.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
Indian IT firms Wipro, HCL look beyond software development for outsourcing
Economic Times |23 hrs ago Growing use of mobile devices and social networking are also emerging as some of the biggest game changers for businesses around the world.When Thanga Tham.. moreLike This 1 | 0 Comments
Nokia to dump Symbian by 2016
Times of India |23 hrs ago Leading cellphone maker Nokia said it will stop using its mobile operating system Symbian by 2016 and recently showcased Nokia N9 will be th.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
Twitter to launch site for platform developers
GigaOm |23 hrs ago Twitter is working to develop and launch a dedicated site for developers working on the Twitter platform, the company says. The inclusion of Twitter into t.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
Blackberry services: India for deal with Canada
Economic Times |23 hrs ago India is looking for a special 'government to government' agreement with Canada to get access to all services of BlackBerry, including its enterprise mail,.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
Platform to clean up mobile spam in India
Reuters- Top News |22 hrs ago Mobile spam is a huge problem in India; according to some estimates, spam may account for about half of all SMS messages within the sub-continent and cost.. moreLike This 1 | 0 Comments
Britain spies the most on web users: Google
Economic Times |23 hrs ago Britain requests the maximum details about internet users than any other country, internet giant Google has said.A report by the search engine revealed tha.. moreLike This 1 | 0 Comments
Google makes it easier for small businesses to create Mobile Websites
Mashable |1 day ago Google has launched a new tool that makes it easy for businesses to create mobile-friendly websites incredibly quickly with Google Sites.The new mobi.. moreLike This 1 | 0 Comments
MySpace sold to Ad Network for $35 Million
Mashable |1 day ago The day that the web has been buzzing about has finally come: MySpace has been sold, to an advertising network called Specific Media for a mere .. moreLike This | 0 Comments
AT&T announces HTC Status Facebook phone
WatBlog |23 hrs ago AT&T on Wednesday announced a smartphone BGR readers knew was coming — the HTC Status. AT&T’s version of the HTC ChaCha is now officia.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
PayPal Predicts the end of the Wallet by 2015
Mashable |1 day ago PayPal has just hit a new milestone: the payments platform has more than 100 million active accounts.The news, announced by PayPal President Scott Th.. moreLike This | 0 Comments
This Week's Pick
IIT-Kharagpur in US tech theft mess
Mashable Nokia to dump Symbian by 2016
Mashable
Microsoft Office 365 Launches
MashableMost Trending Stories This Week
Kerala could become India‘s new Silicon Valley
Economic Times
Apple re-launching iPhone 3GS in India for Rs 19,990
Economic Times
Infosys sees big opportunities in cloud computing
Economic Times
Google confirms US probe into search business
Economic Times
Bharti Airtel to cut 2,000 jobs
Times of India
Apple files patent suit against Samsung in S.Korea
Economic Times
Peer pressure responsible for juvenile cybercrimes
Times of India
PCs in India may get cheaper by 5%
Times of IndiaYesterday's and Before News
The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC),which looks after online railway ticke booking service IRCTC.co.in, has blocked over 4.6 lakh user IDs and 71,484 email IDs since March 2011 to curb malpractices in train reservations. IRCTC has enhanced its cyber surveillance and has been disabling IDs, which are found to be violating laws."Users of these IDs will no longer be able to book tickets through our website,” P C Bihari, public relations officer, IRCTC has said.
The World Bank will provide Rs 228 crore to promote quality engineering education in Karnataka and 14 engineering colleges will benefit from it, state Higher Education Minister V.S. Acharya said. Ten of these colleges will also be helped financially to set up centres of excellence for research in various fields, he told reporters. The bank is extending the finances as part of the central government's scheme of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme(TEQUIP), intended to encourage post-graduate education in engineering and research, development and innovation, the minister added. Karnataka has over 180 engineering colleges, 14 government and the rest private. Around 60,000 students, several thousand from outside the state, get admitted every year into these colleges.
According to Vic Gundotra, a senior vice-president at Google, the company's latest social networking service called Google+ Project consists of Circles, Hangouts, Sparks and Mobile."Online sharing needs a serious re-think, so it's time we got started," he wrote on the official Google blog while announcing the limited availability of the service. In the lengthy post, Gundotra implies that sharing, or in other words, social networking as we know it on the Facebook is "awkward" or "even broken" because it doesn't give due regard to privacy as well as doesn't allow users to have complete control over their social circle. According to Google, Circle will allow users to create different groups of friends or relatives. This will make sure that the information you share with one set of group doesn't reaches the other group. Sparks will allow users to access the content in which they are interested from across the web through Google while Hangout will allow them to video or text chat with anyone willing to do so. Google's +Mobile will be offered through, initially only Android, smartphones so that users can share pictures taken with their phone within their Circle or post messages to their friends. To those who are interested in trying out Google+, Gundotra said, "We're beginning in field trial, so you may find some rough edges... and the project is by invitation only." The popularity and growth of Facebook, which has over 600 million users, have alarmed Google. While the company still leads in overall search market on the web, Facebook this year has become biggest player in display advertising. According to eMarketer, a research firm, Facebook has over 17% share in display advertising on the web. In comparison Google has a 12.3% market share.
