By acquiring the Ottawa, Canada-based QNX, RIM will gain access to its open operating system, Neutrino. The open platform is used across many industry verticals, including telecommunications, medical, defense and automotive.

While QNX’s software is used in life-critical systems such as air traffic control, surgical equipment, and nuclear power plants, it has been used most recently in casino gaming terminals and in-car infotainment systems.

Licenses to Entertain:

The phone maker may be planning to integrate its BlackBerry smartphone functions with in-car audio and infotainment systems in the short term, but for the long term it looks as though RIM may be interested in providing dashboard and communication systems using BlackBerry functions.

“RIM is interested in expanding opportunities for QNX in the automotive sector and other markets,” said Paul Leroux, a spokesperson for QNX. “No question, this is a positive development for QNX.”

“In addition to our interests in expanding the opportunities for QNX in the automotive sector and other markets, we believe the planned acquisition of QNX will also bring other value to RIM in terms of supporting certain unannounced product plans for intelligent peripherals, adding valuable intellectual property to RIM’s portfolio, and providing long-term synergies for the companies based on the significant and complementary OS expertise that exists within the RIM and QNX teams today,” said RIM President Mike Lazaridis.

RIM’s acquisition comes on the heels of QNX announcing that its technology has been licensed for more than 17 million in-vehicle systems worldwide – a 130 percent increase since 2008.

Brands such as Acura, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Nissan and Toyota use QNX software for their hands-free systems, connectivity modules, 3-D navigation systems, or rear-seat entertainment products.

Driving Force Behind In-Vehicle Systems:

QNX intends to keep its existing locations and has no intention of cutting back its staff, according to the company. In fact, the company is currently hiring, according to Leroux.

RIM may also be tapping into QNX’s experience with Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile broadband access technology. QNX, along with a slew of partners, including Lucent and Toyota, was recently selected to collaborate on an LTE-connected car.

Population and changes in demographics will be the driving forces behind changes in the automotive industry, and RIM clearly sees this as a market.

“RIM does not do anything unless it knows there is a market for it,” said Ramon Llamas, an IDC analyst. “They want to do better things with the user experience with smartphones and they are trying to connect the smartphones to other devices. Now they are saying if you are in the car and want to share things with everyone in the car — boom, you can do it.”

In five years, or by 2015, 40 percent of the world will live in cities with populations of more than one million people, and 17 percent will reside in mega-cities with more than five million people, according to Accenture. Those drivers will need in-vehicle systems to better navigate what are expected to be congested city roads. Drivers will also heavily rely on their car to help them decide on the best restaurants and places of entertainment.

When you have finished writing the message you want to delay, select the Options tab. In the More Options area in the Outlook toolbar ribbon, click on the Delay Delivery icon. When the Message Options box appears, go to the Delivery Options area and put a check in the box next to “Do not deliver before.” Select the time and date you want the message to leave. Once you have your delivery time set, click the Close button.

Then click the Send button. Instead of flying off immediately, the message stays put until the designated date and time.

If you need to briefly delay all of your outgoing mail — like when you want to announce an event that you’re currently in a meeting arranging — you can also keep all your messages from leaving your mailbox for up to two hours. Microsoft has detailed instructions for postponing delivery of all messages in Outlook 2007 at bit.ly/3ScSke and instructions for Outlook 2003 users at bit.ly/aPWk7p.

The new site, which was co-created by Stanford University Law fellow Ryan Calo last year and went into beta in March, has rated Facebook’s privacy significantly lower than that of other platforms like Twitter and the iPhone.

“I think people are upset because when you download an app, you don’t have any control over what the app developer sees on your profile,” says Calo. “There’s the perception among users that they don’t need to give away so much information to have the apps do the same thing as they are currently doing.”

WhatApp is a site that rates the privacy, security and openness of web and mobile applications as well as the various platforms they run on. Calo bills it as a Consumer Reports mixed with Yelp and Wikipedia. Experts — lawyers, security gurus and computer scientists — can join the website after being vetted by Calo’s team to rate apps and write in-depth reviews. Everyone else can sign up to write comments, or suggest apps for review.

