Open Source Social Netwoking Tool

Posted By Prostoalex on Slashdot [PeopleAggregator - An Open Source Social Network ] about PeopleAggregator

prostoalex writes "When Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Zaibatsu and Tribe.net just don't cut it, meet PeopleAggregator, an open-source, PHP-written, FOAF-based social network. There's the site and there's the source in case you decide to launch your own. I found out about PeopleAggregator reading this interview with Mark Canter on Read/Write Web today." I wish such sites would provide profile-conversion tools to encourage jumping ship from one to another.

Do You Believe in Free Beer or Free Speech ?

Nicholas Petreley is uspet about the developers who are violating the spirit of GPL license and creating their own versions of licensing. According to him the spirit of opensource is "share and share alike" and as Free Software Foundation puts it, it is free as in "free speech" and not free as in "free beer". The article further describes how developers have invented some license compromises.

Here's the crux of the matter: It's illegal to create and sell a proprietary application based on GPL code. Given the reality that people are always going to create proprietary applications, developers invented some license compromises that make it possible to build proprietary applications on open-source foundations.

The FireFox Browser

Dwight Silverman praises Firefox Browser and claims it to be Easy, Fun, Fast, Safe & Free. You can make out his love for FireFox by this comment :

I've been using Firefox for several months, beginning with earlier releases under the name Firebird. Here's how good it is: If it weren't for incompatibilities with some Web pages designed only for Internet Explorer, I'd probably use this as my only Web browser.

Offshoring and Threat to Individual Privacy

Via Slashdot : David Lazarus writes a special report on Sfgate.com : How one offshore worker sent tremor through medical system ? . The reports traces how a transcription work was sub sub sub sub contracted and landed up in Pakistan without the knowledge of the client. They were able to discover only when they recieved a threatening e-mail from Pakistan when the sub sub sub contractor didn't pay the dues of the end contractor. Even though it hits the idea of outsourcing and offshoring to other countried - its a genuine concern.

Four Historical Lessons of Outsourcing

Bob Davis from the Associated Press writes in WSJ sited on mlive.com how we can learn the lessons of outsourcing from 4 historical tales that help illuminate today's debate.


(1) Even high-skilled, good-paying jobs are vulnerable.

(2) Trade liberalization often works with technology to undermine powerful interests.

(3) Domestic workers are always vulnerable to competition from foreigners willing to work for less.

(4) Politics can slow down the transforming effects of new technology.

India Needs a 4G Forum

CIOL carries an article why India urged to embrace 4G ? According to the experts advise India must move forward in setting up a 4G forum that can provide insights into the country’s needs and capabilities in the area of 4G telecom networks.

Expressing the importance of having a 4G forum for the country, Jorge M Pereira, European Commission, Information Society Directorate General said that India should move forward in having a 4G forum that can provide insights into the country’s needs and capabilities in the area of fourth generation telecom networks.




"This forum when formed, can address issues like R&D in 4G technologies, educating the industry about 4G, expanding wireless with an increase in demand, seamless mobility and utilizing technologies of higher frequency spectrum," Pereira added.





India as a country has got a big talent pool in terms of educational institutions and research organizations and this can help the country in early adoption of technologies like 4G. "India is very good in terms of talent, so the country can provide the talent manpower needed in the areas of computing infrastructure, signal processing, backbone networks, multiple access technologies, channel coding and VLSI," informed, Prof Shankar Lall Maskara from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.





Creation of such forum will boost the chances of India moving towards cutting edge technologies like 3G and 4G. "Establishment of 4G forum is essential for the country now. In fact I am going to meet up with the government of India representatives and very soon we will have this forum functioning as a body," said, Ramjee Prasad, Director, Center for TeleInFrastruktur (CTIF), Aalborg University, Denmark.

Google Goes Personal

Google has launched two more services currently in preview state at labs.google.com The two services are (1) Personalized Web Search : personalized search results based on user's interests & (2) Web Alerts : get alerts about new web pages on a topic of interest.

More at Sfgate.com & Forbes.com

Rural Convergence Centers

via IndianExpresPharma major Lupin Ltd would set up the first of about the 100-odd rural convergence centres (RCCs) -planned by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) across India to foster public private partnerships to accelerate rural development.

