Larry would be going through the sleepless nights these days for sure. Internet Giant Google’s social networking website Orkut has lost yet another turf to the surge of Facebook. India stands among very few countries where Orkut is still a champion in social networking despite of hard selling by other competitors like ibibo, Facebook.com, Fropper & Twitter. But now anymore.
As per the Comscore, a market research firm, says that Indian users are getting more fascinated towards Facebook due to which Orkut has lost its ground in India. According to comScore, Facebook grabbed the number one ranking in the social networking category for the first time in July with 20.9 million visitors, up 179 per cent versus year ago. Orkut registered a growth of only 16 per cent in the same time period.
“The social networking phenomenon continues to gain steam worldwide, and India represents one of the fastest growing markets at the moment,” says Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region. “Though Facebook has tripled its audience in the past year to pace the growth for the category, several other social networking sites have posted their own sizeable gains.”
On the other side Google is struggling badly to repeat its “search service” success for which company has been failed multiple times in recent past despite having heavy investments & many acquisitions. A recent death of “Google Wave” is an live example of such failure.
However, many analyst feel the heat from the other side of the coin. There is a rumor that Google is focusing with its core towards new social networking website “Google Me“. Some of the recent developments by the company stamp these rumors also. A recent talks with Zygna, developers of online games for Facebook and others, and few recent acquisitions clearly indicates that company is going with great guns for its new social networking initiative. That may be the prime reason Google has lost its focus towards Orkut to avoid in-house competitor for its own upcoming social networking initiatives.
In July 2010, more than 33 million Internet users aged 15 and above visited social networking sites in India, representing 84 per cent of the total Internet audience. While India’s total Internet audience grew 13 per cent, social networking usage rose 43 per cent. This makes India the world’s seventh largest market for social networking. Only US, China, Germany, Russian Federation, Brazil and the UK rank above India. Amongst the top social networking sites, Twitter had the most impressive growth with 239 per cent increase in the number of visitors since July 2009
1. Our Oldest Ancestor, “Ardi” :With her long, elegant fingers, 4-ft. frame and a head no larger than a bonobo’s, it’s hard not to feel a certain fondness for little Ardi, the oldest skeleton of a prehuman hominid ever found. Painstakingly pieced together from more than 100 crushed fossil fragments unearthed in Ethiopia, this female specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, for short) lived 4.4 million years ago and had remained anonymous until 1992, when her fragments were first discovered. After 17 years of research, a team of scientists led by Tim D. White from the University of California, Berkeley, published a comprehensive analysis of Ardi in October, in a series of articles in the journal Science. Among the team’s revelations: Ardi was surprisingly unchimplike despite being the earliest known descendant of the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimps. Also, she was capable of walking on two feet despite living in an area of woodland and forest — a finding that downplays the importance of open grasslands to the evolution of human bipedalism.
2. The Human Epigenome, Decoded : The decoding of the human genome nearly a decade ago fueled expectations that an understanding of all human hereditary influences was within sight. But the connections between genes and, say, disease turned out to be far more complicated than imagined. What has since emerged is a new frontier in the study of genetic signaling known as epigenetics, which holds that the behavior of genes can be modified by environmental influences and that those changes can be passed down through generations. So people who smoke cigarettes in their youth, for example, sustain certain epigenetic changes, which may then increase the risk that their children’s children will reach puberty early. In October, a team led by Joseph Ecker at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., studied human skin and stem cells to produce the first detailed map of the human epigenome. By comparing this with the epigenomes of diseased cells, scientists will be able to work out how glitches in the epigenome may lead to cancers and other diseases. The study, which was published in the journal Nature, is a giant leap in geneticists’ quest to better understand the strange witches’ brew of nature and nurture that makes us who we are.
3. Gene Therapy Cures Color Blindness : Modern science already offers ways to enhance your mood, sex drive, athletic performance, concentration levels and overall health, but a discovery in September suggests that truly revolutionary human enhancement may soon move from science fiction to reality. A study in Nature reported that a team of ophthalmologists had injected genes that produce color-detecting proteins into the eyes of two color-blind monkeys, allowing the animals to see red and green for the first time. The results were shocking to most — “We said it was possible, but every single person I talked to said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” said study co-author Jay Neitz of the University of Washington — and raised the possibility that a range of vision defects could someday be cured. That’s a transformative prospect in itself, but the discovery further suggests that it may be possible to enhance senses in “healthy” people too, truly revolutionizing the way we see the world.
