Google seems to be eyeing opportunities in the third generation (3G) of mobile telephony in India. The search engine giant is likely to participate in the auction with an Indian partner.
Sources in the telecom industry say that Google is eyeing at broadband wireless access (BWA) in the country. BWA is also known as worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX). As an alternative, Google could be just a technology partner to a telecom service provider. Foreign companies can buy up to 74 percent equity in such a venture.
This is not the first time that Google is planning to enter into mobile telephony. It shook the world two years ago by announcing that it would bid for the U.S. government's auction of radio frequencies that could be used to deliver the next generation of internet and mobile phone services. The company's plan was to provide a nationwide wireless broadband service that would take on digital subscriber line services and cable internet access. However, it lost out in the auction as incumbent telecom behemoths like AT&T and Verizon stole a march.
Analysts say that there are many reasons for Google to look at 3G. "With the wave of consumers adopting BWA as the likely scenario in India, it is expected to bring about a shift in the focus of advertisement revenue from fixed line internet to mobile internet. Search-led advertisement is the biggest of all in the online business, and Google is the natural stakeholder in the Indian BWA space," says Alok Shende, Principal Analyst, Ascentius Consulting.
Google has also submitted a proposal to regulators in the U.S. for clearance to use unused channels, which the company calls Wi-Fi 2.0 and on which it is possible to offer wireless broadband services at very high speeds.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is offering spectrum both for 3G services as well as BWA and hopes to auction spectrum by the middle of January next year. It finalized the information memorandum last week.
The BWA spectrum to be put up for auction by DoT will be in the frequency of 2.3 GHz, with a base price of Rs.1,750 crore for a pan-India licence. The government will auction two blocks in BWA spectrum and reserve one for state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam in Mumbai and Delhi and Bharat Sanchar Nigam elsewhere.
A spokesperson for Google in India, when contacted, said that the company would not comment on speculation.
By siliconindia news bureau
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
12 Expert Google Search Tips to improve your search
Explicit Phrase:
Let’s say you are looking for content about internet marketing. Instead of just typing internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase. To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.
Example: "internet marketing"
Exclude Words:
Let’s say you want to search for content about internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising. To do this, simply use the "-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude.
Example Search: internet marketing –advertising
Site Specific Search:
Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase. Even if the site doesn’t support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the "site: somesite.com" modifier.
Example: "internet marketing" site: www.smallbusinesshub.com
Similar Words and Synonyms:
Let’s say you are want to include a word in your search, but want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms. To do this, use the "~" in front of the word.
Example: "internet marketing" ~professional
Specific Document Types:
If you’re looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier "filetype:". For example, you might want to find only PowerPoint presentations related to internet marketing.
Example: "internet marketing" filetype: ppt
This OR That:
By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search. If you are looking for any one of one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator. (Note: The OR has to be capitalized).
Example: internet marketing OR advertising
Phone Listing:
Let’s say someone calls you on your mobile number and you don’t know how it is. If all you have is a phone number, you can look it up on Google using the phonebook feature.
Example: phonebook: xxxxxxxxxx
Area Code Lookup:
If all you need to do is to look-up the area code for a phone number, just enter the 3-digit area code and Google will tell you where it’s from.
Example: 617
Numeric Ranges:
This is a rarely used, but highly useful tip. Let’s say you want to find results that contain any of a range of numbers. You can do this by using the X..Y modifier (in case this is hard to read, what’s between the X and Y are two periods. This type of search is useful for years (as shown below), prices or anywhere where you want to provide a series of numbers.
Example: president 1940-1950
Stock (Ticker Symbol):
Just enter a valid ticker symbol as your search term and Google will give you the current financials and a quick thumb-nail chart for the stock.
Example: GOOG
Calculator:
The next time you need to do a quick calculation, instead of bringing up the Calculator applet, you can just type your expression in to Google.
Example: 48512 * 1.02
Word Definitions:
If you need to quickly look up the definition of a word or phrase, simply use the "define:" command.
Example: define:plethora
Source - siliconindia
Let’s say you are looking for content about internet marketing. Instead of just typing internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase. To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.
Example: "internet marketing"
Exclude Words:
Let’s say you want to search for content about internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising. To do this, simply use the "-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude.
Example Search: internet marketing –advertising
Site Specific Search:
Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase. Even if the site doesn’t support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the "site: somesite.com" modifier.