Tiny Loans Big Differences

Saritha Rai writes in New York Times how Tiny Loans Make a Big Difference in Lives of Poor. The article traces Mr. Khosla when he was Shamsabad and was listening to the women in rural areas who received tiny loans from a microfinance program run by SHARE Microfin and how it helped them start homegrown businesses, transformed their poverty-stricken lives and made better education possible for their children.

I was completely blown as I listened to the stories of these tenacious women," Mr. Khosla said. "I started crying." In his view, the microfinance initiatives he visited in India and Bangladesh last month ran more efficiently than most Silicon Valley organizations. "They have sophisticated credit algorithms," he said. "Does the woman own a buffalo? Some chickens? Does she have a toilet in her home? What kind of roofing material does her home have? Does she bring a shawl to the village meeting?"

Open Source Boom : The Rule of 12

Via LinuxWorld : Internet whizz Marc Andreessen at the 3rd annual "Open Source in Government" conference came up with his personal top twelve reasons for why open source will boom over the next 5-10 years.



(1) "The Internet is powered by open source."


(2) "The Internet is the carrier for open source."


(3) "The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed."


(4) "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."


(5) "Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments."


(6) "Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers."


(7) "Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants."


(8) "Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel."


(9) "Embedded devices are making greater use of open source."


(10) "There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies."


(11) "Companies are increasingly supporting Linux."


(12) "It's free."

Outsourcing to in India

If you think that only US citizens are witnessing the trend of outsourcing then you are wrong. Even the Indian professionals are slowly seeing the rise of outsourcing trend from very low-tech to high-tech job. Job security is the most unsecure word today. Even though jobs are not directly going overseas, people are seeing it move to 'another company'.IT operations at Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. are being turned over to IBM India in a deal which could be worth up to $750 million dollars over 10 years and this is said to be the largest deals in the history of IT outsourcing in the India market as told by Dean Douglas, vice president for telecommunications at IBM Global Services to internetnews.com.

Simputer On Sale

Via Keralanext.com : From next month Simputer or a simple computer will be commercially produced and will go on sale. Simputer has been branded as Amida Simputer and jointely produced by Bharat Electronics and PicoPeta Simputers Ltd. It's three variants will be priced at between Rs.9,950 and Rs.19,900.



Even the Indian PResident Mr. Kalam is excited about Simputer and telephoned from New Delhi to compliment the manufacturers.

Lauding the four IISc scientists for conceiving, designing and developing the product indigenously, Kalam said he was proud of the institute for turning such gifted people into entrepreneurs, who set up PicoPeta Simputers Ltd.

Emergance of Brand India

Via Express India : 'India' is emerging as a great global brand name and recieving an unprecedented attention.

India is receiving unprecedented attention of industry, media and governments globally. This will help Indian companies in the long-term to have an edge over other countries that are considered to be India’s competitors in outsourcing business,” says Mr Karnik.

Related : IndiaShining.com

Derisking strategies for Indian Software industry

Anshu Kumar in Fiancial Express writes why it is important for Indian Outsourcing Indsutry and Indian Software industry in general needs a strategic approach and expand its boundaries beyond India. The need is due to changing state of Doallar vs INR, geographical limitations, political situations and other kinds of concerns and threats:

National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) president Kiran Karnik says Indian software companies will have to look at other countries in order to build defences against geo-political risks, regional economic conditions, change in currency rates and possibly and an anticipated shortage of skill pool in some of the specific technology areas.

The Shift In Software Licensing

Via Information Week : According to a survey of both software vendors and major business customers by IDC, up front license purchasing will soon be replaced by subscription-licensing plans, in which vendors and customers adopt a pay-as-you-go arrangement that extends over several years. Amy Mizoras Konary, program manager for software pricing and licensing at IDC points out the problem in the current licensing method:

The problem with traditional licensing, she added, is that customers are often unable to track the amount of software they actually use, much less predict what they need. "Most customers are guessing on how much they're using, so they tend to overbuy," Konary said.

The Broadband - India Aim

Via News Today: According to the study conducted by IBM Business Consulting Services in association with CII, with the support of Department of Information Technology and the Department of Telecommunications the rural india cannot progress with traditional approach. The need of the nation is to get 'connected' using the latest in the information technology

India should target a minimum of 10 million subscribers by 2010 and 35 million subscribers by 2020 in urban India across homes, enterprises and public kiosks, which is the vision according to the CII-DIT-DOT final report of the study on Broadband Economy: Vision 2010.

