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PAN India Roaming likely from 2013 March

After announcing plans to abolish roaming charges for mobile users when traveling within India from next year, the telecom department is likely to ask operators to implement this consumer-friendly move from March. Mobile phone companies have opposed the government's plans to do away with roaming charges, which accounts for about 10% of their revenues, and have warned they would be forced to increase tariffs to offset this loss. By March, the department also wants to expand the mobile number portability (MNP) provision and allow consumers to retain their numbers when they move to a new city or any location in the country without having to pay roaming charges. At present, MNP, the facility that allows customers to retain their number while switching operators, is restricted to a circle. For instance, a Delhi customer can switch to any operator within the metro, as this is considered to be the 'base circle' for that number. The Cellular Operators Association of India, the body representing mobile phone companies on the GSM platform such as Vodafone and Bharti Airtel, has criticised the government's plans to abolish roaming charges, and has maintained that the DoT must first sort out a slew of policy-related issues, including migration to the unified licence, before asking telcos to do away with this charge.

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Firefox 17 features click-to-play and stricter HTTPS enforcement

Mozilla's latest version of Firefox will be enabled click-to-play by default. This feature is meant to deal with vulnerable or outdated plugins, and plugins that are blocked with the click-to-play flag will not be loaded by default. You will have to click on the plugin to run it in your browser. The click-to-play plugins will accompany a blocklist, which is essentially a list of addons and plugins that are disabled to prevent users coming to harm. This includes vulnerable and outdated versions of popular plugins. Whenever you are browsing a site that utilises a vulnerable or outdated plugin that has been included in the blocklist, you'll see the click-to-play frame over the blocked content. If you think that the site is s afe enough for you to run the plugin, simply click on the content to run it. Combining click-to-play with a blocklist enables you to choose whether vulnerable but useful plugins can be run on certain websites. This is quite a useful feature that can be enabled in Chrome as well. For users with slow Internet connections or data limits, click-to-play can prove to be especially useful as flash and other content can be loaded only when needed. This feature can also be found enabled by default on some smartphone browsers, including Opera, Chrome and Dolphin. Click-to-play is also a user-friendly way to indicate that you have outdated or unsafe plugins installed in your browser. Mozilla is also testing a new security mechanism in Firefox that will enable the browser to connect securely to a specified set of websites only when the site sends a valid security certificate. Future releases of Firefox will contain a list of sites known to employ HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), which is a mechanism by which a server can indicate that the browser must use a secure connection when communicating with it. This list in Firefox is important because a browser usually doesn't know that it should communicate securely with a domain or website unless the server asks it to. This may lead to hackers or malicious code preventing the browser from ever establishing a secure connection with the host. The HSTS list will indicate to the browser that it is to connect to the specified sites securely by default, and unsecure connections to these must be refused.

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Micromax announces Funbook Infinity P275

Micromax Informatics Limited has expanded its tablet portfolio in the country with the addition of Micromax Funbook InfinityP275. Micromax Funbook Infinity sports a 7-inch display and runs on Google's Android 4.0.4 operating system. The tablet is powered by a 1.2 GHz Cortex A8 processor and is packed with a 4000mAh battery that provides a browsing time of more than 6 hours on a single charge. Funbook Infinity is equipped with a 2MP rear camera and a 0.3MP front-facing camera. The device also features dual speakers for quality sound output. The tablet supports videos in wide range of formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, RMVB, MP4, MOV, VOB, DAT, FLV and 3GP. The new Funbook comes with a USB port to enable users to share and transfer data, images, videos anywhere anytime. Funbook Infinity has Adobe Flashplayer pre-installed. Similar to its predecessors, Funbook Infinity comes with connectivity options such as 3G dongle and Wi-Fi. Funbook Infinity is priced at Rs 6,699. Specifications

• Display: 7 inch full touchscreen
• Operating system: Android 4.0.4
• Processor: 1.2Ghz Cortex A8
• Battery: 4000 mAh
• Camera: 2 MP rear camera, 0.3 MP front camera
• Memory: 4GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB
• RAM: 512MB
• Connectivity: 3G dongle support, Wi-Fi

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Google launches new initiative for mobile Internet users

Internet giant Google launched a new initiative to help businesses reach out to over 70 million mobile Internet users in the country. Under the 'Let's talk Mo' initiative', Google will help businesses create mobile sites for free, Google said in its official blogpost. According to Nielsen Informate Insights for smartphone users 2012 study, Indian smartphone users are spending over 157 minutes daily on the mobile web. The user-experience is, however, not optimised for the mobile screens as most Indian websites are still designed for the PC experience, it added. "That's why, Google is giving Indian businesses two options. One, create a mobile optimised site for free and second test how user friendly is your existing mobile site," Google IndiaCountry Head Marketing Nikhil Rungta said. Businesses will be able to see how their sites look on a smartphone using the GoMoMeter tool and get personalised recommendations for creating a more user-friendly experience. The site also provides information on current mobile trends, best practices, case studies and various other resources to help businesses develop a successful mobile presence. "The dedicated website (http://www.letstalkmo.com/in/d/) will provide all the tools and resources that businesses need to have a presence on the mobile platform". With more and more people using their mobile phones to explore the web, it makes sense for businesses to have a website optimised for mobile sooner than later.

