Indian Court Orders 22 Websites to Remove Offensive Content

A court in Delhi on Saturday ordered 22 Internet companies, including Google and Facebook, to remove certain "anti-religious" and "anti-social" content, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

India has been concerned recently about online content that it considers objectionable, with the country's Minister for Communications and IT, Kapil Sibal, calling on Internet companies to develop a framework to ensure that such content does not appear online. The government's critics however hold that it wants to censor online content critical of India's politicians.

The companies have until February 6 to report compliance to the court, detailing what action they have taken to remove the objectionable and derogatory content from the websites, PTI said. The judge was acting on a private complaint. Sibal was at the center of a controversy earlier this month after newspaper reports said that he had asked Internet companies to pre-filter objectionable content before it was posted online. Executives of two Internet companies confirmed, on condition of anonymity, that Sibal had indeed made the demand.

The minister however subsequently denied in television interviews that he had asked for pre-filtering of content, which he said would have been a "foolish" proposal. Sibal said he was talking to Internet companies to push for a mechanism to remove offensive content after it is posted. Some of the Internet companies were allowing content that would fail to live up to the laws that they are enforcing in their own country by their own community standards, he told one TV channel.

India's Information Technology Act requires intermediaries like Internet service providers to remove content that is found objectionable within a period of 36 hours of being notified of the content. Intermediaries are also required to warn users against posting or uploading a variety of objectionable content in their user agreements and other rules and regulations.

Very often demands by the government for removal of content have gone unheeded by the Internet companies, and the companies have also declined to provide information on who has posted the content, Sibal said. While private persons have the option to approach courts to get content they consider objectionable removed under various Indian laws, some of them have complained that the court process ensures that the objectionable content often continues online during the duration of the case. Some Internet companies also pass the blame to their parent companies in the U.S., saying that they run the websites.

The order of the Delhi court on Saturday however requires the Internet companies to remove the content considered objectionable until disposal of the suit, Santosh Pandey, the lawyer for the prosecution, told a local TV channel in Delhi. "We comply with valid court orders wherever possible, consistent with our long standing policy," Google said in an e-mailed statement on Saturday. "We're yet to receive the details of this order and can't comment on this specific case." Other Internet companies were not available immediately for comment on the Delhi court order.

Source : Indian Court Orders 22 Websites to Remove Offensive Content

Google Helps You Follow Santa with Smartphones and Social Media

Technology is making it easy and fun to follow Santa this Christmas.

Android phones, Twitter, Google, and YouTube are among the tools you can use to keep tabs on the jolly old elf during his travels for Sunday's holiday.

Google Earth and Google Maps

The easiest way to see what Santa's up to is to visit NoradSanta.org where you can see an embedded map of Santa's journey. The North American Aerospace Defense Command says the man in red officially began his annual journey across the globe at 2 a.m. EST time Saturday morning. If you'd rather see Santa in all his glory on Google Earth, click the "Track Santa On Google Earth" button in the bottom right corner of the map. This will prompt you to download the Google Earth Plug-in for your browser (Windows 2000 or higher and Mac OS X 10.5 or higher).

Smartphones

You can easily track Santa from any mobile device equipped with Google Maps, including Android smartphones and tablets, the iPhone, and the iPad. Open up Google Maps on your device and search for "Santa" to see the man in red's most recent location. If you don't have a Google Maps app on your device, point your web browser to m.google.com/maps. Android and iPhone users can also download NORAD's free official Santa tracking app from the App Store or Android Market. Both stores have many Santa-tracking apps, so make sure you get the official version called NORAD Tracks Santa by Visionbox. The app updates with Santa's current location and you can also play a game called Elf Toss where you try to help the elves load Santa's sleigh in time for Christmas Eve.

Social Media

One of the fastest ways to keep tabs on Santa is through NORAD's official Track Santa Twitter feed providing constant updates of Santa's location and links to the latest videos recording his journey. You can also find NORAD tracking Santa on Facebook, Google+, and Santa's latest videos for 2011 on NoradSanta.org or NORAD Tracks Santa page on YouTube. Just like last year, you can also visit SendACallFromSanta.com to send a personalized holiday greeting from Santa to any phone number in North America. And you can have the kids call Santa's Google Voice number at 1-855-34-SANTA (72682) to leave a voicemail for the man in red. Santa's sleigh, dubbed Santa One, was recently cleared to fly over American skies at an altitude of 50,000 feet.

Tracking Santa Through the Years

The annual tradition of using military technology to track Santa was born in the 1950s.

