Alerted not alarmed [The Register]

But is it robust? [The Register]

Chinese manufacturers are not just copying products conceived in the West: they are improving them. [Technology Review Top Stories]

Hindustan Times: What is RSS? [Scripting News]

Gavin Sheridan, the Irish blogger who attracted the weird attention of Famous Author John Gray's lawyers for calling the guy a phony, replies here to the legal beagles. They, and their client, would be wise to just let this thing go.

[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Bill Gates just gave a talk at a Gartner symposium where he predicted that hardware would get so cheap as to be essentially free. This is a pretty visionary idea -- and, I think, plausible enough; you can buy a $0.99 singing greeting card today with more computing power than all the world's digital computers at the launch of Sputnik (multiple Soviet space-programs' worth of cycles for under a buck!), so the idea of powerful, useful hardware going ubiquitous and cheap is pretty nifty and pretty credible.

In the same breath, though, Gates predicts that software won't be free -- though he has no good explanation for this (presumably, it's because universal free software would be bad for his buiness, so he can't bring himself to contemplate the possibility). This kind of blinkered thinking does Microsoft -- which could be capable of pursuing lots of profitable strategies that don't involve fighting the future tooth and nail -- no credit. If the senior management at Microsoft is this head-in-sand over production trends in software, maybe it's time for the Board of Directors to think about hiring a new chief architect and CEO.

I suspect that it was this kind of thinking that led Microsoft superstar David Stutz to write his blazing resignation when he quit the company last year.

Digging in against open source commoditization won't work - it would be like digging in against the Internet, which Microsoft tried for a while before getting wise. Any move towards cutting off alternatives by limiting interoperability or integration options would be fraught with danger, since it would enrage customers, accelerate the divergence of the open source platform, and have other undesirable results. Despite this, Microsoft is at risk of following this path, due to the corporate delusion that goes by many names: "better together," "unified platform," and "integrated software." There is false hope in Redmond that these outmoded approaches to software integration will attract and keep international markets, governments, academics, and most importantly, innovators, safely within the Microsoft sphere of influence. But they won't .

Link

(via /.) [Boing Boing]

A gigantic photomontage created by Kodak scored an entry in the Guinness book of world records, and took home gold at the Effie Hellas 2004 Awards. The photomontage - titled "The Whole of Greece in One Smile" -- is comprised of 16,609 photos of Greek citizens, and covers a surface area of over 5,000 square feet.

Link (Thanks, Jean-Luc) [Boing Boing]

Bid now for bargain graphics, animation, and rendering services [The Register]

No. 1 Web search company sued by Digital Envoy over alleged unfair practices, misuse of technology. NEW YORK (Reuters) - Digital Envoy Inc. filed a lawsuit against Google Inc., accusing the No. 1 Web search company of unfair business practices and ... [Google Business]

In a move to promote open source software development in a big way, Red Hat India, one of the biggest companies in the open source segment, has announced a scholarship programme for engineering students from across the country. [Rediff Business]

If you believe you are spending to much on your monthly cell phone bill, Intel has good news for ... [Tom's Hardware Guide: News]

I went direct to the head man in Redmond in my latest column: Memo to Steve Ballmer
[Steve Gillmor's Blogosphere]

ZD Net UK has a gazillion RSS feeds. [Scripting News]

BBC: "A handful of UK libraries are to offer wi-fi laptops to visitors so that they can browse the internet." [Scripting News]

Mercury News: Microsoft plans search site for Weblogs. Microsoft became the first big Internet company Friday to say that it would create a special search Web site just for Weblogs. The company said MSN Blogbot will debut in the first half of the year, along with MSN Newsbot, a search site devoted to news.

Another Microsoft "innovation" that's already been invented -- see, for example Technorati and Feedster -- but overall I'm glad to see the big guys getting behind blogging as a form of its own.

[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Full broadband access is expected to be available throughout Northern Ireland by the end of next year. [BBC News | Technology]

A 14-year-old Hong Kong girl flew into a rage and chased her mother around their flat with a knife and wooden pole after she confiscated the teenager's mobile phone. [Expressindia - Breaking News]

India will become a bigger economy than Japan and the third biggest behind China and the United States in the next three decades, Lord Swraj Paul, NRI industrialist and British Ambassador for Overseas Business has said. [Expressindia - Breaking News]

Lots of news from Google today, most of it listed at: What's New from Google.

