Monday, January 21, 2002		Latest in IT world

Blind access

A handheld computer designed for use by Indian villagers could also help the blind and visually impaired here, The Straits Times says. The Simputer is a rugged personal digital assistant with software that can read aloud the contents of Web pages. It was developed by India-based company, Encore Software, and uses parts manufactured by electronics specialist Sharp. Encore chairman Vinay Deshpande said it aims to develop the product to make the text-to-speech transition in South-east Asian languages, as well as the various languages spoken in India. It is envisaged that one Simputer will be shared among many villagers, and so has been designed to be dust- and drop-resistant. It uses a Linux operating system and will be available from March with a monochrome or colour screen. The starting price is expected to be $ 200.

The Internet Advertising Bureau is set to release new standards for online advertising last week, as publishers work to make their medium more consistent and attractive to advertisers, Reuters reports. The new standards from the IAB, whose board includes representatives from Yahoo! Inc., AOL Time Warner Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN network, aim to provide more accurate ways for Websites to count their visitors. The drastic advertising downturn means it is a buyer's market for online ads, and Gartner media analyst Denise Garcia said the new standards could be tilted in favor of advertisers. "The IAB might be erring on the side of the advertisers right now because they are desperate for ad dollars," she said. "That the IAB is becoming more involved and issuing all kinds of recommendations and standards during an ad recession is no coincidence." Online ad revenue fell 9 per cent in the third quarters, according to the IAB's own figures.

A new computer worm masquerading as a software update from Microsoft Corp. is capable of deleting all files on the hard drive of an infected computer but has so far spread very slowly, an anti-virus vendor said, Hindustan Times reports. The so-called 'Gigger' worm is a low threat since so few computers have been infected, Vincent Gullotto, senior research director for Network Associates Inc.'s Antivirus Response Team said. 'It's a mass-mailer with a dangerous payload, but it's not in the wild,' he said. "If it was to begin to spread it could cause significant problems." Apparently, a few persons have been duped into opening the attachment, which has limited the spread of the worm, according to Gullotto. The worm, a self-propagating virus, is written in Java Script and uses Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and mIRC, Instant Relay Chat channels, to spread. It arrives as an attachment to an e-mail that has a subject line of "Outlook Express Update," and sends itself to addresses in the address book as well as tries to delete all files on the hard drive, according to Gullotto.

IndiaMART.com, has launched an independent travel portal showcasing Indian Tourism - http://indiantravelportal.com. The travel portal by IndiaMART, has thus become a platform for conglomerate of travel agents, tour operators, hotels and other affiliated services operating in the Indian travel industry, as well as the most comprehensive online information base on Indian tourism. "Unlike a single operator's Website, IndianTravelPortal.com offers tourists a wider choice from a host of member hotels and service providers while bringing in more business opportunities for the tourism industry at the same time, making it the only portal, in its true sense, dedicated to the Indian travel industry," CEO - Indiamart.com says.