Now we can search for our videos on the net with the help of Yahoo! Search. This is a beta search engine that Yahoo has come up with; and considering the large number of people who are getting broadband access to the internet, this is going to be popular. Check it out.
Monthly Archive for December, 2004
I recently shifted to a new apartment in Andheri East (Mumbai), and went down to the nearby market to check out the grocery and food stores. Seeing a pharmacy shop called “The Medicine Shoppe”, I went in to purchase a few medicines for common cold and fever. The service I got at the store was amazing. The guy on the counter asked me if I wanted to fill out a free membership form. I saw no harm in doing that, and in the next two minutes I was holding a laminated personal ID cum membership card. It entitles me to lots of discounts and free home delivery of medicine at any time; all that at no extra cost. A remarkable first for a pharmacy store here in India.
Rajesh cites Shrikant on his blog listing the predictions for 2005 for Asia-Pacific:
1. India will remain the highest growth market for telecommunications in the Asia-Pacific region.
2. Gartner predicted that mobile penetration in India would reach 8.2 per cent in 2005 and 14.5 in 2008, while combined (fixed and mobile) penetration would grow from 12.4 per cent in 2005 to 19.1 per cent in 2008.
3. Gartner expects the PC vendor market to experience at least three lean years after 2005 with three of the top 10 vendors exiting the market by 2007.
4. IT services will continue to grow in Asia Pacific, where mission-critical services are in high demand.
5. Micro-commerce will emerge as a major new business opportunity and there will be a fundamental change in the way software is built and used with the continuing development of web services.
6. Gartner predicts that the coming few years will present some of the greatest challenges and opportunities of their careers to CIOs and those responsible for IT planning and operations.
7. International bandwidth prices in India will drop by 30-40 per cent in 2005. The telecom market will remain crowded with five key players jostling for market share in cellular space.
Gartner also estimated that the broadband market will double in size to cross one million subscribers and the telecom companies will enter into the video market.
8. Consumer segment is rapidly gaining importance, driven by adoption of mobile services. This is reflected in their increased contribution towards spending for telecom services, from 35 per cent in 2002 to 43 per cent in 2005. By 2008, the consumer segment will account for 52 per cent in telecom spending.
9. Enterprise spending on information communications and technology (ICT) in India is expected to grow at 16.6 per cent to $22.88 billion as compared to Asia-Pacific growth at 7.6 per cent in 2005.
10. Gartner also said that Open Source and offshore IT services will continue to grow, while it warned global IT vendors to take emerging competition from China seriously with at least three Chinese IT companies becoming significant global competitors by 2010.
According to Gartner, the hype of offshore IT services is real and reflects a dramatic uptake in global sourcing of these services. When compared with the total IT services market, less than 3 per cent of spending ($606 billion) is attributable to sourced services in 2004. By 2007, the globally sourced component of IT services spending will be about $50 billion, or 7 per cent of the $728 billion total.
Verb For Shoe, is a new “physics defying†shoe from MIT spinoff company VectraSense. Its not clearly defined how it defies physics, it does supposedly wirelessly communicate to your computer and to other shoes (for inter-shoe e-business cards exchange), have adjustable air bladders, and a performance/health monitoring system (not yours, the shoes’! Don’t you know your Verb For Shoe’s health is more important?)
Engadget takes a dig at this new idea by commenting, “Look, in all seriousness for a moment—we feel we must say this as sort of a public service announcement—MIT spinoff or not, if you buy this shoe we’re totally disowning you.”
An interesting concept, though I found it hilarious. And well, as of now, I am happy with my lowly non-IT and random@health shoes.
A group of scientists has built a $10 million device that mimics the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth and other planets. The scientists hope to use the device to understand how the Earth’s protective magnetosphere works — and possibly gain insights into how to make fusion a feasible energy source.
The team consists of scientists from Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the device is located. They turned the device on this summer and presented the first findings from the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, in November.
The LDX is essentially a miniature magnetosphere — the magnetic field surrounding the Earth that shields the planet from a steady bombardment of plasma (high-energy, ionized atoms) streaming from the sun. This field traps the sun’s plasma, protecting the atmosphere and life on the surface. Other planets, like Jupiter, have much stronger magnetic fields while others, like Venus, have none at all.
Microsoft has launched its own blog service called MSN Spaces. Will be posting more on this, as I try out this new service.
There is a perceptive change in the US investor and venture capital markets. People in large numbers are attending conferences on India. The throng is a big change from the scene after the tech bust left, when the last wave of investors went running for India’s exits. However, this time it’s different. The cash-flow has started flowing back into Indian startups, and investors are starting to prowl for smaller, more innovative companies once again. At the same time, serious economic liberalization and a “brain gain†of technical talent and veteran entrepreneurs pouring back into India are changing the rules. That’s giving observers cause to hope for stronger, steadier growth in India. Primary driver of this change is the birth of a number of hybrid companies with innovations happening in India and sales and marketing happening in US. Now the main technical work happens here and Indian companies are opening up their offices in the US to market their products. This is a reverse trend compared to the outsourcing business model, which is now falling into the second generation companies. Talent is returning back to India, partially because of the tech-bust that took place in the 1990s and then later as Indian companies started getting famous and became leaders in innovation. Its great to see India finally coming of age.
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