Entries from July 2004 ↓

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Reliance Indiamobile has heated the ‘VAS on mobile’ market with its Rconnect services which provides 144kbps Internet Access on its CDMA Mobiles. The Indian telecom operators are testing similar services and finding out the best suitable options through EDGE (GSM) or EV DO (CDMA)
Business Line India Reports :

CELLULAR subscribers can now get Live TV, watch videos and experience high speed Internet surfing on their mobile handsets with Idea Cellular and Hutch, on Wednesday, announcing the launch of EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution) services. The service which has been launched for the first time in the country is capable of data downloads with speeds of 160 kilo bits per second compared to existing speeds of 40 kbps. Airtel is also planning a pan India roll-out by December.

While subscribers of Idea Cellular can avail the service for a flat fee of Rs 500 per month, Hutch users can avail the service for a monthly fee of Rs 100 plus additional charges for downloads. For example, every game downloaded would cost Rs 50 and a ringtone download Rs 10. Idea Cellular subscribers also have the option of paying 5 paise per kilobyte. Subscribers will need EDGE-enabled handsets also to avail the service.

What is EDGE ? (GSMWorld.com)

Further enhancements in data capability over the core GSM network will be provided with the introduction of Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution - known as EDGE*. This will achieve the delivery of advanced mobile services such as the downloading of video and music clips, full multimedia messaging, high-speed colour Internet access and e-mail on the move.

EDGE (or Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution) is a 3G technology that delivers broadband-like data speeds to mobile devices. It allows consumers to connect to the Internet and send and receive data, including digital images, web pages and photographs, three times faster than possible with an ordinary GSM/GPRS network. EDGE enables GSM operators to offer higher-speed mobile-data access, serve more mobile-data customers, and free up GSM network capacity to accommodate additional voice traffic.

What is EV-DO ?(Motorola)

1xEV-DO provides a true broadband service over mobile. With Peak Data Rate of 2.4 Mbps and Average Data Rate similar to wire-line broadband technologies, 1XEV-DO not only brings a superior end-user experience in wireless access to the Internet, but also enables a series of new applications and services

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BusinessWires PR : Axesstel, Inc. (AMEX:AFT), a leader in developing, manufacturing and marketing high-quality, CDMA-based fixed wireless voice and data solutions, hybrid terminals and engineering services to operators worldwide, today announced that it began shipments in June to Tata Teleservices Limited (”Tata Teleservices”), India’s leading private telecom service provider. Operating with the brand name Tata Indicom, Tata Teleservices is one of the largest fixed wireless service providers in the world and has over 1 million 3G1X fixed wireless service customers in India. It is anticipated that up to $45 million in revenue may be recorded by Axesstel related to these shipments during the third and fourth quarters of the current fiscal year.

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Mahesh Murthy gives us the example of one man global company.

LAST week I spent some time with a gent who runs a company in Mumbai that sells software to customers around the world. I had invested in them years ago, and for one reason or another we couldn’t catch up much in the middle, except to share notes on email.

Things were going well. He was not huge by global standards - about $250,000 in revenues, slated to double this year. Customers in more than 30 countries. Over 500,000 people around the world who’d tried his product. Over 5,000 of them who had paid for it and who use it. A well-known brand in its field.

The business was profitable. He reckons he is world No.3 in his niche. His product was acclaimed worldwide, reviewed by PC Magazine and such. All in all, it was a pretty good record - having survived through the worst downturns in the market, and still making it. And we were talking of how he’d done it.

It wasn’t that he was a coding or technical genius. The gent is actually a biology grad, and to my knowledge, can’t write code. But he’s always known what he wanted - and has figured out some inventive ways to get things done.

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A forbes.com report spotted on Slashdot.

Avaya, Motorola and Proxim this week are expected to announce a co-developed handset and enterprise network gear that let mobile phone users roam between cellular networks and wireless LANs.

The combination holds the promise of cutting phone costs for business customers and making mobile workers more productive. It is based on a new Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based Wi-Fi/cellular handset from Avaya and Motorola, IP-based or IP-enabled PBXs from Avaya, plus new WLAN switch and thin access points developed by Avaya and Proxim.

