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Garmin Introduces GPS Devices With Hindi Support

Clara Kangare — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:30:47 +0000

The GPS (Global Position Satellite) navigation system has no doubt helped a lot of us in this complicated world of driving and directions. Physical road-maps are the tools of the past and GPS assists drivers in navigating across unfamiliar territory with confidence. Taking into account the amount of time Indians spent on Internet via mobile it is not surprising to come across a report which says, “New navigation device rolled out with Hindi and Indian English language support“.

These two new navigation devices are called 40LM and 50LM and they have been launched by satellite navigation company, Garmin. The devices are priced at Rs 8,450 and Rs 9,990 for nüvi 40LM and 50LM respectively. It is reported that NAVTEQ maps will be used by these two devices. This year itself NAVTEQ has managed to boost its services twice by launching its navigation traffic service across metro cities and by bringing out NAVTEQ Traffic Pro.

After Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Gmail , YouTube as well as Wikipedia supporting Indian regional languages to gain more attention and usage from masses, it is not surprising to see that even navigational devices will now feature Indic language support. In fact, according to one of the sources, “Voice guidance in Hindi will further help in popularising the devices.”

In the year 2009, MapmyIndia brought out Version 3.0 of MapmyIndia maps betting on the fact that the new maps would cover 90% of the pan-Indian population with the most comprehensive and detailed information/directions.

Have you been guided by any of these navigation devices till now? What was your experience?

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Vodafone India Defeats The Odds And Posts A Profitable Quarter

Aatif Sumar — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:21:54 +0000

The Indian Telecom Sector is not an easy industry to be in. Intense competition exists as there are so many players. Further, the Indian Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is one of the lowest in the world, with rates being rock bottom. The TRAI doesn’t help, by making their life difficult with retro-active tax laws, re-auctions of a year old spectrum.

However, in this environment, Vodafone actually made a profit. It hasn’t been an easy road, with Vodafone losing money initially on their huge capital investment in India. Their income tax troubles with the Government compounded this. However, Vodafone Group has posted a 14% Growth in Operating Earnings, which now stands at Rs 9,740 Crores for 2011-12. Factors that have been attributed to this are good growth in voice minutes and a rising consumer base. Compared to 2010-11′s 3.85 Billion Pounds, Vodafone saw a surge in Revenue to 4.26 Billion Pounds. EBITDA too rose from 985 million to 1120 million pounds.

“Service revenue grew by 19.5 per cent, driven by an 11.8 per cent increase in the customer base, strong growth in incoming and outgoing voice minutes and 51.3 per cent growth in data revenue. In India, pricing showed clear signs of stabilisation after a prolonged price war. Our focus on the key growth areas of data, emerging markets and enterprise is positioning us well in a difficult macroeconomic environment. Our commercial performance and our ability to leverage scale continue to be strong, enabling us to gain or hold market share in most of our key markets, and reduce the rate of margin decline,”, said Vodafone Group Chief Executive Vittorio Colao.

We are not so sure of their statement that the ‘prolonged price war’ is over, given the falling 3G rates amongst all operators in India. Nevertheless, it is reassuring seeing a major telecom operator making a profit in our market. It is bound to stem the rising dissatisfaction in Vodafone’s ranks with the TRAI’s attitude toward operators.

What do you think? Will other operators too post successful financial results? Do let us know in the comments below.

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Jury Decides That Google Didn’t Infringe On Oracle Code

Denzil — Thu, 24 May 2012 10:46:40 +0000

In what has been an almost 2 year old case between Google and Oracle over the copyright and patent issues over the use of Java technology in Android, the jury of the U.S District Court of North Carolina has decided in favor of Google in the patent infringement part of the lawsuit. Both the company and Android enthusiasts can breathe a sigh of relief. The case has raised concerns from everyone on what would happen to Android if Oracle won the suit. The patent scenario is very complicated in the Technology business at present and a lot of company are suing each other over alleged infringements.

Source: Slashgear.com

The complication arose soon after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in early January for US $7.4 billion. The Java language and the subsequent framework were created by Sun which was now in Oracle’s hand. Google had chosen Java as a primary pillar in creating its Android platform. They use something called the Dalvik Virtual Machine which translates programs written in Java into a virtual executable files. Dalvik is licensed as open source under the Apache Open Source License. Google says that this is a clean room implementation (reverse engineering) of the Java language and thus it comes under fair usage. It was thus established that Google hadn’t infringed on Oracle patents i.e. U.S. Patent RE 38,104 and U.S. Patent 6,061,520.

Although the jury earlier thought that Google infringed upon the patents, it could not decide unanimously over the fact that Google used a clean room implementation. Some of the codes are indeed similar but they are not significantly infringing Oracle’s patents. The trial has begun as a very doomsday scenario for Google since if Oracle won, the company would have to license the infringing part and thus pay a huge sum of money ($1 billion) for it in damages.

And #Googacle The Trial is over. Judge Alsup dismissing jury. Since Oracle won virtually nothing, no damages phase at this point.

— Ginny LaRoe (@GinnyLaRoe) May 23, 2012

This trial is not over as the Judge, William Alsup has yet to make a decision on whether Google infringed Oracle’s Java copyrights, since the jury couldn’t get to an agreement on the issue earlier. This judgment is likely to be delivered this coming Monday.

