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‘India-specific app stores’ are going to be launched. |
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Written by Ajay Gupta
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Friday, 03 July 2009 00:00 |
 Nokia, which has recently launched its global app store – ‘Ovi Store,’ is now planning to launch its Indian version by December. According to Nokia India director (marketing) Vineet Taneja, the Indian version of Ovi Store will offer applications specifically designed for Indian customers. It will offer applications in areas including location-based services (both GPS and cellphone tower based), music, entertainment, business to even utilities.
Seeing the growing number of mobile phone users in India, the leading mobile phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, Apple, and Research in Motion (RIM) are anticipating great revenue opportunity in the mobile phone application market of India.
These companies feel that the Indian mobile phone application market has great potential with revenue opportunity next to US and Europe. These mobile phone giants are now gearing to launch the application stores specifically for Indian mobile phone users. These companies have already get application developers started for developing applications for their India specific application stores. The localized versions of the application stores will have applications customised for the Indian market.
Research in Motion (RIM), which launched its ‘BlackBerry App World’ earlier this year, is also looking to launch its “App World” in India. RIM is planning to launch the Indian version of ‘BlackBerry App World,’ which is currently available only in North America and Europe. RIM has confirmed that it is currently working to launch its app store in India. According to RIM, the Indian version of “BlackBerry App World” will have applications of Indian flavour. The localized app store will offer apps focused on connectivity, travel, instant messaging, navigation, and some industry-specific applications.
Meanwhile, the reports are around that Apple is also looking to cash the mobile phone application market of India. According to reports, Apple is also preparing to roll out the Indian version of its App Store, which will offer India-specific applications. |
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 07 July 2009 06:57 |
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India gets sick of cheap copied Chinese mobile phones |
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Written by Harpreet Verma
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Thursday, 02 July 2009 10:36 |
 Sick of “cheap copied Chinese mobile phones and accessories,” India is in process to ban the Chinese mobile handsets. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology says that it is moving to ban the sale of the cheap Chinese cell phones for security reasons.
According to the Government of India, the majority of the Chinese mobile phones do not come with an IMEI number, without which it is difficult to track a mobile phone. Terrorists take advantage of this loophole and often use these mobile phones for communication.
The Indian Cellular Association (ICA) says that the cheap Chinese mobile phones and accessories do not meet the safety standards as well. These devices come equipped with defective batteries which could blow up anytime, while charging or in users’ pockets. There have been a lot of such incidents in India.
The users of the Chinese mobile phones in India see the issue from other side; these people feel that the Indian government is moving under the influence of the mobile handset manufacturers, such as Nokia that are most affected by the cheap copied Chinese mobile phones and accessories, and do not want to see the fake Chinese mobile phones, such as Mokia, BlueBerry, or uPhone, in the Indian market.
There are volumes of Chinese mobile phone users in India. According to an estimate, between one million and 1.5 million cheap Chinese mobile phones are imported into India each month. |
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‘Laser dazzler’ to stop careless drivers without blinding them |
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Written by Harpreet Verma
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Thursday, 02 July 2009 10:34 |
 London, July 2 : Reports indicate that the Pentagon is developing a laser dazzler that will force drivers to stop without harming their eyes.
When a vehicle approaches a checkpoint at speed, ignoring warning signs to slow down, troops do not know whether the driver is simply careless or a suicide bomber.
This makes it necessary for troops to have a clear and harmless way of forcing drivers to stop.
Green laser dazzlers designed to temporarily blind drivers were sent to US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan for just this purpose.
But at short range they can damage the eye, and a number of US troops and civilians have ended up in hospital with eye injuries after "friendly fire" incidents.
US troops and civilians have been sent to hospital with eye injuries after `friendly fire' incidents.
Now, according to a report in New Scientist, the US Department of Defense's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia is developing a pulsed laser designed to prevent eye damage.
Its wavelength means a portion of the light is absorbed by the vehicle windscreen, vaporising the outer layer of the glass and producing a plasma.
