NETFLIX INTEGRATING MOVIE RATINGS WITH FACEBOOK

Los Angeles
The Economic Times

Netflix Inc is the latest media company to integrate with social networking website Facebook, whose huge community of young, tech-savvy users could help drive growth of the online DVD rental service's subscriber base.

Starting on Tuesday, Netflix users can use Facebook Connect software that links individual Facebook pages to third-party Web sites to share their ratings of Netflix rentals with their Facebook friends, the companies said in a statement.

"Intuitively, the folks streaming (Netflix movies) on the laptop tend to be the under-25 crowd," Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said. "You could make the leap that it is the more tech-savvy ... the early adopter crowd ... but Facebook is becoming more mainstream."

SKYPE GOING WHERE PEOPLE TALK MOST: THEIR MOBILES

Financial Chronicle

Skype, the Internet calling service that has more than 400 million users around the world, is aggressively moving onto mobile phones.

The Luxembourg-based company, a division of eBay, plans to announce on Tuesday that it will make its free software available immediately for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch and, beginning in May, for various BlackBerry phones, made by Research in Motion.

Other companies have already made software for those phones that works with Skype, but it does not offer all of the service’s features.

As with Skype on the computer, users of Skype on mobile phones can make calls and send instant messages to other Skype users free, and they pay lower rates than the phone companies would charge when they use Skype to call landlines or other mobile phones.

This year, Skype announced versions of its software for Nokia phones and phones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and Google’s Android operating systems.

Apple will limit Skype’s use on the iPhone somewhat, allowing Skype calls to be made only when the device is connected to local Wi-Fi networks, and not allowing Skype calls over the data networks of its carrier partners like AT&T. Apple imposes the same restrictions on all voice applications in its App Store.

The idea of bringing Skype to mobile phones has always been viewed by cellular operators as potentially threatening. It opens up the possibility that people will use their data plans to make calls using Skype, instead of the more expensive and profitable voice minutes on the carriers’ cellular networks.

“The carriers are in the business of selling voice minutes. For a long time they saw products like Skype coming along and they were concerned,” said Ben Wood, director of Research at the London-based CCS Insight, a market research firm. “But it turned out a little bit different than they expected.”

Wood said many carriers had modified their views about so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, services. In some cases, Skype has proved to be appealing to consumers and a competitive advantage for a carrier over its rivals.

Skype tested its service in London in the last two years with Hutchison 3, a British mobile network. It said it drew more customers to Hutchison 3 and increased its revenue for each user, since people were making calls on their cellphones using Skype that high calling rates would have discouraged otherwise.

TO RAISE PROFILE IN CHINA, GOOGLE BEGINS OFFERING FREE SONG DOWNLOADS

Shanghai
Financial Chronicle

Trying to gain ground in China, Google, the search engine company, said Monday that it had begun to offer links to free music downloads — a service it does not offer anywhere else in the world.

Google executives said they were responding to the phenomenal popularity of free music downloads in China, one of the few markets where the company lags, by forming an alliance with the music industry, including Sony, Universal Music and Warner Music.

The search engine company hopes the demand for music downloads will raise Google’s profile in China, which has already overtaken the United States as the world’s biggest Internet market with nearly 300 million users, and also help the company gain market share against its chief rival here, Baidu, the nation’s dominant search engine.

“This is a huge leap of faith for us,” Kai-fu Lee, the president of Google Greater China, said in a telephone interview Monday. “We hope this will move the landscape to a legal model.”

The deal, which was announced at a news conference in Beijing, is significant for Google and the global music industry because Chinese consumers are addicted to searching for music and downloading free music, often through illegal sites.

Baidu, which has about 62 percent of the Chinese search engine market, has grown incredibly popular partly by offering music search services and linking to sites that offer free downloads of music.

By comparison, Google — which until now has not offered links to free music downloads — has only about 28 percent of the search engine market in China, according to Analysys International, a Beijing research firm.

Saying they are losing big money in China, the big global music companies have sued Baidu in a bid to stop the company from linking to illegal web sites. But Baidu has defended itself, saying it is simply offering search links. The cases are pending.

Baidu also says it has its own revenue-sharing deals with 100 record companies. And last December, the company hired Catherine Leung, a former executive at Universal Music Group China, to head its digital entertainment division.

But Monday, Google said it was determined to catch Baidu, adding that it would offer Chinese consumers exactly what they want but would do so legally by striking a deal with a Chinese partner and the global music industry, including independent music companies.

The Google service allows Chinese consumers to search for music, link to a Beijing company called Top100.cn, and download licensed music from that Chinese site, which has signed contracts with the music industry

MYSPACE LAUNCHES KARAOKE SERVICE IN JAPAN

San Francisco
Mint

Online social-networking titan MySpace on Sunday launched a karaoke service in Japan, expanding its amateur crooner channel to a nation rich with lovers of the pastime.

“If you had told me years ago we would launch an online karaoke site in Japan, I would have told you it is like selling ice to the Eskimos,” said MySpace Karaoke general manager Nimrod Lev.

“Boy was I wrong. It seems like the land of karaoke has nothing even close to that. We met with all the leading companies there and they loved what they saw.”

MySpace Karaoke lays claim to being the world’s “largest user-generated music service,” logging more than eight million visitors since it launched in May of last year in Canada and the United States.

PARTNERS IN PROGRESS

Priya C Nair
The Economic Times

Experts suggest that if start-ups are provided with proper support from well-established organisations that belong to the same sector, it could create more opportunities for India Inc., as a whole. Today, it is possible, for both, the start-up and the industry to jointly identify and execute businesses through industry-start-up collaborations.

Partners in growth

Mango Technologies, a startup founded in 2006, is a provider of software solutions for mobile application framework for ultra low-end to mid-end terminal devices. To take the organisation to newer realms of growth and in a quest to achieve an edge in today’s competitive market, Mango Technologies started collaborating with Qualcomm during the end of 2007.

“We are testing our products on the chip sets of Qualcomm and we are also licensing some of our products to them,” says Sunil Maheshwari, co-Founder and CEO, Mango Technologies about the collaboration. Maheshwari believes that to facilitate the growth opportunities of a start-up, such partnerships are extremely important. “If you want to be a successful product company and deliver products for a worldwide market, then you cannot do it alone, especially as a startup. An understanding with an established firm in your own stream of business really helps in ensuring that,” adds Maheshwari. The benefits of such collaborations are many.

Maheshwari explains, “From Qualcomm, we get all the required support and the much needed platform to test our software. We get early feedback from their teams about our product, which helps us to refine our strategies. Also, we get visibility in terms of the kind of business that is coming our way so that we can plan accordingly.”

Another advantage, according to him is that the team at Mango gets to work with the international team in Qualcomm and because of their multi-national presence; products of Mango get worldwide exposure and prominent visibility in the global market. It is not just the start-up firm that is benefiting out of this collaboration. The partnership brings in several opportunities for the industry as well.

“Qualcomm gets to know the full potential of their chip sets through our products. It also helps them to show a demo of their chip sets with our products to their customers. This is helping both of us to sell more products in the market,” informs Maheshwari.

