Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Samsung and Qualcomm form Internet.org

The global social network, Facebook and a few major companies like Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Samsung and Qualcomm have joined hands to form what may be the future of the Internet. Internet.org is an initiative to deliver internet access to two-thirds of the world that currently does not have access to it. The collaborative effort plans to bring down costs for deployment of such large infrastructure, By reducing the cost and amount of data required for most apps and enabling new business models, Internet.org is focused on enabling the next 5 billion people to come online. Although, many still struggle with basic internet access, and where implementations can be a lifelong goal, its not one that cannot be achieved. For more than 100 years, Ericsson has been enabling communications for all and today more than 6 billion people in the world have access to mobile communications,” said Hans Vestberg, President and CEO of Ericsson. “We are committed to shaping the Networked Society – where everyone and everything will be connected in real time; creating the freedom, empowerment and opportunity to transform society. We believe affordable connectivity and internet access improves people’s lives and helps build a more sustainable planet and therefore we are excited to participate in the internet.org initiative.” “As a world leader in mobile solutions for emerging markets having powered more than 300 million smart devices within 2 years, MediaTek whole heartedly supports the internet.org initiative.” said MK Tsai, Chairman of MediaTek. “Global Internet and social media access represent the biggest shift since the industrial revolution, and we want to make it all-inclusive.” “Nokia is deeply passionate about connecting people – to one another and the world around them,” said Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop. “Over the years, Nokia has connected well over a billion people. Our industry is now at an exciting inflection point where Internet connectivity is becoming more affordable and efficient for consumers while still offering them great experiences. Universal internet access will be the next great industrial revolution.” “Today, more than 300 million people use Opera every month to access the Internet. Tomorrow, we have a chance to serve the next 5 billion people connecting on mobile devices in developing countries. It’s in Opera’s DNA to save people time, money and data, and through internet.org we think we can help advance these goals.” — Lars Boilesen, CEO Opera Software. “Mobile has helped to transform many people’s lives in the emerging regions where often a computing device will be the first and only mobile experience they’ll ever have” said Paul Jacobs, chairman of the board and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “Having shipped more than 11 billion chips, Qualcomm is a market leader that is committed to the goal of bridging the digital divide. We’re pleased to be a part of internet.org and to be working with key ecosystem players to drive this initiative forward.” “This new initiative has big potential to help accelerate access to the Internet for everyone,” said JK Shin, CEO and President of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics. “We’re focused on delivering high quality mobile devices to ensure that the next five billion people have great mobile Internet experiences.”

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Yahoo Buys Rockmelt Social Browser And Shuts Down App

Yahoo’s summer shopping spree has claimed another company. This time it’s former social browser turned Flipboard clone, Rockmelt. According to Rockmelt, its products will be completely shut down at the end of this month. Current users will be able to export their existing content as an OPML file. Reports indicate that the Internet giant shelled out between $60 and $70 million (€45 and €52 million) for the company. Rockmelt’s team will head for the Yahoo mobile and media departments. “The parallels between Yahoo! And Rockmelt are obvious: we share a common goal to help people discover the best personalized content from around the web,” Yahoo’s Mike Kerns and Adam Cahan said in a blog post. Rockmelt has a well-regarded team that was surely attractive to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer as she continues to build out her team. But the acquisition was not a pure acqui-hire, as Rockmelt had built a variety of media-related mobile technologies that could be useful to Yahoo. Yahoo posted the following : Thirty-two Rockmelt employees have joined our media and mobile organization. We aren’t going to discuss specifics on what they’re working on, but we plan to integrate the Rockmelt technology into our media platform in order to deliver content in new and exciting ways. Stay tuned!

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Vine For Android Updated With Push Notifications

An updated version of the Vine application is now available for download for the owners of Android-based devices, namely version 1.3.3, with some appealing improvements packed inside. With the newest version, Viners now have the ability to share user profiles through more than just the SMS app (hopefully all Android apps with sharing capabilities will be available). Users can also look forward to push notifications, so they never miss a mention or re-Vine. Furthermore, the new application release provides the possibility to share any public post to Twitter or Facebook, while also delivering a variety of other bug fixes and improvements. For those of you who don’t keep up with the social media, Vine is an app that allows you to create 6 seconds of video in a looping feed that you can tag and then post. Owned by Twitter, consider this the video version of the social messaging app, if the messages continued to repeat over and over again. Vine for Android is available through the Google Play store for free and it is compatible with devices running Ice Cream Sandwich and later platforms.

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