Jimmy Wales wants the support for this ‘Public Uprising’ in an attempt to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Most critics have agreed that the effects of this bill will definitely be chilling and will also force the websites to pay close attention to the content being uploaded by users onto their respective pages.

In retaliation, Jimmy Wales announced last night that all of the English-language categories of Wikipedia will be  kept offline for a period of 24 hours which will start tomorrow.

While the bill is being passed in the American legislation, the impact of the act will be felt around the globe as most search engines as well as social network sites are located in the U.S.

The bill that is being processed is actually a result of many years of lobbying on the part of film studios and music labels who were against the amount of pirated that was available on the internet through the various search engines. These music labels and film studios lobbied the Congress and eventually the Senate into introducing the SOPA. In its present form, the SOPA can effectively transfer almost all the responsibility of policing the content on the internet onto the owners of the site and gives some rest to the law enforcement agencies.

The bill has been the cause of major worry among the owners of the various websites and search engines with the likes of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia. They have come together to post a petition Capitol Hill with the appeal of rethinking the legislation presently. Mr. Wales fears  the Senate may postpone the bill forward without making any amends to it which is why he has urged the some of the most popular websites of the world to initiate a ‘a day of darkness’ which would mean a simultaneous shut down of all these sites as a sign of their protest against the bill.

The idea of the protest was first initiated by Reddit which is a popular social media site where the users are asked to rate the links that are available to the other sites. Mr. Wales asked for the public’s opinion on this very blog. He asked the users whether Wikipedia should also be initiating a ‘Public Uprising‘ against the SOPA Act. Mr. Wales said,

“Right now what I’m thinking is that if there is a credible threat that this might happen, this could have a positive impact on the thinking of some legislators. Do not underestimate our power – in my opinion they are terrified of a public uprising about this, and we are uniquely positioned to start that.”

Most of the responses to Mr. Wales’ question on the site steered in favour of a one-day strike that could be specifically aimed at the English-language sections of Wikipedia. Hampering the English-language sections of the site would mean that the whole site will be temporarily unavailable in the UK.

While Twitter, Facebook and Google are yet to decide if they will follow Wikipedia in the strike, it has already come to light that there will be scores of users who are already planning to flood the internet with links and information on SOPA and how it will eventually hamper the freedom of speech that all the users have been exercising all this time.

Although the White House is of the opinion that online piracy needs to be curbed, inhibition of innovation is not the method to do it. This is why President Barrack Obama is said to be reluctant to be sign off the current state of the bill.

Now what remains to be seen is whether the lobbyists will be able to continue their efforts in getting the bill passed, or will the protest be successful in making an impact on the Senate. Mr. Wales has said that he intends to meet the senior politicians over the next few days in order to discuss a bill that will have a greater amount of flexibility. At the same time, media conglomerates are pressing the bill to ensure that their efforts are not wasted in the end.

This, however, is not a new fact that Mr. Wales has made use of his online encyclopedia in order to make a point on political affairs. Previously, there was a legislation that was put in front of the Italian Government. This legislation demands any comment, post or content that would have been flagged as defamatory be deleted automatically. As a protest, the Italian version of the site was kept offline for a period of three days during which users could only read a critique that had been put up about the new found legislation. The government was forced to shelve the legislation following the public outcry against it.

DigiMouth Speak:

As we do understand the intentions of Wikipedia in this current state of affairs, we wonder what the league of ramifications for such an action. Google may look to increase their already-large search base, even if its for a single day.

It was followed by #tigerblood, which referred to a comment by Charlie Sheen after he was sacked from the famous sitcom ‘Two and a Half Men’. He was the most talked about celebrity on Twitter, his public breakdown was aptly explained on the site. His popularity attracted a whopping 1 million  followers in a day’s time. This happened in March and its statistic has broken almost all records.

Mubarak‘s resignation also garnered interest topping news list after which US special force’s raid on Osama‘s home followed suit. Another topic which created quite a buzz was the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Rebecca Black, the teenager singer surpassed the tsunami too becoming a global trending topic. About 100 million people became a part of  Twitter in 2011 and people like Simon Cowell, Salman Rushdie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Gary Barlow were welcomed by Twitter.

There were many other popular hashtags too in the year. These trends show how Twitter has connected with the people having common interests. People have interacted on almost everything under the sun. Many were seen quoting that they preferred checking out Twitter rather than watching the TV. Twitter has proved its mettle and is here to stay!