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India has become the unique example of telecom success in both GSM and CDMA. Indian operators have changed the equations of the telecom market. Earlier vendors used to always have the upper hand now they understand that they have to provide customized contracts and service and act as partners, cos India is a serious market and the opportunities are available starting from scratch - i.e at the level of Implementation phase. Thats why, you not only see implementations but India also becoming the test-bed or early implementator of some great telecom and broadband technologies. Every operator and vendor is now eyeing these ‘Value Addition’ technology and market and we will witness lots of new jargons in coming times like Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, EDGE, EV-DO, etc, etc.

The Indian telecom sector grew to 79.4 million customers at the end of May’04 - a 39 percent annual growth that came mainly by the doubling mobile users. A recent paper by Telecom.paper.nl estimates (paid subscription) that there are 0.4 internet, 0.2 broadband connections per 100 people in India.

The broadband sector is still at a very confusing stage since there is not a single technology which has stabilized, every vendor and every operator is singing a different tune. Even the discussion on connection to customer (medium) is divided into Wirelss / Copper / Fibre and Ethernet. The Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association (TEMA) has formed the India Broadband Forum primarily to provide technical, strategic, and marketing support to its member organizations venturing in the development of broadband products and services.

The next phase will the coming of foreign Telecom / Networking / Broadband services for the need of outsourcing i.e Remote Management and Monitoring and other services. For example a recent announcement from COLT telecom to move jobs from Germany and UK to India. India is not only providing the manpower in the services market but there are many companies like Notel, Lucent, Cisco, Qualcomm, Juniper, etc for which India has become the R&D base also, for both the software and hardware.

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Veteran Bollywood comedian, Mehmood, has died in the United States at the age of 72

I am a great fan of Mr. Mehmood, he was the true and may be the first “King Of Comedy” in the hindi film industry. I still remember a very simple but hillarious scene of “Pyar Kiye Jaa” in which he narrates a horror story to Omprakash , he was awarded Film Fare Award for that. Most of the comedians in India just use one method and repeat themselves in all their movies. But Mehmood was the first person who used make-up, accent, props and variety in his comedy. He was also ahead of time making movies such as Kuwara Baap, Padosan, Bombay to Goa, Jinny and Johny , etc. Padosan is still a terrific movie to watch , everytime you see it you experience the same madness. There is no other example of a true “comedy” in the Indian Masala movie industry. There is also a legend about him that once upon a time he became so popular among the audiences that Heroes (a typical lead character in every indian film) used to fear his presence in the movie and started boycotting him. One can simply put faith in this since he was the only comedian those days who gott to sing and dance with her very own female-sidekick (Helen, Durga Khote, Aruna Irani) in all him movies.

Filmography of Mehmood as: Actor, Miscellaneous Crew, Director, Producer on IMDB.com

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A Keralanext.com report :

At present, Bangalore has 1,60,000 professionals working in the technology sector and the number is the largest in one place on the planet.

While about 1,00,000 professionals work in IT companies, the remaining 60,000 are working in the ITES-BPO sector. The number of working professionals is expected to cross 2,00,000 during the year 2004-05 with many IT and ITES-BPO companies rapidly expanding their manpower.

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Found via Slashdot a nice article (Unix’s founding fathers) on Economist.com about Dennis Ritchie who invented C and was one of the key members of the team behind Unix.

It is that interplay between the technical and the social that gives both C and Unix their legendary status. Programmers love them because they are powerful, and they are powerful because programmers love them. David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale, perhaps put it best when he said, “Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defence against complexity.” Dr Ritchie’s creations are indeed beautiful examples of that most modern of art forms.

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Nicholas G. Carr - author of “Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage” in his editorial on New York Times writes about the future of the software industry. He is reacting on the Microsoft’s decision to return $32 billion to its shareholders , according to to him it may be a wise business move, but it is also an admission of defeat.

With its announcement this week that it will pay a special one-time dividend of $3 a share, the company is confessing that despite years of trying, it has not found an attractive way to invest its cash reserves. After decades of spectacular growth, the world’s most famous software company seems resigned to a more sedate middle age.

Microsoft may be the biggest name in software, but its problem is not unique. In recent weeks, many of the largest suppliers of business software, like Computer Associates, Seibel Systems and Veritas, have announced that their growth will fall short of investors’ expectations.

