Most Infosys staff to get 5-7% pay hike; seniors, onsite being finalised

 Infosys staff learned earlier this week that most of them will get salary hikes in the range of 5-7%, at a time when founder Narayana Murthy is fighting to keep his 1,50,000 people team motivated.

While the company is expected to make public the salary hike plans on the day of its earnings results in April, "internally staff were told on the company's intranet," a person with direct knowledge told ET.

The salary hikes that have been finalised includes those up to the JL6 level (Job Level 6), which means junior to mid-level staff that would comprise the "bulk of the company," the person said.

Salary increases are yet to be finalised for both onsite employees and JL7 and higher positions, typically those in relatively senior leadership positions, such as assistant vice presidents, vice presidents and so on.

The company will announce salary increments for the fiscal year starting April during its financial results announcement on April 16, Infosys said in a statement.

"The new salary hikes come nine months after we announced our last salary increases in July 2013," Infosys added, in the statement.

When Narayana Murthy returned in June to try and pull the company out of the morass it was stuck in, following two years of industry lagging performance by then, one of the first decisions attributed to him was an average 8% pay hike for most staff in India, in July 2013.

In January, Murthy also said the company was looking to return to its old practice of announcing salary increments effective April.

"We will leave no stone unturned," Murthy told investors including those from Franklin Templeton and SBI Mutual Fund on Wednesday, in getting the company back to its glory days.

He also said the company's leadership was making the effort to keep employees motivated.

Tech Mahindra Forays Into Enterprise Device Testing With An NFC Lab

Tech Mahindra has officially unveiled a Near Field Communications (NFC) test lab in Bangalore.

The lab will offer NFC Testing and Consulting services to companies that are interested in setting up secured payment processing platforms using the NFC Standard of communication and data transmission, shared Sirisha Voruganti, Head, Device Testing, Tech Mahindra,

“With this test lab, we are geared to help the Chipset manufacturers, OEMs and Service Providers to reduce the failure rates to NIL in the field and hasten their market growth. Our Lab focuses on troubleshooting and consulting with global clients while providing cost-effective test solutions,”

Tech Mahindra’s lab is ISO 17025 Accredited has already met the Wave 1 Test Requirements as mandated by the NFC Forum. Moreover, the lab is well equipped to even meet the upcoming Wave 2 Test Requirements. Apart from establishing this lab, the company had acquired Type Approval Lab in Lund, Southern Sweden from Sony. The Sweden based lab is well equipped to provide end-to-end test solutions to device manufacturers and Global Carriers.

Why did the company feel the need to establish a lab just for NFC? There are labs established to ensure mobile payments are secure. Even the apex Bank, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officially launched one to ensure that Mobile based payments take place in the most secure, yet the simplest of ways.

However, smartphones featuring NFC communications module are growing in large numbers. Though still in its nascent stage, NFC offers one of the fastest modes of secure payment transactions. But perhaps it most appealing factor is that NFC offers transactions which are relatively petty. Consumers and buyers are often perplexed when they have to pay in ‘change’. Small transactions often require these customers to carry coins of small denominations. NFC can easily do away with the obligation of carrying this weighty form of currency.

With more than 400 Million phones featuring NFC already in circulation, Tech Mahindra’s Lab might have been established just in time. What do you think?

Skype can be a universal translator: Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research, which delves deep into fields like computing and information technology, is in sharper focus after the software behemoth's acquisition of Nokia's phone business in September last year, and its attempts to gain a firmer foothold in the rapidly growing mobile devices segment, dominated by Google and Apple. There's also the niche area of wearable technology which is on the brink of going mainstream.

Peter Lee, who recently took over as the head of Microsoft Research, shared his thoughts on emerging technologies on a recent to Bangalore.

Was Microsoft slow in moving to the mobile?

For the past 20 years, MSR has been doing research relevant to the mobile. We were not late in porting cutting-edge technologies to consumer devices. MSR tells the product line about the way the world is going. But the world isn't always ready to take the product. Microsoft was one of the first companies to sell tablets with features like speech and handwriting recognition. Arguably we were too early.

 

 What's the progress in speech-recognition technology?

For 11 or 12 years, the quality of speech systems didn't improve from any company, and many of them gave up. But we kept the research going. In 2009, we had a major breakthrough that saw 30% improvement in speech recognition quality. People are using speech a lot in Xbox One. It's magical when I go into my living room, say "Xbox On", everything turns on, and immediately it says "Hello Peter, Welcome Back", because it recognizes my face and my voice. Research is not about speed, but also about the longevity. It's a lot about patience as well.

Can you elaborate on that breakthrough?

This breakthrough used a concept in artificial intelligence called Deep Learning, which in turn is based on neural network. The system learns by associating certain representation. The learning can be so good that if you show the picture of a dog, the system will not only recognize it as dog, but will also tell you the breed. It's like a child learning to recognize something.

What are its applications?

There are many. For example, when you give a search for 'patent leather shoes for teenager' it understands you want to shop. So, it understands not just the meaning, but the intention as well. We provide translations for over 45 languages.

At the height of the end-of-the-world buzz in 2012, there was a rush of tourists to the Mayan state in Mexico. The government there worked with Microsoft to have the Mayan languages translated for the tourists.

A few years ago, chief research officer Rick Rashid demonstrated speech recognition breakthrough via machine translation that converted his spoken English into English text, then to Chinese text and finally to Chinese in his own voice - all live while he was addressing a group of students. We are now looking at Skype and wondering if it could be a universal translator.

What's the status of wearable technology?

We are doing a lot of research in wearable technology. The fact is most of the sensors in the devices are of poor quality. There is a lot of noise that the sensors don't filter out. We think that Deep Learning can get past the noise. One of our focus areas is the GPS sensor. There is an algorithm in GPS that is extremely power hungry. By leveraging big cloud infrastructure, we will be able to deliver an energy-efficient GPS. We are working with wildlife authorities in Africa, and testing them: for example, to track the movement of zebras.

We want a billion Indians on WhatsApp: Jan Koum

WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum took time off from his hectic schedule at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, on what was his 38th birthday, to talk to ET about the $19 billion deal with Facebook and what advice he would give entrepreneurs. Edited excerpts: 

It's said that you applied for a job at both Twitter and Facebook. I was interviewed for Facebook but nothing really worked out. 

What made you start WhatsApp? How did you hit upon the idea? What did you do that was different from other messenger services?

I got an iPhone and I started to experiment trying to build an application for an iPhone. First, we focused on using your address book. Everybody else was using user names or pin codes, like BBM... Skype you had to get an approval... these were all complicated processes. We just wanted to simplify it. If you have somebody's phone number in your address book, you are on. 

We were the first guys to do it, we were actually the first mover. Everybody else came in and tried to copy us, but they weren't successful. We were global from day one. We focused on translations, we added Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, into the applications from day one because we understood that it's the power of communication, that people want to communicate with people in other countries. 

We hired really smart people, our first set of engineers was extremely talented and allowed us to build a foundation that enabled us to build everything on top of it. 

What, if any, is the monetisation strategy of WhatsApp?

Today, it's a simple one - we are free for the first year of subscription and then it's a dollar a year. There are no plans to do anything else. We are pretty happy with this. For voice, we haven't finalized it internally yet but we might do something different in terms of implementation but fundamentally it will be very similar. 

Some are skeptical about the quality of voice services that can be offered by you. Please comment.

We are going to make sure voice works just as well. I understand that there are bandwidth constraints, network constraints, but we will take the same approach to voice that we took to (messaging) five years ago, which is focus on quality, simplicity, performance so that it's the world standard for voice just as messaging it's the world standard. 

Would you have done the deal at a lower value?

The important thing to talk about here is not the price. Mark asked me to be on the board of Facebook and I'm extremely flattered. We talked about this as a partnership and not as an acquisition. WhatsApp will continue to remain independent. There are no changes planned to the product. Nothing really changes from the user point of view. And, so when we were talking about this deal, we were not as interested in terms of the numbers but as a partnership between two great companies who share the same vision. 

What will Facebook's contribution be to your voice service? Any more hiring?