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Yahoo Launches New Browser Called Axis For iOS And Desktops

Denzil — Thu, 24 May 2012 09:33:40 +0000

The fact that search engines can devise their own browsers to leverage searches and make it easy for users to get their information easily came to light when Google launched their browser Chrome. Bing picked up by tying up its search with IE. Yahoo was the only other search engine to not have its dedicated browser and used to rely completely on its toolbars embedded in other browsers. Now that has changed with the struggling search giant debuting its own web browser called Axis.

Yahoo’s Axis is a browser which connects seamlessly between your computer, your iPad and the iPhone. This concept is not new since Chrome introduced the same feature after the Chrome 19 update. Chrome also offers mobile sync with its Android app. Yahoo is looking at edging Google by introducing Axis first primarily on iOS platforms. Axis is definitely more visual in nature than Chrome and has a very good UI in addition to its features.

Some of its salient features are:

1. Visual Search: The Axis browser focuses mostly on a more visual kind of search which can easily deliver more information to the user than mere text can. The visual approach is important and many content and search companies are looking deep into it. A prime example would be how Facebook has been focusing more on showing bigger photos and arranging them appropriately in their web and mobile interface. We will give Axis the thumbs up for this.

2. Bing integration: Yahoo’s search deal with Microsoft’s Bing makes Bing the default search provider on Axis. This will definitely drive up traffic to Bing. Both Bing and Yahoo seem to have united to take on Google in the search business. Although the market-share in terms of search may not change overnight, this is a good effort.

3. Yahoo on Mobile: This release brings Yahoo’s services to the mobile in a big way. Google may have conquered the mobile app space because of the proliferation of Android. The mobile device functionality of Axis will be one of the most innovative things Yahoo has come up in the mobile space in some time.

4. Cross-Platform: The most important aspect of any software/service is its cross platform availability. For a service to truly scale and see massive adoption, it is obvious that it needs to support multiple platforms. Axis works on the desktop and iOS devices. Currently, there is no word on Android, Blackberry and Linux support. The desktop support that Axis provides is not strictly accurate. There is no desktop app as such. It is a plugin which you can tie-up with your browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE. The plugin opens up the Axis browser when you are surfing on the browser of your choice. Thankfully, it has been done really well, so it does not interrupt your browsing session in addition to augmenting your browsing experience. You can see more of this functionality in the video that we have posted below.

5. Cross Device Syncing: This feature lets you continue your reading, browsing and research from any of the supported devices. All you have to do is hit the ‘Continue on other devices’ button and you are ready to pick up where you left from on your previous device.

6. No Ads: As of now, there are no ads on the service. Yahoo is probably trying to gain more adoption from users before they try to monetize it.

Here’s the full demo video that Yahoo has provided:

There are some issues though. The Next Web reports that Yahoo hasn’t published any terms/conditions for this product and this is strange since the service requires some very serious user permissions. Secondly, a researcher has found that Axis’ Chrome extension is vulnerable to attack and Yahoo has pulled that extension down for now.

Besides these concerns, we think that this offering is a substantial leap ahead for Yahoo which has not been doing well particularly because of the problems in leadership that it has been facing recently. We hope that Axis gains significant traction and thus provide more options for people who want to access the Internet.

Check it out here: axis.yahoo.com

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Can Gamification Of Concepts Revolutionize The Education Process?

Aatif Sumar — Thu, 24 May 2012 07:05:42 +0000

The World Wide Web is a potent tool, with endless use case scenarios. It lead to emails, which killed traditional post. It lead to online gaming, which killed the video game arcade. It changed the way we bank, shop, and travel. In a country like India, Information Technology and the Mobile Web have affected us the most. Now a large percentage of Indians are connected to the Internet through at least one medium. However, one sector has still been shielded from the dynamic effects of the web: The Sector!

Decade old syllabi, unmotivated teachers and lack of upgradation has meant today’s children learn in school in just the same way people were learning 20 years ago. However, this could all change. There exist some trailblazers who are trying to change the way our kids learn and the way they apply it in day to day life, through a process known as Gamification. Gamification is the use of game design techniques, game thinking and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts.

Today’s students are used to playing games like Angry Birds, where they are graded on how well they complete each level. The more levels they complete and the better, the higher their score. Further, this score can be compared with the rest of their friends. Innovators have attempted to harness this inherent love for games in children, and tried to make them learn something more out of it. One such company is ClassToppers.

With over 10,000 users already, their Social Mission is:

To make learning and studying fun for students and give them more confidence in school.

To save teachers time and make their jobs easier so they can focus on helping their students.

Says Co-founder Jatin Patel,”The game-based software operates on the concept that each learner is different. The software throws up questions in three different ways. Only if the students get it right, can he/she proceed to the next level. There are 35 different analytical tools which track a student’s progress“.

Another name which we cannot miss is the famous Khan Academy. Its a free collection of over 3000 ‘micro-lectures’ has played a large role in bringing Education to anyone, anywhere.

