Wipro signs pact to implement Messaging service with Arcelor

Wipro Technologies has signed a five-year agreement with steel company ArcelorMittal to implement messaging service for Arcelor. Under the agreement, Wipro will consolidate and migrate Arcelor's messaging systems to the Microsoft Exchange 2010 messaging platform.

As per the engagement, ArcelorMittal's global messaging system will be secured by Wipro using anti-virus, anti-spam and archival solutions. It will host the new global messaging system on its hardware, hosted at six ArcelorMittal data-centres, spanning across North America, Latin America, East and West Europe and Asia.

This engagement will help transform ArcelorMittal's messaging environment and curtail their global messaging spending. Wipro will use its Next Generation Global Command Center for rendering the global messaging management services.

India's own satellite based nav system soon

India is set to launch its own satellite-based navigation system - GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation or GAGAN.

In the next five years the Indian airspace will get more crowded and the chances of accidents may increase. To reduce the chances of future air disasters, India has endeavoured on the GAGAN project for traffic and directional guidance from outer space.

"The scope for GAGAN extends far beyond Indian borders. It reaches up to Africa and south East Asia. It is a huge airspace that we can monitor with this technology," says Praful Patel, minister of state for civil aviation.

The GAGAN project receives GPS signals from international satellites, but it boosts their accuracy, locking a plane's position anywhere in India to within three meters.

This is made possible by tracking satellites from 15 locations across India and comparing and correcting their data in Bangalore.

When this refined data is beamed to pilots, they will be able to navigate without fear even in bad weather and land at geographically tough airports like Mangalore and Leh. Pilots will also be able to plot shorter, direct flights to destinations. With exact information on plane location, more flights can land safely at airports every hour.

To remove India's dependence on foreign GPS signals, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to launch seven Indian satellites in the next five years.

When ISRO's satellites are placed into orbit, India will join an elite club that includes USA, Russia and European Union, who run their own GPS networks.

We`ll provide access to Indian security agency - RIM

Research In Motion, the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, will provide technical solutions next week, that will help Indian security agencies access its encrypted data, a government source said on Friday.

"They have assured that they will come with some technical solution for messenger and enterprise mail next week. Our technical team will evaluate if it works," the source said.

India has given RIM until August 31 to comply with a request to gain access to encrypted corporate email and messaging services or those services will be shut.

ISRO to launch SARAL satellite by 2011

India will launch a satellite to monitor sea water levels in collaboration with the French space agency, Minister of State for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan said on Wednesday.

The satellite, called Saral, will carry an altimetre (ALTIKA) for studying the sea surface heights and an ARGOS payload, which is a satellite-based data collection platform.

"The project is a joint project of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the French National Space Agency (FNSA). The ALTIKA and ARGOS payloads are built and supplied by the French space agency. The satellite building and launching are the responsibilities of ISRO," Chavan told the Lok Sabha.

The minister said the satellite is likely to be launched in 2011.

Surprisingly priced Indian Tablet

Kapil Sibal with $35 tablet

"Everybody actually said, 'It cannot happen, a $35 tablet,' and not only does it exist, it works and it works brilliantly," said Rajiv Makhni, co-host of the show "Gadget Guru," who took the computer through its paces with show cohort Vikram Chandra and then talked all aspects of the gadget with Kapil Sibal, the country's Minister for Human Resource Development and the same guy who officially unveiled the super-cheap touch-screen device. Aimed at the country's students, it's being called India's answer to Nicholas Negroponte's famed OLPC laptop.

While originally presented as a Linux device, the prototype on the show runs on Android (and handles the operating system "fairly smoothly," the surprised Gurus say. It has a virtual keyboard, camera, full video capability, Wi-Fi for browsing that the Gurus found to be "simple and quick," an e-reader, and 2GB RAM. They say the touch screen is a bit slow to respond. All in all, though, they call it a "fairly impressive little package," particularly for the price, and a game changer for India and possibly beyond.

"We really didn't think it would be as functional as we have found it be," Chandra said.

The tablet is part of a larger initiative aimed at improving India's educational system through technology. It will originally be delivered by mid-2011, subsidized, to higher-education institutions for the estimated $35, Sibal said. (He acknowledged that it will surely cost more at retail.)

Indian origin Computer scientist claimed to have solved toughest riddle

An Indian-origin computer scientist based in the US claims to have solved one of the world's most complex mathematical riddles.

