All posts by Utkarsh

Solution designer with Firstsource solutions. A post grad in Networks and IT Infrastructure. Technology enthusiast, blogger, webdesigner, Network security aspirant and in love with electronics and gadgets. This blog is an attempt to share what I find interesting... almost anything @Mtaram on twitter and
Internet, Technology

Facebook set for display ad lead

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http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/Facebook-ads-485.gifFacebook’s large user base will make it the world’s largest online display advertising company by revenue this year, overtaking the comparable businesses of Google and Yahoo, according to analysis published on Tuesday.

Enders Analysis, based in London, in a report on Tuesday, forecasts that Facebook will lift its advertising revenues from $1.8bn to $3.5bn in 2011, a rise of 95 per cent. At the same time, Google’s display business – which includes YouTube, the video site, and DoubleClick, its banner network – is expected to rise from $2bn last year to $2.6bn this year, with Facebook extending its lead in 2012.

Display advertising includes text, images and video shown on a standard web page, although it excludes search, from which Google derives significantly larger revenues.

Although Facebook’s advertising revenues remain a fraction of Google’s search business, the social network’s 500m users and the volume of ads it shows those users has enabled it to lift revenues rapidly.

To read in depth head over to FT.com

Information Security, Internet, News

India Defends Right to Access Personal Data

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http://sunilnehra.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/login.jpgThe Indian government said Tuesday that new rules allowing it to access personal information available with Internet companies have inherent checks and balances against misuse.
The rules under section 43A of the Information Technology Act were enacted last month and reflect the government’s perception that security threats to the country can be countered by better access to online information.

The country is, for example, locked in a dispute with Research In Motion, demanding access to e-mails and other communications on RIM’s corporate service, called BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Privacy groups and lawyers have described the rules as draconian and said they infringe Indians’ fundamental rights. “These are arbitrary powers that are being given to government, without any checks and balances,” said Pavan Dugga, a cyberlaw consultant and advocate in India’s Supreme Court.

The rules place controls on the gathering and use of personal data by Internet companies, including requiring permission from the provider of information for sharing such data. But the rules cite the government as an exception in this regard.

This article first appeared on The PC World
Computers, Technology

Top 7 Alternatives to Apple’s MacBook Air

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Many people consider the Apple MacBook Air to be the gold standard in ultrathin laptops, but Windows users don’t have to jump to the Mac platform to get the same slim and sleek design.

The seven lightweight laptops here are each no more than about an inch thick, and in some cases they cost several hundred dollars less than the groundbreaking Apple laptop.

Here’s how these ultrathin laptops each stack up to Apple’s popular 13.3-inch ultraportable (discussed in the order of their announcement).

Complete details

Apps

App Helps You Stay Under Your 3G Data Cap

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http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/epicenter/2011/05/Onavo_Monthly_Usage-151x300.pngIs your addiction to apps on your mobile phone or iPad driving your data usage right through the miserly caps?

Well, now there is an app for that.

Onavo, an iPhone and iPad application, says it can effectively double or even triple your data plan, by compressing much of the data you use while surfing the web or using apps. The company says it can compress e-mails as much as 80 to 90 percent. The app also currently smushes web pages, app data and Google maps — but not video.

Onavo attempts to solve the problem by routing downloads to your device through its cloud-based servers. The servers then compress the data before sending it to your device. Once it is installed, all of your data traffic — excluding internet phone calls — makes an extra intermediate stop on Onavo’s servers, without you having to do anything.

The detour, by its nature, adds a bit of extra time for your device to communicate with, say, Facebook.

But because the photo album from Facebook gets shrunk, the effect for users is that downloads are faster, according to Rosen, particularly for those who are in low-coverage areas where devices revert to 2G networks.

The app also shows you how much data you use and breaks it down by app, helping you manage which apps are data hogs.

As for privacy, the company says it doesn’t touch any of the packets that are sent through HTTPS (though users have an option to let Onavo compress some Exchange e-mail that uses HTTPS) and that it doesn’t store data any longer than it needs to. But privacy-conscious users should note that all data you send on your phone that’s not encrypted will be visible to Onavo (just as it is now to your mobile provider).

Google

Google data center security

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If you wondered how Google protects the data in its data centers the here’s is a cool video released by Google itself. This video contains never seen before every single details of all the security aspects of Google data centers.

