WINDOWS 7 COMING NEXT WEEK

Seattle, April 26, 2009 The Economic Times Microsoft Corp said that a version of its long awaited Windows 7 operating system will be made available from next week. The version, known as a 'release candidate', or RC, essentially means the world's largest software company is in the final stages of completing the operating system, the successor to the unpopular Windows Vista. Microsoft said the RC will be available for download by programme developers and IT professionals subscribing to the MSDN and TechNet networks on April 30 and available...

MICROSOFT CUTS COSTS, SAYS WINDOWS 7 ON TRACK

Seattle, April 27, 2009Mint Microsoft Corp’s quarterly profit fell 32%, but its shares rose as investors welcomed continuing efforts to cut costs and news that the release of its Windows 7 operating system is on track. The world’s top software maker offered no profit forecast on Thursday, after withdrawing its outlook in January, but did say it expected the personal computer, server and hardware markets to remain weak for at least another quarter. “While we would all like to think that our recovery will be soon and painless, we unfortunately...

'SLEEP TALKING' PCS USE 80 PERCENT LESS POWER

Washington, April 27, 2009The Economic Times Computer scientists at UC San Diego and Microsoft Research have created a device that will put computers in a doze, which could mean energy savings of 60 to 80 percent. The experts have developed a plug-and-play hardware prototype for personal computers that induces a new energy saving state known as "sleep talking." Normally PCs can be in either awake mode-where they consume power even if they are not being used, or in a low power sleep mode-where they save substantial power but are essentially...

BANGALORE LEADS IN IT SPACE RACE

Anshul Dhamija, April 27, 2009The Economic Times Bangalore continues to be the number one destination for IT/ITeS companies in the country. For all those who thought Chennai and Hyderabad were eating into Bangalore's status as the IT capital of India, here are some facts. The annual year-end report by global real estate consultants Cushman & Wakefield shows that Bangalore witnessed the highest commercial space absorption in the country of 10.4 million sqft — the highest in the country for the fifth consecutive year. Of that, IT...

THE APP-LE OF EVERYONE'S EYE!

Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan, April 27, 2009The Economic Times Thirteen-year-old Connor Mulcahey from Connecticut in the US is a very happy boy. Heck, I would be dancing on the streets, if Apple sent me a $10,000 iTunes gift card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule and a MacBook Pro. All, because I nonchalantly downloaded an application (app) called ‘Bump’ from the iTunes Appstore and it so happened that exactly 999,999,999 apps had been downloaded till then. That’s a very big number and it’s a symbolic salute to ailing Apple CEO Steve Jobs,...

US' LEXISNEXIS GETS INTERIM RELIEF IN TRADEMARK BATTLE

Paramita Chatterjee & Ravi Teja Sharma, New Delhi, April 27, 2009The Economic Times It’s a case of a law firm finding itself at the receiving end of a trademark battle. Reed Elsevier Properties (REP), a US-based publishing house that owns and controls content provider LexisNexis, has received an interim relief from the Delhi High Court, which restrained a Mumbai-based law firm from operating under the name Lex Nexus. The law firm was earlier known as Hathi & Partners....

FIPB SEEKS DETAILS FROM HCL ARM ON NOKIA JV

New Delhi, April 27, 2009Mint Financial Chronicle The Economic Times The government is learnt to have sought certain clarification from HCL Infocomm, an arm of IT firm HCL Infosystems Ltd, on its proposal for a joint venture with Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia Oyj. to sell handsets and accessories. Sources associated with the process said the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), which clears all major foreign investment proposals in India, has sought shareholding pattern of HCL Infocomm, which the company has provided. The...

TREND MICRO EYES RS 16 CRORE SALES THROUGH CONSUMER BIZ

New Delhi, April 27, 2009The Economic Times Anti-virus software maker Trend Micro expects to clock about Rs 16 crore sales in the current fiscal from its recently launched consumer business in India. The USD 848-million (about Rs 4,207-crore) firm expects to sell about 16 lakh anti-virus software licences in this segment this fiscal. "We launched our consumer software in January this year... We expect to sell about 3-4 lakh licences every quarter," Trend Micro Country Head (India) Amit Nath told media. The average cost of the antivirus...

