Interesting USB accessories

I follow the Personal Technology page of "Economic Times" with interest for their India-centric coverage of gadgets & IT topics.

This week ET listed 10 useful USB accessories. Among them, although a USB-based Hub & Mug Warmer, Cooler, paper shredder, Vaccum Cleaner have some novelty, they didn't appeal to me as much as these -

Jabra Speak 410 - USB powered speakerphone ... with integrated cable managment system. Weighing a mere 250g, this speakerphone also has a headset port where you can plug-in any 3.5mm headphones in case you want the call to be private. (Rs 8,000 from www.jabra.com)

USB Display  - This little monitor is completely powered off USB – just one cable is needed for both the video signal and power. The 7-inch 800 x 480 pixel panel is touchscreen enabled too – you can move certain items onto it to clear space from your primary display.
The best part is that since the display connects via USB, your regular VGA/HDMI out is unused and can be used to output to another device simultaneously. ($229.99 from www.thinkgeek.com)

ASUS CrossLink Cable - Thanks to Asus' Crosslink USB cable and adapter, you can quickly connect and transfer data at high-speeds between two computers.The adapter is shaped like a USB drive, has 2GB storage and a miniUSB port on the other side to connect using the Crosslink cable. You can even share an internet connection and optical drive between two PCs. (Rs 4,000 from eBay Global EasyBuy)

USB Foldable keyboard - If your netbook's keyboard proves too small for you or you just prefer to carry your own keyboard around, this flexible USB keyboard is ideal. Since the keys and base material are made of silicon, it is completely silent.
Even though it has the full 104 keys, you can roll it up into a small package. The added advantage is that the keys are completely waterproof and dustproof. ($23.99 from www.thinkgeek.com)

USB Phone2PC - This handly little device is great if you want to keep a record of all your voice calls. It can be connected to most phones using an analog or digital connection and then it connects to the PC using USB.
A software is required to be installed which provides an easy-to-use interface to record incoming/outgoing calls. It includes an external microphone for recording meetings and interviews directly to the PC as well. (Rs 10,000 from www.ebay.in)

I'm surprised that such phone recording/tapping tools are easily available despite recording/tapping being illegal in several countries including India.

In the same technology section, ET gives Reliance 3G Tab a favorable review & 4 stars (out of 5). Reliance 3G Tab (Specs: 7-inch touchsceen,800 x 480 pixels,1.2Ghz processor,512MB RAM,4GB+microSD slot, 2MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM, accelerometer, Android 2.3, 380 g) sells for 12,990 INR.

The review points out three areas where the Reliance 3G Tab doesn't match up to something like the original 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab (P1000).

Firstly,the screen has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels the same as what a high-end smartphone offers and lower than the Galaxy's 1024 x 768.This means that the number of pixels per square inch (pixel density) is low.Secondly,the 800Mhz processor is a bit of a step down and it is noticeable at times with certain apps or when you scroll between screens too fast.Finally,the device is locked to the Reliance network,so you can't just use any SIM card you want.

In the end, they offer a nice suggestion -
If you'd rather not spend the extra,you can choose to buy the 3G Tab without a plan and pay just 12,999 upfront.You'll be using it just like a Wi-Fi tablet and later,you can opt for one of the discounted 3G advance rental or monthly plans.

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Website to track weather in Indian cities - imd.gov.in

Weather isn't a hot topic in India (as it is in the US) & forecasts aren't taken seriously.

Possibly to promote awareness, the Indian Meteorological Department has put out an ad in today's Times of India (with a glaring typo -Meteorological is misspelt as Meteorogical right at the beginning) to publicize the features if its site - IMD.GOV.IN

click image to enlarge

Besides a host of services & forecasts, the site publishes 3-day city forecast for 100 cities. Unfortunately, neither this nor the information from other weather forecasts are accessible as RSS feeds or through widgets as on the US National Weather Service website. As such, there is no easy means by which other websites or individuals can consume useful weather information.

