UNI TECH BLOG I

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PORTLAND: Google Inc’s Android software outsold Apple Inc’s mobile operating system for the first time last quarter among new US smartphone users, according to Nielsen Co.

Android had 27 per cent of the US market in the second quarter, compared with 23 per cent for the Apple iPhone OS, known as iOS, Nielsen said on its website. Research In Motion Ltd clung to its leading position, with 33 per cent share.

Manufacturers such as Motorola Inc and HTC Corp used Android in a wider range of handsets, giving new smartphone purchasers more options. Still, the iPhone retained a higher share than Android among existing smartphone users, according to Nielsen’s research.

“There’s a massive hunger for smartphones, and the Android universe came out not just with one blockbuster device but with a whole series of blockbuster devices,” Roger Entner, head of telecom research at Nielsen, said in an interview.

Motorola’s Droid is sold through Verizon Wireless, the largest US mobile-phone service provider. Sprint Nextel Corp introduced the Evo 4G, made by HTC, in June.

Android’s US success may mean Google will overtake Apple’s iOS globally earlier than previously expected, said Will Stofega, program director at research firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts. Earlier this year, IDC said it expected Android to overtake Apple’s iOS globally in 2011.

“It could happen sooner,” Stofega said. ‘Feasting on BlackBerry, Windows’ RIM’s BlackBerry operating system commanded 35 per cent of the overall US smartphone market. Still, among the group of newcomers to smartphones, BlackBerry’s market share dropped to 33 per cent from 45 per cent a year earlier, Nielsen said.

Microsoft Corp’s Windows Phone software also lost popularity with new users. Its share fell to 11 per cent last quarter from 20 per cent a year earlier, according to Nielsen.

“Android is feasting on BlackBerry and on Windows,” Entner said. Microsoft is trying to revive demand for its mobile software with the release of Windows Phone 7 this year. RIM tomorrow may introduce a new version of its software, BlackBerry 6, Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros, wrote in a research note.

Some of the decline in popularity for the Apple operating system may have come as consumers put off purchases before the June introduction of the iPhone 4, Entner said. Apple may regain share in the third quarter, he said.

Among all US smartphone subscribers, Apple’s share increased to 28 per cent last quarter from 21 per cent a year earlier, according to Nielsen. Android’s share among all US smartphone subscribers rose to 13 per cent from 2 per cent.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

A luxury goods designer, Stuart Hughes, has covered everyday gadgets, including an Apple iPad, in gold and diamonds, turning them into the ultimate must-have “bling”‘ boys toy.

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India’s 71 million internet and close to 10 million broadband users are increasingly becoming the victims of vicious phishing attacks that can result in identity theft, danger to life and even crippling financial fraud.

On Wednesday, users of Google’s email services received a legal notice from the gmail team asking them to update their account details for security reasons.

“Gmail Team is working on total security on all accounts in order to make Gmail better as ever and as a result of this security upgrade we require all Gmail members to verify their account with Google. To prevent your account from disability you will have to update your account by clicking the reply button and filling the space below,” the mail read.

The legal notice from Gmail wanted users to refurbish their account name, password, occupation, birth date and country of residence. It also carried a threat that users who did not update their details within 7 days of receiving the warning would lose their account permanently.

However, when contacted, a Google spokesperson said, “Some spammers send fraudulent mass-messages designed to collect personal information, called ’spoofing’ or ‘password phishing’ . We always advise our users to be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information. Google or Gmail does not send unsolicited mass messages asking for passwords or personal information; even if the message asking for it claims to be from us, please don’t believe it.”

This information is publicly available in the Gmail support center at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=8253

According to Rakshit Tandon, consultant safe surfing with the Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI ), “Phishing activity has been on the rise across India since December. The biggest targets for cyber criminals are banking sites followed by free email sites like Gmail and Yahoo and social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut,” he said.

The IAMAI runs cyber safety programmes and has already worked with 3,50,000 students in 185 schools across 43 cities and 13 states.

“A schoolteacher in Mumbai lost close to Rs 10 lakh after phishers got into her netbanking account. Internet penetration is going up which is inviting more criminal attacks as awareness levels are very low,” adds Tandon.

His advise is to be investigative and use logic (BIUL) when using the Net in order to improve your personal Internet security levels.

REUTERS

SAN FRANCISCO: Private chats between some Facebook users were briefly viewable by other users on Wednesday, an embarrassing technical glitch for a company facing growing criticism over “sloppy” privacy protection.

Techcrunch, a blog, first reported a bug related to a feature on the fast-growing social network site that allows a user to see how their profile will appear to other users.

By manipulating the “preview my profile” feature, Facebook said people were able to view their friends’ private chat messages and pending friend requests for a limited amount of time on Wednesday.

