Google, Facebook, Oracle offer Rs 1 Crore plus Salary at IITs

Top international recruiters Facebook, Oracle and Google have rolled out at least 40 offers with total compensation packages higher than Rs 1 crore at the end of only the second day of IIT campus placements. Such a large number of crore-plus offers - including cash and stock -  are being offered for the first time.

Oracle is leading the charge, offering up to 4,800 stock units worth $200,000 (Rs 1.24 crore), besides a $125,000 (Rs 77.5 lakh) cash component. IIT BHU sources have revealed these figures.

Sources from IIT-Delhi, IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Kanpur said some 4,000 stock options had been indicated as part of the overall package by the American multinational computer technology corporation.

Google, for Mountain View postings, rolled out a salary of $130,000 and 250 stock units worth approximately $134,500 (Rs 83 lakh), said IIT-BHU officials.

The institute added that one student has been selected by Oracle US, and another for Google US.

Average domestic salaries at IIT campus placements this year have been in the range of Rs 10-12 lakh.

Placements at the older institutes started on December 1. Stock options are typically rolled out by companies as a retention measure and are often vested only after employees remain with the company for a specified period.

Facebook has already made offers of $250,000 (Rs 1.55 crore) to students at IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Delhi.

Facebook’s new iPad app: six spectacular features

Facebook's new iPad app has been more than a year in the making, and thus far, anxious iPad users have only received ambiguous "it's coming… eventually" updates from Mark Zuckerberg and Co. TechCrunch blogger discovered a hidden version of Facebook's new iPad app while playing around in the code for the site's iPhone app. Several other tech bloggers subsequently accessed the app - before Facebook caught on and blocked it - posting their early reactions online. It's unclear when exactly the app will be officially released, but in the meantime, what improvements do we have to look forward to in this "spectacular" new offering?

Here the features go:
1. Easy sidebar navigation
The "most important difference" between this newly discovered iPad app and current iterations of Facebook on iPhones and other platforms, is the retooled navigation system. There's now an expandable navigation sidebar that pops out from the left side of the screen, accessed with the mere flick of a finger. From the menu, users can navigate between the News Feed, Messages, Events, and other features, allowing for "speedier movement." The sidebar is a smart use of iPad's "screen real estate," says TIME, because it can always be tucked away, "your screen is never overcrowded."

2. Time-saving overlay menus
The new app makes "great use" of "pop-overs," or overlay menus, that have become popular on other iPad apps. That means that instead of being taken to a whole new window to view notifications or compose messages, these features just pop up in a small window in the corner of the existing screen. "This allows users to quickly check for these types of activity without losing what they’re currently viewing," says Constine at TIME.

3. Improved chat
Just as navigation appears in a sidebar on the left of the screen, the chat feature can now be accessed via a sidebar on the right side. This is designed to "permit persistent use" of chat while doing other things on Facebook.

4. A big emphasis on Places
"Facebook's location push is apparent" in the way the new app ramps up the Places tab. Places, which allows users to check in to locations like restaurants and bars, connects directly to the iPad's GPS, displaying a large map on the right side of the screen, and friends' location updates on the left. You can comment on friends' locations using this feature, too.

5. Eye-popping photos
"Browsing photos on the Facebook iPad app is a fantastic experience". Not only does the iPad's 9.7-inch screen blow up the photos beautifully, but it's "twitch-fast" to toggle among them. The app also allows you to crop photos using two fingers to define the boundaries of the crop. "It has a nice Minority Report feelin' to it."

6. A better-looking Friends page
The iPad app offers an improved showcase for the Friends page, which now uses "large, square-shaped thumbnails" to display high-quality photos of friends in an alphabetized, easy-to-navigate list. "It seems like Facebook's answer to Google+ Circles."

Facebook puts six to Forbes billionaire list

Facebook not only made household names out of its founders thanks to the movie "The Social Network" - it has also minted the latest crop of the richest people on the planet.

Six of the founders and investors behind the hot Internet startup made the annual list of world's top billionaires compiled by Forbes and four of them are new to the roster.

They join a list of others made wealthy by the latest gold rush on the Internet, underscoring the extent of the resurgence in a sector left for dead at the turn of the millennium.

Facebook co-founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg clocked in at No. 52 with an estimated worth of $13.5 billion, up from 212 and $4 billion in 2010.

Co-founders Dustin Moskovitz, the youngest billionaire on the Forbes list at 26, Eduardo Saverin, and investors Sean Parker and Russian Yuri Milner are new to the ranks. Rounding out Forbes' "Facebook Six" is investor Peter Thiel, who has moved down to 833 from 828, despite increasing his wealth to $1.5 billion from $1.2 billion.

Created in a Harvard dorm room in 2004, Facebook rocketed from an online directory for college students to the world's No. 1 social network, quickly surpassing its predecessor Friendster and dominating its rival News Corp's MySpace in popularity.

Facebook has about 600 million users and is a threat to more established big Web businesses such as Google and Yahoo for users' time and advertising dollars.

The private Silicon Valley company recently rounded up $1.5 billion in financing led by Goldman Sachs and Milner's Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, suggesting it could be worth $50 billion and setting off a feeding frenzy among investors.

Other names familiar in tech, media and Internet circles make an appearance on the Forbes list. Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page both come in at No. 24 on the Forbes list, unchanged from a year earlier though their fortunes have increased to $19.8 billion each from $17.5 billion each.