There is a toll free number (1800 180 1717) to get city weather forecasts & observations but the site lacks services that have a "push" mechanism

A better designed site with interactive features (better maps, email alerts, easier accessibility on mobile phones) can boost the utility of India's official Weather tracking service by sharing its wealth of information among the general public.

Also see:
India - Know your elected government representatives
State of Internet in India
Browser Usage Stats for India
Jago Grahak Jago
E-Commerce in India
India IT - facts, numbers & trivia
Discover public transport in India with Google Transit

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Online database of medicines used in India - MedGuideIndia.com

No matter how big or small your ailment, you should never try to play doctor. However, there may be times when you want to verify details of medicines you are consuming. Typically, Indian doctors scribble names of medicines that are almost illegible but surprisingly understandable by the pharmacist.

MedGuideIndia lets you check details of commonly used drugs in India by their brand name. Their search feature also shows brand names for a specified generic drug and you can find out which manufacturers sell that drug and at what cost. Composition of brands and comparative prices of various brands of same composition are shown as well.

This website, aimed mainly at medical professionals, is not an alternative for an actual doctor but it helps consumers to be well-informed.

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India IT - facts, numbers & trivia

Numbers tell a story. Interesting tidbits about India IT from the newspapers (work in progress) -

• Tata Consultancy Services has emerged as the largest recruiter over the last year, followed by Infosys and Wipro Technologies. Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. is ranked four in the list, while HCL Technologies Ltd came fifth. The other players who found place in the top 10 list are: Mphasis Ltd, Genpact Ltd, Capgemini India Pvt Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, Aegis Ltd. .....women as a percentage of total new hires have reached more than 40 per cent over the last 3 years - NASSCOM rankings of top 20 IT-BPO employers. CIOL, 28-Jul-2011
• Onshore software services (often derogatorily called 'body shopping') account for close to 45% of TCS' $8-billion revenues - ET, 1-Jul-2011
• Telecom Regulatory Authority of India reported that at the end of March (2011) the country had just 8.8m broadband connections. By contrast, it boasts some 812m mobile subscribers. - Economist, 28-Jun-2011
• "..cloud-services form 3 per cent of Infosys' income, and over 10 per cent if cloud- products are included."  - 25-Jun-2011
• TCS's headcount stood at 1,60,429 as on April 1, 2010, which increased to 1,98,614 as on March 31 this year. - ET, 21-Jun-2011
• Infosys had 130,820 employees during 2010-2011, from 88 nationalities. Of this, the number of software professionals stood at 123,811, while the rest were sales and support staff....the average age of its employees in 2011 stood at 27 years. The trend is similar with other IT service providers, including Wipro and TCS. - BS, 4-Jun-2011
• Tata Consultancy Services is the largest private sector employer in the country. It had 1,63,700 employees as on June 30. But guess who's number 2? ....The fact that IBM has over one lakh people on its rolls (global workforce is about 400,000) in this country is one of India Inc's best-kept secrets.  ToI, 18-Aug-2010
• Wipro .. "the first company in the world to achieve a level 5 CMM certification" ET, 8-May-2010

Also see: Indian software product start-ups that are making news

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India - Know your elected government representatives

Who says India is a poor country? Did you know 315 of the 545 MPs (Members of Parliament) in the current Lok Sabha or Lower House of Parliament are crorepatis (have assets greater than 10 million Indian rupees)? Out of 543 MPs (Lok Sabha), 153 are facing criminal charges. Fifty-four are facing charges of very serious nature, including murder. Who says having 35 criminal cases filed against an individual can stop that person from becoming a law-maker?


The Association for Democratic Reforms' National Election Watch is a web-based application that has collated details about India's elected government representatives, both at the state & national level, from their own sworn affidavits. It lists details like their constituency, Party, involvement (if any) in criminal cases, education, assets and liabilities. Find out how the representative for your region stacks up against the rest and be better informed while voting at the next election.

This website is the winner of the 2011 NASSCOM Social Innovation Honours in the ICT led Innovation by Multi-stakeholder Partnerships category.