Amid a plethora of social networking sites that cater to only teenagers and adults, there are also a handful of children sites which are well protected from predators.One such site is the Everloop, designed to introduce kids as young as 6 to the world of social networking, reports the New York Daily News. On Everloop, kids can create profiles, chat with friends, play games and upload media, all in closed content 'loops.' These loops are fully enclosed within Everloop, which requires parents to choose which activities their children can participate in on the site. On Everloop, parents also decide who can join their child's friendship loop and who their child can email, chat and even text with the new SMS service 'EverText'. It's security system automatically blocks things like phone numbers, addresses and swear words from being posted to the site. Unlike Facebook, kid-centric sites like Togetherville for young children and Everloop for teens, involve parents in signing-up and monitoring their children's activity. With their stricter privacy rules and requirement of parental oversight over their child's account, these sites help kids improve their socialisation and communication skills. According to Dr Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, author of 'Cybersafe,' while preparing children to be digital citizens is important, "parents shouldn't feel any peer pressure or pressure from their kid," to get them on social media.
The case against IIT-Kharagpur and its affiliate Technology Incubation and Entrepreneurship Training Society (TIETS) for misappropriation of technology of a US firm in the Northern District Court of California has taken a serious turn.Recently, the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) described the technology as "valuable and novel" even before IIT-Kharagpur had access to it. What could further complicate matters for IIT-Kharagpur is the fact that the US court has refused to grant it sovereign immunity (given to countries).IIT-Kharagpur is said to have breached the contract it signed in 2003 with entrepreneur Mandana D Farhang and her affiliate MA Mobile Limited by allegedly passing to others the technology relating to a new platform for mobile computing. Sanjiv N Singh, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs Farhang and MA Mobile, told TOI from the US, "IIT-Kharagpur should be very worried about the Farhang case. The recent authorization by USPTO of a patent describing Farhang's mobile technology and confirming that the technology in question is valuable and novel -- and was valuable and novel as of the year 2000, long before IIT-Kharagpur even had access to it as a trade secret -- confirms that the Farhang case will be a winner and will very likely result in a significant verdict for our client. Moreover, the case has been approved to proceed and IIT-Kharagpur must remain in it as a defendant, despite attempts by it to have itself dismissed from the case." IIT-Kharagpur registrar T K Ghosal did not reply to a detailed questionnaire. He told TOI that the "matter is subjudice and the institute would not like to comment". In the complaint, Farhang's lawyers have made Partha P Chakrabarti, dean, Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy, IIT-Kgp, IIT professors Pallab Dasgupta, Rakesh Gupta, Pravanjan Choudhry, Subrat Panda and Animesh Naskar party to the case by alleging wrongful conduct. Singh said, "There is compelling evidence that agents of IIT-Kharagpur, operating under the direction of and in coordination with Partha Chakrabarti, appear to have misappropriated a US-based company's technology for their own benefit and for dissemination to third parties includingIBM and the Indian Railways." The case relates to 2003 when Farhang and her affiliate entered into an agreement with IIT-Kharagpur and shared a new mobile computing technology. Farhang and her affiliate shared not only critical technology and confidential information with IIT-Kharagpur but also disclosed critical trade secrets relating to marketing, business strategies and various applications for which the technology could be used.
