Category: Technology

MUMBAI: Smartphone and tablet manufacturing giant Samsung has decided to offer user interface and access to content for its users in nine Indian languages. These will be supported on Galaxy Grand, Galaxy S4 and Tab 3. These nine languages will be Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi and Gujarati.

The languages will be available on more affordable phones within this month itself. This initiative has been created especially for the Indian market. Applications from the Samsung store such as Bharat Matrimony, India Property, Times of India will be available in the vernacular languages. Select phones will also have Facebook, Gmail and the likes in the nine languages.

Samsung Mobile and IT, India Head, Vineet Taneja said “We clearly sense a need and a demand amongst users to communicate in local languages using their mobile devices. That is the reason, as an industry leader, we are taking the lead by offering users the ease of accessing regional language content in their preferred language.”

More devices will be added as well as more languages.

NEW DELHI: Fifteen telemarketers have been blacklisted while another 245 have been issued notices by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India for unwanted calls and text messages.

The regulator has also deducted Rs 1.36 crore security deposit for violations of various norms. TRAI, which had implemented Telecom Commercial Communications Customer Preference Regulations from 27 September 2011, had laid down that telemarketers have to deposit some amount to their service provider as security deposit.

The 15 telemarketers have been blacklisted from 27 September 2011 till 25 June this year, and the deduction of security deposit is for violations from 27 September 2011 to 30 July 2013.

There is a provision of deduction from Rs 25,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh in case of violation by telemarketers under the regulations. Telemarketers are required to register with TRAI in order to send commercial communications to telecom consumers.

Subscribers who have registered with the National Customer Preference Registry, earlier known as ‘Do Not Call Registry‘ are not supposed to receive commercial communications.

A different set of numbers starting with ‘70‘ were issued to telemarketers to help unregistered subscribers identify commercial calls and decide whether to accept or reject them. But TRAI has come across instances when the commercial communication was not sent by the registered telemarketers.

MUMBAI: Gozoop, which recently acquired Red Digital, won the social media mandate for the e-commerce portal, dhamaal.com. The objective of the whole campaign is to drive traffic to their website and make it the best shopping portal in India.

The activity will be carried out in two phases. The first phase will create awareness of the portal and make customers comfortable with the platform, while in the second phase dhamaal.com will move on to promote their categories of product and gratify the fans by holding exciting contests.

Commenting on this, Gozoop managing director (India) and co-founder Ahmed Naqvi said, “GoZoop is excited to make things happen for Dhamaal. We look forward to run awesome campaigns and deliver results that help build lasting relationships between Dhamaal and its customers. It‘s all about making people happy, the results will follow.”

He further added, “The initial feedback has been quite overwhelming. Having worked with most of the e-commerce companies in India, we bring to the table an experience and expertise that will deliver a wow.”

“Gozoop was our first choice the minute we decided to go for a social media campaign as we had worked with them in the past and were very happy and satisfied with their level of service and professionalism. We are sure that with Gozoop‘s association, our brand and website Dhamaal.com will get the necessary exposure it needs and will become a success in a very short time,” said Dhamaal.com CEO Hanif Sama.

Dhamaal.com is an online market place selling products ranging from apparels, watches, mobiles and electronics to home and lifestyle items like washing machines and televisions. Since its inception Gozoop has worked with e-commerce portals like Snapdeal, FashionandYou, Quikr, Groupon, Majorbrands, Deals&You, Pepperyfry and Rocket Internet Startups among many others.

NEW DELHI: A total of 29,782 direct-to-home boxes are set to receive Doordarshan’s free-to-air DD Direct Plus, including 20,397 in hilly areas of Himachal Pradesh, which have been provided by the government to 16 states where terrestrial signals are not easily available.

These include 2,277 in Rajasthan and 1,942 in Madhya Pradesh, according to the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

Doordarshan provides free-to-air with a bouquet of 59 TV channels (19 Doordarshan channels and 40 other TV channels). DTH signals can be received by using a set top box and small sized dish receiver units.

As these signals can be received anywhere in the country except Andaman and Nicobar Islands, DTH service in C-band with bouquet of 10 channels is in operation in the Islands.

The DTH sets have been provided in various states for uncovered areas as part of DTH Scheme and Special NE package (Phase-I).

Prasar Bharati has informed that 21 channels of All India Radio are available through the platform throughout the country.

