Chinese hackers breach DRDO security, steal thousands of secret files

The official website of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) once again came under the cyber attack unleashed by the Chinese hackers.

According to the Mumbai newspaper DNA, Chinese hackers breached the security of DRDO website and accessed thousands of top secret files.

As par the report, the top secret files related to Cabinet Committee on Security have been uploaded on a server based in Guangdong.

The report claims that this is the biggest security breach in the Indian defence establishment.

The hacking incident came to the fore in the first week of this month when officials from India's technical intelligence wing, National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), along with private Indian cyber security experts cracked open a file called "army cyber policy".

The DNA report claimed that the file was found attacked to hacked email accounts of senior DRDO officials that quickly spread through the system in a matter of seconds.

Later, the NTRO found that all the sensitive files stolen from the infected systems were being uploaded on a server in Guangdong province of China.

For the first time, Indian cyber intelligence team has successfully tracked the hacking location.

Indian cyber security experts discovered thousands of top secret CCS files, and other documents related to surface-to-air missile and radar programmes from DRDL, a DRDO lab based in Hyderabad, among many other establishments.

Even the e-tickets of DRDO scientists who had travelled to Delhi in February were found on the server.

Intelligence officials also discovered documents of deals struck between DRDO and Bharat Dyamics Ltd, a defence PSU which makes strategic missiles and components.

Other recovered files related to price negotiations with MBDA, a French missile manufacturing company.

Read More

India makes an average of 13 requests per day to Google for personal web details

 

In signs of growing Internet snooping by the enforcement authorities, India made an average of 13 requests a day to Google for access to personal web details of web users during 2012.
In terms of the number of requests for web user details during 2012, India is next to only the US, which made 45 requests a day on an average -- the highest for any country.
The US made a total of 16,407 such requests to Google during 2012, followed by India's 4,750, France's 3,239, Germany's 3,083, UK's 2,883 and Brazil's 2,777 in top-five.
The number of requests from all these countries rose in 2012, while the worldwide total also rose by 20 per cent in 2012 to 42,327, as per Google's latest Transparency Report.
The number of such requests from India also rose by about 20 per cent in 2012 from 3,946 in the previous year.
On its part, the US-based global Internet giant Google provided part or full information to the enforcement agencies from India for about two-third of the total requests received by it during 2012. The compliance rate was much higher at 88 per cent for requests received from the US.
Google publishes data for requests about user details, as also for removal of content on its various platforms, including Search, Images and YouTube, on a six-month basis.
Google received 2,319 user data requests from India during the first half of 2012, while the numbers rose to 2,431 in the second half of the year. The number of user accounts associated with such requests rose from 3,467 in the first half to 4,106 in the last six months of 2012.
The company said it regularly receives requests from governments and courts around the world to hand over user data and the number of such requests have increased with growing usage of its services every year.
Regarding the requests for removal of content, Google said that such requests are also received regularly by it from government agencies and courts around the world.
"Governments ask companies to remove content for many different reasons. For example, some content removals are requested due to allegations of defamation, while others are due to allegations that the content violates local laws prohibiting hate speech or adult content," it said.
In respect of content removal requests from India, Google said: "In response to a court order, we removed 360 search results (during first half of 2012). The search results linked to 360 web pages that contained adult videos that allegedly violated an individual's personal privacy."
As per the latest available data, Google received requests from India for removal of 487 items through court orders during January-June 2012, while another 109 items were requested to be removed through police or executive orders.

Read More

Apple's loss becomes Google's gain

 

Google has retaken the role of superstar of the tech sector with a stunning stock rally as rival Apple flounders.
Google has hit fresh all-time highs in recent weeks, and closed Friday at $831.52, capping a nearly tenfold rise from its public offering price in 2004 of $85. The stock is up about 17 percent so far in 2013.

