The termination of 3G roaming agreements had earlier compelled telcos like Vodafone, Idea and Airtel to send a joint letter to Kapil Sibal and further on to the PM stating that termination of 3G pacts is a breach of contract and government should refund the spectrum auction payments with interest. The future of such 3G roaming was already uncertain. The final verdict is probably out and government has asked telcos to terminate 3G roaming agreements, according to TheMobileIndian. Simply put, their customers cannot use 3G services in circles, where the service provider does not have permit for 3G services. Telecom secretary R Chandrasekhar revealed, "The decision has been taken that this (3G roaming pacts) is in violation of terms and conditions of the licence. The government will be issuing notices asking operators to stop their service with immediate effect. But on penalty, no decision has been taken yet." Not being able to access 3G services, because their service provider doesn't have the necessary permissions will cause a lot of inconvenience to the users. Aircel and Tata DoCoMo, reportedly have already discontinued their pact. Visit as on Omnifuzz or FastFind
India is currently home to millions of mobile subscribers. While this may seem to be a significant milestone to most, it is also an indicator of the fact that millions of us lie exposed to harmful radiation emitted by mobile phones. Numerous reports have been proof enough to convince us that total dependence on them can be fatal, to say the least. The government, however, has been constantly working out ways to ensure that radiation levels emitted by mobile phones remain under check, at all times. Times of India confirms that the government is close to enforcing a set of norms, which should meet the purpose. Hands-free, till now may have been just another accessory bundled up with a mobile phone, but soon, they will be mandatory with all mobile phones. Reason? Using hands-free, as opposed to answering calls the usual way is as an effective method of steering clear of radiation emissions. That or, switching over to SMSes as your mode of communication, altogether is preferable, too, since this way one can evade radiation. However, keeping safety tips aside, the government also plans to tighten the noose around norms, which specify the levels of radiation in every handset. Reportedly, the SAR levels (Specific Absorption Rate), i.e. the rate at which a normal human body absorbs radio frequency (RF), is currently at 2 watts/kg in India. Now, the government aims to crunch this number down further to 1.6 watts/kg average over a six minute period. These levels are decided on in compliance with the norms of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection Association (ICNIRP). 
Internet Explorer has managed to stay at the number one spot, but its market share is quickly dwindling as Firefox and Chrome compete for the next best - number two spot. A report by StatCounter, a service that monitors internet statistics has seen Chrome beat Firefox in the month of November. Chrome reportedly has a market share of 25.69 percent, as compared to Firefox's 25.23 percent through the month. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still has a healthy lead of 40.63 percent, which is slowly, but steadily dropping. Internet Explorer was the most dominant browser for a very long time. StatCounter expects Google to take on Microsoft for the number one browser place in the near future. The service records the number of users per browser and not the number of downloads that each one has. Internet Explorer continues to have a healthy market share in the U.S. In fact, the numbers in the U.S increased slightly from 50.24 percent last year to 50.66 percent this year. While Chrome might have taken a minor lead over Firefox, the trend for the newest of the browsers is healthy. It shows that Chrome will be able to extend that lead as months go by. Mozilla has made changes to make their browser more efficient, but they seem to have lost the momentum they once had with Firefox. Increasing extensions support for the Google Chrome has also been another reason for users to switch over from Firefox. 
As a way to speed up the process of updating Firefox, Mozilla engineers are mulling over a silent update feature, which one security expert argues is a bad idea. Currently, when Firefox detects an available update, it lets you know and if you agree to install it, the browser launches its updater program. That program downloads the update, applies it to Firefox, and restarts the browser. While all that is happening, you're twiddling your thumbs watching a progress bar on your computer screen. To skirt the lag time in the current updating process, the Firefox team is considering a "silent" alternative. Instead of performing an update in the foreground, updates would be downloaded in the background and installed on a copy of the browser in a new directory. The first time that you launch Firefox after an update has been completed, your old version of Firefox is swapped out for the new version. "While many IT security systems will have to be reconfigured to allow background updates to Firefox--which is not a good thing in the first place--there is danger that hackers could subvert the update system to allow them back-door access to the users' computer." Silent updating may be more convenient to consumers, the security expert noted, but it will also invite hacker exploitation of the process. 
16GB of internal user memory, and will feature an 8 MP camera with 28 mm wide angle lens. The Nokia Lumia 710, while featuring the same processor as its costlier cousin, the Lumia 800, has a plastic construction. It also features a WVGA LCD display, a 5 MP camera, 8 GB of internal user memory and weighs around 125.5 g. Nokia has bundled apps such as Nokia Drive, Nokia Music, into both the devices. It remains to be seen how well these Windows phone powered devices will do in a smartphone market that is pretty much dominated by Apple and Google. 
