By Ian Paul, PCWorld

The desktop PC is dead; the era of the gleaming beige tower is over. The age of smartphones, laptops, and tablets is here–or so say numerous pundits and critics.

The only problem is that the desktop PC is alive and kicking–though it’s not quite as popular as it used to be.

“Over the last few years, the share of PC sales has stabilized around 80 percent notebooks and 20 percent desktops,” Stephen Baker, Vice President of Industry Analysis for market research firm NPD Group recently toldPCWorld.

Notebooks did take a huge bite out of the desktop’s market share in the early to mid-2000s, Baker says. But desktop sales have since stabilized, accounting for 20.3 percent of all PC sales among U.S. consumers in 2011, with similar share numbers over the past few years.

[Also see: The Desktop PC is Dead -- Long Live the Desktop]

Critics, pundits, analysts, and even executives at technology firms, however, can’t stop consigning the desktop to the history books. With that in mind, here’s a look at ten past, present, and future desktop killers including gaming consoles, recessions, computers without hard drives, and of course, tablets and laptops.

1. Laptops

Nothing says the desktop is dead like the holidays, and Reuters was leading the funeral dirge for the noble desktop PC in early 2009. The newswire reported that not one desktop model made Amazon’s list of top-selling PCs and PC hardware during the 2008 Christmas season. Seven laptops, meanwhile, were popular sellers. Reuters called this “yet another sign that the former dominance of desktop PCs is fading,” and later wondered if there was “any room left for desktops in the brave new era of laptops.”

2. Tablets

Ever since Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in 2010, pundits have made pronouncements that the one-panel touch slate spelled doom for the lowly, traditional desktop PC. The iPad “is the biggest threat to the desktop as we know it,” tech site Neowin declared in October. Deciding factors for the demise of the desktop include the iPad’s long battery life, and the fact that most people use their PC for things that are much easier to do on a tablet, such as checking email and Facebook and watching streaming video.

3. Smartphones

Did you hear that smartphones are heralding the end of the desktop PC? Yep–in fact, desktop PCs will be on their last legs within five years, CNET quoted technology executive Nigel Clifford as saying. Clifford made that prediction more than five years ago in October 2006 when he was the CEO of Symbian Software Ltd. Remember Symbian? It created a mobile operating system that was fully acquired by Nokia in 2008. Fast forward to 2012–the Finnish phone maker issidelining the Symbian OS in favor of Windows Phone 7. And desktops? Still around.

4. Video Games

You heard it here second: Video games are killing desktop PC computing. That’s the argument Benchmark Reviews Executive Editor Olin Coles posited in early 2011. Despite his title (“How Video Games Killed Desktop PC Computing”), however, Coles is predicting only a long, slow death for “PCs made just for gaming, overclocking, or any other recreational enjoyment.” Coles argues that, as more people choose notebooks and mobile devices over desktops, the tower PC’s last stand will be as a gaming platform. But with the popularity of console gaming and game makers designing new games for consoles first, the PC is on its way out. Coles isn’t ready to pronounce the death of the desktop just yet, but, he says, “the end of an era is near, so enjoy it while you still can.”

5. Internet, Web, Cloud

“The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased,” Steve Jobs told Wired in 1996 during his exodus from Apple, the company he cofounded. Jobs went on to say that the Web was the future, arguing that hardware designed specifically to serve the Web (so-called Web terminals) was a possible future beyond the desktop. To be fair, Jobs was arguing mostly that Microsoft was too dominant in the desktop space for any innovation to happen. Jobs’ quote, however, is an example of how, similar to the present day, people in the mid- to late 1990s saw the Web and Web applications as the future of computing.

6. Network Computers

Along with the ’90s-era Web frenzy came hardware such as Sun Microsystems’ 1996 breakthrough device, the JavaStation, a so-called network computer (NC), designed solely to get the user online. These devices had no hard disks, slots, or CD-ROM drives and were priced at $700 and up. Other companies including Oracle started touting the network computer as the end of the desktop. At one point, even Microsoft tried its hand at an NC called the Simply Interactive PC. But the NC ultimately failed to gain traction as PCs dropped in price throughout the ’90s, and as desktops offered users Web browsers to get online.

7. The 2008-2009 Recession

Sales for desktop PCs dropped precipitously during the 2008-2009 recession while notebook sales kept going, according to British tech news site The Inquirer. This led some to speculate that the death of the desktop had come that much closer as more people moved onto notebook computers. How times have changed since then. Market research firm IDC predicted in June that the worldwide desktop PC market would continue to grow through 2015 by about 1 percent each year. Notebooks, meanwhile, will grow at a much faster rate of around 15 percent per year between 2012 and 2015.

8. The Zero Client

The Year: 2008. The desktop killer: a small cube with a footprint about the size of a CD case called the Pano. A so-called zero client, the Pano consists of a mouse, a keyboard, a monitor, and an external USB drive that relies on to access a Microsoft Windows virtual machine stored on a remote server. The device has no operating system, software drivers, CPU, memory, hard disk, or graphics chip. “The Pano and visualization technology will revolutionize the desktop,” a UK Pano reseller in 2008 told PCWorld’s British-based sister publication, Techworld. Pano Logic, the company behind the Pano, is still selling its zero client, but zero clients have yet to replace the desktop.