When users tried to filter out News Results for the past one hour, they were unable to do so for some reason. News results for topics in the ‘Past 24 hours‘, which happens to be the next filter after the ‘Past Hour’ filter works perfectly.

This problem began about an hour and a half ago (1:30 PM IST). On searching for various search keywords on different browsers including Google’s own Chrome browser, no recent news results could be found.

Random stories as well as posts could be found in the regular search. In fact, apart from the news tab, every other tab functioned properly.

Google has not yet announced this issue on their search engine or any other service platform. When we searched for ‘Google’ on the search engine using the ‘Past Hour’ filter, we received no results and a ‘No Documents found’ page showed up. The same went for the results for ‘Diwali‘, an upcoming Indian festival which should normally trend a lot.

For many Google users, this may hardly be a hindrance, but for a search engine provider who claims to provide the best search results, this outage might come as a slight disappointment.

Although the issue prevailed for a minimal duration, this could have got users pulling their hair strands.

The report says that infection trends were significantly higher in India as compared to other countries. Various parameters were used in the report which included Worms, miscellaneous Trojans, Adware, Viruses, Trojan downloaders, droppers, password stealing and monitoring tools.

In the second quarter of year, Worms became the single biggest problem for Internet Security in India followed by Trojan attacks. Despite this, the risk of the third most common threat of potentially unwanted software dropped by a small number as compared to before.

India appears to be a hot spot for the spread of viruses as well with 11.003 percent of all spambot IP addresses located in India.

The table below shows the statistics of total attacks in India as compared to the world.

Vinny Gullotto, GM for Microsoft Malware Protection Center said,

“We encourage people to consider this information when prioritizing their security practices, SIRv11 provides techniques and guidance to mitigate common infection vectors, and its data helps remind us that we can’t forget about the basics. Techniques such as exploiting old vulnerabilities, Win32/Autorun abuse, password cracking and social engineering remain lucrative approaches for criminals.”

SIRv11 even went on to suggest various measures that firms can take to decrease the risk of malware. These included Building products and services with security in mind, Educating customers and employees, upgrading to latest products and services and Considering cloud services.

The whole report can be read on the Microsoft Security Intelligence website.

Online protection has always been a serious issue with many big firms. These reports will act as an eye opener for many Indian firms who have been lacking in better Internet security infrastructure.

The search engine giant has partnered with Delaware based brewery Dogfish Head to create a unique limited edition beer.

What makes the beer different from other concoctions of its kind is the fact that the brew for Urkontinent has been made out of ingredient recommendations from Google employees all around the world.

According to Sam Calagione, the President of Dogfish Head, Urkontinent is a mixture of different continents around the world.

“It’s what Google does every day — take a fractured world of information and put it into something cohesive and whole”

For the beer, Google received around hundred recipes from Google offices around the world. The final mix consists of amaranth from South America, wattleseed from Australia, green roobios tea from Africa, Myrica Gale from Europe.

The brew also contains ‘Google Honey’, which comes from Google owned bee hives in California. This makes Urkontinent the perfect continental brew.

“The project with Dogfish Head brewery was a Googler-driven project organised by a group of craftbrewery aficionados across the company. While our Googlers had fun advising on the creation of a beer recipe, we aren’t receiving any proceeds from the sale of the beer and we have no plans to enter the beer business.”,

a Google Spokesperson said.

The beer, which launched on 27th September, has not yet reached full scale distribution, but it will hit the stands in the coming few months.

In order to promote the alcohol, Google put up a video on video hosting site Youtube, explaining the inception and making of the beer.

With the new move, beer fans around the world must definitely be saying ‘Cheers’ to Google.

According to a report on online news source TechCrunch, the investigating committee will look into all of Apple’s products which include its computers, tablets and smartphones. HTC claims that this probe will make a significant difference to Apple’s sales.

Giving a brief description about the investigation, the USITC website read:

The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has voted to institute an investigation of certain electronic devices with communication capabilities, components thereof, and related software. The products at issue in this investigation are computers, tablet computers, and smartphones.

 

The investigation is based on a complaint filed by HTC Corporation of Taiwan on August 16, 2011 and amended on September 7, 2011. Supplements were filed on September 2 and 19, 2011. The amended complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the importation into the United States and sale of certain electronic devices with communication capabilities, components thereof, and related software that infringe patents asserted by HTC. The complainant requests that the USITC issue an exclusion order and a cease and desist order.

