Monday, 30 September 2013

Apple And Google Are Now Bigger Than Coke

The big Best Global Brands report from Interbrand has been released, and for the first time, Coca-Cola is not the number one brand. It actually fell to number three, with Apple and Google holding the first and second spots respectively.
In fact, Coca-Cola is sandwiched in between tech companies, with IBM holding the number four spot, followed by Microsoft at number five and GE at number six. Rounding out the top ten are McDonald’s at number seven, Samsung at number eight, Intel at number nine and Toyota at number ten.
Global Brands
Some other noteworthy tech and Internet companies on the list are Cisco at number thirteen, HP at number fifteen, Oracle at number eighteen, Amazon at number nineteen (one of the “top risers”), SAP at number twenty-five, eBay at number twenty-eight, Seimens at number forty-five, Facebook at number fifty-two, Nokia at number fifty-seven, Dell at number sixty-one, and Adobe at seventy-nine.

Of course, it’s not as though Apple and Google are without their brand problems. Apple’s new iPhone has already shown that its fingerprint sensor security technology is hackable, and Google is frequently in the news for privacy-related issues.
“Every so often, a company changes our lives—not just with its products, but with its ethos. This is why, following Coca-Cola’s 13-year run at the top of Best Global Brands, Apple now ranks #1,” said Jez Frampton, Interbrand’s Global CEO. “Tim Cook has assembled a solid leadership team and has kept Steve Jobs’ vision intact – a vision that has allowed Apple to deliver on its promise of innovation time and time again.”
The total value of all 100 brands listed in the report is $1.5 trillion (up 8.4% from last year). Apple’s brand value, according to Interbrand, is $98.3 billion.
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Thursday, 26 September 2013

GTA V Becomes the Fastest Entertainment Entity to Cross $1 billion in Sales



GTA V1 GTA V Becomes the Fastest Entertainment Entity to Cross $1 billion in Sales
That’s right. GTA V has turned Rockstar Games over $1 billion in just 3 days to become the fastest-selling entertainment property. It snatched those honours from Call of Duty: Black Ops II which earned these honors in 15 days.
That’s 5 times quicker!
Unfortunately though, the no. of copies sold has not been disclosed yet. It surely will be in tens of millions, of course.
“Grand Theft Auto is a cultural phenomenon and Rockstar Games continues to redefine what can be achieved in interactive entertainment. We are incredibly proud of the extraordinary critical and commercial response to Grand Theft Auto V.” Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two.
Meanwhile as for the game itself, the response so far has been outrageously overwhelming. With Metacritic’s phenomenal score (which takes out the average of all the reviews) of 98 out of 100 for the Xbox 360 and 97 out of 100 for the PS3, and around 40 perfect scores, the game is certainly no slouch.
There has been a bit of controversy too regarding a mission but hey, what’s a GTA game without controversies?
This is a kind of game which even the gamers who don’t fancy open-world games should play.

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BlackBerry Expects a Loss of $1 Billion this Quarter, Lays Off 4,500 Jobs



BB10 event 610x344 thumb BlackBerry Expects a Loss of $1 Billion this Quarter, Lays Off 4,500 Jobs
It’s no secret until now that BlackBerry is struggling but this time, even they themselves will have to face the bitter truth. This quarter, the company is expecting an operating loss of as much as 995 million dollars.
During this time, it shipped around 3.7 million smartphones and had revenues of $1.6 billion. The exact number of BlackBerry 10 OS smartphones sold wasn’t given. To cut the operating expenditures by half, it will lay off 4500 employees in the coming months, leaving just 7000 positions in the company.
BlackBerry will also take a pre-tax charge of somewhere between $930 million to $960 million, mainly because of the flagship Z10′s inability to move along.
The company will reduce the current device line-up to just four smartphones (two high-end, two entry-level) in the future. The Z10 smartphone will be demoted to the low-end category with its price aggressively slashed (a place where it should’ve been initially) after the arrival of the newly-announced Blackberry Z30.
The future phones will be aimed  towards the “enterprise and consumers” and not the mainstream customers.
“We are implementing the difficult,” said the CEO Thorsten Heins, “but necessary operational changes announced today to address our position in a maturing and more competitive industry, and to drive the company toward profitability.”
While a re-birth of BlackBerry is not off the cards, it will be very difficult for it to regain that supreme spot on the smartphone industry which it once held.
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10th Annual PASHA ICT Awards 2013 Held



