Final Byte

Vodafone-Hutch confusion

2007-04-14T13:21:00.000-05:00

Vodafone-Hutch deal was one of the biggest deal along with TATA-Corus and Hindalco-Novelis to hit the business headlines in the recent past. But all has not gone well for Vodafone-Hutch.

Essar holds 33% stake, of which 22% is through foreign subsidary and remaining 67% by HTIL of which 12.26% is held by Asim Ghosh and Analjit Singh. The allegation is against the stake of Ghosh and Singh since it is funded by HTIL, which makes the overall foreign holding to 89%, beyond the regulatory limit of 74% . Reports say that Vodafone bought 52% stake in Hutch-Essar and another 15% as non-convertible preference share, which is excluded from FDI cap.

There has been more confusion about the stakes in this acquistion

Nokia N95

2007-04-14T13:03:00.000-05:00

Alec Saunders tries his hands on Nokia N95. Some features include a 5 megapixel integrated camera phone, GPS and WiFi.
He has some pictures shot from N95. Check the whole report here

Gadget Updates

2007-04-09T11:20:00.000-05:00

1. Microsoft Xbox 360 to have a QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is added to support chat features available on the new dashboard.

2. Nokia released its much awaited N95, with 5 Mega-pixel camera the cellphone is no shy of being called as a digital camera. Om Malik has some report

Zoom to access data on mobile.

2007-04-07T13:20:00.000-05:00

We all agree Mobile is next generation technology that will rule our data access. Accessing regular web kind of information on little tiny screens is painful for consumers as service providers didn't had any innovative method to deliver these information. This method of information access has found an end, Zoom function will begin to rule the world of information access on the handsets.

Microsoft labs is working on Deepfish which deepens (Zooms) onto the information as and when required by the user. This way user has a bird's eye view of the entire information but can pick a particular content available on the handset screen, dig deep into that content by just hitting zoom.

ZenZui is another company working on similar zoom product enabling easy access to the content

WEP encryption unreliable ?

2007-04-07T12:50:00.000-05:00

A recent report on computerworld says WEP method of transmitting wireless data in Wi-fi network is unreliable and can be easily cracked.

According to researchers, it takes 3 seconds to crack a 104-bit WEP key using a 1.7 GHz Pentium-M processor.

Google can speak now

2007-04-07T00:54:00.000-05:00

On the heels of upgraded mobile based search, Google comes up with a voice based search, more or less placing itself aganst Free411 and Microsoft's recently acquired Tellme.Google voice search can even send the results as a text message to your mobile phones.

Utterance recognition has been the major drawback in automated voice service, but it hasn't deterred these voice based service from loosing steam. Free411 hit about 100 million calls last November. In 8 billion market of 411 service in US, Google doesn't want to be left behined in the world of voice.

From the user perspective, experience with these voice based service can be bad when the service is not able to recognize utterance or if you are calling from a noisy place. In addition one is made to listen to the ads before using the free service. Technology in these voice recognition has lot left for improvement before voice based service becomes your personal assitant at every step of your life.

Michael Arrington's gimmick

2007-04-05T12:34:00.000-05:00

Michael Arrington is the man who seems to be extremely confident in whatever he does, even when he was speaking high about those deadpool corpus. His latest gimmick is a web2.0 expo free pass to anyone who speaks truth (Mike understands, people lie him a lot).

No matter how good your product is, if you can't speak your customer's language you will end up in fuckedcompany list. Mike knows to sell himself. By speaking our language he is trying not to get into fuckedcompany.

Btw Mike, I don't need a web2.0 expo pass, all I need is 50% of your web traffic.

Google's new Mobile based search

2007-04-03T11:38:00.000-05:00

Google has refined its search module for mobile handsets. The new mobile search presents information more suitable for "on the go" activities.

A web based search differs from a mobile based search in various aspects. On the web one might be looking for some research information or read a 2 page article by a sport columnist or browse through reviews in selecting a resturant for your date. Search on mobile is entirely different, people might just need a quick update on the baseball scores or find the exact location of favorite resturant chain around the current location. These kind of short information need to be made available with minimum number of keypad entries.

