Monday, April 15, 2002		Latest in IT world

A mobile phone text message by a fast-thinking Malaysian television producer led to her rescue after she was abducted, the Star newspaper reports. The report said the "attractive" woman was grabbed by two men - one aged 60, the other 29 - as she was walking to a bus station near the popular Central Market in Kuala Lumpur on her way to work. They left her in a room in a condominium where she quickly wrote a message on her phone and sent it to a colleague, who informed the police. The police stormed the condominium, rescued the woman and arrested the two men. The police could not be reached for comment. Mobile text messaging is immensely popular in Malaysia, where phone users send some 500 million messages a month.

Millions of Chinese turned to the Internet last week to observe an ancient custom of honouring dead family members, using the Web to donate virtual flowers and post online messages, AFP quoted the official Xinhua news agency. While the Tomb Sweeping Festival has been part of Chinese culture for centuries if not millennia, it has been given a boost by the new technologies of the 21st century. "For persons on the move in the modern world the tradition is difficult to observe, and the Internet has become the ideal alternative," the news agency said. The festival, one of the few traditional Chinese holidays that follows the solar calendar and which always falls in early April, calls for persons to clean family tombs and offer gifts to ancestors.Now the same can be done online via Websites such as cn.netor.com, where visitors can click on one of 11,000 "memorial halls" for the dead, light virtual candles or joss-sticks, and send cyber-flowers.

Despite global recession that was accentuated by the September 11 strikes, India's export of computer software and IT-enabled services have grown by 40 per cent during 2001-02, according to provisional estimates made by the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC). The Hindu while quoting the ESC findings reports that exports are estimated to have increased to Rs 38,500 crore from Rs 27,500 crore during the same period last year. In dollar terms, the growth was assessed at 31.43 per cent. The ESC is analysing the export figures to ascertain the top destinations of exports and top players, the report adds.

The attrition rate of employees in Kolkata across all sectors is a low 10 per cent against an all-India average of 18 per cent. This low attrition is now playing a key role in wooing investments in West Bengal, particularly in the area of IT-enabled services (ITES), Economic Times reports. With 30,000 graduate passouts per annum who are well versed in English, Kolkata is also finding favour with players in the ITES sector. With financial support from the state government in the form of incentive schemes and venture funds, segments like biometrics, biotechnology and hardware manufacturing are developing in West Bengal.

Motorola has announced the introduction of the GP2000 Handsfree radio - a modern and efficient two-way radio that is ideal for users who require a highly cost-effective communication tool for their operations. Targeted for users in the police, railways, hospitality/service, manufacturing, construction and other diverse markets Motorola's GP2000 two-way radio is compact, modern and easily affordable. The product has been specially-developed with the Asian users in mind as per the company's press note. The GP2000's easy-to-use features also make it a viable choice for many two-way radio users in India.