Pramod Techno Blog Wishes all the fans a Happy & Prosperous New Year 2014

Wishes all the fans

Happy & Prosperous

New Year 

2014

Well once again its that time of year where we look back on the year almost gone and look forward to what the New Year will bring, well once again we've had a really great year this year and thanks to all who made it like that for this blog, with more latest updates and some important event updates from technology world.

MediaTek to invest over $1 billion in chip development

Taiwanese company MediaTek plans to invest more than $1 billion in development of more than 20 new chips in 2014 that will
be built into smart phones, tablets, TVs, DVD players, and wireless devices.

MediaTek usually spends about 20% of the annual amount collected from the sale on the research and development department. @Decrypted Tech

Microsoft announces Nokia Lumia 1520 pre- orders

Microsoft has officially detailed the Lumia 1520 availability and launched a pre-order campaign for the phablet.

Microsoft is going the extra mile with this particular pre-order.

The SIM-free Lumia 1520 will cost you a hefty £594.98, and is
scheduled to start shipping on November 25.

@gsmarena

Apple polishes forecast after selling 9 million new iPhones

"In addition, more than 200 million iOS devices are now running the completely redesigned iOS 7, making it the fastest software upgrade in history,"  Apple said referring to its latest mobile operating system.

Demand for the iPhone 5s has exceeded the initial supply and many online orders are scheduled to be shipped in the coming weeks,
it said.

"This is our best iPhone launch yet. More than 9 million new iPhones sold, a new record for first weekend sales," Apple CEO Tim Cook said.

The iPhone 5, the earlier model, sold over 5 million units in the first three days after its release last September ..........full news @Jagran

Narendra Modi themed SmartNamo phones launched

A Gujarat-based group has
launched two Narendra Modi themed smartphones in India, named SmartNamo Saffron One and SmartNamo Saffron Two. The two smartphones are now available for pre-order at e-commerce website Snapdeal for an initial booking amount of Rs 999.

The 16 and 32GB variants of SmartNamo Saffron One have been priced at Rs 18,000 and Rs 23,000, respectively.

SmartNamo Saffron Two will cost buyers Rs 24,000. Both the phones will be available for delivery in the second week of October, Snapdeal says. Both devices are powered by Android 4.2 and have 1.5GHz quad-core processor ..............full news @ TimesOfIndia

China-Based Hacking Group Behind Hundreds of Attacks on U.S. Companies

The group, called Hidden Lynx, is believed connected to the Operation Aurora espionage
campaign of 2010 in which dozens of major companies, including Google and Microsoft, were targeted.

More recently, Hidden Lynx was associated with an attack on security vendor Bit9 earlier
this year, and also with numerous "watering hole" attacks against hundreds of organizations
in the United States.

The group has a long history of attacking organizations in the defense ..........full news @COMPUTERWORLD

Apple shares up ahead of iOS 7 launch

Apple launching iOS 7. Shares of the tech titan are up slightly -- 1% -- in pre-market trading with its iOS 7 operating system poised to hit iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices later today.

The OS represents a major shift for Apple, and likely consumers ..... full news @ USA TODAY TECH

Apple unveiling its polished iOS7 on September 18

iOS 7, featuring a completely redesigned stunning new user
interface, will be available starting Wednesday, September 18 to iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch® users as a free software update. iOS 7 has hundreds of great new features, including Control Center, Notification Center, improved
Multitasking, AirDrop®, enhanced Photos, Safari®, Siri® and introduces iTunes Radio, a free Internet radio service based on the music you listen to on iTunes®. In addition, iOS 7 has been engineered with deep technical and design integration with both iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c.

“iOS 7 is completely redesigned with an entirely new user interface and over 200 new features, so it’s like getting a ............. full news @Apple Press Info

Run Android apps on Windows, Macintosh PCs & Windows tablets from Bluestack App Player

 BlueStacks App Player and BlueStacks Cloud Connect. Both products revolve around enabling Android applications to run on Windows PCs, Macintosh computers and Windows tablets.

