The Election Commission is planning to take the help of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to impart electoral messages to young voters, Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi said.
"The Commission is now seriously looking at the social media as the hubs to impart electoral education," Quraishi said delivering the Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture 2011 titled 'Education for Deepening Democracy'
"Like Maulana Azad, I believe that an educated and aware citizen is the best guarantee for deepening both democracy and development," Quraishi said.
The CEC said he had recently held talks with policy makers of Education and Youth ministries to integrate citizenship and voter education as a part of the curriculum of their various courses.
"We have established the India International Institute of Democracy and Election Management ( IIDEM) making voter education a core area of emphasis in it," Quraishi said.
Regretting that many voters in the age group of 18-35 years do not exercise their voting rights for whatever reason, the CEC said the Commission has put voter education and awareness programme on fast track to improve the situation.
In a strategic initiative called YUVA (Youth Unite for Voter Awareness), the Commission has planned to rope in the new and young voters, he said.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Mahindra Satyam, Tech Mahindra to merge in 2012
Mahindra Satyam's merger with parent firm Tech Mahindra will take place next year, its chairman Vineet Nayyar said.
"It is a process. We are looking at it when to commence it and we are hoping that by the next year, some time in later half of the year, this amalgamation will in fact take place," he told reporters while declaring Q2 results of Mahindra Satyam.
Nayyar recalled that after winning the bid for the company in April 2009, Tech Mahindra had indicated its intention to merge. "That intention remains," he said.
In May this year, he hinted that the merger may be delayed as it is a legal process which has to go to two high courts.
Tech Mahindra had acquired Satyam Computer Services Limited in April 2009, a few months after Satyam was rattled by India's biggest corporate fraud. Satyam was subsequently re-named Mahindra Satyam.
To another query, Nayyar said the firm had resolved almost all cases in the US, which arose because of the fraud committed by the earlier management.
The company has already paid $10 million to settle the US Securities and Exchange Commission's suit over the fraud. It paid $125 million to settle class action suits and another $70 million to settle the Upaid case.
On the Income Tax department's notice to pay Rs.616 crore tax, Mahindra Satyam CEO C.P. Gurnani said the demand on fictitious income was unreasonable. "That is the reason we have choosen to go to court and are seeking justice," he said.
The Mahindra Group company had earlier said that on the one hand, the government agencies were prosecuting former Satyam chief B. Ramalinga Raju for showing fictitious income, but on the other, making the same fictitious income a basis for demanding taxes.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Inventing the Future of Computing
In a windowless room deep inside IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, scientists are teaching a computer chip to learn from what it sees, much like a human. The effort is paying off, if performance at Pong is any measure.
When the chip, part of a project called SyNAPSE, first learned to play the classic videogame in March, it did poorly. Weeks later, the company reports, it was nearly unbeatable.
The SyNAPSE chip was designed to learn through experience, find correlations, create hypotheses, and remember outcomes. As chips such as the one from SyNAPSE become smarter and smaller, it will be possible to embed them in everyday objects. That portends a future in which the interaction between computer and user is far more natural and ubiquitous. “Computers were originally designed to solve math problems and that’s what they’re really good at—symbolic computation,” says Steve Esser, one of three scientists teaching the SyNAPSE chip. “Anything that involves visual processing, auditory processing, or speech processing—they can do it, but they’re just not very good at it.”
IBM is the third-biggest spender on research and development among US tech companies, having invested $6.28 billion in the past 12 months, according to Bloomberg data. Along with Microsoft, the top spender at $9.18 billion, and Intel, at $7.71 billion, these technology bellwethers are investing in what they see as computing’s next wave.
MORE INNOVATION THAN EVER
“Computing is undergoing the most remarkable transformation since the invention of the PC,” said Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini during his company’s developer conference in September. “The innovation of the next decade is going to outstrip the innovation of the past three combined.”
At Microsoft, researchers are looking at the ways in which users will interact with computers in 3D spaces. In September the company announced a project reminiscent of Star Trek‘s Holodeck, a simulated reality room where people could interact naturally with virtual objects and other individuals.
Microsoft’s effort, called Holodesk, is a like a mini-Holodeck for the office desk, which lets workers interact and manipulate virtual 3D images.
