A national conference titled Utkarsh — Challenges & Opportunities in Business Management and Information Technology was organised by Dr D Y Patil School of Management and Dr D Y Patil School of MCA, at D Y Patil Knowledge City, Pune, recently received an overwhelming response and was appreciated widely. Dr Ajeenkya D Y Patil, chairman, D Y Patil Knowledge City, presided over the inaugural ceremony and Dr W N Gade, vice chancellor, University of Pune, was the chief guest for the occasion.
Dr Ajeenkya DY Patil elaborated on the need for an open education system. He laid strong emphasis on education for economically deprived sections of society. He further added that in keeping with the noble tradition of the D Y Patil Group, the D Y Patil Knowledge City Pune also endeavours to bring world class education to the doorstep of the common man.
In his inaugural speech, Dr W N Gade stressed on the significance of the difference between academics and industrial culture. He observed that despite having the technological expertise, India lacks behind China purely due to non-utilisation of the existing potential. He suggested that the work culture should be changed in Indian organisations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of performance. He focussed on the need of a leader for every organisation and how a good leadership can bring about a remarkable difference to an organisation.
Amongst the keynote speakers were Dr S G Bhirud, advisor, AICTE, New Delhi; Prof B K Mohanty, IIM, Lucknow. Dr S B Kolte, executive president, Management Association of MCA Institutes, (MAMI) Maharashtra; Col Prem Anand, general manager, DCC&A and Dr Sachin Vernekar, director, BVIMR, Pune. Prof B G Bhandarkar, director (corporate relations) D Y Patil Knowledge city; Advt Sushant Patil, director, D Y Patil Knowledge city and Praveen Patil, chief administrative officer, D Y Patil Knowledge city were the guests of honour. The convener of the conference Prof (Dr) O P Haldar gave the vote of thanks at the event.
MUMBAI: Every year huge numbers of animals suffer and die as a result of natural disasters in India. This loss has a dramatic impact on people as they desperately need healthy animals in order to survive and to rebuild their lives. Taking action to ensure animals are protected when disasters strike, the government of India in collaboration with World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) is holding Asia's first national conference on animal disaster management in New Delhi on April 17-18.
The conference will be co-hosted by the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and WSPA, which has been working globally during disasters to protect animals for almost 50 years. Currently a WSPA team is in Maharashtra helping animals caught-up in the drought by providing feed and shelter in cattle camps to benefit 9,000 buffalos and cattle.
Chennai: Veteran playback singer PB Srinivas passed away earlier on Sunday. 82-year-old Srinivas had lent his voice in all four South Indian languages besides Hindi.
The octogenarian was the playback singer of Kannada superstar Rajkumar and Tamil veteran Gemini Ganesan. Srinivas is survived by two sons and daughter.
In fact, it is believed that Srinivas's gentle voice suited Ganesan best. The duo produced some of the most memorable Tamil songs together including 'Kaalangalil Aval Vasantham' and 'Mayakkama Thayakkama' among many others.
New Delhi: In a shocking incident of crime against children in the national capital, a 42-year-old driver allegedly molested an eight-year-old girl in a bus in Sultanpuri area.
The incident took place on Saturday evening, when the girl was playing in the bus which was parked near the slum cluster of Sultanpuri.
Rakesh the driver of that bus reportedly molested the minor girl inside the bus. He has been arrested and charged with sexual assault under the new anti-rape law.
Rakesh reportedly molested the minor girl inside the bus which was parked near the slum cluster of Sultanpuri.
Police said the incident came to light on Sunday after the victim narrated the incident to her parents.
The parents then approached the police who took her to a hospital where a medical examination confirmed sexual assault.
The Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited has signed an agreement with the Electronic Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL) to deploy Carrier Ethernet Switch Routers (CESRs) in Mumbai. The CESRs are manufactured by ECIL under license from IIT Bombay. At a ceremony held at IIT Bombay, MTNL and ECIL signed a MOU to deploy indigenous CESRs in 8 sites across Mumbai. This is perhaps the first occasion where a carrier-class technology developed at an academic institution finds way to a tier-1 provider in India in the transport network.
