QBurst

Researchers at Gartner now report that one in every two Smartphones sold in the world, run Android. According to their latest study, Android claims a 52.5 percent market share worldwide, in the third quarter of 2011. About a year ago, their market share was a mere 25.3 percent and by the last quarter, it touched a mark of 43.4 percent. Today, with its stunning operating system and a vast collection of devices, Google sits pretty at the top, stealing market shares from almost every other Smartphone.

Smartphone market has been a churning revolution for a while and so, it’s not surprising to see a steep 42 percent in its growth in just a year’s time. As a matter of fact, sale of Smartphones to end users reached 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011! (more…)

Microsoft, one of the oldest tablet developing companies, released their first tablet 10 years ago with Chairman Bill Gate’s prediction that within five years it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America. The release was a complete failure mainly because of the operating system they had used in it – Windows XP, which was originally developed for Desktop PC customers. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, recognized the importance of having a different operating system for tablets from Microsoft’s failure. Apple wrote its name in golden letters in the history of tablets, by introducing iPad in which they included a new operating system called iOS. iPad was a big hit in the US market and very soon Google followed with Android based tablets.

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Ever noticed the number of items we carry with us when we go shopping? Our wallet is crammed with cash, credit cards, ATM cards, coupons and loyalty cards; not to forget our mobile phone that is always on hand and never leaves our side even when we are paying for items at the counter. Trying to extract anything from our overloaded wallet while still clutching our mobile phone can be an even more difficult feat. This leaves one wondering how simple shopping would be if we could use, just one object to make all our payments. What if we could use our mobile phone to make payments, instead of different plastic cards, coupons or cash?

With technology advancing at a fast pace, we are almost into an era where we can do just that! In the next five years, we would probably be buying just about anything by simply waving or tapping our mobile phones at the shopping counter.

This technology is called Near Field Communication (NFC) and is expected to create a revolution in coming years. NFC makes it easy to conduct transactions, connect electronic devices and exchange digital content with just a simple touch. This wireless technology allows devices to transfer data over short distances through short waves, a touch or a tap. (more…)

For at least some of us, ad messages popping up on the mobile can be irksome. So how about the “50% off your meal now” offer that pops up on your iPhone as you walk past your favorite pizza outlet at lunchtime. Hmm… maybe not so annoying after all!

What if you come to know your buddy is already in there taking advantage of the offer? You could join and have a great time too – at half the price.

Wait! Get a few more of your friends to drop in to make it a group of 10 and your meal will cost only one-fourth.

That is possibly what a combination of Where app, Facebook and Groupon could do – give you a ‘happy meal’! (more…)

Open Source Application

Skipfish is an open source scanner written in C language used to detect vulnerabilities in web applications. Users can compile the code and execute it for installation. Skipfish crawls through the web application, detects the security probes and generates a report for security assessments.

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Finally Google has arrived at the ‘Micro-blogging’ platform with a real ‘buzz’. On 9th February 2010, Google introduced ‘Buzz’, the new social networking application to embark on its battle to limit the popularity of Twitter. So, now there are lot of competitions going on in the Internet space. Google Vs Microsoft (Operating System & Enterprise Application Suits), Orkut (Owned by Google) Vs Facebook (Social Networking) Google vs Apple (Smart phone market). Before acquiring YouTube, they fought against them with Google Videos. So what we understand from all these competitions is that Google is not just targeting a niche or industry, rather it want to rule the entire IT Business.

At the first look, we may feel that Google Buzz is an integration of Facebook and Twitter, but it is beyond that. First and foremost advantage is that you don’t have to go to another web page to see the ‘buzz’, it’s there right below the inbox in  the Gmail. The conversation will go like an email thread which is the fascinating aspect of Buzz. You can post in the Buzz, which can be held as private or public. Also, you can connect your profiles in Flickr, Piccasa, Google Reader and Twitter to Buzz. That means you aren’t missing any of your friends and by start ‘Buzzing’, you are increasing your friend and professional network. See this wondeful Video of Buzz, to get more insights.

Now we can perhaps clearly say that it is now ‘Google Vs. Rest of the World’. Apple and Microsoft are companies that are worth more than  $ 100 billion each, Facebook and Twitter are the champs of their respective niche, though they are not monetizing it well. There is no doubt that the internet and enterprise software market will come under the reign of Google, which is not far away.

When Google announced its intentions to become a universal search engine in 2007, the very first step it took was to index all videos in the web. It seems, the web giant had predicted that video would be the pick of the world in search among all sources. Suranga Chandratillake took the same initiative when he started his video search website, Blinkx, which has today become the world’s largest single index of rich media content on the web and probably the best video search engine. Senior Analysts in eMarketer say that online video content is on a clear upward trajectory. The demographic range of the viewing population is expanding and the content mix is evolving from short, snack-type clips to long-form content such as TV shows and feature films.

The dominance of video has also made the web a great place for video advertisements. There are different advertising methods that are in existence. Let us explore them briefly.

Video Ad Methods

1.    In Stream Video Ads – The advertisement appears in the bottom or top of the video player when the video is streaming. Here is a sample.

In this sample, the advertisement is displayed on the top as the video streams.

