Billa & Melinda Gates Foundation has been gracious enough to give a grant of us$ 6.5 million to Easypaisa to fuel the adoption of its services among poorest households of Pakistan. A press conference was held at Telenor Pakistan’s head office in which the grant was announced.

Roar Bjaerum, Vice President of Financial Services at Telenor Pakistan, said

Financial exclusion of the lower income population is a systemic challenge in Pakistan. With more than 85% of population not having access to formal savings or credit products, many households are vulnerable to fluctuations in daily income and unable to absorb economic shocks from unexpected events. Easypaisa’s vision is to serve as a vehicle for financial inclusion for such households. The grant will help us accelerate adoption of Easypaisa services among poor and unbanked individuals

Rodger Voorhies, Director of the Gates Foundation’s Financial Services for the Poor initiative, said:

While Easypaisa has seen rapid adoption of its payment and remittance services, adoption of mobile financial services, like savings and insurance, has been slower, this grant aims to accelerate adoption of Easypaisa’s Mobile Account among poor and unbanked households to create a foundation for the delivery of savings, insurance, and other mobile financial services.

Such a significant grant by Bill and Melinda Gates foundation not only sheds light on the philanthropic nature of Microsoft’s founder, but also to his aim to fight poverty across the world. Hundreds and thousands of poor households will be able to access financial services in Pakistan if this grant is utilized effectively for the purpose it is provided instead of marketing the Easypaisa brand.

Techmeme recently added an events section to their website – see techmeme.com/#events  – that lists upcoming (and newsworthy) events focused on the tech industry. It’s a pretty useful list, curated by Techmeme editors, and includes tech events around new product launches, upcoming conferences, earnings calls of tech companies, webcasts, and related events.

The Techmeme blog has more details on how event organizers can get their own event listed on Techmeme. If you are organizing a Tedx or a BarCamp in your city, Techmeme may not find that very interesting but if you are doing a WordCamp that people like Matt {Cutts|Mullenweg} are attending, your event will probably make it to the Techmeme events page.

Subscribe to Techmeme Events in your Calendar

The Techmeme Events page currently doesn’t offer an ICAL / ICS feed so it is difficult to keep track of upcoming tech events in your Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal or Google Calendar. There’s however a little workaround.

You can use either of the above links to add Techmeme events directly to your web / desktop calendar. These are standard ICS files that should be compatible with most calendar application across all platforms.

Thus, if Apple is scheduling an event during the first week of March, it should automatically pop-up in your calendar courtesy Techmeme. [Picture Credits: Wired]

The Source Code

The above ICAL/ICS files for Techmeme are generated with the help of some PHP and web scraping. The script basically downloads the Techmeme events page, extracts all the event related DIVs and formats everything in the iCalendar format. Should you be interested in enhancing / modifying the script, here’s the full source code:

<?php
$url  = "http://www.techmeme.com/events";
$day  = date("Ymd");
$file = 'techmeme.' . $day;
$feed = 'calendar.ics';
//Grab the Techmeme Events page once per day
if (!file_exists($file) || !file_exists($feed)) {
 $html = file_get_contents($url);
 $fp   = fopen($file, 'w');
 fwrite($fp, $html);
 fclose($fp);
//Declare header for Google Calendar
$header = "BEGIN:VCALENDAR
 VERSION:2.0
 PRODID:-//Techmeme//Events v1.0//EN
 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
 METHOD:PUBLISH
 X-WR-CALNAME:Techmeme Events
 X-WR-TIMEZONE:UTC
 X-WR-CALDESC:Upcoming Tech Events curated by Techmeme";
$events = "";
$next   = false;
$year   = date("Y");
$html   = file($file);
//XPath for Event DIVs
foreach ($html as $line) {
 if(preg_match('/<div class="rhov">
       <a href="\/goto\/(.*?)"><div>
       (.*?)<\/div><div>(.*?)<\/div><div>
       (.*?)<\/div><\/a><\/div>/',$line, $match)) {
  $eventURL   = "http://" . $match[1];
  $eventDt  = $match[2];
  if(preg_match('/(.*)?-(.*)/', $eventDt, $date)) {
    $eventDt = $date[1];
  }
  $eventTitle = $match[3];
  $eventVenue = $match[4];
  $month = substr($eventDt, 0, 3);
  //Advance the year after December
  if ($month == "Dec")
   $next = true;
  if ($next && $month != "Dec")
   $eventDt .= " " . (date("Y") + 1);
 //Write an All-Day event to the Calendar
  $events .= "\n" . "BEGIN:VEVENT";
  $events .= "\n" . "DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:"
           . gmdate("Ymd", strtotime($eventDt));
  $events .= "\n" . "DTEND;VALUE=DATE:"
           . gmdate("Ymd", strtotime($eventDt . " +1 day"));
  $events .= "\n" . "SUMMARY:" . $eventTitle;
  $events .= "\n" . "DESCRIPTION:" . $eventTitle
           . " " .  $eventURL;
  $events .= "\n" . "UID:" . strtolower(ereg_replace
             ("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "",
             $eventTitle . $eventVenue . $eventDt)) .
             "@calendar.techmeme.com";
  if ($eventVenue != "")
   $events .= "\n" . "LOCATION:" . $eventVenue;
  $events .= "\n" . "END:VEVENT";
  }
 }
$header .= $events . "\nEND:VCALENDAR";
$fmeme   = fopen($feed, "w");
//Save the Parsed Events to a physical file
fwrite($fmeme, $header);
fclose($fmeme);
}
//Echo the Calendar .ICS file
header("Content-type: text/calendar; charset=utf-8");
header("Content-Disposition: inline; filename=$feed");
echo file_get_contents("$feed");
?>

