Google Apps For Business To Go Paid From May 10 In India

Google Apps For Business

Google Apps for Business, the browser-based office suite that revolutionised the way start-ups and SMBs use e-mail and productivity applications at work, will soon go paid for any business with more than 10 users in India.

Google Apps offers online solutions for e-mail, document editing, spread sheets and calendar management and collaboration with Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs and Sites. These web-based tools are hosted by Google itself and help streamline setup, minimise maintenance and reduce IT costs. Google claims that over three million businesses run Google Apps today.

Earlier, Google Apps for Business offered business users 100 e-mail IDs for free. Now, business users signing up for Google Apps for the first time after May 10, 2011 will be asked to use the paid Google Apps product if they have more than 10 e-mail accounts.

The website has not yet announced the change, but an e-mail message sent by the Google Apps Team reads: “We recently announced upcoming changes to the maximum number of users for Google Apps. As of May 10, any organisation that signs up for a new account will be required to use the paid Google Apps for Business product in order to create more than 10 users.”

Existing businesses will be able to continue to use Google Apps without being charged. Think of it as a bonus for adopting the cloud service first.

Globally, Google Apps for Business announced that it was going paid in 2009. It charged an annual fee of $50 per user, according to this pricing chart.

How does Google Apps differ from Google Apps for Business? While the former is a free service that allows anyone to activate up to 50 accounts and offers messaging apps, customised e-mail accounts for domains, Google Calendar and mobile access to the services, Google Apps for Business offers an additional set of security and support services.

Features such as Google Video for Business and Google Groups for Business are offered on Google Apps for Business. It also provides 25 GB e-mail storage per user, as well as enhanced support and security features. For example, with more administrator controls, you can enforce SSL, which means when you connect to your e-mail and data which are hosted online, the connection is always secure and hackers or IP thieves will not be able to access and steal company information. Various banks currently use SSL to secure online banking transactions.

By setting the required custom password strength, you will be able to ensure that employees’ e-mail inboxes are protected against information theft.

Google also offers 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee and 24/7 support, besides interoperability for Blackberry and Microsoft Outlook users.

A direct competitor to Google Apps for Business is Microsoft’s Office 365 and the tech giant had recently launched a public beta in India. Office 365 is Microsoft’s online productivity suite, which combines Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online into a cloud service.

Office 365 is a paid service for an average of Rs 270 per user, per month, starting at Rs 90 per user, per month for instant messaging and presence applications. And more than 150,000 organisations have signed up to test it so far, the company has revealed.

Read More :- http://techcircle.vccircle.com/500/google-apps-for-business-to-go-paid-from-may-10-in-india/

Microsoft profit expected to rise

Microsoft

Microsoft Corp is expected to report an 18 per cent jump in quarterly profit, as its reliable Windows and Office franchises keep growing.

But that may not be enough to rouse its shares from a decade-long slumber or ease fears that its dominance of personal computing is waning.

The world's largest software company has sold a record-breaking 350 million licenses for its Windows 7 operating system since launching it 18 months ago, and its latest Office suite of applications is a hit with businesses.

But even if Microsoft follows most other tech companies and beats Wall Street's expectations -- as it has done for the last six quarters -- there is no evidence that it will turbocharger the stock, which trades around the same level it did 10 years ago.

Investors fear that new gadgets, led by Apple Inc's iPad, are the thin end of the wedge that will one day separate Microsoft from its core customers.

The new tablets "are making a sea of Microsoft customers comfortable using an operating system different than Microsoft's," Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of fund manager YCMNET Advisors, said earlier this week.

"You're going to see a migration away from the monopolistic dominance that Microsoft had, and that's worrisome for them."

Apple's iPad, along with a handful of tablets running Google Inc's Android system, are starting to eat at the edges of Microsoft's domination of personal computers.

PC sales -- the most reliable indicator of Microsoft's financial success -- fell 1 percent in the first three months of the year, according to one research firm.

VALUATION SAGS Long term, some see the new devices as unleashing a genie that Microsoft may never be able to put back in the bottle.

That fear has chilled Microsoft's stock, pushing it down 15 per cent in the last year, compared with a 16 percent gain in the tech-heavy Nasdaq.

Despite quarter after quarter of strong results for Microsoft -- the company racked up record sales and profit in the last three months of last year -- investors are unwilling to grant it the valuation they used to.

