PTI Takes Lead in Pre-Election Online Polls

General Elections 2013 are happening at a time when Social Media usage is on the rise and around 25-28 million population of Pakistan is connected to internet for various purposes.

Similarly, there are over 120 million mobile phone users in the country. This population, which is either connected to internet or via mobile phones, is gigantic.

Collecting data from this population is relatively easy and many folds more reliable than the data that research companies used to collect through hard-core and conventional means.

Even better, we have companies like Pringit and Rozee, having huge audience and registered users who are willing to participate in online polls that can bring us a clearer picture of various things.

Interestingly, both the companies carried out polls on upcoming elections, asking their users about the political parties they support. Here are the results:

Pring Poll

Out of 5 million Pringers, 37 percent voted for PTI – hinting that that young surfers (almost 70 percent of total Pring audience) are indeed in love with Imran Khan. Rest of the results are shown in below infographic:

Rozee Poll

Rozee asked its entire user base about the political party they are supporting. Around 10,000 users participated in the poll and expressed their thoughts that are presented in below images.

Preferred Political Party (City Wise)

While these polls don’t represent the total population, but tens of thousands of users – who participated in the polls – clearly depict that PTI is ready for a breakthrough in upcomng elections.

Still, let’s not conclude anything here and wait for May 11th for the final results.

Linksys, Wireless-N, Dual-Band Extender

Viber, primarily a multi-platform app that allows voice and text chat between phone users, has now released its desktop version of app for Windows and Mac.

This landmark announcement was made yesterday after which Viber is now officially in line to take on Skype that has around or over 600 million users.

Viber said that it has over 200 million users from various platforms, and this user-base is likely to grow exponentially after the introduction of desktop version and nine new languages that were added to the pool just recently.

Viber said that it adds 400,000 new users every day, while 60 million users were added in 2013 only.

Viber said that it will allow Video-calling for those using the app from desktops. Video calling feature is currently in beta and will be rolled out to mobile app versions in near future.

Desktop version users will have to simply use their mobile account to login to Viber. Desktop version of Viber is designed in a way that users can cross communicate (voice, SMS, MMS, video) between platforms. All contacts and other data is also set to seamlessly sync between mobile app and the desktop version.

Here are other main selling features of Viber Desktop:

• Best-quality HD voice calls
• Video calls
• Free text and photo messages
• Group conversations
• No registration, passwords or invitations required
• Contacts and messages sync between your mobile and Windows
• Transfer ongoing calls between devices

It maybe recalled here that Mobilink has partnered with Viber to allow its 36 million subscribers unlimited Viber usage at a fixed daily charge. Mobilink is likely to start offering the Viber bundle by the end of this month.

Luxury Laptop Worth $1 Million with Personalised Features

We have heard and read about bizarre things made into a very expensive item just because of the material used in them. It also seems ironic to have things made of expensive material when the same can be available at much less and still perform the exact function intended. On top of it all, poverty is still a major issue in many parts of the world and such extravagance doesn’t suit sanity.

However, recently, a London-based luxury manufacturer, Luvaglio is offering a laptop worth $1 million. The laptop claims to combine luxury with performance with diamond-encrusted keys and top-of-the-line materials.

The idea is not too practical as well, because when seen from the point of view that the technology will run out of era and newer versions and better tools will be made quickly available to replace the old gadgetry, this whole expenditure will go in waste, though “diamonds are forever”.

The laptop, however, has all the necessary latest specs and features. It has a 17-inch LED widescreen and an anti-reflective glare and it comes with 128GB disk space with an in-built Blu-Ray player. The laptop is indeed an expensive one, but its claim of uniqueness lies in its personalised options.

The laptop is available in stone colours a user wants to have. Although there is no huge market for such rare objects of vanity, but there are some rich and “filthy” rich who wouldn’t mind spending their money on acquiring such a unique technology item.

A Study Says Most Users Don’t Know About Piracy

Online piracy is a sensitive issue, not just because activists make it sound like it, but it is also something that users don’t benefit from if seen closely. Recently, a study by a British legal firm revealed that most of the people don’t even understand what piracy actually is and which of their acts could be considered as indulging in piracy.

According to the survey from Wiggin, respondents actually liberty feigned and pretended that they are not aware, because internet downloading sites are also very clear about copyrights and if any infringe upon these, they are incriminated.

However, despite this, many people really don’t know what could constitute in them passing the line into illegal downloading of any text, image or video, or any other content. Intellectual property rights are safeguarded to protect the integrity and respect the labour of the creative people from whichever sphere they may be.

In Pakistan, cyber laws are not too strong already. There are many advocacy groups, however, that are working to get some sense into what behaviour is acceptable and legal online and where it is crossing the line, especially with piracy laws.

Although, there are many movies, books and even other items which are available in Pakistan in the open market, the law enforcement agencies themselves don’t take a keen interest in stopping it, simply due to corruption and incompetence. But when a user gets into trouble with international piracy laws or infringes upon rights of a copyrighted item from another country, there is bound to be an action against that user.

Softopreneurship in Pakistan – A Lost Opportunity

We – Pakistanis – develop software, but we don’t sell it; because we develop these software for Americans and Europeans who ultimately sell them at considerably higher prices.

How wonderful it could get if we develop software and sell them ourselves to earn all the margins and profits to ultimately bring back the entire revenue to our homeland.

Generally Asian countries are considered to be the outsourcing hotspots by IT industry leaders around the world. That is why most companies in Asia are famous for providing IT services to the small, medium and large enterprises mostly located in affluent European countries and in the US.

The companies abroad take huge benefit from the low-cost software made by their outsourcing partners and by selling these software to an unimaginably large internet market.

As a thumbs rule the foreign companies indulge in outsourcing to reduce their costs of doing business and consequently to increase their profits. The IT resource-pool is abundant in India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries in the Asian continent. Adept at communicating in English makes things easier for the professionals providing IT and IT-enabled services as English has dominated the world of internet.

However, there is this firm called Sorcim, run by the ‘softopreneurs’ from Pakistan who decided to go on a different route, i.e. product way.

Earlier, known as an IT service provider, today, Sorcim is product-based and explores the dynamics of online market. The software made by the company called RegInOut falls into the system utilities category and helps to boost slow working computers and fix common PC errors such as Windows Registry errors.

The decision to sell product by itself rather than making a product for foreign businesses was a transition in the company’s life. Such transitions are healthy for the businesses and today the IT companies from Pakistan shall try to either penetrate into global online markets or create opportunities in the domestic market.

Sorcim Technologies of Pakistan shares a similar story. However, as business always remains in motion, the company now has successfully become a software vendor. It also plans to launch software products belonging to different categories. RegInOut (reginout.com) has taught great lessons to the company and now they are rapidly learning how to market product with credibility even if you don’t live in the Western part of world.

Before starting to sell RegInOut, Sorcim had made various software and utilities which are still being sold by the American and European web entrepreneurs.