March Boedihardjo

Nine-year-old mathematics prodigy March Boedihardjo, a local Chinese, who was admitted by the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), will become the youngest college student.From this September, March will join other students who are in general some ten years older than he is, to start university life. The University will specially design a five-year curriculum for March which, when completed, will see him awarded a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Science as well as a Master of Philosophy in Mathematics.March earlier sat for the U.K.'s A-level examination and also the Advanced Extension Awards in mathematics. The boy showed his talent in the former exam by scoring As in mathematics and further mathematics and a B in statistics, while he passed the latter one with merit.Within five years, March will complete the requirements as set out for humanities subjects, such as languages, physical education, computer literacy, religion and philosophy. The university will encourage March to participate in social functions and student and cultural activities held on campus, so that he may experience typical collegiate life.

iYomu.com

New social networking website for grown-ups iYomu.com has announced that it will ask its online community to choose one member to receive US$1 million in the iYomu.com Challenge. After completing a series of puzzles and tasks to earn points, three finalists from anywhere in the world will explain why they should receive US$1 million and how it will change their lives. The ultimate decision will be made by an online vote of the iYomu community.

Next Windows version in 3 years

Microsoft Corp has indicated that its next Windows operating system (OS) should be ready for 2010.A projected release of 2010, if met, would see Microsoft easing the concerns of corporate and enterprise customers who, according to a recent Forrester Research report, are displaying signs of becoming wary regarding Microsoft Software Assurance renewal.According to media reports, Microsoft seems to be trying hard to reassure customers about its development cycle after a recent Forrester study that criticised its business-oriented subscription programme (Software Assurance). The study raised questions about the financial benefits of Software Assurance programme.

search tool for mobile content

Google Inc. is developing a new search tool for cell phones that will allow users to find and purchase mobile content, including ring tones and games, according to a published report.Google has been working for months with content providers such as "large entertainment companies and smaller mobile-media aggregators" to make their material available through a mobile search, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter.According to the Journal, mobile users would go to Google to search for content, such as a particular ring tone and would be provided with links to providers where the ring tone could be purchased.

Yahoo launches Search Suggest

Kevin Lee announced on the Yahoo Search blog the launch of a new feature to the Yahoo website. Users of the Yahoo’s tool bar might already recognize the feature as it has been in use for a while on that application.The goal is to offer some conveniences to users searching on the portal. With a dropdown list of suggestions depending on the keyword, the time spent searching is expected to drop offering users the ability to get the information they want faster. Another goal the announcement states was a resolution to the “brain dead” moments where you simple forget what it was you were attempting to find.

Rediff launches content sharing platform iShare

Rediff India has launched 'iShare ', a new multimedia social content sharing platform on the lines of YouTube and Orkut.The platform allows users to share videos, music, pictures, with an easy to use utility tool, which can be installed on PCs and used to upload multiple files even at low-speed. Users will be able to upload pictures and videos off mobile phones, digicams, camcorders and music from MP3 players.iShare supports multiple formats including mpeg, wmv, avi, etc. and even lets users convert their content into easily web streamable flash format.The main aim of iShare is to link the 53 million Indians worldwide outside India with those within the country. It aims to provide richer context for users to connect, and to bring together users with similar interests and form a vibrant online community.

Yahoo.com is Asia’s favourite website

Yahoo! Inc, owner of the most-visited web site in the US, is also the most popular in Asia, according to a survey of 10 markets in the region by research company ComScore Inc.The company had the most popular web sites in Japan, India, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.Microsoft Corp and Google Inc have the region’s second- and third-most popular sites, Reston, Virginia- based ComScore said on its web site.Asia has drawn increased investment from US web companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft and Google as they look to win users in the region’s fast growing economies such as China and India.Ten percent of the population in the Asian markets surveyed uses the Internet at home or work, lagging behind the worldwide rate of 16%, ComScore said. South Korea has the highest rate of Internet usage at 65% of its population, followed by Australia with 62%, New Zealand with 60%, and Hong Kong’s 59%.India and China are at the bottom of the list with rates of 3% and 9%, respectively, according to ComScore.

Yahoo! brings your city up close and personal

Urban skylines are changing in India - in cyberspace too. Global Internet services company Yahoo! Inc - headquartered in Sunnyvale, California - has launched a new series of networks covering urban Indian areas in cyberspace.Called Our City, this three-month-old network is 'a dynamic representation of content created by you and everyone else'.Yahoo!'s new venture in India collects online content on the city from various sources and presents it in a dynamic manner. Our City (http://in.ourcity.yahoo.com) is in the experimental Beta version so far and Yahoo! says that it plans to continue to add more features and city versions.India is playing a significant role in this new venture from the cyber-giant firm known for its web portal, search engine, the Yahoo! directory, Yahoo! mail, news and posting.

Cyber criminals rely on mind games

McAfee has announced the results of a groundbreaking study that details the psychological games and other tactics cyber criminals use in social engineering scams propagated through junk email.In the study titled "Mind Games", the primary author, Dr James Blascovich, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, offers analyses of multiple common scam emails and provides surprising insights into how cyber criminals use fear, greed and lust to methodically steal personal and proprietary financial information.The same psychological practices used by cyber criminals were also investigated in a European report, commissioned by McAfee in association with leading forensic psychologist, Professor Clive Hollin, based at University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.

Blog`, `wiki` top list of hated Internet words

"Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published.Topping the list of words most likely to make web users "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard" was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system."Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth."Cookie", a file sent to a user's computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while "wiki", a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.British pollsters YouGov questioned 2,091 adults earlier this month for the poll commissioned by the Lulu Blooker Prize, a literary award for books"Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published.Topping the list of words most likely to make web users "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard" was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system."Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth."Cookie", a file sent to a user's computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while "wiki", a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.British pollsters YouGov questioned 2,091 adults earlier this month for the poll commissioned by the Lulu Blooker Prize, a literary award for books.

Social networkers lack loyalty

Social networking users tend to get around, as they say, and not stay faithful to one network according to a new study.The report -- Web 2.0 & the New Net -- by research group Parks Associates found that MySpace users are chronically unfaithful. The survey found that nearly 40 percent of MySpace users keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook.Meanwhile, loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is even lower, with more than 50 percent of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles.A straw poll in the offices of ENN matched this pattern with roughly half staying loyal to one social network while the remainder had multiple accounts.According to Parks these trends highlight a peculiar aspect of the market for social networking services. The report found that nearly half of all social networkers regularly use more than one site while one in six use three or more.Parks said the result of its findings is that users are operating in an increasingly interlinked online environment, which is tied together by links, widgets.

youtube

YouTube is reaching beyond its U.S. borders, introducing a number of international sites that could help extend its advertising reach but could also open the popular online video site to more copyright complaints. The company said it will open sites in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom, with more to come.The global sites could help YouTube better tailor advertising on its site. More than half of its traffic comes from outside the United States and its clips come from around the globe. By setting up dedicated sites for each country -- as Google has -- advertisers could design their ads for a specific audience.
e

personal search

Google is to cut the length of time it holds users' personal search data.The European advisory body, called Article 29, said Google's current data retention practices could be breaking European privacy laws.The search giant has said it will now keep personally identifiable search data for 18 months rather than the previous period of 18 to 24 months.

you tube

Google-owned video sharing site, YouTube will be available on mobile phones next year.commuters on subways or buses are likely to access videos of between 30 to 60 seconds each, while people traveling on longer train journeys would probably go for files of up to ten minutes in length.Within a year of launch, they sold the Web site to Google for $1.65 billion.

personal computer

The personal computer (PC) market in India witnessed 20% growth in unit shipments in fiscal 2006-07, according to IDC. With this, the total installed base of PCs in India grew to more than 22 million, which means a PC for every 50 Indians.
At the year-end, HP retained the top spot with a market share of 21.2%, followed by HCL at 13.5% and Lenovo at 9.5%, in terms of unit shipments of both desktops and notebooks. In commercial desktop PC shipments, HCL led the market, followed by HP and Lenovo, whereas in consumer desktop PC shipments, HP was the leader, followed by HCL and Zenith.In terms of total desktop PC shipments also HP led the market, with HCL and Lenovo coming at second and third spots, respectively. In the notebook PC market, HP retained the top spot with a market share of 39.6%. Lenovo came in at the second spot with 17.6% market share and Toshiba climbed up to take the third spot replacing Dell.Overall client the installed base of PCs registered a CAGR of 32.3% up from 9.5 million in 2003 to cross 22 million in 2006, thereby more than doubling in a three-year time frame.
.

ancient Rome

Computer experts unveiled a digital reproduction of ancient Rome that simulates the ancient city over a span of several centuries.The simulation allows visitors to crawl through the bowels of the Colosseum, lined with lion cages, and fly up to circle the bas-reliefs and inscriptions on top of its arches at a time when the building was untouched by time.It cost more than $2 million US and took 10 years to create the digital model, said Bernard Frischer of the University of Virginia, who led the project.

