This one is from my latest column in HindsustanTimes. Isn’t it time Google gears up?

For years now Google and Microsoft have been at loggerheads. I have lost count but this must be something like my 50th something story on the Google and Microsoft saga. The initial years of the Google Microsoft saga were stuff legends are made of. The world’s biggest company, Microsoft, the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, versus a startup, Google and an unknown founder and this startup within a few years threatens the very existence of the World’s biggest company. The story of an underdog threatening the Empire is the stuff which always appeals to the public mind and creates legends. But is the Microsoft Google story really a legend that a startup goes on to become the biggest company in the World or is it because we like to hear legends? The anti-establishment story always appeals. The revolt, the revolution, the Che factor, the change always appeals. But what after that? The revolt has happened are we going to see a new empire set in or was it that was all it was meant to be?

Air, Water, Google, Microsoft, Food

Try and survive without any of these in times of today and you probably won’t succeed. Air, water, food as we all know, Microsoft for everything offline and Google for everything online. If boundaries between offline and online was clear the conflict would never really have happened. Increasing bandwidths, fading boundaries between online and offline and Microsoft goes LIVE online literally and Google Gears it offline again literally. Now it isn’t just a territorial dispute but a combination of offline and online merged into one Universe and only the best and fittest can rule this Universe. The revolutionary isn’t valid any longer, post revolution what’s next? A Kingdom needs a Statesman to run it not a revolutionary.

Google - Power corrupts and absolute power absolutely

I am a huge Google fan and in absolute awe of how it took on Microsoft yet also its critic. Last year I had written a story Why Google Sucks? All those points are still valid except maybe the Chinese dominance one and Google’s current stand. Consumer privacy at Google sucks even now. The amount of consumer information Google really has is mind boggling. Would Microsoft ever be trusted with that much information? The answer is no. Then why is Google being trusted. It doesn’t really need to Einstein to figure this out that Google does have information about when you last when on a date, what you did, what you ate, when you last fought with your spouse if you have written about in your Gmail.

Innovation at Google

What really drives innovation at Google? Is the driving force of innovation at Google what Google “thinks” is in the best interest of the consumer or is it what consumers really want? The answer probably is Google gives what Google wants and a good case are recent innovations from Google.

Wow! Google Buzz is so cool, it’s taken on Facebook. Have you heard that from anyone? What did Google really have in mind about Buzz, was it the consumers or was it what Google thinks best? Or just because half the email population is using Gmail so does Google really think whatever it serves the consumers would consume.

Google Docs updates. Perfectly timed keeping in mind its rival Microsoft Office 2010. Google Docs no longer allows offline access to documents. Is it an acceleration problem or a problem with (Google) Gears? Even though some of the updates are good but the fact is Microsoft Office is the most powerful suite even now. By now more and better was expected from Google Docs.

Microsoft on the other hand came out with Docs.com that allows you share documents in Facebook. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 - Docs for Facebook lets you work from just about anywhere with the familiar Office experience.

The Last Word

Google labs is actually a great place to see innovation. But so are the 1000’s of other idea banks, school labs, and 1000’s of startups across the world wide web. Do any one them have the steam to take on Microsoft? When was the last time Google came up with an application that changed the rules of the game? Are we going to see another Gmail kind of application ever? Will Google do something to make Google Docs the most powerful online suite? When we can we see a launch of a masterpiece that truly shows the mark of magnificence that used to Google once upon a time.