9. Chromebooks: NC 2.0?

“Zero-maintenance computers such as the Chromebook will kill the PC and Windows within 10 years, delivering a punch to the solar plexus of Microsoft’s core Windows business,” TheMotleyFool’s Tim Beyers said in May. Beyers argues that browser-based computers are the future thanks to the popularity of online services such as social networking and video streaming, and to the use of cloud-based virtual platforms in the enterprise. It’s not just desktops that are getting the axe: Beyer believes all PCs will be gone by 2020, at least for enterprise users. It’s not clear how many Chromebooks have been sold to date, but price cuts by Chromebook makers over the holidays suggest that the browser-as-OS concept–the basis of Chromebooks–has yet to catch on.

10. Desktops: The Ultimate DesktopKiller

The desktop PC is dead, at least as a tower that sits beside your desk or underneath your monitor, according to PCWorld’s own Nate Ralph. The tower will become a “relic of a bygone age,” Ralph says, retaining just a small subset of users who need customizable hardware–people like gamers and enterprise users. The mainstream desktop, meanwhile, will morph into the all-in-one PC thanks to innovations such as Intel’s Ivy Bridge and AMD’s Piledriver chips that allow for thinner and sleeker desktops.

The desktop is dead, long live the desktop.

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ABOUT ITCN ASIA – Growth from a country event to a regional event

From its inception in 2001, ITCN Asia, now being organized for the 10th consecutive year, has grown up as the biggest IT & Telecom extravaganza of Pakistan. Most powerful brands of the world will showcase their state-of-the-art products and services which would allow the user community to get exposure to a wide range of technology and solutions under one roof. Most importantly, it would provide an opportunity for business-to-business alliances, leveraging their mutual strengths. ITCN Asia Exhibitions & Conferences have been playing a pivotal role in landmarking the image of Pakistan on the world IT Map, bringing in huge foreign and local investments in the Country.

Over the years ITCN Asia has grown from a country event to a regional event. Just a few years ago there were very few companies with quality certifications. Today, we have over 100 ISO certified companies, the thrust on quality was continued with two new projects targeted to take five companies to CMM level 5 and 30 companies to CMMi level 3 and above.

ITCN Asia 2010 is part of ITCN series that catapulted the local IT Industry, introducing Karachi as the regional IT hub attracting major IT players from all over the world.

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A Chinese retailer nicknamed “the Asian Amazon.com” plans a $5 billion initial public offering in the U.S. — while American firms like Facebook and Groupon have delayed or dropped plans to go public.

It could be a big risk, as many industry analysts believe the recent dotcom bubble is over. But it’s easier, for a number of reasons, for a tech firm to go public in China than in the U.S. these days.

360Buy.com, owned by Beijing Jingdong Century Trading Co., sells cameras, cell phones, computers and the like to the billion-strong Chinese market. And just as in the go-go 1990s, big investors are salivating at its potential market value: The Walton family (think Wal-Mart) recently invested in the site.

“It will be the biggest tech IPO ever,” Tim Keating, former managing director of investment bank Bear Stearns International and now CEO of Denver-area investment fund Keating Capital told FoxNews.com.

Meanwhile, leading U.S. tech firms are struggling with their IPO plans.

  *   Facebook has pushed off its IPO plans to at least late next year, despite recent private valuations that peg the company at more than $60 billion.

  *   The popular daily deals site Groupon delayed its IPO as accounting irregularities led to a plunge in revenues.

  *   Zynga, the maker of popular games like Farmville, recently delayed its hotly anticipated IPO due to “market turbulence.”

And though 360Buy.com is valued at $10 billion — the company is only putting half of its valuation up for sale — it’s far from China’s largest online retailer.

“Consider that the market leader, Taobao Mall, had 370 million registered users in 2010,” Tom McHale, a former technology journalist in Beijing, told FoxNews.com. “Jingdong today claims 15 million users, and that makes Jingdong difficult to find on any list of Internet business leaders in China.”

But that hasn’t stopped the company, which has been in meetings with leading Wall Street firms in Beijing this month with dollar signs in their eyes: Google raised $1.9 billion with its IPO, after all. 

“The four remaining powerhouse investment banks on Wall Street … are the only venture captial firms in the world big enough to pull off a deal of this scope,” Keating said. Or take this kind of risk, he added.

Company officials did not return calls from FoxNews.com.

Is the U.S. Tech IPO Market Dead?

Research by Keating’s firm shows an average of 520 U.S. IPOs annually during the pre-bubble years of 1991 through 1995, compared to an unimpressive 126 per year for the post-bubble period of 2001 through 2009.

Ultimately, that means fewer technology jobs are being created here — one major reason for the high U.S. jobless rate today, Keating said.

“Hong Kong now has the world’s largest IPO market,” in terms of number of transactions, he said. “It dwarfs Wall Street.”

Volatility in the U.S. stock market has generally impacted American companies’ IPO plans, industry sources say.

