Mt. Gox updates website, allows customers to check bitcoin balances

Mt. Gox, a leading bitcoin exchange that late last month filed for bankruptcy protection, has updated its website to allow customers to log in and verify their wallet, or account, balance.

People who purchase a full Office 365 Home Premium subscription - which includes the Outlook email programme, Excel spreadsheet software and PowerPoint presentation tool - will be able to use OneNote functions that are better integrated with other Office programmes and get 20GB of cloud storage.

Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan on February 28, saying it may have lost 850,000 bitcoins - worth around $520 million at current prices - to hackers. It has since gone through a similar process in the United States.

A spokesperson reached via a helpline for Mt. Gox creditors confirmed that Mt. Gox set up the log-in, based on the last available data from the exchange's servers before they shut down.


Leaked information from various hacking attacks on Mt. Gox servers and CEO Mark Karpeles' personal blog and Reddit account have been released in recent weeks, and one file purporting to be the company's internal database contained malware that could steal bitcoins once downloaded.


Besides the log-in option, the Mt. Gox homepage carried a statement in English and Japanese saying: "Please be aware that confirming the balance on this site does not constitute a filing of rehabilitation claims under the civil rehabilitation procedure and note that the balance amounts shown on this site should also not be considered an acknowledgment by Mt. Gox of the amount of any rehabilitation claims of users."

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India-bound Motorola Moto X heading to Flipkart, teak and walnut variants confirmed

Indian retailer Flipkart has snagged yet another exclusive deal with Motorola. The retailer tweeted saying the Moto X is coming soon, along with a map that shows India with a very obvious X in the middle. Flipkart will have exclusive rights to sell the Moto X in India, just like the Moto G.

While Flipkart didn’t announce a launch date, it looks like more than just the black and white versions of the phone will be launched in India. Responding to a query about the wooden back Moto X, Flipkart said two such variants – teak and walnut – will be available.  The disappointing news is that Moto Maker tool will not be making an appearance in India. In any case, we should expect five colour options and the two wood variants at launch.


The Moto X exclusive follows the highly successful launch campaign for the Moto G, which was Motorola’s best launch in any country. With stock running out within hours of the launch, it’s clear that there’s a great demand for Motorola’s new phones. A lot of the excitement around the Moto G launch was due to the attractive pricing, but the Moto X is undoubtedly a more premium device, with a larger display, more powerful internals and a better-spec’d camera. And it also has a few software tricks up its sleeve, that are not found on the Moto G.

Internationally, the Moto X is currently retailing for just under $400, so one can expect a pricing of over Rs 25,000. While not the same as the Moto G, the Moto X does have a bunch of cool features that justify the price. Now let’s hope the developer edition with 32GB memory and the unlocked bootloader also makes it to India.

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Google launches two month Internet education campaign for women in UP

Google has recently launched an Internet education campaign for five lakh women and girls across Uttar Pradesh. The two month programme aims at making women and girls digitally literate. As a part of the campaign, Google has also launched a Helping Women Get Online website www.hwgo.com which can be used to learn basics of internet and computer usage relevant to day-to-day life.

While talking to PTI, Sandeep Menon, Google marketing director said, "The two-month Helping Women Get Online campaign (HWGO) in Uttar Pradesh aims to create awareness about the benefits of Internet for women and assist them to get online through basic knowledge on how to use the Internet."

"We strongly believe that Internet can benefit and transform the lives of women in Uttar Pradesh and India. With the launch of HWGO we aim to help over five lakh women and girls across Uttar Pradesh get digitally literate", he said.

The campaign was launched last year in November with the objective of empowering women with the help of technology following which regional chapter of this campaign was launched. In the next two months Google will cover over 20 cities across the state and help women get online through road shows in residential areas and Internet training modules for girl students in educational institutes, he said.

