Orkut is not a very popular Social network in USA but it is a big thing in India and Brazil particularly. Orkut is the single biggest cause of decreasing productivity of employees in offices in these countries (citation needed). These social networks are rather creating a huge market for Firewalls because most schools use them so that students use internet and not misuse.

I will talk about social networks some other day, the news for today is that Orkut users in Brazil and India (two of Orkut biggest markets) can now post scraps from their mobile phones. They don’t even have to have an internet enabled mobile phone to do this because it is a SMS service.

The SMS service is fairly easy and it seems inspired from twitter. The first thing you have to do is register your cell phone number on Orkut which you can do by going on My Settings page and then clicking on Mobile tab. You will then have to set up your mobile phone number to receive and post SMS.

Now the crappy part is that two of the biggest networks, Airtel and Vodafone have been left out of this service in India while I can’t comment about the counterpart situation in Brazil.

More details are on the Orkut Help page.

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Meebo has become synonymous with web multi-protocol IM and most people have started to prefer it over specialized IM protocol or the applications. The freedom meebo provides to its users is sheer and thus rightfully holds the top place in the market of web based IM. As it always happens that when something becomes successful on web many imitators mushroom up from nowhere to bite the market share. Let’s take a look at some.

1. E buddy was the first web based IM (but it used to support MSN alone) and is perhaps the only serious competitor of meebo which in my opinion gives better interface than meebo. Ebuddy supports gtalk, yahoo IM, MSN, AIM and has also started to support myspace recently. Meebo doesn’t provide support on myspace and thus ebuddy clearly trumps meebo here. It pops up in separate window when you sign in any of the supported IM accountS. You can not log in invisible mode in those accounts which do not have this feature as of yet in their own IM applications (gtalk and AIM).

2. Imo.im is another web based instant messenger which is in its alpha stage and supports all the IM supported by ebuddy. It also has a standalone application for windows which you can install on your PC. Emo seems very promising as the guys behind this are working on providing a translate feature on it. They are on the verge of completing Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese translation feature and they will move over to other languages later on (as mentioned in their blog).

3. Imhaha.com is another web instant messenger which supports QQ which is very popular in China. It also supports other IM like MSN, Yahoo and AIM. It has a Chinese homepage as well.

4. IloveIM.com allows you to stay connected with MSN, Yahoo, AOL (AIM) and Gtalk messengers. The good thing about it is that you can also sign in invisible mode while it encrypts your password with 1024-bit RSA keys. It has an old MSN browser too which it still flaunts down the homepage.

5. RadiusIM brings the concept of social web into IM just like meebo where you can log on to yahoo, gtalk, msn and Aim while other Radius IM users can also ping you. You need to create a RadiusIM id before you can talk to your friends on MSN , AIM , Yahoo and gtalk. The same website also provides one facebook application.

Microsoft is planning to pay approx $800 million to buy TellMe Networks, a company that specializes in voice recognition technology in web-based applications.

Cisco has also acquired WebEx for $3.2 billion, a service company that provides web-based business collaboration services.

If you want to explore the web-based business collaboration services market, known by some as Web 2.0, attend the Web 2.0 Expo from April 15-17 in San Francsico.

Reuters have today reported that New York inhabitants who carelessly cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed “watch out” to no avail.

Kruger says he will introduce legislation on Wednesday to ban the use of gadgets such as Blackberry devices and video games while crossing the street.

“Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry,” Kruger said in a telephone interview from Albany, the state capital.

“This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it’s becoming not only endemic but it’s creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand.”

Tech-consuming New Yorkers trudge to work on sidewalks and subways like an army of drones, appearing to talk to themselves on wireless devices or swaying to seemingly silent tunes.

TVknob.com is another youtube.com like website which is now concentrating on taking web broadcasting to the next level. They have plans to start TV broadcast service with interactive web portal communities and original programming.

TVKnob’s Video and Audio Player is developed by Doug Watkins, these players will allow users to access music and videos by independent broadcasters, and choose from an cluster of online television and radio stations with multiple channels.

Doug Watkins is believed to have said that “YouTube just woke the public up to the possibilities. Our concept offers broadcast technology solutions to reach vast new markets of broadcasting, pod-casting and personal entertainment. There are serious issues facing the future of independent arts and the way it all works. This technology puts in motion a television and radio station network that anyone with the talent and the equipment can take an idea and then turn it into a personalized yet global TV or Radio Channel. It puts the power where it should be — in the hands of the broadcaster rather than the distributor. We would like to see it become the catalyst that bridges the Internet to the TV in the home.”

Web users are required to register themselves for this free service and ofcourse the broadcasters will need to subscribe starting from $99 per month, for a channel of their own. Users will also be able to upload their short films for the TVKnob film festival etc.

To me I think its a good effort, this is taking social networking to a next Level of Object sharing, TVknob is one such innovative move.

Microsoft acquired DesktopStandard, it is a New England-based firm that develops enterprise network management software.

