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Showing posts from January, 2008

Why do you write a book? or a blog?

I used to believe until recently that people write a book or blog when they have some thing unique or different to share, some idea to spread or  to provoke a thought in the minds of readers. It will have your own voice. Your way of thinking and readers see the world through your eyes. One of my favorite bloggers wanted to write a book for a long time. But not sure what to write about. So a new post appeared on the blog asking its readers what do they want to read.  And the community contribution to the book did not stop there. New posts appeared asking readers on how to cover a particular chapter/concept in the book specifically asking for examples and illustrations. It looks like writing a book is just another business. Write a book that people wanted to read instead of write your own book and create your own trend. Same things I observed in case of blogs as well. Are you writing your blog based on what will be read in the market or what will be interesting to general readers o

Midas-Touch Indians : 12 in the top 100

Indians with a midas-touch as Forbes calls it, with an eye on star startups. There are 12 of them in the top of the list. People of Indian origin seem to have developed a habit of making it to the Forbes magazine -- this time it is for making investments in start-up companies and then selling off their stakes with handsome gains. As many as 12 Indian-origin persons have made it to a list of 100 dealmakers with 'midas-touch' prepared by the renowned business magazine, based on the value of the companies these people have taken public or sold in the past five years as well as the capital and involvement it took to get there. Ram Shriram, a founding board member of internet search giant Google, has been named at the third position in the renowned US-based business magazine's Midas 100 List The Hindu News Update Service

YouTube - High Note

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What a delightful video! HighNotes

India vs China : Debate is shifting gears

Review of a new book by The Economist offers an interesting insight of the shift of gears in the debate of India vs China. FIVE years ago, Tarun Khanna, an Indian-born professor at Harvard Business School, grabbed attention with an article in Foreign Policy magazine speculating that India might eventually overtake China. Co-written with Yasheng Huang, a Chinese-American scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the article argued that India's economic model offers more freedom to entrepreneurs which could help the country outpace its fellow Asian giant in the longer term. From a macroeconomic viewpoint, this argument was rather implausible, except in the extremely long term, for China's economy is already three times the size of India's. At the corporate level, though, it made more sense: as its recent unveiling of the world's cheapest car showed, companies such as Tata Motors promise to make the global grade rather faster than their Chinese counter

I in India suggest Inferior or No Infrastructure? (Part 1)

No Legal and Administrative Protection to you or your  Property !! I am not sure about other parts of India, but in Hyderabad, Bangalore and most southern parts of India that is experiencing Real estate boom, when you buy a property there is no guarantee that you can keep it.  Politicians are the new mafia. Political mafia in close ties with the police force and state administration is ruthlessly grabbing land and property from people. They even resort to killing everybody that comes in their way. There is no way you can fight. Courts don't work. Police are already part of the criminal elite.  Who else can save the hard earned money and property of Individual citizens? What kind of a Freedom do you really have when you can't even protect yourself and your house from these hard core politician turned mafia land grabbers. When we talk about the brave optimism and vibrant economy we tend to see the brighter part of India. But  at the core, we have no infrastructure that can

Beware of What you download : Metered Bandwidth is here..!

When it comes to Internet connection, we always take it granted that there is no limit on the bandwidth. We are free to download and upload as much as we can. The only limitation so far is the speed at which we could do. High Speed Internet connection Speeds range from 0.7Mbps to 15Mbps. But Time Warner is moving to a metered model where you will be charged based on your bandwidth consumption. Beware! Time Warner Cable this week said it will move away from the “buffet” model of broadband and start experimenting with a “metered” model. The cable operator is rolling out a trial program in Beaumont, Texas, in which customers will be charged based on the amount of bandwidth they use. Given the rise in bandwidth-sucking content, such as high-definition movies streamed over the Internet, the move is hardly a surprise. Of course before HD movies, the culprit was peer-to-peer file sharing and before that, gamers. Source: Video Killed the Broadband Buffet