The software industry’s sluggishness is not just a reflection of the vagaries of the economic cycle. It is a manifestation of a fundamental, if often overlooked, characteristic of the industry’s product: software never decays. Machinery breaks down, parts wear out, supplies get depleted. But software code remains unchanged by time or use. In stark contrast to other industrial products, software has no natural repurchase cycle.

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Blinkx has launched its desktop search application to add more buzz in the increasingly competitive Web search market. Blinkx installs its own search client and mini toolbars within Windows applications, distills large amounts of text-from Word documents, Web pages or e-mails-into concepts in order to retrieve search results.

blinkx automatically links information from files on your hard disk, and can suggest content from news sites, the internet, video and blogs. It is not designed to replace current search engines like Google or Yahoo, but is a completely new way to use information on the internet. - About Blinkx

Built on top of a powerful search engine, Lookout is the only personal search engine that can search all of your email from directly within Outlook - in seconds…

You can use Lookout to search your:

- Email messages
- Contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, etc.
- Data from exchange, POP, IMAP, PST files, Public Folders
- Files on your computer or other computers
- … Very soul (okay, not true)

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Newyork Times has a article on the reverse migration of Indians from US and other Countrie back to India due to a potentially vast & booming Indian economy.

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apcmag informs about the new ‘personalization‘ feature of Google. :

Personalised search services collect information about the subjects which interest you, so a search engine knows in advance that you are interested in computers and not fruit. Google’s version of personalisation does just this. After completing a profile, searches made at http://labs.google.com/personalized produce not just the usual list of results but also a “personalisation slider” to apply your profile to search results.

Set the slider to maximum and all results are subjected to an analysis based on your profile. Select minimum and the results revert to Google’s standard service. Set the slider to somewhere between these two extremes and it will adjust the balance to reflect the placement.

The flipside for Google is that your profile also has the potential to allow it to charge more for advertising. At present, the profile is stored on users’ hard drives as a cookie and advertisers’ greedy mitts are kept away from its potential for targeted advertising.

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The India’s No.1 Exhibition on the Advertising Industry : The MediaExpo 2004 will be held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi from 6th to 8th August. It would be also the venue for ‘Media Advertising Awards 2004′ The highlights are : -

Seminars & Conferences :: On various advertising related segments addressed by eminent speakers
• Awards nite :: Media Advertising Awards to honour the creative talent of the industry.
• Photographers’ Gallery :: Showcase of works of various photographers.
• Showcase Gallery :: A display of new & innovative products from the gifts & promotion segment.
• Theme Pavilions
• Laser Show
• Fashion Show

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Telecomm India 2004, The Telecommunication and Information Technology Trade Show & Seminar will be held at Mumbai (India) 25 - 28 October 2004 at Bandra-Kurla MMRDA Complex, Mumbai (Bombay) between Monday - Thursday ; 10:00AM-6.30PM . The event is support by Government of India Ministries of :- Ministry of Information & Broadcasting & Ministry of Communications & IT. The Exhibitors profile can be located here and the Conference details can ber located here

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CFO.com reports (Big Rise in IT Outsourcing, Says Survey) about the recent survey conducted by Patni Computer Systems Ltd which says that nearly three-quarters of companies expect to increase their outsourcing budget by at least 20 percent over the next year and a half.

Fully 41 percent of respondents said they expected a 20 percent to 35 percent increase in their outsourcing budget during the next 18 months, 18 percent expected an increase of between 30 percent and 50 percent, and 13 percent expected an increase of 50 percent or more. Just 8 percent said that they expected no increase.

More than half — 54 percent — said that public perception has had no impact on their decisions to outsource. In fact, 30 percent said the only impact was on their ability to speak publicly about their initiatives. While 16 percent did concede that the debate over outsourcing made them reconsider their strategy, no respondents said that it forced them to postpone outsourcing altogether.

As for workforce-related risks: 43 percent of respondents cited lost knowledge, 38 percent singled out mismatched roles and competencies, and just 8 percent cited worker backlash.

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Tom Walker dissects the GNU General Public License (GPL), on Newsforge. According to him the GPL has come to resemble digital rights management (DRM) and not the ” free-as-in-freedom ” motto ; every user should be able to obtain the source code for the software they use.

