Imagine a situation - you are seeing a thing that you don't know anything about, say for example a restaurant menu in some foreign language or a historical monument but you know very little about it or a painting and you can't even search it on Google because you can't describe it in words than you think there needs to be a device which instantly get you all the information you need just in time when you seeing it. It might be very futuristic like that of a sci-fi movie but Google Goggle is a new app (although a prototype) that lets you use pictures taken with your mobile phone to search the web, no need to type or speak your query all you have to do is open the app, take a picture, and wait for your search results. The best thing is its translation feature that translates the texts in picture taken into any desired language you want, right now this technology only works for German to English translations. However, the Google Goggle is available to just Android enabled smart phones with auto focus feature and QVGA screen available in Android market also the smart app is in its early ...

Microsoft Live labs' at the TED2010 conference in Long Beach shows its new technology called Pivot. Its an experimental technology that allows to visualize the data and sort, organize and categorize it dynamically with dash of interactivity and at the same time informative and fun. Pivot visually manipulate, sort, filter and examine related data that are anything from pictures, videos and maps to financials and business data into large collections. In this way, the data itself can help shape and inform the way it is presented. Pivot’s most compelling feature is its ability to smoothly and quickly arrange collections according to common characteristics and then zoom in for a closer look, by either clicking on a particular item or filtering the collection to get a subset of information. Via - http://www.getpivot.com/ See the video below -

SimplyBooks.in is a new book portal launched today in World Book Fair'10, New Delhi. As the name hints the portal is online bookshop targeting Indian customers initially and at moment in beta stage. Simplybooks is launched by startup based in Gurgaon, India that also runs a Finance community portal called feeleminds.com The portal carries the same traits and features like to those online bookshop already exist in market however some features and an impressive UI which is comparatively far better than Indian books portal we see such as Rediff books, Indiatimes, flipkart.com etc.  The portal carries features such as book search - by author, category, book title etc. The portal also offer related products such as CDs, Magazines and Journals in one domain as I dont see any one portal in India which provide all of these. Keeping in mind the beta stage of portal Simplybooks.in looks promising in terms of number of books, user interface and more web 2.0 features than any existing in Indian market except that of flipkart.com. Morever, the entry of one more online bookshop portal will make the stagnant online book selling market to rise above, if changes due to competition is considered.

Today (27th Jan'10) in San Francisco Apple just unveiled its latest creation called as iPad - A new human touch enabled tablet computer ever hyped and a new thing every one was talking about, revealed today by Steve Jobs himself. Priced at $499 in US and will be in other international markets in the June-July timeframe. Here are the complete story of yet another sophisticated cool gadget from Apple, in pictures; Courtesy - Engadget.com and Behance.net

Google Movies Search Google movies search is accessible over web, mobiles, iPhones just go to google.com/movies, it will automatically trace your location and show latest/ upcoming movies listing in theaters new you and can even play trailers, show ratings and categories, movie posters, upcoming showtimes, and a concise list of the nearest theaters and their distances from you. Google Files Search Google search commands gives a very useful way to search specific files such as MS Word, PDFs, RTF or even ZIP files, all you have to do is add <space>filetype:<file extension> after the search, for ex. - 'filetype:.doc' for word documents and 'filetype:pdf' for acrobat PDF files (see pic above). Google Music Search Google music search is a good option for music lovers that allow you to search latest songs, albums or artist and play them at same time. However, due to legal constraints the Music search is restricted to users in US only. Google Dictionary Google Fast-Flip As in google's own words - "Google Fast Flip is a web application that lets users discover and share news articles. It combines qualities of print and the Web, with the ability to "flip" through pages online as quickly as flipping through a magazine. It also enables users to ...

