Recently, during one of Apple’s biggest events, the WWDC ‘08, Apple’s Steve Jobs announced that the .Mac (dot Mac) suite of online service will be re-branded as MobileMe. Today, Apple has updated the .Mac status page with the date when the transition from .Mac to MobileMe will be initiated.

.Mac is a collection of web services available on yearly subscriptions. Services include Mail, personal Web Hosting, online syncronized web storage, backup, iCards etc. .Mac was available for Rs. 5000 / year and offered a @mac.com ID. It was originally launched as iTools, a free set of tools for the Mac OS users, back in 2000.

However, MobileMe is not just a re-branding of the .Mac suite of services. MobileMe has set a whole new dimension to the term ‘online services’ and is said to be Gmail’s newest competition. MobileMe stores all the user data, securely in an encrypted data cloud. This provides the user with the benefit that he can access his data from anywhere in the world.

How is it different from other services?

MobileMe brings the technology of ‘Push’ to be used by the common man. ‘Push’ makes sure that the same data is available in all the devices that the user has set up his account on. What it means is that a new contact added by the user on his phone will also be ‘pushed’ to the data cloud which, in turn, will then be ‘pushed’ to all his computers. Effectively, no matter which interface he uses, the user will always have the same up-to-date data. MobileMe currently supports Push Email, Push Contacts and Push Calendar events.

However, true to its practices, Apple is mainly targeting this service to its Mac and iPhone users. The MobileMe service is currently compatible with an iPhone, Mac OS X and Outlook on Windows XP/Vista. Of course, you can use the web interface from any modern browser, but that defeats the very purpose of ‘Push’ stuff.

That’s it? MobileMe is only about ‘Push’?

No. The MobileMe web interface itself is worth investing money in. It makes use of advanced AJAX technology to give the user the same look and feel as his Desktop application. Actions such as QuickReply, Drag and Drop have been provided in the web interface.

Apple has announced that the transition from .Mac to MobileMe will begin from July 9th, 2008 at 6PM Pacific Time. During the transition, all web services will be unavailable to users. .Mac Mail, though, will be available via the desktop client or the iPhone.

Personally, I am counting down each and every minute till the transition begins. I’m awestruck by MobileMe. Although Gmail still leads the web-service front with an integrated suite of services, the User Interface has not changed in quite some time. Now that MobileMe is out, Google needs to start churning out some good ideas from its thinking mills.

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Funding Funding and more funding.. Well soo much of it that its difficult to get by for a day till funding isn’t mentioned in a post. So here are all the funding updates :

Homeshop18 raises 21 M $ from Saif and Capital18

HomeShop18 which is Network18’s online and on-air retail marketing company and which launched the country’s first 24 hour Home Shopping TV channel has raised 21 million dollar (about 16 million dollar was raised from SAIF Partners and 5 million dollar was raised from Capital 18).

Network18 seems to be taking its TV and Web integrated platform very seriously and this is another initiative in that direction. Along with Moneycontrol, Tech2 and Biztechtv which also has TV components this is another venture of Network18 which will greatly benefit from the web + tv combination.

IDG Ventures & Seedfund Launch Second Funds -  Will Be 300M$ & 30M$ respectively.

IDG Ventures which was recently in the news for pumping in millions of dollars in another ad network has announced a new fund dedicated to India. This fund is expected to close by year 2009. Now the question is where will they invest 300M$? Thats just too much of money! I really feel some startups will get funded for more money than they require or deserve. Especially the internet centric ones which in mind dont need millions of dollars funding like their US counteparts. A step towards another bubble?? WAT say?

Well the other fund which is launching its second fund is a much needed one. Seedfund is announcing a 30M$ fund and it you ask me instead of one 300M$ fund we need 10 of 30M$ fund so that real innovation can be created at the grass root i.e. the startup level.

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A small reminder for our readers that WATMedia is hiring. To know more click here.

