Finally it here, PS3 will be hitting Indian market in December 2007 with the price tag of Rs. 24, 900 for the new 40 GB PlayStation3. Yesterday, MR. Atindriya Bose, country manager, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCEI), unveiled the Playstation 3 (40 GB) for the first time in the Indian market, at a grand expo at the Taj Lands End in Mumbai. The impressive expo included seven gaming zones – Sports Zone, Speed Zone, Action Zone, Shooting Range, Gaming Dungeon, Buzz World and Sing Star Center Stage.

Bose said, "that gaming will soon increasingly become the most accepted form of entertainment in the country and hence the company thought this to be the appropriate time to launch the new products." According to company sources, the PlayStation enjoys 60 percent market share among all the gaming consoles in India.

The Expo also showcased the PSP Slim with Video Out facility and assortment of games including the PSP Spiderman specialty pack at Rs 10,490 with Spiderman games and movies; the Simpsons specialty pack at Rs 9,990 with a new Simpsons game and three new games for PS3.

Source: (ZDnet India, Gameguru,Newslocale)

India has earned a position at the top five of the prestigious “Top 500 Supercomputer Sites List” for the first time ever, with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), and this has been made possible by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons in Pune, which has installed an Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system which can perform 117.9 TFlop/s (‘teraflops’ or trillions of calculations per second) performance.

In (Supercomputer 07) SC07 Conference held in the US last night, supercomputer developed by the Tata Group has been adjudged the fastest in Asia and fourth fastest in the world, till now the the list was usually dominated by the United States.

The fourth-ranking Tata supercomputer Called ‘Eka’ is derived from Sanskrit term for ‘one’, the project entailed an investment of $30 million, which was entirely borne by Tata Sons, and was put together in a record six weeks. CRL was originally set up in February 2006, but the task of putting together the supercomputer started in June this year. ‘

World’s Top 5 Supercomputers

1. BlueGene/L System (IBM) US

2. BlueGene/P system, (IBM) Germany

3. Silicon Graphics (SGI), New Mexico

4. Eka, CRL (arm of Tata Sons) India.

5. HP Cluster Platform (Sweden)

Source: (Times, IndianExpress)

On Monday two major companies USA`s Microsoft and India's Reliance Communications signed a 500-million-dollar deal to launch India's first high-definition Internet TV service.

The Internet protocol Television (IPTV) will start early next year in 30 cities including the financial hub of Mumbai and the capital New Delhi, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Reliance Communications Chairman Anil Ambani told reporters Monday, an eight-year exclusive alliance for IPTV services, which the former plans to launch in India by March 2008.

RCom will pay up to $500 million to Microsoft in licence fees for the US company’s Media room IPTV software platform. The service will offer both high and standard-definition TV, personal media sharing, VOD and PVR capabilities.

The service will be delivered through RCom’s fibre optic network, which covers 13,000 towns and five lakh villages in India.

However, officials from neither company would comment on the pricing strategy for the initiative. The platform will enable Reliance’s IPTV service to deliver video-on-demand, digital video recording, instant channel changing and personal media sharing. Subscribers will be able to watch popular standard definition as well as high definition content.

The companies have been working on the IPTV platform since 2003 and will roll out the service by the end of this financial year. RCom has tested IPTV at over 20,000 households in Mumbai and Delhi.

On the positive note Ballmer stated “IPTV is in its early stage in India, but would catch up in 12-24 months. Most of it will happen in two countries, India and the US, and in India we are expecting tens of millions of customers,”.

Reliance is also planning to go ahead with its DTH service in collaboration with Bluemagic DTH platform which was scheduled to launch by the end of 2007, but has slipped to first quarter of 2008. The service will Measat-3 satellite to beam MPEG4-compressed programming into the sub-Continent. RCom holds 20% of Bluemagic at the moment, with the rest held by subsidiaries, but is moving towards making the DTH service a 100% subsidiary. However, Reliance is coming to the DTH party late, with TataSky, DishTV and Sun Direct already operating pay-DTH services.