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More than 20 pct orders Flipkart through mobile phones

Country's leading e-commerce player Flipkart today said it is receiving over 20 per cent of its orders from mobile phones on the back of growing penetration of smart phone users who prefer buying merchandise through m-commerce mode.

"More than 20 per cent of our orders are coming from mobile at present. And we see a lot of mobile users, who place orders, are from non-metro cities where we see a lot of potential for growth," company's Director (Mobile Marketing) Mausam Bhatt told reporters here.


Mobile users currently prefer to order mobile phones, tablets, cameras, footwear and apparels, he further said.

"Increasing smart phone penetration and lower costs of devise has further contributed to growth of m-commerce," he said.

Quoting a report of Boston Consulting Group, Bhatt said at present 45 per cent online consumers in India use only their mobile devices to access the internet which is expected to increase to 60 per cent over the next three years.

Sensing immense potential in m-commerce, Flipcart had launched its first android-based mobile application in September last year to allow smart phone users to buy products online. It launched iOS-based application in December.


"Through this app, users can check prices instantly using voice search and barcode scanning and can also share product information with friends easily through call, SMS, email, etc," he said, adding that the company would soon roll out windows-based mobile application.


He further said that easy payment options like cash on delivery available on Flipcart's mobile site, mobile shopping was now the preferred way to shop for a growing base of customers.


"In just last three months alone, we have seen more than 2.5 million downloads of our mobile application," he added.


Homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart has now plans to sell furniture, white goods including TV, refrigerators, washing machines through its website.


"We will soon introduce furniture, white goods as new product category," he said.


At present, Flipkart has 20 product categories with 14 million registered users and has one lakh shipments per day to over 150 cities.

He said the market size of e-commerce is expected to reach USD 76 billion by 2020. Last year, the e-commerce market stood at USD 1.6 billion.

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Yahoo to decouple its sign in from Google and Facebook

Users that had been using Facebook or Google identities to use Yahoo services will need to revert to Yahoo ID as the company begins phasing out support for the login alternatives across its service portfolio.

First reported by Reuters, the reversal began with the Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick'Em service earlier this week, before extending to more popular services such as Flickr and other Yahoo Sports brands. No timeline is set for these services to forgo compatibility with other identity providers.


A spokesperson for the company said that asking users to sign up using a Yahoo ID would allow Yahoo to "offer the best personalized experience to everyone".

One of the last major changes that the company made, a visual update of its Yahoo Mail service, was met with howls of derision from its user base when the removal of interface features was paired with a service outage resulting in failed email delivery issues for two and a half weeks.

Earlier this year, the company finally enabled HTTPS by default for its userbase of over 200 million people.

Also in January, a malware attack aimed Yahoo's European users from its ad network attempted to construct a bitcoin mining network. The malware exploited vulnerabilities in outdated Java installations.

Last week, it was revealed that Britain's chief spy agency, the GCHQ, and the United States' NSA had collected webcam imagery from millions of users of Yahoo's Messenger service.


Yahoo "strongly condemned" and denied any complicity in the program, dubbing it a "whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".

In all, the program collected imagery from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally. Images were captured up to once every five minutes, with quicker capture avoided to prevent overloading the systems of GCHQ. As much as between 3 percent and 11 percent of the snapped imagery was considered "explicit", and was collected via taps on intercontinental submarine cables.

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India’s ballot battle will also run through Facebook

Facebook on Tuesday launched its widely awaited “election tracker” for the upcoming general elections, a move that signals the growing importance of social media as a political tool in a rapidly urbanizing India.

 
India’s 2014 ballot battle will run through the social-media world, which could likely influence electoral outcomes by swinging 3-4% votes, as more and more young Indians go online to make sense of politics, according to two new surveys.

 
In these mostly urbanising seats, social-media usage is now “sufficiently widespread” to influence politics, according to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). An offline study conducted by market research firm TNS and Google India suggested similar shifts.

 
The Facebook tracker will help India’s 93 million Facebook users to see which parties and candidates as well as issues are trending.
 

