In News 
'Frenzy 2001' to showcase latest crime mapping & forensic tool
A century ago, humankind's greatest forensic tool was deductive. Today it is digital, and its most advanced applications may be glimpsed at the 2nd annual Forensic Sciences & Crime Scene Technology Conference and Exposition (FRENZY), taking place at the Washington DC Convention Center, May 14-17. This year's FRENZY will offer the latest tools and technology, as well as dozens of roundtables, workshops, panels and networking opportunities, in its evolution as the largest trade show of its kind. While FRENZY is valuable to investigative professionals across the spectrum -- from evidence collection and handling to laboratory instrumentation to GIS and crime mapping -- its second annual show will shine its strongest light on such areas as computer forensics, digital imaging and enhancement, and other technology applications.
Visit: http://www.frenzyexpo.com/
|
Top Stories
|
AM Communications Introduces MapBOSS Map Analysis System
AM Communications, Inc.'s Systems Integration Group has announced the availability of their MapBOSS(TM) map data extraction and storage system. MapBOSS is a web-based storage system that allows secure, multi-location, remote access to HFC design map information across enterprise or worldwide data networks. It contains a collection of auto-extraction engines that intelligently 'crawl' the maps, extracting the inventory data, the number of homes passed in any network segment, miles of plant in any segment, and most importantly, detailed topology information. MapBOSS builds and stores a topology database that contains every active and passive element between any home and the headend. This information is essential to advanced network management functions such as root cause analysis and event correlation. AM Communications is developing a series of companion BOSS products that leverage the information that MapBOSS provides.
Visit: http://www.amcomm.com/
GPS for Flight Management for B747-300 Aircrafts
CMC Electronics Inc. (formerly BAE SYSTEMS CANADA) has been selected by Corsair to supply the CMA-900 Flight Management System (FMS) for its B747-300 fleet. The Global Positioning System (GPS)-based CMA-900 will provide GPS-based navigation and oceanic and remote area operations capability. CMC Electronics is the cockpit avionics systems integrator for this program. The Corsair configuration is a multi-sensor system, based on the CMA-900 FMS integrated with the Carousel IV Inertial System, and providing 100% dispatch reliability anywhere in the world, with seamless navigation from take-off to final approach. The CMA-900 features a colour, liquid-crystal multi-function display and includes CMC Electronics' industry-leading 12- channel GPS sensor. Work has already commenced and the first installation will be completed in September 2001; the last aircraft will be fitted in April 2002.
SignalSoft and SiRF Partner to Provide Advanced Location Services Platform
SignalSoft Corporation the developer of the Wireless Location Services software suite, and SiRF Technology, Inc., a developer of location technology based on global positioning system (GPS), has announced a strategic partnership to provide an end-to-end location services platform to wireless subscribers worldwide. With this agreement, mobile devices enabled by SiRF's SiRFstar(TM) GPS technology, will interoperate with SignalSoft's Location Manager, a key product in its Wireless Location Services software suite, providing wireless network operators necessary location and gateway tools for delivering sophisticated location-based services to their subscribers. SiRF's GPS-based solutions enable a range of devices to detect location, including cell phones, automobile navigation systems, telematics systems, handheld GPS navigation devices, child locator systems, as well as commercial applications, such as asset tracking devices and fleet management systems.
Visit: http://www.sirf.com/
http://www.signalsoftcorp.com/.
|
|
Three Sisters Show Ground Deformation
There has been a slight swelling, or uplift, of the ground surface over a broad area of central Oregon, centered five kilometers, or three miles, west of the South Sister volcano in Three Sisters region of the Oregon Cascade Range, according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey. The Three Sisters region is located 35 kilometers west of Bend, Ore., and 100 kilometers east of Eugene. The uplift covers an area about 15 to 20 kilometers in diameter. The USGS scientists discovered the bulge through use of a relatively new technique called Satellite Radar Interferometry (InSAR), which uses satellite data to make radar images of a portion of the Earth's surface. Through this process, images acquired at different times, but from the same location in space, can be used to detect even minor changes a few centimeters in the elevation of the ground. The images that reveal the 10-centimeter uplift near South Sister were obtained in 1996 and 2000. The exact timing of the uplift, or whether it is continuing at present, is unknown, but is being studied further.