Such innovations in Education can be said to truly make ground-breaking change when our Government acknowledges them and tries to implement them. If Kapil Sibal’s Akash Tablet vision truly takes place, maybe a System can be put into place which is tailor made for Indian school children.

What do you think? Is India ready for such change? Do let us know in the comments below.

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Wipro Launches Free Corporate iPhone App

Denzil — Wed, 23 May 2012 14:10:50 +0000

iPhone apps are really picking up in this country. Wipro Technologies has just launched their free corporate iPhone app for anyone to download and use. Wipro Technologies is the Global IT, Consulting and outsourcing arm of Wipro Ltd.

The app is available in the Apple iTunes store for download. IT professionals (both Wipro and Non-wipro employees) can use this app to access Wipro Corporate News, its white papers, blogs and articles by senior management, press releases, new and events across all its global centres. Wipro Technologies is present in around 54 countries!

Suchira Iyer, Chief Marketing Officer, IT Business of Wipro Ltd. says the company understands the people’s demands for information.

“Wipro Buzz will not only keep our customers up to date with Wipro’s thought leadership but will also help better integration of our increasingly mobile sales and marketing teams. Today, users demand access to information on the go to do their business better and take quicker informed decisions. Wipro understands this need.”

The app sports social media platform integration and users can share interesting news and posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. One strange and seemingly random feature is the built-in route mapping tool and digital pedometer which will help runners keep track of their statistics. Wipro says that they are strongly associated with sports since they sponsor a number of marathons globally. The app caters to a pretty niche crowd. Only serious IT and Tech industry people will download and use it. Nonetheless, the most interesting part is the growing number of iPhone and Android apps that are rolling out of Indian companies. Think of this app like an official website, but only on the phone. That is how all companies will look at it now. The corporate mobile website is probably going to die soon.

What do you think?

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Leap Makes The Near Future Look Just Like Minority Report!

Denzil — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:52:54 +0000

There exists a paradox that we can’t really put our heads around. Does futuristic technology get invented because thinkers/movies/books envision it first or does it get made because there is a logical connection in all this. Maybe we will never know! You must have watched Minority Report and drooled at all the amazing ways in which those guys in the future can control their computers from a distance by gestures. It is popping up all over the place and we last saw such a thing in the Avengers.

We knew this was possible when Microsoft launched Kinect 2 years ago. It was enthusiastically adopted by all the gamers who wanted in on this kind of revolutionary input model. Now, a startup called Leap Motion has announced their low cost interaction tool which will most definitely disrupt the current crop of motion sensing input devices and bring it out for the general public.

Leap:

Their product is called ‘Leap’ and it is surprisingly small and elegant. The Leap is a little bigger than a standard USB pen-drive and connects with a laptop or a desktop. It creates a space of 8 cubic feet where you can manipulate and gesture and this is picked up by the sensor which in turn interprets the signals to deliver the exact response for the gesture on the virtual space. The input can be via your fingers, hands or pencils. Leap Motion claims that the device is startlingly accurate and can take inputs from a sharpened pencil tip which is 1/100 of a millimeter. This signifies an accuracy level at which you can create pixel perfect drawings virtually.

This is the video that has everyone talking:

Leap Motion says that its device can find wider application amongst many fields.

Artists and creative types can use The Leap to emulate a stylus or easily create 3D images.

Anyone can use The Leap to interact with Windows 7/8 or Mac OS X by clicking, grabbing, scrolling and using familiar gestures like pinch to zoom in 3D space.

Users pointing a pen at the signature line of a document to sign it in space.

Engineers can interact more easily with 3D modeling software.

Gamers can play more easily and many will modify with Leap in mind.

Surgeons can control 3D medical data with their hands without taking off their gloves.

We agree! The possibilities are endless. The most exciting part is the fact that the device is on pre-order for $70 (3,863 INR) only! There are limited devices currently, so you might want to hit this link quick and pray that all of them have not sold out yet.

The first shipments will go out this winter after the product is completely ready and tested. In the meanwhile developers are invited to apply for a SDK. If you want to read about Leap and Leap Motion in detail, you might want to check out their About section.

Simple and Disruptive enough to change the world. Don’t you agree?

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Google Chrome Rockets Ahead Of Internet Explorer; End Of An Era?

Denzil — Tue, 22 May 2012 10:08:53 +0000

Browser marketshare has always been the bone of contention among analysts, Industry watchers, frantic bloggers and finally the companies that make those browsers. The companies themselves don’t release any results most of the time and everyone has to depend on a third party analytics and statistics firms to figure out who is doing better. Well, now StatCounter, one such firm has announced that Google Chrome has finally outdone Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in a victory of sorts over the web. This had happened before in the space of a weekend but IE retained its top spot very soon after that. Although this report has not been officially confirmed by either one of the companies, it nonetheless points towards some truth.

StatCounter analyses data from over 15 billion page views around the world. Well, that is a good enough sample size to start an analysis. Now let us go through the details:

Source: StatCounter

Here’s a table on the market-share and the temporary blip that happened on March 23rd.

All values are in percentages

So, it seems that Google Chrome is slowly outdoing its competition. It has managed to leapfrog ahead of Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome is fully open source and at the same time has redesigned the way browsers should look and function. Even, Firefox and IE have been forced to ‘copy’ Chrome’s features because of their popularity.

