The Mozilla community is celebrating 500 million Firefox downloads

TechCrunch noted Thursday that Mozilla was about to celebrate its 500 millionth download of Firefox, the open source browser that has made inroads into Microsoft’s dominant market share. By this morning, the official Spread Firefox site was claiming an additional 340,000 downloads, putting it over the half billion mark.

That’s an impressive download rate — one that has given Firefox an approximately 17 percent share of the browser market. Looking at visitors to NYTimes.com, a much larger share of our online readers, about 28 percent in February, were Firefox users. The bulk of our online readers use various versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (about 60 percent) and Apple’s Safari (about 10 percent).

But we also noticed that tens of thousands of our visitors use various versions of Netscape Navigator, the nearly defunct browser owned by AOL, as well as a variety of other, more obscure browsers. It made us wonder why people choose the browsers they choose. Let us know about what’s behind your choice in the comments section.

Pepsi drops Ganguly, Dravid; Ishant, Rohit in

The change of guard in Indian cricket team is reflecting in the endorsement market, with soft drinks major Pepsi deciding to drop Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid as ambassadors while roping in youngsters Ishant Sharma and Rohit Sharma, in line with its brand ideology.

As far as master blaster Sachin Tendulkar, who has been Pepsi's brand ambassador for a long time now, is concerned, the company is observing a silence.

"From time to time we review the list of stars and depending on situation and who we think is right, we pick and choose. In case of cricketers, Rohit Sharma and Ishant Sharma are surely in as they have the attitude and aggression reflecting Pepsi's brand image PepsiCo India Executive Vice President, Marketing (Cola), Sandeep Singh Arora told media. Read More>>

Nokia ties up with Google

World's largest cellphone maker Nokia has tied up with Google to facilitate web search on its products, even as it launched models offering new services, moves that could consolidate its leadership position.

The integration will begin in select markets on Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic. Google search will be extended to additional models in the future.

Ultimately, Nokia will make Google search available to its customers in over 100 countries around the world, serving mobile owners speaking more than 40 languages.

At the GSM World Congress, the company also launched a number of new devices including phones that offer location- based navigation services.

Nokia improved its market share to 40 per cent last year and hopes to better it.

Launching four mobile phones -- N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 and Nokia 6219 Navigator, the company said these were no longer mobile phones but mini personal computers.

"As we continue to free the internet from the limitations of the desktop, we are taking mobility into a completely new realm of possibility," Nokia Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.

The devices exhibit different location-based and multimedia experiences from pedestrian navigation to geo-tagging and movie viewing to video and photo sharing. The phones would be in the market from second quarter this year.

Commenting on i-phones from Apple and other companies, Nokia officials said they were ready to face the competition.

Nokia Executive Vice President (Mobile Phones) Kai Ostamo, while commenting on its new range of phones, said "we would like to be called Mobile Experience Company and not just a mobile phone company."

With Videos-On-Demand, Bollywood Meets Web 2.0

In many ways the films of Bollywood, South Asia's prolific film industry, are tailor-made for the Web: They're instantly digestible, they're lavishly eye-catching, and they come in an unending stream of around 1,000 movies a year. Plus, the huge expat Indian community of some 25 million worldwide offers a sizable potential market.

So it makes perfect sense that Bollywood.tv is using next-generation caching and content-delivery technology to bring its vast collection of South Asian spectacles to online subscribers around the world.

Based in London and owned by Australian investment firm Charter Pacific Corp., Bollywood.tv was founded in 2005. It has amassed a catalog of 1,900 contemporary and classic Bollywood movies in languages including Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, and Bengali. The site charges $3.99 and up to watch full-length movies and has a monthly subscription offering as well.

Along with third-party providers like Bollywood.tv, big Bollywood studios are getting into the online act as well. Last year two of the largest Indian film factories, Rajshri Group and Eros Entertainment, began making their movies available via download to fans across the Web. Several recent South Asian blockbusters have been released simultaneously in theaters and on the Web. Read More>>

Aamir Khan's Ghajini rights for Rs 90 cr

With pre-release movie rights becoming hot property, the Hindi remake of Tamil movie Ghajini, starring Aamir Khan, has earned an estimated Rs 90 crore by selling its distribution rights. Last year, Om Shanti Om was the top grosser in distribution rights, it sold the rights to Eros for a reported Rs 73 crore.

The Indian Film Company has bagged the domestic distribution rights for the Aamir Khan-starrer for an estimated Rs 53 crore. IFC is managed by B K Enterprises a joint venture of Viacom and Raghav Bahl. Producers Madhu Varma and Allu Arvind have sold the home video rights, overseas rights and satellite rights for another Rs 40 crore.

When contacted, the Indian Film Company’s Sandeep Bhargav confirmed that they had bought the rights for the untitled Hindi remake of Ghajini. Ghajini has been the highest grossing Tamil hit. I believe that the remake of Ghajini will be one of the biggest films of this year. It stars Aamir Khan, so it’s a special film. We have acquired it at a value that includes marketing and print expenses.” Read More>>

New York Times to cut 100 jobs

The New York Times is cutting 100 jobs from its newsroom this year as financial pressures mount from a weak economy and competition from the Internet.

Executive Editor Bill Keller told employees in a meeting Thursday that the cuts would come mainly through attrition and buyouts, but layoffs were also possible.

New York Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said the paper has a total of 1,332 newsroom employees throughout the paper, which would make the cutbacks equivalent to nearly 8 percent of its editorial staff.

The Times' parent company, The New York Times Co., has cut jobs at other properties, including about 125 positions last year at The Boston Globe and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Mass.

