Technology News and Gadgets Updates: 02/14/11

Monday, February 14, 2011

MTS partners Meru Cabs to offer free internet to travellers

Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd (SSTL), which offers telephony services under the MTS brand name, today said it has partnered with Meru Cabs to offer free internet services to its passengers in New Delhi and Mumbai.

The customer needs to ask the cab driver for an MBlaze dongle to get free internet surfing along with unlimited data download, SSTL said in a statement.

The company plans to launch similar services in other major towns including Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad, it added.

"Our partnership with Meru Cabs has been specially designed to offer seamless data connectivity to users on the go, both in Delhi and Mumbai," SSTL Chief Marketing Officer Leonid Musatov said.

MTS claims to have over 9 million voice subscribers in India and under the MBlaze brand provides mobile broadband services to over 4.8 lakh customers in more than 100 cities across the country.

Disclaimer: All information on this news has been compiled from their respective official websites or through public domain sites and leading newspapers. Although, we have taken reasonable efforts to provide you with accurate information, but we assumes no responsibility for the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the Information and would advise you to verify it from the official product provider. We cannot guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. If you would like to advertise on our site please contact us

Internet IP addresses not exhausted: ITU official

An ITU official has denied that Internet addresses running out worldwide.

Zhao Houlin , a senior official of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), said that the IP address stock is not declining and resources allocated to some regional internet registries are far from exhausted.

The in-use IP addresses still have potentials that can be tapped, not to mention that a great number of allocated IP addresses are currently not in use, said Houlin, Deputy Secretary General of the Geneva-based organization.

Houlin said the so-called "exhaustion" means only that the resources under the organization's control have been allocated to the continents, but the regional registries have not allocated all of their respective resources, reports English.news.cn.

He also said there are still potentials for the in-use IP addresses.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has given only some 300 million IP addresses to China, accounting for less than 10 percent of the global total, while China boasts over 400 million internet users, far more than its given shares of IP addresses.

By contrast, the United States with a population of only 300 million, has almost 40 percent of the global IP addresses, a large part of which have remained idle up to now, he added.

However, he warned that the use of un-opened IP addresses required the solutions of many technical, operational and security problems.

The reason for the current exhaustion is that the distribution and management of the internet IP addresses was decided by experts in the American labs at that time, not with a globally unified approach, he said.

Houlin confirmed that the switch to IPv6 was indeed necessary.

Asked when will the internet users switch from IPv4 to IPv6, he said this switch needs time, similar to the switch of China's mobile telephone from the second generation GSM to the third generation 3G.

However, the repetition of mistakes under IPv4 must be avoided, he added.

World's slimmest smartphone: Samsung launches bigger Galaxy Tab 10.1

Samsung launched a second tablet computer on Sunday, with a bigger screen and more processing power than the original Galaxy Tab that is seen as the only real rival to Apple's iPad .

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is intended to be a multimedia hub for afficionados of games, electronic books and social media, with a 10.1 inch (25.7 centimetre) screen, dual surround-sound speakers, and front- and rear-facing cameras.

The tablet, with two core processors to better handle media, is based on the latest Google Android platform, Honeycomb -- which has been optimised for tablets.

It will be sold by Vodafone in more than 20 countries before being released to other carriers.

Samsung, now the world's second-biggest phone maker after Nokia, also launched a new premium smartphone, the ultra-slim Galaxy S II, designed around hubs for social networking, reading, games and music.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung, whose telecoms division accounted for nearly half its profit last quarter, has sold around 10 million Galaxy S smartphones since its June 2010 debut, and 2 million Galaxy tablets.

"If I were (chief executive) Stephen Elop heading up Nokia, I would be looking over my shoulder at Samsung and feeling extremely nervous," said Ben Wood, lead analyst at telecoms research firm CCS Insight.

Samsung also announced a range of enterprise services compatible with its two new devices, to address some of the security concerns that have held Android phones back from a serious challenge to Research in Motion's BlackBerry.

Sony Ericsson unveils PlayStation phone

Sony Ericsson unveiled on Sunday its long-awaited PlayStation smartphone, and said Verizon Wireless would sell the model in the United States.

The model, named Xperia Play, will open better access to the world's largest smartphone market for the a 50-50 venture of Sweden's Ericsson and Japan's Sony Corp.

Sony Ericsson also unveiled two other smartphone models running Google's Android software and said it plans to launch at least eight Android phones this year.

Android has risen fast to be the platform of choice for many smaller phone makers who have rolled out dozens of similar models to battle against Nokia and Apple.

"The Xperia Play offers something refreshingly different amidst a sea of homogenous Android devices. Sony Ericsson needs to maximise its first-to-market advantage before the inevitable rush to join the PlayStation party," said Geoff Blaber, analyst at research firm CCS Insight .

Bert Nordberg, Chief Executive of Sony Ericsson, told Reuters the firm will focus increasingly on growth this year, after turning profitable in 2010.

Nordberg said the company aims to grow both revenue and profits in 2011.

All new models will go on sale from early April, leaving the group with an awkward gap having already had to slash prices to attract Christmas shoppers to its ageing handsets.

Nokia CEO sees billions from Microsoft deal

Nokia's CEO on Sunday touted its recent alliance with Microsoft, saying it would be worth billions to the Finnish cellphone maker, which is seeking to catch up in the fiercely competitive smartphone market.