Windows users, don’t you wish there was a vendor-agnostic, one-stop shop for downloadable software? Something with easily browsable categories, ratings, reviews and simple purchase options?Several companies are trying to make an Apple App Store-like software shop for Windows. Yesterday we noted the launch of Pokki, a store that puts mobile-style applets on the PC desktop. Avenue is a user friendly, lightning fast and immediately available option for fully functioning Windows apps.The Avenue App Store from Netvolution gives Windows users a simple way to find and download Windows-compatible desktop applications. Users can browse apps by popularity or by category, and Avenue also shows featured and new apps.Right now, the store includes categories for games, communication apps, reference tools, utilities, multimedia and entertainment apps, and more.“While there are plenty of websites that allow Windows PC users to download software, most target only a specific niche user or are filled with unscreened and unlicensed software,” said Netvolution CEO Matt Smith in a statement.“Avenue is the first centralized marketplace for all kinds of Windows PC software that’s safe and on par with the app stores that exist for Mac and mobile users.”It’s also easy to find a ton of free apps using Avenue; in fact, all the apps we currently see in the store are free. We’re hoping to see more paid software soon, though. It would be great to grab packages for Photoshop, anitvirus software and a screencap recording app all at once, for example.How the Avenue Windows App Store WorksWhen you find the apps you want, you can click to download them immediately, add them to your wishlist or add them to your shopping cart.One thing we love about the Avenue app store is the ease of shopping for and downloading multiple apps with relatively few clicks. Right now, you can add many apps from different publishers to your cart, then click once to download them all.Better still, your Avenue user account will work across multiple PCs, so your apps will be ready and waiting for download and installation when you log in from a new computer.One issue is that the number of apps included in the store is on the low side, but we expect to see that number rise as the Avenue ecosystem matures. The Avenue App Store An App in Avenue Avenue App Store Shopping Cart Purchasing Multiple Apps Downloading Multiple Apps
Google Labs just launched Swiffy, a new web-based tool that allows developers to easily convert Adobe Flash animation SWF files into HTML5. This will allow developers to make Flash ads and basic ActionScript interactions accessible to users on devices that don’t support Flash, like the iPhone and iPad. Swiffy is very similar to a tool that Adobe released earlier this year called Wallaby. The main difference is that Swiffy is web-based, whereas Wallaby is a client that runs on a Mac or PC. Additionally, Wallaby’s code is designed to be edited and reused, whereas Swiffy’s code is optimized and compressed in such a way that makes editing difficult.The Swiffy demo page shows off the power of the tool. In addition to converting basic banner ad animations, click-event interactions can also be converted to HTML5. To be clear, this won’t convert videos, complex animations or games, but the tool meets its desired goal quite adequately.Swiffy takes advantage of more advanced SVG features, which means that the only browsers that support the converted code right now are Webkit-based. That means Safari and Chrome on the desktop and Mobile Safari on iOS will support the converted files.We’re impressed by what Google has cooked up. A web-based conversion tool will be a boon to advertisers who don’t want to have to recreate certain assets for display on Flash-free devices.
Microsoft Office 365, the technology giant’s suite of productivity apps for the cloud, made its global debut Tuesday.The cloud-based software places Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync into the cloud. The product was first introduced last October as Microsoft’s way to bring its popular collaboration and productivity products to the web. Office 365 comes with all of the Office Web Apps (Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint), as well as email support and Microsoft Access. Essentially, Microsoft has created one product for all of its cloud-based productivity software.Office 365 also comes with ActiveSync, a new tool that lets customers access their cloud-based data (email, web apps, websites, calendars, etc.) from almost any device, including mobile phones and tablets. The company also guarantees 99.9% uptime. Executives we’ve spoken with seem confident in the system’s redundancies and the security measures they’ve put in place to protect customer data.Office 365 comes in two flavors: small business and enterprise. The small business version of Office 365 is designed specifically for small teams that don’t want to deal with IT, while the enterprise version is a customizable version of Office with advanced IT configurations, Office Professional Plus, use right controls and more. The small business plan costs $6 per user per month, and the enterprise version costs anywhere between $2 and $27, depending on which features a company decides to implement.As part of the launch, Microsoft will be working with more than 20 different service providers to package, sell and provide support for Office 365. Bell Canada, Intuit, Telefonica S.A., Telstra Corp. and Vodafone are among Microsoft’s launch partners. The company already has approximately 400,000 customers on board from the beta testing of the cloud-based software.Microsoft has been making big bets on the cloud in recent years with products like Azure, but Office 365 is by far the company’s biggest push into cloud software. It faces stiff competition from Google and its Google Apps offering, though.
Hackers have attacked MasterCard’s website in protest of the company’s blockade of WikiLeaks.“MasterCard.com DOWN!!!, thats what you get when you mess with @wikileaks @Anon_Central and the enter community of lulz loving individuals :D,” tweeted @ibomhacktivist, who seems to be connected with the hacker collective Anonymous.Though MasterCard‘s site is currently online, there are reports that it was completely offline at one point due to the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack.In December 2010, hackers took down Mastercard’s website, along with Postfinance and PayPal, for the exact same reason: a WikiLeaks blockade.Shortly after the attack on MasterCard, WikiLeaks acknowledged on its official Twitter account that several banks still won’t do business with the organization. “The unlawful banking blockade against WikiLeaks in 6th month: The culprits: VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Bank of America, Western Union,” said the tweet.LulzSec, the hacker group that wreaked havoc on corporate and government websites in the past two months, recently disbanded. However, the Anonymous hacktivist collective vowed to continue their hacking activities, and we can already see proof that they weren’t kidding.