Mobile TV

The handset - Nokia N92 - is the world's first DVB-H enabled device that would support LIVE Broadcast Mobile TV, Nokia said in a statement here.The public broadcaster Doordarshan had recently launched Mobile TV services in Delhi. The service currently comprises eight Free-to-Air Doordarshan channels including DD National, DD News and DD Sports supported on DVB-H compliant handsets, it said. According to industry figures, mobile content is likely to contribute to about 30 per cent of the revenues for the broadcasters. The mobile phone market in the country is also expected to touch 348 million by 2010.

orkut

Shiv Sena, has appealed the government to ban the website operated by Google. Shiv Sena has insisted the government of the misuse of Orkut which has resulted in hurting the religious sentiments of Hindu majority.After Brazil (55%) and United States (19%), India (16%) has the third largest number of Orkut users. However, the government of India has no plan to block the site and has ordered for a probe to Mumbai police about the content. Even Google has given access to Indian police to contact it directly.Meanwhile, the student wing of Shiv Sena is trying to develop software for partially blocking the site. They have also appealed the internet café owners not to allow users to connect to Orkut.The student group Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena has raised voice against the misuse of website against certain religious groups, Hindu culture, which may further disturb the communal harmony.

Yahoo search most "risky"

In research published on Monday by McAfee SiteAdvisor, 5.4 percent of Yahoo searches returned links to "risky" Internet sites. AOL was found to be the safest of the top five, with 2.9 percent of sites.According to McAfee, overall, on Yahoo, MSN, Ask.com, Google, and AOL, sponsored searches returned more risky results than "organic" searches. Of sponsored searches, 6.9 percent returned risky content, compared with 2.9 percent of organic searches.

TCS

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, India's largest computer-services provider, plans to hire 5,000 workers in Mexico in the next five years as labour costs climb in its home market because of a rising rupee. Tata Consultancy last week opened a software-development centre in Guadalajara, Northern Mexico and that facility will start with about 300 employees doing tasks currently completed in India, said Gabriel Rozman, head of company's operations in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. The rupee gained 9.2 percent against the dollar this year, eroding Tata Consultancy's earnings from the US, its biggest market, and increasing Indian costs relative to other nations. Tata Consultancy gets about half of its sales from North America. The Mexican peso was little changed this year against the dollar.

IT sector

IT sector would require nearly five lakh professionals in the next five years to cater to the growing needs of this booming industry, NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said.Currently, the industry required three lakh professionals, however the number was expected to nearly double with the sector being poised for huge growth, he said during the inauguration of the country's first IT finishing school.Though the institutes churned out a huge number of engineering graduates, the industry was left with less than three lakh professionals to hire from, since many of them turned entrepreneurs, some sought jobs overseas while others opted for higher studies, Karnik said.

YouTube

US-based Hearst-Argyle Television and YouTube Monday announced a joint effort to add news, weather and entertainment videos and original Hearst television programming in five local markets to YouTube.As part of the deal, Hearst will also use YouTube as part of its new digital video project and will broadcast high school football and basketball and local amateur entertainment on YouTube.Web sites operated by Hearst television stations nationwide generate 1 billion page views each year and provide Wireless Application Protocol content, podcasts, Web-based newscasts, Web videos and blogs in various markets

surface computer

Microsoft Surface machines are built into tabletops and have 30-inch screens that can recognise objects placed on them and are controlled by touch instead of keyboard strokes or mouse movements, said the Redmond, Washington state-based company. Unlike standard touch-screen computers, Microsoft Surface allows more than one person at a time to drag icons or give commands to allow collaborative efforts "just like in the real world.The surface computer is the brainchild of Microsoft's hardware and research teams.In a move unusual for Microsoft, which traditionally licenses its technology to partners, the company is contracting to have the computers made. Microsoft is initially targeting stores, hotels and casinos with the technology. Surface computers will be available in some Las Vegas casinos, Starwood hotels and T Mobile stores by the end of the year, according to Ballmer.

Fortza 2

Microsoft Game Studios launched the upgraded version of its motor sports game, Fortza Motorsport 2, in India priced at Rs 1,895.The launch of Fortza 2 marks a new price point that Microsoft has introduced in the Indian market. company had spent nearly 40 million dollars and two years in upgrading the title for gamers globally. Microsoft is also planning to bring a top-end variant of its high-definition gaming console, X-Box Elite, in the Indian market by August.

facebook

With an ambitious strategy for expansion, Facebook is getting into MySpace's face.Facebook, the Internet's second-largest social network, was originally popular on college campuses, but over the past year it has opened its dorm-room doors to all and seen its membership rolls explode at triple-digit growth rates.Some of the new features, demonstrated by software developers at a Facebook event in San Francisco on Thursday, will allow members to recommend and listen to music, insert Amazon book reviews onto their pages, play games and join charity drives -- without leaving the site.The Facebook invitation is expected to result in a proliferation of new tools and activities for Facebook's 23 million active users, who have largely been limited to making online connections, sharing photos and planning events.

Mobimii

Mobimii, a cross platform social networking portal for cellphones, launched in its Beta-phase today enabling users to chat and share photographs and video-clips through their cellphone with no additional charge other than that of their regular online network fee.Another benefit according to mobimii (pronounced mobi-me) is the unlimited free content that users have access to. Subscription to the site is free thereby combating the premium rates of current cellphone content. So whilst the subscriber would usually pay around R5-00 for a wallpaper or R15 for a ringtone with mobiwii the only cost they have to worry about are their network data charges.

Face book

Facebook.com took the wraps off its highly anticipated makeover from a members-only club into what it hopes can allow it to become a software operating system for all sorts of Internet media. The college student social networking site, which opened up to users of all ages over the past year, said it has signed up 65 partners, including Microsoft and Amazon.com, to build Web applications within Facebook.Founded in 2004 by then-undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg as a socializing site for fellow Harvard students, Facebook now has 24 million active users and is growing by 3 per cent a week.The No 2 social network site, behind News Corp's MySpace, will allow developers to build services that work both inside Facebook's site and on their own independent sites.

Email Ids for Every Indian

Microsoft Corp. has announced unique email ids for every kind of Indian powered by Windows Live Hotmail beginning with www.lokhandwalarocks.com. Users in India can now chose any email id they want through a feature called custom domains.This initiative is being flagged off by unveiling an email id for the residents of Lokhandwala in Andheri, Mumbai called www.lokhandwalarocks.com. This is Microsoft's first step towards customizing email for consumers in India.Windows Live Hotmail is the next generation MSN Hotmail providing a faster, safer and more powerful online communication experience than before. Windows Live Hotmail is designed so people can get their email any time, and any where in the way they want, via the Web, mobile phone or desktop.Windows Live Hotmail will offer users more ways to stay in touch with all the people you care about, plus powerful protection features. It is also integrated with other Windows Live services such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Spaces to deliver a seamless integrated communication experience for users.

Social networking sites

Social networking sites are feeding off each other's good will, according to a new report by competitive intelligence service company Hitwise.
Facebook's traffic has doubled in just over 18 months, but MySpace still receives most of the Web's social networking traffic. MySpace captured 79.7% of social networking traffic in April, according to figures released by Hitwise on Monday. Facebook accounted for 11.47% of social networking visits, while MySpace alterative Bebo drew 1.28% of the traffic last month, according to the Hitwise report.
MySpace visits rose 70% from April 2006 to April 2007, while the percentage increase for the lesser-used sites was much more dramatic, according to Hitwise. Facebook visits increased 126% from April 2006 and Bebo's traffic rose 184% from last year, Hitwise announced.

social networking

Yahoo executives have publicly acknowledged that the company's Yahoo 360 social networking site has failed to achieve expected levels of popularity. Last year, it was rumored that Yahoo tried unsuccessfully to buy social networking site Facebook for US$1 billion, the same figure Yahoo is reportedly willing to pay for Bebo, the U.K. newspaper reportedIn the U.S., News Corp.'s MySpace attracted almost 80 percent of all visits to social networking sites in April, followed in a very distant second place by Facebook with 11.5 percent, according to Hitwise Pty. Ltd. Bebo came in third place with 1.3 percent of visits. Yahoo 360 took seventh place with 0.71 percent.Bebo has a particularly strong following in the U.K., where in mid-April it ranked as the eighth most popular Web site with 1.27 percent of all visits, one spot below MySpace, which ranked seventh with 1.34 percent, according to Hitwise.

.

search requests

A feature listing the day's 100 fastest-rising search requests has been unveiled by Google. The chart, part of the search system's trends service, will be refreshed several times a day using data from millions of searches.Google says a large number of searches are made on the eve of college entrance examinations which appear to come from high school students doing last-minute preparations

mobile phone call

A British climber has become the first person to make a mobile phone call from the top of Mount Everest. Mountaineer Rod Baber, 36, removed his oxygen mask to make two calls from the mountain's north ridge. In the first call to a special answerphone set up by sponsors Motorola.Although bulky satellite phones have been used on Everest for some time, this is the first time anyone has made a mobile phone call from the top of the mountain.Although bulky satellite phones have been used on Everest for some time, this is the first time anyone has made a mobile phone call from the top of the mountain.

Amazon.com

Amazon.com became an ally and a rival to Apple with plans to launch an online music store featuring songs without anti-piracy software.The Internet retailer will compete with Apple’s iTunes digital music store while siding with Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in a campaign to eliminate digital rights management (DRM) software in digital songs.Amazon.com said it is launching an online music store this year featuring millions of songs without copying limitations.The online retail giant said it had a deal with British-based music publisher EMI Music to include its music catalog as well as those from 12,000 other music labels.

Amazon.com

Amazon.com became an ally and a rival to Apple with plans to launch an online music store featuring songs without anti-piracy software.The Internet retailer will compete with Apple’s iTunes digital music store while siding with Apple chief executive Steve Jobs in a campaign to eliminate digital rights management (DRM) software in digital songs.Amazon.com said it is launching an online music store this year featuring millions of songs without copying limitations.The online retail giant said it had a deal with British-based music publisher EMI Music to include its music catalog as well as those from 12,000 other music labels.