4. A Robot Performs Science :By any standard, it was an elementary discovery — the identification of the role of about a dozen genes in a yeast cell. But what made this finding a major breakthrough was the unlikely form of the scientist: a robot. In April, “Adam,” a machine designed at Aberystwyth University in Wales, became the first robotic system to make a novel scientific discovery with virtually no human intellectual input. Robots have long been used in experiments — their vast computational power assisted in the sequencing of the human genome, for example — but Adam was the first to complete the cycle from hypothesis to experiment to reformulated hypothesis without human intervention. Interviewed after Adam’s experiment appeared in Science, inventor Ross King argued that artificial intelligence had almost limitless scientific potential — and that a computer would one day make a discovery akin to Einstein’s special theory of relativity. “There isn’t any intrinsic reason why that wouldn’t happen,” he said. “A computer can make beautiful chess moves, but it’s not doing anything special. In my view, that’s what’s going to happen in science.”
5. Breeding Tuna on Land :In Australia, a tankful of southern bluefin tuna — regal, predatory fish prized for their buttery sashimi meat — began to spawn, and they didn’t stop for more than a month. “People said, ‘It can’t be done, it can’t be done,’ ” said Hagen Stehr, founder of Clean Seas, the Australian company that operates the breeding facility. “Now we’ve done it.” Scientists believe that the breeding population of the highly migratory southern bluefin has probably plummeted more than 90% since the 1950s. Others have gotten Pacific bluefin to spawn and grow in ocean cages, but by coaxing the notoriously fussy southern bluefin to breed in landlocked tanks, Clean Seas may finally have given the future of bluefin aquaculture legs.
6. Water on the Moon :There is water on the moon, scientists stated unequivocally in November. Gallons of it. On Oct. 9, NASA used a rocket to punch a hole about 100 ft. across the moon’s surface, then measured about 25 gal. of water vapor and ice in the resulting debris. Some scientists speculated that there may be enough water in the craters of the moon’s poles to sustain future colonies of astronauts. Others said the ice could hold a historical record of the solar system. NASA said the first priority was to figure out where the water came from and measure how much of it there is. Meanwhile, the discovery had a more immediate and widespread impact among the rest of us: the rekindling of an old thrill. In 2009, the moon, our recently neglected neighbor, regained her mystery.
7. The Fundamental Lemma, Solved :In 1979 the Canadian-American mathematician Robert Langlands developed an ambitious and revolutionary theory that connected two branches of mathematics called number theory and group theory. In a dazzling set of conjectures and insights, the theory captured deep symmetries associated with equations that involve whole numbers, laying out what is now known as the Langlands program. Langlands knew that the task of proving the assumptions that underlie his theory would be the work of generations. But he was convinced that one stepping stone that needed confirmation — dubbed the “fundamental lemma” — would be reasonably straightforward. He, his collaborators and his students were able to prove special cases of this fundamental theorem. But proving the general case proved more difficult than Langlands anticipated — so difficult, in fact, that it took 30 years to finally achieve. Over the past few years, Ngo Bao Chau, a Vietnamese mathematician working at Université Paris-Sud and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, formulated an ingenious proof of the fundamental lemma. When it was checked this year and confirmed to be correct, mathematicians around the globe breathed a sigh of relief. Mathematicians’ work in this area in the last three decades was predicated on the principle that the fundamental lemma was indeed accurate and would one day be proved. “It’s as if people were working on the far side of the river waiting for someone to throw this bridge across,” says Peter Sarnak, a number theorist at IAS. “And now all of sudden everyone’s work on the other side of the river has been proven.”
8. Teleportation! :Inching our reality ever closer to Star Trek’s, scientists at the University of Maryland’s Joint Quantum Institute successfully teleported data from one atom to another in a container a meter away. A landmark in the brain-bending field known as quantum information processing, the experiment doesn’t quite have the cool factor of body transportation; one atom merely transforms the other so it acts just like the first. Still, atom-to-atom teleportation has major implications for creating
9. The Large Hadron Collider, Revived : It is the largest science experiment ever conducted. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, took a quarter of a century to plan and about $10 billion to build. Housed in a 17-mile underground ring, the LHC has been designed to accelerate particles at temperatures colder than that of deep space to a velocity approaching the speed of light. Beset by a series of hiccups and delays, the CERN scientists on Nov. 29 finally recorded a benchmark achievement, powering up a proton beam to an energy of 1.05 trillion electron volts (TeV), overtaking the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois as the world’s most powerful accelerator. Eventually the machine will power up to as much as 7 TeV, causing collisions of such high energy that they will re-create the conditions in the seconds after the Big Bang. Amid the by-products of these collisions, physicists will be searching for signs of a hypothetical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, which according to current theory is responsible for imparting mass to all things in the universe. Other scientists are hoping for even deeper clues, like confirmation of an ambitious theory called supersymmetry. Let the physics begin.
