 | IT Happens : November 2001
Monthly News Notice of IT Happenings |  | | Issue - 5 |
CII Fair 2001: UPTEC shines at Gomti Bank
The Confederation of Indian Industries has been coming to this city of Nawabs from the millennium year 2000 with their unique and modern display style relating to Information Technology, Communications, Entertainment, Consumer Goods, Automobiles etc.
This year too Lucknowites had the privilege to be a part of the fair organized by the CII with great pomp and show. The four day fair (2nd Nov 5th Nov) at the Laxman Mela Park on the banks of the river Gomti that attracted huge crowds.
The star attraction of the fair and the most visited stall was of UPTEC Computer Consultancy Ltd., Lucknow, the only I.T. company in the country boasting to have trust of international I.T. gaints like Novell, Microsoft, Oracle and Compaq, may it be for computer education, service support on software/hardware sales. The presentation of I.T. products at the stall was unique.
Various events were conducted at UPTEC stall. People young and old had a fun time testing their knowledge on various subjects at computer Yaksha Quiz CD. A different type of quiz contest was held called the quiz making contest. There was jostling among the people to have this contest form reflecting their enthusiasm. Hundreds of them participated. Last but not the least it was all three cheers for UPTEC. (Source: UPTEC) Web kiosks for Indian villagers
For millions of Indians living in villages, making a phone call, let alone connecting to the Internet, is a distant dream. But a new, cheap and robust wireless technology could bring the information revolution to rural areas. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras have developed Internet kiosks using a wireless local loop technology call corDECT. The system is cheap, as it replaces expensive cabling with wireless base stations. A kiosk costs around 40,000, compared with 30,000 rupees for installing a single telephone line. (Source: B.B.C. News) Bringing computers to life  IBM has unveiled an ambitious initiative to develop technologies that share the basic biological abilities of living organisms. Ideally future networks should resemble the autonomic nervous system which maintains and monitors many basic bodily functions without conscious help. The autonomic nervous system maintains blood sugar and oxygen levels and monitors temperature. It adjusts that bodys heating and cooling systems to keep body temperature hovering around 370C. What is needed, are computer systems that do a much better job of configuring themselves, can work around disruptions, heal any damage they suffer or fight off potential problems.
(Source: B.B.C. News) Its Italy next for Indian IT professionals Italy is expecting a shortfall of around 2,00,000 IT professionals and there is a demand for developers, specialists technicians, system specialists and network managers.
India produces around 1,78,000 engineers and trains a million IT professionals every year, Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said here at SMAU 2001, the second largest IT, communications and consumer electronics trade fair in the world. Nasscom participated in the fair for the first time.
The outsourcing opportunities for Italy lie in e-business, telecom solutions, technology and architecture, engineering services, software development and maintenance, Karnik said. He added that the two countries could co-operate in banking, insurance, financial services, telecom, digital consumer electronics and embedded software technology. (Source:Business Standard Nov 2001) Tiny transistors  Scientists in the US may have paved the way towards working molecular computers. A group of researchers at Bell Labs have made tiny functioning transistors a million times smaller than a grain of sand. Making large quantities of the tiny components should be straightforward because they self-assemble. But researchers caution that it could be years before such small components find their way into commercial devices or desktop computers.
The biggest improvements in the processing power of a chip have come from shrinking the components that make up the device. The first transistor was roughly 2.5 centimetres (one inch) across and now it is possible to cram more than a billion of them on to a single chip. Researchers are working towards what is regarded as the ultimate in miniaturisation: to use clusters of molecules to form components that form transistors on todays computer chips.
(Source: B.B.C. News) Tuperbots The robots giving birth 
Robots can now exchange their genetic material and give rise to new robots. This one seems to be right out of Issac Asimovs imagination robots that can give birth to new robots. The concept is still on the drawing board, but experiments have proved that its possible. Researches at the Brandeis University conducted an experiment with small robots called Tuperbots to get them to reproduce that is exchange genetic material. These robots had a Tupperware body, infrared communications, a micro controller, two inputs and two outputs, a rechargeable battery and an omni directional infrared communications link that let them interact with each other. Each robot also had an EEPROM (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) chip with a program (algorithm) on it. The control architecture was a feed forward neural network. (Source: P.C.Quest Oct.2001)
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