Somewhat Related :

India's governance will slow its rise as a tech competitor

The end of a phishing scam

Via Forbes : Federal Trade Commission has aressted Zachary Hill , a 'scam artist' who who crafted fake e-mail messages to trick hundreds of Internet users into providing credit card numbers and other sensitive information. According to the report Phishing has emerged as a favorite tool of identity thieves.Victims of identity theft should visit http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft

Links:

How Not to Get Hooked by a 'Phishing' Scam

Antiphishing.org - Stop Phishing and Email Scams

India, Outsourcing and Slashdot

Another interesting story on Slashdot - Builder.com Writers Outsourced to India.

An anonymous reader writes "Builder.com, which is part of CNet.com, is now outsourcing some of their writing to India. The funny thing is, the editor claims it's not as much about money as because he's 'getting a better interface with producers of the content.' He claims CNet isn't giving up control, but if they're the publisher, and he's the editor, and they can't hire and manage their own writers, why shouldn't the Indians just put up their own website to replace CNet, and we can all read what they write direct? I mean, we're all going to be buying software direct from Indian companies soon, so why not?" Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN. OSDN also runs sites like devchannel.org which are more-or-less direct competitors of builder.com.

The Rise Of .Com in India

The dotcom age is not gone. Yahoo! India is number two in logins after US and Yahoo! India expects a growth of 40% per annum, according to the article by Rahul Gupta in CIOL. In another article in Business World [29 March issue] the other risers in the dotcom's are ...

Rediff.com

AutoMartIndia.com

Bazee.com

Naukri.com

Traveljini.com

Makemytrip.com

Indiabulls.com

Union of Snail Mail With E-mail

BBC UK has an interesting story about how some people living in some of the most inaccessible areas of India are enjoying an improved postal service by combining 'e-mail' with the traditional 'snail mail'

WiMax : Growth or Hype

The 802.16 standard, otherwise known as Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax), has been getting much hype over the past year as being the next biggest technology since Wi-Fi. Some analysts believe that WiMax poses a threat to the large mobile phone companies, most of which have already invested billions in other technologies to deliver voice and data over the airwaves (WiMax can cover a distance of 50 kilometers, ten times more than a 3G base station); e.g. EV-DO, a next-generation wireless network that delivers broadband service based on a technology called CDMA. The other side of the story can be found at Alarmist WiMax Predictions [WiFiNetNews | Fleishman's Blog]

For WiMax to pose a threat to any other wireless technology, it will need a major operator to commit to building an extensive network. That hasn’t happened. Also, WiMax wouldn’t pose a significant threat to 3G or Wi-Fi until the mobile version of the standard is complete. Once it’s complete, vendors have to make equipment and that gear must be certified, then an operator must build a network. That process will take many years.

LINKS:

WiMax could leave Wi-Fi in the dust | The Age

The promise of WiMax revealed at conference | Computerworld

Reliance part of global wireless initiative | CIOL

RELATED

Locate the Hot Spots in India (The lisiting provides more than 100 hotspots but only for bangalore)

Indian ISP Happenings

VSNL, India's first and the largest ISP has acquired DishnetDSL for Rs.270 crorers. Dishnet DSL was the first DSL service provider in India and has presence in many locations throughout india providing Dial-Up and Boradband services.


On the other hand Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) today removed a major hurdle for internet service providers (ISPs) by permitting them to use any medium, including copper wire, optic fibre and radio to establish the last-mile connectivity

Near Field Communication (NFC) Forum Launched

Yet another step towards a wirefree generation, the launch of NFC Forum [a.k.a Magic Touch RFID Technology] will enable the standardization of NFC in various electronics devices to communicate with each other just by holding them near each other. The NFC forum is established by Nokia Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) and Sony Corporation.

Via WirelessDevNet:

About Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC technology evolved from a combination of contactless identification (RFID) and interconnection technologies. NFC operates in the 13.56 MHz frequency range, over a distance of typically a few centimetres. NFC technology is standardized in ISO 18092, ECMA 340, and ETSI TS 102 190. NFC is also compatible to the broadly established contactless smart card infrastructure based on ISO 14443 A, i.e. Philips MIFARE(R) technology, as well as Sony's FeliCa* card.

