Category: Software

MUMBAI: Internet powerhouses Yahoo! and eBay today announced a multi-year strategic partnership aimed at taking on the likes of search engine leader Google and Bill Gates‘ software giant Microsoft.

A joint statement issued by the two companies says the partnership is “designed to mutually benefit both companies by better serving their user, merchant, and advertising communities in the US. The agreement consists of four major components in the areas of search and graphical advertising, online payments, a co-branded toolbar, and the opportunity to explore ‘click-to-call‘ functionality.”

Yahoo! and eBay will begin to roll out the initiatives outlined in the agreement this year. This will include a testing phase that will take place over the next several months, with a plan to achieve full implementation in 2007.

According to the deal, Yahoo will be the exclusive third-party provider of all graphic ads throughout eBay‘s auction site. Yahoo! and eBay have also agreed to collaborate on ways to increase the quality and comprehensiveness of Yahoo! Web search results for eBay.com.

Yahoo has also chosen eBay‘s online payment system PayPal to allow its own customers to pay for Yahoo Web services. PayPal will be integrated and promoted as Yahoo!‘s payment solution to Yahoo!‘s merchants and publishers, which includes the Yahoo! Publisher Network, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions and other small business services.

“Our consumers will benefit from the combination of Yahoo! and eBay‘s leading technology and services, providing them with one of the best online experiences,” said Yahoo! chairman and CEO Terry Semel. According to Semel, the partnership offers an opportunity to extend the two companies‘ sponsored search and graphical advertising reach on the Web,” he added.

Said Meg Whitman, eBay president and CEO, “Working together, we can create more exposure for our properties, which in turn makes them more valuable to our users.”
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MUMBAI: To date, television on the Internet hasn‘t been like television at all; video streams tend to skip, stutter and break, image quality is low, and very little content is live. That‘s about to change.

Making its worldwide debut at Streaming Media East in New York City, Zattoo has unveiled a new peer-to-peer IPTV service that makes live, quick-start, long-play Internet Television a reality for broadband users, broadcasters, content owners and advertisers.

The first Zattoo P2P IPTV broadcasts begin in Switzerland with the availability of every action-packed minute of the 2006 soccer world championship (known globally as the FIFA World Cup(TM)), streamed live to Swiss viewers starting with the first match in June and culminating with the championship match on 9 July 2006, states an official release.

“Advances in broadband, video compression, and multicast streaming technology are rapidly lowering the technical hurdles for Internet and television to merge on a PC. However, there is still the matter of cost. Our streaming network solves that problem by reducing broadcasters‘ costs by a factor of ten, making it compelling for them to switch to our technology and broaden their service offering,” says CTO and co-founder of Zattoo Sugih Jamin. “Also, Zattoo‘s proprietary P2P streaming technology ensures a video delivery and smoothness that has until now been impossible to achieve.”

Developed by researchers and software engineers from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Zattoo offers a DRM-secure, commercial peer-to-peer network optimized for streaming video that is uniquely capable of serving the needs of consumers, broadcasters, content owners and advertisers, adds the release.

“End users are tired of islands of content. They want a single place to go where they can switch channels as easily as pressing channel up and down on their current TV remote,” says CEO and co-founder of Zattoo Beat Knecht. “Zattoo offers such a single point of access to the widest variety of content, delivered with the highest possible quality and reliability. Users may watch news at work, educational programs at school, or movies in the privacy of their room, all without set top box, as long as they have broadband access.”

MUMBAI: The subscriber results from Informa Telecoms and Media‘s World Cellular Information Service for 1Q 2006, 3G Americas reports that cell phone users across the globe choose GSM 10 to one over any other wireless mobile technology.

According to the study, the customer base for the GSM family of technologies which include, GSM, GPRS, EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA — grew by nearly 120 million additional subscribers in 1Q 2006 alone, compared to the total net growth of CDMA of about 12 million customers.

