Thirty Software Companies Separated From NASSCOM, Formed a New Association

 

Thirty Indian software product companies joined hands to form their own new association, marking a break-up with the IT industry body NASSCOM. Thirty founder members who were led by Bharat Goenka, co-founder of Tally Solutions, Vishnu Dusad, founder of Nucleus Software, Sharad Sharma, former head of Yahoo India R&D, startup mentor and founder of Brand Sigma and Naveen Tewari, founder of InMobi, will meet on 4 February 2013 to formalize this newly formed association and also for developing further action plans. The new association is called Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt.

Vision of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt

The vision of Indian Software Product Industry Round Table or iSpirt is to transform India in terms of IT and also deliver the invaluable IT solutions at the international level. The objective of iSpirt is to share experiences and expertise of these industries in order to create the awareness in government as well as society about the importance of IT. These 30 Indian software product companies that formed their new association believed that it was not possible for them to grow under larger umbrella of NASSCOM.

No conflict with NASSCOM

One of the founder members of the new association, Bharat Goenka made it clear that there were negotiations about new association formation since past six months. NASSCOM had in return promised support and that there were no conflicts with the IT body. Also, it was explained that the new association would work with everyone including NASSCOM.

Organisational structure of iSpirt

A founder member Sharad Sharma described that the new association iSpirt will not have a president or similar nomenclature. Instead, there will be a governing council that will consist of these four founding members- Sharma, Goenka, Tewari and Dusad. There will be a flat structure of the association. Volunteer model will be adopted.

About NASSCOM

•NASSCOM is expanded as National Association of Software and Services Companies. It is a trade association of the BPO and IT industry. It was established in 1988 and is a non-profit organisation.
•It is a global trade organisation with more than 1200 members out of which there are 250 global companies as well from China, Japan, Europe, UK and US.
•The member companies of NASSCOM have businesses such as software services, software development, BPO, IT and e-commerce.
•NASSCOM was established to facilitate trade and business in services and software in order to encourage advanced research in the software technology. It is registered under Indian Societies Act, 1860.
•At present, the headquarters of NASSCOM is in New Delhi.    

iSPIRT MISSION: WHAT DO WE DO?

We are a think tank with a difference. We will be doing three things:

We convert ideas into policy proposals to take to government stakeholders. Initially, we will engage with government policy makers and other policy bodies to explain, educate and inform audiences why a vibrant software product industry is vital to India’s future. Later, we will pursue policy positions related to software patents, taxation for software products (including SaaS), preferential buying mandates, and so on. We plan to have a symbiotic relationship with trade organizations, including NASSCOM, and see them leading the charge of converting our policy prescriptions into reality.

We convert conversations into playbooks for product entrepreneurs. Product companies need a different mindset than IT services businesses. They need to anticipate customer needs rather than just react to them. They need to brand themselves in very different ways and create IP that will disrupt the marketplace. They need deep technologists rather than fungible engineers. And so on. ProductNation.in will be the platform for enabling crucial conversations around these issues amongst practitioners. It will use an evidence based methodology to shine light on successful playbooks.

We convert actions of self-help communities into market catalysts for product industry. Many intractable ecosystem problems can’t be solved at the firm level. However they can be solved by a self-help community of individuals or companies. In the last 4-5 years, a number of such self-help communities have succeeded in the product industry. They have created successful events like the NASSCOM Product Conclave or programs like the CIO Connect. Now many more such initiatives are happening. These include programs like iSMB and M&A Connect. They are all inspired by the open source model and are self-organizing in nature. They seek to create “public goods” that benefit everybody within the product industry. We plan to support this self-help community model to build market catalysts for the industry.

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Facebook's 9th birthday: Milestones in the history of the social networking king

Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, has turned nine today. With over one billion active users, the social networking giant still continues to grow, since its launch on February 4, 2004.