Guest Article by Ryan Phillips

In most, but not all countries the Gregorian calendar, based on 365 days
and 366 days in a leap-year, is used. The year is divided into 12 months,
and into weeks of seven days. Other units of time are expressed in hours,
minutes and seconds. This is not a universal system and many other forms
of calendars are in existence. When other systems are in operation the
figures used to indicate the year are usually sufficiently different for this
to be obvious. In some calendars, a year may also be divided into units
other than 12 months. In Ethiopia the year is divided into 12 months of 30
days each and one month of five days, or six days every fourth (leap) year.
In many countries, including Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Israel, Japan,
Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand a lunar based calendar systems are
used, usually concurrently with the Western culture or Gregorian
calendar. It is important to be aware that this may have a bearing on the
calendar dates when national secular and religious holidays are
celebrated. It may also have an effect on the starting date of the
governmental fiscal or taxation year. The two main international
timekeeping conventions are the 12 hour clock system and 24 hour clock
system. Most countries operate under one of these two systems, there are
also a few that use both systems at the same time. The British am
(morning) and pm (afternoon) convention is not known nor used in many
countries.
Most of those countries using the 12 hour clock system have a turn of
phrase to differentiate between morning hours and afternoon or evening
hours, for example between 6 o’clock in morning and 6 o’clock in the
afternoon. One should also be aware that some countries covering a
huge area of land, for instance Russia and the United States, are divided
into a large number of time zones between their eastern and western
borders. A large number of countries operate daylight savings time
adjustments. Its commencement, duration and ending is usually
determined by national regulations. A few countries permit some of their
states or regions to opt out of national regulations, resulting in more
than one time zone.
What is more confusing is when different systems of time are used;
although in most countries the clock time is used as a means of measuring
time, there are some countries or regions where a system that might be
titled event-time is used to measure time. In an event-time system, time is
related to events. This might be an historic event such as an earthquake
or wedding of the head of state, alternatively a daily routine event like
morning prayers. Even in the clock time method there are different
systems, in country districts in Ethiopia for example, sunrise is always zero
hour and therefore 07.00 hours or 7 am is 1 o’clock. Similarly in Thailand,
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when not using the 24 hour system, Thais divide the day into four sections
of six hours and to meet someone at ‘four in the morning’ is quite likely
to mean at 10.00 hours.
The expression used for a particular point in time varies from country to
country, and it is not uncommon for such indications of time to be
mistranslated or misunderstood, thus noon which means 12 o’clock
midday in some countries may mean 14.00 hours or 2 pm or 2 o’clock in
others. The German expression ‘halb neun’ or ‘half nine’ means 08.30
hours and not 09.30 hours.
In Malaysia, if a guest is invited to a house on Saturday at 19.30 hours, this
really means that one should come on Friday evening at 19.30 hours, since
Malays consider that the new day really starts at about 18.30 hours. One
would therefore be well advised to establish, in good time, with one’s
host the precise date and time of the invitation so as to avoid making a
mistake by arriving on the wrong day. Likewise it is essential to carefully
check date and time with one’s host in Indonesia where the day begins at
sunset and the night of a day precedes the day rather than following it

R. Phillips is the Editor of Schiel & Denver Book Publishers

A picture is worth a thousand words said some wise man of lore. Well you might be wondering what’s the connection between business, technology and pictures. Well what looks good, appeals? What appeals, sells. Talk about blogging. Tens and Thousands of blogs yet just a few get famous. Why? Reasons are content, marketing and presentation. The entire www seems to have experts and more experts on marketing online. Talking about presentation here is a company that clothes blogs, literally, call it the Valentino of Wordpress and here you get premium wp themes.

Wprex.com is one of the best wordpress theme sites I have seen so far. There are tens and hundreds of free wordpress themes. When I say free it doesnt mean free it means free only in economic terms. In terms of quality the themes are par excellence. This is definitely one of my favorite Wordpress Themes sites and I have even book marked it.

Searching and finding are two different things. On Wprex.com searching and finding the right wordpress theme is like a breeze. I mean its so simple. The categorization is near perfect. The keyword searches are superb. Even if i look thru a critcal lens I can’t find a fault with this website.

My take on Wprex.com and trust me I can be pretty ruthless when it comes to reviewing websites. Wprex.com is like the Valentino of Wordpress when it comes to Premium themes. What about the free ones? Well my answer is if Valentino got generous and gave out his designs for free what would you call that? :) Wprex.com rocks. I give them full marks.

iSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world, tomorrow will host a summit of Internet policymakers, industry leaders and other stakeholders in Washington, D.C., to kick off a celebration of the economic, social and cultural impact of .com. The popular domain marks its 25th anniversary today.

