TechGazing is moving to Social Ambit (http://socialambit.com).

Social Ambit is a new blog for those with an interest in social media and blogs for marketing and PR. While I have been covering this subject extensively on TechGazing, a need was felt to have a blog dedicated to this subject. And create a platform experts to share their experiences, expertise and opinions.

This new blog has been in the making for many months, and I hope this will address the needs of both organizations and individuals.

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By Varun Aggarwal

Google feels proud to embrace its biggest rival Microsoft in the month of love. The search giant has licensed Microsoft’s Activesync for its new product called Google sync.Google sync allows users to synchronize their contacts with Google’s web services. However, Google’s mobile platform Android won’t be a part of the agreement.

Even Nokia licenses Microsoft’s Activesync and uses it under the product name Nokia sync. Microsoft is taking this opportunity to boast about its move towards openness in licensing its patents under a ‘fair and reasonable terms’. Though Google and Microsoft have co-operated in some areas in the past, this is the first ever licensing agreement signed between the two. Would this love between the two last long? Well, I’m not too optimistic.

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 By Varun Aggarwal

Driving everyday to and from office, I often come across an advertisement on radio about how viruses can infect not only your PCs but also your mobile phones. When I first heard that advertisement, I scratched my head a bit to realize that the company ‘QuickHeal’, which promises you to protect both your PCs and cell phones, was not-so long ago struck by a virus itself. The virus impacted the site in a way that everyone who had auto-updates switched on on their QuickHeal installation, were also infected by the same virus.

Well, the point of discussion here is actually not how bad this company is, rather its about ‘do we really need an anti-virus for the phones?’. Let’s look at some facts before drawing any conclusions.  There are millions of Windows viruses that storm the Web each month. If you look at the Linux installations, there are less than 1000 total viruses ever reported. That’s one reason why most Linux users don’t use an anti-virus, even at enterprise level.

Now let’s talk about the mobile phones. There are about 420 known mobile viruses. That said, not all of them can infect every phone. Even if you’re running Windows mobile, your phone cannot be infected by a Windows PC virus. Moreover, there are innumerous mobile platforms–Symbaian (for Nokia phones), Linux, Windows Mobile, Apple iphone, Android etc.

Each of these 420 viruses is capable of infected only a few mobile platforms (in most cases its only one platform). The most popular target for attacks is Symbian, but if you have the Symbian series 60, 3rd edition phone, the chances of attack plunge further down.

But if you’re really concerned about the safety of your mobile phone data, then what you need is not an anti-virus but data backup tools, which usually come free of charge along with the phone. To go a step further, you can buy encryption tools from the likes of F-secure, which can lock or erase your data remotely, in case of loss.

To conclude, I would say that you can still require an anti-virus if you’re working for the army or the government and feel that some professional virus writers can target you personally.

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By Nimish Dubey

The past few days have seen the world buzzing about Google Latitude, the latest version of Google Maps that allows you to see  exactly where your friends are on a map on your handset and computer.  For the most part, it seems an awesome service, as it displays your friends with their Google Talk avatars, status messages and all.

That said,but it does seem to have some hefty bugs in it. If that sounds difficult to believe, try this: it showed a friend of ours somewhere in Maharashtra. Nothing wrong with that, except that he was sitting right in front of us - in a cafe in Delhi! Theories as to why this is happening would be welcome. We are currently trying to find out if he and his phone have evil twins!

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By Nimish Dubey

I know I go on and on about brand ambassadors being a bit of a liability in the tech field but well, I just cannot help it if celebrities endorsing tech products keep tripping up.

The latest to join the list is Aftab Shivdasani, who has been named the brand ambassador for the World Gaming Day, a concept backed by the likes of Sony Ericsson, Microsoft Xbox and Zapak.com.

At the launch, Shivdasani was introduced as a hardcore gamer. He was handed an Xbox 360 (amazing that he did not have one already, being a hardcore gamer) and a Sony Ericsson F305 gaming phone. He gave a little speech, revealing how he had failed in his examinations because he spent a lot of time gaming. All was fine until someone asked him his favourite mobile phone game.

Shivdasani’s answer:  Snake! Nokia must be overjoyed but every gamer in the room was laughing their heads off. Some hardcore gamer this. Oh, and incidentally, he also uses a BlackBerry - one of the least gamer-friendly phones you can find in the world.

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