MUMBAI: Despite another rejection last month of its last attempt to pull the plug on Dish Network‘s Hopper, 21st Century Fox is stepping back into the legal fray in its battle against the ad-jumping DVR service. The broadcaster filed a brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week requesting a brand new review of the 24 July ruling to be heard by all the court‘s judges. The previous ruling shut down Fox‘s aim for an injunction against the Hopper.

For Fox, that was an error and raised the stakes even higher. “The panel announced two unprecedented rules of law that threaten the creation and licensing of television shows, movies, books, software, or other copyrighted content,” said the August 7 filing.

With this latest request, Fox may have reached the point where they are now truly grinding away in this satcaster case. Last month‘s ruling in Dish‘s favor rebuffed Fox‘s notion that letting viewers essentially erase the ads in TV shows was a fatal blow to the broadcast industry‘s business model.

The late July ruling came out an appeal by the broadcaster after a previous District Court ruling in November of 2012 ended up in the satellite service provider‘s favor. Then US District Court Judge Judge Dolly Gee refused to block sales of the Hopper, even though she agreed with Fox that Dish has likely committed copyright infringement. Introduced in May of last year by Dish, the service lets subscribers to leap past commercials in programs that have been recorded off network TV the day before. CBS, NBC and Fox all filed copyright infringement suits almost immediately against Dish to get the service stopped.

MUMBAI: The companies say that Raycom stations will be back on Dish Network “overnight,” and didn‘t provide any details about the agreement.

The broadcaster owns or controls 53 stations in 36 markets including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CW, and MyNetworkTV affiliates in cities including Cleveland, Toledo, Honolulu, Tucson, Baton Rouge, West Palm Beach, Louisville, and Memphis.

The stations went dark on Dish on 1 August when the previous carriage contract expired. Dish accounts for about 15 per cent of Raycom‘s viewers, according to data from SNL Kagan.

MUMBAI: After months of teasing, the wait is finally over: Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who brought forth the video-sharing site YouTube, are taking the wraps off their newest project, a video creation app called MixBit.

Versions for Apple mobile devices and the Web are already live, and an Android version is due in coming weeks.

On the surface, MixBit resembles two other leading video apps, Twitter‘s Vine and Facebook‘s Instagram. As with those apps, users press and hold the screen of their smartphone to record video. Instagram users can capture up to 15 seconds of video, a bit longer than Vine‘s six-second maximum. MixBit allows 16 seconds.

But as the name suggests, MixBit is all about mixing and editing video. Both the app and a related website, MixBit.com, are aimed at making it easy to clip and stitch together snippets of videos. Simple tools built into the app allow users to edit each 16-second clip and combine up to 256 clips into an hour long video. The final product can then be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or the MixBit website.

Think of it as “shoot, mix and share.” You don‘t even have to do the shooting – the MixBit site allows anyone to snip and remix any publicly shared video content.

In fact Hurley said encouraging users to remix other people‘s videos to create new works is the principal goal of the service, which is the first big product to emerge from Avos Systems, the start-up he co-founded with Chen two years ago. (The company has received funding from the venture arm of Google, which bought YouTube, as well as from Innovation Works, Madrone Capital and New Enterprise Associates.)

“The whole purpose of MixBit is to reuse the content within the system,” Hurley said in an interview. “I really want to focus on great stories that people can tell.”

The ability to create those more complex video stories could give MixBit an edge, at least momentarily, over Vine and Instagram, which are growing rapidly. Vine has no editing tools and Instagram introduced rudimentary ones recently.

But one crucial decision by Avos is likely to hold it back: the app is totally anonymous and communal. Users cannot post their videos under a name, and they cannot comment on each other‘s work.

Showing off is a big part of modern internet culture. The competition to create popular videos helped build YouTube into the powerful force that it now is, and it propels social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

MUMBAI: Disney Interactive has released Disney Animated, an iPad application that gives users access to the art and technology behind dozens of feature films from Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Disney Animated was created in collaboration with Touch Press and Walt Disney Animation Studios. The app features interactive illustrations and animation workshops based on real Disney technology, as well as text, art, sound, images and interviews from throughout the studio‘s history. It also includes an exclusive first look at footage, concept art, animation tests and visual effects from Frozen, an upcoming Disney movie.

“At Disney Interactive we are committed to building new, high-quality storytelling experiences that leverage digital technologies and platforms,” said Disney Interactive Entertainment senior VP Mark L. Walker. “Through the power of the iPad, we are bringing fans closer than ever to their favorite Walt Disney Animation Studio films and the art and technology of making those films. Disney Animated represents a rare moment when innovation, technology and art converge to create an experience that is entirely new.”