This story, Subscribe to Techmeme Tech Events in your Calendar, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 14/02/2012 under Techmeme, Internet.

You may also like:

1. How Techmeme Works?
2. Pop-up Reminders in Google Calendar
3. Subscribe to RSS Feeds for Techmeme Search Results
4. Send Yourself an Email in the Future Using Google Calendar
5. How Spammers Insert Events In Your Google Calendar? Fix Is Easy

Microsoft Gulf has announced a competition on online Microsoft Virtual Academy. They announced this before the Qatar Microsoft Open Door 2012.

I also joined the website and passed some exam. Few days after i received email from Natasha Zaza that i was among the top 5 students in Qatar. At that time i was at 5th position, but after some exam i popped up to 4th position.

Microsoft was due to give some gifts for the top position holder but at the spot, we came to know that due to some Government policies they cannot give gift. Anyway it was a nice experience overall.

After the late Arfa Karim, living in a suburb of Abbottabad (75 Km by road from Islamabad), raised nation’s pride by becoming the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional after creating 7 Microsoft and Google certified computer operating systems.

The 14-year-old student, Sikandar Mehmood Baloch, lives in Bilal Town, Abbottabad. Sikandar not only became a certified expert of 107 computer engineering languages at a young age but has also received certificates of his achievements from Microsoft and performed work for Google.

He has also received 25 certificates as acknowledgement of his unique work performed for Google, the biggest search engine in the world. Sikandar is studying in 9th grade in a local school and has made many Linux Systems (From VVS1 to VVS7) and developed an indigenous anti-virus system as well.

He had created a world record at the age of 9 after making his first operating system.

With Microsoft’s latest operating system looming large on the digital landscape – set for a public beta launch at the end of the month – casualties are beginning to emerge.

It turns out that the launch of Windows 8 could see Microsoft’s iconic Start button going the same way as Clippy.

Now a mainstay of personal computing, the Start button was launched 17 years ago amidst a massive advertising campaign featuring the Rolling Stones song “Start me up“.

With Windows XP/Vista and 7 installed on a huge portion of PCs worldwide, the Start button has become a design icon that is effectively synonymous with the Redmond based software giant.

Sadly in Windows 8, rumours are that Microsoft has decided to kill off the Start button, with the space to be occupied by what is being called a “hot” corner.

In essence this will equate to moving the mouse pointer (if on a PC) into the corner which will fire up the new full-screen Metro-style start screen. Tablet users will be able achieve the same result by flicking their finger to the same bottom left corner of the screen.

Windows 8 will perhaps sport the most radical interface overhaul since Microsoft jumped from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95, and killing off the Start button will arguably free up more on screen real-estate.

From a cursory play with the new interface at Microsoft’s CES stand recently, the new interface may have impressed, but it is likely that many long term Windows users will find it baffling.

For first time users the news is potentially worse as there’ll be no visual cues for returning to the full-screen start menu of Microsoft’s newly minted Metro interface.

With the Windows 8 public beta due out in a couple of weeks, the Start button could possibly reappear by then, rumours are that die hard windows users shouldn’t get their hopes up.

So will there be a wake held for the soon to be deceased Start button? Will there be much of an outcry?

