Brier Dudley: Tech needs to do more for U.S. if it wants more visas

I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

That’s the gist of Microsoft’s ambitious proposal to revamp U.S. immigration policies regulating the flow of foreign tech workers into the country.

Microsoft wants the government to let companies bring in more skilled workers from overseas with special visas. It also wants the government to release more green cards that were allocated but unused.

To make this more palatable to a country suffering from widespread unemployment, Microsoft proposed fees of $10,000 to $15,000 that companies would pay for extra visas and green cards issued through the program.

Microsoft estimates this would raise $500 million a year, which could be earmarked for science and math education to better prepare students for tech industry jobs. That’s tomorrow’s payout for the fresh meat Microsoft wants today.

You have to give the company credit for floating a creative solution to one of the thornier political issues facing the country. But more has to be done to get Americans to accept the deal proposed by the crafty software giant.

Really, how many politicians will agree to fill jobs with more foreigners, when millions of Americans are struggling to find work?

A generation is entering the workforce with little hope of ever receiving the wages, job security and stable pensions that enabled their parents and grandparents to buy homes and send them to college.

At the same time, the country’s future depends on its ability to continue being a font of creativity and innovation and a beacon of hope and opportunity for the rest of the world.

Building higher walls along the border isn’t the solution. This is a nation of immigrants, and the recent waves built and lead some of its largest employers. The tech industry is full of examples.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin was born in Russia. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer’s father immigrated from Switzerland.

Then there’s Steve Jobs – the late Apple co-founder and icon of American ingenuity, prosperity and business prowess. He was the son of a Syrian Muslim immigrant, put up for adoption and taken in by an Armenian family in California.

None of that is any solace to American workers who can’t find work today. Especially those with technical skills or training that don’t sync precisely with the thousands of job openings advertised by companies like Microsoft.

Also outraged by talk of a “talent shortage” that underlies Microsoft’s visa proposal are smart, capable people whose careers were derailed by imperfect management systems or office politics.

Microsoft’s “stack ranking” system, which evaluates employees on a curve, regularly empties seats, raising questions about just how critical the talent shortage is in Redmond.

It’s hard to keep it in perspective.

While employees are gritting out their annual job evaluations and the unemployed are sending off their hundredth job application, a new crop of software developers is emerging from schools around the world.

We want it all. We want to help our neighbors. We also want Microsoft and other American tech companies to lure as many of the best and brightest as they can, so they work hard, build careers and invent the future here.

This is a tricky puzzle that has stymied Congress for years. It’s not getting easier with both presidential candidates talking tough about foreign economic competition while pledging to create more jobs.

President Obama went so far as to block a Chinese company’s purchase of four Oregon wind farms last week. Is he going to sign a bill allowing Chinese to take more American software jobs, just not our windmills?

To make its proposal fly, Microsoft and the tech industry need to offer more than just $500 million worth of math and science funding. Here are few ways they could make progress:

1. Create an online portal giving more details about what jobs can’t be filled domestically. Tech companies need to be more transparent about this to prove m

ore visas are needed. They also need to show special visas aren’t being used to fill jobs with lower-cost labor.

2. Use this reporting to create a system that helps government employment agencies and colleges better place job candidates. The data could also be used to focus education and retraining programs.

3. Use the $500 million in visa fees to invest in job retraining and placement services that address the current unemployment. Earmark a portion to retrain and place veterans, who could connect with programs such as Microsoft’s Military Outreach to transition to private-sector jobs. This may not produce top-tier software developers — some people have the gift, many don’t. But it would be a faster way to offset the job importation and make extra visas more palatable.

4. Before tinkering with visas, boost K-12 and college funding by eliminating offshore tax havens the tech industry uses. Microsoft alone uses these to trim its federal contribution by $7 billion since 2009, a Senate panel disclosed Sept. 20.

Microsoft is correct in saying tax law is too complex, enables these schemes and needs to be revised. But then the company turns around and suggests an elaborate new visa program.