Here’s why IE has held on for so long! There are two kinds of people accessing the Internet:

1. Those who just login to the first browser they find to check mail and other stuff

The first category were dominant till some years back and the share of Microsoft’s browser rose because it came bundled with Windows (A huge antitrust issue for them back in the day).

2. The current generation of people who have an understanding of all social media platforms, web-apps and everything else the web can do.

The second category of people have literally grown up with the Internet and adapted to it faster. They have a reckoning knowledge of which browser provides what functionality along with the possibilities that an extension/add-on can bring to the table. We can all agree that these days the number of tech and Internet savvy people is on the rise and will soon overtake everyone else. Actually, ‘overtake’ is the wrong word. There won’t be any camps like those shown above. Almost everyone will know about the Internet, mobile OSs, browsers and everything else the Internet has to offer.

A browser or software will only be able to survive and grow its market-share due to innovations and not technicalities. We are excited at the possibility of new browsing paradigms and functionality that will emerge in the next few years. Share your opinions about it with us.

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Popular Instant Messaging Company, Nimbuzz To Shift HQ To India

Alap Naik Desai — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:08:24 +0000

With 24% market share & 1/5^th of its 90 Million users in India, Nimbuzz has decided to shift its global Head Quarters (HQ) here in India. The mobile instant messaging and VoIP company feels an Indian HQ will help it better leverage its position & has already began the re-structuring process.

Why such a decision? India offers a vast opportunity for mobile centric applications & companies. With such a huge mobile population, telecom companies are clamoring to offer new & innovative solutions to retain the customer base. Last week Nimbuzz had initiated an open API for its Messenger with Chat Buddy Developer Program. Nimbuzz is famous for offering automated chat bots that intelligently guide users to get information across various categories like cricket, astrology, shopping, games, and news. With an open API, Indian developers can easily access over 90 Million users across 220+ countries.

Just last month Nimbuzz had also launched location based advertising through its apps. By learning about the users & their location, Nimbuzz can easily serve contextual advertisements about products / offers nearby. While some have already started to offer similar services, it will be the popularity of Nimbuzz that will set is apart from the competition. Users are known to spend about 55 minutes a day on Nimbuzz! Our readers might also recall, Nimbuzz had also launched an e-commerce venture Ncarry.com to sell mobile phones.

With such a high amount of activity in India, it just makes sense to have an HQ in the country for quicker decision making & implementation. What do you think?

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Facebook Shares Gain Traction, But Trading Price Comes Down

Alap Naik Desai — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:08:23 +0000

The hugely anticipated Facebook IPO closed at US$ 34.03 per share and soon its shares started facing the grim reality when the prices dropped by 11% on Monday.

Facebook had set on a course to gain a very high valuation of US$ 104 Billion. Accordingly, it even jacked up its share prices. Though the shares did trade at the announced price band between US$ 34 – 38, it was a different story on Monday all together. A while ago Facebook had sought additional help from many financial institutions to increase the width of the spread. Accordingly, the company’s lead underwriter (Morgan Stanley) was primarily responsible to keep the prices high on Friday, by buying the shares in huge quantities. This was done to prevent a ‘Busted IPO’, wherein share-prices drop below the announced price-band.

There are quite a few assumption of what would have happened?

Quite near to the IPO, some disturbing insights about Facebook were revealed and it was learnt that though Facebook was a preferred medium to socialize, users were wary of the advertisements.

Since advertisements are the principal revenue earners for it, investors may have backed off?

Finally the fact that Facebook’s Billion Dollar acquisition of Instagram will not become useful immediately may have been the final straw.

Facebook’s rise to fame & similarly to monetary glory has been legendary as it has captured the hearts & minds of people across countries & generations. Hence we will have to wait & see a realistic price for the Facebook shares to stabilize.

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Freshdesk Starts A Future Fund To Help Aspiring Startups With Customer Support

Denzil — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:30:07 +0000

We can imagine what pain it might take an early stage startup to manage their newfound customers. If your idea has picked up with your consumers and the buzz has begun then the you will be in a really confusing place. We are assuming that startup guys don’t really have their customer support in place due to more time spent in developing and marketing their product. This can be a serious problem when customers start emailing you about support, complaints and queries. A little mistake or negligence can be a bad PR disaster for a hot startup due to the fact that they are obsessively tracked by many watchers these days.

Freshdesk, the online customer service startup have decided to help all such early startups by setting up a fund especially for them. This fund has been labelled as the Freshdesk Future Fund and Freshdesk seeks to help out the startups by giving out their customer support platform to them for a year for free. According to the Freshdesk’s website, this means a support of almost $10,000,000. Although, this move is very generous of Freshdesk, we are not very sure about the value they have published.

Anyway, moving on, here is what the deal entails

1. The startups should have less than $1 million in revenues and funding.

2. The deal will provide 3 full time agent logins for a year.

3. The fund will only be for 501 selected companies.

4. The fund is applicable globally for a startup which complies with the first criteria.

The offer has some very salient points:

1. Centralized CRM solutions will make life easier for startup employees. Freshdesk supports Facebook, Twitter in addition to the standard email and this will make a lot of difference in CRM efforts by any startup.