“We worked quickly to resolve this matter, ensuring that once the bug was reported to us, a solution was quickly found and implemented,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Facebook’s privacy slip-up underscores the need for greater scrutiny of the company.

“Our view is that the FTC (U.S. Federal Trade Commission) needs to act on consumer concerns about Facebook’s sloppy privacy and security practices,” Rotenberg said.

Facebook’s instant messaging service was disabled while engineers fixed the bug. The problem was resolved by Wednesday afternoon, Facebook said.

The snafu is embarrassing to Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network with 400 million users, as it comes under increasing scrutiny from privacy advocates.

Facebook changed the way users’ personal profile information is treated last month. It now requires that data about an individual’s hometown, education and hobbies be tied to public pages devoted to those topics.

Four US senators wrote to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg last week taking issue with some of the changes.

Social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, in which users share information with friends and other contacts, have become enormously popular.

Internet search giant Google Inc spurred a privacy controversy in February when it launched a new social media service dubbed Buzz.

The service initially used an individual’s email contacts from Google Gmail to build a social network of Buzz contacts that the rest of the world could see. Google acted quickly to change the settings so that contacts were kept private by default.

The research agency Gartner Inc has identified emerging technologies for future and predicts that these will have a transformational business impact.

According to the report “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008,” these should be considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years.

“Although Web 2.0 is now entering the trough of disillusionment, it will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications,” said Jackie Fenn, vice president, Gartner.

“Later — in between two and five years — cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is moving up the slope of enlightenment, will deliver transformation in terms of driving deep changes in the role and capabilities of IT,” he adds.

So, here’s looking into the emerging technologies for future.

Green IT

Along with broader societal pressure for environmentally sustainable solutions, IT has the opportunity — and in many cases, a requirement — to improve the “greenness” of its own activities, as well as to contribute to broader company and industry environmental initiatives.

Cloud computing

As companies seek to consume their IT services in the most cost-effective way, interest is growing in drawing a broad range of services (for example, computational power, storage and business applications) from the “cloud,” rather than from on-premises equipment.

Many types of technology providers are aligning themselves with this trend, with the result that confusion and hype will continue for at least another year before distinct submarkets and market leaders emerge.

Social computing platforms

Following the phenomenal success of consumer-oriented social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, companies are examining the role that these sites, or their enterprise-grade equivalents, will play in future collaboration environments.

The scope is also expanding to incorporate the notion of social “platforms,” or environments for a broad range of developers to build on the basic application.

Video telepresence

High-end videoconferencing systems (for example, from HP, Cisco, Teliris and others) that utilise large, high-definition (HD) displays and components to show life-size images of participants in meeting rooms or suites have proven significantly more effective than earlier generations of video conferencing technology.

High cost is currently the barrier to broader adoption.

Microblogging

Pioneered by Twitter (although other services such as FriendFeed or Plurk are also available), microblogging is a relatively new addition to the world of social networking.

In this contributors post a stream of very short messages (fewer than 140 characters) providing information about their current activity or thoughts, which can then be subscribed to by others.

The phenomenon has caught on among certain online communities, and leading-edge companies are investigating its role in enhancing other social media and channels.

Courtesy: Gartner

By Harry McCracken

- FOXNews.com

The Web is an amazing source of TV, from the latest shows to classic reruns. And these sites, services, and software can help you explore it all.

Hulu

Popular Web site Hulu lets you watch television shows over the Internet. But there are a wealth of new alternatives to the site.

TV or PC? That’s the question I find myself asking these days when I’m in the mood to watch the tube. There are still plenty of reasons to opt for the HDTV in my living room: It’s got the biggest and best picture, the most theater-like audio, and — overall — the best selection of stuff to watch. But so many popular programs are now available online that I’m just as likely to catch them on my PC.

TV on a TV may still be the most immersive experience, but TV on a PC feels far more personal. For one thing, most of it is available on demand, on your own schedule. For another, there’s an ever-expanding universe of sites, services, and software designed to make it a cinch to find both shows you know you love and ones you haven’t discovered yet, and then watch them your way. Such as these five winners, all of which work on both Windows PCs and Macs and are absolutely free.

Explore a site that’s half TV Guide, half TiVo. You’ve got favorite TV shows, old and new. And Clicker is an extremely slick way to find everything from Lost to The Dick Van Dyke Show. It covers both free sources (such as Hulu and the sites of the major networks) and paid ones (like Amazon and Netflix), and lets you search by title or performer, or browse by category. You can add entire series to playlists and get notifications by e-mail when new episodes are available, making the service a sort of virtual DVR that helps you keep on top of your faves and play catch-up when necessary.

