MUMBAI: After a range of independent restaurants including Hard Rock Caf?, Shiro and California Pizza Kitchen, specialty restaurants company JSM is now going into deep-freeze. The company is introducing the Pinkberry frozen yoghurt brand in India in partnership with the US company which bears the same name.

Three Pinkberry stores-cum-restaurants in Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru opened their doors to customers today, also present at the do was Bollywood actress Tara Sharma inaugurating the nineteenth market globally for the US firm. Says Pinkberry CEO Ron Graves: "We are pleased to join the league of the booming restaurant sector in India. With more than 230 stores worldwide, we have brought in Pinkberry?s high quality, unique and original yogurt experience in India and couldn?t have picked a better partner than JSM Corp who is equally passionate about enabling Indian consumers to enjoy the delights of frozen yogurt."

JSM Corp cofounder Jay Singh says the company is foraying into the frozen dessert category at the right time. Says he: "This segment in India is at an encouraging stage with a size of about $400 million. We expect it to explode to become about $700 million in the next five years."

Tara Sharma & JSM Co-Founder Jay Singh at the launch of Pinkberry store in Mumbai

In order to take a sizable bite of the market, and position it well amidst the growing competition and other international premium brands such as Baskin-Robbins, H?agen-Dazs, London Dairy, Movenpick and Magnum, Pinkberry has worked on its pricing and reduced it considerably for India.

Singh told Indiantelevision.com that as compared to the prevalent price of Pinknberry?s products in Los Angeles "we have reduced the price up to 40 per cent in India, and the minimum range starts from Rs 75 to Rs 380."

He expects to have around 300-400 footfalls daily at the various stores.

In order to gain a further foothold in Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru, 10 more outlets are planned for each of the cities. "As of now, we are not looking at tier II cities and focusing on these three metros," he discloses.

NEW DELHI: The Government today released the national Cyber Security Policy aimed at facilitating creation of secure computing environment and enabling adequate trust and confidence in electronic transactions and also guiding stakeholders actions for protection of cyber space.

The National Cyber Security Policy document outlines a road-map to create a framework for comprehensive, collaborative and collective response to deal with the issue of cyber security at all levels within the country.

The policy recognises the need for objectives and strategies that need to be adopted both at the national level as well as international level.

Releasing the document, Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal underlined that this policy should be seen as about protecting of information, such as personal information, financial/banking information, sovereign data etc. He said that information empowers, and in order to empower people with information, we need to secure the information/data. He also flagged the need to distinguish between data which can freely flow and data which needs to be protected.

Sibal pointed out that the real challenge is in the operationalisation of this policy. He also stated that the government, through incentives and subsidies will need to support Small and Medium Enterprises for accessing the technology to make their systems safe. He also called on businesses to set aside finances for keeping themselves safe in cyber space.

Speaking on the occasion, Minister of State for Communications and IT Milind Deora congratulated all stakeholders and especially officers in the department who worked towards the formulation of the policy. He underlined that this policy will help protect our sovereign assets.

The "National Cyber Security Policy" has been prepared in consultation with all relevant stakeholders, user entities and public.

The objectives and strategies outlined in the National Cyber Security Policy together serve as a means to:

i. Articulate our concerns, understanding, priorities for action as well as directed efforts.

ii. Provide confidence and reasonable assurance to all stakeholders in the country (Government, business, industry and general public) and global community, about the safety, resiliency and security of cyber space.

iii. Adopt a suitable posturing that can signal our resolve to make determined efforts to effectively monitor, deter & deal with cyber crime and cyber attacks.

Salient features of the policy

In brief, the National Cyber Security Policy covers the following aspects:

? A vision and mission statement aimed at building a secure and resilience cyber space for citizens, businesses and Government.

? Enabling goals aimed at reducing national vulnerability to cyber attacks, preventing cyber attacks & cyber crimes, minimising response & recover time and effective cyber crime investigation and prosecution.

? Focused actions at the level of Govt., public-private partnership arrangements, cyber security related technology actions, protection of critical information infrastructure and national alerts and advice mechanism, awareness & capacity building and promoting information sharing and cooperation.

? Enhancing cooperation and coordination between all the stakeholder entities within the country.

? Objectives and strategies in support of the National cyber security vision and mission.

? Framework and initiatives that can be pursued at the Govt. level, sectoral levels as well as in public private partnership mode.

? Facilitating monitoring key trends at the national level such as trends in cyber security compliance, cyber attacks, cyber crime and cyber infrastructure growth.

NEW DELHI: Apple has applied for a trademark in Japan with the name of "iWatch" which will be a wearable device.

It is expected that Apple will be releasing the wearable device soon in Japan.

The application is reported to have been submitted on 3 June and was released on the Japan Patent Office website on 27 June.

Apple CEO Tim Cook had a month ago revealed to the media and tech executives that the time was right for exploration of wearable devices.

Wearable technology has picked up pace as Google is continuing with Google Glass and Samsung is reported to be working on a ?Smart Watch?.

Early last month in Apple?s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple displayed its new Mac Book Pro computer which is much thinner, less than an inch (0.71 inch / 18 mm to be precise) and weighs around 2 kg.

Cnet reports that the latest machine is the slimmest and thinnest Mac Book Pro so far and is equipped with a mighty Intel quad-core i7, 2.7 GHz processor, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics and sports a 768GB flash memory.

It has an ultra high resolution of 2880 x 1800 pixels and longer battery life that lasts for 7 hours. These machines are being shipped worldwide today for 1,199 to 2,199 US Dollars, depending upon the specs.

NEW DELHI: The Information and Broadcasting Ministry has been asked to give its suggestions on a draft cabinet note prepared by the Telecom Ministry to give greater powers to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to penalise service providers for failing to comply with its directives and rules and regulations.

An I&B Ministry source confirmed to indiantelevision.com that a note had been received, and had in fact also been sent to the Planning Commission for its opinion.

The Telecom Ministry in the note has stressed on the need for increasing TRAI?s jurisdiction to impose penalties through a transparent process for default in compliance with its orders and regulations as well as for non-observance of terms and conditions of license.

TRAI at present does not have power to impose penalties, though it can regulate and monitor rates, quality and other parameters of telecom and broadcasting services to protect consumer interest. The regulator is understood to have conveyed to the Telecom Ministry that in the process of its periodic performance indicator reports of service providers, it has often found telecom operators involved in billing disputes lagged in addressing complaints of subscribers.

Such lapses by service providers therefore can only be sorted out if TRAI chooses to file a complaint before a criminal court for adjudication of liabilities.

A Telecom Ministry official said after replies are received from the I&B Ministry and the Commission, the Department of Telecom will send the draft with the comments to the Law Ministry for placing it before the Cabinet.

The aim is to ensure TRAI can periodically monitor efficient use of spectrum and take action in case airwaves are being used inefficiently by service providers.