In the spirit of Google's 'Let's make the web faster' code campaign, there has been a ton of renewed interest around making web and mobile apps faster and more reliable.Really, this is for the simple reason that improved performance of applications means more visitors, higher search rankings, and lower operational costs. As a result, a growing number of app developers and site owners are spending time and money on performance and speed. Luckily, Rigor, a young startup launching today, has come to the rescue to make managing performance even easier.
Mozilla wants your help in keeping the web innovative and open. Today, the organization is launching a new program designed to help spur projects that focus on open web technologies. The initiative is called Web FWD (pronounced Web Forward), and invites teams to spend four weeks working in Mozilla offices, where they'll learn from top experts in web technologies and have access to Mozilla resources. Applications are now being accepted, and the first group of teams will begin working from Mozilla offices in August. Pascal Finette, who heads Mozilla Labs, says that the project was inspired by the success of programs like Y Combinator — though there are plenty of differences. Unlike YC, which takes a modest equity stake in participating companies, Mozilla's not out to make money. In fact, all code written during the four-week program must be open sourced (teams can later fork their code and continue to build their project into a business if they'd like — Mozilla will even make the VC introductions). Mozilla will also consider giving promising products that stick with the open-source model additional funding and resources.
Norway-based Opera has released the newest version of its Web browser today, promising faster speeds, a streamlined and lightweight user interface and several new extensions. Opera has reconfigured its 'Speed Dial' extension. Instead of static thumbnails of frequently-visited sites, now, when you open a new tab, you can embed websites that will update automatically, such as for weather or stock quotes. Opera has also partnered with several startup applications that give the browser a unique flavor in comparison to the competition. Opera's extension partners for version 11.5 include Read It Later, Webdoc, The Hype Machine and StockTwits. Each embeds into the Speed Dial and updates automatically to provide functionality within the browser. Opera has a new password synchronization system through Opera Link that will allow users to port passwords for sites between Opera desktop and mobile browsers. 'We're excited about the work that has gone into Opera 11.50,' said Jan Standal, VP of desktop products, in a press release. 'Before we challenge Lady Gaga though, we've got to surpass the Tom Selleck moustache fan page on Facebook and the number of forum posts Opera fan Tamil has written. We think Speed Dial extensions are amazing enough to do the trick, but we didn't stop there.' Opera claims to have 185 million users. In terms of browser market share, the company is a distant fifth to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari (in that order). Hence, the company likes to have a little fun. The Opera company homepage has a live counter of how many times version 11.5 has been downloaded with interesting milestones revealed when it reaches a new point. The first was 1,908 downloads, correlated to the most people on stilts at one time. It took Opera almost five hours to pass the working population of the Death Star at 1.2 million and is closing in on its next milestone. Opera says that it has fixed ''thousands of bugs and upgraded to our newest core rendering engine.' It also tweaked the 'software graphics engine with faster CSS and SCG rendering' which the company promises makes this version of Opera as stable as it has ever been. For developers, Opera has new core HTML5 support including Session History and Navigation and the W3C File API. In a strictly empirical observation, Opera 11.5 is the fastest browser currently running on my computer. Opening new tabs and windows does not have a lag, Speed Dial loads and updates almost automatically and Gmail is seamless (which I could not say was the case with Firefox 4 or 5). Scrolling with my MacBook trackpad is almost too fast, I have found myself zooming past things I want to read and having to track back. It will take a couple weeks of use, but Opera might have finally pushed its way into my cycle of browsers.
Is there any truth to the belief that U.S. tech jobs are outsourced to India at least in part because Indian developers are better skilled than U.S. workers? According to GILD, a company that combines professional social networking with games that assess skills, there are some areas in which Indians beat their counterparts in the U.S, but there are others in which Americans excel. GILD examined the results of over 1 million assessments taken by over 500,000 developers with an average of 2-3 years of experience. According to GILD: Indian developers outscore U.S. developers by 11% on math and logic analytical skills U.S. programmers outperform Indian programmers on mainstream programming languages including C (US 8% higher), JAVA (9% higher) and SQL (9% higher) U.S. professionals score higher on web programming languages: 53% higher scores on advanced PHP; 27% higher on advanced HTML U.S. tech professionals are 33% better skilled than Indian counterparts at English communication skills In an announcement, GILD CEO Sheeroy Desai said that 'America still holds a strong lead when it comes to web development, but I suspect the gap will narrow over the next few years.'
