cloud based service

information technology (it) industries biggest player international business machines corporation watson computer, which beat champions of the quiz show "jeopardy!" a year ago, will soon be advising wall street on risks, portfolios and clients. citigroup inc, the third biggest united states lender, is watson's 1^st financial services client, international business machines corporation added. it will help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking. international business machines corporation expects to generate billions in new revenue by 2015 by putting watson to work. the technology giant has already sold watson to health-care clients, helping wellpoint inc and seton health family analyze data to improve care. international business machines corporation executives say watson's skills -- understanding and processing natural language, consulting vast volumes of unstructured information, and accurately answering questions with humanlike cognition -- are also well suited for the finance industry. financial services is the "next big one for us," addedmanoj saxena, the man responsible for finding watson work. international business machines corporation is confident that with a little training, the quiz-show star that can read and understand 200 million pages in three seconds can make money for international business machines corporation by helping financial firms identify risks, rewards and customer wants mere human experts may overlook. banks spent about dollar 400 billion on information technology last year, addedmichael versace, head of risk research at international data corp's financial insights, which has done research for international business machines corporation .

cloud service : watson the financial assistant will be delivered as a cloud-based service and earn a percentage of the additional revenue and cost savings it is able to help financial institutions realize. watson, including its work in the health- care and finance industries, will contribute "a portion" of international business machines corporation target of dollar 16 billion of analytics revenues in 2015, saxena said, and that portion will "have a b next to it." watson may add dollar 2.65 billion in revenue in 2015, adding 52 cents of earnings per share, ed maguire, an analyst at credit agricole, estimated in a november research note. international business machines corporation, the world's biggest computer-services provider, reported revenue of dollar 107 billion in 2011 and earnings of dollar 13.06 a share. the company ended 2011 with dollar 11.9 billion in cash. watson "can give an edge" in finance, addedstephen baker, author of books the numerati and final jeopardy, a watson biography. "it can go through newspaper articles, documents, sec filings, and try to make some sense out of them, put them into a context banks are interested in, like risk."

language wall street : in addition to citigroup, armonk, new york-based international business machines corporation has been working with financial institutions teaching watson the language of wall street, and adding content including regulatory announcements, news and social media feeds. international business machines corporation wo not say which other institutions watson is already working with. "it's not selling them software, it's selling them outcomes," saxena addedin a phone interview. watson offers a "more global" picture by looking beyond financial data, saxena added. for example, watson can comb 10 ks, prospectuses, loan performances and earnings quality while also uncovering sentiment and news not in the usual metrics before offering securities portfolio recommendations. it can also monitor trading, news sources and face book to help a treasurer manage foreign exchange risk.

huge marketing : some of the largest financial institutions have already built big data centers. international business machines corporation is competing with most other major technology companies to sell them tools to analyze and use accumulated information, versace said. "apparently citi gets it -- analytics is the new core in competitive banking," versace said. "the ability to efficiently and effectively exploit big data, advanced modelling, text analytics, in memory and real-time decisions across channels and operations will distinguish those that thrive in uncertain and uneven markets, from those that fumble." watson gives international business machines corporation "a huge marketing edge" in the race among tech giants including google inc and microsoft corporation to obtain intelligence for businesses by teaching machines to understand sentences and paragraphs rather than searching for single words or phrases, addedauthor baker. parts of watson could already be combined with other international business machines corporation technologies to help banks with regulatory compliance by surveying internal documents and flagging those that seem amiss, baker said. watson was designed to be loaded with information rather than grapple with a live streaming feed, making it likely international business machines corporation will partner it with other technologies. applications beyond banking beyond banks and other financial institutions, and insurance companies, watson may have applications for telecommunications companies, and perhaps even call centers, addedsaxena, who joined international business machines corporation when it acquired his company webify solutions inc in 2006. international business machines corporation plans to use watson in financial services "mostly for portfolio risk management, they're not going to do stock picking," maguire addedin a february 17 phone interview. "they think that watson can make a difference." still, watson isn't perfect. it is weak in languages other than english, and its processing of social media streams from platforms including facebook and twitter can be sluggish. the lag is "getting shorter", saxena said.

