Computer Gupshup

His first stint as a blogger lasted all of three months.

Prasad blogged on a range of issues--the Gujjar community's agitation in Rajasthan, inflation, the Indo-US nuclear deal--but found that irrespective of his subject matter, the debate he sought to start would inevitably end up in complaints about the Indian Railways or the government.

"Dear Laluji, sadar pranam (salutations)!" read a comment on his post on the Gujjar agitation. "My husband Baba Sidhaye, (an) ex-western railway employee, is the first and only deaf and dumb by birth international cricketer in the world from India among 110 crore of Indian population. I would like to know: What your railway ministry has done to recognize his exemplary services to the nation and Indian Railways? I think that he is eligible for all the awards of government of India..." On 25 July, Prasad wryly remarked, "I would like to thank all those who have posted their comments on my blog. It has come to my notice that most of the comments are related to the functioning of railways, where people have pointed out various deficiencies in the services. We are studying all the suggestions and will try to implement them." He has not written since, though he may return to blogging later.

Prasad's blog is a case in point about why Indian politicians and political parties are reluctant to tap the growing number of Indian Internet users to further their agenda. As of September 2007, India had 49 million Internet users, according to a study by the eTechnology Group of IMRB International, a South Asian market research firm.

Access to a politician lies at the root of this reluctance, says Sanjay Sharma, managing director of QuBitTechnologies Pvt. Ltd, which has been running the official website of Indian Olympic Association president and Congress politician Suresh Kalmadi (www.skalmadi.org), the unofficial website of minister of state for information technology and communications Jyotiraditya Scindia (www.jyotiraditya.com) and an unofficial Congress party website, www.congress4india.com.

"The problem comes up when there is a flood of small and big requests. When you open up access to a politician, this happens and it is difficult to manage. Politicians have a group of handlers who restrict access and act as filters," Sharma says. "But when access is opened up, the equations get topsy-turvy and there is a fundamental conflict. The politician just wants to say things and find a way to filter access to him." Congress party's computer department chairman Vishvjit P. Singh, agrees. "The problem with interactivity is not only the bandwidth requirement but also that anyone can say anything they want." `Intolerant people'?

While the ministry of corporate affairs is working out the modalities of the proposal, it is understood that emails would be an accepted means of communication between a company and its shareholders.

The far-reaching proposals which has found mention in the new companies law Bill, is expected to introduce an era of next-generation company management where board meetings could be held at the click of a mouse. Officials say the proposals would ensure that crucial company meetings are not cancelled because of the absence of the requisite number of officials.

Welcome to the new e-age classroom. In a few schools in India, the Intel's classmate PC (CMPC) programme is revolutionizing teaching as well as learning. In some schools it's at pilot stage while in others the actual rollout has started.

The class starts with the teacher uploading a small video on the topic she is teaching. She keeps on adding her inputs during the video session which plays on each child's laptop via a WiFi (wireless fidelity) connection. The students are required to take the PCs home and bring them back fully charged.

After the lecture, the teacher gives a small group exercise and forms their groups electronically. Students needn't sit together to perform the group task. They can interact via chat windows. Each one can see what the group leader is doing on his PC and add inputs.

During the class, some students start talking. Immediately a message pops up on their screens in bold -- `keep your mouth shut!' Meanwhile, Amit tries to surf the internet for the latest cricket score. Instantly, a message pops on teacher's master PC and she disallows Amit's PC's from doing anything but the exercise.

In fact, the teacher's master PC's monitor is nothing but an interactive white board placed on the wall instead of a blackboard. The teacher uses the interactive white board to draw or write. And for that she does not need a chalk or pen. She can do it with her fingers. At about Rs 13,900 for a Linux-based PC and Rs 15,500 for a Windows XP-based PC, each student is equipped with a small, blue coloured notebook PC with a 2 GB or a 4 GB memory.

In the pilots for the Millenium School, Intel provided 1,500 CMPCs. "Initially it was challenge for teachers to transit from the traditional mode of teaching to a new method but the turnaround happened in a month's time and the results have been great," says Abhinav Dhar, president, K-12 initiative, Educomp.