Yahoo

Yahoo! today expanded the reach of its popular mobile search service, Yahoo! oneSearch beta, to consumers in India. It will go live in beta today in seven countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.oneSearch reinvents search on the mobile and is designed to provide consumers instant, relevant answers on their mobile device. It can now be accessed through Yahoo!'s mobile Web site, on any mobile phone with a browser and Internet access.

Google

Google Inc.’s ease to use, simplicity of design, and massive database listings have made it the numero uno search engine in the world. Now, the Mountain View, California-based Web search leader is extending its design magnificence in new directions by combining its different Web search services into one "Universal Search" service that will present Web sites, news, video and other results on one page.The online search giant has expanded its main Web search engine to incorporate information from a variety of previously separate sources, including videos, photos, books and other content, into its main results page. Users can now find all the relevant information collected on a single, easy-to-use Web page.

you tube

Thailand said that it had reached an agreement with the video-sharing site YouTube to remove clips deemed insulting to the Thai king, but threatened to prosecute those responsible for the images.If the videos are removed, Thailand would stop blocking the site owned by Internet giant Google.YouTube has been banned in Thailand since a clip appeared in early April showing digitally-altered images of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej next to a photograph of feet, considered deeply offensive here.

INTERNET

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has recommended that IPTV and IP-VPN would not come under the definition of internet, and suggested that ISPs shall not be permitted to have PSTN/ PLMN connectivity and shall not allocate E.164 numbering.It also wants to remove restrictions on the use of devices/protocol employed to make internet telephony calls to facilitate use of affordable and user-friendly devices/adapters conforming to international organisations specification like ITU/ IETF.General consumer awareness to use authorised internet telephony services only needs to be developed. Print and electronic media will be effective in promoting such awareness.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

SOCIAL NETWORKING is currently a hot technology area through websites such as Orkut (www.orkut.com), Facebook (www.facebook.com) and MySpace (www.myspace.com), where people can build up the online equivalent of a circle of friends.A network such as MySpace is much more socially focused, aiming at connecting people on an informal level and providing a focus point for people who enjoy similar things. Those may be as simple as model train enthusiasts or more complex, such as rallying people to a social cause. But for people interested in both, such sites provide a central point to bring it all together.

television

About 90 per cent of the children in the US below two years of age and as many as 40 per cent of infants under three months are regular watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said.About half of the shows watched were in the educational category, with the remainder split evenly among non-educational children’s content, baby DVDs/videos and adult TV. Just 12 per cent of the parents whose children watched less than an hour of television a day said their child “hardly ever does homework,” compared to 21 per cent of those who watched one to three hours a day and 27 per cent of those who watched more than three hours a day. Johnson said he believes TV may be shortening teens’ attention spans. “Over time, it could really dumb down society

best Indian portal 2007

BharatMatrimony Group, one of India's leading Internet companies, grabbed the awards for the best Indian portal 2007 under three different categories of matrimony, property and jobs.PC World, one of the leading Indian IT magazines, gave away the awards for the matrimonial site BharatMatrimony and the property portal called IndiaProperty.ClickJobs, the group's job site, was recognized for its best design.PC World had done a survey of around 126 online Indian companies for the awards.

best Indian portal 2007

BharatMatrimony Group, one of India's leading Internet companies, grabbed the awards for the best Indian portal 2007 under three different categories of matrimony, property and jobs.PC World, one of the leading Indian IT magazines, gave away the awards for the matrimonial site BharatMatrimony and the property portal called IndiaProperty.ClickJobs, the group's job site, was recognized for its best design.PC World had done a survey of around 126 online Indian companies for the awards.

best Indian portal 2007

BharatMatrimony Group, one of India's leading Internet companies, grabbed the awards for the best Indian portal 2007 under three different categories of matrimony, property and jobs.PC World, one of the leading Indian IT magazines, gave away the awards for the matrimonial site BharatMatrimony and the property portal called IndiaProperty.ClickJobs, the group's job site, was recognized for its best design.PC World had done a survey of around 126 online Indian companies for the awards.

my space

Social-networking site MySpace, owned by Murdoch's News Corp., has agreed to acquire Photobucket, the Web's No. 1 photo-sharing service. Before the deal is announced, the two sides must wrap up a few details. Financial terms weren't available, but it is widely known that Photobucket, with 40 million registered users, has been shopping itself in recent months and asking for about $300 million. Late Monday, a Reuters report quoting a source familiar with the deal said a preliminary agreement had been reached for around $250 million.

Pew Internet & American Life Project

A new report from Pew Internet & American Life Project has some disturbing statistics based on a survey of 4001 people on the state – or otherwise – of the connected union.Pew Internet & American Life Project has suggested in their report on 'Technology and Media Usage' that nearly half of US citizens have a “distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology”, with 15% of Americans disconnected from cell phones or an Internet connection. The report says that this 15% is mainly ‘older adults’, some of whom do have digital cameras and computers (but evidently no Internet connection to go with it), despite the easy and generally affordable availability of a plethora of gadgets and increasingly inexpensive Internet accounts.

Windows Live Hotmail

Microsoft Corp. has launched Windows Live Hotmail, the successor to MSN Hotmail, in 36 languages. The most significant upgrade for Hotmail since it pioneered the Webmail industry in 1996, the new service has been built to be a vast improvement over the previous Hotmail offering, having incorporated input from more than 20 million beta testers.Windows Live Hotmail will deliver a safer, more powerful and productive email experience than previous versions with flexible access via the Web, on a mobile phone or with an email client. Microsoft also announced that later this month Windows Live Hotmail customers will be able to access their Windows Live Hotmail email and contacts for free using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Office Outlook 2007 via the new Microsoft Office Outlook Connector beta

Disney XD

Entertainment industry giants Walt Disney have launched a new feature named Disney Xtreme Digital which enables the preteens to create mini social networking sites. This could provide them with the same experience adults have with services like MySpace.com.The Disney XD features parental controls as they want to empower the parents to keep a check on the online activities of their childrenThe chat feature on the service requires the kid to get parental approval. This stops them from revealing personal information to the others connected to the service.Yanover added that the kids would be able to just use the Disney content on their Web sites and parents would be able to monitor their activities on this service.

social networking

In Europe and Asia, where mobile phones have higher penetration than in the United States, social networking has been quickly moving toward mobile phones. This is happening both through social networking platforms like MySpace and Bebo making agreements with mobile operators and through mobile-phone-based start-ups such as Jaiku, which is based in Finland.Unlike community sites like MySpace, which are largely confined to personal computers, these new phone-oriented services are bringing the burgeoning culture of exhibitionism to more exotic and more personal locations

yoName

There is a new search engine called yoName that helps consumers find individuals using popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, Digg and Xanga by name, username or e-mail address. The rise in popularity of social networking Web sites, with individuals often using more than one, has driven the need for yoName. yoName developers said the search engine “turns your computer into a private detective,” which may not be well-received by those that believe the Internet and related tools help stalkers and other undesirables locate people. The site’s terms and conditions section includes a disclaimer saying that it doesn’t endorse stalking in any way, shape or form.

ElHood

ElHood is sort of a bilingual MySpace promoting the latest in Latin music, and for Miami-based Monterrosa, it has become a personal and professional lifeline. It is also the latest in a wave of Hispanic social-networking sites building links across the U.S., Latin America and Spain, all hoping to capture coveted advertising dollars.

my space

MySpace has launched a news service that lets members of the popular social-networking website decide which stories bouncing about the Internet are most deserving of attention. The MySpace News service scouts the Internet for news ranging from gossip in online journals known as blogs to stories from media conglomerates such as News Corporation, the Rupert Murdoch headed company that owns MySpace.Placement of items on MySpace News web pages will be dictated by feedback from members, who get to rank stories on a scaled of “loved it to hated it.

my space

MySpace has launched a news service that lets members of the popular social-networking website decide which stories bouncing about the Internet are most deserving of attention. The MySpace News service scouts the Internet for news ranging from gossip in online journals known as blogs to stories from media conglomerates such as News Corporation, the Rupert Murdoch headed company that owns MySpace.Placement of items on MySpace News web pages will be dictated by feedback from members, who get to rank stories on a scaled of “loved it to hated it.

BBC

The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK.Broadcasters around the world are grappling with the shift to on-demand media, with many firms now offering content online or via mobile devices.The archive trial will make available 1,000 hours of content drawn from a mix of genres to a closed number of people. About 50 hours - of both TV and radio programmes - will be available in an open environment for general access.People who are interested in participating in the trial should register at bbc.co.uk/archive.

Google Inc.

Google Inc. plans to launch software similar to Microsoft Corp.'s popular PowerPoint program as the two companies vie to dominate the online experience.it would pay $3.1 billion (euro2.29 billion) to acquire ad-management technology company DoubleClick Inc. Almost as soon as Google announced the cash acquisition, Microsoft and AT&T executives said the deal could violate antitrust legislation _ and result in a dangerous concentration of Internet users' personal data at Mountain View-based Google.The two companies already offer e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet programs, and other tools. Google's new presentation software will compete against Microsoft's ubiquitous PowerPoint software that is part of its popular Office suite.

web 2.0

Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed. A tiny 0.16 percent of visits to Google's top video-sharing site, YouTube, are by users seeking to upload video for others o watch, according to a study of online surfing data by Bill Tancer, an analyst with Web audience measurement firm Hitwise. Similarly, only two-tenths of one percent of visits to Flickr, a popular photo-editing site owned by Yahoo Inc., are to upload new photos, the Hitwise study found. Wikipedia, the anyone-can-edit online encyclopaedia, is the one exception cited in the Hitwise study: 4.6 percent of all visits to Wikipedia pages are to edit entries on the site.