On March 15, 1985, symbolics.com was the first .com registered in what had yet to be labeled the “world wide web.” While it took nearly a decade for the domain — and the consumer Internet — to take off, today there are over 80 million .com websites and the domain is a prominent feature of one of our culture’s most iconic developments.

While its economic and social impact is undisputed, for the first time the economic impact of .com has been quantified in a new study that found that the domain serves as a platform for $400 billion in annual economic activity. The report, by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), found that the broader Internet economy drives more than $1.5 trillion in global annual economic activity, more than the global sales of medicine, investment in renewable energy, and government investment in R&D, combined. The ITIF estimates that the economic activity flowing across the .com infrastructure is likely to grow to $950 billion in annual revenue by 2020.

The .com domain has defined a generation of innovation and entrepreneurism, serving as the launch pad for a new generation of companies that have transformed communications, commerce, entertainment and more.

It has also become part of the fabric of daily life. According to a recent poll of over 3,800 respondents by an independent research firm, 81 percent of Americans visit five or more .com websites a day, with many visiting more than that. Two-thirds of Americans visit between five and 25 .com websites a day. And, nearly two-thirds of Americans have used a .com website to reconnect with an old friend, with six percent reporting that they met their spouse or significant other on a .com website. Over half of respondents reported finding important medical information on a .com website and one in five said they found a job on a .com site.

The .com domain remains at the center of nearly every major Internet trend. According to VeriSign’s Internet Profiling Service there are 11.9 million e-commerce and online business websites, 1.8 million sports-related sites and 4.3 million entertainment-related sites with a .com web address. The most popular words among .com URL’s today include “home” (1.2 million), “online” (1 million) and “land” (891,000).

“For anyone under the age of 30, they probably don’t remember when the Internet wasn’t in their life. It’s become such an essential part of how we work, live and play. The 25th anniversary of .com gives us a moment to step back and realize how deeply the Internet revolution has transformed our society,” said Mark McLaughlin, CEO and president of VeriSign. “At VeriSign, we’re proud of the role we play in helping bring the Internet to people, but we never take for granted that we have to continue to build and strengthen the Internet so it can continue to meet the increasing demands placed upon it.”

In looking ahead to the next chapter in the history of .com and its integral role in the Internet, and as part of its commitment to the Internet infrastructure, VeriSign has embarked on a new initiative called Project Apollo. This initiative will dramatically strengthen and scale the .com infrastructure by the year 2020. Over the next three years alone, the Internet will see the number of users increase by 500 million to 2.2 billion worldwide, and devices accessing the Internet increase from 1.6 billion devices to 2.7 billion devices. And with the emergence of innovations like smart grids, electronic health care and radio frequency ID (RFID) tags, the Internet and associated technology systems will undergo profound changes in the next decade.

To meet the infrastructure challenges expected by 2020, VeriSign is scaling and in some cases revamping the infrastructure that keeps .com running. VeriSign’s 2020 technology roadmap calls for it to grow capacity 1,000 times today’s level of 4 trillion queries to manage 4 quadrillion queries per day to support normal and peak attack volumes based on what the company has experienced as well as Internet attack trends.

“Over the last 15 years, there have been numerous predictions of the Internet’s imminent collapse. But the Internet infrastructure has withstood not only a dramatic increase in both users and usage, but malicious attacks because of the investment and efforts to continually scale it,” said Ken Silva, VeriSign CTO. “With the technology roadmap outlined in Project Apollo, we are building the infrastructure essential to manage the Internet’s next wave of growth as increasing demands put stress on the system and drive a dramatic increase in traffic.”

Cisco today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd. CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd is a private company established to catalyze and accelerate the delivery of various eGovernance services through the CSC framework. The purpose of the MoU is to make education and health care solutions available and to promote social inclusion through CSCs across India. The MoU was signed by Shankar Aggarwal, CEO, CSC e‑Governance Services India Ltd. and Naresh Wadhwa, president and country manager, Cisco India in the presence of John Chambers, chairman and CEO, Cisco; Wim Elfrink, chief globalisation officer and executive vice president, Cisco Services; R. Chandrashekhar, secretary, Department of Information Technology, government of India; and S. R. Rao, additional secretary, Department of Information Technology.