There couldn't have been a worse time for Ujjwal Sen's home computer to crash: The high school student from the suburbs of Mumbai was buried in applications to U.S. universities in May. With deadlines fast approaching, a worried Sen ran to a cybercafé down the street from his home. The 10-seat café, squeezed between a grocer and a hardware store, was always the backstop when the 16-year-old's computer went on the fritz.

Imagine Sen's horror when he discovered that it had been replaced by a pastry shop. Worse still, three other cafés in his neighborhood had closed down as well. Finally, after trudging two miles, Sen found a café, but was granted admission after a long interrogation about his background that only satisfied the owners when he produced his student ID card. "I never imagined that cybercafés in Mumbai would disappear, or entering them would be tough," says Sen.

His concerns aren't unfounded. The increasingly heavy curbs on friendly neighborhood cybercaf&eacutes are stunting the spread of the Internet. The crackdown comes as India is trying to increase household PC penetration, which is currently at just 2 PCs for every 100 households, says the technology trade group NASSCOM, and broadband connectivity, an abysmal 4 million connections, vs. China's 3.2 million new connections every quarter, according to BNP Paribas. Even Vietnam, with a population of just 84 million, is signing up 120,000 new broadband users per month, according to IDC.

Café Owners Now Need Licenses
Why the crackdown? Officials in states like Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, and Haryana in the north believe that getting tough with cybercafe acutes will help them nab "terrorists, hackers, pedophiles, and porn users," says Ashish Saboo, president of the Association of Public Internet Access Providers. India has long been a target of terrorist attacks both within and beyond its borders. In May 60 people died in a deadly bomb explosion aboard a passenger train in the city of Jaipur, while another 60 were killed in an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7.

• Turning Away Customers
  
• Shades of BlackBerry Eavesdropping
  
• Getting Rid of Pirated Software

Wassup is the most common question among friends and one that elicits `blank vacuity' to `inane comments' to `the meaning of life'.

But what happens when you have too-long a buddy-list and cannot ask all your friends this all-important life-changing-question?

Enter twitter. It's a Web 2.0 tool that basically `wassup's your friends all day long and lets you read their answers if you choose to subscribe (in twitter parlance).

Twitter lets you publish updates about your life in 140 characters or less (SMS limit) to family or friends who choose to follow you. All you need to do is answer the question, `what are you doing?'

It is a device agnostic message routing system which essentially means that one can send and receive messages (tweets in Twitter lingo) in a number of ways, including their website, mobile phones, instant messaging clients and downloadable desktop applications.

Life happens between blogs and email
As Common Craft puts it, `Life happens between blog posts and emails' and it is precisely this life between the blog and email that twitter lets you publish.

While many people send out updates like "had an amazing cup of coffee" or "going for a jog", twitter is increasingly being used by people to share their thoughts and to provide links to things they have been reading or experiencing.

There are many benefits to twitter, other than keeping up with the lives of one's friends.For one, it is easy. With easy access to technology, we are pretty much a lazy race. Blogs of 300 words or more are difficult to pen with people turning to micro-blogging from the comfort of their mobile phones.

Saving men, helping the helpless a la' superman
Twitter recently saved a man from jail and got an unemployed person the job of his dreams. A man who was jailed in Egypt sent frantic tweets (updates) and his `followers' (contacts) mobilized forces to get him out of jail.

• Twitter in India
  
• Tweeting brands
  
• Tap into the global brain
  

The ITES sector has matured considerably with its expansion into varied verticals, well differentiated service offerings and increasing geographic penetration. India's importance among emerging economies, both as a supply and demand centre is fuelling further growth of the sector. The IT / ITES industry continues to be one of the fastest growing industries in India, while India maintains its position as a strategic off-shoring destination for MNCs worldwide.

The ITES-BPO employee base has grown to 553,000 in FY (financial year) 07 from 415,000 in FY 06. Over the past decade, the Indian BPO segment has witnessed significant transformation. Starting with basic data entry tasks, the industry graduated to a high proportion of voice-based services and a range of back-office processing activities. The last 3-4 years have seen the scope of services expanding to include increasingly complex processes involving rule-based decision making and even research services requiring informed individual judgment.

