Monday, June 24, 2002		Latest in IT world

SENDING and receiving text messages could soon become as easy as turning on the television if a British company has its way. Wireless Oceans, a company based in Devon in southwestern England, has developed a system called Text2TV that would allow text messages to be received, displayed and sent on TV screens. "To reply you can use the TV remote control and a virtual keyboard on screen or just the remote if it is marked with text characters," New Scientist magazine said last week. The system is incorporated in a box that plugs into the mobile phone and the television. If a message comes in, it displays an icon on the television screen. When the message is read, a microchip formats the characters and overlays the message on the TV picture. "It'll be perfect for those 'did you see that?' moments, when you're watching the football and want to talk about it with distant friends and family," Selwyn Lloyds of Wireless Oceans told the magazine. The company, which is showing the technology to electronics companies, hopes to build it into televisions, mobile phones and VCRs.

Soccer fans throughout the world registered more than 1 billion page views on the official FIFA Website in the first two weeks of the World Cup, Reuters reports. A statement from the world governing body's communications division last week said FIFAworldcup.com had more than tripled the page view count of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. It said the official Olympics Website had registered 350 million page views during the entire month of February.

A study by scientists in Finland has found that mobile phone radiation can cause changes in human cells that might affect the brain, the leader of the research team said. But Darius Leszczynski, who headed the two-year study and will present findings next week at a conference in Quebec, said more research was needed to determine the seriousness of the changes and their impact on the brain or the body. The study at Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) found that exposure to radiation from mobile phones can cause increased activity in hundreds of proteins in human cells grown in a laboratory, he said. Nonetheless the study, the initial findings of which were published last month in the scientific journal Differentiation, raises new questions about whether mobile phone radiation can weaken the brain's protective shield against harmful substances. The study focused on changes in cells that line blood vessels and on whether such changes could weaken the functioning of the blood-brain barrier which prevents potentially harmful substances from entering the brain from the blood stream, Leszczynski said.

Yahoo! India, one of India's leading portals and Shaadi.com, the number 1 matrimonial services provider, announced a broad marketing alliance that enables all Yahoo! India users to access Shaadi.com services from the Yahoo! India homepage as well as other parts of the Website as per the company's press release. This alliance will allow Yahoo! India family members to identify like minded people from Shaadi.com family members. Yahoo! India users get to access the entire gamut of products and services available on the Shaadi.com website ranging from finding a partner, wedding planning, wedding traditions, bindis, mahurats, astrology, gifting, honeymoon travel and directory services. Shaadi.com has a registered user base of 2 lakh members of Indian and South Asian descent all over the world and serves over 3 crore-page views per month. The user registrations on Yahoo! network from India is 2.2 crore and monthly page views is in an excess of 1000 million to Yahoo! network from India.