precise answers : a year ago last month, about 15 million viewers watched watson beat former jeopardy champions ken jennings and brad rutter -- a highly publicized victory in artificial intelligence that international business machines corporation always aimed to apply to the business world. watson had to learn how people speak and write, and evaluate its level of understanding, addederic brown, a member of the team that built him in an international business machines corporation research facility in new york. precise answers delivered with confidence distinguish watson from web searches, enabling the technology to advise real-life decision makers, brown said. "i'm sure they use all this stuff internally to manage their own portfolio," addedcredit agricole's maguire. "international business machines corporation 's treasury is bigger than a lot of trading desks. if they went into asset management they would kick ass, but that's not what they do."

management of subscriberidentification module - Security

telecom companies to procure Under pressure from security agencies, the Department of Telecom will make it mandatory for telecom companies to procure subscriber identification modulecards that are manufactured and personalised in the country. The DoT is also in talks with the Revenue Department to tweak the tax structure to make local manufacturing of subscriber identification modulecards more attractive. At present operators import most of the subscriber identification modulecards used for mobile services from foreign players such as Stumberger, Gem alto and Overturn. Personalisation activities, such as branding, operator specific services and embedding the mobile number on the subscriber identification module, are also done outside the country. According to telecom companies, the current duty structure is heavily loaded in favour of imports and therefore it doesn't make business sense to go local. But the Ministry of Home Affairs has told the DoT that large-scale imports of SIM cards can become a potential security risk because once issued to consumers they remain outside the physical control of the service provider and the monitoring agencies. According to the security agencies, once the encryption keys of any subscriber identification modulecard are compromised, this can be used to trigger various attacks including denial of service, disclosure of location of subscriber, diverting and routing calls. Controlling SIM cards through remote location is known as Over The Air (OTA) management of subscriberidentification module. This technique can allow miscreants to download Trojans and malware. The DoT had earlier issued guidelines for importing telecom equipment under which foreign manufactured network gear are required to be certified by a neutral agency. But this guideline did not include imported SIM cards. DoT sources said that the proposal to offer tax incentives for local procurement of personalised SIM cards has been sent to the Finance Ministry for consideration in the upcoming Budget.

Smart Phone developers Secrets

Information Technology (IT) : RSA computer security fair last week, Gary Kenworthy of Cryptography Research held up an iPod, iPhone, IPad Touch on stage and looked over to a Television antenna 3 meters away. The signal picked up by the antenna, routed through an amplifier and computer software Technology, revealed the secret key being used by an application running on the device to encrypt data. An attacker with access to this key could solution use it to perfectly impersonate the device he stole it from—to access email on a company server, for example. The antenna technology was detecting radio signals "leaking" from the transistors on the chip inside the phone performing the encryption calculations. Transistors leak those signals when they are active, so the pattern of signals from a chip provides an eavesdropper a representation of the work the chip is doing. When Kenworthy tuned his equipment to look in the right place, a clear, regular pattern of peaks and troughs appeared on his computer screen. They could solution be seen to come in two varieties, big and small, directly corresponding to the string of digital 1s and 0s that make up the encryption key. "This antenna is not supposed to work at this frequency, and it's been in someone's attic for years and is a bit bent," added, a principal engineer at Cryptography Research company. "You could build an antenna into the side of a van to increase your gain—well, now you have gone from 10 feet to 300 feet." Kenworthy and BenjaminJun, Cryptography Research's chief technology officer, also demonstrated how a loop of wire held close to two models of smartphone could solution pick up their secret keys. The signal from an HTC Evo 4G smartphone was a direct transcript of the device's key, used as part of a common cryptographic algorithm called RSA Research. The researchers required a more complex statistical analysis to successfully capture a key from another HTC device, which was used as part of an encryption scheme known as AES.

