Category: Software

MUMBAI: Global new world communications provider, Tata Communications, has become the second Tata Group company to be associated with Formula One as it Thursday inked a multi-year technology service and marketing agreement with Formula One Management, the organiser of F1 races.

The agreement will see Tata Communications delivering world-class connectivity to all 20 Formula 1 race locations over its global network, the largest in the world. It will also provide hosting and content delivery services to Formula1.com, which is accessed by tens of millions of fans around the globe.

The deal positions Tata Communications as ‘A Technology Supplier of Formula 1‘ with category exclusive designations as ‘Official Connectivity Provider of Formula 1‘ and ‘Official Web Hosting and Content Delivery Network Provider of Formula1.com.‘.

Formula One group businesses and race locations will now be connected to the Tata Global Network (“TGN”), supported by secure MPLS connectivity. Formula One Management‘s IT infrastructure and Formula1.com will be co-located and hosted in Tata Communications‘ world-class data centres.

Tata Communications MD and CEO Vinod Kumar says, “Formula 1 requires fast and secure connectivity, because even a split second of downtime can have huge repercussions for its business, brand and reputation. This delivery is at the heart of our organisation and working with one of the world‘s most highly technical and innovative organisations is an exciting opportunity for Tata Communications. The collaboration leverages our technology leadership and vision for emerging markets and represents a tremendous opportunity for growth and innovation for both companies.”

Formula One group CEO Bernie Ecclestone said, “I‘m pleased to welcome Tata Communications into the Formula 1 family and I hope this is the start of a long and successful relationship. Connectivity and content delivery are critical issues for Formula 1 and working with the best in the business is a priority for us. This is a collaboration that will help us stay at the technological cutting edge in these categories.”

Tata Communications will also provide Formula1.com with a new Managed Security Suite and will apply an additional layer of managed security monitoring to ensure an increased level of protection to Formula One Management‘s IT infrastructure.

Furthermore, Tata Communications and Formula One Management will work in close collaboration on research and development around connectivity and the latest video technologies.

In 2008, blue chip IT major TCS had signed a technology and marketing partnership deal with Ferrari, building on its earlier long-term partnership that began in 2005.

NEW DELHI: DataWind has clarified that Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal had said that it will continue to supply the Aakash tablet and future demands according to the current order.

Putting all speculations to rest about DataWind‘s status in the current order and future tenders, a press release issued by it said the HRD Ministry will involve C -DAC and ITI to procure for the future requirements.

Clarifying this, Ministry Deputy Secretary N K Sinha said since the Government did not have enough capacities, they will have to involve other players. The next tender will be for five million tablets.

“This vindicates our point that DataWind continues to be a serious player in the supply of Aakash both for the present order of the Ministry of HRD and also future course”, said DataWind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli. “We never had any doubts about our position in the first place. With today‘s announcement by the Ministry, this has been cleared to all those who were speculating”, he added.

Meanwhile, DataWind, the inventor of the Aakash tablet, has been named a finalist for the Global Mobile Awards 2012 (GSMA) in the category of Best Mobile Innovation for Education. The GSMA‘s Mobile World Congress 2012 will be held from 27 February to 1 March in Barcelona, Spain.

DataWind’s products are built around its breakthrough web-delivery platform, covered by 18 U.S. patents, which reduces network load and delivers a fast and efficient web experience on today’s congested mobile networks. Intended to empower a better quality of education through affordable devices and mobile access, DataWind’s Aakash/UbiSlate tablets deliver the power of billions of web pages of content and communication to students anytime and everywhere.

This award category aims to highlight the rapidly increasing convergence of the mobile and education sectors, and to highlight some of the key areas of genuine innovation in learning initiatives. There are a myriad of new ways that mobile is being used in the education context and environment.

MUMBAI: RealNetworks India, a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of US-based digital entertainment services company RealNetworks, has inked a long-term Ringback Tone (RBT) partnership with mobile services operator Idea Cellular which has over 100 million subscribers.

RealNetworks won the deal after an open bidding process ahead of global and Indian Vas players.

RealNetworks will power Dialer Tones for 10 key circles in Gujarat, Rajasthan, UP West, UP East, Bihar, Orissa, West Bengal, Kolkata, Assam and North East. The subscriber base of these circles constitute about one-third of Idea Cellular’s total base, who will now have access to globally advanced and innovative service features.