With only three customers contributing $100 million or more, Wipro needs to gain a larger share of spend from top customers BP plc and GE, as India's third biggest software exporter seeks to catch up with bigger rivals TCS and Infosys who have more clients contributing over $100 million in annual revenues. With only three customers contributing $100 million or more, Wipro needs to gain a larger share of spend from top customers. Infosys has 11 customers contributing $100 million or above in yearly revenues, while TCS has eight such lar GE clients. Wipro gets 20% of its revenues from the top ten customers, lower than TCS' 30% and Infosys' 25%. On its part, Wipro has already started tapping into outsourcing spend by customers such as BP, especially after it acquired SAIC's IT arm. Wipro's efforts in setting this metric right have started showing. In the January-March 2011 period, the company increased its $100 million clients to three from just one. The company also derived annualised revenue in excess of $50 million from 22 customers in FY11 compared to 16 such customers in FY10. General Electric, which outsources IT services worth almost $1 billion, is another large client from which Wipro has been increasing revenues. The company got empanelled with GE in 2009 to start bidding for the company's projects again and has grown this to an over $25 million account since then with plans to increase this to well over $50 million.
The Indian enterprise software market grew by 16.3% in 2010 to Rs 11000 crores, higher than 4.2% growth in 2009, according to research firm Gartner.Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and SAP outperformed their peers in terms of revenue. Microsoft ranked highest as it increased its enterprise software revenue market share in India to 28 percent in 2010. IBM followed suit with its software revenue growing more than 15.3 percent in 2010. IBM expanded dramatically in 2010 into the applications segment with a focus on e-commerce, marketing and sales with more than 20 industry solution frameworks as its "smarter planet" go-to-market strategy evolves. Oracle showed the strongest growth among the top five vendors, as it increased its revenue by 25.2%. Its growth was achieved across all software markets, with faster growth emerging from its business intelligence, security, IT operations, and data integration and quality tools offerings. Among the top 25 vendors in India, VMware led the group with more than 51 percent growth in 2010, followed by Cisco with more than 31 percent. The top 25 vendors accounted for nearly 94 percent share, or more than Rs 10000 crores, of the overall software market. "In 2010, major software vendors expanded their product portfolios, acquired companies where appropriate to their plans, and reached deeper into emerging markets including India," said Asheesh Raina, principal research analyst at Gartner. "The year represented a return to solid footing as the India market expanded in terms of revenue and maturity."
Research In Motion Ltd (RIM), struggling to compete in the smartphone market with Apple Inc and Google Inc, is losing support among some software developers who have been making programs for the company's BlackBerry. Seesmic Inc, a developer of social-media applications, and Mobile Roadie LLC, which makes apps for fans of the Miami Dolphins and country singer Taylor Swift, have decided to stop making products for RIM. Purple Forge Corp, which makes programs for political campaigns and polling, will stop building BlackBerry versions of its apps unless customers request it. "You have to put your resources where the growth is," Seesmic Chief Executive Officer Loic Le Meur said in an interview. "It's coming down to the explosive growth of the iPhone and the Android operating systems." RIM has been trying to build support among developers to fight back against Apple and Google's Android, which have drawn away users with greater varieties of applications. RIM last week said quarterly revenue may drop for the first time in nine years and unveiled plans to cut jobs. The Waterloo, Ontario-based company's share of global smartphone sales fell to 12.9 per cent in the first quarter from 19.7 per cent a year earlier, as Apple gained and Android more than tripled to 36 per cent, according to researcher Gartner Inc. RIM said it continues to increase the number of programs for customers. There are more than 35,000 apps in the company's online store, up from the more than 25,000 in March, said Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman. There are more than 200,000 apps in the Android Market and more than 425,000 in Apple's App Store.
What would Facebook look like without photos of drunken nights out and tales of misbehaving cats? It might look a lot like the internal social network at the offices of Nikon Instruments. The tone is decidedly businesslike, as employees exchange messages about customer orders, new products and closing deals. The general rule is that "if you don't want your company CEO to see it, don't post it", said John G Bivona, customer relations manager at Nikon Instruments, which makes microscopes. As social networks increasingly dominate communications in private lives, businesses of all sizes — from tiny start-ups to midsize companies like Nikon to behemoths like Dell — are adopting them for the workplace. Although it is difficult to quantify how many companies use internal social networks, a number of corporate software companies have sensed the opportunity and offer various systems, some free to existing customers, others that charge a fee per user. It's one more instance of how consumer technology trends, like the use of tablet computers, are crossing into office life. Because of Facebook, most people are already comfortable with the idea of "following" their colleagues. But in the business world, the connections are between colleagues, not personal friends or family, and the communications are meant to be about work matters — like team projects, production flaws and other routine business issues. At Nikon, for example, which employs 500 people in offices throughout the United States, Canadaand Brazil, a code of conduct for using the service leaves little room for the idle chitchat that is pervasive on Facebook.