This absorbs the rest of the pulse and re-emits the energy as a brilliant white light that is dazzling but harmless.
Because the light is emitted from the windscreen, the effect on the driver's eyes should be the same regardless of the vehicle's distance from the laser.
According to Scott Griffiths of the JNLWD, a working prototype could be ready by next year. (ANI) |
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Last Updated on Thursday, 02 July 2009 15:32 |
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Laser beam powered optical transistor may lead to ultrafast light-based computers |
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Written by Heman Kothari
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Thursday, 02 July 2009 10:29 |
 London, July 2 : Swiss researchers have made an optical transistor that uses one laser beam to control another, an instrument that could form the heart of a future generation of ultrafast light-based computers.
Conventional computers are based on transistors, which allow one electrode to control the current moving through the device and are combined to form logic gates and processors.
According to a report in New Scientist, the new component achieves the same thing, but for laser beams, not electric currents.
A green laser beam is used to control the power of an orange laser beam passing through the device.
This offers another possible route to light-based rather than electronic, computing.
Such "photonic" computing is desirable because components using optical fibres carrying light could be much faster than those using wires to carry electricity.
However, previous attempts to make optical transistors for such circuits only produced very weak effects.
The new device could change that.
To make their device, Vahid Sandoghdar and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, suspended tetradecane, a hydrocarbon dye, in an organic liquid.
They then froze the suspension to -272 degrees Celsius using liquid helium - creating a crystalline matrix in which individual dye molecules could be targeted with lasers.
When a finely tuned orange laser beam is trained on a dye molecule, it efficiently soaks up most of it up - leaving a much weaker "output" beam to continue beyond the dye.
But when the molecule is also targeted with a green laser beam, it starts to produce strong orange light of its own and so boosts the power of the orange output beam.
This effect is down to the hydrocarbon molecule absorbing the green light, only to lose the equivalent energy in the form of orange light.
"That light constructively interferes with the incoming orange beam and makes it brighter," said Sandoghar's colleague Jaesuk Hwang.
Using the green beam to switch the orange output beam from weak to strong is analogous to the way a transistor's control electrode switches a current between "on" and "off" voltages, and hence the 0s and 1s of digital data.
Doing it with a single molecule means billions could be packed into future photonic chips. (ANI) |
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Farmers oppose fuel price hike |
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Written by Samrat Khanna
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Thursday, 02 July 2009 10:22 |
 Rohtak (Haryana)/Mumbai, July 2 : Farmers have reacted strongly to the hike in the prices of petrol and diesel.
The delayed monsoon is forcing them to irrigate their fields through tubewells, which consume around 15-20 litres of diesel. They said the price hike would make the running of tubewells very difficult.
"This is the time to sow paddy in the fields. The monsoon has not arrived as yet. We have to use tubewell water to irrigate the fields. The tubewell consumes around 15 to 20 litres of diesel. But now, after the hike in prices of fuel, how will we arrange for so much money to run the tubewell? It will be very difficult for us. We will face heavy losses," said Rajendra, a farmer.
The farmers said the prices of vegetables and other commodities would also go up, as transportation costs would rise because of the fuel hike.
"With the increase in fuel prices, the prices of vegetable will also go up," said Bheema Chavan, a vegetable seller in Mumbai.
Petrol and diesel prices rose by as much as 10 percent in India, on Wednesday, the first increase this year and one of the steepest ever.
Petrol prices rose by four rupees a litre, while diesel rates were hiked by two rupees a litre.
Prices were last raised in June last year, when the average price of India''s crude imports were 113 dollar a barrel, but they were cut in December and again in January as oil prices tumbled.
The government has not increased the price of cooking gas and kerosene to protect the poor and middle-class.
Despite price increase, oil firms say they were likely to suffer a revenue loss of 560 billion rupees on sale of petrol, diesel, cooking gas and kerosene this fiscal. (ANI) |
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