With a user base of 100 million, the country now stands third in the world in terms of the number of people surfing the internet, an official of internet search engine Google said in Kolkata on Tuesday. "China has the highest number of internet users at 300 million followed by the US with 207 million.
India comes third with the number of internet users now soaring to 100 million," Vinay goel, head of products, Google India, told mediapersons.
Of the internet users in the country, 40 million access the net through mobile phones. However, the official from google has pointed out that there was a massive scope of increasing the user base in the mobile internet space as the figure of 40 million comprises only eight percent of those carrying mobile phones.
The number of mobile internet surfers in India is growing rapidly. In 2007, the country had only two million such users. Now the number has gone up 20 times," Goel said.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Steps to secure your WiFi
Here's the methodology, on how to do it...
Enable firewalls on each computer and router: Modern network routers contain built-in firewall capability, but the option also exists to disable them. Ensure that your router's firewall is turned on.
Position the router or access point safely: While installing WiFi, ensure that the position of the access point or router prevents its reach to the exterior as much as possible. Try to position the device as far away from the windows as possible.
Turn off network during extended periods of non-use: Avoid leaving your network available when you are not using it. Shutting down your network will most certainly prevent outside hackers from breaking in.
Avoid using default usernames and passwords: Use a login/password on your router that is different than the default settings. Most routers are made available with a default combination that can be hacked
Enable MAC Address filtering: Each wireless device has a unique identifier called the MAC address. Access points and routers keep track of the MACs for all devices that connect to them. It ensures that rogues cannot connect to it
Avoid auto-connect to open wireless networks: Your connection allows you to connect to an open wireless network such as a free wireless hotspot or your neighbour's router. This exposes your PC to security risks and attacks.
Limit the no of people who can see your network by disabling the SSID broadcast: The wireless access point or router typically broadcasts the SSID over the air at regular intervals. Home users can avoid this facility.
Enable firewalls on each computer and router: Modern network routers contain built-in firewall capability, but the option also exists to disable them. Ensure that your router's firewall is turned on.
Position the router or access point safely: While installing WiFi, ensure that the position of the access point or router prevents its reach to the exterior as much as possible. Try to position the device as far away from the windows as possible.
Turn off network during extended periods of non-use: Avoid leaving your network available when you are not using it. Shutting down your network will most certainly prevent outside hackers from breaking in.
Avoid using default usernames and passwords: Use a login/password on your router that is different than the default settings. Most routers are made available with a default combination that can be hacked
Enable MAC Address filtering: Each wireless device has a unique identifier called the MAC address. Access points and routers keep track of the MACs for all devices that connect to them. It ensures that rogues cannot connect to it
Avoid auto-connect to open wireless networks: Your connection allows you to connect to an open wireless network such as a free wireless hotspot or your neighbour's router. This exposes your PC to security risks and attacks.
Limit the no of people who can see your network by disabling the SSID broadcast: The wireless access point or router typically broadcasts the SSID over the air at regular intervals. Home users can avoid this facility.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Planet of Diamonds
Planets studded with diamond mountains and filled with glass cores may be more than a psychedelic dream. A Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star has a mostly carbon atmosphere, astronomers report online December 8 in Nature. The observation suggests that the rest of the planet may be mostly carbon, too.
The planet, WASP-12b, has an atmosphere containing at least twice as much carbon as scientists expected, an international team of researchers reports. This surprise invites new theories for how planets form, says astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan, a Princeton University astrophysicist who participated in the research while at MIT.
WASP-12b and its mother star, WASP-12, are 1,200 light-years from Earth. The planet is the size of Jupiter but at 2,500 kelvins, much hotter. Its orbit is only about one-fiftieth as far from its star as the Earth’s distance from the sun.
Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, Madhusudhan and colleagues recorded the infrared light from WASP-12b as the planet sneaks around its star. When the planet is in front of the star, the telescope records light from both the star and the planet’s atmosphere. When the planet is fully hidden behind the star, only the star’s light is recorded. Subtracting one measure from the other gives the light coming from just the planet.
Madhusudhan and colleagues compared their results to data simulated for millions of computer-generated planets with different molecules and temperatures in the atmosphere. The team found that a hot planet with at least as much carbon as oxygen fit the data best. In WASP-12b’s atmosphere, the carbon is found in the form of carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide.
