Firefox Builds On It's Success

Firefox, the popular open-source Web browser, is continuing to gain users even as its management structure evolves and it resets its plans for its next update.

The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox recently zoomed past the 75 million-download mark. At this rate, some expect the browser to hit the 100 million-download mark by early october.

According to the French research company XiTi monitor, Firefox has an 11.78 percent share of the browser market in North America, while in Europe, according to XiTi's numbers, Firefox is being adopted at an even quicker pace, with a 14.83 percent market share.

Indeed, in some countries—Finland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Poland—more than 20 percent of users have switched the browser they primarily use from Internet Explorer to Firefox.

India Begins Exports By Road To Pakistan

Direct trade by road resumed Tuesday between India and Pakistan for the first time in 40 years, as trucks laden with garlic from India rolled across the border.

The resumption fulfilled a long-standing demand by traders on both sides, who previously had to transport goods hundreds of miles to the nearest port or train station to get them across the border.

"We are thrilled, and the prospects for trade are immense," Rajdip Uppal, an exporter, said by telephone from the Indian border city of Amritsar.

In a sign of easing tensions between India and Pakistan after decades of hostility, both countries agreed earlier this year to allow exports of livestock and four kinds of vegetables and to meet shortages in Pakistan.

Indian exporters are allowed to send vegetables and livestock to Pakistan. In return, India will import some dry goods.

Trade between the two countries reached $380 million in 2004. But unofficial trade through third-country destinations like Dubai or Singapore totaled more than $1billion, according to Indian industry groups.

Official trade had been by sea or train, both resulting in long delays over customs' clearances. The delays also ruled out trade in perishable goods like fruit and vegetables or livestock.

Despite Tuesday's developments, traders remained dissatisfied with restrictive visa rules under which Pakistani visitors cannot move freely across India.

"We want to invite Pakistani business leaders to India, to take them around and show them the extent of our business. But the existing rules allow a visa to only one or two cities," said Uppal.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over control of the Himalayan region of
Kashmir, since their independence from Britain in 1947. Relations have improved since January last year, when they agreed to hold talks to settle the decades-old Kashmir dispute.

Kashmir remains divided between India and Pakistan, but both countries claim the entire territory.

Japan Plans world's fastest supercomputer

Japan has plans to start building a supercomputer next year that can operate 73 times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer, the government said Monday.

The American Blue Gene/L system supercomputer developed by International Business Machine Corp. at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, currently holds the title of the world's fastest. That machine is capable of 136.8 teraflops, or 136.8 trillion calculations per second, according to Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Japan wants to develop a supercomputer that can operate at 10 petaflops, or 10 quadrillion calculations per second, which is 73 times faster than the Blue Gene, an official of the ministry said on condition of anonymity.

Kyodo News reported that the total amount for the project is estimated between 80 billion and 100 billion yen ($714 million to $893 million) and the ministry will request 10 billion yen ($89 million) for the next fiscal year's budget.

The ministry official could not confirm the figures, saying it has yet to reach a formal decision on the project, which is expected by the end of August. But he said that if the budget for next year is approved, the ministry hopes to complete the next-generation supercomputer sometime in fiscal 2010, which ends in March 2011.

Japan's Earth Simulator supercomputer, introduced in 2002, had been the world's fastest until 2004, when the IBM's Blue Gene took the title, he said.

Currently, the Earth Simulator, at a speed of 35.9 teraflops, is ranked fourth after the IBM's two Blue Gene systems and NASA's Columbia system, all in the United States, according to the top 500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, released at the International Supercomputing Conference held in June in Heidelberg, Germany.

The Earth Simulator is used to track global sea temperatures, rainfall and crustal movement to predict natural disasters over the next few centuries.

The ministry wants to use the planned supercomputer for a wider use such as simulating the formation of galaxy and the interactions between a medicine and the human body.

"Killer Exam"

Swati, 18, was a brilliant pupil but still she feared she had failed her school-leaving exams. She hanged herself hours before the results were released. She had in fact passed.

Aruna, 17, killed herself by drinking pesticide after learning she had flunked

Horrifying stories such as these are regularly published in the Indian media, while studies show more and more teenagers are suffering depression or contemplating suicide.