(Don’t get me started on Microsoft’s tax breaks in Washington state, which is boosting computer -science programs but too broke for just about everything else.)

5. Link the call for additional visas with an equally bold call for broad tax reform, and a pledge to pay more taxes. That would provide more stable, continuous funding for education than unpredictable visa fees that will rise and fall with demand for foreign labor. It would also send the message that U.S. tech companies are doing everything they can to help their country.

As for the jobs at stake, the 40,000 new visas and green cards per year that Microsoft calls for won’t make a dent in unemployment. But they could actually help improve the situation.

In August, there were 12.5 million people without jobs in the U.S. The 40,000 positions are equal to 0.32 percent of that population.

The 40,000 new jobs are more likely to reduce unemployment as the imported workers buy food, cars, clothes and housing during their stay. This is obvious to everyone in the bustling area around Microsoft’s Overlake campus.

Even so, Microsoft’s proposal is a hard sell, especially when you have 12.5 million jobless voters.

No matter what happens, Microsoft gets points for using its megaphone to put an important and sensitive issue on the table during the election season.

It may want to pay us Tuesday for extra visas today, but it’s not being wimpy.

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New app that can hack your smartphone camera and spy on you

US military experts have demonstrated a new smartphone app that can turn your mobile's camera into a spying tool for cyber criminals, secretly beaming images of your house, chequebook and other private information back to them.

The software can even build up a 3D model of your house, from which the hackers can inspect your rooms, potentially gleaning information about valuables in your home, calendar entries as well as spying on you.

The app 'PlaiceRaider' was created by US military experts at Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana, to show how cybercriminals could operate in the future, the Daily Mail reported.

The creators even demonstrated how they could read the numbers of a cheque book when they tested the Android software on 20 volunteers.

As long as the app could be installed on the users phone, it can instantly begin beaming back images from the phone when it senses the right conditions, and software on the other end can then re-construct maps of the visited room.

The team gave their infected phone to 20 individuals, who did not know about the malicious app, and asked them to continue operating in their normal office environment.

The team said they could glean vital information from all 20 users, and that the 3D reconstruction made it much easier to steal information than by just using the images alone.

Researcher Robert Templeman said their app can run in the background of any smartphone using the Android 2.3 operating system.

Through completely opportunistic use of the phone's camera and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs rich, three dimensional models of indoor environments.

"Remote burglars can thus "download" the physical space, study the environment carefully, and steal virtual objects from the environment (such as financial documents, information on computer monitors, and personally identifiable information)," researchers said.

PlaiceRaider will silently take photographs, recording the time, location and orientation due to the sensors within most modern smartphones.

It will then delete any blurred or dark shots, before sending the rest back to a central server, which can reconstruct the user's room, based on information such as phone orientation.

Then the hacker can explore the user's property at will - for instance, scanning the room for calendars, private details on computer screens, and cheque-books or card details.

"We implemented on Android for practical reasons, but we expect such malware to generalise to other platforms such as iOS and Windows Phone," Templeman said.

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Hewlett-Packard announces new tablet aimed at enterprise customers

PALO ALTO -- Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) introduced its new entry into the tablet market Monday morning, announcing the launch of an enterprise-focused mobile device dubbed the HP ElitePad 900.

The Palo Alto tech giant, the world's No. 1 personal computer maker, has struggled to break into the mobile-device market that has made Apple (AAPL) the most valuable company in the United States. HP attempted to jump into the field with its $1.2 billion purchase of Sunnyvale-based Palm in 2010, offering smartphones and eventually a tablet based on the webOS platform developed by Palm. The devices did not catch on with consumers, however: HP announced less than two months after the TouchPad tablet launched in July 2011 that it would cease production of hardware based on webOS, which it decided to offer as an open-source operating system.

