Category: Software

MUMBAI: The first cord-cutters were those who did away with their traditional phone cords in favour of mobile phone services. And Now Yankee Group uncovers a new category: the coax-cutter.

These consumers in the US cut off their pay TV services and use their PCs, gaming consoles and other connected devices to access video programming instead. One in every eight consumers are set to join their ranks in the next 12 months.
 
In the new report, Consumers Consider Axing the Coax, Yankee Group reveals that the number of coax-cutters will grow due to three main factors: a new wave of connected TVs, ever-escalating pay TV prices and the advent of connected consumer devices that can act like set-top boxes, including Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming consoles.

Yankee group principal analyst and co-author of the report Vince Vittore says, “At the most basic level, the decision to cut off pay TV services is an economic one. As programmers continue to demand ever higher fees, which inevitably get passed on to consumers, we believe more consumers will be forced to consider coax-cutting.” 
 
The other findings include:

Pay TV market is flat-lining. Subscribers in Western Europe will increase just 3.9 per cent from 2010 to 2013; US subscribers are on a similar path, growing 6.9 per cent in the same time frame.

Age and connected device usage play a role. Consumers who do cut off pay TV services will most likely be in the 18-34 age bracket and heavy mobile users or gamers.

Consumers will turn to other devices to skirt pay TV services. 56 per cent of households have at least one HDTV and 43 per cent have at least one gaming console.
 

MUMBAI: US broadcaster NBC and the producers of America‘s Got Talent, which kicks off on 1 June, have partnered with online video sharing site YouTube to allow talented acts from across the US to audition online for a shot at performing live on the show. 
 
Till 18 June 2010, talented audition acts can uploaded at www.youtube.com/americasgottalent. From the submissions, the show‘s producers will select 40 acts to be posted on the special AGT YouTube site. The YouTube community will then vote for their favourite acts and the act with the most votes will get to perform on America‘s Got Talent, alongside 11 other YouTube acts chosen by producers.

NBC and Universal Media Studios executive VP, alternative programming Paul Telegdy says, “‘Expect the unexpected‘ has always been core to the success of AGT. This audacious new twist to the audition process offers our viewers not only a priceless golden ticket to get onto the biggest stage in the country in the middle of the competition, but also the opportunity for a thrilling live show where anything can happen. No other show would dare to take on this challenge.”  
 
FremantleMedia US CEO Cecile Frot-Coutaz says, “We‘re thrilled for the opportunity to leverage the passion, power and opinion of the YouTube community to help find the next winner of ?America‘s Got Talent”.

This season, the series has traveled to Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Orlando, Atlanta, and Portland, but the YouTube invitations will exponentially extend the search to find the country‘s freshest and unique talent.

America‘s Got Talent has proven to be an online sensation with some of the most viewed videos on YouTube. From chicken farmer and last season‘s winner Kevin Skinner to Quick Change and Neal Boyd‘s opera performances to little Kaitlyn Maher singing Somewhere Out There.

NBC.com will continue to host the official website for America‘s Got Talent- www.nbc.com/americas-got-talent– and will feature full episodes of the show, weekly video highlights, contestant photos and online voting where fans will be able to vote for the finalists and ultimately the winner.

MUMBAI: US media research company Nielsen has announced the acquisition of GlanceGuide, a video analytics and technology company in California.

GlanceGuide’s advanced analytics capabilities have been immediately integrated into Nielsen’s online video measurement tools to deliver more actionable daily insights to media publishers, agencies and advertisers. 
 
GlanceGuide’s technology provides insights into how consumers interact with the video they watch online. The acquisition of GlanceGuide enables Nielsen to provide its global clients new and critical business intelligence. This offering introduces a new and powerful Nielsen metric to the online video advertising industry– the attentiveness score— which aggregates key variables like viewing duration, video visibility, and audio volume to provide a composite ‘score’ for a piece of video content or advertising.

This acquisition also comes on the heels of Nielsen’s recent announcement in the US to provide clients, through its Extended Screen initiative, with the ability to see how the same piece of content performed on TV versus how it performed online.

In 2009, in response to global client feedback, Nielsen selected GlanceGuide as the technology partner to help streamline the video data collection process. The integration between Nielsen and GlanceGuide provided clients with a single technology solution that enables audience measurement, advertising effectiveness research, and robust analytics and optimization. 
 
