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August 4, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Infosys-Intel open e-solutions lab
CORPORATE NEWS
‘AES not allowed to sell stake in Cesco’
HP gets 390 lakh for e-governance Now comes the wearable
computer India can garner
$100 bn FDI in 5 yrs |
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Mansa resident wins Rs 5 lakh Pepsi prize 132 kv substation for Sirsa soon
Postal stamp on Lucy
soon
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Infosys-Intel open e-solutions lab
Bangalore, August 3 The Infosys-Intel lab at Infosys city was inaugurated by the President and CEO of Intel Corporation, Mr Craig Barrett. Speaking on the occasion, Mr Barrett said more businesses worldwide were becoming e-corporations by using the Internet and e-business to conduct commerce and interact with customers, suppliers, partners and employees. “This e-business lab will speed the deployment of optimised solutions by helping companies take advantage of the price and performance leadership of Intel architecture to reduce costs and simplify design and deployment”, he said. The lab is being anchored by Infosys’ Software Engineering and Technology Labs (SETL labs), which anchors technology research, frameworks for execution efficiency and new-age technology adoption. Under the e-Business Solutions Provider programme, Infosys will work on enterprise-performance engineering on Intel-based platforms and architectures. This engagement will provide a platform to facilitate product evaluation, experimentation and benchmarking, an Infosys statement said. “The companies will also share best practices in e-business. Intel will provide the necessary hardware, software and technical information to enable Infosys to influence and implement solutions on Intel architecture across its large and diverse customer base”, it said. Mr Barrett also launched the Infosys legacom service, which enables companies to leverage their legacy assets as they migrate to open standards-based distributed architecture like Intel platforms. Legacom improves on Infosys’ re-engineering service by using Infosys’ InFlux methodology and componentisation framework, the statement said. The legacom framework focuses on identifying, extracting and repackaging business value in legacy systems. Legacom will help companies benefit from the flexibility, scalability and increased functionality of the modern computing platforms, such as Intel, it was stated. It leverages Infosys’ deep technology expertise, cutting edge research and knowledge of industry best practices, and aligns with Intel’s vision to be the pre-eminent building block supplier to the worldwide Internet economy. Speaking on the occasion, Mr N.R. Narayana Murhty, Chairman Infosys said, with the Infosys-Intel e-business solutions lab and Legacom framework, Infosys and Intel would be able to deliver technology solutions as close partners. Internet key engine
Craig Barrett said the Internet continues to be a key engine for growth in India, and challenged government and industry to expand their Internet infrastructure aggressively to gain competitive advantage in the region. “The sooner every company adopts doing business over the Internet, the faster the acceleration of India’s growth opportunities”, Barrett said. “India’s businesses have the opportunity to increase their productivity, broaden customer base and develop greater efficiencies within all aspects of their organisations”. In comments made at a keynote speech titled “Investing in the Digital World”, attended by about 500 technology and business leaders, Barrett said India’s move to privatisation and investment in a fibre backbone is creating a viable telecommunications infrastructure.
PTI
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CORPORATE NEWS Kolkata August 3 Addressing the 90th Annual General Meeting of the company, Mr Deveshwar said: “Given the adequate support for fibre and energy, this investment programme, on successful completion, carries the potential to catapult this company into a position of leadership in the value-added segment of the paper board industry in the Afro-Asian part of the globe .” The pumping of new funds would not only help ITC Bhadrachalam wipe out the accumulated losses of long gestation period but allow to return the cost of capital for the shareholders. Dealing with the ITC’s additional investments in other businesses, including those in the hotel and tourism sector, he said though the growth prospect in the business was virtually unlimited, the long term prospects showed promising returns even if the economy grew at the present rate of 5.6 per cent. Reliance hikes polyester prices Reliance Industries has increased the prices of polyester and polymer, except that of polyvinyl, chloride (PVC) for August but left the intermediates untouched. The prices of partially oriented yarn has been hiked by Rs 1.81 per kg to Rs 62.21 per kg (Rs 60.40 in July) while in case of polyester staple fibre, the price was up by Re 1 to Rs 49.75 per kg (Rs 48.75), RIL sources said here today. However, polyethelene terapthalate prices saw a cut of Rs 2 to Rs 58 per kg (Rs 60), they added. Modis to sell off non-tyre assets Modi Rubber promoters have devised a comprehensive turnaround strategy, including infusion of up to Rs 50 crore and cost-cutting measures across the company. MRL promoters B.K. Modi and V.K. Modi have begun negotiations for selling off the non-tyre assets of the company to raise the moeny for augmenting the company’s working capital base, senior MRL officials told PTI here today, adding that this was necessary to get the company’s bottomline back to black.
