McDonald's to offer free wireless Internet access at its U.S. restaurants!

As McDonald's continues to deliver fast and friendly food service at more than 30,000 convenient locations around the world, you can now enjoy the possibility of staying connected with friends, family and co-workers. Just find a Wi-Fi ready restaurant and you can check e-mail, browse net or chat with your friends while enjoying the delicious taste at the dining table.
All without no extra cost…yeah…according to reports, McDonald's will lift a $2.95 fee that it had charged customers for two hours of wireless Internet access, available at about 11,000 of its 14,000 domestic locations, starting from Jan 2010, McDonald's USA Chief Information Officer David Grooms said in an interview.
The free access comes under a partnership with AT&T Inc., which provides McDonald's stores with wireless Internet.
The service providers provide high-quality Wi-Fi service through several convenient connection options: on-line credit card payment, subscriptions, prepaid cards, or promotional coupons.
So get ready to enjoy surfing and working in your local McDonald's at no extra cost!

Telecom IT Providers to Merge in China...

Beijing-based AsiaInfo Holdings will acquire telecommunications-software competitor Linkage Technologies International Holdings in a cash-and-stock deal worth US$733 million, as reported by Wall Street Journal. AsiaInfo President Steve Zhang said that the acquisition is intended to help the firm sell more products into China Telecom, the country's second-largest telecom provider. AsiaInfo was originally focused on selling to China Mobile, while Linkage concentrated on China Telecom. The new enterprise will provide software and services like billing systems and customer relationship management tools to China's telecommunications giants. According to Goldman Sachs, AsiaInfo held 12% of the Chinese market for telecom IT services, while Linkage held 11%. Competitor Huawei Technologies had 14%.
We have very complementary customer bases. AsiaInfo's traditional strength is with China Mobile, and Linkage's traditional strength is with China Telecom," Steve Zhang said.

Digital Whiteboard for the Kindle!

Luidia, the maker of an interactive whiteboard technology called eBeam, is entering into another screen: Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader.
They are starting-up by launching a system that automatically zaps a copy of notes and scribbles left on whiteboards into people’s Kindle or Kindle DX. It works by turning the notes (captured digitally by the eBeam system) into an image file, and then emailing that file to a Kindle.
Kindles have long had a unique email address to which people can email Adobe PDFs, RTFs, Word documents, pictures and other files. Amazon charges the Kindle owner 15 cents per megabyte. (The Kindle user has to first add the sender’s email address to an approved list.)
The notes capability could help improve the ways students use the Kindle in classrooms, says Luidia. Nearly 90% of Luidia’s customers are K-12 schools, some of which have been experimenting with using Kindles and e-reading technology to lighten the load of students. In theory, a teacher could present a whole lesson and then zap the notes to students or parents.
“We saw the potential not just to read a novel and textbooks, but also have other kinds of content created live in the classroom by students and teachers themselves,” says Jody Forehand, Luidia’s vice president of product planning.
For now, the feature only works with the Kindle, but Luidia says it plans to add the capability to other e-readers.
“Down the road, we would like to have a much better updating mechanism,” says Rafi Holtzman, Luidia’s chief executive. He says the company was exploring options, but he wouldn’t say whether it was working on a dedicated app for the Kindle that lets people access their notes.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Luidia’s technology or on the future of Kindle apps. But apps that extend or go beyond reading are one of the most anticipated additions to e-book readers in the coming year. Kindle competitor Irex has said it would release a software development kit so that programmers can make their own apps for its e-reading device.
The Kindle does, however, have limitations that multipurpose devices like Apple’s iPhone don’t, including a black-and-white screen that updates relatively slowly, and a wireless Internet connection that is “free” to users, except for times (like emailing over a file) where Amazon charges a fee.
But Amazon already sells a Sudoku game that lets you play the mind-benders on your Kindle, and includes the ability to get hints and check answers! -WSJ

iPhone Tries to Crack Korea...

