How Much CEOs Engage in Social Media Channels

According to BrandFog's CEO, social media and leadership survey 2013 most of the CEOs and top-notch managements are still quite apprehensive towards using social media channels such as Twitter,Facebook etc. The survey has asked around 800 employees of varies size i.e. from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.

In opinion of these employees the primary reason of why their CEOs are not present in social media channels are that they are fear of negative feedback and criticism directly from their customers or end-users. Risk involved of being exposed directly to their customers if they create their social media profiles and can even get weird comments.

Surprisingly, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are more cautious than start-ups heads and medium sized companies, one for reason for same could also be that big companies have lot of time constraints and tight schedule comparing to CEOs of startups.

See full report of BrandFog's CEO, social media and leadership survey 2013.

New Revamped PMO Website Out Now

Lately tonight a whole new revamped India's PMO website - http://pmindia.nic.in has been released with much sharper & cleaner look than earlier version though the website is more obsessed with present Prime Minister of India - Mr. Manmohan Singh, seems like a portfolio website of Mr.Manmohan.

The website has been developed by NIC, National Informatics Center  the site look more new-gen website comparing to previous version, better interface, graphics used are according to current trend however the speed is still match the 90's trend i.e. way way slower even before it's updated.

Noticeable part of the PMO website is the photos/videos section which has been constructed keeping in mind the latest trend and more like a trendy corporate website and not old-fashioned government website that it used to be all those time.

LinkedIn Reached 200 million members, India being second: Inforgraphics

Just now LinkedIn has reached 200 million members worldwide and India being second with 18 million members just after US with 74 million members. According to LinkedIn 2 new members join second across the globe.  LinkedIn has a interesting infographic for same that says that most viewed profile of year 2012 is Barack Obama.

The infographic also says that in India most common first name in India is - Amit & Neha in male and female LinkedIn members respectively.

How to File RTI Online in India

Have you ever felt of using your right to information, introduced in year 2005 in India, under which any citizen of India may ask information from a government/public body and then the same has to reply within 30 days.

To file online RTI, primarily one has to file in person with an amount of Rs 10 either in cash or demand draft/treasury challan. In case you are wondering for online options there are 3 websites that have emerged to help you file online RTIs on behalf of you, charge a nominal fee and after giving right information you have to  just sit-back and relax.

UPDATE: Government of India has also launched RTI Portal - www.rtionline.gov.in which can be used by Indian citizens to file RTI application online and also to make payment for RTI application online by submitting a fee of Rs 10 via Internet banking through SBI and its associated banks.

At present, an applicant who desires to obtain any information under the RTI Act can make a request through this Web Portal to only Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).

RTINation.com

Application Fee - Rs.250

RTInation draft a copy of application as per the information provided by you and email you the drafted application you than have to sign it  and send back via email. The application than take 2-3 days for processing. The response received from the department RTI has been files, will be sent directly to you. You can make the application fee payment via netbanking, debit card, visa credit card.

Swaraaj.net

Application fee - Rs75

Swaraaj.net is more simplified interface in terms drafting application on behalf of you, it also provide you the option for response to be received directly to you or via Swaraaj and in later case Swaraaj can advise you regarding your options to respond to concerned body/department you have filed your RTI application.

To my surprise the portal service is being run single handed by E Varathkanth. The payment of nominal fee can be made via almost any online payment method through instamojo.

OnlineRTI.com

Application fee - FREE

The best & serious online RTI website as yet moreover as the portal is in beta/ public-testing phase, it has made the lodging online RTI completely FREE. You can also track you application status through the website itself can even contact 24/7 online customer support (no telephonic support). The response of RTI application will be sent directly to you.

For filing RTI application online, there is no government initiative yet, however, in case you have been denied, refused to access information you have filed RTI for, you may than file complaint before the Central Information Commission (CIC), for this you can go to government portal - http://rti.india.gov.in and file online "RTI complaint" here (not to be confused with RTI application)  for free and can even track the status of your complaint there.

Is iSPIRT for Startups/ SMBs As NASSCOM is for Biggies ?

Recently 30 odd companies, entrepreneurs, industry veterans and prominently software 'Product' companies' CEOs/founders formed a group called as - 'iSPIRT' abbreviated as Indian Software Product Industry Round Table which will serve a think tank association for startups, SMBs, small entrepreneurs and especially software product industry in India.

Unlike NASSCOM, which is a trade association formed in 1988 has always been a body majorly fruitful only for biggies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL etc all being India's software service key players and not software product companies however small entrepreneurs, startup, software product companies were never been choice of this association otherwise India too could have had its own Google, Twitter or Facebook coming out of this country.

As per iSpirt - "India has been a beneficiary of products created outside its borders. What India offers to the world is however the spirit of service and labor intensive activities. To Western markets India is a picture of hard working citizens toiling away in a rural setting or more recently behind rows of neatly arranged desktops."

India has always seen as cheap software labor force, BPO employees comparing to western market, large number of engineers produced per year and today just an emerging market to sell the products produced in countries other than India. However for few years the software product industry is ramping up silently. In 2011-2012, the Indian software product industry is worth of $1.81 billion USD. Indian product startups has seen a 789% growth and a 2173% increase in funded product ventures in the last 3 years.

