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10 top tech stories of the week [Tech News] [Times of India](Times of India Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Here's a quick look at what made news in the world of technology in the week just gone by... In its Government Requests Report for the first half of 2014, Facebook revealed that India led the world in restricting access to content on the social networking website. The report says that Facebook India blocked nearly 5,000 posts, following requests from government and others to act against 'hate content' on social media platforms India was also, with 4,559 demands for user information in the period. Disappointed at the lack of clearance to its bid to acquire the assets of Mumbai-based telecom operator Loop Telecom, Bharti Airtel has pulled out of the deal, just weeks before the ailing company's licence ends. Loop Mobile had entered into an MoU with Bharti Airtel in February that entailed transfer of its business assets and liabilities in a Rs 700 crore transaction. However, Trai and Department of Telecom raised objection to the transaction on the grounds that it did not give a choice to nearly 3-million subscribers (1.7 million at present) of Loop Telecom to port out to an operator of their choice. Whatsapp, which recently announced that, now lets you know when the messages you send have been read. The double ticks, which signify that messages have been delivered on the recipients' phones, now turn blue when they open the message. This feature is being gradually rolled out on Android and iOS across the world, including in India. According to WhatsApp, this feature is available for iOS, Android, Windows, BlackBerry, BlackBerry 10 and Symbian devices. Microsoft, the world's largest software company, will now give away a comprehensive mobile edition of Office. The free software for iPads, iPhones and Android tablets will do most of the most essential things people normally do with the computer versions of the product. Though Microsoft already offers a mobile version of Office, users till now needed to pay a subscription fee to Microsoft. Now the company is doing away with those hindrances. It is starting to test similarly full-featured and free Office apps for tablets running Android, Google's mobile operating system. And it is updating Office apps for iPhone to allow editing, at a time when Apple's new big-screen smartphones are making it easier to get work done on the devices. Airtel raises postpaid tariff, woos users via free internet Airtel has announcedby about 12% in select plans, effective December in Delhi NCR region. Industry sources said Airtel has increased rates across low rental plans. "Effective Dec 3 2014, bill plan rental for your Airtel mobile will be revised from Rs 199 per month to Rs 224 per month," Airtel said in a message to its customers. On the other hand, the company also. Airtel is set to offer free internet to subscribers for trial as it looks to convert more users into 'internet users' to push up revenues and profits. Airtel aims to offer limited-period free trails for popular services like Facebook, Youtube, Snapdeal, Makemytrip and Twitter, along with tutorials. Once the user likes a service and wants more, the company will offer you dirt-free solutions - for example, pay Re 1 for using Facebook or Twitter for a day. This will be done as part of a new initiative - One Touch Internet. Facebook CEO holds first-ever public Q&A Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week held his first-ever open Q&A session, where he answered a number of questions thrown his way by the public. Among the questions Zuckerberg answered wasand. Samsung has cut the prices of its Galaxy S5 and S5-LTE smartphones in India yet again. The Galaxy S5 smartphone is now listed at Rs 34,900, marking a drop of Rs 2,600. In October this year, the smartphone's price had been reduced from Rs 43,250 to Rs 37,500. Galaxy S5-LTE, which features support for faster 4G data downloads than Galaxy S5, now costs Rs 36,900. This marks a reduction of Rs 3,400 from its previous price tag of Rs 40,300. According to recent report, Google has delayed the release of Android 5.0 update because of a Wi-Fi bug that drained the battery in Nexus 5 units. This bug has been acknowledged by Google's Trevor Johns, who has said, "Android Engineering is aware of an issue affecting Nexus 5 users running Android 5.0 which causes significant "Miscellaneous" battery usage while Wi-Fi is enabled. This appears to be caused by an abnormally high number of IRQ wakeup events. We are continuing to investigate this issue." The report claims that Google now plans to release the Android 5.0 build for Nexus devices on November 12. According to a report, Apple will not produce 7.9-inch iPad mini models starting next year. Instead, it will concentrate on the long-rumoured iPad Pro model. This means that iPad mini 3 will be the last of Apple's small-screen tablets. This could be a major reason for the lack of major improvements in iPad Mini 3 compared to its predecessor. iPad mini not only faces competition from the big-screen iPad Air, but also from iPhone 6 Plus. Germany's biggest news publisher Axel Springer has scrapped a move to block Google from running snippets of articles from its newspapers, saying that the experiment had caused traffic to its sites to plunge. Springer said a two-week-old experiment to restrict access by Google to some of its publications had caused web traffic to plunge for these sites, leading it to row back and let Google once again showcase Springer news stories in its search results. (c) 2014 Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited |