3G Launch delayed

Multiple govt agencies dealing with the launch of auctioning of 3G spectrum, issues over reserve price and administrative charges lead to delay in launch of 3G in India. Launch of 3D can significantly increase the bouquet of services offered by the technology companies as well as increase their top line and margins. With open standards and platforms being adopted by various companies it is also likely that users are going to get a better deal on their handset with rich content and host of entertainment options to keep their lives easier.

Also I think some forward looking states like AP and Karnatka could take up Metrowide 4G initiatives and set a break in the Governmental red tape which keeps India from progressing at a faster rate of development.

Model universities should set up 4G networks in their campus and near by areas and offer free service to university inmates and should be allowed to offer in nearby residential areas on profit making thus even opening source of revenue for these cash crunched universities and raise the quality of life of all stakeholders.

Digitisation and Piracy

With devices like the USB Flash drives of 32 GB memory and external portable hard disks of 320 GB in market and hard disks up to 1 TB in market it makes the job of the online pirate all the more easier. Ubiquitous Broadband availability would add to the woes of all the content producers.

Software,games and movies are now pirated and distributed like never before. Add to that the list of countries and people who have no appreciation of IPR and sites which are used to distribute music and software free. Similarly lot of people take pride in distributing cracks of software's on the internet.

If you can get 1000 $ software for free would you be liking to buy the software. The answer would be probably a no.

So the question arises how to curb piracy with rising digitization and falling morals or changing sensibilities of people. The answer lies in educating people about how not paying for the software stifles the development of new products with falling revenues of the company.

Satyam Fiasco

2 Billion worth or 1 billion worth fraud. A brand new board and bad word of mouth for Indian IT companies certainly to have impact on Indian credibility in US and other clients overseas. A desperate attempt to restore the day to day working of the organisation. Action against former founder in India and Us courts.

Satyam a potential takeover target from as large as 5 org's and 3 PE firms. L&T increased its stake from 4 % to 12%. Loss of one is opportunity for someone else. Other firms of Satyam Umbrella brand are also under scanner and likely to face undue pressure in coming times.

Also its very agonising for the employees. The issue also raises doubts over the integrity of Foreign Auditing firms ( PWC ) which were involved in the graft.

Lets wait and watch the future developments.

Social Sites Picking Up

Selling a service can become a winning proposition was unknown to the likes of Microsoft,Google,Yahoo et al who choose not to enter the Social Media. They took the well trodden path of choosing the products and services which were mainstream.

facebook and Myspace choose the different and now they are sitting on a huge break point. They have maximum active subscribers. Facebook ( 140 Million) and Myspace ( 120) Million. Although yahoo still leads in user engagement, ie the level of time spent by users on the site, but increasingly Facebook and Myspace are becoming just like portals. These social sites are having a number of other aspects built into it. Consider this facebook has almost 52,000 applications. That is huge third party content on the site.

Also these sites have now become astute marketers and are generating huge revenues by targetted advts. and running various campaigns and selling products and services through their sites.

The idea of social networking was unknown till a few years back but has picked up immensely and put these firms on the forefront of a tipping point. Shows how a breakthrough idea could create future Fortune 500 companies and failure to capitalise on the same by existing Fortune 500's may take them out of the league.

The Future Is Not Yet Arrived

Traffic Data at your Mobile Phone or in Website. Smart phone based traffic data pooling software has been available in the US for about more than a year or so. But in India we are still in a development stage. One reason could be the lack of sophisticated smart phones to participate in the program and the absence of volunteers for community benefit program.

Nericell is a project undertaken by the Microsoft India Research Bangalore and it uses smart phones to pool and share traffic data from a particular area. I would say too little too late for the public of India. The same could have been achieved by using planted devices in the area, which has been undertaken at few locations in Mumbai.

online scanners

It is a common fact that most scanners are only 30% accurate in finding and destroying viruses. So if you are using a single virus program then you are only under the deception that your PC is safe from all hazards. In such a situation it is required that you should go in for scanning through multiple online scanners.

