Monday, July 30, 2001		Newsscape

2000-01 healthiest

IT market spending is estimated to slow down in 2001-02 with the growth at Rs 28,698 crore during the period as compared to Rs 22,600 crore the previous year, a PTI report stated quoting the estimates released by the International Data Corporation (IDC), India. The report said that an analysis of the growth trends over the next five years reflects 2000-01 representing the healthiest growth witnessed in the Indian IT market spending between 1999-2K and 2004-05. The survey that gives the segment wise break up in spending in the current fiscal points out that the total hardware market comprising desktop PCs, notebooks and servers is projected to witness 28.38 per cent growth this year.

Aamir Khan production and Indiatimes.com have tied up with Archies to bring out Lagaan merchandise, including writing pads, greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles, slam books and photo albums, according to The Economic Times. The report said Indiatimes.com had introduced one of the largest online film spaces and the first interactive film platform in the country and that the alliance was a perfect marriage of Bollywood magic with online interactivity. The CEO of the company said that in the days to come, the portal would enter into more such alliances in Bollywood.

Motorola Inc, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker, said it would begin selling all of the technology needed to build a basic mobile phone to outside manufacturers for the first time, a Reuters report stated. Motorola, considered to have the widest range of technologies needed to build a phone, said it planned to make available chips, a design layout for the computer board, software, development tools and testing tools. The company, which is known as a top-notch engineering firm, is hoping to profit from its mobile phone technology now that the basic technology to build a mobile phone is so standardised that it no longer differentiates a company. Motorola has previously supplied mobile phone manufacturers with a couple of chips, but this is the first time the company is offering the entire line of chips as well as a detailed blueprint.

The rapid growth of high-speed, always-on Internet connections has turned average computer users into the unwitting foot soldiers of malevolent hackers, who increasingly use home PCs as the launching pad for potentially devastating online attacks, Los Angeles Times reported. The US' leading Internet security group, the Cert Coordination Centre at Carnegie-Mellon University, issued a warning that the black-hat hacker community has sown vast numbers of home computers connected to the Internet with powerful electronic weapons that can be triggered with the push of a button. Hackers use automated programs that disguise themselves as innocuous e-mail attachments. Once opened, the programs deposit software that hibernates in the hard drive until called into action. Most often, they launch what are called 'distributed denial of service' attacks against corporate, educational and government Web sites.

INabling Technologies, a Bangalore-based firm, has come out with a revolutionary device, ‘iStation’ that enables one to send and receive text-based e-mails without a personal computer, according to a news report published in The Hindu. The report said that a company in Karnataka first introduced the product last month. The device is similar in looks to a laptop, with a full-functional keyboard The company has already established servers in Bangalore, Mangalore and Dharwad to make the services available throughout Karnataka.