Remote Security and Management of Laptops

A software is expected to hit the North American market by year end and then in India which can be used for security and management of Laptops. More than 50% of PC's being sold are now laptops, and more than 80% of companies surveyed have lost laptops with sensitive data in them. So what is the solution. There is a 3G technology based method being developed which wipes out sensitive data from the laptop if it is lost even if it is switched off mode. The said development is going to benefit scores of companies in saving their sensitive data.

The said method can also be used for remote software upgrade and patch management of laptops of mobile workforce which has till now been a very costly and time consuming affair.

Santa Rosa Intel Platform for Laptops

After Centrino which was low energy low heat emitting platform for laptop Intel has come up with Santa Rosa platform for laptops. The beauty of the system is its high Wi Fi throghput which has increased from its previous 50 MBPs to now almost 300 MBPS which is a cool six times increase in the speed of the Wi Fi Connection. All well and to add more to the fun it has ready boost and ready drive features of Vista which uses flash memory to increase performance and memory of the computer. In santa rosa platform ready boost ie in built in the system . Which is called turbo memory. It can store frequently used programs in the memory ( Flash chip ) itself and increases the speed of program execution and also reduced access to hard disk saves energy.

Go get it now.

SaaS can confound Pirates

There is a solution to piracy, having only registered members access to the software which is stored on a server. The SaaS advantage. Only those users who are registered would ultimately gain by it. Stumping the very roots of piracy. But then large organisations prefer licenced sorftware due to third party trust considerations and don't go in for SaaS. Also SaaS is suitable only for certain applications which are costly and hense drive small organisations to adopt them. The pirates could only do well to try and hack the system for which alerts could be set up easily using normal programming practices.

Location Based Services

They are a hit in the US and Europe but yet to make an inroad into the conservative Indian Technology Customers. Well services can be expected on your mobile to locate buddies when you reach a hangout who are nearby and free. It can be used to inform you of discount on your favorite items if you are passing by a mall. It could give you an alert of your favorite band playing in a location nearby and a discounted ticket for which you could pay and confirm online.

All these technologies use the GPS technology of the phone to track where you are located and depending on the free and subscribed services which you have subscribed to , it would search a CRM database according to your preferences and make automatic SMS's and calls , ultimately giving you an overall better consumer experience.

India, good services are just a will away.

Now you can win Grammy

Softwares have been used for long for creating digital music using loops, now a new technology has come up which uses Pitch Correction Technique to corect slightly off key notes without resorting to a retake by the artist. The software from Yamaha can be used for Pitch Correction.

Previously techniques are avialable to create Music using digital loops, called Loopology. Now even if you are not a great singer you can manage an album or two, without slogging for that perfect recording.

Good Luck.

VAS to create revenues for TELCO's

When the telecom companies launched the Mobile services they reaped cool booty just by the call charges as in the heydays as they could charge exorbitant amounts for the incoming as well as outgoing calls . But times changed and later SMS turned out to be a moneyspinner for them.
VAS is all set to be the next blockbuster revenue generator for these companies and would keep the telco's Juggernaut rolling ahead with high momentum. In this direction Mauj has roped in Sameera reddy the lass of tinsel town to create value added services around the bollywood theme. Currently the market is worth 300 Cr Rs in 5-7 years it is set to grow to 30,000 Cr. Rs. in India. The services would be Wall papars of the Lass and using her voice in alarms and reminders et al to create interest in the general public and also to create higher revenue.

Robots that Probe

Robots would now be used as probes by Scintists to probe Arctic ocean for new life. Two robotic probes Puma and jaguar each priced at $4,50,000 would be used to probe 5000 metres depth under the sea just 5-10 metres above the sea bed to look for new life hithherto undiscovered. It is said that there are hot springs in arctic region which is hot bed for new life forms to be formed there.
There are great chances of losing the Robotc vahicles but the scintists are going ahead with their mission as the cost benefit analysys justifies the same. The probe will take photographs and collect samples from the area for the scintists to further research and drive conclusions.

