DIGIDROOL

Apple sells 0.7 million iphones

2007-07-04T05:36:00.001-07:00

Apple's iPhone had a record-breaking introduction, sell up to 700,000 of the $499 and $599 combination cell phone, music device and video player in three days. AT and T, the exclusive wireless carrier for the iPhone said they'd seen nothing like it.

"We sold more iPhones in the first weekend of sales than in the first month of sales for any device in AT and T history," company spokesman Mark Siegel told the USA Today. Because the iPhone is activated at home instead of in stores, Apple outlets could sell up to 1,000 phone per hour.

Financial analysts estimated $250 million worth of iPhones - almost all the $599 version with 8 gigabytes of storage) was sold over the weekend. Apple will likely sell 4.5 million iPhones this year and over 30 million devices by 2011, according to researcher iSuppli.

ISuppli today said a breakdown of the manufacturing costs for the iPhone revealed Apple is making around 55 percent in profit. The $599 iPhone, for example, costs Apple $265.83 to make, according to iSuppli. Apple reportedly declined to comment.

Sequoia Funds $7M to Minglebox - A Comparision with Competition

2007-06-20T05:23:00.000-07:00

Minglebox, the India-based social network for college campuses, raised $7 million in funding, backed by Sequoia Capital India.

Minglebox started with a concept similar to facebook, creating customized networks for people on college campuses. The goal is for each network to be a close knit community, working like a college intranet. As with many other social networking sites, you can share videos, music, blogs, photos and events with friends and the group at large.

Minglebox was created by a former Yahoo employee, Kavita Iyer, and the other two founders, Sanjay Aggarwal and Sushma Abburi.

There has been a widespread speculation of a vested interest in the unusually high amount of funding for such a small startup, as their userbase is far less compared to Youtube and to that of its nearest competitor.

A sample graph to showcase the competition.

Comparision with Competition:
Minglebox.com vs Bharatstudent.com
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PSP2 in the making??

2007-06-05T01:34:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks there's been a lot of speculation that Sony is due to announce an updated version of the PlayStation Portable - with some saying it will have internal memory and a better screen - but Sony has played down the claims as just "rumour John Koller, senior market manager for PSP, said he wanted to "clear the air" about the recent rumours. Speaking on the official PlayStation blog he said: "I'm thrilled to hear that there's so much interest in the platform, but sorry folks, these reports floating around fall into the rumours/speculation category."

Koller also tackled claims that mobile maker Ericsson was working on a phone version of the PSP. "We haven't announced anything about a new PSP, much less one that would have phone capabilities," he explained.

PS3 HOME - Incredible!!!

2007-03-12T19:26:00.000-07:00

Good news for the PlayStation camp, full details of Sony's Playstation Home have been revealed, and it ain't no slacker. Alongside those avatars and achievements we heard about earlier, the "service" seems to be a new-gen Second Life killer, with public hangouts, personal apartments (to show off those fancy prizes you've been racking up in recent frag fests) and voice chat.

The seeming-MMO even includes casual games such as pool, bowling and arcade machines embedded into the world, but at any time you can invite a fellow resident to join in on any PlayStation Network-capable game. As for user-generated content, PS Home allows you to hang your own pictures on your apartment walls and share videos with friends. You can of course dress up your avatar in assorted virtual clothings -- for a price -- all while enjoying "dynamic advertising" of some sort.

A large scale beta goes live in April, with the full product to be launched this fall. Make sure to hit up the read link for a gallery of the beautiful scenery and idiotic conversations you too can be enjoying in a few months.

Windows Surface

2007-02-04T06:10:00.000-08:00

Windows 'Surfaces'

Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content.

With Surface, we can actually grab data with our hands, and move information between objects with natural gestures and touch.

Surface features a 30-inch tabletop display whose unique abilities allow for several people to work independently or simultaneously.
All without a mouse or a keyboard.

Apple announces iPhone

2007-02-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

The much anticipated iPhone was announced amidst much fanfare at the Keynote Presentation.
A video follows:

Google purchases Youtube

2006-11-11T06:24:00.000-08:00

Google had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock compensation. YouTube will continue to operate independently. Google Video will continue to operate separately.

