Computer Gupshup

Welcome to the new e-age classroom. In a few schools in India, the Intel's classmate PC (CMPC) programme is revolutionizing teaching as well as learning. In some schools it's at pilot stage while in others the actual rollout has started.

The class starts with the teacher uploading a small video on the topic she is teaching. She keeps on adding her inputs during the video session which plays on each child's laptop via a WiFi (wireless fidelity) connection. The students are required to take the PCs home and bring them back fully charged.

After the lecture, the teacher gives a small group exercise and forms their groups electronically. Students needn't sit together to perform the group task. They can interact via chat windows. Each one can see what the group leader is doing on his PC and add inputs.

During the class, some students start talking. Immediately a message pops up on their screens in bold -- `keep your mouth shut!' Meanwhile, Amit tries to surf the internet for the latest cricket score. Instantly, a message pops on teacher's master PC and she disallows Amit's PC's from doing anything but the exercise.

In fact, the teacher's master PC's monitor is nothing but an interactive white board placed on the wall instead of a blackboard. The teacher uses the interactive white board to draw or write. And for that she does not need a chalk or pen. She can do it with her fingers. At about Rs 13,900 for a Linux-based PC and Rs 15,500 for a Windows XP-based PC, each student is equipped with a small, blue coloured notebook PC with a 2 GB or a 4 GB memory.

In the pilots for the Millenium School, Intel provided 1,500 CMPCs. "Initially it was challenge for teachers to transit from the traditional mode of teaching to a new method but the turnaround happened in a month's time and the results have been great," says Abhinav Dhar, president, K-12 initiative, Educomp.

Wassup is the most common question among friends and one that elicits `blank vacuity' to `inane comments' to `the meaning of life'.

But what happens when you have too-long a buddy-list and cannot ask all your friends this all-important life-changing-question?

Enter twitter. It's a Web 2.0 tool that basically `wassup's your friends all day long and lets you read their answers if you choose to subscribe (in twitter parlance).

Twitter lets you publish updates about your life in 140 characters or less (SMS limit) to family or friends who choose to follow you. All you need to do is answer the question, `what are you doing?'

It is a device agnostic message routing system which essentially means that one can send and receive messages (tweets in Twitter lingo) in a number of ways, including their website, mobile phones, instant messaging clients and downloadable desktop applications.

Life happens between blogs and email
As Common Craft puts it, `Life happens between blog posts and emails' and it is precisely this life between the blog and email that twitter lets you publish.

While many people send out updates like "had an amazing cup of coffee" or "going for a jog", twitter is increasingly being used by people to share their thoughts and to provide links to things they have been reading or experiencing.

There are many benefits to twitter, other than keeping up with the lives of one's friends.For one, it is easy. With easy access to technology, we are pretty much a lazy race. Blogs of 300 words or more are difficult to pen with people turning to micro-blogging from the comfort of their mobile phones.

Saving men, helping the helpless a la' superman
Twitter recently saved a man from jail and got an unemployed person the job of his dreams. A man who was jailed in Egypt sent frantic tweets (updates) and his `followers' (contacts) mobilized forces to get him out of jail.

• Twitter in India
  
• Tweeting brands
  
• Tap into the global brain
  

The ITES sector has matured considerably with its expansion into varied verticals, well differentiated service offerings and increasing geographic penetration. India's importance among emerging economies, both as a supply and demand centre is fuelling further growth of the sector. The IT / ITES industry continues to be one of the fastest growing industries in India, while India maintains its position as a strategic off-shoring destination for MNCs worldwide.

The ITES-BPO employee base has grown to 553,000 in FY (financial year) 07 from 415,000 in FY 06. Over the past decade, the Indian BPO segment has witnessed significant transformation. Starting with basic data entry tasks, the industry graduated to a high proportion of voice-based services and a range of back-office processing activities. The last 3-4 years have seen the scope of services expanding to include increasingly complex processes involving rule-based decision making and even research services requiring informed individual judgment.

The rapid expansion in the scope of BPO has been accompanied by an equally rapid adoption across a range of vertical industries. This wide range of services may be summarised into four broad categories comprising customer interaction services (CIS), finance and accounting (F&A), human resource administration and niche business services.