Mobile Computing Now Affordable

There were times just a few years back when a laptop cost a fortune, but now things are changing for the better. Notebooks and laptops are lot more affordable come packed with the power which would shame even the best of the class server class PC's.
Laptops are powered with 5 in 1 card readers and core 2 duo latest processors. They have every thing from 533 MHz DDR2 memory to dual layer DVD writer. And what more they are even highly affordable also.
Notebooks and laptops are available in the range of 27,000 to 45,000 INR. If you wanted to go mobile then this is the time dude. Go ahead and make that purchase today.

Vista enhances XP Allure

It so happens that Vista requires a expensive hardware upgrade and also for old people its quite a task and steep learning curve to learn the news OS and its ways. So what can be done? People are demanding XP back for these and various other reasons. There are some bugs and it is not a great gaming OS for some.
Hense Dell which initially was planning of shelving the XP OS is now out with 6 laptops which have preloaded XP OS in them. To cater to the public demand for XP OS.
Also Microsoft plans to shelve selling the said OS XP from January 2008.

Brain Machine Interface

Voice interface is soon going to be a thing of the past. What with Hitachi Inc of Japan having developed a technology which can be used successfully for the pupose of interacting with Computer. It especially places the ability to physically challenged people to give commands and control the computer.

Previously there have been forays into the same area by US comapanies but it required a chip to be implanted inside the brain under the skull. But the news technology is a radical deviation from the previous research in which people only require to wear a head band with sensors weighing 1 Kg of wieght. Infrared rays are transmitted through the brain to map the blood movement and record activity of the brain. For example one person could use the Frontal Coprtex of ones brain which is used for problem solving and by doing some calculation there could make a train move or halt.

Cool but I say still crude. I think it should be able to read any text or graphical 2-d or 3-d image also from brain and directly input it into a editing software, then I think some progress would have been made. The presesnt system is just a crude achive ment of what would be possible in a year or two.

Nano Technology and Cancer

It has been found that nanoparticles can be used to cure cancer, spheres of nanomaterials coated with gold have to be injected in a patient showing cancerous tumours. These nano scale particles travel through blood and seep into tumours and collect there. Infrared light is used to detect the location of these tumours and then a certain higher intensity of Infrared light is used to convert this rays into heat by the spheres which destroy the cancerous cells. This technique has most limited side effects and is supposed to cure cancer like prostrate , skin and breast cancer apart from other types of cancers successfully.

N77 TV Phone

Nokia has recently unvieled a new N series phone. This phone consists of TV subscription and viewing functions. There is a dedicated TV viewing button. You can watch News, and Music plus other entertaining stuff while on the move. You can subscribe channels . You can view programme guide for 1 week ahead and also fix up reminders. The phone can remember the last channel you had been viewing. It is going to be first of its kind endeavour in India. It can be noted that mobile TV had made inroads into Japanese culture 3-4 years back. So India has to play the catch up game here at home turf.
The phone is going to have other regular features like the MP3 player, Camera, E-Mail, Calendar, Browsing and Contact list et al as a regular N series feature
Good going for Entertainment freaks.

Game Design and Us

Recently I was reading an article in a newspaper about game design science which is coming to be reckoned as a billion dollar industry in the recent times. What I read was that in a game first you need to conceptualise the design. That is what would be the characters of the game , what would be the logic, what would be different difficulty levels, and how would scoring be done. Cool one difference between the Movie Story board ( Used to represent the design ) and Game Story board which was given was that a movie storyboard is linear where as the game story board is multi path. Ie what happens if one partner in a multiple player game dies et al. Also after conceptualising the design and fixing the boundaries flow charts are made to chalk out the paths and control flow. The application design and role of gaming engine is decided. Then the actual programming is done.

It was indeed an interesting read.

Life is a Movie : Airtel Background Score

Airtel in India had come up with caller ringtone. Now it has innovated further and come up with a background score while you talk, the music plays. Now this is some out of the box thinking. Especially for the young couples who are romantically involved and for those who are married and still in love this is great news which will make their mundane talks more cheerful. The service is not even very costly and is affordable.Good going Airtel. But telco's watch that call quality and call drop rates before people switch over to VOIP or some other technology.

