India will soon get its hand on the Nexus One but interestingly enough, it won’t be the same Nexus One shipped to US customers but rather a stripped down version of the original device.

This news was tweeted out by Ankit, a CNBC TV18 Reporter who had a meeting with Google India head Shailesh Rao.

“Nexus One will not come to India in its US avatar, the India specific Google Phone may be a stripped down version and priced lower!”

Being an editorial meeting, there is no other news regarding its release date or price. The omitted features compared to the actual Nexus One will decide its fate in India.

Surely, Google won’t make  the same mistake Apple made by introducing the worldwide version of the device which was both expensive and reliant on 3G, despite the low 3G penetration in India.  Instead, its pretty clear that Google will concentrate more on competing with the present smart phone market dominated by Nokia and Blackberry.

The slow pace of the sales of Android phones in India might not be great news to Google, but a phone minus some features and a lower price might just do the trick.With the 3G spectrum auction expected to start by April 2010, Google might just be onto a winner by introducing its Google maps navigation system just in time for the announcement. India might finally have a GPS device that actually works.

What about the iPhone you ask? Despite the long wait, there is still no news from Apple as to when it might launch the 3GS in India. And with 3G’s still being sold at the same steep price tag, India clearly doesn’t appear to be Apple’s kind of market.

via Labnol.org

Internet’s video sharing giant, YouTube is down for many users all over the globe. There seems to be some weird downtime here, a few refreshes on your browser solves the problem. But many embedded videos fail to load of many websites.

Many uses are getting “http://1.1 Service Unavailable” error.

No news or any sort of official announcement, meanwhile check the fast popping tweets.

What about you guys? Everyone experiencing this?

UPDATE : YouTube is shining as ever and is back , normal as it was earlier. Many users are reporting, everything seems fine now.

We’ll keep you updated as and when we receive more information about this.

Baidu, China’s own internet giant had announced its own Video channel website just two months back.Keeping all the censorship rules in mind, they planned to stream ad-supported video content, tapping the 162 million yuan ($23.73 million) worth of China’s online video market.

The site is called Qiyi. The direct competition for Qiyi would be China’s most famous video sites like Youku, Tudou, Sohu Video and 56.com.

Providence Equity Partners will invest $50 million into Baidu’s video company called Qiyi. Baidu will continue to maintain majority ownership in the company. And has appointed Yu Gong as the head of this company.

Providence has a history of financing media and entertainment projects and has earlier invested in companies including Hulu, Yankees Entertainment & Sports Network,and Warner Music Group.  Along with investing it has great experience in managing businesses that distribute licensed content online.

Jonathan Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of Providence  says .“We are very pleased to partner with Baidu and are confident that this new venture will become an industry leader, As the world’s largest Chinese language internet search company and also the dominant video search engine in China, Baidu has unmatched competitive advantages in its user base and traffic.The new venture will provide users with a first-class viewing experience, and will work with regulators to ensure the lawful distribution of professionally produced media and entertainment content on the internet.”

Qiyi will be following Hulu’s model and will not support user-Generated Content (UGC) and will solely concentrate on High-Definition, Copyrighted video content with the revenue flowing in from the video-advertisements. It’s expected Qiyi would  host +1,000 licensed movies, +1,000 TV series along with thousands-hours long cartoon, documentary, TV programs etc and some of the content will be exclusive.

UPDATE : Purpose code would be needed in order to do a proper withdrawl. Learn more about the purpose code on ThePayPal Blog.

By now everyone knows about the PayPal <-> India fiasco. Few weeks ago, PayPal had stopped all the withdrawal transactions done by any Indian PayPal Account. Services like Xoom profited a lot by helping Verified PayPal users to get their withdrawn done with some transaction fee attached to it. But thanks to Reserve Bank of India and PayPal, the issue has been resolved and everything is back to where it was with some new rules set it action.

PayPal sent out a email announcing that starting from March 3rd 2010, all the withdraw would be resumed back and instructions for the same would be set up from March 1st.

How to Withdraw from PayPal Again?

• For Exporters, you will be able to move your funds out of Paypal into your bank account from March 3rd without any hassle.
• If you are not an exporter (As part of the changes in Paypal, you will be required to fill out a new field entitled ‘Export Code’ when you request a withdrawal.) and would like to move your personal payments from Paypal to your bank account, the wait is not getting over for you anytime soon. Learn how to get a Exporter Code here.

