Information Technology World

India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has decided to push ahead with the third-generation (3G) mobile spectrum auction within the current financial year ending March 31, the Financial Express newspaper reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.   The auction was set to begin from Jan. 14, but Telecoms Minister Andimuthu Raja said on Jan. 12 some of the differences with the defense ministry were yet to be resolved and that a new date had not been agreed upon. Media reports have said that the auction had been postponed to the next financial year. The auction would now be conducted in the second half of March, with the entire process compressed into 15 days against the earlier scheduled one-and-a-half months, the report said citing unnamed sources. The government, which is fighting a 16-year high fiscal deficit, is targeting to raise around 350 billion rupees ($7.53 billion) through the auction. It hopes to use the proceeds to partly cut down the fiscal...

As the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, is officially starting today, search giant Google has kept its tradition of commemorating the special event with its doodle – that too in a revolutionary way, breaking its own tradition.   Though Google has commemorated almost all historic events and days, this doodle makes a difference because it breaks the tradition of keeping the logo small so as it does not intrude the white space, which has become sort of trademark for the Google homepage. The latest doodle has a stylized drawing of the opening ceremony as its background, which stretches right the way across the screen like a long ribbon. In the doodle the 'l' in 'Google' is replaced by an Olympic torch and on the left of the doodle is the print of the Olympic rings. And the mood created by the use of pastel shade of blue also perfectly gels with the season of the game – the winter. If winter comes, how can Google doodle be far behind!

Even though the world is said to be slowly recovering from economic crisis that has seen many giants fall, the recession has taken a heavy toll on Silicon Valley, according to a recent report. "There are clear warning signs suggesting Silicon Valley has entered a new phase of uncertainty, and that our competitive standing is at risk," says '2010 Silicon Valley Index', a report by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network. The report said the economic crisis had resulted in 90,000 job losses in the Silicon Valley region alone between the second quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009. Silicon Valley is no longer able to attract the foreign talent which has been its "lifeblood" and funding innovation through locally raised venture capital and public offerings "can no longer be taken as a given," the report said. As per the report, inflows from China and India to the Valley con...

Google Inc said it may create a stand-alone version of its Buzz social networking product but won't separate Buzz from its Gmail service, a linkup that has spurred controversy over privacy. Google, the world's No.1 Internet search engine launched Buzz earlier this week in a bid to tap into the fast-growing social networking market dominated by companies like Facebook and Twitter. Buzz allows users to broadcast messages and share photos and videos with friends and colleagues online, similar to Twitter and Facebook. But unlike those services, Buzz is built directly into Google's Gmail and the product automatically creates each users' social network based on the person's most-frequently emailed contacts. "We have considered, among all the other features that we add to Buzz in the future, to create a stand-alone experience in addition to it being in Gmail," Google spokeswoman Victoria Katsarou told Reuters on Friday. In the days since th...

Apple iPhone, iPod touch Security Patch: What's Fixed    Apple on Tuesday released an updated version of its iPhone OS software for the iPhone and iPod touch. The new version 3.1.3 patches several security holes, provides a few bug fixes and minor enhancements, and is available via iTunes download. The five security fixes are related to CoreAudio, ImageIO, Recovery Mode, and WebKit. The CoreAudio patch prevents "maliciously crafted" MP4 audio files from wreaking havoc, such as terminating programs or running rogue code. The ImageIO fix blocks malicious TIFF images from performing similar voodoo when users view them. The Recovery Mode update prevents someone with physical access to a locked iPhone or iPod touch from bypassing the passcode and accessing your data. It corrects a memory corruption glitch in the handling of a USB control message that allowed the security breach. WebKit gets two patches. One corrects an HTML 5-related problem that may cause mail to load...

Nexus One Gets Multi-touch, but Not Droid Google is finally letting the Nexus One use multi-touch for maps, photo galleries and the Web, but that's of little consolation to owners of Motorola's Droid and T-Mobile's G1. Don't get me wrong, it's great that at least one more Android phone is getting pinch-to-zoom gestures, and it's never been clear why certain phones don't include the feature. Rumor has it Apple requested that Google avoid multi-touch  back when the companies were cozy, but Google may no longer want to comply now that the relationship has soured.   We don't know the terms of the arrangement -- or whether it actually exists - so it's unclear whether Google could ever add multi-touch to older phones. For all we know, there may be issues with the Droid and G1 that preclude Google from releasing a simple update, regardless of whether Apple's involved. Whatever the reason may be, the Droid and the G1 lack mu...

Apple's iPhone Takes a Hit   Apple may be touting the release of its iPhone OS 3.1.3 update this week, but new research shows the iPhone is actually starting to slip when it comes to smartphone market share. The shift is no big surprise -- analysts have been expecting the iPhone to begin losing its stronghold to Android for some time now -- but this is one of the first concrete signs suggesting the trend may actually be upon us. Apple's iPhone Fall The new numbers come from ABI Research, an analytics firm based in New York. ABI measures sales of smartphones from quarter to quarter and works with manufacturers to ensure its data is in line with the companies' own estimates. According to ABI, Apple's iPhone accounted for 18.1 percent of global smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2009. In the fourth quarter, that number dropped to 16.6 percent. The change itself isn't enormous, but what's noteworthy is that, while Apple's sales g...

MSI Targets The Top 10 Slot In The Notebook Market Motherboard manufacturer, Micro Star International (MSI), which entered India market in 2005, wants to be among the top 10 notebook vendors in the country by 2011. To drive this growth, company is putting a lot of thrust on its channels.   The Taiwan-based company recently launched 14 new notebooks and netbooks. The new launches are across five series including high-performance G-series gaming notebooks, the Classic series, the E-series entertainment notebooks, the extra-lightweight X-Slim series and the ultra-thin U-series Wind Netbooks. While the netbook range starts from Rs 19,000, the gaming range, with Intel’s latest Core i7 Quad core CPU, starts from Rs 88,000.   Company’s newly appointed Managing Director for India , Tony Yang, said, “Initially, we will focus on the top 10 cities in the country. We will open exclusive MSI stores in the four metros this year. Our market strategy is two-fold. In ord...

 Dell Pips HP In Notebook Sales In Q4 2009 Dell India has shocked both partners and analysts, with a strong show in the India notebook numbers for Q4 2009, according to market research agency Gartner. For the first time in almost seven years, HP had to surrender their pole position as far as notebook numbers go. According to Gartner, 7,59,412 notebooks were sold during Q4 2009, with Dell clocking an impressive 1,81,852 units, followed by HP with 1,71,200, and Acer being a distant third with 1,10,500. “It has been a strong quarter for Dell, and it’s seems some of their strategies in past have paid rich dividends. We believe Dell has done exceedingly well last quarter in consumer notebook sales, and enterprises have also rallied behind Dell,” said Diptarup Chakraborti, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner Technology and Service Provider Research group. “There was a gap of close to 36,000 units a quarter between HP and Dell, during Q1 2009, and it’s a remarkable turnaround...