Idea Cellular CMO Sashi Shankar said, “Dialer Tones has matured as a product and growth has stagnated. There is a need to invest in innovation and think out-of-the-box. We hope to partly address this through our partnership with RealNetworks. After a rigorous evaluation process, RealNetworks emerged as ‘best fit’ for the job at hand. We hope to leverage their global expertise in music, technology and licensing”.

RealNetworks AsiaPacific head DJ Lee said, “We are honoured to be chosen as the RBT partner of Idea Cellular. RealNetworks global expertise in RBT deployment, combined with Idea Cellular’s deep and ongoing commitment to its subscribers’ satisfaction means that Idea’s subscribers will have the opportunity to enjoy innovative, reliable and fun RBT services.”

RealNetworks‘ RBT ASP service is available through 16 mobile operators in 10 countries around the world with 588 million subscribers. Recently, RealNetworks opened its second office in India in Mumbai as a result of the new deal with Idea Cellular.

RealNetworks India country manager DJ Kim said, “RealNetworks India plans to aggressively expand our base with multiple carriers in Mumbai as well as across the country. We will move ahead to bring RealNetworks globally proven VAS services and expertise from advanced markets like USA, Korea and Europe to the fast-growing and promising India market.”

RealNetworks has been steadily growing its business in India since the company opened its first office in National Capital Region (NCR) in 2005. RealNetworks already provides RBT service for Tier 1 and Tier 2 carriers as well as Vas operations to Tier 1 carriers.

NEW DELHI: Worldwide mobile data traffic will increase 18-fold over the next five years, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month — or an annual run rate of 130 exabytes — by 2016.

The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast for 2011 to 2016 says the expected sharp increase in mobile traffic is due in part to a projected surge in the number of mobile Internet-connected devices, which will exceed the number of people on earth (2016 world population estimate of 7.3 billion; source: United Nations).

During 2011-2016 Cisco anticipates that global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times.

The forecast predicts an annual run rate of 130 exabytes of mobile data traffic, equivalent to 33 billion DVDs; 4.3 quadrillion MP3 files (music/audio); and 813 quadrillion short message service (SMS) text messages. An exabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quintillion bytes.

This mobile data traffic increase represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78 per cent spanning the forecast period. The incremental amount of traffic being added to the mobile Internet between 2015 and 2016 alone is approximately three times the estimated size of the entire mobile Internet in 2012.

According to the updated forecast by Cisco, Asia-Pacific will have an 84 per cent CAGR, or 21-fold growth, while Middle East and Africa will have the highest regional mobile data traffic growth rate with a CAGR of 104 per cent, or 36-fold growth. Central and Eastern Europe will have an 83 per cent CAGR, or 21-fold growth. Latin America will have a 79 per cent CAGR, or 18-fold growth. North America will have a 75 per cent CAGR, or 17-fold growth. Western Europe will have a 68 per cent CAGR, or 14-fold growth.

Mobile video will comprise 71 per cent of all mobile data traffic by 2016. The Cisco study also projects that 71 per cent of all smartphones and tablets (1.6 billion) could be capable of connecting to an Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) mobile network by 2016. From a broader perspective, 39 per cent of all global mobile devices (more than 4 billion), could be IPv6-capable by 2016.

With the consumer expectations increasingly requiring on-demand or streamed content versus simply downloaded content, mobile cloud traffic will increase, growing 28-fold from 2011 to 2016, a CAGR of 95 per cent.

There will be more than 10 billion mobile Internet-connected devices in 2016, including machine-to-machine (M2M) modules — exceeding the world’s projected population at that time of 7.3 billion. (One M2M application is the use of wireless networks to update digital billboards. This allows advertisers to display different messages based on time of day or day-of-week and allows quick global changes for messages, such as pricing changes for gasoline).

Mobile devices are becoming more powerful and, thus, able to consume and generate more data traffic. Tablets are a prime example of this trend generating traffic levels that will grow 62-fold from 2011 to 2016 — the highest growth rate of any device category tracked in the forecast. The amount of mobile data traffic generated by tablets in 2016 (1 exabyte per month) will be four times the total amount of monthly global mobile data traffic in 2010 (237 petabytes per month).

Mobile network connection speed is a key enabler for mobile data traffic growth. More speed means more consumption, and Cisco projects mobile speeds (including 2G, 3G and 4G networks) to increase nine-fold from 2011 to 2016.

By 2016, there will be more than 8 billion handheld or personal mobile-ready devices and nearly two billion machine-to-machine connections, such as GPS systems in cars, asset tracking systems in shipping and manufacturing sectors and medical applications for making patient records more readily available.

