India Behind in Innovation

India way behind in constant innovation: Murthy
By siliconindia news bureau
Monday,05 October 2009, 02:41 hrs

Mumbai: Indian companies are doing well globally but they need to be innovative as they face challenge of creating global brand, according to N R Narayana Murthy, Co-founder and Chief Mentor, Infosys. “I have seen a new sense of confidence in India. Our companies have done pretty well. They have gone and acquired several companies in Europe, in Asia and in the U.S. But we do have a challenge and that is we have to create global brands,” he said.

Murthy was speaking on the occasion of a meet organized by Indian Institute of Technology – Bombay and Australia’s Monash University to discuss future challenges and finding solutions through research in engineering, science and technology. He said innovation and marketing were two very important functions in any enterprise, without which it was very unlikely that a corporation would have a great future. That is why there is a need of a global brand. “Creation of such global brands requires innovation. I think it is our responsibility in the industry to create a great future for ourselves on a global scale in the global bazaar by creating global brands, products and services,” he added.

Murthy said India’s GDP growth rate was pretty impressive and Indian exports were “pretty decent even though in the last year or so it has come down”.

India’s telecom space: market and vendors

27 handset vendors enter Indian telecom space in a quarter

By siliconindia news bureau
Wednesday,14 October 2009, 02:50 hrs

Mumbai: Indian telecom industry has not been impacted much by global economic slowdown and many new vendors see this as opportunity to enter Indian telecom space. With the 3G auction around the corner, 27 new handset vendors have entered the market in just one quarter, according to Economic Times.

These new mobile companies are coming up with dual SIM cards, full Qwerty keyboard and at a cheaper price to attract more customers. Mobile handset sales in India recorded a 6.7 percent increase to 100.9 million in the year ended June 30, as compared to 94.6 million in the year before. Even Mindtree has entered the telecom space through its acquired company Kyocera Wireless. China Wireless Technologies’ Indian subsidiary, Coolpad Communications, is targeting Rs. 800 crore revenue in next five years in India. The company is set to invest Rs. 400 crore as capex and opex over the next three years.

According to a new research study by IDC India, the new vendors have ensured that the overall mobile handset shipments touched 6.3 percent as compared to 1.2 percent during the June 2008 quarter, when the new vendors totaled 11 percent. “The shipments from such new players who have entered the Indian market in the last 12 to 18 months grew six-fold with 6.41 million unit sales,” said Deepak Kumar, Associate Vice-President (Research) of IDC, India.

In terms of shipment, Nokia still leads the market share in India with 56.8 percent followed by Samsung with a 7.7 percent share and LG with 5.4 percent share in the 12-month period ended June 30, according to the report. ‘With the mobile handsets market in India growing in volumes , device manufacturers have started focusing on niche and emerging segments based on lifestyle profiling of buyers ,” said Naveen Mishra, an Analyst at IDC India.

“We see the market getting further crowded. At the same time, an accelerated evolution of the market is at work, as rising competition forces vendors to offer a combo of volume and value,” said Kumar.

India’s first woman astronaut?

Who wants to be India’s first woman astronaut?

By siliconindia news bureau
Wednesday,07 October 2009, 02:59 hrs

Bangalore: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is offering an opportunity for women to be a part of the first Indian human flight into space, scheduled for 2014. They could be among the first 2-member crew that ISRO sends up into space. The astronauts will cruise for a week in an orbit 400 km above the Earth before splashing down into the Bay of Bengal.

But there is a harsh side to such a life-changing opportunity. There will be a long-drawn procedure to pick the best and a rigorous training schedule to help survive gruelling conditions in space. “The process will take more than three years. We will start with about a hundred and bring it down to a few. We will keep it open for women,” Dr T.K. Alex, Director of the ISRO Satellite Centre, told Deccan Chronicle.

ISRO has signed a pact with Roskosmos, the Russian federal space agency, for help in selection and training of the crew. The entire process, however, will be conducted at the upcoming Astronaut Training Centre near Bengaluru.