Face Book

Facebook.com is getting a facelift designed to make the popular Web site's social networking features easier to find and use.Besides adopting a new look, Facebook is introducing tools that will enable its users to learn more about their social networks and more easily conduct electronic conversations among multiple people simultaneously.The Palo Alto-based Web site is the second largest social networking site behind MySpace.com, which was sold to News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million.Facebook last year spurned a $1 billion takeover offer from Yahoo Inc. and could attract even more tantalizing bids if Zuckerberg realizes his goal of doubling the site's audience during the next six months. Facebook currently has about 19 million active users, a number that has been rising by an average of 3 percent each week.Despite Facebook's success, Zuckerberg said he and his team are constantly looking for ways to make it simpler to navigate around the site. "There's always room for improvement," said Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard University in 2004 to focus on building Facebook.

Technorati

Blog search engine Technorati Inc.announced that is has acquired Personal Bee Inc., which operates a Web site that customizes news and entertainment content submitted by users for communities of interest around the topics. Terms of the deal, which is the first acquisition for five-year-old Technorati, were not disclosed. acquisition will help the company in its effort to improve user understanding of the "real- time Web," or content that is constantly built by millions of people interacting with blogs, videos, podcasts and photos.The Personal Bee site allows users to publish or manage sites around topical areas; it lets users create collections of stories from the Web, publish them and build communities of interest around them.Technorati tracks more than 72 million blogs and 230 million tagged objects in real time from across the Web, the company said.The combination of the two companies will make it easier for Technorati's clients to market their products and brands by creating new forms of conversational advertising with consumers and building interactive advertisements that can invite feedback from customers.Ted Shelton, founder and CEO of Personal Bee, has joined Technorati as vice president of business development and will lead the effort to integrate the Personal Bee tools into Technorati's products.

you tube

A week after it blocked access to YouTube, the Thai government ordered one of the country’s most popular chat sites to shut its political forum because of postings deemed insulting to the monarch. The political chat room of www.pantip.com was closed Sunday after authorities ordered its creators to pull the forum off-line temporarily, Vissanu Meeyoo, a spokesman for the ministry of information and technology, said. The chat room carried frequent postings that criticised the leaders of a September coup and the current military-backed government. The government also asked operators of another two websites to block comments that could be deemed harmful to national security or insulting to King Bhumibol Adulyadej

mapping

Search engine Google and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum launched an online mapping project to provide what the museum said was evidence of atrocities committed in Sudan's western Darfur region.More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 and some of this carnage -- which the United States calls the first genocide of this century -- has been detailed by Google Earth, the search engine's mapping service (http://earth.google.com).Using high-resolution imagery, users can zoom into Darfur to view more than 1,600 damaged or destroyed villages, providing what the Holocaust Museum says is evidence of the genocide. Sudan's government denies that genocide is taking place.In addition, the remnants of more than 100,000 homes, schools, mosques and other structures destroyed by janjaweed militia in Darfur, Sudanese forces and others are visible.

blogger

The support for a blogger hounded by death threats has intensified with some high profile web experts calling for a code of conduct in the blogosphere.
The female blogger at the centre of the row has been shocked to discover that hers is not an isolated incident. It has led her and others to question some of the unwritten rules of blogging. It could force a re-examination of the way the tight-knit blogging community behaves. Among those calling for a bloggers' code of conduct is Tim O'Reilly - one of the web's most influential thinkers

judgment

A division bench of Allahabad High Court stayed a single judge’s controversial judgment denying minority status to Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, which had set off a political storm on the eve of the UP Assembly elections. Amid wide-ranging political and constitutional ramifications of the high court judge, Mr Justice SN Srivastava’s verdict, which ruled that Muslims ceased to be a minority community in UP, the Mulayam SinghYadav government swiftly swung into action, moving an urgent application before a division bench to challenge the single bench’s judgment.
The division bench comprising Justice SR Alam and Justice Krishna Murari gave the stay order after preliminary hearing of the state government’s review petition.

online maps

Internet search engine Google is calling on its millions of users to chart a new direction for its online maps.As part of an initiative being launched today, Google will provide free tools designed to make it easy for people to share their knowledge about their neighbourhoods and other favourite places by creating customised maps that can assemble information from a variety of sources.

AJAX

Researchers at Fortify Software have uncovered what they say is the first vulnerability to specifically affect Web 2.0 and AJAX applications.Developers in the past used Javascript for simple features like image rollovers and Web forms. But in the Web 2.0 world, Javascript is increasingly being used to transport data, and that's opening the door to security issues, said Brian Chess, chief scientist at Palo Alto, Calif.-based Fortify, which makes source-code analysis software.

virtual health community

TauMed.com (www.TauMed.com), a free virtual health community presently in beta, unveiled an expanded set of personalization and real time community tools with an exciting slate of new features. My Health Space and My Health Share provide strong resources founded in an online community, combined with the power of TauMed’s superior, advanced healthcare topic search.

mobile search

Telecom services provider Hutch has partnered with Microsoft to offer live search for its mobile customers.The private Telco would provide the entire Windows live suite of services to its customers over a period of time. The live search for mobile box would be available on the Planethutch home page. Microsoft and Hutch would be extending this alliance to allow advertisers and content partners to reach mobile customers with advertising opportunities .

.XXX domain

The US-based internet governing body rejected a proposal to create an adults-only zone on the internet, or a .XXX domain.Supporters of an .XXX domain argued it would make it easier to confine sex sites and filter them out. Opponents argued it would make pornography on the internet easier to find.The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which manages the internet's domain-name address system, decided to reject the application for .XXX sites at a meeting in Portugal.

ISRO

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), will launch Italian satellite, Agile, next month end. The satellite would look at galaxies and stars with the aid of X-ray detectors.India bagged the contract for carrying the Italian satellite for $11 million. ISRO had earlier launched small payloads of 50 to 100 kgs for foreign players as "piggyback." This was the first time that the agency would fly a 400 kg foreign satellite as a lone passenger.

google

Google released the new version of their popular free software bundle Google Pack this week. There are two rather interesting and highly useful additions included with this release. Symantec’s Norton Security Scan, a freeware virus scanner, which offers virus protection on a basic level.

social networking

Firms are at risk of data leakage through their employees' increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies and social networking websites, security experts have warned. A survey of more than 1,000 office workers in the U.K. found that 42 percent of those aged between 18 and 29 discussed work-related issues on social networking sites and blogs.More than a quarter of young workers spent three or more hours a week -- during their office hours -- surfing blogs and websites such as YouTube and MySpace, the research, carried out by polling firm YouGov for content security specialists Clearswift found. Nearly four in 10 admitted accessing such sites "several times a day".

unlimited e-mail storage

Yahoo Inc. plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May.The world's biggest e-mail service is scrapping its free e-mail storage limit of 1 gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail.Microsoft has a 2 gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes.

online fraud

More than 3.5 million internet users in the UK have fallen victim to online fraud in the last year, a new survey has claimed. The government-supported Get Safe Online campaign says that the average amount of money lost to internet con-artists in 2006 was £875.

Windows Vista

Microsoft claimed Windows Vista is off to a fast start, having sold more than 20 million copies since its January 30 consumer release. By comparison, in its first two months, Windows XP sold 17 million copies.When XP made its debut in 2001, it came in two main flavors--Home and Professional. The company eventually added the Tablet PC and Media Center editions, and over time, Media Center became the dominant version on retail shelves. Vista comes in six flavors--Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate, as well as a Starter Edition only sold on new PCs in emerging markets.

text message service

A new text message service to remind Britons of their hospital appointments has been launched this week.Making the announcement at this year's Healthcare Computing conference, the firm behind the Remind Patients service said that it sends reminders 48 hours before the appointment either by text message or a phone call, enabling patients to change or cancel if needed.It claimed that the service will help reduce costs and improve efficiency for hospitals and surgeries across the country.

Security concerns

Security concerns over the use of Web 2.0 sites in the workplace have been raised in new research. A report from security firm Clearswift has revealed that over a quarter of office workers aged between 18 and 29 spend more than three hours a week on social networking websites and blogs. Nearly half of these workers discuss issues related to work on these sites, which may pose a security risks to employers, the firm claimed. When asked whether their employer has a policy on accessing social media sites at work, 14 per cent of workers said there was no policy at all.

social-networking

NBC.com will become the first broadcast website to adopt social-networking tools similar to those on MySpace -- including the ability to embed NBC video clips outside the site -- in hopes of establishing a point of distinction among advertisers,

Kongregate

Kongregate, (www.kongregate.com) a social Web games site featuring compelling community features and user-uploaded games, today announced the beta launch of its premier games hub.Kongregate offers over 300 free and highly addictive games supplemented with in-line chat, where players can interact with not only each other, but the actual game developers within the community. In addition to playing games, gamers can tag, rate and comment on games, create friend lists, enter and win contests, as well as set up profile pages with real-time player stats. The company will generate revenue through advertising and promotional sponsorships

YouTube,

a new video-clip blasting Hillary Clinton on the popular video-sharing site YouTube, has shown that voters now have the opportunity to join in the mud-slinging.According to the Boston Herald.com, a remake of the 1984 Super Bowl Macintosh advertisement (directed by Ridley Scott) has been uploaded to YouTube by one of its users, and features presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton as the tyrannical Orwellian figure.The video, which has already been viewed over 438 000 times, features a blue-tinged close-up of Hillary Clinton's face on a cinema screen as she talks to her obedient followers. That is, until a young female, sporting an iPod and wearing a tank top promoting rival presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, throws a sledgehammer at the screen, smashing Hillary's face

mobile phone

GOOGLE is developing its own mobile phone, according to industry insiders, while a Google official last week acknowledged the company was "investigating" such a project.Google ha refused to comment directly on leaks from Europe and the United States which describe a low-cost, internet-connected phone with a colour, wide-screen design. Newspaper and blog reports in recent months have Google shopping its phone design to potential mobile phone manufacturing partners in Asia

social networking.