According to him :

- The GPL has unintentional harmful effects
- The GPL doesn’t do what it was designed to do
- You can’t stop undesired usage, so leave it open

SQLite Copyright

The original author of SQLite has dedicated the code to the public domain. Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute the original SQLite code, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commerical or non-commerical, and by any means.

Contributed Code
In order to keep SQLite complete free and unencumbered by copyright, other contributors to the SQLite code base are asked to likewise dedicate their contributions to the public domain. If you want to send a patch or enhancement for possible inclusion in the SQLite source tree, please accompany the patch with the following statement:

The author or authors of this code dedicate any and all copyright interest in this code to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights this code under copyright law.
Regrettably, as of 2003 October 20, we will no longer be able to accept patches or changes to SQLite that are not accompanied by a statement such as the above. In addition, if you make changes or enhancements as an employee, then a simple statement such as the above is insufficient. You must also send by surface mail a copyright release signed by a company officer. A signed original of the copyright release should be mailed to:

Hwaci
6200 Maple Cove Lane
Charlotte, NC 28269
USA

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Rajesh Jain writes about localization and simplification of the Internet Content so that it becomes more relevant and intelligent - the creation of an SME Trade Information Marketplace (STIM) and PIN-News.

In India, e-business has lagged primarily because of the lack of an Internet infrastructure in the country. There are signs that this is going to change in the near-term as cheaper computers combined with affordable always-on broadband connections will bring more consumers and businesses online. India’s current base of 17 million users is expected to grow rapidly and touch 60-100 million in the next 3 years. Add to this the rapidly growing mobile users (already at 35 million) and India could be set for a boom in e-commerce in the coming years. A harbinger of this was the recent entry of eBay into India via the acquisition of Baazee.com for $50 million. Given this context, there are two platforms which can help dramatically accelerate e-business in India: the creation of an SME Trade Information Marketplace (STIM) and PIN-News.

STIM is about helping small- and medium-sized enterprises build and maintain an online presence, and connect with each other. By using two-way publish-subscribe technologies (wikis, weblogs, RSS aggregators), it will become much easier for SMEs to get out of the marketing trap that they find themselves in and grow their business. Each business needs to have an online presence comprising of four components: an “About Us” page in the form of a wiki which can be easily edited, a “What’s New” page which has the new developments at the company both on the buy and sell side, a meta information page which gives contact and industry information and can be used by search engines to filter results, and a set of subscriptions based on keywords or topics which deliver the relevant updates from other SMEs, thus helping connect one business to other based on interest.

PIN-News is about building a bottom-up community information system. It is built around PIN codes. Neighbourhood events can be posted on to specific pages, organised in a weblog-format. By using standardized forms to do the post, it is possible to capture the information in XML format and use a matching engine to send out alerts to people. For example, if I am interested in book exhibitions or special offers, I can set up an alert on a few PIN codes around my home and workplace. When the book shops in the area do their updates (as part of STIM), I can be immediately alerted. PIN-News thus fills the gap in communicating dynamic information to people who are most likely to benefit from it.

Taken together, STIM and PIN-News can help make the Internet a utility in the lives of Indians and give the ones who do not have access a reason to get connected. It leverages the fact that much of our lives is spent in neighbourhoods and yet we know so little about it because our current media cannot get narrow enough to cost-effectively reach us. This is where the Internet and electronic “information marketplaces” can make a difference.

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Do you now that our government runs a program called Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (S G R Y) ? No. No problems you can atleast know now how it is screwed.

Businessworld reports about the The black hole of Jalpaiguri: (the last page of the article)

Miles away from Gudhiyarkuthi, in Delhi’s Krishi Bhavan, the building housing the main office of the ministry of rural development, officials struggle with the fact that in 2003-04, Rs 264 crore was not used by the states to which the money was allocated by the Centre. “The problem is that, at the end of the year, when states don’t use the funds they are allotted, this surplus money is allocated to other states. The problem is that the decision to allot the surpluses to another state is an essentially political one,” says an officer. States like Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan are allotted the surpluses that other states will not spend.