Part of the explanation comes from the rise of its Android mobile operating system, at the expense of Apple. Android is free but gives Google the opportunity to deliver more services and ads to users.
"The negativity that is surrounding Apple at the moment is giving positivity to Google," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.
Apple, which traded as high as $700 last year, has slumped more than 35 percent and ended Friday at $431.67.
For Google, "there's a lot going forward at the moment," Milanesi told AFP, noting that the company is successfully "getting consumers into their ecosystem."
Google now appears poised to beat Apple to the symbolic level of a $1,000 share price, say some analysts.
Analysts at Jefferies said Google set a price target for Google at $1,000, saying it has been benefiting from a wide range of services beyond its traditional web search ads, including shopping and mobile ads.
"Google looks well positioned for growth with the number one market share in large, rapidly growing markets," said Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who noted that Google remains the top internet search engine and leading advertising platform.
Android now has a 70 percent share of the smartphone market, which "ensures that Google retains a large share of the mobile search market," said the research firm Trefis.
"Another reason that investors are excited about Google's stock is the fact that more than 50 percent of its revenues are generated from markets outside the United States," Trefis said in a note.
"This means that Google's revenues have ample exposure to Asia, Africa and Latin America, all of which are expected to grow at an accelerated pace over the next few years."
Analysts say a shift to the mobile internet is positive for Google, which is also producing its own hardware, including smartphones and tablets.
"We are more constructive (less fearful) on Google's ability to maintain strong growth during the mobile usage shift, and we see opportunity for revenue acceleration," said Bank of America's Justin Post.
Google has been able to tweak its AdWords software, which delivers commercial messages based on a user's profile, to squeeze more revenues from mobile than it has until now, analysts say.

Google is also starting to see potential for YouTube, the video sharing service that has produced little revenue until now.
The Mountain View, California company has been working on other projects, including its own high-end Chromebook Pixel laptop computer and Google Glass, the wearable device expected later this year.
Milanesi said that Google will not try to replicate Apple by getting a lot of revenue from hardware.
"Hardware is serving their services," she said.
One sore spot for Google is its Motorola Mobility unit, the mobile phone maker acquired for $12.5 billion. Some 1,200 jobs are being cut at the division after 4,000 last year.
"Google needs to figure out what to do with Motorola," said Trip Chowdhry at Global Equities Research, claiming that Motorola "hasn't had a single hit" in recent years.
"Within six months, Google needs to take a hard look at Motorola. If they can't deliver, the whole Motorola should be closed and shut forever."
Chowdhry noted that Google could see its momentum slowed by regulatory problems, even though it avoided antitrust action in the United States.
Google is under scrutiny on privacy and monopoly grounds in Europe, and China is also concerned about Android's dominance.
"When you grow so big, you get in the eyes of all regulators and antitrust authorities," the analyst said.
"So far Google has been very smart, quite good at dealing with them," Chowdhry added, noting however that this was "an ongoing concern."

Read More

New app allows people to watch transparent videos at work

A new app allows users to watch videos on a translucent browser that they can see in the background as they work.
The transparent browser can be placed behind any variety of other programs — word processing documents, spreadsheets, other browsers — that allow users to do their work, while watching videos of their choosing in the background, the New York Daily News reported.  Greedy Glutton Software's app VideoGhost, which has been offered for free, can also work as a standard video player.  The program can be installed on a computer or run as standalone software and users can control the opacity of the browser.

Read More

India’s tablet market grows to 3.11 million in 2012

Reinforcing the increasing popularity of smart devices in the Indian market, new data has shown that India sold 3.11 million tablets in 2012.
Last year saw 72 vendors shipping tablets 3.11 million tablets within India, according to CMR, with Samsung, Micromax and Apple emerging market leaders. The dominant OS even for tablets was Android, followed by iOS.

Selling like hot cakes. Reuters

“The year 2012 and particularly the last two quarters (3Q 2012 and 4Q 2012) were significant for the India Tablets market. We have seen the market for these devices grow substantially in 2012, particularly in the second half which made up for over 70 percent of the total sales,” Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Telecoms Analyst, CMR said, commenting on the results.
In the fourth quarter of 2012 alone (October-December), India sold 1.09 million tablets, bringing the total number of tablet shipments in 2012 to 3.11 million, according to the report by Cyber Media Research for tablet devices announced today. The last quarter of 2012 accounted for 35.33 percent of the total shipments for the entire year.
The last year, also saw an emergence of the new ‘Phablet’ category—which is a marriage of a phone and a tablet device which is between 5 and 7 inches— and Samsung Note registered the inception of the new segment.
In 2012, ‘Phablets’ constituted around 16.5 percent of total sales and this trend is expected to strengthen in the coming quarters. Moreover, the user profiles, market dynamics and the product orientation of ‘Phablets’ are very different from that for tablets.
For the last year, all devices that had a size of five inches and above were considered tablets. But beginning this calendar year, 2013, only those devices which are seven inches and larger will be considered tablets.

Read More

BlackBerry India MD Sunil Dutt resigns

BlackBerry, which was earlier called Research In Motion, announced that its India managing director Sunil Dutt has resigned. He leaves the company with immediate effect.