Should be none. We are still an independent company and we will continue to be an independent company even after the deal closes. But we do plan to grow, absolutely. We are going to have to hire more people to support more users and build new things like voice. 

What plans do you have with the money that you get?

I only have one idea, that is WhatsApp, and I am going to continue to focus on that. I have no plans to build any other ideas. The day the deal closes, it's going to be like any other day when we will go back to work. 

How does it feel to have this success?

It's rewarding but again I don't spend any time thinking about it. A lot of my time, effort and focus is spent on WhatsApp. And that to me is more valuable and rewarding than to work on anything else. 

Has the world changed for you post the Facebook deal?

None. Still the same. We still have a lot of work to do. We still have a lot of people who will get onto smartphones, we still have a lot of bugs to fix and improvements to make. Our mission is still not done. 

Do you fear someone else could build a better message/photo sharing platform and make WhatsApp irrelevant. How will you sustain WhatsApp's competitive advantage?

We have always had people copy us. It's not shocking, if anything it's flattering. But what's important for us is to continue to get our product right. I spend more time worrying about ourselves, that we're doing the right thing. 

Did you expect the success?

Probably not to this level. The size of this deal shows how important communication is in today's world. Communication is at the very core of our society. That's what makes us human.

How important is India as a market?

It's a very critical market for us. Ironically, I grew up watching Indian movies as a kid in Russia. I am quite familiar with Bollywood. I grew up watching Disco Dancer, I watched it some 20 times as a kid. India is important from a personal level too. 

We want all smartphone users (in India) to be on WhatsApp. Then if that number is a billion, then it's a billion. Currently, over 40 million. So we still have some ways to go before we hit a billion. 

When do you plan to visit India?

Hopefully soon. Are you inviting me? I wanted to for a long time. My schedule is a little busy but hopefully this year. 

What are the three things that young entrepreneurs should focus on when launching a startup?

Focus is an important part of it. A lot of times people start out with a lot of good ideas, but then they don't execute. They lose the purity of their vision. You end up running around in circles. 

Hiring smart people, smart engineers. Focus on users right from day one. 

Would your new office have WhatsApp signage outside?

We haven't decided yet. We will think about it when we come back. 

What next for Jan Koum?

I have work to do. I get on a plane and I go back and have to go back to the office and work.

Banks to spend 13% more on IT this year: Report

 

Banks and securities companies will increase their spending on IT products and services by 12.7 per cent to Rs 47,700 crore in 2014, says a report. 

"Domestic banking and securities companies will spend Rs 47,700 crore on IT products and services in 2014, an increase of 12.7 per cent over 2013 revenue of Rs 42,300 crore," IT research and advisory firm Gartner said in a report. 

The estimate includes spending by financial institutions on internal IT services (including personnel), IT services, software, data centre technologies, devices and telecom services. 

Gartner research director Vittorio D'Orazio said banks will continue to focus on expanding their branch network. He expects about 2,000 new branches in the country by the end of this year. 

"This strategy, triggered by the need for expansion and for getting market share, is also underpinned by the new bank licenses released by the RBI," he said. 

The modernisation of the back offices, as well as the need to be compliant with international regulations, and increased challenges from new more demanding customers are other trends Gartner sees in the markets. 

IT services will be the largest segment in overall spending in the banking and securities market at Rs 14,900 crore in 2014, due to the continuous focus on the financial services sector by IT services providers. 

The IT services segment is forecast to increase at the third-fastest growth rate at 15.3 per cent compared to 2013. 

Internal services, which includes IT personnel, is projected to be the fastest growing segment at 21.6 per cent in 2014, largely due to the expansion strategies of banks across the country, especially in rural areas, which require more personnel on the field. 

Software is expected to be the second-fastest growing segment, with 19.2 per cent growth in 2014, the report said. 

In the software segment, vertical specific software is the fastest sub-segment due to core banking system replacements and other back-office consolidation which will steer banks from internally developed software to external packages.

New record set for data-transfer speeds

 

Researchers have set a new record for data transmission over a multimode optical fibre - sending data at a rate of 64 gigabits per second. 

Researchers at the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) sent data at a rate of 64 gigabits per second (Gb/s) over a cable 57-metres-long using a type of laser called a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). 

The achieved rate was about 14 per cent faster than the previous record and about 2.5 times faster than the capabilities of today's typical commercial technology, researchers said. 

The achievement demonstrated that the standard, existing technology for sending data over short distances should be able to meet the growing needs of servers, data centers and supercomputers through the end of this decade, they said. 

To achieve such high speeds, the researchers used the VCSEL lasers developed at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and custom silicon-germanium chips developed at IBM Research. 

"The receiver chip is a unique design that simultaneously achieves speeds and sensitivities well beyond today's commercial offerings," said researcher Dan Kuchta of the IBM TJ Watson Research Center in New York. 

"The driver chip incorporates transmit equalisation, which widens the bandwidth of the optical link. While this method has been widely used in electrical communication, it hasn't yet caught on in optical communication," he said. 

"Researchers typically rely on a rule of thumb that says the usable data-transfer rate is about 1.7 times the bandwidth," Kuchta explained. 

"That means that with the VCSEL laser, which has a bandwidth of about 26 GHz, the rate would be only about 44 Gb/s," he added. 

The fast speeds only worked for a distance of 57 metres, so this technology is not designed for sending data across continents. Instead, it's most suitable for transmitting data within a building, Kuchta said.

Pay hike to be 10 per cent this year, lowest since 2009: Aon Hewitt

 

 India Inc is expected to dole out a 10 per cent salary increase in 2014, the lowest in five years, according to a survey by Aon Hewitt. 

In 2013, the average salary increase was 10.2 per cent while in 2009, it was 6.6 per cent. 

According to the global human resource solution provider, the average salary increase for 2014 as projected by over 500 organisations in India stood at 10 per cent, with a range of 8.8 per cent to 12 per cent across industries. 

The years 2012-14 are witnessing a sort of "plateauing" in salary increases as compared to the high double-digit increases in the last decade, according to the report. 

"This period reflects the easing off of the unsustainable, turbo-charged, pre-crisis economic growth. Even though growth appears to be strengthening in both advanced and developing economies, it is expected to be muted and slower paced than in the pre-2008 era," Aon Hewitt India Rewards Consulting Practice Leader Anandorup Ghose said. 

Sectors largely reliant on the domestic economy such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, engineering services and consumer goods, project the highest salary increases, typically above 10 per cent for 2013-14. 

Retail, financial services and hospitality forecast a lower range of salary increases, with these businesses affected by the slowdown in the economy and consumer spending. 

Globally, Venezuela projected the highest salary increase (24.9 per cent), followed by Argentina (24.3 per cent) and Vietnam (11.1 per cent). 

Continuing the trend of the previous few years, the developed economies of the US, the UK and Japan show salary increases in the range of 2.4 per cent to 3 per cent. 

India leads salary increase projections across key APAC countries, followed by China. 

Reasons for lower budgets include concerns over fluctuating economic conditions, cited by 57.6 per cent of the respondents. A third (33.5 per cent) said their organisation is undergoing cost reductions. 

Some organisations are managing wage cost escalation by freezing hiring, transferring salary increases from fixed pay to variable pay and recruiting replacements at lower salaries. 

Interestingly, the pace of top management salary increases has been slowing over the past seven years. 

Rewards for key talent are likely to continue. As against an overall salary rise of 10 per cent, key talent would get a 13.9 per cent salary hike this year, the report said. 

"Organisations are exercising prudence in overall salary increases but investment in key talent continues. Gap between salary increase awarded to key talent vs others is widening year-on-year," the report said. 

Overall attrition reduced to 18.5 per cent in 2013 from 19.3 per cent on account of slow economic growth and limited job opportunities, the report said.

Appirio plans to recruit 600 employees for Jaipur office

 

Appirio, a global cloud consulting company, plans to recruit more than 600 employees in its office here by 2017 as part of aggressive global growth plans. 

The company has started its operations in global cloud consultancy from the office situated in IT special economic zone (SEZ) here and the team of 140 professionals is supporting clients of abroad. 