The video starts with describing physical security measures like restricted barriers, security fencing, video cameras, security guards and biometric scanners in the data centers. It also explains how Google engineers itself assembles the servers and use Linux based OS for the security of data centers.

Check out this cool video to know more about the Google Data Centers:

News

Microsoft to buy Skype

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Just days after reports that Google and Facebook were interested in partnering with, and possibly buying VoIP company Skype, Microsoft announced that it was buying the company for $8.56 billion in cash.

Last year, Skype had revenue of $860 million on which it posted an operating profit of $264 million. However, it overall made a small loss, of $7 million, and had long-term debt of $686 million. It was the second time Skype has been bought out; after being started in 2003, it was purchasd by eBay in 2005 for $3.1 billion. eBay then sold the majority of its stake in 2009 to a private investment group for $1.2 billion less than it paid.

for detailed read head over to NDTV
News

Apple beats Google

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In a recent brand survey by Millward Brown, Apple has taken the top spot from Google as the world’s most valuable brand. The survey revealed the Apple brand to be worth a staggering $153 billion; which was a huge increase on last year’s figures. This resulted in Apple coming out on top and ended Google’s four year reign at the top.

Peter Walshe, global brands director of Millward Brown, says Apple’s meticulous attention to detail, along with an increasing presence of its gadgets in corporate environments, have allowed it to behave differently from other consumer-electronics makers. ”Apple is breaking the rules in terms of its pricing model,” he told Reuters by telephone. “It’s doing what luxury brands do, where the higher price the brand is, the more it seems to underpin and reinforce the desire.”

Out of the top ten brands revealed in the survey, six were technology and telecoms companies. Google at number two, IBM at number three, Microsoft at number five, AT&T made number seven and China Mobile number nine.

The survey takes the value that the company puts on its own brand in its earnings report as a starting point. This is then combined with the perceptions of over 2 million consumers in the market who are surveyed over a 12 month period. A factor is then applied based on the company’s short-term future growth prospects.

[Millward Brown via Reuters]

Google, Technology

Google Music Beta – ready to launch

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http://www.maximumpc.com/files/imagecache/featured_content/google_music_0.jpgGoogle plans to introduce its long-awaited service to allow people to upload and store their music collections on the Web and listen to their songs on Android phones or tablets and on computers.

The announcement of the new service, a so-called cloud-based music player, will be made on Tuesday at Google I/O, the company’s developers conference here, which will run through Wednesday.

The service, to be called Music Beta by Google, is similar to one introduced by Amazon in March, although it will store considerably more music. And like Amazon, Google does not have the cooperation of music labels, which means that users cannot do certain things that would legally require licenses, like sharing songs with friends and buying songs from Google.

But Google’s announcement at this time was unexpected because it has been negotiating with the music labels for months to try to make a deal to team with them on a cloud music service.

originally from: The NY Times
Image source:  Maximumpc.com
News, Technology

BSNL network plan hits a roadblock

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http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110510/images/10bus-Internet.jpgThe Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is not keen on Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) rolling out the national optical fibre network to provide high-speed Internet connection across India.

The network rollout project is part of the national broadband plan, being finalised by the telecom ministry, to provide high-speed Internet connections to 160 million households by 2014.

Trai has argued that the move will be anti-competitive.

The department of telecom (DoT) had proposed that BSNL should act as the executing agency to roll out the network with government funding. The project is estimated to cost Rs 60,000 crore.

Originally published by: The Telegraph
Technology

Google launches WebGL Globe data visualisation tool

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http://cdn.idg.com.au/cw/gim/id/39241/res/21Google has used its Chrome Experiments site to launch a new platform for geographic data visualisation. WebGL Globe, the source coide of which is available from Google’s code.google.com repository, can map data sets stored in the JSON format to a 3D depiction of Earth.

Google has created two example WebGL Globes – one depicting world population in 1990, 1995 and 2000, and one depicting the volume of Google searches by location and language.

Google has invited developers to share their WebGL Globes and will post selected creations on the Chrome Experiments site.

The Khronos Group’s WebGL graphics library allows the use of a PC’s GPU for the hardware-accelerated display of 3D images using JavaScript and HTML5.