Broadband Reaches African East Coast through Seacom Network

New Africa broadband ‘ready’

(Click above link to read full article.)

Riding the digital express
VIEWPOINT
By Calestous Juma

The first undersea fibre optic cable, Seacom, reached the east African coast in July 2009.

This “Digital Express” is the most important infrastructure investment in eastern Africa since the construction of the Uganda Railway which integrate colonial east Africa into the British Empire.

Unlike the railway, dubbed the “Lunatic Express” by its critics, the Seacom network will integrate the region with the rest of the world and provide a crucial gateway to the global knowledge economy.

The $700m (£426m) project – largely funded by African investors – will reduce business costs, create an e-commerce sector and open up the region to foreign direct investment.

New industries will emerge to create content and software, new markets for access devices will grow, and research centres will flourish. Its impact will be unparalleled in contemporary African economic history.

The closest comparison is Africa’s runaway adoption of mobile telephony but at scale previously unimaginable.

Speaking at Seacom’s launch on 23 July, Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete visualised a future in which Africans would truly become part of the global economy.

They could find markets for their beans in Mexico; overcome shortage of science teachers through distant learning; improve access to health care by using telemedicine; reduce corruption by enhanced transparency; and foster regional cooperation through terrestrial fibre optic cables that are currently being laid in the region, he said.

But all these benefits will not be realised without a strong combination of entrepreneurship, education, policy and investment in regional networks.

Infrastructure projects such as this have never been easy. The region has a complex mix of countries including warring and failed states.

This has been complicated by costs. A decade ago it cost over $5,000 (£3,000) to per one kilometre of standard fibre optic cable, now it is just $300. There are some advantages to being a latecomer.

As a result, the necessary infrastructure is beginning to be rolled out. Rwanda and Uganda are now linked through Kenya, and are poised to take advantage of the digital express.

Happy Mishaps

Mishap leaves locals in high spirits

Hemant Kumar Rout, TNN 31 July 2009, 11:14pm IST, Times of India

JAJPUR: Booze flowed free for over 100 villagers, including women, who partied hard after a truck carrying foreign liquor overturned on NH-5 in Jajpur district.

Most of the villagers, who are daily labourers, had not tasted foreign liquor and the orgy left them intoxicated. While several people skipped work the next day to sleep it off, as many as 10 villagers were admitted to a hospital after suffering severe hangovers. They were discharged after preliminary treatment.

According to police, the truck was carrying liquor bottles from a distillery in Puri district to a bottling unit at Chhanapur in Balasore district. “The truck was loaded with 1080 cartons, each of which was packed with 750 ml bottles of whiskey and vodka. It met with an accident and skidded off NH-5 near Kharasrota bridge at Khanditar,” officer-in-charge of Kuakhia police station Atul Krishna Das said.

As soon as the news spread, people from Khanditar and several neighbouring villages rushed to the spot and looted the liquor bottles. The police officer said about 30 per cent of the liquor was either damaged or looted by the time police reached the accident site.

“India in biggest biometric count” [The Unique Identification Authority of India]

India in biggest biometric count

By Soutik Biswas
BBC News, Delhi

Indians do not have a national identity number
A planned Unique Identification (UID) number for Indian citizens will be backed by biometric authentication, the head of the project has told BBC.

Fingerprints and photographs of more than a billion people will be taken when they are registered for the identity number, Nandan Nilekani said.

The biometric evidence will be stored online in what will be the biggest such national database in the world.

The first UID numbers will be issued in about 12-18 months, he said.
Mr Nilekani said that the “technology challenge” in putting together a biometric record of one billion citizens was “immense”.

“Biometrics on this scale has not been carried out before. They will be stored online and help in instant online authentication of the identity of every Indian,” he said. But Mr Nilekani said the government does not have an “exact fix” on the how many Indians had some sort of identity proof. [Nandan Nilekani is chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India.]

