India may not get power-packed Nexus One!

The much-hyped Google's smartphone Nexus One may soon see its India launch. However, according to a Web reports, it will not be the power-packed Nexus One, but a slimmed down version of the Google Android-powered phone.

According to online reports, Google is working on an edition of Google Nexus One for the developing markets like India and Russia that is likely to lack some of the features of the version being sold in the international markets.

The Indian model's pricing is also likely to be less vis-a-vis Nexus One's international pricing.

In January, Google launched its new smartphone Nexus One that it sells directly to consumers. Dubbed as "superphone" by Google, the phone aims to challenge the likes of Apple, Blackberry and Nokia.

On looks front, Nexus One measures 119mm (H) X 59.8mm (W) X 11.5mm (D), and weighs 130 grams. Featuring a 3.7-inch (9.4 centimeter) AMOLED touchscreen display, the phone has been designed in partnership with Taiwan's HTC Corp. HTC also made the first Android-powered phone.

The `pencil-thin' Nexus One offers a 5 megapixel camera (with auto focus, a 2x digital zoom and LED flash) and video recording at 20fps (720 x 480).

On memory front, Nexus One packs 512MB Flash, 512MB RAM and 4GB Micro SD Card which can be expanded to 32 GB.

Delhi Metro powered by Google

DMRC and Google India announced their partnership through Google Transit, to provide complete information on Delhi Metro schedules and r
outes.

Transit service for Delhi Metro would also be available on mobile devices with Google Maps for Mobile, so commuters can check the latest updates to make route changes on-the-go. Google Transit which is a way to navigate on Google maps can give easy information on train timings, station locations, frequency of service, time taken for travel and ticket fares.

"In line with Delhi Metro's vision for a people-centred public transport system, we have launched several initiatives to help commuters better manage their travel time, transfers, and make more informed transport decisions. The collaboration with Google is another step in this direction to make it even easier for the public to plan their trips with transit information on Google Maps", said E Sreedharan, Managing Director, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

How Google Transit will work

• The user searches for information to reach from Place A to B on Google Maps
• The result shows a map with the possible route and driving directions for the commuter
• By choosing the transit option, commuters would get first hand information on Delhi metro's schedule and passing lines in that area
• Commuters get to see the step-by-step directions for the entire route including schedules, travel time and fares for each leg of the trip in text and on the map
• Commuters can also switch on the Layers option on desktop and mobile to get a quick snapshot of the entire Metro network. They can click the station icons to get train information for that station.

Google also provides information on Chennai MRTS, Kolkata Metro, Hyderabad Metro transit services to commuters in Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad respectively.

Microsoft launches Web-based OS in India

The world's largest software maker Microsoft made its cloud-based operating system commercially available for Indian users.

The computer power on Windows Azure, a cloud-based operating system hosted in Microsoft's data centers, will be available at $0.12 on an hourly basis, while storage on Azure will cost enterprises $0.15 per GB on a monthly basis.

The web edition of its database service SQL Azure will be available at about $10 per month for up to 1 GB. The business edition of its database service will be priced at about $100 per month for up to 10 GB of database per month.

Rajan Anandan, managing director, Microsoft India, said, "All of our popular products are already cloud-ready, and we have a clear future roadmap to provide anytime, anywhere access across diverse devices spanning computer, mobile and Internet."

The company claims to have over 3,000 applications developed from India that are currently hosted on the cloud platform. It already claims to have about 250 small and medium-sized customers in India. There are about 22,000 developers from India who are making applications on the Azure platform.

Companies like Infosys, HCL Technologies, Persistent Software, Wings Info, Cerebrate and CDC Software are developing commercial applications and solutions on Windows Azure platform.

Microsoft's estimates reveal that with the Windows Azure Platform, customers and partners can realise a reduction in Total Cost of Operations of key workloads by up to 30 to 40% over a three year period. The announcement makes Microsoft one of the few companies in India that is ready to offer cloud-based services across all three service layers in the cloud, including infrastructure, platform and software applications.

For software-as-a-service, Microsoft had launched Microsoft Online Services, Office Web Apps, Microsoft Hosted Dynamics, Office Communication online and SharePoint online in November last year.

For infrastructure-as-a-service, Microsoft had launched its offerings via Reliance ADAG, Netmagic last year. The platform as a service stack was rolled out as part of Windows Azure and SQL Azure launch.

It's official: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

London: A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades.

A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years' worth of research to try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction, which created a "hellish environment" around 65 million years ago and wiped out more than half of all species on the planet.

Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years.

The new study, conducted by scientists from Europe, the United States, Mexico, Canada and Japan and published in the journal Science, found that a 15-kilometre (9 miles) wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in what is now Mexico was the culprit.

"We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London, a co-author of the review.

The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth with a force a billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

Morgan said the "final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs" came when blasted material flew into the atmosphere, shrouding the planet in darkness, causing a global winter and "killing off many species that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment."

Scientists working on the study analysed the work of palaeontologists, geochemists, climate modellers, geophysicists and sedimentologists who have been collecting evidence about the KT extinction over the last 20 years.

Geological records show the event that triggered the dinosaurs' demise rapidly destroyed marine and land ecosystems, they said, and the asteroid hit "is the only plausible explanation for this".

Peter Schulte of the University of Erlangen in Germany, a lead author on the study, said fossil records clearly show a mass extinction about 65.5 million years ago -- a time now known as the K-Pg boundary.

Despite evidence of active volcanism in India, marine and land ecosystems only showed minor changes in the 500,000 years before the K-Pg boundary, suggesting the extinction did not come earlier and was not prompted by eruptions.

