Silent release !!

White iPhone 4 Arrives !!!

Apple today announced that thewhite iPhone4 will be available beginning tomorrow. White iPhone 4 models will be available fromApple’s online store, at Apple’s retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

“The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.”

iPhone 4 is the most innovative phone in the world, featuring Apple’s stunning Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone resulting in super crisp text, images and video, and FaceTime, which makes video calling a reality.

Pricing and Availability :

White models of iPhone 4 will be available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK and the US, beginning Thursday, April 28 and in many more countries around the world soon. White iPhone 4 will be available for a suggested retail price of$199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model with a new two year agreement through the Apple Store, at Apple’s retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Source[ Apple ]!!

Over 10 Million Scammed On Facebook!!!!!

Spammers have invited over 10 million Facebook users to fake events in yet another attempt to generate income from online survey scams according to a report by the IT security and data protection firm Sophos. Even as we file this report, the scam is in progress and several thousand unwitting Facebook users are falling prey to it.

One of the event known as "Who blocked you from his friend list?" has already tricked over 165,000 people into signing-up, with an astounding 10.3 million users still deciding whether or not to respond. Scammers embed instructions into the 'More info' section of the event's summary and this convinces Facebook users to unwittingly visit the webpages for online surveys or competitions, which are a source of revenue for the scammers by means of commission. Sometimes, users are asked to provide a mobile phone number, and if the user is naive enough to provide it, he/she will most probably end up getting signed up for an expensive premium rate service.

Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, Graham Cluley said, "These spammed-out event invitations and links to survey scams are one of the biggest nuisances on Facebook right now, impacting millions of users every day. It would be great if Facebook was being more proactive in shutting down these obviously bogus events, as currently it's far too easy for the scammers to fill their pockets through schemes like this."

In case you are affected by this scam, then you must cancel your reservation for the event. You must also notify your friends that you have shared a bogus link with them and/or invited them to a fake event. In case you have submitted your mobile phone number, you must contact your mobile service provider and inform them to keep any bogus charges from appearing in your mobile account.

The moral of the story is that Facebook users must beware of such suspicious events and think twice before accepting invitations from an unknown source.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

Microsoft released the first official service pack for Windows 7 on February 22, 2011. This is an important update that includes previously released security, performance, and stability updates for Windows 7. SP1 also includes new improvements to features and services in Windows 7, such as improved reliability when connecting to HDMI audio devices, printing using the XPS Viewer, and restoring previous folders in Windows Explorer after restarting.

WINDOWS 7 SERVICE PACK 1 IS AN UPDATE THAT DOES THE FOLLOWING:

·                     HELPS KEEP PCS SUPPORTED.

·                     PROVIDES ONGOING IMPROVEMENT TO THE OPERATING SYSTEM, BY INCLUDING PREVIOUS UPDATES DELIVERED OVER WINDOWS UPDATE AS WELL AS CONTINUING INCREMENTAL UPDATES TO THE WINDOWS 7 PLATFORM BASED ON CUSTOMER AND PARTNER FEEDBACK.

·                     MAKES IT EASY FOR ORGANIZATIONS TO DEPLOY A SINGLE SET OF UPDATES.

THE DOWNLOAD LINK IS FOR THE WINDOWS 7 32-BIT VERSION, WHILE YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE 64-BIT VERSION HERE(903.2MB) AND THE ISO IMAGE FOR BOTH VERSION OVERHERE (1953.3MB).

via:Techtree

• 

  Samsung to Launch I9003 Galaxy SL in India

  
  

  Priced at Rs. 19,499

Recently, Samsung launched the updated version of the popular Android smartphone, I9000 Galaxy S, abroad. Called the I9003 Galaxy SL, the new version has a Super Clear LCD, which has the same size (4.0-inch) and resolution (800 x 480) of the Super AMOLED display found on the Galaxy S. The Galaxy SL is also slightly thicker than the Galaxy S (10.6mm against 9.9mm) but has a bigger 1650mAh battery compared to 1500mAh battery on the S. The Galaxy SL, however, has a weaker PowerVR SGX530 graphics processor compared to the PowerVR SGX540 GPU on the Galaxy S. It comes with Android 2.2 Froyo pre-installed with Samsung's TouchWiz interface running on top.

