T-Mobile Dumps Google in Europe for Yahoo
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
T-Mobile announced Tuesday that it will soon begin using Yahoo as its preferred mobile search provider in Europe, ending the operator's existing relationship with Google for mobile search.
The move was seen by many as a minor coup for Yahoo, which is competing with Google and Microsoft to win the loyalty of a growing number of mobile Internet users. Others noted that mobile search is in its infancy and said the field is still wide-open.
When T-Mobile signed its original deal with Google, it made headlines as one of the earliest partnerships between a mobile operator and a search provider.
"Well done Yahoo, for knocking Google off the Web n Walk home page," wrote John Delaney, an analyst for Ovum, commenting on the announcement. Web n Walk is T-Mobile's mobile Internet offering.
Beginning in March, T-Mobile customers in 11 European countries will see Yahoo's mobile oneSearch by default on their phones. OneSearch is designed to make it easy for mobile users to get relevant search results and navigate through different categories within search results.
The companies plan to offer other Yahoo services to T-Mobile customers, including Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance. Yahoo now counts 29 operators around the world as oneSearch customers.
The deal appears to mark a strategy change at T-Mobile. When the operator launched Web n Walk, the service was designed to mimic the Web by minimizing T-Mobile branded services and prominently offering Google, Delaney said. Since then it has evolved to add more T-Mobile services. It's not clear yet which strategy end-users prefer. "The risk is that T-Mobile will discover that its users really preferred it when T-Mobile gave them access to the Web, and then got out of their way," Delaney said.
While the T-Mobile/Yahoo deal is a blow to Google, the search giant had a significant mobile win of its own this week. Nokia announced on Tuesday that it will add Google search, in addition to its own search offering, on select phones. Nokia plans to extend the offering to more phones in the future.
Nokia has begun offering an increasing number of services, such as location-based maps and social-networking services, which could compete with offerings from operators. "Nokia is walking a bit of a fine line because they're definitely moving into what some consider carrier territory," said Mike Wolf, an analyst at ABI Research.
So far, the market for branded search services on mobile phones, like those from Yahoo and Google, is still wide-open, he said. The search providers are increasingly interested in mobile because there is strong growth in mobile Internet usage, he said. The iPhone is contributing to that, as a device that aims to make the mobile Internet as similar as possible to the PC-based Internet.
Services from Yahoo and Google also compete with those that are branded by the operator. Companies like Medio specialize in offering technology to operators for branded search services. Operators in the U.S. have been more likely to use the self-branded option rather than partner with one of the online brands. AT&T, however, is one notable exception -- it uses Yahoo's oneSearch.
Success in the mobile Internet is important enough that Wolf believes that Yahoo's track record in the mobile market was a factor in Microsoft's decision to try to buy the search provider. "Mobile is probably at least a consideration in the acquisition attempt," he said.
Labels: europe, google, T-mobile, yahoo
posted by Arun @ 10:17 PM,
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The iPhone KILLER by LG "VOYAGER"
Friday, October 05, 2007
It's been intense lately, enough to give a hardware guru whiplash; everybody has been calling nearly every new object a potential iPhone killer. One of these days someone's going to release a land-line phone with a web browser, and for some reason, someone's going to stand up and call it an iPhone killer. It's bizarre.
Regardless, today is one of the first times that a company executive, not a fan boy, has actually stood up and claimed that its latest phone is going to "kill the iPhone." The company in reference? Verizon. The phone? Its latest offering from LG, the Voyager VX 10000.
"We think it'll be the best phone… this year. It will kill the iPhone," Verizon Wireless Chief Marketing Officer Mike Lanman told Reuters while discussing the LG Voyager. The latest phone's features include a front touch screen, as well as the ability to open up similar to an enV to reveal yet another screen, and a full QWERTY keyboard. It's packed with Verizon's usual gamut of serives like V Cast Mobile TV, V Cast Music, and has the ability to play .mp3, .wma, and unprotected .aac files.
In some respects, it does "one-up" the iPhone. For example, it's on Verizon's high-speed wireless broadband network as opposed to the iPhone, which runs on AT&T's rather slow EDGE network. The iPhone recently gained on-board iTunes, but a WiFi connection is required; the Voyager can download music at acceptable speeds whenever it has access to Verizon's high-speed network. It doesn't appear that the Voyager supports WiFi like the iPhone does, though.
The Voyager also offers a microSD memory slot which can be fitted with up to 8GB of storage—again, another feature the iPhone doesn't have. Other features include Bluetooth support, picture, text, and video messaging, as well as a 2.0 mega pixel camera and stereo speakers.
The front touch display offers a 240x320 resolution screen, while the inside non-touch display offers a 320x240 resolution, according to phoneArena.
Although the phrase is so cliché is gives me shudders, I'm forced to wonder if it won't hurt the iPhone just a bit. I think it might draw the attention of current Verizon subscribers that may be on the edge about switching to AT&T just to grab the iPhone. Verizon told Reuters that the pricing of the Voyager would "range from under $100 to about $400." It will launch sometime in late November.
