Entries from June 2004 ↓

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Found on Nilesh’s Blog

G-Mailto: Sets Gmail as your default mail program in Windows. So when you click on a mailto:// url, your favourite web browser will open up a page with Gmail’s Compose window. Pretty nifty.

GTray: Windows system tray notifier for new Gmail mail.

GmailCompose: A Mozilla Firefox extension to open the Gmail compose window with the click of a button.

Gmail Loader: Import your existing mail into Gmail!

Other supporting apps to help move to Gmail.

* POP Goes the Gmail Retrieve Gmail using POP in Outlook Express

Popularity: 9% [?]

Where there is will, theirs a way. Yesterday via CNBC came through this interesting story about Hiware Bazaar, a small village in Maharashtra which is like a Oasis in Dought Ridden Maharashtra. The Sarpanch and the Panchayat have a ambitious plan for 2005 that , nobody in the village should be below the poverty line and without a piece of land. They also ensure that villagers have access to loans and ensure that loan is used effeciently for the right purpose. Hiware bazaar has some wonderful water reservation plans like banning of certain crops, banning on digging borewells and the beauty is that villagers and farmers do understand this restrictions and now also witness & party to the benefits. By this example we can say that “the probelm is not that people don’t have the solutions, the problem is that people don’t get the problems right ?.” Once you get the problem right you have easy solutions and big results.

The achievements of Hiware Bazaar and others are highlighted in the Planning Commission of India report : WATER The Water Women: A Case Study of Tank Restoration. [ The report is in PDF : To download , Right click the link and choose “Save Target As”.]

Adarsh Gaon

In 1993, three years after a serious village led community development process was underway, Hiware Bazaar was recognized by the Government of Maharashtra as an ‘Adarsh Gaon’ (ideal village). Under a government program that sought to identify the most promising locations of village development in each district, the Hiware Bazaar story was highlighted to the government machinery and to the people at large. In many ways this was because it quickly learnt from the experiences of village development from itsmore famous neighbor of the last decade, Ralegao Siddhi.. By adopting the four tenets of Anna Hazare’s work, Charabandhi (ban on grazing), Nashabandhi (ban on alcohol) Nassbandhi (family planning) and Katbandhi (ban on deforestation), it appealed to planners and politicians alike.

The results of this recognition, besides having monetary benefits for various developments were enormous. Access to government and bureaucratic machinery was greatly increased as a consequence of this. As a result, villageleaders now report few difficulties while trying to access the bureaucratic structure of the government. Most officials were extremely cooperative and eager to enhance the successes of their efforts.

Over the years, therefore, the village of Hiware Bazaar has reportedly used the infrastructure and benefit of many government and quasi government agencies for village development works. These are:

1. Yashwant Krishi Panlot Sanstha- NGO headed by the sarpanch, (recipient of Adarsh Gav Yojna) funded nalla bunding, aforestations, storage bandharas, and boulder/ earthen structures

2. Forest Department- Van-tale, aforestation

3. Agriculture department- Bunding

4. Minor Irrigation dept- Percolation tanks

5. Rural Sanitation programme- Construction of toilets

6. ?- Subsidies for Biogas, solar energy

7. MH Govt.– watershed training institute

8. ICAR and Mahatma Phule Agricultural University- increasing dry crop yields under Jawahar research scheme

* Going green at the grassroots - and blossoming

Popularity: 9% [?]

A PIB Report :

India has called for the need to optimise the use of telecom infrastructure for intra-regional communication with a view to bring down the costs of telecom services. This was stated by the Union Minister of Communication and Information Technology Shri Dayanidhi Maran, while addressing the 2nd SAARC Communication Ministers Conference at Islamabad, Pakistan today. Shri Maran said that “Using each others infrastructure for intra-regional communication can prove to be economically advantageous, but with the added benefit of the resources circulating within the region, besides lower tariffs to the consumer”. For more effective regional co-operation , Sh Maran stated that it would also be necessary to digitalise inter-country links within the region in a time bound manner. “On our part, we have digitalised all our telephone exchanges” he added.

* Two more NIXI nodes to come up

Popularity: 7% [?]