Using simple idea of profiles and community sharing, sites such as Myspace and Facebook now have literally millions of subscribers, each site continuing to grow hourly. To find out how you can be a friend of Farmers Weekly look at our guide, or read Livestock reporter Emily Padfield's description of the joys of facebook.

Friendster

Friendster, an online community that connects people through networks of friends, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the social networking pioneer a new U.S. Patent titled.The patent, granted on March 6, 2007, describes a technology that allows members of a social network to manage their connections. Specifics disclosed in the patent include adding friends, personalizing your profile through arranging, ordering and classifying connections made in an online community, and managing these connections at will.

Web search

To boost its disappointing Web search market share, Microsoft is giving financial incentives to large enterprise customers whose employees use Microsoft's Live Search engine.The program is being tested with "a select number of enterprise customers based on the number of Web search queries conducted by their employees via Live Search.

myspace

the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, recently performed a study on the market share of Internet visits to the top 20 social networking websites. Between the period of January 2007 to February 2007, traffic grew by 11.5 percent, which accounts for 6.5 percent of all Internet traffic in February 2007.
the greatest increase were Buzznet - up 148%, and iMeem, up 145% in the first month of the year; although, both remain at a less than 1% market share.MySpace was by far the most dominant social networking website with a near 81% market share among the 20 sites. The second and third positions went to social networking sites Facebook and Bebo, with a 10.32% and 1.18% market share, respectively.

Blogger

Google announced the launch of Hindi transliteration on Blogger.Google's transliteration technology enables the conversion from English text to phonetically equivalent text in Indian languages. Hindi transliteration on Blogger enables users to publish content in Hindi while using English keyboards for text entry.Google News in Hindi is based on Google's innovative clustering technology, gathers news stories from various Hindi news sources, and presents a ranked one page view with links to users favorite news sources in their favorite news sections.

IIT Mumbai

It's widely publicized that depression and dysfunctional lifestyles abound within the confines of the country's elitist educational institutions, the IITs. While exacting curricula and cut-throat competition can be put down as the usual suspects, IIT Mumbai authorities are busy laying the blame on the Internet.in all 13 hostels of IIT Mumbai, Internet access will be barred between 11pm and 12.30pm in a move to encourage students to sleep early, as also force them out of their 'shells', as Dean of Student Affairs, Prakash Gopalan, describes it.

mobile social networking

immense popularity of MySpace and other social networking sites on the Web still strikes some as bizarre, the technology industry is clearly bent on extending that puzzling phenomenon to the cell phone as a ripe new revenue opportunity. Mobile manifestations of social networking are springing up as both a cellular extension of existing Web sites and communities that exist only on mobile devices. Complicating the discussion is that there's no strong agreement as to what exactly mobile social networking is or should be.

social networking

As a percentage of all visits to the Web by US adult Internet users, 6% are made to social networking sites, which puts it above the percentage of visits made to news-gathering sites but below those to online shopping sites. The bottom line is that social networking has broader appeal than just MySpace and Facebook.

Social Networking Sites

JupiterResearch report, "Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," finds social networks to be a way for advertisers and marketers to break through the clutter and enlist brand advocates for their cause. This year will likely see an increase in the number of brands using social marketing to reach consumers.In 2007, as many as 48 percent of brand marketers will deploy marketing on social networking channels. Last year, about 38 percent were messaging on the channel. Adoption of social marketing tactics stems from the discovery "30 percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers' opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only 10 percent trust an advertisement," said Emily Riley, JupiterResearch analyst and lead author of the report.

WEB 2.0

According to a report from Webroot Software, many are familiar with the concepts of viruses, worms and phishing but our online behaviour makes us vulnerable to spyware programs such as keyloggers that record data that we input using our keyboards. Webroot claims that it is the use of social networking sites which puts us most at risk. More than half of us visit these sites occasionally and around 82 per cent of 18-24 year olds do so on a regular basis.Many in the 18-24 age category said they were willing to open attachments and embedded links found on social networking sites even if they didn't know who had created them. Combined with a lack of understanding for how spyware programs work, this puts them at an increased risk of falling victim to cybercrime.

YouTube

A Turkish court temporarily shut off access to YouTube in the country after a video insulted founding father Atatürk. Others moved to defend the Turkish hero in cyber space.Opponents of Turkish accession to the European Union like to cite the country's denial of freedom of speech, creeping nationalism and its ongoing refusal to recognize Cyprus.

Friendster

Social networking site Friendster is set to extend its online ad deal with search giant Google.So far, Friendster has been relying on Yahoo to provide ads to accompany searches made on its internal web search engine.The website, which helped to pioneer social networking, is not yet profitable but hopes that the new agreement will finally see it making money.it will display ads from Google based on web search requests, which is an established method of making money online. Last year, Google took $3.1 billion in profits and its online ad partners took home a further $3.3 billion

Wikipedia

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is targeting the fourth quarter of this year for the unveiling of an open-source search engine that he hopes could challenge the dominance of market-leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.The project is being run through Wikia Inc., a for-profit company founded by Wales that seeks to use a similar model to the Wikipedia community-written and edited encyclopedia. He hopes to provide the tools and technology to allow programmers across the Internet to collaborate on the development and testing of a search engine and make the results freely available.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is once again paying the price for the anonymity it offers to millions of writers across the globe, who freely contribute to it. Following revelations that a prominent writer/editor, who wrote as 'Essjay', and who said he is a Professor of Theology at a private varsity is actually Ryan Jordan, a 24-year-old college drop-out from Kentucky, the open online encyclopedia is now planning on asking contributors who claim such credentials to take the pains to identify themselves.Last week, the magazine, New Yorker, blew the whistle on Jordan's deception, when it published an editor's note saying that a 2006 Wikipedia profile carried by the magazine erroneously described Essjay's purported academic resume, calling him a 'tenured Professor of Religion'.

social networking

Internet Company Yahoo! has been rumored to be trying to acquire the social networking service Facebook. However, they might no longer need to go for an acquisition as they are now testing adding social networking features to their own Yahoo! Answers service.Yahoo Answers has become a shining star for the company and they have now added a beta service designed to let the 90 million users of this service to create “personal networks” with each other.

my space

Visits to MySpace outpaced those to any other website in January, . The top-20 social networking websites account for 6 percent of all Web visits, making them competitive in popularity with the Web's other top pulls -- adult sites, e-mail, entertainment, search engines, finance, and shopping.It's too soon to know whether today's MySpace users will continue to use social networking websites as marriage, mortgages, and other real-life events begin to distract them from their virtual friends, but as users of all ages go online, MySpace has spawned dozens of clones targeting specific ages or interests

social networking

More and more Web 2.0 start-ups are running into a surprising problem: too many customers.Make that too many customers in the wrong countries.Although the Internet is a global medium, U.S. companies, which drive the vast majority of online advertising spending, shun users in many foreign countries.San Francisco social-networking service Friendster highlights what's happening. While Friendster's user numbers are rising -- 15 percent alone in the last three months -- 22 percent of its users are from the Philippines, another 22 percent live in Malaysia, 20 percent are in Singapore and 12 percent live in Indonesia, according to Alexa, which provides information on Web traffic.Launched in 2004 from Google's Mountain View headquarters, Orkut now receives 71 percent of its users from Brazil.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia not only challenges the concept of what an encyclopedia is; it also raises an intriguing question: What qualifies as intellectual authority in an age of information overload, when society relies increasingly on the Internet? Some critics are troubled by what they regard as a tendency on the Web to value anonymous, collective thought over individual intellect. Some claim Wikipedia devalues traditional scholarship. Supporters counter that the online encyclopedia's constant and easy revision of articles only strengthens their credibility. Fans also praise Wikipedia for "democratizing" knowledge, pitting pedigreed academics against amateur scholars.

news

Rediff.com India has unveiled a new advertising campaign to announce its latest service, unlimited storage space on Rediffmail. The campaign will hit the market on March 9 and is targeted at youngsters in the age group of 15-25 years.According to Ajit Balakrishnan, chairman and founder, Rediff.com, usage of email for storage and sharing of multimedia files has been found to increase incessantly due to the exceptional growth of broadband penetration. The offering of unlimited storage space on Rediffmail will enable users to store unlimited photos, music files and even videos without needing to delete any mail from their inbox.

988 bln gigabytes

EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, announced groundbreaking EMC-sponsored research from IDC that for the first time measures and forecasts the amounts and types of digital information created and copied in the world - and whether it is generated from individuals or businesses.The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010 reveals the amount of information the world is creating and copying in a given year.
It forecasts this entire "digital universe" through the year 2010, and it identifies the specific information types and geographies contributing to its growth.