Varghese Thomas, corporate communications director at BlackBerry India, told TOI, "In the interim, Rick Costanzo, executive vice president for global sales, will take over the leadership of the team in India as (the company) starts the search for a new sales lead as soon as possible." Dutt's resignation comes at a time when the company is going through a critical phase following the launch of BlackBerry Z10, a new smartphone with which it hopes to win back market share from Apple's iPhone and Android devices.
"Sunil Dutt has left his position as managing director, BlackBerry India, with immediate effect. We wish Sunil well for the future. India is an extremely important market for BlackBerry and our aim is to continue to build on our recent momentum with the launch of BlackBerry 10," said Thomas.
BlackBerry 10 is the new operating system for the BlackBerry phones. The company has developed it with an aim to take on Google's Android and Apple's iOS that powers iPhone. In the last few years, BlackBerry's market share has declined sharply as consumers opt for full-touchscreen phones running on operating system developed by Apple and Google.
The number of units shipped by BlackBerry was so low in India in Q4, 2012 that the company did not even feature in the top five smartphone vendors in a report published by IDC.
BlackBerry launched Z10 in India on February 25. In January, Dutt told TOI that BlackBerry 10, which powers Z10, was akin to the new beginning for the company.
The device has received praise from technology reviewers and bloggers for its new user interface but the availability of apps remained a concern. In India, it has also been criticized for having a very high price of over Rs 43,000 while smartphones like Samsung Galaxy S III and HTC One X are available for around Rs 30,000.
On Friday BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg that he was surprised by how well the Z10 sold in India after its debut. He claimed that five days' worth of inventory sold out in just two days. "I got an emergency call from my manager from India saying, 'I'm sold out after two days,'" said Heins. "So now we're scrambling to reload those channels."

Read More

A better Google News experience on tablets

There’s something special about reading news on your tablet. Indeed, swiping through Google News on your tablet is a comfortable and effective way to find more articles from great publications that satisfy your needs and tickle your serendipitous interests. Starting today, Google News feels even more natural and fluid on tablet devices. For example:

• You can find new articles, news sources, and even topics of interest with intuitive gestures. Swipe horizontally between sections – from Business to Entertainment, for example – or tap “Explore in depth” to see multiple articles and other info related to a particular story.
• We’ve also added more breathing room between articles, making it easier to spot the stories you really care about.

We think these improvements will help Google News send even more visits to news sites (six billion per month and counting).  

To give it a try, just visit news.google.com with your Nexus 7, Nexus 10, or iPad.

Read More

Facebook’s News Feed revamp: 5 things you must know

This is what the new News Feed looks like. Screengrab via Facebook.

Facebook has launched a new design for the News Feed. The design which aims to give a more unified experience to Facebook users across tablets, mobiles, desktops and PC’s will divide your feed into content based and give greater prominence to photos, links etc.
Here are five things you need to know about the News Feed.
Content based feeds:  In the new design, there won’t be just one News Feed. Content based Feeds coming up as well.
These have been named as follows:
All Friends: A feed that shows you everything your friends are sharing from status messages to links etc.
Photos: A feed with nothing but photos from your friends and the Pages you like on Facebook.
Music: A feed with posts about the music you listen to, music that your friends listen to, information about your favourite artists and what they share on Facebook.
Following: This feed with the latest news from the Pages you like, celebrities, and other important people you follow on Facebook.
The top of the page has a switcher with a list of feeds. Mobile will also have this option of different feeds.
Bigger, bigger photos on the site: This change will apply not just to pictures shared by your friends or people you follow, but in thumbnails, etc as well.
For instance, if you are following Firstpost and we share a link, the Thumbnail for that article will get bigger. Also if say one of your friends adds a new friend on Facebook, you will be able to see the whole cover photo for that person on your News Feed and not just his or her profile picture.
As far as upcoming events go, the Thumbnail size is much much bigger the design, thus ensuring that the events line up have a prominent spot on your News Feed.
Same design across the board: Not just the News Feed but the whole site is now going to look the same across the board, be it on your iPad, your smartphone or your PC/Desktop. For instance like in mobile and tablets, the desktop version of the story will have the “New Stories” pop up on top. You can just click on it to jump right to the new stories.
The left hand side bar menu that appears on mobile and tablets will soon be available on Desktop. Chat tray will get more prominent on Desktop as well.
Third Party content will get more prominent: For instance, if you share a lot pictures from Pinterest, they are going to get bigger and more prominent.
If you check into a place, it won’t just reflect as so and so checked in here, but a wide-detailed map will appear alongside as well. If you like or check into a restaurant, you will see the cover photo for that place’s page.
Photo Albums will also get a facelift on the News Feed and will get much bigger display with a larger boxes for pictures.
Links published by online websites will get a longer summary with the logo of the publisher in the corner, a bigger thumbnail for prominence and more space for summary.
When it is coming: If you hate this design, and think Facebook is going to get more complicated than ever, don’t worry, the design will take some time to roll out for everyone. Facebook is currently only testing it on a couple of users and you have to sign up for a wait list here.
Facebook states that the new design is aimed at getting rid of the clutter. But we don’t know for sure how ads and sponsored stories will appear on this news design. That is one source of ‘clutter’ that Facebook can’t afford to get rid of right now.