In the previous version of Google mobile, user had an option to pick the kind of search (it can be anything from web,local listings or images). The latest version integrates all these search types together, relieving user from using the keypad more often. I searched for Angelo's pizza in NewYork. The search resulted in different Angelo Pizza locations around midtown area, which obviously means, mobile user won't be trying to browse through hundreds of reviews for Angelo's pizza, but infact looking for actual location and thats the whole reason why he/she is using the mobile for search.

Opera Widgets

2007-04-02T01:40:00.000-05:00

After watching widgets demo from Opera at Barcamp Bangalore-3, I set out to try out the widgets for myself.

The widgets work only in Opera browser. One has to download opera browser which is light on size and during run-time.

The unique feature of opera widgets is its ameoba behaviour. Opera widgets which is just another browser window, can take any shape as specified in a config.xml. Widgets can consist of HTML, Javascript, CSS along with a mandatory config.xml. The config.xml holds settings related to widgets appearance.

Widgets are based on the widgets specification collaborated at w3c. Most of the spec in the community is driven by Opera. I couldn't find any information on other browsers including IE and Firefox embracing the spec. It won't be too long before the big guns can chip-in to take the widget standard to the next level.

I enjoyed myself by creating a RSS widget for this blog using Opera's widgetize.

News Reel at Blogger

2007-04-01T02:29:00.000-05:00

Google's blogger now includes news reel as a widget to include in blogs. Until now bloggers had to include latest news using a custom made Javascript reading RSS data. The new widget allows seamless integration of blogs with Google news. One can retrieve news based on keywords relevant for the blogs. I added a newsreel on to my Cricket blog, which until today was powered by a third party news feed.

Newsreel widget doesn't allow customization with respect to size, color and number of news links to be shown.

On the same lines, Google even allows blogspot users to include videos from youtube based on keywords, but without any customization

Its April fools day at Google

2007-04-01T02:04:00.000-05:00

Free breakthrough broadband by Google ? Thats Google way of fooling people on April 1st.

Its a new venture from Google's subsidary TiSP (is it Total internet SPoof ?) A free registration will get you a setup guide, fibre optic cable, spindle, wireless router with an installation kit. Easy to setup and easy to use broadband is still in beta stage.

Signup today if you are one of those spending billions on your broadband, frustrated with its next-to dial-up bandwidth along with an incredibly painful customer support.

Day-1 from Bangalore Bar Camp-3

2007-03-31T09:30:00.000-05:00

The 2-day, Bangalore Bar Camp-3 began today. This is my first Bar Camp. It was a good place to meet bloggers/founders/technologists/social entrepreneurs.

The whole bar camp was organised into different sessions,each being 30 minutes. Each such session was triggered by individuals who thought any given technology/event/service would help in improving the quality of life. Sessions were filled with lots of participation,debates and discussions from audience bringing out different ideas/suggestions.

Some pictures from the event are uploaded on to Flickr

I had opportunity to attend some of the events

1. Supply chain collisions and its impact on business models and product strategy

2. Future of Indian mobile, technology and broadband (telecom) - Sujai Karampuri

3. Web 2.0: Social Blogging Platform - Vibhash

4. Microfinance and Open Source: The Mifos Project - Soumya Karmali

5. Socionet Trends 3.0 - Ritesh M Nayak

6. Open Web Standards for Widgets - Vivek and Navjot, Opera Software

Out of these, one which caught my real attention was Opera widgets. The technology was simple easy to use and showed lots of promise in the future widget world.

More to come on these sessions in subsequent posts.

Mobile Monday Bangalore

2007-03-26T10:43:00.000-05:00

I had an opportunity to attend Mobile Monday Bangalore (MMB) today. This was my 2nd MMB meet.

The meet started off with M. T. Raghunath from Google discussing about subtleties involved in bringing webcontent into the mobile world. The discussion was about various do's and dont's for providing content on mobile browsers. He also talked about additional settings for allowing the Google crawler to index any mobile based web applications. More information about the crawler at Google Webmasters.

The 2nd half was a demo from Mango Technologies about their framework for mobile handsets. The framework is targeted towards OEMs/ODMs who are mainly into low cost handset manufacturing. India being one of the major hub in low cost handsets, Mango is targeting a huge consumer base through the low cost handset manufacturers.