1] A Leading TV Channel is searching for:

Assistant Manager/Senior Executive-Marketing

Job Responsibilities:

- Liasion with the creative agency for mass & trade communication.
- Drive sales enablement with respect to editorial properties.

- Support sales team with all information on upcoming specials and customisation

To know more about the job click here.

2] Dare is searching for:

Assistant Manager/Manager - Audience acquisition

Job Profile:

• Acquire targeted profile and numbers of audience across multiple media – online/print/broadcast
• Create new brand properties where required for audience acquisition and segmentation
• Interface with Advertising and BTL agencies to create and deliver brand communication

To know more about the job click here.

3] Web1 Solutions is searching for:

Sr. Web Designer

Requirements:

- 2+ years with Photoshop and Dreamweaver.
- Should be good at CSS / xHTML (We hate table based layouts)
- Should know about Web 2.0 stuff

To know more about the job click here.

WATJob is our Job Listings Website that offers contextual, exciting, and refreshing Jobs in the Web 2.0 Industry in India.

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Rumors are afloat in the blogosphere that Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site that has been over-ridden by issues lately, may acquire Summize, the most popular search engine tool for twitter.

It all seems to have begun when Josh Chandler broke news about the deal on his blog. This was followed by Jason Calacanis announcing publicly about the deal on FriendFeed. Not surprisingly, the entire web seems to be waiting for some official word from either of the two companies.

Twitter has been in the news, a lot, lately. It has received over $20 million in funding so far but has been facing all kinds of problems with its service and the up time. We have covered twitter more than once in the past. With problems looming over its head, quite a few people have moved onto services like FriendFeed or Plurk. Yet, the loyalists have preferred to stick to Twitter. The core issue for all of twitter’s problems seems to be the fact that it wasn’t built as a messaging service. Though twitter has now decided to pick up its skirt and get into damage control, it already launched the twitter status blog to provide the status of its services to its users. By buying Summize, twitter will try to have control over the search part of its service.

Why Summize?

If you ask me, I consider Summize as the only 3rd party tool that performs better than the actual service. Summize has been constantly getting better at what it does. During the recent Apple’s WWDC, Twitter (which must have foreseen the danger to its already limping services) recommend its users to follow the Apple Updates on Summize by placing a link under the Update text box.

Summize is a great tool to follow the conversations and activity on Twitter. A lot of Twitter apps such as Hahlo, Twhirl and others already use Summize’s services. Twitter thinks it would be a good idea to integrate the service into twitter.

This news, however, has shattered my hopes to see Summize being used with other services and not being limited to twitter only. Also, this move by twitter has almost killed other search tools for twitter, like tweetscan.

That makes me think, why cannot twitter build its own search utility?

Summize, which originally began as an academic research project by Dr. Abdur Chowdhury of the Illinois Institute of Technology, has previously come out with other interesting things such as Heatmaps for search. Summize Labs are already working on an experimental ‘Sentiments‘ feature using the Twitter API.

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A Russian boy, Nikolai Sazhin (Mathematics student, 19) has been crowned world champion in the novelty sport of chess boxing after knocking out a 37-year-old German policeman Frank Stoldt, who served as a peacekeeper in Kosovo until recently.

The chess part is speed chess, which can be quite difficult and heavily favors those who are well practiced in strategy and able to make decisions faster. Players are given 1 -5 minutes each to win a game, which generally does not result in a checkmate outcome.

Wouldn’t this heavily favor brawn over brains? I mean, any half decent bruiser could just avoid getting checkmated right away and then knock the nerd out in the first round. All you need, then, is someone who can stand a single round in the ring and isn’t a complete moron. Your pure bruiser fails the knockout, then gets suckered into a scholars mate. But a bruiser can punch you and keep punching, while in chess you’d have to wait for him to move before enacting your Master Plan.

The best strategy is to set up complex positions on the board that require ample thought on the part of your opponent and watch his or her time expire.

More of such wacky gaming news only on WATGame.com.