But reporting jobs at the Times' flagship paper had been relatively untouched until now, and the cuts announced Thursday will result in the first net reduction in reporting jobs there in recent memory.

Last November the paper eliminated about a dozen newsroom support staff but no reporters. Mathis said the Times' newsroom has been generally growing in recent years, and had 1,078 employees in 1998.

Bill O'Meara, president of the Newspaper Guild of New York, said the union would work with the Times to minimize the possibility of involuntary buyouts.

A spokesman for the Newspaper Guild of New York did not immediately return a call for comment.

Newspaper publishers around the country have been retrenching with job cuts and other cost-saving measures as their advertising revenues suffer because of competition from the Internet and weakness in the economy, which have especially hurt their lucrative classified advertising business.

On Wednesday employees at the country's No. 2 newspaper publisher, Chicago-based Tribune Co., were told that company would eliminate hundreds of jobs at the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other publications in the latest effort there to reduce costs.

Print advertising revenues have been declining steadily at U.S. newspapers for more than a year, according to figures from the Newspaper Association of America, an industry group. Gains in online advertising have been making up for some, but not all of the losses.

Overall newspaper advertising fell 7.4 percent in the third quarter of 2007, the most recent period for which the NAA has reported data. Print advertising, which still makes up the vast majority of newspapers' revenues, fell 9 percent to $10.1 billion (euro6.9 billion) in the quarter while online advertising grew 21 percent to $773 million (euro528.5 million).

The New York Times Co. reported a 4.1 percent decline in overall advertising for the fourth quarter of 2007, excluding the effect of an extra week in the year-ago period. The declines were even worse in December, when overall newspaper advertising fell 13.8 percent, also excluding the extra week in the 2006 period.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 Brings a New Browsing Interface

With the release today of beta 3 of Firefox 3, we are definitely getting closer to the final release of Mozilla's open source web browser.

But for a third beta this version of Firefox 3 includes some fairly significant changes from the previous betas, including changes to the main user interface of the browser.

By far the biggest change is the inclusion of what is being called the keyhole interface for the Back and Forward buttons on the browser toolbar. This keyhole essentially combines the two buttons into a single composite button that is shaped like, well, a keyhole.

In the keyhole the Back (which tends to be used more than Forward) is the larger portion of the button. The Forward button becomes a smaller button to the right of the Back button and a drop down menu to the right of the Forward button lets users view all pages they have browsed in that session, with the page they are currently on shown in bold type.

In general I liked this new keyhole modification to the Back/Forward buttons and found it intuitive. However, some users may be a little confused at first.

The Star button in the address bar has also been improved somewhat, making it possible to bookmark a page with a single click and get more detailed bookmarking information with two clicks. However, in my usage of the betas I've come to dislike this star button as it sits right next to the drop down button that lets users view pages they have visited. As a frequent user of the drop down I have accidentally clicked the star several times, often bookmarking pages I had no desire to bookmark.

Other usability enhancements include improved site finding accuracy in the autocomplete features in the address bar, as well as better icon and interface integration for users on Mac OS X and Linux. Read More>>

KPOs set to log up to $17-b revenues by 2010: KPMG

The Indian Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) industry will have revenues in the range of $10-17 billion by 2010, a study by KPMG said. Of this, financial KPO would alone account for $5 billion, the study said.

“While the bulk of the growth could be attributed to the financial services, the rest of the $17 billion growth would come from the pharma, core accounting and legal sectors for the KPO sector,” KPMG global sourcing advisory head Pradeep Udhas said. He was also hopeful that the captive units would continue remain dominant though catering to niche areas in the KPO landscape.

The study suggests that although India continues to remain the top KPO destination, there are many countries that are snapping at its heels which qualify for as potential financial services hubs for the KPO industry. “

Companies that are outsourcing to KPOs are trying to balances their risks, such an environment would eventually give rise to a hub and spoke model wherein India would act as a hub for the different spokes emerging in countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada and South Africa among others,” Mr Udhas said. According to the study, large KPO providers are expected to move to multi-location deliver centres. Issues that can potentially hamper growth include skill set shortage, a declining US dollar and compliance and regulatory pressures, the study said.

Special package for IT, BPO industry in Budget

Union communications and IT minister A Raja said his ministry is asking for a dedicated incentive package for the Indian IT and BPO industry in the forthcoming budget and for the continuation of tax holiday benefit under the software technology parks scheme. “We have received feedback from the industry players for the continuation of the STPI scheme.

The scheme’s fiscal incentives, for instance, are being treated on a priority basis by the ministry of communications and IT and we’re extensively following it up with the PMO on this,” Mr Raja said at an industry meet organised by trade body Nasscom. The minister also said continuation of tax benefits would particularly benefit small and medium enterprises, most of which can’t cash in on the special economic zones.

Mr Raja also touched upon the spectrum allocation issue on the sidelines of the meeting. He said that the government won’t lower spectrum pricing but it would be left to competition to determine whether price is to be hiked or reduced. The Wireless Planning and Co-ordination Wing of the Department of Telecom (DoT) has proposed levying one-time fixed spectrum charges for additional spectrum of 1 MHz for Rs 2 crore, 1 crore and Rs 0.35 crore for categories A, B and C circles, respectively, against telecom regulator Trai’s recommendations of Rs 16 crore, 8 crore and 8 crore, respectively. Currently, operators have been paying in the range of 2-6% of their annual gross revenues (AGR) for 4.4-15 MHz of spectrum.

