Studio18 in partnership with Google is all set to release Siddharath Narayan starrer Striker on Youtube. The movie will be released on Youtube on the 5th of Feb, same date as the theater release. This is the first Indian movie to be released on Internet. The movie will be available in US for $5 and for the rest of the world it would be monetized through ads. The movie on Youtube will not be available in India, though we can always trust proxy routes for the access .

Striker - First Indian Movie On Youtube

The release on Youtube is being done citing the international distribution issues. The low star cast movie hasn’t been able to garner interest from International distributors and hence this strategic yet brilliant move.

3 Idiots had also announced a release on Youtube but that would be done by the end of March.

What do you think, is Bollywood accepting the power of Internet finally? Or is Google making efforts to bring masses on Youtube?
Watch the movie trailer

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Striker – First Indian Movie Set For Youtube Release

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Paypal is facing severe outage and all payments to/from India are being reversed.

This is an email I received from one of the payment service

We were just alerted that PayPal India is experiencing some challenges and stopped allowing payments to be sent to or from India. Funds requested through PayPal India are being reversed to their senders, and users have no access to them. PayPal has yet to share with us an estimated time for resolution.

And here is what Paypal has to say

Your payment of xxx has been sent back to the sender of the payment. We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.

If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select “Goods,” and (c) provide a shipping address.

If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India. We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for any inconvenience.

Seems this is not applicable for commercial payments.

Update: We have sent a mail to Paypal India and haven’t got any convincing answer yet.  The only convincing part has been Alok’s comment on this issue:

I read somewhere that this has happened because RBI asked for some documents but Paypal didn’t furnished them and as such all the transactions from Paypal to Indian Bank has been reversed. That do explain the delay in withdrawing the money from paypal to bank accounts(which people are reporting that they are facing this from 26th Jan onwards) but doesn’t explain why the money is being returned to original senders and that too without any kind of intimation at all.

Statements from Paypal:

Anuj Nayar, Paypal’s Spokesperson

I’m writing to let you know that personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in India have been suspended while we work with our business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service.

During this time, customers can still make commercial payments to India but merchants cannot withdraw funds in Rupees to local Indian banks.

We’re trying to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause our customers in India and around the world.

—

Customer Support

Thank you for contacting PayPal. Hi my name is Ruth. I am sorry to hear about this situation, and understand your frustration and concern over the issue regarding your having difficulty on receiving your withdrawn funds that is being reversed.

We are aware of this issue and I sincerely regret the inconvenience it has caused you. Our technical department are working to resolve this matter. We are accomplishing the necessary maintenance to ensure that we will provide you a more convenient service at PayPal. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

I know situations like this can be difficult, so thanks for working with us. If you have more questions, visit our Help Center by clicking “Help” in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

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Paypal India Outage – No Payments to or from India

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Today is Data Privacy Day, and Google, being one of its sponsors, has promoted a video and pushed out a set of 5 privacy principles to explain to users how it handles all their information. Microsoft, LexisNexis, Intel, and, somewhat surprisingly, AT&T. [Data Privacy Day, Google Privacy Center]

Filed under: Google, Mobile

Google’s Android smartphone operating system is clearly aimed at the same customers that might be interested in picking up an Apple iPhone. But it looks like Google may not only be interested in taking the iPhone down a notch or two — the company is also working to ensure that it’s upcoming Chrome OS plays well with tablet computers. You know, like the recently announced Apple iPad.

That’s not to say that Chrome OS will run on the iPad. Rather, the operating system, which is designed specifically for netbooks and mobile computers, will feature touchscreen optimizations that will allow PC makers to load it on devices with or without keyboards.

As Lee mentioned yesterday in Chrome Corner, the Chromium developer site has a page dedicated to a concept UI for tablets. It’s choc full of mockups of a tablet with an adjustable on-screen keyboard, touchscreen launchers, a zooming interface, and browser tabs that would show up on the side of the screen sort of like the Firefox Mobile.

