when technology is a part of the whole!

  Having trouble reading this email? View it in your browser . Stay Ahead! Keeping with the changing needs and dynamics of the IT landscape, Delhi Technology Forum presents TechCon 2011 , a premier event for technology professionals in Delhi NCR. Blended with dedicated content for developers and IT pros, this event promises opportunities for learning all about the upcoming Microsoft technologies and networking with industry stalwarts. To know more about the Delhi Technology Forum, click here What will you learn   Developer Day (Dec 17) Highlights   IT Pro Day (Dec 18) Highlights       Sessions on: Windows Phone 7 App Development Developing with HTML5 Developing on Windows Azure ASP.NET 4.5 SQL Server 2012 SharePoint Development   Sessions on: Implementing Public Cloud with Office 365 Setting up Private Cloud with System Center & Hyper V Public Cloud with Windows Azure SQL Ser...

Microsoft is today launching Windows Phone in India. These phones are,infact, the second generation of phones launched earlier outside India. Codenamed “Mango” the Windows Phones bring a lot of productivity benefits to consumers. Windows Phones are built with focus on people rather than getting tasks done or putting applications in charge. This focus on people infests itself with native integration of the phone with social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo Mail, Live Mail, GMail. Once you associate your IDs at these services, the phone automatically, integrates recent information from these sites into the phone. Let’s see where this could be useful: Let’s say I have a friend whom I have not been in touch with for a few months. He/ She moves locations and updates their phone no. in facebook. With Windows Phone, this updated number would automagically find its ways to the address book and I can call the friend on the new number. Now, if I was interested in knowin...

Internet usage is synonymous with Google  (though this is changing with advent of facebook and twitter) and this gives them the pulse of online netizens. Google has come out with 2010 Zeitgeist and it helps gaze into the minds of online Indians. So, let’s delve into it: Technology: The First love of online folks, this infested in fastest rising queries on Mobile phone brands (micromax, samsung, nokia, sony ericsson). Micromax a relatively late entrant has captured curiosity of the nation while Nokia still continues to rule the trust Indians have on the mobile phone brand. Apart from email (yahoo and gmail rule!) and social networking (courtesy facebook, twitter and orkut), Indians spent most time being musical - looking and downloading songs. IRCTC – the epic ecommerce success has been there in top lists for so long that without this the zeitgeist would seem untrue ! The only other online service that continued to attract attention was Way2SMS (and by logical conclu...

This one is going to be a political post given my home state has just seen one of the momentous events that democracy could provide. Bihar Elections 2010 have culminated on an expected “unexpected” note. The conduct of the elections were “uneventful” (the term is used with reference to the yesterdays of rampant violence and booth capturing). This was expected given that Election Commission had deployed para-military forces at all the booths (with local police left to patrol thereby reducing their interference). EVM use further made the rigging impossible and results were swiftly declared to the public ( incld on the web ) preventing any post polls manipulations. Nitish Kumar returned to power. This was expected. “Unexpected” was Nitish Kumar and BJP sweeping 206 seats out of 243 (political pundits were predicting 170 seats for JDU alliance). This has not only left them stunned but even the NDA alliance is coming to terms with the verdict with disbelief in their eyes! RJD had come...

Wishing Everyone a Very Happy Diwali and a Prosperous New Year! Diwali for me this year is “No Crackers”. Let’s see if this makes any difference!

Sometime in January, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting with Vice President of Symantec in India – Shantanu Ghosh (he also has an interesting food & travel blog ). We discussed the emerging challenges of security landscape in India. What was surprising is apart from viruses, spamming and phishing were equally troublesome for security professionals. An interesting discussion revolved around the declining margins for security solutions. With plenty of FREE security solutions available in the market (including Microsoft Security Essentials), Symantec would be looking for new revenue models. That’s when it came to my attention that Symantec is a big player in the online archive and enterprise security solutions as well. Since then, I had been looking to understand the challenges corporate India faces in the field of security? Recently, I discovered this abstrusely named report by Microsoft – Make Noise Check Noise . The report represents a wide variety of industries includin...

Here’s a question that I have been asking whenever I have had more than a handful of people around me - “How many of you use internet on your mobile phone?” And invariably the response were horribly negative. We frequently hear the great number of mobile phones that Indian consumers have been lapping up.. will this communication revolution lead to information revolution? The answer reflects in the recently released report by IAMAI. Here’s a quick snapshot of how the mobile usage in India looks like: From the hugely touted Indian mobile penetration, only 0.4% users actively use Internet. And here is what my worry is: Mobile adoption in India is leading to telecom revolution while the larger information revolution is still far away. The future of the mobile internet seems to hold some promise though. The young generation of school going and college going kids constitute around 68% of this mobile online population. When this generation grows up (probably in 10 years) they will ...

For all you PC gamers out there, there is reason to rejoice. The internationally acclaimed Alienware range is here in India! Dell has launched its Alienware M17x and this represents premium performance in the Dell consumer product portfolio.  On to some specs of the the 17” monster: Up to Dual 1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 280M graphics processing units (GPUs)2 with SLI™ technology Configurable with Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme Quad-core overclockable Mobile Processor1 Up to 8GB DDR32 1333MHz Memory 1TB3 7200RPM or 512GB of Solid State Storage Capacity (Raid 0) Optional Beyond HD resolution with a WUXGA 1200p (1920 x 1200) Edge-to-Edge LCD design Internal Wireless a/g/draft-n with MIMO (2x2) Technology AlienFX Illuminated Keyboard NVIDIA GeForce® 9400M G1 GPU with HybridPower™ technology Microsoft Windows Vista® (64 bit) [and free upgrade to Win 7 on availability] My first impression of the machine was – it looks intimidating and big. With its ...