On the site, Facebook received 2 points out of 5 (5 being the best score) in all three categories of privacy, security and openness. The scores are aggregated from the experts who reviewed the app or platform, but you currently can’t see how many experts took part in the scoring. Calo says this is a feature he is considering adding. A written “expert review” by Calo himself on Facebook also accompanies its scores on WhatApp. Calo dings the social networking site for not allowing the user to customize what information app developers can see on their profile when they download an app.

One Facebook app, called “Lover of the Day” was even put in WhatApp’s “Penalty Box” for its low scores. The reviewer warns readers to be wary, saying that the “privacy policy is a joke” and that the “app wants to run independently of the user, and it wants to collect your email address”

Meanwhile, both Twitter and the iPhone received 3 points each for privacy and security, and 2 points each for openness — a bit better, but far from perfect. Cyrus Nemati, an expert reviewer listed as a web producer for the Center For Democracy & Technology, wrote about the lack of “granular controls” over the user’s privacy settings on the iPhone.

But Calo didn’t create the site just to point out privacy violations. WhatApp is also meant to be a hub for privacy discussions, and to help consumers guard against scams, identity theft, phishing and other security problems.

“We didn’t see much discussion on privacy, security, openness out there,” says Calo. “So we perceived the need for a place where consumers could go to talk to those issues.”

Calo says he also wants to encourage developers to build apps not only for functionality and fun, but with privacy in mind. Developers can use the site to “brag” about their apps’ privacy if they’ve achieved a high rating.

To rate apps on WhatApp, experts answer a few questions like “How much information does this application gather relative to what you think it needs to provide the functionality it promises?” or “To what extent does this application take steps to protect user data or identity, for example, through encryption?”

Calo recognizes that without direct access to an app’s back-end, it can be hard to determine privacy settings, even for an expert. But he says that experts and others can sometimes glean privacy information from testing or using an app, and that the site provides a centralized forum for those discussions. There’s also the added value of having lawyers review long and cryptic user agreements, which users will often click right through.

The site currently has about 26 experts signed up and some 250 apps listed, a number of them already reviewed. Calo received a grant from the Rose Foundation to start WhatApp last year.

Source: http://ow.ly/1ALp9

There isn’t much info yet, but the number alone is huge.  1 billion dollars.

Bloomberg’s Businessweek is reporting that Google is in talks to purchase ITA Software Inc., the company that acts as the brains behind travel sites such as Orbitz.  The reported going price?  A cool billion.  Yes, with a B.

ITA Software is a Cambridge, MA based company that specializes in software solutions for airlines and travel arrangement companies.  Along with Orbitz, ITA’s software is used by Bing Travel, Kayak.com and CheapTickets.

Microsoft has steadily gained market share on Google in search, due in part to the ITA Software integration and ability to find trip information on Microsoft products.  With Google’s implementation of more search features, it is likely that we’re seeing Google position itself to re-take that lost ground by providing travel results of its own.

What’s up Google’s sleeve for certain?  Time will tell.  But keep your eyes open on this one.  Rest assured that we will be, as well.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/

In its latest report on social networking activity in the Asia-Pacific region, comScore says the Google-owned Orkut is ranked as the top social networking site in India, with 46.8 per cent of the nation’s web population using the website. Facebook, on the other hand, ranks numero uno in Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

The study covered all Internet users aged above 15 in these countries, who accessed social networking sites from home and work locations. However, it excluded those visiting the sites through Internet cafes, mobile phones or PDAs. It also did not include China in the study.

The study has found that 50.8 per cent of the total online population in the Asia-Pacific region visited a social networking site in February 2010, translating into a total of 240.3 million visitors during the month.

“While social networking continues to be one of the most popular and fastest growing web activities in the world, its dynamics in the APAC region exhibit significantly more individual market differentiation than in other global regions,” comScore executive vice-president (APAC) Will Hodgman said.

“In some markets, such as the Philippines, Australia and Indonesia, social networking is one of the most popular web activities, reaching nearly 90 per cent of the entire online population, while other markets report less PC-based social networking penetration, which can often be attributed to the high propensity to engage in social networking via mobile devices in these markets,” he added.

About 68.5 per cent of India’s web population accessed social networking sites in February, visiting these sites on an average of 13 times. An average user spent about 2 hours 10 minutes on these sites.