A newspaper ad that was intended to publish a special telephone number for calling Santa on Christmas Eve instead printed the direct number for the commander-in-chief of Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), the predecessor to NORAD. As calls started pouring in to CONAD that night, Director of Operations Colonel Harry Shloup did not disappoint the young callers and had his staff check the radar for signs of Kris Kringle's sleigh.

Source : Google Helps You Follow Santa with Smartphones and Social Media

Beetel Launches Touchscreen Mobile Phone GD470

Beetel Teletech has entered an already overcrowded mobile market with the launch of GD470, its first full touchscreen mobile handset for  India. The GD470 sports a 2.8-inch screen and comes with dual-SIM capabilities. Beetel Teletech adds that the phone comes with a host of customized applications, which they believe should entice the Indian masses.

Below is the specifications of the Beetel's GD470 :
 

•2.8-inch, full touchscreen
•1.3 MP camera
•Bluetooth
•Video play - .3GP, .AVI, .MP4 formats up to 25fps
•MP3 playback facility (MIDI, AMR and WAV support)
•FM radio
•Expandable memory upto 8GB
 

Additionally, the GD470 comes loaded with 'Beetel World', which includes a host of social networking and infotainment features, like Facebook, Snaptu, Mig 33, Yahoo!, ibibo, Vuclip, Reuters, Hungama and Penguin. Beetel adds that the GD470 can also be used as a sound recorder.
 

Price specification for Beetel's GD470 is Rs. 3,300.

Source : Beetel Launches Touchscreen Mobile Phone GD470

Twitter celebrates Hindi Diwas by adding Hindi support

When Twitter celebrated its milestone moment of reaching 100 million user count, it made an announcement, too. The microblogging site was soon going to roll out additional language support for its homogenous user base. Yesterday, when the nation celebrated 'Hindi Diwas', it just seemed to be the perfect day to have Twitter launch translation support for Hindi. Beginning from yesterday, users can choose to tweet in Hindi, by simply changing their default language preference to 'Hindi' in the 'Settings' tab.

Once the above mentioned settings are changed, all instructions on the page get translated to Hindi. For example, instructions like - "What's happening?" gets translated to "Kya ho raha hain?",  "Help" gets translated to "Sahayta", "Search" gets translated to "Khoje", and so on. This move by Twitter came by when a report stated that of all tweets on the site, only 50 percent were in English.

Source : Twitter celebrates Hindi Diwas by adding Hindi support

Google+ releases API for developers

While Facebook has been rolling out features this week with improved lists and subscribe buttons, Google+ has stayed quiet for the most part. Now, however, Google+ is releasing part of their API for developers saying, "This is just the beginning". This means there will now be outside applications for Google+, however, they have laid some pretty strict rules for third party developers. Some of the principles Google has laid for their developers include, "put the user first, be transparent, and respect user data". The API was released on public data only, which means they can only retrieve public posts and public profile data.

Developers note that there are not a lot of APIs in this release, and it only allows for querying of a single person or an activity/action on Google+. So third party apps like Tweetdeck or HootSuite could be created to display what's going on on Google+, but they will not let users post to Google+. Because the APIs are so simple, the app approval procedure is also simple, they only request to know who the developer is on Google. Given that this is only an initial release, more releases of Google+ APIs are sure to come. Which means more potential for Google+ to be more ubiquitous.

Source : Google+ releases API for developers

Facebook App that Notify Users for Malicious Content

At a time when the virtual space, especially social networks are rife with spam attacks, and hackers on the loose, an attempt by a bunch of students surely seems to be a force to reckon with.

Students belonging to the University of California’s graduate class, Md. Sazzadur Rahman and Ting-Kai-Huang, and a company run by the school’s alumnus, put their heads together and developed a free Facebook application called MyPageKeeper.org, which the founders claim is capable of detecting spam, malware that are found on the walls, and news feeds of the user’s Facebook account. The app, according to the founders aims at delivering real-time protection from viruses, spam to the users. Web protection service, StopTheHacker.com encouraged the construction of the app.

The recent spate of malware attacks on Facebook, and other web domains have given more than enough reasons for attempts like these. Facebook, at present has over a staggering 700 million members, and miscreants have found it to be a place where it was easy to target people into letting spam into their profiles. Contradicting this, MyPageKeeper.org once installed into one’s profile, begins actively scanning the user’s wall posts, news feeds to see if any malicious content was posted. If found any, the app would immediately notify the user of the same and prompt him to remove the malicious content. The app, for now can be downloaded for free off www.MyPageKeeper.org. Although just recently started, the app already has won the confidence of several users.

Source : Facebook App that Notify Users for Malicious Content