India?s Former Telecom Minister Arrested

India?s Former Telecom Minister Arrested

India?s former telecommunications minister, along with two other officials were arrested on Wednesday in an investigation into one of India?s biggest corruption scandals that cost the government billions of dollars.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charged Andimuthu Raja, his secretary and a former ministry official for abusing their official positions to benefit some telecom companies. The scandal involves the 2008 sale of 2G cellular operating licenses of under a first-come, first-served basis, but was unrightfully given to ineligible participants that netted the government only 124 billion rupees ($2.7 billion). The Comptroller and Auditor General reports that losses from the cut-price sales could have cost the national treasury up to $40 billion.

Raja, who still denies the allegation, was forced to resign from the government in November as the scandal tainted the image of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The opposition stalled the functioning of both houses of Parliament, calling for a joint probe into the auction; however, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has refused. The houses are scheduled to meet from Feb. 21 to pass the government?s budget.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/02/03/indias-former-telecom-minister-arrested/

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Does Flash Really Sap Your iPhone Battery?

Famously, you can do almost anything on an iPhone apart from run Adobe Flash; a move that Apple has always defended on the grounds that Flash isn?t finger-friendly and that it drains the battery life too much.

According to IT Pro, this firmly held line has led to ?one of the most bitter and unresolved disputes in the technology industry.? What's more, the site has also undertaken some testing to discover the truth about the iPhone Flash video and battery life debate.

IT Pro sets the battle-lines between Apple and Adobe by pointing out that ?Apple?s backing of H.264 over Flash has helped increase the popularity of H.264. For example, YouTube has converted its entire library to H.264 for playback on iOS devices.?

If this trend is widened to all mobile devices, one of Adobe?s primary products will be undermined by the increasing demand and importance of smartphones and tablet PCs. However, if Apple is incorrect to deny iOS devices access to Flash, alternative mobile OSes such as Android would become even more popular, leaving Apple?s shiny iPhones and iPads gathering dust on the shelves.

IT Pro?s testing methods involved creating two video files of the same movie, ?one using the H.264 codec in a .m4v container and the other using the Sorenson Spark codec, one of the most popular codecs used in online Flash videos before the rise of H.264, in a .flv container.?

The tester then played back these videos in a few different playback apps, measuring the time before the battery of a Samsung Galaxy Tab and an Apple iPod Touch gave out. The test setup was actually quite complicated to ensure comparability, so for more details, see IT Pro?s test setup page.

The results were surprising to say the least ? Apple?s Videos app was more frugal with the power draw than the VLC app, for example. ?Either Apple's in-house app developers are very good (or have access to some trick or a private API for prolonging battery life) or Applidium, the developers of the VLC app, still have a lot of work to do.?

Meanwhile, the Android-powered Galaxy Tab lasted for half an hour less when playing the Flash version of the video than when playing the H.264 file. What's more, the difference was even greater on the Apple device.

For a bit more analysis, it's also worth heading over to the conclusion page.

Is Apple completely justified or totally wrong to ban Flash from iPhones and iPads? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.

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Give Your Dashboard the Finger

An experimental gestural interface for cars lets drivers control any part of their dashboard without taking their hands off the wheel.

Christian Müller</a>, a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken, who co-developed the new system, says the idea is to enable drivers to adjust everything from the volume of the car stereo to the climate-control settings while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

The prototype interface uses several sensors to detect the movement of a driver's right index finger as it disrupts an electric field. It is based on the same principle as the theremin, a musical instrument that is played without being touched. Electromagnetic sensors located in the dashboard detect finger movements, providing the driver is holding the wheel in the recommended ten-to-two position and is driving straight. By detecting the different shapes the driver's finger draws in the air, the system can detect and interpret a wide range of commands, says Müller.

Müller tested it with DFKI colleague Christoph Endres and Tim Schwartz at the University of Saarland, also in Germany. The researchers used a car simulator. "In our prototype we glued these antennae on the dashboard right behind the steering wheel," he says.

Six people were asked to try the system, dubbed Geremin. It was able with an accuracy of 86 percent to distinguish 10 different gestures, including moving the finger up or down, left or right, or tracing out circles, triangles, and squares. The work will be presented next week at the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces in Palo Alto, California.