Apple Inc.'s iPhone on Saturday(28th Nov 2009) will finally go on sale in South Korea, a country that prides itself on creating and consuming cutting-edge technology.
Since the announcement of its availability last week, about 40,000 people placed pre-orders for it, causing the Samsung Electronics Co., to slash the price of its most advanced and expensive phone, a touch-screen model like the iPhone called Omnia2.
The iPhone's arrival will also end the control that South Korea's cellphone makers and carriers, including KT, have had on the software that runs on phones. Applications for iPhone will be available through Apple's online service or directly from software makers.
Even so, the iPhone hasn't gotten that popularity in South Korea that it has in other countries and Apple faces a huge market bias for domestic-made phones, mainly by Samsung and LG Electronics Co., which contributes to about 90% of the cellphones.
In Japan, Apple experienced a slow ramp-up of sales after the iPhone became available two years ago. And in China, where Apple last month began selling the phone, sales have been slow due to modifications the company made at the government's request and the existence of a massive gray market.
South Koreans pay the highest prices in the world for cellphones and among the highest for wireless service. The average selling price for Samsung and LG phones is nearly twice as much in South Korea as it is outside the country.
The iPhone is already changing the pricing dynamic. KT will offer three iPhone models under monthly usage plans with charges ranging from 45,000 won to 95,000 won, or about $40 to $80. Depending on which plan is chosen, the iPhone's price ranges from $342 to free.
Samsung responded this week by making its Omnia2 phone free for people who buy an $80 monthly plan on SK Telecom Co., one of KT's rivals. It cut the $900 price on other plans to around $300.
"The most appealing part of iPhone is the variety of applications," In the case of the domestic phones, we ca use only those programs that are pre-installed on them.
A spokesman for KT Corp., the carrier offering iPhone, says it expects the iPhone to sell more quickly than in other countries because Koreans consider cellphones a way to express status and trendiness!

~Palm Takes on Giants in Smartphones ...

Palm, a new entry in the big list of mobile phone manufacturer came up with the all new, first of its kind of a Web-surfing pocket-computer phone 2002.
The team introduced a new generation of smartphones in June with the $199 Palm Pre on Sprint’s network. The second phone in the line, the $99 Pixi, went on sale Sunday.
While both the products got good reviews as per the expectation for being easy to use and great for Web browsing. But in recent weeks, the rival Google’s Android operating system for smartphones took not more than a week to grab the public attention.
Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s chief executive and the former Apple engineer (the first head of its iPod division), said in an interview that Palm does not need to be as big as its rivals to thrive. “One of the key things we need to do as a company is to get to scale,” he said. “We need to bring on more carriers and more regions.”
Right now, it sells phones in six countries and is steadily expanding to others in Europe and North America. Investors trying to read the mood of the consumer are unsure whether Palm will prevail. The volatility in Palm’s stock is a sign of the uncertainty over its ability to challenge the iPhone and BlackBerry. (Palm’s shares bounced up to $12.40 on Friday on speculation it would be acquired by Nokia, a prospect many analysts find unlikely.)
Palm looks particularly small if smartphone applications are compared. Apple’s App Store now has more than 100,000 apps. No other phone operating system comes close, though there are about 10,000 apps for Android. Palm has about 300.
Mr. Rubinstein said Palm would never need as many applications as the iPhone. “We are focused on quality over quantity,” he said. He expects developers will write program code for Palm devices, in part because Palm’s operating system, called webOS, is based largely on the same languages used to design Web sites. Android, by contrast, is based on Sun’s Java language, and Apple uses a variation of the C computer programming language.
While Android is getting a lot of attention because it has attracted so many phone makers, those companies, Mr. Rubinstein, argues “have to depend on the kindness of strangers” — meaning Google — for their software.
“The companies that will deliver the best products are the ones that integrate the whole experience — the hardware, the software and the services — and aren’t getting one piece from here and one piece from there and trying to bolt it all together,”
“We did what we said we were going to do,” “We have done a really good job of laying a foundation for the company moving forward. Now we need to move quickly,” said Mr. Rubinstein.

Twitter ~ Create something that you want to see in the world!

Evan Williams, chief executive of the popular microblogging service, said he's focusing on making the service more useful, not on earning revenue
Mr. Williams founded several companies before Twitter, including the Blogger service that he eventually sold to Google. One lesson he has taken from them all: “Create something that you want to see in the world,” not what some M.B.A. brandishing a business plan suggests.
“I am motivated by the world telling me I am going to fail,” Mr. Williams told journalists gathered in San Francisco.