Read More

Free national roaming likely before October: Sibal

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said the government will try to start national free roaming for customers before October this year.

"Trai has floated a consultation paper on it (national free roaming). So when Trai's recommendations come and after that, we will try to start free roaming before October," Sibal told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of National Internet Registry (NIR) here.

In December, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ( Trai) had floated a pre-consultation paper seeking inputs from stakeholders on tariff for national roaming services.

It sought views of stakeholders on aspects of national roaming services like the cost components of call rates to be considered, the manner of cost recovery in case incoming calls are to be made free, the tariff for video calls and SMS while roaming, need for permitting special tariff vouchers for roaming customers.

At present, telecom operators have to pay various charges like termination charge, interconnect charges, for completing call of their customers on to other networks which get added to the final cost of the call for the customer.

On the EGoM allowing Norwegian telecom firm Telenor's Indian arm to adjust Rs 1,658 crore licence fee it paid in 2008 against the final price it has to pay for buying spectrum, he said the decision is for other firms also.

"The decision taken by EGoM that all those entities whose licences were cancelled and who participated in the auction and as these companies have paid the money, that adjustment will be done in this licence. It is not only for Telenor but for other entities also," Sibal said.

An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on spectrum headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram had met yesterday on issues related to spectrum auction.

"The structure is same, majority holding is of Telenor. That's why we did it. It will only be adjusted, not refunded," the Minister added.

Sibal also launched the National Internet Registry (NIR), which will reduce the cost of processing IP addresses.

NIR is entrusted with the task of coordinating IP address allocation with other Internet resource management function at national level in the country.

Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) had earlier endorsed the operations of NIR to National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). NIXI was recognised by the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) in March last year.

NIR has been named as Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN). IRINN, a division under NIXI, provides allocation and registration services of Internet Protocol Addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) and autonomous systems numbers to its affiliates to the Indian Internet communities.

Read More

Google’s Foray Into Home Delivery Is a Sideshow in the Real War With Amazon

Google has done little in the past few months to disguise its ambition to battle Amazon in shopping. But the search leader’s latest reported plans to get out in the street and start delivering products directly is a sideshow to the real contest between the two companies.
Or to put it another way: Google doesn’t really need to be on the ground to win.
The Amazon-Google retail rivalry has been playing out online for years. The premise is simple: if you’re shopping online, you’re most likely to start one of two places. You go to Google for information on the product and where to buy. Or you go to Amazon for information on the product, and buy it while you’re there. In that retail equation, the more steps of the shopping process Google can snatch from Amazon, the better for Google and its advertisers, many of whom are merchants also competing with Amazon. (Though it must be said Amazon advertises heavily on Google too.)
Given all the ways Google already competes with Amazon in shopping, moving into direct selling and shipping would seem to be the logical last step — a step the company appears to be taking.
Google is planning to take on Amazon Prime by offering a same-day delivery service from local stores, TechCrunch reports. If that plan actually moves forward, it will no doubt rely on the groundwork Google started laying months ago.

