Saavn has released a new feature called Saavn Remote which is directed at content publishers. The remote is a widget which comes in four different sizes (Poster, Badge, Stamps, Buttons) depending on the needs of the publishers.

The widget has a play button which when clicked begins the streaming and also turns into a pause button. Publishers can embed featured Saavn playlists and also curate their own playlists. The remote also allows single songs and albums to be added.

Right now, Dainik Bhaskar and Jagran's websites feature the Saavn Remote feature. These digital newspapers are accessed by millions of people. The partnership for these newspapers includes the availability of Saavn's library of music for their readers to listen. The logic is that, if readers get to play music on a news site, then they will linger there longer. Revenue sharing is on the basis of the ad content that is served using the widgets.

Vinodh Bhat, Co-Founder and CEO of Saavn stated,

"Getting free music through a site they trust means that web surfers are likely to spend more time on that site – which benefits the publisher and the artist. With Saavn Remote, we believe we can reach more music lovers in more places and cement our position as a leading digital music brand worldwide."

Saavn claims to have  gross margin of 45%, according to a Pando Daily report. It also seems to be driving around 5% of the mobile data consumption in the country. This way of distributing music may have good potential for the ecosystem at large (publishers, music artists, advertisers, readers and of course Saavn).

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Since its founding 2 years ago, Coursera has been growing at a very good pace. The startup pioneered the MOOC model and many new services like EdX, Iversity, Udacity have also now been established.

Coursera provides free online courses to students all over the world by partnering with Universities throughout the globe and getting their courses online for students to learn. I have taken a few courses on the service and I can attest to their quality. Today, the company has announced in a blog post that they have now achieved 3 distinct milestones in their 2 year run as a company.

1. They have signed 107 university partners.

2. The site now provides 532 courses on various academic and cross domain topics.

3. They now have 5.2 million students learning from the site.

These are pretty impressive numbers.

Andrew Ng, Co-Founder at the company had this to say about the developments,

"Two years ago, Coursera was still a budding idea. My team comprising four Stanford students and me had just launched our first two courses, each of which eventually reached over 100,000 students, thus helping kick off the MOOC movement. When we first put these courses online, we could not have envisioned the growth and community response that we witness today, among universities, professors, and students from every corner of the globe."

Co-Founder Daphne Koller also spoke about the milestones,

"We are privileged to host this vast breadth of amazing courses across a broad range of disciplines from many of the world's leading institutions. It is remarkable that such a powerful network has developed just 18 months since the official launch of our company. With so many countries, languages, and educational backgrounds represented, we are proud to be a part of a movement promoting lifelong education for everyone."

Coursera has also released an infographic about their progress and impact across the world.

Interesting bits:

1. India is the second highest when it comes to user base (8.7%) behind US (31.7%).

2. Europe leads in terms of number of University partners for Coursera. India has none despite the large user base. Clearly, this shows a greater need for better education quality in the country.

You can see the whole infographic below.

While MOOC is a damn good idea when it comes to providing access to quality education for those who cannot access it in normal university environments, critics have pointed out some doubts about the model. These include distance, quality, dependence on Internet, lack of a learning atmosphere provided by institutions and so on. These are valid doubts, however the movement is only growing with an increasing amount of Universities partnering  up with MOOC services.

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LG Electronics, a global manufacturer of consumer electronics has been experimenting with multiple iterations of Smartphones, the latest of which was the high-end LG G2. However, the company has chosen to tread a completely different path with its latest low/mid end phone, the LG Fireweb.

Launched in partnership with the Brazilian telecom carrier, Telefonica and currently available only in Brazil, the LG Fireweb is equipped with 4 Inch  HVGA (320×480) TFT display, 1GHz Qualcomm processor and includes 4GB of inbuilt storage with Micro SD card slot. The phone is powered by a humble 1540 mAh battery & can has a single back camera of 5MP resolution. Overall, the entire package costs 449 BRL (Brazilian Real) which roughly translates to Rs. 12,700 (off-contract).