PASHA ICT Awards thumb 10th Annual PASHA ICT Awards 2013 Held
The tenth annual P@SHA ICT Awards 2013 took place at a gala event in the capital Islamabad on Saturday. This is the first year that this event has been held in Islamabad having originally been held in Karachi and Lahore during previous years.
The who’s who of the Pakistani ICT sector hob-nobbed with representatives from embassies, government, business sector and from academia at a star-studded event that buzzed with energy showing once again that the Pakistan ICT sector was alive with innovation.
The P@SHA ICT Awards aim to recognize the best innovative technology products and solutions being  developed in Pakistan and to  acknowledge creativity, innovation and excellence in Pakistan’s Information and Communications Technologies sector.
The theme of the 10th P@SHA ICT Awards was “Innovation is the Catalyst for Growth”.
This year we received an overwhelming number of entries, said Jehan Ara President of P@SHA. Panels of judges from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad spent long hours listening to innovators present their software products and service offerings in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Every year it becomes more and more difficult to identify the best in each category, she said. There are so many great entries.
There are a few innovators that we expect to see in the winning circle every year simply because they keep creating great products, said one of the 21 judges who adjudicated this year’s Awards. However, each year we are surprised at the number of new faces and new companies that somehow emerge to the surface.
Innovation is taking place in every nook and corner of this country, said P@SHA Chairman Naseer Akhtar. This year 40 amazing entries were declared as the best innovators in the17 product and 15 services categories of the P@SHA ICT Awards.
The winners from the product categories of the P@SHA ICT Awards 2013 will be part of the P@SHA delegation that will compete at the APICTA (Asia Pacific ICT Awards) in Hong Kong, against 15 IT economies, namely, Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam.
APICTA is scheduled to be held on November 24 – 27, 2013 where top innovators from the region will go head to head to benchmark their products against the best in the region.
Next year Pakistan will play host to the Asia Pacific ICT Awards when 250 – 300 delegates from a wide number of economies will fly into Lahore and Islamabad.

P@SHA ICT Awards 2013 Winners’ List

  • Best in E-Learning Applications

  • Best in Security Applications

    • Winner
      • Product: CERT Station Cyber Security Dashboard
        Company: CERT Station Cyber Security Dashboard
        http://arpatech.com

  • Best in New Media & Entertainment Applications

  • Best in Financial Industry Applications

  • Best in Research & Development

    • Winner
    • Runner Up
      • Product: Named Entity Recognition
        Omar Hassan Akhtar

  • Best in Industry Applications

  • Best in E-Government Applications

  • Best in E-Logistics & Supply Chain

  • Best in e-Health

  • Best in Tools & Infrastructure Applications

  • Best in Communications Applications

  • Best in Green & Sustainable IT Applications

  • Best in E-Inclusion & E-Community

    • Winner:
      • Product: Lady Health Workers Initiative
        Organization: National Program for Family Planning & Primary Care A Technology for the People initiative
        http://lums.edu.pk/tpi

  • Best Start Up

  • Best in Tertiary Student Category

    • Winner
      • Product: Online Urdu Character Recognition
        International Islamic University – Sana Rasheed
    • Runners Up
      • Product: Bio-Tech Prosthetic hand controlled by EMG Signals
        Usman Raza
      • Product: An Eye for the Blind
        Muhammad Junaid Gill – NUCES FAST Lahore
      • Product: Cloud 9
        Moiz Ali – NUCES FAST Karachi

  • Best in Secondary Student Category

    • Winner
      • Product: Awam Ki Awaz
        Zarmeen Sahar – Lahore

  • Best in Mobile Applications

  • Best in Managed Services

  • Best in Service Innovation

  • Best in CSR

  • Best in Brand Development

    • Winner
      • Tohfay.com – Winner

  • Best in Animation

  • Best in HR Development

  • Best in Social Media (IT)

  • Best in Social Media (non-IT)

  • Best in BPO

  • Best CIO Public Sector

    • Winner
      • Dr. Umar Saif – Chairman Punjab IT Board
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