Source: (ZDnet INDIA, AFP, Rapid TV News, Business Standard)

Patni Computer Systems on Wednesday said that it has bagged a multi-year $200 million deal with Britain's The Carphone Warehouse, Europe's largest mobile phone retailer, a five year deal will cover a wide range of consultancy, software and maintenance services.

Patni will become The Carphone Warehouse's technology partner for developing next-generation systems for the latter's global telecom and retail operations. The Carphone Warehouse is a large mobile phone retailer with over 2,100 stores in 11 countries. The consulting portion of the agreement will involve redesigning some of CPW’s business processes to help them reduce costs.

“Patni will become a key technology partner providing services across consulting, systems integration, application development and maintenance. In addition, Patni will also be a key partner to The Carphone Warehouse for developing next-generation systems for its global telecom and retail operations,” the company said.

Patni's telecom business contributes 14.1 percent to its revenues. The company also recently acquired Europe-based telecommunications consulting services company Logan-Orviss International.

The agreement ranks alongside deals of similar size it got as ABN AMRO’s preferred vendor in a $2.2 billion contract and its engagements with General Electric.

Source: (ZDnetIndia, EconomicTimes)

Cyber criminals are up for more serious chastisement. They will no longer be able to exploit loopholes in the Information Technology Act, which requires law enforcement agencies to book criminals under different laws.
The government will soon make the IT Act of 2000 complete in itself by importing provisions from not only the Indian Penal Code (IPC) but also from other statutes like the Indian Evidence Act (IEA) of 1872 and the Code of Criminal Procedures (CCP) of 1973.

Inclusion of provisions in the Indian Evidence Act will give legal authority for the use of digital signatures under the prevailing cyber law itself. Sections 47, 67A, 85A, 85B and 85C of the IEA will be adopted, a department of information technology official said. Making fake digital signature certificates will now be a criminal offence and would attract harsher punishment.

While Section 47 and 67A of the IEA deal with matters related to proof of handwriting and signatures, Sections 85A, 85B and 85C deal with matters relating to authentication of digital signatures. The inclusion of these Sections will help law enforcement agencies as well as the judiciary.

“If some document is sealed with digital signature, it can be opened only with the help of two codes, one of which is with the user and the other with the controller of certifying authority (CCA). The documents will not open unless the codes match — as is the case in operating a bank locker,” an expert on digital signatures said. Inclusion of these new Sections will also help in promoting the use of digital signatures, the DIT official said.

The department also proposes to include Sections 320 and 198A of the CCP in the IT Act to help enforcement agencies in treating cyber criminals like other criminals. Once the review of the IT Act of 2000 is over, the government will invite public comments before finalising the changes.

The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) has collaborated with One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation to bring the latter's much-hyped $100 laptop to India to promote e-learning among poor children.

Under this initiative, Reliance Communications (RCom) will provide Internet connectivity, network backbone, logistics, and support to the OLPC initiative.

The initiative aims at covering over 25,000 towns, and 6,00,000 villages in the country by 2008. The larger OLPC project has already provided laptops to 5 million school children across the world, and aims to cover 150 million by 2008.

Based on the Linux OS, the OLPC (XO) laptop has replaceable keyboards, which can be changed for use with 35 global languages.

While announcing the collaboration, Tina Anil Ambani, said, "Children are the future of the nation, and shaping the future of millions of school children through new age learning systems is of prime importance in today's digital era."

OLPC has launched its first pilot in the country at a school in a tribal village at Khairat, near Karjat in Maharashtra, where school children have been provided with laptops, and training for teachers to incorporate new ways of imparting education.

Carla Gomez Monroy, learning consultant of OLPC, and a part of the pilot, said, "Children lack opportunity, and not capability. Children at Khairat school, who have never even seen a laptop before, are showing easiness and receptiveness while learning on laptops. It has also resulted in reduction in the number of children absentees."