Notable Thoughts : Weekend Edition

“A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all” - Anonymous. Few notable thoughts that are worth sharing and spreading. Lenovo: A Company without a Country A handful of companies have two headquarters, but Lenovo might be the first multinational corporation to have none. The company, formed by Lenovo's purchase three years ago of the IBM PC Co., has executive offices in Beijing, Raleigh, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Paris. But it doesn't have an official headquarters. How Fast is Social Media Growing? Akamai Should Know The company counts 7 of the the top 10 social networking sites as customers and claims that 92% of traffic to such destinations was carried across their network in December. Overall, traffic to these sites increased more than 5x over the past year, with Akamai delivering more than one million requests per second MacBook Air: Some closer look

Why Microsoft doesn't have a product targeting India?

Microsoft's India Managing directory cites piracy and lack of law enforcement as the reason why Microsoft doesn't create any India specific products. The global software industry generally refrains from developing India-specific products mainly because of high levels of piracy and poor awareness among law enforcement agencies, said a top Microsoft official. Microsoft (India) Managing Director Neelam Dhawan on Wednesday said enforcing IPR laws was a "challenge" and that the industry, as per studies, was losing almost 72 per cent of its revenue due to circulation of pirated software - a menace which hasn't been checked due to poor awareness among law-enforcing agencies here. "We have the best IPR laws in the world but their poor enforcement acts as a deterrent to innovation. This is why we do not have a product made for India," said Dhawan, at a function to award Microsoft IPR scholarships to 33 law students from 11 law schools. Source: India l

Economic Impact of Software & Information : A Report

Software for sure has changed the dynamics of Indian Economy. Here is an interesting report from SIIA about the Economic impact of Software and Information in US and Global economies. Read the report(pdf) here. The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital information industry, today released a first-of-its-kind report that measures the substantial economic impact of the software and information (S&I) industries on the U.S. and global economies. The report, entitled “Software & Information: Driving the Global Knowledge Economy,” finds that these industries are among the fastest growing and most important for propelling continued economic growth — both in the U.S. and globally. Software & Information Industry Association

H1B 2009: Will '2007 H1B Rush' repeat in 2008?

Update : Now its official. USCIS announced today that it received about 163,000 H1B petitions for year 2009 that starts from 1st of October 2008. About 31,200 of those are for Advanced Degree category. Read more . It will be a lottery to accept petitions. I wish you all good luck to you. So, to answer my question I posed in January, whether H1B rush will repeat in 2008, as expected, the answer is a big YES. Update: USCIS announced today that H1B Visa cap has been reached for both regular quota(65,000) as well as Advance Degree exemption quota(20,000). USCIS hasn’t yet announced concrete number of petitions received. Read more.. . Last year, the visa cap for H1B petitions has been reached on Day 1. USCIS had in fact received about 150,000 applications and had to resort to 'lottery'(Random Selection) to pick up eligible applications. Many applicants had to wait quite longer just to know that their application wasn't picked up. Due to sudden rush, many had to wait for months

Notable Thoughts : Tuesday Edition

The boom in India now heard overseas - Los Angeles Times Foreign investment in India may double in 2008 for the second straight year to reach $30 billion, the government forecasts, as the world's second-fastest-growing major economy arrives at what Lehman Bros. calls its takeoff point. That's when consumer demand and business spending start feeding off each other and drive even more investment. Saloni Malhotra among best young entrepreneurs - Rediff The runner-up in the BusinessWeek.com competition is Saloni Malhotra, founder and CEO of DesiCrew Solutions. A graduate of Bharati Vidyapeeth's College of Engineering in Pune, near Mumbai, Malhotra launched her company last February. Microsoft Trains 200000 Teachers in India - PC World Microsoft has trained 200,000 teachers in India on the use of computers, ahead of its original target to train 80,000 teachers in the country during the five-year period ending December this year, it said.