Even though such collaborations were in existence in more mature markets like the US, it is still taking baby steps in India. So, it is not an easy task for a start-up to get associated with a well-established firm. Maheshwari is of the opinion that as product development gains ground in India, more global firms will start putting more faith in our Indian talent. If we have one or two success stories from India about such associations, more and more such collaborations will come up in future.

Partners in success

“Having witnessed various innovations with respect to our area of expertise in several start-up firms, we realised that by partnering with such firms, we would be able to launch a lot of innovations in the market, that too, at a much faster pace,” says Harsha Angeri, director, strategy & new initiatives, Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab. Honeywell has a tie up with a micro-enterprise creator in the healthcare vertical that takes healthcare to rural India by leveraging existing technology and also by avoiding the need for hiring highly trained medical professionals. “Initially, when we interacted for the first time, we realised that both the firms were focused on the same sector. But Honeywell did not have the channels to take its products to the rural markets. Hence, a gap was created that needed to be bridged so that we would reach out to a larger target audience. And the start-up firm helped achieve our purpose as they were well equipped with all the requirements to reach out to the rural audience,” explains Angeri.

The functioning of collaboration works in a peculiar way wherein the start-up does the front-end work and Honeywell provides the backend support. The role of Honeywell is to define the business model, provide technology and also facilitate scaling up and commercialisation of the business. Meanwhile, the start-up has to develop microfranchises and build a viable supply-chain system. Also, they have to offer support in developing a model, which is scalable and replicable in the future.

It is a win-win situation for both involved in this collaboration, says Angeri. Honeywell is able to achieve the domain expertise of the start-up and it also allows the company to reach the end-consumer in case of business-to-consumer start-ups as Honeywell deals mostly with B2B customers. Start-ups, on the other hand get access to the customer and the real world feedback; they also get Honeywell’s feedback in areas which Honeywell is strong in and they also get the market reach and credibility by dealing with a larger company like Honeywell,” informs Angeri. “The speed with which the entrepreneurship culture is catching up in India, we are bound to see more such collaborations in the near future,” says Angeri.

POWER PLAY

Dibeyendu Ganguly
The Economic Times (Mumbai edition)

Power has many definitions, depending on the context. In maths, it's the product obtained by multiplying a number by itself, like two to the power of three is eight. In physics, it's the rate at which work is done, expressed in units of watts or horsepower. In people-terms, my favourite definition of power is from an old organisational behaviour text, which simply says, "power is getting people to do what they otherwise would not do."

This little definition has stayed with me while I've forgotten almost everything else I learnt in business school because it's been re-enforced time and again in real life. It neatly links power to the ability to bring about change, for if there's one thing people do not otherwise do, it's change. This, in turn, links to leadership, which is about bringing change (as opposed to management, which is mostly about promoting order and efficiency).

Powerful leaders, by definition then, are those who bring about the greatest positive change in society, improving the way people live, they way they relate and the way they think. This might be achieved by coercion, through rules and regulations that people must follow whether they like it or not. But most often, if it is to have a lasting impact, it is done by persuasion. Powerful leaders represent a great idea, which others make their own. They persuade people to do what they otherwise would not do through the force of their personalities.

Every year, The Economic Times Corporate Dossier magazine commissions IMRB to conduct a survey to determine India Inc's Most Powerful CEOs. The project starts inhouse, with a long-list of CEOs prepared by The Economic Times Intelligence Group, based on the size of the companies that the CEOs control. After that, the survey goes into the public domain, with roughly 500 executives in senior, middle and junior management across five cities doing the selecting. They are not allowed to pick their own group CEOs, but others who don't have direct power over their lives and careers.

For the first three years of the India Inc's Most Powerful CEOs survey, the man at the top was NR Narayana Murthy. The glory of Infosys was then at its height and its CEO held unquestionable sway over India Inc. But power, as everyone knows, is a sifting thing, and its hard for any single person, however iconic he might be, to retain his hold on people's minds in perpetuity. Last year, NR Narayana Murthy seceded the top position to Mukesh Ambani and slipped to third place. This year, the survey has thrown up a brand new No 1. And there are several interesting changes at the top, reflecting changing perceptions in a period of slowdown.

Set to hit the newsstands on 3 April 2009, the special edition of Corporate Dossier (CD) containing the results of the India Inc's Most Powerful CEOs survey features several articles on the theme of power. The lead article analyses the historic relationship between economic and political power in India, right from the days of the Harappan civilisation.

There have been periods in history when those with economic power have managed to wield political power (The East India Company being a case in point) and then a period of backlash when those in political power sought to gain economic power (the License Raj).

Lastly, the CD special issue features 'Musings On Power', a series of very candid interviews with Deepak Parekh of HDFC, NR Narayana Murthy of Infosys and Sunil Mittal of Bharati Airtel. The panels alongside would give you an idea on how they handle this crazy little thing called power.

BENQ PLANS TO UNVEIL LCD TV, NETBOOK

Thanuja B M, Bangalore
Financial Chronicle

BenQ Corporation, the Taiwan headquartered provider of networked digital lifestyle devices, is betting big on India. The company is foraying into the LCD TV, netbook and all-in-one screen device market in the second half of 2009. The new launches are expected to help the company’s arm BenQ India, contribute 5 percent to its global revenues.

Adrian Chang, president of BenQ Asia Pacific Corporation said that the firm will launch three new product categories in 2009. “From June onwards, LCD TVs, BenQ nScreen all-in-one PC and netbooks would be introduced. These high-technology products would be targeted at the discerning customers, not the mass market,” he said.

The company is hoping to get a 4-5 percent market share in each segment by end of year, according to Govindan Ramanujam, managing director, BenQ India.

At present, projectors, monitors, laptops and a netbook product from the BenQ stable are available in the country. The firm has reached the top spot in high-end projectors market and gained between 8-10 percent marketshare in LCD monitors in India, Ramanujam said.

The Taiwanese company is upbeat about the Indian domestic market, which Chang said is seeing tremendous growth along with other markets such as China. The subsidiary contributes less than 2 percent of BenQ’s global revenues currently but we are internally targeting to achieve 5 percent from the Indian market this year, he added. “Compared to mature markets like Japan and South Korea in APAC region, India is still under-penetrated and has a huge number of possible customers. Potentially, the country can match our China revenues in future.’’

Incidentally, China accounts for about 40 percent of BenQ’s global revenues, which stood at $1.83 billion in 2007. The BenQ group comprising of 12 different companies saw revenues of over $22 billion in the same period.

THE GREENER SIDE OF INDIAN IT COMPANIES

K. Raghu, Bangalore
Mint

Computer services firms such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and Wipro Ltd are offering services in domains ranging from water treatment and waste management to online healthcare, moving from their traditional area of expertise.

Wipro Ecoenergy, a unit of Bangalore-based Wipro, has begun offering water treatment solutions based on recycled waste water and harvesting rain water.

The company is also exploring business opportunities in waste management, following its experiment of reducing liquefied petroleum gas consumption by using biomass gas generated from organic waste to cook food at its Electronic City campus in Bangalore.

“You will not see any business impact in two or three quarters. But Wipro is at least 60 years old and there are decades more to come,” said Anurag Behar, corporate vice-president for community and social initiatives at Wipro.

