My fortnightly column, A Dose of IT discusses on Urban census and public health and well being Kapil Khandelwal www.kapilkhandelwal.com QuoteUnquote with KK

1. VViiddeeoo wwaarrss
c m y k c m y k
TECHNOMICS
PAGE 13
Google is taking a low key
approach in revealing its new
products: Larry Page
Nokia says it is targeting over 50
per cent of the mobile/smartphone
market share in India by 2012.
MONDAY 31 | OCTOBER 2011
BENGALURU
AAPPPPllyy yyoouurrsseellff
People are already using
their smartphones to take
photos of old printed
photos, to preserve the
images and share them
on sites like Facebook.
Shoebox is an app that
aims to make the process
easier.
iiPPhhoonnee
SHOEBOX BY
1000MEMORIES
Microsoft is going after
the female Windows
Phone owners market. It's
aimed at "busy" women:
"We've handpicked sto-
ries & videos from lead-
ing magazines and web-
sites so you don't have
to. Well, because you
deserve it..."
WWiinnddoowwss PPhhoonnee
MSN: ONPOINT
YOUTUBE’S PURSUIT
TO ENTERTAIN
L
ast week Bengaluru
celebrated three mile-
stones as a city. First,
it ranked amongst the top-
five of India’s most populat-
ed cities based on the 2011
population census. Second,
it became one of India’s few
cities to boast an ‘opera-
tional’ metro transport sys-
tem. Finally, with the latest
population and growth sta-
tistics pouring in, the city
will be amongst the top 20
richest cities in the world
by 2025 — the silicon valley
of the east — ahead of
Mumbai and Chennai, pro-
vided it continues to grow
at the current pace in mon-
etary terms.
I would like to raise some
key issues from my experi-
ence on Mumbai First
Healthcare Committee and
the way Mumbai and
Maharastra state admin-
istration have moved for-
ward to restore the balance
in their master plan for
2042.
Firstly, Bengaluru has so
far thrived and succeeded
on the young migrant
‘techie’ population for
growth, both on the num-
bers and GDP front.
However by 2025, our cur-
rent rate of growth will be
halved due to the high pop-
ulation density which will
have its own environmen-
tal, technological, econom-
ic, social and health and
well being issues. What I
fail to understand from the
master planning exercises
in urban India is that high-
density strategy requires
the Urban Development
Authorities to submit a
plan to increase population
density to union urban
development ministries
requirements, which will
otherwise lead to stripping
Development Authorities’
of its planning powers.
Interestingly half of the
top thirty cities of the
world are going to be from
India. The corollary to such
planning policies that com-
pel higher density inorder
to save resources such as
energy and cut down on
greenhouse gas emissions
is not true. Nor are we plan-
ning for health and well
being issues for the highly
dense population.
A simplistic framework
for the health and well
being for Bengaluru in four
key segments would be:
First at the individual level
and how the city will posi-
tively or negatively affect
their health and well being.
Second at the social infra-
structure and community
health networks that are
created in line with the
population’s growth and
affluence. Third, the
Development Authorities
ability to create and pro-
vide the common citizen
services at the cheapest
level without creating
bureaucratic organisations
to oversee and manage
them. Some of these that
impact health and well
being include, food supply,
education, living environ-
ment, employment, water
and sanitation, healthcare
services, housing and
transportation.
In one of my columns, I
had proposed an inclusive
strategy to health and well-
being for Bangaluru
through a six- fold agenda.
Its time we revisit those
once again and take it on
the discussion table.
Kapil Khandelwal is a
leading healthcare and ICT
expert. Kapil@KapilKh-
andelwal.com
A dose of IT
Kapil Khandelwal
Its time for BDA to
wake up to reality
YouTube is making a bold
step into original program-
ming in an
entertainment
venture with
some 100 con-
tent creators,
from Madonna
to The Wall
Street Journal.
