Google app to trace persons missing in floods

MUMBAI: Search engine giant Google has launched an application "Person Finder" to offer information on missing people in flood-affected areas in the country, including Uttarakhand.

Google Person Finder is a web application that allows individuals to post and search for the status of relatives or friends affected by a disaster, Google said in a blogpost.

"Since last week, the state of Uttarakhand in India has been grappling with severe floods. Given that most of these areas in the state are highly inaccessible with intermittent communication, Google Crisis team bring you the Person Finder," the blog post by Jayanth Mysore, Google APAC Senior Product Manager, said.

The tool can help trace the missing people in flood-affected regions of Uttarakhand and is available in Hindi and English, it added. All data entered into Google Person Finder is available to the public and searchable by anyone. The programme also lets press agencies, non-governmental agencies and others contribute to the database and receive updates by using the Person Finder API based on the PFIF open standard.

Flash floods and landslides triggered by the monsoon fury left over 150 dead in calamity-hit Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, while thousands of pilgrims and locals are being rescued from various districts, including Rudraprayag and Chamoli.

50,000 people are still said to be stranded in various parts of Uttarakhand that was hit by cloudburst and floods. The calamity has ruined thousands of homes, rest houses and buildings.

The official death toll still stood at 150, but chief minister Vijay Bahuguna said the casualties could run into several hundreds which will be known only when areas become accessible and water recedes.

The state government's disaster mitigation and management centre had in the morning said that the causalities could run into thousands with about 90 dharamshalas (rest houses for pilgrims) swept away in the flash floods.

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Twitter exec joins White House tech office

WASHINGTON: The White House says Twitter executive Nicole Wong is joining the Obama administration as the deputy US chief technology officer.

Wong was Twitter's legal director for products. She has also been a vice president at Google.

Rick Weiss is spokesman for the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. He says Wong's portfolio will include the Internet, technology and privacy. He says she has extensive expertise on those topics and has a reputation for fairness.

As a Google attorney, Wong testified before Congress about how the Internet company protects users' privacy.

Internet privacy has become a major issue for the White House following revelations about the government's massive collection of data from phone and Internet companies.

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Pakistan to filter content on internet

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is implementing 'Netsweeper' technology for purposes of political and social filtering on the internet.

The Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, has revealed that Canada-based Netsweeper internet filtering products have been installed at the national level in Pakistan.

According to the Express Tribune, the technology is being implemented in Pakistan for political and social filtering, including websites of secessionist movements, sensitive religious topics and independent media.

Pakistan is not only using Netsweeper technology to block websites, it is also using local ISPs and other less transparent methods such as DNS tampering to block content.

The report concluded that altogether, the evidence suggests that Netsweeper filtering devices are being actively used to censor content on an ISP-wide level in Pakistan, the report added.

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Labour strike at Nokia Siemens's Chennai plant

CHENNAI: A section of employees of telecom equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks are on strike at its Chennai factory pressing for various demands, including increase in wages.

The employees backed by the CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions) have been on strike since June 7 demanding union recognition, reinstatement of some suspended workers and wage hike, CITU office-bearers said.

While the CITU claimed that about 120 employees were on strike, the company maintained only 60 stayed away from the work.

A company spokesperson said, "We are working with employee representatives to resolve the issue."

According to a CITU official, the company had suspended 72 employees and agreed to reinstate 67 of them after several rounds of talks.

"We are asking for reinstatement of the remaining five employees," a CITU representative said.

The plant, which manufactures and distributes mobile communications infrastructure, has about 700 employees, including contract workers.

"We are hoping that they would take back the suspended employees. If there is no amicable situation, we will decide on our future course of action by Monday," the union representative said.
The company spokesperson said that management hopes to reach at a positive solution soon.

"We would urge all (employees) to treat this in a rational and measured manner and abide by law and order. We assure employees of our factory all support. We will ensure their safety and provide conducive work environment and try to run the factory operations as usual," the spokesperson said.

Nokia Siemens Networks in October 2008 inaugurated the facility at Oragadam with an investment of Rs 300 crore spread over a three-year period.

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Michael Dell urges investors to support buyout bid

Dell's billionaire founder Michael Dell said he would oppose any leveraged recapitalization of the company and called on stakeholders to vote in favour of his buyout offer, ahead of a shareholder meeting next month.

Dell argued his case in a presentation filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, saying that keeping any part of the company public while it transformed itself would hurt Dell's stock price.

That in turn would threaten customer perception and make it more difficult to keep employees, he said.