BenjaminJun added that all the devices his company has tested produced signals of some kind that could betray their keys, although different eavesdropping techniques were necessary for different devices. While some could be vulnerable to a long range attack, as in the iPod demonstration, others like the HTC devices would require an attacker to get up close. But that could be practical, said BenjaminJun, if contactless receivers used to collect payments from phones with NFC chips were modified by crooks. NFC chips are expected to become widely available in smart phones in coming months as Google and other companies develop contactless mobile payment systems. The apps used in BenjaminJun and Kenworthy's demonstrations were of their own design, because it would be "bad manners" to demonstrate sniffing keys from other company's apps, said BenjaminJun. However, the researchers have shown privately that they can eavesdrop on encryption keys from any app or mobile software, he said. Details of the vulnerabilities uncovered have been provided to handset manufacturers. "We've notified all the phone vendors and manufacturers, and there's a lot of work being done on this now," he said. "I can't name names, but I will say that we're working with one large tablet and smart-phone manufacturer." Modifications to the hardware/software of a mobile device can muddy the signals that an eavesdropper can pick up. Many wireless credit card readers already include such countermeasures, added BenjaminJun. In the case of smart phones and tablets, software upgrades that split operations using cryptographic keys into multiple parts that are then combined could protect existing devices without changes to hardware, said BenjaminJun. However, such tactics come at a cost. "They do require some kind of performance hit," added BenjaminJun, because they ask a chip to do more work. That also means more power consumption, which could deter some developers, who are loath to waste precious battery life.

Google Company drops the cost of their Cloud Storage Service

Google World Wild has cutof the price of its Cloud Storage, web based hosted service designed for enterprise developers who want to store their data and applications' document in the cloud, as opposed to in their own web based servers. The cost, based on monthly hosting usage, have been cut between 8 % and 15 %, depending on the price of data involved on storage, said Navneet Joneja, product manager for Google Company Cloud Storage. "We are committed to building extremely high availability storage in the cloud storage solution," he added. The price cuts will be applied retroactively to Starting March, Google said on Tuesday. Google also announced that several enterprise Data storage vendors have partnered with it and started to use Cloud Storage commercially in their google products, including Panzura, StorSimple, and Gladinet. Cloud Storage was launched in beta version in last year 2010 with the name Google Storage for Developers, and it shed the test label and its original name in October of inthis last year. It is intended as a cloud storage solution for heavy-duty, enterprise applications that generate and contain massive amounts of data storage solution, not as an end user service where individuals can store files, like the google Picasa Web based photo manager, the Docs office productivity suite, and You-Tube for data storing and data sharing videos.

Data to improve support - social media access blocking Gartner

Social media like Facebook and Twitter increasingly getting entwined with new generation lifestyle, the number of companies blocking access to all social media is dropping by around 10 % a year, according to technology research company Gartner. "Even in those organisations that block all access to social media, blocks tend not to be complete," said Andrew Walls, Research Vice-President at Gartner inc company. About 30 % of the big organizations will continue to block employees' access like social media sites by 2014, compared to 50 % in 2010, according to the United States of America - headquartered company. "Certain departments and processes, such as marketing, require access to external social media, and employees can circumvent blocks by using personal devices such as smartphones. 

Organisations need to turn their attention to the impacts of social media on identity and access management (IAM)," the statement said. The social media environments include mechanisms to collect, process, share and store a more complete range of identity data than do corporate IAM systems. They enable a more complete view of identity, one that extends beyond the bounds of organisations. For IAM managers, this is both a threat and an opportunity, it said. Identity data and social media site platforms can expose organizations and users to a wide variety of security threats, but organizations can also use this identity data to improve support for their own IAM practices and the ambitions of business stakeholders, it was noted.

