Category: Technology

NEW DELHI: In separate hearings in Lahore and Peshawar High Courts earlier this month, it became clear that the Pakistan government is not keen to restore the usage of YouTube in the country.

The Peshawar High Court was told on 1 August by Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom Additional Secretary Muhammad Ijaz Mian that it was in the interest of public to keep the video sharing website blocked.

He said an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) had reviewed the matter on 8 February 2013 and found that the public stance was the same and the situation had not changed on blasphemous content. He added that since there was no technical solution at the hands of ministry to ensure 100 per cent blockage of controversial URLs, it was decided, keeping in view the security situation and the sentiments of public to continue with the decision of blocking YouTube.

In the Lahore High Court the same day, Minister of State for Telecom & IT Anusha Rehman Khan and the Secretary IT failed to appear. An additional secretary for the minister who appeared before the court said she could not come as she was busy in making IT policy for the country whereas the Secretary IT had an eye infection that did not allow him to attend the court.

Although the Court summoned both on 7 August, it was observed during the hearing that the government has not been able to resolve the issue of blasphemous content since September 2012, the month YouTube was blocked by the then PM Pervaiz Ashraf.

The High Court said an intelligent solution and regulation was required from the government.

Peshawar High Court was told that the Ministry had issued directives to Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) for finding a state of the art technological solution to overcome the problem but the authority has not responded positively on the issue.

The Ministry representative told the Court that it had contacted google administration to remove the content from its server which the search engine giant refused on grounds that it worked under the laws of the United States and existing law in Pakistan did not force it to fulfill the demands of the Pakistan government.

Google has already told the ministry to pass intermediary legal protection legislation in the country. A worldwide phenomenon, which will make the search engine comply by the local rules and regulations.

On the other hand, Lahore High Court has stated that it is not a solution to block the entire website which also has very valuable information for general public. There should be an intelligent solution to deal with the menace of anti-social and blasphemous content instead of blocking the entire website.

The court clearly stated that information flow cannot be controlled in this way and there should be self-regulation in every house as well. A worst action would be to block the whole internet in the country that will also severe links to the outside world.

NEW DELHI: The Growth of OTT Content: Opportunities and Challenges for Service Providers, a new global survey of cable and broadband operators, finds that most are fairly optimistic about the potential impact of over-the-top services, with 70 per cent saying the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

The results were part of a survey of operators in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa conducted by Incognito Software, a provider of broadband software provisioning and service activation solutions.

“The widespread growth and popularity of OTT content across multiple devices is forcing cable operators to rethink their business models and how best to add value to their subscribers – and the survey results show that there is no single answer when looking at operators of different sizes and across multiple geographies,” said Incognito Software President and CEO Stephane Bourque. “Whether operators take a positive or negative view of OTT content, one thing is constant: their network usage is going to increase.”

The study also found that nearly 82 per cent of respondents have already upgraded their network infrastructure to cope with increased subscriber bandwidth usage and that 75 per cent of the providers who reported a growth in bandwidth consumption attributed the increased demand to streaming video sites.

In terms of managing OTT consumption, the survey found that the most popular approach was fair usage policies (40 per cent), followed by bandwidth caps (34 per cent), and proprietary OTT services (22 per cent), the company reports.

Nearly half of the providers in North America utilise bandwidth caps as their primary means of managing OTT, the survey found. Fair usage and service add-ons are the next most common approaches (33 per cent).

NEW DELHI: NHK World TV, the 24/7 English-language channel for Japan‘s largest broadcaster NHK, is now live on the Opera TV store app platform, enabling viewers to live-stream the station‘s huge selection of entertainment content.

From the free NHK World TV app on their connected TVs, audiences can reach news, documentaries, music, cooking programs, fashion trends, technology insights and much more from Japan, Asia and the rest of the globe.

The Opera TV store, by Opera Software, brings viewers a rich variety of HTML5-based apps tailor-made for Smart TV. In addition to NHK World TV, the Opera TV store also offers apps for video, music, games, social media, news and utilities.

“The world truly is flattening when premium regional broadcasters like NHK give viewers anywhere in the world more choice of exciting on-demand content,” said Opera Software TV & Devices senior vice-president Aneesh Rajaram. “NHK is extremely savvy with seeing the potential of early technology trends, and viewers will agree that its app adds even more engaging and entertaining content to the Opera TV Store.”

The Opera TV Store is an HTML5-based app platform that gives users a rich selection of entertaining apps. It has already launched globally on Smart TVs and Blu-ray Disc players from Sony and TCL, and has also been selected by Humax, Hisense and MediaTek.

The Opera ecosystem spans more than just the Opera TV Store, with the Opera browser and Opera Devices SDK powering the web experience on tens of millions of devices, including those made by Sony, Samsung, Philips, TCL, Sharp, Loewe, Boxee, Freesat+, Vestel and Altech.

