THE NEWEST PRODUCT IN APPLE TECHNOLOGY THE iPAD

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ASUS LAUNCHES 3D GAMING NOTEBOOK IN INDIA

Bangalore: After almost four months of its release, Asus G51J 3D has arrived in India, bundled with specially designed 3D glasses and equipped with NVIDIA 3D Vision. ASUS G51J 3D has NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB DDR3 video memory.

EAX and CMSS audio technology further enhances in-game immersion, delivering crystal clear sound and compelling environment audio effects through bespoke Altec Lansing speakers. ASUS G51J 3D is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor and 64-bit Windows 7 operating system. A pair of 3D Vision active-shutter glasses coupled with a wide-range infra-red emitter delivers stereoscopic images with clarity, brightness and depth-of-field (DOP) at full resolution without any viewing angle restrictions. The GPU driver and a 120Hz 3D panel render each scene twice, delivering up to 60 images evenly to each eye, amounting to a total of up to 120 images at any given time. Gamers can experience total immersion into their games from what were previously flat 2D worlds, to true-to-life 3D.


"NVIDIA is excited about the world's first 3D Vision notebook coming from ASUS," said Phil Eisler, General Manager of 3D Vision business unit at NVIDIA. "The ASUS G51J 3D notebook will set the standard by which gaming and 3D notebooks will be judged. Congratulations to ASUS for achieving this monumental milestone!"

Complementing the immersive visual effects is EAX Advanced HD 4.0 3D audio technology and CMSS surround sound. EAX Advanced HD 4.0 audio technology enhances in-game environments and scenarios by providing corresponding three dimensional sound effects. It can provide up to 64 additional sound effects from its sound library, and produces ultra-realistic spatial effects for more than 300 supported games. Together with high fidelity Altec Lansing speakers, the ASUS G51J 3D delivers a gaming and multimedia audio experience that no other notebook can match.

The ASUS G51J 3D features four dedicated physical cores working in tandem with the operating system and applications for additional performance. It allows users to utilize and launch multiple applications, and to enjoy high definition multimedia and processor-intensive games effortlessly. It also has a built-in 2 megapixel camera and has 15".6 HD LED backlight screen.

The ASUS G51J 3D will be available at around Rs. 99,000 with a two years warranty.

COMBINED PCs BEAT 2nd FASTEST SUPERCOMPUTER

Washington: Legions of personal computers (PCs), engaged in a project to map the Milky Way, beat the world's second fastest supercomputer in sheer performance.

At this very moment, tens of thousands of PCs worldwide are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy.

Enthusiastic volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map our Milky Way.

Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world's second fastest supercomputer.

Since the project began, more than 45,000 individual users from 169 countries have donated computational power to the effort. Currently, approximately 17,000 users are active in the system.

The project, MilkyWay@Home, uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform, which is widely known for the SETI@home project, used to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

Today, MilkyWay@Home has outgrown even this famous project, in terms of speed, making it the fastest computing project on the BOINC platform and perhaps the second fastest public distributed computing programme ever in operation (just behind Folding@home).

The interdisciplinary team behind MilkyWay@Home, which ranges from professors to undergraduates, began the formal development under the BOINC platform in July 2006 and worked tirelessly to build a volunteer base from the ground up to build its computational power.

Each user participating in the project signs up their computer and offers up a percentage of the machine's operating power that will be dedicated to calculations related to the project.

For the MilkyWay@Home project, this means that each personal computer is using data gathered about a very small section of the galaxy to map its shape, density, and movement.

In particular, computers donating processing power to MilkyWay@Home are looking at how the different dwarf galaxies that make up the larger Milky Way galaxy, have been moved and stretched following their merger with the larger galaxy millions of years ago.

This is done by studying each dwarf's stellar stream. Their calculations are providing new details on the overall shape and density of dark matter in the Milky Way galaxy, which is widely unknown.

The galactic computing project had very humble beginnings, according to Heidi Newberg, associate professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy at Rensselaer.

Her personal research to map the 3-D distribution of stars and matter in the Milky Way using data from the extensive Sloan Digital Sky Survey could not find the best model to map even a small section of a single galactic star stream in any reasonable amount of time.

"I was a researcher sitting in my office with a very big computational problem to solve and very little personal computational power or time at my fingertips," Newberg said.

"Working with the MilkyWay@Home platform, I now have the opportunity to use a massive computational resource that I simply could not have as a single faculty researcher, working on a single research problem."

Before taking the research to BOINC, Newberg worked with Malik Magdon-Ismail, associate professor of computer science, to create a stronger and faster algorithm for her project, says a Rensselaer Polytechnic release.

Together they greatly increased the computational efficiency and set the groundwork for what would become the much larger MilkyWay@Home project.

500 MILLION WI-FI ENABLED HANDSETS TO SHIP IN 2014

Austin: The ubiquity of both Wi-Fi technology and advanced mobile phones are ushering in a new age for people who want a high-performance multimedia experience at their fingertips. Carriers, handset makers, and end users are embracing Wi-Fi on the handset for its coverage benefits, bandwidth boost, and wide availability. New data from ABI Research indicates that out of approximately 580 million Wi-Fi devices shipped in 2009, 141 million were handsets.

The momentum of Wi-Fi enabled handsets reflects the recognition of the rigorous Wi-Fi CERTIFIED testing program from the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi handset certification volume grew 142 percent in 2009 from 2008 levels. To date, more than 500 different handset models are now Wi-Fi CERTIFIED, giving consumers more choices than ever before.

"The phenomenal growth of handsets offering Wi-Fi is no surprise. Carriers and manufacturers have come to know Wi-Fi as a reliable, high-performance technology that's been independently validated in our renowned certification program. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED program helps ensure a seamless user experience when using Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phones," said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

ABI Research expects this growth trend to continue, forecasting that half a billion Wi-Fi enabled handsets will ship in 2014, with 90 percent of smartphones incorporating Wi-Fi. "In the age of data-centric multimedia phones, carriers have embraced Wi-Fi technology as a way to offload traffic from licensed spectrum and improve the consumer experience. We are seeing handset users starting to demand Wi-Fi because of its higher data rate and indoor reception benefits," said Michael Morgan, Industry Analyst, ABI Research.

The next major technology advancement for handsets is on the horizon -- advanced Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n technology is beginning to appear in mobile phones, offering consumers increased coverage. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n program incorporates a broad range of performance features required to meet market needs in a wide range of applications.

The first ten Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n handsets have been announced, and given the benefits of this next-generation Wi-Fi technology compared to older generations, the migration toward 802.11n is expected to continue. ABI Research predicts that by 2012, 802.11n will be the predominant Wi-Fi technology in handsets.

Initial handset implementations of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n technology will offer consumers greater effective ranges and improved coverage. Since data transmissions are more efficient with Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n, there is a lower impact to battery life compared to older forms of Wi-Fi technology. Enterprise IT managers will appreciate that Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n networks have greater capacity than legacy networks, allowing more users to be supported on a single network node.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED n devices also incorporate WMM (Wi-Fi Multimedia) Quality of Service. WMM prioritizes network resources for voice and video applications to improve the performance of real-time applications. All Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices are also tested to ensure that they support advanced WPA2 security capabilities.

Recognizing the need for handsets to be aligned with Wi-Fi industry standards for interoperability, security, easy installation, and reliability, the Wi-Fi Alliance began including mobile phones in its Wi-Fi CERTIFIED program in 2003.