The rapid expansion in the scope of BPO has been accompanied by an equally rapid adoption across a range of vertical industries. This wide range of services may be summarised into four broad categories comprising customer interaction services (CIS), finance and accounting (F&A), human resource administration and niche business services.

Key highlights of domestic BPO industry:

BPO demand in the domestic market has witnessed noticeable growth over the past few years. The annual revenue aggregate of the domestic market for ITES-BPO grew to USD 1.2 billion in FY 2006-07 from USD 0.9 billion in FY 2005-06, illustrating a significant increase in demand. While the high growth rate may be attributed to a small-base effect, the rapid adoption of BPO in the domestic market is receiving well-deserved attention.

The Indian economy is increasingly being integrated globally, businesses in India are beginning to face increasing levels of global competition and being pushed to deliver world class levels of product and service quality. ITES-BPO has emerged as an effective means of entrusting specialists with the task of consistently delivering the desired high-levels of quality - leaving the client organisations to focus on their core businesses.

Key growth drivers of Indian ITES-BPO exports:

Abundant talent- India's young demographic profile is an inherent advantage complemented by an academic infrastructure that generates a large pool of English speaking talent. Talent suitability concerns are being addressed through a combination of government, academia and industry led initiatives. These initiatives include national roll out of skill, setting up finishing schools to supplement graduate education with training in specific technology areas and soft skills and memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with education agencies to facilitate industry inputs on curriculum and teaching and develop faculty development programme.

The price hike is attributed to rupee depreciation and increased taxes that have hit hardware companies.

Most manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, HCL Infosystems, Lenovo, Dell and Acer have production units in India. These units largely look at product configuration, value added distribution & customer services and reverse logistics in India, and the major components, like memory and LCDs, are imported. The rupee has fallen 8.3% in 2008 since January, the worst fall since 1993, when it depreciated by 8.75% in the same period. It was trading at Rs 39.90 to a dollar on March 31, 2008, but has depreciated to Rs 42.90 per dollar. According to analysts, the hardware companies have tight profit margins and therefore have been in a wait-and-watch mode on prices. They are slowly pushing the burden of rupee depreciation on channel partners and end consumers.

Another important factor contributing to the price rise is the greater adoption of LCDs and levy of taxes. Sumanta Mukherjee, manager, computing products research, IDC India, says, "The increase in the average sale value (ASV) of desktop PCs is on account of an increasing adoption of TFT/LCD monitors and a change in tax regulation-the levy of excise duty on MRP rather than on the `street price' or the market operating price."

HP, which has been the market leader for notebook PC and desktop PC market, has extended a price hike of 13% to all components. George Paul, executive vice president, marketing, HCL Infosystems, says, "We announced the price hike on our various products from 5%-10%, but if the input prices go up, we will reconsider our price points." Analysts say companies like Lenovo and Dell are likely to follow suit.

Imparting education surely has come a long way today, from gurukuls to virtual classrooms, where the teacher sits on his PC and teaches students across the globe while tutor and trainee are linked with a common site. Students preparing for competitions, medical or engineering tests in districts of Gurdaspur, Mansa, Abohar, Jind, Kaithal or the far off districts in Himachal, are now availing services of the best of teachers in these virtual classrooms.

D.C. Panday, who runs coaching institute in Chandigarh, says virtual teaching has helped him expand reach. An author of IIT entrance examination preparation books, Panday says he was flooded with e-mails from all over the country, requesting him to enrol students in his institute. "Since there is a limit on the number of students I can accept, the concept of virtual teaching has helped me. I now tell outstation students to opt for a virtual teaching session," he adds.

Harmanpreet Singh, founder and CEO of authorGen Technologies, which has developed a software called WiZiQ to help take virtual classes, says, "The concept has found acceptance in the region. In three months alone, we have witnessed 100 per cent growth in the users. All you need is a PC and a broadband connection, and you can start your teaching session".

The virtual classrooms have transcended the geographical boundaries as these newage gurus accept students from across the country as well as students from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and many other South-East Asian countries. Ask Gaurav Tekriwal, who conducts high-speed Vedic mathematics courses through WiZiQ platform for students in Hong Kong, the US, the UK, besides all metros within the country. "The reach of virtual classrooms is phenomenal. I can now sit anywhere in the world and conduct classes. We do not have a physical institute, teaching-learning is only through the computer," he says.