10. A New Planet (or Brown Dwarf?) Discovered: In December, an international team of astronomers announced that it had spotted a planetlike object orbiting a star much like our sun. The star lies 300 trillion miles, or about 50 light-years, from Earth; the planetlike object is estimated to be 10 to 40 times the size of Jupiter. Using a new planet-hunting instrument on the Subaru telescope in Hawaii, scientists were able to get direct images of this new object — which may or may not be a brown dwarf (a failed star). Although direct images of other solar systems have been taken before, this is the first time astronomers have captured a star this similar to the sun in size and temperature. Scientists say the real surprise is the location of the orbit of GJ 758 B, as the newly identified object was dubbed: it was previously thought that large planets form either closer to or farther from their stars, but not in the location of GJ 758 B, which is about as far from its star as Neptune is from the sun. Alan Boss, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institute for Science who was not involved in the research, said the “beautiful detection of a very low-mass companion to a sunlike star reminds us again how little we truly know” about the planets around nearby stars.
Computers have taken over many facets of our lives which includes activities, which we wouldn’t have let them down a few decades back. One of those activities is letting them trade stocks, bonds and other financial instruments on our behalf. Now when I speak on computer-trading or more accurately algorithmic or automated trading, I am not referring to online trading, which I’m sure quite a few readers of this site is familiar with. Unlike online trading, algorithmic trading are carried out by sophisticated players such as investment banks, hedge funds, pension funds and other institutional investors.
What basically happens in an algo trade is that computer programs are used for entering trading orders with the computer algorithm deciding on aspects of the order such as the timing, price, or quantity of the order, or in many cases initiating the order without human intervention. A special type of such trading is High Frequency Trading, in which very powerful computers (usually supercomputers) make elaborate decisions to initiate orders based on information that is received electronically, before human traders are capable of processing the information they observe.
The magnitude of this type of stock trading is tremendous, both financially and ethically. It is estimated that nearly 70% of all US equity trades are algorithmic in Nature, i.e without a live person actually feeding in the orders. The tremendous increase in computing power means that these algos can can sift through an enormous amount of market data both historic and real time. They can then gauge trends and make buy/sell decision on certain parameters within the blinking of an eye and parse trades in millionths of seconds. These algos incorporate a fair amount of AI so that it can learn from past experience. Since most trading is algorithmic anyhow, some of these programs are cunning enough to detect other algos embarking on predictable trading strategies, and ruthlessly adjust their techniques. They’re growing ever more complex, subtle, and sophisticated. An example of this is Citibank’s “Dagger” a sophisticated algo trained in secret by Citi’s financial and investment experts, is capable of stalking through 20 different markets hunting for anomalies, buying and selling, prowling through mountains of historical data—all at the behest of Citi’s clients. Deutsche Bank also has a similar algo called Stealth and Sniper and Credit Suisse has Guirella. These algos work on arbitrage, statistical arbitrage, trend following, and mean reversion, all complex financial techniques to determine pricing and quantity of trade.
Stock exchanges are also getting into the act, and providing facilities such as low latency proximity hosting and colocation. Since latency can influence the the quantum and timing of information these algos can process, sophisticated investing groups spend a lot of money on the fastest data access from their computers to the exchanges, and that can make a significant difference in the way they make money from these trades. Even though algorithmic trading, bound by certain regulations, are legal, there are certain other types of trading which falls in the grey area of market manipulation. Flash Trading is controversial practice of some financial exchanges whereby certain customers are allowed to see incoming orders to buy or sell securities very slightly earlier than the general market participants, typically 30 milliseconds, in exchange for a fee. Now a 30 milisecond advantage is useless to a humar trader, but not so for ultrafast supercomputers which can execute millions of statistical analaysis and carry out high frequency trading in those precious milliseconds. This is the legal equivalent of “frontrunning”, an illegal activity which allows some traders to access and process information before the market, thus profiting from them.
It is also alarming to see how humans traders are being increasingly taken out of the equation. In a hedge fund startup called Rebellion Research, in New York, which was started in 2007 with $7 Million, a bunch of twentysomething math and computer whizzes designed and maintain a learning algorithm called Star. “It’s pretty clear that human beings aren’t improving,” said Spencer Greenberg, 27 years old and the brains behind Rebellion’s AI system. “But computers and algorithms are only getting faster and more robust.
What makes Star intelligent, says Mr. Greenberg, is its ability to adjust its strategy based on shifting dynamics in the market and broader economy. The program isn’t wed to any single investing approach. Under certain conditions, the fund will buy cheap stocks, in others it will favor stocks with swiftly rising prices—or both at the same time.The program monitors about 30 factors that can affect a stock’s performance, such as price-to-earnings ratios or interest rates.