Key highlights of domestic BPO industry:

BPO demand in the domestic market has witnessed noticeable growth over the past few years. The annual revenue aggregate of the domestic market for ITES-BPO grew to USD 1.2 billion in FY 2006-07 from USD 0.9 billion in FY 2005-06, illustrating a significant increase in demand. While the high growth rate may be attributed to a small-base effect, the rapid adoption of BPO in the domestic market is receiving well-deserved attention.

The Indian economy is increasingly being integrated globally, businesses in India are beginning to face increasing levels of global competition and being pushed to deliver world class levels of product and service quality. ITES-BPO has emerged as an effective means of entrusting specialists with the task of consistently delivering the desired high-levels of quality - leaving the client organisations to focus on their core businesses.

Key growth drivers of Indian ITES-BPO exports:

Abundant talent- India's young demographic profile is an inherent advantage complemented by an academic infrastructure that generates a large pool of English speaking talent. Talent suitability concerns are being addressed through a combination of government, academia and industry led initiatives. These initiatives include national roll out of skill, setting up finishing schools to supplement graduate education with training in specific technology areas and soft skills and memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with education agencies to facilitate industry inputs on curriculum and teaching and develop faculty development programme.

The translation service (http://www.- google.com/translate_t) throws up meanings or sentences that sound right for simple sentences like "I love you" or "How are you?" but fumbles away with literal dictionary words when one tries complex sentences, idiomatic usage or slang words - and it also errs on syntax. But the software operates on the principle of "More you use, the better it can get" because users can offer alternatives and press a button that could make the computer system "learn" and perfect usage over time.

"There is a need to reach people who may be English-fa- miliar, but Indic language proficient," Rahul Roy Chowdhury, Product Manager, Google India, told HT. "We'll work to make Google Translate in Hindi even better," said Chowdhury. Google already offers a transliteration service to convert Roman (English) scripts to Devnagari (Hindi) and some other Indian languages and free space on its Blogger.com site for Hindi and regional language blogs.

A significant number of people are using the social network sites for work-related tasks which include research on potential employees and generating new business, a report by global HR firm Manpower stated.

However, a majority is using these sites for personal reasons, with 83 per cent of people studied logging on to stay in touch with friends through them.

While 17 per cent use the sites to research for potential employers, 10 per cent for networking and generating new business and 17 per cent for other work-related reasons.

"Growth of this new medium is rapid. In future, due to huge Internet penetration and younger profile of our country expansion will further accelerate," Manpower India managing director Naresh Malhan said.

Experts believe in today's competitive world, it is important to target active as well as passive job seekers.

"About 30 per cent of the job market in the country is represented by passive job seekers, while about just 15-20 per cent are very active," HR service provider PeopleStrong CEO Pankaj Bansal said.

The passive market can be tapped through the networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook as people using it for personal reasons and not at present looking out for a new job may get attractive opportunities through the websites, Bansal said.

Technology is making it easier for companies to get to the population they want to get to, but they are not as adept as they need to be at finding the people they really want, Malhan said in a white paper on Technology Trends.

According to a separate Manpower report 'Virtual World of Work', use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Friends Reunited is the most popular among those under 35-year-old. About 74 per cent of those studied and aged 16-24 use such sites.

Some older people are also fans of these sites. One in five of those aged between 35-44 of age (19 per cent) and 21 per cent of those between 45-54 of age also make use of social networking sites.

The report also reveled that as the virtual world of work becomes increasingly attractive, people are expecting changes in the workplace over the next 10 years. The results reveals that 87 per cent think technology would play a bigger role in how people work.

About 85 per cent of those surveyed think people would hold more meetings via phone/Internet, while 81 per cent believe people would work from home on a more regular basis.

Mr. Kedersha's online library of 94 videos includes tips on how to chill a Coke in two minutes, simulate a gunshot wound and start up a PC quickly.

Many of the clips have been played hundreds of thousands of times, turning Mr. Kedersha into the top earner on Metacafe, a video-sharing Web site that pays the makers of popular videos. In little more than a year, the site has written him checks totaling $102,000.

That puts Mr. Kedersha, a 50-year-old video producer from St. Petersburg, Fla., near the front of the latest online stampede: the rush to capitalize on the popularity of how-to videos on the Web.

