Here are the features of this Facebook integration.

• see your Facebook News Feed in Skype
• post status updates that can be synced with your Skype mood message
• comment and like friends’ updates and wall posts
• call and SMS your Facebook friends on their mobile phones and landlines
• make a free Skype-to-Skype call if your Facebook friend is also a Skype contact

Apart from that now skype users can make group video calls. Earlier, video calls can be made only between two skype users but now many users can show their face with each others. This is really first in video call technology I guess. But still this is in beta and of course free at this stage. Skype may seem to charge for group video calls later.

We could also experience the new improved skype interface in this version. And another noticeable advantage is the “Automatic Call Recovery”. Which means, if your call drops coz of poor internet connectivity or some other reasons skype will automatically recover and reconnect you to the session.  So why waiting? Try this new version now – Download Skype here.

Here are some information that you would need to activate and access this free Facebook service on your Airtel mobile.

• SMS ‘FACEBOOK’ to 54321
• Visit m.facebook.com from your mobile browser
• Enter your facebook login email and password
• Update your status as “Accessing Facebook for free from Airtel” (lol not necessarily – Update anything you like)

Below is the status of paypal india as per this changes.

1. Paypal will make a formal announcement on the “Bank Withdrawals” on march 3rd until then withdrawal request will not be processed.
2. Due to the RBI regulations everybody who wants to withdraw their paypal funds to Indian bank account or credit card should posses the “Export Code”. Please visit http://dgftcom.nic.in/ to more details about how to obtain the IEC code (Import Export Code). This code should be entered on paypal website to initiate the bank withdrawals from now.(Changes yet to happen)
3. Still the “Personal Payment” option to India will not be available as RBI has some questions about it and paypal is working on it.

Dear Praveen Kumar C,

We have been diligently working with the RBI and our business
partners to resume Indian bank withdrawals for the thousands
of Indian businesses who depend on PayPal to sell their goods
or services in the global marketplace.

Today, we are happy to announce that the RBI has allowed us
to continue local bank withdrawals for settlements for exports
of goods and services.  We are currently making changes to
comply with Indian regulations for settlements for exports of
goods and services, and we anticipate that, as of Wednesday,
March 3rd, customers will be able to use our
bank withdrawal service.  

As part of the changes, you will be required to fill out a
new field entitled 'Export Code' when you request a withdrawal.
This information is required under the current laws of India in
order to identify the nature of cross-border merchant transactions.  

On Monday, March 1st, we will be back in touch with specific
instructions on how you can move your money into your bank account. 

Moving forward, the RBI has told us that PayPal needs specific
approvals to allow personal remittances to India, which we
currently do not have.  Until we get these approvals, personal
payments into India will remain suspended.  However, if you are
an exporter, you will continue to be able to use the PayPal
service for payments of goods and services.  In fact, with the
changes we are making to our system, PayPal is now set to be a
more powerful engine for exporters in India.  With purpose codes
for export transactions and FIRCs (Foreign Inward Remittance
Certificates), you should now be able to get the export
related benefits you seek. 

You can check the PayPal blog for additional updates.

www.thepaypalblog.com

We thank you for your business and for your patience during
the past few weeks.

Sincerely,

PayPal

• Now, Airtel mobile customers can transform their basic phone into a Smart Phone by accessing over 1250 Apps across 25 categories for business, games, books, social networking and other needs.
• Easy single click purchase – with no credit card required – cost added to customer’s mobile bill or deducted from available talk-time
• Starting as low as Rs. 5, local and regional Apps for customers across length and breadth of country

How to access the Airtel App Store?

1. Visit Airtel Live portal from your browser and browse to the Airtel App Central section. OR
2. SMS “app” to 54321 (toll free) to receive the URL from your Airtel mobile.

Wow! Google has sent me a Rs 2500 worth of adwords advertising credit. That is I can use the voucher code on a Google adwords account and advertise for upto Rs 2500 on Google. I’ve already received free adwords voucher from Google for being Adwords Qualified Individual and also sometimes for running Google Analytics account on emails. But this is the first time I am seeing Google is sending free adwords credit voucher through postal. I cannot say I am lucky coz I guess Google has sent this to all adsense publisher but I can say it is a new year gift from Google to me, is not it?

Last year twitter has stopped the SMS tweeting service in India and no mobile users from India could receive updates and tweet from their mobile via SMS. Now Airtel & Twitter have come back again with a tie up for SMS  tweeting. This service is exclusively for Airtel subscribers only. If you are new to twitter, it is a popular social networking and micro blogging service.