The minister said the ministry was ready to submit the amended IT Act in the next Parliament session. “Cyber security is another area where the industry must look to consolidate its position. In order to consolidate industry’s global edge, we have to strengthen our IT Act and give it more teeth. Amendments to the current IT Act are being finalised by the ministry,” Mr Raja said.

Mr Raja also voiced a need for providing cheaper bandwidth to broadband operators for enabling better connectivity in rural India. “Rural connectivity is still a dream for almost 80% of India’s population. Our goal is to provide rural citizens with access to state-of-the-art technology devices and internet at lower prices.

For that to happen, bandwidth has to be made even cheaper and reasonably priced telecom solutions must reach the common package,” Mr Raja said.

Yahoo india sacks forty employees

Pink slips have reached India’s tech capital Bangalore with the online giant Yahoo! chopping at least 40 jobs in a single day at its development centre.

The job cuts have come as a shock for the Yahoo! India employees who were given just 30 minutes to exit their workplace. Some of the emotionally distraught employees broke down on receiving the news while others who turned restive called up ET office.

Globally, Yahoo! has unveiled workforce rationalisation putting roughly 1,000 jobs at risk. The reason cited for Wednesday’s axing of jobs was the internal performance measurement index of Yahoo!, called Relative Poor Performers (RPR). Yahoo! India CEO Sharad Sharma and the top management were not available for an interface with the employees. Further, according to sources, Yahoo! has decided to freeze recruitments in India for the time being.

Yahoo! India currently has a total headcount of 1,500 with its R&D operations solely located in Bangalore. The latest job cuts were primarily in the R&D division.Sources said that the job cuts affected up to the mid-manager level across all its segments. The affected people include developers, senior engineers and some of the relatively inexperienced people. Yahoo! India officials were not available for comment.

Google to set up 20 acre campus in Hyderabad

Global Internet major Google will set up its first campus in India, which will be spread over 20 acres in Hyderabad, a senior IT department official of the Andhra Pradesh government said on Wednesday.

"Google will set up their India campus in Hyderabad. We have alloted 20 acres of land," M Gopi Krishna, Special Secretary in Andhra Pradesh's Department of IT and Communications said during a presentation on the coming Hyderabad IT summit 2008.

About the proposed investment by Google in this venture, he said the internet company would not like to share those details.

He also said Infosys Technologies Ltd would set up its biggest campus in Hyderabad, where it has been alloted 450 acres, bigger than its campus at Mysore which is around 335 acres.

IT exports from Andhra Pradesh has been growing at around 50 per cent for the last three years to reach Rs 18,582 crore in 2006-07, and it is expected to be around Rs 25,000 crore in the current financial year, Krishna said.

He said, "40 IT/ITES SEZs, spread over 2,000 acres in Hyderabad and tier-II locations in Andhra Pradesh, are in the offing. Visakhapatnam is going to be the next IT hub of Andhra Pradesh," he said.

Hyderabad IT Summit, with focus on IT infrastructure, will be held from March 20 to 22. It will focus on emerging trends in global IT industry and infrastructure demands.

The Evolution of Tech Companies Logos

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

Let’s take a look at the origin of tech companies’ logos and how they evolved over time:

Read Full Article>>

Vodafone warns of threat from Google and Apple

Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin has warned the industry to get creative about mobile services or risk becoming marginalised by the arrival of new kids on the block such as Apple and Google.

In his keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona on Tuesday, Sarin said: "We must, as an industry, learn to both partner and compete with these new players because our customers want to experience entertainment such as music downloads, mobile TV, user-generated content such as YouTube, and social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. We have to welcome these new ideas and yet make sure we are relevant for our customers."

Sarin also called for an end to the competition between WiMax and LTE (the long-term evolution of 3G), saying WiMax could be happily accommodated under the LTE umbrella, rather than having "duelling standards".

Sarin said: "In the end… technology is not what matters; it's services, it's applications, it's experiences."

Because mobile customers now want to communicate via a variety of methods — be it SMS, email or social-networking websites — Sarin said the industry must step up to the challenge and "be in all these places".

"We must not allow ourselves to become bit-pipes and let somebody else do the services work," Sarin warned. Read More>>

Taking a Closer Look at How Google Works

With all the speculation about how much Yahoo is worth to Microsoft, or how much Yahoo would be worth if it outsourced its search-advertising platform to Google, it seems like a good opportunity to clarify how Google's system works. After all, it is Google's search and advertising empire that analysts believe to be the biggest threat to both Microsoft and Yahoo.

I wrote a story last week about some online marketers who thought a Microsoft-Yahoo combination would provide an alternative to Google. I've since spoken with a few folks at Google to get a better understanding of the mechanics behind its successful Web search and search-ad systems.

There are three ways for Web sites and companies to get online visibility through Google--Search, Adwords and Adsense--and each one works differently.

Its Search platform gave Google its early fame by making sense of the information on the Web. Once a search query is entered, Google's "spiders" crawl through all the information they can access on the Web and ranks the most relevant pages. The most meaningful factors involved in determining relevance are how many other sites link to a particular page and how many times the query terms appear on the page. Read More>>

JBoss Seam Framework launched new website

The Seam community finally has a new home. Yes, everyone's been begging for this for, like, forever, but we wanted the Seam website to run entirely on Seam, which meant we had to build the infrastructure first. seamframework.org was created using Seam Wiki, a brand new wiki/forum/blog/FAQ Official website

Firefox 3.0 beta is live

The Mozilla Corporation has released a beta version of Firefox 3 for download, but is warning it is not ready for "casual users" yet.