If his buyout proposal fails to sway shareholders, he reiterated that he will remain with the company but said he "will also oppose the kind of imprudent leveraged recapitalization that has been suggested by certain other parties."

Activist shareholder Carl Icahn, who says Dell's offer undervalues the company, on Tuesday promised shareholders that the company would buy back up to $16 billion of stock if they joined his campaign to stop the computer maker from going private.

Dell could fund a tender offer for its own shares with debt financing, Icahn said.

Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake want shareholders to accept a $24.4 billion bid, aimed at taking the company private while it transform itself into a technology consultant for large companies, along the lines of International Business Machines.

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What is forcing Indian mobile app developers to change biz models

HYDERABAD: Soaring sales of mobile phones and their rising prominence as personal entertainment devices are forcing game developers in India to change tacks and shift the focus of their business models away from the personal computer.

Gamers switching to mobiles are buying fewer games for their PC, hitting developers hard. Also, the fact that most games on offer through applications for mobiles are free for the initial stages— known as the "freemium model"— is adding to the hassles of these game developers.

As a result, many developers are now converting their existing development technology formats to suit mobile gaming platforms.

"Currently, we have a portfolio of 70% paid games and 30% freemium," said Reliance Entertainment Digital's chief executive Manish Agarwal.

"But every game from now would be 'freemium' and we will take this ratio to 100% in the coming years." In all, Reliance Entertainment—part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group—has some 600-odd games in its portfolio now.

But the segment is likely to expand rapidly. A KPMG-FICCI study forecasts the Indian gaming market—currently at aroundRs 1,500 crore—to nearly triple toRs 4,200 crore by 2017. The mobile gaming segment will more than triple to Rs 1,800 crore, from Rs 560 crore now, in the same period. Many game developers are now forging alliances with app stores of mobile handset manufacturers and operating system developers, including Google Play, Samsung Apps and Nokia's Ovi.

Gartner's principal research analyst Shalini Verma said even developers of AAA games—those that are high-budget and generally developed by a large studio—are exploring the freemium model.

Also, unfavourable conditions have forced many game developers to shrink operations. For instance, while French firm Gameloft closed its Indian operations in January, 7Seas Entertainment shut its US subsidiary this April.

Disney UTV's chief operations officer Sameer Ganapathy said the "freemium model" gives users more freedom. "The model is viable and lets users make a decision on whether they would like to pay for the game or not. India, which is a price sensitive market, is apt for this business model."

Game developers said they are likely to earn more from the "freemium model" in future than the existing model of selling games through CDs and DVDs.

"There are few challenges in the Indian market. While less than 1% of our users are ready to pay for use, it is about 7-8% in the developed world," said Reliance Entertainment's Agarwal, who pointed out that average spending on games per month in the US is at $8 (about Rs 470).

Rajiv Vaishnav, vice-president at software industry grouping Nasscom, said while "monetisation on mobile apps is a challenge for gaming companies, good quality games are finding eyeballs."

India currently has over 900 million mobile devices, comprising some 350-400 million devices connected to the internet and about 150 million smart phones.

According to the recent Flurry fiveyear report, games top the list of most-used apps and customers spent nearly 32% of their time on them on Android and iOS phones.

Disney UTV's Ganapathy said this has created "virtuous circle" in which the size of the opportunity attracts developers and the huge number of games attracts even more users to the platform.

Currently, hosts like Google Play get 50-60% of the revenues from the advertisements while the balance goes to the game developers. Though there are challenges like tracking the flow of advertisements in the games, the developers hope to save at least 10-15% of marketing costs by adopting the "freemium model".

L Maruti Shankar, nanaging director of 7Seas Entertainment, said his company was in the process of converting a few online games into mobile games. "We will be focusing more on mobile games now onwards." He, however, added that though "freemium games" offered cost savings on marketing, "converting online games to mobile games involves additional costs of 20-30%."

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Samsung Galaxy Note III leaked image surfaces online

NEW DELHI: Samsung has been releasing smartphones at a rapid pace in the past couple of months. Now, a new image of the company's Galaxy Note III phablet has emerged on the internet, just a day ahead of Samsung's June 20 event in London. The handset is an update to the Galaxy Note II smartphone and is slated to be launched at IFA 2013 in August.

The image has been leaked by a Twitter user @PunkPanda, who tweeted that the phone has a 6-inch screen. He also wrote that the display accounts for 84% of the front's footprint, meaning very thin bezels on all sides of the screen. The image shows a Galaxy Note III with big screen and curved edge.