SPICE ARM PLANS R&D UNIT

Writankar Mukherjee, Kolkata, April 27, 2009The Economic Times (Kolkata edition) Cellebrum, the mobile VAS arm of Spice Group, has decided to set up a new R&D facility in Bangalore to develop solutions targeted at the enterprise segment. The facility will develop technology around Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) and towards integration of ERP systems on the mobile phone. The unit will initially employ around 100 people. This will be Cellebrum’s fourth development centre. Its three existing centres are in Singapore, Noida...

BOOSTING PRODUCTIVITY: ‘SCRUM’ AT PLAY, BE IT RUGBY OR SOFTWARE AT INFOSPACE

Anjali Prayag, Bangalore, April 27, 2009The Hindu Business Line Employees at Infospace India may never have played rugby but they all have the expertise to get the ‘ball back into play.’ Scrum, a term borrowed from the rugby field, is an iterative incremental process of software development and is practised by everyone at the Bangalore-based Web design and applications company. “It has been a full-blown practice here for the last three-and-a-half years and we have seen 200-300 percent productivity improvement during the period,” says...

FOR THE SMB

April 27, 2009The Hindu Business Line Xerox India has announced the launch of Phaser 3435 laser printer, designed specifically for the SMB segment of customers. The printer supports automatic two-sided printing and printing speed of 33 pages per minute for A4 size prints, says the company. “It occupies less office space because of smaller footprint, can be set up in five easy clicks and is available at Rs 35,272 along with a one-year onsite warranty,” it says....

WITH THEE BY MY SIDE...

R. Dinakaran, April 27, 2009 The Hindu Business Line How often do you sleep with your mobile phone by your side? Do you keep it under your pillow? Not only mobiles, all electronic gadgets emit electromagnetic waves. Newspapers and magazines constantly publish `studies' on how mobile phones affect our health - mental and physical - with scary reports of brain tumours. Surprisingly, my wife seems to have an uncanny ability to home in on such stories and display them to me as warnings. She is naturally worried as she thinks I am surrounded...

YAHOO PULLS THE PLUG ON GEOCITIES

San FranciscoThe Economic Times Yahoo Inc is shutting down GeoCities, a free service that hosts personal home pages for consumers, which it acquired for more than $4 billion 10 years ago during the heyday of the dotcom boom. A posting on a Yahoo Help page for GeoCities on Thursday said the service was no longer accepting new customers and that it will be closing later this year, with more details about how individuals can save their data coming this summer. The move comes a few days after Yahoo said it would lay off nearly 700 workers,...

IBM PLANS CLOUD COMPUTING SERVICES FOR 2009

Boston The Economic Times International Business Machines Corp plans to launch cloud computing services this year, taking on companies such as Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Google Inc. Company spokeswoman Kelly Sims said on Thursday the first of these new services will enable developers to write software that works with the emerging new technology. Cloud computing systems run software and store information in remote, large-scale data centers that users and programmers access over the Internet. In addition to the service for developers,...

APPLE PULLS PLUG ON "BABY SHAKER" IPHONE PROGRAM

SeattleThe Economic Times Apple Inc. pulled a 99-cent iPhone game called "Baby Shaker" from its iTunes store Wednesday after its premise — quiet a crying baby with a vigorous shake — prompted outrage. According to screen shots posted on several Web sites, "Baby Shaker" displayed black-and-white line drawings of a baby. The iTunes description included the line, "See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!" Once the iPhone owner finishes shaking the device, the on-screen...

NEW PCS LIP-READ LANGUAGES

LondonDeccan Chronicle Scientists in Britain have created lip-reading computers that can differentiate between different languages, a development that could have practical uses for deaf persons and for law enforcement agencies. “This is an exciting advance in automatic lip-reading technology and the first scientific confirmation of something we already intuitively suspected — that when people speak different languages, they use different mouth shapes in different sequences,” said Prof Stephen Cox, who led the study along with Jake Newman...

NOW, SMALLER, FASTER CHIPS

DNA (Bangalore edition) Scientists from University of California, Davis have developed an ultra-small chip that provides breakthrough speeds for a variety of computing tasks. The 167-processor chip, known as AsAP, is fully reprogrammable, extremely energy-efficient, highly configurable. It can be widely adapted to a number of applications....

LOGITECH NOTEBOOK RISER N110

DNA (Bangalore edition) Logitech Notebook Riser N110 elevates your notebook to improve your comfort. You can use the Notebook Riser N110 with your favourite external keyboard and mouse and arrange each peripheral individually to enhance your typing posture. It also features an adjustable tilt and a rubber- soled swivel base, so you can choose the position that feels best to you....