Social-media platforms are likely to be influential in 160 of India’s 543 Parliament constituencies, making Facebook and Twitter users the nation’s newest voting bloc, according to the IAMAI survey.

 
These are constituencies where 10% of the voting population uses social media sites such as Facebook, or where the number of social media users is higher than the winning candidate’s margin of victory at the last election.

 
Research shows that social media is more persuasive than television ads. Nearly 100 million Indians, or more than Germany’s population, use the Internet each day. Of this, 40 million have assured broadband, the ones most likely to have at least one social media account.
 

“Unlike Obama who used social media directly for votes, Indian politicians have tended to use it more to mould public discourse,” says Sunil Abraham, the CEO of The Centre for Internet and Society.
 

“I think these trends are over-hyped and the impact, if any, would only be marginal,” said Communist Party of India MP, Gurudas Dasgupta, who created a Facebook account only last month.

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Yahoo to axe Google and Facebook sign-ins in data collection drive

Yahoo is cutting ties with Facebook and Google, in a push to collect more data from users of its stable of services such as Flickr and Fantasy Football by requiring them to use Yahoo sign-in details.

The plan to abandon the use of Facebook and Google identities to sign into Yahoo services is designed to help the company personalise the user experience and reduce its reliance on its rivals in social media and search.

Yahoo said it was starting by changing the sign-in process for a Yahoo Sports game and would eventually remove Facebook and Google sign-in buttons from all the company’s sites and apps.


“Yahoo is continually working on improving the user experience, which includes our sign-in process for Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick’Em,” the company said.

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, is trying to turn round declining revenues at the internet company that had its heyday in the previous dotcom boom. Since she arrived about 18 months ago, she has revamped a stable of products, launched a mobile business and gone on an acquisition spree, primarily as a way of hiring top engineers.


When Yahoo struck the deal with Facebook in 2009, it was seen as a way of acquiring new users who would be happier using an existing log in for one of the other sites.


Facebook Connect allowed the social network to follow users wherever they were on the web to increase time spent on the site and to help the company, and its advertisers, learn more about users.

Facebook’s ability to target marketing to particular users has become such a valuable asset that it is now experimenting with the first stages of a mobile advertising network, which will allow it to use its wells of user information to sell targeted adverts on other sites.


Yahoo’s advertising business is trying to catch up with rivals after Facebook overtook the company to become the second-largest digital advertising platform in the US after Google last year, according to data from E-Marketer, the research group.

Ms Mayer revealed a suite of new advertising platforms at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, designed to improve targeting and give marketers better control across all Yahoo properties from the homepage to apps.


But the company has yet to convince many marketers, with Henrique de Castro, who had steered the advertising business, departing the same month after just over a year in the job.

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Facebook to shut down Messenger for Windows desktop on March 3

Facebook Messenger for Windows Desktop will be shutting down from March 3, according to a report in The Next Web. The report comes within days of Microsoft’s announcement that the official Facebook Messenger app will be coming to Windows Phone 8 devices within weeks.

According to the report, Facebook’s Messenger app began showing a link saying that it would shut down from March 3. “We’re sorry, but we can no longer support Facebook Messenger for Windows, and it will stop working on March 3, 2014. We really appreciate you using Messenger to reach your friends, and we want to make sure you know that you can keep chatting and view all your messages on http://www.facebook.com,” the message stated at the top of the application.



A Facebook spokesperson also confirmed the same to the website.

Facebook Messenger for Windows was released in March 2012. An OS X version was expected to be launch but given that the Windows version has shut down, it seems unlikely. Facebook is likely to concentrate on Messenger for Windows Phone devices, and other mobile devices, instead of focusing on desktops.  Another report on the The Next Web also said that Facebook Messenger for Firefox is also shutting down on March 3.

This isn’t the only service to get the axe in Facebook recently. Facebook also announced that it would be killing off the email service @facebook.com admitting that it had failed to take off amongst users.