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Social networking powering Enterprise networks is not a new idea. However, we are yet to see an actual project go live with a prominent presence of social networks and tools backing them. This comes at a time when people see Enterprise 2.0 hitting the $4 billion mark in the next 5 years.

The times, as Bob Dylan would say, they are a’changing. A couple of enterprise management systems are turning social, if blog posts are to be believed. So, we have a Joint Contact gluing Twitter into its solution, DeskAway talking about chat and “newsfeeds” (a.k.a. Facebook) & email task management built into it as they see the future.

Interesting points that come out of the above two examples:

• Presence of existing social media platforms as Project Tools
• Option of developing systems based on existing solutions (email, chat, etc.)
• Model of Custom Solutions derived from existing platforms

Enterprise management systems are often aimed at productivity & task management and at, in general, the record of the work going around in the organization. The above picture therefore fits perfectly in to the puzzle of developing an enterprise network.

With popular platforms or solutions, say a twitter being included into the management system, the learning curve is vastly reduced. What we see, instead, is a quicker integration of the system within the workforce,and the users  getting more keen on using the system because they understand it.

A separate way of going about things itself, is to develop the system integrated well with regular solutions. Say, the platform is built to work seamlessly with an MS Outlook or for Open Source fan boys with Thunderbird. The idea being to cultivate existing habits on to newer platforms.

Of course, this might also give an idea for media like Twitter, Plurk etc. to get a business plan in place for revenue. How will Twitter earn money has been the question of the decade for many. Perhaps, this gives an answer. Customized solutions of these platforms catering to the need of an organization or providing licensed versions to corporates with full API access can be a vital cog in building a revenue base. However, this itself might take the social part out of social media really, so things might not be as rosy as they look.

Infact, Facebook itself is looking at opening up its API for app developers to build it into complete systems. Jonathan Heiliger, VP of Technical Operations at FB, spoke about it in brief in an interview last month.

The whole idea of offering Social Networking Solution as a service is simple - Integrate, what people find comfortable, with your enterprise solution and reduce cost and time. The question is not really whether it is possible, rather on whether it is viable. Will licensing the platform, like Facebook, change the entire notion of social media? Will integration of existing tools into project management increase productivity or hamper it instead? Or on a wider note, should enterprises chuck the notion of internal network and go completely social on existing platforms?

Something suggests that the answers might not be all that far away.

Image source: Healthcare.ZDNET.com

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Last time I covered Learnhub.com, when it was launched in March, this year. They have created the community model around the activity of learning. They had some partnership with Educomp then. I noticed a lot of people forming communities around different subjects and asking questions. I somehow felt this model could work online, given there are enough number of people taking active interest in replying to the queries posted by the ‘students’.

Just received a tip that Learnhub.com has launched the SAT and GMAT question banks. It is claimed that these are the “largest” SAT and GMAT question banks in the world. Along with this, Learnhub also provides the students with the information about the American Universities and academic recruiters.

Well, if they can provide reliable and quality material for the tests, I am sure there will be students flocking to Learnhub.com (which, presently, boats of 1500 members). I see a great potential in education services. Specially in India, where, the middle class takes education very seriously, the offerings by Learnhub can be a crucial add on to the students preparing for SAT and GMAT scores.

Thanks to John Philip Green, Co-founder and CTO, Learnhub.com, for the tip

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Here is an innovation from GMail that every single email user in the world is guaranteed to love! How many times have you wondered if you had signed out of your email after accessing it from a public computer? Have you ever been a victim of password theft? We all love the fact that Google allows its users to log in to its chat client Google Talk from multiple sources at the same time. So, how would you know whether your password got stolen if all the intruder does is read your emails and keep a virtual eye on you? You might feel that the fact an email is shown unread means that at least that conversation is safe. Did you know that you could mark an email as “unread” and you would never figure the difference? (Okay, I guess I am sounding like an imposter myself)

Google comes up with a brilliant idea of introducing a privacy setting in GMail that shows information about your last activity on your account and also whether you are logged onto the account on any other device. If you are the cynic type, you could also check out the details section and access more info like how many devices are you logged on from and also the IP addresses. What more, GMail also introduces a remote log out feature using which one can log oneself out of every device other than the one currently being used.