The firm also advises customers on improving energy efficiency at power guzzling data centres.

TCS, India’s largest technology vendor, is commercializing a healthcare portal called WebHealth Centre, a free online and tele-link medical consultancy that allows doctors and patients to get advice from speciality hospitals, a TCS spokesperson said.

The system also can store patients’ health information securely for doctors to access for reference and provide advice.

Such ventures are essentially offshoots of so-called corporate social responsibility initiatives being taken by Indian firms, including measures to improve the environment through reduced carbon emissions and better waste management, without compromising on their profitability.

GOOGLE SEARCH GETS SMARTER

San Francisco
The Economic Times

Google has rolled out two new improvements to its popular Internet search service which its engineers said will help guide users more effectively to the information they need.

"Starting today, we're deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to your search," Google's search quality team technical lead Ori Allon and snippets team engineer Ken Wilder wrote in a posting on the company's blog.

The technology can offer users more conceptually related search terms at the bottom of the search results page.

Another improvement is the addition of longer "snippets", or lines of text describing the search results.

Users making a complicated search query with more than three words will now get longer snippet, in which the number of lines is increased to provide more information and show more of the words in the search query, the engineers said.

MICROSOFT’S WORLDWIDE TELESCOPE TO FOCUS ON MARS, MOON

New York
Financial Chronicle

US space agency Nasa has entered into a collaboration with software giant Microsoft to develop a new technology which will make planetary images and data accessible worldwide through internet.

The joint venture will work to develop a new technology to make Nasa’s content, including high-resolution images and data from Mars and the Moon, available on WorldWide Telescope, Microsoft’s online virtual telescope.

“Making Nasa’s scientific and astronomical data more accessible to the public is a high priority for Nasa, especially given the new administration's recent emphasis on open government and transparency,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate.

Under the agreement, Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California, will process and host more than 100 terabytes of data, enough to fill 20,000 DVDs.

LOOKING TO EXPLORE OPPORTUNITIES IN INDIA: SPANISH CONSUL GENERAL

Kochi
The Hindu

The Consul General of Spain in India Cesar Alba said that his country’s new Asia plan would help business houses in Spain to explore opportunities in India in a big way.

For over 30 years, Spain had overlooked India, but was now looking to the country and others in Asia, he said inaugurating the new development and production centre and international marketing hub of SITMobile, a Spanish IT company at Infopark here on Monday.

The reason for this overlooking of India, he said, was that Spain had few multinational companies. It was difficult for these companies to go in for investments in other countries.

LOOKING TO EXPLORE OPPORTUNITIES IN INDIA: SPANISH CONSUL GENERAL

Kochi
The Hindu

The Consul General of Spain in India Cesar Alba said that his country’s new Asia plan would help business houses in Spain to explore opportunities in India in a big way.

For over 30 years, Spain had overlooked India, but was now looking to the country and others in Asia, he said inaugurating the new development and production centre and international marketing hub of SITMobile, a Spanish IT company at Infopark here on Monday.

The reason for this overlooking of India, he said, was that Spain had few multinational companies. It was difficult for these companies to go in for investments in other countries.

EYEING THE BUSINESS OF DESIGN EDUCATION IN INDIA

The Financial Express

Raffles Education Corporation has launched a premium design institute called Raffles Millennium International (RMI) in association with Educomp Solutions.

The Delhi-based institute will offer certificate courses in fashion design, product design, graphic design, interior design, multimedia design, fashion marketing and management. The campus is equipped with state-of-art class rooms, design labs, international faculty and a choice of international internships.

Says Rohit Kumar, director, Educomp-Raffles Higher Education Limited, “A student at RMI will have the opportunity to get exposed to internationally trained practitioners who will be teaching what is relevant in the real world. They will also have an option of getting transferred to any of the overseas Raffles campuses after two years to continue their higher studies.”

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE APNACIRCLE MERGES WITH VIADEO

The Financial Express

Apnacircle, India’s only online social and career network site, has merged with Viadeo, a business and professional networking website of France. The merger, which is cashless, would enable Viadeo to enter the Indian market and ApnaCircle to get global recognition.

Yogesh Bansal, the founder & CEO of ApnaCircle, says, “It gives us an opportunity to expand our horizons and provide better link-ups to our users. Our aim is to target and provide a platform to both national and international communities to build and bond in terms of career networking.”

Social networking sites are usually about building contacts, finding jobs and harnessing best opportunities for success and growth. Users bank upon this exposure and opportunity to get a chance to learn and gain through the process of career and personal networking. “In today’s scenario there is a need for professionals entering into the industry or wanting to switch jobs to build business contacts rather than just uploading CVs on websites,” says Bansal.

A nautical engineer turned entrepreneur, Bansal did his maritime training on TS Rajendra and sailed for a few years before moving to the US for pursuing MBA from University of North Carolina. He also worked with McKesson, a healthcare and IT solutions firm in the US.

SYNOPSYS INTRODUCES LYNX DESIGN SYSTEM

Bangalore
Mint Deccan Herald

Synopsys, a leader in software and IP for semiconductor design and manufacturing, has introduced Lynx Design Systems, a comprehensive and highly automated environment for implementing chips. Designed for scalable use in design organisations of all sizes, the Lynx Design Systems combines a production-proven ‘RTL TO GDSII’ design flow with productive-enhancing features to accelerate chip development while mitigating the risks of designing at new process nodes, Jai Durgam, senior director, Global Technical Services, Synopsys, Inc. said.

Lynx open architecture is optimised for rapid, out-of-the-box deployment with Synopsys’ Galaxy Design Platform and is inherently configurable to readily incorporate third-party technology.

The system address issues of companies being faced with allocating enormous internal resources to pre-validate design flows and libraries for a specific process or technology code, by enabling accelerated time-to-market without compromising design choice or performance. It helps in getting chips designed more efficiently and attacking total cost of design through systematic design flow management.

SONY COMPUTER LAUNCHES 'HANUMAN-BOY WARRIOR' GAME ON PS2

Mumbai
The Economic Times The Times of India

London-based Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), on Wednesday announced the launch of 'Hanuman-Boy Warrior', a game with mythological content on PlayStation2.

"We have launched the first Indian game on PS2 with localised content completely developed by an Indian game development house," Sony Computer Entertainment, PlayStation -Country Manager, Atindriya Bose, told reporters here.

"Hanuman is our very own classic hero and is ever popular across India and with Indians abroad. The launch of the game has marked a very significant milestone in the Indian game development industry," Bose said.

The game was conceived and made at Aurona's Hyderabad studio in about 9-months period, Aurona Technologies CEO, Santosh Pillai, said.

Aurona Technologies, a subsidiary of the Pyramid Samira Group, is a leading developer of video games and entertainment services. The games division of the company develops consoles, PCs, handheld mobiles and online games for clients.

NETFLIX INTEGRATING MOVIE RATINGS WITH FACEBOOK

Los Angeles
The Economic Times

Netflix Inc is the latest media company to integrate with social networking website Facebook, whose huge community of young, tech-savvy users could help drive growth of the online DVD rental service's subscriber base.

Starting on Tuesday, Netflix users can use Facebook Connect software that links individual Facebook pages to third-party Web sites to share their ratings of Netflix rentals with their Facebook friends, the companies said in a statement.