Google began detailing the reasons behind government requests it receives to remove content from its services and whether or not it has complied.The move was one of several changes made to the Google Transparency Report, an online tool that also shows where the Internet search giant's services and products are being blocked around the world. "We've changed the format so you can now see data on a country-by-country basis," Matt Braithwaite of Google's "Transparency Engineering" unit said in a blog post. "We're also clearly disclosing the reasons why we've been asked to remove content -- such as an allegation of defamation or hate speech," Braithwaite said. Google said it was also revealing the percentage of requests it has complied with, either in whole or in part. "This gives you a better idea of how we've dealt with the requests we receive from government agencies -- like local and federal police -- for data about users of our services and products," Braithwaite said. The updated Transparency Report at google.com/transparencyreport concerns requests made to remove content between July 2010 and December 2010. In Italy, for example, Google said it had a received a request from the Italian police to remove aYouTube video that criticized Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and simulated his assassination with a gun.
Finnish handset maker Nokia announced that it will embed its 'Mobile Money' application across all its handsets going ahead, a move aimed at driving financial inclusion through mobile devices, across the country. The 'Mobile Money' service is aimed at providing the unbanked and under-banked masses, access to financial services through their mobile phones. "As part of Nokia's vision of enabling a broad community with financial services, the application would be available not only on high-end Nokiasmartphones, but also on feature phones and entry level devices," Nokia General Manager (Mobile Payment Services) Gary Singh said. The application can be used to do a variety of transactions like bill payment, money transfer, prepaid SIM top-up, account management and cash withdrawal from Business Correspondents cash-out outlets (registered Nokia stores) and ATMs. One of its latest handsets, X1-01 (a dual-SIM phone) has the application embedded. Currently, mobile operator Bharti airtel offers "airtel money" service, which allows subscribers to pay for groceries, bills and other dues through their mobile phones. The Nokia Money mobile financial services initiative is already being implemented in India through partnerships with Union Bank of India (UBI), Yes Bank, Obopay and a wide range of merchants, retailers and business correspondents, he added. The services, called Union Bank Money and Mobile Money Services (by Yes Bank) are already available in several regions and will be rolled out pan-India in the forthcoming quarters.
There was a time when 'cloud' was nothing more than the result of water droplets suspended above the surface of the Earth. Today, it is a sophisticated term for one of the most-sought-after technology propositions for businesses. For over a decade and a half, cloud technologieshave been quietly transforming our private lives with free and paid online mail and storage services, and more recently with social networking services. Cloud computing involves providing softwarefunctionality over a network from remote servers - possibly located down the street, across the country or on the other side of the globe. It is now a viable business option for corporations and industry, the reasons for which are many: decreased costs, usage-based pricing, increased functionality, improved collaboration and communication, resource pooling, and 'anywhere access' to applications and data. Interestingly, as computing moves to 'the cloud', this major technological shift - as with past innovation leaps - will usher in an evolution in intellectual property (IP) law. This shift will have significant consequences for business IP strategies - especially for software and content companies. Drawing from the aftermath of past technology-related IP rulings, the migration to cloud computing seems likely to drive several top-level trends: Content and technology providers are likely to rely more on technological protections, access controls, secrecy and end-user licensing and a bit less on copyright protection. Migration to the cloud is likely to exacerbate many of the problems that exist today with respect to enforcement on the Internet. Designs and trademarks will become more important, increasing the need to ensure the protection they provide for traditional goods and services also available in the online environment.
Google’s +1 button, the search giant’s challenger to the Facebook Like button, is making its worldwide debut. “Today, +1’s will start appearing on Google search pages globally,” Google Product Manager Nick Radicevic announced on Google’s AdSense blog.“We’ll be starting off with sites like google.co.uk, google.de, google.jp and google.fr, then expanding quickly to most other Google search sites soon after.”In addition to an international rollout on search result pages, Google is expanding its rollout of the +1 button on websites across the world. The company announced partnerships with several publications, including The Telegraph, The Independent, Last.fm, SnapDeal, and El Pais.Google launched the +1 button last month as an attempt to increase its presence on the web. The button acts much like the Facebook Like or Twitter Tweet button. The company says it may use +1 data as a signal for improving search results in the future.