SiGEM and GenRad partner to make "online garage" a reality
SiGEM and GenRad Inc., have announced their intent to offer a business-to-business telematics solution that incorporates diagnostic capabilities.Using wireless communications, fleet managers will be able to remotely predict vehicle maintenance at the first sign of trouble. SiGEM offers telematics devices with on-board diagnostics capability that connect directly to the computer system of all vehicles built after 1996. GenRad will provide the interface to translate vehicle status information gathered by SiGEM's devices for wireless transmission to a web-based monitoring service. This data can then be used for a host of applications including remote assist, diagnostics and vehicle condition monitoring.
Cadcorp passes OpenGIS conformance test for Coordinate Transformation Services
At the recent OpenGIS meeting in Liege, Belgium, Cadcorp passed conformance tests for Coordinate Transformation Services (CT IS Version 1.0) as set by the OpenGIS Consortium (OGC). This is the second OpenGIS conformance test passed by Cadcorp and further illustrates Cadcorp's position at the forefront of OpenGIS activity. The Coordinate Transformation Services (CTS) Specification provides common interfaces for general positioning, coordinate systems, and coordinate transformations. It is a major breakthrough, allowing the easier overlaying of maps or earth images that have been created and referenced to the earth using different datums, ellipsoids, and units.
|
India News
|
India all set to transform commerce in developed world
Until a few months ago, Marc Vollenweider was a partner in the Delhi office of McKinsey. Vollenweider, who is Swiss, is still in Delhi, but in a line of business that sounds almost plebeian by comparison: back-office work. He and his partner (lured from running the Delhi arm of IBM's research centre) have set up Evalueserve, a firm that undertakes various business processes for clients in Europe and North America, offering cheaper, better and faster service than they can deliver the mselves.
Vollenweider and his partner, Alok Aggarwal, were seduced by an irresistible proposition. First-world companies do lots of things that are expensive and necessary, and yet peripheral to their "core competence". The main requirement for these tasks is an intelligent English-speaking workforce-which India has in abundance, at a small fraction of rich-country wages. So why not ship the work electronically to India, which missed out when the West sent much of its manaufacturing to china and other points east? With admittedly suspicious precision, Vollenweider has calculated that a typical western bank can outsource 17-24% of its cost base, reducing its cost-to-income ratio by 6-9 percentage points, and in many cases doubling its profits.
Such calculations have created a new industry in India that could, in theory, transfor commerce in the developed world. The fizziest forecasts have come from Michael Dertouzos, director of MIT's Laboratory of Computer Science. He reckons that India has some 50m English-speakers who could each earn $20,000 a year-making a total of $1 trillion, twice India's current GDP-doing "office work proffered across space and time."
Other predictions are more restrained, but still heady, NASSCOM, thinks India will employ I.Im people and earn $17 billion from what it calls IT-enabled service-what this article will term teleworking-by 2008. A report to the Electronics and Computer Software Ex-port Promotion Council (ESC), a government body, sees the industry's exports to America growing from $264m in 2000 to over $4 billion in 2005. Yet India has been doing white-collar work for the rest of the world long enough to know that reaching targets such as these will not be easy. The new-born industry is already old enough to have tasted failure.
Indian entrepreneurs look at riding the wave, says Sanjay Jain, a partner in Accenture, a consultancy. Earlier waves were the power industry, telecommunications and dotcoms. "Now the latest buzzword is IT-enabled services", he says.
The first riders of the particular wave have been of two types. One is captive operations of big western companies looking to reduce back-office costs without outsourcing. The other is more fleeting arrangements between western clients and subcontractors in India, often brokered by middlemen. The first sort, which provide the bulk of employment in the business, have prospered GE. Cpital Services opened India's often brokered by middlemen. The first sort, which provide the bulk of employment in the business, have prospered GE Capital Services opened India's first international call centre in the mid-1990s. It now employs more than 5,000 people, whose jobs range from such relatively simple tasks as collecting money from delinquent credit-card users to such complex ones as data-mining.