"We aim to build our employee base to more than 600 employees in India by 2017 and with the growing team, we will be able to deliver even higher quality and cost-effective levels of service to our more than 800 medium to large clients worldwide," Chris Barbin, CEO Appirio, said. 

"Besides recruitment from IITs, we will be collaborating with local engineering and technical institutes so that mainly local talent can be hired and job opportunities could be provided to them," he told PTI here today. 

"Jaipur office is single largest office in India and a strategic location for us and from here, we will help the company achieve growth potential and help companies power their business with the cloud. 

"The Jaipur team will deliver business function and technology solutions as well as operations support to global customers." 

"Building a strong team capability to architect and manage challenges is another strategic focus for the Jaipur team," Appirio India GM Manpreet Singh said. 

Started in 2006, the San Francisco headquartered company deals in cloud computing -- a practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

Why enterprises are increasing cybersecurity budgets

Almost 60% of top firms in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia have boosted their cybersecurity spending following the theft of data of millions of customers from US retailer Target and other big companies, a report said.

A survey of senior IT officials in companies ranging from banks to mining, technology and law by BAE Systems Applied Intelligence showed US firms already spending 15% of their entire IT budgets on improving security. The number looked set to rise.

In the United States, 60% of those surveyed said their cybersecurity budget would increase as a direct result of recent high-profile attacks. That compared to 49% in Britain, 54% in Canada and 64% in Australia.

Between November 27 and December 14, US retailer Target lost details of some 40 million credit and debit card numbers and 70 million customer details to hackers.

Many other firms including banks have also had data stolen either by employees or those who broke into their system from outside.

"New technologies, changing business practices and an increasing reliance on inter-connected critical systems and infrastructure are all increasing our vulnerability to attack," the report said.

"It will be those organizations that truly integrate security intelligence into their operations that will reap the benefits and deliver business growth."

Formerly known as Detica, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence is the cyberarm of the British defence company.

More than 80% of those surveyed expected the number of cyberattacks to rise. Loss of customer data was by far the greatest concern, followed by the loss of trade secrets, reputational damage and interruption of service.

In the United States, 29% of respondents estimated a successful cyberattack could cost their organizations more than $75 million. Almost half said it could cost more than $15 million.

The assessment of threat varied somewhat by region and industry, the report said. US firms believed intellectual property that was the second greatest threat to their networks after professional fraudsters while in Britain that place was held by activists, and in Australia by "hobbyist" amateur hackers.y.

Top 10 predictions for CIOs for 2014

Predictions - CIO Agenda, highlights the top 10 predictions for the CIOs through the year ahead. The predictions provide insights on long-term industry trends along with new themes that may be on the horizon that will most impact the role of the CIO. While the 3rd Platform of mobile, social, big data, and cloud services is just beginning to mature, it will require an entirely different set of IT skills and roles many of which are yet to be invented.

"The digitisation of the corporate world is accelerating, and with new technologies enabling the process, CIOs have an unparalleled opportunity to emerge as true business leaders. They will need to step up to the role of Chief Innovation Officer or risk becoming irrelevant in the years to come. " Says Jaideep Mehta, VP and Country General Manager, IDC India

"Organizations need to be cognizant of degree of changes and personalization customers are expecting today. There is a huge need for personalization, relationship sensitivity, service orientation & redefining service levels across all channels, differentiated offering, experience management and predictability . IDC observes that organizations need to revisit their offerings, services and processes to encash the potential of the 4 Pillars - Social, Mobility, Cloud and Analytics. Organizations are expected to go beyond their comfort zones drive innovation and create differentiation and to take advantage of "Edge Technology" "opines Shalil Gupta, Director Insights and Consulting.

According to Fred Magee, adjunct research advisor with IDC's Research Network, "We believe there are clear indicators that the existing role of technology management will evolve in a few short years to a set of roles that includes management of innovation, information intelligence, customer experience, and digital business presence. It's going to be an exciting decade."

The Top 10 Predictions are:

Prediction 1 - In two years, over 70% of CIOs will change their primary role from directly managing IT to become an innovation partner

Prediction 2 - Before 2017, only 40% of CIOs will rise to produce business enhancing insights from big data and analytics

Prediction 3 - 70% of CIOs will increase enterprise exposure to risk to accelerate business agility through increased cloud adoption

Prediction 4 - Enterprise business mobility will require 60% of CIOs by 2017 to support an agile architecture with next-generation mobile applications

Prediction 5 - The demographic shift to young and mobile customers will require 80% of CIOs in consumer-facing businesses to integrate IT with public social networks by 2015

Prediction 6 - By 2015, 3rd Platform requirements will drive 60% of CIOs to use enterprise architecture (EA) as a required IT tool, but only 40% will deploy EA effectively.

Prediction 7 - By 2015, 60% of CIO security budgets for increasingly vulnerable legacy systems will be 30-40% too small to fund enterprise threat assessments

Prediction 8 - By 2017, the transfer of 3rd Platform investments from IT to line-of-business budgets will require 60% of CIOs to focus the IT budget on business innovation and value

Prediction 9 - By 2016, 80% of the IT budget will be based on providing broad portfolio of IT and business services

Prediction 10 - By 2018, adoption of 3rd Platform IT technologies will redefine 90% of IT roles

Infosys to hive off products business, Sanjay Purohit to be CEO

Infosys will hive off its products, platforms and solutions (PPS) business into a separate subsidiary at the beginning of the next financial year, Rohan Murty said in an address to employees at an informal JAM session held at the company's Electronics City campus on Tuesday.

The new division, called Edge Works, will have a three-tier structure, one focusing on understanding market needs, another on product development and a third on implementation at client sites, said sources at the session. Sanjay Purohit will be the CEO of the division and Samson David will be the COO.

Murty is Infosys founder and executive chairman N R Narayana Murthy's son and part of the chairman's office. The possibility of a hive-off of the PPS division was first reported by TOI in December. Infosys's successful banking product, Finacle, will be part of the subsidiary.

The division accounts for about 5.5% of Infosys' over $8 billion revenue. The IT company's vision under its Infosys 3.0 strategy has been to raise it to 33%, but more than three years into this strategy, the PPS needle has barely moved. The primary argument for a hive-off is that the culture and compensation structure of a products and platforms business has to be vastly different from that of a services entity. Infosys has said that acquisitions would be important for PPS to make a leap.

"How you build PPS is very different from that of services and BPO. The move gives the PPS team the freedom to build out the software and products culture required for success. This means building in a more long-term software orientation. This also allows the company to make acquisitions should it wish to do so," said Ray Wang, CEO of US-based research advisory firm Constellation Research.

It is learnt that the company has dissolved the existing PPS structure. The company has recruited 600 senior level executives (delivery managers and VPs) from within the company to be a part of what it calls the business platform group (BizP), a product insight group to conduct market feasibility, sources said.

Use Your Android Phone to Cure Cancer

Smartphone manufacturer HTC has announced “Power to Give,” a new initiative that harnesses the collective processing power of the company’s smartphones to solve epic scientific challenges. Power to Give (PTG), an Android smartphone app currently in beta, works a bit like Folding@Home, Play to Cure and other similar projects. Once installed on your HTC phone, research institutions of your choice will automatically begin using its computing power during downtime to help analyze important data. The app only works when your phone is connected to WiFi and a power source. It never eats up battery power or your data allowance, and it won’t interfere with your normal use of the phone. HTC is currently highlighting four specific PTG projects: Computing for Clean Water, Help Fight Cancer, Say No to Schistosoma and Nutritious Rice for the World. Other popular projects like SETI@Home are also available. You can divide your phone’s efforts as you choose. For now, the Power to Give app is only compatible with the HTC One family, HTC Butterfly and HTC Butterfly S running Android 4.3 or above. The company hopes to release a version compatible with all Android phones later this year. HTC owners can download Power to Give on Google Play. This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Techlicious. More from Techlicious: Glove App Determines Which Wireless Carrier is Best For You 10 Apps & Sites that Will Save You Money Major Security Flaw Discovered in Asus Routers, Too HTC Offering Limited Free Screen Replacements Techlicious 2014 Best of Toy Fair Awards

MWC 2014: The Samsung Galaxy: a history of the S series

Galaxy i7500 to Galaxy S2

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S5, the world sat up and took notice, simply because it's one of the most anticipated phones for 2014.
But how did the South Korean giant become so influential in the mobile phone market? Lest we forget, it was a no-hoper just a few years ago, spraying out demi-smartphones that were met with shrugs and derision in equal measure.
Then Android emerged, Samsung decided that enough was enough, and it decided to take the plunge and become a fish in Google's pond.
The Galaxy i7500 - where our journey begins - was by no means a smash hit, and the Galaxy S did little to improve the situation.
It was with the S2 that Samsung really began to get its act together, and even though last year's S4 fell a little flat, the buzz that remains is proof that Samsung is still the only major player that can take on Apple in terms of overall mobile handset sales, and that it's truly become a shark in the Android lake.