Mozilla developers hope to start testing phones running its new mobile operating system this quarter, with product demos slated for the first quarter next year and "productization" set for before June 2012, according to a road map on the project's website. In July, Mozilla announced the project called Boot to Gecko (B2G), describing it as an operating system for mobile devices that would run applications primarily on the Web. Developers hope B2G will help solve a problem that has long plagued the mobile industry: Developers must rewrite apps for each operating system. The goal of B2G is to create a framework that would let applications run from the Web on any operating system, provided the OS supports B2G's technology. By the end of this year, the developers hope to have basic functions built and integrated including the accelerometer, camera, messaging, telephony and power management, according to the road map recently posted on the site. Mozilla also hopes to have developed the user interface for the phone, which it calls Gaia. Mockups of the UI indicate that it looks relatively similar to the iPhone and Android interfaces. During the first quarter of 2012 the developers hope to have more sophisticated apps and functions ready, such as an app store. They say it's a stretch but they might complete the Bluetooth, USB and NFC functions by then. They are also working on an e-book reader, media player and Web browser. Mozilla didn't respond to questions regarding additional details of progress and declined a request to interview the lead developer of the project. Three Mozilla developers are working on the project part time, according to the website, and others are also voluntarily contributing. B2G is using pieces of Android, the operating system based on Linux and developed by Google. Mozilla has worked on a number of mobile projects in the past that have gained little traction. As far back as 2004 it started building a mobile browser called Minimo, which at one point attracted investment from Nokia, but the project fizzled. It then began work on a browser called Fennec, which it released last year for Android and is now available for iPhone. It's not clear how many people use the browser, since most smartphone operating systems now come with their own browsers. 
Hewlett-Packard announced the new Slate 2 tablet with the Windows 7 OS. The Slate 2 tablet has an 8.9-inch capacitive touch display and is an update to the company's first tablet, the Slate 500, which was released last year. Targeted at businesses, the Slate 2 includes faster hardware including Intel's Atom Z670 processor. HP was able to drop the tablet's starting price to USD699 (Rs. 34,600 approx.) by making a configuration available with just 32GB storage. That version also includes Wi-Fi and Windows 7 Home Premium. The Slate 2 will become available worldwide in November. This is the first tablet announced by HP after the company said it would keep its Personal Systems Group, which deals in smartphones, tablets and PCs. HP was offering the Slate 500 tablet when it said it would sell or spin off PSG, and subsequently killed the TouchPad tablets and Palm smartphones with WebOS. The Slate 2 also has security and management features so system administrators can remotely manage the device. Data on the tablet can be remotely wiped in case of theft, and HP is bundling Absolute Software's Computrace Pro, which helps track lost tablets. The tablet's chip also includes Trusted Platform Management, a hardware-based cryptography and authentication technology. Also offered is a tool for system administrators to deploy a standardized software image across hundreds of tablets. The tablet has Intel's latest mobile processor, the single-core Atom Z670, which runs at a clock speed of 1.5GHz. The Z670 has accelerators to decode 1080p video, and Intel has said the chip can work with Android 3.0, which is code-named Honeycomb. HP declined to say if the tablet would be offered with Android 3.0. HP will compete with Dell, which last week announced the Windows 7-based Latitude ST tablet, and Cisco, which offers the Android-based Cius tablet. Apple's iPad is the top enterprise tablet today, and is being used to access email, calendars, the Web and corporate documents. 
The next major release of the Opera browser for mobile devices is out. The Opera Mini 6.5 and Opera Mobile 11.5 browser were released to the public, yesterday. The browser was launched for the iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian and Symbian S60 devices. The new browser allows users to keep track of the data consumption and expenses. Opera claims that the new browser will allow users to save up to 90 percent of their data charges. The feature is accessible from under the Help menu, where users can see their temporary data usage and the overall data usage. The interface also allows for easy adding of favorite sites to your bookmarks and Speed Dial list. The key difference between the browsers is that the Turbo compression is always turned on in the Opera Mini browser and users have the option to turn it off in Opera Mobile. The browsers are free for download at 
Nokia unveiled two sleek new Microsoft Windows phones on Wednesday, a first step in the ailing cellphone maker's fightback against Apple and Google. The flagship Lumia 800 and more basic Lumia 710 will go on sale in key European markets by the Christmas holiday season. Examining the first fruits of Chief Executive Stephen Elop's big bet on Microsoft software that spooked investors earlier this year, some analysts were impressed, but others said the pairing remains well short of finding an iPhone killer. "It's a new dawn for Nokia," Elop told about 3,000 customers, partners, developers, analysts and journalists gathered in London for the much-anticipated launch at the company's annual conference. He said the new phones' minimalist design and superior navigation features would make them stand out among rival Windows phones, some of which have been faster to market with Microsoft's new mobile platform. The Lumia 800, with vivid colours and a curved, black display, features live icons on the home screen that automatically update news, weather or Facebook feeds. It also boasts free navigation and Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 9 browser. It will sell for about 420 euros ($584) excluding taxes and subsidies, putting it in the same bracket as Apple's new iPhone and Samsung's top-end Galaxy phones. The Lumia 710 will sell for about 270 euros. "These devices are a good start but the reality is that they are pretty much plain vanilla Windows Phone products," said Ben Wood, director of research at UK-based telecoms analysis firm CCS Insight. "The real fruits of Nokia's and Microsoft's labours will come next year... but it remains a Herculean task to recapture this lucrative market from Apple and Android." 