The Galaxy SL will be re-branded as the Galaxy S for India and will come with 4GB internal memory instead of the 16GB memory available on the model sold abroad. The best thing about it, however, is the price. While the older Galaxy S was sold for Rs. 27,999 till it sold out, the new Galaxy S will be sold for just Rs. 19,499. Although you do get a slightly worse display, weaker graphics and lesser built-in memory, the price difference is substantial enough to make up for those things. And for the time the Galaxy S was on sale, it was undoubtedly the best Android phone in the market and now, with the new price it is an even greater value-for-money product.

The phone is yet to start selling and our sources tell us it will go on sale in the next 4-5 days, although you can pre-order it on Flipkart right now.

via: TechTree

• 

  Internet Explorer 9 RC Review

  
  

  Sleeker, faster and more secure but still not as good as rivals

  Great minimalistic design, fast performance, hardware acceleration support, unified address/search bar works very well

  Doesn't play nice with certain websites, too few add-ons compared to rival browsers, underwhelming performance in benchmarks, smaller fonts tend to look fuzzy, minor annoyances abound

  Expert Rating :

  

Expert Review

Internet Explorer has had a long and successful journey. Despite being outclassed by other browsers in almost every aspect it continues to dominate the browser market. It is able to do this simply because it was being shipped by default along with the most popular operating system in the world.

It would be wrong to say that Microsoft has been sitting on its laurels and doing nothing about improving their browser and bringing it up to speed with other browsers and more importantly, web standards. However, it seemed they either did not care much about the browser or the people using it, as the last couple of updates have mostly been cosmetic with nothing major been done with respect to performance. For those enlightened few, Internet Explorer has always been the browser used to download other, better browsers when you first buy your computer or re-install Windows.

But with Internet Explorer 9, things have always seemed different from the start. It seems that the software giant has finally woken up and has decided to do something significant about its browser. Whether it was the slowly decreasing market share or the fact that it finally got fed up of all the IE jokes, but Microsoft is finally taking significant steps in making this next version of their web browser not just better than the one that came before it, but also better than what the others have to offer.

After a series of developer previews and a beta, Microsoft recently released the release candidate of Internet Explorer 9. So we decided to take it for a spin and see just how much better is this new version and more importantly, if it is on par with what Mozilla, Google, Apple and Opera has to offer.


User Interface

Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer 9 has the least amount of UI chrome of any web browser out there and they really do deliver on that front. Internet Explorer 9 by far has the slickest and most minimalistic interface of any web browser we have seen. It is because of a combination of several UI changes that were first demonstrated by Google Chrome. It gets rid of the menu bar altogether and instead places the menu options in a concentrated menu on the right.

 

Internet Explorer 9, however, goes one step ahead of Chrome and places the tab bar in the same row as the address/search bar, thus saving an extra row. This does have its disadvantages, which are quickly apparent when the tabs start piling on but those who indulge only in light browsing won't really be bothered by them.

One good thing about the release candidate is that it allows you to place the tabs in a separate row below the address bar. We noticed that while the browser UI doesn't look nearly as attractive once you do that, it feels less cramped if you happen to have a lot of tabs open all the time.

 

Microsoft has also removed the status bar from the bottom, although it can be enabled from the menu. Instead you get a floating status bar like the one in Chrome, the displays the URL when you hover over a link.

The new tab page in Internet Explorer 9 now shows the most visited sites, just like in Chrome and Safari. Unfortunately, you cannot pin sites the way you can in either of the browser nor can you add your own sites the way you can in Opera. You can hide the sites but then you get ten empty windows - which looks weird. There is a suggested sites feature which, when enabled, shows you sites that you might like based on your browsing history. You can also reopen last session instantly or activate the InPrivate browsing mode, which first debuted with Internet Explorer 8.

Unfortunately, even though the tab page is pretty good, you cannot set it appear when you start the browser. For some odd reason, the first page can only be the homepage, which you can leave blank if you like. It would be nice to have the most visited sites when you start the browser.

 

Above the shiny exterior of the new Internet Explorer 9, if you dig down to the settings menu, you would notice that it has hardly changed since Internet Explorer 6. There isn't anything terribly wrong with it, but since they have changed every other aspect of the UI, a new settings menu would have been welcome as well. Even the right control menu is the same, which still has the "Open" on top, which is unnecessary as you could easily just left click the link instead of right clicking and then selecting Open.

vIa:Tech tree

Get the app to view your profile video !!!