Galaxy i7500

The month is April, the year is 2009, and Samsung debuts an Android 1.5 Cupcake phone that we described at the time as "run of the mill".

The key specs
Screen: 3.2-inch OLED, 320 x 480 pixels
Battery: 1500mAh
CPU: 528MHz, 128MB RAM
Key features: One of the early phones to run Android
Internal storage: 8GB
OS: Android 1.5
Price at launch: £499

Packing a 5-megapixel camera, the i7500 sported an OLED 3.2-inch screen that offered a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, and made use of a conventional D-pad — how mobile technology can change in the space of five years. The device weighed in at 116g, which is a little lighter than today's Nexus 5.
Under the hood the handset had a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A CPU and an Adreno 130 GPU powering the display, a setup which we found to be laggy on occasion. The i7500 had 8GB of built-in storage and 128MB of RAM (absolutely paltry by today's standards but not so bad for 2009).
Despite a relatively large 1500mAh battery, battery life was disappointing: during heavy use it only lasted 3-4 hours, and the handset had to be charged at least once a day.
An underwhelming start for the Galaxy range then, and definitely room for improvement. Android was still in its infancy, and Samsung was still finding its feet: in October 2009, HTC was the only other manufacturer making mobiles running Android. The price was off-putting too, with the i7500 originally costing £499 to buy SIM-free.

Galaxy S

The next Galaxy handset appeared a little over a year later, in June 2010. The D-pad was gone, and the Galaxy S had a far more recognisable shape and style to it, with the now ubiquitous back, home and menu buttons in place.

The key specs
Screen: 4-inch Super AMOLED, 480 x 800 pixels
Battery: 1500mAh
CPU: 1GHz Cortex-A8, 512MB RAM
Key features: Stronger TouchWiz overlay, front-facing camera
Internal storage: 8GB / 16GB
OS: Android 2.1
Price at launch: £449

The display was bigger (spot the emerging trend), offering a 480 x 800 pixel resolution across 4 inches of Super AMOLED screen real estate.
The S originally appeared with Android 2.1 Eclair and bowed out with 2.3 Gingerbread. The RAM was boosted to 512MB, 8GB and 16GB storage options were available, and a 1GHz Cortex-A8 processor kept everything running. A PowerVR SGX540 GPU was in charge of graphics, and the handset tipped the scales at 119g.
Android had added support for a forward-facing camera, so the Galaxy S included one, as well as a 5-megapixel shooter around the back. The battery was again a Li-Ion 1500mAh model, and again the phone struggled to get through a working day without a recharge. The 2.3 Gingerbread update did wonders in this department though, almost doubling its lifespan.
"There are a few faults, but on the whole it's a cracking bit of kit, and you really could do a lot worse," concluded our review at the time, and Samsung now had a foundation it could build on. In 2010, the SIM-free price for the Galaxy S was £449.

Galaxy S2

The S2 was the first Galaxy phone to cause a significant splash in the mobile handset pond.

The key specs
Screen: 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus, 480 x 800 pixels
Battery: 1650mAh
CPU: dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9, 1GB RAM
Key features: Blazing fast internals, strong camera, brilliant screen
Internal storage: 16GB / 32GB
OS: Android 2.3.4
Price at launch: £499

It brought along with it an improved Super AMOLED Plus screen that was expanded to 4.3 inches, a faster dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, 1GB of RAM and a superior Mali-400MP GPU.
The Galaxy S2 debuted in April 2011 with Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread and would eventually get as far as 4.1 Jelly Bean, a sign of its prowess and longevity. In terms of storage space, 16GB and 32GB models were available.
In our review of the phone, its thinness and lightness (116g) came in for praise, as did the display, responsiveness and 1080p video recording capabilities.
The camera had been bumped up to 8 megapixels and now had a flash, while the 1650mAh battery was good for almost two days of average use — a target that many of today's phones would love to be able to stretch to. At launch, SIM-free prices for the S2 hovered around the £500 mark.
After the moderate college radio success of the Galaxy S, Samsung finally had a chart-topping hit on its hands: within five months, it would shift 10 million of its S2 phones.
Here's what we thought at the time: "If you're after a one-word summary of the Samsung Galaxy S2: awesome. We've were waiting for a phone to set a benchmark among the dual-core breed, and we found it in the Samsung Galaxy S2."

Galaxy S3 to Galaxy S5

Galaxy S3

After a brief Google-sponsored detour to make the Galaxy Nexus, Samsung returned to its own flagship phone in the shape of the Galaxy S3 in May 2012.

The key specs

• Screen 4.8-inch Super AMOLED, 720 x 1280 pixels
• Battery 2100mAh
• CPU quad-core 1.4GHz Cortex-A9, 1GB RAM
• Key features Smart Stay, Android Beam, Pop up Play - all about the software and screen
• Internal storage 16GB / 32GB / 64GB
• OS Android 4.0.4
• Price at launch: £499

It was the second home run for Samsung in a row: the S3 arrived to almost universal acclaim, and we called it "the best smartphone around right now" in our original review. Again, the screen was bigger: the Super AMOLED display grew to 4.8 inches at a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels, and the weight grew to 133g as well.
The heavy lifting was done by a quad-core 1.4GHz Cortex-A9 CPU, while the Mali-400MP GPU showed up again alongside 1GB of RAM. The S3 originally came with Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and was at the same £500 SIM-free price level as its predecessor.
As on the S2, an 8-megapixel camera was around the back, though various software optimisations helped to create slightly better photos. In terms of storage, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB options were available.
Not even battery life could spoil the S3 party: the 2100mAh battery was good for eight hours or so of heavy use, which placed it very favourably amongst the other handsets of 2012. Speed, design, battery life, display, responsiveness, bundled features... the phone scored highly in every department.

Galaxy S4

And so to Samsung's current flagship phone until the S5 replaces it this April.

The key specs

• Screen 5-inch Super AMOLED HD, 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Battery 2600mAh
• CPU quad-core 1.6GHz Cortex-A15, 2GB RAM
• Key features Air gestures, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, Drama Shot, Infra red remote, humidity sensor
• Internal storage 16GB / 32GB / 64GB
• OS Android 4.2.2
• Price at launch: £600

The Galaxy S4 arrived in the world in April 2013, offering users a whopping 5-inch 1080 x 1920 pixel Super AMOLED screen, an upgraded 13-megapixel camera, Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean and a 2600mAh battery that typically lasts at least the length of a day.
The specs of last year's model remain impressive: a quad-core 1.6GHz Cortex-A15 CPU, a PowerVR SGX 544MP3 GPU, 2GB of RAM and 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of built-in storage.
It weighs in at 130g and offers a slew of sensors to track your eyes, measure humidity and more besides. You can currently pick up a SIM-free S4 for around £400, though it was closer to £600 at launch.
Despite a high TechRadar review score, and sales of 40 million units in the first six months, Samsung is reportedly disappointed with the S4's impact on the market. As far as we're concerned though, the phone was a success, if not on the same level as the S2 and the S3.

Galaxy S5

So, onto the latest iteration of the Samsung Galaxy family: the S5, and it's powerful while remaining a little underwhelming.