The stock is now trading at 9.6 times expected earnings for the next 12 months. That is half the stock's 10-year average and below the 13 times average for major tech companies.

Even Microsoft's 2.5 per cent dividend yield, which lags only Intel Corp's among big tech, is not enough to persuade investors to change their outlook.

Although some options traders are betting on an upward swing in Microsoft's shares after the results, past experience has shown that even blowout results tend to be priced in before earnings.

This quarter, Microsoft is expected to post sales growth of 12 per cent to $16.2 billion in its fiscal third quarter, and earnings of 56 cents per share, up smartly from 45 cents a year ago, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

That is a respectable gain in a slow-moving economy, but it may not be enough to keep its grip on the technology crown.

Apple, which overtook Microsoft in terms of market value and quarterly sales last year, posted a 95 percent jump in second-quarter net profit to $5.99 billion last week.

Microsoft is expected to report an 18 per cent increase to only $4.7 billion.

Two years ago, Microsoft's quarterly profit was almost double Apple's. The last time Apple produced more profit in a year than Microsoft was 1990.

To add insult to injury, Microsoft's languishing stock means it may be overtaken in market value soon by IBM, the lumbering old foe that Microsoft vanquished in the 1990s.

At the close of business on Wednesday, Apple led the pack with a market value of $324 billion. Microsoft was a distant second at $220 billion, with IBM close behind at $204 billion.

Read More :- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/software-services/Microsoft-profit-expected-to-rise/articleshow/8109463.cms

Social media: The new battleground in Singapore elections

Social media

The odds are always stacked against opposition candidates in Singapore elections and for Nicole Seah, a political novice contesting in the backyard of a popular former prime minister, they should be overwhelming.

But are they? The winsome 24-year-old is already the city-state's second-most "liked" politician on Facebook and she enjoys a higher profile than many seasoned campaigners. She has clips on YouTube and is avidly discussed in blogs.

As Singapore gears up for elections on May 7, no one is sure how social media like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will affect the outcome. What is clear is these outlets are sharply different to the pro-government local newspapers and TV.

"What used to be mere coffee shop talk can now enter the public discourse, for better or worse," says Cherian George, associate journalism professor at Nanyang Technological University.

"Whether it will have any impact and to whose benefit is anyone's guess."

The People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore with an iron grip since independence in 1965, usually wins elections by a huge margin. But at the last election in 2006, when it won 82 of 84 seats, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter either did not exist or were in their infancy and confined to the West.

According to the government's Info-communications Development Authority, 81 percent of Singapore households had access to the Internet at the end of 2009.

Top source

Facebook is particularly popular in the wealthy Southeast Asian city-state where there are an estimated 2.5 to 3 million users in a population of 5.1 million, according to industry estimates.

In a recent survey by the Straits Times newspaper, 36.3 percent of people between the ages of 21 and 34 cited the Internet as their top source of local political news compared with 35.3 percent who preferred newspapers.

According to local media, "Generation Y" citizens, or those born after 1975, make up one in four voters. And opposition parties have been quick to take note.

"There is this explosion of new media tools and we have been able to use them effectively to reach out and tell the truth about our party and what we stand for," Chee Soon Juan, secretary-general of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), told Reuters.

But despite the Internet's growing reach, Singapore's newspapers and TV stations continue to command a much wider audience. The Straits Times, for example, has an average daily circulation of 350,000 while the Online Citizen, a popular Singapore news and commentary site, gets around 25,000 hits a day.

Singapore Press Holdings, which has a near-monopoly on newspapers in the city-state, follows a strongly pro-government line. MediaCorp, which runs the TV stations, is a unit of state investor Temasek.

Seah, who set up her Facebook page just a week ago, had already received 22,372 "likes" as at 4 pm on April 26, far more than any Singapore politician other than the country's senior statesman Lee Kuan Yew.

Still, that may not be enough for her and her alliance from the National Solidarity Party to unseat the team from the PAP led by former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in a five-seat, winner-takes-all constituency.

"Social media has been more useful in forging connections between parties and sympathizers, for example, by helping party members identify people they could engage with in party activities," said Giorgos Cheliotis, who teaches communications and new media at the National University of Singapore.

"But I do not think that it has much power in swaying public opinion."