Even after snagging $100 million in new funding from investors, Mr. Williams seems to feel no pressure to come up with a revenue model for his popular service.
According to him, the company is focusing more on building value using different approach, such as through the new Twitter Lists, which will allow anyone to create a custom list of Twitter accounts that can be shared publicly or privately.
While lists are one step towards taming the chaos of Twitter, a robust search tool is even more important.
In an interview after his keynote presentation, Mr. Williams acknowledged that the current Twitter search engine is too basic and the company has a “significant search team” working on improving it. The next goal is to eliminate the duplicates and other “noise” that come up in most search queries.
Mr. Williams said recently, the company is also releasing a tool for developers Friday that will allow geographic locations to be embedded in tweets.
So there is a lot to look forward in future!

Microsoft ~ reprieve in Word case

Recently, in an appeal the court has granted Microsoft's request to put off an injunction that could have forced it to stop selling its Microsoft Word software next month.
In response to a case against Microsoft, centered on Lucent's claim that Microsoft Outlook's calendar function infringed one of its patents, Microsoft had appealed a court decision from mid-August that gave it 60 days to stop selling Word products that allow users to create custom XML documents.
The ruling, which also includes additional damages Microsoft must pay, stemmed from a patent infringement suit filed in 2007 by i4i. The court has ordered Microsoft to pay more than US$290 million in damages in total.
The most common versions of Word on the market now -- Word 2003 and Word 2007 -- both allow users to create custom XML documents. Custom XML lets people create forms or templates so that words in certain fields are tagged and can be managed in a database. The technology is used by large companies and government agencies.
If the appeals court ultimately upholds the injunction, Microsoft could potentially develop a workaround that avoids using the disputed technology or strip the capability from the products.
I4i's patent covers a technology that lets end-users manipulate document architecture and content. It filed its case in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and the injunction had been set to begin on Oct. 10.
Microsoft said it was pleased with the appeals court decision and that it looks forward to presenting its case at a hearing on Sept. 23.

~NIO- A Bluetooth-based alarm

'Nio', a device that can tell absent-minded technology geeks when they have left their mobile phone or laptop behind is soon to hit the shops!
This device sounds magical but in reality it is nothing but a key-ring-sized box of tricks that emits an alarm whenever a person's device is more than a certain distance away.
The device is the work of a 34-year-old gadget whizz ‘Ben Hounsell’, director of Tenbu Technologies based in Giles Street.
It uses Bluetooth technology to create an invisible wire, and whenever this wire is broken or when the user leaves the phone behind the key-ring emit a shrill alarm sound. The alarm may also make it easy to spot a potential theft.
Nio can be set to go off anywhere between 2 to 25 metres, and it can emit a police siren, a whoop or a Catchphrase buzzer sound.
The name Nio comes from Japan and is named after the fearsome looking statues outside Japanese Bhuddist temples that are there to protect the temple. The names will also appeal to Japanese customers, who are well known for their love of gadgets, especially computers and smart phones.
Hounsell said: “We see this device as a 'gadget guardian' - it's there to protect your device if it gets mislaid or stolen”.
Its creators are said to be in talks to be planning to sell it through Amazon within the next few months, and a number of High Street hardware stores by next year.
The device is currently available on their website www.bluenio.com.

Apps Help Users of iPhones Find Their Way...

