Google image search made easier December 31, 2008
Posted by Arup Deb in Techbytes.Tags: Google, Google Image Search, Search
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Google has just recently made searching for clip art and line drawings much easier. This is yet another step towards making Google the best choice among search engines for all times. Some time back, Google incorporated photo search under the image search feature and prior to that they had introduced the face search feature. The new clip art & line drawings features would definitely be a good news for all those, who regularly search the web for images for personal and other reasons, as with the highly defined search parameters, the job will get easier. The idea behind the different image search features, is to eliminate all other images in the search result that do not fall in the searched category. Those, who are yet to experience the new features, must check out the same. It is really cool. See the Google screenshot down below; different image search options are available in a drop down.
Brazilian IT major Positivo looking for suitors December 14, 2008
Posted by Arup Deb in Techbytes.Tags: Brazil, Dell, Lenovo, Mobo Kids, Positivo, South America, Technology
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One of the largest computer hardware and software players from Brazil, Positivo Informatica S.A. is taking the merger and acquisition route to relieve itself of the hard-times, it is currently passing through. Due to the ongoing global financial crisis and the weakening of the Brazilian currency, Positivo saw a drastic drop in its market share. In the Brazilian laptop market, Positivo’s share dropped to 27 percent at the end of June 2008 as compared to 57 percent during the same period in the previous year. Positivo has been feeling the heat for quite some time now, due to rising production costs, as a good portion of the raw material is sourced through imports.
Positivo is a big name in the Brazilian IT market and also exports to countries in the west. It has a wide range of offerings in the computer hardware segment that include peripherals, and accessories and softwares. The new suitor may have a huge advantage in terms of leveraging Positivo’s ultra modern production facilities, professional manpower, vast sales and service network and a well established brand image.
The South Brazil based company is known for its innovative product design. The Positivo Mobo Kids Laptop shown herein, is a testimony of the high design sense that this company seems to have. And, it is also known for the quality systems that it adheres to for making world class products backed by an efficient customer support. 
Lenovo and Dell are reported to be in talks for acquiring the troubled technology major. It seems post financial turmoil era, global business will see emerging new equations, with the markets getting highly polarised and being shared by a handful of very strong players. Not only in the hardware segment but may be in several other segments too, within the IT products and services space.
Cuil – Not so cool November 16, 2008
Posted by Arup Deb in Techbytes.Tags: CUIL, Google, Microsoft, Search Engine, Technology
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Cuil is the newest giant on the web search block. Well it has been around for a little over three months now. With 120 billion pages indexed, which is three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft (as claimed by them on their site), Cuil pronounced as COOL, at the first glance seems to be making good inroads. However, I personally feel that Cuil (www.cuil.com) has to make some quick proliferation among the internet users before anything else, as I have hardly come across people who do even know anything about this so called cool search engine, though I wonder how much of the new traffic would get hooked on to it for a sustained period of time.
Contrary to what Cuil has been claiming, it may have indexed tons of pages, but what is the use if a visitor’s objective is not met. A word of caution, even if you are inclined to use the search engine, do so only if you have good amount of patience and time on your hand. Do not rely on Cuil if you are hard pressed for time and in a kind of rush to get the desired search results, as while you are searching through the maze of irrelevant results, there could be a high probability that you may miss your flight, may even get delayed for that all important business meeting or falter on any other job that you need to accomplish. You would do pretty well by sticking to the good old Google.
I find Cuil to be pretty dumb in its analytics, unlike Google it cannot process queries the way you want it to be queried. You may key in your search query, any which way you want and there is a very high probability that Google serves you with the desired result, but certainly not the case with Cuil.
Going forward with their features, they undoubtedly have got quite a few innovative ones. But, I would not even like to delve into those, because, as a user my first need is to get the basics right, jazzed up things can come later. What they claim to be relevant search results, may not be relevant for some other person. I have a feeling that they probably rushed to the market with an untested product. There could have been pressures from their funding partners to increase the speed to market, but how does it help? The product needs some immediate attention from their creators, as the users are a ruthless community, they would dump it without giving an iota of chance to recoup. It is high time that they improvise and moreover the luck is on their side, as not too many of the net users are really aware of them. So better luck with the next version.
IT hit by global financial turmoil – What is in store now? October 11, 2008
Posted by Arup Deb in Techbytes.Tags: Allied Digital Services, Business Continuity, Global Financial Crisis, Infosys, IS Services, IT industry, IT Services, ITIM, Managed Service Infrastructure, Offshoring, Satyam, TCS, Wipro, Zenith Infotech
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Because of the current global financial crisis, the last few months or rather few weeks have been pretty bad for, the entire world in general, and the IT industry in particular. Contracts are getting on to the hold mode and in several instances, being scrapped altogether. The small and mid-sized companies are particularly a hassled lot. Large companies too, may have been impacted but they have the resilience to face the rough tides. From the Indian context, companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam and others of their stature had realised the importance of marketing, in the very initial stages of their business. Their technological prowess coupled with the market reach and high visibility, will see them through the bad times. However, they would certainly have to re-invent themselves, in order to face the new world that would emerge after the clean-up act currently underway, in the world of finance.
The real challenge would certainly be for the small and mid-sized ones. Firms that have got niche products or services, are the ones that would see greater opportunities unfurling for their offerings. They would experience steady growth for themselves without much difficulty.
Companies like Zenith Infotech Limited, which is into the Managed Service Infrastructure and Business Continuity space or for that matter, companies like Allied Digital Services Limited, who are present in the IT Infrastructure Management & Information Security Services space, are the companies that would be able to weather the current global financial turmoil, with much ease. These are the companies that have a very bright future. Businesses like them, would also see very little competition creeping in, because of the very nature of their business, which needs great amount of persuasion to make the client repose trust. And, the high cost of building up a new business in this space, from scratch, would certainly act as the entry barrier. And, what about the brand equity that needs to be built. So, it is not only the cost that can act as a detriment, but also the time that new players in the space, would need to spend, on growing up the visibility about their organizations. These companies have already done it and what they need to do now, is to spread their wings into geographies they are not present in and also increase their advertising spends, to have a sustainable impact among the target markets.
The smaller IT players, specially those in the IT Services offshoring space, should sit up and look at innovative ways of sustaining themselves. These outfits should stop treating their competitors as enemies and rather put some co-ordinated efforts in running their businesses. One of the possible strategy could be, to have a common order pool, developed through a common marketing organization, jointly owned by these small firms. They can have a common umbrella brand, under which they can sell their services, thus gaining significantly on the cost front and also leverage the enhanced power, to penetrate client accounts.
So all is not over for the IT players of the world. What is needed is loads of innovative thinking & action and the world can be your’s.