Instead of making another attempt to enter the consumer mobile-device market, HP CEO Meg Whitman is instead targeting businesses with the HP ElitePad 900, hoping that the Windows 8-based tablet will appeal to companies that want to have more IT control over the mobile devices employees carry.

Businesses used to face a tough purchase decision: How to find a product that will delight employees and help them be more productive, while also making sure IT can secure and manage it. The HP ElitePad meets all those tests," Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP's division focusing on PCs and printers, said in Monday's news release.

Whitman has given hints that the company would be jumping back into the market for mobile devices, saying in an August conference call with investors, analysts and journalists that HP was working on a new tablet offering, and telling the Fox Business Channel in a September interview that the company has also been working on a smartphone.

After the later interview, Moor Insights and Strategy principal analyst Patrick Moorhead predicted that HP would aim for the enterprise with any new mobile offerings, explaining that the bring-your-own-device trend will peter out a bit as workers attempt to perform more advanced functions than just accessing email.

"Email is one thing, but gaining access to confidential corporate data and true enterprise applications and being able to lock down and encrypt the data ... will become much more important," Moorhead said in an interview with the Mercury News last month.

The 10.1-inch tablet is powered by an Intel (INTC) mobile processor, part of the Santa Clara chipmaker's efforts to also push into the mobile market, and will run Microsoft's newest operating system, which has been developed with a focus on marrying the company's desktop operating system with mobile offerings. It is expected to launch in the U.S. in January 2013; pricing was not announced.

HP has focused on its enterprise offerings as the consumer PC and printer market has dwindled. In the meantime, Whitman has worked to trim down the company, with the biggest round of employee layoffs and buyouts in its history. HP announced last month that an additional 2,000 workers will be leaving the company, increasing the cutbacks to 29,000 through Oct. 31, 2014.

Hewlett-Packard stock moved higher Monday morning after the announcement, gaining as much as 3.3 percent higher by 9:30 a.m. Pacific time, when shares were trading for $17.41, a 2.1 percent gain from Friday's closing price. HP stock fell to an 8-year low in late August, hitting a low point of $16.77 on Aug. 30.

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HCL launches mobility products in UAE with ME G1 tablet PC

IT hardware company HCL Infosystems today announced the entry of its mobility products in the UAE with the launch of 3G-enabled 9.7 inch HCL ME G1 tablet PC.

NEW DELHI: IT hardware company HCL InfosystemsBSE 7.16 % today announced the entry of its mobility products in the UAE with the launch of 3G-enabled 9.7 inch HCL ME G1 tablet PC. 

The tablet PC has been launched in the GITEX Shopper, 2012 fair in Dubai. 

Other tablet PCs in the ME range will also be available at the fair and all leading consumer electronics outlets in the UAE, the company said in a statement. 

The products are also available across Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Egypt. 

"The ME series of tablets have proved to be an instant hit since its launch...We are confident that the advanced connectivity, innovative features and pre-installed applications will make it very appealing to consumers in this region too," HCL Infosystems Middle East and Africa CEO Shivkumar Gopal said.

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Fix the iPhone 5 WiFi bug

Apple’s iPhone 5 arrives: The new iPhone 5 draws long lines Friday at Apple stores around the world. The latest version of Apple’s smartphone is expected to break first-day sales records.

Apple has released information on how to fix a particularly bad iPhone 5 bug that burned through the data plans of some Verizon customers.

Those who bought the new smartphone noticed that they were being charged for using cellular data even when they were using their phones on WiFi networks. That quickly ate through their monthly data quotas and, in some cases reported on Apple’s support forums, nearly cost some users hefty overage fees.

On Sunday, the company posted a page on its help center telling users how to fix the problem.

To do so, users should head to the “About” menu in the general settings menu of the iPhone. An alert should pop up with a message saying that your carrier settings have been updated. Hit the “okay” button to get the update. Once it’s installed, turn the phone off, and then on again to activate the update.

Once your phone is back on, head to the same menu. If the problem’s been addressed, the words “Verizon 13.1” should be in the “Carrier” field.