2. When working in a startup the budgets are low and the employees are basically spread too thin. This CRM tool will reduce the complications in terms of customer support and help you focus the bulk of your energies in other equally important parts of your business.

3. Superb support means happy customers. Happy customers become evangelists and play a big role in making the company grow in the initial years. A case in point here is Flipkart. Their customer support even in the early years was awesome and it is something they are working very hard on right now too.

Freshdesk is the brainchild of former Zoho Corp. Vice President (Product Management), Girish Mathrubootham who currently serves as its CEO. He spoke about the initiative saying, “Consumers today pick their favorite brands based on the ways the business engages with them. With the Freshdesk Future Fund, we hope to fuel tomorrow’s Virgin, Southwest, and Zappos by equipping today’s startups with the right tools to start earning the love of their customers from day one.”

It is heartening to see companies help out other smaller ventures so that there is a win-win situation everywhere. Freshdesk gets 501 potentially brilliant consumers who will never forget the help they received in the beginning. The said startups can scale their CRM with this tool for a year. All in all, a very good initiative by Freshdesk.

If you are a budding startup that fulfills the funding criteria, then you better email them right away.

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Now An iPhone App To Take Care Of Your Plants!

Denzil — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:57:24 +0000

Hobbies are awesome! They make you take your mind off things and help you relax. In today’s world, everything moves so fast. Many people find it hard to balance between work, family and hobbies. Most of us are unable to pursue our hobbies because of this (I want to write a sci-fi novella!). Well, technology again comes to the rescue to make your life easier! For example: the fine art of gardening which is now practised by very few people (at least in my opinion!). The problems faced in gardening are many such general paucity of gardening spaces, lack of time to check on your garden patch and finally inexperience in terms of wannabe gardeners who want to take it up but find it really difficult. How do you make the whole taking care of your plants part easier?

“There is an app for that”.

Source: Koubachi’s Website

The Koubachi WiFi Sensor is an application which promises to monitor your precious plants and alert you in case things are looking ‘red’. The iOS app comes bundled with a sensor which is supposed to be placed with the plant. These sensor checks all the vitals of the plants by calculating conditions such as sunlight, water, humidity, temperature etc. against the parameters that it has been fed with. Any deviations from the parameters will result in the app giving you an ‘alert’.

This is a really smart application for a very unique niche. The distinguished thing about the application is the fact that it can work for any plant, both the local and the exotic ones. As any gardener will tell you, different plant require different conditions to thrive. The app has a backend directory/encyclopedia which helps it to track various plants and apply the parameters accordingly.

Check out the video which explains the app:

The sensor needs a bit of calibration everyday but will run on 2 AA batteries for a period of 18 months. We are very impressed with this and we are sure that gardening enthusiasts will like it too. The cost for the sensor is 7500 INR (Shipping not included) which is pretty prohibitive when you think of it. You can check the app’s homepage here and tell us what you think in the comments.

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Another 4G Player Quitting Market: Is Government Driving Them Away?

Aatif Sumar — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:30:30 +0000

India’s Telecom Sector has been both a success story and a nightmare for many people. While number of telecom subscribers in India is at a record high, and looking bullish for the future, all is not well. The combination of delays, missed deadlines and inefficient regulation has caused a lot of turmoil. A recent example would be the re-auctioning of 2G Spectrum Licenses that caused companies like Telenor to want to leave the country and Loop Mobile to greatly reduce its operations. The 3G Spectrum was auctioned off at record high prices with lakhs of crores of rupees entering the Government’s coffers. Yet the Roaming Agreement controversy between major operators and the Government took away a lot of sheen and exposed the fact that all was not well.

When we look at the 4G Spectrum, a glum picture exists too. The 4G Auction had taken place in 2010 and a lot of large players purchased spectrum. US Chipmaker, Qualcomm had purchased spectrum in 4 circles, and we know that they are looking for an exit path, with some reports saying Bharti Airtel is trying to take the spectrum off their hands. Now we have news that yet another 4G Spectrum buyer, France Telecom-backed company Augere Wireless is reportedly quitting the Indian Market by selling its 4G spectrum in the two states it holds them. The reason for this move being: Regulatory Uncertainty aka ‘no faith in the Government’.

Investors in Augere Wireless lost faith in their India Operations, and employees in India have been asked to resign.
In a telephonic conversation with the Economic Times, Henrick Stork, CEO of Augere Wireless said, “There is a lot of uncertainty hanging over the telecom sector in India. The cancellation of licences by the Supreme Court, TRAI’s rules for re-auction and the exorbitantly high reserve price, as well as lack of clarity on the new telecoms policy, which was supposed to be unveiled by mid-last year and has not happened yet… all these factors have resulted in our investors stopping funding for our activities here.“

Augure Wireless had paid Rs. 125 Crore in 2012 for the 4G Permit. In 2011 they announced that they would invest close to 300 Crore over the next 5 years in states like MP and Chhattisgarh and had plans for launching in 14 cities by April 2012. However, their investors lost faith in our Regulatory Environment. As their CEO stated, TRAI’s rules were perceived as harmful and unfriendly by their shareholders, causing them to lose faith. Interestingly, this is the first company to be packing up because of a funds crunch. Other players like Telenor lost their licenses and hence wanted to quit.