First, Google started requiring merchants to pay for product listings in search results, a step toward turning its search engine into a straight-up storefront. In December, it purchased BufferBox, a startup that makes storage lockers to take delivery of stuff you order online. Last month, Google bought Channel Intelligence, an e-commerce software maker and service provider that’s been around since the first dotcom bubble.
Among the the services of Channel Intelligence is an offering called “where-to-buy,” which allows stores to let online shoppers know if they have a particular product in stock. This would come in handy for a shopping service that relies on local stores for inventory — Google would have to know what the stores have in stock before they promise delivery. A competing platform already powers eBay’s store-to-door same-day delivery service, eBay Now, which is already up and running in San Francisco, New York and Silicon Valley.
Google’s main advantage over eBay would seem to be visibility. Google gets more online traffic, which means more chances to funnel online shoppers into its own shopping services. Other than that, Google’s same-day delivery plans seem to hinge on the same concept embraced by eBay, as well as startups like Postmates, namely that brick-and-mortar stores — a city’s retail infrastructure — can stand in for the massive warehouses that anchor traditional e-commerce operations like Amazon. Instead of incurring all the costs of buying and storing inventory, the thinking goes, why not just depend on the local retailers that already have the inventory? Couriers to ferry purchases between the stores and shoppers complete the picture.
The only problem is the math. While the city-as-warehouse idea is intriguing, it hasn’t been proven. I’ve used eBay Now, and it’s fun and cool. You can watch the courier’s route in real time on the eBay Now app, and in my case I ended up with a new pair of jeans in just a little over an hour. But no one knows how far the concept could scale. Brick-and-mortar stores as they’re designed right now are still mainly for walk-in shoppers, not e-commerce fulfillment. Logistics experts say there’s no way a store can match a traditional warehouse in terms of order-fulfillment efficiency.
And it’s these warehouses that Amazon continues to build, million-square-foot engines of efficiency rising closer and closer to the same big cities where Google’s same-day service would likely roll out. Amazon has already perfected the science of getting people anything they want in a day or two.
Except for its self-driving cars and its Street View teams, Google doesn’t have a ground game. At the same time, trying to build out a physical infrastructure to compete with the billions Amazon has already invested hardly makes fiscal sense, unless Google wants to make retail its main business.
Not that you could entirely blame them. Jeff Bezos (#19) just topped Google’s founders (#20 and #21) on Forbes’ new list of the world’s billionaires, while four Wal-Mart heirs beat them both in the top twenty. The fortunes of at least two other billionaires above Bezos, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are also rooted in retail. Shopping is a huge business. It’s understandable that Google would want to be a part of it.
But however much attention a Google delivery truck might get on the streets, the real contest will still play out online, where Google and Amazon are on much more equal footing. We live in an attention economy, and Google has the attention. It also has plenty of big clients who would like nothing better than to see Amazon starved of attention. Working together, they’ll try to steer clicks away from Amazon’s shopping carts and into their own baskets — a much more efficient way to beat Amazon than boots on the ground.

Read More

Now, 'air-write' emails to your loved ones via new smartphone tech

Now, a new technology has been developed that would allow users to draw letters in the air with their hand to write messages and emails. Computer scientists at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have created an innovative 'air-writing' glove system that replace the 'thumb-typing' texts or emails on keyboards or touch screen smartphones.
The glove, created by Christoph Amma and colleagues, is equipped with accelerometers and gyroscopes that detect hand movements, the Discovery News reports.
The system then identifies which letters are being drawn and converts them into digital text, which can then be wirelessly entered into an email, text message or other mobile apps.
The system uses pattern recognition software to interpret gestures and is capable of recognizing approximately 8,000 words, along with complete sentences.
Currently, the model has an error rate of 11 percent, but that drops to three percent once it identifies the user's air-writing style, the report said.

Read More

India to address problem of skill shortage: Pramani

India has to address the problem of skill shortage to return to an economic growth rate of 8-9%, said Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman of Microsoft India.

During the previous wave of growth, the skill needed was available but in the next wave of growth, when it happens in the next couple of years, India may see a shortage of skilled people, Pramanik said.

He was speaking on the sidelines of an event to launch Microsoft’s upgraded version of its ‘Office’ suite of products called Office 365 for enterprises in India, which will allow sharing of data across multiple devices such as personal and tablet computers and mobile phones using cloud computing.

“Whether it is a airline or a fast-moving consumer goods or a manufacturing company, they all want to improve the productivity of their existing employees and are trying to use technology to skill and train other people,” said Pramanik.

Despite the fact that Microsoft has been growing faster than the market the past two-three years, the Indian market is underpenetrated from a technology spending point of view, both in terms of enterprises as well as government, he said.

“Typical government spending in most parts of the world is close to 2% but in India it is close to 0.35%. And if I look at the new emerging economies, or the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, we are very far behind,” he said.

Office 365, which integrates Microsoft’s various services such as SharePoint, Yammer and Lync to provide a platform for organisational collaboration, sells for $6-22 (Rs330-1,200) a user per month and can be installed on up to five devices for a single user.