IT companies - America Securities and Exchange Commission last week

Indian based software services Information Technology (IT) firms getting a significant portion of their revenues from a single client are feeling the pinch as their clients based in United States of America and Europe are seeking to transfer some of their pain by reducing work volumes and billing discounts. Mid-sized Information Technology (IT) services firm Mphasis, which announced its latest quarterly earnings a few days ago, is being squeezed by its parent Hewlett-Packard, while Tech Mahindra is struggling to maintain the volume of work it gets from its largest client British firm BT Group Plc. Genpact is also seeing reducing business from General Electric (GE). The US financial crisis of 2008, the subsequent slowdown in that country and the ongoing economic uncertainty in Europe due to the sovereign debt crisis have adversely impacted Information Technology (IT) firms as their largest clients have become more cautious on their technology spends and look to extract the maximum out of every dollar spent. And the pain does not seem to be coming to an end any soon. In 2012, Indian IT industry is expected to grow at 11 to 14percent compared to over 16percent in 2011. "As we go forward we do expect some headwinds from BT in terms of revenue and margins," Sonjoy Anand chief financial officer at Tech Mahindra told analysts last month during the quarterly earnings call. Mphasis is looking for ways to reduce cost to compensate the reducing profitability from HP business. "Hewlett-Packard continues to be a drag," said Nitin Padmanaban of Mostilal Oswal Securities in his 2 March report on Mphasis. "Management is more focused on cost-containment efforts as a larger portion of the business driven by Hewlett-Packard continues to decline."

Not much different is the case of Genpact, which in its regulatory filing to the United States of America Securities and Exchange Commission last week said that it has amended its master service agreement with GE and expects price reductions if certain productivity commitments are not met. HP became the largest client for Mphasis after the US technology giant acquired Mphasis in 2008. Both GE and Tech Mahindra started off as Indian back offices of GE & BT, respectively and hence continues to have their erstwhile parents as their legacy clients. They have been trying to diversify their client base with varying degrees of success. To be sure, Genapact recorded a 27percent growth in its revenues in 2011 from a year-ago period, and saw a nearly 30percent growth in profits, aided by growth in non-GE business. "When you have large customer relationships and if their business is not ideal in terms of performance it will affect you as a supplier," said Ganesh Iyer, chief executive at Mphasis. "Unless we do something different this pattern will not change, we need to offer something different. Just giving price reductions will not work. We will work with Hewlett-Packard to take to their customers our specialized solutions." Tech Mahindra did not respond to queries from ET. In the most recent quarter, Hewlett-Packard saw its revenues fell 7percent while its profits saw a 44percent fall. Similarly, GE saw its sales decline by a billion dollars in 2011, while its profits managed to beat analyst estimates. BT saw a 5percent fall in sales while its earnings grew by 3percent, mostly aided by cost cutting efforts.

Europe offshoring

Europe offshoring : European Countries such as Germany and France and many other countries who have staunchly resisted sending jobs overseas are suddenly capitulating—at least as far as the Information Technology (IT) and software sector is concerned. "Europe companies are now more amenable to off - shoring because they are realizing that it is the only way for them to get efficiency,” says V Balakrishnan, CFO and member of the board, Infosys company. “There is absolutely no resistance to off-shoring in the United Kingdom (uk) which is the biggest market in Europe. In rest of the Europe like Germany and France and many other countries, that is also chang," said Balakrishnan. This change didn’t just manifest itself out of thin air. The financial turbulence of 2oo8 combined with the precarious finances of many of the member states of the European Union have significantly altered the business climate in the region. So much so that the pressure on enterprises to offer competitive products and services are forcing them to outsource more works to offshore Information Technology (IT) and Business process outsourcing (BPO) services providers than they had ever done in the past. The situation had become grave enough to herald a never seen before thisis trend. “Corporates of course are considering doing more and more off-shoring but even (trade) unions are becoming more open to it. They are not making too much noise because they realise that unless companies go offshore, they can’t be competitive in this environment and may go bankrupt. Then, there won’t be any jobs at all," said MukeshAghi, CEO of Steria India. Steria is a French IT and Business process outsourcing (BPO) services company which derives about 9o % of its revenues from Europe. The company has over 6,000 of its global workforce of 20,000 based out of India. This is good for Information Technology (IT) companies in India since Europe is the second largest market for Indian and offshore centric IT services companies—the lion’s share of their revenues coming from the Americas. According to Everest Group, outsourcing spent in Europe in 2010 was pegged at euro 180-200 billion (about $26o billion going by the current exchange rate). Even though the report on European outsourcing market for 2011 is not yet out, it is estimated to be in the range of euro 2oo to euro 22o billion in 2011 as the Information Technology (IT) market in 2011 was nearly flat or marginally up.

