Tech Paparazzi : Steve Jobs and Eric Schimdt spotted together

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Monik

Gizmodo, reported pictures of two of the most prominent people from worlds largest tech arsenals, Steve Jobs and Eric Schimdt seated together at Calafia in the Town and Country shopping center in Palo Alto. The Cafe where they were spotted is owned by ex-Google chef Charlie Ayers.

Two lines overheard by the photographer,

They’re going to see it all eventually so who cares how they get it

He alsoclaimed that these talks revolved around web content. This could possibly have some relation with the recent news of Apple’s route into the Mobile Advertising Business, but then both come from companies [Steve - Apple CEO and Eric - Google CEO] who’s relations have been deteriorating abominably so what could be the core matter of the talk?

Folks at Gizmodo did a complete analysis of their body posture (wow, you seriously need that?) and it finally lands onto the fact that, Eric Schimdt is scared of Steve Jobs!

Mobile Advertising to be reincarnated with Apple’s iAd?

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Monik

If the next big thing is, it’s got to be Mobile Advertising. If analysis’s seem correct then it’s lucid that the Cell Phone markets, especially the smartphone markets in terms of browsing and downloading content have grown 10 folds in the past 3 years.

Apple too has contributed to the growth of the market immensely with the so called “revolutionary product”, the iPhone. Along with the iPhone came the App Store which has also played crucial role in promoting Application sales and the growth of the market and it now holds more than 150,000 apps. This created opportunities for advertisers to boast their products but till now there wasn’t a proposed model for it, all ideas sprinkled and few organizations using them.

Google acquired AdMob for a price of 750 Million Dollars to get into the Mobile advertising arena starting with a already powerful contender in the game. Followed by that we had the news hitting blogs, Apple had acquired Quattro Wireless for 300 Million Dollars which was also a tough challenger in the advertising market. Smells like growing fight, Google and Apple?

Steve Jobs brazenly once during a townhall meet with his companies employees, that they [Google] got into our [Apple] business of cell phones, we [Apple] did not get into their [Google] search business. Steve pointed out Google’s business strategies more or less could make Apple bankrupt if Google continued. What Now? Now it’s Apple’s turn and this time they decide to join in the advertising bandwagon and challenge the biggest contenders in the business, Google.

MediaPost wrote that Apple could be possible launching a new type of a Mobile Advertising Platform called “iAd” (signifies the i used in almost all major Apple products) and that this platform has been purely built upon the acquired platform, Quattro. The announcement of this platform will be coming up on 7th April, some four days after iPad starts shipping. Apple’s lined up all explosives, ha?

The platform will be unveiled at Madison Avenue (somewhat the heart of advertising industry), and invasion of Apple there, surely means direct shot at Google. Apart from Mobile Advertising, i think Apple would be more interested in portable advertising which means, iPad is also included. Most companies fail to have their ideas spread and that is where they lose, but in this case Apple has already got a fair amount of means to propagate its platform with couple of millions of iPhone being used and iPod Touches, 150,000 and more apps and the iPad coming which already crossed 200,000 pre orders by now. These figures mean that Apple has got a hell lot of users there and reaching them won’t be difficult for them.

Almost all the top companies of the valley would be finding ways to get into the app store somehow or the other to advertise. Apple might be the one opening floodgates to them and prove to be another huge success.

Viacom-Youtube’s $1 Billion legal mumbo jumbo

Posted on March 21, 2010 by Monik

One of the biggest media conglomerate, Viacom’s battle with the largest video sharing website, Youtube for a $1 Billion Lawsuit went public this thursday at the Federal Court.

The whole case revolves around the arguments made by both the Giants and most exigent part constituent of the case is the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998).

The DMCA policy gives refuge to the Content and Service Providers from the Copyright acts as long as the Providers are unaware of fact that infringing content is being uploaded and stored and that the Provider’s revenues are not being accelerated because of such activities.

