Jun 19

Mochi Media, an advertising network for casual game sites, said Wednesday that it closed on a $10 million series B round of funding from Shasta Ventures and Accel Partners.

The San Francisco-based company, which launched three years ago, had previously raised an undisclosed sum from Accel Partners. It plans to use the new funds to develop its fairly new advertising platform MochiAds for game developers. Since the network was launched last October, it has expanded to reach more than 60 million unique visitors per month on multiple gaming sites.

Online gaming is attracting more large investments of late. Earlier this month, Turbine, creator of online games like the Lord of the Rings, closed on $40 million in equity financing from Time Warner and GGV Capital.

Jun 4

There are no dearth of porn sites on the worldwide web. And in India, content with desi flavours are the most sought-after in the cyber space with lots of sites sprouting up with each passing day. But when it comes to toon porn stuff, there are hardly any sites out there to quench the thirst of the desi porn lovers.

Now there’s a website, which serializes the sexcapades of a fictitious cartoon character called Savita bhabhi, which claims to be the first Indian toon character custom-made for India.

The website says it has been inspired by a “hot Indian Bhabhi”. Referring to bhabhi or elder sister-in-law, the site’s tagline says: “She is a regular Indian woman…Due to social issues (she is married) she was not willing to expose her true identity. So we decided to immortalize her in the form of Savita Bhabhi.”

The site is about the fantasies of this buxomly bhabhi whose sexual escapades are serialized daily in fantasy story formats. The stories are in English, Hindi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu.

The toon stories are the typical sleazy kind of stuff once popular in the now-archaic print mode targeted (apparently) at the younger generation; the same old he-comes-and-she-seduces-in-a-jiffy tales.

The creators of the site, however, have not apparently used the latest tools in the creation of Savita bhabhi.

Indian porn sites are increasingly using bhabhi as an icon like other typical neighborhood lady, lady-driving instructor, tuition teacher et al.

Psychologists, however, take exception to the proliferation of such kinds of websites saying it will have an adverse impact on the Indian male psyche.

According to psychologist Mythili M Sharma, the portrayal of bhabhi in such a poor light can make a dent on the way a traditional Indian male considers family values.

“In the typical Indian traditional family bhabhi is almost on par with the mother. In the absence of mother, men in a traditional Indian family often reach out to their elder sister-in-laws whenever they have a problem. Websites like this one are not definitely going to be taken in good taste in India by an average Indian male psyche, because bhabhi hold a special place in the mind of an Indian male,” said Sharma.

She felt that such websites should be discouraged especially considering the fact that “we are living at a time when values are breaking down slowly.”

Family values can’t just be transgressed, Sharma added.

Cyber law experts also cried hoarse over the site citing legal as well as moral implications.

According to cyber law expert Na.Vijayashankar, known better as Naavi, the website’s content runs contrary to the existing cyber laws in India.

“I am certain that the activity of the website is illegal and anti-social. It violates Section 67 of ITA 2000 and several other provisions of IPC. In my opinion this site is more dangerous than a normal adult site since it targets young Indian audience and degrades women,” said Vijayashankar, director of Cyber Crime Complaints and Resolution Assistance Center and techno legal information security consultant presently based in Bangalore.

He said it is possible that the publishing of the story itself (if the URL is revealed) would be falling in the grey area of “promoting obscene content” and could invite objections.

Petition against the site

After CyberMedia News contacted Vijayashankar, he filed a petition with the police in Karnataka and also wrote to Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) to find the owners and block the site.

In his e-mail to Gulshan Rai, director of CERT-IN, Vijayashankar said the content of the site is “aimed at corrupting the minds of young Indians in a manner worse than the worst pornographic sites.”

“The site needs to be blocked immediately besides action being taken on the owners. Perhaps the investigation to trace the owners should precede the blocking. However blocking cannot be postponed for long and hence urgent action is called for in starting an investigation,” the mail said.

Vijayashankar has also suggested a CBI enquiry to bring the owners of the Canada-registered website to book.

A recent issue of the Tehelka magazine named the creators of Savita bhabhi as Deshmukh, Dexstar and Mad, who are “appropriately underground.”

According to Alexa.com, the website has a traffic ranking of 3,361, with Indians constituting 89.5 per cent of the viewers, followed by those in the US.

May 20

CBS is making a major Internet and news powerplay, acquiring CNET for $11.50 per share (44% more than CNET is trading at) for a total of $1.8 Billion. Acquiring CNET and its $406 million per year in revenue is a big and bold move by CBS, which was the original parent company of iWon Search (now an IAC company) when it launched.

