Green the Clinic : Kapil Khandelwal, www.kapilkhandelwal.com
Create your own telepresence, Kapil Khandelwal, www.kapilkhandelwal.com
1. Over 90 percent of departmen-
tal post offices across the
country have been comput-
erised, according to official
data. “As of now, 24,015 (94
percent) departmental post
offices out of 25,538 have been
supplied with computer hard-
ware,” Minister of State for
Communications and IT
Sachin Pilot said in a written
reply to the Rajya Sabha
Friday. The government
plans to computerise the
remaining departmental post
offices along with branch post
offices under the IT
Modernisation Project, to be
completed by 2012-13.
Replying to another question
in the upper house, Pilot said
that during the last three
financial years, the depart-
ment of post has been running
in deficit, but denied that
there is any plan to privatise
the postal services. Last
month, the minister had said
that there is decrease in sale
of post-cards and inland let-
terss due to induction of new
technology in the field of per-
sonal communication.
—IANS
bbIITTss
ONE BILLION CHINESE
CELL PHONE USERS
BBeeiijjiinngg:: China is heading to-
wards the billion-mark in the
number of cell-phone users
with a rising number of peo-
ple in the country relying on
phones to communicate.
GOOGLE’S ANDROID
SUITS TO STAY
HHeellssiinnkkii:: Google’s move to
buy Motorola Mobility will
not put an end to patent law-
suits against the Android
platform as the web search
giant is hoping, a Nokia exec-
utive said in a report on
Friday.
Google’s $12.5 bn
acquisition of M-
otorola Mobility
is for more than
just patents.
–––– EErriicc SScchhmmiiddtt
Chairman, Google
IBM TO ACQUIRE
ALGORITHMICS
BBeennggaalluurruu:: IT major IBM said
it has agreed to acquire
Toronto-based risk analytics
firm Algorithmics for $387
million (about `1,750 crore).
The acquisition is subject to
applicable regulatory clear-
ances and other customary
closing conditions.
OVER 90 PER CENT
POST OFFICES NOW
COMPUTERISED
Over 37,000 villages in the
country have not got mobile
phone connectivity till March
2011, according to data from
the telecom department.
Minister of State for Comm-
unications and IT Milind
Deora said in a written reply
in the Rajya Sabha Friday
that “37,184 villages in the
country are yet to be connect-
ed with mobile connectivity
as on March 2011”. The minis-
ter also said that till July 31,
the state-owned Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL)
has covered all district head-
quarters and 33,620 cities with
GSM (Global System for
Mobile communications)
based cellular services. About
579,486 villages, over 97 per-
cent of the census 2001 inhab-
ited revenue villages, have
been covered with telephone
connectivity through village
public telephones. Shared
mobile infrastructure scheme
has been launched by univer-
sal service obligation fund to
provide subsidy support for
setting up and managing 7,353
towers in 500 districts and
over 27 states. — IANS
OVER 37,000
VILLAGES HAVE NO
MOBILE PHONES
c m y k c m y k
TECHNOMICSQUOTE OF THE DAY
PAGE 13
Samsung unveiled Galaxy Note,
claimed to have the biggest and
brightest mobile display.
Facebook to add music, movies
and extensive gaming features
to its site soon.
MONDAY 5 | SEPTEMBER 2011
BENGALURU
New Delhi, Sept 4: It is
difficult for Indian securi-
ty agencies to keep a check
on the contents of social
networking sites because
of the encrypted data,
Communications Minister
Kapil Sibal said Friday.
“The solution service
providers of social net-
working sites secure cer-
tain communication to and
from such networking
sites by employing encryp-
tion, which pose chal-
lenges to security agencies
to keep a vigil on contents
of such sites,” he said.
However, the govern-
ment regularly interacts
with the telecom service
providers and solution ser-
vice providers to address
the issue and implement
solutions to the extent pos-
sible keeping in view secu-
rity, service and develop-
mental needs of the coun-
try, he said.
During April 2010 to July
2011, 33 incidents of misuse
of social networking sites,
related to phishing of
objectionable content per-
taining to political leaders,
religion, national security
and individuals were
reported to the national
nodal agency Indian
Computer Emergency
Response Team.
The ministry of telecom
had last month also
informed the Rajya Sabha
that it has received a letter
from the home ministry to
ensure effective monitor-
ing of social networking
websites like Twitter,
Facebook and others like
Google Plus.