The key specs

• Screen 5.1-inch Super AMOLED HD, 1080 x 1920 pixels
• Battery 2800mAh
• CPU Quad-core 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801, 2GB RAM
• Key features Waterproof, Super fast autofocus, heart rate monitor, fingerprint scanner
• Internal storage 16GB / 32GB / 64GB
• OS Android 4.4.2
• Price at launch: £TBC

In February 2014 the Galaxy S5 was launched unto the baying public, and delivered in a number of stable ways. Gone were the theatrics and the pointless sensors, to be replaced by a heart rate monitor, a blazing fast autofocus and a fingerprint scanner.
The main specs were up again: the CPU was faster at 2.5GHz, the screen was larger as a 5.1-inch Super AMOLED HD option, the camera boosted to 16MP and the battery now rocking up at 2800mAh.
On top of that Android 4.4.2 was included to make things look a lot slicker and the overall interface was overhauled to make things like the lock screen much clearer and generally improve the flow through the device.
The fitness elements were boosted through S Health 3.0, which brings the most holistic tracking app ever for your fitness, according to Samsung, while most other elements stayed the same - although the rubberised back is a lot a grippier.
We're still awaiting a price, but chances are it will be the same as before, hovering around the £500-£600 mark depending on your spec choice.
Our hands on: Samsung Galaxy S5 review found that the "Galaxy S5 has a great camera, strong screen, impressive packaging, a waterproof casing and a blazingly fast engine pumping things along.
"But it doesn't have an amazing camera, incredibly battery life, stunning design or genuinely innovative feature, and that cause a few people to wait and see what the competition brings."
...and so there you have it: a complete walk down the Samsung Galaxy memory lane. Are there any particular handsets that you have fond memories of? Or are there specific innovations that you'd like to see Samsung offer next time around? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

25 Galaxy S5 Features You’ll Actually Care About

25 Galaxy S5 Features You’ll Actually Care About is a post by Josh Smith from Gotta Be Mobile.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 is official with a lengthy list of features and an April release date. While you wait for Samsung to announce the Galaxy S5 price and for carriers like AT&T or Verizon to confirm the Galaxy S5 release date on their shelves we share a look at 25 Galaxy S5 features you’ll actually care about and use.
Samsung beat Apple and HTC to announce the first flagship smartphone of 2014, showing consumers and competitors what the company thinks are the essential smartphone features for the year.
After the Gotta Be Mobile team used the Galaxy S5 and shared our Galaxy S5 hands on, we wanted to call attention to the Galaxy S5 features we are excited about and the ones we think buyers will actually care about.

This collection of Samsung Galaxy S5 features highlights some of the most impressive features that we see consumers using. Some of the features won’t see use everyday, but everything on this list is something the Gotta Be Mobile team thinks consumers will use on a regular basis.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 release date is set for April 11th and the phone is coming to all major U.S. carriers, though the release date may vary slightly on each carrier.

25 Galaxy S5 Features You’ll Actually Care About

Some of these Galaxy S5 features come from the Galaxy S4 or Note 3, while others are unique to the Galaxy S5. Consumers deciding between the Galaxy S5, Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 3 or an iPhone 5s or HTC One should check out these Galaxy S5 features before buying.

Better Build Quality

The Galaxy S5 is still plastic, but offers a better feel than previous phones.

The Samsung Galaxy S5 is still plastic, but according to the Gotta Be Mobile team members that went hands on with the device it doesn’t feel like cheap plastic. Samsung may not match the HTC One or iPhone 5s with metal, but this is an improvement.

Samsung Galaxy S5 vs iPhone 5s

Samsung Galaxy S5 vs iPhone 5s is a post by Craig Lloyd from Gotta Be Mobile.
Samsung announced and unveiled the Galaxy S5 as its latest flagship smartphone, rocking a slightly-larger display, faster internals and a better camera. The new device firmly places the ball back in Apple’s court, reiterating that a larger display is the way to go in today’s handset market.
Apple and Samsung are two of the biggest smartphone makers in the world, so pitting each company’s flagship device up against each other is pretty much the battle of the year — like Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston or Peyton Manning vs. Tom Brady.

The Galaxy S5 can be regarded as a direct response to the iPhone 5s, coming with a fingerprint sensor on the home button and now the choice of a “copper gold” flavor that seems to be the new phone’s version of the gold iPhone 5s that was introduced last year in September. In any case, let’s take a look at the two devices and find out what makes each phone tick compared to the other.

Display

One of the most obvious differences between the Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5s is the screen. The Galaxy S5 rocks a 5.1-inch display with a 1920×1080 resolution, providing nearly 541 pixels per inch. The iPhone 5s only has a 4-inch screen with a resolution of 1136×640, giving it 326 pixels per inch after it’s all said and done.
There were rumors that Samsung would bring out the big guns and introduce a 2560×1440 display on the Galaxy S5, but we knew that was a little far-fetched to begin with. Instead, we’re still stuck with the traditional 1080p resolution, which is still rather admirable.
Either way, both the Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 5s sport great pixel densities and images and videos look good on either device. Your only choice is whether you want a massive screen that may be too big for your hands or your pocket, or if you want the more subtle option of the iPhone 5s.

Fingerprint Sensor

Samsung took a page from Apple’s book this time around by introducing a fingerprint sensor in the home button of the Galaxy S5. However, instead of simply tapping down on the home button to get your fingerprint scanned, the Galaxy S5 requires users to swipe their finger downward in order to scan it.
Hopefully we don’t see any long-term problems with the Galaxy S5′s fingerprint sensor, as many iPhone 5s owners have experienced degraded performance from the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. In other words, the sensor would fail to recognize fingerprints over time, most likely because the sensor would become dirty after several scans.
In any case, Samsung certainly agrees that a fingerprint scanner is the way to go as far as securing your personal information. The iPhone 5s’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor can only be used to unlock the phone and purchase apps in the iTunes App Store, while the Galaxy S5′s fingerprint sensor can be used for other things like mobile payments. It’s likely that Apple’s Touch ID system will expand its usage, but who knows when that’ll be.

Camera

The camera in the Galaxy S5 is a huge improvement over the Galaxy S4, and it quite possibly might be in the running for the best smartphone camera on the market, but further tests will need to be done to see whether or not that’s true.
The 13-megapixel camera sensor in the Galaxy S4 has been bumped up to a 16-megapixel sensor in the Galaxy S5. Of course, megapixels aren’t everything, but it seems Samsung stepped it up significantly with new features like the world’s fastest autofocus in a smartphone camera, as well as Lytro-like focus shifting, where you can change the focus of a photo after it’s been taken.
As for the iPhone 5s, it’s rocking an 8-megapixel camera sensor, and again, megapixels aren’t everything; the iPhone 5s takes great photos and it’s still one of the best smartphone cameras around, but we just might see Samsung edge past Apple in this category this year.

Build Quality

Samsung decided to forgo its slimy plastic that it used on the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy S4 in favor of a soft-touch plastic with a textured finish that makes it more appealing to the senses. While many have joked around that the gold Galaxy S5 looks like a band-aid, it’s hard to deny that that the new look and feel is a welcomed improvement over the previous generation.
Then again, the Galaxy S5 still uses plastic across most of the device, while the iPhone 5s uses a sleek aluminum casing on the back and sides, making it one of the best-looking smartphones on the market.

However, many folks would argue that this makes the iPhone 5s much less tolerable to drops, while the Galaxy S5 looks to have a more robust build quality overall. In fact, Samsung’s new flagship is water-resistant, meaning that you can drop it in the toilet or in a puddle and it’ll still live to tell the tale. Granted, it’s not completely waterproof, but for those accidental moments, the new water-resistant feature can be a life-saver.

Wrap-Up

While the Galaxy S5 might not be a huge upgrade from the Galaxy S4 just from the face of it, the new smartphone is actually a huge upgrade, with just a few amazing new hardware features, as well as a handful of new software features that really puts the Galaxy S4 leaps and bounds ahead of the Galaxy S4.
However, the iPhone 5s is still right there along with it, and it seemed that Samsung played catch-up a little bit with the Galaxy S5 in terms of the iPhone 5s, with the inclusion of a home button fingerprint sensor and a new gold color option for those who like to bling it up.
However, Samsung still brought their own style and flavor to the Galaxy S5, especially with the upgraded camera and the new rear body design. It’ll be quite interesting to see how Apple responds when it unveils and launches the alleged iPhone 6 at some point later this year.