Viacom states that Youtube is defying the DMCA Policy, simply because Youtube’s founders and it’s parent conglomerate’s conduct is not in accordance with the conditions required for DMCA to provide shelter to a service provider. On the other hand, we have Google with a 100 page court file stating that Viacom’s arguments are counterfactual and that it completely agrees with the DMCA policy.

What Viacom Says

The Media giant states that Youtube is not in consonance with DMCA policy as it’s founders were aware of such infringements taking place (Strike 1), Google was also aware of this certainty before acquiring the young startup for a massive amount of $1.65 Billion (Strike 2) and conclusively when they questioned Youtube and Google employees, no one seems to remember anything of such being talked about in the company (Strike 3).

What Google Says

Only service remaining to be released by Google is surely Google Law, to fight all the lawsuits pending against the Big “G”. Currently Google is facing lawsuits all over the globe for Privacy Breaches for two of the biggest service, Google Maps and Google Buzz. This time it could turn nasty with Viacom. Google argues by saying that video shows were itself uploaded by third party companies on behalf of Viacom and then it is treating with the Video Sharing website with DMCA takedown requests.

The matter is not as lucid as it appears to us. Firstly, both the companies have arguments which overlap and thus making the matter even more difficult for the judge to provide a judgement in favor of any of the parties. Viacom takes a direct shot stating that Youtube Founders, specifically Jawed Karim had the knowledge about the infringing content being uploaded during the early days of YouTube during the dawn of the startup in 2005 and Viacom provides a part of the mail conversation between Jawed and the co-founder Steve Chen.

‘Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.’ ~ Steve Chen

Viacom accuses that the founders were even sure that 80% of their web traffic in the earlier days was dependent on the pirated videos and so they also used it as a method to increase financial gains via Advertising, which actually did not happen though.

Google argues that clearly pointing out that Viacom itself was involved in uploading the infringing videos and that it had hired marketing companies to do that task on their behalf because YouTube was an effective appliance for Promotion of Viacom’s shows. Google in it’s court file also includes that there is now way for the website to find if the content uploaded was authorized or not.

This case could also decide the future of video sharing, and finally prove who is responsible for taking care of the Copyrights, the Service providers or the Content creators?

Image Credit

First iPad Commercial on TV [Video]

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Monik

As we approach iPads official delivery date, April 3 Apple starts gearing up with it’s advertisements flooding everywhere including TV after the internet.

Apple never fails to deem its product as a “cool gadget” on TV as that’s what most non-techie’s call it. It looks nice, has multitouch and many applications. That’s what all the non-geeks know because that’s what Apple is showing in it’s ads.

History has proven that Apple rocks all the TV commercials, *cough* Apple has loads of Anti-Windows Commercials airing too *cough*, and Apple does it again.

Here’s a neat commercial which gives a flow of features available in the iPad (though it doesn’t tell you which features are missing which it should according to Consumer Rights) and teaches you how to position your iPad while using it Video after break.

When Opera Comes to iPhone : Six times faster internet browsing

Posted on March 14, 2010 by Monik

Guys, here’s the break. Opera Software ASA, the company which made the browser Opera recently revealed some news that they would be submitting their Browser App for iPhone for approval to the App Store in coming weeks.

If the App ever gets approved then users would be able to experience internet six times faster than the current speed offered by iPhone’s default internet browsing tool, Safari. At SXSW (South by Southwest interactive event) Opera Spokesperson, Thomas Ford gave a glance of the app which is in development to CNN.

Ford said that the App will be submitted for approval in few weeks. Now the biggest question, will Apple ever approve this App? We had a long discussion on this same issue when a rumor had just struck that Mozilla was also making a browser app for iPhone. Readers said that Apple won’t ever approve such an application because the story would end with Apple getting a new competitor for it’s default browser, Safari on it’s device itself. We also referred to the Apple’s submission guidelines which are in favor of the Cupertino Based Company and say that no app will be accepted if it duplicates iPhone’s existing function.