Some cars do already have buttons and controls built into the steering wheel or attached to the steering column, says Müller, but buttons are more limiting than gestures. "While you can certainly have designated buttons for a few selected functions or applications on the steering wheel, the number of gestures can be extended," he says.

The system should be much cheaper than installing cameras to monitor drivers' movements, as some car manufacturers are now doing. The cost of each sensor is about 50 cents.

"It's an interesting idea. It could be useful," says Paul Green, a research professor of the Driver Interface Group at the University of Michigan's Transport Research Institute. But while it may help keep a driver's hands on the wheel, recognition errors could prove to be a different kind of distraction, he says. "Also, if each manufacturer has a different set of gestures, then you have a real problem," he says.

The German researchers hope to extend the gesture set significantly. "We will combine this with speech recognition in order to allow people to dictate text messages in the car," says Müller.

Nonetheless, there are skeptics. Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the U.K.'s Automobile Association, says the prospect of enabling drivers to text is a "frightening" one. "We shouldn't be encouraging people to do anything other than driving while driving," he says.

Dictating texts is "not something we would want to encourage," says Green, adding that "I think we're going to find the throughput would be faster using speech-to-text."

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Give Your Dashboard the Finger

An experimental gestural interface for cars lets drivers control any part of their dashboard without taking their hands off the wheel.

Christian Müller</a>, a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken, who co-developed the new system, says the idea is to enable drivers to adjust everything from the volume of the car stereo to the climate-control settings while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

The prototype interface uses several sensors to detect the movement of a driver's right index finger as it disrupts an electric field. It is based on the same principle as the theremin, a musical instrument that is played without being touched. Electromagnetic sensors located in the dashboard detect finger movements, providing the driver is holding the wheel in the recommended ten-to-two position and is driving straight. By detecting the different shapes the driver's finger draws in the air, the system can detect and interpret a wide range of commands, says Müller.

Müller tested it with DFKI colleague Christoph Endres and Tim Schwartz at the University of Saarland, also in Germany. The researchers used a car simulator. "In our prototype we glued these antennae on the dashboard right behind the steering wheel," he says.

Six people were asked to try the system, dubbed Geremin. It was able with an accuracy of 86 percent to distinguish 10 different gestures, including moving the finger up or down, left or right, or tracing out circles, triangles, and squares. The work will be presented next week at the International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces in Palo Alto, California.

Some cars do already have buttons and controls built into the steering wheel or attached to the steering column, says Müller, but buttons are more limiting than gestures. "While you can certainly have designated buttons for a few selected functions or applications on the steering wheel, the number of gestures can be extended," he says.

The system should be much cheaper than installing cameras to monitor drivers' movements, as some car manufacturers are now doing. The cost of each sensor is about 50 cents.

"It's an interesting idea. It could be useful," says Paul Green, a research professor of the Driver Interface Group at the University of Michigan's Transport Research Institute. But while it may help keep a driver's hands on the wheel, recognition errors could prove to be a different kind of distraction, he says. "Also, if each manufacturer has a different set of gestures, then you have a real problem," he says.

The German researchers hope to extend the gesture set significantly. "We will combine this with speech recognition in order to allow people to dictate text messages in the car," says Müller.

Nonetheless, there are skeptics. Andrew Howard, head of road safety at the U.K.'s Automobile Association, says the prospect of enabling drivers to text is a "frightening" one. "We shouldn't be encouraging people to do anything other than driving while driving," he says.

Dictating texts is "not something we would want to encourage," says Green, adding that "I think we're going to find the throughput would be faster using speech-to-text."

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Score a job interview, take home an iPad

Score a job interview, take home an iPad

Competition between firms for fresh talent is fierce. In order to get graduates to apply for jobs, unbelievable as it may seem, a firm in Britain is offering free iPads to anyone who secures a job interview, regardless of getting in or not.

The Economic Times reports that Autonomy, one of the largest software firms in Britain, is giving away free iPads to anyone simply by securing a job interview. The offer stands to ensure it attracts the best applicants as competition heats up with neighboring firms on the outskirts of Cambridge.

