World Cup fever is back. The once in a four years tournament has kicked off yesterday, June 11 and the world is back to its World Cup mode.

The Internet has not slacked either. From Google who steals an early start with its own goal, to Twitter who comes up with rendered images for World Cup and country hashtags.

Searching Google for ‘world cup’ will get you the usual list of news and sites related to the event but when you scroll down low to the numbers to continue browsing the results, you will not see the usual Gooooooooogle but this.

Hashtag or # on Twitter usually generate link exclusive to the site where you can find certain topics discussed on the microblogging site. These days though, updates with “#WorldCup” (or a World Cup hashtag, as it is read verbally) will be rendered with images of a football.

Updates with any of the participating country’s abbreviation, like #ENG or #ARG, will have the country’s flag image embedded to the update.

Not always in front of the TV to watch the games? Worry not, as long as you have a computer and an Internet connection, you’ll be able to stream live any game you would like to watch here.

Work is expected to slow down, at best, worldwide. Be prepared to have your staff calling in “sick” after an important game. A South African friend resignedly said that he expected things to settle down again in September.

The fever is quite definitely something that the world embraces. Which team are you rooting for?

Google allows company to bid for top place in the Sponsored Link section, a smaller highlighted bar on top clearly indicated as advertisement, as opposed to actual results – which no company can pay in order to move themselves up the ranks.

BP declares that the move was done to help people find assistance and file claims for the damage they suffer in the disaster triggered by an explosion at the offshore oil rig.

Skeptics, however, are convinced the move was executed to spin news and information BP way. The company has earned initial criticism by spending $50 million on TV advertisements, instead of actually doing physical damage control.

Not that the company can afford to keep on paying for top place in the Sponsored Link section. More bills are sent their way as White House assumes a tougher stance toward the matter, leading to market anxiety that sees BP’s shares nose dive as much as 16% to $29.20, their lowest since August 1996.

BP representatives, however, has declared that the company’s financial is strong enough to handle the bills, a statement which has been lend confidence by the White House.

Cleanup costs and other bills total the amount to $1.25 billion, with more to come in penalties.

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You’ve heard of HD formats like 720p and 1080p. Well, today we’re offering a new way to experience YouTube: text-only mode or TEXTp. Try it out by clicking on any of the videos below and read more about this endeavor in our blog: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/

This is what the youtube frontpage boasts. There are a list of videos given which are said to run in the text version, viewing which would save the google guys costs in bandwidth.

So, I did click the link and it took me to a clip which showed up numbers dancing to music. It was not a bad
joke.

I expected google to announce a new innovation on their homepage but this time I guess they resorted to youtube to catch the spotlight of millions of unsuspecting users.

Not too funny but will do.
Happy April’s fool everybody!

A Google spokesperson has informed the BBC that any person may request deletion of their image available in the Google Maps service, which covers 36,000 miles of streets and roads of over 25 cities in the UK. “We have millions of images so that the percentage of which we have removed is negligible,” said the spokesman. The images have been replaced by black screens.

The system allows Internet users to zoom and view the streets as if they were they are watching the rest of the world live. In Spain, the service covers the cities like Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Sevilla, Zaragoza and Oviedo. The project has attracted criticism from groups like Privacy International, according to whom “the images have been captured without the permission of the people for commercial use, which is not acceptable from a legal standpoint.”

The Information Commissioner of the British Government had given its approval for the project proposed by Google, arguing that the U.S. company had developed a series of safeguards to ensure privacy, such as blurring the faces of people or license plates of cars. Street View was launched in the United States in May 2007 and it operates in Italy, France, Holland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand.

How concerned are you to update your browser? Have you ever updated your browser? If not, know that you are one of the 637 million Internet users who put their computer at risk by not having time or interest enough to protect their browsers.

These data are extracted from a study conducted by researchers at Google, IBM and CENL (Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory), a technology research group based in Zurich (Switzerland). The objective was to determine why frequent attacks of cyber criminals occur through the browser, and why a high percentage of these attacks are successful.

The main reason is simple: about 40% of internet users using non-secure versions of Web browsers. Data were collected during June from Google searches and signature security SECUNIA.

Among the users surveyed, 78% used Internet Explorer, Firefox 18%, 3% Safari and 0.8% Opera. IE users are more careless with the updates, since only 52% use the latest version: despite the fact that IE7 is 19 months on the market, there are still 48% of users using the older version (IE6).