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GMail Makes It Easy to Rid Your Inbox Of Promo Emails

One-click unsubscribe right next to the sender’s address. A million email marketers’ voices were suddenly silenced. Gmail is making it easier for you the user to weed out the plethora of junk you have signed up for over the years. Hey, we all know those cruise deals are great, and they come with a special of Norovirus. It makes for more memorable Instagram photos.

Now if you don’t want the latest deals, or are just simply tired of achieving inbox zero, well Google has you covered. There’s a one-click unsubscribe link right next to the sender’s address. No longer are you left to hunt down the unsub link and go through the ‘are you sure you want to do this?’ Nah, I accidentally hunted this link down for a few minutes, clicked it, hit the radio buttons, but I’m still unclear as to why I’m here.


E-mail marketers are now faced with the dilemma of switching to engage their customers. No longer will they be able to just blast away to their lists. It is too easy now to just jump off the list. Expect value added to enter the lexicon of online marketers everywhere.


A piece of good news for marketers is that the unsubscribe button means that fewer emails will be tagged as spam. This has been causing delivery rates to drop as customers get frustrated about how to get off the list. With it front and center, delivery rates should be back up. Now it will be their job to sell in such a way that doesn’t earn them the one-click.


News of this tool was first reported at an industry conference by Google last week. So if you’re an email marketer, prepare to step up your game. In this arena, content is king.

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Facebook Messenger set to arrive on Windows Phone

Facebook has reportedly announced that it would be soon launching its Messenger chat app on Windows Phone.

Facebook messaging is already active on Microsoft's OS for mobiles, however, the latest chat app would offer more features including 'stickers.'

According to The Verge, Facebook Messenger has been available on Android and iOS for several years, but it would now be 'soon' extended to the Windows Phone platform.

The social networking giant recently acquired popular messaging service WhatsApp , which boasts of 450 million monthly users, for an eye popping 19 billion dollars, in a bid to expand its user base.

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Facebook CEO riding high, for now, after WhatsApp deal

Facebook Inc chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg will take a victory lap at the world's largest mobile technology conference in Barcelona on Monday, after beating out Google Inc in a $19 billion acquisition of free messaging service WhatsApp. But he is facing a new arduous race on the horizon.

Just 18 months after appearing at risk of getting crushed by the swelling mobile wave, the no. 1 social network is riding high. It gets a huge chunk of ad revenue on world-wide users of smartphones and tablets, from virtually nothing several years ago.

Now, Zuckerberg's purchase of WhatsApp - while raising eyebrows with the hefty price paid for a company that boasts 450 million users but has little revenue - places Facebook at the heart of smartphone communications.


It's a twist that is sure to have some telecom bosses in Barcelona gritting their teeth. WhatsApp and its fellow messaging apps, including China's WeChat and Israel's Viber, have punched a hole in operators' sales by offering a free alternative to text messages, a $120 billion market for operators. Research group Ovum said telcos lost $32 billion in text revenue last year and will lose $54 billion by 2016.

Zuckerberg and WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum are likely to cast themselves as partners not foes of the industry in their appearances at Mobile World Congress on Monday.

Zuckerberg's keynote at 17:00 GMT is expected to focus on Facebook's efforts to make wireless Internet access easier and more affordable in developing countries.

Surprise deal

Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp is its latest move to transform a platform and company born on the PC into a full-fledged network for a mobile generation. Zuckerberg's progress so far on mobile has positioned the company to take advantage of the fast-growing markets. And it has helped boost Facebook's stock roughly 150 per cent since July.

But with a new crop of smartphone applications threatening to eat into Facebook's audience, worrying signs of waning interest amongst younger users - which the WhatsApp acquisition may help address - and a tech landscape evolving more rapidly than ever before, Facebook can't afford to fall behind again.

That is critical for Facebook as it courts the "next 5 billion" Internet users, many of whom live in places like India and Africa and who are likely to first experience the Internet on a mobile rather than a PC.

