Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Google Adds a new tool of ‘Quick Flight Search’ To Its Powerful Search Engine


Google has just added yet another extremely useful tweak to its powerful search engine, this time making it considerably easier to hurriedly search flight information anytime. Now any user typing simple keywords like “flights from [a city] to [another city]” in the Google search engine will, in less than a second, a very concise and quickly display of a summarized version of all flight information, right on top of the results on the page.
Image representing Google Search as depicted i...Image via CrunchBase
All the analysts who have tested this new tool of Google have declared it to be extremely helpful and successful. It was officially announced, and perhaps released, by Google on Friday through its Inside Search blog. All the analysts claim that the result of almost all major cities comes instantly and this feature ‘works like a charm.’
For Example, if a user types in Google Search: “flight LA SF”, it will instantly display the lengthy list of all the flights going to and coming from either cities. Moreover, it will almost always include the name of Airlines and the duration of a non-stop flight as well. Moreover, if you type precisely, like “flights LA,” Google will give a brief list of every flight coming to LA from all airports worldwide, also additively including the name of airlines and flight durations. Users will also be able to search for the flights originating from one place, by typing “flights from [your destination],” and it will display all the flights flying from that destination. This feature has a language support of ten different languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish and Catalan.

Google Would Have Paid More Than $100 Million to Major Labels for Licenses


Google has faced many critical reviews by analysts regarding its new Google Music Beta service, the new cloud-based locker which released by Google at its Google I/O event few months back. The reviews are so skeptical mostly because the lack of the facility for the users to purchase online music and stream seamlessly without having to upload their own library. Hence, consequently Google is now even ready to offer unavoidable offers of large sum of money to get the required licenses. It has been reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, that Google is already prepared to give out as much as $100 million to all four major labels, without any bitter condition, to acquire the licenses. But despite even this offer, the music labels did not negotiation due to “the music industry’s concern that search results in Google and YouTube often point to pirated music.”
Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
It was known since day one that Google was facing serious troubles while getting the green signal from music labels, but it has now been disclosed for the first time that piracy is the main reason behind it. Further it was stated that Google is now actually ‘fed up’ of trying to convince the labels, above all WMG, as it was asking Google to charge the users with an annual fee of $30 for the cloud service. Whereas, Google had intended that, and was unmoved on the matter, users should be able to check out the new service for free with at least 500 tracks stored for free at first.

Sony Prepares the Development of PS4; Not Investing As Much As PS3

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Sony finally seems to be getting back on its feet; The PlayStation Network is very near to return to normal as the service is revived in Asia this weekend. But now Sony has also begun giving singals about its upcoming PlayStation 4 in the labs. This is not a unique move; in fact it was a much needed move as Sony’s rivals in the market, like Nintendo, are constantly reported to be building Wii 2 and even a new Xbox version. It was reported by Eurogamer, that V.P. and C.F.O. of Sony Corp., Masaru Kato, has to justify the increment he made in the budget for research and development, which will be for PlayStation 4. Kato spoke in a company’s conference call, stating that “For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform – when we’ll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that – but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there.”
It is already pretty clear that, just like Microsoft, Sony had the policy to invest as much as possible and do maximum business from its current gaming consoles. It was even previously heard that there might not be anything new coming in the market for the next few years, since the company no rather has the capacity to spend more time on development and creating a magnificently advanced technology for the next consoles. However, Industry Gamers have reported that Masaru Kato asserts that this development leap might be shortened and the next version of the gaming system may not be having anything new or big.

Facebook Suspected to Make a Team for Designing Its Desktop Software App, Overlooking the Lack of iPad App


Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase
Apparently, Facebook is looking to employ more engineers in order to create a new desktop software team. TechCrunch has highlight that a posting for jobs pages of Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website, titled "Software Engineer, Desktop Software." This job vacancy was cited at Facebook’s official website, enlisting the job post to be available in the recently-opened Seattle office. Further the elaborative detailed of the job states: "The desktop software team is a new team at Facebook based out of Seattle, WA. We will be working on new products that we expect to deliver to millions of users' computers to help make their entire computing experience more social. Facebook is seeking experienced software engineers in Seattle to join this team."
It was also listed that further responsibilities expected by the job applicants are to "create desktop applications for Mac and/or Windows, work closely with our product and design teams to define feature specifications, work closely with our Platform team to build server-side APIs and interfaces in support of these applications, [and] conduct design and code reviews."

Microsoft Is Apparently Making More Money Out Of HTC Android Phone Sales than Its Own Windows Phone

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There has been a very vivid and unbelievable revelation made by an analyst from Citi, Walter Pritchard, who shared very strange findings today declaring that Microsoft might be making even more money from Android system than it might make from its own Windows Phone.
It was stated in a post published on Friday, which identified that Microsoft gets an almost $5 for each sale made on every HTC phone running Android. The absurd settlement was made due to a case of patent agreement between HTC and Microsoft last year. To protect the Taiwanese company from a proposed patent infringement lawsuit, that could have been filed by Microsoft over the Android operating system. It will be even more beneficial for the C.E.O. of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, and his company if they are able to seek agreements with other Android phone makers, which it is in the midst of suing currently. Pritchard has predicted that these companies might even agree to a settlement from between $7.50 to $12.50 per device sold.
Another analyst, Horace Dediu, from Asymco, also stated in his report on Friday that “a rough estimate of the number of HTC Android devices shipped is 30 million. If HTC paid $5 per unit to Microsoft, that adds up to $150 million Android revenues for Microsoft.” On the other hand, if we compare it to the sales of Microsoft’s own Windows Phone licenses, they are sold almost round about 2 million, hence “estimating that the license fee is $15/WP phone,” says Dediu, “that makes Windows Phone revenues to date $30 million.”

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