World's thinnest keyboard unveiled by Cambridge firm CSR

The company behind the technology found in wireless Beats headphones and Nike Running gadget has unveiled the world's thinnest keyboard, with a flexible, wireless touchscreen just half a millimetre thick.

Cambridge-based CSR, which specialises in wireless technology, showcased a prototype of the product at the IFA consumer electronics event in Berlin, but it will be 12 months before it will be available to buy.

Paul Williamson, CSR's director of low power wireless products, said the final form factor depended on how manufacturers bring the keyboard to market, although its primary use is likely to be as a lightweight, complementary external keyboard for tablet devices. "This is a working prototype and a glimpse forward rather than something people will be buying this year," he said.

"We might see lots of shapes and size, .....full news @THE GUARDIAN

Ready for smartphones with a next-generation chip

Next week in Berlin there are sure to be some new smartphone announcements. It's the annual IFA show there, along with some supplemental press events in New York City and elsewhere. Yup, we'll likely see the new Galaxy Gear smartwatch from Samsung and the company's new Galaxy Note 3, but the star of the show may not be one single device. Instead, it could be a single chip.

At least two companies, if not more, are expected to announce powerful new mobile devices built around Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 chip.

The market has seen a number of phones and tablets using the current Snapdragon line, but those have all been the 200, 400 and 600 models. The HTC One and some versions of the Samsung Galaxy S 4, for example, use the current high-end Snapdragon 600.

So what's the big deal about the 800? Quite a.......full news @USA TODAY

How Syrian Electronic Army “hacked” the New York Times, Twitter and the Huffington Post

As of this moment, the website of the New York Times is inaccessible to many people. It’s apparently the victim of an attack by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), the group of hackers that supports Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and who started out by hacking their ideological foes before it occurred to them they’d get more press by going after more visible targets.

But here’s the thing: Unlike previous attacks by the SEA, for example against the Twitter accounts of The Guardian, it seems more likely that this time, the SEA didn’t manage to filch passwords from anyone within the Times itself. As the Times itself has just reported, there has been an “attack on the company’s domain name registrar, Melbourne IT.” The same registrar apparently also hosts the domain names of other sites the SEA claims to have hacked, including Twitter and the Huffington Post, which also .....full news @QUARTZ

WeChat passes 100 million users outside China

 

The figures show a boom in popularity for the app, which now has 30 million more users than a month ago and 50 million more than three months ago.

The service, combined with its Chinese-only counterpart Weixin, now has a total of 235.8 million users, according to Tencent Holdings Ltd., China’s largest internet company by market value.

In comparison WhatsApp, its American equivalent, now has 300 million active monthly users worldwide.

The main foreign markets for the messaging app were India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, Tencent Holdings ........full news @The Telegraph

Nissan will have a driverless car on the road by 2020

 

Nissan has just joined Google in the race to make driverless cars a reality. 

The Japanese automaker is aiming to have such driverless autos on the road by 2020.

"Nissan Motor Company's willingness to question conventional thinking and to drive progress is what sets us apart," said CEO Carlos Ghosn, in a press release. 

 

Nissan intends to start testing such vehicles by 2014. It's unclear how long Nissan has been testing the .....full news @CNN

India-born Satya Nadella in race for next CEO of Microsoft

Satya Nadella , Executive Vice President 
Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group

India-born Satya Nadella, currently heading Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group, is listed among likely successors to CEO Steve Ballmer, who is set to retire within a year.

As executive vice president, Nadella "runs a group that continues to churn out growth and profits", noted Seattle Times in a story on the start of a guessing game among Microsoft watchers, since Ballmer's impending departure was announced.

"There is no single clear successor to a lightning rod of a leader who remains one of the most identifiable CEOs in .......read full news @businesstoday

Guy Hacks Google Glass to Steer Drone

 

 

Outfitted with Google Glass, Blaine Bublitz controls a drone softly floating in the air before him with just a slight tilt of the head.