— IANS
Govt worried on encrypted data
Apple jinx: iPhone 5
prototype also lost
■ San Francisco police had helped Apple Inc search for a ‘lost item’,
following reports that a prototype of the iPhone 5 had gone missing
San Francisco, Sept 4:
San Francisco police have
assisted Apple in the
search for a prototype of
the latest iPhone that
went astray in a bar in a
repeat of an embarrassing
loss that took place last
year.
An Apple employee lost
a yet-to-be-released
iPhone 5 in a tequila bar
in San Francisco’s
Mission District in July,
technology news site
CNET reported this week.
After the device was
electronically tracked
using GPS technology to a
San Francisco house, four
police officers and two
Apple employees visited
the home, the San
Francisco police said in a
statement distributed to
news outlets.
“Apple employees called
Mission police station
directly, wanting assis-
tance in tracking down a
lost item,” the press
release said.
“The two Apple employ-
ees met with the resident
and then went into the
house to look for the lost
item,” it said. “The Apple
employees did not find
the lost item and left the
house.” The statement did
not identify the item
being searched for but the
title of the document car-
ried a tantalising hint:
iPhone5.doc.
A resident of the home,
Sergio Calderon, 22, told
SF Weekly that he has vis-
ited the bar where the
phone was reportedly lost
but he did not have the
device. He said the search
of his house took place in
July. Cupertino,
California-based Apple
began selling the iPhone 4
last year and is expected
to unveil the latest model,
the iPhone 5, in
September or October.
Word of another unre-
leased iPhone model dis-
appearing in a bar came
just weeks after prosecu-
tors decided not to pursue
criminal charges against
Gizmodo technology blog-
gers who got hold of a lost
iPhone 4 prototype last
year.
Gizmodo published pic-
tures and details of the
iPhone prototype after
buying it for $5,000 from a
man who claimed to have
found it in a beer garden
where it was lost by an
Apple software engineer.
Criminal charges have
been filed against the man
who purportedly found
the iPhone 4 prototype
and another who bro-
kered the deal to sell it to
Gizmodo. The pair plead-
ed not guilty on Thursday
to misdemeanor charges
in San Mateo County
Superior Court.
— AFP
Green ways to
clean your PC
Washington, Sept 4:
Scientists have come up
with green solutions to
remove digital waste
from computers.
For instance, old or
rarely used files deplete
precious storage space,
bog down a computer’s
efficiency and sap its
energy.
Trash management
methods could point the
way to a new era of com-
puter cleansing, the arXiv
(pronounced as ‘archive’)
website reports.
Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity scientists Ragib
Hasan and Randal Burns
are applying real world
trash management meth-
ods to clean computers.
Hasan and Burns have
devised a five-tier pyra-
mid of options - reduce,
reuse, recycle, recover
and dispose - according to
a Hopkins statement.
“If you have too much
waste data in your com-
puter, your applications
may slow down because
they don’t have the space
they require,? Hasan
said.
How then can such clut-
ter be curbed?
Reduce: The most pre-
ferred option is to cut
back on the amount of
waste data that flows into
a computer. This can be
done by encouraging soft-
ware makers to design
their programs to leave
fewer unneeded files
behind.
Reuse: If two pro-
grammes are found to uti-
lize identical modules,
one might be eliminated
in a process called ?data
deduplication.?
Recycle: Just as discard-
ed plastic can be refash-
ioned into new soda bot-
tles, some files could be
repurposed. When old
software is about to be
removed, the computer
could retain useful pieces
of the program.
Recover: Even when
waste data can’t be
reused or recycled, these
leftovers might yield
information worth study-
ing after private identifi-
cation details are
removed. Dispose: This is
the least desirable option
and the messiest, when
you consider the energy
used to completely elimi-
nate old files or the real-
world pollution created
when one destroys an old
hard drive or other form
of storage media. — IANS
SSAANNGGEEEETTHHAA
CCHHEENNGGAAPPPPAA || DDCC
BENGALURU
Every time Shalin Jain
wanted to register online
for an event, be it a large
conference, a charity gala
or a music show, he would
never receive a confirma-
tion status until the last
minute. After repeated e-
mails and calls to the event
organisers, he would even-
tually be informed that the
event is overbooked.
Frustrated at the way
online registrations were
handled, he decided to
develop an intuitive online
registration service called
DoAttend that allows peo-
ple to register for an event
by paying through
credit/debit cards or net
banking and also print out
their tickets, to be taken to
the event.