Several proposals are floating through Congress to relax the regulations — and paperwork — for firms that want to go through with an IPO in the U.S. with American investment banks. A rewrite of the Sarbanes-Oxley law, as well as congressional oversight of federal regulation of the markets, is under consideration in Congress, Keating said.

Firms attracting billions of dollars of funding, like 360buy.com, don’t worry about these kinds of regulations. They can afford teams of lawyers to handle the scrutiny of the SEC and other regulators, experts tell FoxNews.com.

Problems with the integrity of Chinese firms’ financial reporting, like the recent delisting of Longtop, the financial software maker, from the NYSE, could impact these major tech deals, experts say. But the allure of China as a lucrative opportunity for investors remains.

“China is a big market and a huge opportunity,” McHale said. “But it’s a complicated place to do business and a tough place to make a buck.”

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NAIROBI (Reuters) – Internet companies such as Google, Twitter and Facebook are increasingly co-opted for surveillance work as the information they gather proves irresistible to law enforcement agencies, Web experts said this week.

Although such companies try to keep their users’ information private, their business models depend on exploiting it to sell targeted advertising, and when governments demand they hand it over, they have little choice but to comply.

Suggestions that BlackBerry maker RIM might give user data to British police after its messenger service was used to coordinate riots this summer caused outrage — as has the spying on social media users by more oppressive governments.

But the vast amount of personal information that companies like Google collect to run their businesses has become simply too valuable for police and governments to ignore, delegates to the Internet Governance Forum in Nairobi said.

“When the possibility exists for information to be obtained that wasn’t possible before, it’s entirely understandable that law enforcement is interested,” Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf told Reuters in an interview.

“Then the issue would be, what’s the right policy? And that, or course, engenders a lot of debate,” said Cerf, who is recognized as one of the “fathers of the Internet” for his early work in areas including communications protocols and email.

Demands from governments for Internet companies to hand over user information have become routine, according to online privacy researcher and activist Christopher Soghoian, who makes extensive use of freedom-of-information requests in his work.

“Every decent-sized U.S. telecoms and Internet company has a team that does nothing but respond to requests for information,” Soghoian told Reuters in an interview.

Soghoian estimates that U.S. Internet and telecoms companies may receive about 300,000 such requests in connection with law enforcement each year — but public information is scarce.

While U.S. courts are obliged to publish reports on wire-tapping of telephone lines, no similar information is required to be made public with respect to the Internet — which grew up after the laws on electronic communications were passed.

Google does voluntarily publish a transparency report every six months in which it details the number of requests it receives from governments around the world to remove content from its services or hand over user data.

But the numbers do not reveal how many users are affected by each request — only trends country by country (www.google.com/transparencyreport).

Some governments are requiring Internet companies to collect more data and keep it for longer, said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, executive director of Poland’s Panoptykon Foundation, which campaigns for human rights in light of modern surveillance.

“Government agencies throughout the world are pushing companies to collect even more data than is needed for their business purposes,” she told the conference.

“For example, we have a very controversial data retention regime which is currently under review. This requires people to store data for a period up to two years so it can easily be accessed by law enforcement agencies.”

The ease and cost of surveillance are at an all-time low, Soghoian said, with Google charging an administrative fee of $25 to hand over data, Yahoo charging $20, and Microsoft and Facebook providing data for free.

“Now, one police officer from the comfort of their desk can track 20, 30, 50 people all through Web interfaces provided by mobile companies and cloud computing companies,” he said.

“The marginal cost of surveilling one more person is now essentially approaching zero.”

(Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Will Waterman)

Conspiracy theories like these are nothing new; opposing views to the official line given by authorities are in fact crucial in exposing deceptions.

However, independent think tank Demos says that young people do not know how to navigate this information when it appears on the Internet.

“We have something like a Wild West on the internet,” says Jamie Bartlett, senior researcher at Demos.

“There’s a huge amount of very trustworthy, academic, good bits of journalism [on the internet], more than ever before, which is extremely liberating.

But at the same time, equal proportions of distortions, propaganda, lies, mistruths, half-truths and all sorts of rubbish. It can be very difficult, especially for younger people, to sort the wheat from the chaff.”

As part of their research into the influence of the internet on young people, Demos teamed up with creative agency Bold for a workshop exploring digital literacy at a secondary school in Tower Hamlets, in East London.

Pupils were asked to rate various sources of information – the government, Twitter, the Guardian newspaper, their family – according to how much they trusted it. The results were telling.

Closest to the heading ‘Trust’ the pupils placed Youtube; somewhere near the heading ‘Distrust’, they placed the government.

As part of the exercise, the pupils were asked what kind of videos they had viewed online. A lot of discussion ensued about various conspiracy theories. All the pupils had seen videos about 9/11, but were not sure who had made them.

“Those ones are true.” said Aminul Islam, 16.

“There was a documentary, I forgot the name of the guy, but he presented evidence that 9/11 was an inside job. I saw it on the internet – I don’t know what website it was,” said Rizwan Choudhury, 16.

It is the same with news surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden. Pupils said that they had found evidence showing that he was not killed when it was reported that he had been.

The pupils at this school are predominantly of Bangladeshi Muslim heritage, and stories relating to Muslim communities are a common theme in their internet research.

However, Demos say that this problem is not limited to one community, but is prevalent among deprived communities in general.