The existence of carbon planets has been proposed in the past, though how such a planet would form is still a mystery. Planets and their stars are thought to form from the same cloud of dust and gas at the same time, so astronomers have assumed in models that the atmospheres of giant planets would have compositions similar to the stars nearby. But WASP-12b has at least twice as much carbon in its atmosphere than the star it orbits—a mystery models can’t explain.
On lightweight planets like Earth, gases like hydrogen and helium escape the planet’s gravity, so the atmospheric chemistry doesn’t reflect the star’s composition. While such rocky planets are forming, if there is less available carbon than oxygen, the planet will be dominated by silicates, like the Earth.
But once carbon and oxygen are roughly equal, the rules of planet formation change.
“When the relative amount of carbon gets that high, it’s as though you flip a switch, and everything changes. Everything would be different — like imagine, one day you’re a Yankees fan, the next day, Red Sox,” says Marc J. Kuchner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Though a giant carbon planet would be predominantly gas, a rocky, carbon-based body the size of Neptune—about 17 Earth masses—would probably have landscapes of diamond and graphite, says Kuchner.
Life on a carbon planet would look different too. Humans eat carbon and breathe oxygen on Earth, but that would be switched on a carbon planet, says Kuchner.
“You would probably eat rust and combine it with the air on this strange planet, which might be mostly carbon compounds,” says Kuchner.
More carbon planets probably exist, says Kuchner, and Jupiter may be one of them. Its carbon to oxygen ratio has been difficult to measure. When NASA’s Galileo probe visited Jupiter in the 1990s, it measured the atmosphere’s carbon-to-oxygen ratio as greater than one.
“Nobody believed it,” says Kuchner.
No model can yet explain how carbon planets form. They may be born in planetary disks with relatively high amounts of carbon, says Kuchner. The disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away, for example, has 18 times as much carbon as the sun.
---
The planet, WASP-12b, has an atmosphere containing at least twice as much carbon as scientists expected, an international team of researchers reports. This surprise invites new theories for how planets form, says astrophysicist Nikku Madhusudhan, a Princeton University astrophysicist who participated in the research while at MIT.
WASP-12b and its mother star, WASP-12, are 1,200 light-years from Earth. The planet is the size of Jupiter but at 2,500 kelvins, much hotter. Its orbit is only about one-fiftieth as far from its star as the Earth’s distance from the sun.
Using the Spitzer Space Telescope, Madhusudhan and colleagues recorded the infrared light from WASP-12b as the planet sneaks around its star. When the planet is in front of the star, the telescope records light from both the star and the planet’s atmosphere. When the planet is fully hidden behind the star, only the star’s light is recorded. Subtracting one measure from the other gives the light coming from just the planet.
Madhusudhan and colleagues compared their results to data simulated for millions of computer-generated planets with different molecules and temperatures in the atmosphere. The team found that a hot planet with at least as much carbon as oxygen fit the data best. In WASP-12b’s atmosphere, the carbon is found in the form of carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide.
The existence of carbon planets has been proposed in the past, though how such a planet would form is still a mystery. Planets and their stars are thought to form from the same cloud of dust and gas at the same time, so astronomers have assumed in models that the atmospheres of giant planets would have compositions similar to the stars nearby. But WASP-12b has at least twice as much carbon in its atmosphere than the star it orbits—a mystery models can’t explain.
On lightweight planets like Earth, gases like hydrogen and helium escape the planet’s gravity, so the atmospheric chemistry doesn’t reflect the star’s composition. While such rocky planets are forming, if there is less available carbon than oxygen, the planet will be dominated by silicates, like the Earth.
But once carbon and oxygen are roughly equal, the rules of planet formation change.
“When the relative amount of carbon gets that high, it’s as though you flip a switch, and everything changes. Everything would be different — like imagine, one day you’re a Yankees fan, the next day, Red Sox,” says Marc J. Kuchner of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Though a giant carbon planet would be predominantly gas, a rocky, carbon-based body the size of Neptune—about 17 Earth masses—would probably have landscapes of diamond and graphite, says Kuchner.
Life on a carbon planet would look different too. Humans eat carbon and breathe oxygen on Earth, but that would be switched on a carbon planet, says Kuchner.