Its not just regular coaching that has found acceptance in e-learning. People like Kalyan Sarkar conduct motivational classes for clients across the world through a virtual class session. "People around the world are interested in upgrading their knowledge. And virtual classrooms serves a perfect platform," he says.

In fact, the concept has caught up well with the coaching institutes and many of them have launched a separate e-tutoring division. As the economies of scale improve, these e-tutors make a neat profit. For those, who are taking students in the US and the UK for reading, mathematics and science, they can easily make anything between $20-$90 an hour, with a one-on-one teaching session fetching more moolah.

Adds Harmanpreet, "As this is gaining acceptance, we have decided to launch a premium service with a payment module for the sessions and advanced features wherein we will be featuring specialised teachers in each field".

A significant number of people are using the social network sites for work-related tasks which include research on potential employees and generating new business, a report by global HR firm Manpower stated.

However, a majority is using these sites for personal reasons, with 83 per cent of people studied logging on to stay in touch with friends through them.

While 17 per cent use the sites to research for potential employers, 10 per cent for networking and generating new business and 17 per cent for other work-related reasons.

"Growth of this new medium is rapid. In future, due to huge Internet penetration and younger profile of our country expansion will further accelerate," Manpower India managing director Naresh Malhan said.

Experts believe in today's competitive world, it is important to target active as well as passive job seekers.

"About 30 per cent of the job market in the country is represented by passive job seekers, while about just 15-20 per cent are very active," HR service provider PeopleStrong CEO Pankaj Bansal said.

The passive market can be tapped through the networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook as people using it for personal reasons and not at present looking out for a new job may get attractive opportunities through the websites, Bansal said.

Technology is making it easier for companies to get to the population they want to get to, but they are not as adept as they need to be at finding the people they really want, Malhan said in a white paper on Technology Trends.

According to a separate Manpower report 'Virtual World of Work', use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Friends Reunited is the most popular among those under 35-year-old. About 74 per cent of those studied and aged 16-24 use such sites.

Some older people are also fans of these sites. One in five of those aged between 35-44 of age (19 per cent) and 21 per cent of those between 45-54 of age also make use of social networking sites.

The report also reveled that as the virtual world of work becomes increasingly attractive, people are expecting changes in the workplace over the next 10 years. The results reveals that 87 per cent think technology would play a bigger role in how people work.

About 85 per cent of those surveyed think people would hold more meetings via phone/Internet, while 81 per cent believe people would work from home on a more regular basis.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

"These are things that we invest substantial resources in, but not from the perspective of selling to make money," Smith said in an interview. "We're doing this to help ensure that the Internet stays safe."

Law-enforcement officials from agencies in 35 countries are in Redmond this week to talk about how technology can help fight crime. Microsoft held a similar event in 2006. Discussions there led to the creation of COFEE.

Smith compared the Internet of today to London and other Industrial Revolution cities in the early 1800s. As people flocked from small communities where everyone knew each other, an anonymity emerged in the cities and a rise in crime followed.

Continuing with its significant contribution to technology development, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has come out with new product, G-Class, a crosslanguage search-plug-in suit. The plug-in suit will primarily meet the complex needs of Indian languages and provide surfing facilities in local languages at available search engines.

S. Ramakrishnan, director general of C-DAC, also announced the launch of two new products -- PARAMNet-3 and INTCOMPv1.0. CDAC has been undertaking research projects for Indian languages since last few years and G-class is an addition to this series. The plug-in product is also a one-stop shop for search engine developers."

With G-Class plug- in, the web will work like an information bureau with queries addressed in Indian languages. For example a person can ask a query in any Indian language on search-engine to get the answer. The in-built transliteration system in the product can translate one script to another. This will simplify surfing for users."

"Indian languages are complex and searching poses specific problems which the best of existing search engines cannot solve. With G-Class, C-DAC has tried to address the problems of Indian users. The product supports eight languages namely Marathi, Bangla, Gujrathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Urdu while Punjabi, Kokani, Kannada and Telgu will be developed soon. The plug-in can also be harnessed to a SQL database. It can also exist on a desktop to create a webpage," he added.

