Well, I love technology in general and yes, I’m going to one of first who buys iPhone 3G when it comes to India. Being an AirTel customer, it is pretty good that I don’t need to change my existing number to move to iPhone 3G, earlier with news that Vodafone will be launching it, I assumed that I might have to move to Vodafone!… And again that updating contacts, new number stuff!

iPhone 3G will come around October this year in India. Earlier there was a news in media that Vodafone will be launching iPhone in India. But it is confirmed now via the PR on Apple web site  that AirTel will be launching iPhone 3G in India later this year. I guess Vodafone will be also launching iPhone 3G for their customers too later this year, but it is not confirmed yet.

Soon customers will be able to purchase iPhone 3G at Airtel Relationship Centers. Details of pricing and availability will be announced at a later date. Airtel customers who wish to receive more information on iPhone 3G can send an SMS with keyword "iPhone" to 54321

More: Press Release by Apple

First off, A horizontal portal refers to an Internet portal site that offers a broad range of content and services. Examples could be Rediff, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL etc.

Few days ago LiveMint covered In.com, Web18 launched In.com today. I just explored it and it is really good. Asutosh reported on his blog that Web18 bought the domain for 2 crores! The domain name is pretty cool, and if it is not a rumor then In.com is good domain to have, even if it costs them 2 crores. It goes well with the desi-web these days!

You need to have an invite to access the site .I left my mail id there and the message says it will take me a couple of weeks to get an invite. I also left my mobile number there but got this message. Got invitation, and even got shekhar@in.com as my ID there, which was again another cool ID to have!

In.com comes very close to which was needed for the desi-web for long time, a good UI & UX and easy to use unlike other portals Rediif, Indiatimes, Yahoo! etc… Here are some screenshots…

For now, In.com appears to be a massive meta-search and aggregator in the making; seems to be an attempt to make it the de-facto destination for searching for news, music, travel, videos, games and all kinds of classifieds. Here are main sections…

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Google introduced FriendConnect yesterday in its CampFire One. FriendConnect is a new data portability initiative for spreading social connections around the web.

TC got a great post on FriendConnect yesterday… FriendConnect is a great way to socialize your website or webapp, In short it can be called as “Social Widgest for Site Owners”. Right now FriendConnect is in a very limited beta with a few “white listed” sites. Those include “registration, invitations, member galleries, message posting, reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.” Google said that they’re starting with a core group of social gadgets but developers are expected to build out a wide array of gadgets over time. And with a few tweaks, any application currently built on or compatible with the OpenSocial platform can be modified to work with FriendConnect.

FriendConnect lowers two barriers to the spread of social features across the web. First, many website owners want to add features that enable their visitors to do things with their friends, but the technology and resource hurdles have been too high. Second, people are tiring of needing to create new logins and profiles and recreate their friends lists wherever they go on the web. Google Friend Connect offers a solution to both of these issues.

Checkout the FriendConnect Intro video here… It is really a simplest way to connect your web site to more people & make it more social…

Via: TechCruch | SEL

Rob Christensen from Adobe Labs has written a great article on Six must-see Adobe AIR Applications (AIR; formerly code-named Apollo).

The goal of Adobe AIR is to make it very easy to build desktop applications with the skills and technologies web developers are already familiar with such as HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, ActionScript and Flex. Just as Flash and HTML are designed to run the same on different operating systems, the objective of Adobe AIR is to extend that same concept to desktop applications.

Once the AIR runtime is installed, the same file can be installed on a Mac or Windows (Linux coming soon). Applications built using Adobe AIR have read and write access to the local file system just like a native application. Other features include local SQLite database, drag’n’drop between applications, clipboard support, a simple and painless install, native file pickers, code signing, support for embedding PDF’s and more. Since a web browser is built-in (WebKit), you can also use your favorite AJAX libraries to build applications entirely in HTML and JavaScript. Or, if you want more creative control, you can use Flash and Flex. There are several tools for building AIR applications including Dreamweaver CS3, Aptana (open source), and Flex Builder 3 (public beta). Since the command line tool for building applications is included in the AIR SDK, you can technically use whatever your code editing tool you’re comfortable with.

Rob Wrote: “Since the alpha release of Adobe® Integrated Runtime (AIR; formerly code-named Apollo) on March 19, dozens of next-generation rich Internet applications (RIAs) built on top of the Adobe® AIR™ runtime have been designed, developed, and distributed across the Internet. Internally, the development teams have been inspired by the imagination, creativity, and resourcefulness reflected in the Adobe AIR applications released so far.” …. more»

Rob listed 6 AIR applications, which are:

• Twitter | Download Twitter
• kuler desktop | Download kuler
• Fresh | Download Fresh
• Finetune Desktop | Download Finetune Desktop
• DiggTop | Download DigTop
• SearchCoders/Dashboard | Download SearchCoders/Dashboard

One more recently launched AIR Application I just saw is Pownce by Digg’s Kevin Rose.

Rob’s Article | Adobe AIR | AIR SDK | More AIR Apps