Also see:
BigTech/NASSCOM Foundation offers NGOs software titles at huge discounts
Indian software product start-ups that are making news
Judicial Orders that changed the nation 
When grassroots innovation goes global

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Bill Gates video on vaccines

Bill Gates has posted an interesting video on his site about his thoughts on vaccines

The video presents facts through entertaining comic art with voice-over by Bill

Also see:
Software industry related comics

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Google Labs Script Converter Bookmarklet

Script Converter is a Google Labs product that allows the user to read a web page in a script of their choice (currently 11 Indian languages, English, Greek, Nepali, Persian, Russian, Serbian are supported). For example, if the user can understand spoken Tamil but cannot read the script, they will be able to view Tamil web pages in English (Roman) script or one of the other supported languages.

The online tool does not translate any content but transforms the words on the page to its phonetic equivalent in the desired script. It also supports the conversion from non-Unicode encodings to Unicode, so that users can view pages without installing the custom font otherwise needed.

Any web-based service that takes its required parameters as a querystring is a good candidate for a bookmarklet. Here's the code for my attempt at building a bookmarklet for Google Labs Script Converter -
javascript:(function()
{
window.location.href='http://scriptconv.googlelabs.com/frame?sln=xx&tln=en&url='
+encodeURI(window.location.href);
})()

The value "xx" for sln indicates Script Converter will auto-detect the language on the web page that it has to transform while tln=en means the content will be shown in English.

You can deploy this bookmarklet yourself (after removing the newline characters) or drag the link below to your Bookmarks toolbar (or whatever it is called in your favorite browser)  -
>> Transliterate with Script Converter <<

To test this bookmarklet, you can open the BBC Hindi home page & then click on the above bookmarklet that you've added to view Hindi content in English.

Also see:
The Joy of Bookmarklets
How to read an online PDF file without installing a PDF Reader
HOW to continuously refresh any web-page in IE & Firefox

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India ranks fourth in Internet usage

Deepak Shenoy informs that as per Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data, India has nearly 10 million Broadband connections in India (not just users).

As per current TRAI norms, a broadband connection should have a speed of 256 kbps.

According to World Bank data, only 4.5% of the total Indian population has access to the Internet (as of 2008) while the world average is 24%

India is however, the fourth-largest country in terms of internet users and is turning out to be an important market.

Also see:
Browser Usage Stats for India

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What is the difference between ccTLD suffixes like "co.in" & just ".in"?

A friend asked me this question & this is my attempt at answering it.

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain (like .com, .net, .org) generally used or reserved for a country, a sovereign state, or a dependent territory.

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for determining an appropriate trustee for each ccTLD. Each country's trustee may assign registrars to sell domain names with suffixes pertaining to their country as per their policies.

A country code second-level domain (ccSLD) is a second-level domain to a country code top-level domain. Some domain name registries introduce a second-level hierarchy to a TLD that indicates the type of organization intended to register an SLD under it. For example, in the .uk namespace a college or other academic institution would register under the .ac.uk ccSLD, while companies would register under .co.uk. The complete list of suffixes including those for each country are available at PublicSuffix.org

The following are the domain name public suffixes for India, made available by INRegistry  -

• .in
• co.in
• net.in
• org.in
• firm.in
• gen.in (general)
• ind.in (individuals)

The following zones are reserved for use by qualified organizations in India -

• ac.in (Academic)
• res.in (Indian research institutes)
• edu.in (Indian colleges and universities)
• gov.in (Indian government)
• mil.in (Indian military)

The ".co.in" suffix was originally for banks, registered companies, and trademarks. Liberalization of registration rules in 2005 & promotion of the ".in" ccTLD has led to greater registrations. India has fewer registration restrictions, especially for foreigners, than other countries.

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IRCTC Alternatives

The IRCTC.co.in website has to be the most trafficked e-commerce site in India as you can book a train ticket online within minutes by paying a few rupees extra rather than buying them from a Railway ticket counter which has perennially long queues. In April 2010, there were over 7 million transactions carried out. The website has an Alexa Rank of 474.