THE GREEN ARMY'S SOCIAL NETWORK MARCH

When it comes to high-profile green coverage, though, Deanna Duke of The Crunchy Chicken has perhaps the broadest reach. Her "Freeze Yer Buns Off Challenge," encouraging people to turn down their thermostats for the winter, garnered press this year in The New York Times and USA Today, among many other outlets. She's a sustainability force to be reckoned with as she publishes clips on YouTube about shopping at farmers markets and posts to Facebook about the health implications of toothpaste with fluoride.

Is anybody besides the tree-huggers listening? You bet they are. Duke gets e-mails every day from the manufacturers of products, she told TechNewsWorld, and those companies are eager to reach the growing market of consumers seeking green approaches to even the most mundane aspects of their everyday lives.

To Review or Not to Review

"Companies are definitely targeting bloggers to spread the word about their products, particularly if they can get a review," Duke said. While she will indeed review products sent to her if she thinks the topic is relevant to her readers, it may not necessarily be a positive appraisal. "My readers expects my honest assessment about a product," she stressed. Interestingly, she's observed that more often than not, the products she publishes the best reviews about are ones she's found on her own.

Still, as green bloggers have moved from daily or weekly blog posts to more frequent, shorter updates through tools such as Twitter, the companies seeking to garner their much-coveted approval have done the same. "There definitely is a push for companies who do provide review copies or giveaways through blogs to require that as part of your entry you have to Facebook or Tweet about the product," Duke explained. "I don't support those types of giveaways as it seems somehow predatory."

Walking the Line

In fact, sustainability activists and companies are doing a delicate dance as they learn more about the benefits and pitfalls of using social networking to advocate for their cause -- which is, in the case of corporations, the bottom line. One community garden organizer thought long and hard about where the boundaries might be as she set up a group on a local food social networking site in Cleveland, Ohio.

"I had to decide whether or not to retain authority to approve group members or posts," Samantha Provencio, coordinator of two community gardens in the Cleveland area, told TechNewsWorld. The gardens are associated with a range of government and state organizations, such as The Ohio State University. However, no one group has the gardens entirely under its purview.

With no official online home for her group members, Provencio decided to use Local Food Cleveland, a site built with social networking platform Ning, to provide space for community gardeners in her own and surrounding counties. In the end, said Provencio, she left membership open, and one big aspect of that decision is the possibility that corporations will indeed come bearing gifts. "If Home Depot (NYSE: HD) wants to offer garden tools to local community gardeners, I want them to have a way to reach us," she said.

It's Not Easy Being Facebook

With Facebook's rapid rise in popularity among activists of all stripes, one obvious question is why the site isn't the de facto standard gathering place for all sustainability communities. For Provencio, the issue was one of usability. "Facebook has changed its format so often recently," she noted, "I was concerned that people would have a hard time using it." Recent changes in the site's terms of service also gave her cause for concern, she added.

For some groups, though, Facebook's enormous reach simply is too important to ignore when time and resources are very tight. Such is the case for a grass-roots citizen action group that came together quickly when the 144-acre Oakwood Country Club and golf course, which sits on the border of two eastern suburbs of Cleveland, went up for sale. Within just a couple of weeks, the group's Facebook page had tallied over 1,000 fans, steering committee member Wendy Donkin told TechNewsWorld. For some time, the page was used simply to gather ideas and build a network around the goal of keeping the acreage as green space rather than let it fall into the hands of a commercial developer.

Right now, the fate of the Oakwood land remains up in the air. However, Donkin thinks that the Facebook group will be crucial as a specific action plan comes into focus. "Once we have a series of concrete steps, we can ask all these people to help," she noted. What they have done already is to ask fans of the group's Facebook page to fill in a form that lists the skills and resources they have that might be useful as the movement gathers steam.

Who's Your Buddy?

A question both activists and corporations will have to tackle is when to use which social networking tool to achieve any given goal. In Deanna Duke's case, targeting her blog's readership has become easier over her three years of publication. "I know my audience fairly well and have a good feel for what they want to read about," she said. "I've learned from feedback over the years what is popular based on page hits or number of comments."

What's harder, explained Duke, is deciding what portions of content she wants to publish via Twitter or Facebook. Like all sustainability advocates, Duke has a life outside her activism as well, and she connects with those people via the same social networking tools she uses in her "green" life. "I have a lot more personal friends and colleagues that follow me on Facebook but don't necessarily read my blog posts," she noted. "Those that follow me on Facebook get the whole shebang -- links to my blog posts, plus personal and other environmentally related links and thoughts I have that I don't want to write a whole post about."

What those friends and colleagues will see if they browse Duke's recent Facebook status updates would interest any public relations person responsible for the online presence of a major corporation: kudos to the makers of LEGOs for making sure its toys are free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a link to a buying guide for dog toys also made without PVC, and a re-post of a link originally distributed by organic dairy product maker Organic Valley about the dangers of overuse of antibiotics in industrial livestock operations.

BROWN PLEDGES SUPER-FAST BROADBAND FOR ALL BY 2020

In a speech, Gordon Brown called super-fast broadband "the electricity of the digital age" which "must be for all - not just for some".

The Conservatives say they have made a similar pledge and have attacked a £6-a-year landline levy planned by Labour.

The PM also promised to create a single website bringing together all government and public sector services.

The "mygov" portal will allow people to manage pensions and benefits, pay council tax, apply for school places and jobs, and book doctor's appointments - all online.

He said it would end the "one size fits all" style of public services and would help the British government become "the most efficient, open and responsive" in the world.

Web institute

In his speech, Mr Brown argued that faster broadband speeds would allow for cheaper and better public services as well as ushering in more sophisticated entertainment options and making trade easier.

But leaving this to the market alone would lead to coverage "determined not by need or by social justice, but by profitability" and "a lasting, pervasive and damaging new digital divide".

Instead, he said it was up to government to create a fair digital future, adding: "The alternative is our vision: ensuring, not simply hoping for, universal coverage."

Mr Brown said greater use of the internet would also allow people to have more say over government policy, such as through e-petitions, and could result in big cost savings by making public services more efficient.

The PM also said Labour planned £30m of funding for a new Institute of Web Science, to be based in Britain and jointly headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web.

This, he said, would carry out pioneering research, in collaboration with universities and the private sector, to develop the next generation of the web.

Jim Knight, the minister responsible for digital inclusion, said the government had to intervene to ensure super-fast broadband reached remote areas of the country.

He told BBC Radio 5 live: "You offer incentives to the market to get to those areas that otherwise they're not going to be able to make a profit out of going to.

"By having universal access to this very high bandwidth which allows more streaming video, allows people to watch TV and listen to radio online, it means that we can also release the business and employment potential of this.

'Technology manifesto'

"If you just leave it up to the market it'll only go to into the cities, it won't get out into rural Cornwall for example without some form of public subsidy."

The government is planning a 50p-a-month levy on landlines to help ensure that rural areas do not miss out on a fast network.

The Conservatives have attacked the tax, saying they will force BT to open up its network to competition, and if necessary use cash from the BBC licence fee to fill in gaps in the fast broadband network.

In their "technology manifesto", the Tories have pledged to give Britain the fastest high-speed broadband network in Europe if they win the general election.

They have also pledged to put more government services online and to publish huge swathes of government data and contracts - and make Britain a world leader in the digital revolution.