"Intuitively, the folks streaming (Netflix movies) on the laptop tend to be the under-25 crowd," Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said. "You could make the leap that it is the more tech-savvy ... the early adopter crowd ... but Facebook is becoming more mainstream."

Movie ratings will appear on Netflix subscribers' Facebook pages if they opt into the program, and will link back to the correlating movie page at Netflix.com, the companies said. The tie-up puts Netflix's brand and its fast-growing online streaming service a major growth driver for its subscriber base in front of more than 175 million active Facebook users through what is essentially a marketing channel.

Facebook Connect, launched last year, was expected to transform the social network from a private site where activity occurs entirely within a "wall garden" to a Web-wide phenomenon where software makers, with user permission, can tap member data for use on their sites. Among others, early partners included CBS, Disney-ABC, Discovery.com and Hulu, jointly owned by News Corp and NBC Universal.

NINE TRENDS FOR IT IN 2009 - I

Chandra Ranganathan
The Economic Times

By most counts, 2008 was a bad year for IT companies, mostly due to the credit-induced economic crisis in the US, their biggest technology market.

As we ring in the new year, ET spoke to IT company officials, analysts and industry experts to get a sense of the trends to watch out for next year in IT services, on the demand and the supply side.

Geography: India offers a spring of hope

While company officials and analysts say much of the business would continue to happen out of the US, they also see an up swell of demand in Asia Pacific and India.

For example, Cognizant, which derives a major portion of its revenue from North America, has been making investments in the last 12 to 18 months specifically in Japan, Australia and India to build its leadership team and sales engines. The company's president and managing director R Chandrasekaran said this would be the additional growth engines in the coming years.

At the same time, HCL Technologies, which is seeing more growth happening out of Continental Europe and Scandinavian countries, said it would pitch itself as an integrated service provider (infrastructure and application to gain a pie of the domestic Indian market. Apart from government contracts worth millions of dollars, IT companies also see more action in the retail and FMCG space.

Service offerings - IT Infrastructure services and BPO

Traditionally, application, development and maintenance services have been the bread and butter of a majority of the software services providers in the country. While this area will continue to grow, the merging growth areas would be IT infrastructure services (IT IS), remote infrastructure management (RIM) and business process outsourcing (BPO). "A large number of infrastructure contracts would be off-shored.

Expect more discussions and debates on IT IS, RIM, BPO, virtualisation and unified communications as companies try to work efficiently across locations and lessen travel costs," said Frost & Sullivan ICT practice deputy director Kaustubh Dhavse.

Pricing- Bang for every buck

While there is consensus that contract prices will be renegotiated, there is no clarity yet on whether there would rack-rate cuts or reduction on a project-by-project basis. Gartner India's principal research analyst Diptarup Chakraborti said, "Rack rates look difficult to sustain at least in the short run and price negotiations even in existing contracts is likely to happen. Both old and new clients pressure is likely. Every client will seek maximum bang for his buck."

At the same time, Dipen Shah, vice-president, private client group- research, Kotak Securities said that this would happen more in the case of small-cap companies who would be open to lower price points to save volumes.

Vendor consolidation- More offshoring

For months now, Indian IT companies have been saying that the consolidation happening in America's BFSI space, would result in more work transferred here, as banks look to save costs by moving operations low-cost destinations offshore. Some companies have been lucky to be a vendor of the acquirer and the acquired entity, thereby getting more business from the merged entity.

"In a few instances in recent large M&A situations in the banking industry, we has found ourselves in the position of being a very substantive provider to both the acquirer and the acquired entity. During the 3rd quarter (July-September), we began working on post merger integration work with a major BFSI client of ours who has recently completed significant M&A activity," Chandrasekaran said.

Similarly, Infosys found itself on the safe side since it was servicing Lehman Brothers and Bank of America. Polaris, too, retained its Bear Stearns business, because it was already servicing Bear Stearns' acquirer JP Morgan Chase.

NINE TRENDS FOR IT IN 2009 - II

Chandra Ranganathan
The Economic Times

Contracts - Vendor is King

Typically, an Indian IT company enters into time and material linked contracts, where the billing is done based on the number of people working on a particular project. "In T & M projects, companies build in a lot of buffer, where if 20 people are billed, 15-16 would be working. But, now companies might negotiate with vendors to work on the same projects with lesser people. They will enter into service level agreements to ensure that quality is maintained even with lesser resources," said an analyst who did not wish to be named. Apart from this, fixed price contracts will also pick up. "Scale and capability – you cab lock it in revenue," Dhavse said.

"About 86 percent of the 15 deals with a contract value of over $1 billion signed in the year-ended June 2008 were structured as fixed price and output-based contracts, where the potential to earn better margins is higher through productivity gains," said S Premkumar, Corporate Officer & Global Business Sponsor– Financial Services, HCL Technologies. Further, iGATE technologies global HR head Srinivas Kandula said, "We encourage our vendors to opt for 'Pay by Drink' pricing model. Certainly, outcome based pricing model has the efficiency advantage."

Techies will head home

IT employees nurturing hopes of onsite projects in exciting locales have to get used to the idea that more work will happen offshore. This trend will happen because of two reasons- increase in revenues from offshore friendly services and more focus in domestic software projects. While RIM, BPO and testing are offshore- friendly, consulting and ERP implementation are onsite intensive. Indian IT companies will also throw more resources in domestic software projects, as they find the demand inside show promise like never before.

"If Indian IT companies don't look at the domestic market now, then the likes of IBM and Accenture will dominate. So they are bringing some of their bright engineers from onsite locations to the domestic market. There is an increase in the quality of employees working on domestic projects," said Pari Natarajan, CEO of management consulting firm Zinnov. "The margins are better now because companies have a better idea about how to price their projects here. Also, they can use the processes and solution components that they used for their clients globally for the domestic clients," Natarajan Currency

Headwinds

The year began with rupee at Rs 38-40 to the US dollar and is ending at Ts 48-50 levels, leaving in its wake losses due to hedging and more confusion. While they contend that currency headwinds would continue, no one is willing to take a bet on the direction or pattern. Kotak's Shah said, "It is very difficult to estimate."

Companies, on the other hand, did not respond to the question on currency headwinds. But broadly, observers say that the dollar appreciation against the rupee is unlikely to continue for long. "I don't expect a sharp movement in the US dollar for another 6 months. It won't go to a 15-20 percent upside. Rs 42-46 levels should make it profitable for companies," said Dhavse.

Headcount Addition

There has been a lot of discussion on the non-linearity model, where companies are trying to break the relationship between headcount addition and revenue growth.

Companies will push for this in the coming year by using automation tools, increasing the utilisation rate and improving employee productivity.

As a result, the campus intake would be flattish. Productivity measures could include an increase in working hours but no company has confirmed this.

Increments will be lower as well. But, some players disagree. "Often employees' productivity is largely influenced by their competency levels. So far, organizations have been thinking that productivity is a mere quantitative measure. As a result, the emphasis has been on number of working hours and days and not so much on 'real productivity'," iGATE's Kandula said.