Today, the 1.85 billion users of the GSM family of technologies make up more than 81 per cent of the wireless mobile market worldwide, with total subscribers of CDMA at less than 300 million and a 13 per cent market share. There were 57 million customers using UMTS services at the close of 1Q 2006.

The results also indicate that from Q1 ‘05 to Q1 ‘06, the GSM family of technologies showed continued growth throughout the Western Hemisphere, adding nearly 95 million new customers — 3.5 times as many as CDMA – and approaching a quarter of a billion customers in this region alone.

CDMA‘s customer base in the region grew to a total of 169 million in the same time period with 27 million new customers and market share declining to 34.6 per cent, along with CDMA to 11.6 per cent. By contrast, the growing market share for GSM reached 47.8 per cent. Latin America and the Caribbean once again nearly doubled their GSM customer base in these 12 months, growing from 77 million customers in March 2005 to 150 million by March 2006.

In this region, more than 19 million GSM users were added, versus 2 million for CDMA. GSM now has nearly 150 million customers in Latin America and the Caribbean and over a 58 per cent share of market, indicating that it is the no.1 technology for wireless mobile services.

In the US and Canada, GSM operators reported exceptional growth, with 4.8 million new customers added in the 1Q 2006 for a customer base of 84 million.

3G Americas president Chris Pearson said, “The majority of wireless customers are selecting GSM service for the value and variety of products and services that are supported by a global eco-system of manufacturers, encouraged by open technology standards versus proprietary standards.”

“In addition, carriers throughout the Americas and worldwide continue to choose EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA as leading next generation technologies for wireless data services for many compelling reasons, such as spectral efficiency, global roaming, economies of scale, handset availability, as well as the potential for increased revenues from 3G services,” he added.

According to a release, the growth of GSM is evident in the number of carriers upgrading or changing their technology platforms in the industry for a variety of strategic business reasons. These include veteran CDMA operators such as Telstra in Australia, and KT Freetel and SK Telecom in Korea who are deploying UMTS/HSPDA. Chinook Wireless (Montana) made a similar announcement to deploy GSM/EDGE to ‘enable their subscribers to benefit from higher performing network service with increased coverage, higher voice quality and advanced digital data services like multimedia messaging and Internet browsing.‘ To date, at least 11 operators have announced CDMA to GSM migrations or dual technology deployments.

Globally, the GSM family of technologies continues its rapid evolution to 3G high-speed wireless data. EDGE is commercially offered by 133 operators across 80 countries, including 31 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. There are 81 additional EDGE networks planned or in deployment. Currently, there are 105 UMTS networks in service across 50 countries, with 59 more planned or in deployment. HSDPA, which is an enhanced version of UMTS for high speed mobile broadband, was launched first in the world by Cingular Wireless in 16 markets in December 2005.

Now, five months later, HSDPA is commercial on 22 networks and 73 additional operators have networks planned, in deployment, or in trial. Rogers Wireless of Canada will deploy HSDPA before year end 2006; T-Mobile USA has announced plans to do the same when spectrum resources are acquired. It is expected that nearly all UMTS operators will deploy HSDPA, essentially a software upgrade to UMTS, resulting in a significant increase in data capacity and offering operators a much-reduced network cost for data services.

Additionally, through its level of scale, GSM serves emerging markets, providing a sub $30 GSM cost handset to the market and reducing typical capital expenditure for deploying a GSM network to a quarter of that required for CDMA, according to the GSM Association.

This data is based on figures from Informa Telecoms & Media, which provides business intelligence and strategic services to the global telecoms and media markets.

MUMBAI: The Association of Electronic Interactive Marketers (AEIM) has announced that The Sims creator Will Wright will be honoured with its first-ever Hall of Fame Award.

As a recipient of the award, Wright will also make a speech at the inaugural MI6 Conference and Awards Show on 27 and 28 June 2006.

The award recognizes Wright‘s career of creative achievements, which include SimCity released in 1989 and credited as one of the most influential computer games ever made. Following on its success, Wright designed numerous other “Sim” games and earned the reputation as a designer of “software toys”-games. In 2000, The Sims was released, surpassing all previous sales records and became the best-selling computer game of all time.

