when technology is a part of the whole!

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 years, you have relied on ratings of various FREE anti-virus software to choose the one you want for your home PC. the choice has been mostly between AVG or Avira. If you were me, you would believe that one should pay for minimum 2 softwares on your PC: Your Operating System i.e. Windows Your Anti-Virus i.e. Norton/ McAfee Now, Microsoft wants you to keep your computer safe for you. After including a world class firewall since Windows XP, Microsoft has now made available a FREE antivirus for your PC. This antivirus is called Microsoft Security Essentials . The antivirus is available as a FREE download from the link above. It is 4.28 MB of download for Win Vista/ Win 7. Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for home PC and counters viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. The software runs in the background and silently monitors the files for all the malware. It schedules scans when the PC is most likely idle and interrupts the user only ...

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...

Today, everyone has a blog. Everyone knows how to design a website (atleast with the right tools). To support this new era, Microsoft is making available its web design tool FREE for everyone. This free tool (called Sharepoint Designer 2007 or SPD) has been made available at http://www.microsoft.com/spd to download. Sharepoint Designer is successor of the FrontPage tools that many of the people  are already aware of. In addition, this tool has excellent support for customizing the FREE SharePoint Services app that comes with Windows Server. One might think that by releasing this software for free, Microsoft may be abandoning Sharepoint Designer. However, that’s not true. Sharepoint Designer will continue its development and next version will be released in the future. While SPD is free, Microsoft also has a professional suite of web design tools available – Expression Web. Lately Microsoft has been making available many of its tools available for FREE e.g. SQL Server Expre...

Today Microsoft has released a new version of Windows Live client for Windows Mobile devices. If you are using any of the Live services – Live search, Messenger or hotmail, you want this locally installed on your Windows Phone as well. the download can be accessed from: http://wl.windowsmobile.com .  The version currently available is v10.6.0046.0800. the exciting addition to this suite has been inclusion of Live Messenger that was earlier taken out of the Live Mobile suite. so, now u can be on IM even when you are on the move. Live Messenger works well over GPRS networks and let’s u have text conversations with your Live Messenger contacts. If you don’t want the client on your mobile, you can access Live services with web browser at: http://mobile.live.com Technorati Tags: live , mobile , windows