Read More :- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Social-media-The-new-battleground-in-Singapore-elections/articleshow/8092826.cms

John James Audubon's 226th birthday celebrated by Google

John James Audubon google doodle. Photograph: Google

John James Audubon was born on this day 226 years ago. Unlike previous Google doodles, such as the interactive submarine which celebrated the birth of Jules Verne, this time Google has kept things simple.

But while the specially designed logo on the search engine's home page boasts no moving parts or any other type of animation, its latest graphic might just go down as one of the more beautiful of recent times.

The letters of the internet giant's name are barely recognisable amid the branches and colourful plumes of the birds which adorn the logo, created in the style of the French-American painter and ornithologist's creations.

Born on April 26, 1785, John James Audubon developed a deep appreciation of nature from early childhood and moved to America from France at the age of 18 in order to avoid joining Napoleon's army.

He was to go on to make name for himself by painting birds in a signature life-like manner that was to overshadow contemporaries and predecessors.

"I felt an intimacy with them ... bordering on frenzy must accompany my steps through life", recalled the painter of his relationship with his feathered subjects.

His far reaching influence on ornithology and natural history extended to being quoted by Charles Darwin in 'On the Origin of Species' while Audubon's field notes are regarded as having made a significant contribution to the understanding of bird anatomy and behavior.

As recently as December, 2010, a copy of Audubon's 'Birds of America' was sold at a Sotheby's auction for £7,321,250, a record price for a single printed book.

Read More :-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/26/john-james-audubon-google-doodle

Twitter to move to new office

Twitter said it has inked a deal to move into a new nest in a chronically downtrodden part of downtown San Francisco that local officials are eager to rehabilitate.

"Happy to say that Twitter is staying in San Francisco," spokesman Ali Rowghani said in a message fired off at the popular microblogging service.

"We've signed a lease to move our HQ to the Central Market area."

San Francisco leaders recently approved a payroll tax break aimed at keeping Twitter in the city and encouraging the startup, and other technology firms, to roost in a section of downtown that has long resisted economic revitalization.

Companies in what are referred to locally as the Mid Market Street and Tenderloin areas will not have to pay any payroll taxes on new hires for the first six years.

Twitter is undergoing a major growth spurt, with new hires coming on board weekly.

Twitter had talked of moving to another northern California city with no payroll tax, but promised it would settle into a vacant Market Street building if the measure was approved.

Read More :- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Twitter-to-move-to-new-office/articleshow/8065014.cms

PSLV launched, 3 satellites in orbits

(ISRO) Chairman K. Radhakrishnan

A "Delightful but tense" 18 minutes after taking off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) successfully placed three satellites, including Resourcesat-2, in their respective orbits on Wednesday morning. This was the 17th successive successful mission on the PSLV.

PSLV launched

Having spent the past few days engrossed with the preparatory work for the launch, scientists at the mission command centre, including chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation K Radhakrishnan, broke into a cheer and went into a huddle after the vehicle and the payloads performed as planned.

"The mission was a grand success," said Radhakrishnan, adding that the string of successes proved to the international community the reliability and cost effectiveness of the vehicle.

The PSLV-C16, launched at 10.12 am from the first launch pad, met all critical parameters and placed the satellites in their precise orbits, prompting the scientists to claim that the mission worked like clockwork.

Read More :- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/PSLV-launched--3-satellites-in-orbits/779000/

Google: Map your own neighborhood

Googel Map Maker

Google Map Maker, the crowdsourced mapping Web app launched in 2008 and available in 183 countries, is finally coming to the United States. It's an important addition to Google's mapping services here and could make for maps that are vastly more detailed and useful than they are currently.

In some countries (like Romania, Tech Lead Lalitesh Katragadda told me) Map Maker users have been responsible for creating whole maps from nothing. Here in the U.S., the editing features will allow the addition of more commercial data (stores and other businesses locations) and highly specific street information that's currently missing, like temporary closures due to construction projects. Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google's mobile products will all use this data. Google's route-planning services will take traffic-related updates into consideration.

Katragadda envisions small-town property or business owners taking an interest in how Google represents their location, adding features like nearby park paths to maps to possibly make their neighborhoods look more attractive.

Anyone can edit, sort of

Googel Map Maker

Any logged-in Google user can edit a map, but changes from newbies aren't automatically reflected on live maps that the world can see. Users' updates go through a vetting process that asks previously blessed users to approve or deny edits (or send them back for revision). As users get better at getting edits posted without edits, they get closer to unlocking the capability to update public maps without having to go through an approval process, and to becoming moderators themselves to other users' edits.