What iSpirt is exactly for ?

iSpirt is currently focused on existing product companies, entrepreneurs and Indian SMBs and helping them for valuation, merger & acquisition matters and increase early stage risk capital that is available to the software industry right now. Unlike to rumors iSpirit will collaboratively work with NASSCOM

For budding entrepreneurs and product based startups iSpirit has formed a separate offshoot initiative called as ProductNation.in, a platform to nurture and grow the Indian startup product ecosystem. It seeks to inform, educate, and initiate dialogues among key ecosystem participants.

With ProductNation initiative iSpirt will focus on creating an interactive platform for budding startups in India to introduce their products across the globe and take their products to cross-border geographies.

The founding people of iSpirit involve - Vishnu Dusad - MD, Nucleus Software, Vijay Shekhar Sharma - CEO, One97 Communications, Naveen Tewari - Founder & CEO, InMobi and Bharat Goenka - Co-Founder of famous Tally accounting sofware company.

The iSpirt initiative is one milestone for software product industry if taken with vision and will indeed boost the ecosystem in India which is otherwise running without the framework in place the iSprt might be the one which can draw the broad picture for same.

Param Yuva II - India's Fastest and World's 62nd Fastest Supercomputer Unveiled

Yesterday, on 8th February Pune based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) unveiled India's fastest supercomputer till date called - 'Param Yuva II', the same will be ranked as 62nd fastest in the world. The supercomputer is 8th among Param series of supercomputers in India first developed in 1991.

Param Yuva II, created & developed in a record three months by team of 300 people of C-DAC with an investment of Rs 16 core (USD $3 million) has 524 tera-flops of computing capability with storage capacity of 200 TB which is almost 10 times faster than the present facility.

This version of Param Yuva supercomputer is energy-efficient with 35% reduction in energy consumption as compared to the earlier one and is better than most supercomputing systems and would have achieved 33rd position in the November 2012 List of Top Green 500 supercomputers of the world.

With the power of Param Yuva II, areas like weather forecasting, seismic data analysis, scientific data processing, pharmaceuticals, bio informatics, aeronautical engineering will all be benefitted due to Param Yuva II.

As of November 2012, India has 8 systems and now with Param Yuva II its become 9 and India ranked 8th in the world by number of super-computing systems deployed.

The Fight for Most Popular Programming Languages

CodeEval recently released a statistics for - Most Popular Programming Languages of 2013. As CodeEval is a platform used by programmers/ developers to showcase their skills by participating challenges, win cash/prizes and impress employers with their technical skills. This statistics and figures are based on a sample size of over 100,000+ challenges processed from participants who have run challenges on CodeEval in 2012.

However, on other hand another list released by TIOBE, a company specialized in assessing and tracking the quality of software differ with the one releases by CodeEval. First let's see what CodeEval statistics has to say:

According to CodeEval stats Python is on top but lost 7% of its market comparing to last years stats of CodeEval, Java gained 3.5% squeezing the gap to just 4% between the two leaders. Perl lost almost 21% and PHP lost almost 8%. The biggest gainer was C# which leaped up 500% while C was up a modest 22.5%.

According to TIOBE stats C is on top, whereas as per CodeEval its not even among Top 5 most amusing is position of language - Python which is on no.8 unlike to CodeEval list. Unlike to CodeEval TIOBE ratings are calculated by counting hits of search queries on most popular search engines, the number of hits determines the ratings of a language.

TIOBE Programming Community Index for January 2013 -



The two stats differ in many ways may because of the criteria they have taken to prepare list, CodeEval has taken its own users data from its own users on other hand TIOBE used search engine  queries made, however the common things are C is evergreen language along with Java and PHP.

Although if you look at Wikipedia list of programming languages used in most popular websites you will see that Java is most popular followed by C, C++ and PHP.

 

Google Opens India-wide mapping contest - Mapathon 2013

Google initiated an India wide mapping contest - Mapathon 2013 for anybody who lives in India in order to create better and detailed maps for Indian geography using Google Map Maker. Mapathon 2013 will run from February 12 to March 25, 2013.

Google is inviting Google Maps users from all over the India by adding knowledge of their local neighborhoods through Google Map Maker by adding almost everything like restaurants, food points, tourist places, hospitals etc. Add new routes, shortcuts, one-ways and make driving a seamless experience for everyone.

Participants will even get cool prizes such as - Samsung Galaxy Note 800 Android Tablets, Samsung Galaxy S II, Flipkart gift coupons and Google Mapathon 2013 t-shirts and certificates as well.The top 1000 contestants by number of published edits will receive cool prizes.

A Bone Conducting Headphone Not for Ears

AfterShokz Sportz M2 is a unique open-ear headphones that doesn't go in to your ears but it actually pass sound through cheek bones, an open-ear headphones with improved street-safety and awareness of surroundings sounds especially for blinds. It is powered by patent pending bone conduction technology which was developed primarily for military use but now its available for consumer use.

These headphones comes with an integrated microphone along with volume controls for making phone calls. In comparison to ear-phones many people will find it to be more comfortable as ear-phones tend to fall out of the ear while doing physical activities such as cycling, jogging, treadmill exercise etc.

For passionate music lover it might not be good option as it music will mix-up with other surrounding sounds and wont give such a great sound quality, nevertheless good option for using with cellphones on streets for being aware of sounds of outside world such as oncoming traffic, car horns etc.