Bublitz, from the coding company IcedDev, used a JavaScript code to turn Google Glass into a basic control system for a quadcopter drone, thus allowing him to control the device by moving his head .... read full news @Mashable

iPhone 5S A7 processor will be 31 percent faster than the current A6 chip

The next-generation A7 processor in the iPhone 5S will be roughly 31 percent faster than the current A6, according to a tweet by Fox News' Clayton Morris. His sources have also mentioned a "separate chip devoted to motion tracking".

It's unclear how Apple would use motion tracking abilities, but it could be developing a new control scheme that uses motion gestures like Samsung has built into its Galaxy S series of smartphones. 

The iPhone 5S is expected to be unveiled at a media event on September 10 ......full news @MacRumours

India overtakes Japan to become third largest Internet population

 

India has bypassed Japan to become the world’s third largest Internet user after China and the United States, and its users are significantly younger than those of other emerging economies, global digital measurement and analytics firm comScore has said in a report. 

India now has nearly 74 million Internet users, a 31 per cent increase over March 2012, the report says.

“Mobile phone based Internet usage is a key component of Indian Internet usage, and I’d say the recent growth is being driven by mobile Internet usage,” Nilotpal Chakravarti, spokesperson of the Internet and Mobile Association of India told The Hindu on Thursday. In addition, many Netizens were using dongles to access the Internet.

Three-fourths of India’s online population is under 35 as against just over ha .......full news @THE HINDU

First unofficial photo of the iPhone 5s in its new color, champagne

 

image courtesy : nydailynews

TechCrunch has published the first photos of the iPhone wearing its new shiny coat. In addition to the traditional black and white, Apple's next smartphone will reportedly be available in a pale gold color dubbed "champagne."

While this new, flashier color is said to be obtained simply by anodizing the smartphone's aluminum shell, fans of all that glitters can already acquire iPhones ........ full news @nydailynews

Haswell-based MacBook Pros expected to ship in September

Taiwanese manufacturers have begun to ship components for new MacBook Pros based on Intel's fourth-generation Haswell processors to assembly plants, according to a Thursday report by Hong Kong-based supply chain monitor EMSOne.

The Haswell architecture, which made its Apple debut at WWDC 2013 in the MacBook Air, is designed to take advantage of improvements in transistor manufacturing processes to increase power efficiency and computational performance. Like its predecessor Ivy Bridge, Haswell chips are...... full news @Apple Insider

Nokia launches Lumia 925, 625 smartphones in India

Viral Oza, Director-Marketing, Nokia India launches the new Nokia Lumia 925 and 625 smartphones during a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday [image courtesy : The Hindu]

The new Nokia Lumia 925 offers advanced lens technology, PureView camera and Nokia’s next generation imaging software to deliver clearer, sharper pictures and video as well as enhanced low-light imaging – all packed in a suavely designed, slim and stylish metal-polycarbonate body.

The Nokia Lumia 625 flaunts a large 4.7-inch super-sensitive LCD screen with the added impetus of an exclusive video content app offering access to over 3000 movies across Hollywood, Bollywood and regional genres for streaming and downloading, the company said in a statement.

Launching the new devices, Viral Oza, Director-Marketing, Nokia India said, “The Nokia Lumia 625 is our largest smartphone screen to date and offers a superior entertainment companion to our consumers, while with the Nokia Lumia 925, we have introduced metal to the Lumia range in a .....read full news @INDIA BLOOMS

Pesky calls, SMSes, connection of banks, firms to be terminated

      
     Over 25,000 entities have been blacklisted for making pesky calls and SMSes and they will not get a phone connection for the next two years, Telecom minister Kapil Sibal said.



"A total of about three lakhs telephone connections of un-registered telemarketers have been disconnected by the access service providers and the name and address of 25,295 such subscribers have been put in the blacklist," he said in the Rajya Sabha.

As per Trai guidelines, only registered telemarketers can make promotional or marketing calls and only to those numbers which are not registered with do-not-disturb list.