Within European Countries UK is the largest market with a share of about 27 of the total outsourcing spent being made there followed by Germany with 26 % and France with 21 %. The Benelux region in Europe which comprises of 3 countries—Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg—accounts for about 10 % of the total outsourcing Information Technology (IT) market and Italy about 9 per cent. The remaining 7 % comes from Nordic countries like Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. According to the industry leaders, the offshore and onsite ratio of outsourcing projects in case of a typical American customer is 70:30. In certain cases, the offshore ratio in contracts issued by some European companies like uk, germany, france, netherlands, belgium, luxembourg, especially those located in nice English speaking countries are even better than that of the United States. "In case of some of the pure commercials non government accounts in Europe, we go to 80-85 % offshore, and in many cases we find that there are very progressive clients in Europe. In some ways, European clients are more comfortable about doing multi-country activities than the Americans," says Brian J Manning, President and MD of the US-based Information Technology (IT) development and other services and solutions provider CSC in India. The Indian offshore delivery centres of CSC account for about half of its overall delivery. The United States of America headquartered company has about 23,ooo of around 97,ooo over-all employees are located in India. In November last year, TCS bagged a $2.2 billion worth of Information Technology (IT) outsourcing deal from United Kingdom based pension firm Friends Life. This is the company’s second biggest outsourcing contract the first one being the $2.8 billion worth of outsourcing contract it won from Citigroup in 2oo8. Again, earlier this month, the company clinched a multi-million Euro and dollar contract from Eoropcar, the car rental company in Europe, for managing the strategic Information Technology (IT) operations of its French operations. "normally, we have closed some large deals in Europe and usa, more than what we have done in the last 2 years. The focus is very clearly on Europe," added N Chandrasekaran, CEO and managing director MD of Tata Consultancy Services, India’s bigest Information Technology (IT) services provider company.

Other Indian IT services players are also seeing wins in various European countries. In the quarter ended December 31, 2011, leading Indian IT services companies including TCS, Infosys and HCL have seen strong sequential revenue growth. During the period, TCS grew 21.6 per cent in Europe over the previous quarter followed by HCL with over 19 per cent and Infosys at 18 per cent. Of the 14 new clients Infosys added in Europe during the quarter, two were said to be over $500 million in size. Many of the large deals won by HCL Technologies in the quarter, many were from Europe. Four of the 10 large deals TCS bagged in the Oct-Dec quarter were from Europe while three were from the US. "Definitely Europe has come a long way compared to being laggard in the past. It’s now catching up with many of the other matured markets, probably out of necessity. Surprisingly, in countries like France who are known to be extremely averse to outsourcing and offshoring, people are reporting more number of deals and seeing increase in clients’ interest," says Gaurav Gupta, partner AT Kearney. So, is this outsourcing trend simply a momentary aberration thanks to the European crisis, or could it in fact show some legs? Industry experts say that IT outsourcing demand from Europe will continue to grow for a variety of reasons. To begin with, the quantum of outsourcing being done by most European countries, except the UK, is quite low. Then there’s the fact that the growth in demand from Europe has been driven by a number of first time outsourcers who had never looked at offshoring as an option in the past. Plus, existing clients are ramping up their engagements with the IT services vendors. Still, Europe can and will not—in the foreseeable future—be a substitute for the US. “In the end of the day, the US is still the biggest IT market. So, I don’t think it will get to a point where the European and the US markets will be the same,” said Partha Iyengar, VP and distinguished analyst at (for) Gartner. “I don’t think one will be a replacement for the other, but it (Europe) will be a strong source of growth in the near to medium term,” he however added. That’s good news for Indian IT companies hoping to mitigate their risks and grow their revenues in what has been a volatile economic era.

