cmyk

cmyk

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Bengaluru Monday 5 July 2010

DC
Dell addresses issues with faulty PC parts on its blog. Google will raise pay to cover a tax for same sex employees.

Apple says iPhones overstate signal strength.

Technomics
bITs
Nokia aims to be the best with Symbian

A dose of IT

To stop a thief, a Rs 10 tag

SANGEETHA CHENGAPPA
DC | BENGALURU

3G in modern healthcare
KAPIL KHANDELWAL

G is a mobile telephony cellular system that follows on from the 2G mobile communication system, is extending its capabilities through a new communication infrastructure. The name "3G" implies a new generation. However the gap between 2G and 3G is not as marked as it was between 1G and 2G with the shift from analogue to digital. I am wondering why did the telecom companies spend INR 67,710 crores bidding for the 3G licenses at the recently held auctions? To me this seems a bit of a paradox. Smart doctors, healthcare ICT players, entrepreneurs and consumer's consider this, the best business models, as per the futurist George Gilder and the author of the Gilder's Law (Gilder's Law says bandwidth - the capacity to transmit information across fixed or wireless telecommunications networks - will double every six months), waste the era's cheapest resources in order to conserve the era's most expensive resources. When steam became cheaper than horses, the smartest businesses used steam and spared horsexs. Today the cheapest resources are computer power and bandwidth. Both are getting cheaper by the year (at the pace of Moore's Law). Google is a successful business because it wastes computer power-it has over quarter million servers powering its search engine--while it conserves its dearest resource, people. Google has fewer than 10,000 employees, yet it generates $25 billion in (current run rate) sales. So do we consider some radical shifts in the way healthcare will be delivered in the future? Some of this is already underway in the offshoring and real-time healthcare delivery models over the web or 3G. We have doctors like Dr. Kalyanpur in Bangalore who have leveraged this in creating teleradiology delivery solutions to hospitals on the other part of the globe-a pure radiologist labour cost arbitration model. The Airtels and Aircels of India who have emerged winners in the 3G bid will develop different services based on location information as

killer applications for 3G. These services could range from those that support health, transport or entertainment to those that support data-mining to obtain information for non-solicited communications. The use of location-based 3G health services is set to become an important part of healthcare delivery. Positioning technologies could make it possible to track vulnerable individuals in real time to ensure their safety. However, post 26x11, fear of terrorist attacks may lead people to restrict exchange their privacy for a feeling of security. In the short to medium term, Airtels and Aircels of the world stimulate 3G commercialisation so that they can evolve towards 4G, consolidating 3G as a backhaul infrastructure supporting a multitude of co-existing applications, and continuously incorporating emerging standards and technologies,. Coming back Gilder's Law, the cost of band width in India is becoming cheaper by the year. Inspite of hefty cost of acquiring 3G licenses, Airtels and Aircels of the world may be forced to sell their 3G data services virtually free or bundle them with their core mobile offerings. I am not sure when the Airtels and Aircels of the world will break even or really make profits on their 3G license bid for the circles in India. A Winners' Waste! Smart doctors and healthcare providers can use this cheaper bandwidth and connectivity resources to conserve their costly clinical capabilities in rolling virtual 3A (Anytime, Anywhere, Anything) doctors, consultation and allied health services and 3G would enhance such health applications. For example keeping a patient in a hospital bed costs over INR 20,000 a week whereas caring for them at home costs a fraction of around INR 3,000 a week. This represents a substantial margin for anyone providing a 3Gbased health monitoring service. Models like these are already working in the NHS in the UK. With 3G, Gilder's Paradox is already working in healthcare! Welcome to 3G doctors and health without boundaries!

July 4: Even as wafer thin margins keep Indian retailers on their toes, the rising instances of shoplifting and employee theft are forcing them to focus on technology solutions that enhance their operational efficiences and combat theft without adding to labour costs. While Asian retailers lose 1.2 per cent of their revenue to employee theft, shoplifting, cash theft, financial fraud and internal collusion, Indian retailers lose 3.1 per cent of their revenue to shoplifting, theft by employees, administrative errors and vendor fraud, reveals the 2008 Global Retail Theft Barometer, Centre for Retail Research. Vasanth Kumar, Executive Director, Max Retail India, which has a 26-store footprint across the country and current turnover of Rs 200 crore says We incur revenue losses primarily due to shoplifting and employee theft, and in some instances, due to vendor fraud and barcode errors. However, we have managed to keep our revenue shrinkage levels below 1 per cent because we have deployed EAS (Electronic Article Surveillance) solutions such as, EAS tags for all our merchandise including shirts, tops, trousers, fashion accessories etc. These tags have inbuilt sensors that trigger an alarm from the EAS pedestals that are built into all our store entrance/exit points, if a customer walks out with the intention of stealing. Max Retail sources these EAS tags from the Indian arm of $18 billion ADT, a division of Tyco International, the worlds largest electronic security company. The EAS tags cost between Rs 10 to Rs 150 each and EAS pedestals which start from Rs 50,000 and cost more if it is bundled with video surveillance and video analytics solutions are well worth the the investment added Vasanth. After working on a distribution model in India for over 13 years, ADT made a strategic decision to invest $500 million over the next 2 years in emerging markets including India, Brazil, Middle East and China, with