However, users who use other browsers are much more careful when it comes to updates: 92% of Firefox users use the latest version, and 70% Safari and 90% the Opera.

In this situation, the criminals often enter a gateway and comfortably get into the PCs of millions of Internet users around the world, where appropriate confidential information is extracted or become zombies that send spam without their owners realizing what their computer is actually being used for.

So which IE version are you using?

However, when you’re a giant and as big as Google, failure is analyzed from various angles by different associations or bodies. One such is the Center for the Electronic Privacy Information (EPIC, in short), and they sued Google and made a case for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC ) to investigate the facts.

The association has asked the federal agency to investigate the level of security services offered by Google in the cloud, and also requested that the company be responsible for the security breaches. They also want Google to not offer such online tools as long as they can not guarantee system security.

EPIC’s concern, however, does not stop with Google, but would cover all services that offer multiple cloud computing companies, whose chief characteristic is to allow the user to ignore the software installed on personal computer.

EPIC claims that Google advertising emphasizes the security of their services, but its terms “does not give any warranty or liability for damages arising from negligence, recklessness or malice on the part of Google”.

Since Google claim that they have not yet reviewed the complaint in depth, but insist that in many cases the security of documents stored on their servers is much higher than in their own hard drive.

Yes! Now you can download packages and run applications in the background with the iPhone 3.0

It will be possible to play through bluetooth with other users without creating a Wifi network, an option that can also lead to other applications The Operating System of the iPhone is shared with the iPod Touch and has exceeded a combined total of 30 million sold units.

The vice president of iPhone software Scott Forstall, said he was optimistic about the new features in the iPhone OS 3.0; expansion, he labelled as “very important”. A prominent improvement is the enhancement of the interaction between the accessories and devices. It will be possible to play through bluetooth with other users without creating a Wifi network, an option that can also lead to further interesting applications. In addition, with the iPhone OS 3.0, you can now talk directly to an accessory “, for example, to remotely controlled speaker or, if you take the medical field, you now have the capability of sending information from medical devices to doctors.

Apple has also expanded the scope of one of its most popular services. Has taken “the heart of the Maps application and and is planning to make it publicly available so that developers can insert the map into their applications.” “You can enlarge take a satellite view, a standard map, customized notes, using Wifi or triangulation …”.

However, two of the most requested by users are the ‘Push Notifications’ and the option to’ copy and paste “text, which existed in, for example, Windows Mobile, and iPhone users. With the first option one may be able to run some applications in the background and developers can add real-time functions that alerts the user.

“This is what we have been doing for the past six months,” said Forstall and has made clear the great effort made to optimize the service. According to the company, they have proven applications running in ‘background’ on Blackberrys or Windows Mobile, and that made the performance of the devices fall by 80 percent. With the latest iPhone OS, performance is only reduced by 23 percent. This option is the last thing we needed to build a truly great experience. “

The iPhone is now available in 80 countries around the world, while last year could only be bought “a handful” according to Vice President Greg Joswiak. He added that Apple set a target of selling 10 million iPhones by 2008 and has exceeded the figure to 13.7 million.

Regarding applications, the company has had 800,000 downloads of the SDK, SDK. Game developers such as Gameloft have managed to come up with the action game ‘Spartan’. Two million units were sold in just a few months.

Sachin Duggal, CEO of Nivio, mentioned in a company press release that both of them will discuss with the world leaders on how will Nivio help in revolutinizing the future of the world. Both Duggal and Dhoot are bestfriends and are the founders of Nivio. The company was founded in August 2004 and is based in Switzerland and has R&D in India. In April of 2008, it has launched its online service successfully. As of today, there are already more than 35000 beta registrations for the product and it is set to be globally launched in full-scale in 2009.

On the other hand, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is an independent and a Swiss non-profit foundation. It is going to hold its annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland this Januarty 28 to February 01, 2009. Its Technology Pioneer Programme, wherein Nivio was among the chosen companies, is aimed at recognizing companies at the forefront of technology and innovation. Out of more than 320 applications from all over the world, only 34 were chosen. There were 44 global technology experts who evaluated the applications.

Some of the past Technology Pioneers at World Economic Forum were Google, Mozilla Corp., Nanosolar, and Infosys. These companies are now big players in the market. Nivio, being one of the Technology Pioneers of 2009, can also grow as big as these companies. This event is a big opportunity for the company to raise awareness of their product and learn ideas on how to further improve their company from the other world leaders who will attend in the said event.

