Microsoft, Google in open war in India

‘MUMBAI: Google and Microsoft, two of the world's largest technology firms, are raining blows on each other as they hard sell their so-called cloud services and vie for dominance in a market estimated to grow to $15-18 billion by 2020.

Although these companies used to be thought of as being fundamentally different, similarities are beginning to show more prominently with both offering office productivity software, besides computer operating systems. While it may be too early to gauge business gains, the war of words has begun.

"Google is the largest cloud services company in India," claimed Rajan Anandan, Google's India head since January 2011. "We have 2,00,000 businesses that use Google cloud solutions. We have orders of magnitude bigger than Microsoft," added Anandan, who used to head Microsoft in India before he took up the Google job.

Cloud computing is causing a fundamental shift in the way technology services are delivered. Unlike in the traditional model, software or hardware need not be on-premise but can bought as a service and can be paid for depending on usage, instead of a lumpsum upfront payment earlier.

Apple to Offer Refund Over Australian 4G IPad Claims

Apple will offer refunds to people who bought its latest iPad following a claim by Australia's competition regulator that it ran misleading advertisements over the device's 4G connectivity, according to reports.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took Apple to the Federal Court in Melbourne on Wednesday for allegedly violating sections of the Australian Consumer Law.

The ACCC claims that Apple's advertisements mislead the public over the device's 4G capabilities, as the latest iPad is not compatible with Australia's sole 4G network, which is run by Telstra.

Telstra operates its 4G service within the 1800MHz band, while the latest iPad can only be used on the 700MHz and 2100MHz LTE bands. The new iPad is compatible with 4G LTE networks in the U.S. and Canada using data speed specifications including HSPA, HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA.

At Wednesday's hearing, an Apple lawyer, Paul Anastassiou, said the company would email customers about the incompatibility with Telstra's network and offer a refund, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Apple also reportedly agreed to put in-store notifications by point-of-sale devices but not on packaging, the paper reported.

Apple officials could not be immediately reached on Wednesday afternoon. An ACCC official declined to comment, citing the ongoing legal case.

The ACCC said on Tuesday it would seek to ensure consumers are aware of the iPad's "correct technical capabilities" as well as pursue other orders including injunctions, financial penalties, corrective advertising and refunds.

Sony Xperia Sola brings floating touch navigation

Forget touch screens. You don’t even need to caress the screen of Sony’s “magical” smartphone to interact with it -- just hover your finger over the screen to navigate through the menus.

This American Life retracts report criticising Apple factory

An episode of This American Life, broadcast in January and adapted from a one-man theatrical show by Mike Daisey, condemned working conditions at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that supplies products for Apple, Sony and Amazon, among others.

The programme aired on January 6, 2012, and became the most popular podcast in the history of the series.

Yesterday, Ira Glass, the host of the show, issued a statement saying that Daisey lied to him and to factcheckers before the show was broadcast.

In a press release, Public Radio International said: "Some of the falsehoods found in Daisey's monologue are small ones: the number of factories Daisey visited in China, for instance, and the number of workers he spoke with.

"Others are large. In his monologue he claims to have met a group of workers who were poisoned on an iPhone assembly line by a chemical called n-hexane. Apple's audits of its suppliers show that an incident like this occurred in a factory in China, but the factory wasn’t located in Shenzhen, where Daisey visited."

Mr Glass said: "We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio."

Mr Daisey's one man show, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, is based on a visit he made to China in 2010. He said: "What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism. For this reason, I regret that I allowed This American Life to air an excerpt from my monologue."

The radio show was the first of a series of reports into conditions at plants in China. The New York Times ran a series of reports into conditions at Foxconn's factories and last month, US television network ABC reported from inside the Foxconn's plant.

In response to the controversy, Apple said the Fair Labor Association would independently audit Foxconn City, one of the manufacturer’s biggest facilities, located in Shenzhen, Guandong Province.