Opera Mini was publicized, a “lot” and seriously a “lot” for a unapproved app. When asked why, the company said this would force Apple to have no choice but to submit to the will of consumers and approve the app, which seems unlikely to happen especially after the iPad launch which left millions of potential consumers unsatisfied and maybe if you remember the Google Voice App Case too!

Opera argues that Mini and Safari are different, saying Opera Mini is quicker at downloading regular Internet pages while Safari’s design makes it more apt for more data-intensive functions, such as editing a Google document.

Opera’s process involves running Web pages through their servers, stripping away all but the most essential data so the pages load quickly.

If Apple disapproves this App, which i think it mostly will, it will end up losing another friend and having it join the alliance of the existing enemies and to name a few, Google and Adobe

Google is the Hungry Beast : Don’t be Evil, Google?

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Monik

Google has seen immense growth, poking it’s nose in each and every sector, healthcare, biotech, cleantech, software, news delivery, books and nearly everything.

Google is very hungry. It wants to capture everything that belongs to you, your entire digital life. From Email to health records online, from entertainment to books, Google wants to know everything about you. It wants to track your online activity and store it for 18 months. Google Buzz breached privacy also, Google Maps has been under a lawsuit for containing unwanted images of people vomiting and naked children.

Google wants to know everything about you. But why? 97% of Google’s revenue is sourced from Advertising and Google wants to know more about you so that it can target you with right types of ads and get more conversions and high numbers on it’s yearly revenue score cards.

90,000 iPads sold by Apple within first six hours

Posted on March 13, 2010 by Monik

Apple’s marketing campaigns, confidential games and rumor mill publicity payed off. Apple’s online store opened floodgates last nights allowing pre-orders and reservations for their iPads and what we had expected, did happen.

Despite people talking about the missing camera and multi-tasking, Apple sold well over 90,000 iPads in the first six hours of pre-orders which they will ship in April.

Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity Board have rolled out their own sales figures based on their calculations and estimates. They claim to have found out Apple’s sales figures, by putting down their order numbers on Google Spreadsheet. By 11:05 a.m. ET they had 15 confirmations with estimates as high as 74,000 products sold but we are not sure if these are just iPad sales or they start from 0 or not.

“51,000 orders in two hours,” announced Victor Castroll shortly after noon. He’s an analyst with Valcent Financial Group and an AAPL Sanity member who, with the blogger-analyst who calls himself deagol, has been monitoring the spreadsheet.

At 4:21 p.m E.T Victor shoots a update, “We’re at about 91k in six hours”. If this is true, then it’s Party time for Mr. Jobs. Frankly, the not-so-remarkable product had received just too much buzz and they did successfully capture as many as consumers in so less time, if the reports are found to be true.

We still strongly believe that this isn’t the success which a company would want, atleast not Apple. They would be concerned with User Satisfaction more (you can obviously say that looking at Apple’s Branding techniques) and so the real reports of Pass or Fail will be coming after the iPads are shipped and people have used them.

[Via Cnn Money]

Twitter into URL shortening business too?

Posted on March 10, 2010 by Monik

Bit.ly, Is.gd, Tr.im, Hop.im and a lot more. Goo.gl too. Now? It’s Finally Twitter! Twitter, the massive microblogging platform the popularized the whole concept of URL shortening starting with TinyUrl.com because people wanted to share URLs which were well above 140 Characters and so they needed something to shrink it and they also need some space to describe it, so this gave birth to URL Shrinking revolution.

But this recently has taken a turn and as been contributing to a lot of Spam and phishing taking place on Twitter via Direct Messages because the biggest advantage of having a shortened URL is that you can hide the destination location of the url so people can be fooled easily by describing the link with some text giving a misinterpretation of what it would lead to while, it leads to some poker or a warez website which is a scam or something.

From now, all the direct messages and Email Notifications from Twitter will have links shortened from Twt.tl and this will help Twitter monitor URLs and prevent such fishing attacks. Here’s a excerpt from their blog post,

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

It surely points that in no time, we will have all replies with twt.tl links too, who knows?

Etiole

Dream Tech. Live Tech.

Monthly Archives: March 2010