There are online scanners now available from ESET, Bitdefender and Kaspersky which are quite adept at catching certain type of infections.

But there is a problem with online scanners especially if you are using a slow internet connection. The program needs to install proprietary ActiveX control in your browser ( Bit defender ) and also download scanner engine and virus definitions which may be painstakingly slow so only those who have connection speeds in MBPS may go for this kind of infectin removal.

Best of luck maintaining your computer and happy blogging.

Technology Marketing By Intel

Intel has developed a embedded processor of a new kind. To display its functionality it developed a prototype of a POS kiosk which can be used to loyalty market its products to customers. It can also be used to remote conference call center employees to customers in the store so that they can find out exact product configurations and specifications. Also customers can check out the details from the company web store. So that is marrying the best of experiential and web marketing under one roof to immensely benefit the consumer with the results.

Now that is something innovative as Intel is not selling this embedded tech processor kiosk but only created it as an example to consumer for high tech technology marketing where consumer is actually the pampered king and not a mall rat.

3 e-props to Intel on some smart technology marketing.

Smart Flash Disks

Flash disks are now available from Sun for data centers which have smart capabilities built into it. Flash drives are upto 100 times faster than conventional hard disks and dissipate much less heat. So you need to consider them as a viable option for your data center storage solutions.

Research has been done and algorithms developed to store data with the frequency of usage in these storage drives to give very less latency.

Recessionary Trends

The effect of recession has been mixed on IT companies many like E-Bay and Intel have shown a decline in profits and sales where as the likes of Apple and Wipro have shown growth figures?

Apple despite the CEO crisis it faced. So it only shows that with proper strategy and management, the adverse can be averted.

Affordable PC's for All Chirag

The other day I was going through newspapers and came across this advert of Chirag PC'c. Saurav is the brand ambassador of the PC.

PC's starting from the range of 14,000 Rs for a celeron powered to Rs, 20,000 for a high configuration core 2 Duo processor. Now this is something I called affordable.

Those who do not have cutting edge technology deployment to make can go for the moderately prized Dual Core at 17,000 Rs.

So now anybody can have a PC at home for entertainment or education via the NEt.

Virtual Desktops

Recession has hit and CIO's task is cut out, to decrease IT costs. Going in for virtual desktops reduces the IT budget by about 10-20%.

A virtual desktop is one where there is no hard disk on the PC ( called client ), and all the data and software's are located in the server, which makes tasks such as updating and maintenance easier for the IT staff.

Various companies like Citrix,VMWare,Parallels, IBM, Microsoft are into virtual desktop business.

But the cost of man hour's lost if the network is down needs to be taken under consideration.

GuruJi.Com Music Search

Guruji.Com is Indian search engine which was the pioneer in searching Cities local data which was later picked up by the likes of Google. As usual innovation comes from the stable of smaller nimbler companies but not capitalized upon because of the lack of marketing prowess or deep pockets.

Now Guruji has come up with a unique concept of Music search, you can search for mp3 and other format songs on the web ( of 4 lakhs database ). YOu can download or listen to the songs. Considering that entertainment is one of the prime reason people visit the web this can be a pertinent step for the company towards differentiation.

They are also running a contest to make the user familiar with the search methodology, again a winning step.

But the serach engine has some lack of AI and expert sense as typing Himmat Wala instead of the Songs from movie HimmatWala produces "No Result Found" Message. But hopefully such glitches would be removed in the near future and the service will assume more respect in near future.

Web OS of the Future

There are many web os of the present,

1. eyeos.org

you can create docs, upload docs to OS and store there, but U cant download. But there is no scope of Im and e-mail.

2. g.ho.st

allows you to store 5 GB free files on a central server and 3 GB of e-mail and has inbuilt IM and E-Mail

3. Desktoptwo.com

This has two interesting features website editor and blogger.

So man web os's are evolving by the day and the advantage is portability of your work environment from any location.