Unified Messaging : Meeboo

You are always trying to use IM for chat and voice chat purposes, You use Google Talk or Yahoo or MSN service. Some of your friends are on other networks. So what is to be done? One has to chat , has to chat.Meeboo.Com has come up with a unified messaging solution . It accepts Username and passwords of all your accounts and allows you to chat with all your friends on all the networks seamlessly. What is the result of this, you can do it through Meeboo client so if you have an old PC you need not have to load all Chat Softwares, only Meeboo client would be sufficient.Meeboo also have a wonderful chat widget which can be used to chat and socialise with your visitors. But my own reservation is that instead of third party endeavour interoperability should be the effort of the players involved in the technology

E-Commerce in India

Some interesting facts about e-Commerce in India . 2200 Crores of e-Commerce took place in India in 2006 and expected to touch 5500 Cr. a growth of 150% over 2006 is expected in 07-08.Some other interesting facts are that 88% of B2C customers are male, 86% are graduates , 24% are self employed. Well with various rural initiatives of Corp's and govt. of India, soon rural folks will effect these statistics. Also most of the business is in Music,Travel, Booking for Movies, Gifts, Computers and accessories, and Apparels segement.Online payment of bills is a big issue in India where local citizens consider Creadit card to be a unethical product and the same problem is being overcome through e-Cash * ITZ Cash ) and also throgh adoption of Debit Card as a mode of payment by some customers.Well another issue is that of tangibility and quality of goods sold throgh internet and the mindset, where established brands can play a major role.

Unified Communications: A new Paradigm

One has so many options of communication today VOIP , Fixed Line, E-Mail, IM, Mobile et al that one finds it very cumborsome to manage through the quagmire of gadgets and sometimes the very purpose of these gadgets which is to make communications easier for the user works at cross-angles and makes things difficult and complicated for user. In comes UC.UC uses a single client interface either through your Mobile , cellphone or smart phone to acces all these types of communication signals. The client software publishes your location , ie if you are at home or office and your preferred mode of communication. It also redirects the messges to the present client with which you are interacting at the present moment.So it is a good tool to make the job of Corporate Business Communications easier and hassle free for the users. Presently UC through phone is not available in India but it is expected to hit the market in Foreseeable future.

Google Trends

Google Trends can be accessed via

http://www.google.com/trends

You can type product or products separated by commas and compare the search across regions, countries and languages. The feature is a coll data mining tool in the hands of the end user and business users to find trends in various countris.For example if I type PC,Mobile in the box and find trends I get a Graphical representation of the comparison of the two terms used for search across the above categories. You could know which product is better by typing two or more products in a category. Marketers can use the information to their great benefit. I think this is one servcice for which eventually Google could charge the Business Community.

Robots that Map : Robotics

Domestic military and combat search operations can benefit with robots which are faster and more resposnsive to their environment and do not commit errors. Such robots are becoming possible thanks to the cutting edge research which is always on .
Robots which can map their environmental information and use it to find way in other parts of the same building or a office or home are being designed and tested. Suppose a particular building has the same type of design in all floors thana combat robot used for fighting terrorists or other hostage taken crisis could easily navigate in the maze and deliver their expected results.
Domestic robots could be fed with maps of their area of operation and could work better than they do with their sensor technology.
Also a team of Robots ( Say 4 ) could map an area faster and could share that info with other robots through wireless network and do better teamwork than humans.

Mobile PC Vs. UMPC

Will a Mobile PC be the future of World or the Ultra mobile PC. The debate is eternal. But people say that the learning curve for mobile computer would be easier to scale by commoners since they are comfortable and used to the Mobile interface. So will the Mobile PC become ubiquitous in the future. Yes it will say experts. But then there are people who say that existing applications can be easily modified to become avialble on UMPC whereas for mobile fresh applications have to be written. But I am sure that business men will understand that user needs have to dictate demand and not the other way round and that in future every BOP member will flaunt a Mobile PC with pride.Say what.

Web 3.0

Web 1.0 was with static publictaion of pages. Web 2.0 was dealing with interactive and dynamic web sites and also lot of colloborative user generated content and social networking in the fore. Now the advent of Web 3.0 is nearing us. It would provide us with Programs interacting with web content in such a way that all the data on the web would be available as Individual data resulting in ableness to process and classify and search and present the data well . It would result in a number of innovative web applications.Some of the endeavours which are already working in this field is Yahoo Pipes.The Jana, Google Base and the tagging process by our own IBIBO and del.icio.us et al.