You can get the browser here. It's available in 30 languages and claims several new features and improvements.

The browser has architectural changes which should make page rendering quicker, more personalisation through one-click bookmarking, and better downloading - including a progress indicator in the status bar and anti-virus checks.

Security is also improved with support for Extended Validation SSL certificates and stricter SSL error pages. Mozilla is asking testers to send its feedback on these features particularly.

The official, full release of Firefox 3 is expected later this year.

There's more on the Mozilla blog here.

It also emerged today that Mozilla is offering live support for Firefox users via instant messenger.

As part of its ongoing battle against Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla has been running a support service since the start of the year. The service only runs for a few hours during US business hours and is staffed by a handful of volunteers.

Kapil takes legal action against India cricket board

Retired cricket great Kapil Dev has taken the powerful Indian board to court for alleged victimisation after he headed the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL), reports said on Wednesday.

Dev applied to the Delhi High Court on Tuesday after the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) stopped his pension as a former international player and also sacked him as head of the National Cricket Academy.

"The only way of earning a livelihood for us retired cricketers is through the game and the board cannot, by illegally changing its rules and regulations, deprive us of the benefits," media reports quoted Dev's court affidavit as saying.

Dev, India's only World Cup winning captain and one of the game's great all-rounders, heads the ICL, which is bankrolled by the media firm Zee Telefilms.

The ICL's inaugural Twenty20 tournament, featuring retired stars like West Indian Brian Lara and Pakistan's Inzamam-ul Haq alongside domestic players, was held in November-December.

The BCCI not only refused to recognise the ICL but also banned Indian players involved in it from playing official first-class cricket.

The BCCI's own Twenty20 Indian Premier League involving top stars from around the world is slated to take place from April 18 to June 1.

Among former Indian players whose pensions were stopped by the BCCI for joining the ICL are Kiran More, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Sandeep Patil, Erapalli Prasanna, Madan Lal and Rajesh Chauhan.

Mukesh Ambani to head India-Russia CEOs' forum

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani will co-chair the India-Russia CEOs' Council, which was established on Wednesday to strengthen bilateral business cooperation in the areas of oil, energy, power, transport, telecom and high technology.

This was announced by Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath at the conclusion of the 2nd meeting of India-Russia Forum on Trade and Investment, coinciding with the visit of Russian Prime Minister Victor A Zubkov.

Ten CEOs each from India and Russia will be on the Council, which will work towards converting about 8 billion dollars worth of projects under discussion and explore new areas for trade and investment.

With the setting up of the business council, "the level of economic engagement between the two countries should increase," Nath said, while addressing a joint press conference with Russian Minister for Economic Development and Trade Elvira S Nabiullina.

Nabiulliana said, "CEOs' Council will be useful to increase the trade manifold between the two countries."

The two BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries had agreed on Tuesday to boost the bilateral trade to 10 billion dollars by 2010.

AOL Announces Open Mobile Platform

AOL today announced the Open Mobile Platform, which the company plans to release to developers this summer. AOL says the software development platform will help developers create applications across major mobile device operating systems including BREW, Java, Linux, RIM, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. The platform will consist of three parts: an XML-based scripting language, a device client, and an application server.

AOL's platform differs from efforts like Google's Android, which was demoed today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in that it isn't a singular phone operating system that attempts to lock users into one way of doing things. Rather, it is a software development platform for multiple operating systems that aims to make it easier for developers to deploy apps across the various mobile OS and platform options.

Lest you think the entire endeavor is completely altruistic on AOL's part, the Open Mobile Platform is also the unified "software module" that AOL hinted at last September, which the company hopes will push its services and APIs onto as many mobile devices as possible. The platform is designed to play nice with third-party APIs, as well as those from AOL including AIM, AOL Mail, AOL Video, MapQuest, Userplane, Truveo, and Winamp. AOL is counting on developers to create mobile applications that lean on AOL services and can be deployed across multiple mobile device operating systems. Read More>>

Yahoo rejects Microsoft, report says it may buy AOL

Yahoo Inc., which rejected Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited $44.6 billion bid Monday as too low, wants to restart merger talks with Time Warner Inc.'s AOL unit, according to a London newspaper.

The Times said, without citing its sources, that the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company (NASDAQ: YHOO) is exploring merger talks with AOL, as well as deals with Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) or Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS).

The paper reported that previous talks between Yahoo and AOL failed because of differences over price.

Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) said last week that it planned to split AOL's Internet access business from its Web portal and advertising business.

The possible Yahoo-AOL talks came as Yahoo formally rejected Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) $31 per share offer as too low. Reports over the weekend said Yahoo won't consider an offer below $40 a share, which would boost the price by about $12 billion.

In the statement released Monday, Yahoo said its board is "continually evaluating all of its strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolving industry environment and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all stockholders."

TCS plans new organisational structure

The country's largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services has planned to reorganise its global operations, with an aim to cater to customers in a focused way and boost its revenue growth.

"As we scale up over 100,000 employees, TCS needs a structure that allows us to build a nimble organisation to capture new growth opportunities," TCS CEO and Managing Director S Ramadorai said.

Besides, this would also help the company in providing customers a clear and better understanding of TCS's project delivery, TCS said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

As part of the reorganisation plan the company has constituted a new unit for its BPO segment, in addition to TCS Financial Solutions and the Small & Medium Business Solutions.

These three businesses would operate as independent units and help in leveraging sales and customer relationships, the company said adding that, the new structure would lead to non-linear revenue growth.

"This will create a framework that is scalable for growth across markets and provide focus on strategic initiatives like asset leveraged solutions, platform-based BPO as well other new initiatives," he added.