In New Delhi, an inquiry into 150 educational facilities by mental health group VIMHANS showed that 40 percent of pupils feel overwhelmed by exams.

A separate study by non-governmental organisation Sahyog showed that 57 percent of the 850 teenagers they questioned suffered from depression and nine percent attempted suicide last year.

SugarCRM Marks First Anniversary

SugarCRM Inc. celebrates the one-year anniversary of the launch of its open source customer relationship management (CRM) application this week with a rapidly expanding community of users that now includes over 300,000 free downloads and 250 paying customers for its professional edition. There are also 575 open source developers contributing new code and enhancements to the system, and nearly 9,500 participants active in multiple forums sponsored by the company.

These numbers mark SugarCRM as the most successful open source enterprise application in the industry. The rapid adoption rate validates the open source model for use in enterprise environments and lays the groundwork for extending the reach of SugarCRM into more and larger organizations.

Some Internet Terms Unfamilier

Podcasting and RSS feeds may be the latest craze in high-tech circles 
but the general public is largely unfamiliar with the Internet terms.   

Seventy percent of Internet users never heard of phishing or aren't  
sure that it refers to e-mail scams that try to trick users into revealing  
sensitive information by masquerading as a legitimate bank or credit 
card issuer. 

Eighty-seven percent are unfamiliar with podcasting, which lets  
everyday users distribute audio files over the Internet for playback
any time on computers or digital music players. 

And 91 percent do not know about Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, a 
technology chiefly used to pull summaries of new entries on news sites  
and Web journals.

World's smallest PC in India

IBM recently launched the world's smallest full functional desktop computer in India within weeks of its worldwide launch to increase its share of the commercial PC market.

IBM has priced the Think Centre S50 ultra small between Rs 38,000 and Rs 48,000 which brings it within the reach of small businesses and homes. The cost includes a standard 15 inch monitor and Windows operating system.

The Think Centre S50 ultra small comes with internal speakers that can enable it to be used in homes. The PC comes in a tool-free durable chassis which is 28 centimeters wide, 26 centimeters deep and 8.4 centimeters high.

NRIs In US earn more then natives

Average per capita income of Indians in the US is $60,093 as per the US census of 2000. The more remarkable fact about this figure is that it stands against the US average of $38,885 in the same census.

This is revealed in a World Bank study on India and its knowledge industry released last week. The study also captures the trends of Indian Diaspora in the United States and elsewhere.

The World Bank report quoting the US census of 2000 says that Indian Americans also have an edge over their American counterparts in the field of education. With more than 62% of them having some college education (compared with just more than 20% for the US population).

While they have spread their wings in virtually all professions including agriculture, biotechnology, business, economics, finance, journalism, management, medicine their presence is highly prominent in the IT industry of the USA: approximately 300,000 Indian-Americans work in Silicon Valley, account for more than 15% of start-ups in the USA, and have an average annual income of about $200,000.

The Indian Diaspora in the US is not only growing wealthy but also rapidly. The Indian American community now boasts of 1.68 million people compared with 0.81 million in 1990-a growth of 106%. Though India, being the source country, cannot stop cribbing about its loss of highly trained personnel and its fiscal costs (as many receive publicly financed education), the remittances it receives coupled with return of migrants with greater international experience bring a mollifying touch to the Indian scenario.

In India, between 1990 and 2000, remittances from abroad grew six fold from $2.1 billion to $12.3 billion. The destination of these remittances shifted significantly from Karalla and Gujarat to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

India is also able to tap capital knowledge and markets via its Diaspora. Especially after its economic reforms in 1991.

For example , in the software industry and IT- enabled services , investments of Diaspora members is quite limited( about 3% of FDI), but their contribution is mostly in the form knowledge linkages , that is, with foreign markets, helping Indian firms to absorb technical and managerial knowledge.

As the world becomes more and more aware of the high quality pool of intellect in India and as India becomes less and less opaque to the world, big MNCs like Microsoft, IBM, and GE are being incessantly drawn towards this 58 year old independent nation accelerating its path of economic growth.