It’s official, Ubuntu has rolled out a Web Music addition to their Ubuntu One service.

An addition to the Ubuntu One “cloud service” now allows all users with a paid subscription to save, store and stream music directly from a web browser. After logging into your  UbuntuOne  control panel, there is a new tab showing off the features, which include offline listening, access to the vast Ubuntu One Music Store and 20GB of storage, with a monthly subscription. Of course there is also a 30 day free trial for the service should you want to try before you buy.

Previous to today, the service was only available from a mobile device running iOS or Android. A free app, available in both the Apple App Store and the Android Market, provided mobile users with a way to stream and access all the content stored in their cloud. Although users have access to the iTunes Cloud and Google Music on their respective handsets, many use alternatives that provide “personalized  radio” based on recommendations, tag matching and “crowdsourced” content such as Spotify and Pandora. Unfortunately UbuntuOne Web Music does not include this, but playlist creation, queue management and shuffle might be enough for you.

It really does seem as if Ubuntu is laying the framework and infrastructure for eventually providing a mobile operating system or partnering with an OEM for shipping U1 services directly on devices. They have a niche market with Ubuntu installations on many personal computers, they have cross-platform sync through a proven cloud service that allows file storage, contact and note sync, and now completely cross-platform music streaming.

Ubuntu says they will continue building out their One service and 2012 will be a big year. The mobile space has been heating up for a long time, and although there might not be any room for a new platform, providing tightly integrated services could be a real differentiating factor for many OEMs. Hopefully Canonical sees this opportunity and can seize it, truly bringing Ubuntu to the masses.

Twenty years ago today, the World Wide Web, also known as “the web”, was born at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This event should not be confused with the Internet’s birth. According to the World Wide Web Consortium’s website, the World Wide Web is “an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing”. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the invention of the web, along with scientist  Robert Cailliau.

Berners-Lee envisioned the concept of using hypertext to help researchers share information over the internet. According to Wikipedia, he proposed ”  to build a hypertext  project” called “WorldWideWeb” (one word, also “W3″) as a ‘web’ of ‘hypertext documents’ to be viewed by browsers,  using a  clientserver  architecture.” Berners-Lee used a computer called NeXT as the world’s first web server. On August 6, 1991, “the web” made its public debut.

Today, the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C, as it is often called, sets the standards for “web” development. Tim Berners-Lee is still very active in the development of “the web” and is the Director of W3C. He was Knighted in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth. He also directs the Web Science Trust and The World Wide Web Foundation.

“The web” has transformed into a medium for the endless sharing of ideas, entertainment, and commerce. Could the men who set this idea in motion ever have envisioned the powerful influence it has become today? So today, when you check up on friends half-way around the globe on Facebook, or catch the latest gossip on some news website, take a moment to wish “the web” a very happy twentieth birthday!

JantaKhoj.com – India’s first complete people search engine has launched a new service in association with BabaJob.com that has an indirect potential of reducing crime rates in the cities. BabaJob is already a famous job portal which lets professionals and executives find bottom-of-the-pyramid informal sector workers like maids, cooks, drivers without any hassle.

Now, this association between BabaJob and Jantakhoj will enable credible domestic help and driver background verifications online using which users availing services of Babajob can find out criminal record, reference, employment, address, driving license and education verification before hiring new maids, cooks or drivers. Lots of crimes such as theft and murders are committed in cities as a result of hiring con-men who do not have proper background verifications.

Babajob ultimately relies on candidates to self-report their information on their site. The reason of partnering with JantaKhoj is the specific expertise in verifications in the informal sector and the reach of JantaKhoj that extends throughout India. The partnership will help current users of Babajob do more thorough background checks before hiring domestic help or drivers assuring them peace of mind.

via WATPR

The internet has always been obsessed about itself. Its narcissistic tendencies have been the driving factor in the making of data visualization about its own technologies, semantic web technology and other endless lists full of the emerging science of the hive mind and the self’s position in this meta-world.

Did you understand that previous paragraph? I sure didn’t but that’s how you start these intellectual and deep posts about the internet, data and other characters of the philosophical nature of the World Wide Web.

However, we are not talking about the philosophical nature of the World Wide Web. We are here to talk about the launch of an extremely new kind of experimental game that takes social browsing and networking to a completely new level.

Meta Assassins is a new appthat promises to rid you of your social life, more or less. It is a game in which gamers will be given specific targets (other gamers), who will surf the web. Your job is to track your quarry to the site they are on and kill them in a [virtual] shootout. But, beware you are also someone’s target. You accomplish all this with a Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox plugin.

The game is currently on a hiatus from the 12th of February. The short playtesting stint was apparently a success, so the developers will be making a redoubled effort into a new avatar.

Although the game works mostly on the world wide web, the amount of data privacy issues this could cause if it were not a game is quite staggering. I would totally turn this into a Hollywood blockbuster (given the right amount of nudging here and there), call it Meta Assassins, and mint money.

If you are interested in this, do check their web page out.