Mahesh Murthy gives some pointers on When is the right time to start your own business? . In the given extract he talks about “Education” .

Education seems to make no difference whatsoever to your likelihood of success as an entrepreneur. As an employee maybe, but not as a business owner. (A personal observation: I never bothered getting a degree, and I don’t think it’s hurt me very much so far.)

The bigger point, though, is what will make the business you intend to start successful. Again, I really believe the key to succeeding is to understand the market you will be operating in. See what the buyers need and what current sellers offer - and figure out if there’s a gap where you can offer something better, and in a way that others can’t match soon enough.

This is what it takes. To do this requires no particular education - and no set years of experience. If there are so many successful Internet entrepreneurs around the world barely out of their teens, it’s because they had the relevant experience of being online early in life - and they figured out the problems and a solution for their markets better than anybody else twice their age. They may be young - but they had the relevant experience.

That’s why you rarely see teenaged chemical industry successes, or 20-year-old biotech billionaires. You need the ‘right’ experience and insights from it - not just years of work at some unconnected place.

That hopefully answers the other question many of you put to me - “Mahesh, I’m joining a bank and want to work for a few years, and then start an organic vegetable operation”. Sorry, bossman, no can do. That is not relevant to your intended line of business. You’re better off going to the mandi now.

* Forbes Magazine’s List of the World’s Richest People

* Noted Individuals - High School and Elementary School Dropouts

* ELLISON TO GRADS: DIPLOMAS ARE FOR LOSERS / Oracle CEO Urges Students to Drop out, Start up (Satire)

* Famous Entrepreneurs

Popularity: 8% [?]

Harvey Cohen, president of Strategy Analytics believes that Technology is the biggest threat to jobs.Technology that adds intelligence to computers poses a far more serious threat to jobs than low-wage countries. According to him, “The thing about technology is that it has a tendency to creep up on you”.

Computers also handle many customer-service tasks today, such as directing callers to service reps or scanning customers’ email and giving back automated responses. As computer intelligence improves, technology will handle more tasks and replace more people.

And the technology will get better. For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research arm for the US military, is leading a project to develop a vehicle that can navigate a desert for at least 15 kilometres without a driver. Prototypes have gone as far as 11km, successfully moving around cactuses, boulders and other obstacles.

“I view this in the same way as the first flight of the Wright brothers,” Cohen said.

Such advancements eventually find their way into businesses, which means someday fewer jobs driving forklifts and delivery trucks.

“The level of embedded intelligence in our electronic products and services is at a real turning point where we see this accelerating,” Cohen said.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Ouch ! Save sperm throw your mobile :

Mirror UK : MERELY carrying a mobile phone can cut a man’s sperm count by nearly 30 per cent, new research suggests.Scientists claim radiation from a switched-on phone, even if not in use, slashes the number of sperm per millilitre by almost 24 million.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Indians have won two of the four Ashden Awards 2004, considered as Green Oscars, and a cash of 30,000 pounds each for their inspirational and innovative renewable energy projects.

* Goverdhan Rathore, founder of the Prakratik Society in Ranthambhore in Rajasthan, bagged the Climate Care Award and the cash prize for providing villages around the Ranthambhore Tiger reserve with a cleaner, greener alternative to firewood for cooking, in the form of bio-gas.

* Hemant Lamba and his team at the international township of Auroville in Pondicherry succeeded in delivering affordable and reliable renewable energy products and services (in the form of solar panels) in 12 states, benefiting 80,000 people.

* Binu Parthan of IT Power received a runners-up prize of 7,500 pounds for designing a pioneering smoke-free, fuel-efficient stove that cuts the wood requirement by 70 percent.

The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy were created in 2001 by the Ashden Trust, one of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts. For the first two years, the awards were presented in association with the Whitley Awards for Conservation. The success of the renewable energy awards encouraged the Ashden Trust to set up an independent scheme and to increase the number of awards, thanks to contributions from four other Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts.