‘Pro-poor’
Biometrics on this scale has never been done before. [Nandan Nilekani's] office is looking at 80 million income tax payers who possess a Permanent Account Number (PAN), some 200 million account holders in public and private banks, some 500 million mobile phone consumers and over 600 million Indians who have election cards. There is, obviously, a considerable overlap as many of them have all or many of these forms of identification. His office will also look at the database of Indian passport holders, public distribution system cards for food for the poor, and the list of cooking gas consumers in the country. However, these checks will have to be done carefully because, as Mr Nilekani admits, there is the “phenomenon of duplicates” or fraudulent numbers.

It is clear that a large number of poor people have no identification at all, making it doubly difficult for them to gain access to social welfare schemes, Mr Nilekani added.

“This project is pro-poor and inclusive targeted mainly towards the poor. The middle class and the rich have some form of identity. People on the margins are getting lost because of lack of identity,” Mr Nilekani said. It is also hoped that the number should help tackle identity theft and fraud.

Mr Nilekani’s office will be working with state governments and 20 – 25 agencies – the income tax department, the country’s Election Commission and the state-run life insurance company, for example – to roll out the identity numbers.
No identity

The unique number will not be an identity card – instead, the number will be included in documents like election identity cards, PAN cards and bank account numbers.

India’s efforts at giving every citizen an identity number is possibly one of the greatest challenges facing the government.

Every Indian is expected to have a national identity number by 2014
“There is the technological challenge, there is a challenge of the scale of work, and there is a complex governance challenge, working with so many departments and states,” Mr Nilekani said.

The state of Karnataka in the south, India’s capital, Delhi, and Meghalaya state in the north-east are among the states which may take part in early pilots.

The project’s main technology centre will be based in Bangalore, with eight regional centres working with the various states.

Unlike in the US and UK, Indians do not have a common federal identity number.
The government expects to give a unique identification number to every Indian citizen within five years.

Indian Coffee and Tariffs Under Indian-Asean Trade Deal

India and Asean sign trade deal

India and the 10-country South East Asian bloc Asean have signed a free trade agreement after more than six years of talks. Tariffs on electronics, chemicals, machinery and textiles will be reduced and eventually eliminated.

These products make up 80% of goods traded between India and Asean. But India has been allowed to continue protecting its farm sector, and has excluded 489 products, including rubber, from the trade deal. Computer software and information technology are also exempt.

A smaller list of products, described as “highly sensitive”, such as palm oil and coffee, will see tariffs reduced over about 10 years, but only modestly.

Indian farmers have won exemption from the free trade agreement.

‘Win-win’
The deal was signed in Bangkok at a meeting of economic ministers of the Association of South East Asian Nations – made up of Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Asean is India’s fourth-largest trading partner. The value of trade between the two was $47bn (£28bn) in 2008.
Secretary-general of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Amit Mitra, said the agreement, which comes into effect form January next year, was “a win-win for both sides”.

“Our minds have met. Of course, a few will lose, but many more will gain.”

Augmented Reality (AR) on Mobile Phones

Mobile phones get cyborg vision

By Michael Fitzpatrick

Zoe Kleinman tries out Acrossair’s software that uses a phone’s camera to tell you where the nearest London Underground station is.

It’s a gift that was once the preserve of fictional cyborgs.

Call it Terminator Vision – a view of the world tagged with rich, location-relevant information whilst your gaze flickers here and there. But now this Augmented Reality (AR), as it is known, is materialising in the real world.

Mobile phone operators, at least, are hoping it will be the next big thing as programmers learn to corral all the bells and whistles of smart phones – GPS, video, accelerometers – into “killer applications”. For the first time such AR is available for handsets. Eventually, it seems possible that mobile phones might play the role of a kind of supplementary brain.

Via the video function of a mobile phone’s camera it is now possible to combine a regular pictorial view with added data from the internet just as the fictional Terminator was able to overlay its view of the world with vital information about its surroundings.
For example, UK-firm Acrossair has launched an application for the iPhone which allows Londoners to find their nearest tube station using their iPhone.