Some highlights: The redesign has gone public for everyone. Froogle is now featured in the toolbar at the top of every page.

A new numrange search, that allows you to type $250..350 and get results including any number in between.

But perhaps most interesting is new Personalized Web Search which lets you specify categories of interest and then uses them to rank results in those categories higher than they would normally be.

[Google Weblog]

The search-engine stud isn't about to be pushed around by competitors. Google unveils a new look designed to drive more traffic to its shopping service, Froogle, and to highlight little-known search tools. [Wired News: Business]

The Internet has made life a lot easier in more than one way. The Net has in abundance simple, light (weight) free and very useful software tools that can put to use both at work and at home. [Rediff Business]

Twenty-seven Indian companies have made it to Forbes magazine's list of 2000 top firms worldwide with their ranking based on composite sales, profits, assets and market value. [Rediff Business]

Noida-based FCS Software Solutions has introduced the FCS Leadership Programme. [Rediff Business]

Infosys Technologies is gradually increasing its presence in the consulting space and currently offers not just a working "blueprint" for a company's IT architecture [Rediff Business]

Google News RSS Feeds

Go here for Google News RSS Feeds.

First Top Indian Portals to provide RSS feeds

Rediff.com:
http://us.rediff.com/rss/index.html

Indian Express Group:
http://www.expressindia.com/syndications/

I'm afraid the others don't have a clue as to what RSS/ATOM mean. My mails to them have had no response. It's the usual blackhole that one sees of large corporates !! Whatz surprising is that a lot more "phoren" content providers like BusinessWeek have been kind enough to respond to my queries and suggestions regarding providing RSS feeds.

Indian Portals that I've written to and which have not responded nor given RSS feeds include

Business Line
Economic Times
NDTV
India Times
The Hindu
Business Standard

RSS Feed Readers

Here's my current list of tested and tried RSS Feed Readers in the order that I prefer:

FeedDemon
SharpReader
SauceReader
Pluck
BottomFeeder
AmphetaDesk
FeedReader

The coolest content posting tool I've seen so far for blogging is w.bloggar

Pop star George Michael leads the way !!

Pop star George Michael abandons the music business in order to release his songs online for free instead. [BBC News | Technology]

Internet Governance

The ITU held a Workshop on Internet Governance on 26-27 February.

The home page for the Workshop is @:
http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/forum/intgov04/index.html

An archive of the talks (RealAudio) & contributions/presentations are available from this site as well.

Starting Young
It's a standard Silicon Valley success story: Entrepreneur starts company in his home, and becomes a leading player in his high-tech field. Only this time, the founder has had to build his business when he's not doing his homework.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1313&trk=nl

GNU Screen: an introduction and beginner's tutorial

GNU Screen: an introduction and beginner's tutorial

Most modern Unix-based operating systems (e.g. Linux, MacOS X, and BSD) come with a little console-mode utility called GNU Screen. It's a powerful tool in the hands of the console warrior, a veritable Swiss Army knife of text-mode human-computer interaction. This utility, despite its considerable usefulness, goes unused by a great many people. Why is this? Few people even know it's there, and those that do rarely understand the problem it solves. In this article, I will explain what screen does for you, and provide a simple set of instructions for accomplishing basic tasks using screen. My audience is those that are skilled with the command line but who have little or no experience with screen itself.

Hope for rookie investors ?!

Rookie HK investor sues adviser, and wins

Hope for a compromise?

Mark Bernstein points to a post by Dave Winer, asking for a merge of Atom and RSS (2.0). It would be a nice thing, and would certainly make things easier on us aggregator developers :) I wonder if the interpersonal politics will prove to be too much though...

More on the SCO/MS thing

Tim Bray has more on the MS funding SCO thing:

Business Week says that Microsoft did lead the Venture Cap horse to the SCO trough. I tend to trust Business Week. Uh, would Martin Taylor like to clarify his statement that the allegations "are not accurate"?