Explaining other new products, Ramakrishnan said, "PARAMNet-3 is high performance inter-connect network, indigenously developed for database and storage applications. This will work as a primary interconnection for PARAM series of supercomputers. With the development of PARAMNet-3, C-DAC has joined an elite group of system developers world-wide, capable of supplying high performance networking component for building supercomputing systems. INTCOMPV1.0 is an open source software useful for automobile and aircraft industries. Software will prove useful for the R&D labs and institutions."

Educational process outsourcing is enabling over 100 Delhi students rake in handsome dividends from a few hours spent answering queries and clearing doubts. Manya Education Private Limited, an e-tutoring firm, recently began campus recruitment in IIT-Delhi, Delhi University and Jamia Millia Islamia. Academically strong students from the Sciences stream were shortlisted and subsequently trained for a month.

The e-tutoring model requires these studentteachers to log on to a chat-based software and answer queries from students in the US and Europe. For an average four-hour session, they earn between Rs 12,000 and Rs 17,000, depending on competency .

Varun Thakur, a Chemistry (Honours) student, is back from office in time for classes at Sri Venkateswara College, after four hours spent interacting with American students in grades IX to XII. "E-tutoring is exciting. I work from 3.30 am to 7.30 am and am back home before classes. The courses in the US are the same as ours. The only difference is the teaching methodology," says Thakur.

Beginning with Math, Physics and Chemistry, Manya Education plans to include social sciences lessons. "We conduct a content test to evaluate the knowledge of interested candidates. Then we pick students who are good communicators," says Sachin from the firm's Human Resources department.

Students-teachers can draw diagrams and figures using the software and transfer files if required. For IITian Rumit Mani, a final year MSc student in Chemistry, the process has been a lot of fun. "I love the subject that teach and the timing works for me as well. Also, I feel confident when I successfully clear doubts and queries," he says.

The teaching fraternity has welcomed the initiative. "E-tutoring is a great option for bright students with a good grasp over their subjects," said Rihan Khan Suri, placement office, Jamia Millia Islamia.

"Since the are flexible, students can quit teaching during exams and then resume it again."

The PMC's head of departments and engineers are being trained in batches to use the Wiki software, which will enable them to post pages on Wikipedia and learn to modify them. Around 70 officials have already been trained. Within the PMC, the Wiki software is already in use for monitoring the status of hundreds of PMC projects on a daily basis.

The move was initiated by the chief information officer (CIO), Anupam Saraph, with an aim to create an easy and quick way of correspondence between officials within the PMC.

"Using Wiki is an easy way of keeping in touch with various departments. We have created several `Wikis' to connect different people and projects within the PMC," Saraph sad.

He explained, saying, "Many departments are involved in one project and are linked to each other. Because of lack of communication, deadline pressure and other constraints, these departments are unaware of what the others are doing. And, therefore, a Wiki -- a set of web pages that users can edit and thus keep others updated -- is the answer to better co-ordination."

However, some BPOs say, the move to Tier II cities may not be a great idea after all, since property prices are not very cheap or not what they expected them to be. Real estate may be booming, but prices sky rocketing as well at times quite close to Delhi and Bangalore rates. What's more, getting good middle management talent too is a problem in these cities.

While cities like Pune have almost become an extension of Mumbai, others like Ahmedabad, Mohali and Jaipur are catching up fast with improved infrastructure and real estate. In fact, many BPOs are drawing out plans to move to these cities, while some have already taken the first step. For example, WNS has a centre in Nasik, Genpact has a facility in Jaipur, Intelenet has centres in Pune and Mohali, and Mphasis has it in Mangalore.

However, experts warn the picture may not be as pretty as it looks. The ground reality is quite different in some of these cities. While real estate is developing fast, prices too are moving north simultaneously. And that's a dampener for many companies. ``Its not easy to get large office spaces at low cost in cities like Pune or Ahmedabad. These cities are also witnessing a real estate boom, costs are only marginally lower than say Mumbai or Delhi. Buying or renting property comes to almost as much as in the metros,'' says Aditya Gupta, president, InfoVision.