The Google-owned video
site islaunching more than
100 new video channels.
iPHONE 4S HAS A
FEW PROBLEMS
User tests
suggest
that bug
in iOS 5
may be
polling
mobile
mast data
too fre-
quently
and run-
ning down battery. A flaw in
Apple’s location services
system in its new iOS 5 soft-
ware is increasingly suspect-
ed of being the cause of
rapid battery drain for some
owners of the iPhone 4S.
iiPPrroobblleemmss
NOW PLUS FOR
GOOGLE APP USERS
Google+, the search giant’s
new social network, has
made the site available to its
40 million Google Apps cus-
tomers around the world and
added some new features.
Google has also announced
a new trends page called
‘What’s Hot’, which will show
what content is most popu-
lar on Google + at any
moment in time.
AApppp pplluuss
PPhhoonnee SSccaann
SUN TO LAUNCH
NEW MOBILE APP
News International is plan-
ning to launch a new Sun
app for smartphones and
tablets within the next three
months.
The app will use existing
Sun content presented in "a
Sun-esque" way and will be
available across Apple and
Android products.
Microsoft works out how
to play Skype the right way
Seattle, Oct. 30: Wall Street is
warming up to Microsoft Corp’s
$8.5 billion purchase of online
chat service Skype.
But there are still concerns the
world’s biggest software compa-
ny — with a patchy record on
pleasing consumers and making
acquisitions work — can really
pull it off.
“It’s got huge potential. It pulls
them directly into the telecoms
area and they need to diversify,”
said Nick Landell-Mills at Indigo
Equity Research. “But they
haven’t really made a lot of
acquisitions. And Microsoft has
noticeably failed so far on con-
sumer. They are essentially an
enterprise organisation.”
Microsoft’s headquarters in
Redmond, Washington, and
Skype’s U.S. base in Silicon
Valley are buzzing as the two
companies start the process of
working together.
Microsoft has not said what it
plans for Skype except to say it is
“incredibly excited” about get-
ting the service into its products.
Most expect Skype video chat
and messaging will start to
appear soon on Xbox game con-
soles, Windows phones and
Windows Live messenger, and
later as an expansion to its Lync
messaging and video chat service
for businesses.
Skype, which popularised the
VoIP — voice over Internet pro-
tocol — method of using a com-
puter as a phone, is the clear
leader in the market, with 145
million users who sign in at least
once a month.
Its online chat service is free,
but it has 8.8 million customers
paying for premium services
such as placing calls to mobile
phones or landlines from a PC
and video-conferencing, which it
is pitching strongly to business-
es.
Microsoft is hoping Skype will
enrich its own programs and
platforms and become a vehicle
for ads, without frightening off
Skype’s loyal customers.
The most likely first step will be
to bring Skype to the nearly 35
million active members of Xbox
Live, Microsoft’s online gaming
setup, allowing players to video-
chat while they play games or
watch movies.
“They are turning the Xbox
form purely a gaming device to
being a communications or
entertainment console,” said
Mark Moerdler, senior research
analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.
“You can sit at your Xbox and be
able to talk to other people
through the camera in Kinect.”
Microsoft will then look to
introduce Skype as an app on its
Windows Phones and make it
complementary to its PC soft-
ware, analysts said, helping it
battle rival services Google Talk
and Apple Inc’s FaceTime.
The strategy will be to draw
more people into Skype, especial-
ly business users, pushing them
towards paid services.
“It’s a huge installed base and
Microsoft can target them with
services from Bing, ads and so
on,” said Jack Gold, head of J.
Gold Associates, a telecoms
research firm. “Skype can also
plug into the Lync environment
and give Microsoft scalability
way beyond what they can do
now, as many companies already
use Skype.”
Analysts expected Skype to add
$250 million to $400 million to
that unit’s sales for the remain-
der of this fiscal year, pushing
the total to about $10.6 billion,
about half what is expected for
the Windows and Office units.
The busiest part of the year is
coming up for Skype, as users in
the northern hemisphere tend to
use the service more during the
dark winter months, especially
during the holiday season and
Chinese New Year when they
want to reach out to friends and
relatives.
— Reuters
Cell phone’s shelf
life is just 2 years
New Delhi, Oct. 30:
Mobile phones are no
more just a communica-
tion device as an increas-
ing number of people are
switching to newer hand-
sets within two years for
new applications, accord-
ing to industry body
Assocham.