The idea, Katragadda says, is to make "living and breathing" Google Maps. Fully approved users will see their updates go live "in minutes," and see traffic direction use the updates shortly after that. So owners of mobile businesses, like the new hotness in dining, food trucks, will want to get approved quickly. However, today's announcement does not have a mobile map editor component; the editor requires a full Web browser.

He adds that an update to the Map Maker tool will also bring in Google Street View images, from which community cartographers can use to construct or edit map data. A new live update viewer will also show what the community is editing at the given moment.

Google won't take input from other community map sources, like Open Street Map or Waze. There are two reasons for this, one of which I got from Google, the other unstated. First, the user approval system was created for this project and isn't even used by other Google services. Adapting it to other user systems is just not on the project plan at the moment. The unstated reason: Google's data licensing is incompatible with other community maps. Open Street Map, for example, uses Creative Commons. Google does not: What you put on Google, Google owns.

Google has different levels of control for different regions of the world. Maps can be intensely political, and contested regions won't be open to community edits from just anyone. In addition to opening up maps to annoying Wikipedia-like political edit fights, factions can put either sensitive or misleading data into Google Maps to influence peoples' movement; Google will keep a tighter grip on the data in disputed areas that it will on, say, downtown Boise. Katragadda told me the balance is difficult but important. "Very few products allow canonical data to be edited by the user," he said, and the team's guideline is to both "look for ways to make the Web more democratic," and "reflect reality." That can be a tough line to walk, as any mapmaker will attest.

The third and fourth dimensions

Googel Map Maker

Today's announcement is about letting users update the standard Google Maps, but in the future the maps themselves may get new capabilities. One is support for the third dimension. Karaganda notably told me that users will be able to update store locations in "strip malls"--which are flat. Google Maps doesn't yet support stores or businesses layered on top of each other, even though his division also runs the Building Maker tool for Maps. 3D map support will come later, he said.

Google Maps also doesn't support event-based map data, such as no-left-turn restrictions that only apply at certain times of the day. That's another feature that may come to Google Maps (and Traffic) in the future, but the Google people I talked with had no announcement on that.

Finally, there's also the dimension of money. Giving business owners control of what shows up on local maps is a key way to improve both maps' utility for consumers and interest in local advertising. That's a big driver for online mapping and perfectly aligned with Google's main business of selling user- and content-aware ad placements.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-20055063-250.html#ixzz1K25jm4ML

Microsoft's Office 365 Beta Launches Worldwide

Microsoft's Office 365 Beta

Microsoft has launched the public beta of Office 365, a major part of its "all in" strategy for cloud computing. Microsoft's rivals in cloud include Google.

Microsoft has introduced the public beta of its Office 365, the company’s cloud-productivity offering and current best chance for driving back the threat presented by Google Apps and similar platforms. Microsoft has a habit of launching large-scale betas for its products, the better to apparently weed out bugs and other issues ahead of the general release.

The Office 365 beta will be available in 38 markets and 17 languages and joins Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. The service’s starting price is $6 per user per month. In addition, Microsoft is launching the Office 365 Marketplace, with more than 100 productivity apps and 400 professional services.

Microsoft originally launched Office 365 in limited beta in October 2010, announcing at the time that general availability would come sometime in 2011. The platform is essentially a rebranding of the company’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which bundled products such as SharePoint Online.

The software giant has also expressed interest in selling Office 365 as a customizable platform, allowing companies with simpler needs to access fewer products. For the past several months, Microsoft has been aggressive in pushing an “all-in” cloud strategy, major components of which involve pushing a variety of cloud-based IT services to corporations. The push comes just as Microsoft faces competition not only from Google, which wants to secure large IT contracts with corporations and government entities, but also upstarts such as Salesforce.com, which have taken to attacking many of Microsoft’s current offerings as outdated.

In virtually every public speech, for example, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff extols the enterprise IT future as mobile-centric and constantly updated via the cloud. Despite having made its fortune in desktop-centric software, however, Microsoft also seems to realize the fundamentals underlying the tech industry are undergoing a massive paradigm shift: hence Office 365, Windows Azure and other platforms.

Microsoft is also partnering with Research In Motion to integrate its cloud offerings into BlackBerry devices, with the latter providing cloud-based BlackBerry service in support of Office 365. RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise servers will connect “cloud to cloud” with Microsoft’s data centers to host Office 365 on users’ Blackberrys.

