Technology News and Gadgets Updates: 01/12/11

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Dell enters printer segment in India

Completing its product portfolio, the US-based computer-maker Dell today entered into the printer vertical in India by launching a comprehensive range of products.

With the launch of these printers in India, we have added one more dimension to our portfolio and now offer more comprehensive solutions to our customers," Dell India Director Marketing, Consumer, Small and Medium Business (CSMB), P Krishnakumar told reporters here.

The range, which constitutes seven printers, will be available across the country by the month-end, he said, adding initially there will be service centres in 16 cities.

These printers will cater mainly to small and medium businesses as they will reduce the cost of print by providing increased reliability with comprehensive warranty and maintenance coverage, he said.

The printers, priced between Rs 6,500 and Rs 30,000, will be wholly imported and available through channel partners, Krishnakumar said.

Looking forward, he said, apart from the personal computer segment, in which Dell holds the number one position, the company will focus on expanding its range of smart phones and tablets that fetches it incremental revenues.

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AMD CEO left partly over mobile strategy

The departure of Advanced Micro Devices' chief executive followed months of concern among some board members that he wasn't doing enough to get the chip maker into the exploding mobile market, a company source said.

PC chip maker AMD's shares slumped 9 percent to close at $8.36 on Tuesday after the company unexpectedly said late the day before that Dirk Meyer was leaving as the result of a "mutual agreement" with the board of directors.

Much of the reason for Meyer's departure had to do with currents of discontent on the board about AMD's choice not to pursue making chips for the mobile market other than netbooks, the company source told Reuters.

In October, Meyer had told analysts that even though tablets like Apple's iPad were eating into demand for laptops, AMD would hold off on investing to develop microprocessors for that market until it grew more. AMD focuses on making chips for personal computers and servers, and competes directly against much larger Intel.

"Strategically they (the board) didn't feel like Dirk was taking them down the road they wanted to be on. They wanted to be on the Yellow Brick Road toward tablets and smartphones," said Patrick Wang, an analyst at Wedbush.

People may increasingly depend on tablets and smartphones -- instead of PCs -- as their main point of contact with the Internet, experts say.

Those devices typically use more power-efficient chips than the so-called x86-based processors sold by Intel and AMD that have served as the main processing brains of PCs for years.

Google launches global kids science fair

Google on Tuesday launched its first ever global science fair for young people aged 13 to 18, with the grand prize being a trip to the Galapagos Islands and a 50,000-dollar scholarship.

"Google is looking for the brightest young scientists from around the world to submit interesting, creative projects that are relevant to the world today," the Internet search engine said.

Students may enter on their own or in groups of two or three. Projects must be submitted by April 4.

As part of the entry, young scientists must create "either a two-minute video or 20-slide presentation giving an overview of your project and embed it on the summary page of your project submission," Google said.

All materials must be written in English, it said, noting that Google Translate is available for those who need it.

Judging of all submissions is to be done by a panel of teachers, Google said.

Then, in early May, "60 global semifinalists will be announced and their projects will be posted online and open to public voting for a 'People's Choice Award.'"

Later in May, Google will announce 15 global finalists who will be flown to Google headquarters in California for a science fair event and judging before "a panel of acclaimed scientists including Nobel Laureates, tech visionaries and household names."

One finalist will be selected from each of three age groups: 13-14, 15-15, and 17-18.

Finalists win a 25,000 scholarship, and the grand prize winner gets a 50,000 dollar scholarship plus a 10-day trip with a parent or guardian to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions.

Twitter users have regional accents, study finds

Twitter users tweet messages with regional dialects, using "suttin" for "something" if they are New Yorkers and "sumthin" if they are not, a new study found.

The social media site is displaying new dialects because it is such a conversational form of writing, according to the Carnegie Mellon University study to be presented on Tuesday to the Linguistic Society of America meeting in Pittsburgh.

On Twitter, users send or tweet messages no more than 140 characters long and often abbreviate to accommodate the short, quick format.

"Written communication often is less reflective of regional influences because writing, even in blogs, tends to be formal, and thus homogenized," the study team said in a statement.

The study found Twitter users in southern California might tweet "coo" for "cool," while those in northern California are more likely to write "koo," it found.

The word "very" is often expressed as "OD" in New York and "hella" in northern California, the study found.

The word "you" is often "uu" in New York but a single 'u' elsewhere, it said. Twitter users in large cities are more likely to use 'yu' than those in rural or suburban areas.

The study looked at 380,000 tweets by 9,500 users who wrote at least 20 messages via cell phone over a week in March 2010.

Regional dialects may be present on Facebook and other social media, but those are more private and less easily studied, said Jacob Eisenstein, who led the study.

The differences in regional expression allowed researchers to predict the location of a user in the United States within about 300 miles, Eisenstein said.

Facebook financing copycats could be a problem

I hope the only people harmed are speculators”. Roger McNamee , the venture capital investor, was discussing the new race in Silicon Valley to buy up shares of hot private Internet companies in the wake of Facebook’s $2 billion fundraising last week that valued the company at $50 billion.