Some key developments in nine years since Facebook's creation:
February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook as a sophomore at Harvard University.
 March 2004: Facebook begins expansion to other colleges and universities.
June 2004: Facebook moves headquarters to Palo Alto, California.
September 2004: Facebook introduces the Wall, which allows people to write personal musings and other tidbits on profile pages. Lawsuit filed against Facebook claiming that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from a company co-founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and a third person at Harvard.
September 2005: Facebook expands to include high schools.
May 2006: Facebook introduces work networks, allowing people with a corporate email address to join.
September 2006: Facebook begins letting anyone over 13 join. It also introduces News Feed, which collects friends' Wall posts in one place. Although that led to complaints about privacy, News Feed became one of Facebook's most popular features.
May 2007: Facebook launches Platform, a system for letting outside programmers develop tools for sharing photos, taking quizzes and playing games. The system creates a Facebook economy and allows companies such as game maker Zynga Inc. to thrive.
October 2007: Facebook agrees to sell a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft for $240 million and forges advertising partnership.
November 2007: Facebook unveils its Beacon program, a feature that broadcasts people's activities on dozens of outside sites. Yet another privacy backlash led Facebook to give people more control over Beacon, before Facebook ultimately scrapped it as part of a legal settlement.
March 2008: Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer, snatching the savvy, high-profile executive from Google Inc.
April 2008: Facebook Chat introduced.
February 2009: Facebook introduces "Like," allowing people to endorse other people's posts.
June 2009: Facebook surpasses News Corp.'s Myspace as the leading online social network in the US.
August 2010: Facebook launches location feature, allowing people to share where they are with their friends and strangers.
October 2010: Release of "The Social Network," a movie about Zuckerberg and the legal battles over Facebook's founding. It gets eight Academy Awards nominations and wins three.
June 2011: Google launches rival social network called Plus. The Winklevoss twins end their legal battle over the idea behind Facebook. They had settled with Facebook for $65 million in 2008, but later sought more money.
September 2011: Facebook introduces Timeline, a new version of the profile page. It shows highlights from a person's entire Facebook life rather than recent posts.
November 2011: Facebook agrees to settle federal charges that it violated users' privacy by getting people to share more information than they agreed to when they signed up to the site. As part of a settlement, Facebook will allow independent auditors to review its privacy practices for two years. It also agrees to get approval from users before changing how the company handles their data.
December 2011: Facebook completes its move to Menlo Park, California Its address is 1 Hacker Way.
January 2012: Facebook begins making Timeline mandatory.
February 2012: Facebook files for an initial public offering of stock.
January 2013: Facebook announced the launch of Graph Search that allows users to search anything their Facebook friends have shared, including photos and posts.

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India’s first ‘ebiz’ government-to-business portal launched

Promoting the National e-Governance Plan, the Govt the launch of an eBiz portal which will offer Government-to-Business (G2B) services for India’s investor and business communities.

Developed by: Infosys in a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) mode.

Objective:

The portal provides a single-window service to enable businesses and investors to save time and costs and improve the business environment.
Government-to-Business (G2B) services for India’s investor and business communities.
A 24×7 facility for information and services, and will also offer joined-up services where a single application submitted by a customer, for a number of permissions, clearances, approvals and registrations, will be routed automatically across multiple governmental agencies in a logical manner.

As a part of the 10-year programme, Infosys will roll-out services in a phased manner. In the first year, eBiz will launch 29 services in the five states including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Central Government Services –