"You never know when something like this is going to go away," Mr. Kedersha said. "I better ride the wave."

Some 25 years after "Jane Fonda's Workout" topped the home-video charts in the United States, Americans' fascination with instructional videos has shifted to the Internet, where a virtually unlimited amount of shelf space guarantees there is something for everyone.

Do-it-yourself tips, self-help, cooking and beauty advice, sports and musical instruction are all available in a smorgasbord that offers the serious alongside the satirical, the humorous and the esoteric. Viewers can learn how to swaddle a baby, grow plants hydroponically or teach their cat to use the toilet.

"Almost everything we sell requires education and explanation and instruction," said Richard Revis, the co-owner of Black Jungle Terrarium Supply in Turners Falls, Mass., who is featured in more than 30 videos on how to feed, breed and care for poison dart frogs.

Most clips tend to run a few minutes or less -- but not all. In a series of videos running a total of more than five hours, an Australian veteran of the Vietnam War demonstrates in minute detail how to build a replica of a working Sherman tank at two-fifths its original scale.

Plenty of entrepreneurs and financiers are hoping that the wave Mr. Kedersha has begun to ride is a long way from cresting. In the last two years, investors have put tens of millions of dollars into start-up companies with names like WonderHowTo.com, VideoJug, Howcast, ExpertVillage and Graspr, which are all hoping to become the YouTube of how-to video clips. Of course, a good share of these videos are on YouTube itself. And traditional media companies like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Scripps Network are putting much of their own how-to content online.

These start-ups have attracted former television executives and veterans of Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and MySpace. Most of them readily admit that, as with many Internet fads, profits remain elusive for now.

Scores of independent video producers, experts and self-styled experts are, meanwhile, vying to make a name for themselves in hopes of sharing in the expected profits. Plenty of others are making how-to clips just for fun or for a few minutes of Internet fame.

Entranced, perhaps, by those infamous hypothetical trains, many educators in recent years have incorporated more and more examples from the real world to teach abstract concepts. The idea is that making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.

That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are correct. An experiment by the researchers suggests that it might be better to let the apples, oranges and locomotives stay in the real world and, in the classroom, to focus on abstract equations, in this case 40 (t + 1) = 400 - 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of the second train. (The answer is below.)

Dr. Kaminski and her colleagues Vladimir M. Sloutsky and Andrew F. Heckler did something relatively rare in education research: they performed a randomized, controlled experiment. Their results appear in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Though the experiment tested college students, the researchers suggested that their findings might also be true for math education in elementary through high school, the subject of decades of debates about the best teaching methods.

In the experiment, the college students learned a simple but unfamiliar mathematical system, essentially a set of rules. Some learned the system through purely abstract symbols, and others learned it through concrete examples like combining liquids in measuring cups and tennis balls in a container.

Then the students were tested on a different situation -- what they were told was a children's game -- that used the same math. "We told students you can use the knowledge you just acquired to figure out these rules of the game," Dr. Kaminski said.

Continuing with its significant contribution to technology development, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has come out with new product, G-Class, a crosslanguage search-plug-in suit. The plug-in suit will primarily meet the complex needs of Indian languages and provide surfing facilities in local languages at available search engines.

S. Ramakrishnan, director general of C-DAC, also announced the launch of two new products -- PARAMNet-3 and INTCOMPv1.0. CDAC has been undertaking research projects for Indian languages since last few years and G-class is an addition to this series. The plug-in product is also a one-stop shop for search engine developers."

With G-Class plug- in, the web will work like an information bureau with queries addressed in Indian languages. For example a person can ask a query in any Indian language on search-engine to get the answer. The in-built transliteration system in the product can translate one script to another. This will simplify surfing for users."

"Indian languages are complex and searching poses specific problems which the best of existing search engines cannot solve. With G-Class, C-DAC has tried to address the problems of Indian users. The product supports eight languages namely Marathi, Bangla, Gujrathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Urdu while Punjabi, Kokani, Kannada and Telgu will be developed soon. The plug-in can also be harnessed to a SQL database. It can also exist on a desktop to create a webpage," he added.