At another school session – this time at Shorefields Technology College in Liverpool, the class is more ethnically diverse. Videos raising questions about 9/11 are still the first examples of conspiracy theories to be discussed.

Some pupils are more sophisticated in their knowledge. They point out a need to double-check facts and sources and not take information directly from sites such as Wikipedia. But there is still confusion about the way the internet operates.

A lot of the information on the internet is radical historical revisionism”

“I just believed the first answer that came up, to be honest. I know I shouldn’t do it, but Google’s like a trusted website; it’s a lot of people’s home page and you just automatically put trust in it.”

Demos’ report into digital literacy brings together existing research alongside a new survey of 500 teachers across England and Wales.

The report says that students did not verify sources, had poor understanding of how search engines work, and were not good at differentiating between propaganda and accurate information.

“These are the skills now that are so central to education and to broader life for young people, but it’s just not getting taught enough.”

What is needed, according to Demos, is ‘digital judgement’. The think tank says it should be a core part of the curriculum, alongside functional skills that are already taught.

At Shorefields Technology College in Liverpool, teachers say that they are already trying to improve their pupil’s internet skills, placing emphasis on research and interpretation of information.

“We’re no longer a knowledge-based industry, we’re about developing the independent learning skills of students.”

Associate Head Teacher Larry Wilson says that he is very aware of the power of the internet, but argues that it should be embraced.

“The impact of the internet is colossal but we sometimes dwell too much on the negatives and not the fact that it’s been so liberating.”

“I don’t welcome that people will be taken down the garden path so we [teachers] have to skill ourselves up to ask the right questions as well.”

There is certainly plenty of confusion about who or what to trust at the school in Tower Hamlets. The pupils have recently been watching videos and reading about links between government figures and the News of the World, leaving them ever unsure about who is telling the truth.

“Why should we trust the government when everything that is being broadcast on TV could be misleading us as well…what are we supposed to believe?” said Reema Begum, 16.

A tough question, and not one that anyone in the classroom could answer completely.

“A lot of the information on the internet is radical historical revisionism,” said Jamie Bartlett.

“Without a common base of history that we all understand and accept and agree upon it’s very hard for people to have a shared understanding of where we are now.”

You can hear more on Asian Network Reports on the BBC Asian Network at 1230 BST and 1800 BST Monday to Friday and after on BBC iPlayer

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In an effort to further bring radio into the 21st century, web-based personalized radio provider Stitcher also available for iPhone) has secured $10 million in Series C funding, thanks to New Enterprise Associates, Benchmark Capital, New Atlantic Ventures and others. The company has now gathered a total investment of $18.7 million in three rounds of funding.

Rather than turn to individual streaming apps of content providers such as CNN and NPR, this free app, available on Android iPhone, BlackBerry and Palm devices, gives users the opportunity to use one central hub to switch between many different programs. Talk, sports, news, entertainment and comedy radio programs are all available on the app, giving users a radio stream on-the-go that does not require additional updates or syncing. Through Stitcher, radio programs are updated automatically and continuously with the most recent episodes and content.

“Stitcher has created for talk radio what Pandora, Spotify, and others have built for music,” said Ravi Viswanathan, general partner at NEA, who will join the company’s board of directors. “They’ve made it personalized; they’ve made it mobile; and they’ve made it available when and where people want it.” He noted that talk programming in terrestrial radio has spurred a $5 billion advertising market, meaning there is a tremendous opportunity on which to capitalize when it comes to mobile talk radio.

The company plans to use the latest funding to expand its workforce, boost product development and enhance partnerships with content providers, allowing it to expand beyond the more than 6,000 different shows it already streams.

He stated this while addressing a lunch party organised by the recently promoted Professors of AIOU including Professor Dr. Syed Abdul Siraj, Professor Dr. Shahid Iqbal Kamran and Professor Dr. Rashid A. Naeem. More than hundred faculty members and administrative officers of AIOU participated in the party.

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Dr. Nazir A. Sangi and the newly selected faculty members have announced donation of one-lack rupees each from their own pocket for the help of AIOU poor students.

The vice chancellor while addressing on the occasion, congratulated all the newly selected faculty in different position and thanked for donating for the poor AIOU students. This will go a long way benefiting the poor to get educated and ultimately for a literate Pakistan, the vice chancellor assured.

The Vice chancellor also shed light on the progress made by the University during the last one year. He said that the University is spreading education to the rural poor by establishing new regional campus in all the four provinces and the AJK. The university is making every use of the latest communication technology to make teaching-learning effective. In this regard the university is trying to remove the distance through the use of latest communication technology, the vice chancellor explained.

Dr. Sangi was of the view that institution can be developed only when their employees are satisfied with their job. In this regard, the university is determined to make all the efforts to promote, educate and facilitate its employees. There are frequently selection boards meeting in the last one year, which selected teaching faculty, officer cadres and officials in all the specialized area.

