According to the Brazilian news magazine Exame, Google has made Brazil the center of its Latin American operations, placing former country director Alexandre Hohagen at the helm.

Google is understood to have chosen Brazil for its superior regional performance. While the Mountain View, California-based search giant doesn’t comment on regional numbers, the article claims that Brazil is Google’s fastest growing market (hard to verify, but it’s certainly one of the fastest growing), generating an estimated $500 million per year in revenues. This is all the more impressive considering the Brazilian office was opened just three years ago and has only 200 employees.

The decision to run Latin American operations from Brazil comes soon after another decision to move all development and management of Orkut to that country, with most of the engineering in the city of Belo Horizonte. Orkut is Google’s social network, which enjoys most of its popularity in Brazil and India.

Brazil is also said to have the second largest number of Gmail accounts, perhaps because of the popularity of Orkut. Google’s biggest white labeled Gmail customer may also be in Brazil: iG, a portal with over 9 million accounts.

Google is still in the process of replacing Hohagen with a new country director for Brazil.

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20/10/08

The project Inter-Meios released this Monday another optimistic scenario for the advertisement market.

From January to August, the means of communication had a R$ 13.3 billion profit with ad sponsorship, which represents a 15.46% grown in relation to the same period last year.

Internet was the mean that grew the most compared to 2007 with 45%, followed by cable/satellite TV in second place, with 28.5%. Radio had an expansion above the average, with 23.3%, little bit more than the movies, which grew 21.3%.

Magazines went up to 19.4% and newspapers, 16.4% compared to 2007. Television had a R$ 7.8 billion profit and 14% growth, followed by international media, improving in 4.9%.

Guides and lists lost 11.6% in comparison to the same period in 2007.

Carrie-Ann Skinner, PC Advisor, 20 Oct 2008

Mobile phone viruses and spam looks set to rise, says the Georgia Institute of Technology Information Security Center (GTISC).

According to its annual Emerging Cyber Threats report, cybercriminals will start targeting smartphones as they are being used more frequently by users when it comes to finacial matters and therefore are a source of sensitive personal data such as credit card and bank account details.

The GTISC also said its expected spam and virus attacks to take the same form as those that are designed to attack PCs.

Simeon Coney of Adaptive Mobile, which provides security software mobile phones, told the BBC: “One of common types we see now runs amok on the Symbian platform. These viruses work their way through the contact book, sending themselves out to every subscriber who has been called or has called that handset”.

Coney said there are 100,000 mobile virus attacks a day but most users are not affected as many mobile viruses are not very sophisticated. He advised mobile users to use precautions similar to those exercised when using a PC.

“Think twice before running any attachment from someone you don’t know, check your bill on a regular basis, and ensure your Bluetooth connection is not set in discoverable mode.”

The Emerging Cyber Threats Report suggested mobile operators, handset manufacturers and application developers need to work together in securing handsets

Jessica Doulcourt, CNET News, Oct 10

Voice-responsive search has been available from Yahoo’s OneSearch 2.0 application for select BlackBerry phones since this last April, but until this week only a few of you could to try it out.

On Thursday, Yahoo slipped voice recognition into the OneSearch 2.0 home-screen shortcut–available for a smattering of Nokia Series 60 phones–and in the Yahoo! Go 3.0 files for select BlackBerry, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia Series 60 models, such as the BlackBerry Curve and high-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. Those using older versions of either of these apps will have to download them anew to get the chatty update.

Operating the voice search is simple–on BlackBerry, just hold down on the green ‘talk’ button and speak your search term. OneSearch will start scouring Yahoo’s database for answers as soon as you let go. Nokia owners can hit the pencil key to get going. Those without pencil keys will launch tier search by pressing the right shortcut key (labeled Y! OneSearch) and speaking or typing into the search box that appears.

Although voice-recognition technology is constantly improving as a whole, many voice searches I’ve tried using various applications have fallen flat. It helps to launch uncomplicated searches in quieter areas. I’ve experienced my share of success, but have also had to punch in search terms or edit them in the search field when the speech recognition software bungled a command or when the search engines didn’t return the results I had in mind. Still, it’s good to have options, and as the technology improves, voice searches will save plenty of typing time and hassle.