Sumit Chowdhury, chief information officer of RCom, said, "School children will be able to access their educational modules in local languages, collaborate with each other, connect to the Internet, and play games as well."

The laptops are connected via network to the school server. All laptops are on the network, so school children can interact with each other, and share the learning experience. However, once out of the school network, these laptops are rendered absolutely useless. They would work only till such a time the battery lasts.

"Keeping in mind that the laptops will be handled by school children, they have been built drop-proof, 45-degrees shock-proof, water proof, and have a longer battery life as compared to regular laptops," added Chowdhury.

RCom and OLPC are in talks with government agencies, NGOs, content developers, translators, teachers, and project managers to create successful ecosystems to further the OLPC program in India.

Around 20,000 youths from the eight northeastern states are to be recruited for India's booming IT enabled services and business process outsourcing (ITES-BPO) industry.

According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), the initiative for the recruitment drive is being done with help from the union ministry of development of northeastern region (DoNER).

Nasscom, the apex body of Indian IT and service companies, has created an assessment and certification programme called Nasscom Assessment of Competence (NAC) for a common and transparent recruitment process.

"About 100 NAC tests would be conducted across the northeast followed by job fairs early next year for the successful candidates for recruitment to the ITES-BPO industry," said Brajamohan Sinha, director of the Tripura manpower and employment department.

The tests, meant for graduates and others, are to be held in phases later this month and in November and December.

According to a Nasscom statement, of the 20,000 proposed recruits, the highest number of 8,000 would be from Assam followed by 3,500 from Tripura, 2,000 in Nagaland, 1,500 each from Mizoram, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh, and 1,000 each from Manipur and Sikkim.

"The ITES-BPO industry is growing at an overwhelming pace and giving a major fillip to the Indian economy. India has established its leadership position globally in the off shoring market and now the availability of skilled manpower is one of the key barriers to the fast growth of the industry," Nasscom said.

With Indian Railways planning to install ATMs in selected trains, you may be able to withdraw money while travelling.

"We already have ATMs in many stations. Now, as a further step, we are planning to install ATMs in some trains as a pilot project," said a senior railway ministry official.

"We are in discussion with some banks to finalise the ATM project", said the official adding a feasibility study is also being commissioned to study the proposed ATM plan.

In the first phase, ATMs would be installed in popular trains and later on depending upon the success of the facility it would be extended to other trains.

However, trains passing through Naxal-affected areas are not being considered for ATM facility for security reasons, the railway official said.

"We have strengthened security measures at railway stations and trains by deploying explosive detection devices, door-frame metal detectors, CCTV and smart video cameras at sensitive stations. Beside acquiring modern security gadgets our dog squads have also been strengthened as there is a need for deploying sniffer dogs at stations", he said.

Steps have been initiated to operate Global Positioning System (GPS) in trains to improve our trains tracking system. A GPS-based system for rail navigation has been planned in coordination with IIT Kanpur. The system provides real time tracking system using GPS.

Beside ATMs and ATVMs, Railway Ministry is planning a major up-gradation of entertainment in some inter-city super-fast trains.

As per the plan, the seats of the coaches will be equipped with flat-panel television touch screens with head phones offering passengers options of live and pre-recorded entertainment and movie channels.

BANGALORE: The rupee appreciation looks to be hitting jobs in the technology sector. The industry's spends devoted to hiring have hit a speed breaker. According to industry observers and media analysts, the last few months have seen as much as a 50% decline in recruitment advertisements.

Several tier-1 tech firms that advertised 12 times across the country in a quarter has brought the frequency down to five. Domestic and MNC tech firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL, Patni, IBM, HP and Dell are all said to have embarked on a "conscious cost-cutting binge". The only exception is seen to be Accenture, which continues to spend heavily on print recruitment ads as the company has an ambitious mandate to increase its India strength.

Analysts say the decline in advertising is a consequence of increased utilisation of the bench (those sitting idly waiting for projects), and a greater dependence on employee referrals (on an average 30% of the entire IT hiring is done through this channel) and external hiring agencies.

