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.