The Deccan volcano theory is also thrown into doubt by models of atmospheric chemistry, the team said, which show the asteroid impact would have released much larger amounts of sulphur, dust and soot in a much shorter time than the volcanic eruptions could have, causing extreme darkening and cooling.

Gareth Collins, another co-author from Imperial College, said the asteroid impact created a "hellish day" that signalled the end of the 160-million-year reign of the dinosaurs, but also turned out to be a great day for mammals.

"The KT extinction was a pivotal moment in Earth's history, which ultimately paved the way for humans to become the dominant species on Earth," he wrote in a commentary on the study.

Don't press F1 in Windows XP: Microsoft

The software giant Microsoft has told Windows XP users not to press the F1 key when prompted by a Web site, as part of a security advisory.

The advisory has been issued regarding an unpatched vulnerability that hackers could exploit to hijack PCs running Internet Explorer (IE). In the advisory, Microsoft confirmed the unpatched bug in VBScript that Polish researcher Maurycy Prodeus had revealed last week.

"The vulnerability exists in the way that VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using Internet Explorer. If a malicious Web site displayed a specially crafted dialog box and a user pressed the F1 key, arbitrary code could be executed in the security context of the currently logged-on user. On systems running Windows Server 2003, Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration is enabled by default, which helps to mitigate against this issue," reads the advisory.

Recently, Prodeus called the bug a "logic flaw," and said attackers could exploit it by feeding users malicious code disguised as a Windows help file and convincing them to press the F1 key when a pop-up appeared. Such files have a ".hlp" extension.

Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are impacted by the bug, said Microsoft, and any supported versions of Internet Explorer (IE) on those operating systems, including IE6 on Windows XP, could be exploited by hackers.

The security advisory said, "Our analysis shows that if users do not press the F1 key on their keyboard, the vulnerability cannot be exploited."

Users can also thwart the attacks by disabling Windows Help.

Google acquires photo-editing site Picnik

Google Inc acquired online photo-editing site Picnik, as the Web search leader continues with a deal binge includes three acquisitions in about three weeks.

Google did not disclose the financial terms of the deal for Picnik, a 5-year-old Seattle-based start-up which said on its website that it has 20 employees.

Google spokesman Andrew Pederson said in an email message that the Picnik team has joined Google's Seattle office and will work with Google's Picasa group.

Picasa is Google's Web photo sharing service. The deal is the latest example of Google's increasing appetite for acquisitions, as the company's core Internet search business has benefited from a recovery in the advertising sector.

In October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company would resume its historic pace of acquiring one small company per month on average, with larger deals happening every year or two.

Last month Google acquired Aardvark, a social search engine and mobile Web email service reMail. Since September, Google has acquired 8 companies, said Pederson.

Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference conference on Monday, said that Google was beefing up its ranks as business conditions improve.

"The bottleneck for us right now is engineering. How many engineers can we find given that we have all these great opportunities?" Pichette said.

Picnik allows users to edit online photos from directly within a Web browser, eliminating the need for special, stand-alone editing software.

Hyd: Octopus reduced to role of guard

The state government is in no mood to restore to Octopus its original role of fighting urban terrorism and wants to use it as one of the security agencies of the police department.

The government has not taken any action so far on the suggestion of principal home secretary Gautam Kumar that the use of Octopus commandos for guarding strategic installations and important places of worship would render them useless to fight terrorists. "There are agencies that are trained to guard places on the hit list of terrorists. Octopus which has a specific task cut out for itself should not be wasted," Gautam Kumar said at a meeting chaired by the chief minister. Soon after the meeting it seemed that Kumar's sane advice would be given heed to, but a few days later this idea has been given up.

The first batch of Octopus commandos comprising about 300 men are posted at Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD). Its second batch of commandos -completing training -are expected to be posted at Shar, Sriharikota. Based on the central intelligence inputs over the years the police have narrowed down on about six spots that the terrorists might target.

The Octopus was created in the aftermath of the twin bomb blasts in September 2007. As per original plan it was supposed to be a composite force comprising various wings to take care of the entire gamut of terror-related activities such as intelligence collection, data analysis and operation. But the agency even before it could take off fell victim to ego problems of top cops.

After finding it unable to raise the kind of force originally envisaged, the government decided last year to reduce the Octopus to an operational unit and handed over its earlier mandate of intelligence collection part to the existing counter-intelligence cell. The operations unit, without its own eyes and ears, will now be used in situations like hostage crisis, building seizures and bomb attacks. In the beginning the Octopus was supposed to be provided with choppers for quick deployment and stationed at at least three designated spots in the state with headquarters in Hyderabad. But now Octopus commando units would be sent to at least five more strategic and sensitive spots.

Police officers who term the deployment of Octopus commandos at TTD and other places as misuse of the force point out that while Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) has job of guarding central government installations such as airports and Nuclear Fuel Complex, it is the task of the AP Special Protection Force to keep a watch on important government structures such as Secretariat, dams and power plants.

They argued that given the recent explosions in Pune it is fair to believe that the threat of terrorist attacks in the state is still alive. They believe that since the Octopus has been raised on the lines of National Security Guards, the force which was used during Mumbai attacks, its role can be diluted only at the peril of public security. The force should be attached to the counter intelligence cell and work under the direct supervision of the director general of police. The state government has been using this model in case of special intelligence branch and the Greyhounds, both of which are dedicated to fighting left wing extremism, for the last 25 years. If this model can work against the naxalites why it cannot be used for fighting terrorism, they wondered.