Links:

Near-Field Communications Opens Vision Of E-Commerce

NFC , Application & Product information on Philips

New Top Level Domain Names

There have not been any major additions to the domain names after the last launch of .info, .biz and some other domain names. There a suggestion from various organizations to include new domain names like ".mobi" for mobile services and ".xxx" for adult content.In May, the applications will be further reviewed by an independent panel. If approved, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will negotiate specific terms and conditions with each domain registry operator

The other applications are: ".asia," ".cat," ".jobs," ".mail," ".post," ".tel" and ".travel." The ".tel" name was sought by two groups.

In 2000, seven new top-level domains were added, including ".biz," ".info," ".name" and ".pro," which were unsponsored, and ".aero," ".coop" and ".museum," which were sponsored.

[Source : Mlive.com]

Latest News via RSS

Topix.net provides news on various topics and provides an RSS feed for the same. There is a similar site called Newstrove.com but topix.net feeds are more accurate, relevant and exhaustive. The advantage of Newstrove is that , it also offer Java Script which can be included in any web page, in case the web server doesn't support XML parsing. The twop indian news sites who have started XML syndications are IndianExpress.com and Rediff.com, I don't know why Timesofindia.com which claims to be the number one Indian news site on the internet doesn't have one. The same is true for Googlenews.com which doesn't offer any RSS feeds. But there are many tools avialable on the net who parse the html to get RSS XML feeds out of them. This method is called "scarping" and it violates copyright, but still there are many tools available and I remember that there was something for Timesofindia.com too.





The convinience which these feeds offer are:


(1) You don't have to visit numerous news/content sites everyday, you can simply subscribe to the RSS feeds.


(2) These RSS feeds generally includes main home page (headlines) and also categorical and topical headlines. Thus I may subscribe only to Cricket feed from Rediff and business news feed from financial express.


(3) These feeds can be viewed in a web based aggregators likes bloglines or blogstreet and destop applicatications like Feedreader.[all are free]


(4) Thus I save lots of browsing time and visit exactly the page whose title has generated interest.


(5) You can also use these topical feeds in your web pages, e.g. a cricket blogger or a web master may show latest headlines in his web page / blog side bar which adds more intelligence to his web page.


(6) Many others things can be done with this syndication method depending upon the creativity, the most interesting I find are blagg and Rollup.org which allows you to subsribe to various syndicated feeds and re-mix them. That is, the headlines are generally shown from one site , then another and then the next one in these aggregators all the individual feeds are randomly mixed and displayed.



To know which sites from India offer syndication you can visit Syndic8.com.

India Entertainment Revolution

Reliance Industries Ltd. Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani expects that India's entertainment industry could ride the broadband wave to grow to $200 billion in the next 20 years. The broadband initiative from Reliance is named as Broadband Baharat. Mr. Ambani was addressing Ficci Frames 2004, a global convention of the business of entertainment. The great advantage according to him is that:

This is because India has the largest digital infrastructure in the world, is not burdened by legacy systems and can leapfrog to the latest technologies cost-effectively, he added.

Reliance is not alone is the broadband venture; Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Korea Telecom have joined hands to offer Indian customers a wide range of broadband services that include cable, telephone connectivity and internet at high speed.

The Indian Animation Industry which estimated to be a billion-dollar industry in India will grow at 30 per cent annually in the near future as expected by Walt Disney President Andy Bird during FICCI-FRAMES 2004.



According to another REPORT by by Ernst and Young and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry:

India's entertainment industry will grow by double digits over the next five years to achieve annual revenues of over nine billion dollars by 2008, helped by increased television viewing

2003 was good for Bollywood with 16 films grossing more than 100 million rupees from the domestic market compared with 13 films which grossed that amount in 2002

India should see 7.5 million DTH subscribers by 2008

The live entertainment segment also posted a 60 percent growth over 2002

12th Convergence India 2004 international exhibition and conference will focus on the tools, technologies and policy perspectives of the emerging convergence scenario in India, showcasing innovative products and services. The 12th Convergence India 2004 event will be held during 18-20 March at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. The event will incorporate carriers and telcos, broadcast and cable; multimedia and internet; networks and computing; IT hardware and software; smart card technologies; satellite and space technologies and telecommunication equipments.



While speaking at Convergence India 2004, TRAI Chairman, Pradip Baijal said that Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will issue guidelines for the Internet and broadband sector in the next fortnight.

Linux is growing / The future is Open

Have you seen the latest IBM Linux advertisement on TV?. It is fantistically conceptulazied , Linux is shown as a kid who befriends everybody wherever he goes. Thus, Linux is growing / The future is open. View the Flash Version


ibm.com/open (philosophy) & ibm.com/linux (products)

Tech-ties between India and France

Via FinancialExpress:
New Delhi is exploring technology alliances with Paris on a range of areas including smart cards, e-governance, tele-medicine, telecommunications and open-source software.