Epic, the Mozilla-based browser providing the Indian browsing experience has been upgraded and improved. Created by Bangalore-based start up, Hidden Reflex, Epic is now 70% faster. It comes with an India sidebar that supports Indian content by providing users access to the latest national and regional news from 100+ publications, 14 live television channels including 9 new channels, thousands of feature films, live cricket scores and more. Full length television shows can be accessed from channels like TV9 Gujarat and the National Geographic channel. It also has Epic Radio, which has more than 5000 radio stations with song alerts. You will even get Gmail, Facebook and Twitter alerts. One of the more coveted features of this browser is that it comes with EpicSafe, a program protecting you from over 3.3 million malicious websites. In addition, Epic now adds a 'Download' button to Youtube pages, it offers to translate webpages from another language into English as part of its autotranslate function, and they've added support for the Oriya language making the total languages supported count, 13. As always, you can customize the browser with Indian themes ranging from Bollywood and cricket stars to landscapes. As part of the language support, Epic allows you to write on any webpage in one of its 13 supported languages or in its word processor, "Write". Epic also has a range of other applications like Picture in Picture Video Sidebar, My Computer, To-do List and Maps. The browser is available for free and can be downloaded from 
Google Buzz was started as a direct competitor to Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service. It was started not too long back, in early February, 2010. Google's Blog has a new post today that announces that it would discontinue the Buzz service, along with a couple of others, prominently Jaiku, Code Search and some social networking elements from the iGoogle customized homepage service. Buzz was tightly integrated into Gmail and it let users post messages along with photos and videos. The service will be suspended in the coming weeks. Google had made the decision to suspend some of its services and their Labs projects. Code Search will meet its fate on 15th of January, 2012 as will the social networking features on iGoogle, Jaiku and also the University Research Program for Google. Also, the main Labs site will be shut down today. Clearly, Google is putting all its efforts into what matters the most. At this point in time, Buzz will be replaced by Google+. The decision was long overdue and it had many wondering when Google would make it. Google will channel its resources from the projects shut down into existing products and as Bradley Horowitz, VP, Product at Google likes to put it ,"Our users expect great things from us; today's announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome." 
The Samsung Unpacked Event was scheduled to take place on the 11th of October 2011. Along with the Samsung Galaxy Prime, Google was set to officially unveil their latest firmware update, Android Ice Cream Sandwich. However, spokespersons from both Samsung and Google had revealed that the launch date of the product and the OS was pushed back to pay respect to the passing of Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs. When Samsung and Google made the announcement about the delay of the event, no word was given as to when the launch would take place. According to a report by Engadget, Samsung has confirmed that the official debut of Ice Cream Sandwich will take place at an event scheduled for the 19th of October 2011. There is also confirmation of the hardware launch in the form of the Galaxy Nexus, so at the event we will see new hardware as well as software. The event will takes place in Hong Kong and as the leaked promotional video from Samsung suggests – 'Something BIG is coming.' 
Microsoft has tried to cut down redundant information stored in the memory. Another change being made is to the way services are initialized when Windows boots. Services will be started when needed, left on an idle mode for a while after the task is completed and then terminate. Some non-critical services will not be loaded during startup. While using the Metro interface, only essential components of the OS will be loaded. There will also be better prioritization of resources for applications, which means less important programs will not idle in the memory for too long. 
Two Linux software groups have joined forces, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in an effort led by Intel and Samsung Electronics. Under the deal, the LiMo Foundation and Linux Foundation are effectively merging their LiMo and Meego mobile operating systems and hope to gain wider industry and consumer support, but analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle. It would have to attract wide support from developers and manufacturers to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems available in a smartphone market currently dominated by Apple's in-house software and Google's Linux-based Android. "The best hope for them is that big operators get worried by Android and decide to consciously switch their allegiances to rival platforms to restrict Google's huge influence over the mobile market," said analyst Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics. Earlier this year Nokia, the biggest phone maker by volume, ditched its own Symbian operating system this year in favour of Microsoft's Windows Phone software. Currently Windows Phone has a smartphone market share of 2-3 percent, according to industry analysts, and LiMo and Meego have less than 1 percent apiece, while Android's share is almost 50 percent and still growing. "This (Tizen) is driven by necessity. Linux rivals to Android have failed to gain traction and Samsung needs to reduce its dependence on Google," said Geoff Blaber, an analyst at London-based telecoms industry consultancy CCS Insight. The world's second-biggest cellphone maker behind Nokia, Samsung is the leading user of the Android platform, which has been one of the reasons for its escalating court-room fight over patents with Apple. Also, some other makers of Android-opera 
The suspense is over and India's low cost access device (LCAD), christened Aakash, was finally unveiled today by the Union Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal. Costing Rs. 2,276 (about USD 46), it is about USD10 more than the USD 35 envisaged earlier. This tablet, unlike the one Kapil Sibal unveiled last year, is an Android 2.2 tablet which runs on a 366 MHz processor with special support for HD Video co-processor and a separate graphic accelerator. It also has 256MB RAM and 2GB of internal memory which is expandable up to 32GB via the provided memory card slot. It also has two USB ports for connecting external/portable hardware. The tablet is being manufactured by a Canada-based company Datawind in a plant in India. "The USD 35 price is achievable at higher volume levels. When we supply the product to the government at USD 35, then too it will allow us a margin, albeit at higher volumes," said the Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind. Aakash will also be available for a subsidised rate of Rs. 1,200 for students. However, the commercial version of the tablet will be available for Rs. 2,999 (USD 60). It is not the cheapest tablet in the world. However, a quick search on the Internet shows that there are cheaper and better tablets available for as low as USD 39. 