Digital campaigners the Open Rights group said Mr Brown's plans were incompatible with provisions in the Digital Economy Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, to cut off persistent illegal file-sharers.

Executive director Jim Killock said: "Online government is a great idea, but Labour cannot say people will depend on online government, and simultaneously plan to disconnect families after allegations of minor copyright offences."

MICROSOFT WINNING FANS EARLY WITH INTERNET EXPLORER 9 PREVIEW

Earlier this week Microsoft unveiled a preview of the engine behind its next-generation Web browser, Internet Explorer (IE) 9. Microsoft is still diligently working to convince many customers to make the switch from the archaic IE6 to the current IE8, but the march of development never stops so Microsoft is already hard at work on the next version as well.

post on the IEBlog "The Internet Explorer Platform Preview is a light-weight frame around the core IE platform which includes the rendering and layout, object model, parsing, and script engines. It's a way to try out the platform, and the experience improvements we're making to performance, standards support and interoperability, enabling "the same markup" to work."

Saint Clair clarified "We will update [the Platform Preview] approximately every 8 weeks on the road to Beta. Each update will provide a more complete look at the IE9 platform. The Platform Preview along with these updates and the reporting tools are designed to speed up the feedback loop between developers and the IE platform."

In other words, this is not a beta release of the IE9 browser. In fact, it's not even an alpha release. Microsoft is still (very) early in the development stage for Internet Explorer 9, but it is actively seeking to engage the Web developer community to test out the core functionality and provide feedback. It is also working to silence critics of IE and begin to build up some excitement and buzz around the eventual launch of the next-generation browser.

Toward that end, the IE9 Platform Preview seems to be quite successful thus far. Internet Explorer 8 is a fairly slick, and rather capable Web browser in its own right. My PCWorld peer Jared Newman notes "IE8 got creative with accelerators and Web slices. It also caught up with the competition on features like drag-and-drop tabs and private browsing."

Two areas where Microsoft has had consistent issues are compliance with Web standards, and speed. On the compliance front, Jennifer Yu, another Internet Explorer program manager at Microsoft, explained in a separate IEBlog post "As part of our commitment to standards and interoperability, we are excited to provide initial support for the W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 (Second Edition) Specification in the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview."

As for speed, there are some initial reports that IE9 isn't just faster than IE8, but mind-numbingly so--depending on the tasks it is being asked to perform. Tests performed by one site report preliminary results that "IE9 tech preview performs 7.8 times better than IE8."

The post detailing the results of the preliminary IE9 tests goes on to add "Betanews estimates that the IE9 chassis on Windows 7 offers 9.32 times better raw computational performance than IE8 on Windows 7, on the same machine."

Not too shabby--especially compared with recent Web browser speed tests conducted by PCWorld. Those tests showed Chrome leading the race, with Firefox 3.5 in second, and IE8 coming in third. Granted, we're talking about milliseconds difference between page loading times, but those milliseconds add up.

I asked Microsoft for an ETA on a public beta of IE9, or even an estimated target for releasing the next generation Web browser. A Microsoft spokesperson replied with the predictably standard non-answer "We're excited to provide developers with access to updated builds of the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview every eight weeks leading up to beta. Internet Explorer 9's public availability will be dependent on when it reaches the quality bar for release."

Suffice it to say that the early speed tests, combined with Microsoft's efforts at cooperating to incorporate Web standards, and its commitment to engaging the developer community early and often all bode well for the next incarnation of Internet Explorer--whenever it finally arrives.

GOOGLE HATCHES PLOT TO BRING INTO TV

Google, Intel, Sony and Logitech have reportedly come together to create a new device platform built for bringing the Web closer to the TV. Google TV would apparently use the Android OS to streamline the act of surfing Web content, including Web-based videos as well as social networking sites, through the television.
Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and Sony (NYSE: SNE) have teamed up to develop a platform called "Google TV" that will bring about a new way to surf the Internet via televisions, according to The New York Times.

Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI), which makes remote controls and computer devices, will reportedly develop peripherals for the platform. These will apparently include a remote with a tiny keyboard.

This follows earlier reports in The Wall Street Journal that Google is testing a TV program search function with Dish Network.

If the reports are correct, the Google platform could further open up online advertising opportunities and bring in more revenue.


The New Google Platform

This new platform is reportedly based on Android, Google's operating system that's so far appeared mostly in smartphones. It will run on Intel's Atom chip, and it's believed Sony will bring out the first devices running the platform.

It's possible the platform will use Google's Chrome browser, which may have to be modified in order to work in an Android environment.

The partners in the project reportedly want to make it easier for television watchers to navigate Web applications such as social networks, as well as streamline the act of getting programming such as Web TV shows and videos from YouTube onto users' television sets.

"A lot of large companies are trying to conquer your living room," Itzik Cohen, CEO of ClipSync, told TechNewsWorld. "There will be more Web-enabled devices connected to your TV in the future." ClipSync's software platform lets people interact with each other while watching television

Google declined to discuss the issue. "We don't comment on rumor or speculation," spokesperson Eitan Bencuya told TechNewsWorld.

That's Entertainment

The consumer electronics industry, which has been bringing out network-enabled devices for the living room over the past several years, is likely to benefit from Google's platform, said Greg Ireland, a research manager at IDC.

"The industry has been looking for something like this platform," Ireland pointed out. "We have a proliferation of network-enabled devices such as connected televisions, connected Blu-ray players and the like, and there isn't a common software platform for these devices, so companies are forced to develop their own software programs," he told TechNewsWorld. "The issue is not just to connect up to Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), but to create a platform that can link your TV to your smartphone and your Blu-ray player, for example."

Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Widgets can tie together various media devices. Several television makers built Yahoo Widgets in their TV lines in the past couple of years, but it has had limited success. "Initially some people signed up with Yahoo Widgets," Ireland said. "Now, we've heard Samsung has moved away from Yahoo and will do something on its own. Panasonic is also coming up with something on its own."

Google's Set Top Box

Earlier this month, Google reportedly began a beta trial of TV search with Dish Network. This uses a set-top box running Android that can search through TV network programming as well as Web videos. Apparently, only a handful of Google employees are involved in the trial.

Dish Network wouldn't discuss the issue. "We don't have a comment on this," spokesperson Robin Zimmermann told TechNewsWorld.

In launching the set-top box trials, Google may aim to support its common platform. "It's not so much that Google's looking to create a box of its own as it is to offer a connected device that's part of the broader developer ecosystem," Ireland pointed out.

Once a common platform is created, it can be monetized because it will provide a set of standards developers can work to.

"You can integrate Pandora and Netflix and Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), but how can you innovate unless there's a common platform developers can work on?" Ireland said. "That's where Google comes in."

Google could deliver a toolkit to appdevs in the next couple of months; products based on the platform will be out around summer.

"Having the Google platform will increase the market for everyone," ClipSync's Cohen said. "And if Google's involved, ads will become part of the mix, which means everyone will be able to monetize."

MICROSOFT CHOICE SCREEN BOOSTS OPERA BROWSER

Web browser Opera says that downloads of its software have doubled since Microsoft introduced browser choice to Windows users on 1 March.

Microsoft now offers customers a choice of 12 browsers rather than installing its own Internet Explorer browser as a default.

A screen offering users the chance to switch browser is rolling out across Europe as part of a Windows update.

Opera says that in Poland 77% of downloads have come from the screen.