Read More

India third largest 'spam spewing nation' in world

India has ranked third on the list of the countries distributing spam across the world, after US and China, a new report has claimed.
While the US was the single highest-ranking country in the study, Asia topped the list of continents with 36.6 per cent of the world's spam accounted for.
In the latter half of 2012, India had been leading the way but has now fallen back to third, with China leapfrogging into second place after a spell in the lower half of the list, statistics from SophosLabs revealed.
US is still firmly on the top, distributing more spam than any other country in the world, clocking in at a "respectable" 18.3 per cent of junk email sent.
The study tracked the amount of spam sent between December 2012 and February 2013. China took the second spot and India the third, with 8.2 per cent and 4.2 per cent of the world's spam, respectively.
Other high-ranking countries included Peru, France, South Korea, and Italy. North America ranked third, with a relatively diminutive 22 per cent, 'TechNewsDaily' reported.
After the top two, the spammers are distributing their activities fairly evenly across the rest of the list.
Stepping back and looking at spam relay from a continental viewpoint shows Asia keeping the top spot that it has held for some time now.
However, there has been a significant redistribution with a shift from India to the US and a 12 per cent swing from Asia to North America.
The list included USA (18.3 per cent) at number one, China (8.2 per cent) at number two. India (4.2 per cent) was placed third while Peru (4.0 per cent) stood fourth in the list.
France (3.4 per cent), S Korea (3.4 per cent) and Italy (3.4 per cent) were placed fifth on the list. Taiwan (2.9 per cent) and Russia (2.9 per cent) were at the eighth position.
Spain (2.8 per cent), Germany (2.7 per cent) and Iran (2.6 per cent) were at tenth, eleventh and twelfth spot respectively.
Compromised user PCs are a huge avenue of spam distribution. In order to stop spammers cold, everyday users can keep their anti-virus software up to date, run regular malware checks, and update their hard-to-guess passwords on a regular basis.

Read More

Microsoft launches Office 365 for businesses in India

Software giant Microsoft today launched its Office 365 for businesses in India, which will provide seamless sharing of data across PCs and mobiles using cloud computing technology.

"Office 365 unlocks social and mobility scenarios that will allow businesses and individuals to take full advantage of cloud computing. It gives them the freedom to do things, when, where and how they want," Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said.

Since the solutions are cloud-based, users can access their mails and files through a variety of devices like desktops, laptops and mobile phones and work on projects while on the move, he added.

Cloud computing facilitates sharing of technological resources, software and digital information. Since it is Internet-based, data and solutions can be accessed from anywhere using a browser.

With the suite of solutions, companies can use Office 365 for USD 6-22 (about Rs 330-1,200) per user per month and it can be installed on up to five devices for a single user under the Office 365 licensing.

"After 18 months, one in five of Microsoft's enterprise customers worldwide use the paid service, up from one in seven a year ago," Microsoft India General Manager (Customer and Partner Experience) Ramkumar Pichai said on the growing user base of Office 365.

It is one of the fastest growing businesses globally for Microsoft, since it was launched in 2011, he added.

Elaborating on the features of Office 365, Microsoft India Director (Office & Cloud) Sukhvinder Ahuja said "This service is more social, like SharePoint integrates with Yammer and Lync to provide a social platform that brings people and teams together to collaborate and share organisational knowledge and information."

The seamless capability of the suite across multiple devices -- tablets, PCs, phones -- makes its value all the more compelling, he added.

The launch is a part of Microsoft's comprehensive cloud services strategy. Microsoft 365 provides all the enterprise solutions on a flexible usage and payment model, along with security and simplified IT management.

Enterprises like Lupin, Godrej, Tata Communications, AEGON Religare, Tata Elxsi, FICCI, SIRO Clinpharm, Unilog, Dabur India, Adhunik Group, Infiniti Retail, etc., are already using the Office 365.

Read More

Google brings Business Photos to India

Summary: The program allows customers to walk through, explore, and take a closer look at a business premise, giving Indian businesses the ability to provide virtual tours inside the offices through interactive 360-degree imagery.

Google has officially launched its Business Photos initiative in India, allowing consumers to see inside a company's premise without actually stepping inside the location. The program allows local businesses to provide Google users a virtual tour inside the business through interactive 360-degree imagery. This imagery can be viewed on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+ Local Pages.

The program is currently available in more than eight countries globally including United States, Australia, New Zealand, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Google Business Photos allows customers to walk through, explore, and take a closer look at a business premise. Also, businesses can embed these photos on their Web sites and social media channels using an embedded code from Google Maps.

Commenting on the value for business owners, Shailesh Nalawadi, Google's product manager of Geo, said: "For the businesses, this provides an opportunity to visually present their product and services. For example, before visiting a store to purchase an electronic device, consumers can use business photos to evaluate and view the selections offered by various retailers."

Hard Rock Cafe in an upscale pub in Pune, India's seventh largest metropolis, has its imagery on Google Maps as part of the pilot program. A customer can check out the décor, seating, and ambience before planning an evening out at the pub.