Apple's iPhone doesn’t only serve to provide all da functionalities of a mobile phone with computers; it also helps users at the time of need, when they need to know the direction.
With its GPS features with include manual and written driving directions built into its standard Maps application makes it a multi-tasking device.
Apple has just started the application, now, a number of companies have launched, or will soon launch, iPhone apps that do offer voice-prompted, automated, turn-by-turn navigation.
This service is not at all new; many other cellphones have long offered such services. But the iPhone's large screen, decent mono speaker and large selection of car mounting kits make it a tempting navigation device...
There is one problem: Because Apple doesn't allow third-party iPhone apps to run simultaneously with the device's core functions, any incoming or outgoing phone call will interrupt all these apps during routing. When the call is over, the apps will automatically resume and continue your route. And none of these apps work on the original iPhone, only the 3G and 3GS. Some of the apps take up a large amount of space on your iPhone, because they store all their maps locally. Others are much slimmer, because they download the apps on the fly, but these require you to have good cellular or Wi-Fi coverage at least at the start of a navigation session.
This new apps out performs many others at navigation, though they have different styles and features.
Let us have a closer look at the similar application provided by other cellphone makers:
1) TomTom: The U.S. and Canada navigation app costs $100 and takes up 1.2 gigabytes of space on phone. But there is no subscription fee and the maps are always present like a stand-alone navigation device. The drawback being, TomTom's app doesn't have live traffic information, doesn't provide a text summary of your planned route doesn't announce street names and doesn't integrate control of the iPhone's music player.
2) Navigon MobileNavigator: This app costs $90, and it takes up 1.3 GB on the iPhone because it also stores all the maps. There is no recurring fee. The app barks the word "caution" when you are speeding. But the Navigon voice was the least distinct. It also lacks a route summary and live-traffic report.
3) MotionX-GPS Drive: This app cost $1.99 and includes a 30-day free trial. After that, it's $25 a year. This one looks and works most like a typical iPod app, and least like a navigation program ported from another device. Its main screen has a clever menu arranged in a circle. It's also fairly small—just 10 megabytes or so. But it must download maps and other info each time you start a route. This also allows it to update the information on the fly. It is packed with features, including live traffic, a route summary, and integrated music control, but it doesn't announce street names, and its function buttons are very small and labeled with tiny type.
4) AT&T Navigator: The iPhone version of this existing service, like Drive, downloads maps and info on the fly, but it takes up even less space on the phone—just 2.3 megabytes. That means you need a good connection at the start of a trip. Its interface is clean, and it has a route summary, live traffic and announcement of street names. And it synchronizes saved addresses with a Web site. But it is potentially the priciest. The app itself is free but usage costs $10 a month.

YouTube to 'Rent' streaming videos…

YouTube, one of the grade-A, top-line, and biggest websites on the net today is also one of the web's biggest disasters in terms of the revenues it earns.
Reports says, Google will lose about half a billion dollars running the site this year.
Apart from a few ads, there's really no revenue making stream for the impossibly popular site.
To cope up with this, Google has come up with the very idea of ‘renting movies’.
But the idea of doing all of this in the web browser as opposed to, say, Apple's approach, which lets movie renters watch a film on their computer, their phone, or their television via the Apple TV box puts a question marks on the success of this new proposal.
Also the obvious question arises: Who will pay to watch videos online?
According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube is eyeing a $3.99 rental price, on par with the competition and other video-on-demand services. Alternately, some movies may be streamed for free, with commercial breaks or other ad sponsorship.
WSJ cites people familiar with the matter who say that while details vary depending on the studio – some will offer streamed rentals for a fee while others will offer them for free but with advertising – the cost of a rental would likely be around $3.99, the price Apple charges for new releases on iTunes.
YouTube is talking to Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., Sony Corp., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. about charging for new titles on the existing YouTube site. In some cases, these titles might be available on the site on the same day that they come...
On the other hand, YouTube’s Consumers are always reluctant to pay for something they’d formerly gotten for free -- and even when YouTube began to add embedded advertisements to the service, users staged loud and angry mini-revolts. While YouTube has been working on building links with a few key services and products like TiVo, it’s unclear whether paid rentals would be available on any platform beyond the website (where it would be much easier to arrange for payment).
Would the consumers be willing to pay four bucks to watch a movie on a little screen on their computer? Well... maybe, if they were bored at the office and wanted to pretend like they were working!

~Nokia-Facebook Deal…

Finland based mobile phone maker Nokia on Wednesday challenged the iPhone maker Apple, by bolstering its smartphone line-up and announced a new location-based service "Lifecasting" with social networking site Facebook.
The deal with Facebook will allow Nokia users to update their location and status directly to the social networking site via a Nokia Ovi account. The first phone to support the service will be the ‘N97 mini’, which will start shipping to retailers in October at an estimated price before taxes and subsidies of €450 and comes with features such as a QWERTY keyboard and a fully customizable home.
This entire offering is supposed to be an effort to cope up with the fact that recently the company has witnessed a drop in its profit margins over the last few quarters as handset demands has slumped, and at the same time Nokia lagged Apple's innovativeness as the focus of cellphone businesses shifts to services and software. Nokia has been looking for business opportunities in offering services like music downloads or games to cellphone users as the handset market mature, but so far its offerings have been very limited.
Its new Booklet 3G netbook computers, is expected to be available for about 575 euros and run on Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.
With the move to making laptops, Nokia is crossing the border between two converging industries in the opposite direction. (Apple, which entered the phone industry in 2007 with the iPhone)

Nokia to Use Linux-based Operating System!