Vinay Deolalikar, who works with the US multinational information technology corporation Hewlett-Packard in California, believes he has solved the problem of "P versus NP", Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

The Massachusetts-based Clay Mathematical Institute has categorised "P vs NP" as one of the seven millennium problems. It is considered the "most difficult" one to be solved.

TRAI sets 2013 as deadline for digitalization in entertainment industry

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Thursday recommended that all analogue signals be phased out by 2013 to allow consumers to watch high quality digital channels of their choice on a-la-carte basis.

Digitization will help companies improve signal quality and offer more interactive and value-added services.

In its recomendation, TRAI said the implementation of the digital broadcast signals should take place in a phased manner starting March 2011 in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Cities with population over one million should be digitalised by December, 2011 while in all other urban areas, including municipal corporations, digitalisation should take place by December, 2012.

Analysis on GSLV-D3's failure complete

Non-availability of liquid hydrogen supply to the thrust chamber of the main engine could have resulted in failure of the third developmental flight of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle from Sriharikota on April 15, a failure analysis committee has found.

The flight of GSLV-D3 primarily meant for testing of indigenously developed cryogenic upper stage (CUS) had failed to achieve the mission objectives following which ISRO had instituted a two-tier process to carry out an in-depth analysis of the flight performance and identify the causes of the failure and recommend corrective measures.

ICICI Direct website unavailable on Thursday

A technical snag hit ICICI Direct, the country's top brokerage house, disrupting its online trading services on Thursday.

Investors were unable to log on to their accounts on ICICIdirect.com, a wing of ICICI Securities that offers retail trading and investment services.

When contacted, a spokesperson from ICICI Securities said that "the problem was due to a technical snag and we are trying to address it".

"However, people willing to square-off the open positions were able to execute orders through phone," she added.

In a message to investors on its website, the company said, "ICICI Direct is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We will be available shortly."

ICICI Securities Ltd is the largest equity house in the country that provides end-to-end solutions (including web-based services).

ISRO launch RH200 successful

ISRO has successfully launched the RH 200 rocket, which had a part of its payload developed by students from Vellore Institute of Technology University (VITU) in Tamil Nadu.

The RH 200 rocket, a technology demonstrator flight, was launched on July 7 from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) attached to Vikram Sarabhaio Space Centre, a VSSC release said today.

The payload developed by the VITU students was part of ISRO's initiative of encouraging varsity students as partners in payload development.

UIDAI aims to enrol 60 crore by 4 yrs

With the first phase of UIDAI aiming to enrol 600 million residents of the country into its database in next four years and its possible use in improving the Public Distribution System, the Authority Chairman Nandan Nilekani today said the journey will be “long” and “tough”.

Nilekani expressed satisfaction over the pace of the project and said the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was on “the right track”.

The Authority which has been set up to provide a unique 12 digit number to each resident of the country aims to roll out the first number between August 2010 to February 2011.

“It is a very complex project and what we are going to do now (issuance of first Aadhaar number) is only a start. We have promised that we will have 600 million enroled in the next four and half years. It is going to be a long tough journey, the former chief of IT giant Infosys said on the sidelines of a function here.

INSAT 4B suffers power supply problem

Scientists of the Indian space agency are working to fix a power snag that switched off 12 transponders of the INSAT-4B comunication satellite Wednesday night, affecting services of some television channels and telecom operators.

'An expert team is looking at the possibilities of partial utilisation of some of the transponders that were switched off. The team is working to restore the services at the earliest,' S. Satish, director (Publications and Public Relations), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told.

There was a power supply anomaly in one of the satellite's two solar panels and six Ku Band and six C-Band transponders of the satellite got switched off, Satish said.

Wi-Fi everywhere in India soon

In the next few months, you may see a slew of product launches of wireless broadband devices from phones and laptops to netbooks and iPad look-alikes.

Industry analysts say the auction of basic wireless spectrum is set to open up a new market for wireless broadband devices and services, aimed at making your home and office, always connected.

3G operators are also expected to use both Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax to support their network for voice as well data services.

India Post on Twitter; grievance & comments are most welcome - Secretary

Got a grievance? Post it! If you’ve a query or a grievance relating to the department of posts, try tweeting about it to India Post@PostOfficeIndia.

Barely three months after it started its Twitter account, India Post — it was the first GOI department to go on a social networking page —  has 1,164 followers and has resolved countless complaints and queries.