Joydeep Raha, vice president (initiative) in advertising company Lowe, said, "IT firms today are extremely conscious about the utilisation levels of their bench staff to optimise productivity and increase profitability (which has been badly hit by the rupee appreciation). This has significantly brought down the size of the IT recruitment ad market."

Ajay Shroff, director in ad firm Pinxit Blue, said, "This scenario has resulted in an immediate business impact of 20 to 25% on ad agencies. Agencies that do not have a vertical spread could be the most hit, by up to 50% of their income. Also, the bring-the-buddy scheme (employee referrals) has become extremely popular, with some companies doubling or even trebling the referral bonuses."

Shroff said one employee was recently given a reward of Rs 1 lakh by his employer for referring his friend to work. "IT recruitment ads have become seasonal. Now, ad firms wait for increment/attrition months like June, July, August or January to put out the ads. This has started impacting our revenues adversely," said Soumya, director (accounts) at RK Swamy BBDO.

Quality of talent has always been a problem with recruitment ads, which drives up costs. "A single print ad can throw up 10,000 resumes at a time. But often, the employable ones in the lot could be barely 10. Imagine the time and energy we end up spending on screening these CVs" asked an HR manager of a large IT firm.

BANGALORE: Continuing with its string-of-pearls acquisition strategy, Wipro has entered into an agreement to acquire a Singapore-based design services semiconductor firm in an all-cash deal. However, the value of the deal was not disclosed.

Wipro Technologies will acquire Oki Techno Centre Singapore (OTCS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry, Japan, over a period of one year and this would be its second acquisition in the semiconductor space with the earlier one being NewLogic.

OTCS registered revenues of 8.8 million Singapore dollars for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007 and has a 40-member team. Vasudevan Aghoramoorthy, V-P, Wipro Technologies said, this acquisition will enable them to meet the demand for newer wireless technologies and also expand its breadth of offering in the semiconductor design space.
For the first time, Wipro Technologies has made an acquisition in the Far East region with all its previous buyouts in the US and Europe.

OTCS is focussed on wireless design and has capabilities in radio frequency (RF) technologies. It mainly works for the parent company with some third party clients and Wipro expects to provide solutions for the semiconductor companies.

Sudip Nandy, chief strategy officer, Wipro, said, “Wipro sees this transaction as strategic fitment in building niche competencies which will enhance our presence among technology companies in Japan.”

Wipro Technologies has also entered into an agreement with Oki Electric to set up a dedicated development centre in Bangalore. Mr Aghoramoorthy said, this centre will work with tandem with the Singapore centre.

"OKI has been enhancing its design and development skills. We have been looking for a global partner to improve our efficiency in semiconductor design through outsourcing," said Masahiko Morioka, president, silicon solutions company at Oki Electric Industry.

"A PC for every home" may not be such a distant possibility after all -- especially if you happen to be a MTNL customer!

The state-owned telecom major, in association with Chennai-based Novatium, is today launching its Rs 4,500 PC, which comes with the added benefit of an Internet connection for just a small monthly fee.

The computer, christened 'netPC', will be launched today in the capital by Communication and IT minister, A Raja.

While 'netPC' looks and feels like any other PC, it's essentially a no-frills device. Which means it lacks most of the common hardware found on a typical PC. It does not have a regular CPU or any storage device.

MTNL will connect the terminals to a centralised server in the locality, and will provide the PC with Internet access. All applications including consumers' data storage will be done by the server.

According to Novatium, the advantage of 'netPC' is that customers will not have to face the challenges that are associated with a regular PC.
Besides, they will retain the choice to use either Windows or Linux operating systems.

The Novatium Web site explains the concept of 'netPC' as: "netPC reaches one's home on a network cable just like a cable television service or Broadband. Metro ethernet deployments are quickly becoming a pervasive reality, and hence, instead of just Internet Broadband to one's home, one can ask for a complete desktop with inbuilt Internet access, educational packages, online games, chat, Web cam, productivity suites, and much more served on the Nova netPC."