Make any computer a media center. Boxee is a hot piece of software that lets you browse and enjoy a bevy of digital content, including paid and free video on the Web, files on your computer or home network, music, photos, and more. It’s meant to appeal to folks who have connected their computers to their TV sets: You can breeze through the whole user interface with a remote control, and everything’s got a sheen that looks great in high definition. But it’s fun to use even if just to watch TV on your laptop or desktop monitor.

Try a better Netflix. Netflix may still be synonymous with DVDs by snail mail in little red envelopes, but its Watch Instantly feature — which gives every Netflix subscriber unlimited on-demand access to a profusion of movies and TV shows — is one of the best ways to spend a few bucks a month on internet content. Oddly enough, though, finding stuff to watch is surprisingly frustrating: when you search on the Netflix site, the Watch Instantly titles are often overwhelmed by the ones that are still only available on DVD.

Enter Instantwatcher.com, an ingenious, ingeniously simple site that does one thing: help you locate items you can Watch Instantly. It shows only films and episodes available for instant viewing, and it tells you what’s popular right now. Find something that catches your fancy, and one click loads it up in Netflix’s player.

Capture, convert, and move streaming video. Most free TV on the Web streams to your PC, which works just fine for one-time viewing on a broadband-connected computer. But you’ve got to be online to watch it, and can’t save items for offline viewing or move them to gadgets such as your cell phone, media player, or game console.

RealNetworks’ RealPlayer SP is a clever application that changes that. Install it, and you can download and save video all over the Web, then convert it and transfer it to your other devices. Other services and software offer similar features, but I don’t know of any that make the job as easy as RealPlayer. The downside? It doesn’t work with copy-protected content, such as most of the shows that big-name entertainment companies make available on the Web. That still leaves a wealth of stuff to watch, including most of YouTube.

“Google” your cable or satellite box. Did I say this column was about how to get more out of Internet TV? I fibbed a little. LocateTV is a search engine that lets you track down programming that’s available via your cable and satellite subscription, complete with episode guides, reminders, and other features that are reminiscent of Clicker. Tell it your zip code and provider, and it’ll restrict its results to shows available locally, and will give you the channel numbers you need to tap on your remote.

LocateTV is a vastly more efficient way to navigate through thousands of hours of programming on hundreds of channels than scrolling through a never-ending programming grid on your TV. It’s pretty cool when you think about it: The Internet is so powerful a force that it can make TV better even when you aren’t watching TV on the Internet.

Harry McCracken blogs at Technologizer, his site about personal technology. He’s also the former editor in chief of PC World. Follow him on Twitter as @harrymccracken.

Indiatimes Infotech

If last year was the year of Netbooks, 2010 seems to be the year of Tablets. Since the day, very first rumours of Apple Tablet iPad started floating in, IT hardware manufacturers of all hues have jumped on to the Tablet bandwagon.

Joining the Tablet market is IT major HP, which unveiled its Tablet, called Slate, at the Consumer Electronics Show at Las Vegas in January. The company recently released a video promoting its upcoming touchscreen Tablet which will run on Windows 7 operating system.

Here’s looking into how HP Tablet stands vis-a-vis Apple iPad in specs like memory, display, connectivity, pricing and more.

Dimensions

Apple’s iPad measures 9.56 inches in height, 7.47 in width and 0.5 inch in depth. iPad weighs 1.5 lbs (0.68 kg), the 3G version is 0.1 pounds heavier.

HP Slate measures 9.21 (h) X 5.70 (w) X O.57 (d) inches and weighs 0.67 kg, according to reports.

Display

According to reports, HP Slate features a 8.9-inch 1024-by-600 capacitive touchscreen display.

iPad has a 9.7-inch LCD colour screen. The device uses iPhone’s multi-touch technology, Apple’s Magic Mouse, and the company’s trackpad technology also found in some Apple’s laptops.

Camera

HP Slate is likely to come with a 3 megapixel camera on its back panel and a VGA web cam on the front panel. The front camera will enable video chat.

However, Apple’s iPad lacks camera. Lack of camera being widely seen as a negative in iPad as the device is said to be placed somewhere between a smartphone and a laptop.

Processor

iPad runs a version of the iPhone’s operating system. The iPad has a 1GHz chip that is custom designed by Apple.

On the other hand, HP Slate features a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor.

Memory

As for memory, Apple iPad come in 16, 32 and 64GB versions.

HP Slate will come with 32GB of flash storage and 1GB of non-upgradeable RAM. There’s also a 64GB version.

OS

According to reports, HP Slate will pack Windows 7 Home Premium along with HP’s touch-optimised user interface. Earlier in January, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer displayed a prototype of HP’s new tablet computer at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas running on Microsoft’s latest Windows 7 computer operating system.

Apple iPad comes with iPhone OS 3.2.

