Upcoming Gadgets (Tech Friendly)
Internet
Electronic Arts Brings ‘Madden’ to Facebook
Sep 1st
Electronic Arts is bringing its popular Madden football game to Facebook. Madden NFL Superstars launches as a free application Tuesday. The game lets players create fantasy teams featuring more than 1,500 current NFL players from this year’s team rosters. The fantasy teams compete with one another on Facebook. Or, they can play against fantasy versions of the season’s actual NFL teams.
Electronic Arts Inc. plans to make money from the game by letting players pay nominal amounts of money for better players and other game content. Those microtransactions are expected to add up, though the majority of players are expected to play the game without paying a dime.
NFL Superstars, which comes a week before the football season kicks off, follows EA’s FIFA Superstars soccer game for Facebook. That game has about 4 million players. EA Sports President Peter Moore said the idea is to bring Madden to a broader audience beyond the fans of the console version, which sells about 5 million to 6 million units each year and can be complicated to play.
NFL Superstars was created by EA Sports and Playfish, the social game company EA bought last year for $ 275 million.
Sony to Challenge Apple With Music, Video Service
Sep 1st
Sony Corp will launch a new music and video download service linking a range of its devices, in a challenge to Apple Inc’s dominant position in the market, the Financial Times said on Wednesday. The announcement is set to be made at the IFA technology show in Berlin on Wednesday, the paper said, coinciding with a scheduled media event by Apple the same day in the United States. The service will work across various internet-connected devices, such as Walkman music players, Vaio computers, Bravia TVs, Blu-ray players and Sony Ericsson mobile phones but will not be available to consumers until next year, the paper said. Sony’s Welsh-born president, Howard Stringer, has struggled to develop hit products and services that take advantage of the conglomerate’s rich portfolio of music and film.
The company launched a video-on-demand service in the United States, dubbed Qriocity, this year. But Sony has so far failed to gain ground on Apple in the download market. Apple is expected to unveil a revamped iPod at its media event on Wednesday, although speculation is also simmering it will make an announcement about its own TV project, Apple TV. A spokeswoman for Sony declined to comment.
Amazon Trying to Create Web-based TV Service
Sep 1st
Online retailer Amazon.com Inc is trying to create a service that gives paying subscribers unlimited access to some television shows and movies over the Internet, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Seattle-based retailer has proposed a Web-based subscription service to several major media companies including General Electric Co’s NBC Universal, Time Warner Inc and Viacom Inc, the newspaper said, citing people with knowledge of the proposal. Amazon did not return calls seeking comment. CBS, Viacom Time Warner and NBC Universal declined to comment.
The news comes as more companies try to boost their online TV businesses. The new service would look to take on companies like Netflix Inc that allow paid subscribers to stream TV shows and rent movies. “CBS had talked to Amazon but there is no impending deal,” a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Viacom had also met with Amazon, another source familiar with the matter told Reuters. The Journal reported that in at least one version of Amazon’s proposal, subscriptions could be bundled with its existing Amazon Prime service immediately giving the service a large number of built-in subscribers. Prime is a service that offers members free two-day shipping on most Amazon purchases for $79 a year.
Gmail’s Giving You a Priority Inbox
Sep 1st
The folks over at Google understand what a pain email can be. Especially those that get about a hundred emails a day. Most of those hundred emails may not even be important. Therefore, they’ve created a ‘Priority Inbox’ which allows you to separate your emails into, “Important and Unread”, “Starred” and “everything else”. The spam settings will still continue as normal.
After a while Google will start to predict which messages are important. There will also be plus and minus buttons for you to click whether the mail is important or not.
Rahul Gandhi Has 67,921 Followers on Facebook
Sep 1st
Rahul Gandhi is a hit on Facebook. He has a fan page following of 67,921 people which could be among the 
largest for any leader in the country on the popular social networking site. Moreover, Gandhi’s facebook account, which Congress says has not been created by him, has 4,999 friends listed in it. It has photographs and videos as well as regular updates.
Rahul’s sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra too has a fan page with 17,469 people listed as followers and another page named as “Priyanka Gandhi politician” having 163 followers. Party President Sonia Gandhi has a page which lists her as an author with 1,283 people liking it while another page with politician listed along with her name has 503 people who like it.