Following such success it was no doubt that Wright was named one of the most important people in gaming, technology and entertainment by Entertainment Weekly, Time, PC Gamer and GameSpy.

“Will Wright has had a revolutionary impact on the electronic games industry,” said MI6 and AEIM president & CEO Jim Chabin. “As our industry and millions of fans worldwide anxiously await what promises to be a spectacular experience with his newest creation, ‘Spore,‘ our board felt that now was an excellent time to acknowledge this person‘s impact on all of us.”

The AEIM is a new non-profit, professional trade organization designed to support the video game industry‘s marketers and related professionals.

MI6 speakers and participants include a list of gaming and entertainment industry executives involved in participating in professional development seminars, educational workshops and keynote sessions. Companies onboard include Microsoft, G4, Xbox, Activision, THQ, Electronic Arts, MTV Networks/Spike TV, Midway Games and ABC Entertainment, among others.

MUMBAI: GarageGames has announced the launch of the B.I.G. (Break Into Games) Competition – a search for America‘s greatest independent videogame developers on 5 June 2006.

On the lines of an American Idol style finale, the entrants and winners will vie for prizes including professional gaming hardware and coveted publishing deals with GarageGames and its partners.

All B.I.G. entrants will be given the opportunity to build their game prototypes with a free trial version of the impressive, new Torque Game Builder (TGB) from GarageGames, which will empower them to build amazing games from scratch and compete for top prizes and recognition, informs an official release.

“We‘ve seen compelling games prototypes created with TGB in one to two weeks,” said GarageGames president Mark Frohnmayer.

The competition is said to be supported by a step-by-step tutorial to a fully developed online community, where designers are in contact with technical experts from GarageGames and the gaming community. Podcasts and white papers are also available for reference.

Prototype games are due 25 August 2006, the top 10 finalists will be simultaneously announced at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Bellevue and at ShowDown in San Jose on 26 August 2006.

The contestants will then have over one month to polish their final games before being flown out to compete at IndieGamesCon (IGC)– GarageGames annual version of Sundance for Indie game developers – in Eugene, Oregon from 6 to 8 October 2006.

Only five contestants will be chosen to appear at the end of the Player‘s Choice Awards and be part of B.I.G.‘s ‘Indie Idol,‘ judged by a panel of industry experts.

GarageGames director of business development Jay Moore said, “This is the best opportunity for up-and-coming videogame developers to break into the business and for established developers to show their skills. We‘ve made it totally free so that it‘s possible for literally anyone to pursue the American dream. Furthermore, the support is there to make anyone a winner who has the passion for it.”

MUMBAI: OpenTV Corp. and MC3 Global have signed a multi-year license agreement for the OpenTV Participate solution to manage Play Platinum TV, MC3 Global‘s soon-to-be-launched TV gaming broadcast business.

OpenTV Participate will be the core business management tool for Play Platinum, a UK-based fixed odds gaming and entertainment broadcaster and managed services provider. Play Platinum expects to broadcast programming such as virtual horse racing and numbers games, including Keno, to viewers on free-to-air satellite, broadband internet, and other distribution platforms.

OpenTV Participate will process all transactions and provide modules for customer registration, customer care and bonus, and loyalty schemes. OpenTV Participate will also offer MC3 Global multiple finance functions, including billing (via credit cards and premium rate telephony), accounting, business and financial reporting, and risk management, all with real-time accessibility.

“MC3 understands how OpenTV‘s technology can help achieve their vision, and we are delighted to be working with them. OpenTV Participate has been designed to enable broadcasters to offer compelling interactive services with a customer-centric approach. We believe that OpenTV Participate will help Play Platinum achieve a large, loyal customer base, and will enable Play Platinum to manage those customers more efficiently than any other platform in the market today,” said OpenTV EMEA managing director Ben Bennett.