The registered telemarketers have been allocated special number series, starting with 140 for making .......Read More @TimesofIndia

Google Puts Waze Traffic Data on the Map

image courtesy:pocketgpsworld.com

Google on Tuesday announced that it is incorporating real-time traffic data from Waze into its popular Google Maps mobile application.

"Users of Google Maps for Mobile will now benefit from real time incident reports from Waze users," explained Brian McClendon, vice president of Google Maps. "This means when Wazers report accidents, construction, road closures and more on Waze, the updates will also appear on the Google Maps app for Android and iOS in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Switzerland, UK and the US."

Waze provides real-time, crowdsourced traffic reports and was acquired by Google in June. Tuesday's announcement represents one of the first visible fruits of that union.

Google declined to ......full news @TECHNEWSWORLD

Mark Zuckerberg has a plan to bring internet access to everyone

 

 

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is ambitious, if nothing else. Whether you're into the social networking scene or not, you have to credit the whiz kid for building the world's largest social playground with over a billion active users around the globe. That's impressive, but it pales in comparison to what he wants to do next. The social star now wants to connect every person in the world to the Internet, and he has a plan to get it done.

It's really more of a rough draft, as Zuckerberg himself makes clear in a multi-page outline (PDF) of a new initiative to bring Internet access to all. He's not alone, either. Zuckerberg is joined by some big names in founding Internet.org, a global partnership aimed at making Internet access available to the next 5 billion people. In addition to Facebook, other founding members include Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm, and Samsung.

"Everything Facebook has done has been about ..........read full news @MAXIMUMPC

Apple adds new rules on children's apps to iOS developer guidelines

Apple has paved the way for the launch of its new Kids category on its App Store by adding new rules for children's apps to its developer guidelines.

The newly-added "Kids Apps' section of Apple's App Store Review Guidelines sets out the company's policy on privacy, advertising and use of in-app purchases in iOS apps aimed at children younger than 13.

It comes after several months of news stories about children racking up big bills buying virtual items in mobile games without their parents' knowledge, and ahead of the publication this autumn of a report on children's apps by the UK's Office of Fair Trading.

Apple's new guidelines cover four key points:

24.1
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 must include a privacy policy
24.2
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 may not include behavioral advertising (e.g. the advertiser may not serve ads based on the user's activity within the App), and any contextual ads presented in the App must be appropriate for kids
24.3
Apps primarily intended for use by kids under 13 must get parental permission or use a parental gate before allowing the user to link out of the app or engage in commerce
24.4
Apps in the Kids Category must be made specifically for kids ages 5 and under, ages 6-8, or ages 9-11

The rules aren't a huge surprise for children's app developers, with many having added privacy policies and .........read full@theguardian

3D printing creates model of baby in womb

An ultrasound is a regular procedure for expecting couples, and it’s not unusual for the parents to take a black and white print of the fetus home with them.

But the rapidly evolving technology of 3D printing is giving parents – and scientists – a much clearer view of their baby.

A clinic in Japan is offering to print models of fetuses from inside pregnant womens’ stomachs – and even giving them a copy to take home as a memoir of their pregnancy.

Technicians use MRI scans and a technology called Bio-Texture modeling, which converts the MRI data into a 3-D image.

Then a 3-D printer builds up........ more details @euronews

Instagram virus creates fake 'likes' and followers in lucrative marketing scam

A virus typically used to steal credit card information has been repurposed to target Instagram, generating fake "likes" and followers, and selling them online. 

As Reuters reports, these fake "likes" are then sold in batches of 1,000 on online forums, and can fetch surprisingly high prices. According to security firm RSA, 1,000 Instagram followers sell for around $15 online, while 1,000 "likes" selling for $30. The same number of credit card numbers, by comparison, go for as little as $6.

Concern mounts as Google confirms Android cryptographic vulnerability

 

Google has confirmed reports of a weakness in Android's Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) that has left bitcoin wallets generated on Android devices vulnerable to theft.