When contacted, Chairman of the Computer Department of the Congress, Vishwajeet P Singh, went through the pages and accounts on Facebook and said some of the pages give information taken from Wikipedia and are “definitely” not created by the office of either Rahul or Sonia Gandhi. “It has definitely not been done by the Computer Department,” said Singh, adding it is very easy to set up a page and these are open forums. Singh also dismissed the possibility of taking action as no one claims to have created the pages.
Asked whether such pages and the internet increase the reach of the party, the Congress leader said that the penetration of internet in India is not like that in the United States and it will take time to have the kind of impact which is there in the US.
YouTube In Talks Over Pay-As-You-Go Film Service
Aug 30th
Google’s YouTube video-sharing website is in talks with Hollywood movie studios over a global pay-as-you-go video service that could be launched by the end of the year, the Financial Times reported on Monday. Citing people with knowledge of the situation, the newspaper said the new service is likely to first launch in the United States, followed by other countries over time. Google and YouTube “talked about how many people they could steer to this … it’s a huge number,” the newspaper quoted an executive with knowledge of the plans as saying.
Viewers would stream films on the site and pay about $5 for newer titles, the FT article said. The films would become available at the same time as their release on DVD and on Apple’s iTunes store and Amazon.com, it added. The paper said negotiations have been ongoing for months, but have taken on a new urgency in recent weeks as Apple is expected this week to unveil developments to its TV service.
Fennec Alpha Mobile Browser Available for Android and Nokia N900
Aug 30th
Alpha released its mobile browser, Fennec for Android devices and Nokia N900. Fennec allows for secure mobile browsing and supports HTML 5. It is built on the same platform as Firefox.
Fennec is the first mobile browser that facilitates add-ons. Its performance is boosted by two main technologies, ‘electrolysis’ and ‘layers’. It is currently available for Nokia’s N900, N810 and Android 2.0 and later.
Google Polishes Real-Time Search, Launches Site
Aug 28th
Google Inc launched a website on Thursday for users who want to sift through news, comments and other information on the Internet in real time, letting them follow conversations on social network hubs such as Facebook and Twitter in one place. The move expands the Internet search leader’s efforts to compete with Microsoft Corp’s Bing in letting Web surfers track up-to-the-minute comments and postings and could also be a useful tool for organizations tracking public opinion on everything from a movie to a new product. Google’s effort underscores the importance of real-time data on social media, in an increasingly competitive Internet search arena which it dominates.
Microsoft in October also announced partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to provide real-time search results. A link on search results also lets users track conversations on the Internet — back-and-forth comments about a particular topic — in real time, and another click lets users choose to monitor discussions from a specific geographic location in English, Japanese, Russian or Spanish. Hollywood studios, for instance, can quickly scan initial comments and snap reviews after a movie premieres, or a company can check out opinions on a new product on launch day.
The company has no plans for now to sell advertising on the separate site — which users could also access from search results generated on the main page. “It’s a great way to find out what people are saying about something … right now,” product manager Dylan Casey said. “Real time search is a core feature of Google search.” Google decided to hive off the separate site after research showed that enough users wanted to limit their Internet trawls to real-time results only. Addressing potential concerns about privacy, Casey added that only publicly available postings are displayed.
Latest Opera State of the Mobile Web Report Showcases Greater Gender Equality
Aug 26th
In just two years, the percentage of women on the mobile Web has risen 575%, according to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report, published today. South Africa leads the world’s push for gender equality on the mobile Web, with women accounting for nearly 44% of mobile web users.
Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report, published monthly, provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. The full report is available from http://www.opera.com/smw/ (English only). This month’s report includes the first results from a survey of more than 300,000 Opera Mini users, as well as a snapshot of mobile web trends in Southeast Asia.
MapmyIndia Launches India’s First House Address Maps
Aug 26th
MapmyIndia announced the launch of India’s first house address maps. An important part of the company’s latest maps release – MapmyIndia Maps Version 5.0 – the house address maps are now available for Delhi NCR and Chandigarh, with more cities to follow. Maps Version 5.0 also includes a large directory of 3 million places as well as highly detailed, street level maps for over 809 cities of India as well as All India coverage connecting,76,000 towns and villages by over 1 million kilometers of highly accurate, updated and fully navigable highways and road network.