The number of copies downloaded in Poland were up by 328% on normal levels in the three days Opera analysed, between 12 and 14 March.

The screen has also made a big impact on Opera downloads in Spain, Italy and Denmark where downloads have doubled and over 60% of traffic is coming from the screen.

"This confirms that when users are given a real choice on how they choose the browser, they will try out alternatives," said Hakon Wium Lie of Opera Software.

While the Norway-based company has focused on the European market, according to StatCounter GlobalStats in March 2010 Opera was the biggest browser in Russia with a market share of 32.76%, beating Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Microsoft agreed to offer users browser choice in Europe as part of a settlement following a 10 year dispute with the European Commission over competition regulation.

TWITTER FLIES THE COOP

The new service will let Twitter users send and receive messages while they are on a partner site. It will also allow users to follow a string of related tweets without leaving the site. The idea behind the service is to allow partners to better integrate their own conversations and product positioning with Twitter.

The @anywhere functionality can be implemented with a few lines of Javascript code.

Twitter CEO Evan Williams announced the @anywhere platform during his keynote address at the South by Southwest interactive conference under way in Austin this week.

'Our Open Technology Platform'

The company elaborated on it in a blog post, although it didn't provide a timeframe for rollout.

The post provided examples of how @anywhere could be used: following a New York Times journalist via her byline, tweeting about a video without leaving YouTube, or discovering new Twitter accounts on the Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) homepage.

Besides Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg and eBay, initial participating sites include AdAge, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times (NYSE: NYT), Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), Yahoo and YouTube.

The Facebook Connect Model

Twitter's new feature is being likened to Facebook Connect -- a set of APIs that allow Facebook members to log onto third-party Web sites, applications, mobile devices and gaming systems with their Facebook identity.

Like Facebook Connect, @anywhere will break down communication barriers across the various social media sites and portals people frequent, Rob Ungar, an account executive at Widmeyer Communications, told TechNewsWorld.

"It's going to make it easier to keep the conversation going rather than having to manage so many different identities to engage around a piece of content," Ungar said. "Right now, people can make comments on one site, of course, but they have to repost on Twitter. This will make it easier for people to share content and promote a dialogue, which is something that Twitter is very good at."

If it's integrated with blogging sites like WordPress or Blogger, @anywhere will ratchet up the "intra-site" dialogue that much more, he added.

Plus for Marketing

The new service will also assist marketers in building a brand or promoting a product, Nichole Goodyear, CEO of Brickfish, told TechNewsWorld. "It will have the ability to bring people into a conversation about something they might otherwise not be aware of."

Consider a product review posted on Amazon, for example.

"Studies have shown people tend to buy products that are recommended by friends or people they know," said Goodyear. "Reading tweets about a product review that links to the actual page would facilitate sales of the product."

MICROSOFT GIVES DEVS A GLIMPSE OF HTML 5-FRIENDLY IE9

The newest version of Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Internet Explorer will feature full hardware acceleration and a new Javascript engine that engages multiple processor cores for faster rendering, the company has announced. The new version aso reverses the software giant's reluctance to adapt to HTML 5.

The company released a developer preview of Internet Explorer 9 at the MIX10 developer conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Rough Draft

The preview is not a fully functioning browser, lacking crucial tidbits such as an address bar, for instance.

It's designed to give developers a feel for the core capabilities of what will eventually be released.

Microsoft isn't saying when it will come out. In a statement Wednesday, the company said it expects to release new preview versions every eight weeks until the release goes to beta, but it did not say when that might occur.

The new version will feature full hardware acceleration of graphics and text, support for HTML 5, CSS3 and a new Javascript engine that takes advantage of multicore processors.

The advances are meant to reduce limitations on Web design and development imposed by current implementations, Microsoft said. Consequently, the new browser will not work on Windows XP.

Early Praise

The advances are being well received by developers, Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish told TechNewsWorld.

"They're looking to regain a leadership role here and to really dazzle developers by really showing their commitment to HTML 5 and its potential," she said.

By moving to hardware acceleration, IE9 will enable faster rendering of animations and video, allowing developers to create beefier Web sites that software-based rendering schemes just couldn't handle, she noted.

Why It's Important

Creating a great next version of Explorer is critical for Microsoft as it attempts to build on the early success of Windows 7.

In all its incarnations, Explorer is still the most widely used browser, with a 61.6 percent market share in February, according to Net Applications. That's down from a recent peak of about 68 percent in May 2009, shortly after the current version was released. In that time, the fastest-growing browser has been Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chrome, which now has about 5.6 percent of the market, according to Net Applications.

Maintaining or extending market share is important to Microsoft and Google, particularly, because it allows them to cross-promote other products, such as Bing for Microsoft or productivity apps for Google, McLeish said.

She said she does not anticipate the lack of XP support to have much of a detrimental effect on IE9 adoption, or Microsoft's market share.

Many enterprise customers running XP are expected to upgrade to Windows 7 as Microsoft phases out support for the older operating system, helping spur adoption of the new browser while simultaneously helping kill off IE6, which both Microsoft and many in the developer community would like to see disappear.

INDIA NEEDS 100 MILLION BROADBAND CONNECTIONS:PITRODA

New Delhi: National Knowledge Commission chairman Sam Pitroda Wednesday said India needs around 100 million broadband connections and the government is focused on connecting 250,000 panchayats across the country through broadband.

"We have today about 10 million broadband connections for a country of a billion people, which is no good. Ideally this country needs 100 million broadband connections. If I say 100, even 80 or 70 million is good enough," Pitroda, who is also known as father of India's telecom revolution, said,

Interacting with women journalists at their club here, Pitroda said he hopes that the number of broadband connections will reach 100 million in five years' time.

"We don't have concrete timetable right now. We all are working on it. But we are first focused on connecting 250,00 panchayats through broadband now. Because that is the nerve centre of our decentralised governance," Pitroda added.

He is also an advisor to the prime minister on public information, infrastructure and innovations.

Asked if rural India is ready for technological change, he said: "If Bangalore is the back office of America, rural India should be the back office of urban India."

Giving an example, he said why should 20,000 clerks work in Delhi or other cities to file insurance claims, why can't that be done online by people in rural India.

"There are lot of young kids in rural India who are equally smart. Don't underestimate their talent. I think rural India is ready, we have not given them connectivity. You give them connectivity, you move a lot of back offices to rural India. It will happen," he added.

He added: "Next decade is going to be the most important decade in putting institutions and infrastructures related to information systems in place to be able to take advantage of a connected billion people."

GOOGLE UPGRADES CHROME ACROSS THE BOARD

Google has updated the Chrome browser for most of its multiple versions on all platforms in the past few days, although most of the updates have been minor. However, high-priority security fixes have been made to the stable version of Chrome.

Five security fixes labeled "high" have been applied to the stable Windows version of Chrome, including a fix for a bug that was discovered by Sergey Glazunov. He has received the first $1,337 Chromium Security Reward for the discovery. The security fixes include plugging holes in tab sandboxing, memory errors occurring with malformed SVG images, integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects, and an cross-origin bypass error. One security fix applied to the Chrome beta plugged a hole created by memory errors in empty SVG elements.

One new feature in the stable version since the upgrade to v4 has been disabled. The experimental anti-reflected-XSS feature XSS Auditor was disabled because of rare but "serious performance issues," according to the release notes.

The Windows beta version now includes the translate infobar, for automatic page translation using Google's translate function when you visit a Web site with a different language than your system default.

