Dubai: Envoys in Dubai signed a new UN telecommunications treaty on Friday that a US-led delegation says endorses greater government control of the Internet. The US and more than 20 other countries refused to ratify the accord by the 193-nation International Telecommunications Union. Here is a look at Internet restrictions and availability at selected countries and regions around the world: North Korea Internet use is extremely restricted with many of...
04:58 PM, Dec 15, 2012
New Delhi: Against the backdrop of some arrests over certain postings on social networking sites, Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday said a provision in the Information Technology Act has been misused in some states and the Centre will soon issue an advisory to check it. "As per our assessment, there has been misuse (of Section 66A of IT Act) in some states...It is my personal opinion and...
12:30 AM, Dec 15, 2012
New Delhi: Google released its year-end Zeitgeist list for 2012. Google's annual list is an indicator of what's hot and happening in the online world. The search engine leader, each year, analyses billions of search queries to come up with the Zeitgeist - the spirit of the time. This year Google studied 1.2 trillion searches for its Zeitgeist report. While the world's attention wavered between the tragic and the silly...
08:35 AM, Dec 13, 2012
Los Angeles: The world's attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, Web surfers searched in huge numbers to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver. Whitney Houston was the "top trending" search of the year, according to Google's year-end zeitgeist report. Google's 12th annual roundup is "an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen...
07:39 AM, Dec 13, 2012
San Francisco: Facebook Inc began rolling out a variety of new privacy controls on Wednesday, the company's latest effort to address user concerns about who can see their personal information on the world's largest social network. New tools introduced on Wednesday will make it easier for Facebook's members to quickly determine who can view the photos, comments and other information about them that appears on different parts of the website,...
10:34 PM, Dec 12, 2012
San Francisco: An election victory tweet from US President Barack Obama - "Four more years" with a picture of him hugging his wife - was the most retweeted ever, but the US election was topped by the Olympics as the most tweeted event this year. Obama's tweet was retweeted more than 810,000 times, Twitter said as it published a list of the most tweeted events in 2012. "Within hours, that...
01:40 PM, Dec 12, 2012
San Francisco: Yahoo is spiffing up and expanding its email service in an attempt to regain some of the ground lost to a Google alternative that lured away millions of users. The changes unveiled on Tuesday are meant to make Yahoo's email faster and easier to use on the Web. To cater to the growing audience checking their email on smartphones and tablet computers, Yahoo also introduced mobile apps for...
05:52 AM, Dec 12, 2012
San Francisco: Facebook says some users were briefly unable to access the site because of a technical glitch. The social networking site with over 1 billion users worldwide says on Monday it made a change to its domain name system setup. The change resulted in some users temporarily not being able to reach the site. The problem was detected and the site is now fully back. A DNS acts like...
08:47 AM, Dec 11, 2012
San Francisco: Several Google Web products, including the popular GMail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents on Monday. Google confirmed that "service disruptions" had affected GMail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google's Apps suite, a Microsoft Office rival that caters to both consumers and businesses. By 10:10 AM Pacific Time (11:40 PM IST), Google's Apps Dashboard monitoring service...
06:04 AM, Dec 11, 2012
Seoul: Moon Tae-Hwa stares at his computer, dizzy and nauseous from the hours of porn he's viewed online while his wife and children slept. He feels no shame - only a righteous sense of mission. "I feel like I'm cleaning up dirty things," the devout Christian and family counsellor said. Moon is among the most successful members of the "Nuri Cops" (roughly "net cops"), a squad of nearly 800 volunteers...
03:57 PM, Dec 10, 2012
Tehran: Iran says it has launched a video-sharing website in the latest move to create government-sanctioned alternatives to Internet powerhouses such as YouTube. The Web page of Iranian state TV says the new site - Mehr, or affection in Farsi - seeks to promote Iranian and Islamic culture and artists. It's unclear, however, how heavily the site, www.mehr.ir , will be monitored or censored. Western websites such as Facebook, Twitter...
04:22 AM, Dec 10, 2012
Rourkela: A 20-year-old man was arrested on charge of uploading an objectionable picture on social networking site Facebook, police said on Saturday. Pintu Sahu was taken to custody by Brahmani Tarang police on Friday for posting an objectionable picture on his Facebook account, police added. The picture, posted on December 6, which was also the 20th anniversary of Babri Masjid demolition, showed 'Lord Hanuman sitting atop a mosque', they said....
05:33 PM, Dec 08, 2012
San Francisco: Google will no longer offer its Web-based office productivity software free to small businesses, the Internet company's latest move to expand revenue beyond its core advertising services. Google said on Thursday that businesses with 10 or fewer people will now need to pay $50 per user per year - the same rate that larger businesses pay - to use its Google Apps software which includes email, word processing,...
09:49 AM, Dec 08, 2012
New Delhi: Google is going full steam ahead with its social networking service Google Plus. Soon after adding its Plus One feature to apps on Google Play. Google has announced the launch of Google Plus Communities. Though Google has an existing community product called Google Groups, Communities on Google Plus are more closely integrated with Google Plus, which is a major focus for the Internet giant. "With Google+ Communities there's...
02:31 PM, Dec 07, 2012
San Francisco: You're apt to discover more useful apps for your smartphone or tablet computer at Ask.com. At least that's the thinking behind a licensing agreement that Ask's search engine has forged with Silicon Valley startup Quixey, which has spent the past three years refining a technology to analyze the services offered through millions of applications designed for iPhones, iPads, Android gadgets, Windows devices and BlackBerrys. Results from Quixey's database...
07:45 AM, Dec 05, 2012
New Delhi: LinkedIn, the professional networking website, has released its first ever list of the most viewed professionals on LinkedIn in India. The list called Power Profiles 2012 includes 37 different profiles across six categories. LinkedIn has 17 million users in India and over 187 million users globally. List of the most viewed LinkedIn profiles in India: Internet - Kunal Bahl, CEO, Snapdeal.com - Sachin Bansal, Co-founder & CEO, Flipkart.com...
04:50 PM, Dec 04, 2012
New Delhi: Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, has released her '2012 Internet Trends Year-End Update' and it also includes interesting statistics on Internet and mobile usage in India. The year-end report is an update to the 2012 Internet Trends report published in May 2012. Highlights: - There are 2.4 billion Internet users in the world of which 137 million are in India. - India added...
02:40 PM, Dec 04, 2012
Vatican City: Pope Benedict XVI will start tweeting in six languages from his own personal handle @Pontifex on December 12. The Vatican said on Monday the pope will be using a question and answer format in his first Tweet, focusing on answering questions about faith - in 140 characters. The pope sent his first tweet last year from a Vatican account to launch the Holy See's news information portal. The...
05:23 PM, Dec 03, 2012
Dubai: A major US delegation is leading the opposition to possible new UN regulations on Internet commerce and controls that are part of wide-ranging talks that open Monday in Dubai. The UN conference is seeking to update telecommunications codes last reviewed when the Web was virtually unknown. Officials from the UN International Telecommunications Union have tried to counter concerns that the 11-day meeting could impose measures that will restrict the...
03:29 PM, Dec 03, 2012
New York: The US federal government has cleared VeriSign to manage the databases that house ".com" domain names for another six years, but the company won't be allowed to raise prices without approval. Under the current contract, which expired on Friday, VeriSign was guaranteed four price increases of up to 7 per cent each on domain name registrations. VeriSign sought a similar guarantee as part of the contract renewal, but...
12:49 PM, Dec 01, 2012
