IBLOG SPACE

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday inaugurated the country's first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an "ambassador of death" to Iran's enemies. The 4-meter-long drone aircraft can carry up to four cruise missiles and will have a range of 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), according to a state TV report — not far enough to reach archenemy Israel. "The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship," said Ahmadinejad at the inauguration ceremony, which fell on the country's national day for its defense industries. The goal of the aircraft, named Karrar or striker, is to "keep the enemy paralyzed in its bases," he said, adding that the aircraft is for deterrence and defensive purposes. The president championed the country's military self-sufficiency program, and said it will continue "until the enemies of humanity lose hope of ever att

Just a few days back, Facebook Places was launched; and today it was Google’s turn to announce that Google Maps especially for the Mobile, which marked its achievement of reaching around 100 million users. I must say, Google has a sense of “Perfect Timing”. Google Maps, which is designed especially for the Mobile devices now, has around 100 million monthly users, using this service on different mobile devices. This information is provided very timely on the Google Blog and is written by Vic Gundotra, the head of Google maps mobile. Care to note here, this Google’s action has compelled Facebook to share the limelight in the web arena. These days, Vic is more involved in running efforts of Google to fight against the increasing popularity of Facebook within Social Networking; this particular project being tentatively named as Google Me. Accordingly, everything points in one single direction, Google by no means will let Facebook alone, take away all the limelight. Gundotra in his blog

Virgin Mobile India has introduced many youth centric campaigns, with the most recent one being the ability for Virgin Mobile users to download free music thanks to its tie-up with Universal Music. Now, the company is at it again by tying up with GetJar, a cross platform mobile application store. The GetJar website says – GetJar – Appsolutely everything for Nokia, Blackberry, Android, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG, Palm – which pretty much sums up what the company is about. With this tie-up, Virgin Mobile India users will easily be able to download applications such as Facebook Mobile, Yahoo!, Nimbus, eBuddy, to name a few, across various platforms. However, Virgin are not the first mobile service providers to tie-up with GetJar. RCom had earlier in the year tied up with GetJar to bring 65,000 GetJar apps to RCom subscribers across the country. With both these tie-ups, one conclusion that can be derived is that GetJar understand the huge potential for mobile applications in India and

India is a country addicted to fancy phones. This might be a bold statement for a man who carried the LG mobile that came with the Reliance Premium Plan, got a bulky Nokia phone later to cause physical harm to potential muggers in the US by flinging it at them, and now owns the coolest phone he has ever owned, which unfortunately is a bad Samsung model. I am one of those very few exceptions in our country who do not have a phone that has social networking capabilities or emails or anything more than your basic SMS and calling. The “cool” phones sell like hot cakes in India. It is really not surprising that people today, especially the youth, look at the social networking features, radio, camera and other features on the phone(I, at times, am lead to believe that a phone with all the features in the world but has no calling capability might just sell as much in our country). A phone that has internet capabilities is almost essential and as a result iPhones and BlackBerrys are very muc

Ybrant Digital, the company offering digital marketing solutions, is planning for an IPO in order to raise INR 700 crores in order to expand to Chinese and Brazilian markets. Ybrant also plans to buy a company in in-gaming advertising and a US-centric affiliate network. To make these acquisitions, Ybrant plans to make funds available through a pre-IPO round wherein they shall negotiate with existing investors. The digital marketing company has already raised INR 259 crores for the acquisitions from private equity players and four hedge funds. ybrant-page Through the in-gaming advertising company acquisition, Ybrant plans to bring gamers from all across the globe to one location where they can run advertisement. Such a gaming platform will definitely be a force to reckon with in the in-game advertising world. Lycos acquisition benefits? Recently, we reported that Ybrant bought Lycos for a cool $35 million. With the 20 billion ad impressions that Ybrant already had before they

One of the largest deals in the internet security space was announced yesterday. It was Intel buying out the anti virus company McAfee for a whopping 7.68 billion dollars. Through this deal McAfee investors will get $48 per share, which is 60 per cent more than what McAfee’s closing price of $29.93 yesterday on the NYSE. The boards of both companies agreed for this deal unanimously. intel-mcafee What does Intel stand to gain? Though McAfee might be behind Symantec when it comes to security solutions in the market, with this deal, Intel will be able to dominate the chip industry. While other companies have to depend on outside security programs, Intel can now integrate McAfee security solutions into their chips, which may just make the systems operate faster, and we all of us love a fast system. With rising virus threats which only seem to grow, Intel only stands to gain in the PC market. Though more than 80% of PCs have an Intel chip, Intel have still not penetrated the non-PC

It is not like Facebook hasn’t delivered enough in terms of applications, features, games, etc. to users thereby constantly keeping them glued to their Facebook accounts. The last thing Facebook would want is to instigate something that could ruin its repute. It is still uncertain, whether the supposedly new ‘Dislike’ button is for real or not. There have been rounds of rumours warning users of the Dislike button to be a scam that purportedly spreads virus to those who use the feature. To make sure that users are secured from such scams Facebook also issued a warning about the bogus Dislike button scam. make-dislike The scam is said to initiate with a hoax status update from a friend who has already been affected by the virus and prompts you to get the Dislike button too. Once you click on the prompted URL you’d be asked to install it, post doing which your status simply gets updated by the same “Get the official DISLIKE button NOW!” URL, thus spreading a virus across Facebook. Th