Hard Rock Cafe in Pune, India, on Google Maps

To get Google Business Photos, business owners can hire one of Google's certified Trusted Agency Photographers including Indiacom, Jindal RH Interactive, Carbon Tree, and Vox360, to capture the interiors of their premises and displays on the storefront, like business hours, rating details, credit cards accepted, and posted menus. Trusted Agency photographers are independent contractors who have been trained and certified by Google to produce high quality panoramic images. 

As a business owner, though, one can also upload own photographs to Google+ Local. 

Busienss Photos can help customers get a better sense of what a business has to offer and what sets it apart from others.

Read More

Evernote hacked: 50 million passwords reset

Online note-taking service Evernote Corp. says it has been hacked and is resetting all its 50 million users' passwords as a precaution.

The Redwood City, California-based company said in a post published yesterday that an attacker had been able to access sensitive customer information and that every user would have their account reset "in an abundance of caution."

Evernote says the attacker was able to access an unspecified number of customers' encrypted passwords. Decoding such passwords can be difficult but is far from impossible.

The company says it has seen no evidence that any customer data had been tampered with or that any payment information had been compromised.

A phone message left with Evernote today was not immediately returned.

Read More

Indian women turn to smartphones to 'pin creeps'

With virtual bodyguards, panic buttons and maps to pinpoint harassment blackspots, women in urban India are turning towards smartphones for protection after the notorious gang-rape in New Delhi.

Interest in safety apps and websites has surged since the fatal December attack, in which a 23-year-old student was gangraped by drunken men in a bus while she was on her way home from a cinema in the Indian capital, reports the Herald Sun.

Following the incident, four businesswomen set up Safecity.in, a website for victims of harassment to channel their anger.

The site encourages them to "Pin the Creeps" by reporting incidents of harassment and abuse, which are added to an online map and sent to those requesting alerts.

Mumbai-based Elsa D'Silva, a founder of the site, said social media has allowed women to speak out and warn others of dangerous areas, even if they were reluctant to give their name or make a complaint to the police.

The website has linked with new mobile app SafeTrac, developed by tech firm KritiLabs and downloadable for free, which has an SOS button to alert emergency contacts and lets relatives or friends track the user's journey.

It joins a host of similar apps designed to reassure women, especially those working late and travelling alone - that is, if they can afford mobile internet access.

The first such Indian app was FightBack, launched by non-profit trust Whypoll a year before the Delhi attack, since when it has gone free of charge and seen a flurry of downloads.

Whypoll founder Hindol Sengupta said they were now working on a "next generation" app that would include guidance for reporting abuse. Women often don't know their legal rights when they go to the police station and they can be further violated there, he said.

However, technology clearly has its limits - it cannot fulfil the need for decent law enforcement, or change attitudes towards women. And while the Indian smartphone market is rising rapidly - expected to soon become the world's third largest - it still accounts for a fraction of about 700 million active mobile subscriptions in the country.

Read More

55% of developers currently making games for mobile devices

Smartphones and tablets are currently the most popular devices for game developers to release games on. It shouldn’t be surprising given how many people own smartphones and/or tablets, and want mobile games to play in order to pass the time. The Game Developers Conference polled over 2,500 North American game developers and asked them which platforms they’re currently developing their games on.




55% of the game developers said that they’re currently developing games for both smartphones/tablets. 48% are currently developing games for PCs and Macs. 13.2% are currently developing a game for the Xbox 360. 13% are currently developing a game for the PlayStation 3. Only 4.6% are working on a game for the Wii U. 4.2% are making a game for the PlayStation Vita, and finally only 2% of developers are currently developing games for the Nintendo 3DS.
58% of developers are planning on releasing their next game on smartphones/tablets, 49% are releasing their next game onto PCs/Macs, 14% are releasing their next game for the Xbox 360, 12.4% are releasing their next game for the PlayStation 3, 6.4% are planning to release their next game to the Wii U, 5% are releasing their next game for the PlayStation Vita, and only 2.8% are planning on releasing their next game to the Nintendo 3DS.
Mobile gaming is rapidly rising and developers find that the smartphone/tablet platform would be the most profitable one to develop for. Games are relatively cheap on mobile devices (with the highest I’ve purchased being Final Fantasy Dimensions with its $19.99 price tag), making them more easily accessible than the $60-ish priced console games. It also helps that there are really well-made mobile games that feature beautiful graphics, such as the ones being released for the NVIDIA Tegra 4.

Read More

Now, new service that delivers your 'snail mail' like email

An Austin-based startup Outbox has no made it easy to digitize all of your physical mails and deliver them to you electronically.

The firm Outbox has turned the traditional mail you receive in your mailbox into a digital format you can read on your phones, tablets and PCs.

According to Mashable, once you sign up for Outbox, the company will visit your mailbox three times a week and collect your mail on your behalf.