Back to Scoble :)

IBM plans to more than double its work force in Calcutta to 4,000 by the end of this year,

IBM plans to more than double its work force in Calcutta to 4,000 by the end of this year, according to West Bengal state officials, as part of its expansion plans in India.

Apple CEO Jobs received no bonus for 2003, as his salary remained unchanged at a nominal $

Apple CEO Jobs received no bonus for 2003, as his salary remained unchanged at a nominal $1. He did get a big stock grant early last year, however, in exchange for out-of-the-money options.

Linux Clustering Goes Mainstream with Help from Cisco Switching Technology

Googling Up Passwords

Google is in many ways the most useful tool available to the bad guys, and the most dangerous Web site on the Internet for many, many thousands of individuals and organizations.
By Scott Granneman Mar 09 2004 12:58PM PT
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/224

***

Internet Providers Sue Hundreds for Spam
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=&e=8&u=/ap/20040310/ap_on_hi_te/internet_spam_3

***

Do We Get Enough In Innovation for What We Give to Microsoft ?
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107869473053748560,00.html?mod=technology%5Ffeatured%5Fstories%5Fhs


Intel says it won't support China's Wi-Fi rules
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040310/tech_china_intel_1.html

E-initiatives by my part time management course institution

Take a look here for some e-initiatives by my part time management course instituition XLRI, that it's undertaking for it's full time students. This program has received much attention from the media and is proving to be the way for other institutions in the future !!

Guess whoz on the Net in the "new" way - via RSS (not the socio-political orgn) and blogs - nowadays ?!

Microsoft RSS Feeds

Sun
http://today.java.net/pub/q/rsschannels
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/ThirdParty/RSSFeeds/

Cisco:
http://www.2rss.com/index.php?cat2=48


For those who are interested in knowing more about RSS/ATOM feeds, read

The really simple future of the web
What the hell is RSS ?

Blogs are also getting hotter by the day, more so with RSS/ATOM feeds easily integrating into them and cool posting tools !!

An interesting read on how M$ is doing "brave" new PR stuff via an "innovative" strategy is one of using its employee's blogs for passing on "cutting edge" stuff as well as talk subtly about its practices, happenings, etc is available from http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/03/08.html#a6907

Try for more of same variety @
Microsoft Bloggers
Sun Systems Bloggers - not in the same league as our friends above ;-)

You'll be surprised at how much info is coming out of there. It's treading a very thin line on what to disclose and what not to. And companies are beginning to evolve policies for these !

FWIW, more and more companies are trying to provide RSS/ATOM feeds both to their internal and external audience.

And, some companies are scrambling (so to speak) to get RSS technology embedded into their OS (M$ - LongHorn, Sun - JDS) for various reasons !
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1544882,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000630

For some more related info on RSS/ATOM readers, blogs, and such, visit My RSS/ATOM Page

RSS Feed

My RSS/ATOM info page. Trying this post primarily to test the "Blog This" option in Google's ToolBar. Let's see :)

India outsourcing surge hits rich Asia's property
http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2004/03/04/rtr1285660.html

***

How Tiny Swiss Cellphone Chips Helped Track Global Terror Web
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/04/international/europe/04PHON.html

***

Fear Not Outsourcing, Knowledge Workers
http://www.techcentralstation.com/030404F.html

***

A look inside DoCoMo's 4G world
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story.asp?source=blq/yhoo&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo&guid=%7B80347A18%2D5AE6%2D4DDB%2DA1B9%2D62532989F8AD%7D

***

Gartner says camera phone bans in the workplace not effective
http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=17156

***

Now, a course on outsourcing: MIT shows the way
S Rajagopalan
Washington, March 2

Outsourcing is here to stay. And the tacit acknowledgement comes from the redoubtable Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by starting a regular course on outsourcing at its famed Alfred P Sloan School of Management.