In a joint statement after a meeting of the fourth Indo-French joint working group (JWG), communications and IT minister Arun Shourie has solicited the support of France “for reversing the rising tide of protectionism in the western world, which could inhibit innovation, impose additional costs on cross-border exchanges and reduce competitiveness of IT products and services.” More...

Stop whining about outsourcing, David Shaffer Suggests

According to the article, written by David Shaffer, president of the Public Policy Institute, an Albany-based think tank,said that the "one-sided" blame game of blaming India and outsourcing should stop.

"A lot of our legislators are looking at the scary news stories about call centers in India. They think they see a way to shift the blame. So, one bill after another is being introduced in the legislature to "crack down" on companies that employ people in other countries," claims Shaffer, while adding that only two of the legislators -- Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have not joined this bandwagon. "Nothing in this or any of the other proposals would create one single job in New York State. But more important, anybody with even a marginal understanding of New York's economy should know that we gain far more from international trade than we lose," Shaffer's article further goes on to add.

He concludes by saying ...

Fact is, we need to imitate India, not whine about it."

Bandwidth to India Surges

Via PRNewsWire: According to new research from TeleGeography, India's international submarine cable capacity will have grown from 31 Gbps in 2001 to 541 Gbps by the end of 2004 -- a 17-fold
increase in three years.

American Jobs Moving to India

Via : Slashdot.org | Need a Job? Move to India :

WhoDaresWins writes "As U.S. jobs move abroad, more Americans are willing to work overseas like in India as per a CNN.com story. The story talks about many Americans and also Indians who are American citizens moving to India for work. This story should be an eye opener to people who feel Americans cannot work in India. With a booming economy there is a need for skilled professionals with years of experience in a western enconomy and industry. Best of all, job listings are available online." Thomas Friedman has a piece called The secret to India's success.

Don't miss the discussion.

The Myths of Open Source

Alhtough I am not agreeable to this, since I do not consider anyting as a holistic solution, still this article offers some points for discussion. John Alberg cofounder of Eployease in CIO Magazine elaborates how open-source was not able to meet all the needs and discolses the myths of using open source. Eployease provides employee benefits administration services to more than 1,000 organizations across America .
The myths discussed are...
(1) ATTRACTION IS THE PRICE TAG

(2) THE SAVINGS AREN'T REAL

(3) THERE'S NO SUPPORT

(4) IT'S A LEGAL MINEFIELD

(5) OPEN SOURCE ISN'T FOR MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATIONS

(6) OPEN SOURCE ISN'T READY FOR THE DESKTOP

THE BOTTOM LINE :

Is open source right for every organization? In the end, argues Andy Mulholland, chief technology officer for Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, it's a question of attitude. "The arguments for and against open-source software often get very trivialized," he says. "It's not a technology issue; it's a business issue to do with externalization."


Companies with an external focus, he says, which are used to working collaboratively with other organizations, and perhaps are already using collaborative technologies, stand to gain much more from open source than companies with an internal focus, which see the technology in terms of cost savings.


"The lesson of the Web is that standardization is better than differentiation," Mulholland claims. "Is there a virtue in doing things differently? Is there a virtue in doing things the same way as everybody else?" As the past decade has shown, standardization with a proprietary flavor—think Microsoft—has its drawbacks: bloatware, security loopholes, eye-popping license fees and an unsettling reliance upon a single vendor. In offices around the globe, an era of open-source standardization, determined to condemn such drawbacks to history, may be dawning.

Need for Speed in Indian Reforms

Raghuram Rajan of The International Monetary Fund, which hiked India's growth projection to 7.6 per cent from 2003-04, said drastic reforms were required to push up GDP growth to the desired 8-10 per cent annually in two decades

Links

Biography of Raghuram Rajan on ECGI - Europen Corporate Governannce Institute

Info and papers on NBER - National Bureau of Economic Research

Research Papers and Teaching Material on CHICAGO GSB

India to be center of Internet Gravity

India is likely to be the Internet's new centre of gravity along with China, according to the top official of the body that oversees the Internet.

Paul Twomey, the chief executive of Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), says that the pull from the Far East and emerging markets such as India and China was becoming very strong.