Due to their success, the awards have expanded in number and geographical coverage. This is the second year to include projects in the UK, recognising that industrialised countries need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy 2003 are presented in association with Green Futures, the UK’s leading magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures, and its parent organisation, Forum for the Future. Forum for the Future was founded in 1996 by three of the UK’s leading advocates of sustainable development - Jonathon Porritt, Sara Parkin and Paul Ekins. The charity aims to accelerate the building of a sustainable way of life, taking a positive, solutions-oriented approach.

* Picture Gallery of Finalist

Popularity: 8% [?]

Cisco Systems, Inc the worlds largest network equipment manufacturer will buy the intellectual property i.e a majority of the engineering team and select assets from Procket Network for $89 million. Prokect was co-founded in March 1999 by Sharad Mehrotra, William Lynch and Tony Li, Procket markets concurrent services routers and has expertise in silicon and software development. Mehrotra, the chairman emeritus of Procket, is no longer active with the company. Procket’s has a technology similar to Cisco’s new high-end router, which was unveiled in May and took four years and $500 million to develop. It is intended for large telecommunications carriers.
Links:

* Cisco Systems to Purchase Intellectual Property, Engineering Teams and Select Assets from Procket Networks [ Cisco News Release ]

Popularity: 8% [?]

Follow this post on Slasdot regarding the debute of Indianized version of Spiderman in India:

Lord Omlette writes “I’m really surprised no one else has mentioned this, but Spider-Man is getting redone in India! As an Indian-American, I’m quite excited. (Let’s get it out of the way: even our comic book heroes are being outsourced, wtf!) The manga version of Star Wars was pretty good, but off the top of my head I can’t think of any other comic books that were redone for a completely different culture. Anyone?”

* Spiderman Goes Desi [TOI]

Popularity: 8% [?]

In the light of latest Bazee.com ( Avnish Bajaj and Suvir Sujan), takeover bid from Ebay.com , Economic Times Reports:

Build a world-class organisation, turn it around into a profitable venture and then sell it off for a bounty’– this seems to be the mantra for becoming a millionaire these days as more and more CEOs are selling-off their startups and joining the ‘crorepati-club’ . Some of the daring CEOs which materialised the BOT ( Build Operate Transfer ) philosophy to sell of their ventures are:

* Raman Roy - Spectramind now owned Wipro Spectramind

* Anant Koppar - Kshema Technologies now owned by Mphasis BFL

* Puneet Dalmia and Alok Mittal - Jobsahead.com
now owned by Monster

* Sabeer Bhatia - Hotmail.com
now owned by Microsoft

Popularity: 8% [?]

Bob Bemer, a computer pioneer who published warnings of the Y2K problem in the early 1970s and helped invent a widely used coding system, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 84

A short list includes:

* helped create COBOL (as in “Grandfather of” )

* coined the words COBOL and CODASYL

* invented the ESCape sequence

* created the PICTURE clause

* helped create and standardize the ASCII character set (as in “Father of”)

* put the backslash into the ASCII set

* helped create the 8-bit per byte standard”

Popularity: 8% [?]

(Appologies for typos, spelling and grammatical mistakes - forgot to include in original email)
Dear Mr. Morales,

I was kind of disturbed by seeing your news article published in
Bloomberg today : India Kills 5 Kashmir Rebels; 23 People Hurt in
Blast, AFP Says .
(http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=audL0YUGBIL8&refer=asia)

It seems that either I am ingorant about politics and my country or
the western media doesn’t have the willigness or honesty to understand
the difference between “Rebel”, “Terrorist” or “Militant”. I am in no
support and bias towards India and Pakistant , I am hopless about both
their politics and politicians.

I know you don’t represent the entire western media but atleast I can
know your personal thoughts on this and your reply may also eliminate
certain misconceptions in my mind (if any) and I would get my facts
straight.

I would like to ask you on the behalf of a common Indian Citizens,
relatives of the people who died in Kashmir & rest of India and
families of martyr soldiers . I will be very obliged to know what
makes you say these peoples “Islamic Rebels”, is India - Pakistan
issue a Hindu - Muslim issue, I think by attaching this tag of
“Islamic (Rebels) you are hurting Muslims in India also. Please let us
know why don’t you use the term “Terrorits” .