Internet ad

The Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report showing that Internet advertising revenue for 2006 was estimated at $16.8 billion, a 34% increase from $12.5 billion in 2005. Fourth-quarter revenue totaled just under $4.8 billion, the highest quarter ever and a 32% increase from the same period in 2005.“The maturation of the Internet as an effective advertising medium is directly tied to its ability to deliver qualified audiences to marketers,” said Peter Petrusky, director of PwC’s Entertainment, Media & Communications Practice, in a statement

ban

A new law in France makes it a crime for anyone who is not a professional journalist to film real-world violence and distribute the images on the Internet. Critics call it a clumsy effort by authorities to battle "happy slapping," the youth fad of filming violent acts - which most often they have provoked - and spreading the images on the Web or between mobile phones. The measure, tucked deep into a vast anti-crime law that took effect Wednesday, has alarmed media advocates who say it tramples on freedom of expression

inernet in china

China has banned the opening of new Internet cafes this year."In 2007, local governments must not sanction the opening of new Internet bars," Xinhua news agency on Tuesday quoted a directive jointly released by 14 government departments, including the Ministry of Culture, as saying.The notice said Internet cafes that had received planning approval would need to be completed by June 30, 2007.There are currently about 113,000 Internet cafes and bars in China, Xinhua said, citing the Ministry of Information Industry

internet

Tribe.net

Cisco Systems is continuing to broaden its interest in social networking technology.Cisco had purchased “selected assets” of Utah Street Networks. The firm operates the social networking site known as Tribe.net. Cisco also said some employees of the company would join Cisco. However, it did not buy the Tribe.net Web site.

myspace

Popular online network MySpace.com will find it tough to win the kind of following it has on US college campuses as it expands into Asia. Like foreign Web brands before it, including South Korea’s Cyworld and Yahoo! Days, MySpace — which lets members look up friends’ blogs and songs posted by their favourite artists — may find its global label counts for little beyond its home market

my space

Universal Music has filed a suit against social networking site MySpace for violating copyrights of artists Universal represent.Universal, a division of Vivendi Universal, filed the complaint against MySpace, a unit of News Corp, in the federal court in Los Angeles, where News Corp and MySpace are located, MySpace spokesman Jeff Berman said. MySpace hosts thousands of personal web pages and diaries that carry text, video and sound features, defended its content on Friday, noting it is a free website and that it makes efforts to abide by the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Tribe.net

Networking company Cisco Systems is to buy the underlying technology assets of also-ran social networking site Tribe.net, according to a report in the New York Times. The paper says the announcement will be made this week.As the New York Times points out, it’s a curious match. With 55,000 employees, Cisco makes networking equipment for large companies, while Tribe.net has eight employees, and has been outpaced by successful social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Broadband Year

Aiming to bring fruits of the digital revolution to more and more people, India has set a target providing 20 million broadband connections by the end of 2010. nine million broadband connections will be set up by the end of this year, which is being celebrated as Broadband Year.

Twitter,

Facebook, MySpace, Friendster and other social-networking Web sites already let users keep close tabs on their friends.next big thing in social networking is Twitter, a new service that lets users post short comments about what they are doing at any given time of the day via their cellphone, instant-messaging service or Web site.When a user submits an update, the service posts it online and sends it out to the person's list of friends.

graphic card

TUL Corp has announced the PowerColor X1950 SCS3, touted as the world's fastest silent graphic card. This graphic card runs passively, at the same time, maintaining its original specifications, including: 575MHz core engine, 1380MHz effective memory speed, 256MB GDDR3, and 36 pixel processors. The X1950 SCS3 comes with VIVO, HDCP, and is Windows Vista ready.

social networking

Following in the footsteps of deals with MySpace and Facebook, eBay is now on board with Bebo, reports the Wall Street Journal. Social networking sites have a large teen user base, an age bracket eBay is keen to target. Over 50 percent of Bebo users are under 18, compared to eBay’s 35-44 age range. It is unclear at this point how the companies plan to enforce eBay’s minimum age limit of 18 on social websites where the minimum age is as low as 13.

social networking

Business decision makers are turning to social networking - a medium traditionally favoured by teenagers thanks to sites like Facebook and MySpace - to virtually interact with clients, suppliers, business partners and potential employers and employees. Viadeo, a professional networking site, officially opened its doors to UK executives this week, following on from its success elsewhere in Europe which saw it gain around 3,000 new members every day.The site, which was founded by a network of 200 entrepreneurs in France, now boasts more than one million members

web 2.0

The popularity of web 2.0 content across different demographics has meant that social networking sites have continued to successfully target specialised or localised markets, recent developments have suggested.The marketing research site also reports that online advertising has proved to be successful on Disney-related websites via branding or third party deals.

orkut

Google Blog announced that Google will be launching a new feature for Orkut users that use Claro as their mobile provider in Brazil. The feature will enable users of Orkut to SMS message their Orkut friends from their mobile phones. The details on exactly how this is done, is not exactly clear. But if you do receive a "scrap" message from a friend and it has the word "mobile" next to the friend's name, then it was sent via mobile phone .

orkut

Google Blog announced that Google will be launching a new feature for Orkut users that use Claro as their mobile provider in Brazil. The feature will enable users of Orkut to SMS message their Orkut friends from their mobile phones. The details on exactly how this is done, is not exactly clear. But if you do receive a "scrap" message from a friend and it has the word "mobile" next to the friend's name, then it was sent via mobile phone .

Girlfriendscafe.com

A new social networking Web site has launched at Girlfriendscafe.com. Geared toward women in the United States and Canada, the online community provides a safe haven for women to communicate to one another and have fun.The social networking site is free to all members. Women can choose from the exciting menu to create their own personal online profile; talk in chat rooms; post on a message board; create their own and view other member blogs; and be instantly connected to their girlfriends through instant chat. Girlfriendscafe has also set up a post office for its members to send and receive e-mail

online community

animeOnline , Ltd. today announced the launch of the beta version of animeOnline.com , the new online community and news resource designed to reach the growing entertainment audience interested in anime , manga and Japanese entertainment. animeOnline is headed by Rob Bricken.

web 2.0

In the last 12 months Web 2.0 has emerged as a technology capable of bringing about the sort of business upheaval that was initially attributed to the web back in the heady days of the dotcom boom. Commentators have predicted that Web 2.0 will destroy traditional news providers and that community and collaborative information resources will sweep online publishers away in a tide of new business models.

social networking sites

First social networking site was Classmates.com, started in 1995. The interface was bare-bones, but the idea was powerful for the time.MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) is the largest social networking site (in terms of members) and basically has the same model. Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) did almost exactly the same thing, but focused on college, then high-school schools, and then alums (open to everyone now though.

blogger

popularity of Web 2.0 applications such as blogs and widely used social networking sites like MySpace and YouTube, several candidates are gravitating toward such technology to garner support and raise money.

business and Social networking

Internet-based social-networking services today are most popular among consumers, particularly the teen-age set. But social-networking tools hold a lot of promise for business applications too.Think of a task group that's putting together a customer proposal and could use some input from an employee with deep knowledge of the target customer's vertical industry.The application's search tools let users search the system by name, expertise or keyword. It lets people with common interests and work objectives form communities, bookmark and share documents and Web pages.

Mixi

Japan's top social-networking site is the 8-million-strong "Mixi," .MySpace allows anyone with a valid e-mail address to sign up for free accounts. By contrast, Mixi requires an introduction from someone who is already a Mixi member, a bit like winning entry to an old-style club in this society long reputed as guarded against outsiders.That feature, designed to give a sense of security and in-group feeling, has been critical in Mixi's success among shy and conformity-driven Japanese.

adsense

Revenue is growing for many of web 2.0 companies. So you have to believe that the advertising model can work. People are spending tons and tons of money on online advertising. They key is, you have to have a lot of traffic if you’re a destination site for it to work. The other way to make money … is to build advertising infrastructure companies.

posthumous messages

More than half of teenagers who use the Internet frequent social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, where they create elaborate profiles and personalize them with photos, music and video. It follows that the online hangouts have become as important to young people in death as they were in life .MySpace avoids deleting the deceased's profiles unless asked by family members, which means the profiles-turned-memorials can stay active for years..

DNA social networking

DNA and genealogy research has been gaining popularity with the ease of DNA testing .This could be the biggest social network in the world where everyone can find cousins everywhere.

PaidSpaces.com

PaidSpaces.com is set to revolutionize the way we do social networking.PaidSpaces.com is the newest rival that is aligning to help others get connected with their friends while getting paid.Google adsense users may even get to use adsense on their profiles. The marketing team of PaidSpaces.com says that if they are going to share the wealth with their members why not allow them to also get paid on the many adsense clicks that their profiles could bring..

web 2.0 and poverty

The term 'Web 2.0' captures the transition of the worldwide web from flat websites offering static information to a new computing platform independent of earlier shackles.The applications available include web-based word processors and spreadsheets such as gOffice or ThinkFree, online calendars like Kiko and backup services such as that provided by Mozy. Most of these also offer free storage space, acting as a kind of virtual hard disk for saving files.these applications are all web-based -- users create, save, and retrieve files online. Thus, they are not confined to any particular operating system or hardware.This drastically reduces the cost of using applications, which can be run, for example, through a free web browser (such as Firefox) and a free operating system (such as Linux). Users only need access to the Internet to benefit from these applications.In many parts of Africa and Latin America, progress has been made toward providing access via internet cafés, government installations, kiosks, and computing clubs. The Drishtee program in India and IT clubs in Egypt are products of this trend.But the reduced costs alone will not entirely solve the access problem. Users need education -- particularly in English, the dominant language of the Web -- and a familiarity with computers to get the most out of these applications.