McNamee, a co-founder of the private equity firm Elevation Partners, whose best known principal is the musician Bono, knows a thing or two about the shadowy markets where private start-ups like Facebook trade hands. His fund paid $120 million over the summer for a stake in Facebook that valued the company at just $14 billion. On paper, McNamee has more than tripled his money in just over six months.

But McNamee is starting to worry about a spate of copycat offerings that may come along in the coming months from dozens of Internet companies spurred by overzealous investors.

“If history is any guide, both sides will eventually overplay their hand on this, eventually leading to problems,” he said, resigned that the boom in private fund-raising may end badly. Venture capital investments used to be made only by venture capitalists – professionals with an appetite for risk.

But today, with billiondollar rounds of fundraising for the likes of Facebook and Groupon, money is flowing into these businesses from big institutional investors to wealthy individual clients of Goldman Sachs to plain old retail investors.

Then there are more indirect ways to buy into the hot private stocks. Some financial firms are creating vehicles, giving wealthy individuals a chance to get in on the action in secondary markets, where Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and other tech startups are trading at a frenetic pace.

Last week, a group of technology executives started a closed-end mutual fund that will try to buy shares directly from companies or on private exchanges. Think of the soon-to-be publicly traded NeXT BDC fund as away for mom and pop to acquire shares of Facebook without being a wealthy client of Goldman Sachs. According to McNamee, investors are handing over money by the boatload because of a deep-seated insecurity of missing the next big thing. Call it the Google Effect.

“Almost every institutional investor screwed up Google’s IPO by not buying aggressively. No one wants to repeat that mistake with Facebook,” said McNamee, referring to the fact that Google’s original price at its public offering was a measly $85 a share; the company’s shares closed on Monday at $614.21.
Memories might be long about the Google IPO, but that does not mean that investors should take the plunge. Those heaving money at companies like Facebook are doing so with only a modicum of information about the companies’ performance.

In the case of Facebook, investors were told only about the company’s revenue and profit for the last two years – hardly the kind of granular detail that most investors, even rich ones, typically require.

Tablet, smart tech toys hits stores in 2011

Buyers have become very picky in opting for the slimmest, sleekest and most intelligent tech-toys. Neenu Abraham takes a peek at what’s in store in 2011.

Hen Rene Penning de Vries, the chief technology officer of NXP Semiconductors, talked two years ago about a technology that could tell you whether the milk in your refrigerator has turned bad, many found it hard to believe. But the latest display of products and technologies of the future at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas shows that the day is not too far off when you can actually access internet and watch YouTube on your refrigerator.

Mobile phones and computers constituted the chunk of consumer electronics devices purchased in 2010, according to this year’s edition of Accenture’s Consumer Electronics Products and Services Usage Report. In 2010, BRIC consumers have shown a higher rate of adoption of the newest technologies and a greater willingness to pay premiums for features and enhancements.

This explains why many gadgets with ultra-cool features are making their way to India. Take Samsung’s C9000 series of 3D TVs, for instance. Users can see their programmes on the remote control screen of this TV anywhere in their house.

Also, 2011 seems to be poised for a tablet war. With India being an attractive market for these gadgets, here are some exciting technologies and products to watch out for.

Tablets/Tablet-PCs

Right from the jaw-droppers — the Motorola Xoom to BlackBerry’s Playbook — a line of exciting tech toys are out. LG unveiled its first tablet, which runs on the Android version of Honyecomb. Toshiba also has been showing off its 10-inch tablet running on Honeycomb.

In India, the biggest hit last year was perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which runs on the Android Operating System 2.2. It offers PC-like web-browsing on its 7-inch display screen, and special customised applications suitable for India.

"With 3G services being rolled out, Indian consumers can download new content faster," says Ranjit Yadav, country head, Samsung Mobile and IT. “As the mobile industry gears up for the convergence era, 2011 will see a further spurt in the growth of smartphones and tablets,” he says.

The Empire Strikes Back

The new HTC HD7 sees HTC repeat the large display formula of the HD2, only this time with Windows Phone 7 running under the hood. The huge touchscreen with 480 x 800 resolution dominates the front with three touch buttons (home, back and search) below it, while the back nurses a 5 MP camera with dual LED with a kickstand placed over it. You can flick open the kickstand and rest the phone on it in landscape mode to watch videos if you wish. Made mainly of plastic, the HTC HD7 looks sleek enough and while it does not have the drop-dead good looks of the iPhone 4, those who look at it will definitely give it more than one look (although we did find the yellow shade around the camera a tad odd). The HD7 scores heavily in the specs department too, with a 1GHz processor, 16 GB onboard storage (not expandable, alas), 576 MB RAM, a host of sensors (compass, proximity sensor, etc.) and all the connectivity options (Bluetooth, GPS , Wi-Fi ) you could ask for.

But the biggest star of the show is perhaps Windows Phone 7. The tiles and hub interface throws menus totally out of the window (pun intended), looks very good indeed, and is extremely easy to use. You can switch from the homescreen to a complete list of applications on the phone by just swiping your finger to the right. And while Android and iPhone fans might point out that the OS has just one homescreen, the fact that it scrolls down seemingly endlessly, allowing you to place as many tiles as you wish on it, compensates !