If you were affected by the glitch, Verizon has said that it will work with its customers to fix the situation.

In a statement to 9 to 5 Mac, Verizon Wireless said that it will not be charging users for “unwarranted cellular data usage.”

Verizon hasn’t released how many iPhone 5 units it sold in the first push, though the company’s Web site shows that the iPhone 5 will not ship until Oct. 26, 2012.

Verizon iPhones shipped “unlocked,”meaning that the same device could be taken to other phone networks. While Apple sells unlocked versions of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, this is the first time that a carrier has done so. Verizon said that it will not relock the iPhone, meaning that users will have the option to take their phones to a competing network after their initial two-year contract with Verizon expires.

The unlocked iPhones will not, however, work other carriers’ high-speed 4G LTE networks.

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Zuckerberg Dresses Up for Medvedev Meeting

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc. FB +1.19% (left) shakes hands with Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister, at the Gorki residence near Moscow, Russia, on Monday, Oct. 1, 2012

Facebook Inc. co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, decided against his casual apparel and wore a formal suit Monday to meet his high-placed fan, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Mr. Zuckerberg came to Russia to boost Facebook’s position in the Russian market and encourage local engineers and programmers to work for the company. He said he was honored to have been invited to see Mr. Medvedev. He presented the prime minister a T-shirt with Mr. Medvedev’s Facebook page address.

Mr. Zuckerberg didn’t meet Russia’s leader, President Vladimir Putin, whose attitude towards social networks differs from Mr. Medvedev’s.

Facebook and other social networks were pivotal in mobilizing tens of thousands of anti-Kremlin protesters last winter and remained the main platform for opposition opinion making and discussion, in contrast with the country’s mainstream media.

Mr. Putin and some of his conservative supporters have repeatedly played down the role of social media in Russia, portraying opposition leaders as stooges of the West. Unlike Mr. Medvedev, Mr. Putin has no Facebook page.

Black-tie meetings aren’t the only items on Mr. Zuckerberg’s Moscow agenda. On Sunday, he did some sightseeing, taking pictures of St. Basil Cathedral, the Red Square, and even a local McDonald’s restaurant.

He’s giving a lecture at the Moscow State University on Tuesday.

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Apple eyes India stores, but laws may hold it back

Apple is reportedly subject to a law that requires 30 percent of a company's products to be sourced locally.

Apple's store in Hong Kong.

(Credit: Apple )

Apple's retail stores are expanding their footprint globally. But now, their move into India could be held back.

Earlier today, the Economic Times reported that Apple is currently considering opening stores in India. However, The Wall Street Journal reported today, citing sources, that the company is subject to a law that requires all foreign retailers to source 30 percent of their product sales from local companies. In other words, 30 percent of the products sold in the stores must have come from an Indian partner.

For Apple, that's a problem. The company currently relies on companies like Foxconn and others to produce its products in China. Apple does have some outsourced activities in India, which could help the company bring its stores to the country. However, one Journal source says that such a relaxation of the laws could take "a couple of years" to be completed.

Such changes are by no means unprecedented. Late last year, India nixed a rule that would allow companies selling their own products to own at most, 51 percent, of the operation. Now, they can own it all.

Apple has been quickly expanding its retail presence around the world. Last week, in fact, the company opened a second store in Hong Kong. Apple currently doesn't have any stores in India.

Originally posted at Apple

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Navy devs cook up Android spyware to map your location - in 3D

Indiana students working with the US Navy have demonstrated malware capable of mapping a room and creating a 3D-navigable space to help information thieves find what they're looking for.

The Indiana University team, which includes a representative from the Naval Surface Warfare Center, created PlaceRaider – smartphone software which covertly takes snapshots every two seconds and then runs those snaps through existing analysis software to create a 3D model, which enabled users to find bank details, snatchable property and even when the residents were likely to be out.