Play Platinum, which expects to launch its service in multiple territories, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, will be broadcasting in several languages with customers able to engage with programming through the telephone, the internet and SMS. With its real-time processing of all participation, OpenTV Participate enables Play Platinum to broadcast live statistics to Play Platinum viewers synchronized with the programming.

“As with most businesses, ours is designed to grow in stages with new formats being added as the business builds. OpenTV Participate is the perfect platform for such a strategy — the system is extremely powerful and modular in design. In the main package, we get all the systems we need to run a participation-based interactive TV business and can then add new modules quickly and with little additional effort — for example, new games engines or the very slick participation TV modules,” said MC3 Global managing director Jennifer Allsop.

MUMBAI: Alcatel and Microsoft Corp. announced they will harness IBM‘s server systems technology to deliver solutions for carrier-class triple play/Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) deployments. This announcement, combined with the existing OEM agreement between IBM and Alcatel, solidifies IBM as a key member of the joint Alcatel-Microsoft IPTV ecosystem.

As a result, IBM, Alcatel and Microsoft will work together to deliver these advanced systems to carriers deploying triple play service offerings.

The optimization of IBM‘s server and storage solutions will include the ability to provide superior support for the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition software platform within Alcatel‘s overall Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA). The companies will also cooperate on global go-to- market efforts that will include joint selling and marketing activities, states an official release.

The combination of Alcatel‘s network access experience, IBM‘s proven server solutions and Microsoft‘s software expertise and comprehensive IPTV Edition software platform is expected to speed time to market for IPTV services while improving system performance and architecture scalability for telecommunications service providers. In addition, with the pre-investment in performance testing and integration, the cooperation also has the potential to improve performance and lower CAPEX for service providers, the release adds.

“As the key services integrator and partner to many of the world‘s largest service providers seeking to deliver triple play offerings, our customers rely on us for guidance across all areas of their projects,” says president for Alcatel‘s fixed solutions activities Monika Maurer. “By working with established leaders like IBM and Microsoft we maintain tremendous confidence in the capabilities of the ecosystem, while providing our customers with the flexibility and reliability necessary for their next-generation network deployments.”

“IBM is pleased to be a key server platform and storage provider in delivering integrated IPTV solutions to Alcatel and Microsoft customers,” says IBM‘s Systems and Technology GroupVP Jim Pertzborn. “Leveraging the breadth of IBM‘s System x ™ and BladeCenter ™ technologies will enable Alcatel and Microsoft to deliver reliable, scalable and cost-effective IPTV solutions to their customers.”

“Our joint collaboration with Alcatel and IBM is a significant validation of the growing IPTV industry,” adds Microsoft TV Division GM Marketing Christine Heckart. “By working with these industry-leading companies we can continue to strengthen the Microsoft IPTV Edition platform while enabling service providers to cost-effectively deliver exciting new TV experiences for consumers.”

MUMBAI: Sybase Inc., the UK-based company providing enterprise infrastructure and mobile software, has announced that its database and mobile software solutions received highest honours at the 2006 SIIA Codie Awards.

Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise(ASE) 15 and AvantGo won as leaders in the Codie Awards‘ in the “Best Database Management Solution” and “Best Mobile Solution” categories.

“Sybase has secured its position as a leading database company and a cutting-edge provider of mobile industry solutions,” said Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) president Ken Wasch. “The company continues to be recognized for its innovative technology.”

Commenting on this achievement, Sybase senior VP corporate development and marketing Marty Beard said, “We are extremely pleased about the SIIA‘s recognition of our database and mobility solutions.”

“These prestigious awards validate our unique ability to deliver best-of-breed data management and mobility solutions that span both ends of the solutions spectrum from the data center to the device,” he adds.

The annual Codie awards showcase the software and information industry‘s finest products and services, and remains the industry standard for celebrating outstanding achievement and vision. This year‘s winners were chosen from a record 1,026 nominations for excellence of products, services, corporate leadership and philanthropy