Explaining other new products, Ramakrishnan said, "PARAMNet-3 is high performance inter-connect network, indigenously developed for database and storage applications. This will work as a primary interconnection for PARAM series of supercomputers. With the development of PARAMNet-3, C-DAC has joined an elite group of system developers world-wide, capable of supplying high performance networking component for building supercomputing systems. INTCOMPV1.0 is an open source software useful for automobile and aircraft industries. Software will prove useful for the R&D labs and institutions."

Educational process outsourcing is enabling over 100 Delhi students rake in handsome dividends from a few hours spent answering queries and clearing doubts. Manya Education Private Limited, an e-tutoring firm, recently began campus recruitment in IIT-Delhi, Delhi University and Jamia Millia Islamia. Academically strong students from the Sciences stream were shortlisted and subsequently trained for a month.

The e-tutoring model requires these studentteachers to log on to a chat-based software and answer queries from students in the US and Europe. For an average four-hour session, they earn between Rs 12,000 and Rs 17,000, depending on competency .

Varun Thakur, a Chemistry (Honours) student, is back from office in time for classes at Sri Venkateswara College, after four hours spent interacting with American students in grades IX to XII. "E-tutoring is exciting. I work from 3.30 am to 7.30 am and am back home before classes. The courses in the US are the same as ours. The only difference is the teaching methodology," says Thakur.

Beginning with Math, Physics and Chemistry, Manya Education plans to include social sciences lessons. "We conduct a content test to evaluate the knowledge of interested candidates. Then we pick students who are good communicators," says Sachin from the firm's Human Resources department.

Students-teachers can draw diagrams and figures using the software and transfer files if required. For IITian Rumit Mani, a final year MSc student in Chemistry, the process has been a lot of fun. "I love the subject that teach and the timing works for me as well. Also, I feel confident when I successfully clear doubts and queries," he says.

The teaching fraternity has welcomed the initiative. "E-tutoring is a great option for bright students with a good grasp over their subjects," said Rihan Khan Suri, placement office, Jamia Millia Islamia.

"Since the are flexible, students can quit teaching during exams and then resume it again."

This is where Carmen V. Russoniello, lab director and a professor in the College of Health and Human Performance at the university, is trying to determine whether some video games can be good for you.

"I've always thought there's something special about the concept of fun; it's one of the most powerful words in the English language," Russoniello, a former president of the American Therapeutic Recreation Association, said in North Carolina recently, just yards from a wall covered with diplomas, professional citations and the medals he earned in the Vietnam war.

"As scientists," he said, "we know there is a cascade of beneficial biochemical and hormonal effects in people when they are engaged in an activity they perceive as fun. What we're seeing here is that some video games fit into that mould and that some games can have a positive health effect on people."

Formally, Russoniello's research project is called A Randomized, Controlled Study of the Effectiveness of PopCap Video Games in Reducing Stress and Improving Mood.

Informally, that means that the professor is in the process of bringing 120 test subjects in, wiring them up like Woody Allen in Sleeper (1973), sitting them in front of a computer and then measuring their brainwaves and heartbeats as they play simple games such as Bejeweled, Bookworm Adventures and Peggle. PopCap, the Seattle company that makes those games, is paying the $23,500 (around Rs9.4 lakh) cost of the study. Russoniello intends to announce his results later this year.

US-based mobile payments company, Obopay, plans to launch this convenience-packed person-to-person mobile payment service in the country soon, a top company official said.

"We are in talks with more than 15 banks and are close to sealing deals with three banks. We hope to launch our service here within a month," Obopay Vice-President business development Balachandra Unni said.

Anyone having a mobile phone and bank account will be able to transfer money to another person at the other end provided that person also has a bank account and a mobile phone, Unni said.

For the service to gather momentum, much would depend on having lower transaction costs and Unni said, "We are working on it. However, it has to be minimal and less than the normal transaction costs to make the bank-account link model successful."

The aim is to make the bank-account link model into a full-fledged ATM, where people can undertake all transactions conveniently from their respective places.

"If there is more usage of the model, operational costs will definitely come down," he added.

"People residing in metros can easily send money to their native places even in rural areas through this highly convenient model and at a lesser cost. All one needs to do is go to the nearest bank branch and collect the money," Unni said.