Shares of the company were trading at Rs 869, down 3.79 per cent in the afternoon trade on the BSE.

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GPhone Prototype Expected at Mobile World Congress

It's a big week coming up in the Mobile Web world. The annual Mobile World Congress is being held in Barcelona, 11-14 February. The early buzz is around Google's much (and oft) rumored GPhone. According to the Times Online, Google "is expected to produce a prototype mobile handset" at the show. Even if Google itself doesn't unveil a phone, there will be plenty of Android prototypes on display (Google's open source Mobile Operating System).

CNN is reporting that "as many as one dozen handset makers and chip companies are expected next week to unveil mobile phone prototypes designed to operate with Google Inc.'s (GOOG) new Android software platform".

We'll just have to wait and see if Google itself comes out with a phone, although our network blog last100 speculated recently about a potential partnership with Dell. Check out a classic last100 post from last August if you're interested in some visual concepts on what a Gphone may look like! Read More>>

Yahoo may consider Google alliance

Yahoo Inc would consider a business alliance with Google Inc as one way to rebuff a $44.6 billion takeover proposal by Microsoft, a source familiar with Yahoo's strategy said on Sunday.

Yahoo management is considering revisiting talks it held with Google several months ago on an alliance as an alternative to Microsoft's bid, that source said. At $31 a share, Yahoo believes the bid undervalues the company, two sources said.

A second source close to Yahoo said it had received a procession of preliminary contacts by media, technology, telephone and financial companies. But the source said they were unaware whether any alternative bid was in the offing.

In a memo to Yahoo employees on Friday, which was obtained by Reuters on Sunday, Yahoo leaders wrote: "We want to emphasize that absolutely no decisions have been made -- and, despite what some people have tried to suggest, there's certainly no integration process underway."

Few natural bidders exist besides Google that could engage in a bidding war, and Google would be unlikely to win approval from antitrust regulators, some Wall Street analysts said on Friday.

The Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Sunday that Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt called Yahoo's chief executive Jerry Yang to offer his company's help in any effort to thwart Microsoft's bid. Read More>>

Yahoo rejects Microsoft's bid

Yahoo Inc on Monday rejected as too low Microsoft Corp's unsolicited takeover offer, currently valued at $42 billion, putting the ball back in the software giant's court to pursue a deal.

In a statement, Yahoo said its board unanimously concluded the proposal was not in the best interests of its shareholders.

The company said the offer "substantially undervalues" its "global brand, large worldwide audience, significant recent investments in advertising platforms and future growth prospects, free cash flow and earnings potential, as well as our substantial unconsolidated investments."

Yahoo added that its board was evaluating all its strategic options.

Microsoft made the half-stock, half-cash offer on February 1. It was originally worth $44.6 billion, or $31 per share -- a 62 percent premium to Yahoo's stock price. Since then, Microsoft shares have fallen, and the deal is now worth $41.5 billion.

Microsoft now must decide whether to sweeten its offer, launch a proxy fight or simply withdraw. Read More>>

A Future Archaeological Dig

Cognizant amoung 25 Fastest-Growing Tech Companies

It has been a rough 12 months for the stock market, including technology stocks. The S&P 500 is off 2.1% over the past 12 months (dividends excluded) and the Nasdaq 100 Tech Index is off 8.7%. But you could have done well owning the really hot technology companies. A year ago we published our annual list of America's 25 fastest-growing technology companies. Those stocks have gained 16% over the same time period.

Company

Business

Price ($)

EPS Growth (%)1

5-Yr Sales Growth (%)2

Latest 12-Mo Sales ($Mil)

1	Google	online search engine, web portal	638.25	30	155	14,973
2	Salesforce.com	sales mgmt software	54.47	40	85	676
3	Ceradyne	aerospace, defense ceramics	46.26	10	75	744
4	Euronet Worldwide	banking software	27.33	20	69	821
5	FalconStor Software	archive, backup software	8.79	28	58	73
6	Cognizant Technology Solutions	consulting	27.11	32	53	1,960
7	Celgene	biotechnology	54.27	35	53	1,266
8	LifeCell	biotechnology	43.30	30	3,4	1773,4
9	Martek Biosciences	nutritional supplements	33.55	18	42	307
10	j2 Global Communications	internet telecom svcs	20.40	17	42	204
11	Red Hat	Linux software	19.65	22	41	493
12	Digital River	e-commerce services	33.24	23	41	335
13	Genentech	biotechnology	71.50	26	414	11,7254
14	DRS Technologies	aerospace, defense	52.88	12	39	2,999
15	L-3 Communications Holdings	communications equipment	105.58	17	38	13,540
16	Vocus	public relations mgmt software	29.04	30	37	54
17	CommVault Systems	archive, backup software	19.01	25	37	172
18	FARO Technologies	measuring equipment	22.21	18	35	176
19	Comtech Telecommunications	telecommunications equipment	47.35	13	31	464
20	Network Appliance	data storage hardware, software	22.88	18	30	3,012
21	NII Holdings	Latin America wireless telecom svcs	49.26	36	30	3,023
22	Diodes	semiconductors	24.33	19	28	388
23	Dolby Laboratories	audio technology	51.31	20	23	482
24	Gen-Probe	DNA diagnostic technology	62.70	21	23	395
25	Adobe Systems	imaging software	38.05	15	23	3,158

Read More>>

Ishant is a dangerous bowler: Ponting

Australian captain Ricky Ponting conceded on Sunday that his tormentor Ishant Sharma is a "dangerous bowler" but stopped short of rating the Indian attack as the best he has seen in home conditions in the recent past.