A year after it pulled the plug on silent updates in Firefox 4, Mozilla said it will debut most of the behind-the-scenes feature by early next year. Assuming Mozilla pulls off silent upgrading this time around, it would make Firefox only the second browser to take that route. Google's Chrome has been the poster boy for automatic updates that remove the user from the equation and can't be switched off. Mozilla did not say it was copying Chrome -- it's denied doing so with other features -- but the chairman of the Mozilla Foundation, Mitchell Baker, acknowledged what she called "update fatigue." "In the past we have been very careful to make sure people know something is changing with their Web browser before it changes," said Baker, who heads the non-profit organization that oversees the Firefox-making Mozilla Corp. "Today people are telling us -- loudly -- that the notifications are irritating and that a silent update process is important." The difference between then and now, a Mozilla developer explained, is the rapid release schedule that upgrades Firefox every six weeks. "Most users don't want to think about software updates nor version numbers and now they are being forced to do so every six weeks," said Brian Bondy, a Mozilla developer working on one component of silent updating, in a blog post last Friday. According to Bondy and other information published on the Mozilla website, the current goal for most of the multi-part project is Firefox 10, slated to ship Jan. 31, 2012. Some pieces will appear in earlier and later editions, however. When Firefox receives the feature, the browser will download the upgrade in the background, then install it the next time Firefox is restarted. Users will be reminded to install the upgrade 12 hours later if they haven't restart 
When Google first launched Chrome, there was a feeling that it was too basic and had almost no features. In comparison, Firefox had no dearth of features and plugins. Three years have passed since Chrome's launch and it's about to overtake Firefox as the second most used browser, according to a Computerworld report. The only browser to be used more is Internet Explorer, but that number is gradually dropping. At this pace, Internet Explorer won't be able to hold its lead for too long. Firefox, too hasn't seen a healthy growth. It's userbase has been declining since a while, despite several new releases and added features. While Firefox users have a whole bunch of browser add-ons at its disposal, Google Chrome's extension database is rapidly improving, as popularity continues to rise. Other browsers such as Apple's Safari, Opera, among others account for less than 5 percent of the browsers. They haven't seen a massive rise or drop in the adoption rates. At the rate at which Google Chrome is rising, it's likely to take the number one browser spot by the end of next year, maybe even earlier. The last stable build of Chrome was version 14, and was launched two weeks back. 
The much-awaited and debated "$35 tablet" will be launched on October 5th. The tablet was supposed to launch in the month of June, but the project was delayed as HCL tender was cancelled, owing to bank guarantee related issues. India Government will subsidize the cost by 50%, so a student would have to pay only Rs. 1,100/ for the device, though it is not sure whether this holds true during the launch phase or not. Features 
Bharti Airtel may reportedly well be on its way to coughing up a whopping 50 crore, as a fine for having allegedly violated CLI norms. According to a report in The Times of India, Bharti Airtel attempted to conceal its CLI, or calling-line identification mechanism, and made promotional calls to non-Airtel consumers. If found guilty, Airtel may have to shell out a hefty fine. DoT, as per the report, stated that deceiving the CLI mechanism was a breach of the license conditions. The calling-line identification mechanism, is the one most of us are familiar with, and also refer to as Caller ID. Therefore, with the tampering of the CLI norms, Airtel may be charged with the violation of Clause 41.19 (iv) of universal service access licence norms. According to this clause, the CLI mechanism cannot be tampered with, by any mobile operator, since CLI translates to security. Additionally, it is being learnt that in the Madhya Pradesh circle alone, several instances of the CLI mechanism being tampered with have come forward, by the way of complaints to the DoT. The report however also adds that Airtel denies having received any statement as such from the DoT, and would hence, not comment. 
The Skin is also pretty well-equipped. The screen measures 4.0 inches with a resolution of 480x800. It's 3G ready with full HSDPA and HSUPA bandwidth support. Powered by a 1GHz processor, the Skin uses a different variant of Android called 'Flexy', since the conventional OS wouldn't really work on this type of screen layout. Other features include an 8MP camera plus a front-facing VGA camera, 720p video recording with MKV and AVI support out-of-the-box. According to various sources, Samsung has confirmed that they will be putting this into production as the large scale manufacturing of these flexible AMOLED displays will begin in Q2 of 2012. If all goes as planned, we can expect the phone to hit the shelves by the end of 2012. The final product may not look exactly like the one in the picture, but at least it will be the next step in mobile evolution. 
Full HD or 1080p resolution was a thing of wonder back in the day, but now it has become common and therefore not really exciting, anymore. Panasonic showed off their 4K-ready plasma TVs, last year, but powering so many pixels does require some intense processing power. While today's discrete graphics cards can easily go beyond that resolution, Intel is aiming at achieving this with their onboard GPU, which will ship inside Ivy Bridge processors, sometime next year. Intel is very confident about their new technology and say that the Multi-Format Codec or MFX engine is capable of playing multiple 4K videos at the same time. Now, before you get too excited, remember we are talking about simply powering a display with that resolution or decoding such movies, you won't be able to game at that resolution using just the IGP. We'd like to see them try, but highly doubt that would happen. In a way, this is more of an evolution, rather than a revolution, since 3 years back, AMD and Nvidia already had IGPs (Integrated Graphics Processors) that could easily do 1080p, so this is not very surprising. Let's hope they launch it by 2012. 