The Common Service Centres program is a strategic cornerstone of the government of India’s National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) with 250,000 CSCs planned across 600,000 villages. The CSCs have the potential to offer Web-enabled e-governance services in rural areas as well as to provide high-quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and services in areas such as education, health and entertainment.

Insurance today is one of the biggest earners of most developed economies. While I don’t have the exact figure in US insurance that we pay comprises of a great share of revenue the country earns. Hedging for the future so that it is safe and we have the required funds when we require has made insurance into a billion dollar industry. When we buy insurance what’s the best we can expect? Let’s talk auto insurance for instance. For example where can get we cheapest auto insurance companies so that the future is secure and yet the payment we pay is less.

Well the answer is right here OnlineAutoInsurance.com The site lets us compare offers by different companies and then fnd the cheapest auto insurance. It also gives quotes from different auto insurance companies to let us choose the best rate. It empowers us to select the cheapest rate while picking between ins carriers

Now isn’t that absolutely great. Now only do we pay less, we also get a cover and we know we are safe and our future is in secure hands too. We are protected and that itself is such a great feeling. Noteworthy are a few things. Price sometimes isn’t the only criteria while choosing insurance. As a buyer you need to get into nitty gritty of what’s covered by the insurance and what’s not. You need to be sure that by paying you get it all and therefore it is important verifying car insurance

The more information you have about the insurance companies and their offers the better. It lets you choose the right offer that’s best suited to you. The more information you have, the better offer you can choose which covers more and yet you don’t pay much.

With over 33 major languages and 1652 dialects, India is a nation of diverse cultures and languages. About 95 percent of the nation’s population prefers working in their regional language – while just about five percent conducts its business in English. It is obvious that the disparity in language usage contributes to the digital divide. Since 1998, when Microsoft India identified localization as a key catalyst for effecting ushering in an IT revolution, the company has been working on overcoming the language barrier to computing since.

Today, Microsoft India showcased a host of custom made solutions for the Indian market under its ongoing effort of making technology accessible by localizing its flagship products. The solutions and tools include:

o The Indic Language Input tool is a set of tools that help users enter Indian language text into computers easily and quickly. For example, one can type, For example, one can type “bhaarat mein anek bhaashaein bolee jati hain” for obtaining 2

The Indic Language Input tool is available in two versions; the desktop version enables the user to enter Indian language text directly into any application running on Windows, such as Microsoft Word or Outlook. The web version allows the user to enter text on any web page – such as Live mail or Windows Live Messenger - without requiring software download. The Language Input tool’s visual keyboard enables users to visually select and directly enter Indian language characters. The beta version of the project is available for free download and currently supports ten languages – Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Oriya and Punjabi.

o Windows 7 Hindi language interface pack (LiP) which allows users to experience the latest operating system and its features; Windows Taskbar (Go-to spot for launching programs and switching windows), Aero Shake (Click a window pane and shake your mouse to minimize all other open windows), Peek, Snap (Drag an open window to your screen’s border to automatically re-size it. Snap two different windows to the left and right borders for a perfect comparison), Jump Lists, Multitouch (Interact with your PC with a touch-screen monitor, using your fingers and multi-touch gestures, and Remote Media Streaming (Enables highly secure, remote Internet access to home-based digital media libraries from another Windows 7-based PC outside the home) in Hindi.

o MSN Yuva – One stop online Hindi channel for the globally connected youth of India. It offers a window into every aspect that interests Gen X, from sports, to entertainment, to career counseling, to the latest news. It offers features like Dosti – a social networking site in Hindi, Dil Se – An online confession box help that helps finding solutions to one’s most intimate/personal problems with the choice of keeping or revealing one’s identity and Fun Tadka – The fun quotient which provides Bollywood’s latest gossip, film reviews, tips on love & romance etc.