Ramesh Jayaraman, General Manager of ADT India, displays strip tags in his left hand and EAS tags in his right hand. R Samuel

india innovates
India getting the lion's share of the investment. Beginning with the establishment of the Centre of Excellence in November 2008 at Bengaluru which currently has a team size of 100 engineers, ADT is working on solutions for India in India. We have created Indiaspecific EAS tags which are slim and can be stitched into the saree and remains hidden from sight behind the price label. We have also created smaller, sleeker, reusable, stick-on strip tags which go into high-end packaged merchandise like kids toys. They are also used on expensive perfume/liquor bottles, Gilette razors, DVDs/CDs, purses etc. Source tagging at the factory itself is gaining immense popularity with our retail customers here. Overhead thermal sensors that sense human temperature in a particular area, informs retailers where customers linger on longer, so that they can place their merchandise in

those areas said Ramesh Jayaraman, General Manager of ADT India. More important, the company makes sure that specific tags work with specific detachers, which makes it difficult for people to break them apart. Other interesting applications for EAS tags in India for ADT are libraries to tag books, 3D movie glasses with embedded tags preventing theft, and BPOs which lose 30 per cent of their high-end headsets to employee theft every month. We are currently looking to develop EAS-RFID solutions, where EAS will take care of theft prevention and RFID will help to capture data of articles such as jewellery for instance. Data on a jewels gross/net weight, its price, wastage, VAT charges etc is incorporated in a tamper-proof RFID tag which the counter salesman scans and reads through his handheld PDA reader in a few seconds, enabling customers to quickly browse through an entire range of ornaments in a few minutes. RFID solutions can also help to substantially reduce stock reconciliation time, allowing

for better customer service by staff in jewellery stores. Currently, the manual process of stock reconciliation every morning and evening takes anywhere between 35-40 hours per week added Ramesh. The company is also developing wireless video monitoring solutions for customers that have offices in remote locations across the country and battery backup for devices which work on ADT's Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS). In India electricity works in different phases, so if a chain of stores in multiple locations works on different phases, we have to build a system that will enable our IDS to work across all phases explained Ramesh. He pointed out that Indian enterprise customers use ADT's Electronic Access Control (EAC) solutions primarily for time and attendance logging unlike in the US, where it is used primarily for integrated access control within one building and between several buildings of an enterprise in that city, country and all its global offices. We see a huge opportunity in India for our solutions ranging from anti-

theft systems, EAS solutions, fire alarms, emergency breathing apparatus to video surveillance systems, security alarm monitoring, electronic access control and fire suppression systems he said. While ADT has identified several target verticals, its focus currently is on Infrastructure, (Power, Oil & Gas, Airports), Commercial, including office buildings, financial institutions, IT/ITES, Pharma and Contract manufacturing facilities. Until last year, the Engineers in the Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru worked on global solutions 95 per cent of the time. Today, 30 per cent of their time is spent developing local solutions. We are looking to acquire 5-10 Indian companies in the electronics security space, for which we have set aside $2 billion. I am hiring a person who will come on board next month. He will dedicate all his time to M&As said Ramesh. We will ramp up our manpower, Indianise existing solutions and get into local assembly to reduce cost to service the price-sensitive Indian market added Ramesh.

okia is committed to get back the No.1 position in smartphones and plans to use no other software than Symbian and Linux MeeGo, head of its mobile solutions unit said on Friday. It's my aim to ensure Nokia stays as the market and intellectual leader in creating the digital world, Anssi Vanjoki wrote in a blog on Nokia's website. There is no denying, that as a challenger now, we have a fight on our hands. The first battle is to bring you products and services you will want to own and use. The world's top cellphone maker warned in mid-June second-quarter sales and profits at its key phones unit would be weaker than expected as it struggles to compete against Apples iPhone. Nokia also said 2010 profit margin at the phone business would be weaker. Vanjoki noted it would be a tough task to make Nokia the leader in smartphones again, but added the company has all the assets to produce killer smartphones and market-changing mobile computers. Reuters

Google to buy travel software company

At Sun Valley, moods are brighter than before

PAUL TOMASCH
NEW YORK

Kapil Khandelwal is Director and CEO, Makven Capital, a niche investment banking and advisory services firm and a leading healthcare and information communication technology (ICT) expert.