Unlike the company’s previous digital efforts for this age group, the books are intended to be used as primary texts (other McGraw-Hill digital texts have been sold as a companion of physical textbooks). This is the first time a major publisher has launched such a platform.Grade schools and high schools have been slower to adopt digital textbooks than universities, at least partly because K-12 textbooks are traditionally provided by schools — many of which lack hardware to ensure that all of their students can access them.But textbook makers have good reason to innovate in this area. K-12 textbook sales this April — traditionally the start of the classroom curriculum buying period — dropped more than 15% since the same time last year, according to the Association of American Publishers. Digital books might offer one way to help reverse the trend.Polly Stansell, director of product development for McGraw-Hill, acknowledges “it’s a pretty small market if you rely on one-to-one” sales. But she cites rotating carts that some schools have set up to give students computer access at some points in the day — and a trend of allowing kids to bring their own devices to school.McGraw-Hill’s new format, CINCH, is a cloud-based curriculum for K-12 math and 7-12 science. It makes all course materials, which include ebooks, presentations, assessments and animation clips, available from any device with a browser. Students in a class can also participate in Facebook-like conversations that stay with the text. “We’re trying to meet students and teachers where they’re at digitally,” Stansell says.McGraw-Hill will also be launching a new payment model with CINCH: schools will be charged for each student to use the textbooks on a yearly basis. It comes out to about the cost of a workbook for each student.Another publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has taken another tack on making digital textbooks more appealing to the K-12 market. At the same conference, it announced schools that implement its supplemental online product, SkillsTutor, will now be provided with hardware at favorable pricing as a result of a new partnership with Intel and Equus Computer.Also at ISTE, Pearson announced that its digital K-8 program for mathematics and reading would be joining McGraw-Hill’s new CINCH texts on the cloud.
Is the full-screen touch interface for Windows 8 'just a shell' on top of Windows? Not really; there isn't an application running like Media Center that you could shut down and it isn't just a browser – this is another mode for the interface that you can switch in and out of. But it is the browser that powers it.Apps for the immersive Windows 8 interface are written in HTML5, JavaScript and CSS (and presumably, Silverlight – this is the IE10 engine and there's no reason for it not to run plug-ins) and packaged up in an AppX container. In fact, if you dig into the web standards support that Microsoft has added to IE10, it's clear to see that despite the resemblance to the Silverlight-powered Windows Phone 7 'Metro' interface, the layout of this new user interface is the biggest reason for adding those standards now.Windows 8: everything you need to knowOne standard that Microsoft added to IE9, Media Queries, is always suggested as a way to have one web page display appropriately on different-sized screens – not just shrinking the page but reflowing the layout and adding or removing extra details to fit.IE9: Media Queries change the layout of the page as you resize itThe IE Test Drive demo for Media Queries shows a page of pictures optimised for a smartphone, a netbook and a notebook or desktop: the images change size, lose the headline and caption and switch from a grid layout to a stack.That's exactly the same change you see in the News application in the Windows 8 touch demo: when the app is full screen, you get large thumbnails with captions underneath them and the heading for each section has several links.The layout is the same when another app takes up a slice of the screen, but when you slide the News app over so it takes up a smaller area, you only get one image and heading in each section and the images turn into small thumbnails to make room for the caption.It's the same with the video player; as the window gets smaller the video doesn't just get resized – the layout changes with the title appearing underneath it, along with the playlist. That's exactly what you'd expect from an interface based on Media Queries.WINDOWS 8: When the News app is full screen, you get a page of large images…Incidentally, Media Queries let you change the layout of a page based on the orientation as well as the size. So far we've only seen the Windows 8 immersive user interface in landscape format, but we've also only seen it on a breadboxed ARM system that would be pretty hard to pick up and rotate, so it's still entirely possible that there will be a portrait version of the interface.NEW LAYOUT: Drag the video player to take most of the screen and the News layout changes completelyMedia Queries retrieve different layouts and views of the page from the server depending on the window size but getting a flexible layout in the first place takes a combination of three web standards only introduced in IE10 – including one that Microsoft came up with and only proposed to the W3C group that standardises HTML in April.VIDEO THUMBNAIL: Give the News app more room and the video player changes layout insteadThat's the Grid Layout standard, which 'allows us to align content and create regions within an app,' according to Markus Mielke, a senior lead program manager on the IE team – and IE10 is the first browser to include Grid Layout.HOW GRIDS WORK: This IE10 tutorial shows how an app can be divided into regions that align and stretch…Grids can have headers, footers, main sections and gutters to divide areas. You can define the proportions of the areas as fractions of the page and use layers and alignment to position content inside the grid rather than counting pixels. 