NEW DELHI: Sony and Panasonic have signed a basic agreement with the objective of jointly developing a next-generation standard for professional-use optical discs, with the objective of expanding their archive business for long-term digital data storage.

Both companies aim to improve their development efficiency based on the technologies held by each respective company, and will target the development of an optical disc with recording capacity of at least 300GB by the end of 2015.

Sony and Panasonic will continue to hold discussions regarding the specifications and other items relating to the development of this new standard.

Optical discs have excellent properties to protect them against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored. They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them a robust medium for long-term storage of content.

Both companies have previously developed products based on the Blu-ray format, leveraging the strengths of optical discs. However, both Sony and Panasonic recognised that optical discs will need to accommodate much larger volumes of storage in years to come given the expected future growth in the archive market, and responded by formulating this agreement.

In recent years, there has been an increasing need for archive capabilities, not only from video production industries, such as motion pictures and broadcasting, but also from cloud data centers that handle increasingly large volumes of data following the evolution in network services. Both Sony and Panasonic have a proven track record in developing Blu-ray disc format technologies, and by actively promoting the adoption of a new standard for next-generation high-capacity optical discs, they intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations.

MUMBAI: Sport1 US, a new pay-TV channel dedicated to US sports, is launching in Germany, Austria and Switzerland today.

The channel has secured carriage on the platforms of Kabel Deutschland, Sky Deutschland as well as Unitymedia and Kabel BW. Sport1 secured a comprehensive rights package from ESPN Sports Media to feed the channel. It also acquired broadcast rights from the NFL for additional live matches, building on a previous deal. Sport1 has also been awarded further pay-TV rights from the NBA, allowing it to air three live games per week.

Constantin Medien CEO Bernhard Burgener commented: “With Sport1 US we are extending our digital portfolio under the multimedia umbrella brand Sport1 to include another pay-TV offering – alongside our already superbly established channel Sport1+. There are a great many fans of US sports in the German-speaking region, too, and we want to satisfy the demand in future with a broad range of premium US sports on Sport1 US.”

NEW DELHI: An ‘Archive of Indian Music‘ (AIM) has been established in the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in a unique first-of-its kind effort to digitise and preserve old and rare gramophone records.

This is because many of these rare records are on the verge of destruction and would be lost forever without timely action.

The Archive was launched by External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid in the presence of renowned classical dance exponent and AIM Advisory board member Padma Vibhushan Dr. Sonal Mansingh, historian and archivist Dr. Boria Majumdar, IGNCA Member Secretary Dipali Khanna, and renowned author/historian and founder-trustee of AIM Vikram Sampath.

AIM is the brain-child of Bangalore based author/historian and Sahitya Academy winner, Vikram Sampath and has been established with the generous help of T V Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education.

The main objective of AIM is to create the first digital sound archive of India and disseminate the content freely among all music lovers through an online portal and through innovative ways like audio exhibitions, listening kiosks, guided listening sessions etc. and by taking it to the youth in schools and colleges and giving them a new perspective of looking at Indian history – through sound. 

The range of gramophone records that will be restored include Hindustani and Carnatic classical music, Folk music, Early Cinema, Theatre, Speeches of great leaders of the country and voices of common Indians that were recorded starting 1902.

Pai believes that ‘AIM is a brilliant initiative to refurbish the rich musical tradition left behind by our ancestors, it is a unique concept that provides us with an opportunity to access the rich audio records that we have inherited and we are extremely proud of. In this day where only material gains matter to people, I am delighted to see a young man like Sampath who has worked on this with unparalleled passion and zeal and hence I came forward readily to support his dream and help it materialize.” 

Sampath added, “India‘s musical inheritance is a larger aspect of its identity in the world of music. AIM is an intellectual property created to save these vintage recordings for the future generations to know and be proud of the work created by the musical geniuses of our country. It breaks my heart to see this valuable cultural inheritance rot in the most despicable manner in flea markets and Kabadi shops across India. On a war-footing, we hope to reverse this trend and have set ambitious targets for ourselves – including restoration of 100,000 records within the next five years and construction of a National Sound Archive of India in Bangalore, with parallel centers in other parts of India. Equally important is disseminating this archived material for the public at large as it is the treasure that every Indian has inherited and has a rightful access to”

Established in 2011, the Trust has set up an office in association with the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities in Bangalore and imported state-of-the-art machinery to digitise old gramophone records.

The website of AIM www.archiveofindianmusic.org features around 200 artistes and nearly 1000 tracks at present – all of which can be accessed completely freely and sitting at home. Rare tracks including Gandhiji‘s Spiritual Message that he recorded in 1931 in England, the country‘s first recording by Gauhar Jaan in 1902, Tagore reciting his Bengali poetry, the first recording of the National Anthem by the Viswa Bharati Chorus, the first recording of M S Subbulakshmi as a child of nine years are just a few of the valuable gems in the website. The Archive has already collected nearly 10,000 old and vintage gramophone shellac and vinyl plates from various parts of India for purposes of restoration.