Labels: iPhone apple LG Voyager mobile verizon
posted by Arun @ 11:19 AM,
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Microsoft in fresh push to take on iPod
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Microsoft on Tuesday (3rd october 2007) took the wraps off its second attempt to make a dent in Apple’s dominant position in the digital music business, a year after its first salvo fell far short of offering a serious challenge to the iPod.
At the same time, Bill Gates, chairman, sought to forestall any doubts about Microsoft’s willingness to keep taking losses in its pursuit of Apple, as he promised there would be more future generations of Zune, the software company’s digital music technology.
“We’re very committed to this,” Mr Gates said, adding that the Zune player had a central role in a 10-year plan to build a digital entertainment business. “There’s a long way to go to achieve the full vision.”
Microsoft said it had sold about 1.2m of its first-generation Zune players, which was launched last November. That compares with the more than 100m iPods in the six years the Apple player has been on the market.
“We’ve been down this path before, people said we were crazy to take on Sony,” said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division. He added that the company believed that the latest version of Zune would establish it as the clear number-two to Apple by the end of its current financial year, which ends next June.
For the second generation of the Zune, scheduled to go on sale in North America in mid-November, Microsoft said it would offer two new players based on flash memory to accompany a hard-drive player with a bigger 80 gigabytes of memory. That echoed Apple’s segmentation of the portable music market with its iPod nano.
In its second attempt to establish a big market for Zune, Microsoft doubled down on its earlier bet that the best way to make headway against Apple lies in building a social experience around its music players, for instance by letting users share music with each other.
The company said it had relaxed restrictions in the first generation of players, which had limited the ability of users to share songs with each other wirelessly and proved unpopular with customers.
It said it would launch a test version of a new social networking service linked to the Zune, which would encourage users to sample each others’ music, potentially generating sales at a redesigned online store.
While the first Zune players – rushed to market in just six months last year – were designed and made by Toshiba, the second version has been designed from the ground up by Microsoft and will be made by Flextronics.
Labels: ipod microsoft apple zune
posted by Arun @ 12:04 PM,
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Zapak-Multiplayer Online CricketGame
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Zapak-Multiplayer Online CricketGame
Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd., a Reliance ADA Group venture, has launched India's first full-feature online multiplayer cricket game. The multiplayer option allows players to play the game no matter where the two of them are. Kapil Dev launched this game, in presence of Navjyot Singh Sidhu.Beginning with the toss and weather conditions, the game gives the player the liberty to try all possible strokes and bowling styles by the book. It also allows for innovative shots, new field settings, risk of facing the risk of a no ball, benefit of overthrows and even run outs.
Announcing the launch of this game, Rajesh Sawhney, president, Reliance Entertainment, said, "Now, given the fact that Cricket is not just a passion but a religion in India, it presented us with a huge opportunity. We have launched the world's first full-feature online multiplayer cricket game."
Players can start playing the game immediately by visiting Zapak.com as it does not require any installation of programmes, hence no CDs, no requirements for memory space on the computer.
Let's Play
posted by Arun @ 10:21 PM,
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Personalized Heart Monitoring using Smart Phones - Version 1.0
Friday, December 29, 2006
Personalized Heart Monitoring using Smart Phones - Version 1.0
Introduction :
The estimated direct and indirect cost of cardiovascular diseases in the United States alone is $393.5 billion for 2005.Statistics indicate that approximately $4 billion of unnecessary medical costs are spent each year on the assessment of non-cardiac cases in hospital emergency departments.To reduce these costs and the anxiety of people with known cardiovascular problems a portable monitoring system that monitors the heart and notifies the person or external party in case of abnormalities has been proposed. The monitoring system is meant for patients that have a known cardiovascular disease and need to be monitored around the clock.
The estimated direct and indirect cost of cardiovascular diseases in the United States alone is $393.5 billion for 2005.Statistics indicate that approximately $4 billion of unnecessary medical costs are spent each year on the assessment of non-cardiac cases in hospital emergency departments.To reduce these costs and the anxiety of people with known cardiovascular problems a portable monitoring system that monitors the heart and notifies the person or external party in case of abnormalities has been proposed. The monitoring system is meant for patients that have a known cardiovascular disease and need to be monitored around the clock.
Traditional heart monitoring :
Its solutions exist for many years such as the Holter device which records the patient'sECG for 24 to 48 hours and is then analysed afterwards by the cardiologist. The patient can ‘wear’ the device and go home and resume his/her normal activities. The main drawback of these solutions is when a major incident occurs during the monitoring phase which is recorded but no immediate action is taken to help the user.There are two solutions to these pro
blems.They are :
Solution 1 : We can use smart phones (or PDAs) equipped with biosensors that record the heart signals and transmit them to a health care center or hospital for analysis. Such solutions can store the signals locally , directly on the smart phone or using wireless technologies (e.g. GPRS).
blems.They are :Solution 1 : We can use smart phones (or PDAs) equipped with biosensors that record the heart signals and transmit them to a health care center or hospital for analysis. Such solutions can store the signals locally , directly on the smart phone or using wireless technologies (e.g. GPRS).