If according to you the definition of “Rebel” is correct then, do
rebels kill people in another states and innocent common citizens who
are in no-way attached to Kashmir issue ? . For Example : Mumbai Bomb
Blast and Gujarat Temple Attack.

Also if they are truly rebels then why are Indian Politicians remain
untouched and the body count of innocent people increases day-by-day.
Who are they rebelling against normal people of India (for your
information Hindus & Muslims both) or Goverment of India.

Again, I would be very obliged to get the reply from you, or if you
think I am a Hindu fundamentalist and a “Rebel” then please do
understand that I do not kill people and I know that your mail
software has a “Delete” button.

Thanks & Regards,
Santoshkumar
http://sanspeak.blogspot.com

cc : Editor responsible for this story: Peter Torday at ptorday@bloomberg.net.

PS : For your easy reference I have also copy - pasted the definition
of Rebels & Terrorist from dictionary.com

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rebel

re bel ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-bl)
intr.v. re belled, re bel ling, re bels
To refuse allegiance to and oppose by force an established government
or ruling authority.
To resist or defy an authority or a generally accepted convention.
To feel or express strong unwillingness or repugnance: She rebelled at
the unwelcome suggestion.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=terrorist

ter ror ist ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trr-st)
n.
One that engages in acts or an act of terrorism.

ter ror ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr-rzm)
n.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or
an organized group against people or property with the intention of
intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for
ideological or political reasons.

Popularity: 8% [?]

TRAI Releases Consultation Paper on Review of Access Deficit Charges :

TRAI had notified an Interconnection Usage Charge (IUC) and an Access Deficit Charge (ADC) regime in January, 2003 which was subsequently reviewed and a revised scheme for IUC and ADC was notified on 29th October, 2003. The Authority had stated in its subsequent notification, inter alia, that it would be reviewing the ADC regime annually, it would consider phasing out ADC funding to BSOs other than BSNL after next review, and consider moving to a revenue share regime to fund the ADC, which should gradually decline and be phased out within three to five years. The Authority has released a Consultation Paper today to begin the consultation process for such a review.

The paper first recalls some of the key points that the Authority had made in its notification of 29th October, 2003 regarding the evolution of the ADC regime over time, and its review for adopting a revised regime based on revenue share. The paper then notes a number of difficulties that have been reported regarding reconciliation of data (and hence related payments) as well as certain incentives for call bypass/grey market calls under the present ADC regime. The Authority has reached a conclusion that these matters would be suitably addressed under a regime based on revenue share. In this context, the Authority has also raised the issue of the ADC being made available only to BSNL, the incumbent which has a large presence in the country, including in rural and remote areas.

The paper argues that if the ADC regime is based on revenue share, then the extent of data requirement for the review is much lower than that required for an ADC regime based on varying charges per minute. Thus, based on reasonable assumptions on growth of subscriber base for fixed and mobile, capital investment and average revenues per user (including revenues from access and long distance services), it would be possible to calculate the required percentage revenue share that would fund the ADC. The paper has taken a range for the average monthly rental for BSNL’s fixed service, and thus has reached a range for the proposed ADC revenue share. One estimate of monthly rental is Rs. 156, which was the amount, based on actual data for 2002-2003, considered for the IUC Regulation of 29th October 2003. Subsequent to this some revisions in the monthly rentals have taken place in a number of tariff schemes, as a result of which the average monthly rental would have increased. An upper limit of Rs. 200 has been taken for monthly rental, in the paper on ADC review. This amount was used in the first IUC Regulation which was notified on 24th January, 2003, based on the standard tariff packages in place. Further, the Authority has now given tariff forbearance (except for rural areas). Thus, the range for monthly rental considered for the ADC review is Rs. 156 to Rs. 200.

The range for the proposed ADC revenue share based on the calculations mentioned in the paper is 2.2% (for monthly rental of Rs. 200) and 5.3% (for monthly rental of Rs. 156) of AGR(Adjusted Gross Revenue).

The Authority invites responses from the stakeholders by 15th July, 2004. For more detail, please see the TRAI website at “www.trai.gov.in”.