The Chrome dev channel has been updated for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Google says that users on all three platforms should see significant improvements in the performance of the autofill feature. Mac OS X dev channel users have also received many fixes to the bookmark bar, but that users will still experience significant problems with their bookmark folders for now. A fix is coming, say Google's release notes.

Google's Internet Explorer booster add-on, Chrome Frame, has also several repairs. Chrome Frame now uses IE's default pop-up blocker, and clicking one link with both mouse buttons will no longer crash the browser. Note that Chrome Frame is still considered experimental, and isn't recommended for casual use.

SCIENTIESTS TO MAKE MULTI-PROCESSOR COMPUTERS SMARTER

Washington: Luis Ceze, a Washington University computer scientist is trying to bring discipline in the modern multiprocessor computers, as he believes that they perform in an unpredictable way even after giving certain sets of commands. "With older, single-processor systems, computers behave exactly the same way as long as you give the same commands. Today's computers are non-deterministic. Even if you give the same set of commands, you might get a different result," he says, according to ANI.

Ceze and UW associate professors of computer science and engineering Mark Oskin and Dan Grossman and UW graduate students Owen Anderson, Tom Bergan, Joseph Devietti, Brandon Lucia and Nick Hunt have now come up with a way to get modern, multiple-processor computers to behave in predictable ways, by automatically parceling sets of commands and assigning them to specific places. Sets of commands get calculated simultaneously, so the well-behaved program still runs faster than it would on a single processor.

Ceze says: "With multi-core systems the trend is to have more bugs because it's harder to write code for them. And these concurrency bugs are much harder to get a handle on. We've developed a basic technique that could be used in a range of systems, from cell phones to data centers. Ultimately, I want to make it really easy for people to design high-performing, low-energy and secure systems."

Ceze says this will help many people and simplify the process. "We can compress the effect of thousands of people using a program into a few minutes during the software's development. We want to allow people to write code for multi-core systems without going insane. If this erratic behavior irritates us, as software users, imagine how it is for banks or other mission-critical applications."

FBI GOING UNDERCOVER ON FACEBOOK

San Francisco: U.S. law-enforcement agents are being trained to use social-networking sites like Facebook to befriend suspects and collect evidence, according to documents released by advocacy group The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The Justice Department internal training document, called Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites, revealed that undercover agents for the FBI and other agencies set up false profiles on sites like My Space and Facebook to try to nab suspects by getting access to their social networks.

The training manual said that such operations can be useful to communicate with suspects or targets, reveal their personal communications, gain access to non-public information and map social relationships and networks. Information gleaned can also be used to verify alibis and establish locations, the 33-page document revealed.

Social networks are also a good source of information on defence witnesses, the Justice Department's slide presentation said.

"Knowledge is power," the document said. "Research all witnesses on social-networking sites."

The document notes the potential problems with such covert operations with the words: "If agents violate terms of service, is that 'otherwise illegal activity?'" referring to site policies against establishing accounts with a false identity.

While the Justice Department document left the question open, a document released to EFF by the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service noted that that IRS employees are prohibited from using deception or fake online accounts to obtain information about taxpayers.

"In civil matters, employees cannot misrepresent their identities, even on the Internet," the document states. "You cannot obtain information from websites by registering using fictitious identities."

The EFF, which advocates for online privacy rights, withheld comment on the Justice Department documents but did praise the IRS policy.

"The IRS should be commended for its detailed training that clearly prohibits employees from using deception or fake social networking accounts to obtain information," the group said Tuesday.

'GOOGLE TO OBEY RULES EVEN IF IT PULLS OUT'

A Chinese Google user poses for a picture with his eyes covered in front of...

Google should obey Chinese government rules even if it decides to retreat from the country over hacking and censorship complaints, a Chinese government spokesman said on Tuesday.

Investors sold off Google Inc shares a day earlier after signs the company could soon shut its Web search site in China, Google.cn, two months after saying it would not abide by Beijing’s censorship rules and was alarmed by hacking from inside China.

Shares of Google fell nearly 3 per cent in regular trading on Monday to close at $563.18. Shares of Baidu, the No1 search engine in China, rose 4.8 per cent to $576.84.

Google has not unveiled any plans, leaving users to guess whether the company may seek to unilaterally do away with the Chinese-mandated filters that censor content on google.cn or announce it is shutting down the site.

In what appeared to be a reminder that China would not welcome any abrupt steps, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said Google should follow rules even if it decides not to stay in the country.

"On entering the Chinese market in 2007, it clearly stated that it would respect Chinese law," the spokesman, Yao Jian, told reporters in answer to a question about Google.

Google opened its Chinese search portal in 2006.

"We hope that whether Google Inc continues operating in China or makes other choices, it will respect Chinese legal regulations," Yao told a regular news conference.

"Even if it pulls out, it should handle things according to the rules and appropriately handle remaining issues," he said.

Yao said those rules included one that a foreign company report to the Commerce Ministry about plans to pull out.

If Google does decide to leave China, it could unnerve other foreign investors in the country. But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang downplayed the significance of such an action.

"I think this would just be the individual act of one company, and will not affect China’s investment environment," Qin told a regular news briefing. "It will not change the fact that most foreign companies, US ones included, have a good business in China and generate large profits."

Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said last week he hoped to have an outcome soon from talks with Chinese officials on offering an uncensored search engine in that country of 384 million Internet users.

Many experts doubt China’s ruling Communist Party would compromise on censorship. The Financial Times reported at the weekend the talks had reached an impasse and Google was "99.9 per cent" certain to shut Google.cn.

A Google spokesperson said on Monday that talks with Chinese authorities had not ended, but added that the company was adamant about not accepting self-censorship.

China requires Internet operators to block words and images the ruling Communist Party deems unacceptable.

Internationally popular websites Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are entirely blocked in China, which uses a filtering "firewall" to block Internet users from other overseas website content banned by authorities.

FACEBOOK OVERTAKES GOOGLE

Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week, industry analysts showed.

Facebook's homepage finished the week ending March 13 as the most visited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise.

The 'important milestone,' as described by Hitwise director of research Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 per cent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.

By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.Com increased only nine per cent in the same time -- although the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.

Taken together, Facebook.Com and Google.Com amounted to 14 per cent of the entire US Internet visits last week, Dougherty said.

Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.

In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox that echoes Gmail's format.

Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.

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PASSWORD-STEALING VIRUS TARGETS FACEBOOK USERS

Boston: Hackers have flooded the Internet with virus-tainted spam that targets Facebook's estimated 400 million users in an effort to steal banking passwords and gather other sensitive information.

The emails tell recipients that the passwords on their Facebook accounts have been reset, urging them to click on an attachment to obtain new login credentials, according to anti-virus software maker McAfee Inc.

If the attachment is opened, it downloads several types of malicious software, including a programme that steals passwords, McAfee said.

Hackers have long targeted Facebook users, sending them tainted messages via the social networking company's own internal email system. With this new attack, they are using regular Internet email to spread their malicious software.

A Facebook spokesman said the company could not comment on the specific case, but pointed to a status update the company posted on its website earlier warning users about the spoofed email and advising users to delete the email and to warn their friends.

McAfee estimates that hackers sent out tens of millions of spam across Europe, the United States and Asia since the campaign began on Tuesday.

Dave Marcus, McAfee's director of malware research and communications, said that he expects the hackers will succeed in infecting millions of computers.

