Indian IT Cos To Prune Recruitment

With Rupee appreciating a whole 13 percent against Dollar in recent time IT companies margins have got squeezed and realizations in dollar are reaching all time low. Hense the companies have to come up with alternate strategies to reduce the burden. Add to all this the talks of impending US recession and you get a situation which is well difficult to handle for Indian IT comapanies like TCS which are mostly dependent on Exports for their Earnings.

The steps the compainies are taking is to tweak with Employee Productivity and wages. Compared to last couple of year increase in wages of about 15% across the board, this year only 7-8% increase in the wages are expected. Also companies will be hiring less and taking the productivity increase route to maintain the same levels of service.

Best of Luck Indian IT companies.

A New Phone For Blind in US

Now blind can find out currency denominations by photographing the currency on phone and the phone resolves and reads out the denomination aloud to the blind. Nokia came out with a phone with software capability to convert text in Menu's et a; to english and it can even translate the same into other language. Federation of Blind developed it in US.

So finally the blind can be independent and need not depend on help from others. Till artificial vision develops they may have to do with it.

The Most Sophisticated Home PC

That you can have today is HP Pavilion Elite Core 2 Quad. It has four cores and 2 CPU's to give you super performance. It has a Combined HD and Bluray Compatible ROM so if you are really a Media Freak working with HDVideo you would really want to have this PC. It also has a one touch backup facility. Apart from that a 1 Tera Byte Hard Disk to store all you may want to. Thats all I had time to gather if yo uare interested visit the HP site.

Games and Benefits

It was long known that computer games involving motion like Nintendo are used to reduce weight. Slowly the lobby claims are rising by each passing day. A game called repassion is known to improve Cancer receovery time. The game shows how cancer cells spread and how you can kill them which creates a will power in children to fight cancer. They take their Chemotherapy regularly and improve over time.

There have been other games which are claiming could cure sickle cell anemia among other diseases. Various other MMORG's teach teamworking for the achival of common goals in life like fighting diseases or terrorists. Other games teach about the cultures of other nationals and make them better global citizens and knowledge workers.

US Recession and SaaS

US recession may be bad for IT companies of US as the IT spend of various companies is bound to go down. This will result in pressure on the top line and bottom line of IT companies which is bound to affect the economy further. But in all this bad blood some companies are also bound to benefit. Which are these companies?

The SaaS providers. As the IT budgets get pruned by SME's and Big Companies alike, there is bound to be a shift towards SaaS which definitely reduces the TCO of any companies as it saves a large amount of Dollars on deployment, Maintenance and Staff. More and more companies will adopt SaaS to reduce the costs of the Company.

So while the Recession is set to Hurt the US economy the SaaS providers stand to gain from the phenomenon.

Cell Phone as a Mouse and Marketing Tool

vSoon cell phones could be used for transferring data like photos et al to the Desk Top by just pointing and using Bluetooth and associated software on both the PC and the Cell. YOu could move objects , transfer photos to desktop.

In the marketing applications Bill Boards et al could be used to create 24 Hrs Info dispenser with customers downloading info from these screens which are in fact just computer screens using the same technique.

This results in a very successful and sophisticated marketing tool where detailed brouchures or comparative spreadsheets could be transferred to the users phone at any time and which would also drive the cost of the transaction down.

Technology and Innovation

Lots of people talk about Inovation with out understanding all the connotations of it. Innovation is not a word its a philosophy, a way of thinking. There could be various types of Innovations.

1. Product Innovations : The product is kept from getting obsolete by carrying out innovative incremental impovements in the product. This leads to product remain appealing to the target audiance all the time. Take for example Lenovo Laptops, they initially had Face Recognition software for password , now they have Touch Screen Interaction as a new feature, Cool isnt it.

2. Product Line Innovation : Product Line Innovations like Apple does all the time adding new innovative products like Safari, I-Pod, I-Phone , Movies Distribution all leading to overall boost in customers of the comapany and their satisfaction.

3. Process Innovation : Doing someting to produce better quality product, or more customer satisfaction or simple cost reduction or efficiency is process Innovation.

4. HR Innovation : In this new Global Knowledge Economy what can not be achieved by managing your people innovatively. You can engage employees, keep them motivated and manage attrition of your comapny by keeping poachers at bay.

Face Recognition Software

It was being used for Password by Lenovo laptops. Now Google and some other lesser known companies are making a foray into Face Recognition, Classification and Indexing software. This software may ultimately be used for classifying and finding similar images on the net.