The issue came to light last weekend, with reports that around $5,700 worth of the bitcoin cryptocurrency had been stolen as a result of the vulnerability on Android.

"We have now determined that applications which use the Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) for key generation, signing, or random number generation may not receive cryptographically strong values on Android devices due to improper initialization of the underlying PRNG," explained Android security engineer Alex Klyubin in a post on Google's Android developers blog.

"Applications that directly invoke the .....read full new at Guardian

Google servers went offline for 5 minutes, web traffic plunged 40 percent

For five minutes early on Saturday morning, the Internet stood still as all Google services including Gmail, Drive, Maps and Chat suffered an outage and didn’t function.

The Google App Dashboard documented this brief outage as all apps provided by the search giant went down for around 5 minutes.

The app dashboard for Gmail had the following message for users:

We’re aware of a problem with Gmail affecting a significant subset of users. The affected users are able to access Gmail, but are seeing error messages and/or other unexpected behavior. 

A similar message was .....read full news at FirstPost

Cisco to cut 4,000 jobs despite strong profits

Cisco's chief executive John Chambers

The news came after it reported net income of $2.3bn (£1.5bn) in the fourth quarter, up from $1.9bn a year earlier.

Cisco's chief executive John Chambers said that "the economic recovery is slower and more inconsistent".

The cuts come as the company looks to reduce costs as it sees demand for its networking equipment remain uncertain. 

Cisco also predicted that its revenues in the current quarter would be at the lower end of analysts' forecasts. 

Its shares fell more than 9% in after-hours trading.

Mr Chambers said the job cuts were due to weaker sales in Japan, China and Europe, which had weighed on revenue growth.

"The environment in terms of our ......read full news @bbc.co.uk

US county abandons TCS project, files lawsuit

 

India's largest software services exporter, Tata Consultancy Services, has been slapped with a lawsuit by Orange County in California for making "a series of false promises and intentional misrepresentations" during the bidding process for a contract.

TCS declined to comment on the issue, citing it as a legal matter.

The issue relates to a contract for development of a tax collection and management system for Orange County in 2007-2008. TCS won the bid for the job for an amount of about $8 million.

According to the contract, Tata America International Corporation (TCS America) was to develop and implement the Property ..... read more @siliconindia.com

China to probe IBM, Oracle, EMC for security concerns

    China's Ministry of Public Security and a cabinet-level research centre are preparing to probe IBM, Oracle and EMC over security issues, a newspaper report said.

The report follows revelations by former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency and his assertion that the agency hacked into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and in Hong Kong.

Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has had access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and........read full news @timesofindia

MediaTek has unveiled MT8135 quad-core chipset for tablets

MediaTek has now introduced a new SoC (system on chip), MT8135 for tablets that features a quad-core solution.

According to MediaTek, its latest quad-core chip for tablets incorporates two high-performance ARM Cortex-A15 and two ARM Cortex-A7 processors and a PowerVR Series6 GPU. The processor is complimented by an optimized ARM big.LITTLE processing system which allows heterogeneous multi-processing including heavy web-downloading, heavy graphics gaming, high-quality video viewing and multitasking, as per the company.

"ARM big.LITTLE technology reduces processor energy consumption by up to 70 percent on common workloads, which is critical in the drive towards all-day battery life for mobile platforms." We are pleased to see MediaTek's MT8135 seizing on the opportunity offered by the big.LITTLE architecture to enable new services on a heterogeneous processing platform," said Noel Hurley, vice president, Strategy and Marketing, Processor Division, ARM.

MediaTek claims that it has applied bi............more details at NDTV GADGETS

Sony Xperia Z Ultra smartphone with 6.4-inch full-HD screen launched for Rs. 46,990

  

Sony has launched its biggest-ever smartphone, the Xperia Z Ultra, at a price point of Rs. 46,990. The phone will be available starting August 2, in Black, White and Purple colours.