Agencies
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‘AES not allowed to sell stake in Cesco’
Bhubaneswar, August 3 An emergency meeting of the Directors of the state-run Gridco (Grid Corporation of Orissa Ltd) not only declined the AES offer to sell its equity in Cesco but also decided not to permit the sale or transfer of AES shares to a third party, the official said on the condition of anonymity. AES Corpn had said on Tuesday it wanted to pull out of the state's power distribution business even after the intervention of the federal government, the official said. The state government has decided not to allow the power major to walk out of Cesco as AES is a major shareholder of the distribution company that owes Rs 1.60 billion to the government in electricity bill dues, he said. Besides, the power company owes Rs 270 million to Gridco on account of losses caused to the latter due to the closure of the Banharpali plant by AES, he said. The dispute between the two surfaced in May after AES closed down operations at a thermal power station in Banharpali in Jharsuguda district,395 km from Bhubaneshwar, for a week demanding that dues of Rs14 billion from Gridco be cleared first. But Gridco said it could pay AES only after it recovered Rs1.60 billion as electricity bill dues from Cesco. It has also asked AES to pay Rs 270 million as compensation for losses due to the closure of the Banharpali plant. Gridco holds 51 per cent stake in the plant and 49 per cent stake in each distribution company. As the sole transmission entity, Gridco purchases power from OPGC and OHPC and sells it to the distribution companies through bulk supply agreements. The AES Corporation has committed a breach of contract by not giving financial support to Cesco in its revival, he said.
IANS
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HP gets 390 lakh for e-governance
Chandigarh, August 3 The e-governance project was an innovative project sanctioned for the first time to any state government under the RIDF by Nabard. It envisaged setting up of statewide computer intranet system, connecting all district headquarters with the state headquarters and all the block/tehsil headquarters with the respective district headquarters. This will help in flow of information easily accessible across the various departments throughout the state and make the administration timely responsive and responsible. Besides, the project will also save other miscellaneous expenditure. There is also provision for point to point and multi point video conferencing. Earlier, Nabard had sanctioned information technology project “Lok Mitra” of Himachal Pradesh in Hamirpur district. This was replication of Gyandoot model of Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh and an intranet system wherein panchayats had been linked to the headquarter at Hamirpur through computers. Initial feed back after the formal operationalisation on May 8 indicated that the system was providing services to the rural folks at their door steps by facilitating lodging of complaints and grievances from the nearby centre, thus, avoiding the need to visit district headquarters and consequently, saving their valuable time and money. The people are getting the information about various employment and other government programmes, information about market rates of agricultural commodities and other facilities at their door steps.