It uses an Xbox Kinect camera and an optical transparent display to give people the illusion that they’re interacting with 3D graphics. For example, a user can juggle virtual balls or hold a virtual prototype of a smartphone. The Holodesk is part of Microsoft’s pioneering work in what it calls natural user interfaces.
It looks at how people will interact with computers when computing power is everywhere and not limited to a PC. “There is this real sense that this is a dramatic new trend for the industry and for Microsoft,” said Steve Clayton, who writes about internal research for the company blog, “Next at Microsoft.” “We’ve been investing a lot over this vision.”
At Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, Brian David Johnson spends quite a bit of time thinking about the future—the year 2020, to be precise. In fact, the futurist recently participated in a conference call about building Intel’s 2020 CPU.
As chips become embedded in many different devices, the company has realised that it needs to change.
ALGORITHMS THAT GRASP HUMANITY
“Fast and less-expensive and smaller isn’t enough anymore; we really need
to have an understanding of what we’re going to do with it,” says Johnson, who travels the world talking to people about how they envision the future.
“To be a human in 2020, it will begin to feel like data is taking on a life of its own,” he says. The proliferation of computing into everyday objects will generate massive quantities of sensor and other data, with algorithms talking to algorithms and machines talking to machines, he adds. “That algorithm—that thing that processes that massive amount of data—will need to have an understanding of what it means to be human.”
Who Manages Cloud Services to the Home?
Users are frustrated trying to connect all their home devices to a wireless network. Who will fill the gap?
The enterprise is where the big bucks used to be, but home is where the hearts of consumers are. As the Web becomes more integrated in people’s lives, the home will become the battleground for a coming generation of startups and big companies. There’s a huge hole in the market where broadband hits the home, and normal people struggle to connect their ever-growing number of devices to a wireless network they may not understand.
After watching big firms aim products at the home consumer and talking to venture firms trying to see which business models might have the most success, we believe the question boils down to whether an application or hardware is a better way to deliver connected home services? Fundamentally, every entrepreneur should realise that in a broadband world, what they will deliver is a service, and the rest is just the wrapping.
CONSUMERS LIKE HARDWARE
Earlier this week we saw the launch of Nest, a smart, connected thermostat, which is both beautiful and simple to use. All its complexity is hidden in the simplistic touch-wheel design, but it aims to control the heating and cooling in your home in a manner that will save consumers up to 30 percent of their energy consumption. At $250, this isn’t a cheap thermostat, but what people are buying here is the intelligence that resides in the service (and a pretty thermostat).
A similar example is the Sonos system, which is awesomesounding hardware that acts as a music delivery service. Again, the Sonos system isn’t cheap, but it does offer consumers aesthetically
pleasing (in sound; the boxes aren’t all that attractive) hardware with the true purpose of delivering music from the Web.
The box is also easy to set up and manages to mask any problems with the quality of a user’s home Wi-Fi network, so the consumer doesn’t need to worry about allocating bandwidth to the box. The list goes on with such devices as the Roku, which, like Sonos, is easy to set up and helps ensure a solid experience. And I can’t avoid mentioning Apple, which might be the king of building hardware that hides its complexity and is heading toward becoming a means of delivering such services as iTunes, iCloud, and MobileMe. It’s not quite there on the service side, yet, but I have no doubt it will get there.
UNCLEAR APP-ORTUNITY
While the app economy is huge on mobile devices, its ability to deliver services designed to be consumed at home is unclear. So far, apps designed to help consumers manage network-based services inside the home have faltered.
On the energy management side, Google’s PowerMeter and Microsoft’s Hohm products were abandoned after low adoption. That may reflect a lack of interest in home energy monitoring, so we’ll have to see if Nest makes an impact where these services failed.
The television industry hopes to build apps for its screen, and pay TV providers are offering apps in the form of TV Anywhere products that might count as an example of success. But it’s hard to pinpoint specific apps that provide a connected experience tied to the home or gadgets residing in the home. I wonder if services such as security and TV apps might be the best way to hide a service in the form of an application.
With TVs and TV content, an app strategy makes sense, because the content will come via IP to a multitude of devices from different manufacturers (although for traditional TVs, a settop box might work, too). For security, which would require a professional installation of equipment, an app strategy may also work.
MANAGING THE HOME NETWORK
The other area where I’d love to see some sort of user-centric app or device is in managing the network.
