Song Search on Google..

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The next thing Google is coming up after its very successful text and image search is music search!

Not only searching but users can also play the song after searching for it on pop up music players and not only that album art would also be displayed for ease of identification.. isn’t it cool?!!

Warner Music Group Corp., which invested $20million into this venture with Google, benefits with the exposure to the company on each of the music searches on Google.

I think stuff that adds value to consumers is going to be a hit and so be it for Google and its song/music search features..

Cricket ** India – Australia Match 2 at Nagpur

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Hey that’s a superb score after the exiting finish on the first match of the tournament. 354 runs in 50 overs is pretty well done. I watched till around 240+ runs at our pantry when we were 4 down and around 36th over. I had a doubt on the score we could make. But I guess we’ve got a wonderful score and are on our way to win this match for sure…  Any other opinions??

Ah, just learnt Dhoni put in a very impressive 124 runs off 107 balls! This boy has got some guts..mate! Good luck at Nagpur it seems..

And finally as expected we won! With such a huge total it is very difficult for any opposition team to sail through easily..but winning with 99 runs was good..

Google to be your new 3G/WIMAX provider?

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Would google be your neighbourhood 3G/WIMAX Internet service provider?

This could really be true, as per some reports on some top tech and news reports. Google may bid in the upcoming auction for 3G and WIMAX spectrum in India in joint venture with a local venture, as per the telecom regulation here. The regulation allows for up to 74% ownership of such a venture by a foreign firm.

The reason here is again that India has a very low per capita penetration of internet usage and when the new users hop on to the web using their mobile phones or PCs or laptops, google could leverage its already big clout by offering more services other than the ISP business.

Also, according to a report by ASSOCHAM, by 2014 WiMAX subscribers would outnumber 3G subscribers. It is expected to touch 60 million users compared to 20 million for 3G. So, to access the WIMAX space, Google is probably using the 3G license auction as a route.

Whatever the case, its going to be more that more services and google applications would be being available to the end customers in India, including the rural areas which could come as a bane.

Yahoo Geocities is Closed..

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Hey, do you remember Yahoo Geocities? Or were you using it lately? Sorry for some bad news; its closed now.  I remember building my first few Internet pages on Geocities and then moving on to my rediff.com account to create some personalized web pages.

I was doing my MBA some 7 years back when I was using the geocities.. so it took some time for me to recollect what it really was!

There are a lot of alternatives now though which allow you to create custom pages. The bloggers are pretty good at push button publishing, but I think for making some Internet pages, if one couldn’t afford or technologically build up a web site, it was a pretty good alternative.

I believe this is another closure of business from Yahoo after they closed the Yahoo Photos site of theirs. I think adopters of the web in the early 2000’s would have used these sites and would have loved Yahoo for all the bouquet of services they offered! Some nostalgia of course…

Hope not sto see more Yahoo services being closed out.. wish you luck Yahoo.. there needs to be some competitor to Google right?

Exchange Traded Securities

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Hello, have you heard of exchange traded funds(ETFs) the now popular investment instruments for financial investors? Well, if not, here are some notes on these instuments. ETFs are quite wonderful instruments, to understand, are something like mutual funds being composed of a basket or portfolio of securities, but the best part is that unlike the mutual funds, these can be bought and sold on exchanges just like stock..so just providing that special edge required especially in these choppy and volatile markets.

To take the discussion a bit further, these ETFs typically constitute their portfolios by being based on an underlying “Index” chosen by the issuer. So, these ETFs try to replicate the movement of the Index by creating a portfolio of stock with the same constituent stocks as the Index and in the same ratio as in the Index. The portfolio thus created, forms the base for the ETF and in effect shares of this investment portfolio are offered as ETF shares.

The popular ETFs and ETF companies are Realty Funds Inc. offering the “Adelante Shares” range of Real estate exchange traded funds, the popular iShares from Barclays, PowerShares from Invesco, NETS ETFs from Northern Trust, Vanguard ETFs, WisdomTree ETFs , the Spiders or SPDRs from State Street, HealthShares, Claymore ETFs and many others.

From the list of the issuers itself we can assess the popularity of these instruments. Each of these issuers further issue tens or some even a hundred and more ETFs. The ETFs from these various issuers are based on a variety of aspects like some issue ETFs based on the various sectors of industry like the WisdomTree International Basic Materials Sector Fund, Intl. Communications Sector Fund, Intl. Energy Sector Fund and some choose to create funds based on performance of Indices in different countries like say, NETS TOPIX Index Fund based on Japanese securities, WisdomTree India Earnings Fund etc. Some other areas on which the ETFs could be based on are Growth or value prospects like from iShares, disease and medicine company based like from HealthShares etc. So, each issuer chooses a specturm of areas and opputrunities to target their ETFs on, so that investors can pick and choose the geography or Index or a sector on which they would like their ETFs to be based on.

The World is small!