MySpace

The News Corp owner social network and blogging service MySpace now has 45.5 million users and is growing by an amazing 160,000 new users a day, according to MediaPost. In the US, one in five internet visits in September was to a top 20 social-networking sites.MySpace received over 80% of visits to those social-networking sites.YouTube’s growth continued to be border on the steroid-induced side, with 249% growth from March to September.

Imeem- social networking

A new social networking/ blogging service “Imeem” has launched today with software that “lets people communicate and share photos with each other in private or semi-private communities.Imeem enters a market currently dominated by services including the now News Corp owned MySpace and Yahoo’s 360 service.the service requires the downloading of software to be used as opposed to its web based competition, with Windows being the only platform the software will work on.

Social Networking Can Kill Your Career

Everyday, there are millions of people who apply for jobs at various locations. What those millions do not realize is that their cyber social life may cost them the dream job that they have been looking for.Cyberspace is a great place to post your thoughts, communicate your fears and even find the next girl/guy. Unfortunately in our day and age, putting your thoughts online may cost you your next career.One 2006 graduate, who preferred to remain anonymous, was turned down for a summer job based on the contents of her MySpace page.

social networking sites growth

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that April’s top 10 social networking sites collectively grew 47% since last year — a climb from 46.8 million uniques in April 2005 to 68.8 million in April 2006. Nielsen//NetRatings says these social networking sites reach 45% of active Web suers. MySpace led the other social networks with 38.4 million unique visitors and growth rate of 367%.

farmers on net.

around 70% of British farmers are now connected to the Internet, with a large percentage of those having broadband connections. This is leading to increased online activity, particularly at the Farmers Weekly Interactive web site.

web 2.0

A new Senate Bill filed by Illinois Senator Matt Murphy outlines a legislation that would force any computer made available to the public in a public library and schools to block social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Murphy describes his bill as a “proactive” move to “protect kids” from potential new threats such as sexual predator looking for victims on sites such as MySpace.com.

web 2.0

Yahoo! Mail, who has provided mail services since 1997, was No.1 web mail provider in the world with 249 million users in 2006, according to comScore Media Metrix. MSN's Hotmail, a major competitors of Yahoo! Mail, with 236 million users, was listed as the second major provider followed by AOL and Google with 50 million and 60 million users respectively. To keep its leading role in mail service market, Yahoo! Mail has provided several new services such as drag-and-drop support, right-click menus, RSS feeds and a preview pane, and launched Yahoo! Mail Beta, a significantly different and advanced version, since 2004.

web 2.0

Cell phones play a crucial role in relationships among young techies in a high-tech Indian boomtown as they provide technical support to people half way across the world in North America.So suggests a US study focusing on the very personal side of personal computing noting that technology workers in Bangalore use mobile phones to bridge modern and cultural values - to facilitate arranged marriages, as one example. They also rely on the phones to maintain personal relationships despite the modern realities of living apart or working hectic schedules, suggests research by doctoral student Carolyn Wei in the University of Washington's department of technical communication.

web 2.0

The transition from Microsoft Windows XP to Vista, and from cell phones to iPhones, mimics the cultural transition we've already made from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.The term Web 2.0 was used by O'Reilly to imply a new, improved version of the web. In Web 2.0, websites have merged with computer applications and content has been separated from individual websites. It's all about the data: accessing data, sharing data, and distributing data.

web 2.0

Yahoo blended its free e-mail and instant messaging services on Monday, making it simple for users to "chat" online from any computer connected to the Internet.Yahoo is the largest provider of web-mail service, according to ComScore industry tracker.
Yahoo said it will roll the service out in phases to its approximately 250 million e-mail users during the coming three months.This deep integration across Yahoo!'s e-mail and instant messaging services enables e-mail users to easily connect to contacts in Yahoo! Messenger's thriving IM community, without leaving the Web mail experience.People can choose to let others know if they are online and available to exchange messages in real time, and users will be able to see the online status of everyone in their contact list as well. Each instant messaging dialogue will take place in a new conversation tab within Yahoo! Mail beta, allowing people to chat with multiple friends simultaneously, without leaving the e-mail experience. Users can also convert e-mails seamlessly into IMs when friends come online .

web2.0

The Google Blog announced that they will be adding personalized search results by default for any person signed in to their Google Account. That means if you use any one of the following Google services Gmail, Orkut, AdWords, AdSense, Groups, Alerts, and so on... you will automatically be shown search results tailored to your past searching history.There are two clear concerns here. The most obvious is the privacy concern, but that is for a different blog. The second concern is the search engine optimization area. How can one optimize a site for a search results environment that is constantly changing.

social networking

Friendster, a social networking web site founded in 2002, was one of the early pioneers of social networking on the web, but it lost some momentum when newer sites with more facile features appeared on the market.Friendster is repositioning itself as the social network for young adults. It seeks to attract a grown-up, post-college crowd rather than trying to compete for MySpace's teenage audience or Facebook's college-age users. Lindstrom says that adults in their 20s and 30s are the biggest users of the site today.

web 2.0

Like Google, Yahoo! started focusing on personalized in earnest around 2007. Any user willing to sign up for an account soon found that the search engine started to learn from his or her search behavior, identifying themes, topics and web site neighborhoods of particular interest. Relevant pages were given a boost in his or her search engine results.At the same time the search engines started to weed out sites and pages he or she did not find interesting (for instance by measuring how much time the person spent on that page).The information gathered from registered users was also used to influence the results for non-registered users.

web2.0

You've heard about the new era that is sweeping the World Wide Web? Dubbed Web 2.0, this online revolution is all about sharing: be it a personal page at MySpace, a video on YouTube, a podcast or a blog. Now, a Website called HR OptIn has brought the power of Web 2.0 to working women, or more specifically, to women who used to be working for some of the top organizations in America but who took time off to care for a child, a parent, or to raise a family.

my space

MySpace is trialling a content filtering system that can identify copyrighted material on its site. The move follows a lawsuit against MySpace filed by Universal Music in November in which the record label claimed MySpace had infringed copyright by allowing its 90m members to upload music videos. MySpace rival YouTube has yet to install a digital fingerprinting system on its video-sharing site.

web 2.0

immense popularity of MySpace and other social networking sites on the Web still strikes some as bizarre, the technology industry is clearly bent on extending that puzzling phenomenon to the cell phone as a ripe new revenue opportunity.Mobile manifestations of social networking are springing up as both a cellular extension of existing web sites and communities that exist only on mobile devices. Complicating the discussion is that there’s no strong agreement as to what exactly mobile social networking is or should be.Some of the more basic offerings revolve largely around joining chat rooms and searching for new friends to communicate with by text message.

web 2.0

Indian portals are trailing behind in popularity in a recently released JuxtConsult survey (one of the very few surveys conducted to study Indian surfers). Insiders feel that foreign players have an edge as they have the resources and mature marketplaces to test their search engines and mail systems before coming to India. “Global companies like Yahoo amortised entire cost over a huge user base.Though Rediff claims to have emerged right on the top of Indian customer’s preference list for email in a com- Score Media Metrix survey, one cannot brush away the market perception that Indian portals have failed to match the growing influence of Yahoo and Google. In fact, Rediff Mail has lost some of its client base both to Gmail and Yahoo, according to JuxtConsult.Despite an impressive array of numbers from Rediff and others, internet pundits insist that they have to be quick on their feet to match up to global bigwigs. Consider Google’s social networking site Orkut and Rediff’s Connexion, for instance. Though Rediff launched Connexion three years ago it’s still a long way to go before Indians really start using it as a place of social meetings compared to Orkut which arrived a year back in India and is just rocking.

web2.0

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch noted recently that the advent of Web logs or blogs, as they are commonly known, and personal websites is probably comparable to the invention of the printing press some five centuries ago in terms of their potential to revolutionise humankind's knowledge dissemination and knowledge creation. Blogs (the term "blog" entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2003) are a natural progression from Internet chat rooms, ICQ and online diaries. According to Microsoft's latest survey on blogging in Thailand, about 21 per cent of the country's 8.4 million Internet users are now bloggers, those who read or write online diaries or journals. Comparing this to the regional average of 46 per cent, the survey noted that while blogging is still quite new in Thailand, it is ahead of other places such as India.The survey is part of the "Blogging Asia: A Windows Live Report" conducted online across seven Asian markets, namely Hong Kong, India, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, in which more than 25,000 people participated between August and September 2006.

web 2.0

The opportunity that the gaming companies see is huge- with the number of internet users having increased from 5.5 mn in 2000 to 40 mn in 2006 and this growth expected to continue, the gaming companies see an opportunity that they can't afford to miss. Meanwhile, broadband services also show promise with the number of broadband subscribers in Indian expected to reach the 20-mn mark by 2010, according to Nasscom estimates. India, clearly is all set to be one of the leading online markets and it makes good business sense for these gaming companies to be out there.

web 2.0

There has been an increasing dependence on non-traditional media like the Internet. There was also a strong need among people to create their own space through interaction and personalization. The new mantra is to communicate, share and connect! Blogs and social communities were also emerging as strong influencers.Comparing the earlier version with the present, Web 1.0 was all about one-way publishing whereas Web 2.0 leveraged UGC (many-to-many, consumer-to-consumer). It was largely about consumer-to-consumer, user-generated content. He gave examples of several successful Web businesses, such as Amazon, Ebay, Classifieds and YouTube.

face book

For the first time, Facebook.com is facing the realities of being used by predators.
Wildly popular with college students - but now attracting an increasing number of minors and adults - the social networking site known for its elaborate privacy controls is tackling some of the same safety issues that for years have dogged its chief rival, MySpace.com.When the site was launched in February 2004, Facebook members were required to have a valid e-mail address issued by a college, university or alumni association. In late 2005, the website established high school networks, and students needed an e-mail address from their school to sign up.With membership peaking at 8 million in September, Facebook opened access to all Internet users. In less than six months, the site's popularity has doubled to 16 million users, about two-thirds of whom are enrolled in college or high school.Facebook is made up of 47,000 networks - individual schools, companies or regions - which are each independent and closed to non-affiliated users. Most Facebook users can view less than 0.5 percent of the site's total profil.

web 2.0

While Web 2.0 offers many new opportunities for companies to grow their business, few enterprises realize how to implement the full range of capabilities to succeed. By 2008, the majority of Global 1000 companies will quickly adopt several technology-related aspects of Web 2.0, but will be slow to adopt the aspects of Web 2.0 that have a social dimension, and the result will be a slow impact on business, according to Gartner, Inc.The challenge is that Web 2.0 is not just a set of technologies, but also has attributes that have a social dimension — new business models, user-contributed content and user-generated metadata, more open and transparent business process, simplicity in design and features and decentralized and participatory products and processes.

web 2.0

A recent poll conducted for Careerbuilder.com showed that 26 percent of hiring managers admitted to using the Internet to perform background checks on job candidates. A further 12 percent admitted to using social networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com as a screening tool. For many college students, social networking sites such as Facebook.com and Myspace.com are a core part of their cyber profile used for networking. However, many students are surprised to learn that their candid and sometimes sexually explicit photos and the details of their drinking and dating lives in their profiles can negatively affect their job search. Those disparaging comments, risqué photos, inappropriate language and lewd jokes posted on their profiles could be viewed as a reflection of their character by a potential employer. According to an HR director, people should carefully consider their potential audience and the impression they may have based on your pictures, personal opinions, and ideas posted online.

feed

What is RSS?
RSS is Really Simple Syndication. It is an XML-based format in which content from blogs and web sites, including dnaindia.com, is delivered to RSS news readers. DNA's RSS feeds include headlines and summaries.

web 2.0

Co-founders of the Internet telephone service Skype unveiled the brand name and details of their latest project: an Internet based television service, Joost.Currently available in private beta testing, Joost combines the best of TV and the best of the Internet by offering viewers a unique, TV-like experience enhanced with the choice, control and flexibility of Web 2.0.The company, known under the code name The Venice Project, revealed its official brand.

web 2.0

The potential for Web 2.0 in India is definitely exciting, but for now, a concept should be for the global market, not just for the home market.The challenges for entrepreneurs building a web start-up with their own money is also daunting, unlike the first wave of dotcoms in 1999-2000, when venture funds chased eyeballs that never earned them revenues, instead of using a stickiness yardstick, resulting in the notorious dotcom bust.Today, analysts say there are about 30 web start-ups in India and another 20 are gearing up for launch in a few months.But many online ventures with a good revenue model are the first generation dotcoms focused on e-commerce, travel, job portals and matrimonial sites and some of them such as makemytrip.com and travelguru.com have raised cash to grow their business

orkut india

Even before the storm over the alleged defaming of a Delhi airhostess on Orkut has died down, a Delhi teenage girl has fallen victim to the Orkut mischief-makers, who have posted a profile on the web page, describing her as a 'sex teacher'.The girl's profile also has obscene photographs and contact details such as her home address and telephone numbers. The matter came to fore after the girl's family started receiving vulgar calls and her father approached the Cyber Cell of Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing.

web 2.0

The evaluation and classification of the top 121 highly popular websites in India was done by JuxtConsult by measuring these websites on 32 individual criteria grouped under six different usability aspects, branding, navigation structure and value added features, website design, company and contact info, contact responsiveness and technical parameters.Of the 26 user-friendly websites, 12 websites -- Shopping, Shaadi, Yatra, HSBC, Jobstreet, Ebay, Spicejet, Travelguru, SimplyMarry, Citibank, Reliance and Samsung -- are in the 'best practice group,' scoring more than 95 per cent points.

web2.0

Sun Microsystems announced that the Norwegian government has deployed a combination of Sun hardware and software technologies as the foundation of its national rollout of the "eNorway 2009" initiative designed to provide the country's citizens with Web-based access and support for all government services.

web 2.0

Lycos is set to go after a portion of the popular online-video and social-networking spaces by launching a service that lets users create video playlists composed of footage from several websites.Users of the US-based service, called Lycos Mix, will be able to select video from YouTube, Google Video and MySpace to create playlists. The free service, currently in beta testing, uses Lycos technology that allows both real-time chat and permanent comments.

social networking

Cisco Systems Inc., whose core business is selling the routers and switches that direct data traffic over computer networks, said it has acquired a small social networking company that allows businesses to create MySpace-like communities on their Web sites.Cisco said Friday that it was paying an undisclosed amount to acquire privately held Five Across Inc., an 11-person San Francisco company whose software allows companies to add user-interaction functions and multimedia-sharing capabilities to their Web sites.Five Across' publishing platform allows users to create personal Web pages and post photos, videos and audio clips, much like the proprietary system used by News Corp.'s MySpace.

web2.0

Fast pitch an online social network for professionals has launched a portal for people of African American origin, and other ethnic minorities, called MyBlackFriends.com. Representatives of Fast Pitch say the portal is a networking website which is tailored to, but not just for, Minorities. The content, they say, is built around African Americans and other ethnicities and 'people of color'.

web 2.0

Vodafone and MySpace announced a deal today to provide social networking services to European customers for the first time.MySpace Mobile will be available in the second half of 2007 for United Kingdom users first, with plans to implement the service for the rest of the European Union at a later date.

social networking

Online communities or sites, which bring people together, are an excellent way of bonding people. They not only cut across limitations of distance and time but also give you an opportunity to meet people you wouldn't have met otherwise. They also take care of inhibitions among people who don't have great social skills. Having a medium between two people, even though it may be non-personal, makes it a lot easier to communicate which might have been tough in a real life situation. You also get to meet a lot people you might have lost touch with like school friends, college friends, friends from your previous residential area, friends from your coaching classes and so on and so forth. You also meet a lot of like-minded people who share similar interest and then there are some who use it for business networking also. So all in all, a great innovation, that's brought our world just that much closer

web 2.0

A new generation of net-savvy denizens is doing away with the drudgery of geography and finding unique ways to socialise. But online communities are not just about meeting and mating, they are becoming melting pots of views, information, ideas and contacts for just about every subject.Music communities are some of the more popular communities, as people with similar tastes tune in and recommend new music to each other. IndianGuitarTabs.com, one such site, is a popular haunt for South East Asian music enthusiasts.Following in the footsteps of international networking sites are specialised Indian community engines. Fropper and Minglebox, social networking forums, have grown exponentially since their launch, as has Yo4Ya.com, a new entrant in the Indian youth networking space.

web2.0

MuslimSpace.com was started by Mohammed El-Fatatry, a 21-year-old UAE-born Egyptian software engineer, media specialist and documentary filmmaker who now resides in Finland. A student of media technology at the Espoo-Vantaa University of Applied Sciences, he calls himself a Muslim entrepreneur, and has set up several websites targeting the Muslim community the world over, including a peer-to-peer file sharing site called IslamicTorrents.net, a support site for the popular BitTorrent.Although you can do the same things you do on other social networking sites — create Web pages, write blogs, join groups, post pictures and even add their favourite audio and video favorite audio and video —the rules are stringent, and require rigorous adherence to an Islamic code of conduct. For instance, women posting their pictures have to pose in traditional Islamic clothing. Indeed, most of the pictures of women posted show them revealing only their eyes. El-Fatatry also bans “unIslamic” words like four-letter exclamations. And yes, you cannot use your membership to date other users.

web2.0

About 93 per cent of the 28 million Indians online belong to the age group 18-45 years — a target audience that has the maximum buying power. Ten million of these are hooked on to some form of online social media, be it personal, career or business networking, matrimonial sites, discussion rooms, virtual activity platforms, instant messenger, podcasts, RSS feeds and blogs.Social media advertising has been taking the online advertising industry by storm. The total marketing spend on social media is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 106.1 per cent from 2005 to 2010, reaching $757 million in 2010, according to a report from PQ Media. Blog advertising, worldwide, totalled $25 million in 2006, which includes blogs, podcasts and RSS advertising .

web 2.0

More than half (55 percent) of all American teens between the ages of 12 and 17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teen-agers conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which conducted phone interviews with 935 teens.The study claims girls use social networking sites like MySpace to reaffirm existing friendships, while boys are more often there to flirt.The research suggests that these sites were most popular with girls aged 15-17 as 70% of those questioned said they had an account at one or more of the social networking sites. By contrast only 54% of boys aged 15-17 were such keen users. Some teenagers are avid users of the sites and 48% of those interviewed said they visited the sites on a daily basis, while 22% said they looked at the sites several times a day.

web 2.0

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev asked Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to intercede on behalf of a Russian teacher accused of using pirated software in his classroom.In an open letter, Nobel Peace Prize winner Gorbachev said the teacher, Alexander Ponosov, from a remote village in the Urals, should be shown mercy because he did not know he was committing a crime. "A teacher, who has dedicated his life to the education of children and who receives a modest salary that does not bear comparison with the salaries of even regular staff in your company, is threatened with detention in Siberian prison camps," Russia has been mounting a high-profile crackdown on piracy as part of its efforts to join the World Trade Organization.