Truecaller ties up with Nokia‘s Android-powered X series

Aiming to expand its reach in emerging and mass markets like India, phone directory app Truecaller has tied up with Nokia for newly launched Android-powered X series smartphones. 

The Truecaller app will be available on the Nokia apps store for all devices in the Nokia X series. 

"Given Nokia's reach in the emerging and mass markets, our collaboration will help in further expanding the reach of our application in these markets," Truecaller co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Nami Zarringhalam told PTI. 

Truecaller, which has a global userbase of 45 million, has about 25 million users in India, he added. 

"Our recent product enhancements, rising user base in emerging markets especially India makes it the right time for us to expand our product availability to newer platforms," Zarringhalam said. 

The firm claims to add about 900,000 users every week globally, while in India its users are expanding at a rate of 500,000 per week, he added. 

"Our users make over 600 million phone searches every month," he said. 

Nokia X series users will have access to all the features of Truecaller's 4.0 version which includes caller ID, name search and call blocking functionality, Zarringhalam said. 

Truecaller 4.0 is the latest update on the app which provides the customary caller ID and call block feature, coupled with integrated functionality using Twitter. 

This will help users to see if a number is connected with a Twitter account and have the ability to tweet or follow a person directly through the Truecaller app, he added. 

"With Truecaller, you are able to control how your contact information is shared and how others can contact you. This is done by guarding your most personal accessory (your mobile phone) and eliminating the annoyance of unwanted calls, while making it easier for people you want to hear from to find you," Zarringhalam said.

Major bitcoin exchange is insolvent, companies say

 

A major bitcoin exchange has gone bust after secretly racking up catastrophic losses, other virtual currency companies said Tuesday _ a potentially fatal blow for the exotic new form of money. 

The website of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox was returning a blank page Tuesday. The disappearance of the site follows the resignation Sunday of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, a group seeking legitimacy for the currency, and a withdrawal ban imposed at the exchange earlier this month. 

Prominent members of the Bitcoin community _ including San Francisco-based wallet service Coinbase and Chinese exchange BTC China _ sought to shore up confidence in the currency by saying Mt. Gox's collapse was an isolated case of mismanagement. They said it had abused users' trust, but did not offer details on how. 

``As with any new industry, there are certain bad actors that need to be weeded out, and that is what we are seeing today,'' the statement said. 

Documents purportedly leaked from the company lay out the scale of the problem. An 11-page ``Crisis Strategy Draft'' published on the blog of entrepreneur and Bitcoin enthusiast Ryan Selkis says that 740,000 bitcoins are missing from Mt. Gox, which roughly translates to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of losses, although figures are fuzzy given Bitcoin's extreme volatility. 

``At the risk of appearing hyperbolic, this could be the end of Bitcoin, at least for most of the public,'' the draft said. 

In a post to his blog, Selkis said that the document was handed to him by a ``reliable source'' and that several people close to the company had confirmed the figures. Reached by phone, he declined further comment. 

The scandal may cost Bitcoin enthusiasts dear. 

At the Tokyo office tower housing Mt. Gox, bitcoin trader Kolin Burgess said he had picketed the building since Feb. 14 after flying in from London, hoping to get back $320,000 he has tied up in bitcoins with Mt. Gox. 

``I may have lost all of my money,'' said Burgess, next to placards asking if Mt. Gox is bankrupt. ``It hasn't shaken my trust in Bitcoin, but it has shaken my trust in bitcoin exchanges.'' 

Mt. Gox CEO Karpeles did not immediately return several messages seeking comment. A security officer at the office tower said no one from Mt. Gox was in the building. Tibbane, an Internet company that Karpeles is CEO of, still has its name listed on the building's directory. 

``I have no idea'' where they are, said Burgess, the trader. ``I'm both annoyed and worried.'' 

On bitcoin exchanges, the currency's value has fallen to about $470 from $550 in the past few hours, a figure already down more than 50 percent on the price of $1,200 per bitcoin reached on Mt. Gox three months ago.

 

The disappearance of Mt. Gox could be fatal for Bitcoin, which was started in 2009 as a currency free from government controls. Bitcoin's boosters say the currency's design make it impossible to counterfeit and difficult to manipulate, and the virtual money has won an eclectic mix of die-hard fans, including libertarians, tech enthusiasts and adventurous investors. 

But the currency has struggled to shake off its associations with criminality, particularly its role in powering the now-defunct online drug marketplace Silk Road. Only last month another member of the Bitcoin Foundation, Vice Chairman Charlie Shrem, was arrested at New York's Kennedy Airport on charges of money laundering. 

Authorities have been taking an increasingly hard look at Bitcoin and related virtual currencies including Litecoin, Namecoin, Ripple, and countless others. Some countries, including Russia, have effectively banned the currency. In other jurisdictions, authorities are weighing whether to try to tame the marketplace through licenses or other mechanisms. 

Even if Mt. Gox doesn't drag Bitcoin down with it, there's fear that the exchange's demise will push officials to take an even more skeptical stance. 

``I think this is disastrous from a (regulatory) standpoint,'' Selkis, the enthusiast, said in a message posted to Twitter. ``The hammer will now come down hard.''

LinkedIn to launch site in Chinese

 

LinkedIn is launching a Chinese- language site for the world's most populous Internet market and says it will comply with the communist government's censorship rules. 

The professional networking service will compete with established Chinese-language services Tianji, owned by France's Viadeo SA, and homegrown rivals Ruolin and Dajie. 

LinkedIn says it has 4 million users in China but until now its service was in English. 

Professional networking services see fast-developing economies such as China and India as important sources of growth. In China, LinkedIn says it sees a potential market of 140 million professionals. 

Unlike Facebook, Twitter and other sites, LinkedIn has always been allowed to operate in China. 

LinkedIn Corp, headquartered in Mountain View, California, acknowledged that expanding in China raises "difficult questions" because it will be required to censor content. 

Such restrictions have hampered some other Internet services. Google Inc closed its mainland search engine in 2010 after a dispute over censorship. Chinese authorities block access to Twitter and Facebook but have allowed LinkedIn to operate. 

LinkedIn promised to make clear how it conducts business in China and to undertake "extensive measures" to protect members' rights and data. 

"Government restrictions on content will be implemented only when and to the extent required," said CEO Jeff Weiner in a statement today. 

"LinkedIn will be transparent about how it conducts business in China and will use multiple avenues to notify members about our practices." 

Two-thirds of LinkedIn's 277 million users are outside of the US. China had 618 million Internet users as of the end of 2013, according to an industry group, the China Internet Network Information Center. That included 277 million users of social media sites, though no details of those targeting professionals were reported.

Blackberry unveils smart phones made by Foxconn

 

Struggling Canadian handset maker Blackberry unveiled Tuesday its first smartphones built by new Taiwanese partner Foxconn as it fights to recover from huge losses. 

Blackberry showed off two devices to help it claw back market share in a new a five-year partnership with Foxconn. 

"We are definitely here to compete and to win back some lost ground before the end of the year," Blackberry chief executive John Chen told reporters at the February 24-27 World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain. 

Blackberry reported a $4.4 billion (3.2-billion-euro) loss in the third quarter of 2013 last December but cheered investors by announcing it was teaming up with Foxconn, which is also a key supplier to a chief rival, Apple Inc. 

The first handset is the Q20, which has Blackberry's trademark physical keyboard and is to be released later this year. 

The second, the Z2, has touch screen and is aimed at the Indonesian market, going on sale in April for less than $200, Chen said. 

Now joined with Foxconn, which is the marketing name for Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Blackberry will focus its comeback fight on selling phones to its traditional marketplace, the corporate sector, he said. 

"Our turnaround strategy is to focus on enterprise," Chen said. "We are always known as the number one in security." 

The Blackberry boss said he aimed to improve the company's liquidity position this fiscal year before making a return to profit in the following year.

Why cloud computing has high penetration in India?