Finland-based world's largest mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, has plans to challenge its rival iPhone by switching over to Linux OS. It is all set to release a device with Linux operating system inside in favor of its very own Symbian OS this week.
Following criticism that it had failed to come up with a handset to match the iPhone, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, President & CEO of Nokia, said that it was aiming to be "even more competitive”. “We are competitive in the marketplace right now as we speak, and we will make efforts to be even more competitive going forward."
Nokia remains the dominant supplier of smart phones, but its market share has been shrinking, falling to 45% of world-wide unit sales in the second quarter from 47.4% last year, also recently, Nokia's average selling prices have declined faster than the industry average, making high-end phones a crucial product category for the company.
Nokia Executive Vice President of Markets, Mr. Anssi Vanjoki says the new N900 phone with Linux OS, which will go on sale in October (price ranging to about €500 (about $700) excluding discounts), wasn't conceived as a direct challenge the iPhone.
Nokia's main competition with the iPhone is smart phones that use the Symbian operating system. Nokia's move away from Symbian, to the Linux-based operating system will give the new phone a more "PC-like experience," allowing users to run dozens of application windows at the same time.
I think Nokia's move to a Linux-based OS for its smartphone line is a good one since its Symbian operating system has failed to impress new consumers. Symbian is just mediocre compared to web OS on PalmPre or Androidon HTCDream, says Mr Kallasvuo.

India To Become 'centre of gravity' Of IT/ITeS Industry

Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys, has predicted that Indian IT and BPO industry is likely to generate 10 million jobs by 2010, and the country is going to be the “centre of gravity” for the IT sector.
On the ‘Business Implications of a Flattening World’ Nilekani said that Indian companies need to have a global vision to realize the potential of the country.
Nilekani also said that software development in India has become qualitatively better and customers wanted more of it. The global companies have to make a fundamental shift in their strategies by opening up more to markets in India and China.
In these two countries a huge demand for things like mobile phones has been growing and other countries have changed their operations from BPO to leverage this aspect.
With its large pool of young and dynamic population, in future India is sure to become a centre of gravity not only in the field of IT but in every field, given the nation realize their potential and capability!

‘techTribe’~ A Professional version of Orkut!

The increasing popularity of social networking have reached to the level of specialization, and now we have networking sites dedicated separately for cricket enthusiasts, Bollywood buffs, Hindi music lovers, professionals and so on…
The techTribe headed by Rohit Agarwal is one such professional version of Orkut meant for IT/BPO/KPO Professionals, enabling them to use social networking for innovation through ideas, networking and mentorship...
Launched few months back, this site is based on the premise that we can develop a network of professional buddies, colleagues etc who can be a source of help throughout our career. The site can help technology professionals establish their identity¬ based on their background, their achievements, their abilities and specially their network of friends and colleagues (The conception that ‘You are judged by the company you keep’ works here!).
Comparing it with an already available professional networking site ’LinkedIn’ we find that LinkedIn is a place to find professionals we don’t know, while techTribe is a place where we build a network and utilize that network for counseling, guidance or mentorship.
techTribe, works similar to other networking sites, but with a professional look and feel.
We can create an account and start a tribe or join one created by others. The names of these tribes are limited only by our own imagination. Eg. BlackBeltTechies, JackofallTrades, VirtualTeamforSoftwareDev. You can create a blog, add photographs, upload/write articles etc.
The revenue model will be based on corporates who are interested in sponsoring relevant parts of the sites (or maybe relevant tribes), premium membership for paid users or from unobstrusive advertising.
Given the fact that the user base is likely to have a very strong technology orientation, it is possible that many tech companies would pay to capture eyeballs on this site. techTribe is looking forward to get mass membership through corporate alliances with IT companies. They have an early success story with Zensar Technologies, which has announced a partnership to help foster innovation within its developer base.
Moreover, TechTribe isn’t just about social networking, but it moves a step further to leverage the concept of social networking to provide an innovation platform.
“We’re looking to provide India’s innovation platform. We didn’t start techTribe as a social networking venture, we started it and are running it as an innovation platform”, says the CEO Mr. Rohit Agarwal.