Intel and IMRB recently concluded a study, which is considered to be one of the largest studies conducted in India, on the penetration of personal computers in India. The study that was conducted across 82 cities, 28 million households in urban India now have a PC. This figure indicates that the number of PCs have doubles with the number going up from 19% to 38%. Some of the important points to note in the results are: * Smaller tier cities contribute significantly to growth in PC market * Youth drives the category & is the torch bearer for PC adoption in India * PC buyers seek value while buying PCs and do not buy cheap * Notebooks become more desirable and bring new users into the fold india_pc The study reveals that an important factor in this changing demand for PCs can be attributed to youth in India. This segment of consumers have started to “demand” for computers at an early age, thus increasing the PC sales. Mobile Vs PC So the PC sales have gone up, but can

Facebook Places has launched. What this application allows you to do is check-in your location on Facebook and your friends are updated in real-time. There is nothing novel about the idea considering Gowalla, and Foursquare, provide you the same service. But with the number of Facebook addicts around the globe, this application is sure to be a hit. Security Features Facebook has always been in the news for its security, or rather the lack of it. Recently, the social networking giant has had to make many changes to keep users satisfied. Now, with Facebook Places, Facebook has been cautious from the start itself. As a default setting, only friends will be able to see your check-in. Minors, who have always been a problem for Facebook, are taken special care of by only updating their friends with their check-in, even if they have changed the default setting to “everyone”. facebookgeo The Good There are a lot of good things about such an application. Users will be able to share

Social networking is a craze for everyone in the country. These days, when you meet someone new, usually the first question is, ” Are you on Facebook / Twitter?” (Orkut might be a part of the question only if your new acquaintances are unfamiliar with social networking faux pas) LinkedIn is another social networking website which may get a mention if the meeting is on a professional front. Some of us might deny it, but such websites have become an important part of our lives for the sole reason of networking; be it with friends, family, or people in your field of work. But what is the price we are paying for putting all our information on these websites? Identity_theft The answer to the question above is identity theft. The most recent victim was Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen. Mr. Sen is just one more in the long list of celebrities and high-profile individuals in India who have had to face identity theft on social networking websites. Another famous personality that co

After social networking and online gaming, web reality shows is the next growing trend among the youth. The fickle minded youth is now attracted towards web reality shows, instead of TV reality shows. On TV – there are so many reality shows for almost everything; be it dancing, singing, comedy etc. Now producers are looking torward web as another platform to generate good revenues. Many companies are trying their hands on this new platform – BigAdda has already launched some web reality shows like India Bike Rally (IBR), Get Fit India. IBR was a success – there were nine million page hits, over 20,000 followers and about 19 million votes were cast for the participants. Companies like ibibo, MSN, Hungama.com, Contesttowin.com, Airtel, Rediff, Network18 and Zatang are also coming up with new & innovative ideas of web reality shows. Balaji Telefilms has also recently launched a video blog – Bol Niti Bol (though not a reality show).

It’s been well known across the web, that no matter how popular Facebook is, there are two countries where Orkut still dominates – India and Brazil. Around a year back, WATBlog had posted an article on how Facebook was coming close to overtaking Orkut. Over the last one year, the migration from Orkut to Facebook has been steady. If Alexa’s stats are anything to go by, the time spent on Orkut has steadily been decreasing – down by 10% in the last three months. There are a few reasons I believe Facebook will trounce Orkut. 1. The popularity of a social networking site is not just based on how many people it has, but how frequently they engage with others on it. Over the last 2 months, my Facebook feed had around 300 annoying updates every day.

On the wake of the much anticipated launch of Facebook’s GeoLocation Application onto its social networking site, a potential competitor in the name of Foursquare has churned out more or less a defensive marketing warfare strategy. In order to secure its market position in the Location Service business, Foursquare has updated its privacy settings and also added pages that enables users to know better as to which of their information is being publicly shared. The need of such a feature rose out of chaos created due to constant information updates confusing users as to what is actually being shared and where exactly it is shared. foursquare-check-in These freshly updated privacy settings facilitate users to conceal

Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), one of industry’s leading accounting and business consultancy firm, in its latest report titled “Mobile Broadband Outlook 2015” has said that the number of 3G subscribers in India is projected to cross 107 million-mark by 2015. Looking at the recently concluded 3G spectrum and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) auction, which resulted in a more-than-estimated revenue inflow of Rs. 1.06 trillion for the Government, this projection might well turn out to be true. What is interesting is that PWC has estimated the rural subscribers to comprise 24 per cent of the overall 3G subscriber base by 2015. This mobile broadband penetration will be driven by the introduction of innovative technologies, decreasing price of 3G/High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) enabled handsets and enhanced user experience. Maintaining a positive outlook towards the mobile services sector, the report says that the mobile subscriber base is projected to cross 1 billion in 2014, thanks to high