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Yesterday’s terrorist attack at multiple locations of Mumbai resulted in a Tweets frenzy where minute-by-minute updates about the location of the blasts/skirmishes, positions of the security forces, location of the journalists and safe passages for stranded commuters, among other things, were discussed.

Indian authorities, however, cautioned twitters to abstain from discussing positions of security forces as terrorists might be following the same network. There were rumors that authorities are going to ban Twitter but they died after some hours. However, this whole episode has given way to a discussion about the pros and cons of Twitter. Critics are saying, and rightly so, that a social network like Twitter can never be a source of news as it has no authority and anyone can write any sort of rumor in the garb of breaking news.

TechCrunch lauded the tweets in its initial update post but a majority of commenters were of different opinion. One wrote,

“I’m not against Citizen Journalism – but on it’s own a single photo means nothing – it’s only in aggregate or with corroborated accounts from trusted sources can you use such media to add value to such a news story.”

Whereas another one said,

“Twitter has been successful in distributing the news and alerts much more than that of CNN or any news station in India, like IBN or NDTV, solely because its aggregating information from all places.”

Twitter is a great application and given the security situation in Pakistan, much much worse than India, Can we use Twitter to run alerts and break news? At least, we can update people about safe havens/exits in case of a major attack. But the basic issue is the low penetration of the application. What do you think?

Advertising Standards Agency of UK has banned an advertisement of Apple iPhone on the basis that it misled consumers about the speed with which they can access the Internet.

This is second time in four months that the company has faced a thrashing from UK’s top advertising watchdog. In August, the watchdog banned another Apple ad for wrongly suggesting the device allows use of all functions of all Web sites including surfing a news Web site, viewing the Google maps service and downloading a file with a waiting time of fraction of a second, Bloomberg reported.

This news item diverted my attention to the local scene where companies have an open playing field regarding advertisements with no checks. To name a few, we have the 50 and 75 paisas billing advertisement while they actually charge more than double of that. Same is the case with other products and services where customers are easily fooled by these companies. it’s time to set up an independent and more importantly ‘powerful’ consumer body or at least an advertising authority to keep a check on consumers exploitation.

Research firm Gartner released a report on the global outlook of mobile phones for the year 2009 and predicted that cell phones growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region, including India and China, may come to a halt.

Wall Street Journal reported that Gartner is expecting a low-single-digit growth contraction from 2008 levels. In the third quarter of 2008, about 309 million mobile phones were sold world-wide, a 6% increase from a year earlier, but a significant decline from the 16% year-to-year growth seen in the third quarter of 2007. Replacement sales were hit especially hard, while first-time users remained active, the research firm added.

Nokia kept the lead with 118 million handsets or a 38.2% share, Samsung sales were around 53 million or a 17.1% market share whereas Sony Ericcson came third with 24.8 million handsets sale and a market share of 8.1%.

Pakistan, being an essential part of Asia Pacific, is also seeing a downfall in the sales of handsets. The economical quagmire has barred a common man from changing mobile handsets every couple of months – a trait very much prevalent as recently as six months back. The upper crust of society is taking interest in iPhone and other smart phones but as they constitute only a smaller portion of total sales so this doesn’t add up in the final stats.

On another note, Nokia still remains number one in Pakistan and a recent survey put Nokia at holding 48% of the market share. Samsung and LG are also catching up here – given their affordability but we can expect some serious slump in the mobile market. That’s good for many buyers though, if prices go down, they can buy their favorite sets.

There is a buzz recently about hackers attack on the oil and gas authorities’ portals of both India and Pakistan by the rival hacker groups.

India’s HMGT Andhra Hackers group attacked the site of OGDCL rendering it totally useless for many hours. After a couple of days, Pakistan Cyber Army returned the favor with attacking the portal of Indian oil and gas authority.

Hacking was pretty common among the Indian and Pakistanis before 1998 and also during and after the Kargil conflict but since then, these type of attacks saw a major decline. However, the general opinion of the people, as I recently read on one portal, was to encourage this useless exercise. Commenters were happy that we have settled the score with our ‘enemy’ but they forgot the fact that this futile exercise leads to nowhere. Both Pakistanis and Indians have to understand this point. There is one silver lining though, the ratio of hackers has declined in both the countries and we only see minor episodes like this once or twice a year.

Facebook was eyeing the acquisition of Twitter but the companies have yet to reach a consensus on the deal with some insiders saying the deal has failed altogether.

The Web 2.0 company has been in business for more than two and a half years but the revenue growth is minimal with almost no profits made. Facebook was considering a bid of $500 million and the talks were underway as recently as Nov. 22 .

Given the dire situation of the economy and the financial standing of Twitter, the deal value could have been much lower, Financial Times reported, citing Chris Sacca, a Twitter investor. If the deal has failed, as the indicators suggest, this could be a setback to both Facebook and Twitter. Former will suffer because the latter provided an excellent business opportunity and the lack of revenues/capital might force Twitter to sell itself, at much lower rates, in near future.

Hewlett Packard saw a growth of 10% in the PC sales for the third quarter and PC sales dwarfed that of printers by big margins.

Bloomberg reported that the company’s fourth-quarter net income dropped 2.4 percent to $2.11 billion, or 84 cents a share, from $2.16 billion, or 81 cents, a year earlier. The company had an 18 percent share in PC shipments whereas Dell was trailing behind at 14 percent, the news service added, citing research firm Gartner Inc.

PC revenues topped $11.0 billion while around $7.5 billion were earned in printer revenues. Additionally, the company has a strong outlook despite the current financial crisis.

The acquisition of Electronic Data Systems and the popularity/affordability of economical notebooks are some of the reasons behind the improved sales of the company.

Adding a local note, HP is also a favorite brand in Pakistan but the huge devaluation of Pakistani Rupee resulted in an increase in prices but decrease in sales. Even a simple HP520 and HP530 are now above the range of a low-to-medium income professional. Dealers are reluctant to cut prices but as a result are also suffering setbacks because of low sales.