Google Sees Surge in iPhone Traffic

When it comes to web surfing there is no other device like iPhone. Nokia fans and Blackberry folks are very reluctant to accept that iPhone from a computer company beat the mobile phone companies flat out. But they all know iPhone has really done it. Data from search engines only confirms it. On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times. A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone. The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide , according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those

Google Sees Surge in iPhone Traffic

When it comes to web surfing there is no other device like iPhone. Nokia fans and Blackberry folks are very reluctant to accept that iPhone from a computer company beat the mobile phone companies flat out. But they all know iPhone has really done it. Data from search engines only confirms it. On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times. A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone. The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide , according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those

IT at the heart of India's development

IT is indeed has been pivotal and certainly fueled India's recent growth, though significant yet latent contributions by other sectors can not be ignored. A nice perspective at how IT is helping India shine. One of the pillars of modern India, and one the country is relying on to complete its transformation from an economic backwater to a global superpower, is its IT industry. From humble beginnings the industry has grown beyond what anyone imagined 20 years ago. It is currently worth about US$47 billion, or about 5.4 per cent of India's gross domestic product, and is still growing at about 30 per cent per year. It employs 1.6 million people directly, and many more indirectly. Its phenomenal growth has led India to take IT to heart as a national industry, and everyday Indians have a real sense of pride now that its large tech companies are rivalling the established IT giants like IBM. This is proof to them that India can play and win on the global stage. Source:

Life Styles Apart : Monday Morning Edition

  Motorola Seeking for a Comeback It boasts 2 new attention-grabbing, "multimedia monster" handsets - the mobile film studio Moto Z10 and a powerful music phone Rokr E8 - much to the delight of journalists/bloggers and consumers alike. Study: More than half of Americans embracing mobile data According to Deloitte & Touche, millennials (consumers ages 13 to 24) lead the new media charge, with 46 percent embracing their mobile handsets as entertainment devices Beam Files To Your Mobile For Free Beam it up Scotty is a way to send pictures, music, videos, documents or any other file to any mobile device for free Nokia's New User Interface an iPhone Look-alike As expected, everybody wants to be iPhone lately. Take for instance this patent filed by Nokia in June 2007 for its own version of multi-touch user interface A 100-inch WVGA Display in the Palm of Your Hand Microvision’s new projector is smal

Notable Thoughts : Monday Morning Edition

Notable thoughts Monday Morning Edition, few thoughts that caught my attention over the weekend surfing. Taxes: How low (or high) can they go? There was a fascinating (to us, anyhow) table in a recent issue of the Journal of Financial Planning. It showed the top marginal tax rates for married couples from 1913 through 2003. Those, you’ll recall, are the highest rates at which income over a certain amount is taxed. The rates ranged from a low of 7 percent (on income over $500,000) in 1913 to 94 percent (on income over $200,000) in the war year of 1944. Undergraduate programming From CrossTalk, The Journal of Defense Software Engineering: “It is our view that Computer Science (CS) education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. We consider that the general adoption of Java as a first programming language is in part responsible for this decline.” India's first mobile soap - Times of India Dig

Auto insurance by the mile in Texas

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Pay your auto-insurance based on miles you cover. Interesting, but will it be cheaper for Texas?  Based on the ball park estimate given by MileMeter CEO, it could be. "The cost per mile varies with the geographic area and the age of the driver, but a reasonable ball park for a 30-year-old driver and minimum coverage in a midrange urban ZIP code in Texas might be 4 cents per mile, MileMeter CEO Chris Gay says. Multiple drivers in a household can also be covered for a single vehicle.". If we take an average of 15000 miles per year, then that would only cost about $600. We really need to look at the type of coverage to see if this is cheaper than conventional.  But nonetheless, very interesting concept and would definitely workout if you are just about average driver in terms of miles you drive everyday. Back in 2005, we covered Norwich Union's Pay-as-You-Drive program in the UK to charge consumers for auto insurance based on how often, when and where they use

