160By2 Launches Free SMS To Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia & Singapore; Disruptive

Hyderabad based SMSCountry, which operates the free SMS service 160by2, has launched free SMS services to Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia & Singapore. This means that registered users can send an SMS to mobile numbers in these countries, without paying the standard International SMS charges. Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, CEO and Co-founder of SMSCountry has said that the [...]

Why You Can’t Search The Word ‘Sex’ On Bing

Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Corp., doesn't return any result for one of the most searched terms from India: sex. However, if you tell the search engine that you're from the USA, or any one of the European countries (users can easily change country without even logging in), and bingo, several links are returned. If you say you are from China or an Arabian country, or Hong Kong or Singapore, again, no luck. According to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Insights for Search, "sex" has been a high-volume search string from India, ranking above 60 on a scale of 0 to 100 since 2004. The volume has been growing and in 2008. It was among the most-searched terms on Google, a search engine that demonstrates no inhibitions in returning links related to sex, much like its competitor Yahoo! A blogger who goes by the handle Soumyadip first reported on this quirk of Bing and since then, Indian twitterverse has been aflutter with protests.  From a strictly legal point of view, however, Bing is doing the right thing, says Pawan Duggal, a Supreme Court advocate who specializes in cyber law. "They (Bing) seem to be doing this to comply with the provisions of the Information Technology Act of 2000," Duggal said. According to the act, anyone publishing or transmitting or causing to be published or transmitted content of a pornographic nature can be punished with imprisonment up to five years and a fine of Rs1 lakh, he said. And the definition of such content is quite wide—"any content that is lascivious and that will appeal to prurient interest or the effect of which is to tend to deprave or corrupt the minds of those who are likely to see, read or hear the same," Duggal said. And it's not just the publishers of such content that can get into trouble. All the intermediaries—be it a search engine or an Internet service provider—can be potentially liable under the Act. So far as users are concerned, viewing pornography is not an offense in India. However, with effect from 5 February, viewing child pornography has been made a punishable offence through an amendment of the Act, Duggal said. While most search engines return links to non-pornographic sites relating to sexual health or related issues as the top results, porn sites do incessant search engine optimization and invariably, there is at least one link to a pornographic site when searched for "sex." "Bing has done the right thing. Not doing so exposes a search engine or any intermediary to potential legal liability," Duggal said. Ironic then, that while Bing has been careful about potential liability in certain countries, it has been less so with the "autoplay" feature that allows videos to be played within the search engine, FoxNews reported. "...bloggers and Internet safety experts quickly discovered that one of Bing's 'features' is that it takes only a few clicks for anyone—of any age—to view explicit pornographic videos without even leaving the search engine," the story said. We are awaiting comment from a Microsoft spokesperson.

Why Google e-Books are better than Amazon’s Kindle

I know what you might be thinking. This dude just dissed Google the other day and now he praising it. Well, that’s not what I am doing here. The reason for this new found love for Google is its ebooks strategy. And my love is only limited to this strategy of Google. The problem with Amazon’s [...]

Top 10 Ad Networks in India

In continous effort to bring new top 10 countdown of things happening around. List of ad networks in no order Google Ad Sense – Mother of all self serve ad networks with largest pool of impressions availables though effective on long tail, in effectiveness in guaranteeing delivery of impressions on particular publishers or tier-I and tier-II [...]

Nasscom Emergeout 50 is all about honouring the true spirit of SMEs

The contribution of the SME community to the Indian IT BPO industry can never be overemphasized but most Emerging companies face a major challenge in getting their due recognition and at times even loose out to the larger players. Size definitely does matter, but should not be the only criteria for recognition. The Indian IT [...]

Microsoft Launches Next-Gen Gaming Experience

Microsoft has launched new interesting new control system for the Xbox 360 console, at E3 in Los Angeles called - Project Natal. The concept is very much in resemblance to Microsoft Future vision that the sofware giant had earlier given demo of. The new gaming & gaming experience is actually controller free gaming system that is [...]

Energy Efficiency Opportunities in India

Forthcoming WRI research hopes to help overcome barriers in India’s burgeoning ESCO market.

University of Pune and Global Talent Track unveil Faculty …

University of Pune and Global Talent Track unveil Faculty ...India PRwire (press release), IndiaDr. Uma Ganesh, CEO Global Talent Track who also addressed the gathering highlighted the blurring of line between traditional classroom approach and the technology enabled learning thanks to new tools such as Web 2.0 and the blogs. ...

Seizing India’s Sustainable Investment Opportunities

The New Ventures India community recently convened its annual Investor Summit to discuss small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the opportunities and obstacles investors face.

Mobile Trading: SEBI Drafts Framework; Role Of Mobile Operators?

Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is now readying a proposal for mobile trading. It has put up a framework that lists guidelines and safeguards for brokers wishing to introduce such a service and has invited comments. Download the draft of the framework from here (PDF). SEBI has refrained from discussing the role of mobile operators. The [...]