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Vatican to launch Internet news portal next week.
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Technomics
Gadget Fix
A dose of IT
KAPIL KHANDELWAL
oogle Health is not going to be there anymore. After its launch in May 2008, Google Health went through a chequered existence till Google Execs announced, last week, to withdraw the product by end of 2011. I will use the PESTC model to conduct the postmortem analysis on the death of Google Health Politically, 2007-08 was a time when concerns around reforming healthcare reforms were at its peak and one of the key agenda items in the US Presidential war. Such need to reform healthcare was politically echoed world over by many leaders. This meant more business for healthcare ICT to create solutions to address various issues like healthcare access, costs, quality, outcomes and so on. Politically, it made sense for tech heavy weights to put their might in launching healthcare solutions and in this political back drop that Google Health was launched. However since then not much impact for many tech major's who waged on healthcare. Economically, this was the time for world's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Healthcare was seen as anti-recessionary. Tech major's boardrooms discussed de-risking and growth by social sectors such as healthcare, education and so on. Google's board and leadership could not have been thinking differently while giving thumbs up to invest in healthcare business. However many tech majors have since realised that healthcare requires longterm strategic vision and investments to stay in the
June 26: Imagine a scenario where you are cruising down MG Road and impulsively decide to stop at a fancy new restaurant for dinner. After parking your car, you whip out your smartphone and take a photograph of the restaurants faade and within seconds the menu of the restaurant is displayed on your phone screen along with other relevant details like visuals of the interiors of the restaurant, the kitchen, its smoking area and its childfriendly zones etc. Augmented reality, a technology that is popular in the West will soon be adopted in India, allowing people to make spot decisions on where to dine without spending hours trying to figure it out, says Suhas Gopinath, CEO of Global Incs. Hot, new, tech products will be launched in the areas of mobile and cloud computing to cater to the unmet needs of multiple industry verticals. For instance, technology will make it possible for parents to receive messages as soon as their children board the school bus, and will allow them to keep constant check on their kids academic progress, at the click of a button, noted Suhas. Global Incs which began as a pure play IT services company is now aggressively focusing on product development, as the company is finding it hard to retain its global customer base due to rising costs. The company is developing a low cost iPad clone an eBag that will replace the heavy school bag. Very soon, kids will go all the way to school and back home with a compact, lightweight eBag in
tow. Imagine another scenario where your newspaper will be delivered to you on your mobile phone or tablet device. Sujai Karampuri, CEO of award winning startup, Shloka Telecom says that this is a new reality that will happen sooner than later. Stating that the next big game changer that technology will usher in is video, he said Video-calling will become the standard in two to three years, changing the way we live, work and play. We will also be able to see who we are playing mobile games with, across locations. Flexible screens especially the cellphone screen will be expandable to the size of a regular newspaper and people will be able to read large format content on their mobile devices very soon, says Alok Bhardwaj, founder of Hidden Reflex that launched the first Indian browser called Epic. He said, with OLED technology, screens larger than tablet
screens can be folded up to the size of a cellphone screen. Watch out for new, flexible devices such as a wrist watch which will also identify your GPS position and also keep you updated on all your Facebook friends status messages said Alok. Another sweeping change that will come into our lives is the way we interact with our computing devices. Human Machine Interface a favourite topic of the movie industry will revolutionise the way we interact with machines. For instance, the input device for a computer has stopped evolving beyond the keyboard and the mouse. This is where Gesture computing with powerful hand, face and emotion recognition algorithms can make the keyboard and mouse redundant. This way interacting directly with the computer will become ubiquitous and will perhaps become available to even low-end cellphone users in the near future observed
Sanjay Shelvankar, founder CEO of ScaleneWorks People Solutions LLP. Some of the applications that will use gesture recognition are sign language recognition, patient assistive robotics and immersive gaming. More important, gesture recognition will make the remote control redundant, added Sanjay. E-commerce is now coming of age, thanks to a gamut of brands and categories to choose from, free shipping, fabulous discounts ranging from five to 60 per cent, cash-back guarantees if a customer is not satisfied with the product and the convenience of researching purchases online. Its time for e-commerce version 2.0, because people are warming up to shopping online and apprehensions about the security of online transactions have begun to melt away. Sales have gone up by 10 times since we launched our site three years ago, says Ramakrishna Kalluri, director of playgroundon-