The event was better organised and structured than the previous meet, except that audience had to fight with the mosquitoes, since the event was held in open arena.

Bangalore bar Camp

2007-03-22T23:29:00.000-05:00

I am participating in the next Bangalore Bar camp-3 to be held at IIM Bangalore on March 31st, 2007 and April 1st, 2007.

This is my first bar camp, looking forward to meet people from Internet and Mobile industry.

Infrastructre has been one of the major block in the current India growth story. I am looking forward to meet people with techonology ideas/products/solutions to solve these infrastructure issues in the current scenario.

Apple TV

2007-03-22T11:13:00.000-05:00

Apple has been pioneer in keeping products simpler both in design and usage. Another such simpler product from Apple stable is Apple TV. I am not fortunate enough to buy one for myself and test. Reports term the product as a cool and easy to use. Yes, it was iPod which revolutionised the portable music players with its design and use, now Apple is targeting video players. Apple TV can download media files right from your desktops on to its hard drive using wireless network (It even supports 802.11n)

Advent of such products is certainly bound to bring the digital content from server farm to the living room, which means searching and playing media files right from the TV set. For now, Apple TV supports downloading content using iTunes and then playing it on TV screen through wi-fi from your computer . Reports say, in future, the software may be upgraded to stream the content directly on to TV screens. This streaming feature would be a boon for youtube video makers, who can sell their highly popular content for a premium by streaming it to TV screens. Such a scenario would provide huge opportunity for ad gaints like Google to clean up its ad inventory.

TIP:Playing around with Blogger template

2007-03-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

If you are one of those change seeker who makes changes to blog template on blogger often, you might end up making mistake and often loosing your existing template. Blogger advises you to backup the existing template on to your local hard drive.

Making changes to your blog while being online affects your visitors (assuming you have too many visitors unlike me). Best way is to create a temporary blog just to tryout changes for your template. Once you are satisfied with the new template on your trial blog, copy the code on to your live blog. This way you don't need to backup the template on to local machine. This way you can even access your edited templates online.

Joost Invites

2007-03-18T08:37:00.001-05:00

In case you want to beta test Joost, leave a comment with your name and mail id. I have 2 invites to beta testing Joost.

IPTV in India by BSNL

2007-03-18T07:12:00.000-05:00

BSNL has launched IPTV service in Pune,India. The service was launched on Mar 15, 2007. The service include

Telephone
Cable
Internet
Video on Demand

IPTV delivers digital television content over the existing telephone network.

IPTV technology has been backed by major telecom operators in US and European market in a bid to increase their margin by using their existing fixed line infrastructure. Advent of VOIP and subsequent delivery of telephone services over the TV cable network has given sleepless nights to the telecom operators. Major telecom operators who had invested thousands in the telecom infrastructure had to provide other value added service along with voice to keep with the competetion.

India telecom market is still free of VOIP service due to government regulations, but BSNL has ventured into IPTV before the country's cable operators and government regulation could start hitting its margin

Better Bangalore

2007-03-14T10:48:00.000-05:00

We all know how much Bangalore has grown to be known as the IT hub, we also know that its infrastructure has not kept pace with its development.

Everyday hundreds of people commute in the traffic affected streets to reach Electronic city spending anywhere between 1 to 2 hours on their one way commute. This actually means less utilization of their valuable time. Infrastructure projects have begun to improve the traffic congestion but with population estimated to increase, the demand curve for better infrastructure is always on rise. So how can the Bangalore IT companies better utilize the available resources ?

1. Lobby government to provide incentives / tax holidays for opening offices around the city, there by reducing the number of people moving around the city.

2. Most of the employees in these IT companies commute through company provided Bus/Cabs. Wireless enable these vehicles and allow the commuters to better utilize their commute time. Telecom providers in India already provide broadband through wireless datacards. A simple soultion could be using these datacards to wireless enable the vehicles.

Newsgator OPML doesn't work

2007-03-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

If you are one of blog addicts like me, you would surely be using one of the feed readers. You don't need explanation on OPML either.