Right now this is only a concept, and it’s not clear if there will be any Google Tablet hardware. But it shows that Google is at least thinking about the touchscreen tablet space. A number of PC makers have also started loading Google Android on tablets. And you know who else is interested in the tablet space? Microsoft. Windows 7 features an on-screen keyboard and a number of touch-friendly features built right into the OS.

It’s also probably worth pointing out that the iPad will be able to run 140,000+ iPhone apps at launch, while Windows tablets will be able to run a wealth of Windows software. Any Chrome tablet will be able to run… Chrome, which is basically an entire OS built around a web browser.

You can check out a concept video of a fake Chrome tablet after the break. And if you want to check out a pre-release version of Chrome OS, you might want to check out Hexxeh’s latest Chromium OS Zero build which includes a new auto-update feature.

Google Chrome OS could run on tablets, take on the iPad originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Chrome OS - Apple - Google - IPhone - Microsoft

Google’s call to the NSA to investigate its recent breach and help secure its network is raising concerns.

All source code for the mobile phone OS is now available for free under the Eclipse license and other open-source licenses

Not only will Microsoft no longer serve Facebook’s banner ads, the social network is shifting away from them altogether. Plus: Will Facebook hire a high-profile sales exec now?

Two Firefox add-ons, Sothink Web Video Downloader 4.0 and all versions of Master Filer, were found to contain Trojan horse code aimed at Windows users.

As expected, Microsoft has announced the general availability of the Azure platform (Windows Azure, SQL Azure, and AppFabric) in 21 countries. Starting today, Microsoft customers and partners in those regions will be able to launch their Azure production applications and services with the support of the full Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The Windows Azure platform AppFabric Service Bus and Access Control will continue to be free until April 2010 for those that sign up for a commercial subscription.

The final release was available last month, and since then Redmond says thousands of customers have moved from the Community Technology Preview (CTP) to the production code (Microsoft did not charge for Windows Azure platform usage incurred during January). This month though, Microsoft’s partners will be able to begin selling paid commercial subscriptions based on their own solutions to their customers. Billing and SLAs for all commercial accounts technically begins today.

If you choose not to upgrade to the production code, you should know that CTP accounts are being disabled today and any Windows Azure Storage is being made read-only. SQL Azure CTP accounts will be able to keep using their existing databases but will no longer be able to create new databases and Windows Azure platform AppFabric namespaces will be disabled. SQL Azure CTP accounts that have not been upgraded will be deleted on March 1, 2010 while Windows Azure Storage CTP accounts and Windows Azure platform AppFabric namespaces that have not been upgraded will be deleted on April 1, 2010. Microsoft is therefore asking those who do not wish to upgrade to export their data to a commercial subscription prior to these dates.

The 21 countries onboard are as follows: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, Spain , Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. Microsoft is not saying when it plans to roll out the Azure platform in more regions.

Late last week, Google announced it will phase out old browser support next month on Google Docs and Google Sites. The search giant also sent out an e-mail to Google Apps administrators to warn them of the date, as well as tell them something it did not disclose publicly last week: Gmail and Calendar are next on the IE6 support kill list. Here’s the relevant snippet:

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar. Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

We contacted Google to verify the authenticity of the e-mail. “We plan to stop supporting older browsers for the rest of the Google Apps suite, including Gmail, later in 2010,” a Google spokesperson confirmed with Ars. We asked whether phasing out the support for older browsers on Gmail and Google Calendar would affect everyone, and not just Google Apps that companies have deployed. “Correct, both enterprise and consumer users,” the spokesperson told us.

IE6 started off 2010 with about one-fifth of the browser market share. Actually, if we add all browser versions below IE7, Firefox 3.0, Chrome 4.0, and Safari 3.0, it’s clear that at least one in four users are using browsers that Google plans to stop supporting. There’s no telling if this number is the same for those who access Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, or Google Sites; we asked, but Google refused to provide data from its end. The company has been using Gmail to convert IE6 users to Chrome for over a year, but later this year it’s going to deal another blow to the ancient browser, moving it that much closer to its well-deserved demise.