Read more @
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_596032,001300460000.htm

***

New IBM Partner Program Looks to Key Industries
By Darryl K. Taft
March 2, 2004

LAS VEGAS—IBM Tuesday will announce a new approach to seeking business partners in select industries.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1541438,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

***

RSS for RFPs
Tuesday, March 02, 2004 4:07 AM

Windley points to an interesting use of RSS - a feed run by the Utalh State
dept of purchasing, advertising the current bids page. That's a great way to
get information out - consulting companies should pay attention to this.

http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3255612105

***

New Netsky-D Worm Spreading Through E-Mail
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20040301/tc_nm/tech_worm_dc

***

Network certification choices grow with Cisco
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0301specialfocus.html?fsrc=rss-cisco

***

... "An interesting twist on this is what Cisco is trying now. Cisco took an interesting internal development, staffed it with some of its best people, gave it some money - and set it free, with a "buyback" provision built in at a pre-arranged price when the new company hits its benchmarks. Very creative and maybe that is the future model, because it's clear that the old model of a corporate R&D division just ain't working." ...

Read the complete article @
http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0301anderson.html?fsrc=rss-cisco

***

AMD Names Chief Strategy Officer

Advanced Micro Devices on Monday named its first chief strategy officer
in the company's history, responsible for seeking out new markets and
focusing the company's direction.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1541082,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

***

CA's Kumar Knocks Protectionism, Oracle Takeover

... Companies will always tend to go "where the talent is" he said, but Computer Associates' high level software design and development will remain focused at its U.S. headquarters, he said. ...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1541206,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

***

The Three Big Lies of the modern corporation

1. The customer come first.
2. We make our decisions on behalf of our shareholders.
3. Employees are our most important asset.

Art Kleiner's newest book, Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege & Success explores a theory that's more parsimoniously tied to observable facts -- that the goals of organizations are determined by a small "core group" of people who matter.

http://www.isen.com/blog/archives/2004_03_01_archive.html#107815093197411470

***

For those whose RSS reader does not (yet) support atom.xml use the following handy site that converts Atom to RSS.

http://www.2rss.com/software.php?page=atom2rss

Instead of using your regular link to the atom.xml feed, use the following URL:

http://www.2rss.com/atom2rss.php?atom=http%3A//abcdef-blogpost.com/atom.xml

Another method is:
http://cavedoni.com/2004/02/rss1/rss1?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fabcdef-blogpost.com%2Fatom.xml

***

Sun Develops New Infinite Access Security Model

Sun plans to invisibly integrate multi-factor authentication, identity management,
and containment support into its software products and platforms. Sun's Java
Desktop System will be the first product to integrate complete out-of-the-box
support for Java Card multi-factor authentication technology.

http://servlet.java.sun.com/logRedirect/rss_solaris-PARTNER/http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-02/sunflash.20040224.2.html?biga=15

***

Sun Releases Identity Manager for Microsoft, Other Platforms

Sun Identity Manager (formerly known as Waveset Lighthouse) offers enterprise-wide
identity management of Microsoft environments. The solution features
quick-to-deploy provisioning, plus password and directory-management capabilities.
Sun also offers packaged integration with Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and
IBM OS/390.

http://servlet.java.sun.com/logRedirect/rss_solaris-PARTNER/http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2004-02/sunflash.20040224.3.html?biga=15

***

Rage Against Offshoring Is Very Real
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,592118,00.html

Rage Against Off-Shoring Is Off Target
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,588382,00.html
(subscription required)

SPECIAL REPORT ON THE U.S. ECONOMY
Where Your Job Is Going
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/investing/articles/0,15114,538786,00.html
(requires subscription)

***

Disruptive Incrementalism
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/schrage0304.asp?trk=nl

***

On the record: John Chambers
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/02/29/BUG8T5A5VN1.DTL&type=printable

***

Is IT happening in 2004 ?
http://www.business-standard.com/smart/story.asp?menu=56&story=35366

***

Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=562&e=11&u=/ap/deliver_me_web

***

One good reason not to get a mobile phone with SMS capabilities :) ...

"Yahoo! news reports that South Korea's third-largest credit card issuer, KEB Credit Service, fired 161 people -- a quarter of its workforce -- via mobile phone text messages." ...
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=4&u=/nm/20040227/od_nm/financial_korea_keb_dc

***

Google Founders Keep 'Top 100' List of New Ideas

... "For 20 percent of your time, if you're working at Google, you can do what you
think is the best thing to do," Page, 31, said. ...
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=569&u=/nm/20040229/tc_nm/tech_google_innovation_dc&printer=1

***