Example: "internet marketing" site: www.smallbusinesshub.com
Similar Words and Synonyms:
Let’s say you are want to include a word in your search, but want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms. To do this, use the "~" in front of the word.
Example: "internet marketing" ~professional
Specific Document Types:
If you’re looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier "filetype:". For example, you might want to find only PowerPoint presentations related to internet marketing.
Example: "internet marketing" filetype: ppt
This OR That:
By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search. If you are looking for any one of one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator. (Note: The OR has to be capitalized).
Example: internet marketing OR advertising
Phone Listing:
Let’s say someone calls you on your mobile number and you don’t know how it is. If all you have is a phone number, you can look it up on Google using the phonebook feature.
Example: phonebook: xxxxxxxxxx
Area Code Lookup:
If all you need to do is to look-up the area code for a phone number, just enter the 3-digit area code and Google will tell you where it’s from.
Example: 617
Numeric Ranges:
This is a rarely used, but highly useful tip. Let’s say you want to find results that contain any of a range of numbers. You can do this by using the X..Y modifier (in case this is hard to read, what’s between the X and Y are two periods. This type of search is useful for years (as shown below), prices or anywhere where you want to provide a series of numbers.
Example: president 1940-1950
Stock (Ticker Symbol):
Just enter a valid ticker symbol as your search term and Google will give you the current financials and a quick thumb-nail chart for the stock.
Example: GOOG
Calculator:
The next time you need to do a quick calculation, instead of bringing up the Calculator applet, you can just type your expression in to Google.
Example: 48512 * 1.02
Word Definitions:
If you need to quickly look up the definition of a word or phrase, simply use the "define:" command.
Example: define:plethora
Source - siliconindia
Monday, October 12, 2009
Microsoft Office Web Apps vs. Google Docs and Zoho
Web-based office suites is the latest competitive zone for Google, Microsoft and Zoho. In addition to the typical features of desktop productivity suites, each offering assures greater integration with the web, including collaboration and publishing features not available with traditional applications.
No company is more jazzed about web-based applications than Google, so you'd expect its suite to be the best, right? Wrong. In fact, the most amazing thing about Google Docs turned out to be just how woefully inadequate for serious work it actually is. When you log in to Google Docs, you're greeted with a familiar, Google-style UI (user interface): spare, reserved, understated, even elegant. But while this trademark approach works wonders for Google's search products, with Google Docs it belies a paucity of features that's instantly frustrating.
Just for starters, forget about a smooth migration away from Microsoft Office. Google added support for Office 2007 file formats in June, but so what? Even with the older Office formats, Docs chokes on all but the most rudimentary formatting. If the goal was simply to mimic the current office paradigm on the web, Docs would be a miserable failure, but Google is looking at the bigger picture.
But most of us in the real world have given up on the 'paperless office', and once your feet land back on the ground, Docs disappoints once again. Joel Spolsky once wrote that the problem with lightweight office suites is that 80 percent of users need only 20 percent of the features of Microsoft Office, but it's a different 20 percent every time. Google Docs doesn't give you all of the features of Office and it doesn't try to. Unfortunately, in its present state it's missing so much that it's sure to lack something for just about everybody. Zoho offers a slightly different take. While Google Docs presents a Spartan UI that emphasizes the online aspect of the suite, Zoho makes more of an effort to mimic the look and feel of traditional desktop applications. The results might seem more familiar to new users, but they also underscore the limitations of this strategy.
Zoho has a few features that Google Docs lacks, but most are minor. For example, Google's word processor offers a robust equation editor based on the TeX language, but Zoho's equation editor is better. Zoho's thesaurus gives the part of speech for synonyms, while Google's does not. Zoho allows you to insert HTML (Hyper Text Marquee Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) directly from files on the web, rather than simply editing it in your browser as Google Docs allows you to do.
Like Google Docs, Zoho encourages web-based publishing and collaboration. Here, Zoho's minor advantages include the ability to post to blogs directly using the MetaWebLog or Blogger APIs, the ability to generate a 'doc roll' of recent documents for embedding in a web site, and integration with EchoSign for digital signatures.
icrosoft is also planning to offer several versions of its web-based Office at launch. The consumer version will be ad-supported and offer similar web-publishing features as its competitors. Microsoft will also offer a hosted subscription version for businesses, with improved document management and workflow features. Customers who prefer to run the suite on their own servers will be able to do so if they buy a volume license to Office 2010.