Flash

HP Slate will offer support for Adobe’s Flash, video standard used for viewing websites. However, iPad doesn’t offer support for Flash. This means users will encounter those `big, empty video boxes in the middle of a page’ while surfing on the pages which require Adobe Flash.

Connectivity

Apple iPad supports both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. The Wi-Fi antenna supports 802.11 a/b/g/n. The device also packs GPS. There is also a 3G version which is likely to go on sale in late April.

Connectivity options in HP Slate include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional 3G and GPS.

Battery

According to Apple, iPad offers battery life of up to 10 hours. The standby time is approximately a month.

HP Slate reportedly supports upto 5 hours of battery life

Output

HP Slate is expected to have 1 USB 2.0, 3.5mm headphone jack and HDMI-out.

However, there is no facility for HDMI output in iPad. This means users will not be able to view HD videos on a large TV screen even if they have downloaded the same from iTunes. The Apple device can playback at 720p HD video. There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack.

Pricing

iPad’s 16GB version of the basic Wi-Fi model sells for $499. A 32GB version will cost $599, and a 64GB device will be $699. The 3G models won’t be available until April. Those will range in price from $629 to $829.

Though HP has not revealed pricing for the Slate, according to reports, the company will price it for $549 (Rs 26,400 approx). For now, HP has also not revealed when the device will be made available. However, speculations are rife that with the release of the promotional video, the device is soon expected to hit shelves.

You thought Google Inc’s recent spat with the Chinese government must be one of the biggest concerns for the IT giant considering the mammoth sized Internet market in China? Not really! For the search giant has many more challenges to contend with: slowing growth, regulatory scrutiny, shift in ad spending and more.

Here’s looking into Google’s six troubles.

Facebook

While Mountain View, California-based Google has the biggest share of online search at home and in Western Europe, it has been leapfrogged by social network Facebook Inc as the most popular US Web site.

This month, Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited Web site in the US, accounting for more weekly visits than Google.com, according to research firm Hitwise.

Facebook’s gains at Google’s expense weren’t lost on Levi Strauss & Co. The closely held maker of blue jeans and Dockers pants is advertising on Facebook this year for the first time, while its budget for search, Google’s mainstay, is staying about the same as last year, said Megan O’Connor, director of digital marketing.

The same goes for advertisers like Starbucks and JetBlue Airways, which are eager to get their marketing messages in front of Facebook’s 400 million users.

No Search success

Google’s ventures in mobile, video and display ads have failed to match the success of search. To catch up in social media, Google added a social- networking feature called Buzz to its Gmail e-mail, letting users share photos, comments and clips from its YouTube site. The site drew criticism over privacy, prompting Google to scale back some of Buzz’s features.

“They need to show how they’re going to monetize things like Android, where they seem to be taking good mobile market share,” said Richard Parower, manager, Seligman Global Technology Fund. “How can they turn that into operating profits?”

Regulatory obstacles

Like Microsoft, Google faces regulatory obstacles to efforts to break into faster-growing markets. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether the AdMob deal would squelch competition in the mobile ad market.

The US Justice Department also has raised antitrust concerns over a proposed $125 million legal settlement between Google and a group of publishers and authors. The agreement, if approved by a judge, would create the world’s largest digital library. In Europe, Google is under scrutiny for possible privacy, antitrust and intellectual property violations.

“Google has enjoyed an extended period of unfettered growth,” said Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for Competitive Technology, a Washington trade group that represents technology companies. “Between Washington and Brussels, it’s clear that they’re now in a time where their explosive growth will be under greater scrutiny.”

Slowing sales growth

As sales gains diminish, some investors are concerned that Google has begun to resemble Microsoft Corp, which generates billions of dollars in cash from its mature flagship business yet has struggled to conquer new markets. Google’s sales increased 9 percent last year after almost doubling in 2005.

At Google, sales growth has slowed in each of the past seven years, to 9 percent in 2009 from 409 percent in 2002. “They were the new kid on the block and everyone thought they were great,” said Daniel Morgan, a money manager at Synovus Financial in Atlanta, which oversees about $7.5 billion, including 27,720 Google shares, Bloomberg data shows. “That kind of euphoric, love-at-first-sight status has changed.”

Falling stocks

Google shares, which doubled last year, have dropped 8.6 percent in 2010, the sixth-biggest decline among the 75 technology stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. The stock is 24 percent below its peak of more than $740 in 2007.

R&D spend

Google has been piling up cash faster than it can find ways to spend it. Its cash and marketable securities surged 54 percent to $24.5 billion at the end of 2009 from a year earlier and made up 60 percent of total assets, up from 50 percent. Meanwhile, research and development costs rose only 1.8 percent to $2.8 billion.

This means Google is spending about 12 cents of every sales dollar on research and development, comparable with 15 cents for Microsoft.