Microsoft Planning To Set Up R&D Operations In India.

Tech giant Microsoft is planning to expand its R&D activity across the six functional divisions in India. It is looking towards establishing a separate centre of excellence for its to-be-launched Vista operating system that would work on integration of Vista OS with other systems in a technology environment while also handling migration services.

The India’s development centre of the company at Hyderabad currently consists of around 1,200 employees, of which 500 were added last year. In keeping up with the current rate, it is expected to add 500 more by this year, while the management team has proposed to increase India head-count from 4,000 to 7,000 by the year 2009 only.

India has long enjoyed a reputation as a destination for IT and business process outsourcing. Now, the country is fast emerging as a major center for cutting-edge research and development (R&D) projects for global multinationals such as Microsoft and Motorola as well as Indian firms. More and more companies in industries ranging from IT and telecommunications through pharmaceuticals and biotech are setting up ambitious R&D projects, in part to serve the Indian market, but also with an eye to delivering new generations of products faster to the global market.

Nokia all set to make a mini notebook!

Nokia, the world’s top cell phone maker, unveiled the plan of entering into Notebook (The ‘Nokia Netbook’) manufacturing. It is a revolutionizing decision from Nokia, in a scenario where we can hear of Dell PC makers stepping into mobile manufacturing. It is not unexpected also as the iPhone developer Apple has already entered into laptop manufacturing, though we can’t compare the two as Apple has already produced its notebook while Nokia Netbook is yet to be tested.
Short specifications of Nokia Netbook are: 10- inch screen 2.75 lbs in weight Windows Operating System Wi-Fi ready (rest we can find out only when the product is available in market!).
Since cellular phones business is not doing well in the market recently, it is expected that this new product of Nokia will help the company regain its economic stability.
Looking back in past, Nokia has been telling us that there are hundreds of millions of ppl who are having their first internet experience on the phone, not on pc and their smart phones are actually multimedia computers and those computers need to fit inside our pockets. Their vision and hopes are that we will someday use our mobile phones as our main computers by just connecting keyboard and screen to it when needed!

So would they really make a notebook / netbook?
Nevertheless, Nokia Netbook is one technological development that must be looked forward to. This new development may be an indication that there is still a lot to look forward to in the future with regard to cellular phones and netbooks as well...

Blackberry ~ 'fastest-growing firm' says the business magazine Fortune..

Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of the Blackberry mobile phone, ranks one in the list of ‘world's fastest-growing company’, says the business magazine Fortune.
In the magazine’s latest annual guide to the 100 fastest-growing businesses, Canada-based RIM has come at the top. The second and third place being occupied by US chipmaker Sigma Designs and Chinese internet business Sohu.com respectively.
The Firm growth is measured as a combination of profits, turnover and investment return over three years.
At the same time Apple was in 39th place, while Google came 68th on the list.
Profits at RIM have grown 84% over the past three years, while its revenues have expanded 77%, and it has seen a total return of 45%. The credit goes to the huge popularity of its Blackberry handsets.
It is the first time that companies outside of US have been not only included but ranked first among the 100 fastest-growing businesses.
Revenues at Sigma have seen a rise of 104% since 2007, thanks to increased sales of Blu-ray disc players, and a deal with computer giant Microsoft.

This year five Chinese firms made it onto the list, with Sohu.com, Online computer games website Shanda, reservation agency Ctrip.com, telecom software firm Asia Info and China Medical Technologies being some other companies from countries other than US.
Fortune reports that Chinese firms were benefiting from the country's continuing strong economic growth in the face of the global recession.