In these times of frequent comparisons between aamchee Mumbai and Shanghai and every other global city, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), which enjoys the distinction of being the largest municipal corporation in the country, has launched its citizen portal dedicated to the citizens of Mumbai (www.mcgm.gov.in).

In what could prove a laudable effort at e-governance -- if only it is honestly implemented -- the portal aims at transforming the way in which our city lives and breathes... It claims that it will ensure 'freedom from queues' to Mumbaikars.

Enabled by solutions, consulting, and services by SAP AG, Siemens Information Systems, and ABM, the citizen portal is designed to address the needs of employees, corporates, and administrators through online availability of services backed-up by necessary infrastructure.

Some of the services offered by the portal include: birth and death certification, health care, MPFA licenses, trade licenses, hoarding licenses, advertisement licenses, complaints registration, nursing home and sonography, water works, etc.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is working on a new device to drastically reduce the cost of satellite phone usage and enable access to remote areas of the country, a top space agency official said here Monday.

"We are finalizing the design of GSAT-6 experimental satellite that will carry the device to connect mobile handsets through a satellite link. It will make access cheaper with connectivity even in remote areas," ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair told IANS at the first plenary session of the International Aeronautical Congress (IAC 2007) on the inaugural day.

Referring to the exponential growth of mobile subscriber base in the sub-continent after the advent of the cellular technology in the GSM and CDMA space, Nair said a similar revolution would take place when satellite phones become affordable by better and efficient use of space technology and applications.

"We hope to launch GSAT-6 in the next three years with the special device in the transponders for providing direct access to mobile phones on the lines of direct-to-home (DTH) satellite link used for television broadcasting," Nair pointed out.

The GSAT-6 will be launched by the indigenous GSLV (geo-synchronous satellite launch vehicle) and deployed in the geo-stationary orbit at 36,000km from earth by 2010.

"A subscriber will be able to connect his or her GSM phone when signals from the mobile service provider fail or do not reach by automatically switching over to the satellite link," ISRO scientific secretary Bhaskara Narayana said.

"We are also designing a larger solar antenna for the satellite, which will be five times bigger than the present 2.2-metre antenna used in the communication satellites for news gathering and television broadcasting," he added.

The larger antenna will be deployed as an umbrella in space.

It may be recalled Iridium LLC, a satellite phone service provider, shut shop after it went bankrupt in 2000 due to heavy losses and dwindling subscriber base owing to steep access costs.

Abu Dhabi-based Thuraya Satellite Communications is the only operator providing both satellite-based and GSM-based services to millions of users in about 110 countries from two commercial satellites.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is going to get Rs 35 million to fight cyber-related crimes, Minister of Communications and Information Technology A. Raja said at the closing ceremony of the seventh Interpol cyber crime conference.

"We will provide Rs 3.5 crore (Rs 35 million) to the CBI for developing advanced software and procuring latest software and tools to fight cyber crimes more efficiently," Raja said here.

"Information and communication technology, which is the foundation stone of the cyber world, is likely to come under serious onslaught of cyber crimes. If left unchecked, cyber crimes are likely to pose a significant threat to national security," Raja added.

The minister informed that the department of information and technology has established a resource center for cyber forensics in Thiruvananthapuram, which is tasked with development of cyber forensic tools and training of law enforcement personnel in investigation of cyber crimes and use of these tools.

He also stressed on the arrangements for speedy trans-border cooperation, public-private partnership and bridging the skills and resource gap that exists between cyber criminals and law enforcement agencies through quality training and upgrading of resources.

The three-day conference, which began Wednesday, was attended by representatives from 37 countries, EUROPOL, UNODC, UNICR, Council of Europe, multinational IT firms, Indian state-run firms and the department of electronics.

Over 40 senior police officers from 20 Indian states participated in the conference.

Infosys Technologies Ltd on Friday announced that the first group of 25 UK graduates would leave for India to be trained at the Infosys Global Education Centre at Mysore.