Duggal will also be joining the New Champions’ Annual Meeting on September of 2009 at Dalian, China.

Dr.Jhunjhunwala leads the Telecommunications and Computer Networks group (TeNeT) at IIT Madras. This group is closely working with industry in the development of a number of Telecommunications and Computer Network Systems. TeNeT group has incubated a number of technology companies which work in partnership with TeNeT group to develop world class Telecom and Banking products for Rural Markets.Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala has been awarded Padma Shri in the year 2002. He has been awarded Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1998, Dr.Vikram Sarabhai Research Award for the year 1997, Millennium Medal at Indian Science Congress in the year 2000 and H. K. Firodia for “Excellence in Science & Technology” for the year 2002, Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Foundation Award for Science & Technology for the year 2004, Awarded Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Lecture Award by INSA for the year 2006 and IBM Innovation and Leadership Forum Award by IBM for the year 2006. He is a Fellow of INAE, IAS, INSA and NAS. Dr. Jhunjhunwala is a Director in the Board of SBI. He is also a Board member of several companies in India, including TTML, BEL, Polaris, 3i Infotech, Sasken, Tejas, NRDC, and IDRBT. He is member of Prime Minister’s Setup Scientific Advisory Committee.

Do you know that most Indian Bloggers are from Delhi. I have reason to believe it to be so. Just type Blogs in Google Trends and see for yourself!

Indian Blogosphere is pretty nascent. It is pretty hard to figure out the number of Indians in the blogosphere. I am planning to maintain a directory of bloggers along with their blogs ranked according to alexa.  So if you are an Indian and if you have a blog then please leave your blog along with a description of the same in the comments. If you cracked 6 figures in alexa, well thats an achievement! In that case don’t forget to leave your email address as well. I might want to get into touch with you and discuss a bit about factors that contributed towards your blogging success!

BharatEntrepreneurs.com was started in 2008 with just a couple of members and then more and more people joined the bandwagon. Right now we are focussing on Business News and articles related to entrepreneurs. We hovered in and around 650,000 rank in alexa and we are hoping to crack the top 100,000 some time in the not too distant future.

Given that Indians are usually pretty good in English and can communicate well, one wonders why there are not too many blogs out there to validate this. I mean compared to the number of people from other countries who blog, Indians seem to lag behind in running popular blogs.

However there seems to be a lot of interest in the words, “blogs”, “blogging”, “bloggers”

Consider these graphs from google trends. http://www.google.com/trends?q=blogs&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0

India ranks number 1 for the search term “blogs” in google. This shows that, though Indians are interested in blogs, they seem to be not interested in starting one!

I say this because, Portugal, Brazil, Philippines, and the United States, all have a huge number of blogs. Infact, in most of the blogs you can see widgets for RSS, Chat , or Visitors in most of these blogs, while I see that most people in India hardly have an idea about RSS or how to embed widgets and add functionality to their blogs.

With internet fast penetrating Indian homes and prices becoming affordable, one can hope that Indian Bloggers can be more vocal and be a strong community in the internet.

Also this raises an interesting question. Since there are not too many popular and mainstream bloggers/blogs from india, does this mean that there is a gap in the indian blogging industry that can be easily be plugged in by opportunistic entreprenerial bloggers?  I am one such entrepreneur, the question is ArE YoU???

Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft will be the official search engine for Verizon Wireless. With yahoo powering AT&T and Google powering Sprint, Microsoft is hoping to gain a foothold in the mobile cyberspace. They have a 5 year contract with Verizon. The payments are a whopping $550 million dollars to $650 million dollars.

Given that Google search is something we are all used to, it remains doubtful if the users remain faithful to the defacto MSN Live search. In all probability users will install google search into their browsers and start browsing the net just like they would do in internet explorer.

Given that Live is many a light years behind not only in terms of search results but also in user acceptance, one can only wonder when the people at Microsoft will realize that it is a bit too late to start competing with the established Search Giant. Unless Live offers far superior set of results or some new unique feature, it is unlikely that this deal would be beneficial to Microsoft.

Well what do you think? If you were in Steve Ballmer’s shoes, would you have gone ahead???

But how soon is the real question ? I’ve several ideas bumping in my mind at all times and it feels real misreable when I see others launching that idea before I could even start to work upon it.