"Ishant has done well in the latter half of this tour so far. He is a dangerous bowler," conceded a sombre Ponting.

"Sreesanth has also looked good but it's too early to say this is the best attack seen in Australian conditions for sometime now as England was here last year," he said.

The young Indian attack, led by Sharma, booked Australia out for 159 in 43.1 overs after Ponting had chosen to bat first at the Melbourne Cricket Ground today. The Aussie skipper was suitably impressed.

"He is different in the sense that he hits the deck hard and gets some inconsistent bounce. I don't know whether it's because he changes his action.

"He looks dangerous and would be even more to the left-handers. Even to the right-handers, the kind of in-swing he manages is a bit unusual," Ponting said.

Reliance Power lists today

It has been a roller-coaster three weeks since India’s largest initial public offering (IPO), that of Reliance Power Ltd, closed.

Back then, if the premium that the shares commanded in the illegal grey market was any indication, investors were willing to pay almost double its Rs450 price. The Rs11,500 crore issue was subscribed in just one minute.

By the time the share lists today, two high-profile IPOs have been abandoned due to a lack of response. The Bombay Stock Exchange’s (BSE) benchmark index, the Sensex, has lost more than 3,200 points in that time.

So, how will Reliance Power fare? “It is like going to a restaurant. The food maybe very good, but if the ambience is not good, then your experience does get affected,” says Arun Kejriwal, director, Kejriwal Research and Information Services. “Nothing has changed for the issue itself, but sentiment in the market has changed, which will affect the listing price.”

Right after the issue closed, the market tumbled on global fears about the impact of the US subprime crisis. Two rate cuts by the US Federal Reserve within eight days and a Bank of England rate cut could not stem the flight of foreign capital from emerging markets. Read More>>

Ishant sends Australia crashing

Ishant Sharma ripped through the heart of Australia's vaunted batting line-up to help India dismiss Australia for 159 off 43.1 overs in the fourth one-day international of the triangular series in Melbourne on Sunday.

Sharma had Matthew Hayden , Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds all caught behind during an inspired spell of bowling from India's three pacemen, who reduced Australia to 75 for five in the 18th over. Score Card

Yahoo to Reject Microsoft Buyout Offer

Yahoo! Inc., the Internet company that has failed to crack Google Inc.'s dominance of Web search, plans to reject a $44.6 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp., a person familiar with the situation said.

The board spent a week reviewing the $31-per-share unsolicited offer before deciding it was too low, and directors are likely to reject it tomorrow, said the person, who declined to be identified because the discussions aren't public. Yahoo wants at least $40, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

The decision steps up pressure on co-founder Jerry Yang to present investors with a strategy to revive a stock that lost half its value in the two years before the offer. He may look to outsource its search efforts to Google or find another buyer, though analysts said it is unlikely that any other options will emerge and Microsoft may make a higher offer to win.

``A lot of this is gamesmanship on the part of Yahoo,'' said Scott Kessler, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York who recommends holding Yahoo and buying Microsoft. ``Microsoft is well aware that Yahoo doesn't have any other options. What this is about is how much Microsoft wants Yahoo and how much time they're willing to wait to get this deal done.'' Read More>>

Cognizant revenue crosses $2 billion

Cognizant Technology Solutions announced that fourth quarter profit rose 39 per cent, even as revenues in 2007 surpassed the $2 billion mark in line with its guidance for the last year.

The computer services provider registered a net profit of $96.3 million for the October-December 2007 period, against $69.5 million in the corresponding period of the previous year, driven by robust operating margins (non-GAAP) growth of 20.3 per cent.

Taking the cue, while the markets were down 62 points, the IT index was up 3.73 per cent.

This is well beyond the 19-20 per cent the company expected in the quarter. However, it excludes a stock-based compensation expense of $9.8 million and a $5.9 million non-cash operating charge resulting from the nine-month impact of the recently-enacted fringe benefit tax. Read More>>

Yokia! Why Nokia Should Buy Yahoo

Forget Microsoft, News Corp. or even Apple. Nokia, the world's no.1 mobile handset maker, should buy Yahoo. Or so says Information Week's Stephen Wellman, who puts forward a compelling argument: If Nokia is repositioning itself as a Web services company, to combat falling profit margins on its hardware, then acquiring Yahoo would help to give the company a much needed presence on the desktop (not just mobile), as well as beef up its Web offerings and Internet brand recognition in general.

"Nokia is now a Web company, not just a handset maker. But, the company acts as if the Web is just mobile and has no desktop component. This isn't a very smart strategy", writes Wellman. All of Nokia's mobile web rivals: Google, Microsoft and, of course, Yahoo all have desktop products.

"These Web giants are leveraging their vast desktop Web audiences to grow their mobile initiatives. While Nokia has tons of mobile phone customers, it doesn't have as many Web application users", notes Wellman. Read More>>

Your MySpace Web Browser Is Coming

Flock, the Mozilla-based social web browser has made the announcement that everyone has been waiting for: they will now integrate with MySpace. Building on the MySpace Developer Platform, Flock will allow users to surf the web with their MySpace friends in their sidebar. At Tuesday's MySpace Developer Platform kick-off, Flock demonstrated this integration by giving event attendees a sneak peak at the upcoming Flock features. Although details of the new functionality are limited at this point, we do know that the MySpace People integration, as it's being called, is expected to function in a manner very similar to the Facebook integration that is already in use in Flock. This integration will expose all of the relevant actions made available by MySpace and will build them into the People Sidebar of the Flock browser. Read More>>

Top 10 Reasons For a LinkedIn IPO

1. Businesses that can cut costs for clients can IPO in a recession. LinkedIn cuts the cost of business development, recruiting and finding experts.

