web 2.0

you tube india

2008-05-08T22:34:00.000-07:00

You Tube, the online video sharing community owned by Google, launched its Indian version . Youtube has already signed up a host of Indian content partners for its local face - Eros Entertainment, Rajshri Films, IIFA, ministry of tourism, IIT Delhi, NDTV, UTV, Zoom TV, India TV, Krishcricket, etc.Before India, YouTube had localised versions in 19 other countries, which includes Australia, Brazil, Spain, Russia, etc.YouTube, the decision to bring YouTube to India was influenced by the fact that in terms of the user base, India registered one of the fastest growth, figuring in the top 15 countries from being in the list of the top 30 countries in one year's time. Arsiwala also sees a great opportunity in the increasing number of mobile users in the country.YouTube has been adding around 2 lakh users monthly. Hundreds of videos are uploaded on YouTube everyday.

web cables cut

2008-02-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

Middle East, India and Bangladesh are experiencing disruption after undersea broadband cables were damaged between Egypt and Italy. India is home to an $11b outsourcing industry, which depends on it.India's banks and stock exchange also experienced problems on Thursday.Up to 60% of India's 50 million internet users, both individuals and companies, were affected.India's IT industry employs 700,000, who work for companies that provide a range of services - from answering customer queries to analysing equity markets - to global clients.

email security

2008-02-05T20:11:00.000-08:00

Google is adding more email security and storage products for businesses, sharpening its aim on a Microsoft stronghold while the competition between the two rivals also heats up in internet search and advertising.Google’s push into business software, launched in 2006, looms as a threat to Microsoft, which derives much of its profit from the sale of its more expensive Office suite of software applications as well as its email programs.

Orkut adds privacy control features

2008-02-03T10:36:00.000-08:00

social networking site Orkut, which turned four, has introduced new privacy control features in the past few months to make the site more secure for its users. The new features will help the users make a selection from various options available and they can restrict access of the unwanted visitors on their personal home page. Orkut, a social networking and discussion site operated by Google, also added features like a larger album space where one can upload large number of pictures. Although, the facility was available earlier but in a restricted form.

March Boedihardjo

2007-08-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-23T23:17:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-18T14:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

"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

2007-06-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

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.
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personal search

2007-06-13T21:21:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

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.
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ancient Rome

2007-06-12T16:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-12T01:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-10T23:41:00.000-07:00

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"

2007-06-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-06T23:31:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-06T23:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-06T01:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-01T03:11:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-25T01:56:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-25T01:28:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-23T01:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

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.

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search requests

2007-05-23T00:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-23T00:06:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-17T03:47:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

Yahoo

2007-05-17T03:28:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-17T02:36:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-11T23:25:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-08T22:22:00.002-07:00

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

2007-05-08T22:22:00.001-07:00

best Indian portal 2007

2007-05-08T22:22:00.000-07:00

my space

2007-05-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-07T02:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-02T00:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-28T19:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-23T02:36:00.001-07:00

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

2007-04-23T02:36:00.000-07:00

BBC

2007-04-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-04-18T02:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-12T01:07:00.001-07:00

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

2007-04-12T00:59:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T00:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-07T01:48:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-03T06:37:00.001-07:00

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

2007-04-03T06:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-30T22:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-30T05:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-29T06:30:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-28T06:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-24T22:45:00.001-07:00

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

2007-03-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-23T07:21:00.001-07:00

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

2007-03-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

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,

2007-03-20T06:26:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2007-03-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-17T19:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-13T06:47:00.002-07:00

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

2007-03-13T06:47:00.001-07:00

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

2007-03-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-11T05:52:00.001-07:00

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

2007-03-11T05:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-03-10T21:38:00.000-08:00

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

2007-03-09T06:06:00.000-08:00

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

2007-03-09T05:54:00.000-08:00

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

2007-03-09T04:12:00.000-08:00

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.