Such companies often save 40-50% by shifting work from their home base to India. The savings may grow, because India's telecoms costs, which are higher than in rich countries, are falling thanks to liberalization. Shipping out more sophisticated services could also produce higher saving, because the salary gap between, say, an American or an Indian accountant is larger than that between an American high-school graduate and an Indian college graduate doing the same job.
|
|
Money is not the only attraction. No company will direct white-collar work to India for long if it does not get standards of service at least as high as those it is used to at home Many Indian teleworking bosses claim to raise service quality. EFunds Internationa, part of a company spun off from Delux, the biggest American printer of cheques, says that in Gurgaon it has cut the number of errors in data processing for one client by 90%, and also cut the number of days taken to close the clients montly accounts from five to three. Rajeev Grover, eFunds head of shared services, says that Indian teleworkers outperform Americans in similar jobs because they treat them as serious careers and also because they are better-educated than their American counter-parts, who are often college drop-outs.
Shiftings office work to India can also provide an opportunity to upgrade technology and service. Citigroup, an American financial giant, has an affiliate in Mumbai called e-Serve International, which employs 2,000 people to provide such services as the processing of documentation for letters of credit and the handling of questions over money transters. Outsourcing of work handled by call centers (now transformed into "contact centers" that can handle e-mail, fax and other media as well) is expected to go to India.
Into this arena is stepping a new breed of entrepreneure, flaunting international savvy, management finesse and venture-capital finance. He does not skimp on bandwidth or any other technology; and nobody can describe his premises as a data sweatshop. His employees are encouraged to ponder careers with the company, and might even own stakes in it. He aspires to the professionalism of a GE or an American Express, but aims to serve many masters, Messrs Vollenweider and Aggarwal belong to this breed. So does Sanjeev Aggarwal, who set up Dasksh. Com, a contact centre that now employs 500 people. Yet another is Raman Roy, who left GE Capital Services to set up Spectramind.
Many of the charismatic captives are them selves joining the ranks of the independents. EFunds has landed a second client and is eager for more; e-Serve is scouting avidly. British Airways and Swissair are selling services outside their groups. All are eyeing the $200 billion of business-process outsourcing that Dun & Bradstreet, a research firm, says is farmed out by companies worldwide. They see no reson why India should not claim a big chunk of that. Indian animators are putting virtual flesh on the skeleton ideas of American film makers. Indian lawyers are doing research for British and American Firms. Indian engineers are designing construction projects. At the most rarefied end of the spectrum, Indian scientists are conducting basic research and development for western firms. In some cases, the availability of low-cost, high-quality expertise in India could transform the economics of the industries that they serve.
Recession is less likely to hurt teleworkers, and may even help them. Cuts in IT investment by customers are leaving Indian software programmers idle. But teleworking firms are offering to reduce the cost of back-office processes that are indispensable. Thus, while the notoriously profitless Amazon.com has cut customer-service jobs in Seattle, it has added positions in Gurgaon through Daksh.com.
White- collar work may shift to India even faster than some forecasters expect. Consider exIService, a teleworking outfit started in 1999 by Gary Wendt, ex-head of GE Capital. Wendt later became boss of Conseco, a financial group in Indian, and soon persuaded it to buy his Indian firm for $53m. Exl is now doing a roaring business: Conseco plans to shift 2,000 jobs from Indiana to India, saving over $30m a year. In America these jobs suffered from high turnover and quality problems over customer service. If moving to Exl solves these problems, as well as saving money, other American companies seem sure to join the stampede that is turning India into the world's back office. (The Economist)
Source : The Times of India, 10 may, 2001
News Links
Ministry prunes IT export target to $9.7 billion -- Study on hardware sector planned
Nasscom launched call centre forum
|
|
|
|