* Consultation Paper On Access Deficit Review [HTML]
[PDF] Right Click and choose “Save As”.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Navhind Times Reports :

India-based IT services vendors saw 29 per cent increase in revenues, but continued to be a marginal player in the global market which grew 6.2 per cent to $ 569 billion in 2003, research firm Gartner has said.

Indian-based vendors represented a small segment of the worldwide market, with 1.4 per cent of total revenues. However, their revenues collectively increased 29 per cent over 2002, according to preliminary results from Gartner.

US-based vendors continued to lead the worldwide IT services market, attracting 59 per cent of the total spending. IBM remained the largest competitor, with revenue rising 6.2 per cent to $ 42.6 billion and its market share unchanged at 7.5 per cent.

Popularity: 8% [?]

In continuation to my earlier post It’s Time for Ebay to take the Bazee, the Global online auctioneer eBay Inc will acquire Baazee.com for $50 million (Rs 230 crore). Earlier the size of the deal was not known. The founder Avnish Bajaj, 33, and Suvir Sujan, 32, have just become the latest dot com millionaire poster boys of the nascent Indian Net scape joining the gangs of Sabir Bhatia (Hotmail.com) and Rajiv Jain (India.com).

Popularity: 8% [?]

Which Mobile Internet technology is the best ?

May be you can find it, by playing this simulation game at Lucent.com . The simulator here shows the differences in bandwidth and roundtrip delays for various mobile technologies. The simulator compares CDMA2000 EV-DO, CDMA2000 1X, GPRS and EDGE. A UMTS, GPRS, GSM-Data and Modem version. There are two version of the simulator one with EV-DO & one with UMTS.

You can find some good articles, product information, policy reviews and recommendations at Convergence Plus.

Related Links :

* Mobile Internet India 2003

* Convergence India 2005

Popularity: 9% [?]

Ranjeev C Dubey, managing partner of New Delhi Law Offices (South) writes in Business World India ; Why India doesn’t need a Whistle Blower Act. To some extent he is correct, but what he expects “effective, responsible government” requires”effective, responsible society”. The society is getting what its deserves but the penalty is paid by people like Satyendra Dubey. So the best solution will be to not to have people like Satyendra Dubey. Support corruption, save a life.

Corporate India does have legitimate fears: for one, cohesion, mutual faith and team play are the key to productivity, and institutionalised Orwellian squealing is its antithesis. Second, there are a thousand ways to victimise squealing employees, but such laws only encourage the incompetent to become whistle-blowers to avoid being sacked. Third, whistle-blowing settles extraneous scores, promotes ‘political’ subgroups, institutionalises internal and external blackmail, and adds to the predatory powers of our predatory state. Lastly, whistle-blowing results in defensive management, proliferates mindless procedures, and ultimately destroys initiative and risk-taking.

The key point here is that what applies to corporate India also applies to the government of India: a whistleblower law may only work to paralyse whatever still functions in the government. Let’s face it, the whole corruption racket works on mutual benefits and fair distribution. What you probably will have with a whistle-blower law is a little benefit and a lot of problems.

So why do we need whistle-blower legislation? Laws don’t automatically mean law-abiding societies. That apart, what will the law say that is not already covered under existing fair labour practice legislation (’thou shall not victimise’) or, as in Dubey’s case, the Indian Penal Code (’thou shall not kill’)? So let me put it bluntly: to save a life such as Dubey’s all you really need is appropriate and sensitive government response to credible information of corruption in high places, and an effective witness protection programme. These are administrative issues, not legislative ones.

This is not an argument for a whistle-blower law. This is only an argument for effective, responsible government. So let us focus on working towards responsible liberal governance and forget about the symbolism inherent in enacting a grand law we cannot and will not implement.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Yahoo!, Microsoft, EarthLink and AOL Propose Key Best Practices and Technologies to Tackle the Problem of Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail. The complete proposal can be found at
http://antispam.yahoo.com

Download.Microsoft.com [ PDF ]

http://www.microsoft.com/spam

http://www.earthlink.net/spamblocker

http://corp.aol.com/press/press_release062204.html

Popularity: 8% [?]