Smartphones, laptops and other portable devices will drive about 90 per cent of global mobile data traffic by 2016. M2M traffic will represent 5 per cent of 2016 global mobile data traffic while residential broadband mobile gateways will account for the remaining 5 per cent of global mobile data traffic.

Service providers are increasingly looking to offload traffic to fixed/Wi-Fi networks. In 2011, 11 percent, or 72 petabytes, per month of total mobile data traffic was offloaded. By 2016, 22 per cent, or 3.1 exabytes, per month of total mobile data traffic will be offloaded. Without offloading, the 2011-2016 global mobile data traffic CAGR would be 84 per cent instead of 78 per cent.

The average mobile connection speed doubled last year and is expected to increase nine-fold by 2016. Mobile connection speeds are a key factor in supporting and accommodating mobile data traffic growth.

MUMBAI: The Associated Press (AP) is working with Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) to digitise its video archive, making it available to a new audience across digital platforms.

AP’s film and tape archive contains around 70,000 hours’ worth of footage including more than 1.3 million global news and entertainment stories in 16 mm film and videotape as old as the beginning of the 20th Century.

The project is part of the upgrade project which will see AP switch its entire newsgathering, production and distribution systems to HD to continue to meet the technical, editorial and business needs of its customers in the digital age.

AP director of international archives Alwyn Lindsey said, “Today’s market is driven by giving customers breadth of content, ease of access, and value for money. While we have already digitised around 10 per cent of our archive, it has been a top priority to get all of our most saleable archive footage online and make it available to our customers, wherever in the world they may be. To make this happen, we needed a partner who could handle our global business needs and a project of this scale, and for that reason, we chose Prime Focus Technologies.”

Using the skillsets of its global organisation to digitise AP’s film and tape archives, PFT will then catalogue, manage transcode and deliver AP’s content to a multi-media audience.

PFT has experience in digitising archive content and has partnered with organisations such as the British Movietone Library, British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum, IMG, Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Eros International.

PFT UK vice president and head Aine Healy said, “PFT is delighted to be working closely with AP to make its valuable archive of footage available to the world, and to preserve it for generations to come.”

The project will be driven by PFT’s content operations platform and supporting services CLEAR.

PFT said that it is delivering this project in an “unprecedented timescale”, creating nearly four million new assets in just 18 months which includes 3,000 hours of film with an average of 60 news stories per hour – creating a total of 900,000 files and 29,000 hours of video with an average of 20 news stories per hour – creating a total of 2.90 million files.

NEW DELHI: UFO Moviez India Ltd and Dolby Laboratories, Inc. today announced a collaboration to bring a major transition in the audio experience across UFO’s digital cinema screens in India, bringing high quality cinematic surround sound to UFO cinemas across the country.

Dolby will assist UFO with setup for the digital encoding and mastering workflow for UFO Moviez and provide UFO-Dolby co-branded CP750 cinema processors, delivering a complete end-to-end digital sound process and helping to provide an authentic audio experience in the theatres.

Sound in many digital cinemas in India currently goes through multiple conversions from digital to analogue and back, resulting in loss in sound quality at each conversion. Additionally, audio alignment and calibration of theatres is planned to be conducted, ensuring a premium entertainment experience for movie-goers in UFO cinemas.

UFO Moviez India Ltd founder and managing director Sanjay Gaikwad said, “We have invested in bringing surround sound from Dolby to our digital cinema chain in India because we are committed to delivering innovative technology that adds value to the entertainment experiences for our viewers.” He added, “While we have already enhanced the viewer’s experience by providing digital quality picture to cinemas across India, the audio experience is still in the analog format. This partnership will complete the digital cinema experience by providing digital surround sound, on par with the best facilities in the world. The UFO-Dolby co-branded audio processors will also be future-proofed beyond standard 5.1 surround sound, as filmmakers migrate to 7.1 surround sound, which is simultaneously happening around the world.”

“At Dolby it has been our constant endeavor to make the entertainment experience richer, more realistic, and immersive. Dolby has constantly helped filmmakers and sound designers to realise and preserve their creative intent, so that cinema going audiences can experience their favourite movies as intended by the content creator,” said Dolby Laboratories Vice President (Asia Pacific) Mahesh Sundaram. “The collaboration intends to expand the footprint and reach of premium cinema entertainment in India by delivering significant improvements that enhance the experience in theatres across the country.”

NEW DELHI: Affle, one of Asia’s leading mobile media company, has announced the appointment of Rahul Roushan as head- content services based out of its Gurgaon office.

With this association, Affle aims to strengthen its content services and provide unique content offerings on the digital medium through innovative and appealing branded content initiatives.