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to prevent internet users from using technology that would allow them to privately browse the internet. A PTA spokesman said that the directive was intended only to stop militants from using secure Internet connections to communicate with each other, but admitted that this could only be done by preventing all Internet users in Pakistan from using virtual private networks ( VPNs), The Express Tribune reports. A VPN allows two or more users to share data without letting anyone else monitor it.
IBM is working on a 120PB (petabyte) drive, which quite definitely is the largest we've ever heard of. To put this into perspective, most people buy 750GB drives these days, the IBM drive can store 120 million GB in comparison. That's enough space to store 24 million HD movies. IBM is attempting this feat by putting together 200,000 drives. According to MIT's Technology Review, this large array of drives requires 2 petabytes of space to just keep track of all file names and folder structures. We'd imagine keeping an index and linking so many drives together would also be a nightmare. The drives are lined up horizontally and to keep temperatures down, they are cooled using water rather than air. IBM's Bruce Hillsberg is aware that drive failures can wreak havoc with such large scale data systems. Data replication is being done to prevent data loss and the supercomputer responsible for handling the data is capable of running nonstop and without any performance loss even if a drive happens to fail. The entire system uses the GPFS file system, something that was also used in the IBM-Violin attempt at beating the 5GB/s file transfer speed barrier. 
Telecom regulator TRAI has asked leading telecom service providers, including Bharti airtel, Vodafone and Idea, to justify their decision to hike mobile tariffs by up to 20 per cent. "We have sent letters to all the companies which have recently hiked tariffs seeking justifications for the reasons as to why they have hiked the tariffs and the reasons for the same. The last one gone to Reliance Communications," TRAI Chairman J S Sarma said on the sidelines of an event. Recently, companies like Bharti airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone and Reliance Communications raised tariffs for their services by about 20 per cent in most operating circles. Most of the companies cited inflationary pressure in the country as being responsible for the tariff hike. Airtel had raised the tariffs for its 'Advantage' and 'Freedom' pre-paid tariff packages, which are based on per minute billing, to 60 paise per minute for local and STD mobile-to-mobile calls. Earlier, it was 50 paise per minute in this category. "Telecom is probably the only industry where, despite increasing inflation, tariffs have been falling unabated. Continuously declining margins, high 3G and BWA auction prices, constrained spectrum and rural roll-out aspirations leave us with little choice but to make some price corrections," Bharti airtel had said in a statement. 
Software updates are pretty common and there're also firmware upgrades available for everything from motherboards to cameras to even phones. However, it's not very often that you hear about a software update for a processor, and definitely not one that speeds up the CPU. Some of Intel's Sandy Bridge models will be able to operate at slightly faster speeds once the update is applied. The models to be upgraded are - Core i3 2312M, Core i3 2101 and the Pentium G622. With the updates, they'll operate at faster frequencies and will be offered more cache. Intel claims that with these updates, users should be able to notice a performance boost of roughly 10 to 23 percent depending on the kind of application. The question many are asking is that if the processors were able to operate at faster speeds, why didn't Intel set them to those speeds during the time of launch. The step is being looked upon as a marketing gimmick. The same performance could be achieved by users even without the update, if they chose to overclock the processors. As of now, it looks like the update software will only run on the Windows 7 operating system. 
A recently launched Chrome plugin called Music+ is sure to tide you over until that glorious day comes. Music+ is a plugin that was developed during the Echo Nest Social Music App Challenge. It uses the music intelligence service's API (as well as Facebook's API) to make it easy to find and listen to music while surfing the web. Simply install the plugin in Chrome, and start discovering music. At its simplest, you can pull up a toolbar in which you can search for playable music to listen to while browsing (courtesy of Rdio and MP3s on blogs). Those songs can be shared with friends on Facebook via message, or they can be posted as a playable stream on your wall. Start surfing, and the app gets interesting. If you go to a blog and highlight a band name and right-click, you can listen to songs by that artist instantly. However, the app really shines when used with Facebook. You'll have to disable secure browsing in order for it to work (which is a pain), but once you do, every artist on the site will have a "Play" button next to their name, allowing you to listen to tracks by that artist right within Facebook. You can then surf around the site as usual, without having to stay on the page to continue listening. The app also adds a column to the left of any band Page containing similar artists, an awesome addition when it comes to music discovery. It also allows you to add artists to your queue for later listening. All in all, this is an awesome app when it comes to facilitating music discovery. No more toggling over to YouTube or a music subscription service to check out a band while reading. It's all woven into the Facebook browsing experience. 
Google's $12.5 bn buy of Motorola Mobility might hurt Apple's ability to pressure the Android ecosystem and the iPhone maker may try to strike back by buying up more patent troves, Jefferies & Co said. The brokerage sees Nokia , InterDigital , and Research In Motion's patents as potential targets for Apple. Google has been under pressure to build a patent portfolio after losing out to Apple, Microsoft Corp and others in a recent auction of bankrupt Nortel's assets. Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility is an attempt by the Internet search giant to fend off increasingly aggressive legal attacks from rivals such as Apple. 