The Sony Xperia Z Ultra sports a sleek look with a thickness of 6.5mm, and weighs 212 grams. It features a 6.4-inch full-HD display with a resolution of 1080x1920 pixels. It is the first smartphone display that integrates Sony's Triluminos technology, which the company introduced at CES with its Bravia televisions. Sony claims that through the technology the display reproduces a greater range of rich, natural colours to deliver true, natural shades. The technology also includes X-Reality for mob.... more details at NDTV GADGETS

Saudi website editor sentenced to seven years in prison, lashes

The editor of a Saudi Arabian social website has been sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes for founding an Internet forum that violates Islamic values and propagates liberal thought, Saudi media reported on Tuesday.

Activist Raif Badawi, image source: carbonated.tv

 

Raif Badawi, who started the "Free Saudi Liberals" website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, has been held since June 2012 on charges of cyber crime and disobeying his father - a crime in the conservative kingdom and top U.S. ally.

Al-Watan newspaper said the judge had also ordered the closure of the website.

France was concerned by the sentence and remained committed to "freedom of opin .........Read full story at REUTERS India

TCS completes acquisition of French company Alti SA

 

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), on Wednesday, announced that it completed the acquisition of French IT services company Alti.

A statement from TCS said it completed the acquisition during an official ceremony under the patronage of Arnaud Montebourg, Minister for Economic Regeneration for the French Republic.

The deal, valued at 75 million euro (around Rs.530 crore) was an all-cash transaction and the announcement was made in early April 2013. 

Alti is a privately-held company with revenues of 126 million euro in 2012 and is regarded as one of the top five system integrators of SAP solutions in France. Its customers include several top French corporations in the ................... read full news at The Hindu

Google gets deeper into hardware with new tablet, TV gadget

Google Inc(GOOG.O) on Wednesday showcased a new-generation, slimmer Nexus 7 tablet that the Internet search company hopes will expand its presence in consumer hardware, and ensure that its online services remain front-and-center on mobile devices.

The latest Nexus 7, featuring a Qualcomm Inc(QCOM.O) Snapdragon processor and a higher display resolution, on July 30 will be priced at $229 for a basic version with 16 gigabytes of storage. The original year-old tablet started at $199 for an 8 gigabyte version.

Sundar Pichai, head of Android and Chrome software, said on the sidelines of an event to launch the tablet that the Internet company would make a profit off the new product. The first-generation Nexus 7, which marked its initial foray into mobile electronics, was financially a break-even product for the company, analysts have said.

"The new Nexus 7 is designed so that it's profitable for all the people involved. Retailers, us, everyone included .........read full story at Reuters India

Motorola debuts three Verizon-exclusive droid phones

 

The phones, the Droid Mini, Droid Ultra and Droid Maxx will go on sale for $99, $199 and $299 for customers who sign a two year contract and will be available in Verizon stores August 20, according to Verizon Wireless.

The latest Droid line-up marks the first phone range that Motorola has designed since it was bought by Google in 2012. It will be followed in little over a week by the August 1 unveiling of the Moto X, a hotly anticipated smartphone from Motorola.

Verizon Wireless and Motorola launched the first phones under the Droid brand for phones based on Google Android software in 2009, at a time when rival AT&T Inc(T.N) still had exclusive rights to sell the Apple Inc(AAPL.O) iPhone.

The Droid brand helped to resuscitate a struggling Motorola at the time as Verizon .............read full story at Reuters India

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd spying for China stated by former CIA boss Michael Hayden

 

Michael Hayden, also the former head of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), said in an interview with the paper that Huawei had "shared with the Chinese state intimate and extensive knowledge of the foreign telecommunications systems it is involved with".

 

"I think that goes without saying," he was quoted as saying.

The newspaper reported Hayden said intelligence agencies have hard evidence of spying activity by the world's No. 2 telecoms equipment maker. It did not detail that evidence.

Huawei, founded in 1987 by former People's Liberation Army officer Ren Zhengfei, has repeatedly denied being linked to the Chinese government or military or receiving financial support from either.