AIM has trustees from all over India and is guided by an advisory board comprising of some of the most eminent artistes of the country – filmmaker Shyam Benegal, danseuse Sonal Man Singh, Chinmaya Gharekhan of IGNCA, Bombay Jayashri, Dr. Jayanthi Kumaresh, Pt. Vijay Kichlu, VAK Ranga Rao, Alarmel Valli, Dr. Shyamala G Bhave, Lalith Rao, Nandini Ramani, VAK Ranga Rao, Arundhati Ghosh of IFA, and Bhaskar Mitra of Sangeet Ashram Kolkata.

MUMBAI: A group of graduates from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala have launched a TV channel called ‘We 4 U‘, the first 2G/3G mobile TV channel. The channel can be accessed anywhere in the world.

The engineering graduates said that their intention was to promote local news and events.”This is an era of mobile revolution and so we have decided to launch a television channel based on mobile technology,” said Aravid S G one of the founders. The channel can also be viewed on desktops, laptops, tablets, iPads but not on TV.

The channel is going in its test phase soon and will focus on local news and events such as programmes of residence associations and the youth. It will run for 24 hours and will be supported on all platforms such as Java and Android.

Tie ups are being planned with other TV networks for expansion. For now the channel will be available at normal rates.

MUMBAI: According to media reports the social network giant Facebook plans to let marketers insert 15-second video ads directly into people‘s news feeds. This step needs to be taken with caution as it may not go down well with its users.

Buyers could target the age and gender of the users who‘d find the ads in their feeds reports claim citing “two people familiar with the matter.” Ads could sell for as much as $2.5 million a day depending on how many people watch them.

Execs appear to appreciate the possibility of a backlash: CEO Mark Zuckerberg has delayed the plan “at least twice” as he considers ways to minimise user ire over the ads, for example by offering them in high-def and ensuring that people won‘t see the same pitch more than three times a day. But the sales opportunity apparently is too lucrative to resist.

Advertisers likely will spend nearly $64 billion in the US this year on TV ads vs $36 billion on the web. That‘s why digital powers including Google, Yahoo, and AOL are gunning for TV advertising – including by staging their own NewFront sales pitches to ad buyers as they also gather for television networks‘ upfront presentations.

Last week Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told analysts that her company has “a massive and engaged audience around the world that brands can use to build awareness and drive sales. Every night 88 million to 100 million people are actively using Facebook during primetime TV hours in United States alone.” Nielsen has been working with Facebook to come up with ratings for online videos that would be similar to TV ratings.

MUMBAI: Indian bred multinational digital agency Gozoop, which recently expanded its global presence by setting up operations in Singapore, has announced the acquisition of Red Digital, one of India‘s leading social media agencies. With this business acquisition, clients and employees of Red Digital will be consolidated under the Gozoop brand, thus revitalising the latter‘s Indian operations.

The acquisition is in line with Gozoop‘s strategy of increasing the revenue contribution from its Indian operations. Over the past few years, Red Digital has worked for several marquee brands such as Mumbai Indians, Dell, PepsiCo, BMW, Parker Pens, Adidas, PVR, Godrej, Berger Paints, Reliance Foundation, Educomp, Citibank, ICC and Discovery Channel.

The acquisition of Red Digital will play a pivotal role in Gozoop‘s global expansion in terms of operations and client portfolio. With Red Digital‘s rich client base and strong presence in five key cities in India, and Gozoop‘s international exposure and clientele, the combination will enhance Gozoop‘s global presence and cost efficiencies.

Currently, 65 per cent of Gozoop‘s revenue is attributed to its international operations in UAE & Singapore. Post the acquisition and with a total of 65+ retainer clients, Gozoop aims to double its Indian revenue in the next financial year. Gozoop‘s domestic operations will now contribute close to 50 per cent of revenues, an increase of 50 per cent from earlier. The acquisition will also increase the employee strength of the company to about 100 members, making Gozoop one of India‘s largest digital agencies in terms of employee strength as well.

Commenting on acquiring Red Digital MD India Ahmed Naqvi and co-founder of Gozoop said, “Gozoop has always aspired to be a market leading digital agency and this deal will exponentially accelerate our ability to realise that ambition by giving us access to newer geographies across India. Red Digital‘s world-class brands & top talent, together with Gozoop‘s end-end digital service offerings & social products like Zozolo, will help move our collective clients and the industry forward. We expect further consolidation in our industry and look forward to acquiring digital agencies to fuel our growth in India as well as to enter international markets like USA, Australia & Qatar.”