"If Facebook is not first in line when those people are firing up their devices, it stands a chance of never connecting with those folks, because there are so many alternatives," said Brian Blau, an analyst at research firm Gartner.

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Android phones using Bing under threat: CERT-In

Cyber security sleuths have alerted Android based mobile phone users against a suspicious activity being detected in the commonly used search engine 'Bing' on internet-enabled communication devices.

Terming the severity of the malfunction as "medium", the Indian cyberspace security agencies have alerted users that a possible attack of the virus could "compromise" sensitive information of the owner stored on the phone.

The systems that is found affected is the 'Microsoft Bing version 4.2.0 and prior on Android'.

"Arbitrary code execution vulnerability has been reported in Microsoft Bing for Android which could allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary code and install arbitrary APK (Android application package file) on Android devices," an advisory issued by the Computer Emergency Response Team-India (CERT-In) said.


The CERT-In is the nodal agency to combat hacking, phishing and to fortify security-related defences of the Indian internet domain.

Describing the abnormal activity, the agency in its latest advisory said "a flaw has been reported in Microsoft Bing for Android which could trigger while handling DNS (domain name system) responses on an insecure network."

"An attacker could leverage this issue to executing arbitrary code within the context of the application. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to install arbitrary APK files via vectors involving a crafted DNS response, leading to the compromise of the device and resulting in information disclosure," the agency said.

Cyber security experts said Android phone users taking the help of Bing to surf the Internet should update their existing versions and deploy proper anti-virus on their systems. 

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Facebook bets big on mobile with $19bn WhatsApp deal

The surprise mega-deal announced on Wednesday bolsters the world's biggest social network -- which has more than 1.2 billion members -- with the 450-million-strong WhatsApp, which will be operated independently with its own board.

It fits with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's focus on being at the center of lifestyles in which billions of people around the world share whatever they wish over the Internet using smartphones or tablets.

"Facebook works harder than any other social site to keep people coming back," said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott.

"In the past year, they've focused much of that effort on mobile -- introducing Home and Paper, and upgrading both their Facebook and Messenger apps -- and this is another step towards keeping people engaged no matter where they are."

Facebook promised that WhatsApp would remain independent and said it served a real-time communication need, while Messenger was used more in the style of email between members of the social network.


WhatsApp is ideally suited to young people who increasingly prefer rapid-fire smartphone messaging to making calls or churning out email. Facebook has been eager to keep the devotion of young users who set trends and carry tech habits into the future.


It is Facebook's biggest acquisition and comes less than two years after the California-based Internet star raised $16 billion in the richest tech sector public stock offering.


Zuckerberg said that WhatsApp -- a cross-platform mobile app that allows users to exchange messages without having to pay telecom charges -- was worth the steep price because its blistering growth around the globe has it on a clear path to hit a billion users and beyond.

"Services with a billion people using them are all incredibly valuable," Zuckerberg said while discussing the purchase price during a conference call with analysts.

The deal came from a chat Zuckerberg had with WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, whom he described as a "valuable thought partner" and friend of many years.

Koum, who joins Facebook's board under the deal, said: "WhatsApp's extremely high user engagement and rapid growth are driven by the simple, powerful and instantaneous messaging capabilities we provide."

The tie-up gives WhatsApp "the flexibility to grow and expand," he added.

Zuckerberg and Koum, who both took part in the conference call, did not discuss details about WhatsApp revenue, saying the focus for the foreseeable future would be on growth, not making money.

WhatsApp software is available for free, but after a year, users are asked to pay annual subscriptions of 99 cents each.

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Airtel gets Mumbai edge with Loop buy

The telco, being one of the first operators in the circle, has a strong base of high-value subscribers; Airtel could leverage that for its top-end services.