Remember those golden days of search? When the big networks were all getting into search : NBC launched Snap.com, ABC launched Go.com and the Go Guides format, and CBS went “Search & Win” almost almost a decade before Microsoft. Are things coming around full circle?

CNET Networks’ sites will be combined with CBS’s list of online destinations and interactive businesses, and expect some MSNBC style cobranding from the company online and off. CBS has a fairly poor online presence outside of sports, so a synergy between CBS and CNET does make some sense (let’s also remember that CBS Corporation and Viacom/MTV are both owned by the same parent company), but will it be a success?

Personally, I’m excited to see if CBS does something cool with Search.com (come on CBS, buy Teoma or Gigablast, just buy one and launch your own engine!!!)

CNET properties include :

* CNET
* ZDNet
* GameSpot.com
* TV.com
* mp3.com
* CNET news.com
* UrbanBaby
* CHOW
* Search.com
* BNET
* MySimon
* TechRepublic

CBS online properties include :

* CBS.com
* CBSSports.com
* CBSCollegeSports.com
* MaxPreps.com
* CBSNews.com
* last.fm
* Wallstrip
* MobLogic
* CBS Radio

CBS also adds that its network of the CBS Audience Network sites which power the online presence of local affiliates is made up of more than 300 partner Web sites and reaches 82% of all online users in the United States.

May 18

Hot-on-the-heels of MySpace announcing data portability, Facebook and Google followed suit with ‘Facebook Connect’ and ‘Friend Connect’ respectively. Features with different names but essentially the same function — to help users share their profile data on other Web sites across the Internet.

Somewhere along the way though, Facebook has developed cold feet for the Web site has now chosen to suspend Google’s Friend Connect for getting access to Facebook user information. The reason seems to be the Web site’s privacy policy — going by a statement on its Developer page yesterday.

The statement says Facebook has found out that ‘Friend Connect’ re-distributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users’ knowledge. Which goes against Facebook’s privacy standards that have been hitherto strictly adhered to. The statement however adds that suspension of ‘Friend Connect’ is more or less temporary till such time when Google’s ‘Friend Connect’ is made to comply with Facebook’s terms of service.

The statement says Facebook has followed up with Google regarding this issue several times, and that they hope to work with Google in future in such a manner so as to allow Facebook users share their data exactly when and where they choose. All said, MySpace’s data portability, Google’s ‘Friend Connect’ and their ‘Facebook Connect’ could all be part of one great Internet movement, the statement concludes.

May 17

UK software sales are on course to lag almost $60 billion behind China this year, fuelling high-level calls for Britain to abandon the low-cost end of market.

Revenues in the Chinese software product and services sector are forecast to reach $140 billion (£70 billion) by 2010, and already hit $21bn during the first quarter of 2008 alone, close to the sector’s $27.5bn revenue predictions for the entire year in the UK.

India’s software sales and services revenues are forecast to reach $52 billion this year.

Sean Finnan, president of the UK trade association for technology Intellect and UK country manager for EDS, said it is time for Britain to forget any hopes of matching China and India in the low-cost software market.

Finnan says the country should instead carve out a niche for itself in high-value end of the sector.

An Intellect report into the state of the UK technology industry published today shows the European technology industry growing by 5.7 percent last year, compared to 33 percent in India and 28 percent in China.

Finnan said: “It is unsustainable to try and dominate the low-cost ground. China and India will always be able to win the volume game. We need to try and follow the lead of the financial-services sector to reposition ourselves at the high-value end of the market. We believe that the knowledge-economy services will be critical for the economy going forward.”

Speaking at the launch of the report, Richard Holway, of Farnham Consulting, said that less software was being sold as companies tried to extend the life of existing products.

He said: “Seventy to 80 percent of the revenue is being generated by existing clients saying they are going to keep the software longer and spend more money on bolt- and add-ons.”

Tom Wills-Sandford, deputy director general of Intellect, said China is yet to cut into the UK software market but this could change in future.

He said: “The UK software industry has seen steady growth over the last few years and is in good shape. The software sector in China is certainly growing fast, but we have not seen a significant impact in the UK from either Chinese software products or Chinese outsourcing.

“However, given their appetite for expansion into new markets and the staggering rate of development both internally and externally seen to date, this may well change in the future.”

The Chinese first quarter figures released by the Ministry of Industry and Information showed software services has generated $4 billion, software outsourcing £258 million and software sales $7 billion in revenue during the first three months of the year.

The European Information Technology Observatory software revenues forecast for the UK for 2008 predicted €10 billion revenue from system software and €7.9 billion from application software.

« Previous Entries

WordPress database error You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1 for query SELECT cat_id, cat_name FROM made by widget_links_with_style