The new hires would begin their six months customised software engineer education programme at the centre in early September 2007, a release said here on Friday.

After a four-month educational programme at the centre, the graduates would be be relocated to Infosys development centres across India for two months to gain hands-on experience with real projects.

Following the successful completion of the six-month orientation programme, they will return to join Infosys offices in the UK.

The Global Talent Programme (GTP) is Infosys' university level recruiting programme outside India. Trainees recruited for the GTP undergo a customised education and orientation programme created to ensure that they are trained adequately with necessary technical and client-facing skills and sufficient live project exposure in the Infosys Global Delivery Model.

Commenting on the programme, B G Srinivas, Head of EMEA, Infosys Technologies, said, "By joining a global community on the Mysore campus that includes trainees from the US, Australia and Japan, the UK graduates will gain exposure to new ways of thinking and ultimately help Infosys play an even more strategic role for its clients."

The UK initiative follows a successful implementation of the GTP in the US that was able to recruit 250 graduates to India.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released its recommendations on reforms in telecom licensing policy and said there should be no cap on the number of access provider in any circle.

On mergers and acquisitions, the regulator said the market share of the merged entity should not exceed 40 per cent either in terms of subscriber based or revenue. At present, this cap is at 67 per cent.

TRAI also raised the cap on equity capital from 10 per cent to 20 per cent up to which a telcom player can acquire stake in another telco in the same service area.

On the issue of access providers using a combination of CDMA and GSM technology, the regulator said the existing license should be permitted to be used to provide services through either of the technology, subject to certain conditions.

TRAI has not changed the roll out obligation for the access providers.

The recommendations are subject to approval from Department of Telecom before being formed into law.

Delhi Cops are all packed  and ready to upgrade their defence system to fight the new territory which is expanding at a fast pace. Cyber Crimes are up and are haunting people, take not of the previous incidence of death of a young boy in Mumbai, now cops are upgrading its Cyber Cell to tackle the "crimes of the future".

The capital's police has decided to hold regular interactions with IT majors to upgrade its personnel's technical know-how in a bid to keep pace with the rapid technological advancement and the fast changing cyber crime scene.

"The fast changing technical environment throws up new challenges. Technical innovation leads to new modes of crime and we have to keep pace with technology to tackle it," city Police Commissioner Y S Dadwal said.

He said the force will hold interactions with IT companies to help increase the efficiency of the police personnel dealing with cases of cyber crime. Noting that instances of cyber crimes are increasing across the country, he said, Delhi Police is fully geared up to meet the challenge.

"The figures are increasing. We have a number of IT experts and qualified engineers. We are confident of catching cyber criminals," he said.

The Cyber Cell, which functions under Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing, registered 17 cases last year related to hacking, obscenity, e-commerce fraud and Internet related copyright violations.

In 2005, the figure was 12, while the cell has registered six cyber crime cases this year. The cell had received 58 complaints in 2005 and 206 in 2006, but many of these cases did not come under the ambit of cyber crime laws. This year, the cell has received 35 complaints so far.

This year the cases include one where an airhostess complained that she had been profiled in the social networking site 'Orkut' as a "sex struck woman".

In another incident, some people created a page of a research scholar in Jawaharlal Nehru University linking him with women in the campus.

The recent case of misuse of social networking sites was that of the abduction and murder of a Mumbai-based businessman's teenaged son. A "friend" left a message in his 'Orkut' page for a meeting at a shopping mall after which the boy, Adnan, was kidnapped and killed.

Not to be left behind in utilising advancements in IT, the police is also planning to connect its headquarters with offices of the Deputy Commissioners of Police in all the nine districts for effective communication between middle-level officers and top brass through the cyber highway.

"Talks are at an advanced stage with the service provider MTNL and we hope to get it done soon," Dadwal said. He said the police is visualising a scenario where they could keep a hawk eye on the capital.

"Once this materialises, our communication system will improve, which means that we get an upper hand. We could also regulate the traffic flow sitting in the control room by viewing the visuals from various parts of the city," he said.