Rahul Roushan, a former journalist who goes by the pseudonym “PagalPatrakar”, began his road to recognition with the success of the globally renowned news satire website – Faking News (http://www.fakingnews.com/). Faking news was originally launched in 2008 as a blog and hobby, but later with its popularity and creative content went viral to become very popular.

Said Affle CEO Anuj Kumar, “We are delighted to have a successful entrepreneur like Rahul Roushan on board, to strengthen Affle’s content offerings for consumers and brand solutions for advertisers. We see a market gap currently for original & engaging mobile content and given Rahul’s successful stints in the industry and much appreciated creativity, we are confident of filling this void. Rahul will be the driving force of our content strategy team to create differentiated branded content solutions for consumers and advertisers in the digital space.”

At Affle, Rahul will take up responsibility of leading initiatives for specialised content offerings that will appeal to consumers as well as advertisers. He will play a key role in driving the advertiser campaign solutioning business at Affle and focus on launching more differentiated branded content initiatives. In addition, Rahul and his team will continue to offer and grow fun content on Faking News, whereas the marketing, advertising, content syndication, merchandising and other commercialisation aspects will be managed by Affle through its carrier, publisher and advertiser outreach.

A post-graduate in Business Administration from IIM Ahmedabad, Rahul also had a string of diverse roles including working as a journalist at Sahara Samay and an entrepreneur where he launched a website, cricstock.com, ahead of 2007 ICC World Cup.

MUMBAI: Online social network ibibo says that its iBrowser on the mobile has clocked six million downloads since its formal launch in December 2011, with 50 per cent of these coming as monthly active users.

Facebook and Zedge are the top two mobile sites followed by Getjar, Google and ibibo.

The mobile browser has been brought in India jointly by Ibibo Group and China’s leading Internet company, Tencent. Tencent in China runs the mobile browser, named as QQ Browser which has 330 million users.

ibibo iBrowser is currently available for Android, Symbian and Java based phones, which together cover 90 per cent of all mobile handsets in India. The Browser comes preloaded on multiple mobile handsets like Huawei, LG, Spice and Lemon. Users can also download iBrowser from Mobango, Android Marketplace, Getjar, Samsung Appstores, Nokia Ovi and Airtel Appstore.

iBrowser is well received by the mobile Internet community across India, the company said.

Core features of ibibo iBrowser :

– Navigation with Indian sites pre-embedded in the iBrowser and segregated as per categories.

– Search inside iBrowser is powered by Google, Yahoo and Bing.

– Users can open multiple WAP sites in different tabs (very similar to web browsers).

– Unique multi-threaded download feature, where users can check the status of all downloads in one view.

– URL auto-completion feature makes it effortless for users to access popular sites.

– iBrowser offers a feature called Night Surfing Mode that protect users’ eyes in the dark and makes extended browsing more comfortable.

– Users can customise and personalize the look of their iBrowser skin.

– iBrowser works on a free-link technology that makes wireless networks more stable.

MUMBAI: Comcast is taking on Netflix. The US media, entertainment and communications company has announced the launch of Xfinity Streampix, a new subscription video service that enables Xfinity video customers to instantly view favourite movies and TV shows in and out of the home, including numerous past seasons of current hit shows and full series, to multiple screens and devices including TVs (as a subscription On Demand folder), online platforms and mobile devices.

This new service complements the 75,000 TV shows and movies currently available on Xfinity On Demand, XfinityTV.com and through the Xfinity TV app.

To launch Streampix, Comcast has entered into licensing agreements with movie studios and programming providers including Disney-ABC Television Group, NBCUniversal, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Cookie Jar Entertainment and built a line-up of top-rated content, which is available starting this week.

Comcast senior VP, GM, video services Marcien Jenckes said, “Xfinity TV is a one-stop source for the most video entertainment on any screen and it just keeps getting better . Our goal is to consistently deliver greater value to our customers and to bring the best anytime, anywhere entertainment on multiple platforms. Streampix is another step moving TV Everywhere forward by giving customers access to an even greater library of popular choices to watch.”

Streampix is launching with programming and aims to increase the breadth of entertainment choices for Xfinity customers in the coming months to include complete seasons of TV series, popular children’s franchises and hit movies available to instantly stream across multiple platforms including TV shows 30 Rock (NBC), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Ugly Betty (ABC). on the film front it has deals for titles like Analyze That (Warner Bros. Pictures), Brokeback Mountain (Universal) and Stuart Little (Sony).