In a survey conducted
across six major cities of
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata,
Chennai, Bengaluru and
Hyderabad, nearly 39 per
cent respondents said
they switch to a new
phone in less than two
years for new applica-
tions.
The survey covered
1,370 responses from peo-
ple in the age group of 20
to 30 years. Also, with
prices of mobile handsets
coming down and dispos-
able incomes going up,
people are changing
handsets too often. The
survey found that for
first time buyers, the
brand of phone influ-
ences the purchasing
decision with 39 per cent
respondents agreeing.
India is the second
fastest growing telecom
market in the world after
China, with 59.1 crore
users in urban areas and
30.1 crore users in rural
areas. About 17 per cent
respondents said price
was a factor, while 10 per
cent said availability of
the latest model influ-
enced the purchasing
decision.
For the second pur-
chase, quality ranked on
top with 15 per cent
respondents agreeing.
As per the survey,
friends are the single
most important source of
information while pur-
chasing a handset.
Youngsters are using
their phones for social
networking, listening to
music, playing games,
reading news, surfing the
net, chatting with friends
and families and even
checking their bank bal-
ances with handsets, it
added —PTI
China joins the elite
supercomputer club
Beijing, Oct. 30: China
has made its first super-
computer based on
Chinese microprocessor
chips, an advance that sur-
prised high-performance
computing specialists.
The announcement was
made this week at a tech-
nical meeting held in
Jinan, China, organised
by industry and govern-
ment organisations. The
new machine, the Sunway
BlueLight MPP, was
installed at the National
Supercomputer Center in
Jinan.
The Sunway system,
which can perform about
1,000 trillion calculations
per second - a petaflop -
will probably rank among
the 20 fastest computers in
the world. More signifi-
cantly, it is composed of
8,700 ShenWei SW1600
microprocessors, designed
at a Chinese computer
institute and manufac-
tured in Shanghai.
Currently, the Chinese
are about three genera-
tions behind the state-of-
art chip making technolo-
gies used by world leaders
such as the United States,
South Korea, Japan and
Taiwan. "This is a bit of a
surprise," said Jack
Dongarra, a computer sci-
entist at the University of
Tennessee and a leader of
the Top500 project, a list of
the world's fastest comput-
ers. Last fall, another
Chinese based supercom-
puter, the Tianhe-1A, cre-
ated an international sen-
sation when it was briefly
ranked as the world's
fastest, before it was dis-
placed in the spring by a
rival Japanese machine,
the K Computer, designed
by Fujitsu.
But the Tianhe was built
from processor chips
made by US companies,
Intel and Nvidia, although
its internal switching sys-
tem was designed by
Chinese computer engi-
neers. Similarly, the K
computer was based on
Sparc chips, originally
designed at Sun
Microsystems in Silicon
Valley.
Dongarra said the
Sunway's theoretical peak
performance was about 74
per cent as fast as the
fastest US computer - the
Jaguar supercomputer at
the Department of Energy
facility at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory,
made by Cray Inc. That
machine is currently the
third fastest on the list.
The Energy Department
is planning three super-
computers that would run
at 10 to 20 petaflops. And
the United States is
embarking on an effort to
reach an exaflop, or 1 mil-
lion trillion mathematical
operations in a second,
sometime before the end of
the decade, although most
computer scientists say
the necessary technologies
do not yet exist. To build
such a computer from
existing components woul-
d require immense amo-
unts of electricity - rough-
ly the amount produced by
a medium-sized nuclear
power plant. — NYT
Mumbai, Oct. 30: The e-commerce market in the
country, which is growing at an estimated 40-45 per-
cent against a global growth rate of 8-10 percent, is
likely to touch `50,000 crore this year, says a recent
study.