These impressive figures are probably not due to the quality of the website but due to the monopoly that it enjoys. Like many, I've endured the slow-loading pages but since the last few months I'm happy to have discovered alternatives to IRCTC.

Since a couple of years, IRCTC has started providing an API at a hefty fee for third-party vendors. As a result, there are now a bunch of websites now that offer a superior interface & experience for buying train tickets online at a slightly higher cost, like -

• Cleartrip
• MakeMyTrip
• Yatra
• Thomas Cook (India)

I've tried the first two & am impressed with the clean interface & relative speed with which you can book tickets.

 The MakeMyTrip site interface (click to enlarge)

Booking a Tatkal ticket on Cleartrip appeared faster although it still probably hits IRCTC's servers. Some of these sites also occasionally have special offers. For instance, Cleartrip is giving away a cash back of upto Rs.100 on train bookings done through Net Banking till May 31st, 2010.

Also see:
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools

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Google Translate can now SPEAK Hindi

Although Hindi is the national language of India, it is spoken by less than half the population. For those among the other half & non-citizens who want to learn Hindi, Google Translate's text-to-speech functionality can be a good tool. Hindi is currently the only Indian language supported.

On clicking the Speaker icon in front of the translated text, the Hindi words are read out by a female voice. This feature relies on Flash. The translation is not perfect always.

As Google admits...

Clear and accurate speech technology is difficult to perfect, but we will continue to improve the performance and number of languages that are supported.

I hope more Indian languages get supported by Google Translate & it's text-to-speech functionality lets Indians appreciate languages they don't know.

Also see:
Google Script Converter transliterates between Indian languages
Read Telugu news sites in transliterated English

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Raman Effect can fingerprint the universe

This week's Swaminomics column in the Sunday Times of India, based on an article in The Atlantic Magazine explains how India's Noble prize winning scientist C.V. Raman's discovery has finally become a breakthrough technology.

Handheld scanners called Raman scanners, weighing just one-third of a kilo, are being used by US narcotics squads and airports to detect drugs.

The scanners work by detecting the molecular structure of the object they are scanning. If you shoot a beam of light on an object, a very small part of it interacts with the atoms of the object and scatters light in a pattern or spectrum unique to that particular molecule.This is the Raman Effect. It is difficult to detect, and typically needs lasers to amplify the signal. Every molecule has a different Raman pattern. This is why Raman scanning has been called the fingerprinting of the universe: it can identify substances as surely as fingerprints can identify humans.

Scanners have a laser, spectroscope and an electronic heart that can recognize Raman patterns. This yields almost instant recognition of target substances.

Scientists aim ultimately to create a database of Raman patterns of every substance for easy identification.

The Atlantic reports other mash-ups of the Raman Effect -

The potential medical applications of Raman technology are perhaps the most exciting. Researchers at Stanford University are experimenting with it as a non-invasive tool to diagnose breast, lung, and other cancers. River Diagnostics, in Rotterdam, is marketing a bacteria-strain analyzer to identify pathogens in real time and combat hospital-acquired infections. Diabetics may someday be able to monitor their glucose without poking themselves to get a drop of blood. Allergy sufferers may be able to instantly detect which pesky pollens are in the air and respond accordingly.

I found it interesting that I read this article by my favorite Indian columnist who probably first read it in an American magazine that carried this feature about an Indian scientist's path-breaking discovery that is finding application outside India scores of years after he first observed it. Goes to show how geographies are irrelevant for ideas & why good ideas should keep flowing.

The funny cover of The Atlantic that features the Raman article

Also see:
Accidental Discoveries
Geniuses

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Internet Banking risks - Phishing, Vishing & now SIM-swap frauds

ICICI Bank has been running a Customer Education Series in Indian newspapers & they are one of the few Indian banks that bother to educate the public about banking facts that are not generally known. The columns in the series are available on the Web only as PDFs (AFAIK) & they do not seem to be easily reachable.

I've heard of Phishing & Vishing, but SIM-swap fraud was news to me. Excerpt from a today's column on SIM-swap fraud -

Your mobile phone is now also a convenient banking channel; but it can make you vulnerable to SIM-swap fraudsters if you do not take some simple precautions.