2. The best businesses IPO when markets are down. It shows strength. Who cares if it takes 12 months for markets to pickup? Insiders will be locked-in for a while anyway.

3. Facebook cannot IPO. Their $15bn valuation won’t wash with public investors and they can hardly do a down round. So LinkedIn gets the mindshare and public currency to win the next round.

4. Public currency is needed to buy local business networking sites such as Xing and Viadeo, where non-English languages make organic expansion hard.

5. LinkedIn keeps innovating, such as their recent move into expert networks to compete with Gerson Lehman Group. This move is an obvious revenue earner.

6. LinkedIn’s revenue model is not tied to advertising and is therefore more recession proof.

7. The bloom is off the Facebook rose, so strike while the iron is hot (sorry about mixed metaphors Ed)

8. We all need some cheery news amidst all this recession talk.

9. Somebody needs to show that public markets are suitable for high growth, high tech businesses and not just dividend-spouting oil companies.

10. Because I forecast that they would and I would love to be proved right.

Finally, why do we always need 10 items on these lists?

First Google Android phone may debut next week

The first mobile phone to incorporate Google’s open-source Android platform will debut at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a source close to British chipmaker ARM Holdings has told Reuters.

According to the source, ARM, a U.K.-based company that makes embedded and graphics processors, as well as processors for mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs, will introduce a prototype for a telephone that uses Android as its operating platform as soon as next Monday.

Google and its partners in the Open Handset Alliance unveiled their open source Android platform last November with the goal of spurring third-party developers to create new and innovative applications for mobile devices. Read More>>

Vista, Leopard, Linux to compete in hack contest

Apple's OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux operating systems are to be pitted against each other in an ethical hacking contest in Vancouver next month. Run by the organizers of the CanSecWest Vancouver 2008 security conference, the competition is a repeat of the "PWN to Own" contest at CanSecWest in 2007, when security researchers competed to win a MacBook Pro and $10,000. The prize was shared between security researchers Dino Dai Zovi and Shane Macauley for their successful Read More>>

Wipro to hire more freshers

Wipro Ltd said it would hire more freshers in 2008 and has tied up with more than 14 educational institutions to give their students a sneak-peek into the company’s culture. This would improve joining ratio and help cut attrition in the long run, the company said.

Ms Priti Rajora, General Manager, Resourcing, said the company, whose margins have been squeezed by the strengthening rupee, is looking to increase the percentage of freshers to 50 per cent of total recruitment in 2008-2009, compared with 35 per cent in the previous year. This is being done to improve the utilisation level, she said.

She said it was cheaper to hire a fresher and train him rather than employ an experienced person. There could be revisions in the number of experienced people the company would hire, she added.

Ties up with colleges

Ms Rajora said the collaboration with colleges aims to bridge the gap between the industry and the academia and make the student more corporate-ready. She said the company interacts not only with the students but also with the members of the faculty, the management of the institution and the placement officers.

Ms Rajora said Wipro is planning to launch a dedicated fresher engagement program within the next couple of quarters.

IBM explores 67.1m-core computer for running entire internet

We'll hand it to IBM's researchers. They think big - really big. Like holy-crap-what-have-you-done big.

The Register has unearthed a research paper that shows IBM working on a computing system capable "of hosting the entire internet as an application." This mega system relies on a re-tooled version of IBM's Blue Gene supercomputers so loved by the high performance computing crowd. IBM's researchers have proposed tweaking the Blue Gene systems to run today's most popular web applications such as Linux, Apache, MySQL and Ruby on Rails.

The IBM paper rightly points out that both large SMP (symmetric multi-processing) systems and clusters have their merits for massive computing tasks. Of late, however, most organizations looking to crunch through really big jobs have preferred clusters, which provide certain economic advantages. Customers can buy lots of general purpose hardware and networking components at a low cost and cobble the systems together to equal or surpass the performance of gigantic SMPs.

Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft stand as just some of the companies using these clusters to offer software, processing power and storage to other businesses. Their customers tap into these larger systems and can "grow" their applications as needed by firing up more and more of the provided computing infrastructure. Read More>>

Obama loses Silicon Valley to Clinton: Is anyone surprised?

It must have come as a surprise to the boisterous Barack Obama supporters who were flagging down commuters at light rail stations south of San Francisco after work on Tuesday, but Hillary Clinton won far more votes in Silicon Valley than did her rival from Illinois.

In Santa Clara County, home to Google, Apple, Yahoo, Intel, HP, and Sun Microsystems, Clinton won a commanding 54.8 percent share of the vote.

Obama, by comparison, won only 39.3 percent. That's a remarkable margin of 16 percentage points. It's far more than the 9.5-point margin that Clinton claimed statewide, meaning Obama fared worse in Silicon Valley than he did in the rest of California.

By an 8-point margin, Clinton also bested Obama in neighboring San Mateo County immediately to the north, which is home to YouTube, Spoke.com, and Internet-monitoring firm Keynote.com.

Here's the chart: Read More>>

Mousewheel Click to Paste in Firefox

A typical computer mouse has 3 buttons but only two buttons remains dominant in our daily computer usage. For those who don’t know, the middle mouse can become quite useful too, if one know how to use it properly.

In this post, I will show you 6 tips to supercharge your Mozilla Firefox with the middle mouse button , thus making your web browsing experience better than before.