Yahoo! India, today announced the launch of "Movieplex", a video destination allowing users to enjoy licensed full-length movies for free through the Internet on demand. Yahoo! India will collaborate with movie production houses to bring numerous "Bollywood" movies online to users for a piracy-free, quality 
Google announced Monday morning that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. Motorola is one of 39 manufacturers of handsets that use Google's Android operating system. Buying a hardware company is an unusual move for Google. The acquisition, Google said in a statement, "will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem." Google CEO Larry Page expanded on what that might mean in a blog post. In addition to citing Motorola's home devices and video solutions business, Page references recent patent wars that Google believes to be anti-competitive. "The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to 'protect competition and innovation in the open source software community' and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction," Page writes. "Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google's patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies." Android will continue to be an open platform, and Motorola will continue to be run as a separate business, Page added. 
Firefox 6 is in the wild, with Mozilla making the code available for its latest browser despite not making an official launch statement. With Google's Chrome taking an increasingly large bite out of the market, Apple's Safari benefiting from the familiarity of users with iPhones and iPads and Microsoft having something of a browser renaissance of late, there is significant pressure on Firefox. Firefox 6 final is not officially out until Tuesday, but, according to The Register a blogger at TechnoBolt has outed the availability of the code for Linux, PC and Mac. Just to mix things up a little, Mozilla will release a beta version of its successor Firefox 7 and an early build of Firefox 8 on the same day, the first evidence of the company's decision to make incremental tweaks rather than sweeping changes for each browser. Mac, Windows and Linux versions of the software are available on the company's FTP, bringing improved HTML 5 handling. Also included in the latest browser is extended CSS support, better display of iFrames and a data management window to control the plundering of your personal data by websites. 
Google+ Inc's new social-networking service may grow to claim 22 per cent of online US adults in a year, passing Twitter Inc and LinkedIn Corp. to be the second- most-used social site after Facebook Inc, a survey found. Google+ has signed up 13 per cent of US adults and will add 9 percent over the next year, according to the survey from Bloomberg/YouGov. In the same period, Facebook will lose about 2 percentage points of US adults to keep 69 per cent of that population, while Twitter and LinkedIn continue to grow their portion of users. Started in late June, Google+ is growing faster than Facebook and MySpace Inc. did in their early days. The service, which lets people connect with and manage groups of friends on a website, gained about 25 million users worldwide in less than a month, estimates market researcher ComScore Inc Facebook has more than 750 million active users. "Google+ is tracing a path similar to Facebook's initial growth -- building excitement in a core group of early adopters," said Michael Nardis, head of YouGov investment products, in a statement about the survey. Katie Watson, a spokeswoman for Mountain View, California- based Google, declined to comment. Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Facebook, and Matt Graves, a spokesman for Twitter, also declined to comment. Bloomberg and London-based market researcher YouGov Plc polled 1,003 online US residents 18 and older from July 29 to August 2 for the survey. The results showed Twitter will add almost 3 percentage points of US adults online over the next year to claim 20 per cent of the population. LinkedIn will also have signed up 20 per cent of those people, after gaining almost 2 percentage points within the year, the survey found. Among survey respondents who had signed up for Google+, 45 per cent said they read content on the site every day, compared with Facebook's 62 per cent of users. Twitter has 42 per cent of its users return daily, while LinkedIn has 8 per cent. Google+ usage is likely to take away from the time people spend on Facebook, the survey found. Some 30 per cent of people who use both services said they plan to reduce the amount of time they spend on Facebook. Some 31 per cent of Google+ users polled said they have already abandoned their accounts or not written any posts yet on the site. 
Google Labs is over, the company announced today in a short post to the official Google Blog. Labs was the official home of many of Google's experimental projects - from a map of the human body to a Gmail plug-in that tried to stop people from sending emails while drunk. To be frank, it was an incoherent, unsatisfying, poorly supported tangle of perpetual alpha and beta technologies. Google would likely prefer it be seen as a relic of the Pre-Plus Era, back when Google 'didn't get social software.' The whole company is remaking itself now, with a very well received social network as the common thread now running through all the company's sprawling properties around the web. Google Plus wasn't a Labs Beta, it was a company-wide 'field test' developed in deep secrecy and then shared with 10 million people who couldn't get enough of it. 'In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments--in others we'll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market.' Reactions among Google Labs app users range from concern that the news signals an end to a period of experimentation at Google to hopefulness that existing products will be better-supported as a result. There was a sort of a flow with Labs, though. Ideas would be launched there, the company would see what kind of uptake they got, sometimes they would 'graduate' from labs and sometimes they would be ended instead. Most of the time they would just hang out there forever, being just ok. What the new flow for experiments to be productized will be is something to watch for. A Google spokesperson said in an email, 'there won't be any immediate changes to in-product experimentation channels like Gmail Labs or 
Social networking access seems to be that one important feature that would complete a mobile service. Taking a cue from this, one of India's rapidly growing mobile service providers, Tata Docomo have announced their USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) based access to popular social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. According to a report in TELECOM TALK, the catch here is that users will not have to subscribe to any data plans to avail these services. By dialing *325# and *515#, users will be able to access Facebook and Twitter – can see and post status updates, post comments, poke, like, among others. In order to subscribe to Twitter, the user can dial *515#. On reaching a landing page, hereafter, customers can punch in their Twitter details, and begin tweeting. Facebook services, on the other hand can be accessed by dialing *325#, and like mentioned before, users can enter their details on the landing page that follows. 