About 80 percent of the domestic e-commerce market
is travel related, comprising booking of airline and
rail tickets, hotel bookings, and online mobile
recharge, with online retailing taking in just about 15
percent. Electronics and apparel are the biggest cate-
gories in terms of sales, the
study said. “We believe it’s
the simplicity of the trans-
action processes which will
encourage adoption of e-
commerce,” First Data
India and ICICI Merchant
Services general manager B
Amrish Rau said. As per
the report, the industry
consensus is that growth is at an inflection point with
key drivers being increasing broadband access, which
is growing at 35 percent month-on- month, 3G pene-
tration, rising standards of living and “a burgeoning,
upwardly mobile middle-class with high disposable
incomes”. Other drivers include, availability of a
much wider product range, including those from
international retailers and direct imports, compared
to what is available at the brick and mortar retail out-
lets. Busy lifestyle, urban traffic congestion, lack of
time for offline shopping as well as lower prices com-
pared to brick and mortar retail driven by dis-inter-
mediation, besides reduced inventory and real estate
costs, have also been cited as factors driving the
growth of e-commerce. —PTI
E-COMMERCEMARKETTOTOUCH`50,000CR
WWoorrlldd’’ss ffaasstteesstt
ssuuppeerr ccoommppuutteerrss
■ K (Japan)
■ Tianhe-1A (China)
■ Cray XT5 (Japan)
■ Nebulae (China)
■ Tsubame 2.0 (Japan)
■ Hopper (US)
■ Tera-100 (France)
■ Roadrunner (US)
NOT JUST A PHONE
Features like applica-
tions, bluetooth, GPRS,
camera, FM radio and
MP3 player are key fac-
tors influencing pur-
chase of most young
mobile phone users.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (L) shakes hands with Skype CEO Tony Bates during a news conference
announcing Microsoft purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion on May 10, 2011 in San Francisco, California.
TThhee tteecchhnnoollooggyy ooff ffuunn:: Four things to keep you going through the week
Forza 4 Speed Pack DLC peeling out November 1; Batman: Arkham City ships 4.6 million in first week; DC Universe Online F2P mega launch is set for November 1, say reports
GAMES WEBSITE BORED AT THE OFFICE? GIZMOS
BATTLEFIELD3
CCoonnssoollee:: PS3/XBox 360/PC
GGaammee ttyyppee:: First person shooter
DDeevveellooppeerr:: Electronic Arts
TThhee GGoooodd:: Deep and varied multiplayer com-
petition ● Awesome array of vehicles ● Many
attractive environments ● Rewards teamwork
handsomely.
TThhee bbaadd:: Campaign is disappointing and dull ●
Only six cooperative missions ● No way to
practice jet flight outside of multiplayer.
TThhee vveerrddiicctt:: In the realm of online combat,
Battlefield 3 provides thrills that few games
can match.
A PROFILE WITH A DIFFERENCE
LLiinnkk:: http://www.theprofiler.be/
In what appears to be a brilliant use of paper-
vision, one can use The Profiler to visualize
what’s behind your profile picture, and discov-
er what goes on in your friends’ heads. The
user can connect with his or her Facebook
account.
ARE YOU READY TO COLLAPSE?
DDeevveellooppeerr:: Gamehouse
LLiinnkk:: apps.facebook.com/collapse-blast/
Challenge your friends with the fast action fun
of Collapse! Blast, a Facebook-connected ver-
sion of the classic hit game. The blockbusting
excitement of
Collapse!
gets even
more explo-
sive now that
you can chal-
lenge your
Facebook
friends. Enjoy
this one
minute color-
matching frenzy as you go for the highest
score possible. Simply click on like-colored
groups of blocks to destroy them, but be
quick before they reach the top! Add more
rows to create bigger groups and earn mas-
sive points. The more you score, the quicker
you can rise in experience levels to open up all
new possibilities for fun, including the use of
fantastic power-ups.
ASUS ZENBOOK UX31
DDeevveellooppeerr:: Asus
PPrriiccee:: $1,099
TThhee GGoooodd:: Striking design ● Strong perfor-
mance, blazing SSD ● Long battery life ● Crisp
1600 x 900 display ● Robust speakers.
TThhee bbaadd:: Flaky trackpad ● Keyboard can be
frustrating ● SSD offers smaller storage capaci-
ty than competitors with spinning drives.
TThhee vveerrddiicctt:: The UX31 is the new Ultrabook to
beat, thanks to its long battery life, fast perfor-
mance and welcome extras like a high-res dis-
play and Bang & Olufsen speakers.
88..55
1100
A HTC 1 prototype