From LinuxJournal & also a discussion on Slashdot:

Delixus, Inc. recently completed work on the Delixus e-Governance Platform 2004 edition that leverages the strengths of Linux to provide improved services to widows, pensioners and poor farmers in the Indian state of Karnataka. The Delixus e-Governance Platform addresses the needs of millions of rural poor citizens in India who receive widow or pension checks through services provided by local government offices. For several reasons, the current manual system is slow in getting checks to the people who desperately need the money. First, long distances often exist between the pension offices and the villages where people live. Second, cross-referencing multiple files for a single citizen often takes weeks due to the large volume of applicants. Third, citizens often are unaware when checks are ready for pickup.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Manjeet Kripalani in BusinessWeek writes about the “The Digital Village “; how the poor farmers of Karnataka are facing the benefits of digitization of the land records with equal access to information and proving as digital turning point for India. There is a great divide in India of haves and haves not, sometimes natural and sometimes artificial due to red-tapisim and exploitation. The equal access to information is a crucial right of any citizen and should not depend upon class, caste or status, thats what is the definition of Democracy. Technology can not only breat this divide and inquality or exploitation of system , but it also provides the power to the common man, the power of knowledge.

Stretching Resources

Many of these efforts are driven by the urge to profit: If a fraction of India’s poor logged in or dialed up just once a day — and paid a minuscule fee to a service provider for the privilege — then the sheer mass could create a viable business. “If you can conceptualize the world’s 4 billion poor as a market, rather than as a burden, they must be considered the biggest source of growth left in the world,” says C.K. Prahalad, a leading management theorist who studies developing markets. Other pioneers are purely altruistic — they want to break India’s millennia-long curse of poverty.

It’s an awesome curse, and at first look, it’s hard to see how digital technology cooked up by some entrepreneurial do-gooders can relieve hunger or thirst or guarantee a better crop. No laptop, however cheap or durable, can compensate for India’s lack of a nationwide power grid, or a comprehensive network of highways. But digital technology can deliver information — information the rural poor desperately need — about crop conditions, fertilizer prices, health care, and more. Reliable information can help India’s poor stretch their resources — to plant the right crops, deal with bureaucrats more effectively, operate on a level playing field with customers and merchants. The digital revolution in India is largely an information revolution……….

Popularity: 8% [?]

Internet auction major Ebay.com is all set to aquire the local internet auction big-shot Bazee.com. The valuation of the deal is not known right now, but according to the latest news Baazee.com promoted by media group Star and ICICI Bank , expects to break-even in the current financial year. Baazee.com was initially promoted by two Harvard graduates & first-time entrepreurs Avnish Bajaj and Suvir Sujan. Mr Sujan left the company for sometime and then returned to become the co-CEO

Popularity: 8% [?]

Barry Shlachter from Star-Telegram writes :Reforms set the stage for India’s boom

As Americans learn every day, bits and pieces of their economy are being dismantled and shipped overseas. India gets the lion’s share of business-process outsourcing — 35 percent — compared with China’s 15 percent, and 6 percent each for Canada and Mexico. At last count, more than 700,000 Indians work in outsourcing activities.

A remarkable convergence of factors has put India in the right place at the right time to become the world’s white-collar outsourcing leader: an abundance of cheap but educated labor that speaks English and access to cutting-edge telecommunications technology that links U.S. clients or consumers with Indian facilities as if they were next door.

Help lines for utilities, credit cards, computer makers and others are now staffed in Bangalore, which controls 35 percent to 40 percent of the country’s export software and business-services work, as well as in other southern Indian cities, including Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and New Delhi. Telemarketing, financial research, tax returns, book editing, medical transcription, mortgage processing and payroll chores are increasingly being outsourced. Software design and programming is even bigger.

While offshoring work makes up a minuscule slice of India’s economy, it was expected to bring in revenues of $12.2 billion in India for the year ending in June. That’s up 28 percent over the previous 12 months, according to India’s National Association of Software and Services Companies, the outsourcers’ industry group. About a third was earned by call centers and business-process operations, the rest by software developers and programmers.

It’s not all one-way traffic.

Many of the computers used by Indian call centers and software design offices are American-branded.