Once it gets your mail, it then sorts it, scans it, and sends you digital versions that you can access from a smartphone app or a website on your computer.

According to the report, one can request the physical copy of mail they want.

Outbox will then package it and deliver it back to your mailbox within two days.

One can also opt out of mail he/she never wants to receive, such as coupons or circulars, and Outbox will put that on a "do-not-mail" list of sorts for those things, preventing them from ever seeing the person's digital inbox.

Read More

Facebook to showcase new look for newsfeed on March 7

Facebook Inc will unveil a new look for its popular 'newsfeed' next week, the latest move by the Web company to revamp key elements of its 1 billion member social network.

Facebook will showcase the newsfeed makeover at a media event on March 7 at its Menlo Park, California headquarters, the company said in an emailed invitation to reporters on Friday.

The event will be Facebook's second high-profile product event this year, following the rollout of its social search feature in January.

Facebook's newsfeed, which displays an ever-changing stream of the photos, videos and comments uploaded from a user's network of friends, is one of the three "pillars" of the service, along with search and user profiles, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said.

The last major update to Facebook's newsfeed was in September 2011. Since then, the company has incorporated ads directly into the feed and the company has shifted its focus to creating "mobile first experiences," as more people now access the social network every day on mobile devices than on desktop PCs.

The mobile version of Facebook still lacks many of the features available on the PC version, said Brian Blau, an analyst with industry research firm Gartner. "So maybe this is a way to bring some of that together," he said.

Shares of Facebook, the world's No.1 social network, were up nearly 2 percent, or 52 cents, at $27.77 in midday trading on Friday.

Read More

Google releases Hindi input app for Android smartphones

Google has just released a new app called Google Hindi input app which allows users to type in Hindi on their Android smartphones.
The Hindi Input app will let users type messages, update their social networks or compose emails in Hindi their Droid.
Word of caution though… the app only works if your phone supports Hindi reading. For instance, if you can read  नमस्ते as is correctly on your phone, then go ahead and install the app Google Hindi. The app also allows Hindi transliteration.

Get the new Hindi keyboard on your Android.

Users can
• Toggle the button “a->अ” on English keyboard to turn on/off transliteration mode.
• In the transliteration mode, you can type Hindi word in English characters and the app will convert them to Hindi.
• By turning off the transliteration mode on English keyboard, you can type in English.
Typing in Hindi keyboard
• Toggle the globe button to switch between English and Hindi keyboard.
• Consonants are alphabetically ordered into 2 pages. Press the paging button “1/2” “2/2” to navigate between pages. Long press the character key to select various forms in the popup.

Read More

Samsung launches 8-inch Note 510 tablet

Samsung on Friday announced the launch of the Galaxy Note 510, its new 8-inch tablet , and its first ultra-high definition (UHD) television, the 85S9, in India. The new devices and appliances, launched as part of the Samsung Forum, will become available over the coming months.

The Galaxy Note 510 will bring the popular features of Samsung's Note range of phablets to a larger screen. So, this mid-size tablet will come with a S-Pen, as well as S Note templates and tools. The company is pegging this device, which can be held in one hand, as a smart diary. The new tablet also underlines the increasing popularity of tablets with calling capability, especially in value-conscious India, where it serves the purpose of two devices.

Samsung also unveiled its stunning 85-inch UHD television, the 85S9. With a radical "timeless gallery design", the screen appears as if it is floating within the frame, which incidentally nests an array of speakers, producing an unprecedented 120w of sound. This device will compete with the 4K televisions announced by rivals Sony, Toshiba and LG. Samsung says UHD is different from the 4K televisions.

Samsung's South West Asia president and CEO B.D. Park said innovation and discovery are the key principles of the company's business. "These are driving our goal to enable consumers to discover a world of possibilities and technology," he added.

The company also announced the new F8000 series of LED TVs, which will be available in 46, 55 and 65 inch screen sizes. These smart televisions will feature the improved Smart Interaction 2.0, which can understand up to 300 commands and has better language recognition.

The first evolution kit for the smart televisions will also become available from this year, said Atul Jain, VP consumer electronics. "Large-screen televisions are the fastest growing market segment in India. Globally, over 100 million smart television applications have been downloaded," he said, adding that smart televisions now command 10 per cent of the panel TV market in India.

Other announcements included the NX300 Wi-Fi-connected compact mirror-less camera as well as new ranges of refrigerators and washing machines. The company did not announce prices or availability dates for any of the products.

(The writer attended the Samsung Forum 2013 in Hyderabad on the invite of Samsung India.)

Read More