 

The USITC has identified Apple, Inc. a/k/a Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, CA, as the respondent in this investigation.

 

By instituting this investigation (337-TA-808), the USITC has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case. The USITC’s Acting Chief Administrative Law Judge will assign the case to one of the USITC’s four administrative law judges (ALJ), who will schedule and hold an evidentiary hearing. The ALJ will make an initial determination as to whether there is a violation of section 337; that initial determination is subject to review by the Commission.

 

The USITC will make a final determination in the investigation at the earliest practicable time. Within 45 days after institution of the investigation, the USITC will set a target date for completing the investigation. USITC remedial orders in section 337 cases are effective when issued and become final 60 days after issuance unless disapproved for policy reasons by the U.S. Trade Representative within that 60-day period.

(Source: TechCrunch)

With Apple launching the iPhone 5 in the next couple of months, it will be interesting to see the findings of the investigation.

The report claims that by the year 2016, the Asia Pacific region will have close to 481 million Pay TV users.

Statistics show that the region had a total of 362 million users by the end of 2010. This counts for a massive 53% share in the global market. The study says that by 2016, this number is to increase by another 56% in 2016.

By 2016, the Pay TV revenues will be close to $47 billion. Apart from India and China, strong growth is expected in countries like Vietnam and Thailand as well.

The forecast also predicts that the Asia Pacific region will have 802 million TV households with over 1.1 billion TV sets used in the region by 2016.

In the current scenario, Japan leads the Pay TV market with a 29% share. But with China’s fast adoption of the concept of Pay TV, the share will fall down to about 26%. China is expected to have a share of 27.5% in 2016 compared to their current 20.5% share.

With broadband becoming cheaper and more available in Asia, it will not be long before Pay TV gives some serious competition to DTH and Cable TV providers.

With the new partnership, Vodafone can take advantage of Myriad’s popular social networking management service - Xumi. With the help of Xumi, operators can expand their base on standard market phones by allowing easier access to social networking websites on pre-installed or downloadable browsers.

‘Pre-Family Man study‘, as the market research was called, gathered relevant information from roughly 4,200 men from Singapore, India, Taiwan, China, Indonesia and Australia.

This is the first time that single men as a target audience has been studied in detail. It is an lucrative segment of the market as this segment is more inclined to buy digital products because of their higher purchasing power. The study was carried out with the help of Market research firm Synovate

Kenneth Andrew, the Marketing Director for Microsoft Advertising said,

“The pre-family men market has undeniable influence with 20 per cent of pre-family men being classified as innovators and early adopters. With the immense growth seen amongst this group, brands and marketers need to understand their value, and how they think at the different stages of their lives or their career. These insights will enhance marketers’ communication strategies, allowing for better engagement with this highly valuable segment”

According to the study, 40% of the single men use laptops for social networking and 35% use desktop PC’s. A mere 20% use their smartphones for using social networks.

When it comes to gaming, Smartphones take the cake with 56% of the target group using gaming apps on their phones. 35% people play games on home consoles while 33% play on portable consoles. Another important observation was that majority of the target group use laptops and PC’s for business over entertainment.

Jon Wright, Regional Director of Analytics for MEC said that the study was conducted to find out the type of devices that single men use and when, why and how they use them.

With Microsoft’s latest innovation, the Windows 8 coming up, this study might just help them in engaging better with the Asian Market.

‘Tweetwalk’ as the campaign is called, is the first of its kind where Burberry will put up content like backstage photos on Twitter. Apart from this, every new look will be shared on the social network even before the models hit the ramp.

In order to ensure the rapid streaming of content on Twitter,  photographer Mike Kis will share his snaps via Instagram, a live photo sharing software.

Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer at Burberry said,

“Twitter is instantaneous and I love the idea that streaming a show can be in many different forms. This collection is all about the most detailed hand crafted pieces and fabric innovation, creating a beautiful physical experience that is communicated digitally in dynamic and diverse ways and I love balancing those two worlds”

Twitter is not the only social network that Burberry will be using. A live stream of the event will also be shown on Facebook. Certain interviews will be shown on Youtube via a live broadcast as well.

Burberry’s campaign seems to have given Social Media a new, more fashionable use.