IIT India from American eyes

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Little hyped up and say IIT is what you get if you put together MIT, Harvard and Princeton, while IITs are no way close in any aspect to any of the above institutes. The only one factor that is quite contrasting is in the number of people compete to get in. What can you expect when you have billion people and only 7 institutes. Does that makes IIT great, just because its tough to get in? I don't think so. From Crackle: IIT India from American eyes Source: IIT India from American eyes | Crackle - Stream On

IIT India from Italian eyes

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Its not in English, but captions will come to your rescue. From Crackle: IIT India from Italian eyes Source: IIT India from Italian eyes | Crackle - Stream On

India and Open Source

Can Open Source help India?  Found this excellent article at Wharton Knowledge. discussing about how Open Source will impact Indian ecosystem. Will India Become the New Vanguard of the Open Source Movement? Last month, when Sun Microsystems announced a $1 million grant for innovative open source projects at the Free and Open Source Software conference in Bangalore, it wasn't the sort of news that makes major headlines. Larger amounts have been committed before. IBM, for instance, is spending $1.2 million to set up an open source Software Resource Center in partnership with the Center for Development of Advanced Computing in Pune and the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. And this is only one of IBM's India projects. Sun has spent almost $2 billion supporting open source initiatives across the globe. In general, while many Startups and businesses across the world use open source , almost none of those applications they develop are open source. If all those p

Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship

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Good to know some of the myths of Entrepreneurship. Its all what people, most likely, non or not-yet entrepreneurs think about before they start.  Real entrepreneurs realize themselves pretty soon in their courtship the difference between a myth and reality. Read details about each myth here at the original article, Top Ten Myths of Entrepreneurship , I just want to highlight a couple that are quite the few that motivates a many entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs are successful financially. Sorry, this is another myth. Entrepreneurship creates a lot of wealth, but it is very unevenly distributed. The typical profit of an owner-managed business is $39,000 per year. Only the top ten percent of entrepreneurs earn more money than employees. And the typical entrepreneur earns less money than he otherwise would have earned working for someone else. Starting a business is easy. Actually it isn’t, and most people who begin the process of starting a company fail to get one up

Your Child in a Cartoon movie

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Around the world, Parents take literally 1000s of photographs and hours of video of their kids every day.  To capture those first moments of every thing to cherish forever. At every opportunity, parents try to a make real cute movie of their kids, with all the professionalism they have accumulated through the labor.  Well, good news for those hard-working parents who want to see their kid in a movie. Not just in any movie, but a cartoon movie that kids just love to watch all the time.  Real cartoon characters with one new character, your kid. Read on. Children can now watch themselves interact with their favourite cartoon characters, thanks to Kideo 's personalized videos. How it works? Customers either upload a photo of their child to kideo.com, or go to a Lucidiom retail photo kiosk and scan or upload it there. The photo is cropped down to a head shot, which is then attached to a cartoon body. A few days later, a DVD is mailed to the customer’s house, with an animated mov

A 100-inch WVGA Display in the Palm of Your Hand

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There were lots of news stories and rumors about a mobile device that can be used as a projector to quickly make a presentation on the fly. But haven't seen any prototype so far until CES 2008.  Here it is. As if there isn’t already enough out of CES 2008, this pocket-sized projector has got to be one of the coolest gadgets that made its debut at the show. What’s the big deal? Code-named "SHOW", Microvision’s new projector is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and can project a DVD-quality widescreen 848 x 480 pixel image up to 100-inches in size! What’s more, is that the SHOW is designed to connect quickly and easily to a variety of laptops, mobile phones, PMPs, digital cameras and other mobile devices. The production model provides up to 2.5 hours of battery operation and will make use of the company’s single micro-mirror laser scanning display technology. If Microvision can partner with Wayne Szalinski to develop an eight-foot projector screen that