Cloud based services have been in focus for a few years now. From FREE online email services (e.g. hotmail, gmail) to paid online services (e.g. Google Apps, Office Online, Yahoo Premium emails), the adoption of these services has been steadily rising. The safety of these applications have been questioned (as exposed by recent Twitter docs leak).. While Microsoft had launched its service in US way back, it has now launched these services in India. These services follow the initial launch of Hosted Exchange and Hosted Dynamics. These pay as you go/ subscription based services are meant for companies who want to avoid internally maintaining these basic IT services. The service is being launched as Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite . This suite includes Microsoft Exchange Online , Microsoft SharePoint Online , Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Communications Online . Exchange Online provides email, calendaring and contact management. Sharepoint...

India is going to be voting soon. I have been thinking on how we can improve the whole political process and quality of candidates. The systemic issue with our voting process has been that educated people have stayed away from voting. IMHO, the reason being they don’t want to sweat out standing in a line or going to the nearest booth for lack of simple amenities. I think there is a simple solution to the above available via technology. EC should make available voting via internet. If this made available, educated people who have access to internet and feel unmotivated to visit the election booth can vote via a very personal device – their computer. this would reduce burden on the voting booths and hence the expenditure for EC. also, the chances of fradulent/ bogus voting would be reduced as it will be difficult for anti-social elements to reach everyone’s home (rather than the voting booth). I have heard people say that internet is not available for everyone. I agree and I am prop...

The one thing i keep hearing everyday is cost cutting that is going on everywhere. Layoffs are more drastic of these cost cutting measures. Our company has also done its own bit of cost cutting (without firing anyone yet!).. Microsoft India has launched a website - http://www.controlcosts.com/ that can help enterprises cut costs. The site showcases prominent Indian business leaders at the site. To start, you just choose the scenario that you think is creating cost bloat in your organisation and the site will recommend tools and technologies that will help you streamline that process. At the site you can also pre—order the CFO toolkit that contains 10 ways to control costs. In addition, the site features a bunch of case studies from customers who have experienced cost savings. If one wanted to setup a discussion on cutting cost with an expert within Microsoft, they can do the same at the site. In the current times, this is an excellent move by Microsoft to help the customers...

In the past days, I haven’t been blogging. A lot has happened in that time – terrorist attack in Mumbai, MNS lost track, global recession set in and Congress advanced in the country. Here’s an ode to the state of the society as viewed by my nephew, Shantanu Chandra who is in Class XII, Amity International, Gurgaon. The lines below capture the times prevailing and the need for us to drop the “chalta hai” attitude but with caution: This techie world of gizmo and gadget This eerie feeling of incongruous widget Which gives us pleasure and takes pain Along with it makes us insane; Absurdness to such a horizon from where one would never fall And still people call you “Microsoft—…That’s all” A teen like me can’t do without a mobile-call Even though I know it is killing my brain cells, after all; This techie world of gizmo and gadget Makes a non-techie guy weird and hollow The bureaucrat are more concerned about their Sunday meal Than to serve the poor people whose w...

One of the biggest grouse that I had heard from community was that MS development tools were very expensive for people in India. Specifically, students mentioned that it was impossible for them to get the products due to them being expensive. In the first step, Microsoft made available Express edition of the development tools freely available for everyone. And now, hold ur breadth, it is making the development tools (full editions) available for FREE for students. The products now being made available for FREE are: Operating System: Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition Development IDE: Visual Studio 2005/2008 Professional Edition XNA Game Studio 2.0 and 12-month trial academic subscription to the XNA Creators Club Designer Tools: Expression Studio 2 (includes Web, Blend, Media and Design), Database: SQL Server 2005 Express, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, What is great is that Microsoft is making available the entire stack from Operating System to devel...

  Bill Gates, the prodigious Founder & Chairman of Microsoft is in India. Tomorrow he is going to be talking about the innovation opportunities in India and how Microsoft is going to be supporting the same.. the talk is scheduled to be in IIT Delhi from 2:00 PM… I am going to be attending the event. I have clicked a photo of my exclusive pass here :).. BTW, if u were a member of Delhi Bloggers you could have had an opportunity to attend this as well… If you are not attending the event live, you needn’t miss out on the fun. The event will be broadcast live. You can watch with me as he speaks (over webcast). Simply click on my pass image to register and watch starting 2:00 PM tomorrow…. When Bill Gates talks, he talks BIG… I am sure that I would have a lot to share after the event. So keep watching this space. Technorati Tags: bill gates , india

Live Maps from Microsoft is a good product.. and till now it was only good in US.. Microsoft has finally made Live Maps available for India (news via LiveSide.net ).. it is still not comprehensive for small cities in India and only has Street Maps for 9 major Indian cities - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur. I took the maps for a spin asking for directions from MG Road in Gurgaon to India Gate in Delhi. The result (seen below) are exactly the route that i would take. Amongst other features are Local Search, driving directions and business listings. The Live Maps seem good as a start but i need more time to verify the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the map data.. hope it meets my criteria :) Check out your city on Live Maps: http://mapindia.live.com and let us know what you feel about the search..