The salient features of these CESRs is that these will provide for excellent service oriented communications and form the backbone of future next generation telecommunication services such as leased services, software defined networking and secure communications. Conceptualized, developed at IIT Bombay, the CESRs are now manufactured by ECIL. The CESRs have an all-time low 1-microsecond port-to-port latency that makes them fastest in the business. The low latency also translates to low power consumption and small foot-print. Being indigenous the CESRs provide an additional level of security keeping customer data safe and secure.
MTNL will deploy the CESRs in 8-sites across the island city of Mumbai in an interconnected ring topology. From each site, MTNL will offer carrier-class services to enterprise customers, government agencies and other bodies. These services would include Ethernet, leased lines and MPLS network access from 10 Mbps to 10Gbps. The backbone of the network that would interconnect the CESRs will consist of 10Gbps links that would route Carrier Ethernet and Optical Transport Network (OTN) packets. The excellent latency, low energy consumption will be new features that would be brought out by MTNL for customers across the city of Mumbai.
Presiding over the signing ceremony, Prof. Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay commented that the deployment of IIT Bombay licensed technology would set a new benchmark in technology adoption from the IIT system to industry.
It must also be noted that MTNL has deployed an earlier version of the CESRs in their data center since May 2011. Prof. Khakhar commended the visionary leadership of MTNL and thanked its Executive Director Shri. Peeyush Agrawal for taking this critical step forward towards indigenization.
CMD ECIL, Shri. P. Sudhakar commented on the occasion stating that ECIL was proud to have collaborated with IIT Bombay to bring this technology to the market. He also thanked MTNL for giving this opportunity to deploy the CESRs in MTNL’s network.
A new report onApple Insiderstates that Microsoft is working on its version of smart glasses which could compete with Google Glass.
The report is based on analyst Brian White’s note to investors where he said that Microsoft is planning to bring a set of Internet-connected glasses to the market next year.
The report adds, White believes that Google Glass will kick off what he sees as a “major push” in wearable electronics by the biggest tech companies.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin in this file photo with his Google Glass. AP
As far as Google Glass is concerned, the device expected the hit the stores later this year. At a TED Talk, Google co-founder and the man behind the Glass project, Sergey Brin had said that the devices would hit the stores this year. He also promised that the price would be much less than the current $1500 price tag that the developer versions carry.
At the recent SXSW conference in Austin, Google had showed Gmail, Path, EverNote, New York Times apps for Google Glass. More on how the apps work here.
The prototype version of the Glass has Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS and an integrated camera.
Startup Weekend EDU had five teams working together with technology, education and the future in mind.
The teams pitched their next big idea to a panel of judges on Sunday night after having just 56 hours to work with teammates, whom they've never met, on how to make that idea a reality.
With help from business and design mentors along the way, they were able to learn, grow and sculpt their dreams into ones that will have an impact.
"It's really nice to hear from other people who have been there and have done it successfully," said Brendan Younger, a former science teacher who says he wants to share class experiments with more and more kids using technology. "Just to know that it's possible and that you don't have to become the next Facebook to be successful at all that's always a big morale booster and motivation."
Many participants are entrepreneurs, web designers and teachers. All working together to bring technology and teaching together for a better future in Albemarle County.
Organizers said there have been thousands of Startup Weekends all around the world but only a few years ago Startup Weekend EDU began.
They say some of the participants will quit their current job on Monday because they're so inspired and determined after the weekend is over that they know now their idea could actually work.
A series of tweets about fake weather conditions in Middle Eastern countries began appearing on Thursday afternoon.
The accounts are the latest in a series of large corporate Twitter feeds to have been breached.
The BBC said that it now has control of all three accounts and all inappropriate content has been deleted.
A BBC spokeswoman said: "We apologise to our audiences that this unacceptable material appeared under the BBC's name."
The attacks began in the early afternoon on Thursday. At the same time, BBC staff were alerted to a phishing email that had been sent to some BBC email accounts. It is not yet clear if the two are related.
The email contained a link that if clicked on could expose password details.
The BBC weather Twitter feed, which has 60,000 followers, was among those affected.
Alongside the standard tweets from the weather feed such as "'last night was chilly" some more bizarre comments began emerging.
They included: "Saudi weather station down due to head-on collision with camel."
Another read: "Chaotic weather forecast for Lebanon as the government decides to distance itself from the Milky Way."