"With Facebook as your lure, you potentially have 400 million people that can click on the attachment. If you get 10 per cent success, that's 40 million," he said.

The email's subject line says "Facebook password reset confirmation customer support," according to Marcus.

FACEBOOK TO OPEN OFFICE IN HYDERABAD

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Popular social-networking site Facebook will open an office in India, joining a long list of international firms that have looked to tap a skilled workforce that provides support services at relatively cheap wages.

Facebook's office in Hyderabad will support users, advertisers and developers in India and around the world, the company said in a statement on Monday.Hyderabad also houses other foreign firms, including Internet powerhouse Google and software giant Microsoft, whose Indian employees work on everything from writing software codes to providing customer services at cheaper salaries than in developed nations such as the United States.Facebook, which lets users connect and share information with friends online, has emerged as one of the Internet's most popular destinations, challenging established players like Yahoo Inc and Google.

Facebook counts around 400 million users and has had large investments from Microsoft and from Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies.More than 8 million of Facebook's total users are in India, the company's director of global online operations, Don Faul, said in a post on the Facebook blog.Seventy percent of the people using Facebook are outside the United States and are accessing the service from more than 70 languages, he said.Facebook's office in Hyderabad will supplement operations supported out of Palo Alto, California, Dublin, Ireland and a recently announced location in Austin, Texas."By having multiple support centers in a variety of time zones, we can provide better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support," Faul said.

QUALCOMM FILES PATENT FOR A FOLDABLE TOUCHSCREEN

Bangalore: Qualcomm filed a patent that directs toward a type of tablet device, which makes use of up to three touchscreens or in the patent application's exact words, 'a multi-fold mobile device with a configurable interface'.

The language of the patent indicates that the inspiration behind the design of this tablet-like device is an emphasis on smaller form factor devices, which are 'limited' to having smaller display screens. The proposed device's ability to be 'folded' will allow it to retain the key points of being compact and portable while providing the user with a larger display, reports PC World.

The concept user interface in the patent application changes depending on its physical orientation. This is because the screens will be able to detect their orientation in relation to each other through the use of one or more 'accelerometers, inclinometers, or any combination."

Beyond the automatic detection of physical orientation, the language of the patent suggests that the screens could be orientated in just about any direction. The patent also says that a device may be configured to have a larger screen size or may be configured to have a small form factor for convenience and portability." That is, you could probably pick between how many screens you want to use at a time.

Unfortunately there is no particular, announced product at this time, so it simply remains a concept at best. It is unclear where exactly Qualcomm expects to take this patent but we can probably take a wild guess that it will catch people's eyes in whatever form it ends up taking.

'MAKE NO MISTAKE: GOOGLE WANTS TO KILL THE iPHONE.WE WON'T LET THEM'

IT looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Three years ago, Eric E Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, jogged onto a San Francisco stage to shake hands with Steven P Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, to help him unveil the iPhone at the annual MacWorld Expo.

Google and Apple had worked together to bring Google’s search and mapping services to the iPhone, the executives told the audience, and Schmidt joked that the collaboration was so close that the two men should simply merge their companies and call them “AppleGoo.”

Today, such warmth is in short supply. Jobs, Schmidt and their companies are now engaged in a gritty battle over the future and shape of mobile computing.

In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. This month, Apple sued HTC, the Taiwanese maker of mobile phones that run Google’s Android operating system, for violating iPhone patents. The move was widely seen as the beginning of a legal assault by Apple on Google itself, as well as an attempt to slow Google’s plans to extend its dominion to mobile devices.

Google fears that Microsoft or Apple or wireless carriers like Verizon could block access to its services on devices like smartphones.

Google’s promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny in the mobile world.

At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Jobs believes Google violated their alliance by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone.

“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business,” Jobs told Apple employees shortly after the public introduction of the iPad, according to a Google insider. “Make no mistake: Google wants to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”

Apple declined to comment for this article. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, have openly expressed admiration for Jobs. In a statement, Schmidt concurred. “I continue to believe, as many do, that Steve Jobs is the best CEO in the world today, and I admire Apple and Steve enormously,” he wrote. But business is different.

The ads run by service provider Verizon for the Droid put the rivalry in perspective: “Everything iDon’t ... Droid Does.”

TWITTER LAUNCHES LINK-SCREENING SERVICE

Bangalore: Aiming to prevent phishing and other malicious attacks against users of the popular microblogging service, Twitter has launched a new link-screening service. Twitter will shorten URLs, so users will see some links in e-mail notifications and direct messages from other users written as twt.tl, Twitter said in a blog post, as reported by Owen Fletcher from PCWorld.

Phishing attacks ballooned on Twitter last year as the service grew in popularity. Twitter's new link-screening service comes after it last year started using Google's Safe Browsing API to check for malicious content in links posted by users.

SONY UNVEILS NEW MOTION-CONTROLLED GAMING SYSTEM

SAN FRANCISCO - Sony Corp has unveiled its new motion-controlled video game system, pitching it to both casual and hard-core gamers alike, as the company looks to ride one of the hottest trends in gaming.

The new system will help Sony keep pace with rivals Nintendo Co Ltd, which pioneered gesture-based gaming, and Microsoft Corp, which is launching its system later this year.

Sony's new PlayStation "Move" controller is used with its Eye gaming webcam, translating users' motions into actions within games on the PlaySation 3 (PS3) console.

Move, which resembles a TV remote with a colorful ball stuck on the end, will be available as part of a package this fall for less than $100, Sony said at a media event on Wednesday.

The company said 36 third-party developers and publishers are supporting the Move platform. In fiscal 2010, Sony will release more than 20 games that are dedicated to or supported by the system.

Nintendo's Wii kicked off the craze for motion-controlled gaming, making the console and active games such as "Wii Fit" and "Wii Sports Resort" into huge hits with casual gamers.

Microsoft has already unveiled the Natal body-gesturing gaming system for its Xbox 360 console, which the company plans to have in stores for the holidays.

Jack Tretton, chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, said in an interview that motion control expands the market opportunity for the PS3 to new consumers, and said the company hopes to siphon off some Wii users.

"We clearly want to speak to the 34 million people who already own a Playstation 3, then I think we offer a great opportunity to graduate from the Wii to the Playstation 3," Trettton said.

Sony said Move is especially precise, with every twitch and punch registering accurately in games ranging from casual titles for kids to fighting and swashbuckling swordplay games.

Sony said the accuracy of its motion-based gaming means it will also appeal to more hard-core gamers, generally younger men, who are the backbone of the $50 billion gaming industry.

CLOUD COMPUTING CHANCE FOR CHINESE SOFTWARE MARKET

ABU DHABI- Cloud computing, a fast-growing way of selling services via the Web without physical software, offers a chance for China finally to develop a software market, according to a Chinese industry veteran.

Kai-Fu Lee, who recently resigned as head of Google China, said the kind of piracy that has hobbled Chinese IT was near-impossible in a cloud-computing model, in which companies or individuals pay to access services that are hosted elsewhere.

"China has been plagued by piracy for the last 20 years and that unfortunately has caused China not to have a software industry," Lee told Reuters in an interview at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

"But it's irrelevant now, because software distribution is shifting from packaged software, from end user licence, to cloud Internet distribution. and when you're on the cloud you gotta pay," he said.