Google Lagging behind Yahoo search Engine For some features…

In spite of having made an outstanding image in the field of search engine as a repository of information, Google’s technology seems somewhat lagging behind its rival like Yahoo.
According to comscore Media Metrix reports, when it comes to serving financial news and information, Yahoo draws 17.5 times traffic of Google, and Yahoo Finance occupying the top position for consecutive 19 months.
Google Finance drew only 1.2 million unique visitors while the figure is 21.7 million for Yahoo Finance.
James Pitaro, vice President of Yahoo’s audience group, said, “In our research with users, we found that the more information that was displayed on the page, the greater the anxiety.”
Yahoo adopted “the Apple model — simplicity in design; a clean, simple look, not overburdening our users with too much information on the page.” While Google do not seems to pay attention to these details.
Yahoo Finance is organized into sections: investing; news and opinion; personal finance; customized portfolio tracking; and “Tech Ticker,”
When we click on a link to a news story accompanied by a Tech Ticker video, it starts automatically and gives a warm human presence on the page. The video player is on one side of the page and is stationary; the visitor scrolls down on the other side to read news articles. It provides a multitasking feel. Mr. Pitaro said, “We have a great relationship with the front-page team to identify topics we should cover,”
Google does not use the mostly empty home page to let visitors know that it has a finance site — some may not even know it exists. (To reach it, a user must click on the word “more” at the top of the home page.) But Google’s finance site offers something rather basic that Yahoo doesn’t: free real-time price quotations obtained directly from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
Compared to the total US traffic on all Google sites with the total on all of Yahoo’s, Google edged past Yahoo last year to take the overall lead. Since then, Google has stayed on top, though with only a slim advantage, according to comScore. So finance is an important category that allows Yahoo to remain neck-and-neck with Google over all.
Yahoo understands that a free finance site prospers by drawing less from the world of mathematics and more from the world of entertainment, informing just enough to satisfy users without setting off an anxiety attack.

Apple denies its role in restricting Google’s VoIP Technology…

Google Voice, a free Internet service that uses VoIP technology to link phone numbers together was relaunched as Google Voice on March 11, 2009
It provides new features, like voicemail transcriptions and SMS managing, centralized voicemail and indexable, automated voicemail transcription, accessible by PC or phone making it easier to connect with people, and to manage those connections.Google provides this application to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone.
Earlier this week, we learned that Apple had suddenly begun to pull third party iPhone applications for Google Voice, saying that they “duplicated” some of the iPhone’s functionality. According to reports, Apple has even blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store.
Apple had also rejected Google’s own official Google Voice application submitted six weeks prior, sparking a din of complaints from developers and users over the arbitrary and possibly anti-competitive restrictions being imposed by Apple.
According to a Google Spokesperson, they have doubts over their old friend AT&T and Apple over this restriction. They are doing all this to protect their sacred cash cow. But it looks like the government isn’t going to stand for that any longer.
Federal Communications Commission is looking into Apple’s the matter, and has sent letters to AT&T, Apple, and Google to find out what’s going on.
In response, AT&T Inc. told federal regulators on Friday that it played "no role" in Apple Inc.'s decision to keep Google Inc.'s Google Voice Internet phone application off the iPhone while Apple said that it hasn't rejected the software.
Instead, Apple told the FCC that it is still studying the Google Voice application, but said it has concerns about how Google's application puts the Google brand on Apple's device.
"The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality.”

Google’s rival challenging over its Book Deal…

In October 2005, Google reached the settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, allowing Google to digitize millions of books, which is expected to have huge benefits for minority populations and their access to valuable information.
The Google book settlement, scheduled to be reviewed in an Oct. 7 court hearing, would allow Google to scan and make available scores of books, including millions of out-of-print titles. The digitized books will give minorities and poor people new access to titles that were formerly only available at large university libraries.
According to the Professor Rhea Ballard-Thrower, law librarian at the Howard law school. "Books are the great equalizer." The idea that a student in Boston at a very exclusive private school can read the same books that a student somewhere in an under funded, urban public school, that they can have the same access to the same materials is actually just amazing.
The president and CEO of the Leadership Conference Wade Henderson on Civil Rights say, "This project is part of a larger effort to democratize knowledge. To me, this project is so crucial because it helps to level the playing field at the most fundamental intersection of rights, knowledge and advocacy."
While on the other side, several groups have complained that the settlement could give Google power to monetize so-called orphaned works, books still under copyright protection but for which no one claims ownership.
This settlement has attracted opposition from various corners of the book world. The Department of Justice has also opened an antitrust investigation into the implications of the agreement. Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo had all agreed to join the group called Open Book Alliance that has been critical of the settlement plans to make a case to the Justice Department that the arrangement is anticompetitive.
In response David Drummond, the company's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer said, Google will make privacy a top priority as it develops its Book Search product. The book settlement may not be perfect, he said, but is the result of three years of negotiation and compromise.
Despite several concerns about the settlement, the book project will bring "remarkable" access to blind people, said Charles Brown, advisor to the president of the National Federation of the Blind. People with sight impairments will be able to use text-to-voice and other technology to gain access to millions of new books.