By Akhilesh Shukla 

It is more than a mere coincidence that Satya Nadella, before moving into the shoes of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer as the CEO of Microsoft, was heading cloud computing initiatives of the company. His elevation from head of cloud computing to the post of CEO shows the growing significance of cloud services within the IT giant.

The entire ecosystem, be it service provider, vendor, research firms, etc are positive about the growth of cloud computing.

Research firm IDC in a recent study predicted that in 2014 spending on cloud services would surge 25% to over $100 billion worldwide.

CIOs in India have also adopted cloud computing with open arms. The adoption rate of cloud computing is 67%, as per IDC.

It is lower than countries such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. However, Indian CIOs have adopted cloud for more strategic purposes like collaboration solutions, disaster recovery, supply chain management, etc. On the other hand, CIOs of South Asian countries have moved only basic applications like database hosting, email hosting, back-up, servers and storage on cloud.

The main reasons for high usage and adoption of cloud in India are its cost-effectiveness, agility and scalability. Cloud also suits the present need of CIOs, who are asked to show quick results and high return from every investment made on IT infrastructure.

"Cloud computing has several benefits, which are driving its adoption worldwide. It helps the CIOs to save IT resources, space, and it is also scalable. It can be quickly deployed, reduces the capital expenditure as well as the time to market," said Sandra Ng, Group Vice President, Practice Group, IDC Asia/Pacific. "It's a win-win situation for them," she added.

But cloud computing comes with its own risks and apprehensions. Data security is one of the major concerns for technology buyers. Meeting compliances is another barrier to adoption of cloud. Apart from these, factors such as lack of understanding of how cloud works, vendor lock-in, and upgrades required in the existing infrastructure are some other concerns of users.

"It is not that Indian CIOs are not aware of the risk factors involved in adoption of cloud computing. But they try to ignore them, as they look at the merits (faster and cheaper) of cloud computing," pointed out Sandra.

Another factor that is discreetly driving cloud computing in the country is lack of regulatory guidelines.

In the West, permissions are required from the authorities in case an organisation is moving any data, services or applications on cloud. In Europe, an organisation requires permission from the government to store data out of the physical geography of the country. Similarly, National Security Agency needs to access any data, any time in the US.

"It is true that cloud is popular in India because it is cheap and we do not have any guidelines for data security and privacy. Indian government and to some extent CIOs are yet to rise to the growing challenge of data security and privacy. Off-late, we have seen some action. But it will take some more years for them to match steps with their western counter parts," said Manpreet Singh, director, Technology Business Services, Capita. Capita provides business process outsourcing and integrated professional support services solution in UK. The company has an India office in Pune.

India has always been a price-sensitive market. CIOs, just like other denizens, are no exception to the rule. They love to shop cheap goods including technology. But security should not be compromised, especially, when around 80% of the critical infrastructure is in hands of private organisations.

How to Use Your Smartphone Camera to Search

Searching with words is so 2010 —searching with images is the wave of the future. Whether you’re trying to identify something you’d like to buy, checking for deals or looking for information on what you see in the world around you, visual search apps can help. Armed with a smartphone and one of these apps, all you have to do is snap a photo and the app will try to identify the object or landmark and find information on it. Ready to get started? Here are our favorite visual search apps. Google Best app for searching for anything and everything: Google Goggles No matter what kind of information you want, Google Goggles — not to be confused with Google Glass — can help. This is a stand-alone app for Android, but it’s built into the Google Search app for iPhone (tap the search bar and then the camera icon to search by image). Take a picture of whatever you want to know more about, from a place to a work of art to a barcode or text (even in a foreign language), and Google will bring up more information. If the item is for purchase, you’ll also find shopping links and reviews. If you just have one visual search app on your phone, this multipurpose search is the way to go. Price: Free on iTunes and at Google Play Amazon Best app for all kinds of shopping: Amazon Mobile If shopping is what you’re interested in, Amazon Mobile makes it easy for you to find anything they stock using your smartphone camera. Just fire up your Amazon app and click search, where you have the option to search by text, barcode or “flow,” which searches based on what your camera can see. Though flow has difficulty recognizing some items — we found it identified a paperback book immediately but couldn’t figure out a Jawbone Jambox was — its overall image recognition is pretty good. If you want to shop on Amazon, this is the perfect helper. If Amazon isn’t your thing, however, you may be better

TCS top IT service provider in Europe, Middle East

Global software major Tata Consulting Services (TCS) has been ranked number one IT service provider for the manufacturing industry in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) by leading analyst firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

"The study we conducted revealed that TCS has demonstrated an ability to deliver a range of services to European manufacturing enterprises, as also confirmed by its key clients," IDC head for manufacturing insights Pierfrancesco Manenti said in a statement here.

The study and ranking help decision-makers in the manufacturing industry achieve their business goals by providing an independent view of the performance of leading IT vendors operating in EMEA.

"Manufacturers are under pressure to reduce operational expenditure and increase efficiencies, while maintaining product quality and meeting safety and regulatory norms," TCS global head for manufacturing industry solutions Milind Lakkad said in the statement.

The study recognised TCS' track record for designing and implementing systems for some of the region's leading companies.

TCS partners with manufacturers across verticals to help transform their business models and implement technology solutions.

"Our solutions also benefit clients to improve time-to-market for new product releases, as each solution is tailored to ensure each business can meet its objectives within the regulatory parameters," Lakkad said.

The Indian IT bellwether was ranked as the overall leader on five key processes and as the outstanding leader in manufacturing operations management.

"The advent of next generation technologies is reshaping the nature and context of the industry, making it necessary for us to assess the content, structure, and model of the IT services space," Lakkad noted.

TCS is also devising new software solutions to help businesses deliver process improvements using their present capacity and resources.

The study focused on the processes of most importance to the manufacturing industry to generate a sector-specific analysis to help them make informed-decisions.

The processes include supply chain management, product life cycle management and engineering, manufacturing operations management, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management.

15 Technology Training Centres to be set up across country

 

The Centre would set up 15 Technology Training Centres in the country during the current five year plan with an outlay of Rs 2,200 crore, Union Minister of State for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) K H Muniyappa said today.

Laying the foundation for a Rs 100 crore Technology Training Centre at the IT Park here, he said the MSME ministry had already set up 18 such training centres. He said manufacturing industries' contributed over 15 per cent of the country's GDP.

'Which (blank) are you?' Online quizzes go viral

For a compulsive online quiz-taker like Chrissy Noh, the temptation was too great to resist: ``Which sandwich are you?'' 

After answering a series of unscientific, seemingly unrelated questions, which included selecting her favorite doughnut from a lineup of frosted pastries, the New Yorker had her answer (grilled cheese). And she's not the only one who's comparing herself to sandwiches lately. 

A recent explosion of silly online personality quizzes, most of them created by the young social media mavens at Buzzfeed.com, has Americans talking about which of the 50 states they really ought to be living in and which Harry Potter character they really are. Buzzfeed says the quizzes are smashing traffic records and generating more Facebook comment threads than any viral posts in the site's history. 

Experts say the phenomenon isn't surprising given the age-old fascination with that central question, ``Who AM I?'', and a desire to compare ourselves with others in a social media-obsessed society. 

On a recent snowy day, the 37-year-old Noh admitted that she and several friends spent the afternoon taking quizzes and texting each other screen shots of the results. ``It turned into an all-day group text message fest, where it was just picture after picture of, oh, what rapper are you?'' she says, laughing. ``What career should you actually have? Which sandwich are you? Which member of One Direction should you marry?'' 

Personality quizzes have been around for decades, gracing the covers of women's and teen magazines with questions designed to lure us in. Nor are they new to the Internet, where online quizzes can be found aplenty on sites like Zimbio.com, among others. But the recent wave of quiz popularity can be traced directly to Buzzfeed's New York City headquarters, where a team of about 100 content creators have been producing one to five quizzes every single day for the past two months. 

The most popular quiz, ``Which State Do You Actually Belong In?'', has generated about 41 million page views. 

``For our most viral quizzes, the results have to be meaningful in some way,'' says Summer Burton, BuzzFeed's managing editorial director. ``It's not that they are scientific. It's just that what they say means something to people as far as their own identity.'' 

