India Telecoms Auction Raises $10bn 

India’s mobile phone firms have bid almost $10bn (£6bn) in a key auction for the country’s second-generation (2G) telecoms licences. The amount far exceeded the government’s target of $1.8bn, and will be used to shrink its budget deficit. The government will get at least $3bn initially as companies have to pay up to a third of the winning price now, with the rest by 2026. The winners included Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance Industries. 

 

Android Extends Gains on Apple, Windows Phone is 3rd

The Google Android system extended its gains over Apple’s iPhoneglobally in the last quarter of 2013, and Windows Phone grabbed the number three market position, a survey showed Wednesday. The IDC survey found Android had a 78.1 percent share of global smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter, bolstered by a 40 percent jump in the number of handsets delivered. Apple got only a modest boost in the fourth quarter from the release of its new iPhones, with sales up 6.7 percent compared with a year earlier. That means its market shareslipped to 17.6 percent from 20.9 percent, according to IDC. The Microsoft Windows Phone platform saw a 46.7 percent year-over-year rise in sales, which pushed its market share to three percent.

 

Smartglasses that Help Surgeons See Cancerous Cells

If you think cancer removal surgery is but a one-time procedure, you’d be wrong. Doctors don’t always cut out all affected tissues in one go, but a new pair of high-tech eyewear could help make that happen. The device, developed by a Washington University research team led by Samuel Achilefu, can make cancer cells perfectly visible to surgeons as they operate. It’s loaded with custom software that makes cancerous cells glow blue (due to a molecular imaging agent that gives it color) to anyone wearing the headset. 

 

New Website Lets You Video Chat with Avatars of Dead People

A new website createsvirtual avatars of the dead so that their loved ones can video chat with them after they are gone. The website ‘Eterni.me’ is a startup by engineers, designers and business people, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT)’s Entrepreneurship Development Program. The team claims to have developed a means by which a person can be digitally reconstructed after their death. The service needs to be provided with a person’s chat logs, social-network information, photos, and e-mails, and it uses this information to reconstruct a person’s memories and mannerisms, ‘CNET’ reported. 

 

‘Business Microscope’ to Track Employees’ Every Move at Workplace

A Japanese company has developed a device that can track everything you do in the workplace — from how long you have been sitting idle to how often you visit the lavatory. Hitachi, the electronics maker, has created the device, called ‘Business Microscope’, which looks like a badge or ID card and contains chips and sensors to record an employee’s behaviour. It detects to whom you have spoken, how often, where and how energetically. The gadget also reads your colleagues’ badges and judges the distance between people talking, The Times reported. It tells bosses how often an employee leaves their seat, how far they walk and where they go. It would also be able to judge how often a person speaks in a meeting and report on how much they contribute to group sessions.