HOW TO: Turn Your Facebook Profile 

Photo Into a Video !!!

Some Facebook users — myself formerly among them — are obsessive profile tweakers. We edit our list of interests. We reorganize our photo albums and experiment with awesome profile photo hacks. We weigh carefully whether we want to “Like” this Page or that, because we wonder how that information will be inferred. And we’re always just a little bit, well, bored with our profiles.

Enter FlipYourProfile, a new Facebook app slash browser plugin that allows you to replace your profile photo with a video. That’s right. You no longer have to have a boring still image in your profile photo box. You can have a moving, breathing, sound-generating profile video on loop.

The app was built by Cisco and DDB Singapore as a way of promoting the former’s line of Flip video cameras.

The application has two catches: First, only those who have the plugin installed will be able to see your video, otherwise they’ll just see your regular Facebook profile photo. Thus, if you want your friends to see your new profile video, you’ll need to persuade them to install it (and perhaps upload a video to their own profiles as well). Secondly, an ad saying, “Amazing! You can post videos on your Facebook profile. Get the app to view my profile vid,”will be automatically posted to your wall should you decide to upload a video, which is rather annoying.

Still interested ?? Follow these four steps to upload your own Facebook profile video.

1. Go to facebook.com/FlipSG and download the browser plugin for Chrome, Safari, Firefox or IE.
2. Restart your browser.
3. Connect your profile with the app.
4. Shoot and send video by e-mailing a video from your Flip Video cam to me@flipyourprofile.com, or by using the Profile Maker to shoot a video using your webcam or to upload an existing video (less than 10MB, .flv, .mp4, h.264 only).*

*Note: If you’re using, for example, your iPhone to shoot video, you’ll need to use a free file converter like Get Miro to convert your .mov file to one of the compatible formats. You should also shoot your video in horizontal mode; otherwise, it will appear sideways on your profile.

Visit Flip your profile

Via (MASHABLE)

Cyber Police to Monitor Internet for Hate Pages

Government body to moderate the removal of anti-social content from social networking sites

Hot on the heels of the Dr. Ambedkar Facebook hate page related riots in Mumbai and subsequent removal of the pages, the cyber police of the country have taken it upon themselves to moderate the vast array of content that goes up on popular social networking sites for such content. Daily newspaper DNA talked of The Mumbai Police and some IT experts will patrol websites and if found, that anti-social content will be forwarded to the India Computer Emergency Response Team (or ICERT). This agency will then communicate with the social networking site, requesting them to pull down the content and even help trace the wrong-doers.

Now that is one big task to pull off according to me, as you have millions of users creating umpteen number of 'groups' or 'pages' on the Internet. But this shows how seriously we take what goes on the Internet these days, seeing how a single page can enrage people to riot in the real world, causing damage to public property.

The question is -- should we even take online groups or pages like these so seriously? Should we bother spending time and resources in tracking down these mischief mongers? What do you think? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Mobile Entertainment Growth and 3G

Entertainment through mobile phones have been present since the time when mobile handsets were equipped with monotone ringtones and the user had the ability to personalise them. Today mobile entertainment have evolved by leaps and bounds. Current generation premium handsets are equipped to perform as a digitalcamera, personal media player and a portable internet device.

India, although boasts of 585 million subscribers, still uses mobile phones primarily for voice calls. With spiraling voice call rates, it is no surprise that India along with Brazil are the countries with lowest ARPU’s in the mobile wireless communications sector[1]. Therefore it is of critical importance that VAS (Value Added Services) market is monetised.[2]

The VAS market in India contributed to 7% of the total revenues for the mobile operators in 2006. It was $679 million at the end of 2006 with non voice revenues increasing every year.[2] In 2009, the VAS market contributed Rs 6000 crore accounting to 10% of the operators revenue. The figure is predicted to go up by 18% by the end of 2010.[3]

A pattern regarding the growth of mobile entertainment can be derived from the following data:

VAS Performance- 2005[2]

VAS Performance- 2006[2]

VAS Performance- 2009[1]

The most noticeable trend is the shift in the SMS usage by the mobile consumers. The year 2005 had 80% of VAS being used for SMS (P2P,A2P P2A), 2006 had 55% and 2009 has 49% of the VAS being used for SMS. This phenomenon is due to consumers engaging other VAS products such as CRBT, Games, Email and Data. CRBT’s has had an appreciable rise in terms of percentage consumption. 13%, 35%,49% for the year’s 2005, 2006, 2009 respectively.  Another area of promising growth on the VAS front is data. Email, data and GPRS usage has grown over the years. From an insignificant 1.5% in 2005 and 2006, GPRS has grown to a significant 8% in 2009. Games had a noticeable rise from 1% in 2005 to 3% in 2006. The above figures indicate the consumer’s deflection from the voice model to more data oriented applications.