1. Issue of Industrial Entrepreneur Memoranda

2. Issue of Industrial License

3. Filing for Employees Provident Fund

4. Issue of Permanent Account Number (PAN)

5. Filing of Returns by Companies (Form 1)

6. Tax Deduction Account Number of Income Tax Dept

7. Excise Tax Registration (Form R-1)

8. Service Tax Registration (Form ST-1)

State Government Services –

Andhra Pradesh

1. Annual Filing under Factories Act

2. NOC from Pollution Control Board

Delhi

1. MSME Registration (SSI)

2. Annual Filing under Factories Act

3. Factories License

Haryana

1. NOC from Pollution Control Board

2. New Power Connection

Maharashtra

1. Annual Filing under Factories Act

2. Factories License

3. New Power Connection

TamilNadu

1. Annual Filing under Factories Act

2. Factories License

3. MSME Registration (SSI)

4. New Power Connection

About eBiz

IntroductioneBiz is one of the integrated services projects and part of the 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) under the National E-Governance Plan (NEGP) of the Government of India. eBiz is being implemented by Infosys Technologies Limited (Infosys) under the guidance and aegis of Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Government of India. The focus of eBiz is to improve the business environment in the country by enabling fast and efficient access to Government-to-Business (G2B) services through an online portal. This will help in reducing unnecessary delays in various regulatory processes required to start and run businesses.
This project aims at creating an investor-friendly business environment in India by making all regulatory information – starting from the establishment of a business, through its ongoing operations, and even its possible closure - easily available to the various stakeholders concerned. In effect, it aims to develop a transparent, efficient and convenient interface, through which the government and businesses can interact in a timely and cost effective manner, in the future.
Vision
The vision of eBiz is to be the entry point for all individuals, businesses and organizations (local and international) who would like to do business or have any existing business in India by creating a one-stop-shop of convenient and efficient online G2B services to the business community, by reducing the complexity in obtaining information and services related to starting businesses in India, and dealing with licenses and permits across the business life-cycle.
About DIPPThe Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) was established in 1995 and has been reconstituted in the year 2000 with the merger of the Department of Industrial Development. Earlier separate Ministries for Small Scale Industries & Agro and Rural Industries (SSI&A&RI) and Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises (HI&PE) were created in October, 1999.
With progressive liberalization of the Indian economy, initiated in July 1991, there has been a consistent shift in the role and functions of this Department. From regulation and administration of the industrial sector, the role of the Department has been transformed into facilitating investment and technology flows and monitoring industrial development in the liberalized environment.
 For more information, visit www.dipp.gov.in

About Infosys
Infosys (NASDAQ: INFY) defines, designs and delivers IT-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a Flat World. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to clients. With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their IT budget by leveraging the Global Delivery Model that Infosys pioneered. Infosys has over 1,00,000 employees in over 50 offices worldwide. Infosys is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index and The Global Dow. For more information, visit www.infosys.com

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Microsoft to developers: This is the 'modern.IE' world

Modern.IE is a new tool from Microsoft for Web developers to make sure that their sites are built for the modern Web.

(Credit: Microsoft) In case you weren't sure, Microsoft wants you to really, really understand that Internet Explorer 10 isn't just any old update to the much-maligned browser. The latest example: "modern.IE," a set of tools to help Web developers that the company announced today.
"It's still too hard to test sites across the different OSes and browsers," Ryan Gavin, Internet Explorer's general manager, said in a phone interview with CNET yesterday. "On our part, we can encourage best practices. We know we can do better here, so we're providing the tools and support so that developers spend more of their time innovating and less of their time testing."



"More time innovating, less time testing" was Gavin's watch-phrase of the day, something he repeated throughout our conversation. Microsoft clearly believes that modern.IE's toolset will appeal to developers.
Some developers who have used pre-release versions of the service were impressed with modern.IE.
Rachel Andrew, managing director of Web development company Edgeofmyseat.com, said to me in an e-mail: "I'm a Mac and Linux desktop user. I have Windows laptops for testing, but haven't used Windows for anything else for many years. I feel as if Microsoft [has] recognized, with modern.IE, that this is the case for a lot of Web designers and developers. Instead of trying to persuade us to use Windows, the site gives us a whole bunch of ways to test sites from our platform of choice, to ensure that people who visit our sites using Windows and IE get a great experience."
Modern.IE appears to be quite simple to use. Drop a URL into the scanning tool text field, and it kicks back a report with suggestions on how to improve your site, split into three categories. The first is a long-overdue bit of housekeeping that breaks down problems that have arisen from supporting legacy versions of Internet Explorer.