Adds the officer: “Why should the surpluses be distributed to others? Not being able to use the funds reflects a failure of the bureaucracy in a state and in the districts. It’s not that there is no poverty in those states.” The officer points out that states like Punjab and Haryana are also allotted a large volume of foodgrains under the scheme. “This is absurd. Why do these states need the foodgrains when even the poor in these states buy directly from the market?”

The other problem is with the assets themselves that are created. Around 15 per cent of the funds are supposed to be for maintenance of the assets created in earlier years. “Unfortunately, we’ve found that not much of the money is used for maintenance,” says the officer.

Ironically, even despite these problems, many believe that the Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojna is more successful than most other government schemes (See ‘How The SGRY Works’).

Will Manmohan Singh’s proposals to transfer funds directly from the centre to the panchayats work? For all its faults, even in West Bengal where panchayati raj institutions are supposed to function more efficiently than in other states, village panchayats are the best institutions to judge how government money could be used in those areas. But they need to be made to work better. And one of the most important ways to do that is to put information in the hands of people like Kharen Roy.

Till that happens, Singh could spend all the money he wants - but the poor might still vote him out of power five years from now.

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Wipro Technologies, the global IT services division of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT), announced the launch of its RFID enabled concept store at its Electronic City campus. The concept store demonstrates how item level RFID tagging enables automatic check-out, intelligent shrinkage avoidance, smart stock maintenance, and tracing and tracking of apparel by the store manager. The concept store showcases RFID technology being used across different business processes in a retail store and has been launched to help customers understand the working of RFID in a real world environment. The concept store is part of the RFID center of excellence at Wipro Technologies.

The RFID Journal reports the future plan of WIPRO for RFID :

Recently, Wipro developed software that will schedule the correct number of cashiers to meet demand at the Metro Group’s RFID-enabled Extra Future Store, in Rheinberg, Germany. Once the software is deployed, which is set to be happen within the next few months, customers can opt to have the bar code on their loyalty card scanned as they enter the store. The software will use those customers’ shopping history to calculate when they are likely to reach the checkout register. The software will then assign staff to work the sales terminals so there will always be enough cashiers to meet customer demand, while freeing up staff to do other work when they are not required to process sales transactions.

Wipro maintains that its RFID software and services can be customized from applications that Wipro has already developed. “Products are 70 to 80 percent ready and then customized for individual customer requirements,” says Bhanu Murthy, vice president, retail vertical at Wipro Technology, in Bangalore, India.

As an aid to its potential RFID customers, Wipro says it has developed its RFID return-on-investment (ROI) engine-a software program that can calculate the potential costs and returns for companies planning to deploy RFID. “This give a more accurate picture of potential cost than anything so far,” says Murthy.

What is RFID ?

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a method of remotely storing and retrieving data using devices called RFID tags. An RFID tag is a small object, such as an adhesive sticker, that can be attached to or incorporated into a product. RFID tags contain antennas to enable them to receive and respond to radio-frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. More on Wikipedia

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Diana Farrell , the director of the McKinsey Global Institute, and Scratch Zainulbhai , director in theMcKinsey’s Mumbai office write a report on ” A richer future for India “

The wealth generated by India’s fast-growing information technology and business-process-outsourcing industries shows that the country has started living up to its economic potential. Unfortunately, they produce just 3 percent of GDP and employ less than one-half of 1 percent of the nonfarm labor force. By contrast, most sectors of India’s economy remain shielded from global competition by high tariffs and restrictions on foreign direct investment and are thus woefully uncompetitive. Although some might argue that removing these barriers would threaten social objectives such as the protection of jobs and incomes, a robust economy would be more likely to realize them.

The take-away
If India is to replicate the success of its IT and outsourcing industries elsewhere in its economy, its leaders must lower barriers to trade and encourage foreign investment in other sectors. …..More (Preminum Content : Requires registration - Free)

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NYT reports the fading outsourcing backlash in US :

As Indian outsourcing companies grew fearful that negative publicity would harm business, Nasscom tried to protect themselves by campaigning for outsourcing with lawmakers, government officials and industry lobbies in the United States and Europe.

But in the last two months, analysts say the backlash issue seems to be fading in importance to the American public and to United States businesses.