Data and Voice Break up[2]

The above bar graph indicates the penetration of VAS in the Indian market. Although the growth has been gradual, the VAS intake may go up with the introduction of 3G. According to Mr. Pankaj Sethi, Tata Teleservices, Data services have been contributing to 10% of the VAS market. With 3G, the data consumption could go up. Pricing is also important as India is a price sensitive market.

Currently the EVAS (Entertainment VAS) has been contributing in the fashion as stated below : [1]

The Hindi film industry is the biggest driver as far as EVAS is concerned, followed by regional content, cricket and devotional.

The influence of 3G on the mobile entertainment growth could be accurately studied by analysing the pre 3G and the post 3G scenarios. Unfortunately 3G is yet to be fully functional in the country. Although this is a limitation, few logical predictions can be made about the changes in VAS and EVAS with the introduction of 3G.

• There is a fair chance that data usage would significantly increase. This means that the consumer would be able to stream audio – video content whenever he or she wishes to. BSNL, currently in its 3G offering facilitates the user to watch television content (ex: reality shows) on mobile phone.
• With adequate data bandwidth available, the content creators may not hesitate to invest in made-for-mobile content. These are content that are specifically designed and produced to be accessed on a mobile screen. A current example for made-for-mobile content is Airtel Talkies which provides audio clips of hindi films for its subscribers.
• SMS’s are one of the mediums to  facilitate access to content in mobile phones.  Provided the right pricing, there is a major possibility of SMS’s contributing less in the VAS revenue mix when 3G is established. We may ape the ‘American model’ wherein Emails are use over SMS’s for accessing content as well as text communication.
• A major hindrance to accessing content on mobile phones are the mobile devices themselves. As per Mr. Subash Ghosh,UTV New Media, of the 500 million subscribers in the country, only 10%- 12% have high end handsets. Still a smaller percentage above use data services. On the other hand, Mr Pankaj Sethi believes that this issue would be bypassed as OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) like Micromax have come up with 3G enabled mobile device priced conservatively at Rs 3500- Rs 4000.

Even before the introduction of 3G, there was a pattern change happening in the VAS market. With low voice call rates and lower ARPU’s, the fraternity has to think of alternate ways to generate income. This makes VAS and EVAS a logical choice. As per my opinion the VAS market in India will continue to evolve gradually with newer and innovative products/services coming in. 3G may will make the process quicker.

References.

1.  Mr. Pankaj Sethi, Tata Teleservices

2. Future of Mobile VAS in India, December 2007, Mr.Mohit S Gundecha, Prof Tom Kosnik, Stanford University/ Mr. Kunal Bajaj, BDA India

3. Mobile VAS summit 2009 Report, September 23- 24, 2009

4. Mr. Subash Ghosh, UTV New Media

Chrome Extensions “Capture music while surfing”!!!

Want to download your favorite tracks while surfing through music sites? Well here’s an option for all chrome users to download their all time favorite music tracks using “ExtensionFM” the new add-on from google chrome.The ExtensionFM or the ExFM is the latest and simple addon from google that helps you capture your favorite audio tracks and add them to your playlist.

This extension once installed will require you to register yourselves using an account option that helps to keep the library through the sessions. There is also an option of attaching a profile named Last.fm that enables scrolling through tracks that have already been heard.

This new extension allows music to be accessed from almost anywhere without having to worry about downloading it.   All the songs that have been added to the playlist can be shared with your friends on  Facebook,Twitter,Tumblr and LastFM.

If you have no clue from where to begin you can access the facebook fan page on Facebook ExtensionFM which updates a bunch of music sites from where you can add songs to your playlist.

To install ExFM on Google Chrome just go to THIS page and click on Install to add ExFM as an extension.