One of Microsoft's research teams mistakenly pressed the big green button on a social search project codenamed Tulalip, which was briefly online at 
Google announced its second quarter earnings today and the numbers are a significant reversal from the slight dip the company saw in Q1. Google's gross revenue was $9.03 billion, more than what investors had projected. CEO Larry Page kicked off the earnings conference call and described not only the financial data but some other notable figures as well: the number of Google Plus users, how much they're sharing, how widely Chrome has been adopted and the current activation rate for Android devices. 
According to the reports, India's premier mobile service providers – Vodafone Essar, Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular have gone full throttle with their plans of rolling out revolutionary 3G Roaming services in the country, on a massive scale. Interestingly, the 3G Roaming services are being planned not only on a massive scale as far as the reach is concerned, but also in a manner that is not too heavy on the pockets of the average Indian. Signing on the dotted line of the ICRA (Intra – circle roaming arrangements) agreement, the leading telecom trio has agreed to roll-out the 3G services by using each other's networks. Vodafone Essar has got into what it calls a bilateral agreement with Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular to bring forth to the customers 3G services, across major demographics. For example, Bharti Airtel that has a considerably widespread presence in the country doesn't possess a 3G presence in Gujarat. A void, it hopes to wipe out with its agreement with Vodafone Essar and Idea Cellular. Each of these 3 telecom giants have bagged 3G licenses in various parts of the country. Bharti Airtel owns 3G licenses for Delhi, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (west region), West Bengal, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, the North East, and Jammu and Kashmir. Vodafone Essar, on the other hand has 3G licenses for Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh (east region) and West Bengal and Idea Cellular has 3G licenses for Maharashtra & Goa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, UP (East) UP (West), Punjab, Haryana and Kerala. 
The Government of India has asked Google, internet telephone company Skype and other such companies to allow the country's security agencies to monitor their user services to guard against terrorism and other crimes. Minister of State for Telecom and IT Sachin Pilot has said that there is a whole list of companies that have been asked to give access and provide solutions. "We can't afford to take chances with national security. There is a whole list of companies that have been asked to give (access), provide monitoring solution, because law enforcement agencies, the home ministry and intelligence agencies want information for national security. Papers were exchanged months ago, the discussions are on and we are looking at finding a solution soon, since it is a matter of national security," Pilot added. India's fear is that terrorists will use services such as those offered by Skype and Google as they are heavily encrypted and security agencies can't monitor them. The government had also made efforts to find ways to monitor the corporate email services offered by Canada's Research In Motion Ltd. are still under way. While the BlackBerry maker has already offered systems to monitor internet browsing and messenger services used on its smartphones, it maintains that intercepting corporate emails is impossible as there is no technology available to allow monitoring of the service. In December 2010, mobile handset maker Nokia Corp. said it has set up servers in India so as to allow security agencies to monitor its consumer email services. 
Google+. Applications and websites that enable this migration are already showing up. Move2Picasa is a small application that allows users to move their photos from Facebook to Google+. Coded by Pune-based Web developer Aman Kumar Singh, Move2Picasa saw over 10,000 users put in requests for migrating their photos from their Facebook accounts to Google+ profiles. 
Microsoft said it will issue four security updates next week, only one of which is pegged as critical, to patch 22 vulnerabilities in Windows and Visio 2003. Next Tuesday's patch lineup is smaller than June's, when Microsoft shipped 16 updates that fixed 34 flaws . The company typically delivers a lighter load in odd-numbered months. In May, for instance, Microsoft shipped just two updates -- the company calls them "bulletins" -- to patch only three vulnerabilities. Of the four updates slated, one will be rated "critical," the highest threat label in Microsoft's four-step scoring system, while the other three will be marked "important," the second-most-dire ranking. Next week's Patch Tuesday vulnerability count will be among the largest for the year, with its 22 bested only by April's 64 and June's 34, and tied with February's collection. But the bugs-per-bulletins ratio is the highest for the year, observed Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, hinting of next week's releases. In April, Microsoft patched 30 vulnerabilities in the Windows kernel device driver with a single bulletin, a record for one update. Microsoft has issued more than a dozen DLL load hijacking updates since last November. In May, the Slovenian firm Acros Security announced that more DLL load hijacking updates were necessary to plug holes in Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). At the time, Microsoft said only that it was investigating the Acros report. The sole critical update scheduled for next week affects Windows Vista and Windows 7, but does not impact the much older Windows XP or any of Microsoft's server operating systems. Because Windows XP will be immune to the one or more vulnerabilities in that update, Storms said the bug had to be in code first used in Vist 
European Space Agency takes cameras to the next level, builds one where you can see a human being's fingernail on the moon (from Earth, of course). They're calling this camera GAIA and it creates images with one billion pixels. The Space Agency enlisted UK based e2V Technologies. They built a huge digital camera with 106 charged coupled devices packed in together. This is the largest camera created ever for a space program. The reason behind the building of this camera is that at the beginning of the new millennium, the European Space Agency planned to map 1 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy in 3D. Each of the charged coupled devices are shaped like credit cards and are the width of human hairs, made of slabs of silicon carbide, and each store light in the form of a single pixel. The device is set to launch on the Soyuz-Fregat sometime this year. This ship will be out and beyond for five years, settling in the Earth-Sun L2 Larange Point. The discoveries it makes will be beamed to radio dishes in Spain and Australia. 