Bharti Airtel, the country's largest operator of mobile services with a little over 200 million subscribers, was a distant second to Vodafone in Mumbai: as against Vodafone's 7 million subscribers, it had only 4.2 million. With the acquisition of Loop Telecom's 2.9 million subscribers, reportedly for Rs 700 crore from the Dubai-based Khaitan family, Airtel will inch ahead of its rival. Is this one-upmanship at the core of the acquisition announced earlier this week? Clearly not: mobile telephony is no longer just about adding numbers. The hara-kiri of 2010-11, when telcos acquired customers at a loss, drove home the lesson that the quality of customers matters more than anything else.

Actually, the numbers game is not in play at all. While Loop does have 2.9 million subscribers, only 47.3 per cent are "active" - one of the lowest in the industry. In other words, Airtel will get only 1.36 million active subscribers from the acquisition. But, Loop has a very large pool of post-paid subscribers: 40 per cent. For most other telcos, the average is not more than 20 per cent. These are high-revenue subscribers. "The subscribers that have stayed on with Loop are loyal. It is very unlikely that they would port out," says Alok Shende, principal analyst and co-founder of Ascentius Consulting.

To understand how this happened, one needs to go back in time. When mobile telephony licences were first given out in 1994, two companies had got the lucrative Mumbai circle: Hutch Max (now Vodafone) and BPL Mobile Communications. The second company was owned by BPL Communications (74 per cent) and France Telecom (26 per cent). Rajeev Chandrasekhar was the principal owner of BPL Communications with a 63.07 per cent stake. As it was amongst the first two operators, it got high-value customers and was also able to lock in many companies. That's why Loop boasts of enviable average revenue per user, or ARPU: Rs 350-400 a month for post-paid subscribers and Rs 100-120 for the pre-paid category (which are both higher than Mumbai's average). Its overall ARPU of Rs 225 is higher than Airtel's (Rs 195) and more than double of the national average (Rs 100).

What makes it all the more interesting is that Loop has higher ARPU even though it does not offer high-speed data services like 3G. Airtel, experts believe, will not let these high-quality subscribers remain on 2G data networks. There is, therefore, a strong upside to the business.

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Facebook facing growing up pains

As Facebook celebrates its 10th anniversary, the world's biggest social network is finding its path as a maturing company, adapting to an aging user base.

The company created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 has established itself as a phenomenon, securing its place in the world of the technology giants.


"Facebook has made the world much smaller, much more interactive," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

"Facebook started the social revolution but it may not be able to control it."

In its short history, Facebook has become a part of daily life for more than a billion people around the globe.

Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg described the mission as "making the world more open and connected," and some say he has accomplished just that.

"More than 20% of all time spent on the internet is spent on Facebook," says Lou Kerner, founder of the Social Internet Fund.

Yet in some ways, Facebook could be the victim of its own success. Its initial core base of teens and university students has expanded, and Facebook is now widely used by people in all age groups.

Facebook says it has a global total of 1.23 billion monthly active users, including 945 million who use the social network on a mobile device. But some analysts note that Facebook has to shift strategy for an aging user base.


An iStrategyLabs study of US Facebook users found a 25% drop in the number of users in the 13-17 age group, along with an 80% jump in the number of users over 55.

"People joke that for the teen, Facebook isn't cool when your mom is on it," Kerner said. "I think it's not even your mom any more, now it's also your grandmother."

The research firm Social Bakers says its data shows teens are a big and still-growing part of Facebook.

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Now app to detect fake Facebook accounts

As instances of cyber impersonation on social networking sites rise, an Israel-based start-up has developed an application, FakeOff, that helps to identify fake accounts on Facebook.

The app on the world's largest social networking platform claims to protect users from scams devised by fake Facebook users, who are mistaken for genuine 'new friends'.

"Recent statistics show that at least 10 per cent of about 1.35 billion Facebook users are not authentic. Besides, there are millions of users who create fake identities and appear as regular users," FakeOff creator Eliran Shachar told PTI.