You can download the OneSearch 2.0 with a voice start-screen widget for select Nokia Series 60 phones by navigating to m.yahoo.com/shortcut from a PC or phone. The new version of Yahoo Go 3.0 (technically 3.0.4.6), which includes the voice-supporting Yahoo OneSearch widget, can be found for some Nokia and BlackBerry models at get.go.yahoo.com from a PC or the phone’s native browser.

Governmental initiatives to promote digital inclusion can bring internet to 80% of the Brazilian population until 2010.

The forecast was made by the minister of Science and Technology, Sergio Rezende, on last Friday (26), during an interview at Empresa Brasil de Comunicação – EBC (Brazil Communication Enterprise).

“We estimate that until 2010 we will have 80% of the Brazilian population accessing the internet regularly. This is the global aim”, says the minister.

The intention is to triplicate the number of Brazilians accessing the net,  from 60 million to 150 million users.

According to the minister, the government has been investing in building “telecentros” in poor communities, raising the number of labs in public schools and the connection of this computers with the internet. The plan is to invest R$ 40 bi more until the end of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s mandate.

29/09/08

As iniciativas do governo para promover a inclusão digital podem levar internet à 80% da população brasileira até 2010.

A previsão foi feita pelo ministro da Ciência e Tecnologia, Sérgio Rezende, na última sexta-feira (26) durante uma entrevista no estúdio da Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC).

“Estimamos que até 2010 teremos 80% da população brasileira acessando regularmente a internet de uma forma ou de outra. Essa é uma meta global”, afirma o ministro em declaração repercutida pela Agência Brasil.

A intenção é triplicar o número de brasileiros com acesso à rede, passando dos atuais 60 milhões para no minímo 150 milhões de usuários.

De acordo com o ministro, o governo tem investido na construção de telecentros em comunidades de baixa renda, ampliação dos laboratórios em escolas públicas e na conexão desse computadores com a rede através do “Programa Banda Larga na Escola”. Além disso, o plano nacional de inclusão social e digital ainda prevê mais de R$ 40 bilhões em investimentos até o final do mandato do presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Durante a entrevista, Rezende apontou as iniciativas como prioridade do Ministério. Lançado no início do mês, o “Programa Banda Larga na Escola” tem sido feito através de uma parceira do governo com empresas de telefonia.

By Betsy Schiffman September 16, 2008       Wired.com

Cable looks like a decent place to park your money in the event of a catastrophic market meltdown. The logic is this: People like TV. They don’t want to give it up even if the economy is going to hell in a handbasket. Actually, they may be less willing to sacrifice it in a recession, according to some Wall Street analysts. And even if cable operators won’t grow gangbusters, they may not bleed subscribers — unlike other businesses.

“Generally speaking, incumbent cable providers are better protected [from the economy] than other businesses for a couple reasons. The only competitive pressures they have are coming from Verizon and AT&T, and they don’t have the scale to pose a serious threat yet,” says Chris King, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. “And as Americans, we would rather cut off our arms than cut off our TV service.”

In a major market downturn, there aren’t many sectors that will escape unscathed. And there’s some expectation that if people are forced to trim spending, they will give up premium cable TV services such as HBO. But generally speaking, cable providers have proven more resilient to the market downturn than telecom competitors. (Both AT&T and Verizon posted dismal broadband growth last quarter, before this little financial crisis really took hold of the market.)

And among all the cable players, Comcast, like a cockroach, is perceived as a tough company and a safe bet in an economic storm, says Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett. But that also means that the stock is a little rich — or at least it was before the market opened today.

“Cable stocks are enjoying a banner year in this extraordinarily tough market,” says Moffett. “But there has been much more separation between the cable stocks than in prior years … And for many investors, Comcast is the cable industry.”

In theory, investors like Comcast better than Time Warner Cable because it’s not being chased out of New York City by Verizon, which is in the process of rolling out FiOS, a high-speed fiber internet and television service throughout the city.

Another reason why Time Warner Cable may be cheaper than Comcast: Wall Street thinks that the company’s financial goals are a little aggressive, which means it could disappoint, and that means the stock is cheaper.

Of course, Time Warner Cable may have looked cheaper yesterday. As of publishing, Time Warner Cable shares were only down 3.5 percent year-to-date, while Comcast was down roughly 25 percent for the last eight months.

“Cable isn’t going to be immune from the general market, but [the industry] has performed better than telecom,” says King.