A 100-inch WVGA Display in the Palm of Your Hand

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There were lots of news stories and rumors about a mobile device that can be used as a projector to quickly make a presentation on the fly. But haven't seen any prototype so far until CES 2008.  Here it is. As if there isn’t already enough out of CES 2008, this pocket-sized projector has got to be one of the coolest gadgets that made its debut at the show. What’s the big deal? Code-named "SHOW", Microvision’s new projector is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and can project a DVD-quality widescreen 848 x 480 pixel image up to 100-inches in size! What’s more, is that the SHOW is designed to connect quickly and easily to a variety of laptops, mobile phones, PMPs, digital cameras and other mobile devices. The production model provides up to 2.5 hours of battery operation and will make use of the company’s single micro-mirror laser scanning display technology. If Microvision can partner with Wayne Szalinski to develop an eight-foot projector screen that

Finally a PC that is better than Apple Mac?

Well, in the words of Walt Mossberg of WSJ,  at least in certain aspects, there is a PC that can be set in the same class as of Apple Macs. Though finally Walt recommends Apple Macs as they are cheaper (compared to this particular model PC) and have much better software, he finds some features of this stylish Dell XPS model very impressive, to an extent of better than Apple Macs. Higher memory, Wireless keyboard and mouse, ability to just plug-in memory cards from your cameras, stylish speakers, sensors that can detect just waving off to activate multi-media controls and sturdy frame itself. But hardware is not all about any computer. Dell just needs a better OS, instead of Microsoft Vista to really have a chance to beat out Apple Mac. Watch the review for a look at the Dell XPS. I have a HP Slimline desktop and a 21" View Sonic and I am running Microsoft Vista Home Premium. I love it.  I am not convinced about Apple Macs that they are worth the buck yet. Too much to pay

GM's Driverless Car

Not sure about the business case for a driverless car, but here is a demo of one from GM. The car is powered with  GPS, Cameras, a whole lot of sensors and a huge stack of computers (reminds me of a Telecom switch fabric). In the demo, the car even stops at a stop sign and take turns effortlessly and looks like it gives a smooth ride.

Fuel Cell Car : Cadillac's Provoq

Fuel Cell Cars may be reality very soon. Here is an exclusive video of Cadillac's Provoq at WSJ, that runs of liquid hydrogen. Unlike science fiction movies predicted, this car doesn't run on water, but on liquid hydrogen that is not available for general consumers anytime soon. Technology that creates liquid hydrogen out of water right inside a car is still a fiction.  The car is amazing that it can pickup 60Miles in 6.5 seconds and it can go 300 miles before you recharge with liquid hydrogen. Watch the video for more.

World's tallest Bungee jumping Platform: Macau Tower

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This tower is 233 meters tall and is the world's highest commercial bungee jumping platform. Do you dare?   (Image: Flickr Image from http://ram.viswanathan.in/2006_08_01_archive.html ) The jump platform at Macau Tower is a full 233 meters high, placing the inaugural jump at its December 2006 launch into the Guinness World Records. Hardy jumpers who make the leap experience about 4 to 5 seconds of freefall—at speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour—before stretching the 50 meter bungee cord nearly four times its unloaded length and rebounding at approximately 30 meters above the ground. The tower uses a guide cable system, allowing bungee jumpers to safely experience a few rebounds before slowly landing onto a specially designed airbag. Pricing is MOP 1,088 (USD 135 / EUR 92), which includes a certificate, membership card and souvenir T-shirt. Website: www.macautower.com.mo/eng/adventure Springwise: Bungee jump for high-end thrill-seekers

Map illustrating Cell Phone Usage Laws across US

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Do you know your State laws on Cell Phone usage? Do you know whether it is already illegal for you to talk on cell phone while driving? Every state has its own set of rules on cell phone usage. Here is a nice compilation of all State Laws in to a one map by Jalopnik. Rules Of The Road: Jalopnik Guide To Cell Phone Usage Laws