The company’s software is designed to help network administrators manage access privileges and file sharing between groups of computers. DesktopStandard’s products work with Microsoft Group Policy, a component of Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, that allows administrators to control multiple systems with one set of parameters.

The DesktopStandard product and its developers will eventually be absorbed by Microsoft, according to a statement on the company’s website. Microsoft said that it hopes the integration will make it easier for administrators to install and manage Group Policy, as well as back-up important data.

“DesktopStandard products are already seamlessly integrated with Group Policy and are complementary to Microsoft technology. This acquisition enhances our ability to meet customers’ needs,” said Larry Orecklin, general manager of Microsoft’s Windows Enterprise Management division.

For years, server administrators have been using virtualization software to rapidly test new deployment environments, and to consolidate server hardware by putting several server operating systems on a single physical machine.

However, the latter option has not yet entered the mainstream. Intel is hoping to change all that with an announcement today that it is providing VMware certification for many of its motherboard and server products.

Intel announced the formation of the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (ESAA), a new program that allows hardware and solution vendors to certify their servers with various software applications, including VMware. According to Kirk Skaugena, Intel’s vice president in charge of the Server Platforms group, the program offers a “big revenue opportunity for the channel and a way to expand the benefits of VMware products to more and more companies around the world.”

Many systems vendors have already jumped on the bandwagon, including ACER, Bull, Compusys, HCL, Itautec, Gateway, Lenovo, LangChao, Maxdata, MPC, Powerleader, Samsung, Verari, and WiPro. ESAA certification includes validation for many different types of software and hardware configurations, and is not strictly limited to VMware. Open source applications, databases, HPC software, VoIP and other telephony software, backup, and security are also options for ESAA certification, according to the Intel whitepaper. ESAA also helps firms with post-sales support through TSANet, a third-party nonprofit industry consortium that allows companies to share customer support resources.

The explicit support of VMware, along with Intel’s own hardware virtualization efforts, shows that the company is serious about promoting virtual computing. Not only does virtualization promote Intel’s higher-margin server products, but it justifies the move to dual- and quad-core CPUs. Many organizations are concerned about excessive power and cooling requirements for their server rooms, and consolidating multiple servers on one physical machine makes sense from a power-saving point of view. While it was the fact that traditional MHz scaling has stalled that forced CPU vendors to move to multi-core designs, the move may wind up being beneficial for the IT industry increasingly focused on server consolidation.

Linux XP Desktop is the most popular Linux Distro in Russia and is now offering Linux XP 2006 Service Release 2 to the international market. Linux XP Desktop 2006 is a user friendly Operating System based on an updated release of Fedora Core 3. The desktop environment is based on GNOME which is fine tuned to mimic Windows XP’s look and functionality. Linux XP Desktop is binary compatible with Fedora Core RPM-repositories supported by a large Fedora community.

Linux XP is also integrated with Microsoft Technologies including Microsoft VPN, Active Directory, Remote Windows server login, read/write FAT16/32 and read NTFS file-systems. The operating system is also compatible with Windows applications and allows you to install & use Windows applications easily.

Linux XP Desktop 2006 International Edition SR2 is available for $48.48 in USA and $42.87 in Canada. The distribution comes with a set of useful applications such as OpenOffice suite, planning, project management, e-mail, calendar/todo, Internet, ICQ/MSN/etc, audio/video conferencing, file sharing and exchange, raster and vector image editors, movie and music players, internet radio, TV, dictionaries, software development tools.

Linux XP also supports nVidia and ATI graphics drivers and has good support for OpenGL. Many games can be easily installed & played on Linux XP and it also has easy to use update manager & auto-installer.

Yahoo Inc. is offering free group conference calling services from Vapps Inc. to the roughly 80 million users of Yahoo’s instant-message and Web telephone-calling service, the companies said Monday.

The service, called ConFreeCall, will be available for download through’s Yahoo Messenger with Voice service, allowing friends or families to hold free conference calls to complement Yahoo’s existing text, voice and photo-sharing services.

Vapps, a supplier of conference-calling services and equipment announced a similar deal in June with Skype, the international market leader in instant message and Web-based phone calling services with more than 100 million users

Vapps — short for Voice over Internet Applications — says it can offer free conference calls with high voice quality for up to 500 simultaneous participants per call — enough to handle an extended family reunion.

A moderator can control call volume control, muting, announce participants and recording, among other features.

Closely held Vapps, of Hoboken, New Jersey, has a plan to offset the cost of providing free conference calls by offering related premium services, including conference call recording, playback and 24-hour operator support for arranging calls.

Yahoo Messenger with Voice subscribers can find the ConFreeCall application in the Yahoo Messenger plug-in gallery. The service is also available directly from Vapps.

Vapps counts tens of thousands of registered users for its existing audio conference call services. Previously it charged 6 cents a minute per user, meaning an hour-long conference call with 10 participants cost around $36.

Source: Reuters