YAHOO PAYS $28 MILLIONS ON UNPROFITABLE ONLINE ADS

 Yahoo Inc. has brought an unprofitable online advertising service called 5 to 1 Holding Corp. for $28 million to increase it's revenue growth.

The deal announced Wednesday to provide yahoo with more tools to place online ads for big companies looking to promote their brands.

About 20 websites work with 5 to 1 to sell their unused advertising spaces. Those efforts haven't been fruitful for 5 to 1, which has been losing money since it's 2008 inception.

Last 5 years 5 to 1 has lost about $9 million on revenue of less than $1 million. The company based in Santa Monica had 19 employees, including five sales representatives, as of March, according to a filling with  the securities and exchange commission. The same filling indicated that 5 to 1 need to raise it's revenue to keep it's operating next year.

Yahoo's earnings have risen recently, but it's ad revenue hasn't kept up with the rest of internet. Last year for instance Yahoo's ad revenue has increased by just 1 percent while total ad sales on internet climbed 15 percent.

The financial funk has weighed on Yahoo's stock price, leaving it far below the $33 a share that the company could have gotten had it accepted a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp. three years ago. Yahoo shares felt 4 cents on Wednesday to close at $15.96.

E-BOOK SALES SURPASS PRINTED BOOKS

 Amazon.com Inc, said that after less than four years of selling electronic books, it's now selling more of them than printed books.

The online retailer said, that from April 1st, more than 105 e-books were sold for every 100 printed books including printed books for which there is no electronic edition. The comparison exclude free e-books, which would increase the scale further if they were included.

Printed books include both hardcover and paperback books. In July, Amazon said, that e-books sales had outstripped hardcover sales. It is now selling three times as many e-books as it did a year a ago.

Analyst estimates that Amazon accounts for about two-third of U.S e-books sales.

Amazon also said that it's latest and cheapest version of Kindle e-book reading device is the best seller of the line, five weeks after it was introduced. The Kindle with special offer costs $114, and shows ads in stand-by mode.

NOW ACCESS FACEBOOK ON PHONES WITHOUT INTERNET

Singapore based software application developer U20pia has developed a new application for mobile phones that will allow them to access Facebook on all kinds of handsets without paying for data connection.

"We ar using USSD technology which will enable users to access Facebook on their mobile phones without having GPRS connection on their phones," said Sumesh Menon the co-founder and CEO of U2opia mobile.

Unstructured Supplementary Data (USSD) is the technology used by telecom players to send the alerts to the users that informs them about their balance at the end of each call or for sending miss call alerts.

Menon mentioned though the technology will not provide access to graphics, it will help users to send and view upates on their fiends' walls in Facebook.

"It's like SMS, and hence the load on the network is negligible. We have biult some commands through which users can receive alerts on activity happening on his wall as well post an update," said Menon.

U2opia launched this application in India today with telecom major Bharati Airtel. While Airtel customers can update their Facebook status through thie USSD service at free of cost, Rs.1 per day will be charged for accessing the full feature of this apllication which enables viewing news feeds and liking news feed stories, posting on friend's walls confirming friend's requests, viewing notifications and finding and adding friends as well.

"In Indian market scenario where the penetration of smart phones is relatively low and the use of internet on mobile phones is limited only to key cities, many users are exclude from accessing their Facebook accounts from their mobile phones," said Sheerish Joshi, Bharathi Airtel.

"We look forward to bring millions of Facebook users in India closer to their for social networking by allowing them to access at any time, any where on their Airtel powered mobile phones," said Joshi.

NOW, A FOLDABLE SMARTPHONE SCREEN

Mobile phone manufacturers have unsucessfully tried to make smaller devices with big screens. But the sheer impossibilty of creating seamless screen nixed the idea of folding phone. Till now.

Researchers at Samsung Institute of Technology, South Korea, have a built a prototype of seamless foldable display that opens upto look like that of regular phone.

The display consists of two Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) panals covered by silicon window that prevents scratches and acts as touch screen, the Daily Mail reports.

When folded down they are separated by  just a gap of  one millimetre. But when open one panel lies completely over the other and appears as seamless.