While at the face of it, the phone appears pretty ordinary, what is interesting is the choice of Operating System. LG has opted for Firefox OS release 1.1 so as to make it exceptionally simple for the common folk, not familiar with the intricacies of Smart OS, explained Jay Sullivan, COO of Mozilla,

"We built Firefox OS as part of Mozilla’s mission to put the power of the Web in people’s hands and offer the best Web experience possible. We’re happy to see Firefox OS gain momentum with partners launching new devices in new markets and developers around the world being inspired to innovate. Our partnership with Telefonica Vivo demonstrates the rich, new experiences offered on Firefox OS by combining the best global and local content with LG’s elegant new device experience"

Firefox OS for smartphones has been discussed at great lengths in the past. Ever since the proposition of a Web-Based Operating System running all the essential functions of a smartphone was put forth, Firefox's name has been doing the rounds. Though LG's Fireweb is certainly not the first device to run Firefox OS, it is positively an important milestone for the Mozilla's Corporation.

ZTE, the Chinese Networking & Communications Company claimed the honor of making the first couple of smartphones that worked on Firefox OS. But LG Fireweb could indeed set the pace of development & adoption.

LG Fireweb has quite decent hardware that is aimed at the middle tier of customers, who have the money to buy a smartphone, but do not want the complexities usually associated with the OS. Being predominantly run on Open Standards & HTML5, the phone comes with web browser, calendar, clock and maps apps. Being priced carefully to be made affordable & accessible, LG Fireweb's success could prove the marketability & efficacy of Firefox Mobile OS. What do you think?

Image Credits: eng

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Apple announced new products a day ago which include iPad Mini with Retina Display, iPad Air and the new Macbook Pro along with a free release of the new OS X Mavericks. They also announced the new Mac Pro, its high end computing solution for enterprises, whose design is frankly very interesting. The new Mac Pro was announced a few months back and yesterday the company announced the price and the estimated release date.

The new device is apparently very quiet in terms of noise inspite of the computing power stored therein, due to the new thermal core design. It runs on the latest Intel Xeon E5 processors, has 64GB of RAM, dual AMD Firepro graphics chips that can have upto 6GB of dedicated memory and 1 TB of solid stage storage. It seems to be the absolute high-end device from the Apple fold which will have movie editors and other similarly engaged in jobs and professions that require that kind of computing power. For a device this powerful, the Pro is actually much smaller in size than your average desktop CPU. This compact design and the minimal aesthetic is really fascinating when you think of it. The Mac Pro will start at $2999 and it will be available for sale in December.

The Mac Pro is also rather different from other popular Apple products. It is assembled in the US. Apple has released a video which shows the process of assembling the Mac Pro and it is rather beautiful to look at. The video shows how industrial robots assemble the computer with precision. Check the whole video out below.

Source | Atomic Delights

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Amid the growing distrust between people and technology companies who are allegedly in bed with surveillance agencies, Google has taken some steps to protect the privacy of people using the internet globally. This is especially relevant after Snowden revealed that Google was collaborating with the US Government to facilitate spying on its users. While Google specifically denies this charge, it seems it cannot exactly reveal the actual terms of its data sharing with the Government due to shady legal bindings.

At a special presentation in New York a few days ago, Google (Google Ideas) revealed two new services which are specifically made to ensure freedom of expression on the web. The first service, uProxy is designed for citizens in any part of the world to bypass country level surveillance and securely communicate with people elsewhere in the world. They can also get access to uncensored content on the web and thus learn more about happenings in the world rather than falling prey to their government's propaganda. This applies to dictatorial regimes which resort to censorship and heavy handedness to maintain their control on their countries.

The service has not been developed at Google though. It is a University of Washington and a Brave New Software project which has been funded by Google. One of the major implications of services like this is the usage of this tool in China which enforces a firewall censoring a lot of content and services all together. uProxy will work on Chrome and Firefox but not on Internet Explorer initially. This is slightly weird because there might still be a large amount of people who access the Internet via IE. Apparently, savvy web users in China have already used something like this to bypass the Chinese firewalls. Google's product simplifies this to make this more accessible. Check out this video below to see how it works.

The second service the web company announced is called Project Shield, which aims to use Google's infrastructure to protect news websites and human rights groups from targeted distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks by nefarious radical web outfits. The recent hackings by the Syrian Electronic Army, which is targeting quite a few new websites like BBC News, Associated Press, Al Jazeera and so on. These politically motivated attacks are fundamentally opposite to the freedom of open expression on which the web is founded. Google's network infrastructure is quite huge and this is a result of their services being used all over the world. Thus they can withstand a lot of DDOS attacks. Getting news organizations on their infrastructure would give these outlets a free platform to report news without suffering the flack for doing so.