It’s good to see how well PayPal made an email announcement for lifting the ban. Post the earlier ban to withdraw many PayPal users had no clue of this and had to suffer unnecessary charges and inconvenience.

Dear Vidyesh Modey,

We have been diligently working with the RBI and our business partners to resume Indian bank withdrawals for the thousands of Indian businesses who depend on PayPal to sell their goods
or services in the global marketplace.

Today, we are happy to announce that the RBI has allowed us to continue local bank withdrawals for settlements for exports of goods and services. We are currently making changes to
comply with Indian regulations for settlements for exports of goods and services, and we anticipate that, as of Wednesday, March 3rd, customers will be able to use our bank withdrawal service.

As part of the changes, you will be required to fill out a new field entitled ‘Export Code’ when you request a withdrawal. This information is required under the current laws of India in
order to identify the nature of cross-border merchant transactions. On Monday, March 1st, we will be back in touch with specific instructions on how you can move your money into your bank account.

Moving forward, the RBI has told us that PayPal needs specific approvals to allow personal remittances to India, which we currently do not have. Until we get these approvals, personal
payments into India will remain suspended. However, if you are an exporter, you will continue to be able to use the PayPal service for payments of goods and services. In fact, with the
changes we are making to our system, PayPal is now set to be a more powerful engine for exporters in India. With purpose codes for export transactions and FIRCs (Foreign Inward Remittance Certificates), you should now be able to get the export related benefits you seek.

You can check the PayPal blog for additional updates.

www.thepaypalblog.com

We thank you for your business and for your patience during the past few weeks.

Sincerely,
PayPal

iYogi Inc, a Consumer Tech Support Service which provides Remote Techinical support to clients raised $15Million in third round of funding. The funding was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson(DFJ) which contributed $9Million and was joined by return backers Canaan Partners, SAP Ventures and SVB India Capital.

Investors were also very amazed with the five-year-old venture’s year-on-year growth for its success in raising capital when most early-stage firms are struggling to generate revenue and are stuck with developing a revenue building plan.

The Press Release says,

“The surging demand for remote technical services stems from the critical need for computer owners to keep their systems up and running and retailers to differentiate their offerings, particularly as the PC market becomes increasingly commoditized and competitive”

iYogi provides remote technical support to everyone across the globe. Along with remote support it offers loads of tech support services like PC Installation, recovery and maintenance, anti-virus/spyware cleanup, data back-up and PC speed optimization. Its annual unlimited tech support plan starts at $139.99. Most of its tech support services are centered around Microsoft software, but Google and Apple products are also listed on iYogi’s website.

The company was founded in 2005 and is growing rapidly.  The company has established a presence in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

“We are delighted to have support from successful, high-profile venture firms like Draper Fisher Jurvetson along with Canaan Partners, SAP Ventures and SVB India Capital Partners,” said Uday Challu, co-founder and CEO of iYogi. “iYogi’s progress over the last year is both a strong reflection of the tremendous market opportunity for remote technical services and an indication of iYogi’s momentum in seizing significant market share. We are able to effectively and consistently address and resolve consumer concerns through our unique Global Delivery Model across multiple geographies with the highest resolution rates and customer satisfaction in this growing industry.”

The company claims to have seen 300 percent growth in revenues and subscribers since 2008, and it intends to grow the number of Global Tech Experts to 3,000 worldwide in 2010.

Baidu, being China’s biggest Search Market Giant recently announced its plans to introduce a new video channel website which will provide copyright video content to its Chinese internet users. With the search market share of 63%,  Baidu is China’s largest Search Engine player.

Chinese government blocks U.S. Web sites based on user-generated content, which include some famous websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube , mainly for political reasons. Google’s YouTube still being banned in China, this would be a brilliant business plan for Baidu which already has the strongest hold over China’s Web World.

Baidu said it has seen growing demand for video content on its search engine. Both Baidu and Google already offer Chinese users a video search feature that finds clips from other sites.  Summuing up to the video market, China’s online video market was worth 162 million yuan ($23.73 million) in the third quarter .

Baidu will air ad-supported movies, TV series, sporting events, animation and other content, creating a service that is could be as huge as Hulu. Yu Gong – who was most recently president and COO of China Mobile’s 12580 division and is formerly Sohu.com’s COO – has been hired to head up the company.