This is indeed worrisome. Other companies too aren’t very happy. With telecom giant Vodafone threatening to seek international help against the government for yet trying to make them pay $3.5 Billion for their 2007 acquisition of Hutch, one fine day they too might decide that enough is enough. It is not a healthy environment to operate in and it is up to the TRAI to listen to the woes of the players and try to improve the situation.

What do you think? Are operators and spectrum buyers being too fussy or is the TRAI actively making a more hostile environment by trying to mint too much money?

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After Telenor Now Sistema Threatens To Exit India Due To TRAI’s Proposal

mitesh — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:41:49 +0000

Sistema, the Russian oil to telecom conglomerate has threatened to exit India if government accepts TRAI’s proposal to sell CDMA airwaves for more than 4,078 Crore per unit. This translates a 14 fold increase in comparison to what the company paid in 2008. This is serious issue because Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor has also followed in Sistema’s steps and threatened to exit India for the very ‘same reason’.

News of the exit from the Russian operator is a 180 flip as earlier it vowed to continue operations in India after Supreme Court declared one of its license null and void.

One of the senior Sistema official said that there is a lot of pressure on the company to pull out of India, a country where it has already invested $3 Billion. It had purchased controlling stake in Shyam Telelink which was subsequently been renamed to Sistema Shyam. The company is better known to the public as MTS.

Sistema has in the past pushed a petition in the Supreme Court against its decision to cancel Sistema’s mobile permits. There are chances that Sistema can commence arbitration before an international tribunal as the regulation goes against the bilateral treaty between Russia and India. Experts and company officials view the proposed TRAI policy as a coded message to build entry barriers for new operators.

Whichever way the matter swings, Indian policy makers need to take a deep look at the current and proposed policies as India, is now being viewed as a difficult and preferably avoidable investment destination. Due to non-friendly attitude towards foreign companies and the complex investment policies. Policy makers specially in the telecom sector need to quickly draw out a solution which will be favorable for all the stakeholders.

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Does India Really Need Internet Regulation?

Aatif Sumar — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:42:31 +0000

The Internet is growing more and more relevant with each passing day. Even in a country like India, with a large percentage of rural population, people access the internet through a variety of mediums like their mobile phones. With widespread Internet proliferation around the world, the United Nations wants to take certain steps to either regulate the internet or allow governments to regulate the Internet. In fact, in the 66th session of the UN, India made a proposal to control the internet though a UN Committee.

We all remember the Government’s attempts to regulate networks like Facebook and Twitter. Due to tremendous public pressure and ridicule, they reversed their stance saying they were misconstrued. Now, however, even people taking part in running the country are speaking out against Internet regulation. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a Rajya Sabha MP, has written a letter to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in which he asks him to withdraw India’s position of Government controlling the internet.

Calling the move “ill-considered”, Chandrasekhar, In his letter, said, “India must move immediately and reverse its stance at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) meeting in Geneva and ultimately, when further dialogue takes place under the IGF in Baku in November 2012 as well as at the WSIS meeting scheduled in Dubai at the end of 2012. Any fresh position must be subject to wide-ranging public consultation. This policy is against the open, democratic, inclusive and unhindered growth of the internet. It harms India’s reputation, has been submitted without a prior public consultation with multi-stakeholder groups, and therefore needs to be withdrawn “

Bringing up the fact that India’s 800 Million strong mobile internet and 100 Million strong Computer users could be hurt by it, and even India’s image as a vibrant democracy could be tarred, his impassioned letter is a compelling, convincing argument against censorship or Government Control of the Internet, often called the last bastion of freedom.

Let us analyze and see if the Government has a valid stance for deciding that the Internet needs censorship in our country. We are a nation with great diversity, probably one of the most diverse in the world. Because of this, there are always situations where one person or the other’s sentiments are hurt by a statement, a survey, a website or a picture. Mischievous individuals are known to exploit this weakness of ours by stirring up unrest, to meet their singular narrow causes.

The Internet, with its openness and option of complete anonymity, has actually helped people to stir up controversy and affect public opinion. The Government probably wants a system in place by which they can at least try to regulate malicious and inflammatory content without causing a controversy each time they try to do so. However, the flip side of giving the Government this power is the fact that power corrupts. This power of their’s to regulate the Internet can so easily be used to gag social change, stifle innovation or stop anything the Government does not see fit.

Are we mature enough, as a society, to not misuse the Internet? If not, are we ready to give out law-makers the power to prune and fine tune what is available on the Internet for us? It has no simple answer and debates are bound to continue. What do you think? Do let us know in the comments below.

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Pin, Pinner, Pinterest!

Guest Author — Sat, 19 May 2012 04:30:56 +0000

Pinterest is the newest members of today’s top social media websites. What makes it different and exciting to use is that instead of focussing on written content as a means of communication, it allows users to ‘pin’ images and videos onto virtual bulletin ‘boards’ and share them with other ‘pinners’. To help make this process easier, Pinterest has created a simple ‘pin it’ button which allows users to grab visual content from any website and pin it directly onto their boards with just one click. It also automatically displays a link to the original source of the image thereby crediting the creator of the image and possibly avoiding copyright infringements.