The program regularly crunches decaded of historical market data and the latest market action to size up whether to buy or sell a stock. When certain strategies stop working, the program automatically incorporates that information, “learns,” and adjusts the portfolio. Every morning, Star recommends a list of stocks to buy or sell—often it offers no changes at all. A human trader implements the moves. The firm says it never overrules the computer program, which is largely the same system they started with in 2007. Star was designed with the simple goal of beating the broader market, something which it has consistently achiever since the firm was founded. Rebellion gained 17% in 2007, compared with the 6.4% gain by the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It stayed defensive throughout most of 2008, holding gold, oil and utility stocks. Still, it lost money like most investors, sliding 26% but topping the 34% decline by the Dow industrials.
In early 2009, Star started to buy beaten-down stocks such as banks and insurers, which would benefit from a recovery. “He just loaded up on value stocks,” said Mr. Fleiss, one of the founders referring to the AI program. The fund gained 41% in 2009, more than doubling the Dow’s 19% gain. The defensive move at first worried Mr. Fleiss, who had grown bullish. But it has proven a smart move so far. “I’ve learned not to question the AI,” he said.
Now just computers are efficient does not mean they’re infallible. Owing to the complex nature of financial markets, where the laws of predictability does not apply, the algos can often mess up and often spectacularly. For instance, on May 6, 2010 a huge crash occurred involving U.S. corporate stocks, followed by an almost immediate rebound. It was the second largest point swing, 1,010.14 points, and the biggest one-day point decline, 998.5 points, on an intraday basis in Dow Jones Industrial Average history. Such loss usually denotes the the start of a depression, but the massacre was over in 10 minutes, and rebounded back to normal levels. Here’s a chart :
Though no particular reason could ever be ascertained, but the most likely being automated trading errors. Despite the fact the automated trading have increased volumes and returns for savvy investors, high frequency trading, without adequate regulations and using leverage or boorwed capital can also can erode wealth and often can be counterproductive to general economic activity. At the end of the day, computers are merely tools, it’s human ingenuity and greed which drives them. Indian exchanges like BSE are also just beginning to enable automated trading, it’s high time that they should stop blindly aping the west and think about pros and cons before they implement, due to market pressures. This activity does not help the small retail investor and they are the people who have propped up the Indian economic miracle for the last 3 decades.
Samsung Electronics is poised to unveil its first tablet PC offering at the IFA electronics show in Berlin, Germany early next month. The rumored nickname for the new device is the “Galaxy Tab,” a la the company’s new Galaxy S smartphone series. Moving further, Samsung has released a teaser video for its upcoming Android based Tablet yesterday.
The 7 inch device which is set to get launch in Berlin on September 2, looks like a direct extension of the Galaxy S series of phones Samsung is currently selling. We’re big fans of the Galaxy S handset, as you can see in our hands-on review of the Galaxy S Captivate.
In addition to a 7-inch multi-touch screen, the Galaxy Tab video also notes that the tablet will ship with Google Android 2.2, a.k.a. Froyo. This is the latest Android variant and the first to include official support for Adobe Flash. The Galaxy Tab teaser also notes the ability to do video calls, which indicates that the device will be equipped with a front-facing camera.
Pricing and detailed technical specifications aren’t available at this time, but with any luck, the Galaxy Tab might just prove to be the first Android tablet with an actual shot at rivaling Apple’s iPad. Apple has already been challenged by many other strong competitors like RIM (BlackBerry) , Microsoft, LG and Dell who are gearing up to launch their own tablets in next few months.
While Microsoft is working closely with Intel to launch Microsoft Tablet, RIM has already announced the launch of “BlackPad” in October. A recent bold statement by LG towards LG Tablet has already served much to Apple for which company would be working with upcoming iPad strategy for sure.
It would be interesting to see next few moves by Apple to counter such detour attacks on iPad market share. What do you think about Samsung and other Tablets’, scheduled to be launch, success. Do let us know in comment section.
To commemorate cell phone manufacturer Nokia’s 15th year in India, Red FM devised an innovative activity. The radio station created a record of sorts by having the maximum number of live callers on a single day airing on Red FM’s network of 47 stations across India. A countdown promo for five days culminated in the activity which took place on the d-day.The promo encouraged listeners to share their Nokia moments on Red FM on that day. And finally on July 30, 2010, all the 47 radio stations of Red FM celebrated Nokia Day for 17 hours at a stretch. Red FM created a programming roadblock for Nokia, wherein all the links were dedicated to the mobile phone giant. Also, Red FM’s popular tagline, “Bajaate Raho”, was changed for the day to Nokia’s tagline, “Connecting People”. A radio blog was also created, through which listeners could post their wishes for Nokia. Listeners who participated in the activity were awarded Nokia merchandise.
” We share the same brand attributes as that of Nokia – which is unique innovations and connecting with people. We were able to elicit spontaneous reactions from people because of the powerful brand Nokia is,” says B Surendar, senior vice-president and national sales head, Red FM. The radio station urged listeners to call and share their favorite Nokia moment with the radio jockeys. Besides, radio jockeys from across cities called each other on-air to share their personal Nokia moments, in sync with the phone company’s tagline, ‘Connecting People’. RJ’s went over to various cities to get people to share their Nokia moments, which were also aired.