So it is a virtual laptop which can be accesseed from any PC. I would say it is very impressive and in future would get even full fledged.

What to blog and how to earn

I started blogging three years back in 2005. I started with blogger. But success eluded me initially. But I never gave up. I succeeded in Winning IBIBO competition 7 times and was platinum league blogger in quality round. I earned there what I couldnt earn through adsense in months times and got paid handsomely.

The problem with blogging is that there are millions of blogs and no readers it is like a neurotic perfect competition.

There are various Indian blogging portals , in which newer ones like IBIBO and Sulekha which are hogging more limelight in recent times.

But most are like a bunch of travelogues or personal blogs with personal fan following which has nothing to do with blogging quality.

My point is that you should be getting at least 100-200 visitors daily to break even otherwise it is just let it be a hobby.

Technology Easing Life

I was thinking of some practical products which are making lives of Internet Workers easy and productive.

Two devices came to my mind which are really useful in Indian Context.

1. USB Modem: The USB modem gives you instant wireless access to internet and that too with good connectivity and less hassles of dealing with the cable. Tata Indiacom, Bharti Airtel and BSNL all of them offer such products in the range of 2,500 Rs to 3,500 Rs. If you are thinking of taking an internet connection you may very well go for it. The advantage is that if you are a tech entrepreneur you can use it for lugging your wi fi with U where ever you go.

2. Net Books : really cost effective alternates to laptops, easy on pocket good functionality and easy to carry about. Wonderful for making presentations to clients.

Your Pot Of Gold

If you are really good at programming you can make money even if you are only at high school and dont have the degree to land you a lucrative job.

Program a game for I-Phone, or create a app for Google and they pay you handsome dollars or royalty or a price or award,

Otherwise if you are just good at playing games come on go for the scores of competitions always on in the net and make a fortune the pot of gold is there waiting for you to take the opportunity and make a killing.

Recession Hit Hard the Technology Companies

Intels which was till now insulated from recession in in the grips of it now, with falling sales revenue and profit. The Q4 net is down 90% and sales down 23%.

Companies like Yahoo and Sun are already facing rough times with large retrenchments. As such intel has decided to do away with a bit of R&D expenditure.

Wireless Global Networks

National Broadband?

What would be the future of Broadband, 3,5 G then 4G then LTE right. Not quite the black swan theory postulates it is not possible to foresee the future and especially tech future where the horizon changes like the Hurricane Katrina disrupting market and sunk capital.

I was thinking about future of broadband and I thought that it is surely going to be National Broadband. ie Broadband through satellites, peer to peer collaborating nano communication satellites lining the national body, obviously geosychronised.

Such technologies are already a reality in robots combating terrorists and can be deployed with nano satellites to cover states or small nation by one network, also different nations would link there State LANS via synapses to form the first Wireless Backbone of Earth.

If any scientist of US reads this it may be available in US by 1 year and in India in next decade.

So what is your take , is this author mad?
But you see prescience makes a Blue Chip company.

Continuing Education Through Technology

Are blogs the Second Media or the First?

What was the state of the Main Media or the traditional Media prior to Competition from blogs. I see blogs as unorganized media having a lot of freshness and innovation factor compared to the main media.

When first blogs appeared two centers of powers got threatened the government and the Media as there citadel and fiefdom was threatened by blogs which were opinionated and steroidal or biased or unbalanced according to various sources, but today many newspaper has a blogs column or a blogs section in website contributing the more popular user generated content.

Similarly Youtube and other sites are a huge success as UGC is even competing in professional area of film and documentaries making.

Today blogs are free media from where you can pick relevant info free of cost. Also internet is a source of tele education which you can ignore to our peril. So is that education you picked up from college enough? Think about it.

Cars That Can Fly

British company parajet is developing a skycar. It can run on road and also fly. Additionally it’s bio fuel powered and hence a green technology. The car has a 1000cc engine with 140 Horse Power. It can fly at a maximum altitude of 15,000 feet.