Dr. Sangi, said that his top priority is to spread basic education and professional training compatible to far-flung and backward areas of the country, where even schools are not available. He said that AIOU has many programs of basic training including livestock, art and design, marketing and computer and with these programs, the university can bring a revolution in the lives of poor, unemployed and backward people of the country but for this purpose, the university is lacking appropriate funds and buildings. For this purpose, the university has established a Fund for Poor people, in which many people are contributing for the education of poor Pakistanis. On the occasion, Dr. Sangi also announced to contribute one hundred thousand rupees for this fund out of his pocket. Similarly, an amount of one hundred thousand rupees was also announced to be contributed by the recently inducted faculty members of the university.

Dr. Sangi said that Allama Iqbal Open University is amongst the four mega universities of the world and it is also the largest Public Sector University of the Country. He said that AIOU has a mandate to spread higher education through distance education system throughout the country and it has a nation-wide network of regional campuses in the country. Currently the university is offering a greater number of programs through its regional network to provide education at the doorstep of the nation. AIOU is giving special emphasis on personality building, he added.

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The expansive universe cultivated by Facebook demonstrates the changing trend in networking and social behavior exhibited by the internet populace. Left behind are the days when one would find pen pals in corners of the world; we now find friends through a web medium that not only gives a brief intro, but also provides some assurance in terms of common contacts.

If one is to review the history of Facebook, a common story with the release of the motion picture “The Social Network”, the interesting factor found common is the initial thinking that led to the planting of the roots for this giant. It was exclusivity; a club that only a few could get into, while everyone wanted to be in it. In fact, even Orkut employed a similar technique in its heyday, requiring an invitation from members to join.

However, opening up the club proved to be the best thing for Facebook, propelling it into the heights of the internet world, and of course, making a billionaire out of its founder.

Instead of emailing your friends and family and attaching pictures, you could simply share your life and even your daily routine with your world; all through one portal. As the popularity has climbed, more developers have taken to this one platform to share their wares, from games to markets. And this has meant that the time spent by an average user of the site has also increased dramatically, in some cases, alarmingly.

This is one of the reasons why many workplaces have restricted worker access to social networking sites from the office, with information security and confidentiality also playing vital roles.

The various researches done so far have shown diverging results on what would be the best solution for a more open and productive workplace. In fact, a recent Gartner report showed a decline in the use of email communication corresponding with an increase in social network mediums as primary contact platforms. The hypothesis by the report states that social platforms could become the solitary modes in the next 5 years for all forms of communication; email, notes, messages, photos, etc.

Taking into account the global trend, enterprises have to make decisions on how to utilize the social platform; incorporate or segregate. Some organizations have welcomed Facebook openly, relying on the strong member base to promote and market their brands and environment. Others have kept the gates closed.

This is an arena that has become the new battleground for software houses, with Yammer and Salesforce applying the early breaks to introduce enterprise-specific social portals.

The model utilized by these enterprise options is similar to Facebook’s historic model; allowing people of one domain network to connect. In such cases, an enterprise deploys a social platform for all its employees to utilize for all communication, at the office and beyond the doors of the workplace. For a large organization, this is one of the best and low-cost ways to have its people get to know each other, especially in light of the segmentation and segregation that most large entities employ for efficient working processes. Additionally, with Admin control remaining in the hands of the company, the chances of mischief can be minimized.

Scrybe, an Adobe Systems Inc. & LMK Resources funded Tech company, (with roots in Pakistan) has become the new member of the social networking arena, launching Convofy.

Being the proud creators of a popular calendaring and personal productivity suite, the new product aims to revolutionize the social networking experience for enterprises. Key features that its founder Faizan Buzdar has been quick to highlight include:

User experience seems to be the vital aspect considered during the design of Convofy, and the only way to get the complete feel for it would be to try it out. The viral impact of the product has already had several competitors sign up to review the platform, while also enticing large enterprises to join and give their workforce a vital connection tool.

Just like all of us would like our mobiles to be the all-in-one device, Convofy aims to do the same with the office environment. Still early days to predict the success factor, but things are appearing green at the moment.

Take a look for yourself and share the experience: http://www.convofy.com

Have a look at following preview video:

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When I say Veena Malik, the first thing that would pop into most of our minds would be Big Boss. Her actions in the Indian reality show “Big Boss” have been dissected and discussed by millions of Pakistanis and has remained the major topic of conversation for countless TV shows, baithaks, hang outs and what not.

Admit it or not, all this talk surrounding her has made her somewhat of a celebrity. She was actually in the top ten twitter trends worldwide after the Express News interview she gave and as ProPakistani first reported, she’s the first Pakistani woman to ever achieve this feat.

Her controversy sold and she became the most talked about woman in Pakistan, seemingly overnight.

Well that’s not it. The real news is that Veena Malik has become a world wide celebrity. In fact, these days, a video of verbal spat between her and a religious scholar on the Express News interview she gave (on her return from Big Boss) is circling around the web, including Digg, Huffington and various other notable places.

Entitled, “This woman is AWESOME. Pakistani Actress Defies Mullah Accusing Her of Immorality”, the video has English subtitles as well, providing this issue an international audience.

Just to add to your knowledge, this video has been viewed more than a half million times in just less than one month.

Now this is an interesting scenario for a multitude of reasons. First of all, this is one of those rare stories to surface on Digg (and get popular too) from Pakistan . It’s a personal experience that stories from Pakistan don’t usually pop on Digg, regardless of how interesting or pop-worthy they are (Power diggers will concur here).