More than 3,000 calls were aired on the radio station on the day; the actual number of calls received by the radio station was much higher. Currently, Nokia is running a campaign on Red FM promoting traffic to Nokia’s website, nokiamoments.com, which urges consumers to register their moments. The entire affair definitely comes across as an interesting campaign done on radio.
India’s fifth biggest Telecom Network provider, Tata Tele Services has selected Nokia Seimens Network as technology partner for rolling out its third generation mobile telephony services across the country, reported by Reuters. Financial details of the deal has not been disclosed yet. The roll-out of much-awaited 3G services by Tata Tele will lead to increase in the number of Internet Telephony Service Providers and sharp reduction in International Long Distance call rates due to mobile VOIP service.
RIM is really going through hard time, atleast in India these days. Toughening its stand on Sunday, India Govt has issued an ultimatum to RIM (BlackBerry) to get in-lined with the security concerns and any other proposal would be unaccepted but to install server in India for tracking its messenger and enterprise mail service as the offer made by it to provide data from its Canada-based server could be detrimental to national security.
BlackBerry maker RIM (Research in Motion) has offered its services on the deferred basis after it faced the threat of possible shutdown of the core features by 31 August if security agencies can’t gain access and control over the BlackBerry’s heavily encrypted messaging services.
In order to reach to an acceptable agreement with Indian government, RIM has made a failed attempt where Govt. would hand over the list of BlackBerry phones for which monitoring need to be done and company in turn will hand over unencrypted messaging details of those phones in not more than 10 days. Initially RIM has proposed this exercise manually which later changed to non-human-interaction methodology by cloud based solution. Unfortunately security agencies turned down the proposal scouting over the sensitivity of information and possible hack and leak of those information while getting them access through Canada based server. Even the automated system of extracting information from Canada-based server was not free of danger because the information could be hacked midway, the sources said.
The sources said that RIM officials were conveyed in no uncertain terms that they should deploy their interception server in India with the Indian Service Provider having a definitive tracking system.
Taking serious exception to BlackBerry’s inability to provide a solution to BES, the Home Ministry again wrote to the Telecom Ministry that if the RIM officials in collaboration with the service providers do not come up with a solution to BES, the service should be stopped immediately.
Initially RIM has fished out any possibility of handing over any control or data of their users to any authority. As a response, Indian Government made it clear to company that no service provider or company is over and above the nation’s security and can’t operate in country with their own terms & conditions. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, RIM later offered to work with government to solve this issue where company can hand over the information to gov of those number which need to be monitored. However, the security agencies insisted on a real-time information rather than a deferred one in the interest of national security.
Besides India, Saudi and UAE govt is also looking for the similar solution form the RIM. UAE has set the deadline of Oct in order to block the services, if company fails to incorporate such monitoring services to their security agencies. Due to such threats from multiple countries, company lost $2.7 billion in stocks despite the launch of new BlackBerry smartphone “Torch” due to possible market disconnect from few nations including India and Indonesia, one of the biggest mobile market across the globe.
The BlackBerry makers are racing against time to meet the August 31 deadline set by the Government earlier this month to provide a solution for intercepting the BBM and BES or see the prospect of the mobile phone’s popular services being shut down in the country.
The Government is firm that any proposal of RIM would be accepted only after security agencies are satisfied with the technology of interception.
About 20 million unique online users visited financial and business sites in June this year in India as per the latest data released by the US based Internet research firm comScore. In the same month in 2009, financial and business sites received about 14 million unique users. As expected, 72 per cent of the visitors were male, mainly in the age group of 25-34 years. Afaqs news bureau reported this news saying that the category is led by websites of various banks. The website of ICICI Bank, icicibank.com, was the most visited finance/bank website with 4.7 million unique users in June 2010. The website of HDFC Bank, hdfbank.com, attracted 3.4 million unique users in the same month and was the second most high traffic finance site. The traffic on the State Bank of India website increased by 84 per cent in the last 12 months and got about 3 million unique users in June 2010 as compared to 1.6 million users in June 2009. It was third most visited site in the category. The websites of Citibank and Axis Bank received 2 million and 1.3 million unique users respectively this year.
2.2 million unique users landed on Network18 group’s finance site, Moneycontrol.com, in June 2010. The traffic on Moneycontrol.com has increased by 35 per cent since June 2009. Surprisingly, more than 2 million unique visitors arrived on the Indian Overseas Bank website. Traffic on Bombay Stock Exchange site dipped marginally (2 per cent) and about 0.8 million visitors reached it this year, as compared to 0.9 million last year.