In the coming year, the Streampix service will be available on additional devices such as Xbox 360 and Android-powered devices. Streampix will be included as part of many Xfinity triple-play packages, Blast!+ and Blast! Extra video/high-speed Internet packages, as well as separately for $4.99 a month with other video packages, and enables the company to have greater flexibility with packaging and bundling options.

With Streampix, the Xfinity TV service is a video solution that lets users watch TV episodes of current seasons and complete past seasons of broadcast and cable shows. Xfinity TV also offers a suite of tools to personalise and manage viewing across screens for no additional charge through XfinityTV.com and the Xfinity TV app.

Xfinity TV will continue to make more entertainment choices and personalisation tools available across screens and through additional devices in the future, said Comcast.

MUMBAI: US media, entertainment and communications company Comcast has announced it has selected four new minority-owned independent networks to be broadly distributed on Comcast Cable systems between April 2012 and January 2014.

After an evaluation of more than 100 proposals, Comcast selected four networks – two of which are majority African-American owned and two that are majority American Hispanic owned and operated and programmed in English.

Comcast executive VP David L. Cohen said, “We are thrilled to work with such talented individuals to launch these new networks that will bring exciting and fresh content to consumers. Comcast is committed to delivering programming that reflects the interests of our customers, and we look forward to integrating these great networks into our rich programming line-up.”

Spearheaded by Entrepreneur and NBA Hall of Famer Earvin “Magic” Johnson, in partnership with GMC TV, Aspire is dedicated to delivering enlightening, entertaining and positive programming to African-Americans families, including movies, documentaries, short films, music, comedy, visual and performing arts, and faith and inspirational programmes. Aspire will celebrate the successes, achievements and accomplishments of the African-American community and create new opportunities for the next generation of African-American visionaries. The network will launch by summer 2012.

Johnson said, “Aspire will be a network that encourages and challenges African-Americans to reach for their dreams and will appeal to all generations. Aspire will celebrate our heritage, our groundbreaking achievements and the fearless talent that has shaped American culture. I’m most excited about Aspire creating opportunities for the new voices, new visions and the next generation of storytellers”.

Proposed by music star Sean “Diddy” Combs and MTV veteran Andy Schuon, Revolt is designed to have programming inspired by music and pop culture, including music videos, live performances, music news, and interviews and will incorporate social media interaction for music artists and fans. The network has entered into an agreement to
launch in 2013.

Combs said, “Revolt is the first channel created entirely from the ground up in this new era of social media. We’re building this platform for artists to reach an extraordinary number of people in a completely different way. REVOLT will be live, like all great moments in television history. REVOLT will also be immediate, like today’s social networks. We know it was a highly competitive process and we want to thank Comcast for this opportunity to truly change television with REVOLT.”

Proposed by Hollywood director Robert Rodriguez and FactoryMade Ventures executives John Fogelman and Cristina Patwa, El Rey is designed to be an action-packed, general entertainment network in English for Latino and general audiences that includes a mix of reality, scripted and animated series, movies, documentaries, news, music, comedy, and sports programming.

The El Rey network will include programming that features Hispanic producers, celebrities and public figures. The network has entered into an agreement to launch by January 2014.

Rodriguez and FactoryMade Ventures CEO John Fogelman said, “This partnership with Comcast signals an important moment for the Latino community in this country – we are passionate about creating a wildly entertaining destination that we can be proud of by appealing to both Latino and mass market audiences. We engineered El Rey to address a burgeoning opportunity to deliver unique, high-quality and compelling content to a hard-to-reach demographic and are excited to bring more opportunities to generations of talent, storytellers and dreamers through this special partnership.”

Proposed by Spanish language television veteran Constantino “Said” Schwarz, BabyFirst Americas is designed for infants, very young children, and their parents, and emphasises the importance of early development of verbal, math and motor skills. The network has entered into an agreement to launch by April 2012.

Schwarz who is BabyFirst Americas CEO, chairman “We are thrilled to partner with Comcast and commend them for recognising the importance of quality education for young children. BabyFirst Americas aims to bring the essential academic building blocks for Kindergarten readiness into the home, making it accessible for families all across the U.S.”

Comcast made a series of voluntary public interest commitments in connection with the NBCUniversal transaction, one of which is to launch 10 new independently owned and operated networks over the next eight years.

Of the 10 networks, four will be majority African-American owned, two will be majority American Latino owned, two will be operated by American Latino programmers, and two will provide additional independent programming. Ultimately, each of the 10 networks will be added on select Comcast systems as part of the digital basic tier of service.