~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.