Content Digitisation and Management

Content digitisation and Management is all set to change the IT landscape in India. With only a few governments like Andhra Pradesh and karnatka having gone in for e-Gov initiatives, this segment with rest of the state govt's following suit is all set to boom.One problem with this domain is that 95% of data which is typically being dealt with is unstructured in nature making it difficult to process it and derieve meaningful knowledge or trends useful for business from it.Also most of content is in different formats and is difficult to have a integrated view of it making the job of creating meaning ful MIS reports for Management difficult. With coming of Artificial Intelligence and Web 3.0 the same tasks are set to become more easier to achieve.

Autonomic Computers

Autonomous systems being developed by Dell are PC's which have the following properties.

1. Self Healing : It detects software errors and tries to correct or fix it. Hard ware errors are notified to the user.

2. Self Protection : It will take care of applying latest patches with out users worrying for the same.

3. Self Optimisation : It takes care that all devices are working in optimum manner.

4. Self Configuration : It results in automatic configuration of computers which till yesteryears proved to be a big head ache for users.

Also it is similar to AI system but a bit inferior or less demending technology compared to AI. It is just like our Human bionic system. How it functions without our knowledge.

SaaS and India

Generally big enterprises go in for licenced software due to security and convenience . Also there i sthe feel good factor of being in control.But what about SME organisations . Can they afford the luxury of above mentioned features. Obviously no. B'cos affordability for small organistions is a big issue. Also they can not have expensive skilled staff required for manning and maintaining these applications.
Hense they can go for SaaS. Although SaaS has not picked up as a movement in India but SME's are adopting it for the purpose of CRM and Enterprise Apps.

NVIdia Graphics Adapter

YOu go to a shop and just like Intel inside , its written NVIdia Inside. What does it mean and what is its implications. The implications are as follows.

7900 gx2 Adapter High end direct x9.0 compatible

8500GT low end directx10 compatible

8600 GT(S) high end directx 10 compatible

8800 GTS Best for gaming and video slightly expensive

NVIdia and ATI based video adapter have onboard memory and can be used for better gamimg and video experince. Various software requires compatibility with Direct x 9 , 9.0c,10 et al. Check out before buying computer.

Lenovo's New Thinkpads

These models are light, having intel core 2 duo processor, good clock speeds of 1.8 GHz and also better WiFi connectivity range and also improved battery life of 12 hrs. Throghput in WIFi mode is 30% higher and range is also improved. IT has enhanced security with password protected hard disk and external ports which can be locked.GOOD model to buy.

Google Gears

If you have witnesses an erratic internet connection you will only be glad that Google came up with its new application, Google Gears. It can be used to make internet access offline. That is you could use Google APPS even if the net is down and then when service is restored you could SYNCHRONISE the server with the data which is stored locally till then. How does it achive this, through a browser open source plug in.Long live off line web access.

Data in a Card

Many times while buying a PC or Laptop you may have come across DaTa Card reader or drive. Well it is a drive in which one can put a Data Card. A data card is flash memory in the size of Credit Card. It is slightly expensive than pen drive and also performance may be a bit less. But it is cool and slick looking and the inthing in storing Data now-a-days.

Robots galore

A toddler robot is being developed in japan. 33 Kgs 4.2 feet. A bit big at delivery. Also robots have been developed which by using actuators in liew of muscles can change facial expressions to 36 different expressions also developed in japan. I wonder why Japan is where most innovation takes place. Are other human beings dumb?

E-Commerce facts

E-Commerce is divided into B2B and B2C . In India e-travel forms 40% of total B2C commerce. 90% of b2b business is formed by e-procurement. The total retial market in India is about 289 billion dollars of which about .3% or 1 billion dollars is the share of e-commerce. and 3% is the share of organised retail. In US the share of e-Commerce is 3.2% of about 1 trillion of retail business there.

Multimedia Fingerprinting

YouTube now owned by Google carries out Audio sampling of their content for record label companies to curb piracy. Now it also is planning to do Video Fingerprinting to come up with technique to find if a uploaded video is copyright protected. Initially it is carrying it out for media houses, Time Warner and also Disney, later they wish to carry it out for other major media companies.Any thing in favor of good original content is only good news for entertainment starved globe.