How do SIM-swap frauds occur?
• The fraudster obtains your mobile phone number and bank account details through a phishing e-mail.
• He asks your mobile-phone-service provider for a replacement SIM card under some pretext, like changeover to a new handset or loss of SIM/handset.
• The service provider deactivates your SIM card and gives him a replacement SIM.
• The fraudster introduces a payee into your bank account using the phished data, transfers funds from your account to his and withdraws the money through an ATM.
• All this while, your service provider's alerts don't reach you because your SIM card has been deactivated.

What are the safeguards that should be taken?
• Never respond to phishing e-mails.
• Do not disclose your mobile phone number on websites.
• Change your banking passwords frequently.

If you find your mobile number inactive for an unusually long period or abruptly barred from calls; or if it displays limited access or says the SIM is inactive; contact your service provider without delay and find out the reason.

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Google Script Converter transliterates between Indian languages

If you can speak & understand one of 11 Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu) but cannot read in that language, Google Script Converter can help you out by transliterating it into a language among them that you can read or to English. So let's say you are a Hindi speaker living in Hyderabad who can understand Telugu but cannot read local news in an online Telugu newspaper like Eenadu. To start reading Telugu in Hindi, English or whichever of the other  Indian languages supported by the tool, you have to copy a site's content & paste it within the text-area in Script Converter.

Telugu text in Hindi (click on the image to see a larger one)

This is a great tool for those trying to learn new Indian languages. To take this a step further, I wish there is a text to speech tool that can work well for Indian languages. I found that regular text to speech tools can speak out English words properly but not words in Indian languages transliterated to English.

Try it out: Eenadu in English

Also see:
Read Telugu news sites in transliterated English
Voice of Opera

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TechEd India 2010 starts with a Bang

The 3-day TechEd India event started in Bangalore with a keynote by Somasegar, Senior Vice President, Developer Division, Microsoft. He announced the availability of the much awaited Visual Studio 2010 & and .NET Framework 4.

(Photo by @msigeek)

If you are missing the event (like me), catch the action on the slick TechEd India website. While you are at that site, there's a neat Silverlight-based Win-a-Min Quiz contest that you should try out. The contest is going to run between 9:30AM to 7:00PM during the event days & its open to everyone in India. They are giving away movie tickets every couple of minutes during that time.



Many Indian MVPs are tweeting about the event & you can tune in to that as well for live updates.

Also see:
Developer Contests

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Indian software product start-ups that are making news

The business newspaper Economic Times (Hyderabad edition) carried an interesting front-page article yesterday on successful Indian software products coming out of India.

Over two-and-a-half million people worldwide, half of them in the US, are using word processors,creating slide-show presentations and doing their sums with the help of an online suite of software products built by technology start-up Zoho, located in Chennai.

In Bangalore, InMobi,a company that builds technology for mobile internet advertising,is helping global advertisers and publishers reach 175 million customers every month across Asia,Africa,the UK and the US.

... while it took Infosys Technologies 18 years to record its first $100 million in revenue,product start-ups such as InMobi expect to do so within five years.

In Kolkata, FusionCharts,a graphic data visualisation tool created by startup Infosoft Global is used by 1,500 organisations across the globe, including the US government.

..Webaroo’s SMSGupShup a Twitter-like closed group messaging product for cellphone subscribers, has 27 million users in India. In three months GupShup will be available to mobile users in nearly two dozen countries.

Apalya now has one million customers for its product MiMobiTV that streams live television onto mobiles starting at a subscription price of Rs150 a month.

Earlier this year, Mango Technologies, that was incubated at the NSRCEL centre in IIM-Bangalore, sold two of its proprietary telecom solutions to handset maker, Qualcomm.

This blog uses a contact form that's built with Zoho Creator & I'm happy with the way its been working. Zoho also provides APIs for integrating Zoho services with third-party applications.

The free version of FusionCharts works with PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, RoR, simple HTML pages or even PowerPoint Presentations. I was not aware of it when I was evaluating free ASP.NET charting controls for a project requirement.