“No longer are customers prefacing outsourcing questions with what they should do to deflect the backlash issue,” said Partha Iyengar, research director for Gartner in Mumbai. Gartner nonetheless still recommends that its United States clients continue with employee-impact assessments and community audits before embarking on outsourcing.

Some experts said they expected the concerns to be replaced by more pressing matters, like the shortage of skilled labor.

“Most companies are expanding so rapidly,” Mr. Mehta of Nasscom said, “that we fear the new threat for outsourcing is not the backlash but the imbalance in supply of skilled professionals.”

The hostility against outsourcing may have inadvertently helped the industry, some experts suggested.

“The backlash proved a gold mine of free publicity for Indian outsourcing companies,” Mr. Iyengar of Gartner said. “For many U.S. companies, the backlash made offshoring a compelling proposition.”

Even smaller outsourcing companies, like iGate Global Solutions, based in Bangalore, reached some deals after the controversy. The company, with $125 million in annual revenues and 4,000 employees, has customers like General Electric, GreenPoint Financial and Kraft Foods.

“The backlash issue made outsourcing so mainstream that even my barber was speaking knowledgeably about outsourcing,” said iGate’s chief executive, Phaneesh Murthy, who is based in Fremont, Calif.

In political circuits too the voices we hear now are somewhat different as kerry accepting the outsourcing

“We recognise that outsourcing is a reality, but at the same time, we want to develop our jobs and industries more at home here too. But Senator Kerry is an internationalist and I think India should welcome him as an American President,” Richardson told reporters when asked about his party’s strident posture against outsourcing.

Even then people are not short of Myths and still more knowledge is required on this subject . Far from damaging the economy of the United States, offshoring should enable its companies to direct resources to next-generation technologies and ideas — if public policy doesn’t get in the way. - A report on CFO.com

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Business Standard reports cheer in the indian infotech market :

Infosys Technologies’ first quarter results for 2004-05 have comfortably beaten the street, both on revenues and earnings. Far more significant, though, is the upward revision in its guidance for this fiscal.

According to the company’s revised estimates, income growth for the full year is expected to be around 40 per cent, while earnings per share are expected to grow at 34 per cent. That’s a healthy rate of growth.

Given the fact that the Infosys management has traditionally been very conservative about guidance, the markets will undoubtedly re-rate the company, especially as it trades at a forward price-earnings ratio of well below its annual earnings growth rate.

But Infosys’ revised guidance also sends another strong signal to the market - a pointer whose implications go far beyond the effect on a particular stock.

Taken together with MphasiS BFL recent results and its management’s upbeat assessment of prospects, the signal going out loud and clear is that the outlook for Indian software services has changed significantly for the better.

Tata Consultancy tops list of IT software exporters

India’s technology hub sees growth in investment in first quarter

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Presented by the British Council, the 0110 Digital Film Festival aims to provide a platform for filmmakers and artists who want to experiment with alternative forms of filmmaking. The festival has a competition section for which entries are invited. The deadline for submissions is July 23, 2004. There is no entry fee. For further details and to download the application form, click here[PDF].

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Pluck enhances Internet Explorer to:
- Deliver stories from all your favorite sites
- Organize your Favorites so you can access them from any computer
- Share Web pages and folders with colleagues and friends
- Search Google, eBay & Amazon in a single window
- Create custom eBay feeds with Auction Scout (NEW!)
And it’s free.

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Buddy Zone is a fun, virtual meeting place for networking and bonding. Make new friends and get to know your old ones better.

Joining Buddy Zone

It’s as easy at 1 2 3

1. All you need is MSN Messenger to get started. If you don’t have MSN Messenger, download it today.

2. Enter Buddy Zone via MSN Messenger by completing an easy, one time registration process.

3. On submitting the registration form, you will receive an e-mail from the administrator. Simply, confirm your registration via e-mail.

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Myadda.com a social networking site is launched by Anand Giri (29) a Industrialist from Bangalore. He becomes your first friend on Myadda as soon as you register. The registration is very simple and fast, hardly takes 2 minutes. The profile contains a special section as Schools & Companies which may be useful to find you old school day crush. And if you pathetic ones didn’t have any crush and desperately looking for one, then you can also date or show your interest in gettint married. The site is not very populated hence you have to be very patient.