This remains to be seen, but the good news is that the Windows key on the keyboard of most PCs will still have the same function as it has today under Windows 8 and will pop up the Start screen – which should at least provide a solution for some frustrated users.

The team behind Shape Collage, a popular photo collage software, have launched Loupe, an online tool that will help you create collages using Facebook photos.

You can either use your own photo albums and turn them into collages or the app can also pull photos from the albums of your Facebook friends that are visible to you.

It takes just a few steps to build your first collage. Authorize the app to access your Facebook account, then select any of your photo albums (or that of your friends), choose a shape and your collage is ready. Hit the Share button to save that collage to your Facebook account or grab the permalink to share it by email.

The collages look impressive and if you don’t like the default layout, you can always move or delete any of the pictures on the pile. Here’s a quick video that shows how you can turn Facebook albums into collages.

The drawback though is the resolution. Loupe generates a relatively small image of your collage that will probably look good only on a mobile screen. Shape Collage says that will be introducing higher resolution images in the future.

Photo Collages and Facebook Privacy

Any photo collage that you create with Loupe is public and currently there’s no option to change the visibility to private. Thus, if you have any private photos on Facebook that you don’t want the world to see, it may not be a good idea to turn them into collages because others may then find them through search engines.

Also see: Create Picture Collage in Picasa

This story, Create Collages with your Facebook Photos, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 10/02/2012 under Facebook, Internet, Photo Sharing.

You may also like:

1. A Twitter Background Made Using Photos of Facebook Friends
2. Know If Strangers Can See Your Facebook Photos
3. Make Beautiful Photo Collages from your Pictures with Microsoft AutoCollage
4. Build a PDF Slideshow with your Facebook Photos
5. Create High Resolution Picture Collages & Posters in Seconds

After the late Arfa Karim raised the nation’s pride by becoming the world’s youngest Microsoft Certified Professional, another Pakistani wonder child has made history after creating seven Microsoft and Google certified computer operating systems in a suburb of Abbottabad.

The 14-year-old student, Sikandar Mehmood Baloch, lives in Bilal Town in Abbottabad. Sikandar not only became a certified expert of 107 computer engineering languages at a young age but has also received certificates of his achievements from Microsoft and performed work for Google. He has also received 25 certificates as acknowledgement of his unique work performed for Google, the biggest search engine in the world. Sikandar is studying in the 9th grade in a local school and has made many Linux Systems (From VVS1 to VVS7) and developed an indigenous anti-virus system as well. He created a world record at the age of nine after making his first operating system. He works with many websites and earns over $70 dollars daily.

Though its slight old news, but happy to share it, as Microsoft Feed publish it.

Read it here.Top Community Honor Goes To Qatar Datamation Systems Employee

Thanks Shijaz Abdulla Microsoft Qatar for the tip.

Microsoft will align its next major updates of Windows, both for phone and computers. Windows Phone 8 & Windows 8 will have several features and architecture in common like networking stacks, security and multimedia architecture.

It is also being reported that Windows Phone 8 will support multi-core processors, multiple screen resolutions, SD Cards and even C/ C++ programming. It is also worth noting that Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 will both run Metro apps, hence harmonizing the user experience over various Microsoft devices and reducing the time in learning curve of the user.

In a video, Joe Belfiore, manager of Windows Phone for Microsoft, said that the intention is for developers to be able to

“re-use, by far, most of their code” when moving behind the desktop and smartphone platforms. This should also help Microsoft to seamlessly transition many of its existing PC developers to mobile, resulting in a much larger pool creating apps. (Quote Courtesy: Mobile Business Briefing)

If the unification of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 occurs as planned and some applications could be used in both platforms while others easily portable,  there is no doubt that a lot of developers will be attracted to develop apps for Windows based devices and hit maximum customers by a single app. This will also support the Windows Phone marketplace which has considerably lesser apps as compared to Apple Store and Android Market.

All of it depends on Microsoft’s ability to pull off the coup and change the app marketplace forever. However, if it fails to do so, Microsoft will lose credibility and will be left far behind Google and Apple especially in battle to attain superiority in the mobile and tablet platforms.

China's Silicon Valley

Zhongguancun may be
hailed as China's most famous village by foreigners. Dubbed as "China's
Silicon Valley", the country's biggest high-tech park in west Beijing is
not only home to Chinese high-tech companies such as Lenovo, Baidu and
Sohu.com, it is also the China headquarters of world-renowned technology
companies such as Google, Microsoft and Intel.