It could be used to locate Images infringing copyrights. It could be used to search products on the net based on Image. An image search. OR searching for some complicated part or assembly.
Ultimately it looks like moving towards Web 3.0 applications or semantic web where all the images could be intelligently classified and used.

Social Networks Pros and Cons

Social Networking is surely the happening phenomenon of this age. Did you know that 7 out of 10 searches are based on Social Networks like Facebook et al. Moreover there are certain factors that are needed to be thought about while you go about this application. It could complicate your existence by adding an addictive dependence on the web.

You could be attached to a virtual spouser and you may get conscious and guilty about it at times. Little reserch has been done in this field and with changing times there is growing acceptability of alternate virtual lives but one needs to be aware of its down side also before venturing into it as Orkut witnessed some hate crimes based on Social Networking working intricacies.

Hybrid Phone From Polymer Vision

Apple officials be warned. Time of Monopoly profits and monopoly innovation are gone by. Polymer Vision has launched readius the worlds first Phone with E-Book reader or display. It boasts of a 5" Screen which can be folded into the phone to fit in when not in use.

Now read Blogs, News or E-Mail while you are moving on your mobile. Now this is some thing really fascinating. Although it may cost at upper side range of phones but it is sure to create value and interest in Business and casual users alike. Expected in Mid 2008.

The company also dreams of a gadget with 8" colour display which could also be used to view video within five years time. The current version is only Black and White.

Creating Beat Loops

We talked elsewhere previously on how to use Loops to create Music Tracks and Background score. Today lets talk about how to synthsise beats.

ie creating the loop beats themselves. This can be done by using Cakewalk Kinetics or Techno software to create funky and good loops to use in your music projects all without the problem of connecting instruments and recording to create classy music.

Go on Synthesise more music.

IDS and your Computer Security

Intrusion Detection Systems for computers are important as they try to trace any intrusion to your PC through the Internet specifically. The various components of an IDS are Sensors, Console and Engine.

Sensors generate events, Console Monitors , Alerts and Controls the censors, The engine stores the details in a database and generates events according to security rules.

There are various types of IDS

1. Network IDS
2. Protocol Based IDS
3. Application Protocol Based IDS
4. Host Based IDS
5. Hybrid IDS

More on this in coming posts.

Long Term Evolution Internet Connectivity

It is being hyped as the Forth Generation Mobile Communications technology. It can be used for Wireless data Transfer of upto 170 MBits per second. A cool increase of over what WiMax can achieve. But WiMax covers a lot more distance of radious in connectivity.

But then there is little seen in term of adopting even 3G where developed nations like US lag behind with just 3G adoption till date. Even emerging countries like India are only thinking of adopting 3G services. The hindrances against adoption is in developed countries lack of initiative on the part of Developed countries as they have huge sunk funds in Retro Wireless technologies which makes it vested in going slow in adopting 4GL and LTE technologies.

India is one of the countries where such problem of locking of financial resources is not there as there are vaste swathes of virgin markets here , but then India has the problem of low Internet Awareness and PC penetration and Education.

As a rule Technology evolves at a rate faster than the Technology Adoption. With the prices of laptop and NB computers dropping fast I guess WiFi will be used by one and all in the time to come.

User Generated Knowledge and Geo Tagging

Geotagging also known as geocoding is a process of adding geographical information to a Blog, Photo , Video, RSS feed or any other data or info. This can be used by variious programmes to show the info. in a map interface making it easier to locate info. whiich may be of interest to user. For example if you want to read blogs on India Australian Cricket Match then type Perth or locate Perth in the Map and most probably you will get info on subject of your interest by those who are close to the action.

Currently Flickr has 5% of its Photos tagged. Imagine if all the photos are tagged. It wil create a database of visual info which may be combined and seggregated by the next Symantic Web and create a user generated Encyclopedia which could beat Wiki. If there is a system of grading bloggers , than a real Time Wiki could be created in which you always get the live info and articles on all topic the day the event happens instead of once a year Brittanica and Encarta gives a limited info.

Android PLatform and G-Phone

Google phone would support Android Platform which is opensource and supported by 34 companies worldwide. Surely this is going to bring down the cost of entry into the telecom business, so then why are companies supporting it.