Lee resigned from Google last year, a few months before the company reported a large-scale hacking incident that caused it to threaten to withdraw from China. Google is in talks with the Chinese government and expects an outcome soon.

Lee, who also previously headed Microsoft's Chinese operations, has now started a $115 million venture-capital fund, Innovation Works, that aims to foster Chinese entrepreneurs in the areas of mobile Internet, e-commerce and cloud computing.

China's business software industry will make revenues of $6.2 billion this year, analysts at IT research firm Gartner estimate, dwarfed by the United States' $99.2 billion and less than 3 percent of the world's total.

Microsoft's chief operating officer said last week the company would be cautious about investing in China until it improved intellectual property rights, and said China would not achieve its potential until that happened.

Cloud computing, or software as a service, is still a young industry and was pioneered by Salesforce.com, which centres around offering Web-hosted customer relationship-management (CRM) software for sales people.

Lee said cloud computing had already revived China's online gaming industry, which seemed moribund 10 years ago but is now thriving, thanks to micropayments that gamers make for virtual weapons or other props that improve their performance or status.

"If you don't pay, you can't log in. If you log in, we're gonna charge you. If you don't give me your credit card, you can't use our product," he said.

"That's going to enable the next Salesforce.com, the next CRM, the next whatever company, because now the software companies can charge."

Lee estimated it would take about five years before China would produce a company of the scale of Salesforce, which made sales of $1.3 billion last year and has a market capitalisation of $9.4 billion.

OPERA RELEASES MINI BROWSER BETA FOR ANDROID

In a move to expand its franchise to a higher-end frontier of the mobile phone market, Opera Software has released a beta version of Opera Mini 5 for Android.

Opera's Mini and more feature-rich Mobile browsers are widely used in the mobile phone market, but the company faces a challenge in new smartphones using Apple's iPhone OS, Google's Android operating system, and Palm's WebOS. Those come with their own browser installed already, in those cases based on the WebKit browser project.

Mini is designed to work on less-capable phones with smaller screens, slower network connections, and less-sophisticated user interface abilities. Version 5 offers support for features including Speed Dial, which is a grid of favorite Web pages, compression through Opera's servers to speed download of Web pages that aren't tailored for mobile phones, and tabbed browsing.

The Norwegian company had released an earlier version of Mini for Android, starting with a technical preview in April 2008 and culminating in Opera Mini 4.2 for Android in January. It's also working on a version of Opera Mobile for Android.

GOOGLE MAKES ITS LOCAL SHOPPING MOVE

It took a while, but Google has made its big move as a local shopping inventory gatekeeper. The company said Thursday that it will offer mobile device users inventory checks on local stores, allowing them to see if products are available.

The program has already enlisted some key retailers including Sears, Best buy, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and West Elm. Rest assured that local merchants, which increasingly rely on Google to send business their way, will follow suit.

These local inventory checks have been talked about for years. In 2006, Google, Intuit, and the Kelsey Group outlined retailing's future and it sounded a lot like what the search giant is rolling out today. Four years later, we're almost to the point where local inventory searches are part of your average Web experience.

In a blog post, Google outlined how it works. You do a search, click on a blue dot to see if a product is near by and then you can check inventory. The search works on the iPhone, Palm WebOS and Android devices.

WEB-CONNECTED TV: APP MAKERS FEEL DAUNTED

Bangalore: By the end of this year, Americans will own more than two million Web-connected TVs, which let users access online services such as Pandora with the same remote control they use to switch channels. Yet while developers have managed to create a wide range of apps for mobile phones, they are worried by the prospect of building software tools for TVs, reports Douglas MacMillan of BusinessWeek.

There is no easy way to create an app that can run on the wide range of sets, says Forrester Research Analyst James McQuivey. "Nobody wants to get in the business of developing separate widgets for Samsung, LG and Sony," he says. In addition to all those TVs, there's a growing range of set-top boxes, each with its own software. There is Roku and its Channel Store, which offers movie-streaming services from Netflix and others with handy tools, like a Facebook photo viewer.

To companies such as Internet music provider Pandora, each new outlet for TV applications presents a further opportunity to reach a fresh audience. The Oakland based company makes its free program available on almost every TV set and box on the market and says its TV business currently adds up to about 500,000 users. "The foundation is there for those numbers to start growing exponentially," says Tim Westergren, Pandora's Founder and Chief Strategy Officer.

Internet giant Yahoo! proposed a solution in early 2009, when it announced that new TVs from Samsung, Sony, LG, and Vizio would come equipped with its Connected TV software, which is open to all developers. So far the multidevice service is getting into homes - Yahoo says more than two million sets have sold with Connected TV - but the apps are slow to come. Only about 35 full-feature apps are available on the service, according to Russ Schafer, Yahoo's senior director of product marketing. TV makers are now unveiling their own app stores. In January, Samsung introduced Samsung Apps; during a Super Bowl commercial, Vizio pitched Vizio Apps. Both systems are generally compatible with Yahoo, but not all apps made by third-party developers will work on all TVs.

GOOGLE TO REDESIGN NEXUS ONE FOR INDIAN MARKET

Bangalore: To take on Nokia, which has a market share of 55.9 percent in the handset market in India; Google plans to redesign its Nexus One mobile handset for the Indian consumers. Also, the handset is likely to be a simplified cousin of the one that was launched in U.S. in January and will be priced more economically.

Experts wonder that if this stripping down of features is strictly necessary. They say there is a market for high end smartphones in India too. Google might want to appeal to the majority of the 500 million mobile users in India who use low end handsets, but it need not have to adopt such an either-or strategy.

Currently, Nexus One has a five megapixel camera with LED flash, which can be trimmed. Since Google believes that India is still not a smartphone friendly country, they might do away with Wi-Fi and HSDPA, HSUPA. So power requirements come down drastically, and battery type might change.

The company plans to launch new designed mobile in India sometime in the fourth quarter of 2010.

GOOGLE LAUNCHES TOOL FOR SEARCHING PUBLIC DATA

Google's Public Data Explorer can generate charts based on a list of popular queries, backed by official data.

Google is building on its partnership with the World Bank and other statistics gatherers to present an array of data in visual form within Google Labs.

Google Public Data Explorer went live Monday, accompanied by the requisite blog post. The site takes public data regarding schools, population, crime, and even names to construct charts and graphs that help illustrate trends.

Google is also releasing a list of the top search terms that can be answered with public data, based on the analysis of anonymized search data. School comparisons and unemployment topped the list of the most frequent queries, followed by population, sales tax, and salaries.

The list gives searches an idea of the data available to them that can also be manipulated into moving charts and graphs over a time period. In addition to former partners the World Bank, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and U.S. Census Bureau, Google has added the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, the California Department of Education, Eurostat, the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to its list of data providers.

GOOGLE TO INSERT AUTOMATED CAPTIONS ON YOUTUBE

San Francisco: Google is to add automatic captions to the tens of millions of English-language videos it hosts on YouTube, the web search giant said.

The move will make the videos more accessible to deaf viewers but will also help Google index the content and supply relevant ads alongside it, analysts said.

Google has been experimenting with the automated captions for several months with a handful of high profile partners like the University of California, Berkeley, Yale University and National Geographic. All other captions on YouTube videos were provided by the videos' producers.

Google has been working on speech recognition technology for some five years, and uses the technology to transcribe audio voice mails through its Google Voice service, and to provide spoken Web searches from smart phones.