The Mini DisplayPort-to-HDMI cables used mainly by Apple in their Mac range of computers will now have to search for another solution. The company behind HDMI, HDMI Org has stated that the manufacturers of these cables have been told that their products are unlicensed and should not be sold. According to a report by Tech Radar, HDMI Org has confirmed that any cable that has a DP male connector on one end and an HDMI male connector is unlicensed and should not be on sale. According to the report, the company explained that the HDMI specification defines an HDMI cable as having only HDMI connectors on the ends. Anything else is not a licensed use of the specification and therefore, not allowed. All HDMI products undergo compliance testing as defined by the Compliance Testing Specification. HDMI Org went on to state that the CTS (Cognizant Technology Solutions) clearly defines necessary tests for all products defined in the HDMI specification. Since this new cable product is undefined in the specification, there are no tests associated with this product. It cannot be tested against the specification. This comes as a major setback to companies such as Apple, Toshiba, HP and Dell who all supply their products with these ports. As of now there is no concrete solution to the connectivity option that is used to connect these computers to an HDTV for mirroring video content unless one is to rush to the market now and pick up a cable before they are removed from the shelves. 
One of the reasons for Mozilla's recent drop in popularity has to do with its memory consumption. While the latest version Firefox 5, hasn't been too bad, it's been a problem plaguing Mozilla's browser, for a while now. A fix to this problem might soon be in sight. The common problem has been sourced to the browser's Javascript garbage collector, which clears out garbage after a certain interval. This will be repeated more often so memory is cleared faster. There are some other updates as well - specifically to Firefox's Sync feature, which will sync in realtime. Font rendering also has been improved in the latest built. If you want to take a look at how well the feature works, go ahead and check out Firefox's Aurora channel to download one of the latest development builds. If you're already using it, it's only a matter of updating it. The memory optimization feature has been implemented there. The latest Aurora build isn't working towards Firefox 6, but Firefox 7. Understand this is a an early build and instability and bugs are going to be present. We'll have to wait and see if this memory optimizer fix will cure problems brought in by plugins installed on Firefox. 
Google intends to retire several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products, Mashable has learned.The move is part of a larger effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+, the search giant's social initiative. Blogger and Picasa aren't going away, of course — they're two of Google's most popular products. Instead, according to two sources familiar with the matter, Google intends to rename Picasa "Google Photos" and Blogger will become "Google Blogs." Several other Google brands are likely to be affectGoogleed, though YouTube may not be rebranded. The technology giant shut down Google Video, its failed web video service, in May. The move isn't without precedent; Google acquired JotSpot in 2006 and rebranded it as Google Sites in 2008. In 2007, Google acquired VOIP platform GrandCentral and relaunched it as Google Voice in 2009. Picasa and Blogger were also Google acquisitions, although both companies have been part of the Google empire for far longer. Picasa was acquired in 2004 and Blogger was acquired in 2003 and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the world. Although the rebranding could upset some existing customers, it also gives Google the ability to completely integrate both services into Google+. The transition from Picasa and Blogger to Google Photos and Google Blogs will occur "in a month to a month and a half". The date aligns with the likely public launch of Google+. It is expected that, the public debut of Google+ on or before July 31. The date is important because it's the day all private Google Profiles will be deleted. Google doesn't want to have private profiles after the public Google+ launch. Instead, the company is likely to encourage users who want more privacy to use Circles to cu 
Google updated their PageRank scores within the Google Toolbar yesterday. Some webmasters have noticed that Google.com lowered their own PageRank from a 10 to a PageRank of 9. While these numbers aren't as important as they used to be, it's still an interesting metric. Google has been the most authority website on the planet for a long time, it was always in the upper echelon of websites in any metric you could find. Now there is one stat you can bring up that doesn't show Google in the digital elite, and strangely enough that metric is their own. No surprise to most of us, Facebook remains a perfect PR10 website. Sites that maintain a PageRank of 10 as they are called, can be confident that are among the most linked to on the web. While it appears Google's growth slowed enough to downgrade their PR, it appears Facebook continued to gain enough links to maintain their PR10 status. Since PageRank is scaled logarithmically, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the same rank over time. So go ahead and bust out open site explorer, or linking root domains, or how many unique IP's you have in your backlink profile. Social gurus can talk about Facebook shares, and show you recent SEO moz data for that one as well. Guess what? It's still not Google PageRank. Who cares when you go from 500 unique linking domains to 1,000? But lose all your PR overnight, and it might cause you to stop and think for a moment about what happened.