2.    With Video Ads – Pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads constitute this method. The advertisements appear before, in the middle and after the streaming of the video respectively.

The sample below shows the advertisement being played in the entire section of the video player.

3.    Around Video Ads – This advertisement comes in video oriented sites in a variety of ad formats including standard text ads and image ads.

In the above sample, the publisher website Hulu has customized the surrounding areas of the video player for the advertisement that plays within the player.

Video Ad Production

Gone are the days when companies had to invest huge amount of money and time for video advertisements. Similar to the DIY (Do It Yourself) website creation tools, today we have DIY video ad creation tools. And these packages start from as low as $500. Few web companies provide huge database of already prepared advertising videos from which the customer can choose and customize.

There are also on-location ad production companies who come to the spot, shoot the video and do the customization. These methods are however complicated when compared with the DIY methods which specialize mostly in creating montages.

Video ads are short. The very lengthy ones could span to 60 seconds and they are very rarely made. Most of the ads are 15 to 30 seconds long.

Video Ad Distribution

When we think about video, the first picture that comes to our mind is television. So can we bring our web made advertisement into TV? If you have that question, the answer is yes. There are companies that function exclusively for this. The platform which they provide enables a customer to create a video ad, bid for TV spots and schedule airing time. Spotrunner was the company to pioneer this service. Soon to compete with them was Google. Now we have many companies which offer a similar platform and they distribute the video ad not only in TV but also in online TVs like Hulu, Veoh and various ad networks like YuMe, ScanScout and Right Media.

Video ads are also distributed in online advertising campaigns, business directory listings, Internet yellow pages, local search directories, online newspapers, video sharing sites, social networks, eCommerce sites, etc.

Are you a business owner finding difficulty in locating customers for your service? Maybe it’s time to invest in video ads.

Google has made some pretty major improvements to the camera application in Android 2.0. This includes more control over white balance, focal length, flash settings, and effects. To complement this Motorola has smartly outfitted the DROID with a 5 megapixel camera coupled with an LED flash. However many initial users claim that the camera is painfully slow to focus and take a snap.

The system comes with a 1400 mAh removable battery which is not bad at all but we expect that it won’t deliver the rated 270 hours standby time or 6 hrs 25 min talktime, especially comparing it to the previous CLIQ. However Motorola has managed to provide a decent talktime of around 5 hrs 30 min, thanks to the somewhat ironic under-clocked CPU!

Articles on Google waves is flooding the web, trying to bring out a deeper understanding on this wave renaissance. There is so much of expectation generated now as people are anxiously looking forward to get their hands on it. With the little information revealed by Google, let us try to figure out something more on how this is going to work. In Google wave 1 we discussed about Google waves as a product. This time let us view Google waves in the perspective of a developer, that is, Google waves as a platform.

What is a platform?

Platform in software realms can be understood as an entity on which software can be made to function. A platform provider will provide APIs (Application Programming Interface) for software to be developed in his platform. Let’s take a few examples: Java, the product of Sun Microsystems serves as a platform and it comes with APIs like AWT, JDBC, JMF and so on. These APIs are also provided by Sun Microsystems. Apple Inc, owner of iphone had APIs confidential until October 2008 when the company open sourced and made it license free to develop software applications to be run on iphone. Lately, there is facebook API which is both powerful and popular.

What about Google API?

Google has promised to come up with a public API which can be used by any developer to create applications that run on the wave platform. There are 2 ways by which a developer can make his presence felt in Google waves. The first method is by building robots or creating gadgets. The other method is by embedding waves on third party websites. Let’s try to get some insight on these new terminologies.

Robots, Gadgets and Embed API

Robots are automated participants in a wave. Remember the robot in ‘Lost in Space’. It is a similar kind of simulation except that these robots will function inside the computer. A robot created inside a wave will be able to read, modify and delete blips and wavelets. A wavelet is a smaller wave that is resident inside a wave and a blip resides inside a wavelet. The diagram below will give you better picture.

The developer can create robots and perform interactive operations within a wave. What are the interactive operations? Well, that is left to the creativity of the developer. Learn more about robots here. Wave Gadgets are similar to the ordinary gadgets in its mechanism to get embedded as third party development applications. But there is more offered. A wave gadget can function within a live wave. An example Google gives to explain this is one which lets participants of a wave to vote on where to go for lunch. Learn more about gadgets here.

The second method using Embed API enables to bring waves into third party websites. There will be simultaneous updates in websites as and when an update is made inside a wave. Google has already come up with a few embeds. ‘You tube playlist discuss’ is one among them and is sure to gain so much popularity.  Learn more about embed APIs here.

As Facebook is dominating now with so much integration, it is certain that we can expect even more from Google waves. So if you are a developer, be informed about what is going on in Google waves and get ready to play with the tools as soon as you get them.

Links for further study:

http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/

For most of us finding information on the Internet is synonymous with going to Google.com, typing in a word or phrase and clicking search. In fact Google does account for a major share of the search engine market and with good reason too. check this out if you are still in doubt.

Thus despite new players coming up, Google still remains the leader in information search on the web. That is exactly why it makes sense to understand and develop efficient googling techniques. Mentioned below are few tips which, when practiced while searching the web using Google, will save time and improve search results. (more…)