line.com, a site primarily focused on selling sports and fitness brands. . One of the greatest contributions of technology today is to integrate a consumers online and offline experiences. Suresh Narasimha, CEO of Telibrahma tells us how: If a customer who is shopping for clothes online, wants to know how a particular dress looks on her, technology makes it possible for her to see herself in all the dresses she has shortlisted. An auto enthusiast, who is going through the fine print of a Ford Figo advertisement in the newspaper can fish out his mobile phone and take a picture of the ad. He will be able to see a detailed brochure of the car and book a test drive, all on his mobile device. Telibrahma has assisted 50 national and international brands in engaging with their customers with such services. Technology service providers will target mobile phone users with a variety of applications that will be delivered via the cloud on a pay-per-use model, making life easier for the average person, says V R Govindarajan, director Perfios Software Solutions. People will be able to do pretty much everything on their smartphones that they could previously accomplish with their desktop and laptop apps. Location based services will help people find points of interest like coffee shops, libraries, malls, while on the move; personal navigation services will help people find their way through various parts of a city with ease, and free personal finance software, will allow people to manage and get a 360 degree view of their personal finances said Govindarajan.
ujitsu has launched the Bay Projector for its Lifebook notebooks (S761 and P771) , converting the notebooks into a fully-equipped mobile office. One of the most convenient features of the projector is that it can be inserted into the notebooks modular bay and can be used in seconds, with the added advantage of not having to carry the cables around as well. As a business notebook user, an executive might know the scenario of arriving at an important meeting, ready to give a presentation, only to discover that the projector is broken, missing or is not compatible with the notebook that he is carrying. The Bay Projector solves that problem and converts the notebook into a fully-mobile office said Alok Sharma, Country Manager, Workplace systems, Fujitsu India. This 210 gm light weight projector works almost on every surface, consumes less power, is quieter and is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The screen can be projected onto the wall and the latest figures, videos and illustrations can be shown to colleagues and customers. When not in use, the Bay Projector can be easily removed and replaced with a modular second battery, a DVD Super Multi drive, or simply a weight saver. At the end of a long day for business travelers, the projector can also double-up as a hotel room personal cinema, where it can be used for playing back movies on a bigger TV screen, for more comfortable viewing.
metaphors, the hacker group took to Twitter the microblogging site where it had more than 277,000 followers to release its statement. A link to the release also was posted on www.lulzsecurity.com but there was no way to independently contact the group to confirm the release. The abrupt dissolution came a few days after LulzSec threatened to escalate its cyberattacks and
steal classified information from governments, banks and other major establishments. LulzSec also had said it was teaming up with the Anonymous hacker activist group to cause more serious trouble. "... Our planned 50day cruise has expired," the hackers said in their statement, "and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind -- we hope -- inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval,
mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love. If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere." In what could be a sign that cyber police were making progress toward shutting down LulzSec, British police said on Tuesday they had arrested a 19-year-old man on suspicion that he was connected to the attacks on Sony, the CIA and a British police unit that fights organised crime. London police declined to say if the teenager was a member of LulzSec but the hacking group said on Twitter that he had hosted one of its chatrooms on his computer server. The arrest came after Spanish police earlier this month apprehended three men on suspicion they helped Anonymous. So far LulzSec's publi-
cized assaults have mostly resulted in temporary disruptions of some websites and the release of user credentials. The data the group released Saturday was a mixed bag. We were not able to access all of the files but those that were available included a list of routers devices that handle Internet traffic and their passwords, as well as account information for an Irish private investigation service. The AOL documents appeared to be elements of an internal technical manual. A file list on a download site indicated there also was some AT&T internal data in the dump, although the nature of that data was not immediately clear. AOL was not immediately available for comment, while an AT&T spokesman did not have immediate comment. Reuters
SECURED DNS