Lenovo New Netbook.

Lenovo has announced the IdeaPad S10-2 netbook, that is slimmer and lighter than its predecessor the S10.

"With the netbook scene rapidly changing, consumers are telling us they want to merge the capabilities of their most commonly used sources of electronic entertainment, such as digital photographs, online TV, music and social networks all into one portable and affordable device," said Dion Weisler, vice president, Business Operations, Idea Product Group, Lenovo. "We've incorporated that feedback into our new IdeaPad S10-2 netbook, giving consumers around the world more ways to connect with options for wireless connectivity, a more portable and expressive design and entertainment-packed features."

Starting at just over two pounds and measuring less than an inch thick, the new IdeaPad S10-2 netbook has an 10.1-inch LED screen and a ring pattern design on the top cover personalized in grey, pink, white or black. While slimming down the netbook's size for increased portability, Lenovo has outfitted the netbook with a keyboard that's nearly 90 percent the size of a standard keyboard, a larger touchpad, three USB ports, a 4-in-1 card reader and a built-in web camera. The netbook runs on the latest Intel Atom processor technology and has a 160 GB hard drive. The company maintains that the S10-2's battery saving software helps it achieve up to 30 percent more battery life than before.

Consumers can go online anywhere with a host of wireless connectivity options and Lenovo has equipped the netbook with Dolby Headphone technology to amplify customers' audio experience. Users can wear any set of headphones to hear surround sound audio from 5.1 channels of sound. With the Lenovo QuickStart application users can listen to music, view photos, send instant messages or make Skype calls without waiting for their operating system to boot. Users will also be able to log into the PC with their face with VeriFace facial recognition technology.

With Lenovo's OneKey Rescue System consumers can recover their data if it becomes corrupted in a few simple steps. The tool can also be configured to run virus scanning before entering the main operating system to restore damaged files and allow users to back up and recover their data.

The IdeaPad S10-2 netbook will be available at the end of May on www.lenovo.com and through business partners beginning at the end of June. Models start at $349.

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Chat with IPL Players

mig33, a social networking platform, together with five DLF IPL teams, Kings XI Punjab, Delhi Daredevils, Royal Challengers, Deccan Chargers, Chennai Super Kings, has managed to bring the real excitement of cricket straight from South Africa to your mobile phone. With the IPL fervor that has gripped fans, mig33 has been engaging its members with real-time chats with players from the five IPL teams. While both registration and chat are free, charges are applicable for data transfer.

Once a member joins a particular fanclub, say Kings Eleven Fanclub, he can enjoy live ball-by-ball commentary, be updated with sports news, buy virtual club merchandise, cheer on his favourite team players, and discuss the match religiously, all while chatting with his fellow Kings Eleven fans. He is alerted before a team coach, cheer leader or a player comes on board to chat and connect via text messages on the screen with the fans.

"Cricket is a social activity and the mobile-phone provides the ideal platform for fans globally to engage directly with one other, as well as chat to their cricket heroes. We are delighted that the IPL teams have established their official mobile fan clubs on mig33 and are using this new communications channel to help build their fan globally," said Steve Boom, chief executive officer, mig33.

Preity Zinta, co-owner, Kings XI Punjab, said, "We are excited with this association with mig33. mig33 has brought our fans across the globe on a common platform. It is amazing to connect with them and be so close to them while sitting in South Africa. Our fans are using this platform to ignite passion and to support the team during the IPL."

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BSNL’s $6-b GSM contract:-Ericsson, Huawei shortlisted

equipment major Ericsson and Chinese manufacturer of telecom gear Huawei have been shortlisted by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for its mega 93-million-line cellular project. The project size is estimated to be around $6 billion, making it the single largest contract in the world.

While Ericsson has been shortlisted for North and East zones, Huawei has qualified for West, East and South zones. Other bidders, including ZTE, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel Lucent, have been disqualified on technical grounds. Some of the vendors disqualified, including Nokia Siemens, have supplied equipment to BSNL earlier

Quoting prices

With only one vendor having qualified from three zones, the financial bids submitted by the qualified companies may have lost their relevance. Since there is no second qualified bidder in North, West and South, BSNL will have to give the contract at the price quoted by Ericsson and Huawei respectively. The project envisages both GSM and 3G network rollout.

However, BSNL cannot award the contracts immediately since the Ministry of Home Affairs is yet to give its clearance from the security point of view.

The Ministry had raised concerns regarding some of the foreign vendors, especially about Huawei from China. A committee was set up by the Ministry to evaluate the background of the bidders before the contracts are awarded. This committee is yet to submit its report.

Seeking to open bids

Meanwhile, BSNL has written to the Department of Telecom seeking permission to open the bids submitted by Ericsson in the North zone even before the Ministry submits its report.

BSNL has told the DoT that it was facing acute shortage of GSM capacity and since Ericsson was already an established vendor on its network, the contract for the North zone should be awarded to the Swedish company for this region.

The project is part of a major expansion plan aimed at giving BSNL enough capacity to expand its subscriber base. While private operators have been adding over 2.5 million new users a month, BSNL is adding just over a million.