RIM’s upcoming PlayBook tablet will be able to port and display Office 365 data from any user’s BlackBerry, through the BlackBerry Bridge tethering service.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s battle with Google over large cloud contracts has grown particularly intense in the past few months, with the search-engine giant even suing the federal government after the Department of the Interior allegedly denied its bid to update an email and messaging system. Microsoft’s BPOS-Federal suite eventually won that contract, estimated at $59 million over a five-year life cycle.

Last October, Microsoft announced a partnership with New York City’s government to provide municipal employees with access to cloud-based Microsoft applications, in what many saw as a sort of response to Google’s agreement with the City of Los Angeles to provide cloud services to its employees.

Read More :- http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/Microsofts-Office-365-Beta-Launches-Worldwide-756933/

Chinese swap skills on internet

Everyone knows the internet is a useful place to conduct business. The Chinese have gone a step ahead. They are now swapping their skills on the web to learn new ones.

Resourceful Chinese internet users are saving money, as they exchange skills like English language for piano lessons and driving for cooking.

Offers like that have become common on many Chinese social networking websites. Many users have successfully exchanged skills for free, earning the name "skill swappers", according to the Global Times.

A leading skill-swapping Chinese website, jnjhw.com, has about 50,000 offers under various categories.

Most registered users are students or professionals, according to Hao Yi, a 27-year-old who founded the website in 2007.

To locate an exchange partner, internet users only need to type in their desired skills and location.

Wang Xuyang, a student at Beijing's Central Conservatory of Music, learned about this kind of barter from a friend who learnt French after exchanging piano lessons.

Wang said skill swapping was a very "economical way" of learning languages after a commercial English language training course worth 20,000 yuan left him disappointed.

"I won't charge someone a cent for piano lessons if they teach me some English," said the music student.

Skill swappers say the system has a variety of benefits.

Skill exchanges can provide a "more natural and effective way" for people to make friends than some match-making websites, which are too purpose-oriented, said Yan Wenhua, associate professor of psychology at the East China Normal University in Shanghai.

Read More :-  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Chinese-swap-skills-on-internet/articleshow/7997734.cms

Google's new CEO 'under watch'

Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page

The investor spotlight will land squarely on new Google Inc Chief Executive Larry Page, overshadowing decent, but uninspiring first-quarter financial results when the company reports its earnings on Thursday.

Less than two weeks after the Google co-founder officially took the CEO reins, investors are hungry for details about Page's management plans and strategy as the search giant faces sharp competition from Facebook and Apple Inc, and intensifying regulatory scrutiny.

Page's performance on Thursday's quarterly conference call with analysts and his views on spending and competition will be closely parsed by investors -- if the famously media-averse 38-year-old shows up in the first place, that is.

Google is keeping tight-lipped about whether Page will actually participate in Thursday's earnings conference call. While the list of tech CEOs that skip such quarterly calls includes Microsoft Corp's Steve Ballmer and Apple's Steve Jobs, some analysts and investors say a no-show by Page for the first call of his tenure would send a negative signal to Wall Street.

"Myself and the Street would be collectively disappointed and shocked if he was not" on the call, said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter. Shares of Google, which underperformed the market in 2010, are down roughly 9 per cent since the company announced in January that Page would replace Eric Schmidt, who had held the top job for the past decade.

Page moved swiftly to streamline decision-making at Google's upper ranks during his first days on the job, but investors are anxious about how the management change could affect the company.

"What impacts the stock? Uncertainty. If he doesn't clear up any uncertainty, that's another overhang," said Schachter. Analysts estimate that Google, which has beat Wall Street's revenue targets for the past six consecutive quarters, increased net revenue by 25 per cent year-over-year to $6.32 billion in the first quarter, with adjusted earnings per share of $8.11, according to Thomson Reuters.

Gleacher & Co analyst Yun Kim said the nearly 1 per cent decline that Wall Street expects in Google's first-quarter net revenue, after a very strong fourth quarter, could provide clues about Google's longer-term growth potential.

"It comes down to the fundamental issue of whether or not the acceleration of their business in Q4 ... -- was that really improving fundamentals or greater seasonality?" said Kim.