EJEEVIKA TRAINS RURAL YOUTH TO HIGH GROWTH SECTORS

Ravi Teja SharmaThe Economic Times Have a bias that rural youth cannot match up to those educated or trained in urban areas? eJeevika is trying to change that by training the rural folk for high-growth sectors. Richa Pandey Mishra, founder of the venture feels they are addressing a very important problem in rural India. “Even after being educated, there are no jobs for these rural youth. We are working from ground up,” she explains. The model is interesting. Here, the placement precedes the training. After an initial screening by eJeevika...

THE ROBOTIC KIDS

Sudhir SyalThe Economic Times At 25, IIT Mumbai engineering grad Gagan Goyal had already founded Rhizo, a startup clean tech venture that aimed to harness heat generated from air-conditioners. This venture however had to be shut down, and like most Indians, young Goyal fell back on the ‘secure’ environs of a public sector oil firm. “But I was not enjoying myself. I had a fetish for robots. I thought why not launch a business around robotics,” he says. Through his engineering, Goyal had displayed a keen interest in robotics with him...

CORE VS NON-CORE: INDIA INC’S DIVERSIFICATION STRATEGIES

Arati Menon CarrollThe Economic Times In December the RP Goenka group sold its stake in mobile and laptop retail chain RPG Cellucom to focus on “higher margin retail categories” . The metals-to-telecom Aditya Birla group is in negotiations to sell its electrical insulators business. The go go years During the bull run of 2000-2005 , amid increased global interest in the ‘India story’ and astonishing GDP growth, companies went on a high-octane drive of diversification beyond their central businesses. If in the days of the license raj...

KODAK INDIA OPENS SERVICE FACILITY

ChennaiThe Hindu Kodak India has inaugurated its state-of-the-art digital camera service facility in Noida. This is the first facility in India and only the second in Asia for Kodak to be equipped with the latest calibration and setup equipment for digital cameras and can handle complex servicing and repairs. Kodak’s national distribution partner HCL Infosystems will manage the back-end repairs and service at this centre says a rele...

GET YOUR SOFTWARE FROM A CLOUD, SAVE MONEY

New DelhiThe Economic Times As small and medium businesses in India struggle to stay afloat during the global economic slowdown, they are opting for cheaper computing services, and a Boston-based entrepreneur is here to promote his solution, cloud computing, in which software is shared over a wide network of computers. Sumeet Sabharwal, senior vice-president of outsourcing and IT hosting firm Navisite Inc, says cloud computing is a viable Internet model for small and medium businesses across India, especially in the technology hubs...

INDIAGAMES BETS BIG ON MOBILE GAMING

R. Ravikumar, ChennaiThe Hindu Business Line Betting big on mobile gaming, Indiagames Ltd is currently developing games based on sports and movies, and also has tied up with biggies such as EA, Disne and THQ to distribute their games in both mobile and online verticals in India. The company, which has 60 percent share of the Rs 200-crore (in terms of gross revenues) mobile gaming market, is all set to launch its first 3D game – Cricket Super Sixes, in the US market. “As the size of the software requires 3G, we are launching it in the...

SOFTWARE TOOL TO CHECK ONLINE TRANSACTION SITES AUTHENTICITY

ChennaiThe Hindu Business Line The Hindu The Times of India (Chennai) Odyssey Technologies Ltd, the Chennai-based software company, has launched a new software toolbar that help users to visit ‘trusted’ Web sites for online transactions. Called ‘Snorkel Toolbar’, the new software tool will be available first to HDFC Bank, which in turn will give it its customers for doing online transactions with the bank. The company will also provide the tool to its other clients, including IOB and Karur Vysya Bank, according to B. Robert Raja, Chairman...

VMWARE UNVEILS OS FOR BUILDING THE CLOUD

BengaluruThe Asian Age Virtualization pioneer VMware announced VMware vSphere 4, the industry’s first operating system for building the "internal cloud", enabling the delivery of flexible IT as a service. Ganesh Mahabala, regional director, India & SAARC, said: "As the complexity of IT environments have continued to increase over time, 70 percent of customers’ IT budgets are spent on simply trying to ‘keep the lights on.’ Leveraging VMware vSphere 4, customers can take pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT...