It has a propeller at back and can para drop n case of emergency.

New Product

Sony has a new 10 MO CCD, 4GB camera which has inbuilt wi fi and doesn’t need PC to transfer images and videos to websites using internal browser and 3.5 inch touch screen.

Professionals never had the going so good without the hassle of a PC or Laptop to transfer and saving time amd effort at the same time.

The future is WiFi.

Crime Scene Painter

Soon police will not have to visit crime scene to investigate the case. A scanner has been created which when moved at the crime scene creates a 3d model of the scene with precision of accuracy. Now public places where police cant stay for long could be recorded and police could analyze the case with leisure and any number of times with this technology.

This is another step where technology plays an enabler in making human lives more secure.

TEchnology NEWS

• Satyam Computers is in trouble with a new BOD and the tainted Board dissolved. I had read about Silo's in business how Satyam continues to function in a corruption continuum is very astonishing fact
• Ergonomic laptop keyboards are now available with mouse tracker within keyboard apart from the pad and also digitizers for graphics application, Also extend able screens are available to view multiple apps at a time, all in all laptops are becoming device of desire
• Palm Pre is all set to compete with i-Phone, this not only accepts gestures and touch interface but also has a sliding qwerty keypad, so competition to i-phone from many sources
• A wi-Fi Graphics card is chosen as the best device at CES 2009 at Las Vegas, failed to impress my imagination
• Also a voice controlled robot which can open fire, what if the device malfunctions due to hacker intervention
  

Office,Technology and Security

How secure is your office infrastructure. there were software locks on security, now there are hardware locks on security.

Some companies allow employees to use office infrastructures like printers et al for their limited personal work, some other companies strictly consider it as a threat. For the latter category here is a news update.

You have hard disk with number pad for creating passwords of 6-20 digit strength and give an additional layer of security from employee theft of valuable corporate data( Encryption being one). So apart from other devices like printer which gives such lock security .

Apart from that consider using CCTV surveillance of employees as it creates more discipline in employees. Self discipline is the best but then any system left to it self leads to entropy.

So take your security policy decision today.

Vi Applications

Vi stands for Video Intelligence. These are advanced security Camera's with capability to generate or trigger alerts. These alerts can be then sent to a laptop or smart phone of a security officer who can initiate the action to avert a major crisis.

So in a sense Vi is used in Disaster Aversion. The Camera's have various capabilities like to find if a Baggage lies unclaimed or more than a prerequisite number of people enter a restricted area. These Camera's are Motion or Thermal Camera's and the latter can work even during the night.

Vi is a important security devices in countries like India which are dealing with Terror Attack aftermath and require proactive security with lack of trained staff and sniffer dogs. Also population explosion creates more problems in manual checking.

Advances in the technology i n future may make even baggage checking automated.

Some links that may help

http://intelli-vision.com
http://onssi.com
http://agentvi.com

Enjoy reading more blog posts.

TEch News

I. Windows 7 has Vista Kernal

Windows Vista 7 Beta version would only be a vista kernal enhanced but would have a new interface.

II. AMD's Phenom II

AMD is significantly behind Intel in developing cutting edge products, it is developing Phenom II processor which is in the range of 225 Dollars and is in performance better 20% than phenom I processor but is at the same pedestal as the Intel quad core Processor but Intel is ahead with its Core i7 processor which is significantly advanced compared to Phenom II with its 8 threads per core.

The phenom II has 8 MB L2 cache and 6 mb L3 shared cache.

Core i7 and Variants

Core i7 CPU comes in three variants at three price points

* Core i7 920 at 284 USD (mainstream)
* Core i7 940 at 562 USD (performance)
* Core i7 965 Extreme at 999 USD (enthusiast)


Parallelism : 4 Physical Cores, 8 Logical Processors (hyper threaded)
Memory standard : Triple Channel DDR3
L2 Cache size : 256 KB per core
L3 Cache size : 8 MB
Transistor count : 731 Million
TDP : 130 W
Fabrication process : 45 nm

In any case even the moderately priced i7 920 gives you phenomenal performance gains of upto 50% compared to a quad core CPU so if you are upgrading and want a economical option don't think go for it.