U.S.-based Providence Equity Partners (an investor in  Hulu) and Baidu will team up  to set up an online video channel in China, this channel would provide licensed content in this joint venture. Many local websites reported the joint venture company has received about $60 million in private equity funds and Baidu will invest about $10 million into the firm.
Baidu is also an investor in PPLive, a Chinese website that streams licensed movies and video for free.

It was not clear if the new video channel would include online user-generated content, if anything of that is allowed the Great Firewall of China is bound to be upset.

Amazon finally has launched its 9.7-inch electronic ink display bearing ‘Kindle DX’  worldwide. And would be available from Jan 19th 2010.

It boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images which connects via cellular 3G networks used by majorly all cellphones right now.  This makes it a good buy for India , as we already have limited Wi-Fi hotspots to connect to. Kindle DX wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents of high resolutions.

Kindle was first launched in India in October 2009 but failed to make a major impact due to lack of 3G connectivity all over the country.  You can pre-order your DX from Amazon at a price of $489

Kindle DX has a 4GB storage capacity which could fit in 3,500 books on a single device. Also being  a native PDF reader, users can wirelessly receive their PDF format documents on their Kindle if they have wireless coverage or can move them over using a USB connection. The large display helps to read  documents with more complex layouts without scrolling, panning or zooming, and without re-flowing.

Along with all this DX has a experimental read-to-me feature “Text-to-Speech” that converts words on a page to spoken word so customers have the option to read or listen. Customers can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and their spot is automatically saved. Pages turn automatically while the content is being read so customers can listen hands-free. Using the read-to-me feature with books, newspapers, magazines, and personal documents, Kindle DX can read to you. It also has built-in access to The New Oxford American Dictionary and Wikipedia.

To know more about Kindle DX visit Amazon Kindle DX.

Google India has announced Site Clinic for Indian webmasters wherein the submitted websites would be analyzed by Google Experts to improve search quality. Selected sites will be personally evaluated by the Google employees and suggestions will be given to users based on the searches.  However, not every submitted site will be selected for the clinic and there will be a selection process where few websites will be chosen to take part in it.

You need to be a part of the Google Webmasters to submit your website. If your site is not part of Google Webmasters, you can sign up for it here before registering for the shortlist.

So Submit your site today as the last date of submissions is 20 January, 2010. To make sure your site gets accepted make sure you fulfil the following two requirements :

• Register your site on Google’s Webmaster Tools
• Make sure your site follows the Google’s Quality Guidelines.

Our team will analyze websites submitted to the clinic. The plan is to offer constructive advice on accessibility and improvements that can lead to better visibility for your website in Google’s search results.

Image Courtesy : Cleveland.com

Briefly for few hours, China enjoyed total Internet freedom Monday early morning. China’s Official Web Controlling system known as ‘Great Firewall’ which is controlled by the Chinese government to implement Internet censorship was lifted for few hours and China enjoyed websites like YouTube, Facebook etc. Rumors spread around very fast across social networking websites about China lifting the censorship on various sites but soon when China woke up, the censorship was back and computers sprung upon the blocked website error messages.

Twitter users were the one updating all the updates regarding the fast spreading news  related to this, amongst all the one of the twitter user, Michael Anti a social critic tweeted about its development as it came to him saying  ‘It’s believed this unblocking on some ISPs is caused by GFW upgrading and maintainence, not real unblocking. Yet to confirm.’ While others reasoned it had something to do with the heavy snow that blanketed northern China over the weekend.

The real reason behind this rampage of unblocked access is still unclear. China Unicorm, the ISP which maintains this system didn’t clear anything yet.  China’ web censorship was primary in the push to crackdown pornography. But many say its just to control the world’s largest Internet Community. Authorities announced last week that thousands of  people were arrested last year for crimes related to online porn, Hundreds of websites have been shut down, including file-sharing destinations for pirated movies and music, as well as personal blogs.

A  pronouncement released last month stated was interpreted to mean that foreign websites may one day have to register with the government before being allowed inside the Great Firewall. China’s Internet censorship measures have indefinite criticism by many. Implementing harsher means could cause widespread internet rebellions all over China.

Image Courtesy : ChinaDigitalTimes

Wishing every one a Happy New Year!
Let us all contribute to have a great year ahead!!

Welcome 2010!!!

Happy New Year!!! by Google