Saloni started her career in an interactive media start up, Web Chutney in Delhi.
Starting a social enterprise (Desicrew) wasn’t among the top ideas she had while she was mulling her own business. At UnPluGGd event, she shared her entrepreneurial journey from being an engineer to starting Desicrew.
Watch the video
Saloni’s Presentation
The first phase of MNP (Mobile Number Portability) in India has begun and
Mobile number portability controlled roll out has begun [read how Mobile Number Portability works] and though the service has been rolled out only in Haryana, the pan India roll out will happen starting January 20th, 2011.
Telemarketers to pay Rs. 2 L Fine for Unwanted Calls?
Starting January, telemarketers will have to pay a fine (anywhere between RS. 25,000 – 2 L) for making unwanted calls and sending text messages. They will also get a special series number (starting with 70).
From ET: Under the new system, mobile users would get an option of blocking all telemarketing voice calls and receiving text messages only. And even while receiving text messages, they could specify an area of their choice such as banking, insurance, loans, automobiles, real estate, said a TRAI executive who did not wish to be named.
The telecom regulator will ensure that all telemarketing firms have mobile and landline numbers starting with the 70 series so that customers can identify such calls.
TRAI is also bringing about changes in the earlier format to add additional level of checks to ensure that customers registered with the DNC are not subject to pesky calls . “So far, telemarketers were required to scrub the number with the DNC registry , which was being maintained by the NIC. Now, both the mobile operator and the telemarketing firm will have to run a check,”.
2G Scam – TRAI Recommends Cancellation of 60 Licenses
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) recommended cancellation of over 60 licenses given to six firms including Etisalat and Videocon.
The Union Telecom Minister issued notices to 85 licensees out of the 122 issued by his predecessor A Raja for 2G spectrum. These companies will have to explain why they fudged documents at the time of applying for licences. Most of the telecom companies have been put on notice including S-Tel, Uninor, Loop, and Videocon some of whom have begun services.[source]
Google Japan launches a new service “Chrome Music Mixer” [J] to promote Google Chrome browser.
# may only play inside Japan
You may choose four tracks of music video from a lot of prepared sessions, let them play on four YouTube windows.
Step 1: choose the main track from five – telephone talk, steel pans, string quartet, human beatbox and bluesharp
Step 2: choose the rest three tracks from 17 choices from regular instruments like guitar/drums/flute/keyboard/etc. to skateboard, baloons, rice-frying sound.
Step 3: Name it, then play!
Here is my Asiajin mix “Happy Birthday” with human beatbox, baloons, skateboard and fried rice making sound.
Caution: As Google Japan says, it is recommended to play the four-YouTube music with over 20 Mbps bandwidth, Flash Player version 10 on major browsers.
The service is on http://www.morewithgoogle.jp/, which promotes Google services to Japanese users with videos.
The Hyogo police arrested a Nagano guy in September under a charge of running 60 of internet bulletin boards for users to buy and sell illegal drugs online.
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“No Drug” campaign in Japanese online game BelleIsle in 2006
This guy was expected to sell drugs by himself, but he talks that what he sold over the BBS were not drugs but salt and tea.
He gave his BBSs names like “Yakumi BBS”(taste of drug/medicine BBS, the Japanese word “Yaku” can be both good and bad medicines), posted ads like selling “S” and “Kusa”. “S” can be thought as “Speed”(Amphetamine) but he sent salt, “Kusa”(Weed) the buyers had expected cannabis but he sent tea leaves. “S 01 6,000yen” was supposed 0.1 gram of Amphetamine but he sent back 0.1 gram of salt. He confessed that he had earned about 15 million yen (US$178,000) by selling salt and tea. No single claim or damage report are filed yet.
Police expected to arrest him for drug dealing charge, but as there are no fraud victim and he himself did not sell drugs, it may result only in charge of “the providing aid to advertising of commercial handover” for running BBSs, which is the first applied in history.
via Mainichi and Nikkan Sports
TechBeat is the Malaysia-based podcast hosted and produced by John Lim that brings together tech journalists and opinion-makers to discuss the the latest news in technology and media in and around the country. For this inaugural episode, we have David Lian, APAC Social Media practice Lead for Text100, and Edwin Yapp from ZDNet to talk about
1. Microsoft has sold 1 million units of the Kinect, and hopes to sell 5 million by the year’s end.
2. The Steve Jobs/Rupert Murdoch collaboration for the iPad-only ‘newspaper’, The Daily.
3. Malaysia’s own newspaper, The Star, venturing into the iPad space.
4. Online sedition guidelines to be rolled out for Malaysia’s netizens
5. YTL’s Yes4G: Does it, and can it, live up to the hype.
When in Japan do as the Japanese do. Amazon Japan, one of the most successful foreign web companies in Japan, understands good localization.
At the year end, they run a user vote contest to set the best “bishoujo”(beautiful girl) character among adult PC games.
In Japan, huge number of adult anime PC games are sold every year. It is understandable that many of the consumers want to purchase them secretly, i.e. online. It seems it is big also for Amazon Japan. Their best sellers list show that the price range of the packages is between 7,000 yen to 10,000 yen (US$80-$120).
This time, Amazon Japan picked up 49 girls from those best sellers, and asked to vote for one character.