New Play Station 3 now available at $299 only!

Launched in November 2006 in different parts of the globe, PlayStation 3 is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment, and a successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series.
Its unique features being its unified online gaming service, the PlayStation Network, (which contrasts with Sony's former policy of relying on video game developers for online play), its robust multimedia capabilities, its connectivity with the PlayStation Portable, and its use of a high-definition optical disc format, Blue-ray Disc, as its primary storage medium.
Before it launch in September 2006, the 20GB PS3 price was reduced to approximately 420 US Dollars.

Now after almost three years of its release, Sales of the PlayStation 3 seems to have fallen behind its rivals owing to recession and weak game release schedules.
After months of rumors and anticipation, Sony says it's slashing the price of the currently available 80GB PlayStation 3 by $100, now the new price will be $299. It is also launching a slimmer, lighter model in early September that will also cost only $299.
Now video game enthusiasts will be able to buy the new game console — a brand new PS3 with a thinner, lighter shape and a 120-GB hard drive — for $299.
As the new model is expected to arrive by the beginning of September this year, meanwhile, its 160-gigabyte model will drop from $499 to $399. (Both the 160- and 80-gigabyte models will be discontinued once they sell out.)

Positive Feel For Tech Giants…

After some of the positive economic news during the last few weeks, it seems that the tech industry has decided to think positively about the future.
Survey of senior executives at 130 tech companies reveals that Eighty percent of tech companies believes that business conditions will be better a year from now, eight percent of these executives expected revenue to rise next year, and 72% expected increased profits. In all, 57% of the tech execs surveyed expected the economy to have recovered by next year!
Sixty six percent of the tech executives support the thinking that tech industry would recover faster than the economy as a whole, and only 17% believes that it would be later. Companies based on Silicon Valley are more united in the thought with seventy seven percent supporting the thinking that tech industry would recover faster than the economy as a whole.
The thought is supported by the fact that many tech companies make components that will need to be ordered ahead of time, if finished products are going to be available when businesses start buying tech again. And some tech companies that have traditionally sold to businesses are coming out with products targeted at consumers, which could help boost their sales.
According to Matuszak, chair of the information, communication and entertainment practice at KPMG, the tech industry recovered faster from the dot-com bust, although he it is also being said that tech caused that downturn.

‘Mmarket’~ Da One Stop For 480 Million Mobile Subscribers!

US personal computer maker Dell Inc. is entering the smart phone market for the first time through a cooperation deal with China Mobile Ltd., the world's biggest mobile handset maker by subscribers.
China Mobile's online store called Mobile Market ‘Mmarket’, launched Monday, will be offering music, games, videos and other entertainment programs for download to mobile phones. It serves to link handset vendors and application developers to China Mobile's users.
The Mobile Market is specially planned to attract more users to its newly launched 3G mobile service.
Mobile Market supports 10 handset models, including devices from Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., HTC Corp.'s Dopod and Dell brands
According to China Mobile spokeswoman Rainie Lei, Dell's new handset, known as the mini3i, will support applications from China Mobile's online store.
Suffering from stiff competition and pricing pressure, major personal-computer makers, have been turning their attention to a new market for growth. PC makers like Dell, Hewlett-Packard Co., Taiwan's Acer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc., have launched handsets in an effort to diversify their product offerings and launch devices that fetch higher margins.

In this scenario, a site channeling 480 million subscribers into a single mobile app and content store would seem like one of the world's most lucrative properties.
There are a lot of eyes focused on China Mobile right now as it gets ready to launch its Mobile Market venture. The store's site is sort of live now, though it appears to be in a pre-release testing phase with broken links all over the place; the carrier officially says that the service will be available in September, so we'd look to that date before the full force of half a billion individuals gets unleashed on the site!!!