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Coming soon to Facebook: more action, battle games

When nWay began a trial of its dark, sci-fi combat game "ChronoBlade" on Facebook last year, the San Francisco-based start up felt sure it had a hit on its hands.

"First of all, what comes is, 'Wow, I had no idea you could actually do a game of this quality on Facebook,'" said Dave Jones, Chief Creative Officer of nWay, who has worked on "Grand Theft Auto" and "Diablo."
Then came some resistance: Jones admits some potential investors and partners questioned how an action-focused game with slick graphics can play to a Facebook audience more accustomed to "Farmville" and other less time-consuming casual games. Others wondered how the game – which launches this spring – would gain significant users and revenue on the social network.
But Facebook Inc is betting nWay and a clutch of other developers this year can extend console-style action games beyond Microsoft Corp's Xbox or Sony Corp's PlayStation onto the world's largest social network.
Facebook is spearheading the launch of 10 high-quality games created by third-party developers in 2013 that squarely target so-called hardcore gamers, an atypical audience overlooked thus far against the wealth of family-friendly offerings like Zynga Inc's "Farmville" that now dominate the social network's gaming landscape.
The effort, which began late last year but will accelerate in 2013, is part of Facebook's ongoing objective of making sure its 1 billion-plus users log in and spend more time on the network, which in turn boosts ad revenue. Facebook also takes a cut of its applications' revenue.

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Airtel Emergency Alert Services Launched For Indian Women Safety

Telecom Major, Bharati Airtel, has come up with an emergency alert service for women. The service was launched by Airtel on Friday, for its users in Kolkata, Odisha and Bengal. Women in an emergency situation need to dial 55100, a helpline number of Airtel. The facility also allows users to send SMSes in case of emergencies.
The emergency helpline number when dialed sends alerts via voice message and SMS to 10- predefined numbers. The message will also deliver to the numbers the location and timing. An Airtel official says that the messages will be sent to all 10-predefined numbers simultaneously. He also said that the alert to the numbers will be repeated at least 3 times in a span of 30 minutes.



Vire Indar Nath, the COO of Airtel for the West Bengal and Kolkata circle, confirmed that the service is now available for free and is chargeable after a period of 30 days. The COO also said that the service is launched primarily targeting women folk.
Bengal, Odisha and Kolkata currently have around 20 million subscribers for Airtel. The company is also expecting that around 10 per cent of its women subscribers will avail its new service.
The COO also confirmed the company's talks with local police administration regarding the implementation of a single number system for making calls in emergency. The alert service of Airtel can also generate alerts to numbers like 100, to the local police station. This means that women can also include local police station numbers among the 10-predefined numbers.

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Hackers Targeted Twitter User Data

Twitter Inc. on Friday said it had detected "sophisticated" unauthorized attempts to access information from the short-messaging service used by more than 200 million people.
In a blog post, the San Francisco company said it identified this week computerized attacks that may have accessed ...

Anonymous hackers attacked Twitter this week and may have gained access to passwords and other information for as many as 250,000 user accounts, the microblog revealed late on Friday.
Twitter said in a blog post that the passwords were encrypted and that it had already reset them as a “precautionary measure,” and that it was in the process of notifying affected users.
The blog post noted recent revelations of large-scale cyber attacks against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but unlike the two news organizations, Twitter did not provide any detail on the origin or methodology of the attacks.

Anonymous hackers attacked Twitter this week and may have gained access to passwords and other information for as many as 250,000 user accounts, the microblog revealed late on Friday.
Twitter said in a blog post that the passwords were encrypted and that it had already reset them as a “precautionary measure,” and that it was in the process of notifying affected users.
The blog post noted recent revelations of large-scale cyber attacks against the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, but unlike the two news organizations, Twitter did not provide any detail on the origin or methodology of the attacks.

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