“DoAttend, is a do-it-your-
self, online event registra-
tion system for event man-
agers and party planners.
The feature-packed web
application has all the tools
to allow users to create,
promote and track the
guests who’ve registered to
attend their events online.
The tool can be used at no
cost for users organising
free events and only a nom-
inal fee is charged from
users collecting paid regis-
trations from event atten-
dees,” said Shalin.
If you are planning to
organise a class reunion or
a prayer meeting, you can
get started on DoAttend, —
first by creating a new
event where you enter a
name, description, venue
information, date and time,
after which the event page
will be published using a
unique URL provided by
DoAttend. From that point
onwards, you can create a
customised registration
form for guests and design
the tickets for attendees to
print out before showing up
for the event and even col-
lect registration fees from
those who are planning to
attend.
DoAttend will then help to
send out invitations from
within its site and event
organisers can promote the
event by linking up with
various social networking
sites to draw a bigger audi-
ence. Potential attendees
can also click to add the
event to their Google,
Yahoo, Outlook calendar
and view a map with direc-
tions to the venue location.
DoAttend has powered reg-
istrations to corporate
themed events such as
Nasscom’s Product
Conclave 2010, monthly
cycling runs organised by
CRX Sports, Thought works
forthcoming Ruby
Conference India, among
many others. “We charge
on a SaaS based model
where every ticket sold is
charged 4.9 per cent of the
ticket fee, plus `15 per
attendee. For other coun-
tries it is 1.5 per cent of the
ticket fee plus 49 cents per
attendee. So far, 2,500 event
managers from around the
world have signed up to use
DoAttend, we have 200
Indian customers and have
reached $2 million in ticket
sales” said Shalin.
DoAttend is optimised for
the iPhone and the iPad as
well.
Do’Attend is just one of
the many products that
Shalin, 28, has successfully
developed. Sheer passion
for software inspired him to
bootstrap Tenmiles
Corporation in the year
2000, while still in first year
college pursuing a degree
in Statistics. Since he was
quite adept at writing Flash
and web based applications
having worked part-time in
two different companies, he
decided to start designing
Flash banners for global
customers. “I was clear
from the start that I want to
build a world class software
product company because
it is far more challenging to
build a product that is uni-
versally accepted across the
globe than offer services to
a few customers,” says
Shalin. At first, he offered
the Flash banners for free.
It was when a Canadian
customer refused to accept
free banners and paid him
$60 for 3 banners, Shalin
decided to price each ban-
ner at $20. Within the first 6
months he had raked in
$1,000. He created Screen-
swift next, a software prod-
uct that converts Flash
media into a screen saver,
enabling movie posters to
be downloaded as screen
savers. Initially he offered a
free version of Screenswift,
to popularise it and later
sold it for $49 per licence.
“Disney used Screenswift
to distribute Disney screen-
savers, big design houses in
Europe bought the product
too,” said Shalin. His next
product, a web-based
Helpdesk software for small
and medium businesses
(SMB) was an instant hit.
We clinched 11 deals with
SMB customers from
Europe and the US in the
first month of its launch.
The startup firm has
notched up an impressive
list of 6,000 customers from
70 countries with its innov-
ative product portfolio.
Create and manage events online
New Delhi, Sept 4:
Troubled by pesky calls
and messages, over 130 mil-
lion mobile subscribers
registered with the nation-
al do not call registry till
Aug 25, said Minister of
State for Communications
and IT Milind Deora
Friday. “As per the infor-
mation by Telecom
Regulatory Authority of
India, 130.21 million sub-
scribers are registered
with National Customer
Preference Register (NCP-
R) as on Aug 25,” said
Deora in a written reply to
the Rajya Sabha.
TRAI has issued regula-
tions and direction from
time to times to prevent
pesky calls and messages.
Last year, the telecom
watchdog announced a set
of new measures to curb
unsolicited commercial
calls and messages, which
were to be implemented
from Jan 1. This was
extended to March 1 and
then to March 21.
The regulations include a
fine ranging from `25,000
to `250,000 for the default-
ing companies. Unlike the
previous regulation that
asked customers to regis-
ter their numbers in ‘do
not call’ list, the new one
allows customers to choose
from different categories
like ‘fully blocked’ or ‘par-
tially blocked’. — IANS
More than 130 mn
users opt for ‘do
not call’ registry
START-UPS
Kapil Sibal
O
ver the last few
months while doing
up my new office, I
have been evaluating many
new emerging telepresence
technologies that could
completely disrupt the way
I do up my new office —
decorate my board and
meeting rooms with new
video communications gear
— at the same time provide
a shift in other spheres by
putting them up at our
homes or at medical clinics
and transforming them to
digital and medical homes
respectively.