UNI
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Now comes the wearable
computer London Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge where DeVaul is helping to pioneer wearable computers on MIT's MIThril project. But the network of computer cards and cables attached to the vest is only a means to an end. ``This is a research project,'' he says. ``We don't anticipate that people will be going around wearing things like this!'' DeVaul does, because you don't learn much about wearable computing sitting behind a desk. In that, he is following in the footsteps of Steve Mann, the father of wearable computing, who received his PhD from MIT in 1997. And before long, tens of millions of people could be wearing computers one way or another. The parts may slot into a CyberJacket or BlazerJet. They may be built into belts and subsumed into decorative jewellery or the pendant computer Toshiba showed in concept form last year. According to the Wearable Computing website: ``In the next five years, we can expect wearable computing to be adopted in a variety of industries, including health care, shipping and courier services, inventory and warehouse operations, conference and trade shows settings, security and law enforcement, newsgathering, museums and zoos, automatic data collection, and sports and entertainment. Large scale acceptance of wearables in the general consumer market will surge in about 2005. By 2015, wearables will have virtually eliminated desktop, laptop, and handheld solutions altogether, leaving only installed computers — computers and monitors built into the walls of your home — and wearables.'' That may seem unlikely, but not too long ago, so did personal computers and mobile phones. There is already a big market for mobile computers, including notebook PCs and palm-style personal organisers. What drives the next step into wearables is the need to carry and use mobile computers without necessarily losing the use of your hands. But more sophisticated applications may require wearable computers that are as powerful as desktop and notebook PCs, or even more powerful. Divers may want to use such computers on the ocean floor, like the WetPC, while construction workers may want to take them to the top of unfinished skyscrapers. DeVaul says: ``You could check your email or read the web, but you wouldn't really want to do that using a wearable. What would be much more useful would be to get supporting information during the day.'' In other words, the wearable would act like a personal assistant, providing information about the places you go and the people you meet. The secret of making the interface work is ``to give you the key things well, not to give you a lot of things,'' says Professor Steven Schwarz who used to work for Xybernaut, is the leader of the MIThril development, which is a continuation of his Smart Vest project. Voice recognition is another obvious alternative. But it is not just about doing old things in new ways, it is about doing new things. Schwarz argues that wearable computing also involves ``shifting from explicit to implicit commands, which is not a trivial step.'' The wearable computer should therefore have some sense of you and your environment so that it can act appropriately. Knowing your schedule is a good start, says Schwarz. DeVaul says his vest-based system also includes an accelerometer so ``it can distinguish when I'm sitting still, walking, riding a bicycle. When I'm sitting down, I'm much more interruptible.'' Instead of just monitoring your position and movement, a wearable computer could also monitor your heart and other bodily functions. But if everything you do is based on computers, what happens to privacy? ``Privacy is the main reason I got into wearable computing in the first place,'' DeVaul replies. With a wearable, you own your own information, and you decide when to disclose it. ``Unless we show that it can work, people are going to build centralised privacy-invading systems because that's what everybody knows how to do.'' However, today's wearable computer builders are more likely to turn to Lart, the Linux Advanced Radio Terminal being developed at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Laurie van Someren, Aleph One's founder and Managing Director, says there is an interest in wearable computers but the market is being held back by the high price of spectacle-mounted displays — around $5,000 for a VGA screen. By arrangement with The Guardian |
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India can garner $100 bn FDI in 5 yrs New Delhi, August 3 The first-ever comprehensive report on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), compiled in association with global consultant
Mckinsey, has suggested a road map for stepping up FDI including $ 45 billion through privatisation of public enterprises in the next five years. The report titled “Achieving a quantum leap in India’s FDI,” prepared at the initiative of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, was presented to External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh at a function here today. The report, which has come out with far-reaching recommendations said if “appropriate measures” were implemented, the country’s economic growth would be pushed up 1-2 per cent to achieve 8 per cent annually. Recommending the setting up of a monitoring structure within the government to review the implementation of projects approved for FDI, it said such objectives were necessary to catch up with countries which recieve significant amounts of FDI. The report said the Prime Minister should set ministry-specific FDI targets and hold each ministry responsible for achieving its targets. This was necessary as the largest portion of FDI is hindered by sector specific policy barriers, it said. It also recommended setting up of two high-level committees within the government and externally to facilitate the implementations of the report’s recommendations.
PTI
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Mansa resident wins Rs 5 lakh Pepsi prize Chandigarh, August 3 Mr Darshan Singh is an employee at a marriage palace at Baretta in Mansa district. He is the second winner from Punjab to have won the Pepsi prize under campaign 'Mera Number Aayega' launched in March-April, 2001. Mr Darshan
Singh, who was extremely excited about winning this prize, said: "I had always dreamt of winning some big cash prize one day and thanks to Pepsi for fulfilling this dream." Mr Ramesh Lal was the first winner of the prize from Chandigarh whose bottle of Pepsi fetched him Rs 5 lakhs earlier.
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132 kv substation for Sirsa soon Chandigarh, August 3 Nabard will provide assistance under the RIDF for Rs 296. 63 lakh. The 132 kv substation to be constructed would replace an existing overloaded 33 kv substation by March 2002. “The project will reduce distribution losses ,” said Mr A
Ramanathan, CGM, Nabard.
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Unilever net up Castrol centre Hero Cycles MD Bank seminar Technical meet Telco rating Corporate pact |
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