Besides these services, the company also revealed a real-time digital attack map which tells you who is getting digitally attacked and where. You can see this map here.

While these new products seem very helpful on the surface, there is still a lot of transparency expected from Google. Google Ideas is headed by a former US State Department Official, Jared Cohen and this means that these services are furthering US policy out there in the world. However, recent revelations of the NSA snooping is in stark contrast to the freedom of expression and privacy being furthered by the US.

What are your thoughts on these new tools? Share them with us in the comments.

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Sistema Shyam Teleservices, a telecommunications company that offers CDMA Based Data Service under the brand name of MTS has launched a unique Data-Only Service called 3GPlus.

Though the name sounds like MTS may have shifted its base from CDMA to GSM, it is certainly not the case. 3GPlus is essentially a high-speed wireless broadband service. It is being pegged to substantially raise the company's revenues.

3GPlus is positioned in quite a unique way. The speeds offered by the service can achieve a theoretical high value of 9.8 Mbps, which is higher than most GSM based 3G services which normally operate with a theoretical high value of 7.2Mbps. Though there are 3.5G and 3.75G Data Standards available, which can offer higher speeds like 14.4 or even 21.1Mbps, very few companies have augmented their 3G standards to these elevated speeds.

Additionally, the company has cleverly priced the tariffs for the same too. 10 GB Data for a month costs about Rs. 875 for Post-Paid users, while a recharge voucher for the same costs Rs. 999 for Pre-Paid users. Similar plans for 3G based services costs anywhere between Rs. 950 to Rs. 1498.

The limitations: Though the speeds for 3GPlus may be higher than standard 3G services and the prices may be marginally lower, it is still a platform based on CDMA based Data Service, which mandates usage of USB Dongles provided by MTS and is a service-locked offering. Interestingly, the company has plans to launch smartphones on this network by end of this year. Furthermore, speeds offered by 3GPlus are way lower than 4G based services which have the capability of reaching up to 100 Mbps.

Though MTS has secured a unified licence, which allows liberal use of telecom technologies for providing latest services, presently it doesn't have contiguous spectrum, lamented Dmitry Shukov, CEO of MTS India, "It will not be able to offer LTE services soon as it would need at least one more carrier of 1.25MHz spectrum to offer LTE or 4G services. It currently has three carriers of 1.25MHz each in nine circles. We don’t have contiguous spectrum."

MTS has traditionally been a predominately data service company. Though the company has been through some tough times, if MTS makes this even more attractive to users and ensure seamless connectivity, it could certainly win back market share. What do you think?

Image Credits: fe

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Digital media company Komli Media has secured funding worth $30M from new investor Peepul Capital and exisiting investors Norwest Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. The seven year old company says this money will be used to further invest in technology and to strengthen its presence across the Asia-Pacific region. It also plans to further invest in its technologies such as real time bidding (RTB).

"We have already seen strong adoption of our integrated solution along with algorithmic trading.  With the increased funding, we plan to deepen our focus on innovative technologies, such as real time bidding (RTB), to deliver significantly greater value to our customers," said Prashant Mehta, Chief Executive Officer, Komli Media

The latest round of funding takes total funds raised by the company to USD 90 Mn, which includes a USD 39 Mn Series D round led by Norwest Venture Partners and other investors in 2012.  Till now Komli has acquired five start-ups viz, Admax, ZestAdz, Aktiv Digital, Indoor Media and Postclick. Founded by Amar Goel in 2006, Komli is looking at clocking $100 mn in revenues in 2014.

Earlier in June this year Komli integrated ts ad serving soultion Komli ROI with Facebook Exchange. It also collaborated with Twitter increase ad sales in India while it did the same with Southeast Asia last year. Komli has already built out a DSP and data management platform, in addition to continuing to operate its publisher network

Image Credits: komli

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Intel Capital, a Venture Capital (VC) arm of chip maker Intel Inc. has invested a total of US $ 65 Million in 16 Startups. Two Indian companies, Perpetuuiti Technosoft, a Mumbai-based People, Process and Technology Automation firm, and Bangalore-based Savaari Car Rentals are on the list.