Google believes that the web is the future and it's inevitable that document creation, publishing and collaboration will move online. If you agree with that vision, then online productivity software offering from a company as prominent as Google will naturally be attractive to you.
Microsoft is moving to the web as a defensive measure, but its goal is not to replace the Office we have now. Rather, it has planned to augment its current offering with an online option. In that sense, the Office web applications will probably fill much the same niche as Outlook web access. They'll be invaluable for mobile workers, but where possible, most will stick with the desktop versions. In addition, by bringing support for the Microsoft Office file formats to the web, Microsoft further cements its status as the de facto standard for Office documents.
Don't be surprised if you find yourself using web-based productivity software in the near future; the online publishing and collaboration features are too valuable to ignore. At the same time, don't wipe your current office suite from your hard drive just yet. Although the current offerings are impressive, browser-based applications have a long way to go before they become the standard for business users.
Courtesy - SiliconIndia
[Rumour] Cloudboard: Google’s upcoming Web-based clipboard
A leaked internal feedback form and other data from Google suggest that the Internet search giant is getting ready to roll out a new Web-based clipboard manager called Cloudboard.
The Google Operating System blog stumbled upon the feedback form for internal testing purposes, and it gives out quite a few interesting details.
Calling it a ‘server-side clipboard for Google Apps’, the Cloudboard is kind of a replacement for Google Notebook, making it easy to paste excerpts from Google Spreadsheets to Gmail, copy multiple images from Picasa Web Albums, copy YouTube videos, copy an event and pasting it into Google Docs or Gmail, paste copied items from Google Image Search, copy maps into Google Docs, etc.
One of its coolest features seems to be an ability to automatically format the data you are copying to play nice with the app you paste it to. The form cites an example that if you copy a formatted cell in Google Spreadsheets onto the Cloudboard and then paste it into Google Docs Writer, the Cloudboard would transform the data into a comparably-styled HTML table.
This seems like it would be quite a useful app, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Google integrate it in some way into the Chrome browser too.
Source – thinkdigit
The Google Operating System blog stumbled upon the feedback form for internal testing purposes, and it gives out quite a few interesting details.
Calling it a ‘server-side clipboard for Google Apps’, the Cloudboard is kind of a replacement for Google Notebook, making it easy to paste excerpts from Google Spreadsheets to Gmail, copy multiple images from Picasa Web Albums, copy YouTube videos, copy an event and pasting it into Google Docs or Gmail, paste copied items from Google Image Search, copy maps into Google Docs, etc.
One of its coolest features seems to be an ability to automatically format the data you are copying to play nice with the app you paste it to. The form cites an example that if you copy a formatted cell in Google Spreadsheets onto the Cloudboard and then paste it into Google Docs Writer, the Cloudboard would transform the data into a comparably-styled HTML table.
This seems like it would be quite a useful app, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see Google integrate it in some way into the Chrome browser too.
Source – thinkdigit
Friday, October 9, 2009
Obscure Google Features
One of the most frequently used reason for removing features from Google's products is that not many people used them. Here's a recent example:
"Google Base has its own search page for users to search across everything that's been uploaded, but it isn't widely used. Instead, people search on Google Product Search for products, or on Google Maps to find houses for rent or sale. Therefore, we're planning to retire Google Base's separate search page in a few weeks."
Google Base search is not the only obscure Google feature. Even though it's difficult to estimate how often each feature is used, it's safe to say that the following features are rarely used:
1. Gmail mute. The option that lets you ignore boring conversations from mailing lists is available in Gmail's standard interface and it has recently been added to Gmail Mobile.
2. Google Reader's auto sorting. "This works by prioritizing subscriptions with fewer items. So, with this setting, your friend's blog with one item a month will not be drowned out by higher volume sites such as the New York Times because we'll raise the blog to the top."
3. Google Chrome's docking positions. "Drag a tab to pre-defined locations, or docking positions, on your computer monitor or browser window to quickly resize your browser window. When the docking icon appears, release the mouse over the icon to have the tab snap in place."
4. GoogleTournament function from Google Spreadsheets. "The GoogleTournament function returns live data for games occurring during the Men's and Women's NCAA Division I Basketball Championship."
5. Google Toolbar's "up" button lets you go up one level in a web site.
6. Google Music Search, used for showing outdated information about music artists.
Can you think of other obscure Google features that are probably used by a small number of people?