The group claiming responsibility has previously spread messages in support of Syrian President Bashar-al-Assad.
The BBC's Arabic and Radio Ulster feeds were also affected.
Faris Couri, BBC Arabic's editor-in-chief said in a statement: "Today at around 11.00GMT, BBC Arabic's twitter account @BBCArabicOnline was hacked. Since then, several pro-Assad news tweets were published by the account.
"We strongly condemn such action and apologise to our audiences," he said.
Social engineering
The attacks on the BBC are the latest in a series of hacks on high-profile Twitter accounts.
Last month Burger King and Chrysler saw their Twitter feeds hijacked while a quarter of a million Twitter users had their passwords stolen.
"The BBC is an obvious place to attack as it a trusted brand and so anyone who wishes to broadcast a message can reach a audience that are likely to pay attention, certainly initially," said Prof Alan Woodward from the department of computing at the University of Surrey.
"The most likely source of the hack is via social engineering - someone managing to elicit the password by fooling the user who keeps the password," he added.
Increasingly experts are now calling for Twitter to step up security and offer two-factor authentication, essentially a disposable, single-use password for its users.
Writing about the hack on his blog, security consultant Graham Cluley said it was unclear how the password had been cracked.
"The good news is that the hack doesn't appear to have been done with the intention of spreading malicious links or scams. Instead, it appears that the Syrian Electronic Army are trying to spread political messages about Syria instead," he said.
"You should always use hard-to-guess, hard-to-crack, unique passwords for your online accounts that you are not using anywhere else on the web."
After years of promising a revolution in mobile payments, Near Field Communications is nearly here.
Optus, Telstra and Vodafone are all involved in NFC trials in Australia, and all are likely to launch a full mobile wallet this year.
Vodafone general manager of strategy and business development Thomas Roets says NFC-capable smartphones will eventually replace the cards we carry in our wallets.
Similarly, Telstra chief technology officer Dr Hugh Bradlow says NFC will be one of the technologies to take off this year.
"It's been promised for a long time, but this year many devices on the market will incorporate Near Field Communication, which allows radio communication to be established by touching the devices together or bringing them into close proximity," Dr Bradlow says.
"NFC has been a slow burn but it will likely become entrenched this year and we plan to be a big part of that."
Visa country manager Vipin Kalra says Australia is on the cusp of a new wave of mobile and contactless payment systems as consumers fall out of love with cash.
Mr Kalra says half of Australians carry less than $50 in their pocket, while a quarter carry less than $20. "We are seeing a double-digit growth, month on month, on the use of contactless payments in Australia," he says.
The path to widespread NFC use has become clearer recently with key announcements coming out of Mobile World Congress and rumours Apple will include NFC in its next iPhone.
Samsung and Visa used the Barcelona event to launch an alliance that is tipped to accelerate mobile payments.
The deal - the first between a major NFC handset maker and a payment network - means all future Samsung smartphones will come NFC-ready and with the Visa PayWare app installed.
A Juniper report predicts there will be almost 300 million NFC-capable smartphones circulating next year, while ABI Research says that figure will rise sharply, with 1.95 billion NFC-enabled mobile devices in 2017.
Attitudes to mobile payments are also changing. In KPMG's 2008 Global Consumer & Convergence Survey of 31 countries, about half of respondents said they were very uncomfortable with mobile phone transactions.
By 2011, that trend had reversed and 66 per cent said they were willing to use their phone as a wallet.
One of the challenges consumers face embracing the new wave of digital payments is that several solutions are in the works, with different "digital wallets" offered by phone manufacturers, telcos and banks.
Along with promoting NFC, Visa has launched V.me in the United States and is set to release it here this year.
V.me will save consumers typing in their banking and delivery details when they shop online.
The system, which involves hitting one button to complete an order, is set to be popular with the growing number of online shoppers using smartphones and tablets.
Mastercard has beaten Visa to the Australian market with its similar product, MasterPass, that launches this month.
One of the key areas both MasterCard and Visa are promoting with these services are loyalty schemes.
Businesses will be able to take advantage of the buying history recorded with digital transactions, with customers offered real-time alerts if they are in a certain geographic area.
Mr Kalra says consumer confusion with mobile payments is certain to disperse with time.