When combined with new demographic insights, the newly integrated solution enables media companies and advertisers to understand how different groups of consumers respond to online video and advertising, which in turn can feed into media sales & advertising optimisation efforts.

Nielsen senior VP of online product leadership Dave Osborn said, “Nielsen is fully committed to providing our clients with actionable, comprehensive and immediate insights about online video consumption. GlanceGuide is a leader and innovator in video technology and analytics, so this was a natural and exciting extension of Nielsen’s current offerings to the advertising community.”

GlanceGuide co-founders Indra Mohan and Desikan Jagannathan added, “This is truly a match where the sum is much greater than the parts. Our integration with Nielsen will enable media clients to better sell their audience, while providing marketers with the tools to improve the effectiveness of their advertising.”

NEW DELHI: India needs to ensure that all her officially recognised 22 languages can be adequately represented to make Web accessible in Indian languages a reality. In view of this, the role of India becomes prominent especially in the area of internationalisation, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Sachin Pilot said.

Speaking at a two-day Conference on World-Wide-Web: Technology, Standards and Internationalisation, which coincided with the opening of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) India Office, the Minister said this would go a long way in accelerating the growth of Web in Indian Languages. India is committed to the goal of ‘Internet for All’, and the Government in close co-operation with other stakeholders has taken several steps in this direction, the Minister added.
 
Emphasizing the need for taking the benefit of Information Communication Technology (ICT) to masses, the Ministers said that engagement with W3C in building all the required standards will facilitate information access on World Wide Web regardless of languages, location, ability, generation, age and income. Besides facilitating wider access of web by common men, it will also equip them to provide locally relevant content on the internet. Such initiative will play a great role in reducing poverty, improving health care, education, spreading good governance and addressing all local challenges in the global context.

Department of Information Technology Secretary R Chandrashekhar, Joint Secretary N Ravishankar, and Swaran Lata who is Country Manager W3C India Office and head of the TDIL programme were also present. 
 
W3C India Office has been set up at DIT under the aegis of Human Centered Computing Division. The Division is implementing the programme ‘Technology Development for Indian Languages’ (TDIL). TDIL Programme is engaging itself actively since 2006 with all the stakeholders in the country to work towards internationalization of W3C Recommendations.

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international Standards Body which develops Standards / Best Practices / recommendations to ensure seamless web access to all. The Vision of W3C is to achieve “Web for Everyone and Web on Everything.” W3C works in tandem with others standards making bodies such as UNICODE, IETF, ICANN and ISO at the international level. W3C has so far published about 183 standards for web technology and working in the future web standards. Recommendations evolved by W3C run across many technical domains. 

MUMBAI: Online social networking site ibibo.com has introduced the concept of social gaming to Indian internet users. Social games on ibibo.com are being built with the vision of connecting India through the concept of casual, fun and highly localised games. 
 
The ibibo Farm Game has become a rage with the youth and this gaming format is gaining quick traction with online audiences across India. The ibibo Farm Game takes India to its roots where users play the role of farmers. Each user manages and owns a piece of land, grows crops, harvests crops and earns virtual money.

Players aspire for the top leader board position within their online social graph. The most interesting aspect of the game is the surreptitious stealing of crop from friends’ farms- the fun aspect of the game! 82000 fruit and vegetables are stolen everyday from friends’ farms on the ibibo farm game.
 
Other interesting nuances of the ibibo Farm Game are:

Buying a dog that guards the farm and saves your crops from being stolen.

A hen that lays egg if you feed it and you can sell the eggs to earn more and likewise a cow for milk.

Decorate your farm impress friends (differentiate your farm from others) and stay on top of your social graph.

NEW DELHI: Bids for the 3G auction showed a steep rise to close at Rs 120.7 billion after 137 rounds on the end of 24th day today.

Applications for price increment for the 138th round tomorrow ranged up to Rs 400 million for some centres.

The bids for both Mumbai and Delhi crossed the Rs 20 billion mark, at Rs 21.29 billion and Rs 20.81 billion respectively.
 
Karnataka closed at Rs 12.16 billion, with the rest of Maharashtra at 11.05 billion, Tamil Nadu at Rs 10.46 billion, and Andhra Pradesh at Rs 10.29 billion. Gujarat closed at Rs 9.94 billion, and West Uttar Pradesh went up to Rs 3.52 billion. Kolkata clocked Rs 3.31 billion, East Uttar Pradesh rose to Rs 2.68 billion, Madhya Pradesh was at Rs 2.51 billion, Punjab rose to Rs 1.66 billion, Bihar rose sharply to Rs 516.3 million, and Orissa went up to Rs 337.5 million. 
 