For those of you who think that I’m being too much of a conspiracy theorist, have a look and see how many positive stories about our country were Digg’d the most:

http://digg.com/search?q=pakistan&sort=digg

Personally I feel the way this issue had the whole nation gripped, is disturbing to say the very least. It’s not like enough doesn’t happen in our country that we elevate a person, whose very work is to get talked about no matter how that may be achieved, to an internet celebrity status.

Another point to ponder here is why do these types of stories make headlines in western media that show Pakistan in a negative light? Are these stories the best Pakistan can do? Or is good stuff so hard to come out of Pakistan these days?

All stuff like this does, makes us “the laughing stock” for countless people. Things could have gone differently in this case if Veena Malik had refused to go to the show. Having gone there, she could have portrayed our culture and the situation lot better.

Even after having done all that stuff, she could have at least accepted that she was at fault instead of denying and blowing this issue out of proportion.

On the other side, the host of that show could have thought of Pakistan before setting up an incendiary encounter he knew would have gone the road it did. As for us, why was this issue more important than the life and death issues this country faces everyday?

I think it’s a call for us to have a soul search. Instead of discussing whether an entertainer was scantily clothed or not, we should focus our attentions on matters more critical. It’s not like we’ve run out of them.

It’s time to think for a better image of Pakistan, instead of increasing our personal ratings, advantages, profits and individual interests.

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PTCL has signed an agreement with Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, which will enable Bahauddin Zakariya University students, staff, faculty and university administration to avail PTCL’s EVO services at discounted prices.

According to the agreement, Bahauddin Zakariya University students / officials can get EVO devices at 50 percent discount rate, i.e. Rs. 2,000 instead of regular Rs. 4,000 first up charges.

Similarly, monthly EVO charges will be deducted at Rs. 1,250 instead of regular Rs. 2,000 charges per month.

PTCL EVO has signed similar agreement with various other organizations, including universities, medical colleges and government institutions.

Students of other national universities can also push their administration to sign similar agreement with PTCL, so that such discounts are made available for them as well.

Via PTCL Workers

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Almost a month ago, we had uncovered this start-up Groupin.PK that promises discounted deals and coupons for its customers from local market.

Now we are told that Groupin.PK is launching its operation tomorrow (in Islamabad for now) and as a promotion company is offering sugar at Rs. 25 per kilogram.

As we mentioned in our last coverage, the idea behind Groupin.PK is that they offer (from a minimum of 50% up to 90%) discounts coupons to their subscribers.

This discount is made possible only when a minimum number of people sign up for that deal, lets say, 100 people. This way, all 100 people will enjoy the discount, while the seller/vendor can enjoy the bulk sale.

In the case of Sugar, we are amazed at the discount rate, I mean they are offering even lesser than the factory cost. When we asked if Groupin is subsidizing the sugar as a launch promotion, the Marketing Head of the start-up opted not to disclose the trade secret.

Groupin is likely to start its operations in Lahore and Karachi in a month’s duration.

Also to mention here, there is a cap of 5 KG per account for this sugar discount, meaning that, one account holder will not be able to buy more than 5 kilo grams of sugar.

Also remember this that deals won’t stay on Groupin.PK for ever. Usually deals are going to say valid for 24 hours or so. Though, old deals (the popular ones) may come back again, based on the demand and seller’s will.

You can signup here: Groupin.PK

This year, like every year, the internet embraced April fools day and as usual, major tech companies and websites shocked people who didn’t realize what the date was. So without further ado, I present the better pranks pulled off this year:

Australia to get 2022 World Cup, FIFA descends into chaos:

Sport news website “The roar” had quite a few people going with this one. The article stated that FIFA had some internal disputes and Qatar had been stripped of its World Cup hosting rights. Instead Australia had been given the right to host World Cup 2022. Here’s the posted article:

http://www.theroar.com.au/2011/04/01/australia-to-get-2022-world-cup-fifa-descends-into-chaos/

Google’s Hiring Autocompleter:

Google always comes up with the better jokes every year and this year was no exception. Turns out, Google autcomplete feature is powered by people. And you can be one of them! You are eligible if your typing speed is around 32,000 words per minute, and you are willing to travel to far off places to learn local trends. Here’s a video of life as an autocompleter.

Another one from Google is the new Gmail Motion feature which uses body gestures to control everything in Gmail, as is demonstrated below:

Groupon patents April fools day:

Keeping in line with companies applying for crazy patents in the industry, Groupon decided to patent April fools day.

“For centuries, April Fools’ Day’s intellectual trademark ownership has been uncertain. That’s why we are proud to announce our patent application for April Fools’ Day. Everyone’s favorite day of daffiness finally has a new owner—Groupon!”

Here’s the page where they announced it:

http://www.groupon.com/pages/april-fools

A pen that tweets as you write! :

“Artline” have revolutionized the industry with the release of the world’s first Twitter pen. This piece of equipment can twitter whatever you are writing through the use of a series of accelerometers and a small camera mounted in the barrel track the pen’s movements and translates that into characters. A specially designed 4th generation microchip allows the pen access to your Twitter account, updating it instantly.

http://www.artline.com.au/flash.aspx

YouTube:

YouTube posted the top 5 viral pictures of 1911, complete with grainy black and white film. It’s a collection of actual viral videos these days by the way for the YouTube newbies.