The acquisition combines the largest and fastest-growing video-sharing community online with the largest search engine. YouTube, which was founded in December 2005, serves over 100 million videos per day via its progressive downloading technology. The site has captured 47.07 percent of the online video market, compared to Google's 11.09 percent. Google, meanwhile, holds about 50 percent of search market share, outstripping its closest rival, Yahoo, by about 25 percent.

The acquisition of YouTube gives Google a greater ability to capture more of the online video and social networking advertising market. Buying YouTube may also give Google a competitive edge against News Corp., which owns social networking site MySpace. MySpace currently owns about 20 percent of the video-sharing market, according to Hitwise.

Source: Google

Phone rumours from Apple help share prices to skyrocket

2006-11-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

Increasing numbers of share buyers appear to be convinced that Apple will soon unveil its first mobile phone. Apple, he says, can change this because it will be the first big company in the west to approach phones from the user's perspective

The company's stock price has risen to record highs on successive days, with little to suggest that anything other than 'iPhone' speculation is the cause.

'If Apple can repeat its startling success of recent years, it could not only produce a product that satisfies the iPodistas but lights the blue touchpaper under the operators,' he wrote.

A Mockup Video:

PS3 launched

2006-10-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

Yahoo Time Capsule

2006-10-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

Yahoo starts clock on Earth time capsule

Yahoo has set out to capture life on Earth in digital formats for a time capsule to be buried in Silicon Valley as well as beamed into the cosmos from Mexico.

The internet giant invites people worldwide to contribute pictures, videos, songs, ideas, drawings or anything else they could digitise for a "first-ever electronic anthropology project" to document human life in 2006.

Submissions could be uploaded via the internet to regionalised "Yahoo Time Capsule" websites.

Suggested topics included love, anger, fun, sorrow, faith, beauty, hope, and "you".

"You don't have to be a gadget hound or tech savvy to know how to do these things any more. Who knows what it will be like in 10 years?"

Yahoo planned to open the time capsule when it celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020.

"Even though it might seem like a short future out, I can only imagine how we will look to our future selves given how rapidly things are changing," Srinivasan said.

Google in talks to acquire youtube

2006-07-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

PIC: Comparision of web traffic to online videos

The rumor that Google is in talks to acquire YouTube may be more than “40% likely to be at least partially true.” The talks are in fact underway, according to “a person familiar with the matter.”

A Journal reported the same price tag, $1.6 billion. Hitwise, by the way, just posted some interesting traffic stats and discussion on Google Video vs YouTube. The gist of it is that YouTube is much bigger and growing faster and that Google sends lots of traffic to YouTube already, reportedly more than anyone but MySpace.

Yahoo Devours Del.icio.us

2005-09-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

In its latest acquisition of a social networking service, internet powerhouse Yahoo on Friday chomped down on del.icio.us, a startup that enables people to more easily compile and share their favorite content on the web.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company didn't disclose how much it paid for New York-based del.icio.us because the purchase price wasn't large enough to have a significant impact on its finances.

Del.icio.us will continue to run its own website, which allows users to create a personal account so they can create a page devoted to their favorite online articles, music and reviews. The material can be shared with others simply by sending along the web link. The content also can be identified with labels, or "tags," to make it simpler to find.

More than 300,000 users have signed up for the service since del.icio.us' inception two years ago, founder Joshua Schachter said in a Friday phone interview. Schachter intends to work at Yahoo's headquarters, but del.icio.us' other eight employees will be scattered around the country.

Yahoo! purchases Flickr

2005-04-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! purchases Flickr

21 March 2005

Yahoo! has bought Canada's Ludicorp Research & Development, which runs the internet photo sharing service Flickr.

Flickr provides a way to store, sort, search and share photos online. Although no purchase price was disclosed, the deal is likely to have cost less than $50 million.

Joanna Stevens, a spokeswoman for Yahoo! told ZDnet: "We look forward to working with them for their innovation and product development across the Yahoo Network in the coming months."

Flickr will apparently remain a standalone site for now, but plans are afoot to relocate staff to California from Vancouver at some point. Experts predict it will be absorbed into Yahoo!'s new Yahoo! 360 blogging service.

Flickr promises that current management will remain in place and will not be turned into "a bunch of suits". The companies will continue separately, while Yahoo! will gain some of Flickr's features.

Internet giant Yahoo! has taken over the online photo-sharing site in a bid to expand its presence in the growing blog market.