The Visual Nature of Pinterest

When on your Pinterest profile, you will have to build a network of followers who will browse your boards for inspiration and ‘re-pin’ images to their own boards or even ‘like’ and comment on them. The simple thought and the visually stimulating content has contributed to Pinterest being one of the fastest growing social media website in history to cross the 10 million unique visitors mark. It secured $100 million in funding from Japanese firm Rakuten. Although it is the latest craze in social media, it is still the beginning and there’s a lot left to be determined. If we are to learn from the downfall of other social media websites in history, we will know to be patient and ride out the craze until we figure out how many actively engaging and genuinely contributive users are actually on the platform.
Originally having gained popularity with women, Pinterest is now rapidly also being used by men across the globe. Although U.S has a massive 83% female user base, Britain has 56% male users, which suffices to say that men are also discovering the benefits of being on Pinterest. Perhaps the appeal of the website is starting to grow beyond just the “wish-list” and DIY nature of the boards to a more explorative tone covering topics ranging from technology and sports to alcohol that men possibly find more engaging.

One of the first Pinterest Brand Campaign

Although the concept is simple and the appeal is irrefutable, Pinterest is still in a nascent stage making it slightly too soon to comment on it’s full potential as a social media marketing tool. Independent pinners, businesses, social media agencies and the likes are still trying to figure out how to leverage it for their brands. Honda was one of the first brands to successfully launch a campaign on Pinterest called ‘Pintermission’ but not many others businesses have followed suit. The good news is that the website is still promising a lot of upgrades, one of which is to launch a more sophisticated version of the search tool. The current search version does not allow location-based searching which makes it hard to track pinners from your country, in-turn making it trickier to benefit from it if you are based in a country like India with a relatively smaller share of users.
If you want to have a look around and see how Pinterest is currently being used, here are some top pinners I would recommend:

Babble – For parents
Martha Stewart Weddings – for brides and grooms
Better Homes and Gardens – for architects, home and horticulture enthusiasts
Nicole Bach – DIY tips to turn your carriage into a pumpkin
Ban.Do – Really stylish and visually strong boards
Instyle Magazine – Fashion, Celebrity Gossip, Beauty Tips
Whole Foods – Recipes, Kitchenware, Healthy Living and more
Travel Channel – World travellers and daydreamers.
Life.com – Photographs capturing the life, style and stories of iconic people throughout history.

This is an article by our guest Blogger, Pooja Shah.

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Pinterest Receives $ 100 Million In Funding From Japanese Company Rakuten

Alap Naik Desai — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:18:54 +0000

The newly emerging social media site Pinterest has received a very healthy fund infusion from Rakuten (Japanese e-commerce company ). It is reported that the company have invested US$ 100 Million. This round raises the company’s value from US$ 500 Million to a whopping US$ 1.5 Billion.

Though this figure is nowhere close to Facebook’s 104 Billion, the site is fast catching up to the social networking giant. Launched two years ago the California-based company has secured close to 20 Million users. Pinterest will be using the funds to co-promote Rakuten by entering into Japan & other 17 markets where the e-commerce company is operational. Rakuten’s CEO Hiroshi Mikitani quips, “We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce”.

The social media company largely relies on users who “Pin” their photographs and images and follow others’ collections. Though the company is jubilant, it has a very difficult task of curtailing the number of malicious activities that are originating there & stop the rapid decline in number of users.

After acquisition of Instagram by Facebook for US$ 1 Billion such lofty valuations have kind of become the norm. With such a promising financial growth will Pinterest be soon acquired by the Social Networking bigwigs?

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UC Browser Number One On Mobango; Still Behind Opera Mini On Other Platforms

Denzil — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:59:56 +0000

The Mobile India is reporting that mobile browser UC Browser, a browser originating from China has managed to gain more downloads from the Mobango App Store. The new browser has seemingly trumped Opera’s nifty offering by 33% more downloads. We will check how the app has fared on other platforms and if it really has the potential to topple Opera from its sweet spot.

Lets look at how both the browsers fare on Google Play:

UC Browser installs: 500,000 – 1,000,000

UC Browser ratings: 10,785

Opera Mini installs: 10,000,000 – 50,000,000

Opera Mini ratings: 266,081

Opera is enormously popular on Android in India due to the compression facility that it offers. Internet infrastructure is not really up to the mark in the country and hence the heavy usage.

We also checked how both of them were doing on the Itunes App Store but there is no install data available, hence we will have to resort to indirect means like Number of rating and the actual value of the ratings.

UC Browser ratings (Current version): 27

UC Browser ratings (All versions): 162

Opera Mini ratings (Current version): 90

Opera Mini ratings (All versions): 1735

We also checked Nokia’s Ovi Store and there was no data on which one was doing better except for the fact that both the browsers had the same 4 star rating. The UC Browser on the Blackberry app store has a 2 star rating while Opera Mini has a 4 star rating.