When you login you have to choose login as Social or business I have to find the idea behind it when I have the time. I didn’t like the idea behind having case sensitive usernames, it may be irritating to many people and they will find themselves clicking on “forgot password?” the very next time they are back on the site. There are somethings which you may want to have or there are something which may not be working, but it is mentioned by Myadda that they are currently in beta stage, these things may happen and they are open for feedbacks.

Overall Myadda is indeed a very good tool and may satisfy the appetite of Indian netwokers with improvements as it crosses it’s beta stage. All the best guys!!!

What can myadda do for you ?
* Build Business Contacts
* Meet New Friends
* Reunion with Old Classmates
* Create the fun of Addas
* Find Soul Mates
* Enrich your Lifestyle
* Have Unlimited Fun

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Slashdot discussion on the new improved Popularity: 7% [?]

A study by Business Strategies Group (BSG) Ltd., ranks CyberMedia’s Living Digital and PC Quest as the top two IT publications in terms of circulatio. This is the first ever study of the Indian B2B publishing market and covers revenue through advertisement, circulation and reach of the magazines, events organized and the future of the medium. The highlights mentioned on CIOL’s site are listed below:

* The market for B2B events is currently worth around $75 million in organizers’ revenues

* On-line revenues from Internet-based promotional and marketing activities could double in 2004 to reach $22 million. However, given the rapidly increasing Internet usage within business, it is likely to grow fast.

* Despite changes in government policy on foreign investment in mid-2002 were, regulatory barriers to involvement in the market by foreign companies remain substantial.

  - Australian financial services group acquired 19 percent stake in Hindustan Times

  - Financial Times picked up 13.5 percent stake in Business Standard

  - Dow Jones announced an agreement with Bennett Coleman & Co, publishers of Times of India and The Economic Times, to establish a joint venture to publish an Indian edition of the Wall Street journal.

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Rajesh Jain Quotes WSJ :

Engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology here [in Chennai] smile as they watch a magic brown box grumble, groan and then spit out 12 dirty 10-rupee notes, each valued at about 18 European cents.

They have built India’s first rural automated teller machine to serve remote areas of the subcontinent. It can process the worn notes in small denominations that are the main currency in Indian villages, and at $800, or about €650, the machine costs less than one-twentieth the price of a regular ATM.

India’s Icici Bank Ltd., with the help of the institute in Chennai — formerly Madras — and others, has developed the village ATM from inexpensive homemade parts and programming. Despite its low price tag, the machine is built to survive extreme weather and power outages. It can tell when two ragged notes get stuck together and can scan fingerprints to identify rural savers who are illiterate or are reluctant to use a personal-identification number. The ATM will be tested at an Icici branch in Chennai this month. If it works, the rugged ATM eventually could be used at hundreds of Internet kiosks in remote areas of India.

The project is more than an altruistic attempt to improve the lives of rural Indians. It is the latest example of how India’s nimble private-sector banks try to use local high-tech skills to squeeze profits out of small savers.

Indian companies such as HDFC Bank Ltd. and Icici didn’t exist until deregulation opened the market to private banks in the 1990s. Now, they boast millions of customers and are among the most-profitable and fastest-growing companies in India. HDFC and Icici both have seen their profits grow by more than 30% annually during the past five years.

The trick, they say, is technology. In a country where most potential savers make less than $100 a month, the banks have mastered ways of attracting small customers, even when they hold accounts with a minimum balance of $100. Setting up a national network of full-fledged branches was too expensive, so the banks expanded using ATMs, phone banking and the Internet to reach new customers inexpensively.

“The challenge is that the transaction sizes are very small by international standards,” says Neeraj Swaroop, country head of retail banking at HDFC in Bombay. “We were able to do it in an economically viable manner by investing in the right kind of technology.”

Thanks to affordable technologies, the most advanced banks in India say more than 70% of transactions are done outside branches. “They are aggressively targeting the customer like never before,” says Gurunath Mudlapur, head of research at Khandwala Securities in Bombay. “They are using a lot of innovation for the Indian context.”

Popularity: 7% [?]

A BBC Report : The internet is beginning to have a revolutionary effect on the 700 million people who live in villages in India - and the charge is being led by women.

Popularity: 8% [?]