Computer Gupshup

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.

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.

The COFEE, which stands for Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, is a USB "thumb drive" that was quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies last June. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith described its use to the 350 law-enforcement experts attending a company conference Monday.

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

It also eliminates the need to seize a computer itself, which typically involves disconnecting from a network, turning off the power and potentially losing data. Instead, the investigator can scan for evidence on site.

More than 2,000 officers in 15 countries, including Poland, the Philippines, Germany, New Zealand and the United States, are using the device, which Microsoft provides free.

"These are things that we invest substantial resources in, but not from the perspective of selling to make money," Smith said in an interview. "We're doing this to help ensure that the Internet stays safe."

Law-enforcement officials from agencies in 35 countries are in Redmond this week to talk about how technology can help fight crime. Microsoft held a similar event in 2006. Discussions there led to the creation of COFEE.

Smith compared the Internet of today to London and other Industrial Revolution cities in the early 1800s. As people flocked from small communities where everyone knew each other, an anonymity emerged in the cities and a rise in crime followed.

At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, the grid will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spinoff from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players, and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies "could revolutionize society". "With this kind of computing power, future generations can collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine," he said.

The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their "red button" day -- the switching on of the Large Hadron Collider, the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.

Cern, based near Geneva, started the grid computing project seven years ago when researchers realized LHC would generate annual data equivalent to 56m CDs -- enough to make a stack 50 miles high. Ironically this meant that scientists at Cern -- where Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet in 1989 -- would no longer be able to use his creation for fear of causing a global collapse.

This is because the internet has evolved by linking together a hotchpotch of cables and routing equipment, much of which was originally designed for telephone calls and which lacks the capacity for high-speed data transmission.

By contrast, the grid has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing centres, meaning there are no outdated components to slow the deluge of data. The 55,000 servers already installed are expected to rise to 200,000 in two years.

Superfast grid not for home net users

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

As more and more of Mumbai's busy citizens opt to do their banking and credit card transactions online, a Nigerian national's arrest in Surat on Thursday and Jitesh Kishan Gavit's arrest from Mumbai's western suburb of Nalasopara on February 8 -- they have allegedly phished at least 25 HDFC bank accounts -- send out a strong warning. Grapahics

With an estimated 35.4 million Internet users in India, we are a good market for phishers. Internet users here rank among the top social networking users, and global agencies that monitor phishing have sounded an alert to those hooked to such websites.

There's more bad news. When it comes to hosting phishing websites -- mirror sites that capture account details -- India ranks third at 9.39 per cent, says the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), a global pan-industrial and law enforcement association focused on eliminating fraud and identity theft due to phishing, pharming and email spoofing of all types.

The APWG report, which was released in November 2007, ranks China at the top with 24.21 per cent, followed by the US at 23.85 per cent. Russia, Thailand, Romania, Germany, South Korea, UK and France are other countries in the top 10 phishing list.

Internet users vulnerable
Internet users here are at high risk as the country is yet to have a dedicated agency that monitors cyber frauds, said Vijay Mukhi, president of Mumbai-based Foundation for Information Security and Technology, a private e-security firm.
Neither the government nor the information technology industry has taken measures to establish an agency that will monitor, track down and curb the growing number of cyber fraud cases in the country," said Mukhi.

Social networkers
Gartner, Inc., a global IT research and advisory firm, reports that phishers are collecting personal data from social networking websites. Andrew Walls, research director for Gartner's infrastructure protection group from Australia, said: "We are seeing phishing scams wherein personal data has been collected from online social networks such as MySpace and Facebook and then integrated into very personal and targeted emails."

The mails sent to potential victims are personalised and seem credible. "The messages are more convincing due to the amount of personal information they contain," said Walls. "The phishing message may be delivered through email, instant messaging, SMS, or a message on your social networking site (like a scrap)."

Specific India-based information from the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, in its last report published in 2006, revealed that phishing attack against the e-commerce sector, which includes online retailers, auction sites and recruitment services, amounts to 76 per cent. The remaining 24 per cent of the attacks target banks and financial institutions.

Quick money, easy work
APWG's latest report, published in January, reveals that it received reports of 28,074 phishing attacks and 23,630 phishing websites in November 2007.

Walls attributed the popularity of phishing to attractive profit margins. "The entire effort of building and distributing phishing messages can be automated, so the creation of thousands of phishing emails costs the phisher very little," he said. So, if a phishing scam generates 50,000 messages and just one per cent of the recipients are taken in, the phisher has still defrauded 500 people.

Get secure, go public
The future of phishing will be controlled by the quality of security implemented by those targeted. "If fraud detection systems within a bank rapidly identify and stop phishing frauds, phishers will move to weaker targets," Walls said.
Disclosing security breaches also helps. It educates consumers about the risk in online commerce, puts pressure on companies to improve security and gives governments an indication of the true level of crime. "Corporations must disclose security breaches to the public. This has been adopted in 38 (of the 50) states in the US and it's yielding results."

"Google will set up their India campus in Hyderabad. We have allotted 20 acres of land," M Gopi Krishna, Special Secretary in Andhra Pradesh's Department of IT and Communications said during a presentation on the coming Hyderabad IT summit 2008.