Recently, a prototype of Samsung Galaxy Note III also made its way to the internet. It is rumoured that this phone will have a 5.99-inch SuperAMOLED screen with 1920x1080p resolution, 13MP camera with optical image stabilization and support S Pen stylus. Antutu benchmark records show the score of a Galaxy Note III with 1.6GHz quad-core processor and running on the unannounced Android 4.3 mobile operating system.

Samsung is scheduled to host an event for its Android-powered Galaxy range of devices as well as Ativ series of gadgets, which run on Windows OS. The company has launched a total of 12 devices globally since April this year, including the flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone and tablets running on Intel chips.

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Review: Sony Xperia Tablet Z

NEw DELHI: Sony has not focused on the tablet market the way it is doing on smartphones. In the last few years, it made some Android tablets - part of the Tablet S and Tablet P series - but did not push them like the Xperia phones. With Xperia Tablet Z, this is changing.

With Tablet Z, Sony has a better idea of what it is doing in the market. Unlike the original Tablet S that had an asymmetric shape, the design of Tablet Z is simple and mainstream, which should appeal to more consumers. The hardware, at least on paper, looks good. There are hundreds of Android tablets made by tens of companies. To stand out in this crowd, Sony has given Tablet Z some special treatment. Currently, this is the lightest and thinnest 10-inch tablet you can buy anywhere in the world.

In terms of specifications and features, Tablet Z looks as good as any other Android tablet, and we can tell you that it provides an experience that is reliable. Yet, there is the matter of price. With an MRP of Rs 46,990 it is one of the most expensive tablets launched in India.

Does it offer to enough to justify the premium Sony is seeking over tablets sold by other companies? No, it doesn't. But the tablet does have a few features that you will not get in any other device. Are these features important? Read on and decide...

Slimmest one
Despite sporting a 10-inch screen (10.1 inches to be precise), Tablet Z is incredible to hold in hands. With a 6.9mm thickness, it is slimmer than even smartphones. The tablet uses a 1200 x 1920 pixels screen and hence has an aspect ratio of 16:10. This makes it rectangular, unlike iPad that has a more square shape and an aspect ratio of 4:3. The shape and thickness make Tablet Z comfortable to hold. You can use it for long durations whether you are working on an office document by holding the tablet in portrait mode or watching a film by keeping it in landscape mode.

Talking of using Tablet Z for long durations, it is difficult to ignore the tablet's weight, or rather lack of it. At 495 grams it is very light for its size. The low weight is undoubtedly the result of material that Sony has used in building the shell of the tablet. Unlike iPad, which uses an aluminum shell, Tablet Z has been built using plastic. Fortunately, the back cover, which can not be opened by a user, has been given a coat of soft rubber, which makes it impervious to fingerprints and gives the device a premium feel.

Other than the weight and thickness, Tablet Z also scores over its competitors when it comes to the ruggedness. It is a water-proof and dust-proof device. The headphone jack, microUSB port, microsim and microSD card slots are covered with flaps that seal them. Yes, you can use Tablet Z in rain or wash the dust of its screen when it gets dirty.

The only area where the design seems lacking is the placement of speakers. When the tablet is held in landscape mode, the speakers, which are placed on the bottom of left and right sides, are covered under hands. This muffles them.

Screen is a very important component of a tablet. Tablet Z has a screen that is more vibrant and has much better viewing angles compared to the one found on Xperia Z phone. But when compared to the screens on tablets like iPad 4 and Nexus 7, we found it lacking. For example, colours look better on the iPad. Brightness is another issue. In our use, we found that in well-lit conditions the brightness and contrast on the Tablet Z screen was less than satisfactory.

Customized Android experience
Given the powerful hardware under-the-hood, Tablet Z performs well when you use it. Apps open in seconds, web browsing is smooth, most of the FullHD videos play nicely, and demanding games like Real Racing run well. Unfortunately, there is a hint of lag from time to time in user interface (UI), especially while opening the app drawer or swiping between home screens. It is not a deal breaker - even on Samsung Galaxy tablets similar lag is visible - but the level of UI smoothness doesn't match what Nexus 7, Google's official Android tablet offers.

This lag seems to be the result of UI customization that Sony has put on the tablet. The device is powered by Android 4.1 but to make it more suitable for the large screen, Sony has added a few UI elements. Between the onscreen navigation button and the notification centre on the bottom bar, Sony has added two onscreen buttons. One gives a user access to a remote control that uses the infra-red sensor in the tablet to control a TV, set-top box or digital media player through the tablet. Clicking on the second button gives access to mini apps like Calculator, Recorder and Notes that can be opened on top of any primary app for easy multitasking.