Hayden is a director of Motorola Solutions, which provides radios, smart tags, barcode scanners and safety products. Huawei and Motorola Solutions Inc (MSI.N) had previously been engaged in ...........Read full story at Reuters India

Microsoft received 400 requests from India for ID data

 

Indian law enforcement agencies last year sent Microsoft 418 requests for information on user accounts to assist investigation into criminal activities. 

Microsoft says it provided no content data to the Indian government. 

The inquiries involved nearly 600 different accounts or IDs, but the U.S. tech giant did not provide content data in response to India's request, according to Microsoft. 

However, it handed over non-content data 88.5 percent of the time, and 1 percent of the time rejected requests because they did not meet legal requirements, the company said. For another 10.5 percent of the time, Microsoft was unable to locate any information for the user account specified by the Indian government. 

The government made 53 requests on data related to Skype, which Microsoft acquired in 2011, and these.....Read full story at zdnet.com

Apple iPhone sales see sharp fall in India

 

     Smartphone maker Apple has seen a sharp fall in its India sales during the first three months of 2013, a trend that analysts say might persist as the California-based company looks to make deeper inroads into world's third-largest smartphone market.

Sales in India had soared soon after the November launch of iPhone 5, the latest iteration of Apple's smartphone. In an uncharacteristic move, Apple followed up with a sustained marketing campaign, advertising discounts schemes and monthly installment options for customers in India, where its phones are seen as too expensive.

"The October-December quarter was an exceptional one for iPhone, but that hasn't been the case since then," said Manasi Yadav, who tracks India's smartphone market for researcher IDC. According to IDC data, iPhone sales have been on a downward trend after the........Read full story at Times of India

Ban kids below 13 years, Delhi HC tells Facebook

 

The Delhi High Court Tuesday asked social networking site Facebook to upload a disclaimer on its home page that children below the age of 13 years cannot open an account on it.

A division bench of Acting Chief Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Vibhu Bakhru asked Facebook to not allow children under 13 years from opening an account.

Senior advocate Parag Tripathi appearing for Facebook assured the court that the site "will upload the disclaimer on its home page that children 13 years can not open.... read full story at Zee News

Y-Nots from India win Windows Azure Challenge at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals

Y-Nots from India win Windows Azure Challenge at the Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals Team is recognized in St. Petersburg, Russia, for app innovation.

 
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — July 11, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today awarded Y-Nots the First Prize in the Windows Azure Challenge at the 11th annual Microsoft Imagine Cup . The team also won the Mail.Ru Group Connected Planet Award, taking home a combined cash prize of $ 20,000 with additional Boost awards. The Imagine Cup as the world's premier competition for student technologists brings developers and aspiring entrepreneurs together to create innovative projects and ultimately bring those ideas to market. The Competition featured three major categories — Innovation, Games and World Citizenship — as well as three product–specific Challenges — for Windows Azure, Windows Phone and Windows 8 — and eight special awards from Imagine Cup sponsors.

The winners were announced at the Imagine Cup Awards Ceremony, held at the historic Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and attended by more than 800 students, judges, awards Partners, Russian dignitaries and members of the media from around the world. The ceremony was the culmination of a four–day competition and celebration of bringing ideas to life through technology and teamwork.

Y—Nots competed among eighty-seven student teams from 71 countries in the Worldwide Finals. Microsoft has awarded cash and other prizes valued at more than $1 million throughout the yearlong Imagine Cup competition, including awards for the winning teams at the Worldwide Finals event this week.

"For the past 11 years, Imagine Cup has been a place of inspiration and innovation for students around the world," said Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president and chief evangelist at Microsoft. "The students participating in this competition demonstrate the very best in innovation from their home countries and together are creating new apps, innovations and services that will change the way the world works, interacts and learns. We are incredibly proud of the finalists who competed in Imagine Cup this year and stand in awe of the projects and technology they brought forth during this exciting week."

The Indian team won in the Windows Azure Challenge for their project Zoik...... read full story at microsoft.com