All along year 2009, this year has been the year of disruptive ideas, innovations and originality of concept that drove the startups in India when it comes to technology, web and internet. Similar to Best Startups list in 2008 we are compiling a list of some the very interesting and gutsy startups that made impression over the world wide web. The list is relatively small when it comes to numbers and the basic criteria of choosing the startups in India are - How disruptive is an Idea behind?, Orginality of startup concept, Are they really startup? and lastly how much impact did they made to their similar competitors/counterparts with their first presence. So, here we go; VoicePHP - A product by Tringme which is a Bangalore, India-based startup come up with disruptive simple idea of infusing VoIP into PHP by using the familiar PHP programming methodology which can be freely downloaded and is used by majority of web developers. TringMe introduces this simple technology as not an extension to PHP but the same PHP which now outputs voice instead of text and also takes input as voice instead of text. iMO - iMO, a Gurgaon, India based 3-people early-age startup who was able make ...

In India, corporate sector employees productivity is Killed by 12.5% in surfing social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut etc. during the office hours says ASSOCHAM's (Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry) Social Development Foundation (ASDF) survey. Morever ASSOCHAM survey  in a press release says - Almost each day, an average corporate employee spends an hour, gluing to various social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Linkdein etc. for 'romancing' or otherwise drive some satisfaction out of it...with this average corporate employee’s each day working is reduced by an hour from 8 hours to 7 hours. Young professionals join the social networking sites the most. It also reveals that 93% of youngsters are aware of social networking sites. Orkut and Facebook are found to be the most popular online destinations among survey respondents. 73% of aged 45-58 spend over an hour online daily to use online sources to access news. On the other on same note and on same day an interesting reports by CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) says that growth momentum of the services sector in India has increased during April–October 2009, compared to the same period during 2008. If one has to go by ASSOCHAM than productivity has already been ...

Just a few hours back the Indibloggies Award'08 has been announced and The Best Indian Blog for Year 2008 is - Random thoughts of Demented Mind, a humorous blog by Arnab Ray along with winner in each category. The Category winners list are also the been announced with the stats of all the voting counts. In Best Science & Technology Blog Category the clear winner with huge gap in percentage as expected is - Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal who is better known as Father of Indian blogging revolution and first Pro-blogger in India blogging since 2004. Interestingly, IndianWeb2.com has also been nominated in the same category, but we are happy that we lost to such an excellent Blog/Tech Resource. However, Voting seems to be down low in terms of total number of votes in comparison to population of India or say what I might read about ever growing online Internet audience hype in India, if that has to be true than why most of the individual votes could not even cross the 100 mark. Moreover I could not find the press mentions such as TOI (Times of India), HT or any leading dailies of such a nice initiative carried out by just one ...

The recent United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen COP15 of all that big gathering of world leaders might not be as successful as it needed. However, the technology is backing up the Climate challenge education across the globe. The major internet brands such as Microsoft and Google are providing some excellent online resource and tools to educate, inform and empower people to address climate change. Microsoft - The Environmental Atlas of Europe - A digital platform for educating citizens about climate change, along with nine case studies illustrating the consequences of climate change in different environments, such as the shrinking ice cover in the Baltic. Bend the Trend - An online global program that helps people make pledges to reduce their carbon emissions. Eye on Earth - Windows Azure-powered portal that lets users track and give feedback about their environmental data such as air and water quality. The data is being provided by different individuals across the globe, through Bing maps, historical environment data and via environment monitoring stations. Project 2 Degrees - A Web-based Emissions Tracker software tool for cities around the world to measure and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by calculating the carbon footprint and also to plan meaningful actions that ...

Recently a research has been conducted by TrendStream, who publishes the Global Web Index and the research is based on interviews with 32,000 Internet users in 16 countries including India. The research outputs a visualization that shows the different kind activities performed by online users in major countries across he globe called - Global Map of Social Web Involvement. Interestingly the reports also shows some very positive aspects of India's online activities such as writing blogs, using micr-blogging services, uploading videos and photos where it leads most countries (user volume in millions) like UK, Germany, Australia, Italy, France, Germany and Japan. Moreover, when it comes to percentage of total online users - More people in India write their own blogs and use Micro-blogging services in India than US. The report is extremely useful for all those who are on verge of starting any internet or web startups in India or any countries listed in this report or planning to have one, with all these social web involvement matrix one can plan out a specific traits, features in their websites, portals or internet services to take advantage of what people are more prone to do with doing activities more than others. Global Map of ...