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Pirated sites to appear lower in Google search rankings

Google is constantly working towards improving the way Search serves its expansive userbase. In an official blog post, Google has mentioned that Google has developed over 200 signals to ensure that its search algorithms offer the best results, and from next week Google will consider a new signal for determining the search rankings. Google will now take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices that it receives for any website, while determining search rankings. He goes on to specify that the websites with a high number of removal notices may feature lower in Google Search results. This way users will be able to get to legitimate and quality sources of content with much ease. "Only copyright holders know if something is authorized, and only courts can decide if a copyright has been infringed". He affirms that Google cannot determine whether a certain webpage infringes a copyright law. Owing to this, although the rankings of some pages would be affected, Google would not be removing any pages from the results altogether, unless it receives a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owners themselves. Google will also offer 'counter-notice' tools, for those who feel that their content has been wrongly removed. The post further reveals that Google's Transparency Report on copyright will contain details such as the name of the sender of the copyright removal notices, the frequency of receiving the notices, and the copyright owners and websites on behalf of whom such notices have been sent. By doing so, Google is hoping that the data will aid in discussions pertaining to the pros and cons of different proposals to tackle the issue of online copyright infringement. For this particular release, Google will disclose data starting from July 2011, and continue to update the numbers each day. In its detailed graphical report, Google highlighted that last month alone, it received as many as 1.2 million requests made on behalf of more than 1,000 copyright owners to remove certain websites or webpages from search results.

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Yahoo! to kill 50 products

Yahoo is dumping products along with workers in a quest to return the faded internet star to glory. Yahoo announced the move while mapping out the company's turnaround on the heels of an unusually upbeat quarter in which profit climbed 28 per cent. It was the first time since 2008 that Yahoo saw revenue rise in a year-over-year comparison of financial quarters. Yahoo will shut down or consolidate 50 products that don't "contribute meaningfully" to revenue, according to the chief executive. The company will focus on online venues such as News, Finance, Sports, and Yahoo Mail that attract the most users and advertisers. Yahoo reported net income of $286 million on revenue just shy of $1.08 billion in the first three months of this year. Yahoo shares jumped more than two percent on the news, hitting $15.44 a share in after-market trade. Yahoo this month said it would slash some 2,000 jobs in a purge aimed at transforming into a "smaller, nimbler, more profitable" company. The 17-year-old company based in Sunnyvale, California, had more than 14,000 employees at the end of 2011. Yahoo has been trying to reinvent itself as a "premier digital media" company since the once-flowering internet search service found itself withering in Google's shadow. As the company strived for a new identity it saw an exodus of talent that commenced during a failed bid by technology giant Microsoft to buy Yahoo four years ago for about $45 billion. Yahoo hasn't seen search ad revenue results envisioned when it subsequently struck a deal to have Microsoft power queries at its websites.

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Airtel may launch 4G services in Kolkata next month

Airtel's is likely to launch it in Kolkata circle in the first half of April. Citing unnamed sources, Telecom Talk reports that Airtel may launch LTE-TDD based wireless broadband services in the first half of April, 2012 in Kolkata. It further reports that ZTE will assist Airtel as the equipment partner, while Indus Towers will be providing towers for the 4G services. The site also points out that Airtel may install small cells at different places of the city to provide better coverage. Also, the roll-out of LTE will only be available in select pockets of the city. It may be recalled that Airtel had won spectrum for high-speed wireless broadband service (Broadband Wireless Access spectrum) in four circles namely Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka . Airtel was allocated 20 MHz of BWA spectrum in 2.3 GHz frequency band. In the same auction, Reliance Infotel had won a pan-India BWA spectrum and was given a 20MHz band. RIL has been previously rumoured to launch its 4G services with an ultra low-cost tablet. Meanwhile, Airtel, which has the largest subscribers base in India, is likely to launch its 4G services with new dongles and tablets.

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Android Market is now Google Play Store

[caption id="attachment_1198" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Google Play"][/caption] Google Inc is renaming its online storefront for music, books and digital goods, its latest move to raise its profile in the market for electronic content sales and to better compete with Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc. The company has retired the Android Market name for its store that sells apps, videos, music and electronic books on the Web and on mobile devices. From Tuesday, the store will be rebranded as the Google Play Store. The change is designed to make it clearer to consumers that Google offers a broad catalogue of content in addition to the apps programmed for smartphones and tablets based on its Android operating system. The name is being introduced three and a half years after Google launched its Android Market as a central outlet for consumers to download the mobile apps created for the growing number of Android-based smartphones. Android is the world's No.1 smartphone operating system, used in smartphones sold by Motorola , Samsung  and HTC, among others. There are more than 450,000 Android-compatible apps available from third-party software developers versus 550,000 apps available for Apple iOS devices such as the iPhone and iPad. In the past year and a half, Google has expanded the menu of offerings in the Android Market to include digital books, music and videos - markets where Apple and Amazon have robust businesses. Apple said in October that more than 16 billion songs have been downloaded from its iTunes store. Amazon said last year that it sells more digital books than print books. Google's variety of outlets for selling different types of digital content - consumers could purchase electronic books at a special Google books website as well as on the Android Market website - was confusing for consumers. And the applications for consumers to play music and videos, or read the books they purchased also had different names, creating further confusion, he said. On Tuesday, Google's various media applications will all feature the Play branding as part of their names. Although Google Play is still not available for the Indian Audience for some aspects, games and apps are easily available at the given discounts.

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Yahoo preparing layoffs, could affect thousands

Yahoo Inc's new chief executive is preparing a significant restructuring of the Internet company, including layoffs that could cut thousands of employees from its payroll. The moves could be announced as soon as the end of the month and would represent the first major changes under CEO Scott Thompson, the former PayPal president who took the top job at Yahoo in January. The changes at the struggling Web pioneer, which recently hired the Boston Consulting Group, will focus on its products group, as well as on research, marketing and public relations and businesses that are not core to the company. Yahoo, whose revenue slid by more than a fifth last year, had 14,100 employees at the end of 2011. The company fired CEO Carol Bartz in September and has been undergoing a "strategic review" since then that could include spinning of some of its Asian assets and accepting a minority investment in the company. Meanwhile, activist hedge fund ThirdPoint has announced plans to install its own slate of directors on Yahoo's board.

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