?You want to make sure that you get the very best through the door. What you do is dangle an iPad ? and they come and see you. Someone else is offering an iPhone,? the Daily Mail quoted multi-millionaire founder Mike Lynch as saying.

Now that the country is getting back on its feet from the recession, tech firms, most especially, are actively and aggressively hiring new people. Statistics at Autonomy show that only a fifth of young adults asked to a first-round interview ends up taking a job there. This definitely sweetens up the deal. How do I apply??

About the Author

Francis Tan is the Asia editor of TNW. He is an aspiring entrepreneur who's into indie rock music, mecha, Star Wars, and all sorts of geekery. You can find him on Twitter.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/uk/2011/02/03/score-a-job-interview-take-home-an-ipad/

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Canada?s Prime Minister Speaks out on Twitter about Usage-Based Billing

Canada?s Prime Minister Speaks out on Twitter about Usage-Based Billing

angry_kidIf you?ve been following the Canadian ISP drama over the last few weeks, you?d know that Canadian residents are facing the harsh reality that the Internet will be metered by every ISP in the country.

In short, the CRTC (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) made a decision that forces smaller ISPs to charge customers usage-based billing, and they gave the larger ISP?s (Rogers, Bell, Shaw) the ability to set the rates. While nothing has really changed for customers of the major ISP?s whom already have limited use of the Internet, it meant that no one in Canada was legally allowed to sell unlimited Internet to its customers. And TekSavvy, a smaller ISP in Canada that did offer a 200GB cap as well as unlimited packages have pulled the plug on the heels of the new legislation. TekSavvy customers now have a 25GB cap.

Will the Canadian government overturn the CRTC?s decision?

Aside from TekSavvy capping news, there?s been a few recent updates to the situation since we reported that over 200,000 people have petitioned to stop internet metering. Yesterday Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada tweeted that he?s concerned about the CRTC?s decision on usage-based billing and told Twitter he was asking for a review of the decision.

Industry Minister, Tony Clement also seems to be backing customers with his statement to reporters yesterday ?I can certainly undertake to you that this is a top priority for me and my department,? Clement also indicated that Canadians should have their answer by March 1st.

With the possibility of Clement and Harper on board, as it stands now, it?s looking pretty good for Canadians. But, what if the government chooses to pick the side of big business instead of the citizens? Can we expect the major ISP?s to reduce the cost overtime? Or can we assume that the prices will continue to rise? After all, Rogers and Bell are the two major providers of television distribution in Canada (satellite, cable).

It?s not just media junkies affected

Many Canadians believe that the major ISP?s will do anything they can to stop us from streaming and downloading media because if we could freely use Netflix, we might not order as many pay-per-view movies, and worst case scenario (for Rogers and Bell) we?d completely cancel our cable subscriptions and turn to the Internet. And media isn?t the only thing that sucks a lot of bandwidth. What about video-calling services like Skype? Another service that directly affects both Rogers and Bell?s bottom line of their landline and wireless divisions. What about content creators? Uploading video to YouTube and Vimeo uses up a lot of the previous bandwidth as well. It?s not just media junkies being hit here.

Some folks have argued that this entire situation has been blown out of proportion and claim that $100 a month for 200 GB is reasonable. But reasonable for who? People who are fortunate enough to be able to pay it? Regardless of whether you can afford it or not, it?s the principle that enrages many Canadians.

The current ambivalence about the role and legitimacy of smaller carriers continues. They are allowed to exist but denied the means to innovate. In a business with as much uncertainty as this, turning down the possibility for technical and business innovation seems a riskier move than letting it go ahead. -Michael Geist

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/ca/2011/02/03/canadas-prime-minister-speaks-out-on-twitter-about-usage-based-billing/

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NASA spots 6 planets around a new Sun-like star

NASA spots 6 planets around a new Sun-like star

The team running NASA?s Kepler observatory and the the Kepler planet-finding telescope have found the largest collection of planets yet orbiting a single star. The star, named Kepler-11 is nearly identical to our own Sun. It hosts at least these 6 planets that are all in tighter orbits than Mercury.

