Rovio Slashes the Price of Angry Birds on iOS to Free to Boost Sales

Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, the most successful game of recent times has cut off the price of its popular Angry Birds and Angry Birds HD titles to free as an effort to boost sales of the games again.

The move saw the Angry Birds app being chosen as the App of the week.

The apps were already free on Android but its only now that they’ve seen their price getting slashed to ZERO on iOS. Their free versions have been pulled down from some markets as well. Rovio, however, hasn’t confirmed yet whether the move is temporary but its highly likely that it isn’t.

What goes up…

Rovio has, in recent times, seen its place fall from the top 80 grossing apps for the first time in the App Store since May 2010. Angry Birds series’ titles have been downloaded over 1 billion times, quite an achievement even for a freemium app. It also popularized the idea of proper gaming and store on a smartphone.

The game series, however, lately has become a bit dull and boring due to a certain lack of ideas. Also the rise of new app makers has made gaming on a smartphone a never-ending experience which always feels fresh.

FCC Orders to Suspend Payments to Pakistani Telecom Operators for Charging Higher Call Rates

The Federal Communications Commission, the regulatory body in USA, has ordered all U.S. telecommunications service providers to freeze payments to Pakistani long-distance carriers for termination services in excess of 2 cents per minute.

In an order issued on March 5th, 2013 and posted to the FCC website yesterday, the agency’s International Bureau agreed to partly grant an October 2012 petition by Vonage Holdings Corp. for commission intervention in what the company claims is a 500 percent increase in the rates charged for outgoing calls to Pakistan.

Such rates prior to Oct. 1, 2012, had been based on cost, averaging $0.02 per minute, but Pakistani carriers decided to raise the rate to $0.088 per minute following the creation of a new “International Clearing House.”

AT&T Inc. also supported Vonage’s petition, and said that Pakistani carriers’ actions violate the commission’s policies protecting U.S. consumers against anticompetitive conduct by foreign carriers to force “above-cost” settlement rate hikes.

However, instead of issuing a full stop payment order as requested by Vonage, AT&T recommended that the commission issue an order prohibiting increased U.S. settlement payments above the rates that existed before Oct. 1, 2012.

FCC in its order said:

“We find anticompetitive the Pakistani LDI [long-distance international] carriers’ actions demanding a substantial rate increase above previously negotiated rates in a way that amounts to a rate floor. By establishing the International Clearing House plan, the Pakistani carriers acted in concert to impose unilaterally this rate floor without engaging in meaningful negotiations with U.S. carriers and foreclosing future separate negotiations between U.S. and individual LDI correspondent carriers.”

“Vonage is extremely disappointed in the exorbitant price increase imposed by the Pakistani providers.  The increase hurts consumers and prevents us from providing greater value to our Pakistani customers,” said Michael Tempora, Senior Vice President of Product Management for Vonage. “Vonage appreciates the efforts of the United States government and the FCC. We are hopeful that this Order will spark a prompt reduction in calling rates so that consumers can once again afford to call Pakistan with the freedom and frequency they enjoyed before.”

It merits mentioning here that telecom operators in Pakistan were charging higher calls and hence had posted tremendous increase in stock value and revenues during Q4 2012. With this order, and possibly the similar action in other markets, operators are likely to face the monetary brunt.

Google+ now boasts enormous cover photos and Now-like About section

The web version of Google+ has got a slight redesign today with much larger cover photos, a Google Now-eqsue look for the About section as well as Local reviews.

The new cover photos are quite large, up to 2120px by 1192px in fact, and they are displayed in 16:9 aspect ratio when fully expanded. Now you can really make your Google+ page shine.

The changes continue in the About section of your profile where Google has given the information more of a Google Now look. It’s organized into different cards, which are easier to edit with each having its own prominent edit link.

Lastly, there’s the addition of Local reviews – a new tab which contains all the reviews you’ve given to restaurants, clubs and bars.

Google says that the changes will start rolling out gradually in the coming days, so head over to your Google Plus profile page and see if you’ve already got them.

Intel Pakistan Sgns MoU with Pakistan Science Foundation

Intel Pakistan has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF – Federal Ministry of Science & Technology) to support Intel Pakistan in holding Science Fairs all over the country.

The MoU will bring Intel Pakistan and PSF together to work for accelerating the pace and scale of education in Pakistan and will create awareness and promote research in Sciences. PSF works to promote scientific research and provide funding for research projects in the areas of Agricultural Sciences, Biological Sciences, Bio-technology and Genetic Engineering, Chemical Sciences, Information Technology, Mathematical Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Engineering, Earth sciences, Medical sciences and Physics.

The Foundation has so far funded 1031 research projects in various fields of Science and Technology and has been supporting Intel in conducting the Intel ISEF affiliated National Science Fairs ever since the inception of the program in Pakistan in the year 2003.

Under this project, PSF will support Intel Pakistan in arranging trainings for science teachers, holding provincial and national science fairs all across Pakistan, including orientation workshops and providing resource persons, mentors and judges, cash awards for the winners, and logistic support wherever possible.

Sharing his thoughts at the occasion, Naveed Siraj, Country Manager Intel Pakistan said, “Intel wholeheartedly believes in the powerful impact of knowledge and its application within our community. We are very excited to be partnering up with Pakistan Science Foundation this will encourage and inspire next generation of innovators and yield significant positive results not just by enhancing training and educating, but also encouraging students to convert their ideas into reality. Through a sustained public-private partnership with organizations like PSF, we work at international, national, and local level and invest heavily in education programs adapted to address the technological needs of the country.”

Over the years, Intel Pakistan has partnered with and facilitated many public and private sector organizations with programs that increase access to technology – helping people with better education, improved healthcare, and economic opportunity. Intel has been instrumental in creating innovative new solutions and building a future of opportunity for the youth of Pakistan.

0 IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator: Company’s first open source cloud software

One of the world’s leading business computer producers, IBM has announced that it will make all its cloud services and software on an open source cloud architecture. By doing so, innovation in the cloud computing will increase pace as the sector still lacks industry-wide open standards.

Based on requirements by their customer, the company has disclosed a new private cloud service based on the open sourced OpenStack. Named as the IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator, the new open source cloud software gives clients greater flexibility by removing the need to develop specific interfaces for different cloud services.

The new software will enable companies to quickly combine and deploy various cloud services onto the cloud infrastructure by allocating computational, storage and network resources with an easily with an extremely user-friendly graphical user interface.

The new IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator will also help reduce operational costs by automating application deployment and lifecycle management in the cloud: computational, storage and network configuration, human tasks automation and integration with third party tools. It will also help simplify the end user utilization of cloud services, through a self-service portal which will also include the ability to measure the cost of cloud services with metering and charge-back capabilities.

Robert LeBlanc, IBM senior vice president of software said,

“History has shown that open source and standards are hugely beneficial to end customers and are a major catalyst for innovation. Just as standards and open source revolutionized the Web and Linux, they will also have a tremendous impact on cloud computing. IBM has been at the forefront of championing standards and open source for years and we are doing it again for cloud computing.  The winner here will be customers, who will not find themselves locked into any one vendor — but be free to choose the best platform based on the best set of capabilities that meet that needs.”