Right now, I don’t have the ability to allocate bandwidth easily to certain areas of my home or to certain applications. I think that, as more devices compete for limited Wi-Fi, such services make more sense. It could be built into a router or perhaps managed through the Web via an ISP-provided app.
Either way, consumers are beginning to get frustrated with the toll of maintaining, updating, troubleshooting, and having mediocre experiences on their connected devices.
Instead of bringing the glitchy PC experience to homes, let’s get it right this time with something that looks more like electricity. I don’t care if it’s hardware or an app; I just want to be able to flip a switch and have it work.
The enterprise is where the big bucks used to be, but home is where the hearts of consumers are. As the Web becomes more integrated in people’s lives, the home will become the battleground for a coming generation of startups and big companies. There’s a huge hole in the market where broadband hits the home, and normal people struggle to connect their ever-growing number of devices to a wireless network they may not understand.
After watching big firms aim products at the home consumer and talking to venture firms trying to see which business models might have the most success, we believe the question boils down to whether an application or hardware is a better way to deliver connected home services? Fundamentally, every entrepreneur should realise that in a broadband world, what they will deliver is a service, and the rest is just the wrapping.
CONSUMERS LIKE HARDWARE
Earlier this week we saw the launch of Nest, a smart, connected thermostat, which is both beautiful and simple to use. All its complexity is hidden in the simplistic touch-wheel design, but it aims to control the heating and cooling in your home in a manner that will save consumers up to 30 percent of their energy consumption. At $250, this isn’t a cheap thermostat, but what people are buying here is the intelligence that resides in the service (and a pretty thermostat).
A similar example is the Sonos system, which is awesomesounding hardware that acts as a music delivery service. Again, the Sonos system isn’t cheap, but it does offer consumers aesthetically
pleasing (in sound; the boxes aren’t all that attractive) hardware with the true purpose of delivering music from the Web.
The box is also easy to set up and manages to mask any problems with the quality of a user’s home Wi-Fi network, so the consumer doesn’t need to worry about allocating bandwidth to the box. The list goes on with such devices as the Roku, which, like Sonos, is easy to set up and helps ensure a solid experience. And I can’t avoid mentioning Apple, which might be the king of building hardware that hides its complexity and is heading toward becoming a means of delivering such services as iTunes, iCloud, and MobileMe. It’s not quite there on the service side, yet, but I have no doubt it will get there.
UNCLEAR APP-ORTUNITY
While the app economy is huge on mobile devices, its ability to deliver services designed to be consumed at home is unclear. So far, apps designed to help consumers manage network-based services inside the home have faltered.
On the energy management side, Google’s PowerMeter and Microsoft’s Hohm products were abandoned after low adoption. That may reflect a lack of interest in home energy monitoring, so we’ll have to see if Nest makes an impact where these services failed.
The television industry hopes to build apps for its screen, and pay TV providers are offering apps in the form of TV Anywhere products that might count as an example of success. But it’s hard to pinpoint specific apps that provide a connected experience tied to the home or gadgets residing in the home. I wonder if services such as security and TV apps might be the best way to hide a service in the form of an application.
With TVs and TV content, an app strategy makes sense, because the content will come via IP to a multitude of devices from different manufacturers (although for traditional TVs, a settop box might work, too). For security, which would require a professional installation of equipment, an app strategy may also work.
MANAGING THE HOME NETWORK
The other area where I’d love to see some sort of user-centric app or device is in managing the network.
Right now, I don’t have the ability to allocate bandwidth easily to certain areas of my home or to certain applications. I think that, as more devices compete for limited Wi-Fi, such services make more sense. It could be built into a router or perhaps managed through the Web via an ISP-provided app.
Either way, consumers are beginning to get frustrated with the toll of maintaining, updating, troubleshooting, and having mediocre experiences on their connected devices.
Instead of bringing the glitchy PC experience to homes, let’s get it right this time with something that looks more like electricity. I don’t care if it’s hardware or an app; I just want to be able to flip a switch and have it work.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
YouTube Releases Its 90-Minute, User-Generated Documentary Film For Free
Last summer, YouTube embarked an ambitious film project of the sort that is only possible in the 21st century. They asked thousands of people all over the world to document their experiences on a single day and upload the footage.
The result, titled 'Life in a Day,' is a 90-minute film directed by Kevin Macdonald and produced by Ridley Scott. It documents human life on Earth for one day, insofar as such a thing is possible within a span of 90 minutes. The movie, which has already premiered at a few festivals, is now available in its entirety on YouTube.