Italian and Swedish researchers have Bring a new technique of transmitting multiple signals

Researchers effort finding better wireless solution : group of Italian and Swedish researchers have Bring a new technique of transmitting multiple signals on the same frequency in wireless technology. This novel radio-technique allows the execution of, in principle, an infinite number of channels in a given, fixed bandwidth, even without using polarization, multi port or dense coding techniques. "This Technique paves way for innovative techniques in radio science and entirely new paradigms in radio-communication protocols that might offer a solution to the problem of radio-band congestion." They are from the University of Padova, Italy, and the Angstrom Laboratory, Sweden, devised a solution to the problem by manipulating waves so that they can hold more than one channel of information. They were able to twist radio waves akin to that of fusilli pasta, allowing nearly limitless numbers of channels to be received and broadcasted. The proliferation of smartphones, wireless internet and digital Tele-vision has continually shrunk the number of radio-frequency bands available to broadcast information. "You just have to try sending a text message at midnight on NewYear's Eve to realise how congested the bands are," stated Fabrizio Tamburini, lead author of the Researchers. A wave can twist about its axis a certain number of times in either a clockwise/counterclockwise, meaning there are several configurations that it can adopt. "In a 3D perspective, this phase twist looks like a fusilli pasta-shaped beam. Each of these twisted beams can be independently generated, propagated and detected even in the very same frequency band, behaving as independent communication channels," Tambourine said.

Researchers demonstrate transmitted two twisted radio waves, in the 2.4 - GHz band, over a distance of 442-m from a lighthouse on SanGeorgio - Island to a satellite dish on a balcony of Palazzo Ducale on the mainland of Venice, where it was able to pick up the two separate channels. "Within reasonable economic boundaries, one can think about using 5 orbital angular momentum states, from - five (counterclockwise) up to five (clockwise), including untwisted waves. In this instance, we can have 11 channels in one frequency band. It is possible to use multiplexing, like in digital Television, on each of these to implement even more channels on the same states, which means one could obtain 55 channels in the same frequency band," said Tambourine. In addition to increasing the quantity of information being passed around our planet, this new discovery could also help lend an insight into objects far out in our galaxy. Black holes, for example, are constantly rotating and as waves pass them, they are forced to twist in line with the black hole. According to Tambourine, analyzing the incoming waves from the super massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A, could help astronomers obtain crucial information about the rotation of this "million-solar mass monster." Their results have been reported on March two, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics.

25 Billion Downloads on Apple App Store

Iphone, ipod, and Ipad, Apple inc App Store crosse 25 billion downloads and rewards the customer who put it over the goal with a Dollar - 10,000 iTunes gift card. Apple revealed that more than 25 billion apple application have been downloaded from its App Store by the users of the more than 315 million iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch screen devices around the globe. The 25 billionth application downloaded by apple user, "Where's My Water?" (free version), was downloaded by Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China. As the winner of the App Store Countdown to 25 Billion Application on app store, Chunli Fu will receive a Dollar - 10,000 iTunes Gift Card, the apple company said. The App Store offers more than 550,000 apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users in 123 countries worldwide, with more than 170,000 native iPad apps available on apple app store. App Store customers can choose from a wide range of application in 21 categories, including Newsstand, games, business, news, sports, health and fitness, payment services, fun, information, and travel. The App Store has paid out more than Dollar - 4 billion to developers world wide, the company reported. “We’d like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve this historic milestone of 25 billion apps downloaded,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services. “When we launched the App Store less than four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they have, or that developers would create such an incredible selection of apps for iOS users.”

allple iphone, ipod, ipad- Al Hilwa, applications development software analyst at research firm IDC, told The Globe and Mail the 25 billion milestone is a symbol for the explosive growth of the app economy. “Apps bring a simplicity of interaction that eluded previous generations,” he told the paper. “Enterprise applications will eventually follow consumer ones, marking an industry transition to this style of software.” TechNet, a bipartisan policy and political network of technology CEOs that promotes the growth of the innovation economy, released a study in February showing that there are now roughly 466,000 jobs in the “App Economy” in the United States, up from zero in 2oo7. The top metro area for Application Economy jobs is NewYork City (usa) and its surrounding suburban counties, although SanFrancisco and SanJose, California, together substantially exceed NewYork. While California tops the list of Application Economy states with nearly one in four jobs, states, including Georgia, Florida and Illinois (usa) get their share as well. In fact, the report found more than 2-3 of Application Economy employment is outside California and NewYork. The results also suggest that the Application Economy is growing quickly, and that the location and number of application development related jobs are likely to shift greatly in the years ahead. “America’s Application Economy—which had zero jobs just five years ago before the iPhone was introduced—demonstrates that we can quickly create economic value and jobs through cutting edge innovation,” said ReyRamsey, company president and CEO of TechNet. “The ApplicationEconomy is creating jobs in every part of America, employing hundreds of thousands of United States workers today and even more in the years to come.”