New fuel economy standards May be Little Unrealistic

If you have watched Al Gore's  Inconvenient Truth, you will remember the graph showing Fuel efficiency in USA and China and other countries. USA is far behind China as of now and will reach today's China fuel efficiency standards by 2020. That's lame for USA, otherwise dubbed as the high tech world with lots of innovation. If you also think that its lame and quite inefficient, think again. Consumer Reports argue that the new standard to raise fuel efficiency to 35Mpg by 2020 is not realistic, based on where we are today.  So, cars in USA might not even reach there and ask for extension to that deadline. Who knows? The new standards require all new passenger vehicles sold in the United States by 2020 to average 35 mpg. That's reported to be about a 40 percent increase over the current standards of 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 mpg for pickups, minivans, and SUVs. However, in our testing, reaching a real-world 35 mpg would require a bigger jump than that. The curr

Obama's Iowa caucus Victory Speech

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ThingLab Prints Your Prototypes in 3D

3D Model Making made easy, as simple as printing. Quite fascinating. UK-based advanced printing firm ThingLab specializes in taking 3D virtual models and making them a reality using their special line of inkjet printers. Perfect for product design, architectural models, concept evaluation and a plethora of additional projects, ThingLab’s 3D printing provides an amazingly cost-effective modeling option when compared to the astronomical price tag that prototype-modeling can carry. Simply deliver your 3D files according to ThingLab’s guidelines and your finished model will be shipped back to you as soon as one day later. The finished products are high quality plastic models with a stunningly sharp full color finish. ThingLab’s 3D printers are available for purchase and range in price from around $25K to upwards of $100K . This is certainly outside of many budgets, hence their 3D printing services which will quickly put a one-off of a 3D model in your hands for as little as a co

Innovative ways to retain Indian talent

Some very interesting ways Indian IT companies are trying to retain talent. The contest for tech talent in India has intensified to such a level that employers are trying out new approaches aimed at making work life better for their people. Infosys has opened an office in downtown Bangalore so pregnant women who live closer to the center of the city don't have to commute all the way down to Electronics City on the woeful Hosur Road. Other companies are trying flextime and work-from-home strategies, as detailed in this Economic Times article. As broadband connectivity gets better throughout the country, I figure, huge masses of people will be able to start working at home. If and when this spreads to the villages, it could be truly revolutionary--part of the solution to massive migration from the villages to the cities in search of opportunity.

System that Made Internet Possible Turns 25

Twenty-five years ago a couple of guys switched a then-obscure military agency over to a new computer standard called TCP/IP. The switch suddenly made it possible for small experimental computer networks all over the country to talk to each other -- and that made the Internet possible. The obscure military agency was DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. One of those guys was Vinton Cerf, who is commonly called "The Father of the Internet." (Source:NPR)

How to find the Best Camera Phone?

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With so many Camera Phones in the market, how do you find the best Camera Phone? You can read reviews, ratings and blogs that all talk about and discuss about them. But here is another interesting and reliable source of information to find out the best one. Based on how many people are actually using them and what is the quality of pictures taken. While every camera boasts of excellent quality, you can validate the quality of those photos yourself, only by looking at the quality of pictures taken by them. Flickr is one of the top Photo sharing sites where millions of individual users across the world upload their photos to share. Flickr offers a popularity page where it shows how its users are taking pictures (Camera Makes, Models etc). They report the popularity trends over a period of time as well. Let us see, how camera phones fare recently. Here is the recent trend chart for photos taken on mobile phones.   Flickr: Camera Finder Well. Now you know. Here are the Top 5 Came

iViz Tech Solutions : AI based Hacking, ON Demand

Quite an interesting  concept of using AI to simulate Human hacker(s) to attack a system to detect vulnerabilities and fix them. As per my understanding, its almost an impossible task to emulate even a lay man's brain. Then is it possible at all to think like a hacker? Hackers hired to help companies discover internal security threats may soon be out of a job. Just ask IDG Ventures India, which pumped $2.5 million into iViz Tech Solutions, an Indian startup that promises on-demand software that does penetration testing, or simulated attacks on systems, to detect network weaknesses much in the way a hacker would. Incubated in one of India's top technology institutes in 2005, iViz develops artificial intelligence-based products that simulate an intelligent hacker to detect the security flaws in a system or network and suggest corresponding remedies. Company co-founders Bikash Barai and Nilanjan De, graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology–Kharagpur, say