The service would be of immense benefit to the retail sector as it would enable customers to make direct payments from account to account with adequate safeguards, Unni said.

"In credit and debit card transactions, there are some security concerns. But the bank account link-model has less security concerns since it is a direct transaction from one account to another," he said.

But as churn rates still crawl upward, employers are rethinking that strategy. Now, they are linking overseas travel, education leaves and training opportunities with the amount of time a worker owes a company.

"Bonds will get tied not to employment, but the nature of on-the-job training provided to employees," says Ashutosh Sinha, recruitment director at business process outsourcing (BPO) giant Convergys Corp.

Also known as "service agreements" in the outsourcing and information technology (IT) industries, bonds generally require an employee to agree to stay with a company for a year or two, and pay the company several thousand rupees if they decide to leave.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, companies such as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and Wipro Ltd were notorious for demanding up to a few lakhs from employees who left before their contract was up, and TCS even fought a lawsuit over the practice in a California court.

The industry's shift away from the practice, observers say, is partly a legal move.

Third-party trainings or trips abroad may be the only types of bond contracts that an employer can legally enforce, according to Sanjay Kamlani, a co-chief executive officer of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing company in Mumbai.

A bond contract in any other instance is "nothing more than a scare tactic," he says.

Observers also say contracts with strings attached can be win-win for both employer and employee; BPO and technology workers can now join companies and pledge to stick around, in exchange for getting a bump up the skills ladder or the opportunity to learn new skills abroad.

Yahoo Labs Bangalore will be a centre of excellence for next-gen eration search and advertising technologies, focussed on making the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers. Rajeev Rastogi, a fromer Bell Labs director, has been appointed as vicepresident and head of the new lab.

THE NEW laboratory-with an initial team of 100 scientists and engineers-will be part of the expansion of its R&D operations in the country
YAHOO LABS Bangalore will be a centre of excellence for nextgeneration search, focussed on making the Web more relevant and simple for users

"Yahoo Labs Bangalore intends to build a world-class team focused on delivering the most valuable insights and leading-edge technologies to delight all of our customers worldwide," according to Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president and head of Yahoo! Research.

He told a news conference in Bangalore, "As an extension of our research and development (R&D) operations here, Yahoo! India Lab will initially have a 100-member team of scientists and engineers. They will work on multiple projects to make the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers worldwide. The India lab will work in tandem with the other labs in the US for deriving new algorithms to enhance the performance of our search and retrieval tools. While the R&D centre will write software codes for various functions, the lab will develop products for databases," he said.

Top 10 states (in terms of percentage of Indian users)

• Maharashtra 19.6%
  
• Andhra Pradesh 9.9%
  
• Delhi 8.9%
  
• Karnataka 8.8%
  
• Tamil Nadu 7.7%
  
• Kerala 6.9%
  
• Uttar Pradesh 6.8%
  
• West Bengal 4.5%
  
• Gujarat 4.4%
  
• Madhya Pradesh 4.2%
  

Indians were the fifth most active among Orkut users
Orkut has millions of users worldwide, though the exact number is not known. India has more users on Orkut than the US

Who's sending these scraps?
The scrapplost users hall from Pakistan, followed by Madagascar and the Contral African Republic. Among women, the most scraps come from Jamarca, then Madagascar, fo lowed by St. Plorre and Miguelon. Among men, Pakistanis sent the most, then Qatar

SINGLES BEAT MARRIED, HEAVEN BEATS HELL
Orkut also classifies people on the basis of relationship status (married, single or in love) or state of mind (Heaven or Hell) in their personal lives.

Relationship

• Married- 101
  
• Single- 1086
  
• Love- 593

• People living in "the state of Heaven"- 1400
  
• People living "in the state of Hell"- 1331

The order, issued by city police commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakraborty, comes into effect from today.

"I have issued the order keeping in mind the modus operandi of terrorists and other anti-social elements. Such persons may use cyber cafes to contact their accomplices over mail. Terrorists also interact with their contacts on details of their designs," Chakraborty told PTI here.

The order makes it compulsory for internet parlour owners to seek the photo I-cards from customers and record their names and addresses as also details about the time of log in, duration of use and the serial number of computer used. The details have to be kept on the server for six months.