Yahoo!’s India base has been expanding big time over the past few months and it now accounts for a major contribution to Yahoo!’s global ventures. Almost 30 per cent of Yahoo!’s intellectual property development around the world now comes from it’s Bangalore research center. This share was a modest 12 per cent few years ago. Among other development centers of Yahoo!, USA accounts for close to 60 per cent and the rest 10 per cent comes from Yahoo!’s other centers across the globe.

According to Mr. Shouvick Mukherjee, chief executive and vice president of Yahoo India R&D Yahoo India’s share of intellectual property grew rapidly as the Bangalore dev center got deeply involved to take end to end responsibility of number of global as well as regional products making Yahoo India R&D the second largest centre globally. Another reason is the fact that more than 50% of Yahoo’s users are outside USA and more focus was required on the growth of theses markets in its research and product development efforts.

Two of Yahoo!’s best products – Predict and Helion have been developed at the Yahoo! India development center. Predict is an advertisement exchange that predicts which ad will get what level of click thus improving the return on investment for advertisers. The second product Helion facilitated the launch of multiple sites in parallel. Yahoo! has rolled out major lifestyle based portals using Helion.

Microsoft Advertising & Aegis Media recently conducted a study about how Indians are using the web to supplement their shopping decisions – both on the web and at shops nearby. The study clearly reveals that it is no longer enough to capture consumers only by traditional advertising and companies should start looking at online brand building to sustain their growth.

The study is a part of a global initiative that polled 19,000 shoppers across 17 world markets and considered both in-store and online shoppers in sectors like groceries, apparel, home electronics and fast food.

Here are some key findings from the study:

• 75 per cent of Indian shoppers use online services to compare prices at local stores and also use the web to find out good restaurants nearby.

• 66 per cent of shoppers in India use the internet to locate products and brands nearby.

• 39 per cent of Indian shoppers look for promotions and discounts, deals for their favorite brands while browsing the Internet.

• Coming to e-commerce, 50 per cent of the Indian shoppers actually make online purchases using their computers.

• Coming to mobile e-commerce, 31 per cent Indian shoppers make purchases using mobile phones.

Image Courtesy

In order   to enable more and more common people or rather common investors to participate in the capital markets, the Government has decided to launch investor education Web sites in all regional languages.   The govt. feels that with literacy levels being low in Indian society, making investor education Web sites available in regional languages will encourage more people to participate in the investment process and thus increase awareness among common people.

Dr Manmohan Singh – the prime minister of India will launch these investor education Web sites today (i.e., December 14) as a part of the India Corporate Week 2010′ which starts today. The Corporate Affairs Ministry of India has already been holding a lot of investor awareness programmes across the country with this year the number of programmes being a whopping 3,000 as compared to the last year count of only 300.

Image Courtesy

If you knew about Whirled Creative you wouldn’t be sitting here, reading blogs. You’d be out there with the cool folks, mashing art with technology and putting the rad in non-traditional. They created the Google Instants music video, and now they have made a video about #newtwitter. How cool is this video? Well, the folks at Whirled Creative have taken Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.I.Am and Nicki Minaj’s pop-rap song Check It Out and given it the #newtwitter twist.

The song starts with the group logging inas Will.I.Am (@iamwill), and works around as he tweets and clicks around #newtwitter.

With the song lyrics appearing in hashtags, searches @replies and inside maps, the video itself is an absolute must for anyone who feels like watching the super-rad mashup of current gen songs and current gen web technology.

It will, however, be very confusing for the old twitter user. It will also irritate users who have been wishing for a taste of #newtwitter for a long long time now. Why? Because the moment Will.I.Am asks for a redesign, he instantly gets the preview bar at the top of his bar. Guess the celebs get their wishes fulfilled everywhere, eh?

Check out the video here (Mild NSFW warning for language):-

Tata Docomo has launched yet another first in the Indian telecom industry – Web Based Live Chat. This new web based Live Chat help feature from Tata Docomo enables both existing new subscribers to submit their query for a new connection by giving their details. After this, Users get a chat window and a customer service executive becomes available on line to resolve the query or issue in real time.

This Live Chat service from TATA Docomo is available 24×7 and lets users share files during the chat session.the chat service is powered by Talisma Chat. However the chat is not supported in Google Chrome browser.

You can directly launch the live chat window by clicking here or by going to the   Help website.

Here are a few screen shots which you can take a look at for yourself:

Wipro Infotech has bagged big orders for three Indian states which involves building high end datacenters from scratch. According to a news release, Wipro will build, manage and commission State data centres (SDCs) for Maharashtra and West Bengal. The third state is Gujarat which already has a State Data Center, so here Wipro will only upgrade and commission the datacenter.

These data centres would host applications and provide Government to Government (G2G), Government-to-business (G2B) and Government-to-citizen (G2C) services. Wipro would also build a central repository for all data related to the State on citizen information, services portal and online services. SDCs are emerging as one of the key elements of the core infrastructure required for the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP). Once integrated with the other infrastructure projects such as State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service Centres (CSC), it would form the framework for roll out of various eGovernment services.