Indexing Text Data from Images :Google's new Patent

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Dynamically extracting text information from images could have a new wave of applications even in everyday life of a consumer.  Mashable notes ,  Google has filed a patent (full text available here ) for “recognizing text in images,” which could give Google Street View a whole new meaning and purpose. According to Information Week , the technology would involve capturing text from things like street signs, building names, and address numbers; data that could be used for everything for more precise driving directions to advanced image search.

Japanese Envy India’s Schools

The hype that maths and science are absolutely critical for the success of  a new economy is gaining more ground.  While many new generation Indians aspiring to drop out of schools and start their own businesses inspired by Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs, everybody turns to India when it comes to primary education.   It looks like even Japanese parents also believe that their kids need to go to Indian schools. Another huge opportunity for Entrepreneurs and Educators in India to bridge the markets. Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education. Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here

T-Mobile's Customer Support - I hope it's true

Ryan of 37 Signals shared his recent experience with T-Mobile customer service that's so wonderful and quite unbelievable to me. Instead of waiting for about 20 minutes on the line to talk to an agent, T-Mobile's calling back the customer when they are ready is an excellent strategy of really caring about customer. I hope its not an exception but something every customer experiences with T-Mobile.  The other two strategies, giving a specific date for resolution and automatically communicating customer once the problem is fixed are just excellent. 1. I never had to stand in line Waiting on hold sucks. T-Mobile knows it so they gave me another option and called me back. 2. The agent cared about my problem The girl on the line was kind, attentive, and apologetic. She made me feel like it was their problem and their responsibility. Which is exactly what I want as a customer. She also promised an update by a specific date, which eased my uncertainty. 3.

T-Mobile's Customer Support - I hope it's true

Ryan of 37 Signals shared his recent experience with T-Mobile customer service that's so wonderful and quite unbelievable to me. Instead of waiting for about 20 minutes on the line to talk to an agent, T-Mobile's calling back the customer when they are ready is an excellent strategy of really caring about customer. I hope its not an exception but something every customer experiences with T-Mobile.  The other two strategies, giving a specific date for resolution and automatically communicating customer once the problem is fixed are just excellent. 1. I never had to stand in line Waiting on hold sucks. T-Mobile knows it so they gave me another option and called me back. 2. The agent cared about my problem The girl on the line was kind, attentive, and apologetic. She made me feel like it was their problem and their responsibility. Which is exactly what I want as a customer. She also promised an update by a specific date, which eased my uncertainty. 3. W

The Second Decade Of Offshore Outsourcing

Quite an interesting aspect of offshore outsourcing, that outsourcing may become just as natural choice as expanding business into emerging markets like China and India.  The article also discusses how traditional cheap sweatshops have become strategic partners leveraging the models that they invented for themselves. Two-thirds of companies on the InformationWeek 500 list of business technology innovators say they do offshore IT outsourcing, up from 43% in 2004. Consulting firm NeoIT estimates that 75% of the world's 2,000 largest companies are engaged in offshore outsourcing, with 20% of their IT budgets spent on offshore contracts; it predicts that could rise to as much as 40% of budgets in the coming years. Cost cutting is usually the main driver, but as companies rely ever more on foreign markets for revenue growth, they're rethinking where they want their employees, including those in IT. For Genworth's McKay, it makes sense that globalization of the IT workf