o Internet Explorer 8 in 18 additional languages on Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008 Language Packs which will allow users to access like InPrivate Browsing, Web Slices, Accelerators and Visual Search in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.

o Language Interface Packs (LIPs) in 12 Indian languages – Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu - for MS Office and Windows. A total of 45 additional soft (virtual) keyboards, which are free to download, are also available in these 12 languages.

o Windows Live, which includes e-mail, Instant Messenger, online storage, photo gallery, social networking, calendar, online storage, personal home page, and more, in seven Indian languages. The languages are Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

o In Microsoft’s most significant initiative to reach out to Indic developers, the Captions Language Interface Pack (or CLIP) has been launched for Hindi, Malayalam, Oriya, and Tamil. CLIP is a tool that uses a tooltip caption to display translations for user interface items in Visual Studio 2008. This is the first tool specifically designed to help students and beginner developers in India use the product in their own language.

o IL-POST (an annotation framework for Indian languages), wikiBABEL (a community-oriented multilingual content creation portal) and MINT (an algorithm for mining multilingual news corpora) developed by Microsoft Research India aimed at creating resources to enable computational linguistics research in Indian languages.

Microsoft has been working on language computing in India since 1998, since the first India visit of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. The idea was to usher in the IT revolution in the country in a phased manner – and localization was identified as the key catalyst for effecting this development. In 2003, Microsoft India launched Project Bhasha, a cohesive effort to bring together governments, the academia and research institutions, the local ISVs and developers and the industry associations on a common ground for promoting local language usage in IT. The www.bhashaindia.com portal is India’s leading community for Indian language computing.

Mahindra Satyam, the brand identity of Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (NYSE:SAY), a leading global consulting and IT services provider has signed a new four year offshore contract with KMD, one of Denmark’s leading IT companies. KMD, which specializes in the public sector, signed a renewed contract with Mahindra Satyam for the next four years worth approximately $48 million ending in December 2013. The new contract is an extension of a previous contract that was due to expire this year which involved the supply of application development, testing and application support services particularly in the area of SAP which is a growing business for the Danish IT company.

The new contract involves stronger partnership and multi-fold increase in business commitment with offshore work conducted in a development centre in Bangalore, India. The scope of application development work covered will primarily include SAP, as well as other technologies such as Mainframe applications, .Net, Java, BizTalk, WebLogic, PL/1, Sharepoint and MQ Series.

According to Lars Monrad-Gylling, CEO of KMD, “We have chosen SAP as a strategic technological platform for our development work and consider it a common cornerstone to enable coherence between systems, global market standards and to offer our customers greater openness and freedom of choice. Mahindra Satyam’s outstanding competencies in this area were a major factor in our decision to extend the contract.”

He added, “The offshoring project with Mahindra Satyam allows KMD to achieve even greater growth in the SAP development area and allows us to offer customers a reduced time to market. We consider Mahindra Satyam among the world leaders in their field and the two companies have already been engaged in a highly successful partnership.

C P Gurnani, CEO of Mahindra Satyam commented, “We view this significant contract award as a great endorsement of the quality of work we have already delivered and a real testament to the success of the partnership that has developed between the two companies. We look forward with anticipation to the next phase of this relationship.”

While there are tens and hundreds of online casino games when it comes to choosing the right ones even the most professional gamers would be at a loss. The reason probably if of plenty. How does one choose the right ones?

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In an attempt to cope up with the subscriber losses at its fixed-line phone business, Verizon Communications Inc is planning to slash close to 13,000 jobs at the division this year following a slump in expected fourth quarter revenues.

Chief Financial Officer John Killian said that the cuts will follow reductions of a similar size as in the last year. This year’s eliminations shall equal to 11 per cent of the staff at the unit with about 117,000 in the workforce at the year end.

The company’s sales grew 9.9 per cent to USD 27.1 billion, however short of the USD 27.3 billion estimate. The fixed-line revenue fell 3.9 per cent.

The company’s pretax expense was USD 3 billion last quarter related to job cuts, pushing it to a net loss of USD 653 million. This is in sharp contrast to the USD 1.24 billion profit last year.