I shall definitely hail this feature since it’s an important step Google has taken towards protecting users’ privacy. The fact that GMail also lets the users know the IP address of the current device they are on, is the killer idea for me. This proves that Google had taken huge deliberations before coming up with the features. However, I am a little apprehensive about the section where GMail promises to report the time of last activity. If I am allowed to judge Google on the basis of Orkut’s recently launched “Last Logged in” feature, I am very disappointed because I always find the reported time to be when I logged into my current session. The whole idea behind the feature loses its meaning, in that case.

GMail, again, finds itself taking a huge lead in the war of web email applications and both Yahoo and Windows Live have a lesson to learn. Unfortunately, this feature roll out is still in the process and just might take a while to appear on your inbox.

Lastly, here’s a screen shot plagiarized from the Official GMail Blog -

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A few days back, we had reported about Google’s YouTube being sued by Viacom, which owns brands like MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount, for almost 1 billion dollars, claiming that several of Viacom’s video shows had been illegally broadcast on YouTube. Viacom had also asked for access to YouTube’s source code and its search API but had been denied the same by the judge citing that such a request was “considered against its value and secrecy“.

Although the opportunities looked bright for Google, the US District Judge Louis L. Stanton ordered them to hand over all statistical data, like user names & IP addresses, regarding the Viacom videos that have been watched on YouTube. Such an order had raised a furor among the YouTube users over security concerns and prompted Google to ask Viacom to anonymize users and the logs to protect the users’ privacy.

According to Viacom,

…YouTube has filled its library with entire episodes and movies and significant segments of popular copyright programming from Viacom and other copyright owners, neither YouTube nor the users who submit the works are licensed to use…..

…The search code is the product of over a thousand person-years of work. Singhal Decl. 9. There is no dispute that its secrecy is of enormous commercial value. Someone with access to it could readily perceive its basic design principles, and cause catastrophic competitive harm to Google by sharing them with others who might create their own programs without making the same investment.

Although Viacom maintains that it needs users’ data only to prove its case of YouTube’s copyright infringement, such an order didn’t go too well with the YouTube Community. There have been petitions making rounds in the online atmosphere asking the judge to revert his decision. Moreover, every single hour witnesses a new flamed video mushrooming on YouTube, condemning the decision.

Viacom might have gone an extra yard in its effort to prove the case but all the negative publicity just might go against its brand image. People might argue that negative publicity is also publicity, at the end of the day. My question is, did a conglomerate as huge as Viacom need negative publicity in the first place?

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Webdunia, the portal with multi-lingual content, plans to attract the youth by announcing new interactive features on the site.

The company, which plans to spend Rs. 25 crore over the next 3 years, has now enabled features that let its users to email in 9 different languages from their mobile phones. One of the most important feature launched by the company is their SMS short code services. This service enables its users to:

1. Read Jokes and Quotes

2. Get advice on various topics

3. Get examination results

The company recently launched the ‘Main Bekasoor Hoon‘ marketing campaign, stressing on how essential it is to know the regional languages. The company has also launched a few online games which have instructions in Indian languages.

Other new features include a regional language classified portal where users can list their classifieds for free. The company also has a ‘My Webdunia’ sub portal which lets the users create personal web pages and write blogs in 10 different languages.

Speaking to afaqs, the company’s president and chief operating officer, Pankaj Jain, says,

These features have been introduced for existing users and also to attract a new set of users, especially the youth.

Jain claims that the site receives about two million unique visitors every month and is growing at the rate of 6-8 per cent.

Webdunia is trying to make use of the regional ladder to climb up the popularity list. Only time will tell if the company is able to woo the youth segment that it actually intends to.

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