Mobilizy has shown off its Wikitude world browser which presents users of phones running Google’s Android operating system with information about real world objects submitted by users.

‘Virtual sphere’
AR is a precocious new technology; a spin-off from virtual reality (VR).
But unlike VR, which seeks to persuade you that you really are in a fantasy place, AR enhances perception of the real world.

Augmented reality could help people find a bite to eat. Not only could this form of rich, intuitive and easy to grasp data be the next killer app for the mobile, some see it changing our world view forever. “The biggest significance of mobile phones as media is that they have increased our closeness to virtual reality,” says Japanese writer and net culture guru Toshinao Sasaki. “Because compared to PCs, mobile phones are with us for much longer hours.”

The sudden democratisation of smartphones, which for the most part are powerful, tiny, portable computers, is beginning to make cyborgs of us all, he says. In addition, Mr Sasaki says, they will help erase still further the already disintegrating barrier of what we see as reality and non-reality, private and public. “While the internet sphere and the reality sphere had previously been completely separate as ‘virtual and non-virtual,’ mobile phones have rapidly shrunk the distance between them.” Now, says Mr Sasaki, the virtual sphere is likely to merge seamlessly into reality because of the arrival of AR.
“Eventually, it seems possible that mobile phones might play the role of a kind of supplementary brain,” he says. To the Japanese, and elsewhere in the mobile-centric world, mobiles are essential tools that help us navigate around an increasingly complex world.

Ubiquitous AR will likely increase this reliance further.
Already Japan is an avid consumer of location-based services and thanks to a 2007 law all Japanese phones must come with GPS to help with “law enforcement”.
It was just a matter of time until somebody united the thirst for user-generated content, the mobile, and the real world.

World filter
Step forward Tokyo-based smartphone app developers Tonchidot, which recently revealed a beta, or test, AR application for the iPhone called Sekai Camera (World Camera). It’s where AR meets social networking, the company says.

“Sekai Camera really improves communication between individuals and companies,” says Takahito Iguchi, the application’s creator. “It generates a new, fourth dimension everybody has dreamed of.” By combining a smartphone’s camera, GPS, and net connection Sekai allows social tagging, or “Air Tagging” as Tonchidot describes it, of the real world through the mobile screen. Using the phone’s built-in GPS, Sekai calculates your position. The viewfinder for the camera then displays location-specific information graphically on top of your real-world view. For example, if you feel peckish in a shopping centre you could use the application to scan the shops for a place to eat. The software could also display menus and reviews. It is similar concept to Mobilizy’s Wikitude app. But Sekai Camera allows individuals and businesses to add their own information including text, images, and sound.

It’s a new and more natural way of being more knowledgeable about what is around you. One user describes the experience as “having an informative, manga-like world superimposed on the real one”.

A filter will be offered, says Tonchidot, so that users remain in control. At the Tokyo launch of the trial version, invited guests could tap a tagged object seen through the iPhone and up popped a window with info – a picture with a comment box or a spoken message created earlier by a tagger.

Tags can also translate to coupons from businesses or travel tips from friends. Tonchidot says it is now working with Softbank Mobile, one of Japan’s big 3 mobile carriers, to amass enough tags for the soon to be announced Tokyo release.

Promotional video for the Sekai camera application, that calculates your position using GPS and images, then displays information over your real-world view.

‘Layar cake’
Elsewhere developers have been scrambling to get their apps on high-profile handsets such as the iPhone or those using the Google’s Android platform. For example, Google boasts the likes of a stargazer application called Sky Map which allows a user to identify constellations by simply pointing their phone at the night sky.

Users of the Wikitude program can tag places of interest for others. Perhaps the most advanced service is SPRXmobile’s Layar service. Launched this June in Amsterdam, residents and visitors can now see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, jobs on offer in the area, and a list of local doctors and ATMs by scanning the landscape with the software. “Layar helps discover what is around you by displaying real time digital information … an equivalent to the internet browser but now for the real world,” explains Maarten Lens-FitzGerald, a Layar co-founder. “It’s a new and more natural way of being more knowledgeable about what is around you. It also helps you experience things you didn’t know about before.” The Dutch company says it plans further rollouts globally, and is now working with location based info providers and estate agents in Germany, the UK and the United States to bring similar services soon.