A QUIZ FOR EVERYONE 

A scroll through the ``QUIZZES'' page on Buzzfeed.com reveals a bewildering assortment, many infused with pop culture references. Which celebrity cat are you? Which pop diva? Which ``Girls'' character? What career should you actually have? Which generation do you actually belong in? What kind of dog would you be? 

The intense push to pump out as many quizzes as possible started a couple of months ago after Buzzfeed editors realized that a quiz called ``Which `Grease' Pink Lady are you?'' ranked among the most-trafficked posts of 2013. Then, in mid-January, a quiz called ``Which city should you actually live in?'' went viral, and the whole venture just took off like wildfire, Burton says. 

The ability to create a quiz was encoded into Buzzfeed's in-house content management system a little more than a year ago. Essentially any staff member has the autonomy to create one. There are no specific rules regarding quiz-making, but each one follows the same age-old general format: You start with the results and work backward based on general personality traits that go with each answer. 

``If you take a `Parks and Rec' quiz and you get Leslie Knope, then you're very enthusiastic,'' Burton says. ``It's almost like you pick three or four adjectives, and then those kind of go into figuring out what the answers for each question are going to be. And assigning them to a result.'' 

Staff members generate the quiz ideas themselves and create the entire thing on their own, though they do receive an edit and feedback before the quizzes are published. 

The trick to creating an addictive personality quiz is similar to the art of writing a good horoscope. It has to be broad and all-encompassing yet make people believe the answer applies to them personally. We know there's little substance to them, and yet we can't seem to stop taking them. 

What makes these online quizzes so alluring is that they can be instantaneously shared with hundreds of friends on Facebook for instant feedback, says Denise Friedman, who teaches psychology at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. 

``In our age, we're constantly reflecting on who we are, and technology has really changed the way we interact,'' Friedman says. ``I think we are constantly engaging in social comparison and thinking about where we stand.''

 

`A WAY TO KILL TIME' 

John Egan, 50, who lives in Austin, Texas, says he gets sucked into the quizzes partly because he's curious about himself, and because he wonders how his answers will stack up against his Facebook friends'. But the quizzes have little staying power in his brain. 

``It's kind of this momentary thrill, if you will, and then you move on. And it's like a shiny object: `Oh, there's another quiz!''' he said. 

The quizzes are overwhelmingly upbeat and lighthearted in nature, a calculated decision by the people engineering them. 

``Quizzes are an investment of someone's time,'' Burton says. ``So it feels like it would almost be mean for someone to go through the process of taking the quiz and have it say, `You're really cynical and negative and nobody likes being around you.''' 

And you can take them over and over until you get the answer that validates your own assumptions about yourself. Noh says she may have taken the ``Which rapper are you?'' quiz quite a few times until she was satisfied with the result. 

``I kept getting Eminem, which I was unhappy about,'' she says. ``I was like, `I really want Kanye, so I'm gonna answer these questions until I get Kanye West.'''

Samsung unveils smart cameras with NFC, WiFi sharing options

 

Korean electronics major Samsung today unveiled a new range of smart cameras with advanced NFC and Wi-Fi capabilities priced in the range of Rs 12,490-21,290 for the Indian market. 

The cameras come pre-loaded with suite of standard Smart Mode and Smart Auto Mode features, which allows the user to capture photographs with an unparallelled level of customisation and functionality, Samsung said in a release. 

Smart Mode allows for a number of different customisation and personalisation settings, while Smart Auto analyses shooting environments and selects the most optimal settings for any situation, it added. 

"The new line-up includes the WB35F, WB50F, WB350F and WB1100F offering superb image quality and next-generation sharing capability, offering photographers of all abilities a great way to capture and share their world," it said. 

Besides, the brand new Tag & Go feature takes sharing seamlessly connects the cameras with smartphones by touching the two devices together, no configuration is required. 

The Photo Beam feature immediately transfers the image being viewed on the camera to a smartphone or tablet, while AutoShare saves images straight to the device in real time, removing the burden of manually backing up pictures. 

"Remote Viewfinder offers flexibility when setting up shots, as the camera can be controlled via a smartphone to act as a viewfinder, while Mobile Link allows transfer of selected images to smartphones, making sharing quick and easy," Samsung said. 

On pricing, Samsung said, WB35F is priced at Rs 12,490, while WB50F, WB350F and WB1100F are available at Rs 14,990, Rs 21,490 and Rs 20,990, respectively. 

"With the addition of these new models, Samsung's digital still cameras portfolio now has a complete lineup of 9 digital cameras priced between Rs 7,190-Rs 58,900.

Mozilla plans Rs 1,500 smartphone for emerging markets

 

Technology firm Mozilla has showcased a smartphone prototype for developing countries, which could cost as less as $ 25 (about Rs 1,500). 

The company, which runs the Firefox browser, has partnered with Chinese low-cost chip maker Spreadtrum. 

"In 2014, we are differentiating our user experience and our partners are growing the portfolio of devices. We are also enabling a whole new category of smartphone, priced around $ 25, that will bring even more people around the world online," Mozilla Chief Operating Officer Jay Sullivan said. 

Firefox OS devices are the first devices built entirely to open Web standards, with every feature developed as an HTML5 application. 

"We launched our first smartphones in July, and have since expanded into 15 markets. People in Latin America and Eastern Europe have eagerly upgraded from their feature phones to Firefox OS smartphones. Sales have far exceeded our targets. But 2013 was just the beginning," Sullivan said. 

The devices from Mozilla's stable are expected to see stiff competition, especially from Chinese and Taiwanese handset makers like Huawei and ZTE. 

Since last year, Firefox OS devices have gone on sale in 15 markets with four global operators and handsets from three manufacturers. 

Firefox OS will be expanding into important new markets in 2014. 

However, no details on the availability of the devices in India was disclosed.

IIM Ahmedabad wraps up placement process in three clusters

 

IIM Ahmedabad has wrapped up final placements for its 378-strong class of 2014 within three clusters, one short of the four planned for. 

More than 125 firms participated in the process this year, including the laterals with Accenture Strategy emerging the top recruiter across segments, picking up 18 students. 

Among global investment banks, HSBC was the largest recruiter, making offers to nine students for roles in investment banking, corporate banking and private banking. In the strategy-consulting space, The Boston Consulting Group made 15 offers to students while AT Kearney, Bain & Co and McKinsey & Co extended seven offers each. 

In the niche consulting domain, EXL was the highest recruiter with eight offers. Hindustan Unilever was a leading recruiter in the consumer space with six offers. Reliance Industries was the largest recruiter among general management firms with eight offers, while Amazon led in the technology space with 15 offers. 

Latent View and Samsung made seven offers to students for roles in data analytics and business development. The placement process was conducted in two stages. The first was the laterals process where firms interviewed students with work experience and offered them mid-level managerial positions. The second stage was the final placement process where firms were grouped into cohorts based on the profile offered, and groups of cohorts were invited to campus across different clusters. About 50% of the batch was eligible for lateral placements. 

Firms across diverse sectors such as analytics, BFSI, consulting, consumer services, pharmaceuticals and technology, participated in the process including Aditya Birla Group, Amazon, Google, Infosys, Latent View, Microsoft, Star TV India amongst others. This apart, companies from multiple sectors hired for a wide range of functions. 

Recruiters in the consulting space included Booz and Co, Ernst & Young, EXL, KPMG, McKinsey & Co, Oliver Wyman, TSMG amongst others. The financial services sector saw participation from global investment banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS amongst others. 

Sales and marketing roles were offered by the likes of Airtel, Asian Paints, HUL, ITC, Kraft and Nestle, among others. Aditya Birla Group, CK Birla Group, General Electric, Mahindra, Reliance Industries offered general management and leadership profiles. 

From the technology space, there was Amazon, Cognizant, Google, HCL, Infosys, Latent View, Microsoft, Samsung among others. A number of first-time recruiters such as Embibe.com, Fractal Analytics, Kepler Cannon amongst others participated in the placement process. 

This year, 13 students opted out of the placement process to start their own ventures including an IT solutions venture to support the logistics and transportation sector, a platform for improving the agriculture supply-chain, amongst others.