The photo above is an artist rendering provided by NASA of one of the smallest planets that Kepler has found ? a rocky planet called Kepler-10b ? that measures 1.4 times the size of Earth and where the temperature is more than 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Huddled around their energy source, the low-density planets likely have a substantial gas or liquid composition at distances close enough to the star that the material risks boiling off. But it appears that the planets may be teetering on the edge of stability. The planets are in fact all larger than Earth and are all less dense than Earth, suggesting that they have hydrogen-rich atmospheres, or are primarily composed of liquids.

The Kepler telescope launched into space in 2009 to find planets that could support life and is currently pointed at an area of more than 150,000 stars in a part of the Milky Way galaxy. NASA believes that they could find more than 1,200 possible planets and hundreds of new multi-planet systems with the Kepler telescope.

The image above is a full suite of planets detected by Kepler to date, with the new sextet on the bottom.

About the Author

Courtney Boyd Myers is the East Coast editor of TNW, based in NYC. She began her career writing about robots @ Forbes and has also written for PCMag, PSFK, IEEE Spectrum, the Huffington Post + Pocket-Lint. She loves magnets + reading on her Kindle. You can follow her on Twitter or e-mail her at Courtney@TheNextWeb.com.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/02/02/nasa-spots-6-planets-around-a-new-sun-like-star/

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The Daily is now live on the App Store

The Daily is now live on the App Store

You watched the livestream earlier, then you read our lengthy article listing everything you needed to know about The Daily ? now the iPad application has gone live on the App Store.

The Daily will feature news articles, interactive graphics, videos and photos designed to work with the iPad?s touchscreen. The Daily will cost a mere 14 cents per day, 99 cents a week, $40 per year and will be sold exclusively via Apple?s iTunes store. The first two weeks will be free, courtesy of Verizon. A small selection of the iPad newspaper will be available on its site.

The Daily totaled $13 million to set up and will cost $500,000 to run weekly. Murdoch?s other publications, The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Sunday Times, have all introduced paywalls for their websites. The Daily joins the ranks of other paid-for newspaper apps on the iPad including Esquire, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Glamour, GQ and Wired.

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Social Surveillance Yields Smarter Directions

Most drivers will be familiar with the feeling that trying a slightly different route, or leaving a few minutes later, would have saved them time in traffic, and some may have tweaked a familiar route to test the notion. A free navigation app for smart phones called Waze performs such experiments at a grand scale by treating its users as road-going data probes.

Waze users automatically broadcast their GPS position and speed to Waze over the Web at all times. Social-networking and gaming features built into the app also encourage them to actively share information such as the location of hazards and traffic jams. When a user asks the app for directions, those sources of information influence Waze's routing algorithm. Users can see the position and speed of other users on a map, and also receive live hazard reports. The data collected by the app is used to refine Waze's map in other ways, showing, for example, the location of unmapped streets.

"In the old world, you would flash your lights at someone. Now we can deliver the experience and intuition of other drivers to you through the app," says Noam Bardin, the company's CEO. Waze, which is based in Israel and Palo Alto, California, currently has more than 2.6 million users worldwide, roughly 800,000 of whom are in the U.S.

Waze awards points to drivers for miles driven with the app running, and also for submitting hazard reports. Making a report while driving, to indicate problems such as traffic jams, speed traps, or accidents, requires just three taps on the phone. Users can also create and join groups to follow reports from people who drive a particular route or area, or compete with friends to rack up the most points.

Those points do more than just make users feel good, says Di-Ann Eisnor, vice president and community geographer at Waze. "We use it as a confidence score for the contributions that user makes," says Eisnor. A report of a traffic jam from a low-ranked user is less likely to change the route suggested by Waze than one from a high-ranked user, for example.

Social features like that are what really set Waze apart, says Alex Bayen, a researcher at University of California, Berkeley, whose group previously developed a phone app that simply collects traffic data. "There are many sources of traffic information but no other app lets you see other drivers around you and actively work together to post about traffic problems," he says.

Most GPS navigation devices and apps that advise on traffic do so based on a mixture of historical traffic patterns and input from sparsely distributed road sensors, says Eisnor. Google's free navigation app for Android phones combines users' GPS trails with more traditional sources, although it offers fewer features than Waze.

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