Private Browsing Mode

Privacy is a very important issue in Browsing the Net. When you use a computer at a Cafe or at home important info is left as a audit trail in the form of Cookies, History and Cache. All this data is prevented from being created in a Private Browsing Mode.

Currently Apple safari and Google Chrome support this mode but have their own glitches , for eg Chrome doesnt clear Gears data.

Also Firefox 3.1 and IE 8 Beta versions are trying to incorporate the same albeit with little success.

Hope more is done in this regard to make our private lives more safer from stalkers and cheaters.

Intel To Lose Revenue

Intels Q4 revenue is likely to fall by as much as 25%. They are also likely to underspend on their R&D budget. The fall in sales is expected on counts of recession leading to a fall in expenditure by both Consumer and Enterprises.

Also new platform expected off Intel is postponing the buying decision of various companies along with the recession effect making things difficult for this processor giant which stands to loose more ground because it is in the leadership position in the Processor market.

A fall in R&D expenditure is likely to see postponement of new products introduction and marketed.

When You Buy Internet Connection

WELL there are some tasks you have to carry out with fervent pace if you buy an internet connection.

1. If you are using Windows OS ( Which 90% ) users do, then windows firewall is not enough to deal with your PC’s security, consider installing Comodo Pro Firewall.
2. The above is the disadvantage, the advantage you gain is that all OS updates and all drivers and BIOS updates are available to you mostly free of cost so make sure you have set on the windows automatic update in the security center of control panel.
3. Also make sure the firewall is on.
4. Add exceptions to firewall, like the browsers et al.
5. Run virus updates manually every day also set it to automatic updates.
6. Run the virus scan every day as you are prone to infections, malwares and tracking cookies.
7. Using Ccleaner clean the temporary files every day which are likely to be in the range of at least 5-20 MB per day
8. Disconnect when not using the internet

Wish you a safe and happy browsing experience.

Owning Secure Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Owning Secure Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Well, lot has been said and written about Cloud Computing and Elastic computing with the latter provding benefits of pooling of resources. So you can go for Elastic Computing on Demand or you can go for in house procurement of servers and a cloud network at your company premises which can also keep your data safe.

The main concern in the Cloud Computing is that Data is not secure. Now to overcome this you can set your own network with pooled servers and a open source middleware to contain the otherwise humungous costs, and then set up virtual machines on top of that to change the resources to a particular machine as required and also to balance the load of all the various applications installed on various VM’s.

Also in this configuration the overall scaling of capacity can be done with ease to overcome capacity bottlenecks to the entire pool of applications without migrating the applications from one PC to another of higher capacity.

Hence the conclusion is that instead of buying one’s computing demand on On Demand Cloud Centers one can set up own safe Cloud Network to use securely. Amazon EC3 and Google provides free cloud software for the same.

VOIP and Recession

Cost Saving, VOIP and Company Size

Using VOIP for communications leads to a gain or loss is a moot point even among the experts of technology. Many say at these times of recession VOIP can be used to save on costs along with related technologies like Unified Communications. UC definitely helps in presence management with a high degree of precision and also can be used to treat the voice data like a data mine to other benefits.

But would the investment in infrastructure dictate that VOIP be used to the companies benefit in case of small companies the losses would offset the gains, but for big companies too many experts believe that the cost benefit would be skewed against deployment as the ISD and ILD costs are fast falling southwards. So then that leaves us to Niche segments like Call Centers where too you need to take the cost of infrastructure upfront investment along with employee training and manning into consideration before arriving at a final decision.
This not taking into consideration the goodwill loss when a person is unreachable when required, or a opportunity loss of Millions of dollars that may result due to absence at the pertinent time resulting in customer getting miffed and not willing to negotiate further.

So man I leave you to take the hard call according to your ethics, thinking , circumstances and budgets, to go for that cost cutting or not is totally up to you.