The secret of India's success

Via TheStraitTimes:: Find out why India is so successful in the software business. In US sometimes back Japan was synonimous with Automobile and now India equals software.

The Indian Public Issue Potential

Disinvestment minister Arun Shourie has hinted that the government can raise as much as Rs 1,50,000 crore every year for five years from the market by way of such issues. He was speaking at the valedictory session of the Young Indians Summit

He was all praise for the young, who dominate the information technology sector with an average age of 26 years. The sector contributes $16 billion worth of exports.
India can become a global hub for research & development in different fields, Mr Shourie said. “But we should come up with big ideas. In the last 20-30 years, no great idea has emanated out of India.”

Two Way Street called Trade

HAL R. VARIAN writes in New York times in the article : What Goes Abroad Usually Comes Back, With Benefits
The article essentially tells us that any 'trade' is a two-way street.

The money paid to foreign producers, whether businesses or workers, typically comes back home to buy domestic goods and services, thereby generating domestic employment. That is true whether it is European companies paying American biotech researchers, or American companies paying Indian programmers.


Think about it. If Oracle sends $10,000 abroad to pay an Indian programmer, then that money either finds its way back to the United States or it doesn't. If it comes back, it can be used to buy American goods and services, employing American workers. If it doesn't come back then it's even better from the viewpoint of the country: we've sent them paper, while they've sent us valuable goods and services.

India, the outsourcing scapegoat

James K. Glassman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and host of TechCentralStation.com writes in his article Don't make India the outsourcing scapegoat on Post-Gazette. According to him Sen. John Kerry is fond of calling CEOs who employ foreigners "Benedict Arnolds," after the despicable Revolutionary War turncoat, but there is lots of hipocracy involved in it.

Put hypocrisy aside. The traitors to American interests aren't CEOs seeking to boost profits that ultimately lead to more hiring at home. The real Benedict Arnolds are Kerry and his colleagues in Congress, such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Jon Corzine, D-N.J., who understand enough economics to know that outsourcing is trade and that trade -- as David Ricardo figured out 200 years ago and as Hillary's husband articulated in the 1990s -- benefits both parties.

He feels that India is unnecessarily made a target and the whole election campaign is biased against it without seeing the bigger picture.

Now, many Indians feel they are the scapegoats for America's cyclical economic downturn in what they see as a racist campaign. Isn't this the way trade works? "On the one hand you talk about opening up our markets. On the other, you want to ban ... outsourcing," said India's deputy prime minister.



In fact, the business processes (or BP) work that Indians do for companies worldwide is a "good thing," as Gregory Mankiw, head of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, had the temerity to say, like the little boy who couldn't help but speak the truth while his elders were telling lies. ("This simple restatement of the logic of liberal trade brought derision down on Mankiw's head," wrote The Economist. And from, among others, Corzine, the former CEO of Goldman, Sachs!)



As the BP sector waxes, India becomes a bigger market for "Dell personal computers, Cisco switches and Avaya telecommunications equipment," writes Rafiq Dossani of Stanford in Outlook, an Indian magazine.

Links:

Kerry Donors Include 'Benedict Arnolds

Globalisation, US and outsourcing —Rafiq dossani Martin kenney

India: One of the most closed economy

US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick declares india as ''one of the most closed economies of the world," and hence it should not complain about US being protectionist against Outsourcing.

''The Indians have absolutely no right to complain because they don't belong to the government procurement code'' in the World Trade Organization (WTO), which sets obligations for making procurement deals transparent, he said, ''and, frankly, they're not that liberal on the services side.'' ''The long-stalled WTO negotiations have a chance to advance in 2004, he said, but only if all parties are willing to open agricultural markets, including elimination of export subsidies by the European Union.

Link:



Robert Zoellick's Free Trade Evangelism | By Toni Solo | CorpWatch [Holding Corporations Accountable]

Are you doing Yoga today?

[ Via : Contracostatimes] According to the latest study conduted by Harris International for Yoga Journal, around 7 percent American practice Yoga thats about 15 million people

WHO DOES YOGA?
Among Americans who practice yoga:
* 77 percent are women.
* 15 percent have an annual household income over $100,000.
* Nearly half have completed college.
* 27 percent are ages 45-54; another 25 percent are 25-34.
* Slightly less than 20 percent live on the West Coast, compared to 30 percent in the Northeast and 30 percent in the central United States.

