Satellite newspaper kiosk in Chennai

International tourists and frequent business travellers who seek the familiarity of reading their hometown newspapers in print can now do so right in Chennai.

A satellite newspaper kiosk is a fully automated unit that receives the latest editions via satellite transmission. A copy is printed on demand. Some of the newspapers in the network include USA Today (US), The Observer (UK), Die Welt (Germany), Sports Nippon (Japan), Le Monde (France) etc.,

The price is about $5 a copy. The vending machine prints the copy within 3 mins. The technology is offered by a Dutch firm. Once the idea becomes popular, the vending machine is installed in malls, airports and other public places in Chennai.

Work place of the future - cube less office

Can you imagine working on a cube-less floor? Its not just cube-less floor, but no assigned seat. Just like in college, anybody can sit anywhere in the office. Can you think of working in that kind of environment?

But, many silicon valley companies including Cisco, Sun and Intel are casting aside the cubicle culture to save the money. Also these companies are thinking that "open office" culture improves the interaction and productivity. These companies found and analyzed that 60% of the company's cubes are empty because employees are visiting customers, telecommuting, vacationing or in meetings. Employees on average spend 20% of their work hours telecommuting.


Thank god, this culture didn't come to India yet. Otherwise, our tables will be completely occupied by laptops, water bottles, coffee cups lined up on the floor, wires/cables all over the floor and always there is somebody peeping into your monitor through your shoulder!!!

There are disadvantages of both fully walled rooms (less space efficient, like old US R&D centers) and low walled cubicles (more noise, like in many Indian companies). There should be considerably high walled cubicles which enable interaction and privacy to certain extent.

Courtesy: mercurynews.com

IndLinux - A computer for Indians

Most of the Indians (especially in rural areas) get basic education in their local language (non-English). Not all people who study English in India have a high command of the language. Many times language barrier becomes a bottleneck in bringing and sharing a lot of opportunities. With more than a billion people and lack of good infrastructure, the localized software will help India to reach rural areas.

India needs localized software to move to the next decade!

There are many companies that are providing proprietary software solutions for Indian languages (including Microsoft). But IndLinux is a project started by Prakash Advani and Venkatesh Hariharan in Dec 1999, that localizes tools used for Linux and other free software environments into Indian languages.

Currently there are teams for Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriaya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. The task of localization involves writing I/O modules, development of fonts, kernel enablement, word translation etc., The project always looks for volunteers to help them. Are you one of them? then go here.

For more details on IndLinux project visit: http://indlinux.org/

Rendezvous with the God - Provide your fingerprint!

Do you know where the world's largest biometric solution is implemented? It is in Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD), a conglomerate of temples in Andhra Pradesh, India.

The biometric system is used here to control the crowd, rather than for enhanced security. The temple receive an average 50,000 pilgrims everyday, with the numbers fluctuating upto 1,50,000 on some festival days.

In this temple, pilgrim needs to register his/her fingerprint before buying the ticket and identify him/herself using the registered fingerprint at the time of darshan.

We see people complaining about fingerprinting in US airports as indignity. How many people know that you need to provide fingerprint if you want to visit this temple at Tirupati.

Are there any Indian software product companies?

I read somewhere (numbers may not be exactly correct): "India produces nearly 3,50,000 Engineers per year. Whole of Europe produces 1,00,000 Engineers a year and US produces only 70,000". I also read, " Many bright Indian minds (are we??) opt for computer job to become part of the Indian IT industry."

What are Indian best tech companies? Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam and HCL. How many of these tech companies influenced the technology world? Answer is none. India didn't create IBM (that defined PC standard), Microsoft (cause for worlds popular Operating system), HP (famous for printers, enterprise servers), Google (you cant imagine world without search) or Sun (the inventor of Java).

The evident difference between these companies is that the former are service companies and later are mainly product companies. I am not undermining any Indian IT services companies. They achieved a lot so far. They helped build an Indian brand, brought global work cultures, introduced corporate governance. They are globally successful companies. But my point is they are not innovating enough.

Well, some of you might be wondering, what is the difference between service company and product company. Service company sells service. It creates software that is for a specific situation with relatively low level of leverage and reuse. Product company builds products that are useful for wide range of customers.

I agree that there are few software product companies in India, but they are small size. I feel that the time has come for Indian product companies. India has a very good brand value. Now for a good product idea, there are funds available in India and it is getting better everyday. And also many Indians with good product design experience are returning home.

But product companies are risky (normally only 4% succeed). Product companies need a higher level of innovation, higher technical abilities. But bigger risks always leads to bigger rewards.