Courtesy : googlesystem.blogspot.com
"Google Base has its own search page for users to search across everything that's been uploaded, but it isn't widely used. Instead, people search on Google Product Search for products, or on Google Maps to find houses for rent or sale. Therefore, we're planning to retire Google Base's separate search page in a few weeks."
Google Base search is not the only obscure Google feature. Even though it's difficult to estimate how often each feature is used, it's safe to say that the following features are rarely used:
1. Gmail mute. The option that lets you ignore boring conversations from mailing lists is available in Gmail's standard interface and it has recently been added to Gmail Mobile.
2. Google Reader's auto sorting. "This works by prioritizing subscriptions with fewer items. So, with this setting, your friend's blog with one item a month will not be drowned out by higher volume sites such as the New York Times because we'll raise the blog to the top."
3. Google Chrome's docking positions. "Drag a tab to pre-defined locations, or docking positions, on your computer monitor or browser window to quickly resize your browser window. When the docking icon appears, release the mouse over the icon to have the tab snap in place."
4. GoogleTournament function from Google Spreadsheets. "The GoogleTournament function returns live data for games occurring during the Men's and Women's NCAA Division I Basketball Championship."
5. Google Toolbar's "up" button lets you go up one level in a web site.
6. Google Music Search, used for showing outdated information about music artists.
Can you think of other obscure Google features that are probably used by a small number of people?
Courtesy : googlesystem.blogspot.com
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Google's PowerMeter to boost energy efficiency
Los Angeles: Google is partnering with privately held firm Energy, to provide households with free energy management software called PowerMeter, which will boost energy efficiency, the company said on its blog.
Google had launched PowerMeter, which is a web tool, in February to let consumers monitor how much electricity they use at home. But in order to use PowerMeter consumers needed a smart meter installed. Many customers have already tested and used this application. Now, consumers can buy Energy's power-usage measuring device called TED 5000 which costs around $200, and use Google's software on top of it, without ever needing a smart meter.
Google had launched PowerMeter, which is a web tool, in February to let consumers monitor how much electricity they use at home. But in order to use PowerMeter consumers needed a smart meter installed. Many customers have already tested and used this application. Now, consumers can buy Energy's power-usage measuring device called TED 5000 which costs around $200, and use Google's software on top of it, without ever needing a smart meter.
Even though many companies are now trying to propagate smart meters they still account for a small percentage of all
Google's partnership with Energy does not include any financial terms. Google is already working with Sempra Energy's San Diego Gas and Electric and
Source - siliconindia news bureau
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Gmail Messages with Enhanced Content
Gmail added a feature that lets you interact with the messages sent by some companies without opening a new page. It's called "sponsored mail with enhanced content" and here's the description:
If you're subscribed to receive email from certain senders, the messages you receive from them will be enhanced with an interactive gadget that has up-to-date content from their website (you'll also see an icon in your inbox identifying these messages).
For example, if you receive a Pregnancy Bulletin newsletter from Babycenter, you'll be able to view up-to-date content, including the babyname of the day, and browse though the current top 100 baby names within the message. Aside from the convenience of being able to interact with certain websites from inside Gmail, the branded content will help identify that your messages are legitimate and not spoofed (we'll only show branded content when the sender authenticates their mail). We're currently testing this with a small number of senders and will decide whether to make it widely available based on user and partner feedback
For example, if you receive a Pregnancy Bulletin newsletter from Babycenter, you'll be able to view up-to-date content, including the baby
Courtesy – Google Blog
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Google has Done it Again !!! A Very Smart Innovation
Check out this device ...
Guess what you can do with a touch screen, camera, scanner, WiFi, and google maps ...
View a building through it, and it gives you all the information about that building....
Choose a building and touch a floor and it tells you more details of the building. You can use it when you want to know a car model, an insect name, what kind of food is served at a restaurant and how much, who built a bridge, etc. etc.
It’s got a scanner built in.
so you can use it this way when you want to check the meaning of a word in the newspaper, book, magazine, etc. It would be much easier to read a real book. You can use the dictionary, wikipedia, thesaurus and anything else available on the web. What do you think?
Indoor guide: Works in a building, airport, station, hospital, etc.
Automatic simultaneous translation: here Latin to English.
Search keyword: Helpful when you want to find out a word from a lot of text in newspaper/book
Nutrition: This kind of function would be helpful for health freaks..
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