Solution 2 : Another innovative solution to this problem aims at building platforms for real-time remote health monitoring. These solutions use (wearable) wireless sensors to monitor patient’s vital signs (e.g. ECG, oximeter, blood pressure). The European project Myheart (http://www.hitech-projects.com/euprojects/myheart/ ) develops such a platform and focuses on heart patients. Myheart aims at designing intelligent biomedical clothes for monitoring, diagnosing and treatment.
The platform developed by this group collects the bio data and send it to a care-center or a hospital for processing and analysis. None of these solutions process the ECG data locally on the smart phone, and the ECG signals need to be continuously transferred to a health center if the patient needs to be monitored 24/7. This can be costly when GPRS is used for transmitting the data. To deal with this issue several research projects consider processing the ECG data on a local device. Example projects are Amon, Epimedic and Molec.
Objective :
To investigate and develop an application whereby a heart patient is monitored using various types of sensors (ECG, accelerometer, Oxygen). The sensor information is collected and transferred wirelessly to a smart phone. Our solution analyses the ECG on the local device. One distinction of our solution compared to the others is that we can personalise the monitoring and we have mechanisms in place to locate the user in case of emergency whether the patient is indoors or outdoors. We detect life threatening arrhythmias and give the patient general information about their health when they are not in a dangerous situation. We can also store extra information for further use by the health providers.
Conclusion :
This article has given an overview of how using smartphones can we personally monitor an heart.So,if you liked this article and if you are interested to know more on this sensational topic,post your comments and the next version of the article(version 2.0) will be posted which will contain the architecture and the prototype of the system.
Reference :Research paper published by Valerie gay.<< print >>
posted by Arun @ 1:29 PM,
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Magnetic Brain Simulator
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Magnetic Brain Simulator
The technique is known as 'transcranial magnetic stimulation' or TMS.In essence, TMS is a powerful computer controlled electromagnet that sends focused magnetic pulses into the brain.
The magnetic field induces a current in the neurons, which then become stimulated as a result.
This can be used to alter the brain in specific ways, either activating or deactivating certain areas of the cortex.
This is often used for neuroscience research. For example, if you suspect that a certain brain area is involved during a certain task, you can alter the function of the brain area and see if participants perform the task any differently.
Existing research has used this technique and has shown that stimulating certain areas improves mood or, in some instances, cognitive performance.
The OpenStim project states their aims as:
1. Create a community that designs the core technology for a safe, highly functional, inexpensive, efficacious noninvasive transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) device for stimulating the central nervous system.
2. Facilitate experimentation and exchange of ideas, on the topic of modulation of brain function in a variety of people and contexts, so that we can learn more about the neural circuits mediating our subjective experiences, and improve mental functions (aka hacking your brain).
Although they aim to build a "safe" device, I can't actually see anything on their site which specifies exactly what they define as safe.
In the research, TMS most commonly refers to specifically designed high powered electromagnets that pump out about 1-1.5 Tesla of field strength in millisecond bursts.
This is very powerful, although because of the thickness of the skull and the need to use only the most focused part of the magnetic field, it is only enough to reliably discharge a few centimetres square of neurons just below the skull.
However, a significant danger is that with enough pulses, a seizure is triggered.
Most of the protocols in the TMS literature and research centres are designed to avoid this. When these limits are adhered to, TMS is very safe and no long-lasting effects have been found.
However, even if you make sure you keep within the accepted 'safe limits' for TMS stimulation, with home-built kit you are less likely to be sure that your equipment is genuinely doing what it is supposed to.
In other words, builder beware! Your brain is fragile, so make sure you know the risks before altering it in anyway.
More : OpenStim project
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posted by Arun @ 12:47 AM,
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Future of Science and Technology - AI
Monday, December 25, 2006
Future of Science and Technology - AI
The UK government has commissioned two separate 'horizon scanning' reports looking into how society, science and technology will develop in the next 50 years.The US think tank, Institute for the Future, and UK research company, Ipsos MORI, each produced a collection of papers making predictions in particular areas.
Two predicted trends jumped out at me after a quick browse through the two reports. First, computers and technology will get increasingly intelligent in themselves, second, so will people thanks to other technologies designed to help us keep up.
According to the papers, artificial intelligence beyond the human will revolutionise the way humans make decisions and plans and take action on them, allow more sophisticated and stable global trade, and be used to better plan and manage social relations.
Future humans will be able to keep up with the flood of complex information thanks to new kinds of drug "that alter or support brain function", and widespread modification of the human body, including stronger muscles and skin that functions as a display.
But do we need a new kind of human to keep tabs on artificial intelligence? Experts run all kinds of things today, and manage to explain their activities to people without similar knowledge. Perhaps we can give future AI the same capabilities.
Or are some things beyond the basic human body and mind? We could instead make intelligent systems that simply ask what we humans want, and do what's necessary. I think I'd feel a little uncomfortable about that though - maybe we'll need some super humans to watch our AI angels after all.
More Info : Delta Scan Sigma Scan
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posted by Arun @ 11:54 PM,
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