Microsoft released Windows 8 -laboratories around the world in Aachen, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Cambridge (United Kingdom), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Mountain View, Redmond, and San Francisco - USA.

Last week, Microsoft released a Windows 8, the next major rethink of its OS, which is expected to go on sale later this year. As tablets and smartphones have started to replace PC and laptops, and as increasingly sophisticated Web based services have grown in importance, Microsoft has fallen down behind the likes of Apple, Google, and Facebook, oracle, in providing the software that most people use every day. Windows 8 represents an attempt to catch up and remain relevant. Although unfinished (and subject to significant changes before its official release), Windows 8 looks set to be the most radical reinvention of Microsoft's OS since Windows 95. It blurs the line between pc and mobile computing, and contains some clever tricks that could help Microsoft push into mobile, social networking, and consumer cloud services. But the combination of a tablet and a desktop interface may also prove confusing for some users. I didn't test Windows 8 on a touch-screen device, but then most people will encounter Windows 8 on a new laptop or pc. While 62.5 million tablets were sold in 2011, according to IDC, that's only 15 percent of all the PCs sold. Instead of developing one version of Windows for tablets and another for desktops—as Apple inc has done with OSX and iOS—Microsoft chose to build an operating system that does it all. It's an approach that makes sense for Microsoft, since it will help introduce users to its mobile os.

Windows 8, the first thing you'll notice is that, instead of the familiar Windows pc, you're met with a series of tiles, each representing a different app or online service. This new start screen is based on Metro, the interface Microsoft created for Windows based smart Phone, and it includes many of the same features as that operating system. Each tile can be more than just a button, showing the latest updates from a program underneath—a new e-mail message, Facebook post, or tweet, or an upcoming calendar event. And it's simple to rearrange the tiles to make all this information accessible at a glance. The regular Windows desktop is still there, it's just hidden underneath this start screen; one of the tiles on this screen will still take you to a familiar-looking Window 7-like interface—complete with windows, a task bar, and normal Windows applications. But it's impossible to use the operating system without returning to the Metro start screen every time you want to start an application. By right-clicking on the bottom left corner of the screen, you can access things like control panel, search, run, and the command prompt. Even on a non-touch screen device, the Metro-style interface is intuitive and slick. It feels very different from any previous version of Windows 7 8 version , and distinct from either Apple inc or Google's mobile operating systems.

Windows 8 also comes with several tablet-style apps, which are shown on the start screen, as well as Metro versions of existing applications like Mail and IE. I found the Metro version of some apps, like IE 10, surprisingly enjoyable even on a desktop (pc) computer—all of the browser "chrome" disappears while you're reading a webpage; the useful stuff (the address bar, tabs, settings) returns with a click or a swipe. But having two versions of certain apps, and thus two different ways of doing things, could prove confusing for some people. Using a regular mouse and keyboard with the Metro interface can be clunky. Opening and closing app, for instance, requires grabbing them from the top and pulling them to the bottom of the screen. Some Metro application, like the Finance one, are probably well-suited to a tablet but felt out of place on a regular PC. Merging the two interfaces means the Windows button is replaced by the Metro start screen. In the conventional pc mode, clicking the bottom left corner of the screen, or hitting the Windows button on your keyboard, simply returns you to the start screen. This takes some getting used to, and it seems like a compromise made at the expense of usability on an ordinary laptop or desktop - pc.