In an official communiqué, Will Hodgman, executive vice-president, Asia Pacific, comScore, says, “With India emerging as a vibrant global financial centre, online finance is beginning to attract significantly more attention and drive more transactions than ever before in this market.”
He adds, “With half of India’s online population visiting a business or finance related site during the month, there is an opportunity to reach and engage financial consumers in a way that was not possible before. Now, financial companies must focus on devising effective digital strategies to help attract and retain these important customers or risk losing them to their competitors.”
How far can you go when your product is almost reaching to its saturation level ? That’s exactly Google is trying to do these days. In order to compete with Facebook & Twitter, which are slowly covering up Google’s source of revenue from ads, Google is trying to produce better way of search results display. Company is trying to flunk the traditional way of search results by testing a feature that displays live-updating search results as you type your search query, no keystroke on “Enter” or “Return” required.
When you try to type something in Google’s search text box, its shifts its location automatically at the top of the page and rest of the page will display the preview of results which will get produced based on your keyword entered by you. As you will type more, results will change automatically in real time. Results are changed to match what you type as you go, kind of like a Firefox page search, Spotlight on the Mac, or Windows 7’s “Search programs and files” field in the start menu.
Currently these live search results are not available to normal visitors as Google has incubated a habit of R&D with its search results. Some of those results come out as a new feature and many never get a chance to get a life. Company tests these feature with very limited set of selective users. Google releases new search features to the public all the time; just last week it launched Google Apps Search, which searches Google’s Gmail, Docs and Sites web apps.
Google makes its money by displaying contextual ads based on your searches. You’d think this would make that more challenging, but as far as we can tell from the video, those ads are updated live along with your search results.
One of the Bloggers Rob Ousbey was fortunate to discover this feature which later confirmed by various many other such “testers” and bloggers. He managed to records a video of this feature, which we have embedded for your preview below :
The war of Tablet PC market is showing no sign of slow down. After enormous success of Apple’s iPad, companies are gearing up to reserve their Tablet market share and as a result, many Tablet were announced in last few weeks by Microsoft, RIM etc. Now it’s LG electronics who jumped into the competition with an open challenge to Apple and much of worries for others.
LG electronics Inc, which has lagged behind in mobile handset market due to late entry of smartphones, plans to launch a tablet computer globally by the fourth quarter under its Optimus line, said Chang Ma, vice president of marketing for LG’s mobile-devices unit in an interview to WSJ. Over and above company also has plans to launch 10 more smartphones and sell five million devices by the end of the year in a scramble to compete with rivals.
In an interview Mr Ma informed that upcoming LG Tablet will run on Google’s Android software with an ability to create content rather than simply reading. This will set LG Tablet apart from Apple iPad which current has an ability only to read the contents. He said that iPad is a great device undoubtedly but he doesn’t do much work on it. “Our tablet will be better than the iPad.”
The tablet will include content focused on creation such as writing documents, editing video and creating programs. It will also have “high-end features and new benefits,” many of which will focus on productivity, Mr. Ma said.
without revealing its launch plan, Mr Ma said that U.S. will be the key market for LG Tablet. He denied to comment anything on whether any wireless carrier will be involved with the distribution of the product.
Currently LG’s position is very precarious in mobile segment. The third largest handset manufacture is facing tough competition in many geography due to local players. Market shift towards smartphones is also one of the major blow to company for which company was never prepared. Competitors like Apple and HTC have thrown LG much behind in mobile segment by having range of smartphones in market.
According to research firm Gartner, company’s share of the smartphone market was 1.2% in the second quarter which further went down due to 31% decline towards LG’s handset unit in second-quarter sales and swung to its deepest quarterly loss in eight years.
Like other handset manufacturers, LG has bet on Google’s Android operating system to revive its fortunes. With recent strategy shit, LG will relaunch its Optimus smartphone line with its flagship Optimus One through 120 operators. While the phone will be LG’s flagship product, company intends for Optimus One to be a “gateway smartphone” for first-time customers.
Besides all company plans to launch devices using Nvidia Corp.’s dual-core processor in the fourth quarter. It also plans to be aggressive with fourth-generation, or 4G, technology, and build a phone compatible with long-term evolution technology by early next year.
Recently RIM (BlackBerry), also announced about its upcoming Tablet called “BlackPad“. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that company is working closely with Intel to come out with one of the best tablet PC ever. After LG, its seems that Apple is going to face some tough competition in next coming months when all tablet PCs will be available for customers to have real comparison and ratings.
With all announcements, expectations and strategy it will be interesting to see upcoming quarters from the company prospective which will carry massive strategy move for the company’s mobile unit. However, road-to-success is not going to be a cake walk for the company as competitors will hold everyone from the neck to make sure their own smooth sailing.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country’s biggest software exporter, is ready to bring out an ambitious project which is also being talked about as group chairman Ratan Tata’s next dream project. The ‘Nano Of IT’ as company’s senior management likes to call, is a cloud offering and is expected to be launched in mid-September. The aim of this project is to make information technology affordable to the country’s 35 million small and medium businesses (SMBs).