"At every convergence point of technology or any intersection of moving from one platform to another platform, there may be some confusion for a while," he says.
"It's just that evolution of technology and people get used to the idea. It's the convenience factor that really drives people to change their behaviour. The trick is to keep things very simple."
RWD took hold in 2012, but Flash games developer Iain Lobb reckons it’ll go mainstream in 2013. “If you’re designing a website and not thinking about the user experience on mobile and tablets, you’re going to disappoint a lot of users,” he warns. Designer Tom Muller thinks big brands getting on board will lead to agencies “increasingly using responsive design as a major selling point, persuading clients to future-proof digital marketing communications”. When doing so, Clearleft founder Andy Budd believes we’ll see an end to retrofitting RWD into existing products: “Instead, RWD will be a key element for a company’s mobile strategy, baked in from the start.” Because of this, Budd predicts standalone mobile-optimised sites and native apps will go into decline: “This will reduce the number of mobile apps that are website clones, and force companies to design unique mobile experiences targeted towards specific customers and behaviours.”
2. Multi-device design
Designer Laura Kalbag thinks 2013 will see “the abandoning of device-specific web design”. She explains that as more devices arrive with varied viewports, “pixel precision and Apple-specific breakpoints will die out, the idea of control will be relinquished, and web design will be more about system design than static mockups”. Developer Remy Sharp agrees: “It’s sunk in that we need to test on mobile, but with IE arriving on Xbox, Jason Grigsby’s TV browsers talk, and Anna Debenham’s excellent state of games browsers, it broadens our deployment targets even further and challenges designers and developers to work in ever more diverse landscapes.” As consultant and author Eric Meyer says, it’s “not just desktop vs mobile any more”, but “desktop and mobile and couch and TV and more”.
3. Flash shifts again
“Last year, I said Flash was here to stay, especially for creating rich, immersive online content in the entertainment sector,” admits Muller, “but the unstoppable rise of tablets and the uptake of standards means Flash is being pushed to the side in favour of fast(er) loading HTML-only sites that deliver future-proof yet equally rich experiences.” However, Lobb notes Flash isn’t quite done: “It still has strongholds: specialist video players, banner-ads, Facebook modules, and games. In web games, some predict HTML5 will take over, but on the desktop I see little evidence for that. Until Internet Explorer adds WebGL support, Flash will remain the go-to technology for web 3D.”
4. Leaner, performance-focused websites
During 2012, the average site size crept over a megabyte, which designer/developer Mat Marquis describes as “pretty gross”, but he reckons there’s a trend towards “leaner, faster, more efficient websites” – and hopes it sticks. He adds: “Loosing a gigantic website onto the web isn’t much different from building a site that requires browser ‘X’: it’s putting the onus on users, for our own sakes.”
It’s a sentiment that chimes with many. Chris Mills of Opera/W3C hopes 2013 will see “more responsible usage of libraries”, and notes that there’s too much reliance on them for trivial functionality; he reckons “people will become sensitive to this as they work on more projects that require good support for TV and mobile”. Designer and writer Stephanie Rieger reckons that although people now know “web design isn’t print,” they’ve “forgotten it’s actually software, and performance is therefore a critical UX factor”.
5. Device and design resource-pooling
We’re familiar with people pooling code, but 2013 will see sharing widen, according to Meyer and designer Geri Coady. Meyer reckons that instead of studios each maintaining dozens of devices for testing, we’ll see community device labs, and Coady believes the year will bring more participation in open source design. “I love the idea of donating a little design talent to open-source projects that you use or community groups that you support,” she explains. “Open source developers often spend so much time working on the technical side of things that the visual side can end up being neglected. But this past year has seen great work from the W3C’s Responsive Images Community Group, which now has a well-designed home on the web that strengthens its image as well as its mission.”
6. Modular design
2013 will see more people taking advantage of design process building blocks. Muller thinks that through RWD, grid-based, modular GUI design is “now stronger than ever,” and that we’ll see more very structured page layouts over the coming year. Mo Morgan, head of technology at Kitcatt Nohr Digitas, notes that “Amazon Web Services and others prove infrastructure and platforms can be commoditised”, and “the plethora of available frameworks show it’s no longer necessary for developers to keep reinventing the wheel”. Such building blocks remove pain and expense, he explains, “allowing the masses to make things that would have previously been too arduous or expensive”. Designer/developer Paul Mist hopes such changes will “speed up workflows, so we can spend more time making the web beautiful”, but Morgan worries there’s a possibility 2013 will see people start to “lose touch with core technologies that underpin all of these things, to the point where if the commoditised offering can’t meet a specific requirement, it effectively can’t be done”.