With no applications for price increment for tomorrow, the bids for some service centres are expected to slow down. These include Kerala, Haryana, East Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and the North East.

The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea Cellular, Reliance, S Tel, Tata Teleservices, Videocon Telecommunications and Vodafone Essar.

The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial 3G operations from 1 September.
 

MUMBAI: Sun Direct, the direct-to-home (DTH) service provider, has launched a new Mega Shine pack that offers a three month subscription for Rs Rs 1,750, including installation charges. Customers can choose from six free top up packs of popular channels.
 
The pack offers Colors, Star Plus , Zee TV , Sony Entertainment TV, Imagine TV, Sab, MAX , Zee Cinema, Hungama, Disney, Disney XD, Aaj Tak and NDTV 24X7.

Along with this, there are other free top ups of regional channels in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Punjabi languages. 
 
Sun Direct CEO Tony D‘Silva said, “We believe in providing maximum entertainment to our customers by providing more value and variety. We have a vast audience across the country and to cater to their requirements we are happy to announce a mega shine pack and free top up packs which will provide the customers with more entertainment options and will enable better television viewing.”
 

NEW DELHI: Even after touching 100 per cent in the activity requirement, the bidding for the 3G auction refused to stop. After completion of 132 rounds on the 23rd day, the pan-India price has reached Rs 113.27 billion.

There were applications for price increment for the 133rd round tomorrow ranging up to Rs 400 million for some centres.
 
The bid for Mumbai was Rs 19.87 billion, while that of Delhi was Rs 19.20 billion.

With no applications for price increment for tomorrow, the bids for some service centres are expected to slow down. These include Haryana, East Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and the North East. 
 
The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea Cellular, Reliance, S Tel, Tata Teleservices, Videocon Telecommunications and Vodafone Essar.

The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial 3G operations from 1 September.

NEW DELHI: The 3G auction on its 22nd day of bidding crossed the Rs 100 billion mark with a total figure of Rs 110.47 billion after 128 rounds – rising three times above the floor price of Rs 35 billion.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) announced that the activity requirement will be set to 100 per cent in clock round 132.

The bid for Mumbai reached Rs 19.09 billion, ahead of Delhi‘s Rs 18.45 billion.
 
Karnataka closed at Rs 10.31 billion, Andhra Pradesh at Rs 9.60 billion, and Tamil Nadu at Rs 9.48 billion. Gujarat closed at Rs 9.27 billion, while Kolkata clocked Rs 3.12 billion.

The bids for most service centres are expected to slow down with the auction having come to a virtual end there. These include Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kolkata, Kerala, Punjab, Haryana, West and East Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and the North East. 
 
The telecom operators in the race are Aircel, Bharti Airtel, Etisalat DB Telecom, Idea Cellular, Reliance, S Tel, Tata Teleservices, Videocon Telecommunications and Vodafone Essar.

The successful bidders would be allowed to start commercial 3G operations from 1 September.
 

MUMBAI: Videocon d2h has tied up with Atom technologies to launch a mobile-based recharge facility for all its DTH subscribers.

Subscribers can now easily recharge their accounts via a mobile phone application called “atom”, which they will have to download on their phones.

All one has to do is send an SMS to 54959 with text as <atom> to download the required application. Once a customer downloads the application and registers with Atom, they can access and recharge their accounts via their credit cards.

Atom technologies has already put into place an interactive voice response (IVR) based platform for Videocon ‘d2h‘ subscribers and has now extended it to mobile based recharge option. The Atom platform provides a completely secure and automated environment to end customers.
 
Videocon d2h CEO Anil Khera said, “The success of the IVR platform proved that the subscribers were looking for easier and convenient platforms for recharging. The proven expertise of atom technologies, to provide secure and easy-to-use transaction platform has helped us deliver convenient solutions to our customers.” 
 
Atom Technologies director Dewang Neralla said, ” It is a part of our service defining strategy to help our customers reduce their collection cost. I am sure in a large mobile user population this will help Videocon d2h get collection/recharge efficiently through IVR and mobile phone”.