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Nokia N97 Review

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General	2G Network	GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
	3G Network	HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100
		HSDPA 850 / 1900 / 2100 - American version
	Announced	2008, November
	Status	Coming soon. Exp. release 2009, June

Size	Dimensions	117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm, 88 cc
	Weight	150 g

Display	Type	TFT resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
	Size	360 x 640 pixels, 3.5 inches
		- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off - Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate - Full QWERTY keyboard - Handwriting recognition

Sound	Alert types	Vibration; MP3 ringtones
	Speakerphone	Yes, with stereo speakers
		- 3.5 mm audio jack

Memory	Phonebook	Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
	Call records	Detailed, max 30 days
	Internal	32 GB storage, 128 MB RAM
	Card slot	microSD (TransFlash), up to 16GB

Data	GPRS	Class 32
	HSCSD	Yes
	EDGE	Class 32
	3G	HSDPA, 3.6 Mbps
	WLAN	Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology
	Bluetooth	Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
	Infrared port	No
	USB	Yes, v2.0 microUSB

Camera	Primary	5 MP, 2592x1944 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus, LED flash, video light
	Video	Yes, VGA@30fps
	Secondary	Yes, VGA@15fps

Features	OS	Symbian OS v9.4, Series 60 rel. 5
	CPU	ARM 11 434 MHz processor
	Messaging	SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
	Browser	WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML, RSS feeds
	Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS, Visual radio; FM transmitter
	Games	Yes + downloadable
	Colors	White, Brown
	GPS	Yes, with A-GPS support; Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch
	Java	Yes, MIDP 2.0
		- Digital compass - MP3/WMA/WAV/eAAC+/MP4/M4V player - MPEG4/WMV/3gp/Flash video player - TV-out - Voice command/dial - Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF viewer) - Flash Lite 3 - T9

Battery		Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh (BP-4L)
	Stand-by	Up to 432 h (2G) / 408 h (3G)
	Talk time	Up to 9 h 30 min (2G) / Up to 6 h (3G)
	Music play	Up to 40 h

Misc	Price group

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Mobile TV will do good in Indian Market

Despite regulatory hurdles and spectrum issues, the world of television or TV on mobiles is making a promising start in India with players like UTV and National Geographic channel joining the increasing number of players like Reliance Communications, MTNL and BSNL.

While the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has approved the access of TV on mobiles, service providers still cannot stream live TV channels on to the handset due to spectrum allocation from the Ministry of Information and Broadcast. However, since the regulations do not allow a direct transmission of TV channels, service providers as well as content providers have started using a technology called Unicast which provides content to end-user on a one-on-one basis. One handset pulls content from a central repository and transmits it through a wireless network.

Public service broadcaster Doordarshan currently offers limited mobile TV services in Delhi. However, the market has seen increased activities from various stakeholders including technology providers, network equipment vendors and mobile service providers.

For instance, UTV New Media — the digital arm of UTV — recently announced the launch of a music video channel on Mobile TV. Branded as UTV@play, this will provide users an exclusive mobile channel where they can access videos and music with a click of a button. With a catalogue of 15,000-20,000 songs, UTV with this launch is expecting to garner at lest 10,000 subscribers in the very first year. T N Prabhu, CEO, UTV New Media feels there are users who are interested in such content. “We have seen that users from India stream video’s from International sites. We are sure there is enough users who are looking for such content on the mobile handsets,” said Prabhu. The National Geographic channel, too, has joined the fray by launching Nat Geo Mobile.

With over 300 million mobile phone users in India, and an addition of almost 10 million users every month, mobile TV does hold a promise. Springboard Research, in a recent report, estimates that mobile TV services market in India could reach $360 million (around Rs 1,780 crore). The report says that in the first year of operation, mobile TV could reach a penetration level of 5 to 6 per cent (of the total mobile subscriber base) in India. If taken at the current subscriber base of 375 million, this would mean that India will have over 20 million mobile TV subscribers within the first year of the launch of service.

Reliance Communication, through its R-world has been providing mobile TV for quite some time now. “While its difficult to quantify the number of users, Reliance has revenues in a few lakhs every month through its mobile TV offering. We are currently offering 11 news channel. A user can watch TV on the handset with a lag of a few minutes as they are not transmitted live,” said Krishna Durbha, Head Business and Marketing, VAS Reliance Communications. But he believes that there are still lot of barriers.

Shiva Bayypunedi, director and founder of Apalya Technologies, provides technology support for mobile TV for service providers like MTNL, BSNL, Spice, UTV among others feels that the Indian mobile TV market is still very nascent. “Other than the spectrum issues, constrain in handset, standardisation of technology platform are some of the barriers for the growth of this segment. Moreover, India is still predominantly a prepaid market. In such a scenario getting the volumes is difficult,” adds Bayypunedi.

A Springboard research indicates that 50 per cent of respondents (base of 1,215 users) said they would be very interested in mobile TV, while another 34 per cent said they would be fairly interested in it if it were available and affordable. Besides, a high percentage (86 per cent) of those surveyed said they would be either among the first to try or would definitely try a new service if somebody showed them how to use it.

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