This investment spans a total of 9 Individual countries and covers platforms as varied as cloud, data centre, mobile technologies and consumer-related services. Trying to establish the notion that the VC firm supports startups across multiple categories and doesn't just favor tech companies, Intel Capital has undertaken such an exercise and that too on such a scale, explained Intel Capital President Arvind Sodhani,

"We are a stage-agnostic investor and these investments range from seed-funding to series A (first round of early stage funding) and in some cases advanced funding…. The investments in Indian companies were from the country-specific fund."

Having dual presence in India as well as Singapore, Perpetuuiti Technosoft offers business continuity solutions, disaster recovery management and business process automation platforms. Savaari on the other hand is a big player within personal logistics and transport services. Though faced with heavy competition, Savaari has been gaining a strong foothold. Being guided by Gaurav Aggarwal, the company appears to be doing well.

Intel Capital has exponentially scaled up investment in Indian Startup Ecosystem. To ensure it had ready funds to invest, the VC firm recently setup 'Intel Capital India Technology Fund' with a US $ 250 Million corpus. Interestingly, about 80% of the same has already been committed to multiple companies.

Ironically, a while earlier, Intel Capita had announced that it will only invest in established players & refrain from taking a risk on the nascent start-ups. But it appears the VC firm hasn’t stayed true to its policy.

Other companies to find financial backing from Intel Capital include: High-speed connectivity products company Lintes Technologies (Taiwan); Cloud consultancy CloudFX (Singapore); Cloud storage software provider Cloudian (Japan/USA); Community website and services platform CSDN (China); Cloud file service Fileforce (Japan); 3-D software developer DotProduct (USA); Interactive video platform Interlude (Israel); Mobile news syndicator Mobiles Republic (France/USA); Visual merchandising and analytics solutions Prism Skylabs (USA); Hybrid storage provider Reduxio Systems (Israel); Chip simulation acceleration Rocketick (Israel); Semiconductor materials developer SBA Materials (USA); Open source database solutions SkySQL (Finland); and Wireless electricity provider WiTricity (USA).

Image Credits: fe

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Pinterest has raised a whopping funding worth $225 million from Fidelity Investments, with previous investors including Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, Valiant Capital and Bessemer Venture Partners.  The company has raised $564 million in funding to date and the latest series E funding now makes the social scrap-booking network worth $3.8 billion.

Pinterest plans to use the raised funds to expand internationally and improve mobile experience which it says has grown 50 percent so far this year. Furthermore it plans to invest in talent and technology and finally in advertising. The company shared that it looks to launch in 10 more countries by the end of 2013. It further revealed that it has seen a 125 percent growth in international traffic since the beginning of this year.

The popular site which let’s users share pictures and websites with each other has become second only to Facebook when it comes to referral traffic, according to Shareaholic, a company that distributes sharing widgets and monitors where traffic comes from on the web.  Pinterest announced last month its plans to foray into ads with promoted pins.

In March Pinterest added data analytic tool for businesses and revamped desktop with bigger pins and larger images. The three-year-old social network teamed up with brands and updates iOS and Android apps in May. It then added a feature that lets users send pins to their friends. According to a new infographic, 70 percent of brand engagement on Pinterest, comes from fans versus the company or brand specifically.

Image Credits: allthingsD

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In a bid to enhance image discovery for Flickr, Yahoo has scooped up image recognition start-up LookFlow for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2009 the firm incorporates artificial intelligence into a platform for image search and discovery. ”Flickr is the largest collection of images we love. They share our passion for creating phenomenal experiences & technology to help you discover those images. We couldn’t be more excited”, LookFlow said in a blog post.

The five-engineer team will be joining the Flickr group at Yahoo, and its technology will be integrated in future versions of Flickr. The team will also help Yahoo build a "deep learning group." Since, Marissa Mayer’s entry, Yahoo has acquired more than 20 small startups  except the $1 billion Tumblr acquisition. Last week, Yahoo announced that Flickr is going to undergo a major revamp. Yahoo already gave Flickr a makeover in May and launched android app. Also, in August it bought another image recognition startup, IQ Engines which is focused on finding text, objects, and people within photos. The 800 million monthly active user service, recently revamped Yahoo Mail with various features along with adorning a new slimmer logo.

Photos and video have become an essential and inseparable part of the internet ecosystem. Hence, its makes sense that Yahoo is boosting Flickr to compete against mushrooming social sharing start-ups.

Image Credits: dg

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