When the project was first underway, ReadWriteWeb's own Curt Hopkins questioned whether it was truly possible to effectively document life in a single day with constraints such as the inherent length of a feature film and YouTube's own terms of service restrictions. Such a task would seem to be impossible, but a project of this nature can at least provide a snapshot of life for a small sample of human beings across the planet.
We'll leave a more in-depth critique of the film up to the movie critics, but if nothing else, it's a very interesting concept, made possibly only by digital technology and the Web.
Macdonald and Scott pieced together their creation from 4,500 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube, all of it purportedly recorded on July 24, 2010. Even six years prior, gathering that much footage from so many geographically dispersed locations would have required a huge budget, large film crew and extensive air travel.
In this case, the project was backed by a giant tech company who can afford to bring on award-winning talent to help piece the whole thing together. That ability sure made the finished product looked nice, but we can imagine a similar approach being used by amateur filmmakers, as well as budding professionals, who now have history's largest, most distributed film crew at their disposal.
Google Reader Gets The Google Plus Treatment
After announcing on October 20 that Google Reader would be annexed by Google Plus, Reader has gotten the ol' +1 today. Google is rolling out the new, clean Plus theme that has already come to Gmail, Docs and elsewhere, and it is replacing the Reader 'Like' function with the +1 button. Sharing from Google Reader now produces a +snippet. I guess we no longer need that nice workaround.
But it's not all plusses on Google Reader today. Reader's social features, beloved by some avid readers who didn't want the noise of sharing on full-fledged social networks, are now switched off. No more friending, following and sharing; it's all circling and +1s now.
The changes don't really remove any functionality, either (edit: except note-taking. Did you know Google Reader had note-taking?), but they do force those who like to share via Google Reader to join Plus. Shuttering features that have devoted users, even if it isn't many, is always a bold move.
'Retiring Reader's sharing features wasn't a decision that we made lightly,' says engineer Alan Green in Google's blog post, 'but in the end, it helps us focus on fewer areas, and build an even better experience across all of Google.'
But it seems like Google has had it out for Reader for a while now. In January, it demoted Reader below the fold in Gmail. Google's essence is social now, and standalone Reader users have to join the party.
The close-knit sharing between avid readers was nice, but there are clear advantages to sharing on Google Plus, not the least of which is the fact that +snippets are much more attractive to click on than simple Google Reader links. For those mourning the loss of their Google Reader communities, wouldn't creating a Google Reader circle do the trick?
Although, it sure is lame that Google didn't make it easy to convert your Reader friends into a circle automatically.
For anyone who doesn't use Google Plus, there are some amazing RSS clients that use your Google Reader as the back-end but let you share however you'd like. And you know you can still add all your preferred sharing services to the 'Send To' tab, right? The same settings we showed you before to add Google Plus as a Reader service will let you add anything else, too.
But it's not all plusses on Google Reader today. Reader's social features, beloved by some avid readers who didn't want the noise of sharing on full-fledged social networks, are now switched off. No more friending, following and sharing; it's all circling and +1s now.
The changes don't really remove any functionality, either (edit: except note-taking. Did you know Google Reader had note-taking?), but they do force those who like to share via Google Reader to join Plus. Shuttering features that have devoted users, even if it isn't many, is always a bold move.
'Retiring Reader's sharing features wasn't a decision that we made lightly,' says engineer Alan Green in Google's blog post, 'but in the end, it helps us focus on fewer areas, and build an even better experience across all of Google.'
But it seems like Google has had it out for Reader for a while now. In January, it demoted Reader below the fold in Gmail. Google's essence is social now, and standalone Reader users have to join the party.
The close-knit sharing between avid readers was nice, but there are clear advantages to sharing on Google Plus, not the least of which is the fact that +snippets are much more attractive to click on than simple Google Reader links. For those mourning the loss of their Google Reader communities, wouldn't creating a Google Reader circle do the trick?
Although, it sure is lame that Google didn't make it easy to convert your Reader friends into a circle automatically.
For anyone who doesn't use Google Plus, there are some amazing RSS clients that use your Google Reader as the back-end but let you share however you'd like. And you know you can still add all your preferred sharing services to the 'Send To' tab, right? The same settings we showed you before to add Google Plus as a Reader service will let you add anything else, too.
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