About the proposed investment by Google in this venture, he said the internet company would not like to share those details.

He also said Infosys Technologies Ltd would set up its biggest campus in Hyderabad, where it has been allotted 450 acres, bigger than its campus at Mysore (which is around 335 acres).

IT exports from Andhra Pradesh has been growing at around 50 per cent for the last three years to reach Rs 18,582 crore in 2006-07, and it is expected to be around Rs 25,000 crore in the current financial year, Krishna said.

He said, "40 IT/ITES SEZs, spread over 2,000 acres in Hyderabad and tier-II locations in Andhra Pradesh, are in the offing. Visakhapatnam is going to be the next IT hub of Andhra Pradesh," he said.

Hyderabad IT Summit, with focus on IT infrastructure, will be held from March 20 to 22. It will focus on emerging trends in global IT industry and infrastructure demands.

Configration

• Full-size keyboard
  
• Full-size 13-inch display
  
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor
  
• 2GB memory
  
• 80 GB 1.8 inch hard drive
  
• Latest Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth

Rohit Singh, (name changed), an engineer working for the Pune office of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country's biggest software exporter, is a worried man these days. His 23-year-old colleague who was working on a project for a US-based telecom client, has just been sacked for "non-performance."

FOR ABOUT
A decade now, IT majors like TCS, Wipro and Infosys have been merrily hiring fresh graduates to serve what often looks like bottomless demand.

BUT TRAINING
Costs to make fresh graduates yield productive hours are rising.

While the official line in the leader of the multi-billion-dollar IT industry is that 500 people are being "disengaged" on grounds of performance, the overarching background of a likely US recession and a strong rupee tell a different story.

• Don't get lured by the speed advertised by the Internet service provider (ISP). Go for a plan that suits your requirement.
  
• Although long-term commitment with an ISP costs a bit less than paying a monthly rental, it would be advisable to start with a comparative ly lower speed plan that is more value-for-money
  
• Check with your ISP whether it gives you the flexibility to upgrade or switch to a different plan
  
• Here is how speed measurements go: 1 kilobit (kb) equals 1000 bits and 1 megabit (mb) equals 1000 kbs
  
• Download doesn't just mean downloading software or an application or any movie or song for that matter. Even when you open a Web page, you have downloaded information from the Internet.
  

• Credit card is the most common method of payment for Indians with 84 per cent opting for that mode over others
  
• Online shopping has opened up new avenues, especially in the realm of travelling where Internet has made it convenient to book tickets, says survey.

"The Internet is no longer a niche technology as far as socio-economic class A and perhaps even B is concerned; it is more powerful than mass media as it is interactive and it is an utterly integral part of modern life. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by the online media. As our lives become busier and cluttered, it is not surprising that consumers turn to the unrivalled convenience of the Internet when it comes to researching and buying products," says The Nielsen Company's India Director (Online Research), N. S. Muthukumaran.

The survey reveals that online shopping has opened up new avenues, especially in the realm of travelling where Internet has made it convenient to book tickets. As many as 73 per cent Indians have purchased airline tickets/reservations in the past three months, this percentage being the highest for any country in Asia Pacific. Globally, travel is the fourth most popular shopping category on the web.

"The accessibility to a wide range of comparable information online makes travelling a category that is extremely suited to the Internet and is a lucrative investment option for marketers,"says Mr. Muthukumaran.

For Indians, other popular items for Internet shopping include books (46 per cent), electronic equipment (29 per cent), tours and hotel reservations (24 per cent), videos/DVDs/games (23 per cent), event tickets (23 per cent), clothing/accessories/shoes (21 per cent), and music (20 per cent).

For Internet shopping, credit card is the most common method of payment for Indians with 84 per cent opting for that payment option over others. Interestingly, it is also the highest percentage for any country in Asia Pacific for payments made through credit cards for online purchases.

The majority of Indian online shoppers are loyal to the sites that they shop from, with 54 per cent of them saying they buy from the same site while making an online purchase, while 48 per cent of the online Indians get influenced by special offers on sites.

"Online shoppers tend to stick to the shopping sites they are familiar with. Capturing the online shoppers early and creating a positive shopping experience for them would prove beneficial in the long-run for marketers. India is a promotion-oriented country and for an Indian consumer special offers enhance the value of their shopping," Mr. Muthukumaran adds.

83% of respondent in India cite the Internet as their most used resource for product research

56% Newspapers

77% of respondents intend to buy at least one consumer electronic equipment in the next 12 months.

• Products most often researched in India-mobile phones, laptop computers and digital cameras
  
• Products most often bought online in India laptop computer, mobile phones and MP3 players

• 55% use portals as resources
  
• 44% Use search engines
  
• 41% Use product review websites

• 67% Latest models available
  
• 65% Comparison of models and product features
  
• 62% Comparison of prices
  
• 61% Because they can do it any time.

• 61% Quality
  
• 61% Price 37% Brand name

"Almost all Internet links in the country have been restored. The Internet Service Providers have shifted their traffic to other alternate route," Intern