Demand for OSP - Other Service Provider

[ Via : FinancialExpress ] Reliance Industries, Tata Technologies, Hinduja TMT and Del International of Bangalore are among the 41 companies who have approached the department of telecommunications (DoT) for getting the other service provider (OSP) licences. OSP licensee can tele-banking, tele-medicine, tele-education, tele-trading, E-commerce, etc. As per DoT guidelines, OSPs would be allowed to operate the infrastructure provided by various access providers without paying any licence fees. However, they are strictly barred stepping into the operation area of other access providers. They are also strictly banned from providing any switched telephony

Link:

InvestIndiaTelecom.com: A DoT India site : Telecom Acts and Legislations in India, Network Status, Telecom Policy, Investment Policy, FDI Policy, Opportunities in BPO Sector, List of OSP (International Call Centers, Domestic Call Centers,Network Operation Center, Tele-education, Vehicle Tracking System, Long Range Alarm Systems, Bill Payment Terminal), WPC / SACFA, Exhibitions, Brochure - Indian Telecommunications, etc.

Open Source Content Management Systems

Searching for open source content management systems?

CMSInfo provided you news & information about the various CMS softwares.CMS Matrix provides a handy tool to compare the popular ones and Drop.org is the place where you can discuss the CMS. Once you have visited all these sites and made up your mind - Would you like toTRY before you INSTALL - then OpenSourceCMS is the right place for you. [Recommended]. After deciding the right OpenSource CMS Software you can host it at OpenSourceHost.

D-Link & Sify tie-up for Wi-Fi Growth in India

[ Via Newstodaynet ] D-Link India Ltd and Sify Limited have teamed up to put India onto the global Wi-Fi map. India currently has a larger number of Wi-Fi hotspots (over three times higher than China) and the number is growing exponentially. Sify has already established Wi-Fi hotspots with broadband connectivity in Bangalore, Chennai and Delhi using D-Link's wireless products.

Merger of Atom With RSS (?)

[ Via CNN ] Dave Winer, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School who is commonly considered the arbiter of the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) format, proposed on his Scripting.com Web log that the format could merge with Atom, a competitor launched in the summer.

SAJA Roundup & Tips on Covering Outsourcing

SAJA > Outsourcing

Sources, resources and more about outsourcing jobs to India. A constantly-updated compilation of major articles, opinion pieces, and contacts, including pro-outsourcing and anti-outsourcing experts.

India Shining : Ok, but Bill please

After the Election Commission’s ban, the Centre’s ‘‘India Shining’’ campaign has run into more trouble. The Delhi High Court today asked the Vajpayee Government to furnish details of the funds spent on the campaign and sought to know the guidelines under which the expenditure was incurred.

The growth in Data Services

Via Hindustantimes.com: Whoever has the bandwidth will rule the world and whoever know how to manage it will be the king. The next phase of telecom growth will be in the enterprise network management and services. Reliance Infocomm and Tata's will add huge manpower in 2004-05 to introduce these services. Data services like broadband conncectivity, VPN, Leased Lines, Wireless Data Access would see a huge demand in the Indian market.


*Telecoms companies are scrambling to meet the burgeoning demand for international access and specialised data services that has accompanied a boom in the Indian economy and its outsourcing industry.



Local firms that offer international phone services, such as Bharti Tele-Ventures, Reliance Infocomm and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd are now eyeing the lucrative data market. And global carriers such as AT&T Corp and Cable & Wireless Plc are clamouring for a piece of the action.



"Everybody wants a chunk of the data business," said Kobita Desai, telecoms analyst at Gartner India Research and Advisory Services. "It's still a niche area, but a high-margin one."



Spending on data services in India is likely to double to 50 billion rupees ($1.1 billion) in four years, according to Rajiv Sharma, CEO of Bharti Tele-ventures broadband and data division.
*

Outsourcing and the property business

Umesh Desai and Dominic Whiting reports in Forbes [ India outsourcing surge hits rich Asia's property ]. Due to current boom in the outsourcing and BPO industry in the region the property sector is also riding on the wave and making profits.




*For India, the influx of jobs due to "business process outsourcing" (BPO) is a shot in the arm for a property sector that had been languishing.



In 2004, 11 million square feet (1.022 million sq metres) of office space is expected to be taken up in India's five biggest cities, nearly twice 2002's 6.4 million.



"Two years ago the market was in the doldrums because of the India-Pakistan tensions and a global recession was not allowing multinationals to grow in emerging markets," said Chanakya Chakravarti, executive director at property services firm Cushman & Wakefield India.