"When you start showing seasonal patterns in your business, then your growth rate is peaking," he said. Google is ramping up efforts to supplement its core search advertising business with revenue from display and mobile ads. And the company is increasingly focused on social networking and the local ad market, where rivals Facebook and online coupon service Groupon rule the roost.

Page's attitude toward spending on such strategic areas, as well as on less crucial initiatives such as self-driving cars, and the potential impact on Google's profit margins are high on investors' list of concerns.

"They have been increasing their hiring and other cap ex," said Ryan Jacob, chairman and chief investment officer of Jacob Funds which counts Google among its top holdings. "With Larry taking over, people may be wondering if they take it up further."

Even before Page moved into the CEO suite, Google announced various spending-heavy measures, including 10 per cent across-the-board pay raises and plans to add more than 6,000 employees this year. In the fourth quarter, Google's sales and marketing spending surged 55 per cent year-on-year to $902 million.

Meanwhile, the increasing regulatory scrutiny of Google has become a greater concern for investors.

Google's deal to acquire online travel software company ITA Software for $700 million was approved with by US regulators with stiff conditions, and US regulators are exploring whether to open a formal probe into Google's Internet search ranking practices, a source said.

"In the last two years the sensitivity about Google becoming more dominant has gone up, so this definitely is an overhang," said Caris & Co analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.

Read More :- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/internet/Googles-new-CEO-under-watch/articleshow/7969411.cms

Cricket fever back on YouTube, brings live streaming for IPL 2011

Cricket fever back on YouTube

After inveigling cricket enthusiasts with a spine-tingling, gripping streaming of Indian Premier League last year, YouTube has got more to offer. The company has girded up for this year’s IPL excitement as well by bringing users all the action straight from the pitch of the cricket extravaganza.

In collaboration with Indiatimes, aficionados can seamlessly watch games as they happen, view entire past matches, and cotton to highlight clips of all 74 matches on Indiatimes’ YouTube Channel. To make the league even more compelling, two new teams entitled ‘Pune Warriors’ and ‘Kochi Tuskers Kerela’ have joined the fray to battle it out.

The engrossing 51-day tournament commenced on Friday night with the returning champion Chennai Super Kings beating the Kolkata Knight Riders at home. Besides the foremost match, every other match will be webcast across the globe on YouTube while the full-length videos of each match will be made available soon after they pull up stumps and retire to the pavilion.

Those who’d be junketing during these searing battles will also be enabled to watch the catch-up videos and highlights on their mobile devices. Users who happen to slip on a particular match can feast eyes on the whole match later in the Past Matches tab on Indiatimes’ YouTube Channel. Fans can also share, rate and comment on videos throughout the channel, or upload their own video responses to the action.

So tune in and get adjusted for an exciting tour of 51 action-packed matches.

Read More :- http://www.techshout.com/internet/2011/14/cricket-fever-back-on-youtube-brings-live-streaming-for-ipl-2011/

Microsoft attacks Google over security

Microsoft Corp. is lashing out at Google Inc., extending hostilities between two of the most prominent corporations in the technology industry.

Microsoft claimed Google has been misleading customers about the security certification of its suite of software programs for governments. Microsoft's deputy general counsel, David Howard, blogged on Monday about a newly unsealed court document that shows that "Google Apps for Government" hasn't been certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act.

Google's website claims it has, and the company has attested to that in court documents.

"It's time for Google to stop telling governments something that is not true," Howard wrote.

The documents are part of a Google lawsuit alleging that it was improperly frozen out of competing for a US Department of Interior contract to build a new e-mail system for 85,000 employees - a contract that Microsoft won. A judge earlier sided with Google's belief that the bidding was rigged to favor Redmond-based Microsoft, and issued a preliminary injunction while the two sides duke it out.

Google insists it's not deceiving anyone, since a less-robust version of the product has already been certified under FISMA.

"We did not mislead the court or our customers," the company said in a statement, noting that "Google Apps" received a FISMA clearance in July 2010, and that "Google Apps for Government" is "the same system with enhanced security controls that go beyond FISMA requirements."

The documents show that Mountain View-based Google is in the process of applying for certification for "Google Apps for Government."

The controversy illustrates the wide range of complaints and tactics that Google and Microsoft are using to attack each other. Their enmity has grown as Microsoft encroaches on Google's search turf and Google goes calling on Microsoft's customers to sell them programs such as email and word processing.