Kodak:

Kodak really got into the groove this year. They offered an app for removing a specific person from all of your photos and videos regardless of their location. Super creative stuff.

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=2/6868&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=16712

Share funny pranks you’ve come across the web in the comments!

(CNN) — After several days of blackout, internet access was restored to parts of Egypt on Wednesday, according to CNN correspondents and internet traffic monitors.

Cell phone networks, which also were cut off amid sometimes violent protests in the Middle Eastern country, were also partially running, according to reports.

“#Alexandria tense as fears of clashes rise; internet back up and running #Egypt,” CNN’s Nic Robertson wrote on his Twitter feed at 8 a.m. ET.

“Good news: Internet access being restored in Egypt,” Google wrote on its official Twitter feed.

“Internet blackberry do seem to be working again,” CNN’s Ben Wedeman posted at about 5 a.m. ET.

CNN confirmed internet service had been returned to Egypt at about 5:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday. Internet monitors Renesys and RIPE also show a spike in Web traffic coming from the country, after several days without a signal.

“Egyptian Internet providers returned to the Internet at 09:29:31 UTC (11:29 a.m. Cairo time). Websites such as the Egyptian Stock Exchange, Commercial International Bank of Egypt, MCDR, and the US Embassy in Cairo, are once again reachable,” Renesys, an internet intelligence company, wrote on its official blog.

CNN iReport got a flood of new accounts from Egypt after internet service started to return on Wednesday.

Egypt’s embattled government is believed to have cut internet and mobile phone access in an attempt to disperse protests calling for the country’s president, Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for 30 years, to step down.

Mubarak on Tuesday said he would not seek re-election in September. U.S. President Barack Obama urged that the transition should occur quickly.

Demonstrations — both pro- and anti-Mubarak — continued on Wednesday.

Egypt’s protests initially were organized, at least in part, via Facebook groups. After the internet started to shut down on Thursday, protesters used other means to communicate.

On Monday, Google announced a service that would let people in Egypt and elsewhere post to Twitter by making landline phone calls.

The search company’s voice-recognition software translated those calls into text, allowing people outside of Egypt to view the Twitter messages.

The internet situation in Egypt has raised questions about the role of technology in modern protests and also about “kill switches” for a country’s internet.

CNET reports the United States is considering giving Obama the power to cut private internet access in the event of disaster.

Some pro-technology groups have condemned the internet shutdown in Egypt.

(CNN) — Are we in the age of internet revolutions — where Facebook, Twitter and text messages are essential ingredients in democratic change?

Or, as the ongoing protests in Egypt perhaps show, is the internet only one tool in this process — nothing more than the modern version of the telephone?

As violent demonstrations continue on the streets of Egypt — where many are upset with the results of Hosni Mubarak’s 30 years in power — tech pundits and bloggers are trying to sort out the internet’s role in the situation.

Some say Egypt is violating modern human rights by cutting access to the internet and to mobile phone networks. Others say the fact that protests have continued despite these digital barricades reveals a massive hole in the argument that social media spawns modern revolutions.

“Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools,” Malcolm Gladwell writes in The New Yorker.

To help make sense of these complicated arguments, here’s a wrap-up of what people are saying about the internet’s role in Egypt, where unrest continues, and in Tunisia, where protests earlier this month toppled the government and set off a wave of unrest in other Middle Eastern countries:

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told Al-Jazeera that internet access is a modern human right:

“We want to make sure that Egypt is not interfering with the use of social media. That’s a fundamental right as clear as walking into a town square. We’re making these points clear to Egypt, publicly and privately.”

Dave Pell, writing on the blog Tweetage Wasteland, says the internet isn’t essential for revolution — but it sure helps:

“Yes, folks. The Civil Rights movement took place at a time before Twitter. For those scoring at home, the same is true for every notable historical movement from the Big Bang through the release of Destiny Child’s Bootlylicious video. The realtime, social web is clearly not a required element to organize and execute a high impact revolution. Neither is a megaphone, but it sure makes it easier for the folks in the back to hear you.”

CNET’s Caroline McCarthy says “there’s no such thing as a ‘social media revolution’”:

“A dictator toppled by Twitter or ousted through the efforts of a Facebook group? It’s an enticing idea, particularly for those who are in the business of social media and have a personal stake of sorts in tallying each instance of social media’s global value making headlines. Twitter punditry this week has been peppered with speculation about whether upheaval in Tunisia or the subsequent anti-government protests in Egypt might amount to the ‘first’ true revolution spawned by social media. But this just isn’t the right way to measure things: the occurrence of a ‘social media revolution,’ at this point, should be neither noteworthy nor remarkable. If a dictator is overthrown or a government ousted, it would be notable if Facebook or Twitter weren’t used.”