'If you're familiar with the WPF grid [for laying out applications], some concepts should sound familiar,' Mielke points out and grid is ideal for web apps – including the Windows 8 user interface.START GRID: The Start screen layout uses a grid of tiles…Look at the way the tiles in the Windows 8 Start screen are laid out in grids, with three columns that can have one or two tiles in each cell of the grid, with a gutter between them to mark the edge of a 'page' (like the panoramas in Windows Phone 7 that means you can always see that there's more content than fits on screen). The Photo Feedr app has the same kind of grid layout, with different sized pictures arranged to fit into the grid.PHOTO GRID: …and the Photo Feedr app has a grid layout of thumbnailsWithin the grid layout the elements of an app don't have to all resize or stretch in the same way; that's handled by the flexible box standard (flexbox for short). And when there's content arranged in columns that you want to reflow as the window changes size, that's done by the multi-column standard.STRETCH: As you make the window larger, flexbox stretches the layout but keeps the boxes aligned.The flexbox standard is 'in flux,' Mielke says and it's only just entering the working draft stage, which is about stable enough to fit the IE team's maxim of only implementing standards that are ready for developers to work with. But the multi-column standard he calls 'super stable'; it hasn't changed since the end of 2009, so it could easily have been in IE9 on that basis. It's most useful when you have flexbox and grid layout as well and our guess is that the IE team waited until it could work on them all together in IE10 – so the Windows team could use them to build their interface. RELATIVE: Set the proportions for flexible boxes and different content areas get more of the space in a larger windowMULTISIZE: This IE10 demo app gets different layouts and content details depending on the window size – exactly the same principles you see in the Windows 8 touch appsAnother new standard implemented in IE10 is CSS3 transitions; the new HTML5 SkyDrive photo view uses this to rearrange image thumbnails using subtle animations as you resize your browser window – so the images flow into place rather than jumping. That looks very like the way the tiles on the Start screen flow into place as you scroll sideways.HTML5 SKYDRIVE:Animated transitions rearrange your photos and SkyDrive keeps the aspect ratio (like flexbox)'If you think small you should not forget big as well,' Mielke says of web apps; 'it's not just about small devices, it's also about scaling up.' Similarly the Windows 8 immersive interface isn't just for tablets; we're expecting a variant for big screen systems – perhaps one you can control with Kinect.
We've confirmed the rumors of Myspace layoffs with our own inside source; From what I'm hearing the company expects to lay off at least 150 of its around 400 employees tomorrow (37.5% of its staff). According to the source, another group of around 150 employees will be put on a transition plan, where they will still be laid off but can work with pay for a few weeks while they search for another job.Myspace cut around 47% of its staff back in January and these new layoffs come as Myspace is preparing itself for a sale, which we're hearing will be signed tomorrow and announced on Friday. While there are multiple rumors circling regarding who exactly will be buying the beleaguered social network, the names being tossed around include a bidding group fronted by Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, Buzzmedia, and even LivingSocial.
Rumors have been circulating for the past few months that Yahoo would create its own Apache Hadoop commercialization company to compete with Cloudera. Today GigaOM's Derrick Harris reports that Yahoo will make an official announcement this week. According to Harris, the spin-off will be called HortonWorks, a reference to the elephant-themed Dr. Suess book Horton Hears a Who. HortonWorks is expected to offer a set of high level management tools on top of the Hadoop core, which will also be open source. Harris notes that Yahoo will try to maintain a good working relationship with Apache. However, Harris has reported that Yahoo's relationship with Apache was strained in the past. Competing with Cloudera, which employees core Hadoop developers, could make some uncomfortable. Yahoo has long been a major backer of Hadoop, and has contributed the majority of the current code base. Hadoop creator Doug Cutting worked at Yahoo before moving on to Cloudera. Yahoo is moving into an increasingly crowded space also populated by companies like DataStax, EMC and IBM. Also, LexisNexis just open-sourced a competing big data technology HPCC. Harris writes 'HortonWorks will have to ensure it advances Hadoop development across industry lines and not just in a manner optimized for Yahoo's webscale needs if it wants to gain adoption.' It's still early in the game, but Harris also points out that Hadoop companies aren't producing much revenue yet. 'Cloudera is leading the charge right now with what I've heard is a few million in annual revenue, but that's hardly enough to sustain the amount of investment in Hadoop,' he writes. However, The Wall Street Journal reports that analysts believe that commercial Hadoop could be a billion market.
Extentech has released today a MindTouch Sheetster Add On which means MindTouch users can now edit Excel spreadsheets inline without leaving their environment, all for no extra charge. Here is a quick Video demo of the feature (turn the volume down if you don't want the annoying music track). Sheetster is entirely open-source based where anyone can build a standalone Java app server that serves up dynamic spreadsheets.. This is another alternative to the raft of online spreadsheet data-sharing tools that I reviewed last week.
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