In China, Robin Li, the man behind the popular search engine Baidu, is listed with an estimated wealth of $9.4 billion. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.com - a site similar to eBay for businesses' transactions - is worth $1.6 billion.

Digital Sky Technologies Chief Executive Milner, credited with beating Silicon Valley at its own game, landed on the cover of Forbes' billionaires list magazine. His firm holds stakes in the center of this generation's Internet leaders including social gaming Zynga and the online coupon site Groupon.

Facebook gets Top 10 place in ComScore US Ad Survey

The massive audience at Facebook helped it take a top-ten ranking for the first time in ComScore's January survey of the number of unique visitors to U.S. Internet sites and advertising networks.

The Internet research company said Facebook was viewed by 153.0 million unique visitors in January, or 72.2 percent of the overall U.S. Internet audience that month, putting the site in 10th place in ComScore's Ad Focus survey of U.S. sites and advertising networks. The top spot went to Google Ad Network, with 197.1 million unique visitors, or 93.1 percent of Americans online.

Facebook's rising popularity has helped it move up significantly in ComScore's rankings. Last June, Facebook ranked 26th in the Ad Focus survey with 141.6 million unique visitors, or 65.9 percent of the U.S. Internet audience that month. In December of last year, however, Facebook was already on the verge of the top 10, sitting in the 11th spot.

Excluding the advertising networks, Facebook ranked fourth among the top 50 Web properties in the U.S. in January, behind Yahoo sites, Google sites and Microsoft sites, respectively. Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site, was not among the U.S. top 50 properties in January.

Facebook denies to build its own phone

Social networking website Facebook has said it is pushing deeper into the mobile phones sector, but denied an Internet report that it will build its own phone.

Privately held Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide and the company already has applications on a number of mobile phones that tie into its social networking website.

But Jaime Schopflin, a spokesman for Facebook, said the privately held company "is not building a phone." Facebook's current projects include "deeper integrations with some manufacturers," he said.

"Our view is that almost all experiences would be better if they were social, so integrating deeply into existing platforms and operating systems is a good way to enable this," Schopflin said in a statement.

In a report, the technology website TechCrunch.com had revealed that a source with knowledge of the project revealed that Facebook is secretly building software for a phone and working with a third party to build the hardware.

TechCrunch.com said Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and core functions of a mobile phone, which it can only do if it controls the phone's operating system.

Facebook, for its part, cited Facebook Connect, a service to allow members to log onto third-party websites, for Apple Inc's iPhone, and contact syncing on its iPhone application as projects it has already undertaken.

In May, Facebook also launched a stripped-down version of its social networking website designed for mobile phones with limited bandwidth Internet connections.

"The bottom line is that whenever we work on a deep integration, people want to call it a 'Facebook Phone' because that's such an attractive soundbite, but building phones is just not what we do," Schopflin said.

Facebook's denial comes after Google Inc last year dismissed media reports about its plans to build a phone, and then later came out with the Nexus One.

At the time, the company said it was focusing on developing its Android mobile operating software, which works on a multitude of mobile phones developed by other companies such as Motorola Inc's hot-selling DROID device.

But Google eventually did release in January its own smartphone called the Nexus One, manufactured by Taiwan-based HTC Corp.

Facebook adds location-based feature

Facebook users carrying their smart phones will soon be able to "check in" to real-world locations such as bars, parks and live concerts as the social network makes its first foray into the location services craze.

"Where are you?" is joining "What's on your mind?" as Facebook lets its users declare their whereabouts to their friends and people nearby.

With the much-anticipated launch of Facebook Places, the world's largest social network joins a growing number of services that let users find coupons, earn quirky merit badges or simply share with friends where they are.

These location services from various startups, including Foursquare and Gowalla, have grown in popularity with the widespread availability of smart phones that have GPS and other means of determining the user's location.

Facebook's version initially works through the site's iPhone application; users will need to download a free update of the Facebook app. Owners of other touch-screen gadgets can get the feature through visiting touch.facebook.com on their mobile Web browser. Facebook says it will add Places to other smart phone apps later.

By nature, check-ins are "opt in" - that is, you won't be forced to check in to a location if you don't want to. When you do, your check-ins will be shared with your friends by default, but not the broader public unless you decide to do so.

If you're out and about with friends, you'll be able to "tag" them using the (at) symbol, much the same way you can already tag them in your status updates. Your friend will then be notified that you have tagged them and can choose to check in too, or reject it.

A feature called "Here Now" lets anyone who has checked in to a place see who else has done the same. Other Facebook users who have checked in to the same location will be able to see you even if they are not your friends, but you can turn this feature off.

The first time you check in, a message will pop up letting you know that your locations will be visible to your friends and to others who have also checked in there. You'll need to either accept or deny this.

Though they are still new, location services present "endless possibilities" to businesses. Marketers want to reach consumers when they are at the point of making a purchase decision and locations services offer that opportunity.

It also holds promise for shoppers - if they are willing to share their location with nearby businesses.

Even so, it could take some time before checking in becomes as common as posting photos and adding status updates. Although Facebook's iPhone app has more than 20 million active users, and a similar number use the touch.facebook.com site from another touch-screen phone, that's still a small portion of the 500 million users Facebook has worldwide.

Facebook created Places by looking at the way people already use the site, says Ana Yang Muller, product marketing manager at Facebook. Users have already been saying where they are, and who they are with, in their status updates. Places is a natural extension of that by making location easier to declare with a check-in.

Facebook says it will eventually let restaurants or shops claim their locations, which could open the possibilities for targeted ads, deals or coupons for loyal customers.