The researchers tested the foldable display's durability by performing 100,000 folding and unfolding cycles. They said that key to success was controlling the optical properties of material.

"All the materials in foldable window unit (glass and silicon rubber) must have almost the same optical properties and attach to each other strongly without any property change," Samsung's Hongshik Shim said.

This new type of technology have not taken off so far because of high maufacturing costs.

Samsung hopes that this large screen display will be available soon with AMOLED technology. 

ANGRY BIRDS LANDS IN CHROME WEB BROWSER

Rovio's Angry Bird is landing on the Chrome in the first version of addictively popular smart phones and tablets game tailored for play on computer web browser.

"We wanted to bring the Angry Bird's to the web or a long time," Peter Vestebacka of Finnish software firm Rovio said while launching the new version of at Google developers conference in San Fransico.

"One of the reasons we've been angry is we've' not able to bring this to the web, until today."

Vesterbacka stepped on a stage during conference keynote at which Google engineers showed off Chrome browser improvements that include ramped-up graphics speeds for smooth rendering of imagery in games.

"We are bringing 'Angy Birds' to the biggest platform of the web and it's one of the best version that is built to date," Vesterbacka said , it really rocks, as you will see.

Once the game is installed in the Chrome browser, the game can be entirely even if the internet if the computer is not connected to the internet.

"It will make those flights more bearable," said vesterbacka, who is referred to as Rovio's "Mighty Eagle."

Angry Birds has shot to pop culture stardom and lauched Rovio into world wide fame.

Millions of tablets and smart phone users have downloaded the game and are tapping at their devices, catapulting cartoonish birds into absurd fortresses built by little green pigs who have stolen the birds' eggs.  
         

APPLE TOPPLES GOOGLE AS WORLD'S MOST VALUABLE BRAND

                          

Technology giant Apple emerged as world's most valuable brand surpassing search engine major Google.

The iphone marker's brand is valued at $153.3 billion, an 84% increase since last year.Mean while google's brand is now valued at $111.5 billion, a 2% fall from 2010.

ICICI brand is the lone Indian company to feature in the list of top 100 global brands. With a brand value of $14.9 billion, India;s largest private sector lender ICICI bank is ranked at 53rd position  in the league of world's 100 most valuable brands compiled by global brand agency Millward Brown. This is the second straight appearance for ICICI bank in annual brandZ study.

Interestingly the report said that with a rise of 27% in brand value to $8.2 billion, India's Infosys was one of the most valuable technology brands in the world and is expected to soon rank among the top 100 most valuable global brands across all sectors.

IBM has bagged the third position with a brand value of $100.84 billion followed by Mcdonalds ($81.01 billion)    and Microsoft ($78.24 billion).

The BrandZ index calculates brand value on several factors, such as an estimate of Brand's contribution to earnings, valuation of intangible assets, measure of customer perception and an estimate of growth potential.

The Brand rankings are dominated by technology companies, with six out of top 10 places cornered by Apple, Google, IBM ,Microsoft, AT & T, China mobile.

Other brands in the list include- Coca cola (6th), Vodafone (12th), Toyota(27th), HSBC (28th), Colgate (55th), Pepsi (63rd), Intel (58th) and Samsung (67th).  

FACEBOOK IN INDIA HITS 25 MILLION MARK !!!!!

 The number of users in India has crossed 2.5 million mark, the social networking site said Thursday.

"Facebook currently has 25 million users in India," said David Fischer vice president advertising and global operations Facebook at an interactive advertising and digital marketing exhibition, Ad-Tech.

Facebook has become one of the most popular websites for interactive internet users in the recent past in India, leaving behind other social networking sites such as Orkut and Twitter.

"We are also looking forward to build strong relationship with India's strong network of developers and entrepreneurs who are increasingly harnessing Facebook to create unique sharing experiences on the social web" said the company.

The 25 million and growing Facebook users in India range from business people and students to public figures and institutions, including Finance minister Pranabh Mukarjee, the Delhi traffic police and perfectionist Amir Khan.

From January Muncipal Corporation of Delhi has aloso started using Facebook to post problems for immediate action onn ares like garbage cleaning and sanitation.