OMAR INVITES IT FIRMS TO INVEST IN STATE

Srinagar
The Tribune

Calling upon Information Technology chieftains to invest in the state, which has been a laggard in the development of IT industry, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said today that his government would offer all possible help to them and the state had necessary wherewithal for the success of this industry.

Omar made this appeal while interacting with a delegation of Nasscom, an apex body of IT companies.

Led by its chairperson Dr Ganesh Natarajan, the delegation gave a power-point presentation to the CM accompanied by several of his colleagues on issues of “IT Sector and its Growth”, “Education and Skill Development Initiative and Employable Skill Development” and “A Case History of Maharashtra.

An official spokesperson quoted Abdullah as saying that the IT sector has the potential of offering enormous employment opportunities and asked Nasscom to participate in the development of this sector in the state.

Urging the captains of IT and other related sectors to look towards the state for setting up their ventures, Omar said the youth in the state possessed ample talent but there was a need to harness their potential. He said IT was one of the few sectors where physical connectivity was not necessary and this factor could be put to advantage for development of this sector in the state.

Focused attention, concrete strategies and time-bound action on these plans would go a long way in promoting this sector in the state, he said, adding that use of technology could also help in bridging disparity in the educational standards prevalent between rural and urban areas.

Calling for evolving a multi-tier strategy to achieve the objective of jobs in IT, the CM expressed gratitude to Nasscom for taking the initiative and asked them to suggest ways and means for development of this sector in the state and also creating job avenues for the youth. He said with the improvement in security scenario, the focus should be on development of emerging sectors like IT, which have a vast application in day-to-day life.

HP’S DESIGN STREAMLINES DATA CENTRES

Deccan Herald

HP has unveiled an approach to critical facilities design that can increase data centre efficiency and reduce customers' capital costs by 15 to 25 percent. The multi-tiered hybrid design from HP aligns facility design with business priorities. This delivers improved operations and energy efficiency.

Most companies build or re-design multi-tiered data centres keeping the higher availability of their critical applications in mind. This results in expensive and redundant infrastructure that consumes much of their investment. HP's approach to facility design offers a multiple-tier design, with each tier matching availability requirements of a range of applications. This eliminates unnecessary technology and redundant power and cooling.

BK MODI MAY MERGE HOTSPOT RETAIL WITH CELLUCOM

Kalyan Parbat & Writankar Mukherjee, Kolkata
The Economic Times (Kolkata edition)

The Rs 2,000-crore plus BK Modi Group is weighing the possibility of merging its twin mobile retail entities, HotSpot Retail Pvt Ltd and Cellucom India, and bringing them under the Spice brand.

The move, that is still being debated upon internally, comes barely two months after the group concluded a 100 percent buyout of Cellucom India, from its Dubai-based founder Arun Nagar.

Interestingly, Cellucom India was acquired earlier this year through HotSpot Retail, a subsidiary of India Televentures which is an investment company controlled by BK Modi’s son and SpiceCorp vice-chairman Dilip Modi.

Cellucom India is now a wholly owned subsidiary of HotSpot Retail. As the group’s mobile retail arm, HotSpot Retail deals in cellphones, connections and accessories across its 475 outlets nationally.

Cellucom India, in turn, offers the full spectrum of IT products like laptops, PDAs and accessories, besides diverse mobile handsets at its 115-odd outlets across India.

When contacted, Dilip Modi said: “There’s no immediate plan to merge HotSpot Retail and Cellucom India. Our present concern is to undertake backend integration of both corporate entities. We will also look at integration of their respective product-lines by getting their synergies going.

While HotSpot Retail’s mainstay happens to be its suite of mobile handsets and accessories, Cellucom’s strengths lie in its comprehensive suite of IT products accessories.

Any merger decision can only be debated after we’ve integrated the back-end of both mobile retail entities and have evolved a unified go-tomarkets strategy.”

Such backend integration must also necessarily touch the combined employee pool of the two companies and the buzz was that quite a few employees at Cellucom India have already been laid off as part of this exercise. Some accounts put the figure vaguely at 200, although this couldn’t be confirmed.

Responding to the issue, HotSpot Retail CEO Sanjeev Mahajan told ET: “When we were combining the backend of both HotSpot Retail and Cellucom, we made an internal assessment of the best available talent in both organisations. I cannot share specifics, but the number of layoffs is a fraction of what is being quoted.”

Though early days, senior executives in the BK Modi Group indicated that brand integration exercise is also underway in some ways, to which of course, Mahajan said: “We are in the process of evolving a single brandname to maximise the synergies of both the HotSpot and Cellucom mobile retail formats. One of the options being explored is bringing both entities under the Spice mother brand banner.”

SAP/SYBAS PROVIDE CRITICAL APPS ON MOBILE

Deccan Herald

AP AG and Sybase have announced partnership to integrate SAP Business Suite software with Sybas' mobile enterprise application platform which would deliver business-critical applications to iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and other devices.

Through the partnership, users will have access to critical customer data in both connected and disconnected modes right from their mobile device of choice by utilising Sybase's business process mobilisation technology.

Sybase will work together with SAP to simplify the delivery of enterprise applications to mobile devices to speed up rollout and reduce end-user training for sales representatives and service personnel.

MATHWORKS ANNOUNCES NEW SIMULATION TOOL

Deccan Herald

MathWorks has announced the availability of SimBiology 3, a tool for modelling, simulating and analysing biological systems in one integrated, graphical environment. SimBiology 3 provides a more intuitive and flexible environment for population pharmacokinetic (PK) modelling and analysis.

SimBiology 3 includes a new PK model wizard that offers the ease-of-use of a built-in library without the limitation of pre-defined models. The model wizard automatically generates PK models by specifying only compartment number, route of administration and method of elimination. Users can also import clinical or experimental data, preprocess, visualise and calculate statistics on the data. Population fits can then be performed using methods such as non-linear mixed effects modelling.

ASUS LAUNCHES LAPTOP WITH WHOLE-DAY-BATTERY FOR RS 26,000

Sreejiraj Eluvangal, Mumbai
DNA

Even as netbook lovers wait for ARM-based laptops that are expected to deliver 10 hours and more of battery time, Taiwanese computer maker ASUS has come out with a netbook with 9.5 hours of battery life.

To achieve the 'whole day' battery life, Asus has installed an 8700 mAh battery, with about four times the capacity of the usual 2200 mAh batteries sported by most netbooks in India. So far, the title for the netbook with the longest battery life in India had belonged to the Samsung N10, launched two months ago, with its 5,200 mAh battery lasting for around 6-6.5 hours of low intensity usage.

However, the high-capacity battery on the 1000HE has taken the total weight to 1.45 kg, against around 1.1 kg for the low capacity netbooks such as HP Mini and around 1.25 kg for the high capacity ones like Samsung N10.

A company executive said the new model, the first to sport the newer N280 Atom processor from Intel, will retail for around Rs 26,000 including taxes, in Mumbai. The Atom N280 is a slightly more advanced version of the highly successful N270 processor by Intel and gives slightly better performance. Nearly all the netbooks available in India are built around older N270 processor.

ASUS UNVEILS NEW EEE PC

Bangalore
Deccan Herald

ASUS, inventor and innovator of widely acclaimed Eee PC, on Tuesday, in Mumbai, announced the launch of Eee PC 1000HE equipped with new Intel Atom N 280 processor.