Mobango is a cross platform app store which has around 8 million users and sees 1 million app downloads on a daily basis. Google Play, iTunes and Nokia’s OVI are much bigger in terms of download and users. So Opera Mini’s number one position is still strong on almost all platforms. This is due to that fact that Opera has tie-ups with major device manufacturers who provide Opera directly on their phones, which are mostly feature phones. Thus, even though UC Browser’s download count might increase but currently it can’t compete with the Mini yet. UC Browser has indeed started gathering steam and is very hot right now. The browser has good webpage loading compression, a similar feature that Opera Mini offers. The Android version had voice commands too!

Check out the video here:

Have you used UC Browser? Share your experiences with us.

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‘In India, A Stunning 97% Of All Searches Take Place With Google’, Reports StatCounter

Aatif Sumar — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:12:36 +0000

When you ask someone about Internet Search, by and large, most people associate it with one name, Google. Other competing search providers do exist, such as Yahoo, Bing and Rediff even Facebook could be a social search engine but Google continues to rule the roost. This holds true in our country too.

The latest StatCounter Report has shown that in India, a stunning 97% of all searches take place with Google. This comes in a country with a severe case of Internet Explorer 6 hangover, and a large number of Yahoo and Reddiff users. It seems like most people still prefer Google as their search provider. Closest competitors are Yahoo with a 1% share and Bing with a share even less than 1%.

To reach such a level of user penetration, Google must be doing something right. Their easy to use, aesthetically pleasing simple interface is what won users over in the infant days of Web Search. However, they have kept innovating. Soon iGoogle came about, by which all your Google Services were tied together on one Home Page.

Now, users can search Google simply by typing into the address bar of most popular browsers. Also, Google lets them easily access GMail, Google Documents, Google Plus and even the Android Google Play Store.

Google’s Search engine is called a continuous work in progress by Google Engineer Ben Gomes. “When I was a new employee at Google (a decade back), we took about a month to index about 50 million pages. Today, the same amount happens in less than a minute. That’s how evolved the systems are and it continues to get better each day,”

Google recently launched Knowledge Graph, which uses artificial intelligence to personalize and improve the user’s search results. With so many innovations and interesting attempts every other day there is no doubt that Google is the most popular Internet company in India.

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Google Boosts Search Intelligence With Knowledge Graph

Denzil — Fri, 18 May 2012 04:30:50 +0000

I had come across an interesting comparison some time back when I read that the supposedly benign Google had an intelligence level of a baboon. Depending on how you view a glass containing a certain amount of water, you could say that this is pretty cool or frightening. Google Search converted us, Internet users, into Information junkies who had an easy access to whatever they wanted to search in the whole wide world. The fact that Google’s primate intelligence was not really enough sometimes because search keywords were not able to zero in on the right word, place or context was a little troubling but we all accepted that this was the best technology could offer. That is changing from now on!

Source: Google

Google today announced the next biggest thing in Search and it is called the Knowledge Graph. The knowledge graph is ambitious project which aims at eliminating the errors in context based results and ultimately hold a total repository of knowledge, just like what Wikipedia is doing. They had a pretty detailed blog post about it on their official blog. This is how it explains what the Knowledge Graph is all about.

“Take a query like [taj mahal]. For more than four decades, search has essentially been about matching keywords to queries. To a search engine the words [taj mahal] have been just that—two words.

But we all know that [taj mahal] has a much richer meaning. You might think of one of the world’s most beautiful monuments, or a Grammy Award-winning musician, or possibly even a casino in Atlantic City, NJ. Or, depending on when you last ate, the nearest Indian restaurant. It’s why we’ve been working on an intelligent model—in geek-speak, a “graph”—that understands real-world entities and their relationships to one another: things, not strings.”

The graph currently has more than 500 million objects and 3.5 billion facts and understands the interconnected complex relationships between these objects. The graph improves search in 3 major ways.

1. Human language is far from perfect in terms of universality and consistency in rules. English is a good standard to adhere to but it does have its own few flaws due to quirky grammar rules and other colloquial or contextual problems. The infusion of intelligence in the search will make it better at deciding exactly what you were looking for.

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Source: Google

2. The graph is located on the right side of your screen and will give you quick and relevant summaries of a keyword. Say, if you are searching for Einstein, it will pick up Einstein’s details like birth, death, achievements along with related people. This is excellent because now you can dig up information for your research project easily and find related terms, people and activities that are related to your keyword.

Source: Google

3. Finally, the graph might help you make interesting discoveries about people and topics because of the way it pulls data from various sources and summarises it nicely. This Search example by Google shows where Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons got the idea for his characters.

So, we are guessing Matt is Bart!

The graph is not just for desktop web users. Google has tailored it to run on mobile devices too. Check this image out.

Source: Google

The feature is currently being rolled out to Android OS 2.2+ and iOS4+ users. (I have yet to see it!)

So how revolutionary is this? Some are saying that it got 1000x smarter! Well, it is pretty awesome not just because of the search associations and results it throws but because of the fact that an artificial virtual engine has become smart enough to understand human context however primitive it maybe at this point. This is the first step towards artificial intelligence making the world easier for everyone who wants to explore it.

Intelligent machines, a web of things and augmented reality! These are the next biggest things to look out for from here on. I just hope we don’t end up in a Skynet like scenario however unlikely that may sound!

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