Fake profiles are divided into several groups including criminals, commercial and psychological, that can risk reputations (identity theft), children (paedophiles and sexual abuse), property (home break-ins) and personal safety, he added.


"FakeOff app uses sophisticated algorithm to investigate the behaviour of suspect 'friends' and rank them according to 1-10 credibility score. It scans up to 365 days of timeline activity for every suspect Facebook friend and checks for abnormal activity," Shachar said.


The app checks timeline activity of the suspect and tries to locate abnormal activity that indicates a non-normal way of usage. It allows the user to scan the photos of the suspect to find out if it was stolen from someplace online, he added.

FakeOff crosses information from all investigations and calculates results of user based on other investigations on the same suspect, he said.


FakeOff has been live for two months now and has over 15,000 users so far.

"Twenty-four per cent of investigations conducted in the app return as fake. A fake profile can be very complex and some of the fakes that we help the users find is only for their eyes so we can't know the final result from the photo scan results, but the user easily can," he said.

According to Facebook, about 14.3 crore accounts on the social networking site may be false or duplicate, with a major chunk of them coming from developing markets like India and Turkey.

The firm said it estimates up to 7.9 per cent accounts being duplicate and up to 2.1 per cent and up to 1.2 per cent accounts being user-misclassified and un-desirable, respectively. Facebook's monthly active users (MAUs) stood at 1.19 billion as of September 30, 2013.

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Facebook users unhappy with Twitter-like trending feature

Facebook is reportedly being criticized by users for allegedly aping Twitter like trending feature.

The new feature designed to provide updates to users regarding certain topics, is available in several countries including U.S., U.K. and Canada.


Links to trending topics, including entertainment, sports and news, being talked about on Facebook are displayed at the right of the main news feed, the PC World reported.


Facebook users have lashed out at the popular social network saying the feature is in no way relevant and focuses more on celebrity gossip.

Meanwhile, Facebook responded to users’ request to remove the trending section by saying that the feature can’t be turned off, adding that it was open to feedback.

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Kindle Paperwhite ebook reader, Kindle Fire HD tablets now available on Amazon.in

Amazon's front-lit ebook reader, Kindle Paperwhite and its Kindle Fire HD tablets are now available for purchase on the company's Indian online store, Amazon.in and through more than one hundred retail outlets including Croma, Reliance Digital, E-Zone and Vijay Sales in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad and Pune.

Orders placed for the ebook reader and tablets placed on Amazon.in will be fulfilled by Amazon and sold by Croma retail. The site mentions a shipping time of 2-4 days for most Delhi Pin Codes.

Amazon had announced(http://gadgets.ndtv.com/tablets/news/amazon-launches-kindle-fire-hd-range-of-tablets-in-india-378983) the availability of both the devices on June 13. Just to recap, the Wi-Fi version of the Kindle Paperwhite ebook reader has been priced at Rs. 10,999, while its Wi-Fi plus 3G version costs Rs. 13,999. Amazon has also revised the Kindle ebook reader's price in India. It is now available for Rs. 5,999, Rs.1,000 less than the Rs.6,999 price it was launched at originally, in August 2012. 

The 16GB variants of the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 tablets are available for Rs. 15,999 and Rs. 21,999 respectively. The 32GB storage variants of the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 tablets are available for Rs. 18,999 and Rs. 25,999 respectively.

The Kindle Paperwhite, which was initially launched in October 2012, features a 6-inch Paperwhite display packing-in 212 pixels per inch and displaying 16 level grey scale. The Paperwhite display is essentially a front-lit display that guides light underneath an anti-glare layer and down toward the display, away from the reader's eyes, allowing readers to read with less eye fatigue and strain. Amazon claims that the e-reader offers 25 percent higher contrast for sharp, dark text and packs in 62 percent more pixels for higher resolution.  The screen's brightness can be adjusted for reading in different light conditions. The Kindle Paperwhite sports a 2-point multi-touch display eliminating the need for physical buttons.