In contrast, Internet users in the Asia-Pacific region spent an average of 2.5 hours on social networking sites during the month and visited the category on an average of 15 times.

Google has added information about bike trails, lanes and recommended roads directly onto the map. This can help the user get a better sense of their route. This new feature also lets the user find trails nearby for a recreational ride. The Maps also has a “Bicycling” layer where the user will see three types of lines appear on the map:

• Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
• Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
• Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes.

The routing suggested for cyclists is designed to avoid freeways and high-traffic areas, and to select gentler terrain by routing around hills. To make it even more useful for riders on the go, Google expects to have a mobile version available in the near future, as well.

While everybody is all geared up to check out Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 event tomorrow, fresh information regarding the same has arrived now. Sources familiar to Apple’s plan say that the company will launch an ad platform which would most likely be called iAd. If that stands true, we may expect future apps to come with ads inside. Apple already owns Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising start up.

At the iPhone Developer centric event, which is just a day away, Apple is expected to talk about the ad platform in applications. The iPhone OS Apps have turned out to be a gold mine for Apple and hence the company wishes to make the best of it. If Apple gets a heads up for introducing the ad platform for mobiles, rival Google will totally jump in its chair. Reason? Even Google will get a strong basis to go ahead and point out potential competition to Federal regulators and thereby purchase AdMob, a mobile advertising company, for $750 million. Originally, Apple intended to by AdMob.

Apple already has an established mobile OS App Store and a hot product – iPad. Apart from that, Apple has massive user data that many advertisers would be interested in for targeting ads. What Apple or Google will gain from mobile ad platforms is a totally different story. For that matter, iPhone App developers will see a win-win situation to earn more by developing applications with ads. However, the big question is, would you pay for application with ads or the one without ads. One possibility could be that future free apps (mostly games) in the app stores may carry ads.

We shall wait another 24 hours to see if the said plans are being followed or not.

Source: http://www.techtree.com/

And while iPhone, Android and iPad are still the top application development candidates for developers, two platforms have made significant inroads with developers. Blackberry has doubled from 21% developer support in January to 43% in March, while Windows Phone has nearly tripled from 13% to 34%. Both vendors have announced major improvements to their device capabilities during the first quarter, which is clearly translating into market opportunity for developers. “I do mostly business applications, so the phones that are big in business are big with me,” claimed one developer interested in both platforms.

This Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software Electronic incorporates information from various sources, capture data at the point of encounter and maintain caregiver decision making process. Ampere Software has enhanced software design and development expertise by adding the advanced technology like.NET 3.5. C#, Ajax, SQL 2008 and HL7 Engine which categorized this product as world class software to improve business process in medical and hospital industry. A dedicated software development team from Ampere developed this software within the timeline and meets the client expectation.

“This EMR Software provides caregiver to check patients check in/out, submit CPT information, treatment plan recommendation, and generate reports very fast” said Nitin Chauhan, CEO of Ampere Software “We are excited to offer innovative, market-leading electronic medical record software that will help our client to get value from Business Process and their applications more quickly.” President, Partner Client based in USA.

Ampere Software, An innovative application software development company launch robust and efficient blackberry mobile application development with all the features integrated like that of calling, text messaging, e-mailing, web browsing, etc. With its “Always On, Always Connected” approach, it connects business users to their e-mail systems, including Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange, and other critical systems (using a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)-based wireless connection.

Developers from Ampere Software build an application with the Blackberry’s Mobile Data System; they are creating amazing that is perfect fit for Enterprise Solution framework. An example of blackberry application would be something like a realtor’s Blackberry financial calculation tools. These applications work inside the Enterprise Solution to give realtors real time financial information that they can easily share with their clients to improve right business decisions.

“This application can be used not only for emails, but also Customer Relationship Management (CRM), field service, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), order entry, Internet and intranet access, instant messaging and more all the tools and applications necessary for you to make key business decisions quickly” said Nitin Chauhan, CEO Ampere Software.

BlackBerry programmer’s team will assist customers to create best logic and then convincing your business process to BlackBerry smart phones platform. In last few years Ampere Software become the major source to develop the highly robust software product for the famous offshore brands across the world and satisfied successfully.