OICL DEPLOYS CORE SOFTWARE

The Times of India (Delhi edition) The Oriental Insurance Company Limited (OICL) has completed the implementation of its core software (Inlias) in all its 1,018 branches and extension counters. To celebrate the deployment of the software OICL organized an event, which was chaired by Arun Ramanathan, finance secretary. The new software will enable the customers to pay their premiums, or lodge their claims, at any of the offices of OICL through out the country....

SMART CARD MATERIAL TO HELP COMPUTERS SWITCH ON INSTANTLY

Washington, April 19, 2009The Economic Times Ultra-thin ferro-electric materials used in smart cards will soon make computers more efficient by enabling them to switch on instantly. Smart cards rely on ferro-electric materials to instantly reveal and update stored information. For example, in ATMs. A computer with this capability could instantly provide information and other data to the user. Researchers led by Darrell Schlom at Cornell University took strontium titanate and deposited it on silicon, the main component of most semiconductors....

MICROSOFT: NO OFFICE 2010 BETA FOR YOU

April 19, 2009Financial Chronicle Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it will not open Office 2010 beta testing to the general public, but will instead limit the preview to a large group of invite-only users starting in the third quarter of 2009. The technology preview, as Microsoft will call the beta program, will involve "thousands of users," a company spokeswoman said. But it will be a closed group, in that Microsoft will not post a beta version of Office 2010 to its site for just anyone to download. "At this point, there is no plan"...

YAHOO, MICROSOFT APPROACH ENDGAME ON SEARCH

San Francisco, April 19, 2009The Economic Times It's been more than a year since Microsoft Corp's unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo Inc ended in tatters and acrimony. Now the two companies are talking again, with the less contentious agenda of forging an Internet search advertising partnership having replaced the notion of an outright merger. Analysts say that co-opting Yahoo's search assets represents Microsoft's best hope to turn around its money-losing online business and to challenge Google Inc's dominant and growing share of the U.S....

FIPB TO TAKE UP YAMAHA, NOKIA PROPOSALS TOMORROW

New Delhi, April 20, 2009The Economic Times Mail Today After deferring it earlier, the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) will again take up Japanese two-wheeler major Yamaha's proposal to transfer its Indian sales business to a new entity - India Yahama Motor Pvt Ltd - tomorrow. The FIPB will also consider Nokia Corporation's proposal to enter into a joint venture with HCL Infocomm to set up exclusive retail outlets for selling handsets and services to Indian consumers. If approved, this will be the first single-brand retail...

US AUDITING BOARD PLANS STRICTER NORMS

Ritwik Mukherjee, Kolkata, April 20, 2009Financial Chronicle Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), created by the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 to oversee auditors of public companies, has announced plans to upgrade the standards for confirming information on a company’s balance sheet from a third party, such as a bank or customer. It may be mentioned that in the case of Satyam, its auditors from Price Waterhouse (PW) are under scrutiny on why they signed on what turned out to be fabricated sales invoices, bank statements ...

DLF SEZS WON’T BE CANCELLED TILL REALTOR REFUNDS DUTY SOPS

Amiti Sen, New Delhi, April 20, 2009The Economic Times Real estate developer DLF will not be allowed to get its four special economic zones (SEZs) denotified or cancelled till the government carries out inspection of the zones to ensure that all duty exemptions enjoyed by the developer during implementation of the project are refunded. It must also be ensured that there are no units in these zones which could get affected by the denotification, a government official said. “We have already asked our field organisations to start the inspection...

3I INFOTECH HOPES TO MEET REVENUE GUIDANCE FOR FY'09

New Delhi, April 20, 2008Financial Chronicle MintThe Hindu Business Line Business Standard 3i Infotech, the software company in which India's largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, holds a majority stake, is hopeful of meeting the revenue guidance of Rs 2,200-Rs 2,300 crore for 2008-09 fiscal, banking on its transaction based business model. "We feel we can meet our guidance level of Rs 2,200-Rs 2,300 crore as our revenue comes from transactions based activities. Our two-third revenue comes from banking and financial services and...

LUMINOUS BAGS CONTRACT FROM GRAY CLIFF WINERY

Bhubaneswar, April 20, 2009The Financial Express Luminous Infoways Pvt Ltd, a Bhubanswar-based software company has bagged a major engagement contract from world's third largest winery, Gray cliff Winery, to completely manage their sales, purchases, trading, retail operation in Bahamas and USA. Luminous Infoways managing director Tanmaya Mohanty said the software company would provide services of content creation and content management for the winery. The engagement contract also involves maintaining the gift shops of Gray cliff Winery...