“Dell, Dell, Dell,” rattles off V.S. Srinivasan, a Mumbai-based business-processing consultant to Mastek, which has forged a joint venture with Carreker, a Farmers Branch firm that specializes in outsourcing for financial institutions. “Compaq, Compaq, Compaq.”

In April, IBM signed a 10-year agreement to handle all information technology for India’s largest cellphone company, Bharti Televentures, a deal that Big Blue estimated would be worth at least $700 million. The same month IBM paid $160 million for a major Indian call center called Daksh.

And many of the Indian outsourcing providers have opened offices in the United States, hiring executives and sales staff.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Earlier other than PSTN Dial-up & ISDN there were very few value addition with ISP like Leased Line, Hosting, Co-locating server, etc. But now with VSNL’s demonopolization and increase in service spectrum and increase in the knowledge of corporate sector, ISPs are looking forward to gamut of Value Added Services like VOIP, DSL, Bandiwidth on Deman, VPN, Managed Services, Vide & Web Conferencing, Net Telephony, and lots of other mix-n-match of services. This Express Computer article discusses the slag faced by ISP idustry in general due to the dial-up dependancy of the customer, there is need for new technologies and new exitement. For example, I don’t have boradband connection at home and may not in the near future also because in our area there are too many cybercafes and it should be profitable for my cable provider / internet provide to provide the connection in my area and/or building complex, but thanks to Reliance India Mobile I can now connect anywhere through my laptop or desktop.

Express Computer Online :The growth of the Internet subscriber base in India has slowed down, it was less than five percent during Q3 and Q4 of 2003. According to the Internet Service Providers Asso-ciation of India (ISPAI), this is because close to 95 percent of Indian customers are still on dial-up which is unreliable in terms of speed and quality of service. Worse, a dial-up user gets hit with hefty phone bills on top of what he pays the ISP.

ISPAI points out that ISPs are focusing on metros and select B-class cities. This leaves small towns where customers cannot afford the high cost of buying a PC, an Internet connection and paying the telephone charges for ‘net access. These users prefer to go the nearest cybercafe; hence the scope for increasing the dial-up subscriber base is very low. ISPs are therefore forced to look at VAS to make up for the loss they are incurring from pure dial-up services. Says Amitabh Singhal, president, ISPAI, “Out of the 4.1 million Internet subscribers in India, a majority reside in cities. That number can go up to 40 million if we offer value-added services such as broadband.”

ISPAI believes that Indian ISPs have plumped for the VAS route in order to be profitable with a low subscriber base. One obvious route is to sell services that increase bandwidth consumption and thereby the ISP’s revenues. Notes Singhal, “In the last couple of years, many Indian ISPs have shuttered their establishments due to the slow growth of their subscriber base. ISPs will have to offer broadband and value-added services to remain in business.”

Popularity: 7% [?]

After the launch of Gmail (google’s email service) Yahoo! declared a 100 MB mail services but our very own Rediffmail dares to declare 1GB. Actually I was expecting the same from these email providers from long time since storages technologies have evolved and price/mb has dropped significantly, moreover the better management of space and deactivation of non-active members would have allowed yahoo & hotmail to provides space n x 10 MB long time ago. But there was no need, since there was no competition so nobody even thoought of providing . Now with google’s announcement the need has arrived to sustain the customers. But from 5 MB to 1 GB jump is amazing. I hope people will not misuse this for ‘xxx’ attachments ;-).

BusinessWire: Rediff.com India Limited (Nasdaq:REDF), one of the premier worldwide online providers of news, information, communication, entertainment and shopping services today announced the launch of Rediffmail 1GB effective 2000 hours IST today, giving virtually unlimited storage space of 1 gigabyte to all its free email users in India and worldwide.

With immediate effect, Rediffmail users will also be able to send in a single email a message of size up to 10 megabytes.

Earlier this year, Rediff.com had launched Rediffmail with enhanced security and feature-rich add-ons. Rediffmail users already enjoy a simple-to-use, fast and secured experience. Rediffmail is secured with an exclusive Spam Shield and enables one to write emails in 11 Indian languages.