Another big change with Windows 8 is its connection to the cloud. Whenever you log into another machine running Windows 8—with an e-mail address and password tied to Windows Live—you'll see the same start screen and have all your other preferences in place. It's a smart move, and most people will find it convenient. You can also connect your Window 8 (and Windows Live) account to various online services—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.—and these will also automatically be set up when you log in somewhere else. And, of course, you'll have access to all the documents you've saved on Microsoft's cloud service, SkyDrive. Again, though, these cloud features work best in the Metro mode—I couldn't see a simple way to access SkyDrive from regular old Windows Explorer, for example. Windows 8 also tries to be the glue that holds your online social life together—another innovation borrowed from Windows Phone. An application called People grabs contacts from online services like Facebook and Twitter (with your permission, of course) to create a single address book and social platform. The app shows Facebook and Twitter updates neatly together, and lets you reply, post, and comment without ever leaving Windows 8. Once a Facebook friend has connected his or her account to Windows 8, you can chat live via Microsoft Messenger app, and other Windows 8 apps are designed to encourage sharing via the People Application Many people will probably find this useful, but since it lacks the nuances of the actual Facebook or Twitter interfaces, it seems an innovation best suited to a mobile device.

Windows 8 introduces an app store, similar to Apple's and Google's. It's sparsely populated at the moment (I found only three "social" apps, for example), but that's hardly surprising given that the OS is still in development. In fact, Windows 8 clearly presents a neat opportunity: putting a tablet and desktop OS together should encourage Microsoft's army of developers to start building many more tablet and mobile Windows application. From now on, if you're developing a pc application for Windows 8, it'll make sense to make it tablet-compatible from the start. Microsoft has also released development tools to make it easier to build programs that work both as Metro apps and desktop applications. Overall, Windows 8 is shows an impressive amount of innovation, and many of its features promise to work extremely well on touch-operated devices. But the decision to merge the Metro interface with a conventional Windows desktop, while clever from a strategic perspective, is a bit frustrating. Given enough time, I'm sure I'd get used to Windows 8's split personality; but I'm not sure it would make any more sense.

Internet users won’t wait a second for results

Wait a second. No, that’s too long. Remember when you were willing to wait a few seconds for a computer to respond to a click on a Web site or a tap on a keyboard? These days, even 4oo milliseconds - literally the blink of an eye - is too long, as Google engineers have discovered. That barely perceptible delay causes people to search less. “Subconsciously, you don’t like to wait,” said Shree.ArvindJain, a Google company engineer, and the resident speed maestro. “Every millisecond matters.” Google and other tech companies are on a new quest for high speed, challenging the likes of Shree.ArvindJain to make fast go faster. The reason is that data-hungry smartphones and tablets are creating frustrating digital traffic jams, as people download maps, video clips of sports highlights, news updates or recommendations for nearby restaurants. The competition to be the quickest is fierce. People will visit a Website less often if it is slower than a close competitor by more than 250 milliseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second). “250 milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web,” said Harry Shum, a speed specialist at Microsoft. The performance of Websites varies, and so do Internet user expectations. A person will be more patient waiting for a video clip to load than for a search result.

And websites constantly face trade-offs between visual richness and snappy response times. As entertainment and news sites, like The New York Times site, offer more video clips and interactive graphics, that can slow things down. But speed matters in every context, research shows. Four out of five online users will click away if a video stalls while loading. The major search engines, Google and Microsoft’s Bing, are the speed demons of the Web, analysts say, typically delivering results in less than a 2nd. In 2009, a study by Forrester Research found that online shoppers expected pages to load in two seconds or fewer - and at three 2nd, a big share abandon the site. Only three years earlier a similar Forrester study found the average expectations for page load times were four seconds or fewer. The two-second rule is still often cited as a standard for Web commerce sites. Yet experts in human-computer interaction say that rule is outdated. “The old two-second guideline has long been surpassed on the racetrack of Web expectations,” said Mr.EricHorvitz, a scientist at Microsoft’s research labs.
There are laboratories around the world in Aachen, Bangalore, Beijing, Cairo, Cambridge (United Kingdom), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Mountain View, Redmond, and San Francisco - USA.