1- Click on a link with the middle mouse button to quickly open a link in a new tab. No more right click -> “Open Link in new tab”!

2- Press the Control (Ctrl) button and scroll the mouse wheel backward to increase Firefox’s font size. Scroll it forward to decrease the font size.

3- Press the Shift button and scroll the mouse wheel forward to move a page forward and scroll backwards to go the previous page.

Below are Mozilla Firefox’s about:config hack to modify hidden preferences (mouse related). Check out here on how to modify about:config.

4- Change the value of middlemouse.paste to true. This will let you paste a clipboard content to any text field with the middle mouse button.

5- Change the value of middlemouse.scrollbarPosition to true and restart your Firefox. The next time you click on a scrollbar location with the middle mouse button, Firefox will center the screen to that position.

6- Change the value of mousewheel.withaltkey.action to 1. This will enable you to scroll document by one page while pressing the Alt button.

That was all that I can find on how to optimize the usage of a middle mouse button in Mozilla Firefox. Feel free to add more tips and tricks by leaving a comment below. Enjoy!

Yahoo seeking ways to avoid Microsoft takeover: Jerry Yang

Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang sent a message to employees on Wednesday, assuring them the firm's leaders are exploring ways to avoid a takeover by software giant Microsoft.

In an email to Yahoo workers, Yang said the board of directors has yet to decide how to respond to Microsoft's offer to buy the veteran Internet company for $44.6 billion in cash and stock.

"Our board is thoughtfully evaluating a wide range of potential strategic alternatives in what is a complex and evolving landscape," Yang wrote in the email, which was filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

"What's become clear in the past few days is how much people care about this company. I've heard from many of you, and from other friends and colleagues from around Silicon Valley and across the globe, that we need to do what's best for Yahoo and our shareholders."

Microsoft's unsolicited offer to pay the equivalent of $31 per share for Yahoo highlights the 14-year-old California firm's potential to recapture past glory, Yang told employees.

Microsoft publicly announced what it billed as a "generous" offer for Yahoo on February 1 and said its plan is to combine resources to take on Internet powerhouse Google.

Google has come out against the proposed takeover, condemning it as an attack on the freedom of the Internet.

Yahoo has said little more than its board is carefully reviewing options that include keeping Yahoo an independent company.

Yahoo has received calls from "a number of interested parties" and has a wide range of strategic options, a source close to Yahoo told media.

Those options include outsourcing online advertising to arch-rival Google, a proven master at pumping revenues from that well.

If it spurns Microsoft's offer, Yahoo's board of directors will be under pressure to give stockholders a soothing cash payout or even borrow money to buy back shares and turn the firm private.

The offer comes as Yahoo is losing ground rapidly in the Internet space to Google, the search leader which has cashed in on the market for online advertising.

Yahoo announced plans last week to lay off 1,000 workers, seven percent of its employees, as part of an effort to reallocate resources and bolster its bottom line.

Linux Guru Bashes Apple OS

Linus Torvalds, leader of the cult of Linux, took a swipe at Apple's OS X and Microsoft Vista in the same breath at a conference in Australia last week, adding more fuel to the simmering programming language battle between the world's high-profile geeks.

Speaking at the linux.conf.au conference in Melbourne, Australia, a few weeks ago, Torvalds called Leopard "utter crap" and bashed the proprietary OS makers for being greedy, according to Australian reporter Nick Miller in the The Age.

"I don't think they're equally flawed -- I think Leopard is a much better system," Torvalds said. "(But) OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary."

He also scoffed at his rivals' practice of revenue-through-renewal by launching upgrades that require new purchases.

"An operating system should be completely invisible," Torvalds said. "To Microsoft and Apple (it is) a way to control the whole environment -- to force people to upgrade their applications and hardware."

Torvalds swipes at Microsoft and Apple come on the heels of a highly publicized tiff between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Sun Microsystems developer and "father of Java" James Gosling.

Earlier last year Jobs reportedly said that "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

The ball was lobbied back at Jobs when in the fall Gosling abandoned his Mac laptop, writing on his blog that in addition to abandoning his "eye candy" Mac laptop for a real developer's machine, he thinks "iPods are nice, but they're not the defining center of my life."

Who will strike the next blow?

Our bet is on Bill Gates, as soon as he finishes re-installing Windows XP.

Firefox 3 Beta 3 to be out Feb 11

The targeted release date for Firefox 3 Beta 3 is now February 11 and follow on Beta 4 is “tentatively” scheduled for February 26, according to Firefox meeting notes posted on Mozilla.org Tuesday.

With that, it appears Firefox 3 will be released in early 2008 as planned, although no exact date has been announced.

The team started release candidate builds after the Beta 3 features code freeze on January 29 but planned at least one more beta before version 3 of the open source browser is released.

The Firefox development team has decided to put out a Beta 4 version of Firefox 3 to refine the Windows, Linux and Mac OSX themes and overall “Visual Polish,” as well as improved offline support, security UI and Places feature, according to the meeting notes. Beta 4 is referred to as the “final ship”

One major bug in Places, for example, makes it impossible to drag and drop items across different views and menus. “This is the cause of much weeping and gnashing of teeth,” the report notes.

Still, the Firefox team is in the final stages of development and has fixed more than a thousand bugs since Beta 1. The development team is working to resolve the last slate of bugs and the quality and assurance team is fhammering on the upgrade’s new add-ons manager, the Mac OSX theme and icons (formerly known as Proto), web protocol handling, the Places UI library and safebrowsing and phishing protection, according to the meeting notes. Read More>>