Yesterday saw the movie Antitrust and I guess the initial speech by CEO of NURV company in the movie encapsulates the tech business. It’s a binary business he said, either 1(alive) or 0(dead) and with new technologies mushrooming every hour it’s very hard to keep up with the pace. If it was not for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry and Brian then maybe some other kid working somewhere in a Garage might have been a success today. The difference between these guys and others I feel is that they are ready to take their chances while others are terrified to an extent, to stick to the orthodox way of secure life. It’s not that all budding entrepreneurs who’ve left their college midway have been successful but if the idea is really rocking and coool then there is no way that one can’t build another Microsoft, Apple or Google. And these are just the few renowned companies, there are thousands of others like Blake Ross (Firefox Kid), Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning (Napster), Bram Cohen (BitTorrent), Max Levchin (Paypal) who have made it real big despite having dropped out of college quite early in their career.

Max Levchin, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign graduate who sold the company he co-founded, PayPal, to eBay for $1.5 billion when he was just 26, uses his blockbuster success to persuade students at his alma mater not to follow his example. He makes the case that young people should seize the fleeting opportunity to get a different kind of education.

“You are essentially taking a class in real-life company-building on the nickel of a venture capitalist,” Levchin said. “It’s a pretty unbeatable deal.”

So the big question that remains to be answered is should one drop out of college or not to pursue his/her dream ? Debate is on ….

BarCamps

According to wikipedia “BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants”

Almost every city has a BarCamp these days. Below are a few:

• BarCamp Bangalore – www.barcampbangalore.org
• BarCamp Mumbai – www.barcampmumbai.org
• BarCamp Delhi – http://barcamp.org/BarCampDelhi
• BarCamp Chennai – barcamp.org/BarCampChennai
• BarCamp Hyderabad – barcamp.org/BarCampHyderabad

Those were just a few links to make it easy for you. However you can just visit BarCamp.org and search for your city or even better just google it

If your city doesn’t have a BarCamp then try starting one yourself. The details are found in the BarCamp official site BarCamp.org.

Proto.in

This is a an event thats especially setup for entrepreneurs to showcase their startups to VCs. Take a look at www.proto.in

More similar ones:

• HeadStart.in
• Kickstart.in

And also to mention there’s a weekly event called “Startup Saturdays” conducted by KickStart. So take a look at that too on their website www.kickstart.in

There’s also an online pitch for entrepreneurs to showcase their startups to VCs. Its called Vator.tv. Just post your videos at Vator.tv and wait for a VC to contact you.

It was clear to me, early on, that my calling was in business. I did not graduate with a medical degree or was a lawyer. Enterprise, therefore, was my calling. But I was very clear that the mantra of success lies just in these two lines, “Doing what you like and loving what you do.”

I was very clear I had chosen a path which I love every moment of. And that is one advice, I would like to give to my young friends here, who are graduating here tonight. To ensure that you are doing what you love in doing what you like. Never accept the situation where you have to like or love what you are doing. There was a time when our parents would aspire us to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and many of us, many of my own peers were kind of pushed or nudged into those areas to which they were enjoined for the rest of their lives. Only mediocrity comes out of such moves. Thankfully, in today’s world, you can choose what you want to do. Just being merely doctors, lawyers and engineers are not the only professions left for you to choose. There are great many more professions. Today you can choose what you want to be. There are different branches which have come out of variety of streams of enterprise. Today you see enterprise coming out of almost nothing like Microsoft and more, even more importantly, companies like Google which are some of the largest companies I am talking about. That gives you an idea, an idea of power, an idea of the power of thought. And very little capital. Both Sergey and Larry Page, drop outs from Stanford, Bill Gates drop out from Harvard went on to build successful companies, perhaps one of the most successful companies that we will witness in decades. So, the world has changed and the good news is that the world is accepting this change and is allowing people to take interest in the areas that they would like to build their successes upon.

For me, as I said, it was in the area of enterprise. Coming out of 1976 I saw the pole positions taken up by the Birlas, the Tatas, the Dalmiyas , the Thapars and those in my own city, the Hero cycles, the Ostwald Vitriols and I was told time and again that all the grand stand positions are gone. I could pick a petrol station, pick up a car agency do some small enterprises. There was enough small scale enterprises flourishing in Ludhiana making bicycle parts but clearly, having dabbled in some of those activity for a few years I was very clear that one could push forward and create something fairly big.

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