7. Standards involvement
For Marquis, 2013’s key trend will be more developers taking an active role in the web standards process. “It feels like there have been separate silos in play – developers doing client work, and browser representatives working full-time within the standards bodies,” he says. The hope is more crossover: “Today, you see ‘developer preference” cited in a mailing list thread, but rarely do full-time web developers chime in with opinions. There’s a disconnect, and that impacts both groups negatively – standards bodies get blamed for standardising features developers dislike or don’t understand intuitively, and developers get blamed for ignoring features or using them incorrectly. I hope people look at the work being done by members of the Responsive Images Community Group and others, and see it as a call to join the discussion. The only way we’re going to be fully represented is by showing up and working together.”
8. Industry education
2012 was a good year for web education, and Sharp thinks this trend will continue: “I’m talking about educating kids, the ‘yoof’ of today.” He admits the government may not be pushing as hard as the industry would like, but says organisations are filling the gap: “Efforts like Code Club are starting to really land, and I’m seeing an increase in events aimed at teens and youngsters, in web programming and hacking.”
9. New tools for web design and management
With the explosion in RWD, developer Sally Jenkinson believes 2013 will be the year processes and tools evolve. “We’ve seen a move towards designing in the browser, but vendors like Adobe aiming to introduce offerings such as Edge Reflow will impact on existing wireframe and design methodologies.” She thinks lines between mockups and prototypes will blur, and static representations will no longer “accurately reflect the variety of permutations in terms of device renderings”. Redweb head of development Wayne Rowley adds that improved mobile tools are also likely: “CMS vendors are already seeing the need to provide mobile support when creating and managing content, and the next step is to optimise CMS software interfaces, empowering content editors with true flexibility and location-independent content management capabilities”.
10. More video
According to designer Ayesha Garrett, barriers to entry regarding video continue to fall, and 2013 will find a lot more of it online: “Internet speeds, including for mobile devices, are rising. Also, people with subscriptions to Adobe Creative Suite have suddenly found themselves with extra ‘free’ software, and are playing around with video packages and experimenting with After Effects.” She adds that some video trends will perhaps be less welcome: “We’ll see ongoing heavy use of the DSLR look – narrow depth of field and shake – and slow motion, because more cameras are incorporating that.”
11. Storytelling and personality
Bluegg studio manager Rob Mills reckons 2013 will see a “further step in the direction of storytelling and personality on the web, achieved through a greater focus on content and an increase in the use of illustration”. He says content strategy has always been important, but we’ve nonetheless of late seen a renewed focus on content. “Agencies and individuals are therefore going to have to work better with clients on content-creation and management, which can only be a positive thing for user experiences.”
12. Making a profit
We’re used to seeing venture capitalists fling money at half-baked ideas, and major players open bulging wallets to pay absurd money for existing services (witness Facebook’s $1billion purchase of Instagram). Developer, speaker and writer Rachel Andrew hopes the coming year will see this change. “From a business perspective, I’m hoping 2013 will see more celebration of profitable businesses," she says, "rather than glorifying successful funding rounds.”
13. Tablet thinking goes beyond the iPad
Publication designer Roger Black says publishers will in 2013 “continue to push out native iOS apps” as they realise “the iPad is not the magic pony they’d been looking for”. Android and Microsoft tablet sales, combined with apps not being linkable outside of each platform, will result in more “impressive, hand-built responsive HTML apps that play everywhere”. However, Black adds iOS wrappers for responsive publication templates will “allow publishers to have their app and eat it too, enabling developers to stick to new OS revisions and publishers to stick to content.”
Mobile platform strategist Peter-Paul Koch also thinks we should watch out for Tizen: “It’s an HTML5-based mobile OS created by Samsung and Intel, and initial devices are expected in Q2 2013. If Samsung pushes Tizen devices, you’ll know it’s going to be a big deal.” On Firefox OS, Koch is less optimistic: “It will fail, because they can’t produce cheap enough phones that compete with cheap Androids and run a decent browser.”