“You would probably eat rust and combine it with the air on this strange planet, which might be mostly carbon compounds,” says Kuchner.
More carbon planets probably exist, says Kuchner, and Jupiter may be one of them. Its carbon to oxygen ratio has been difficult to measure. When NASA’s Galileo probe visited Jupiter in the 1990s, it measured the atmosphere’s carbon-to-oxygen ratio as greater than one.
“Nobody believed it,” says Kuchner.
No model can yet explain how carbon planets form. They may be born in planetary disks with relatively high amounts of carbon, says Kuchner. The disk surrounding the star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away, for example, has 18 times as much carbon as the sun.
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Saturday, November 13, 2010
Facebook to now land up with its "The different" Email service
After reigning the Social Networking, facebook set to launch "the differnt" email service.
Social networking site Facebook may soon offer e-mail services to its 500 million members to compete Google and Yahoo, making it the largest such service on the planet. More significantly, the offering could lead to a fundamental transformation of e-mail.
Facebook would have a tremendous advantage because it owns a vast collection of data about people's relationships and would find it easier to graft e-mail onto its existing social services such as photo-sharing. The news has come up after the strategic alliance with the software giant Microsoft to incorporate the functionality of Facebook in the Office applications.
If it is announced, a Facebook e-mail service would allow its more than 500 million members to communicate with anyone inside or outside the walls of the social network. If they use it, Facebook would leapfrog the 361 million global users of Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail's 273 million users and Gmail's 193 million.
The launch of the new service will be made official on Monday.
Now the question arises that would it be easier to divert, for their current email accounts to new email service from facebook.
Lets see...
Social networking site Facebook may soon offer e-mail services to its 500 million members to compete Google and Yahoo, making it the largest such service on the planet. More significantly, the offering could lead to a fundamental transformation of e-mail.
Facebook would have a tremendous advantage because it owns a vast collection of data about people's relationships and would find it easier to graft e-mail onto its existing social services such as photo-sharing. The news has come up after the strategic alliance with the software giant Microsoft to incorporate the functionality of Facebook in the Office applications.
If it is announced, a Facebook e-mail service would allow its more than 500 million members to communicate with anyone inside or outside the walls of the social network. If they use it, Facebook would leapfrog the 361 million global users of Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail's 273 million users and Gmail's 193 million.
The launch of the new service will be made official on Monday.
Now the question arises that would it be easier to divert, for their current email accounts to new email service from facebook.
Lets see...
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Real talent lies in the colleges other than IIT's and NIT's
The majority of talent for the IT industry lies in colleges other than the IIT's and NIT's and cities which are partially or completely ignored by companies for fresher placements in India, according to a study.
The scientific assesment team, Aspiring Minds, which compiled the study, segregated the country's colleges into a top 100 campus list and compared their employability with the rest of the campuses (which they termed "tier II" campuses).
To calculate their "employability", around 250,000 engineering and MCA students across the country, from more than 12 states, were tested on AMCAT, a test accepted by Indian IT/ItES companies as a standard of measuring candidates' skills.
Campuses which fall in the top 100 campus list were segregated and their employability was compared with the rest of the campuses (tier 2 campuses) and it was discovered that the major skill deficiency between the two categories was in quantitative abilities and not in communicative abilities as presumed.
More than 70 percent of all students employable for IT product sector and more than 80 percent of all students employable for the IT services/KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) sector are in tier 2 colleges, the study said.
The scientific assesment team, Aspiring Minds, which compiled the study, segregated the country's colleges into a top 100 campus list and compared their employability with the rest of the campuses (which they termed "tier II" campuses).
To calculate their "employability", around 250,000 engineering and MCA students across the country, from more than 12 states, were tested on AMCAT, a test accepted by Indian IT/ItES companies as a standard of measuring candidates' skills.
Campuses which fall in the top 100 campus list were segregated and their employability was compared with the rest of the campuses (tier 2 campuses) and it was discovered that the major skill deficiency between the two categories was in quantitative abilities and not in communicative abilities as presumed.