To Amazon Japan’s credit, the contest page is not shown to all Amazon visitors, so do not think that kids or others see it easily. You need to go down into “Game”-”Adult” first then see the banner to reach the page. And if you try to open any detail page of the games, you will be asked if you are over 18 yo.
This page was took up and buzzed among Japanese web users, because for people it was still surprising and interesting that even Amazon doing such campaign.
We were reporting that Sina Weibo is taking away Kaixin001′s traffic as they all mainly target at white-collar class at this moment. Tencent QQ’s users are more grassroot which sounds like no overlap with Sina’s target, and 50millions users of Sina Weibo is nothing comparable to QQ’s user base (latest data shows QQ’s online users at one time has reached 120millions.). But, if you still remember that, when Kaixin001 smashed into the market, many experts were thinking of its potential threat to Tencent as they believe QQ’s users will eventually grow up one day and potentially become white-collar class, now we may have the same reason to say, Sina could be Tencent’s next enemy, and this time, the threat might be more real and tougher because Sina has much stronger background and resource, and more important, it is more open.
Let’s just do a quick review of what Sina has been doing in past a few months:
Nothing serious, yet. But as Pony Ma said recently, I am feeling the threat everyday.
Tokyo-based tech start-up Conit launched an in-app purchase platform for the Android apps as well as the iPhone/iPad apps on Friday, in association with Japan’s largest ad agency Dentsu.
The platform is named as Samurai Purchase[J], and allows smartphone app developer to manage all their in-app purchases that are made by users via the Android and the iPhone handsets. Purchase requests from the apps are transferred to PayPal on both smartphone platforms, furthermore, the Android purchase platform is expected to accept the credit card payment option by the end of next month. Monthly subscription rates for smartphone app developers start at 126,000 yen for using the Android in-app purchase platform, 136,500 yen for using the iPhone/iPad in-app purchase platform.
China Mobile is running a promotion campaign in Jinan city of Shandong province, if you sign a 3-years contract and pre-pay minimum rmb 6800, (depend on the amount you pre-pay) you would be given a 8GB iPhone 3GS or 16GB iPhone 4 or 32 GB iPhone 4 for FREE. And China Mobile guarantee the iPhone is from ‘official’ channel.
This is funny. As everyone knows that China Unicom is ONLY operator has the contract with Apple, so where on earth do China Mobile’s iPhone come from?
1. Directly bought from Apple Store. It is almost impossible for Apple to sell iPhone directly to China Mobile, unless China Mobile send his staff to Apple Store and queued for hours to buy plenty of them;
2. Pay more money and buy from China Unicom iPhone package subscribers. You may see it is a bit crazy, but it sounds like a good solution; Now China Unicom responds: if it detects iPhone subscriber is not using the 3G Sim on his iPhone, the sim might be blocked and the iPhone could be locked as well.
3. Bought from grey market. I would not say so. However, with such pressure from China Unicom’s iPhone+3G package, and it’s in China, everything could be possible.
No one is going to answer this question, I am sure. At least we can see that, for China Mobile, iPhone really sucks. :-)
Japan’s second largest cellphone operator KDDI and the world’s largest meteorological company Weathernews jointly announced that they had launched a new weather update service by using Stevenson screens built on about 100 cellphone base stations in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, which is named Soratena after sora (meaning ‘sky’) and antenna. The service is available only on KDDI’s feature phone and smart phone handsets.
Every station is personificated and has a unique name after its location, and each of them speaks about what’s happening according to the weather conditions as if it were a human. The installed sensors collect updates of air temperature, air pressure, humidity, rain, ultraviolet strength and sunlight at each location.
This is currently operated in beta and expected to be an official service next April. By then, additional sensor equipments will be installed at another 2,900 base stations nationwide.
In this digitally connected world, do you really need a fax machine? You do need fax service, but you don’t need to own a machine (or even rent one)? 
SuperFax is Fax on the cloud service (from Delhi based knowlarity) that enables you to send and receive faxes via email. Once you sign-in, you will get a phone number that maps to your email address. The number when called gives a fax tone. An SMS is sent to you after the fax is received. Fax will be made available in your mailbox as a PDF attachment.
Similarly, in order to send a fax via email, simply email the attachment to to <stdcode+phonenumber>@superfax.in (example 1244100141@superfax.in) and the attachment will be delivered as a fax.
While sending the fax, the service will automatically retry in case of failure and uses 128-bit encryption technology to ensure the data safety.
What’s really neat is that for sending international fax, you don’t need to pay any ISD fee (check out the rate card).
A very useful service that is aptly suitable for small and medium enterprises. What’s your take?
Also see: Indifax : Email/Fax documents using Mobile
About a year ago Sony Ericsson Launched the world’s first transparent display phone Xperia Pureness, which made the world wowed for it. Now Chinese manufacturer Lenovo is going to launch its own of such kind, which is called S800 ( this name is still not officially confirmed). Lenovo is not just simply going to copy Sony Ericsson’s idea, they got something new. Lenovo S800’s transparent display supports color, while Xperia Pureness’ is just gray.
Lenovo S800 debuted at a sport fashion event hold in Beijing, but the phone is just showed off by models, and not allowed others to touch. But just don’t think it’s just a mock up. A set of pictures circulated on Chinese websites claimed to be secretly taken in models’ dressing room show that Lenovo S800 is a functional phone. In the pictures these beautiful models are paying with the phone, typing on it or using it to take phones.There’s also no information about the launch time and other specs.