Rediff.com will also start freeing up over 15 million email addresses that have not been in use over the years, giving new users a better chance of finding an email id of their choice. For the premium paid users, Rediffmail Plus and Rediffmail Mobile, the storage space available will be 2GB each. The storage previously available with Rediffmail was 5 MB and the mail message size 1 MB. For the paid Rediffmail Plus and Rediffmail Mobile users, storage was 10 MB and the mail message size 5 MB.

Popularity: 7% [?]

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan’s biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem.

Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes
that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so. But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line. Moral of the story: KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) i.e.alwayslook for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem

Popularity: 7% [?]

Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices are the driving factors of telecom growth in India especially in CDMA network implementations. The anti-outsourcing brigade in US should see to this how Indian Companies are helping Qualcomm, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel, Ericsson, Alcatel and thousands of others not only as a consultant or contractors but also as a customer. Lets us all know what TRADE means. India is not just a cheap labour port it is also a R&D Hub and no longer it is follower of technologies it has become one of the early implementers too.

3gNewsRoom : Lucent Technologies announced it has been awarded a contract worth nearly $30 million to support the CDMA network expansion of Tata Teleservices in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Lucent will provide equipment, software and services to increase the coverage and capacity of Tata’s network in this market.

Under the agreement, Lucent will supply Tata Teleservices with Lucent Flexent base stations that support 3G CDMA2000 1X service as well as upgrades for its mobile switching centers. The deployment will increase voice capacity on the network and enable Tata Teleservices to deliver a variety of value-added mobile high-speed data services such as video streaming and high- speed Internet access to more customers.

* Success and Future Opportunities for CDMA2000 Examined at 2004

* Lucent bags $30m Tata Tele deal

* India To BREW Mobile Apps

Popularity: 8% [?]

Steve Lohr (New York Times) writes: [Higher-skilled jobs not safe from outsourcing]

Although definitions vary, software architects are highly skilled workers who often earn six-figure salaries in the United States. The Microsoft contracts with Infosys and Satyam show that the work of software architects, senior software developers and software developers was being done by employees of the Indian companies working at U.S. Microsoft facilities.

A spokeswoman for Infosys said the company does not comment on its contracts. A Satyam spokesman could not be reached.

Critics of the outsourcing trend regard such agreements with Indian contractors, with work done both in the United States and in India, as a step toward shifting more and more skilled technology jobs overseas.

* Microsoft outsourcing high-end jobs, union says

* High-End Technology Work Not Immune to Outsourcing

Popularity: 8% [?]

Juniper’s CEO Scott Kriens On India in his Interview to BusinessWeek: [”There’s One IT Market: The Planet” ]

In India, we’ll have several hundred people in Bangalore by the end of the year. Some of them are in sales, but a lot of them are in development. There’s a tremendous supply of talent. China is a different story. There’s good labor for cheap, but also a huge economy. It’s a very big, important market for us. In Russia, engineers cost half of what they cost in India and China. But there aren’t a lot of English-speaking [engineers].

There’s one IT [information technology] market: the planet. It’s not a sustainable model to be a regional player.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Latest facts and figures of Indian Internet Service Providers found through GIPI india.

* ISP Licenses Issued - 540 Approx.

* Operational ISPs - 185 Approx

* Cities/Towns covered - 340 Approx.

* Internet Subscribers - 3.3 million Approx.

* Cyber Cafes / Public Access Kiosks - 12,000 Approx.

* In-principal approval for setting up Int’l Gateways - 45 ISPs

* Operational Int’l Gateways by 8 - 9 ISPs - 40 +

* Total Estimated Investment made by ISPs - Rs. 6000 crores

* Estimated Investment made on Eqpt. by ISPs - Rs. 2500 crores

* Estimated Employment Provided (Direct/Indirect) by Internet Industry - 1.1 lac

[Source : Internet Service Provider’s Association of India]

The Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) was set up in 1998 with a mission to ‘Promote Internet for the benefit of all’. ISPAI originally started activities in 1994, when e-mail licensees such as Sprint RPG Ltd., Global Telecom Services Ltd., Wipro Ltd., Datapro Information Technology Ltd., Crompton Greaves Ltd., Satyam Infoway Ltd., etc came together with the express purpose of initiating continuous dialogues with the Department of Telecommunication