However, engineers warned that the technology is far from perfect and that the machine translations are sure to contain mistakes.

"We know it's not perfect, and sometimes it will be funny," said Google engineer Ken Harrenstien, who is deaf. "But it's better than nothing."

MICROSOFT TO LAUNCH SOCIAL NETWORKING PHONE IN US

San Francisco: Software giant Microsoft is to launch its own mobile phones in the U.S. later this year as it aims to challenge the growing smartphone dominance of its main rivals Apple and Google.

The phones will be made available in July exclusively on Verizon, the largest cellphone carrier in the US, and will be aimed at heavy users of social networks, said the report, which featured what it said were leaked images from the phones' marketing campaign. The two phones are codenamed "Pink" and "Pure", and will be manufactured for the software giant by Sharp, the report said.

The report came after Microsoft last month unveiled a new mobile operating system that was widely praised by technology pundits.

Microsoft used to enjoy a leading position in the smartphone arena but has seen its position severely eroded by Apple's iPhone, by the Blackberry and by numerous devices running Google's Android operating system.

GOOGLE GRANTS $1 MILLION TO SCIENTISTS FOR DATACENTER RESEARCH

Bangalore: A team of scientists from several U.S. universities has proposed to redesign a server CPU to give a separate power feed to the chip's memory controller, for which Google is giving them $1 million, reports Datacenter Dynamics.

This would enable the rest of the chip to be powered down when idle, while only the controller stays on to make the unit quickly accessible if needed. The idea is one of several proposals for a new Google funded research project aiming to develop new low-power modes in servers, whereby the maximum possible amount of server components gets powered down when the machine is idling.

Earlier this week, the search giant awarded $1 million to the project, a collaboration of computer scientists from University of California Santa Barbara, Rutgers University, University of Michigan and University of Virginia, according to a Rutgers statement. The two-year grant may be extended by one more year and an additional $500,000.

The team of researchers will work with UCSB's Greenscale Center for Energy-Efficient Computing. "Greenscale will provide critical infrastructure to the project with the planned construction of the Greenscale Experimental Datacenter, a state-of-the-art miniature datacenter where systems researchers can conduct radical experiments not possible in production datacenters," said Fred Chong, Professor of computer science at UCSB and the center's director.

While Google has been giving out research grants in the past, at a rate of about 150 grants per year, the grants it awarded this week were much larger than the ones issued previously. This week's awards, representing the first round of the company's new Google Focused Research Awards, totaled $5.7 million. Grants were awarded to scientists working in one of four areas: machine learning, the use of mobile phones as data collection devices for public health and environment monitoring, energy efficiency in computing, and privacy.

AFTER TOUCH SCREEN TABLET, NOW TOUCH SCREEN TABLE

Washington: Researchers have designed Pictionaire, a 1.8 meter long table, which is placed directly beneath a ceiling-mounted camera and projector, which can "read" and respond to items placed on the table. This is developed by Microsoft researchers Andy Wilson along with colleagues from University of California, Berkeley, according to ANI.

When a user places a sketchbook on the table, the ceiling mounted equipment recognises it by its size and shape, and projects virtual "drag-off" handle onto the corner of the page. If the user swipes over the handle, the camera takes a digital snapshot of the sketchbook page and sends the information to the touchscreen so that a digital version of the page appears on the table.

The ceiling-mounted hardware then projects the image onto the pad and the user can trace key components onto their sketchbook page. "We're playing with the concept of moving back and forth between the virtual and the real," New Scientist magazine quoted Wilson as saying.

Furthermore, when the user places the keyboard onto the touchscreen, the overhead camera recognises it. As the user types, images or words conceptually related to those they type appear on the touchscreen around the keyboard to help in the brainstorming process.

IPAD TO HIT U.S. STORES APRIL 3,THEN 9 MORE MARKETS

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK - Apple Inc said the first iPads will be in U.S. stores on April 3 and hit nine international markets later in the month, easing concerns that manufacturing constraints could delay launch.

The news sent shares of Apple surging as much as 4.3 percent to an all-time high of $219.70 on the Nasdaq, as analysts said the speedy international rollout could help build sales momentum.

The 9.7-inch touchscreen iPad, which is designed to surf the Web, play video and games, and read digital books, is the most anticipated product launch from Apple since the iPhone in 2007.

Chief Executive Steve Jobs unveiled the tablet in late January, but the company did not announce any international markets until Friday, when it said the tablet will go on sale in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

"I think it eases concerns that were circulating about supply. There's always so much speculation around a launch, and this alleviates those fears," said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross, adding that the breadth of the international launch should reassure investors.

Cross expects the iPad to be a major growth driver for Apple eventually. She estimates the company will sell 4 million to 5 million units in the first year, which will add $1 to earnings per share.

The April 3 launch date means Apple won't likely book any iPad revenue in the current fiscal second quarter, which closes at the end of March. Nonetheless, Barclay's analyst Ben Reitzes said the launch plans added some "welcome clarity."

"Not only is the device available April 3 in the U.S., but we believe availability in nine other countries by the end of April is likely quicker than many thought, lending potential upside to consensus estimates into mid year," he wrote in a research note.

Analysts are currently forecasting Apple's fiscal 2010 earnings per share at $11.62, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, up from $9.08 last year.

There has been some debate on how successful the much-hyped iPad really will be. While most agree that the device is well-designed and appealing to consumers, some analysts are not convinced there is a big market for tablet computers.

The iPad will have to compete for consumer attention with a myriad of established devices, including smartphones, netbooks and dedicated e-readers like Amazon.com Inc's Kindle.

Apple said that an iBooks application for the iPad -- which will compete with the Kindle -- would be available as a free download on April 3.

A BIT LATER THAN EXPECTED

The U.S. launch date for the iPad model with short-range Wi-Fi wireless links, starting at a price tag of $499, is slightly later than the previously expected late March launch.

Oppenheimer & Co analyst Yair Reiner said there were some supply constraints around the iPad, which was not unusual for a major product launch. But he said that would not be an issue in the long run.

"I think supply constraints can have some short-term impact in the first quarter, obfuscating the true demand around launch time, but the longer term is more important," he said.

Customers looking for versions of the iPad with third-generation (3G) high-speed cellular data links will have to wait until late April, said Apple.

AT&T Inc, the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, will provide wireless connections for the iPad. But AT&T's top executive said earlier this week that he expects consumers to mostly use Wi-Fi to connect the iPad.

Beginning March 12, U.S. consumers will be able to go to Apple's website to preorder both the Wi-Fi-only model and the version with 3G and Wi-Fi, or reserve a device to pick up at a store on April 3.

Research firm iSuppli estimated the total materials costs for each device is $219.35, with a $10 manufacturing cost.

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"Companies can no longer afford to just think in terms of traditional PC form factors or architectures," Principal Analyst Ranjit Atwal argued. "With the rise of web-delivered applications, many users no longer need a traditional PC running a resident general-purpose operating system and fast x86 CPU, Apple's iPad is just one of many new devices coming to market that will change the entire PC ecosystem and overlap it with the mobile phone industry."

The statements echo Apple's own beliefs about tablets. Company chief Steve Jobs has put the iPad's importance on par with that of the iPhone and Mac and considers it more a general computing device than just a media browser. Tablet PCs have existed for several years, but in the Microsoft-endorsed convertible notebook format have rarely sold well beyond the niche markets of doctors and other very specialized fields.