PC VENDORS PIN THEIR HOPES ON INDIA

Chennai/Bangalore, April 20, 2009Business Standard PC shipments across the world including India declined quite significantly during the last two quarters, an offshoot of the global financial meltdown. However, that has not dampened the spirit of the PC vendors regarding the opportunities that emerging markets like India still hold. A report by MAIT, the apex body that represents the hardware sector in India, the total PC sales between October and December 2008 were 1.4 million units, registering a decline of 19 percent over the same...

THE SHOW GOES ON

Janani Krishnaswamy, April 20, 2009 The Hindu Business Line Recession or no, companies in the consumer technology space appear to be going ahead with R&D and new product launches. eWorld talked to the players for more on their plans. Here's a snapshot of the action: More flat panels coming If there is one market that seems unaffected by recession, it is the flat panel display segment. Samsung and LG are betting big on this space this year. LG India plans to launch 35 models of LCDs, eyeing a 33 percent market share by year end. ...

SPECTRUM AUCTIONS IN LATIN AMERICA WILL TRIGGER MASSIVE BROADBAND SUBSCRIPTION GROWTH

Cellular News 3G and WiMax spectrum auctions in Latin America will trigger massive broadband subscription growth, from 9 percent at year-end 2008 to 70 percent at year-end 2014, according to a new report from Pyramid Research. Fixed broadband penetration in Latin America, which stood at 5.0 percent at year-end 2008, is roughly 30 percent below the global average of 6.5 percent, while 3G mobile penetration, at 3.4 percent, also ranks well below the global average of 7.8 percent, notes Jose Mario Lopez, Research Manager at Pyramid Research...

EU STARTS ACTION AGAINST BRITAIN OVER DATA PRIVACY

BrusselsThe Economic Times The European Commission started legal action against Britain on Tuesday for what the EU executive called a failure to keep people's online details confidential. EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding said the action related to how Internet service providers used Phorm technology to send subscribers tailor-made advertisements based on websites visited. Britain has two months to respond to the charges, a Commission spokesman said. BT admitted in April last year that it had tested Phorm in 2006 and 2007 without...

TWITTER FIGHTS OFF COMPUTER WORM

WashingtonThe Economic Times Micro-blogging service Twitter was targeted by a wave of attacks by a computer worm over Easter weekend, a co-founder of the Web messaging company said. "On a weekend normally reserved for bunnies, a worm took centre stage," Biz Stone said in a post on the official blog of the San Francisco-based startup. Stone said the self-replicating computer worm, which resulted in users of the service receiving and sending unwanted messages, had not caused any damage. "Please note that no passwords, phone numbers, or...

BOOK A BED AND BREAKFAST, CATCH A COMPUTER VIRUS

WashingtonThe Financial Express The number of computer viruses is growing extraordinarily fast and shifting from phishing e-mails to being hidden in seemingly safe websites such as a local bed and breakfast, says Internet security company Symantec Corp in a new report on Tuesday. There has been a huge increase in the number of viruses and worms, also called “malicious code,” on the Web with 624,267 identified in 2007 compared with 1.6 million last year, according to Symantec. “60% of all the (malicious code) threats in the past 20 years...

RETAILERS REVAMP BUSINESS MODELS TO CUT COSTS, UP SALES

Supriya Verma Mishra, MumbaiThe Economic Times The month of March has been very fruitful for the organised retail’s biggest player, Future Group. The company is going in for a complete revamp of its business model. Investors seem to have taken a cue from this, as the company’s stock has zoomed more than 60 percent in the last one month. Pantaloon Retail’s monthly sales grew 32.4 percent year on year against 31 percent in February. Its value retail format grew 25 percent, while lifestyle retail grew 17 percent. Same store sales growth...

DEMAND FROM IT SECTOR GETS BACK SOME SIZZLE FOR SEZS

Rituparna Bhuyan, New Delhi Business Standard Demand for special economic zones (SEZs) appears to be reviving even as realty developers are shying away from developing these tax-free enclaves due to liquidity crunch, according to experts who are tracking SEZs. Recently, DLF requested the commerce ministry to derecognise at least five of its nine notified information technology SEZs. Parsvnath, another real estate developer, put its plans for developing 12 SEZs on hold and stopped land procurement for most of them. However, market experts...