About negative comments or complaints, secretary, Posts, Radhika Doraiswamy says, “We want the negative comments. We started this page as a marketing tool for our international product, but each negative comment is an opportunity to set things right,” she said, but added, “There is also a tremendous amount of goodwill for India Post.”

Microsoft partners with NIIT & IISc to develope Cloud solutions

Software giant Microsoft (MS) today said IT firms NIIT, Cognizant and CDC Software, and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) will build solutions and train manpower based on its cloud computing platform, Windows Azure.

Cloud computing refers Internet-based computing, where applications and software are accessed over the Internet, which results in reduced IT costs.

Microsoft has partnered with IT training firm NIIT, which will train over one lakh students on Windows Azure over the next three years. IT firm Cognizant, on the other hand, will develop solutions based on Azure to help its clients implement, migrate and manage their applications on the cloud.

Bangalorians can file their complaints online soon

Get prepared for an e-revolution in civic life. You will not have to run around or make repeated calls for the fused streetlights, potholed roads, fallen trees or damaged electric poles in your area. Just come online, write about it and get it fixed by the concerned agency.

Finally, India's IT capital can boast of a holistic public complaint management system, one that integrates complaining civilians, acting civic agencies and the ruling government online.

The Times of India's Bangalore Patrol, conceived and managed by Janaagraha, is working on an online complaint management system where people can log in, locate their area, file their complaint and submit it online. These complaints will then be directed to the concerned authority. The agencies will also have an option to log in and update the complaint status online.

The idea is based on common man's experiences and careful studies of the various success models that have been adopted and implemented in many developed countries, including the UK and the US.

UK's http://www.fixmystreet.com is already doing it for many years now. So is the http://www.seeclickfix.com in US that equips the common man and the governing agencies on reporting and receiving issues across the various neighbourhood communities.

This facility will be made available online on the WISA portal, a month after the first report card for all the 198 wards is out.

India joins Elite group of Countries with indegenously developed LCH

LCH model on display

The maiden flight of the indigenously manufactured Light Combat Helicopter (LCH) on Sunday heralded India's entry into the select group of countries capable of developing their own combat helicopters.

The LCH, manufactured by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, took to the skies on Sunday in the presence of the defence secretary R K Singh, vice-chief of air staff, air marshal P K Barbora, chairman HAL, Ashok Nayak and senior officials of defence ministry and the forces. Chief test pilots Unni Pillai and Hari Nair put up a spectacular flying display of the LCH at the HAL airport in the city.

SMS service to be launched in Chennai to check names in Electoral rolls

The Chennai Corporation will soon launch a short messaging service (SMS) using which the residents could check if their names have been included in the electoral rolls.

Senior officials of the civic body said that voters could text message their EPIC (Elector's Photo Identity Card) number and they would get a reply SMS if their names are on the list or not. The mobile number and prescribed format for sending the text message are being worked out.

Kannel, an open source WAP and SMS gateway, which is used to send many text messages, is being currently tested. The civic body also upgraded its server recently.

The city has a total of 27,62,920 voters of which 13,85,789 are males and 13,77,122 females. The Corporation is currently conducting a 100 per cent verification of voters and 4,36,317 new voters have been listed. There have been a total of 3,01,214 deletions too. By July, the draft electoral rolls are expected to be published.

HP & Sify partners to offer Cloud services

HP and Sify Technologies Limited, a leading Data Center player jointly announced an agreement to power SIFY’s On-Demand cloud services using HP’s Converged Infrastructure. This will allow Sify to provide demand based computing services on a pay per use or flexible contract model. Customers using the new service will be able to accelerate time to market and reduce cost by leveraging IT services on the fly, without making substantial capital investments in technology.

Using HP’s Converged Infrastructure, Sify is now launching new cloud services including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for select applications under its On-Demand Hosting Platform. To enable this, the Blade System Matrix a product of HP’s converged infrastructure, pools together Sify’s IT resource into a highly automated and virtualized resource pool. Specific application templates have been developed to automatically provision resources for every new business requirement. Businesses users will be able to request IT services on the fly by using a self service portal powered by the HP Insight Orchestration tool, within the Blade System Matrix.

Google India revamps the search result page

Google India added some features to the search results page.

Some of the features include Updates from twitter, pages during a particular timeline , news items etc.... Check out to find the latest features.

Here are some of the screenshots: