Masala Today

An emerging technology may be the newest heavy hitter in the competitive world of broadband Internet service. It offers high-speed access to your home through the most unlikely path: a common electrical outlet.With broadband over power lines, or BPL, you can plug your computer into any electrical outlet in your home and instantly have access to high-speed Internet. By combining the technological principles of radio, wireless networking, and modems, developers have created a way to send data over power lines and into homes at speeds between 500 kilobits and 3 megabits per second (equivalent to DSL and cable). Imagine a world where you don"t have to dig up the earth to lay down co-axial cable lines, or where accessing the internet means plugging a small black box into a power outlet in your house. That world may be around the corner. Thanks to the Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), a technology, that threatens to turn the communications world upside down by bolstering broadband compe

Unlike most other ICT reports, this one doesn't come out every year. So, when the World Bank released its Information and Communications for Development (IC4D) Report 2009 a few weeks ago -- three years after the Bank's first ever report on ICT -- expectations were high. Many were looking forward to something enlightening, or at least something that would spark some new thinking. Instead, the report dwelled on what at least half a dozen similar reports have said over the last year; and that is, access to affordable high-speed Internet and mobile phone service are the key elements for economic growth and job creation in developing countries. In fact, when studied closely, its central theme looked somewhat similar to the earlier one as well. It too harped on the fact that ICT plays a vital role in advancing economic growth and reducing poverty.Still IC4D 2009 is interesting for pulling out a significant aspect of e-government -- which is often overlooked -- by highlighting that e

The 18th Annual Conference of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), organized in association with the Himgiri Nabh Vishwavidyalaya (HNV) and supported by UNESCO, opened yesterday in New Delhi, India. The AMIC Annual Conference is an important event on the Asian media calendar; it attracts eminent international speakers and participants from the media industry and academia. The AMIC Conference is open to academics, media industry professionals, government agencies, policymakers, regulators, UN agencies, donors, research groups, civil society organizations, independent consultants and students. More than 500 delegates from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the Americas are expected to participate in this year’s event, under the theme "Media, Democracy and Governance: Emerging Paradigms in a Digital Age". The 18th AMIC Conference features high-profile keynote addresses, plenary and parallel sessions. It provides a critical space for both media profession

New Delhi: The battle over standards for the multi-billion dollar e-governance projects is once again hotting up. IT majors like IBM, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat have shot letters to industry bodies — Nasscom (for software) and MAIT (for hardware) — and the Department of Information Technology (DIT), protesting over the inclusion of clauses which allow for ‘multiple standards’ and ‘royalty on software’ versus a ‘single’ standard and ‘free’ software.At the second meeting of the apex body on standards for e-governance held on June 17 this year, all the members approved Unicode 5.1.0 as a standard for e-governance applications for all 22 Indian languages (except Kashmiri). They also approved the Open Type Font as a mandatory standard for e-governance applications. With regard to metadata (name, age, sex, etc. for land records and the like) and data standards, too, there was a consensus.However, it was on the draft policy on ‘Open Standards’ that the differences emerged. While Nasscom pre

NEW DELHI - India’s software exporter Infosys Technologies has bagged a 10-year e-governance contract from the Ministry of Commerce to develop an e-business portal that will give businessmen easy access to government information.In the first three years, the government would spend Rs 15 crore in the project. However, the total value of the contract was not disclosed.“(At the end of 10th year) we expect this project to be expanded to cover the whole country and provide over 200 Government-to-Business services as well as other value added services by suitable private vendors,” Commerce Minister Anand Sharma told reporters after launching the portal here.E-Governance is the latest business opportunity segment for Indian IT companies, who are facing slowdown on export front.IT firm TCS had earlier bagged two big ticket e-governance projects—online application portal of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the online Passport project of the Ministry of External Affairs. With the Unique Ide

After the successful roll out of their rural IT infrastructure project across several districts of West Bengal, SREI Sahaj e-Village Limited, a subsidiary of SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd., has announced the launch of agricultural services at the Common Service Centers or CSCs. The facility was officially introduced by Dr. Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary of Agriculture, Govt. of West Bengal at the Tathya Mitra Kendra in Jangipara CSC, Hooghly. Dignitaries present at the launch were Mr. M. N Roy, Principal Secretary of P&RD dept, Govt. of West Bengal, Mr. Satish Tiwary, Principal Secretary, Land & Land Reforms Commissioner, and other government officials. The service launched will enable the villagers to conduct soil testing and determine the suitability of soil for the growth of different crops in diverse seasons. Villagers can then upload their soil health report in the portal available to them and use it as reference for the future thus enabling them to improve their ag

A giant step towards Bridging the Rural- Urban Divide New Delhi, Srei Sahaj e-Village Limited, a subsidiary of Srei Infrastructure Finance Limited, has partnered with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the largest Open University offering distance learning programmes, today to deliver international quality education at affordable costs to the rural population of India through 27,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) that Sahaj is setting up in the states of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and Jammu & Kashmir. This prestigious partnership is aimed at making higher education available to the villagers in their own villages thus bridging the massive rural-urban educational gap. An estimated 100 million rural youth population across the country stands to benefit through the Sahaj-IGNOU partnership. Srei Sahaj-IGNOU will jointly develop new certificated programmes especially designed for the rural youth, providing training in a blended learning en