If you are an existing twitter user and have your airtel mobile number updated  on your twitter account then no changes required  for you. You will start receiving tweets via SMS to which you are already subscribed and you can tweet via SMS.  If you already have twitter account and want to update your Airtel mobile number, just  send “Start” to 5300. If you new to twitter and want to get started, send “signup” to 5300 from your airtel number.

Although this encourages the tweeting habit by making the things easier, this service is bit expensive. Airtel charges Rs 1 for this Value Added Service. Alternatively you can just go to the twitter.com directly and update your mobile device details after logging in to your account. Anyway receiving SMS updates should be free of cost and you can make use of it.

Branding:

People are now ready to trust anything if it is branded by Google. Inspite of the trustworthiness and reliability Google can reach wide audience easily.

Cost:

Google Chrome operating system is 100% open source and it is free to use. No more license fee, genuine software validity or os update problem. So it is direct competition to Microsoft windows operating system. Who will ignore a quality product that too offered for free.

Speed:

It is a well known pain of a  windows user who should wait for minutes and minutes to get their system running up. Also a windows OS system will always perform slower than at the time of purchase. More the usage period, more the system slows. Since the failure of windows vista, people really need a good OS to replace the widely used windows XP. It is said/noticed that the upcoming Microsoft OS  Windows 7 (shortly launched – around october 2009) is light weighted and loads faster than vista. But Google challenged that this new OS will just boot in seconds not in minutes. So people will no more need to wait to start working on the system when they switch it on. Especially for notebook/netbook users it will be a WOW factor since it can save lot of battery power.

Compatibility:

Drivers support is the main problem in an operating system. Windows XP users experienced lot of issues at the initial stage and also Vista users was frustrated for the same at the beginning. The main reason for less linux users is also the same. Linux platforms does not support most of the hardwares and also required more time/knowledge to configure and run the OS. But Google said that with this Google chrome OS “Users don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.”

Security:
Google says that it will redesign the architecture of the OS where there should be no word for virus, malwares or spywares. Since security is the big concern of the operating system Google takes this very seriously. Windows users will definitely turn into this OS if this happens as they already know the impact of the losses due to virus attacks.

Web Applications:

It is really unnoticed that all the local applications are gone to web and we started using every thing online. Google Docs for Microsoft office.  Online players for windows media player. Gmail for outlook and many. So Google focuses on running web applications on operating system level instead of from browsers. This could be a revolution after 2010 since most user experience happens in web than local. So definitely this announcement of new OS architecture will push Microsoft to start thinking about WINDOWS 8 or so by now itself…. Let us keep our fingers crossed until the beta release of this chrome….

UPDATE: We also should not forget about the Flops and Failures of Google before we start celebrating this announcement.

Before the release of the stable version here is the official video of the features of the firefox 3.5

Although Airtel started charging for mobile internet, still it did not lose the GPRS customers. Rather kept growing.  This was because Airtel allowed unlimited bandwidth plan for all the packages they offered. It was quite popular among the customers because other competitors like Vodofone (Formerly Hutch) was charging their customers with  pay per internet usage and with additional monthly rent for the service. Airtel was standing alone to offer unlimited internet for cheap prices with out any fixed rent.

The Airtel GPRS package in the Tamilnadu circle was(Yes it ”was”) as follows,

• Daily Pack – Rs 20/Day/Unlimited
• Weekly Pack – Rs 75/Week/Unlimited
• Monthly Pack – Rs 375/Month/Unlimited

Today I received a SMS from Airtel that it withdraws the unlimited GPRS packs. Below is that SMS.

Pl note, Unlimited GPRS packs will be withdrawn effective 06-April. Enjoy GPRS service with the pay as you use facility only @30p/50KB browsing charges. Call 17134.

So there is no more unlimited GPRS internet stuff where slowly & slowly the word ”Unlimited” will vanish from Indian mobile and internet industry very soon. Already airtel started to cap their unlimited broadband usage under fair usage policy where customers internet speed will be reduced drastically after reaching certain bandwidth for the month.

So now what should we do due to this unlimited GPRS withdrawal by Airtel?

1. Since Airtel GPRS pack comes with zero rental, it may be activated by default on the all sim which  already using GPRS. You should deactivate GPRS to avoid the data usage charges. OR
2. There are few mobile applications like Email, Google latitude, messengers which will automatically attempt tomake GPRS connection when ever required. So you may need to change the settings on the apps or be ready to pay the additional data usage charges.