More than 70 percent of all students employable for IT product sector and more than 80 percent of all students employable for the IT services/KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) sector are in tier 2 colleges, the study said.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Mobile Number Protability service delayed again ya but apply for mobile number portability from Nov 25
The crucial decision for mobile number portability (MNP) would rollout by November 3, reports CNBC-TV18 quoting sources. The Foreign Investment Promotion Board FIPB will consider MNP licencee for south and east India Telcordia’s proposal on November 3. Sources added that number portability would be made commercially available by month-end.
Haryana would be one of the first states with MNP effective from November 25, while testing to begin from November 8. Mobile subscribers will be able to change service providers while retaining phone numbers from November 25.
To begin with, mobile number portability (MNP)— which allows subscribers to change operators while retaining the same number—will be introduced in Haryana. It will be extended to other circles in the next few months.
Operators’ networks are ready and have been tested fully. Applications from subscribers will be accepted from November 25 and the government will come out with detailed guidelines and advertisements in this regard in the first week of November.
Some experts said the introduction of MNP services could be a game-changer in the telecom sector. It could put pressure on leading mobile operators to announce new schemes to retain their subscribers. While no study is available on how many subscribers are looking for a change in service provider, telecom analysts feel it may not be more than 10% at any given time.
MNP is the facility that lets a mobile phone subscriber retain his/her original mobile number even after moving from one service provider to another.
In India, MNP has been elusive so far. It has been implemented the world over and we are one of the last countries left to implement MNP.
Haryana would be one of the first states with MNP effective from November 25, while testing to begin from November 8. Mobile subscribers will be able to change service providers while retaining phone numbers from November 25.
To begin with, mobile number portability (MNP)— which allows subscribers to change operators while retaining the same number—will be introduced in Haryana. It will be extended to other circles in the next few months.
Operators’ networks are ready and have been tested fully. Applications from subscribers will be accepted from November 25 and the government will come out with detailed guidelines and advertisements in this regard in the first week of November.
Some experts said the introduction of MNP services could be a game-changer in the telecom sector. It could put pressure on leading mobile operators to announce new schemes to retain their subscribers. While no study is available on how many subscribers are looking for a change in service provider, telecom analysts feel it may not be more than 10% at any given time.
MNP is the facility that lets a mobile phone subscriber retain his/her original mobile number even after moving from one service provider to another.
In India, MNP has been elusive so far. It has been implemented the world over and we are one of the last countries left to implement MNP.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Importance of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic. It is also considered the most effective and cheapest means of promotion.
There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, out of which some of the visitors will come back to your website again and again, thereby having active increase in the visitors over the period of time.
Ignore the valuable utility of social media usually will lead to three consequences namely
• The ones who have no or very less knowledge about social media.
• The ones who are interested but they are not familiar on how to use it.
• Those who don’t believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business.
The people who don’t understand or realize the value of social media websites, let’s take a look at the benefits of effectively promoting the purpose through social media channels like social bookmarking, video embedding. Developing links and successfully promoting them on social bookmarking sites, the one’s like Digg and StumbleUpon will lead several benefits:
Namely the benefits can be categorized into two categories i.e. primary and secondary traffic and thru high quality links.
• In primary traffic comes the people who come diverted directly from the social media websites and in large amount of visitors whereas in the secondary traffic comes the traffic which is diverted through links from contents across the social media sites.
• In High Quality Links i.e. when one becomes popular on the social bookmarking sites will get you a large number of links, some of which may be topically relevant, some not.
There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, out of which some of the visitors will come back to your website again and again, thereby having active increase in the visitors over the period of time.
Ignore the valuable utility of social media usually will lead to three consequences namely
• The ones who have no or very less knowledge about social media.
• The ones who are interested but they are not familiar on how to use it.
• Those who don’t believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business.
The people who don’t understand or realize the value of social media websites, let’s take a look at the benefits of effectively promoting the purpose through social media channels like social bookmarking, video embedding. Developing links and successfully promoting them on social bookmarking sites, the one’s like Digg and StumbleUpon will lead several benefits:
Namely the benefits can be categorized into two categories i.e. primary and secondary traffic and thru high quality links.
• In primary traffic comes the people who come diverted directly from the social media websites and in large amount of visitors whereas in the secondary traffic comes the traffic which is diverted through links from contents across the social media sites.
• In High Quality Links i.e. when one becomes popular on the social bookmarking sites will get you a large number of links, some of which may be topically relevant, some not.
Fab Furnish