Developed by a 250-member TCS team, the cloud offering promises to lower the cost of ownership by 35-40%, compared with the traditional licensing model. Expensive capex investments required in IT will be converted into a monthly subscription model. Pricing per user for the entire IT stack will be Rs 8,000-10,000 per month. The stack includes hardware, networking and software. New customers will be locked in for three years, according to the reports.
The service is expected to be a major growth engine for TCS. Executives expect to raise up to $1 billion a quarter in the coming years from the service, though it is early days yet. Initially, the focus will be on the domestic market, but the firm plans to take the offering overseas later. To begin with, TCS is confident of adding 100 customers every quarter or 400 in a year’s time.
Cloud services, delivered over the Internet, are an on-demand paradigm that can disrupt the way IT services are delivered today. Cloud computing uses virtualisation technologies and can potentially make an enterprise shed all of its IT assets one day — servers, storage, and applications can all be rented as per the requirement from cloud service providers.
The TCS service has been piloted with 75 customers and Ratan Tata is likely to review the project later this month. When officially launched, this would be one of the biggest cloud rollouts in the world, and perhaps Ratan Tata’s last big-ticket project before he retires in 2012 as Tata group chairman.
In the last few weeks, TCS has stepped up partner activities and concluded channel strategy meetings in New Delhi and Mumbai. The company has also hired a branding firm to coin a name for the service.
The Social media industry has a new agenda, that of scaling up to next generation computation. The nature of the industry itself implies that a relatively small number of players control the global social networking eco system and this is leading to a vigorous battle on this front.. Google has been pinched by the core due to enormous rise of Facebook and company barely has anything in hand which can encounter such situation, besides being just a spectator; atleast for now.
On Wednesday Facebook announced another initiative called “Facebook Places” which allows users to disclose their physical location to their friends & relatives. It paves the way for the start-up to become a player in the growing Web business of supplying local information and advertising. However, company has been questioned for their privacy issues which is inherited with the new initiate.
The rollout of Facebook Places follows the launch of quite similar feature by Google and Twitter just few months back. Google Places, based on prior Google business listing, offers web Pages dedicated to local businesses, showing where they are located, street-wide maps and images, and customers reviews of their services and products, be it saloon shop or small restaurant at a corner. Businesses also allowed to advertise through such pages.
With location based service, all three companies are encouraging businesses to open up as much as possible, whether its school, park or some small shop around the street. And all three want businesses to advertise online and potentially target ads in real-time to users of mobile devices, right where they are. while Twitter is still enhancing “Places” to ensure better mean of it service, Facebook and Google is leveraging on existing network and existing business model to ensure best of business.
The launch of Facebook Places ratchest the competition between companies. Unfortunately Google, which is thrived by selling its ads along side of internet search results, is still scrambling to develop a secret social networking like website (Google Me to rival Facebook. People on Facebook may rely more on their friends and known network contacts to disclose their physical location compare to anonymous search results of Google. That’s where Facebook leaps ahead with the real objective and “Places”.
Why So Much Focus on “Places”
whether it is Google, Facebook or Twitter, companies have already sensed a big chunk of revenue from local ad which can be reserved only through local reach and presence. Through Places businesses can publicize their services and products to most relevant buyers while potential buyers can reach to nearby businesses easily. So far, only a fraction of local businesses advertise online. But in an interview Wednesday Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called the local market a “big space.”
Overall, small and medium-sized businesses with 100 or fewer employees spent $35 billion to $40 billion in all forms of local advertising in the U.S. in 2009, estimates BIA/Kelsey, a local-media advisory firm. Matthew Booth, a senior vice president at BIA/Kelsey, estimates that about 1.2 million small businesses in the U.S. already pay Google to appear in text ads alongside Internet search results. The Asian market is at the very early stage but gradually gaining momentum towards such services adoption.
Current Scenario of “Places”
Google, which for years has been amassing business listings, says more than four million businesses have a Place page and “thousands” have paid to have their listing highlighted in search queries and maps for about $1 a day, according to Mr. Hanke. He added that about 20% of Google search queries focused on local places. More than 10 billion search queries were executed through Google last month, according to comScore Inc.
Now Facebook is asking businesses to create a Place page on its site and is encouraging them to advertise their products to users. In addition, Facebook is letting users “check in” at public places using their mobile phones, which can pinpoint their location through GPS () and other means. Checking in allows people to notify friends in their social network that they are at a bar, for example.
Twitter Inc., the microblogging service, earlier this year launched Twitter Places, which allows users to broadcast, or “tweet,” their location, including at businesses, to followers of their messages. Over time, the company is expected to try to line up local businesses to offer deals to users in connection with the feature.