The iPad – no longer the apple of publishing’s eye in 2013?
14. The app backlash
Apps remain big business, but some publishers continue to edge to HTML5. Redweb head of innovation David Burton reckons a larger backlash is brewing: “The gold rush is over, and there’s unrest in that apps aren’t all they promised to be. We now live in a just-in-time culture, where Google can answer anything at the drop of a hat, and we no longer need to know the answers. The app model works the old way. Do we need apps for every brand we interact with? Will we even have iPhones in five years’ time? Who knows? But one thing is certain – the internet will remain, and the clever money is on making web apps that work across all platforms, present and future.”
15. A mobile design explosion
Designer/developer Dan Eden says that with “more companies focussing web efforts on mobile,” designers will feel the pressure to brush up on the subject, to the point that in 2013, “designing for desktop might be considered legacy support”. Rowley agrees projects will increasingly “focus on mobile-first regarding design, form, usability and functionality”, andChris Lake, Econsultancy director of product development, explains this will impact on interaction, with web designers exploring natural user interface design (fingers, not cursors) and utilising gestures.
16. Experimental and iterative design
Product designer Faruk Ateş predicts 2013 will see “the rise of new approaches to design and development”. Rem units, CSS grids support, pre-processors, and a better, wider understanding of RWD will “lead to more people exploring different ways to get the job done, and result in more experimental approaches than we’ve seen so far in real-world situations”. A big shift, reckons Burton, will be more live iteration: “We’re increasingly comfortable using products that aren’t finished. It’s become acceptable to launch a work-in-progress, which is faster to market and simpler to build – and then improve it, add features, and keep people’s attention. It’s a model that works well, especially during recession. As we head into 2013, this beta model of releasing and publicly tweaking could become increasingly prevalent.“
17. Better page layout
Recent years have seen a lot of focus on technology, but many designers see a swing towards design in 2013. Eden is looking forward to typography improvements and was “incredibly excited to hear about Monotype’s acquisition of Typecast and Typekit’s ongoing negotiations with Linotype”. Meyer points at CSS “finally getting strong layout mechanisms it’s lacked since its inception”, through the likes of Flexible Box Layout and Grid Layout. And Lake reckons there’ll be a trend towards ‘nano design’: “The detail matters, and can be the difference between a good experience and a great experience.” Garrett adds we’ll also see a “trend towards not looking CMS-like”, through clients demanding a site run a specific CMS but that it not look like other sites using the system.
Online type is changing fast, providing more options for designers
18. Scalable web design
According to Nick Pettit, teaching team lead at Treehouse, scalable web design will be big in 2013: “SWD is a methodology for designing websites capable of being displayed on screens with both low and high pixel densities. Like RWD, it’s a collection of ideas, techniques, and web standards.” The SWD approach ditches rasters for vectors, utilising SVGs “capable of scaling in size without a loss in detail or sharpness”, and Pettit reckons it was only IE’s lack of SVG support holding designers back; now SWD and SVG are viable.
19. Behaviour-driven discoverability
With so much information now being produced, digital technology strategist James Gardnerthinks 2013 will see a trend towards dealing with discoverability: “Current solutions are clunky and inaccurate, and rely on plenty of input from the user. New solutions will be behaviour-driven and built on more sensitive algorithms working with diverse data sets, such as location and social.” This, he believes, will take the onus off of search and be more proactive in providing related information: “I see this as a race between established companies – Google and Facebook – and startups who focus on niche discovery.”
20. Rise of the hybrid designer
Budd thinks the switch to RWD will bring more collaboration in agency teams: “We’ll see fewer designs being thrown over the fence to developers, and a rise in cross-functional pairing.” But Mist believes we’ll in reality see more hybrid designers emerge: “Take a brief that requires a responsive design. Give it to a designer who knows how to code and then to one who doesn’t. You’ll get a more effective, fluently designed site from the former. Throw in frameworks, new standards, and massive improvements in capabilities for designing in-browser and the latter will fall further behind. Those who already code have an astonishing playground to create with. Those who don’t need to learn – fast.”