Augmented Reality

When real and virtrual world are intermixed together, we get what we call the Augmented Reality. It is similar to virtual reality but with the addition of live real time information. It has various applications like in medicine, robotics, mobile applications, military and Movies.
Let us take the axample of Movies. How augmented reality can help in creating better movie experience. You could crate studios and rent them to people and earn cash . Or you could use these virtual studios and place the artists in them so that the cost of a real studio is saved. This is but one of the number of applications possible with augmented reality.
Also suppose you have a mobile you could use GPS and sensors on mobile and make the mobile experience a memorable one for user by adding value added service like locating which location a video camera is poointing at and if for eg it is a resturant you display the Menu and wait time to the user.
Wow, this is really some news.

Techno Mirror

A new technology has come up which can be used by cloth merchants very efficiently. It will making shopping smart and result in higher footfall,Customer Satisfaction and increasing revenues for the Company.
A mirror which has a PC at the backend with , RFID reader , which automatically detects the cloth which you wear and guide you with matching clothing and cool accessories which go with the system. So you can find out all your favorite items in the store and not even require a salesman assistance to make your choice. A assistant gets you your required clothes and accessories. The price and other details can be displayed at the Mirror which is a Surface computer.
Now this is real pathbreaking innovation to the delight and profit of both the customer and the cloth ratailer.

Regulating Blogosphere

Recent happenings in Blogosphere of US and some violence directed against Bloggers in US has raised this issue. My take is Blogosphere is just like any other Media, with vested interests and truth ingrained in it. Let the public have the discretion to decide what is true and what is not. I think public is not thinking enough to dig out truth but not unthinking enough not to know truth from lie. Cool but vested interests and lobbying would always be there. I think people should have the courage to laugh off grapevine as a good cassandra effort. Some magazines like B&E from IIPM even publish regular Cassandra columns prominently of Noam Chomsky.What is your take.

The sound of the Music

In the yesteryears the music used to be loud of about 0 decibel level. With coming of technology people started comperssing the sound waves to convert it into more uniform and less varying upto -18 decibels levels. But people say that the previous method of mastering sound or songs was better than that is being used now. Cool but antithetical or counter speakers say that loud music causes fatigue and may sound better for a short duration but if you hear an I-POd from beginning to end for hours together your ear-drums will pain.Well this is wrt to US Industry in India we are happily ignorant and happy , complacent and smug with whatever we have.

Sell Solutions not Products

People sell PC as product. That can be made out by reading in the specification that OS provided with Compaq PC is DOS. What do I do with DOS. It simply isn't my need. I can't do anything with it. I need a PC with my required software in it. If I cant get it Croma or Dell showroom is of no use to me.To get the software loaded I have to deal with filthyly mannered and dangerous people in Mumbai. I may get conned or I may get murdered. Law and order situatilon is real bad in Mumbai. Recently on three days in a hattrick Mumbai policemen got a taste of lawlessness in the city. One got thrown of third floor , two got beaten at Kalina.Well if I want a solution I will know upfront what my TCO is going to be. Also I deal with less human interface and my CSI ( Customer Satisfaction Index) is pretty high.

Lab-on-chip

Chips has been developed which accepts a small amount of spit and analyses it within minutes to diagnose Dental disease of gums. The chip analyses the amount of protein present in the sample to deduct if the disease is presnt or absent. Soon we would have chips which could diagnose cancer and other deadly diseases. The chip which was first visualised in the futuristic serial of 80's has already become a stark reality. This only proves that only the world imagination is the bottleneck to the collective technology that the global village today pocesses.

I was wondering what else could be a related linear offshoot of this technological development and came to the conclusion that by 2012 we would have a MPU in computer, that is Medical Processor Unit, which could through a Medicinal Cartridge manufacture and dispense authentic drugs inside home and diagnose diseases at the click of a mouse.Till then happy postponing the decision to buy a computer, you may miss the ULTIMATE m/c.

Surface Computers

Microsoft is coming up with a new type of computer called the surface computer. The surface computer is in essence a Flat table like computer, this computer can be used of various purposes. One of the purposes is transferring data to the Computer. The core duo processor computer can be used to transfer your photos from mobile to the surface. Then as the stack of photos appear on the table top people can drag these photos towards them and view them as the suraface is touch sensitive.People at hotels could place ordedrs through e-Menus. E-Commerce could take place for recharging phones by dragging plans towards mobile. Only your imagination is your limitation.