Finally there is another question. Instead of building new product companies in India, is it possible to transform the existing big services companies into product companies? My answer is No. Its very tough because, a software services business is very different from a software product business. It will have different financing, different client interaction, different goals and different decisions. But there are few companies that made this transition before; Oracle is one such company.

GPS navigation launched in India

What is GPS navigation?

Global Positioning System (GPS) is a system that communicates with satellite to trace the location and position of vehicles on earth (This technology is widely used in mobile phones also).

How is it useful in cars?

A GPS enabled simple, smart and sleek gadget can be mounted on a car that determines your current location. This gadget accepts any destination and the navigator in the gadget will guide you, turn-by-turn, with graphical map instructions supported by voice prompts. Search for points of interest (nearest ATM, nearest shopping centre, nearest petrol pump, nearest attraction etc.,) will be available.

Where is it available in India?

MapmyIndia Navigator is currently available in two hardware models: Delphi and AMAX. These devices comes with pre-loaded maps that give complete coverage of streets and points of interest in 18 major cities.

"MapmyIndia Navigator" is currently available with car accessory and consumer electronics dealers in major cities. It is also available online via Indiatimes and MapmyIndia.com.

Want to know how it looks?




How much does it cost?

Techtree reported that in Delhi, the device costs Rs 21,000 while in other states, it comes for Rs 22,000.
Indiatimes is showing price range as Rs. 16000-19000 for online buying.

Is it worth in India?

In countries like USA, where there are names for each road, number for each block (building) the GPS gadget may be most reliable, intuitive and accurate. I doubt how much this will be useful in India, where roads dont have names. Even there are names for some roads, they change if government changes. Also, in India wherever you are, there are local people (or) auto-wallah who can tell you the best way to reach certain destination. I know most of us prefer that way, because roads become unusable or change (two-way to one-way) frequently in India and only local people will know better.

If you are a gadget savvy and have a car, tryout one.

courtesy: techtree, mapmyindia

First time a Telugu film released in US before India.

Yes, first time in history, a Telugu film is released in US before India. “Happy days” by Sekhar Kammula is a well directed movie that showcases the present young generations trials. This was released in US on 28th Sept and in India on 2nd Oct.



Watching this movie makes you feel good and noble about you. This movie deals with the 4 years college life in an Engineering college. It’s a wonder that Sekhar has done in this movie.

When asked “what is the reason behind releasing Happy Days in US before India?”, the director says, “my commitment towards my word: I promised a release date to my USA distributor”. “Happy Days is a film to which you can even take your Tamil and North friends along with you as 90% of NRIs have engineering background. I am sure that Happy Days will cross language barrier in USA.”, he adds. (source: idlebrain).

Don’t miss Happy Days. Savour that nostalgia.

Bangalore vs Chennai vs Hyderabad

I am not going to compare the general good and bad things of these cities. A very nice comparison of that kind can be found at eNidhi.

Well, over the years, many parents, students, friends asked me questions like:

- My son is passing out this year, which city is good for him to find a job?
- I have done a course on Mainframe, where should I search for a job?
- Which city has more opportunities for SAP?
- etc.,

Here I am trying to find answer for these questions through (somewhat) realistic data. In the process I have found some interesting stuff that I will share with you.

I have these numbers in front of you that indicate the approximate (relative) number of jobs available in each city. I hope these numbers themselves answer the questions.

Now you can decide which city you want to land to find your dream job. Though this table is accurate, this is not complete as it does not indicate the competition in each city (Ex: there may be more job seekers in Bangalore than Hyderabad, so the success probability in Bangalore might be less than Hyderabad though Bangalore has more jobs than Hyderabad). I was not able to get data on 'number of job seekers' from each city. But I feel that the data given here will be useful to some extent.

Other interesting stuff

- Not only the software exports, but also the number of job openings proves that “Bangalore is hottest for IT”. Though Bangalore is suffering from creaking infrastructure problems, the city still continues to be the hottest for IT companies.

- Though Chennai and Hyderabad has comparative number of jobs in other areas, Bangalore is exhibiting over whelming majority in product jobs (VLSI/systems-programming in table-1).

How the data is collected

1)Entered naukri.

2)Searched jobs with
- Location "city name"
- Functional area "functional area"
- Keyword "Technology"
- Job Type "Company jobs"
- Freshness "less than 30 days old"

Finally, I agree that one can get more number based conclusions by googling it a bit (or by looking at data in job sites). Please let me know if you attempt and analyze the relevant data.