Priced at Rs 24,990, it PC comes with Bluetooth 2.0 and a 160GB hard disk with an additional 10GB of Eee Online storage that provides excellent user experience.

ASCOM BUYS SOFTWARE FIRM FROM ERICSSON FOR $170 MN

Zurich
The Economic Times

Google Inc released a new version of its Chrome Web browser on Tuesday, as the search giant continues its efforts to get a foothold in a market dominated by Microsoft Corp.

The new Chrome represents the first major update of the software aimed at the general public since Google entered the browser business six months ago. It offers Web surfers faster performance and a handful of new features, such as auto-filling of personal information on online forms and a new way for users to drag around tabs of different Web pages within the browser window.

Google was a distant No 4 in the browser market, with 1.2 percent share of the worldwide market in February, according to market research firm Net Applications. Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominates the market, with a 67.4 percent market share in February, while the Mozilla foundation's Firefox browser had a roughly 22 percent share.

Apple's Safari browser had an 8 percent share. Last month, Google officially joined the European Union's antitrust case against Microsoft, describing the browser market as "largely uncompetitive."

The EU has charged Microsoft with abusing its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser with its Windows personal computer operating system. According to a post on Google's blog on Tuesday, the new Chrome beta loads certain types of Web pages 25 percent to 35 percent faster than the current version of the browser.

The new features were previously available to programmers using the "developer" version of Chrome, but Google has now packaged all the updates together into a more reliable beta test version that is available for download. Google also has a more polished, so-called stable version of Chrome, based on the older beta version.

SKYPE TARGETS CORPORATE MARKET

The Hindu Business Line

eBay unit Skype on Monday plans to announce a version of its Internet calling software that connects to corporate phone systems, the Wall Street Journal said. The new software, called Skype for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), is expected to allow employees to make domestic and international calls with regular office telephones, instead of a headset plugged into a personal computer, the paper said. Initially, the company will charge about 2.1 cents per minute for calls to cellphones and fixed lines, but calls from computers to phone systems using the Skype software will be free, the paper said. Skype, which was acquired by eBay in 2005, is one of the best-known Internet calling firms that allow free calls among Internet users.

NASSCOM TO RAISE GREEN WARRIORS

Goutam Das, Bengaluru
The Asian Age

Indian IT industry’s lobby body Nasscom says it can motivate the more than two million currently employed in the sector to become ‘green warriors’ — environment-friendly citizens who would spread the green word in our societies and create awareness.

This is part of Nasscom’s ‘green IT initiative’ that also seeks to move all the green talk from being a corporate social responsibility thing into a business imperative.

"We have been speaking to people within and outside the IT industry. Green IT was beginning to sound like a loosely-used term," vice president at Nasscom Rajdeep Sahrawat says.

So the body has now laid out a three-point agenda: Make the IT industry adopt green technologies and practices, help other industries become greener using IT, and transform the IT-BPO sector’s employees into green crusaders.

The first imperative — turning the IT industry green — is a low hanging fruit, says Sahrawat. Most new campuses that are coming up are environment friendly; some companies have also "greened" their older campuses. This means that they now have green buildings, use green computing infrastructure such as energy-efficient data centres and power-efficient PCs; they also have good e-waste management policies.

Bengaluru-based IT services firm Frontier Business Systems, for instance, has set up a new green facility at an investment of $4 million — the firm says the building scores highly on key environmental categories such as indoor air quality, energy and water efficiency. The green building also hosts a green data center and showcases green virtualisation solutions.

After the first do-it-yourself approach, comes the ‘help’ other sectors agenda. "IT will have a play in implementing smart grids, smart meters that could help monitor electricity consumption in real time, in intelligent transport systems," Sahrawat says.

Solutions that firms can market under the green IT category include cloud computing, video-conferencing, Web-conferencing, motion and heat detection sensors.

Nasscom had formed three working groups in January with representation from the government, industry, NGOs, and consultants. The groups will define a roadmap over the next 12-24 months.

"We need good data points and have therefore commissioned a research project on green IT in the Indian context," Sahrawat says. Nasscom may now work with the government on various green initiatives.

SITMOBILE OPENS ITS OFFICE AT KOCHI

Kochi
Financial Chronicle

Spanish IT company SitMobile has today opened its new production and international marketing centre at Infopark here today.

SITMobile CEO Enric Sole, who was present at the inauguration said by opening the new office in India, the company plans to have a stronger presence in Asian and Middle East telecom markets.

"Kochi was chosen due to availability of highly skilled technical resources combined with facilities provided by Infopark that hosts the best Indian companies in IT industry," Sole said.

He said the present global economic crisis has not affected SitMobile. The company, which has 20 technically skilled resources at present, hopes to increase it to 100 in the following months, he said.

Inaugurating the new office Consul General of Spain in India Cesar Alba said, "Kerala has always had a forward looking policy with regard to education and is one of the leading states in the education sector in India."

H1B VISA PETITIONS TO BE ACCEPTED TILL APRIL 7

Washington
The Economic Times Mint The Financial Express

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services would accept petitions for the H-1B work visas on the first five working days beginning April 1.

However, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) facilitation centers would accept H-1B visa petitions if it does not receive adequate number of applications to meet its annual Congressional-mandated cap of 65,000.

"We will continue to accept the petition, if we do not have the right number to meet the cap, after the first five business days from April 1 to April 7," USCIS spokeswoman Chris Rhatigan said.

The USCIS last week had announced changes in the application form related to H-1B visa, in view of the restrictions imposed in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which prohibits hiring of people with H-1B visas by companies receiving federal aid money.

The USCIS asserted that this would not result in procession of the application. "We are committed to ensure to all the employers, to all those who submit the petition to clear as expeditiously as possible, and give them feed back weather the petition has been approved or not," Rhatigan said.

Under the new provisions, each applicant needs to receive an attestation from Department of Labor with regard to the federal money being received by them and if vacancy is not being filled at a place because an American was fired earlier.

USCIS said numerical limitation on H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2010 is 65,000. Additionally, the first 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of aliens who have earned a US masters' degree or higher are exempt from this cap.

However, petitions for new H-1B employment are exempt from the annual cap if the beneficiaries will work at institutions of higher education or a related or affiliated nonprofit entities, or at nonprofit research organisations or governmental research organisations, USCIS said.

HP JOINS EARTH HOUR CAMPAIGN

Bangalore
The Hindu Business Line

Hewlett-Packard on Monday announced its tie-up with World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF) as the 'green technology partner' for Earth Hour 2009, the global climate change campaign. All countries participating in the campaign will observe Earth Hour at 8.30 p.m. in their local time on March 28. Millions of individuals and hundreds of organisations will turn off the lights for one hour and show that by working together, they can make a difference in the fight against climate change. HP will switch the lights off in all its buildings in India during Earth Hour.

RODRIGUES INSPECTS IT PROJECTS

Chandigarh
The Tribune

As a part of the monitoring process of world-class integrated infrastructure coming up in the Rajiv Gandhi Technology Park, UT administrator, SF Rodrigues, visited the project today and observed the progress of leading IT companies.

