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Half a million sales expected for Firefox OS phones in India: Intex Summary:  The maker of a new $33 smartphone billed as India's cheapest says it aims to sell half a million in the next three months in what it called a 'new era' for the market. Indian mobile phone maker Intex has teamed up with California-based Mozilla — the non-profit organisation behind the Firefox open-source web browser — to create a cheaper alternative to Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones. Intex  handset, which went on sale this week, is aimed at first-time smartphone buyers, and is the cheapest yet to hit the market. "We're moving into a new era in smartphones", Intex spokesperson. "This is a user-friendly handset that can help people onto smartphones and onto the internet. "We have big expectations that this phone will find a large market, and we are expecting 500,000 sales in the first three months." The company is initi

Most popular open-source cloud projects of 2014 Summary:  OpenStack leads, but the still wet-behind-the-ears Docker is gaining fast.      At  CloudOpen , a  Linux Foundation  tradeshow held in conjunction with  LinuxCon , the Foundation announced that an online survey of open-source cloud professionals found  OpenStack to be the most popular overall project . Most popular open-source cloud projects That wasn't surprising. Although OpenStack is only four years old, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud project is very popular with support from such industry giants HP, Red Hat, and VMware. What was somewhat surprising was that number two was Docker, the just-over-a-year old container technology. It's no news that Docker is hotter than hot, but to go from nowhere to the second most popular project in 12 months? That's amazing and speaks to its rockstar rise in popularity. Behind those two, you'll find   KVM , the x86 virtualization technology that

Microsoft weighs new names for its TechEd conference successor Summary:  Microsoft is surveying select users and partners about what it should name its unified IT pro show slated for next year. Here are the names said to be on the short list. Microsoft is surveying select customers and partners about what it should name its new catch-all conference that is replacing TechEd and a number of other product-specific shows. According to some of those surveyed, Microsoft's short list of names under consideration for the new show include: Microsoft officials announced in July that the company is consolidating its TechEd, Microsoft Management Summit, SharePoint, Lync and Exchange conferences into a single, new unified tech conference that will be held in Chicago. The new IT-Pro-focused event is slated for the week of May 4, 2015. Microsoft Current Microsoft Co: Microsoft Forsee (not sure if that's a typo) Microsoft 4C Microsoft GO Microsoft Tomorrow Microsoft Sp

ownCloud 7 pulls in users and open source developers Summary:  ownCloud, the open source private cloud for small to medium sized businesses, pulls in great developer support with its latest release. Sure you could join everyone else and put your data on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud, or you could use the latest ownCloud 7 to run your own private cloud. ownCloud makes it easy to run your own private cloud using any storage your company is already using. There's an enormous range of cloud options, but the newly released  ownCloud 7 Community Edition  is a great one for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) that value their privacy.  What  ownCloud  brings to the table is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud. In the company's own words, ownCloud gives users a "a 'Dropbox-like' experience while complementing the security and privacy on the back end." The program also comes with mobile web browser support, Android and iOS cl

Can a Surface Pro 3 with docking station replace your desktop PC? Summary: In its ads, Microsoft says the Surface Pro 3 is "the tablet that can replace your laptop." With the addition of a new docking station, the Surface Pro has its eye on your desktop PC, too. In its ads for the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft calls the latest release of its flagship Windows device “the tablet that can replace your laptop.”With the help of a new Surface add-on, that same hybrid device can now replace your desktop as well. I received an early production model of the Surface Pro Docking Station, which is available for preorder now and shipping later this month. For $190, it allows a Surface Pro 3 owner to snap the lightweight tablet into a frame that holds it firmly in place, transforming it into a full-fledged (albeit compact) Windows desktop in seconds. You can use that configuration as is, adding only an external keyboard and mouse. But

What 'one Windows' really means (and doesn't) Summary:  Is Microsoft building a single version of Windows that will run on phones, tablets, PCs and gaming consoles? Nope. Here's a refresher as to what really is happening. Microsoft execs have struggled to explain for the past year or more where the company is going with Windows. Thanks to a passing comment by CEO Satya Nadella during the July 22  Microsoft's Q4 fiscal 2014 earnings call , the struggle is continuing. "We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes," Nadella told press and analysts listening to the call. Wow! One Windows OS running on phone, tablet, PC and gaming console?  Not exactly. Later in the call, Nadella attempted to clarify his remarks, but not in time to stop the breathless headlines. Here's what "one Windows" really means: 1. A single team dev

A Farewell for Orkut S ervice Summary:  One of the first social networks around, Orkut was most loved by Indians & Brazilians by statistics. Now, Google is pulling the plug on it. A kind of nut? An obscure race of extra terrestrials in one of the forgettable, recent Star Wars movies. An Eastern European small car!  Depending on where you are in the world, these may well be your guesses to the meaning of the word that suddenly proliferated news channels a few days ago, especially in India. Orkut, as you may know, is none of the above but the name of one of the world's first online social networks of significance. The reason it made headlines is because of its decision to shut shop. Or rather, a decision made by its parent, which happens to be one of the world's biggest internet companies. Google has decided to do a 'Kevorkian' on its child which admittedly has been on life support for many years now.  The company plans to pull the plug on it on Septembe

India's Chargebee takes the sting out of billing hassles for a competiting service Summary:  Chargebee is yet another company whose origins can be traced to indignant comments on a Hacker news post about a subscription rate hike — in this case, at billing infrastructure leader Chargify — which inspired the founders to jump-start a competing service. Name:  Chargebee Cloud Segment:  SaaS Type of App:  Billing and Subscription Management Founders/Management:  KP Saravan, S Rajaraman S and T Thiyagarajan T, S Krishnamoorthy Co-founded by former employees of Zoho, one of India’s first stars in the CRM and cloud space, Chargebee’s business model seems to have arrived at the right time in a world where almost everything seems to require a subscription, from online television to digital newspapers and magazines. Yet for companies who dole out these subscriptions, managing things like billing can be a distracting affair, especially if you cater to a fast-growing, di

Intel pushes industry to cut the cables Summary:  WiFi is wonderful, but somehow we are still stuck with lots of cables. Now Intel and others are working to eliminate the rest and deliver true wireless computing. Intel didn’t invent WiFi — 802.11b was approved four years before Centrino came along. But the wireless platform did much to bring about a world in which we can walk into a coffee shop or hotel and expect free wireless broadband. What it did not do, however, is get rid of all the cables. Now the industry is setting its sights on the remaining ones. Two technologies, in particular, are poised to make this happen. The first, WiGig, can be used not only to stream video to TVs and monitors, but also to connect computing devices to wireless access points, docking stations and other peripherals. The second, wireless charging, could finally eliminate the need to carry a power cable everywhere. Like WiFi, these aren’t new technologies. Dell has been offering a Latitude la

Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google: in a month review Summary:  It's been a busy month in the mobile world and this recap pulls all the best coverage into a convenient place. If you missed something big, you'll find it here. From Recently announced Fire phone from Amazon to some new Windows 8 hybrid tablets. I've opined about the myth of the optimal tablet size and shared how to deal with that. All in all it's been a busy month and those interested in the mobile space should find lots of interesting things in the recap. The Big Guys — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, and Amazon Apple is fun again  — Things have seemed a bit stiff and unsure at Apple events since the passing of Steve Jobs. The WWDC keynote indicates that Apple is back, and fun things are about to happen. Microsoft Office for Android: Pushing Windows even further behind in mobile  — Microsoft came under some heat from Windows customers when it released Office for iPad before a touch-frien