Whatever the cybernetic implications this means we should be seeing more of AR in every sense.

Additional reporting by Yasuko Amahisa in Tokyo.

A Wake-Up Call for the US: India’s Technology Revolution

U.S. needs to wake up to India’s tech revolution

By IANS
Thursday,06 August 2009, 04:08 hrs

Washington: Saying that the U.S. needs to wake up to the reality of India’s technological revolution being led by IIT-educated “young men and women under the age of 27″, President Barack Obama’s nominee for deputy commerce secretary said countries like India, China, Brazil and Russia were going to pose a major challenge to American dominance in the coming years.

“Today, we find ourselves competing not only with companies of great capacity, but countries intent on establishing dominance in the growth areas of the 21st century,” Dennis Hightower, Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of commerce, said at his confirmation hearing Wednesday.

“Countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China — often referred to as the BRIC countries — are now employing aggressive industrial policies reminiscent of Japan’s strategic commitment to the electronics industry in the 1960s,” he said.

Referring to his recent business travels in India, Hightower said he was “floored by that country’s commitment to reinvesting in technology and the implications for the United States”.

Visiting “a veritable who’s who of global technology giants” in Bangalore, the would-be Obama official said he “was struck not only by the technological inroads being made in newly designed, avant-garde factories and laboratories, but also by the fact that this technological revolution was often being led by young men and women under the age of 27.

“By and large, these young people were not educated in the United States like many of their fathers — at MIT, Cal Tech, or Rennselaer, for example — but at the Indian Institutes of Technology.”

Hightower noted there are “projections that place the United States in fourth place over the next 15-20 years in terms of consumerism, manufacturing capacity, and the growth of an entrepreneurial base that keeps pace with new global developments and delivery systems.”

“This forecasted outcome, to my way of thinking, is unacceptable,” he said stressing “we must re-establish the primacy of the United States as the world leader in innovation, creativity and excellence across the global economic spectrum.

“If America expects to lead, we must put our best minds on the toughest problems — reforming the way America uses healthcare, consumes energy and educates our children,” Hightower said.

“America must now act with a renewed sense of urgency” he said, as “our global competitors are neither standing still nor shy about taking action to exert their global economic ambitions”.

India: Free Education Bill Passed by Parliament

India passes free education bill

The Indian parliament has approved a landmark education bill which seeks to guarantee free and compulsory education for children aged between six and 14. The bill, passed by the lower house of parliament, will set up new state-run neighbourhood schools.

It will also force private ones to reserve at least a quarter of their places for poor children.

Currently about 70 million children receive no schooling, and more than a third of the population is illiterate.

The bill was passed by the upper house last month. It now needs presidential assent – a mere formality, correspondents say – to become law.

‘New era’
India’s Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal described the passage of the bill as “harbinger of a new era” for children to meet the challenges of the 21st century. “We as a nation cannot afford our children not going to schools,” he said.
The minister said the bill covers children with disabilities and that the government is planning to set up special schools for them. “This bill provides for the inclusion of children who are disadvantaged because of disability. The government is not only setting up special schools for them but doing all it can to provide education to them in all types of schools,” Mr Sibal said.

The bill also ends widespread practices by which schools impose admission fees on parents to guarantee their children a place and bureaucrats enjoy discretionary powers on deciding who to let in.

Achieving universal education is one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals to be met by the year 2015.

Critics of the bill, however, say it is not clear how the government plans to pay for this. Also, they say it does not cover children below the age of six and therefore fails to recognise the importance of the early years of a child’s development. They say it also does little to address India’s inequitable school system under which there are vast discrepancies between well-funded private schools and state-run schools with poor quality teaching staff and infrastructure.

At the moment India spends a little over 3% of its GDP on education.