He inspected the progress of the work at the Entrepreneur Development Centre (EDC) and discussed with the secretary and the director IT about the support structures.

They also discussed about equipping the centre with the state-of-the-art facilities for software research and development for young IT entrepreneurs.

The centre is being constructed at a cost of Rs 17 crore on an area of 51,915 sq ft. He emphasised on the need of planning and creating other support system components like security and fire safety measures, medical care system and a meditation centre for the IT professionals as a stress relieving aid.

Accompanied by MP Singh, secretary to Governor, Sanjay Kumar, finance secretary, Manjit Brar, director IT, and senior officers of architecture, engineering and forest department. Rodrigues also visited Sukhna Lake and discussed the plan of beautifying the area by using the latest technologies and architectural designs to make it an ideal recreational centre

COMPACT DISC FIRM TO INVEST RS 100 CRORE FOR GAMING STUDIO

Mumbai
The Hindu Business Line

Entertainment firm Compact Disc India on Monday said its subsidiary firm Laser Infomedia would invest Rs 100 crore for setting up of a gaming publishing and development studio at Jaipur.

Laser Infomedia would set up the studio within the next financial year, Compact Disc India said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange. For this project, the Rajasthan State Industrial and Investment Corporation has recently allotted a land plot at Jaipur, it added.

Shares of Compact Disc were trading at Rs 35.95, up 4.20 percent in the afternoon trade on the BSE

WEB TOOL FOR TRANSLATING IN INDIAN LANGUAGES

K.V. Kurmanath, Hyderabad
The Hindu Business Line

The long wait of language lovers will soon be over with Sampark, a translation machine to be offered free on the Web, getting ready for launch in June 2009.

The beta version would allow users to get their documents translated into Hindi from seven Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Punjabi and Marathi. “We are working on 18 systems (translations among these languages). It will be upgraded as we get the feedback,” Prof. Rajeev Sangal, Director of IIIT, told Business Line.

The Indian language machine translation (Sampark), which is being developed by nine institutes including IITs and universities, is anchored by IIIT (International Institute of Information Technology) here. The programme is being funded by the Union Ministry of Information Technology.

The institute is also working on an open source translation programme called Anusaaraka, which allows translation of English texts into Hindi. “We are launching a beta version 0.50 soon. But keeping in mind the complex grammar of Indian languages, it will take some time to launch a better version,” students working on the programme said

'THUMBS' UP FOR CET, IIT PRACTICE ON MOBILES

Bangalore
Deccan Herald

'Thumb Culture’, it is a term used for the younger generation who constantly keep typing messages without a break, using thumbs. Now parents can ease their fears of ‘Thumb Culture’ eating into children’s study time. They might just be using it to prepare for their upcoming CET or IIT entrance papers.

A new concept that looks into providing practice papers for students aspiring for engineering or medical courses on mobiles will be launched on Friday, by Bangalore-based companies. The concept is simple: Download a software called ‘Mplg’ (www.ipomo.in). Pay the subscription fee of Rs 275 for three months at the nearest SBI branch in the name of Ipomo Communications India Pvt Ltd.

Get the unique code or the ‘Journal Number’ and enter it along with your name, age and email ID on your mobile, using the software and you will be ready to access the test question papers prepared by reputed houses of learning. Scorecards are immediately updated and students can evaluate their own performance.

Creator of the software Mplg, Ipomo along with BASE and ACE in a unique venture, have started a time based testing system on mobile platform to help students prepare better for their CET and IIT entrance examinations.

The software provided by Ipomo, a company founded last year, will give students an opportunity to take practice tests in various subjects prepared by city-based educational training organisation BASE and ACE, for the upcoming entrance tests to be held in the next three months.

While the IIT course test papers will be available from Friday, CET practice papers will be up for students from April 1 2009.

QUALCOMM WILL LAUNCH RS 10,000 LAPTOP THIS YEAR

Sreejiraj Eluvangal, Mumbai
DNA

Two years ago, it was seen as an example of a business model gone wrong. Operators and equipment manufacturers that had invested into Qualcomm's CDMA technology were publicly expressing their disappointment over the "high royalties" the firm charged.

A long running patent dispute with Qualcomm saw Nokia virtually exit the CDMA handsets business. Consumers flocked to the rival GSM technology and the future looked bleak for Qualcomm, the company that owned most of the CDMA patents. But two years on, Qualcomm has successfully managed to convince both the CDMA operators in India to expand their network and launch 3G services based on the company's EVDO technology. The dispute with Nokia has been buried, replaced by an alliance between the two. Rumours are that a Qualcomm-powered Nokia computer will hit the market in a few months. DNA catches up with Kanwalinder Singh, the country head of Qualcomm India, to find out what the company is planning for the Indian market.

You seem to have rediscovered some old friends...Have you changed your business model all of a sudden? Have the royalty issues been sorted out?

I don't think there was a change per se. Qualcomm has a royalty structure, which is slightly below 5% of the device price. We have always said that by addressing the affordability of the device, we can make a much bigger contribution to the growth of devices than tweaking with the 5%. So, if a phone was $40, you make it at $20. Tweaking the royalty structure is not the right way to do it.

Investing that money into R&D to make devices more affordable, more varied and to bring those devices into the market is the right way. Anything you do in the Indian market, you have to address the affordability factor. We have always said we will address the affordability issue. Today CDMA phones are retailing at Rs 700. That comes from investment and research that goes into making it affordable so that volumes pick up. It's becoming apparent now that these products are beginning to be launched. So you are hearing a lot about us now.

Qualcomm has been working on launching a low-cost, 3G-enabled PC architecture suited for markets such as India. What's the update on that?

The PC market in India hasn't taken off. Last year, we sold some 2 million laptops in India. Against this, some 3 million smartphones were sold in India. There is a huge pent-up demand for mobile computing -- devices that combine computing and mobility.

Is that demand what Qualcomm is aiming at? Do you have any forecasts for how big the demand is?

The forecasts for Indian markets have always been pessimistic. With the availability of wireless broadband, we have achieved a fundamental breakthrough. And this breakthrough is creating the need for alternatives to current computing (read Intel)

LAPTOPS TO MAKE LEARNING HI- TECH AT SRCC

Avneep Dhingra, New Delhi
Mail Today

Even in the days of economic downturn, Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) is going to provide laptops to each student and faculty member.

The college will be pumping in several crores to set up the infrastructure to make the campus WiFi enabled and have air- conditioned classrooms equipped with Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screens. LCD projectors have already been installed in all the 25 classrooms.

HOW TO TURN YOUR IPOD INTO IPHONE

New York, March 22, 2009
The Economic Times

I try to keep a stiff upper lip about not having an iPhone. Just couldn't afford it, not with the $75 a month or so AT&T charges for service on top of the $199 upfront cost for the device.

I could, however, afford the $229 iPod Touch, and got it as a gift, as it happened. It has most of the same goodies: a Web browser, email, YouTube. And it stores way more music than the iPhone. Plus, the other day I used it to call China.

Yup, a call around the world, on a device that doesn't have a phone. A handful of applications on Apple Inc's iTunes store will let you do this, as long as you're in a Wi-Fi hot spot.

My iPhone complex hasn't disappeared, but at least now I have a device that looks just like it, has no monthly service fees, and lets me make free or cheap phone calls.

The best part of these applications, which require the second-generation iPod Touch that came out last year, is that they are free to download, and calls to other people using the same app won't cost you anything.

Two of the services I've tried, Truphone and Fring, will also let you make free calls to Google Talk users and type instant messages to friends online. Both automatically queue up a list of buddies from different services you might have, including Gmail chat, AIM and MSN Messenger, once you log in.

US TO ACCEPT H-1B VISA PETITIONS FROM APRIL 1

Washington, March 22, 2009
The Hindu Business Line The Economic Times (Delhi edition) The Times of India

The US has announced that it will start accepting petitions for H-1B work visas for the next fiscal from April 1. Lottery would decide successful applicants if the number of petitions for the fiscal beginning October 1 this year crosses the annual cap, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said.

However, it reminded the petitioners and their American employers of the new provisions of the Employ American Workers Act that imposes restrictions on issuance of H-1B visas for companies receiving federal grant money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law by the US President on February 17. In a statement, USCIS said the numerical limitation on H-1B petitions for fiscal year 2010 is 65,000.

Additionally, the first 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of aliens who have earned a US masters' degree or higher are exempt from this cap.

However, petitions for new H-1B employment are exempt from the annual cap if the beneficiaries are to work at institutions of higher education or a related or affiliated non-profit entities, or at non-profit research organisations or governmental research organisations, USCIS said.

BSNL LAUNCHES TRIAL RUN FOR BILLING SOFTWARE

Tamil Nadu, March 23, 2009
The Hindu

BSNL has launched dry runs for switching over to a nationally integrated call detail record billing software program that is tipped to replace its existing meter-based billing system for landlines by August.

DELL LAUNCHES MACBOOK AIR KILLER

March 23, 2009
Mumbai Mirror

The sleek, aluminum-encased notebook is 0.65-inches thick and comes with a 13.4-inch screen and a 128 GB solid-state drive.

Starting at $1,999, the Adamo is positioned as Dell's new high-end brand. Another configuration will sell for $2,699.

The device comes packed in a clear case along with an optional branded sleeve or tote bag from designer luggage and handbag label Tumi.

The Adamo is meant, "to make a design statement, to surprise people that this is a Dell," said marketing executive John New. "This is for the customer that has that discerning taste, and is willing to pay a little more for that."

Dell has been working to generate buzz for Adamo, Latin for "to fall in love with." Word of the PC began to leak late last year, and the company hosted an event in January in Las Vegas where it provided a fleeting glimpse of the laptop as it was held aloft by a model.

Apple helped launch the so-called ultra-portable category last year with MacBook Air, which, at 0.76 inches, previously laid claim to the title of world's thinnest.

The Adamo at 4 pounds is heavier than the Air, which weighs 3 pounds and is priced from $1,799. Most PC makers, including Lenovo Group, Hewlett Packard Co and Sony Corp also sell ultra-portables.

HCL OFFERS ROUND THE CLOCK SERVICES TO LAPTOP USERS

Bhopal, March 23, 2009
The Pioneer

HCL Infosystems, India’s premier information enabling, ICT System Integrator and Distribution Company announced a pioneering initiative in the Indian ICT sector to further strengthen its customer care services in Madhya Pradesh. In an unprecedented move, HCL announced the launch of ‘HCL TOUCH’ its 24X7 round-the-clock, service and support for its laptop customers in Madhya Pradesh.

In Madhya Pradesh, HCL announced 42 company owned ‘HCL Touch’ centres across 31 cities like Balaghat, Bhopal, Biaora, Chhindwara, Guna, Gwalior, Indore, Jabalpur, Hoshangabad, Khandwa, Mandla, Ratlam, Nagda, Rewa, Sagar, Satna, Shahdool, Singrauli, Ujjain, Ambikapur, Bailladilla, Bhilai, Bilaspur, Jagdalpur, Janjgir, Kanker, Korba, Mahasamund, Raigarh, Raipur and Rawan. HCL Touch offers round-the-clock service to Laptop users across India through a universal customer care number. Support will be offered in both English and Hindi, making it a very customer centric service.

A laptop user of today uses his/her machine both at work and at home, works at home and while travelling and looks for a round-the-clock support with the facility to service his laptop anywhere he travels in India or abroad.

HCL touch delivers for the first time in India a number of value added services that today’s laptop user looks for. Services such as “Network and Email support”, Peripherals and Hardware Configuration Support”, “Fortressing Support”, “Preventive Health Care” support, “Tracking Services” etc.

This is also backed by several other initiatives such as SMS request for support, pick and drop facility, and “On Site” direct company service anywhere in India at the customer’s premises.

This landmark laptop service will be delivered through India’s largest IT Service and support network. A network that, reaches out to over 4000 towns, The HCL touch network consists of 14 remote support centres, 505 service offices, 390 ware houses and 150 repair centres, all of which are company owned, making it India’s largest direct IT service infrastructure.

GOOGLE RELEASES NEW BETA VERSION OF CHROME WEB BROWSER

San Francisco
The Economic Times

Google Inc released a new version of its Chrome Web browser on Tuesday, as the search giant continues its efforts to get a foothold in a market dominated by Microsoft Corp.

The new Chrome represents the first major update of the software aimed at the general public since Google entered the browser business six months ago. It offers Web surfers faster performance and a handful of new features, such as auto-filling of personal information on online forms and a new way for users to drag around tabs of different Web pages within the browser window.

Google was a distant No 4 in the browser market, with 1.2 percent share of the worldwide market in February, according to market research firm Net Applications. Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominates the market, with a 67.4 percent market share in February, while the Mozilla foundation's Firefox browser had a roughly 22 percent share.

Apple's Safari browser had an 8 percent share. Last month, Google officially joined the European Union's antitrust case against Microsoft, describing the browser market as "largely uncompetitive."

The EU has charged Microsoft with abusing its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser with its Windows personal computer operating system. According to a post on Google's blog on Tuesday, the new Chrome beta loads certain types of Web pages 25 percent to 35 percent faster than the current version of the browser.

The new features were previously available to programmers using the "developer" version of Chrome, but Google has now packaged all the updates together into a more reliable beta test version that is available for download. Google also has a more polished, so-called stable version of Chrome, based on the older beta version.

DISCOVERY SUES AMAZON'S KINDLE

San Francisco
The Economic Times

Media company Discovery Communications Inc has sued Amazon.com, accusing the online retailer's Kindle of infringing its patent on electronic book technology.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in US District Court in Delaware, marks another blow for a closely watched gadget that has drawn fire from publishers that say Amazon is trying to avoid paying royalties.

The lawsuit claims that Amazon, in two versions of its Kindle, has infringed one or more of the claims on a patent that Discovery founder John Hendricks received in November 2007.

The patent deals with encryption technology for the distribution of digital books.

Amazon launched the second version of its digital e-reader last month. The wireless device, which retails for $359, has been closely watched by gadget lovers and touted by Amazon as the future of book reading. It first came to the market in November 2007.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Discovery, which is not a competitor to Amazon and is best known for its Discovery channel on U.S. cable television, is seeking damages and a royalty to compensate it "for any future infringement" of the patent.