Nokia announced on Friday that it was teaming up with Microsoft to take on Google and Apple in the smartphone market.

"Microsoft is contributing to Nokia substantial monetary value," Stephen Elop said on Sunday in a presentation ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"Some people interpret that to be in the millions or tens of millions," said Elop, who left Microsoft to take the helm of Nokia in September.

It was, however, a much better deal than that for Nokia, Elop said because it "is measured in the B's not M's."

While Nokia was clearly dependent on Microsoft's Windows phone, Elop said Microsoft was also putting a "very significant bet on Nokia delivering location-based services."

Forget search engines, try the new ‘answer engines’

Computer wizards have claimed that by using a ‘cutting-edge’ technology they have created a clever website that gives direct answers to direct questions.

According to creators, “trueknowledge.com” site is an Internet “answer engine” which breaks new ground by giving direct answers to questions.

Co-founder William Tunstall-Pedoe, who is based in Cambridge, said the website is a “phone-a-friend” on the Internet which can answer “trillions” of questions.

“What's new is that it is a website which answers the question,” the Daily Mail quoted Tunstall-Pedoe as saying.

“It doesn't give you references to articles mentioning the words in the question. It gives you the answer. Ask it when Bob Dylan's birthday is and it will simply tell you. And it if doesn't know the answer it will say it doesn't know.

“It doesn't know everything but as we input more information it will know more and more.”

“It's cutting-edge use of computers. It uses unique semantic technology, which has been many years in development.

“It understands user questions, represents knowledge in a way that the system can understand and process and can combine existing knowledge to infer new facts and answer questions it has never seen before.

“Powering the platform is also a database of facts: a unified representation of the world's knowledge containing factual, common sense and lexical knowledge.

“We can already answer trillions of questions and as this knowledge base grows, we understand and answer more and more,” he added.
Disclaimer: All information on this news has been compiled from their respective official websites or through public domain sites and leading newspapers. Although, we have taken reasonable efforts to provide you with accurate information, but we assumes no responsibility for the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of the Information and would advise you to verify it from the official product provider. We cannot guarantee that the information on this page is 100% correct. If you would like to advertise on our site please contact us

Samsung launches second tablet computer

Google search often represents layer upon layer of intrigue

Pretend for a moment that you are Google’s search engine. Someone types the word “dresses” and hits enter. What will be the very first result ? There are, of course, a lot of possibilities. Macy’s comes to mind. Maybe a specialty chain, like J. Crew or the Gap. Perhaps a Wikipedia entry on the history of hemlines. OK, how about the word “bedding” ? Bed Bath & Beyond seems a candidate. Or Walmart, or perhaps the bedding section of Amazon.com. “Area rugs” ? Crate & Barrel is a possibility.

Home Depot, too, and Sears, Pier 1 or any of those websites with “area rug” in the name, like arearugs.com. You could imagine a dozen contenders for each of these searches. But in the past several months, one name turned up, with uncanny regularity, in the No.1 spot for each and every term: J.C. Penney. The company bested millions of sites – and not just in searches for dresses, bedding and area rugs.

For months, it was consistently at or near the top in searches for “skinny jeans,” “home decor,” “comforter sets,” “furniture” and dozens of other words and phrases, from the blandly generic (“ tablecloths” ) to the strangely specific (“ grommet top curtains” ). This striking performance lasted for months, most crucially through the holiday season, when there is a huge spike in online shopping. J.C. Penney even beat out the sites of manufacturers in searches for the products of those manufacturers. Type in “Samsonite carry on luggage,” for instance, and Penney for months was first on the list, ahead of Samsonite.com.

With more than 1,100 stores and $17.8 billion in total revenue in 2010, Penney is certainly a major player in American retailing. But Google’s stated goal is to sift through every corner of the Internet and find the most important, relevant websites. Does the collective wisdom of the Web really say that Penney has the most essential site when it comes to dresses? And@ bedding ? ^And area rugs? And dozens of other words and phrases? The New York Times asked an expert in online search, Doug Pierce of Blue Fountain Media in New York, to study this question, as well as Penney’s astoundingly strong search-term performance in recent months.

Mobile Fair-Linux group hopes to gain from Nokia-Microsoft pact

Wireless Linux group LiMo hopes to benefit from a tie-up between Microsoft and Nokia as this should push smaller phone makers to seek alternative software platforms, its head said on Monday.

Computer operating system Linux has started to win traction in mobile with Google Inc's Android rising to the No. 1 spot in global smartphone rankings last quarter, helped by a wide array of models from many vendors.

"With Microsoft and Nokia now in lockstep and the Android arena rapidly becoming commoditised, other handset vendors must look elsewhere to avoid the irreversible margin collapse that befell PC manufacturers," Morgan Gillis, head of LiMo, told Reuters.

LiMo, a non-profit foundation, hopes to benefit from its focus on giving greater say over software development to telecoms operators, but it has struggled to win wider adoption outside Japan.

The market for software platforms on cellphones was led by Nokia's Symbian operating system for a decade, but its position has weakened since Apple Inc's 2007 introduction of iPhone, culminating to last week's announcement on adopting Microsoft's Windows Phone as its primary platform.

"The new tie-up has great upside for Microsoft although there is also a major risk that the existing Windows Phone vendors will now feel alienated," Gillis said.

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Monday, February 14, 2011