Wired’s David Kravets reports that Egyptians are publicizing protests with good-old-fashioned leaflets, in the absence of the internet:

“… Don’t confuse tools with root causes, or means with ends. The protests in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are against dictators who’ve held power — and clamped down on their people — for decades. That’s the fuel for the engine of dissent. The dozen or more protesters that self-immolated in Egypt didn’t do it for the tweets. ‘It’s about years of repression and dictatorship. Revolutions existed before Twitter and Facebook,’ Issandr el-Amrani, a Cairo writer and activist, said in a telephone interview from Tunisia. ‘It’s really not much more complicated than this.’ Only about a quarter of the Egyptian populace is online, el-Amrani estimated. So street protests have grown the old-fashioned way: by leaflets and spontaneous amalgamation.”

At the blog TechCrunch, Alexia Tsotsis writes that Twitter is turning people into individual news networks:

“Humans are functioning as defacto news aggregators using the publication tools already available. This, while not a novel idea, really hit home in the past two weeks with the two subsequent revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. What I and you probably noticed was that interested people we followed took it upon themselves to become individual nodes of information, using the tools they had to serve as their own news networks.”

In The New Yorker,Nicholas Thompson, a social media expert, writes that the internet can benefit both sides of a conflict:

“Governments control the pipes through which all that information flows. This means they can block sites or, as Egypt has just apparently done, shut down the entire Internet and thus confuse everyone who has come to rely on it. In Iran, the government clearly had some success using the Internet to disrupt and slow the green revolution. In Tunisia, the government hacked the password of nearly every Facebook user in the country. Had Ben Ali not fallen so quickly, that information would have been extremely useful. Technological tools can be used quite effectively by the masses, or by the man.”

On the Foreign Policy blog “The Net Effect,” internet scholar Evgeny Morozov writes that the internet and mobile phones make it easier for authoritarian regimes to track protestors:

” … technology — not just the Internet but also mobile phones — make (sic) it easier to trace protesters and dissidents. It would be very hard, for example, to trace the names of everyone who gathered on Minsk’s central square to oppose the results of the recent elections in Belarus before mobile phones became ubiquitous.”

Speaking on CNN, journalism professor Jeff Jarvis said the internet is a human right — and that it enables people ‘to take charge’ of government :

“I think the right to connect now becomes a fundamental human right. And the problem here is we see that government is the single point of failure for the internet. Whether that’s the kill switch, as Egypt has used it, or whether it’s the fact that they control the structure for the internet. And so our future — the means by which we’re going to build the next society — is vulnerable here, and that worries me. At the same time, I celebrate the fact that the people in a nation can use these tools to take charge.”

Harvard’s Jillian York writes the Tunisia protests would have happened with or without Twitter and Facebook — but we might not have heard about it:

“Would the State Department have gotten involved early on (remember, their first public comment was in respect to Tunisian Net freedom)? Would Al Jazeera –without offices on the ground — have been able to report on the unfolding story as they did? Most importantly, would any of that have mattered?”

Internet access is “fundamental” to the protests in Egypt, writes Khadija Sharife on the Huffington Post:

“More than ever, the internet remains a crucial vehicle of sustaining and transmitting resistance by allowing for Egyptians to ‘network the world’ about the machinery of Mubarak’s brutal regime. While it is not technology that has given life to the revolution but Egyptians themselves, catalyzed in part by their Tunisian neighbors, access is fundamental.”

In The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell points out that protests — and revolutions — occurred long before the internet. Take the Civil Rights movement:

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KARACHI: Authorities have asked mobile telephone operators to stop BlackBerry services to foreign missions in the country amid concern about the security of the communications, industry sources said on Monday.

Two industry officials confirmed that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had asked them to stop all Blackberry services to foreign missions.

“I can confirm that PTA has asked us to stop all BlackBerry services to foreign embassies and high commissions,” a senior official at a mobile company, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

Another industry official at another mobile company also confirmed receiving the instructions.

“There are some other issues as well, mostly relating to BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server), which we are trying to resolve in consultation with the PTA,” he said.

A PTA spokesman was not available for comment.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) has been buffeted by demands for access to its encrypted data from several countries, including India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), worried by security and social mores.

Government officials say that they had never allowed BlackBerry services to foreign missions and inbound roamers when the services were launched in Pakistan in 2005.

The government also initially banned the more secure BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) services in Pakistan.

BES allows users to send and receive secure email and messages, which is difficult for governments to intercept and read.

However, the instructions have since been flouted by all five Pakistani mobile operators.

An industry source said that the government had asked all operators in the country to enforce the restrictions.

“The most critical issue is the provision of BlackBerry services to the foreign embassies, missions and high commissions,” said the source.

“Therefore, all the operators have agreed to close all BlackBerry connections provided to them by January 31,” he said, adding discussions would be held with the PTA to gain more time on the provision of BES to local customers as well as BlackBerry services to incoming roamers.

If fully enforced, the restrictions would mean no BlackBerry services for many of the multinational companies and aid groups, who use the BES service rather than the Blackberry Internet Service, or BIS, which is much less secure.

Last year, India demanded access to all BlackBerry services as part of efforts to fight militancy and security threats over the Internet and through telephone communications.

Last week, RIM said there was no possibility of providing India access to corporate emails on BlackBerry devices. (ref:tribune.com.pk)