As part of China's efforts to build an
innovative economy, the State Council, China's Cabinet, recently
approved a development plan called the Zhongguancun National Innovation
Demonstration Zone (2011-2020) that allows companies in the area to try
out new measures and pilot projects.

The plan, which includes a drive to
boost the total revenues of companies in Zhongguancun to 10 trillion
yuan ($1.8 trillion) in 2020 from 1.55 trillion yuan last year, is
designed to help the area become one of the world's most famous
technology hubs. The predicted income increase will come from increased
sales on the back of tax incentives for companies moving there and
research and development subsidies.

"Zhongguancun has entered a new phase of
development," said Yang Jianhua, deputy director of the administrative
committee of Zhongguancun Science Park. "I think in the next 20 years
Zhongguancun will have the three top technology industry clusters in the
world and will form a grouping of the world's top technology
entrepreneurs."

Zhongguancun's history can be traced
back to a crowded electronic avenue in the 1980s. Close to China's top
universities and national academies, China's biggest technology hub
first emerged as a small market for electronic components and devices
for technicians and researchers.

In October 1980, Chen Chunxian, a
researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, founded a technological
development service department under the Beijing Society of Plasma
Physics in Zhongguancun, making it the first civilian-run scientific and
technological institution in the area.

READ MORE

All your private and confidential emails are stored in your Gmail mailbox but are they secure? Can a Google employee working on the Gmail product read your messages?

In theory, the answer could be yes. Christopher Nguyen, who was earlier responsible for Google Apps operations at Google, shared this on Quora:

A small number of GMail related engineers have access to the servers as a matter of necessity to do their jobs; a very small number of people actually access the contents as a matter of necessity to do their jobs, and even then, almost always only the associated metadata.

The rest have to file a request and justify any access they ever need, which is extremely rare. All have to sign paperwork re users’ privacy at the risk of dismissal & legal action, knowing that whatever they do is discoverable. And ultimately, an internal culture of respecting users’ privacy helps keep one another in check.

Google also serves contextual text ads in Gmail and these ads are triggered based on the content of the email message that your currently reading. Obviously it is the bots that are scanning your Gmail messages for relevant keywords but Microsoft, with a hope that some Gmail users will shift to Hotmail, is using this point to target Google on privacy.

Some email services, like Gmail, actually read the contents of your mail (both sent and received, even if you aren’t a Gmail user but just sending to someone who is) in order to decide what kind of ads to serve up to you. They may call it “scanning” and attempt to equate it with less invasive activities like “checking for spam” but it’s quite different. For you, and the people you send mail to, it’s not spam, it’s personal.

Microsoft has also released a video, titled the Gmail Man, highlighting this Gmail behavior. Microsoft uploaded the video to YouTube, a platform owned by Google, and it isn’t therefore surprising that the video has garnered more dislikes than likes – after all, most YouTube users are also Gmail users and they aren’t buying Microsoft’s argument.

Related: Find if your Email has been Read

This story, Can Google Employees Read your Gmail?, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/02/2012 under GMail, Tech Notes.

You may also like:

1. Import Your Outlook Emails into Gmail with Google Email Uploader
2. Track Gmail Messages with Google Analytics
3. Read any Web Document Directly in Google Docs – Similar to Gmail
4. Does Google Read Email Attachments in Gmail for Ads ?
5. Gmail Adds Read Receipts in Google Apps Business

Amazon today launched Junglee.com in India today and, in its current form, Junglee is more like an online marketplace where you can quickly compare prices of books, electronics, music, apparel and other products offered by hundreds of online and offline retailers in India.

Several shopping stores in India – including Homeshop18, India Plaza, Shoppers Stop, Fabindia, Microsoft Store, Future Bazaar and many others – have added their product catalogues to Junglee so it becomes a little easier for the consumer to research product prices from one central place.

Is Junglee Cheaper than Flipkart or Infibeam?

As you may have noted, the two most popular shopping sites in India – Flipkart.com and Infibeam.com – are both missing from Junglee.com. These sites might have better deals to offer than Junglee so I have a written a simple bookmarklet that lets you compare prices of books on Junglee.com with that of Flipkart and Infibeam in one go.

Is Junglee Cheaper

To install the bookmarklet, simply drag the “Is Junglee Cheaper” button from this page to your browser bookmarks toolbar. Then open any book page on Junglee.com and click the bookmarklet to instantly know the price of that book on Infibeam and Flipkart.