Webaroos SMSGupShup was probably the inspiration for Google India's free SMS service called Google SMS Channels.

Similarly, JustDial may have been the inspiration for another Google India Labs service called Google Phone Search. This free service which is in the pilot stage provides voice search for region-specific info like local business listings, movie showtimes etc., in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. While Google Phone Search (toll free # 1-800-41-999-999) uses speech recognition technology to process a query and read out the results or send the information via SMS, a real person picks up the phone at JustDial (phone # in India - 6999-9999; in 240 cities in India) to address a query.

JustDial makes money from small businesses paying up to be sponsored listings. In this fiscal year, it made about $32 million in revenues having answered 72 million calls. JustDial (1-800-JUSTDIAL) has recently been launched in the US. The operations will be handled out of India but it will soon be creating call center jobs in the US.

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Read Telugu news sites in transliterated English

Although I manage to speak decent Telugu (one of the twenty-two scheduled languages of India & spoken by over 74 million native speakers), I have to confess I'm poor at reading it (Why? That's another story). So for long, I wished there was a way to read Eenadu (the largest circulated Telugu news daily in Andhra Pradesh with over 13.5 million readers) in English. My wish has been granted, thanks to a Firefox extension called Padma, a Transformer for Indic Scripts, built by Nagarjuna Venna and Harshita Vani

Padma can understand a variety of fonts used in the popular Telugu-based news websites & convert them to RTS (Rice Transliteration Standard for Roman Transliteration of Telugu)

Here are the steps to read content from the online version of Eenadu (or Andhra Jyothy, Andhra Prabha, Vaartha newspapers) in transliterated English
1) Install the Padma extension in Firefox & restart the browser
2) On the Eenadu site, select content you wish to read in English

 3) Right click & choose the option Padma & then Transform to RTS

Also see:
Free print version of Newspapers
HOW TO GMail Chat in an Indian language

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Amul girl creator passes away

Eustace Fernandes is the creator of the famous Amul Moppet that is as well known as R K Laxman's Common Man. In a country where humor is not taken seriously, these icons have managed to tickle the funny bone of millions of Indians.

The wildly popular ad campaign for the Amul butter brand featuring the Amul girl started in 1966 and has been running for five decades now, picking whatever is in the news at that point of time, drawing some analogy with butter & delivering witty punchlines mostly in Hinglish.

(Courtesy: Amul)

Thankfully, the website of Amul has preserved these ads and they make for a interesting visual history of India.

Also see:
Software industry inspires cartoonists & vice versa
Al Jaffee's MAD mag Fold-Ins in Flash

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Hyderabad MMTS on Google Transit

Having tried out Google Transit two years ago in Seattle, I wished a similar facility was available for India & especially Hyderabad. I was happy to read that Google Transit now covers public transportation options in more than 445 cities across the world including Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai & Kolkata. You can find transit stops in your area & plan a trip with Google Transit using the local trains (not buses yet) in any of these four cities.

The Hyderabad Multi Modal Transit System (MMTS) has become popular in a short span of time as it faster than other commuting options and inexpensive. I tried out a search for Public Transit options from Chandanagar to Somajiguda in Hyderabad

The search shows the estimated travel time but unlike in the US, the fares are not shown.

I wish Google Transit results also cover the state-run APSRTC bus service routes as well soon as thousands of Hyderabadis utilize it daily.

Also see:
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools
Make the most of IRCTC

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Google contest to promote Hindi on the Web, Knol & Transliteration tool

Google is running a Hindi essay contest called 'Hai Baaton Mein Dum?' till January 31st, 2010. Participants can submit an essay on any of the five topics given below in Hindi language -

• Entertainment
• Travel
• Sports
• Health
• Social, Economic and Political issues

There is no limit to the number of entries per contestant and there are some 310 prizes to be won!

This contest doubles up as a promotion for Google's Knol & it's excellent Transliteration tool.

Knol, a Wikipedia style encyclopedia, has received a luke-warm response so far. 

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