I have been using newsgator free online subscription. I was trying to export my OPML file and unfortunately I haven't been sucessful. Even making a OPML file as public didnt do any magic.

Does any one of you experiencing the same problem ?

Update : I didn't get any reply from Newsgator support. But I am able to export my feeds as an OPML file.

WWIGO review

2007-03-03T23:08:00.000-05:00

I had opportunity to take sneak peek at the streaming video product WWIGO from Motvik during Mobile monday Bangalore (MMB).

WWIGO is acronym for Webcam wherever I go. The idea behind the product is to make use of the cellphone camera as a webcam to your laptop or desktop. The application is built on Symbian and hence you can test the product only on your Nokia handsets. Soon to be supporting other platforms/handsets, the technology behind the product is video captured through your cell phone camera, streamed on to your computer system. This is made possible by running two applications, one on your PC and another on your cellphone using the underlying bluetooth transmission.

I met Rajan,one of the founder, during MMB and they had plans of providing the basic version at free of cost and advanced version for a premium. Laptops these days are equipped with a webcam and smartphones equipped with wi-fi are slowly replacing cellphones, in that context users would expect some more value to the service if they are buying it for a premium. Rajan also talked about revenue from Advertising model. Using WWIGO as a webcasting service and generating revenue by delivering Ads along with the content.

WWIGO would be more appealing for the users, if the service can be applied to solve some real world problems like using a low cost bluetooth enabled camera phone as a spy cam in premises.

Check the video below from Mobile Monday Bangalore on WWIGO

Kiruba's foot note

2007-03-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

I was reading Kiruba Shankar's blog recently, This footer message caught my attention. If you are one of those geek, building websites or having done HTML work, you would have experienced the pain of trying to make a webpage look similar in different browsers, not to forget different resolutions in those browsers. After all that pain, if one of your webpage visitor still complains, then look for Kiruba's answer.

Joost invitation

2007-03-01T09:52:00.000-05:00

I have 2 invites for testing Joost (Formerly, The Venice Project).

Any of you interested, please leave a comment with your name and email.

Mobile Monday Bangalore

2007-02-26T10:53:00.000-05:00

I got a chance to attend mobile monday Bangalore, today. It was the first time I was attending meet.

It was good place to meet and interact with people who are optimistic about the growth of mobile and its applications in India. Bangalore being a IT hub in India, such kind of event adds fuel to the growth of mobile applications in form of startups.

On the agenda, There was a lecture from Naveen R of Tonse telecom about wi-fi in India. While the rest of world is talking about wimax, usage of wi-fi in India is still in its nascent stage.

There were two startups which showed their demo.

1. Inactiv, a social networking based on SMS, trying to catch up with mobile and SMS growth in India. The model sounded to be on the heels of twitter, even though the owners denied it. But I am impressed with such kind of model.

2. Motvik's wwigo was another product shown at the meet. The product was impressive in terms of technology, but not sure of the revenue model.

Overall it was a satisfying meet if not convincing. Not convincing because, there was lot of confusion and disturbance among the audience while there was demo. The organisers of meet are not event managers, so people attending the meet should understand and co-operate to make it a better organised event.

Yahoo mixd is stopped!!

2007-02-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

The mobile-web integrated service from yahoo, mixd has been stopped from Feb 25th. The final message on Yahoo mixd, says the mixd service was a pilot study. I was pretty impressed with the feature of mobile-web integration and the good usage of the service could have proved viral in the mobile application arena.

While similar SMS networking applications like Twitter has been increasing its user base, Yahoo mixd gets into dead pool.

New template to my Blog

2007-02-25T12:16:00.000-05:00

I moved from a 2 column tic tac blogger template to a 3 column tic tac template. Thanks to the blogcrowds. These guys has amazing collection of modified standard templates .

Finally...

2007-02-21T03:45:00.000-05:00

Its been lot of changes on personal front, I was moving from Newyork to Bangalore so its been a while since my tech blog nextgen is updated.

Changes on personal front, so are changes to my blogs. Nextgen which was hosted at pobolo will be here at finalbyte.

Finally I am back at blogging, it will be a while before I could move all my previous posts from nextgen to finalbyte,