"The BPO boom in the past two to three years has led to a resurgence in the Indian property market across segments."



Call centres and other information technology firms accounted for 82 percent of the total office space let in New Delhi and its surrounding areas in the first half of 2003. They took up 51 percent in Bombay and 81 percent in Bangalore.



The $3.6 billion industry is seen rocketing to $13.8 billion by 2007, with the number of jobs quadrupling to one million.*

Mobile Happy

Thanks to India, mobile phone industry is happy | Hindustan Times: The growth in mobile/telecom industry in India and China is making the mobile phone industry happy. Now cities like Mumbai have more mobile users than land line users. Companies like Reliance Infocomm and Tata Teleservices are betting heavy on not only mobile but many more value added services like Broadband and other direct to home services. In developed nations the growth is seen in more feature rich phones and in India the growth is in roll-out of the services in untouched areas and competition between technologies like GSM and CDMA.

US trade groups to battle BPO backlash

Via CentralChronicle : The various trade groups in US believe that outsourcing to countries like India and China is the only way to save jobs in America against international competition.Around two hundred such groups have formed a coalition - 'Coali- tion for American Growth and American Jobs' - to beat back Federal legislation that would restrict foreign outsourcing by govern- ment contractors and limit visas for non-American workers with technology skills.




"It is hard to get the message out there when unemployment was not coming down as quickly as we would like and politicians are using it as an election-year issue," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, an Arlington, Virginia, trade group representing 500 technology concerns.



Read Harris Miller's viewpoint The Global Realities of IT


OPPOSITE MATCH:


On the other handAmerican jobs coalition.orgis working on ...

Initiate a State level push for the
American Worker Protection
bill. (Already begun in GA, CO, FL, and OH)

 Support Rep. Tom Tancredo's
HR 2688 with elimination of
H-1B work visas. Total Reform of the Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) program.

L-1 visas should be capped, should have layoff protection for American
workers, and should be used only for Executive positions.

The Department of Labor should investigate H-1B abuse, fraud and mismanagement.

The Truth About Offshoring

The little sexy thing called "Business World" always comes up with something good. Grab this copy to know about the facts of offshoring and outsourcing. What's happening in USA , what are the sentiments and what are the facts.

Businessworldindia.com >>Cover Story BPO | Myth Vs Reality | The truth about offshoring

The Outsourcing Discussion : Slashdot Again

Again on Slashdot:
The full outsourcing discussion posted on Slashdot.org by Hemos.

GileadGreene writes "Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recently did an interesting Op-Ed piece [The silver lining of outsourcing overseas ] about the "silver lining of overseas outsourcing": the growth that it generates in the US job market as Indian companies outsource work that US workers are better at. Apparently total exports from US companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002 as well. So maybe this outsourcing thing isn't so bad after all." Ultimately, free trade works out well; I think one of the issues is that white collar jobs are just beginning to feel the pinch, and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s.

Indian Techies Answer About 'Onshore Insourcing' | Slashdot

Roblimo makes this post:Indian Techies Answer About 'Onshore Insourcing' on Slashdot: A must read.


"This is an unusual Slashdot Interview, since instead of using email I asked all the questions in person last week either at LinuxAsia2004 or in casual meetings with local LUG members and other techies I met during the conference. Some of your questions[Ask Indian Techies About 'Onshore Insourcing'] were answered quite well by other Slashdot readers in the original post. (Slashdot has many readers both in and from India.) I also inserted a number of personal observations, which I usually don't do in these interviews, because it seemed to be the best way to answer some of the questions. And some questions were nearly unanswerable, as you'll see when you read the rest of this article."



Robin 'Roblimo' Miller is editor in chief for OSDN, one of the world's leading online tech news publishers. He has written extensively about computers and the Internet for Slashdot, Linux.com, NewsForge, Time New Media, Online Journalism Review, Web Hosting Magazine, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and many other Web sites, newspapers, and magazines.

Micro Financing

Resources:

Rural, Micro Fianance & Small Enterprise Development Links | World Bank Group

The Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI)

How to Change the World:
First Steps toward Becoming
a Social Entrepreneur | Journal(blog) @ Changemakers.net

Ashoka.org Social Entrepreneurship

Renewingindia.org: Micro Finance

What is micro-finance?

Gender and Micro-finance resource page | oneworldaction.org