July 4: As Rupert Murdoch, Bob Iger and other media honchos assemble in Sun Valley next week for some fly-fishing or white water rafting, spirits should be brighter than a year ago: stock prices are up by about a third, after all. That alone provides the currency and freedom to get down to the real business of the media summit, one that boutique investment bank Allen & Co annually hosts in the shadow of the Pioneer Mountains in Idaho. For the past 27 years, the Sun Valley Lodge has been the spot where blockbuster media deals have been hatched. Even in 2009, when advertising revenues nosedived, Comcast Corp's co-founder Ralph Roberts had the

News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council on ''Rebuilding Global Prosperity'' on November 17, 2009 in Washington.

moxie to talk to General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeff Immelt about a deal for NBC Universal.

This year, it could be Walt Disney Co CEO Iger who finds himself center stage amid speculation he may

shop ABC -- something Disney has denied. Or veteran dealer Barry Diller from IAC/InterActiveCorp, who has said he would look at a deal involving his Ask.com search engine. New media hotshots like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Zynga on nearly everyone's wish list are also expected to attend. As are Google Inc, Time Warner Inc, News Corp, all flush with cash. You would think this is going to be a pretty exciting Allen event, said Mike Vorhaus, managing director of consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. Fundamentally, the people at that place, every single one of them, is worth 30 percent or 40 percent more than they were a year ago. Still, once they step off their private jets and settle in

fireside, media chiefs may not be much in the mood for dealmaking, given jittery financial markets and fears the U.S. is heading into a double-dip recession. Jonathan Knee, a media banker at Evercore Partners Inc, said most executives remain gun-shy and any dealmaking would likely involve cable channels or modest new media plays, rather than the blockbuster takeovers. The brief euphoria of the beginning of the year has been tempered dramatically both by the recent volatility in the economy and even the quarterly results, said Knee. People are glad it's not the bloodbath they thought it might be last year, but I don't think that any believes they have permanently dodged a bullet. Reuters

oogle Inc plans to buy one of the Web's key providers of airline travel software for $700 million, potentially raising new antitrust concerns for the world's largest Internet search engine. Google said on Thursday that it had agreed to buy privately-owned ITA Software, in a move that Google said would allow it to improve the way consumers find flight and fare information online. What we're going to do is build new flight search tools that focus on endusers, Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts and members of the press on Thursday. He said that Google had no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers and that Google planned to honor all existing agreements that ITA has with its partners . Reuters

Obama doles out Broadband grants

Did a speeding car just jump out of my cellphone?

ANNA EISENBERG
NEW YORK

A 3-D phone Samsung.

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July 4: Smartphones are getting smarter. Now some new models even offer games or television broadcasts in three dimensions and you dont need special glasses to see the show. Traditional 3-D technology used for movie screens and television superimposes or alternates two views, using filters or shutters in the glasses to select a view for each eye. This creates an illusion of depth. But a new

generation of devices, many of them hand-held and now in prototype, dispense with the pesky glasses. Instead, they use optics and other technology built into the display to steer one view directly to the left eye, and the other view to the right. Glasses-free 3-D effects are easier to produce on a small, portable screen than on a large, stationary one, said Paul Semenza, a senior vice president at the market researcher DisplaySearch in Santa Clara, Calif. Thats because the viewer can easi-

ly adjust the angle and position of the display by hand to take best advantage of the 3-D view. You can put yourself in the sweet spot, he said. That easy, intuitive adjustment viewers can make is one of the reasons that this technology will probably succeed in the mobile space. The devices offer extra drama for sports broadcasts. Footballs or baseballs seem to pop out of the display as through they were headed right toward you, said

Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, a marketing research firm in Norwalk, Conn. On mobile devices, 3-D works well for advertising, he said. The 3-D process can throw the spotlight very effectively on an icon or product, he said. Cans of soda, for example, can emerge dramatically from the background. Samsung Electronics introduced its 3-D W960 touch-screen phone in May in South Korea, and customers are already using it

to watch TV shows and music videos, said Eunju Hwang, a spokeswoman for the company in Seoul. The retail price is about $150, but prices may vary among carriers, Ms. Hwang said. Other companies have also announced glasses-free mobile 3-D displays, Mr. Semenza said. At a video game industry trade show last month in Los Angeles, Nintendo, for example, demonstrated a 3-D portable game device that requires no special eyewear. Nokia has demonstrated a 3-D cell-

phone, he said, and Hitachi is selling a 3-D phone in Japan. The market for glasses-free, or auto-stereoscopic, 3-D is small right now, Mr. Semenza said, but will grow rapidly as the technology is incorporated into laptops, notebooks, digital cameras, camcorders, digital picture frames and game devices. The company is forecasting that about 1.7 million glasses-free 3-D units will be sold worldwide in 2011, including about 1.3 million 3-D mobile phones. NYT

.S. President Barack Obama announced on Friday nearly $800 million in loans and grants for the build-out of broadband networks to reach homes, schools and hospitals. The grants and loans, which will be matched by another $200 million in private investment, is part of Obama's roughly $800 billion federal stimulus package, which includes $7.2 billion for broadband expansion projects. Obama said the 66 new infrastructure projects will directly create 5,000 jobs Reuters