Virgin Mobile Launches GSM Services in Southern Circles

Virgin Mobile on Thursday announced the launch of its GSM services in the country, starting with five Southern circles.

Announcing the launch, CEO, Virgin Mobile India, MA Madhusudan said that the GSM Services would be rolled out in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

"This launch will help us further consolidate our position as one of the leading, youth mobile service brands," he said.

The services come with innovative offerings like 'vMingle', an integrated social networking service which brings all social networking sites at one place. It allows users to stay in touch with friends across all social networks at one time through a single log-in.

Another service is 'vGenie', which offers prompts and alerts like birthday reminders, wake-up calls and social networking updates. Another offering 'vBelong' enables users to create and design their own WAP sites for their group, college etc., he said.

For now, consumers in South Indian circles will be charged 20 paise per minute for STD and local calls to any Virgin mobile number without any special pack. Virgin Mobile customers calling any other network will be charged at 40 paise per minute for local and 50 per minute for STD calls.

Bollywood actors Ranbir Kapoor and Genelia D'Souza have been roped in as brand ambassadors for Virgin Mobile in India.http://www.kitnakuch.com

Twitter Cuts Feature on Site Over Security Flaw

Twitter has temporarily disabled one of the features on its website after a security researcher warned of a programming flaw that left the login credentials of its users vulnerable to hackers.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in an email that the company had temporarily cut off access to a feature that lets users display Twitter updates on their websites by using Flash technology. "Our team has disabled the Flash widget while we look into the problem," Stone said. Mike Bailey, a senior security analyst with Foreground Security of Orlando, Florida, said that the problem exploits a widely known vulnerability in Adobe Systems Inc's Flash programming language. Adobe has told programmers how to address the vulnerability, which was first discovered in 2006, Bailey added, but noted the operators of many websites have failed to respond to those warnings. The microblogging site's huge popularity has made it a prime target for hackers looking to spread malicious software to Twitter's millions of users. "As simple as the attack is, I've been finding them all over the place," Bailey said. Officials with Adobe declined to comment. A hacker last month briefly hijacked the Twitter site and redirected it to one that claimed to represent a group calling itself the Iranian Cyber Army. That high-profile attack - by a perpetrator who stole credentials to the account that Twitter uses to route its traffic -- did not compromise credentials of any Twitter users. Bailey said his analysis of the Twitter site showed that it could have been vulnerable to attacks for more than a year, but that it was impossible to know whether hackers had actually exploited the Adobe flaw. He is scheduled to discuss his research on the Twitter flaw at the Black Hat DC security research conference in Washington, which begins on Feb. 2. 

Google Founders Brin and Page To Sell 10 mln Shares

Google Founders Brin and Page To Sell 10 mln Shares

Google Inc founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell about 10 million of the company's shares over the next five years, the company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.

Page and Brin currently own about 57.7 million shares of Google's Class B common stock -- roughly 18 percent of Google's outstanding capital stock and about 59 percent of the voting power of Google's outstanding capital stock. If the two founders both sell 5 million shares as planned, they would own about 47.7 million shares, which would represent around 15 percent of Google's outstanding capital stock and 48 percent of the voting power of Google's outstanding capital stock. Page is currently Google's president of products and Brin is its president of technology.