The first version of the bookmarklet works for books only though I might expand it to other product categories later. Here’s a quick video that demonstrates how the Junglee bookmarklet works.

This story, Compare Junglee Prices with Flipkart and Infibeam, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/02/2012 under Amazon, Bookmarklets, India.

You may also like:

1. A Good Site for Comparison Shopping in India
2. Popular Search Words – Discount, Cheap, Free, Prices, Deals, Used
3. Apple Drops Prices on Macs in India
4. Compare Product Prices from eBay and Amazon
5. Amazon Online Store is Live in India

Carlos Slim is well known in Latin America and abroad as one of, if not the wealthiest CEO in the world. He was even mentioned on the Colbert Report this past week introducing him to the American public as someone who’s net worth trumps that of Mitt Romney as well as that of Donald Trump. This week an OECD report named Slim’s company, Telmex as overcharging Mexican consumers for telecommunications products from 2005 to 2009. Slim argued against the allegations and the numbers presented in the OECD report stating that his company was working within the competitive market that exists in Mexico and did not take any actions that would be deemed as anti-competitive. It is likely a detailed debate will occur over Slim and his companies that may lead to a test of Mexico’s competition laws as well as the reputation of Mexico’s state telecom giant Telmex. We will have to wait and see if Slim wins the day, or if he will be fined. One fine has already been set on Slim’s company, but a challenge in Mexico’s Supreme Court may eliminate this legal measure from being enforced.

Telecommunications giants have been in the position to create a great deal of wealth as new technologies create new boom markets for their products in a commercial environment dependent on new forms of telecommunications. With technology, come many new IP laws to enforce violations of privacy and competition in those new markets as companies jostle for position and form legacies like Nokia and Microsoft. In the EU, stringent laws enforcing consumer protection within the Common Market have set much of the global standard against overly ambitious telecoms giants. Going from competition laws setting records against companies like Microsoft to investigations into companies like France Telecom regarding a series of employee suicides since privatisation a few years ago, the EU has set the hard standard against companies that wish to violate competition laws and as well as all other market and labour standards. It is likely that Mexican competition laws will take much of their precedents from that of the EU and US to enforce any violations against Carlos Slim’s business interests, if evidence provides for enforcement to become necessary.

In reality Mexico is likely not the most expensive country for phone services, and there is a great deal of evidence showing that their NAFTA neighbour, Canada has the highest per-capita telecoms charges in the world. A lack of effective competition policies have created a market in Canada where people not only pay a great deal for services, but services are often out of date and ineffective due to a lack of competition in the Canadian mobile phone market. While many developing nations have modern up to date cellular services due to the reduced cost of setting up such systems in places that historically had poor phone access, Canada’s modern economy creates an expensive and outdated mobile phone market that has existed without proper scrutiny from the last few governments. There have been some moves to protect Canadian consumers over the last few years, but until a true measure to help Canadian consumers takes shape it would be a good idea for those like Carlos Slim and other telecoms to enter a Canadian market that sorely needs proper services in their sector for individuals and businesses. A study of the Canadian, European and Mexican telecoms markets would be a useful and interesting study to provide all consumers with a legitimate and fair market for telecoms usage.

Finally there is some great news for all Skype fans waiting to get the official app on their Windows Phone 7 handsets. According to WP7Labs, an anonymous tipster spilled the beans by maintaining that Skype Beta app for Windows Phone 7 will soon be available for testing among Microsoft employees. It has been a long time since Windows Phone 7 users are looking for a way to get Skype working on their phones. We believe that this Skype release will be a proper app allowing the users to make calls, video chat and IM.

The original text of the email, that was sent to Microsoft employees, reads:

href="http://aliwaqas.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/skype.jpg"> style="background-image: none; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-top: 0px; border: 0px;" title="skype" src="http://aliwaqas.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/skype_thumb.jpg" alt="skype" width="595" height="111" border="0" />

Apparently, it is clear from the email excerpt that Skype app for Windows Phone 7 will come loaded with all pre-requisites and essential hardware support. We believe that sooner or later, Skype for Windows Phone 7 screenshots might start making it to web-sphere. We are keeping a keen eye on these developments and we will update this post once we get more information or any leaked screenshots of Skype app for Windows Phone 7 handsets. In the meanwhile, you can head to href="http://wp7lab.com/news/microsoft-dogfooding-skype-beta-for-windows-phone/"> WP7Labs for further details regarding this development. And in case you happen to be one of the MS employees reading this post, then we invite you to fill us up on any further information that you might have in comments area.