Well because overall market would be benefitted because of spillover and multiplier effects which are going to follow open sourcing of platform. More and more third party VAS would be launched. More the number of softwares available in the market more the Telecom Market as a whole would benefit.

Android platform is based on the opensource Linux operating system. Google acquired Android in July 2005.

Is 100 $ Laptop actually required

HCL already has a Laptop of 14,000 Rs, and trends show that with in two years a normal configuration Laptop with full functionality may be available for $ 100. So is there really a need for a $100 Laptop per student programmes being aspired by many companies, which may not even offer full functionality.

The market dynamics looks like the prices are getting skimmed. Maybe then the companies like Intel and Microsoft could continue their good work by reducing the price target to a $50 Laptop by the end of next two years which could be used to spread computer literacy in the third world and developing countries.

Only At Apple : MacBook Air

What is it that one can do to enhance once business appeal. Simple offer products which are unque and are not offered any where else. Apple has done the same with its product portfolio by recently launching the thinnest of all world laptops. This laptop is just .4 Cm thin at the front and 1.9 at the Back. Compared to current laptops of 2 cm to 3 cm laptops. So what are the other features , a 80 GB hard disk and 2 GB ofMemory, although not a fastest processor. So maybe its being positioned as a style product for models and business presntations for just basic functionality.

It doesnt has a Optical Disk Drive and uses one available wirelessly at your home. ( PC or Mac). It uses many features borrowed from I-Pod and I-Phone to make it more alluring and appealing. It uses touch screen features of the I-Phone. The laptop weighs just 1.36 Kg or 3 pounds.

Costing at $1800 ( Rs. 71,000) approx. It uses a customised 60% thin Dual Core processor especially designed by Intel for this notebook.

The Notebook was unvieled at Mac World Expo opening at Sanfransicco.

Global Delivery Model Using Internet Technology

A number of Companies have set up successfully all around pure dot com model. Take for example Google it had an idea of search engine and it made a Billion Dollar company out of it. Take for example a lot of Successful bloggers who started alone and then hired people to create a blog network. Take other companies who started with E-Mail Applications, Chat Applications and Social Networking.

Every other day there is a news about a new type of service provider giving some unique service.

The advantage of Internet has been huge on Business Ditribution. It involves a lot of effort to set up even a local distribution center but here you are with internet ready to distribute your software or publication to all in the world just by a mouse click.

If you want to sell software which requires no physical ditribution of wares then go for a Dot Com to ditribute your software product. Get into publishing business by just strating a Blog and signing up a Advertising Network and you will be able to start getting customers from all over the world without any additional investment.

Only your idea is your constraint. If you get a new idea, and are able to execute it properly you are surely going in for a good million dollars worth business.

Bored With Regular Music Numbers

Try HipHop Virtual DJ Club 3.0. It allows you to change the pitch and speed uptoa +/-33%,which is cool. Just tweak a bit with your beatles or Maddona songs and they will give you a completely new experience of listening listlessly to same tracks. You could very easily earn some money by playing DJ inKidsBirthdays et al.

Penryn Platform From Intel

After introducing Santa Rosa now Intel is coming up with Penryn Platform. It is a 45nm technology compared to65 nmtechnology.Totally five processors are being developed for laptops. Main features would be graphical subsystems and high power and low energy requirements.Also the cache is increased to 6 MB from a 2-4 existing cache.

The microarchitecture processor is surely going to give Intel a competitive edge.

Data Center TCO to Reduce

With virtualisation at thread level in CPU itself the TCO of dataservers is going to go down. IF you have a two processor quad core chip where each core handles 8 threads and one virtual server can be assigned to one thread itself then rest assured that one CPU will handle 2 x 4 x 8 = 64 server processes. Currently one core handles a server. Increased productivity reduced cost will surely make data centers and dot coms more profitable proposition.

The Franchise Route and Technology Products

There is a huge technology market in the world ready to be tapped by the right brains. One way is to create gadgets which are so user friendly that people are able to use it even if they are not educated. Take for example if a computer is invented which does comon tasks such as playing music and running customised programmes then a vast swathe of Rural folks of the Emerging economy and third world become your Customers automatically. This could be done through creating simpler interfaces like local language voice input and cheaper computers, if brain signals could be tapped it would lead to certainly more benefits.

Hense taking into account that there is a large legion of untapped customers if only we had the right product whcih would meet their needs. So you dont have that much capital to spend as there is a market even wih current product portfolio. So what do you do?