With so many initiates and options it would be interesting to see who will manage to gain the maximum momentum and how far people will inherit the ‘places’ habit with their day-to-day life.
We would like to ask from our readers which company will manage to seal the top place with “Places”. Do let us know your views in comment section
Intel Corporation, world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, agreed to acquire McAfee, a computer security and antivirus software company. Intel has agreed to pay out $7.68 billion ($48 per share in cash) to McAfee towards this deal which has been announced today. The boards of directors of both companies have approved the deal, which is expected to close following shareholder approval and regulatory clearances.
Indeed its a big deal for Intel too specially when it comes to security-oriented software company acquisition. However company feels that with growing popularity of computation, security has been an integral part and its time to have significant observation towards software security which makes its business too.
Intel president & CEO Mr. Paul Otellini said “With the rapid expansion of growth across a vast array of Internet-connected devices, more and more of the elements of our lives have moved online. In the past, energy-efficient performance and connectivity have defined computing requirements. Looking forward, security will join those as a third pillar of what people demand from all computing experiences.”
with impressive financials recently in recent quarters McAfee has stamped positive growth in future. This may be one of the key reason Intel got interested with McAfee. No matter what’s the correct intention behind this deal, one thing clearly stands out: Intel is taking security services & solution very seriously no matter its hardware integrated or software oriented. Intel has always proved itself and that’s why Intel is one of the market leader now.
Despite of takeover, McAfee will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and it will be reporting to Intel’s Software and Services Group.
With growing interest and viewers, Online Video Industry is constantly making its mark in Internet era. However, Online video publishing websites like YouTube, Vimeo has been flooded with millions of Videos and its has become very tedious to find out ‘best of Videos’ at any given time. Analyzing this scenario, YouTube, an online video publisher, has launched “Charts” which ranks “Top Web Videos” to promises to deliver only the best.
This page whcih keep visitors updated on which videos are trending now, which are all-time classics, how various vids stack up against one another and more. Think of it as the Billboard Hot 100 for the world of web video. This feature will cater to those who may not be willing to explore online video but never mind for something interesting. This feature will provide the timely & popular content across the ‘Tube’.
There are multiple criteria based on YouTube Charts filters the Videos. You can have a list of videos that got most views, most views of that day, week, month or all time. You can also filters based on maximum Viewed, subscribed or linked. You’ll be able to see the top 100 videos from each list; that means the YouTube Charts will feature 900 videos and channels (likely with some redundancies) every day.
In order to enhance this feature further, YouTube is soliciting feedbacks from the viewers for kind of features they need to integrate and make it much more valuable for all viewers.
It would be interesting to see a new filter for type of content; for example, what’s the most subscribed comedy channel this week or the most liked music video today? We’d love to be able to search within the charts, and we’d love to see a Charts API for tracking how videos wax and wane in popularity. And although it might be tricky to get various large tech companies to play nicely with one another’s data, it would also be cool to integrate stats from other video sites, as well.
What other options do you think YouTube should add to Charts ? Do share with us in comments section.
The digital arm and subsidiary of DB Corp (Dainik Bhaskar group), i-Media Corporation Limited (IMCL), is gearing up to launch two new websites. As per the afaqs,Gyan Gupta, business head, IMCL reveals that one will be an English language news portal and the other will be an education related website. Both sites are expected to go live by the end of this month. However, the URLs of these portals have not been finalised yet.
The Group would launch a news site in English for the first time, though it already owns and runs Hindi (Bhaskar.com) and Gujarati (DivyaBhaskar.co.in) news portals. Similar to Dainik Bhaskar’s site, Bhaskar.com, the English news portal is expected to be highly focused on state-level or local news, apart from offering national and international news content. The site will also have interactive features such as blogs and forums, as well as features to share content across social media properties.Gupta says, “Local news is our strength. We have figured out that a lot of individuals — who consume content online mainly in English — residing in India and abroad would like to read local- level news of their hometowns. Based on that, we have decided to launch an English language website to cater to the needs of such people.”
Gupta thinks that the English news site would gain popularity among non-resident Indians (NRIs), consumers who stay away from their hometowns and younger people, who want to read local news in English.The hiring of editorial staff for the news portal has been on for last few months. It is understood that a dedicated set of reporters would be roped in to gather and publish news on the English news website. The English news website will be primarily monetised through advertising.
The education website will be focused on career-related information or guidance. To begin with, the site will have information related to various career opportunities, jobs guidance and counselling related to different career options. “Later, we will add interactive and customisation features on the site,” Gupta says.
The education site will be mainly targeted towards users in tier II and III towns and will also be monetised through advertising. However, there are no plans to offer listing options to educational institutes as of now.