It comes with 2GB of internal storage space out of which 1.25GB is available to the user, capable of holding around 1100 books. It also offers free cloud storage for all content (books and magazines) purchased from Amazon.

Kindle Fire HD is a 7-inch tablet with 1280x800 display resolution that is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Imagination SGX540 GPU. It weighs 395 grams and is powered by a 4400mAh battery rated at 11 hours of usage.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9, on the other hand, features an 8.9-inch display with a pixel density of 254 pixels per inch and a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. It is powered by 1.5GHz dual-core processor and Imagination SGX544 GPU, weighs 567 grams and is powered by a 6000mAh battery rated at 10 hours of usage.

Both tablets come with 1GB of RAM, dual-band Wi-Fi, Dolby Audio with dual stereo speakers, Bluetooth 3.0, and are available in 16GB and 32GB variants.

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Airtel, Google team up to provide free mobile Internet to subscribers

Bharti Airtel said it has partnered with Google to launch a service ‘Free Zone’, wherein subscribers will be able to access Google services such as Gmail, Google+ and Google search on their mobile phones without any data cost.

The users, however, have to pay for advanced services such as attachment downloads, the company said in a statement.

“…Free Zone powered by Google, will give Airtel mobile customers access to mobile web search and feature phone friendly versions of Gmail and Google+ in India. The first page of a website linked from search results is provided at no data cost,” Airtel said.

The company added when users leave the Free Zone to navigate deeper into a website or download an attachment they are informed about the data charges and given the option to purchase an appropriate data package.

“In this market, where feature phones predominate, our association with Google to bring Free Zone to India will encourage millions of users to discover the power of mobile Internet for the very first time and leverage the amazing world of information search, email and social collaboration – at no incremental cost,” Bharti Airtel Chief Marketing Officer (Consumer Business) N Rajaram said.

Users can have unlimited access to Gmail from their mobile browser but if they click on a link or attachment within the email they are directed to a page where they can purchase a data package.

In the same way, subscribers can search Internet and access the first page of websites from the results for free. If they click further into a website after that, they are directed to a page where they can purchase a data package, it added.

“The mobile Internet user base is growing really fast in India… We hope this initiative will encourage more Indians to experience the value of the Internet and gain from it,” Google India VP and Managing Director Rajan Anandan said.

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Facebook's latest mobile acquisition: It's all about your data

The social network's intentions, noble or otherwise, are to increase the pool of application makers who build Facebook hooks into their apps.

With the purchase of Parse, Facebook has instantly moved from consumer social network to business service provider, playing host to the back end of thousands of mobile applications. In so doing, the company has bought access to data it could otherwise not touch.


On Thursday, Facebook announced that it agreed to acquire 2-year-old Parse for an undisclosed sum, though multiple reports peg the value at $85 million in cash and stock.

Parse serves as host to "tens of thousands" of iOS, Android, Windows, and HTML5 apps. The company offers mobile developers a convenience by taking care of back-end needs around data storage, people management, and notifications, all in exchange for a reasonable monthly fee.

When the deal closes, Facebook will become the new landlord to app makers who have chosen to make their home on Parse's platform. It will also inherit an entirely new revenue stream, though that seems to be the least of Facebook's interest in the mobile-attuned company.


With Parse, Facebook, once wading in the shallow end of the mobile ecosystem, has dived into the deep end and caused a splash so large that many will question the company's intentions, while others will cry of ecosystem pollution.

Facebook's intentions, noble or otherwise, are to increase the pool of application makers who build Facebook log-in, sharing, liking, commenting, tagging, and other features into their applications. The company, which just enhanced its mobile APIs to facilitate deeper links between applications and the social network, now has a fresh crop of app makers to pitch on the additional offerings. The sell is obvious: Hey, developers, look what you can add to your apps with just a few clicks, and you'll totally get a ton of traffic and new users back in return.

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