Sony has also added a bar on the top of the screen. This gives users access to the app drawer, where all installed apps can be viewed and managed, as well as allows them to add four apps for quick launch.

Both quick launch and mini apps are good ideas and help users do things in a better way on the tablet.

The device has two cameras - a 2.2MP shooter above the screen and 8MP camera on the back. Both can shoot videos in FullHD. For video chats we found that the front camera produced detailed and clear feed. The primary camera, however, doesn't live up to its promise. Even in good light, it takes images that are average at best. The photos lack details and aren't very sharp. In low light, the camera produces images that are full of noise (grain) and are unusable. That said, clicking photos with a large device like Tablet Z doesn't feel natural and you will like to use primary camera only occasionally.

The battery life of Tablet Z is average. When charged 100% the battery lasts around 10 hours when the tablet is used primarily for web browsing, social networking, emails, and a bit gaming and video watching.

Should you buy it?
No. As we said earlier, Tablet Z is too expensive for what it does. You can get iPad 4, which has access to better apps, has better battery life and has a much better screen, for almost Rs 15,000 less. The only important feature you would miss out with iPad is ability to add extra storage through a microSD card.

If you prefer Android, we suggest Nexus 7 with 3G connectivity and 32GB internal storage. That sells for around Rs 23,000, which is half of the price of Tablet Z. Though Nexus 7 has a smaller screen.

There is only one particular scenario where Tablet Z makes sense. If for some reason you want a tablet that you can use during rain or in shower or a beach, Xperia Tablet Z is the perfect choice. It is pricey but if you want to use a tablet while you are in a swimming pool, this is the best option.

Specs: *10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen (1200x1920 pixels)
*1.5GHz quad-core processor with Adreno 320 GPU
*2GB RAM
*Water-proof and dust-proof design
*16GB internal memory
*Support for microSD card up to 64GB
*8 megapixel rear camera
*1080p FullHD video recording
*2.2 MP front camera with 1080p HD video recording
*3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microUSB, NFC, Infrared sensor
*6000mAH battery that lasts around 10 hours of average usage
*Android 4.1

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Idea slashes 2G data tariff by 90%

NEW DELHI: Following in the footsteps of market leaders Vodafone and Airtel, the third largest mobile operator Idea Cellular, has also revised data tariff in eight circles across the country.

Idea users can now access data for 2 paise per 10 KB which the company claims is a 90% reduction in the existing tariff of 2 paise per KB.

Idea's new data tariff will be applicable starting July 1st, 2013 and the offer will be valid for 90 days. Idea users in the eight circles of - Tamil Nadu & Chennai, Karnataka, Kolkata, West Bengal, Assam, North East, Bihar, and Orissa - will benefit from the revised data tariff on both, prepaid and postpaid 2G plans.

"Idea has continuously focused at growing data penetration in tier 2 & 3 markets. These 8 circles comprise of 1/3rd of the total mobile users in India, with a large number of users waiting to board the mobile broadband wagon. Availability of data at such affordable rates will usher in a new wave of mobile data growth in the country", said Ambrish Jain, deputy managing director, Idea Cellular.

The revised tariff is applicable on pay-as-you-go basis for all users using 2G data.

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Google: 24 million women in India use internet daily

MUMBAI: About 40 per cent of the 150 million internet users in the country are women and close to 24 million of them log in everyday to check emails, interact on social networking sites and shop online, according to a study conducted by search giant Google.

"Around 60 million women in India are now online and use the Internet to manage their day-to-day life. With easy access to internet at homes, cyber cafes, offices and growing adoption of smart phones, Internet is being used by women for a variety of things," Google India VP and Managing Director Rajan Anandan told reporters here.

The study also found that women who are online are relatively more affluent and younger, he added.

The study, which also includes internal data from Google and a survey of 1,000 women, found that three out of four women in SEC AB are now online and 75 per cent are in the 15-34 age group with over 24 million women accessing the Internet daily.

In terms of online activity, email, search and social networking topped the list, followed by downloading music, looking for educational content, job search, watching videos and consuming news.

In terms of top searched categories by women on Google, apparels and accessories was the biggest search category followed by food and drink, baby care, hair care, and skin care.

The study found that categories like skin care, hair care, food and drink were the fast growing search categories, with queries coming from mobile phones accounting for almost 25 per cent of the total query volumes in these categories.

According to the research conducted by TNS Australia, more than half of the respondents with access to internet, said net research influenced their decision before finalising a product.

Internet influence also turned out highest for categories like skin care (72 per cent), baby care (69 per cent) and hair care (65 per cent) products.

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