Easy way out, take the franchisee route. Sort of renting your brand to people who can invest with profit sharing. But it does has its own problems. You need to agree to SLA's on both the sides at the Contract stage itself.

ie how often and how much help you will provide to franchisee and how franchisee should maintain the standard of product or service so as to not to dilute the value of the Brand.

This is easier done with products as the quality can be delivered consistently.

Black Armor External Harddisk : New Product Update

At a price of 150 $ it will store 160 GB with Hardware level encryption. Expected by second quarter of 2008.

>>>Kingston Datatraveler Secure USB Drive

It will take the pressure of upto four feet under water. So cool get into bath tub with your USB drive. Soon we may have water proof laptops which could be used in Bathrooms and swimming pools or Beaches. Cost Rs. 10,500 for 8GB version.

What Apple Has Lined Up For 2008

Technology market is not easy to crack, what with new products being churned up every quarter by 10's of big companies with huge R&D allocations for improving the customer experience of technology products.

Apple is continuing with the same tradition and is coming up with a ultra thin and light Lap Top which will be using flash memory to reduce weight. The weight would be between 1-2 Kg's.

I - Phone may go 3G and increase the speed of web access throgh I-Phone which may surely rev up the sales of this product.

Also last years not so alluring product Set Top Box's attractiveness will be improved by tying up with all big banners and getting into film distribution throufg its popular I-Tunes store. All these steps will surely keep the comapny at a northward course with regard to its sales and net profits.

LISA the Lab Assistant

LISA in Germany is beingdeveloped in the Fraunhofer Institute whose protocol will be ready in one year. Lisa will be a smart Lab assistant. It will recognise obstacles through a thermal camera and intelligent skin with signal processing technology. It will not be able to do any other task and can be used only for its intended purpose. It can be programmed through verbalcommands and through a touch console.

So time is not away when Robots will do cutting edge research.

Knowledge Marketing and Technology

Technology is closely related to new products and new product concepts every few months.Mostcompany have a portfolio of Computer Models released everymonthand anew processor or varianteveryfew months.

Hense these companies can gain a lot through knowledge marketing. KM is a process through which you impart product knowledge to prospective customers through various means. The effect of Knowledge Marketing in Technological companies can be used to convert ambivalent customersintoprospects and converts of product. Ambivalent people take decisions based on information from anysourcenot necessaryly reliable sources , hense KM is very important.

Technology Marketing

Marketing can be achived through building a communityaround your product. It not only helps inBrand recall and fostering brand loyalty but also helps in establishing a connect with the consumer and also engaging the consumer. It can also be used as a tool for Customer Relationship marketing.

Sunsilk does so in India with Sunsilkgang of girls creating a customer bond with the brand and leveraging the same in achiving increase in topline and bottomline.

Fun@Technology Work

NIIT technologies is one of the best Indian companies for working. It pays $5 per month for dating every month. It pays an amount of 120 $ for getting married, also 5$ per month for childs education and health allowance.

It conducts a two month Indoctrination training for the new cnadidates to teach them the tricks of the trade and every year twice they find competance gaps to find out about the training needs of the employees. Also lots of parties and fun events are organised to keep the staffs life stress free.

Also arrangements are made to make the anniversary of the employees a special affair by providing them vehicle for outing.

Some New Products

Polariod has come up with a Mobile camera Printer, compact which can print 2 x 3 Inch photograph instantly from mobile digital source.
Projectors to view photos and Videos from Mobile laptops and other devices from 3M
A passport size External Hard Disk from Western Digital along with Encryption and Sync software and USB supported.

Search Engine Innovations

Google is adding Google Timeline to its arsenal of innovations. If you want to serach information of a particular Company say Dell it gives you information in a timeline from the time the company was launched to the time the present time. So a neat timely division.

But I think its high time that NLP Serach Engines come up to make it easier to search for non Tekno people. Also Ask has dome some good work like it shows up Videos and blogs along with the list of serach results in nest columns. May be google should follow in it too.

Technologies that will Rock 2008

I think major technologies of 2008 are going to be telepresence and unified communnications.
Telepresence would use conferencing, 3d Net , or Mobile or other gadgets to make you interact with others in the real time. People will be able to talk to vendors around the globe in real time. MICE costs would be reduced by means of Telepresence.
UC will also make it possible to present a single identity of the user to the interacting public through a common ID to reach them by e-Mial, or Cell, or Land Line et al.