The manoeuvring has ranged from a "gotcha"-type stunt in which Google accused Microsoft in February of copying Google's search results, to Microsoft - long a target of antitrust complaints - filing its first formal antitrust complaint against a rival by arguing to European authorities that Google is abusing its dominance to freeze out rival services.

Read More :- http://ibnlive.in.com/news/microsoft-attacks-google-over-security/149015-11.html

Indian embassy joins Facebook in Nepal

Indian diplomacy is set to make friends and woo youngsters by joining the social networking platform.

The latest entrant to join Facebook is the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, one of the biggest Indian missions abroad, and currently, with the ruling Maoist party stepping up its anti-Indian propaganda, in need of loyal friends.

On Friday, ahead of the Nepali New Year, the Kathmandu-based mission launched its own Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Embassy-of-India-Kathmandu/199580790072376

"The mission of the Indian embassy in Nepal is to expand the dimension of friendship between (the) two countries and their people via cultural exchange and mutual cooperation," the brief introduction said.

"The Public Division of the Ministry of External Affairs went on Facebook last year," said Apoorva Srivastava, spokesperson at the Indian embassy in Kathmandu.

"Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao is on Facebook. It is the most popular social networking site in Nepal with most Nepali youths being on Facebook. Therefore, it is a most effective medium for reaching out to people."

Starting with 49 people who like it, the Indian embassy's Facebook page focuses on non-political events that touch a chord in Nepal - like an international conference on Buddhism that was co-hosted by the embassy as well as the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, an upcoming musical event in memory of Melba Devi, the first Nepali woman singer to cut a record who had close links with Kolkata, and of course, the celebrated victory of the Indian cricket team in the World Cup.

Every year, the Indian embassy in Kathmandu offers 2,000 scholarships and the Facebook page, it is hoped, will disseminate information more effectively.

However, the embassy is going to steer clear of controversies - on its new Facebook page at least.

The nascent site has not yet received any unkind comment so far.

Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood has also been keen for the embassy to be on Twitter.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social-media/Indian-embassy-joins-Facebook-in-Nepal/articleshow/7946431.cms

YouTube gets stage for live events

YouTube has added a stage for live events as the world's leading video-sharing website continued its effort to woo viewers away from television programming.

YouTube Live launched online at youtube.com/live, letting people subscribe to watch shows or events streamed by the Google-owned operation's partners.

A "Digitour" performance by top YouTube musicians was schedule for live streaming at 7:00 pm (0200 GMT Saturday).

YouTube planned to gradually roll out a test version of a platform that would allow established video contributors with accounts in good standing to stream their own real-time shows.

YouTube has live-streamed concerts, sporting events and interviews in the past on an intermittent basis. The Live platform would make real-time programming a standard part of the service.

"The goal is to provide thousands of partners with the capability to live stream from their channels in the months ahead," product manager Joshua Siegel and product marketing manager Christopher Hamilton said in a blog post.

More than two billion videos are viewed daily at YouTube, which has been gradually modifying its service to get people to spend more time at the website and less time staring at television screens.

Facebook now wants a say in computer hardware

Facebook, the world's largest social network, wants to get in on computer hardware as well.

The company that revolutionized social networking on the Internet has teamed up with some of tech hardware's biggest names - Hewlett Packard Co, Dell Inc, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel Corp - to launch the "open compute project."

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the project aims to offer specifications and designs for more power-efficient computers that are specifically geared toward running Internet services, shared openly with other companies.

"What we found over time is that a lot of the stuff that the mass manufacturers put out wasn't exactly in line with what we needed and what other social apps needed," Zuckerberg said at a media event at Facebook's Palo Alto, California headquarters on Thursday.

By sharing design specifications, he said he hoped to increase availability and demand for the specialized servers.

Dell will build servers based on those technical specifications, while Synnex Corp will act as overall vendor for the systems. The technology will power servers in the social network's first custom-built data center, in Prineville, Oregon. Until now, Facebook has leased data centers for its infrastructure.

With more than 500 million users, Facebook is the world's No. 1 Internet social network and is increasingly challenging established Web companies like Google Inc and Yahoo Inc as a top destination for Web surfers and a compelling advertising channel for marketers.

The technical infrastructure that powers websites such as Facebook, on which more than 30 billion photos, videos and other types of content are shared by users every month, play a key role in a service's performance.

According to Facebook, the new servers will be 38 percent more energy efficient and cost 24 percent less than off-the-shelf products used to power its service.