Recession and IT Budget

Fighting Tech Budget Inflation At the time of Recession

Well talking about recession, as US economy caught pneumonia all major world economies are sneezing. So there are talks about controlling that Tech Budget. Already there are talks about ROI targets not being met by the technology investments of the CIO’s.

So then there are some cool ways of reducing your it budget to fight that recession, as follows.

Server Virtualization : Buy a virtual server from a service provider instead of a dedicated server which is surely likely to cut your bill.
Server Consolidation : If you run a data center reduce the number of servers by buying more capable and powerful multi CPU multi core processors, which results in saving of HVAC costs.
Application Integration will strict result in cost savings for the organization.
VOIP : VOIP can be used to cut the fixed phone bill and ISD / Long distance call bills.
Blade Servers : Blade servers can be used to cut on the Space requirements and also save on the HVAC costs.
UC and Video Conferencing : It can be used to cut the travel cots and hotel bills of the organization.

But strictly this author feels that curtailing the IT budget is no solution and that a holistic view of the IT budget needs to be taken for the purpose of calculating ROI and not piecemeal approach. Also good IT support is now into Hygiene factors rather than a business strategy for differentiation like before.

India and Broadband

Why Taking a Broadband Connection Makes Sense Now

Any good cyber café charges 15- 25 Rs per month which results in cool 450 – 750 Rs /Month of expenditure, for the same amount in India unlimited plans are available from players like BSNL, Sify, PaceNet et al. The monthly cyber café charges are for 1 hr. only. The unlimited plans offer you unlimited fun apart from the hours you also have unlimited download/upload facility for which cyber cafes place various restrictions like only 10 MB. So if you want to use You Tube to upload your quality videos you are at total loss with the Cyber Cafes. Apart from that expect some shoddy professional behavior from the callow cyber café employees.

Apart from huge cost advantages you put your security at risk in the internet cafes which is not the case with the home broadband connection where there are slim chances of theft of your personal data and surveillance. Also every time you enter a Cyber you need to put up with distractions like people on Phone or talking binge. Also due to terror attacks there are strict restrictions about providing ID proof and address every time you enter a cyber. Why go through all these hassles. So what are you waiting for? Is it not time to just lunge at the opportunity to join the club of 5 million broadband users in India?

Nokia in a New Avtaar

Nokia Service Provider?

Apple does it successfully with its i-Tunes endeavor. Not just being a Phone handset dealer and entering into providing services which both has a higher growth potential but also higher margins. So Nokia is now trying the same path. To achieve the same purpose Nokia has come up with 12 acquisitions in the past one month and also hired 700 top executives from Google,Yahoo and Apple. This is surely going to turn out to be a winning strategy for Nokia as its Phone Handsets business is taking a Hit from the likes of Sony Ericsson and Motorola, LG and Samsung which are fast making inroads into the consumer psyche with top notch products with a panache and winning flair.

So Nokia now has its future roadmap dictated by competition from other more nimbler firms which are trying out all the marketing tricks and innovations to turn the heat on the Finnish Giant. The setting has all the making of a Hollywood thriller flick as a Marketing War of the Future. Who will come out a winner will well depend on who executes their Marketing and Product innovation plans more smoothly and nimbly.

3G and Gaming Landscape

How 3G could change the Gaming Landscape

One needs to be proactive to comprehend the market future, and also device clever ways to create new markets. With 3G heralding its way into India in 2009 Feb auctioning of Spectrum, there is light for gamers.

Combine this with smart phone pervasion and you see gaming consoles would be replaced by Smart 3G phones where people while traveling or at home could simply connect to their friends and play interactive games instantaneously while on the fly.

Broadband in Phone would also mean that people would be able to tirelessly access new areas of service like Live TV on Phone through the Internet et al. How one would be able to use these services is totally up to the imagination of the Businessmen.

WELL here is hoping that gamers life would change for better with 3G enabled smart phone.