The large display is terrific for browsing the Web and the overhauled Internet Explorer now serves up tabs too. As in most mobile versions of Windows, Windows Phone 7 too comes with a stack of software goodies, including a mobile version of MS Office, seamless connectivity to Skydrive (its online storage service), excellent push mail support, Bing search and maps, and a Zune app to play and transfer videos and music. Top that off with a superb People app that gets all your Facebook and other contacts in one place and also keeps you tuned in to Facebook updates by them, a marvellous onscreen keyboard (the best we have since the iPhone), excellent sound performance and you have every reason to believe that the HD7 is one of the best phones in town.

That it fails to live up to that tag is once again the fault of its OS. There is no multitasking , beyond the option to play music in the background, no cut and paste, and while Bluetooth is present, you cannot use it to transfer files, although the option to mail them and upload them directly to Skydrive exists. You have to use Zune to transfer music and video (reminiscent of being tied down to iTunes) and a far cry from the relative openness of both Android and Symbian. Round that off with a camera that is more often than not mediocre and battery life that struggles to see through a day and the HD7 starts looking very human indeed.

There is no doubt that using Windows Phone 7 is an absolute joy, but the absence of apps, especially in a phone that costs almost Rs 30,000 is inexcusable.

FEATURES
4.3-inch , 480 x 800 pixel capacitive display 1Ghz processor, 586MB RAM, Windows Phone 7 16GB storage, 5MP cam, Wi-Fi , GPS, 162 grams

Tostitos for dipping? Sure, why not

From 1958 to 1961, Pepsi-Cola invited consumers to “be sociable, have a Pepsi.” Now, a brand sold by another division of PepsiCo is turning to social media as the centerpiece of an ambitious campaign.

The brand is Tostitos tortilla chips, one of the best sellers for the Frito-Lay unit of PepsiCo along with mainstays like Lay’s , Doritos, Cheetos, Ruffles and Fritos. Tostitos chose halftime on Monday night of the college football Bowl Championship Series title game to introduce a campaign that is focused on reuniting consumers with relatives , friends, former teammates and lost romantic partners.

The campaign, called “Tostitos Reunite America,” is housed on a tab on the Tostitos Facebook page. It will be promoted through social media and public relations rather than a traditional advertising campaign with elements like television commercials or print advertisements .

The campaign is among many for a growing list of mainstream brands that are being presented through social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It was not that long ago that it was uncommon for packaged foods like Tostitos to turn to social media. Today, a shopping basket full of brands from companies like Campbell’s Soup, Coca-Cola , ConAgra, Kraft, PepsiCo and Sara Lee are being hawked alongside automobiles, financial services and technology products.

The campaign grows from a persona developed for Tostitos by Frito-Lay and its agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, which plays up the brand’s role in creating “connections” among consumers. That has been brought to life through other initiatives like a sponsorship this year and last of a football game, named the Tostitos Connect to Home Bowl, that is played in Iraq between U.S. troops and former college football stars.
During halftime of Monday’s title game – played between Auburn and Oregon in Glendale , Ariz. – Tostitos arranged surprise reunions between some of those troops and their families.

The goal of the campaign is to establish Tostitos as a brand that “brings people together through the power of technology,” said Justin Lambeth , vice president for marketing at Frito-Lay in Plano , Texas.

“Technology is a great enabler ,” Lambeth said. “We can keep in touch with friends; we’re a text or tweet away.”
“But it can also divide us,” he added, so the campaign’s promise of arranging reunions in the real world ought to be appealing. Consumers are being invited to visit facebook.com/tostitos, where they will read a message declaring: “Facebook is great. Face-to-face is even better. Tell us which Facebook friend or family member you’re dying to reunite with. If you’re picked, we’ll set you up with a once-ina-lifetime reunion.”

Lambeth said, “Whether the issue is time, money or distance, we can make it happen.” Frito-Lay is still deciding how many reunions it will finance, he added.

Consumers will be asked to upload video or film clips to the Tostitos Facebook page, making their case to be chosen for the reunions .

“We’re hoping for stories that should make you laugh, make you cry,” Lambeth said, “and motivate you to submit a story of your own.”

The winner or winners will be determined by other consumers, he added, who will vote for their favorite submissions from among the clips.

“Primarily, we’ll look at popularity ,” Lambeth said, “and we’ll overlay a little bit of judgment” to filter inappropriate content. There will be features enabling visitors to Facebook to watch the stories, share the stories and recommend the stories. There will also be a “send a gift” feature by which they can send icons to their Facebook friends. One icon will bear the “Tostitos reunite America” theme. One is less commercial, reading, “Let’s reunite.” Others are more generic , carrying thoughts like “Me and you,” “Here’s to us” and “Miss you!”

Although Lambeth declined to discuss the cost of the campaign , campaigns that are concentrated in social media typically cost less – usually, much less – than campaigns replete with TV spots. According to Kantar Media , a unit of WPP, Frito-Lay spent $27.14 million to advertise Tostitos in major media in 2009. That was up 0.2 percent from 2008, when spending totaled $27.08 million, but down 40.2 percent from the $45.36 million spent in 2007.

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Wednesday, January 12, 2011