Bangalore: the success story of ICT industry

A lot has been said and written about Bangalore, and its iconic status as the “IT capital of India.” With its clear and chronological account — on both the ICT revolution and why it converged upon Bangalore — India's Silicon Plateau gives a fresh ‘byte' of perspective. Throughout his narrative, Mascarenhas maintains that Bangalore's reputation of being a technopolis preceded the “IT outsourcing boom”, which, he says, rode on the back of a “scientific base” established by public sector research and educational institutes in the city.

Mascarenhas does not limit his study to Bangalore, or even the ICT industry success story. He attempts to chart its growth at the national level, offering a historical and political perspective to what triggered the upswing. Apart from marking the milestones in the ICT road map, he seeks to analyse and contextualise the various policy statements on the subject. He goes on to explain why and how India in general, and Bangalore in particular, was able to acquire a competitive edge in an industry, which, he says, is at the core of the technology-led “new economy.”

Full report here Hindu

Giving e-cues to the book lovers

The world is flat, Thomas Friedman said famously, and innovators like Brij Singh are proving this through their work and the choices they make in life.

Singh, an IIT Roorkee graduate who spent 10 years in Silicon Valley, US, as a serial entrepreneur, moved to Bangalore recently and founded Apptility – a web services company that counts revolutionising e-publishing among its many goals.

Through Fliplog, one of its flagship products, Apptility and Singh aim to “reinvent books for the digital generation”. “Traditional books and content formats are getting disrupted with the ongoing digital revolution, and with Fliplog, we want to be at the leading edge of this transformation,” says Singh.
The company uses the Fliplog platform to create e-books that are available for download on the iPad and iPhone – two gadgets that Singh is an unabashed fan of. He also believes the iPad has an important role to play in India. “It will be instrumental in innovation leapfrogging and will give a new starting line to Indian designers.”

Full report here DNA

Between the covers

The BlackBerry is — quite literally — everywhere. President Barack Obama admits he can't live without it. Oprah Winfrey declared that it is one of her ‘favourite things.'

The bio of Research in Motion (RIM), a company which had modest beginnings in 1984 but went on to become a global giant after it launched the BlackBerry in 1999, is absorbing.

Founded by Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie on a $15,000 loan, RIM had sold more than 50 million BlackBerry pieces; the sales figures show annual profits in excess of $11 billion.

Bestselling author and journalist Rod McQueen's fascinating story offers never-before-seen glimpses into the company's origins and development — and the geniuses who were its inspiration.

It's much more than a business book… it's a success story of a brilliant global brand.

Full report here Hindu

Riding through turbulence

He was directly involved in one of the most striking cases ever of corporate crisis and renewal. Ed Cohen, Satyam’s former chief learning officer and now a global leadership and business transformation expert, along with his former colleague Priscilla Nelson, bring out corporate crisis management at its best in their book, Riding the Tiger: Leading Through Learning in Turbulent Times. Set against the backdrop of the extraordinary revival of crisis-hit Satyam Computer Services, the book tries to provide insights into how people should react, respond, and lead during turbulent times to achieve organisational renewal, spurred by leadership through learning. In conversation with Garima Pant, the authors share moments from their Satyam story. Excerpts:

What was the first thing that struck you after the Satyam scandal broke?
Priscilla: Shock, disbelief. The first state was denial. We didn't want to believe it. We thought it was some big joke out there or some catastrophe. It was sort of a 9/11 kind of a situation, on a different level, but very much like that. I remember being in the office and watching the TV screen with Raju's face on one side and the stock ticker on the other side. And we had a good deal of money invested. And we could see the stocks crashing and it felt as if blood was draining out of our body.

Ed: I was in the States when the news broke and the first three days I didn't sleep at all. And I kept convincing myself that when I finally go to sleep I was going to wake up from the nightmare. I just didn't want to believe and kept thinking that we're going to wake up and this is going to be not real. And Priscilla was here and so it was more real for her. She had the press to deal with. I had decided to take the night off, very rarely have I done that. It was very ironic, because I had said that anything that happens tonight can wait until tomorrow, which wasn't.

Full interview here Financial Express

Open race in the mobile space

In science fiction, a robot with a human appearance used to be called ‘android,’ a word traceable to 18th century, from modern Latin androids. Greek andro (human) plus eides (form, shape), informs www.etymonline.com.

In the world of computing, Android is a Java-based operating system, ‘an open platform for smartphones from the Open Handset Alliance (www.openhandsetalliance.com),’ says http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com. “Based on Linux, Android includes a library of Java classes for building mobile applications. Enabling any developer to write an application for the phone, it competes with the traditionally closed platforms of cellular carriers.”

Embedded device development
For a long time, cell phone developers comprised a small sect of a slightly larger group of developers known as embedded device developers, traces Jerome (J. F.) DiMarzio in ‘Android: A programmer’s guide’ (www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

Full review here Hindu

Toibin sees novel surviving new technology

Award-winning Irish writer Colm Toibin firmly believes the novel will remain fundamentally unchanged by the Internet or other high-tech innovations, a realm in which he admits he is nearly illiterate.

Toibin, the author of such critically acclaimed novels as Brooklyn, The Master and The Blackwater Lightship, is set this week to appear on a panel to discuss The Author in the Age of the Internet, part of the London Review of Books' 30th anniversary celebration events in New York.

Toibin is a technophobe. He writes with a fountain pen on paper and cannot figure out how to send e-mails by phone. An interview with Reuters on Tuesday was delayed as Toibin fumbled with his cell phone, repeatedly failing to answer it.

I actually miss most calls, Toibin said apologetically over a landline from Princeton University where he teaches. Like an awful lot of writers, I am barely literate in the things that seem to matter now.

Full report here Reuters