In my journey to create
and test a cheap solution, I
went out in search of poten-
tial components that would
make up the telepresence
package. My discussions
with a few doctors and like-
mined professionals gave
me an understanding of the
following:
The cost of telepresence
systems is prohibitively
high as the equipments
have proprietary technolo-
gy which cannot be unbun-
dled. They also had a bad
experience with telepres-
ence systems in the past —
the Internet network could-
n’t meet the latency
demands of telepresence,
lack of support staff to man-
age such a system and they
were not sure how much
real usage there would be.
To zero down on a poten-
tial solution, I started look-
ing at a number of factors
ranging from price, to
broadband service
provider, voice and video
over IP solution’s reach,
flexibility and interoper-
ability and product line
depth and having a service
that can assure me that the
systems I put in my home
and office are fully utilised
and provide the highest
return on my investment.
Here are some of my assess-
ments and impressions on
the overall solutions that I
put together as an operat-
ing telepresence model.
First, let’s start with the
broad band service prov-
ider. The current incum-
bent Airtel fell far below
expectations. Their equip-
ment, poor broadband
speed and latency had the
level of my frustrations at
its peak. Even at 2mbps
connectivity, my telepres-
ence sessions still had stat-
ic and voice/video corrup-
tion. My conclusion is to
try other service providers
who can be more under-
standing.
The second key compo-
nent of the solution was a
high-definition (HD) TV
with a 1080p HD resolution
and 120Hz or more refresh
rates with four or more
HDMI (High-Definition
Multimedia Interface) slots.
The options available in the
market are Sony, LG, and
Samsung. I finally settled
down for Sony 32 inch LED
Skypeready TV. Little did I
realise that Sony’s Bravia
range of LCDs had to be
replaced twice as they went
phut after installation. The
third key component of the
solution is HD TV Cam.
While Sony offers a superi-
or proprietary HD Skype-
ready TV cam that works
with their Skype-ready
LED TV, it does not work
with laptops as a plug-and-
play device. Hence I zeroed
in with cheaper, Logitech
HD TV Cam. The fourth
component of the solution
was an iOmega’s Screen-
play HD Media Drive and
player that could store and
forward my medical images
or record and replay our
telepresence sessions for
training and medico legal
issues for the doctor.
Finally, Microsoft’s Skype
video calls were stress test-
ed for over two months and
they seem to be working
fine. The doctor’s practice
management would come
from a start up that is offer-
ing the services ‘on the
cloud’. (More on this in my
next column). To conclude,
I have acquired a home-
based telepresence solution
for less than `60,000 from
retail purchases. As I repli-
cate this solution in my
new office, I hope to bring
down the costs below
`30,000 for the desktop te-
lepresence and around `75,-
000 for the board room.
With as low as `40,000, the
doctors can too upgrade
their clinic to a telepres-
ence system for consulting
their home and medical
tourism customers.
Sony, Logitech, iOmega
and Microsoft Skype can
creatively work out better
solutions for doctors, if
they wish, to jointly pro-
ductise this solution bundle
to make it cheaper and
work faster.
A Dose of IT
Kapil Khandelwal
Kapil Khandelwal is Director, EquNev Capital. The views
expressed are his own.
How to maximise
your telepresence
Shalin Jain
■ Apple lost an early pro-
totype of the iPhone 4
at a bar in Redwood
City near the company's
headquarters in 2010.
■ That device was picked
up by another cus-
tomer and sold to tech
site Gizmodo.
■ That sequence of
events triggered a
criminal probe which
ended just this month.
■ Two suspects (Brian
Hogan and Robert Sage
Wallower) linked to the
2010 lost iPhone 4
debacle have pleaded
not guilty.
■ Hogan and Wallower
professed their inno-
cence in a California
court. The judge sched-
uled a pre-trial for Oct-
ober 11 and an actual
trial on November 28.
Apple employees
called Mission
police station
directly, wanting
assistance in
tracking down a
lost item
immediately.
–––– AA ssttaatteemmeenntt
bbyy SSaann FFrraanncciissccoo ppoolliiccee
TTrraacckkiinngg tthhee mmiissssiinngg iiPPhhoonnee 44
iPhone 4