All Posts by Himanshu Sheth

|In: Technology|Last Updated: | 3 Comments

Few days back,while watching the Business News on CNBC TV-18,I came across the news that a new company called Guruji.com is launched by two IIT alumini guys named “Anurag Dod” and “Gaurav Mishra”.The name seems to be pretty INDIAN.Listed below are some of the interesting facts about www.guruji.com

About the Business:
Guess what, their business is also targeting the Indian audience who want a change from Google.Yes,Guruji.com is a new company which also be in the same business as Google(which will enter the booming business of Search Engines.It will take competition with Google,forgotten hero ask.com , Yahoo Search and other engines engine seems to be pretty good and is molded on googol lines.


About the Funding:
Guruji.com has been funded by Sequoia Capital India(www.sequoiacap.com/india) and Angel Investors.

Some interesting Facts:
There are lots of interesting things to watch out for Guruji.com . Apart from being Indian and searching only Indian based pages,it allows the users to search for restraunts,hotels in any city in India just by giving the Hotel name and city.


The look and feel is same like Google.Hence,you wont miss Google a lot -:)
More information given below.

Check out Anurag Dod’s interview on “http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1347/
is-guruji-the-new-google-for-india”

-Himanshu J Sheth
(30/11/2006,3:24 AM)

|In: Technology|Last Updated:

Source : www.venturebeat.com

YouTube will deliver user-submitted video from its site to mobile customers of Verizon’s V Cast video service.

You have to pay $15/month extra (above Verizon’s basic wireless service) for V Cast. However, a caveat: Verizon phones will only carry “high quality” YouTube videos, which seems to go against YouTube’s origins of promoting user-generated videos that are often grainy and of average-quality, but compelling nonetheless. Still, video quality is improving overall, and so this may not be a problem near-term. It is also a first for YouTube, which had promised the service was coming. More deals coming.

|In: Business|Last Updated:

Economic Times Network,www.economictimes.com
Dated: 26/11/2006

The world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart is believed to be close to striking a deal with the Sunil Mittal led-Bharti Industries, after UK retail Tesco dropped plans to ally with the New Delhi-based group for its India foray. Tesco called off talks with Bharti putting an end to the much awaited partnership in the retail sector.

According to sources, talks between the two soured in the last minute on several issues but the important ones were royalty and branding. Tesco was not too keen on merely being a back-end partner in India the way Tatas chose to with Woolworth in the durable business.

Bharti is also understood to have been Wal-Mart’s fourth choice as its partner after the global retailer had held several months of intense negotiations with other Indian business houses like the Birlas, M&M and Rahejas, informed sources said.

Wal-Mart is also believed to have committed ‘serious money’ in the Indian market that would enable the JV to take on the muscle of a strong competitor such as Reliance Retail. Initially, Wal-Mart would provide the back-end supply chain and cutting-edge processes while Bharti would operate the front end.

Also, the royalty and investments in the joint venture offered by Wal-Mart was far higher than that offered by Tesco and it could provide the joint venture the scale and pricing that other retailers would not.

With this, the Bentonville Arkansas-based giant has succumbed to what it always called `the unbelievable potential’ of India’s booming economy and consumerism. Earlier on Saturday, a Reuters copy quoted a Tesco spokesman as having ended negotiations to form a widely-expected joint venture with Bharti, but said the company still planned to enter India’s retail sector.

Wal-Mart scored over Tesco in its swiftness in executing the deal. John Menzer, president and chief executive of the retailer’s international arm was instrumental in sealing the deal, it is learnt. While Tesco was bullish on the India plans, they probably took a little longer in sealing the deal.

Various industry sources ET spoke to attribute several reasons to the turn of events. They said that Tesco didn’t take kindly to the way Wal-Mart joined the fray with a counter offer of sorts. It took also took serious objections to media reports about both Tesco and Wal-Mart were in talks with the Bharti group for a possible partnership.

|In: Technology|Last Updated:

Microtune has announced a new tuner chip that brings quality digital TV to PC notebooks, portable TVs, tuner sticks, portable DVD players and other small devices that demand both high performance and lower power.

Called the MicroTuner MT2130, the new tuner, when integrated into portable consumer products, allows users to watch analog and digital TV across cable or off-air broadcasts, to time-shift programs and to capture video for multimedia applications.

“The worldwide transition to digital television is increasingly spanning a widening range of consumer electronics and peripherals,” said James A. Fontaine, Microtune’s President and CEO. “Our new MT2130 leverages the superior engineering, excellent performance and reliability that have come to characterize Microtune tuners, and it adapts our market-proven RF technology for new classes of power-sensitive digital TV devices. By deploying the MT2130 chip, our customers can differentiate their portable products by offering superior TV reception across the analog and digital broadcasts that exist today.”

Microtune’s new MT2130 is based on the architecture of the company’s three-in-one tuner — the MT2131 analog/digital/cable tuner. The MT2130 is engineered to receive weak signals and to compensate for the small, built-in antennas typical of portable products. It deploys Microtune’s ClearTune filtering technology to improve channel reception and is engineered to minimize noise and distortion for consistent, stable picture quality.

The chip supports multiple TV transmission standards (ATSC, QAM, DVB-T, ISDB-T, DMB-T, NTSC, PAL and SECAM). As a result, it permits manufacturers to deploy the same tuner on multiple platforms, gaining economies of scale, while providing a single solution that cost-effectively bridges the multiple analog and digital TV standards that co-exist today.

At ¼-inch in size, the MT2130 chip fits into very small designs, such as dongle or flash-stick packages, and can be easily configured in multi-tuner architectures. Multi-tuner architectures enable diversity applications and permits users to enable ‘watch and record’ two or more channels simultaneously.

The MT2130 tuner is sampling now to select customers and is priced at less than $3.00 in volume quantities.

|In: Technology|Last Updated:

Source : www.tech2.com
Dated : 07/11/2006

In a strategic acquisition graphics chip maker Nvidia has decided to acquire PortalPlayer, a firm that made its name selling mp3 decoding chips, which were used by Apple in its iPod Nano range.

PortalPlayer was established in 1999 and counts among its customers companies like SanDisk, Philips and Samsung.Recently Apple announced it would no longer be using chips from PortalPlayer, preferring to go over to Samsung instead. This was a major loss for PortalPlayer, as Apple was its primary customer. This loss caused PortalPlayer’s stock market value to crash and left it as easy pickings for others.

Nvidia, who is rapidly looking to expand into the handheld PMP market, saw this as a great opportunity and decided to acquire PortalPlayer for $357 million.

Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia had this to say, “With this acquisition, we are combining the two essential technologies of next-generation PMPs, PDAs, portable game players, and phones: PortalPlayer’s innovative Application Processor technology and NVIDIA’s industry-leading GPU technology. With the products created through this combination, we intend to drive the next digital revolution, where the mobile device becomes our most personal computers.”

|In: Technology|Last Updated:

Source : http://www.tech2.com
Dated : 16/11/2006

The elusive iRiver Clix, renewed with 4 GB storage memory, has officially been priced at US$199.99 (around Rs 9,200). The portable media player plays MP3s, WMAs, OGGs, FM radio, MPEG-4 video as well as photos, on a 2.2-inch QVGA display.

The player is also PlaysForSure compatible, letting you purchase and download music from online subscription sites such as Napster.com. Microsoft’s recently released Zune media player is not PlaysForSure compatible, instead being locked to only the proprietory Zune Marketplace for purchasing music.