The idea is that the software, called PlaceRaider, could be embedded into any of the camera-enhancement applications already available in the mobile app marketplaces, providing it with all the permissions it needs to carry out the attack. Once installed, PlaceRaider runs in the background, covertly taking snaps opportunistically as the user moves around the room with the phone. The malware mutes the volume before every snap to prevent the shutter sounding. Along with the pics, the camera records its orientation to help it build the 3D model later.

Obviously useless snaps are then discarded – which amounted to almost three-quarters of them in testing – and the rest are sent back to the miscreant along with the orientation data. All that data is then run through the Bundler toolkit - a stitching package following on from Microsoft's legendary Photosynth application, which glues together unrelated photos of the same subject. The result of that is run though the open-source Patch-based Multi-view Stereo Software to create a 3D navigable space.

It's not quite that easy, in the detailed write-up (PDF, detailed and well written) the team points out that Photosynth can rely on most pictures being horizontally aligned (as they come from Flickr, or are at least deliberately taken) while their samples were at all sorts of angles though they did have the orientation data to help address that.

The point of the process was to make it easier for the miscreant to find stuff worth seeing, so the team set a room with a decent amount of data on display (cheques on the desk, a wall calendar carefully noting foreign travel, and so forth). Twenty students were then asked to complete normal mobile-phone takes on an infected HTC Amaze, without knowing the true purpose.

Once the data had been gathered, another group of students were asked to see if the data contained anything useful, with half being given the raw images (between 800 and 1,400 of them per sample) and the other half getting the 3D experience. Unsurprisingly those able to visualise the space made a much better job of finding the data, showing the analysis was worthwhile.

That's nothing to panic about right now, the process was complicated and the threat indeterminate (take a look around you now, decide what in the vicinity would be of value to a thief, and realise the threat isn't really credible just yet), but that will change as the processing power of the phone increases (enabling it to filter out more information) and more bandwidth becomes available.

It was lack of bandwidth which prevented the team from using video, but the implications are obvious. Web cams have been hijacked many times, but they generally point in one direction and thus have limited value for snooping. A mobile-phone camera gets a decent sweep of the room every time a call is answered, increasing the risk hugely.

The PlaceRaider team recommend removing the ability to mute the shutter sound (which they do by reducing the volume, as Android already insists in playing it every time a photo is taken) and limiting access to orientation data, though they also admit that a PlaceRaider-detector would be trivial to write and that anti-malware software might become increasingly necessary as the cameras we carry around start being used against us.

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Attacks on 6 Banks Frustrate Customers

Six major American banks were hit in a wave of computer attacks last week, by a group claiming Middle Eastern ties, that caused Internet blackouts and delays in online banking.

The targets of last week’s computer attacks included Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank. Some, including Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, have pointed accusations at Iran in the attacks, and one expert said Iran must at least have been aware of them.

Frustrated customers of Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo and PNC, who could not get access to their accounts or pay bills online, were upset because the banks had not explained clearly what was going on.

“It was probably the least impressive corporate presentation of bad news I’ve ever seen,” said Paul Downs, a small-business owner in Bridgeport, Pa. “This is extremely disconcerting.”

The banks suffered denial of service attacks, in which hackers barrage a Web site with traffic until it is overwhelmed and shuts down. Such attacks, while a nuisance, are not technically sophisticated and do not affect a company’s computer network — or, in this case, funds or customer bank accounts. But they are enough to upset customers.

A hacker group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters — a reference to Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, a Muslim holy man who fought against European forces and Jewish settlers in the Middle East in the 1920s and 1930s — took credit for the attacks in online posts.

The group said it had attacked the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocks the Prophet Muhammad. It also pledged to continue to attack American credit and financial institutions daily, and possibly institutions in France, Israel and Britain, until the video is taken offline. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq were also targeted.

On Friday, PNC became the latest bank to experience delays and fall offline. Customers said they had been unable to get access to PNC’s online banking site, and those that visited the bank’s physical locations were told it was because PNC, and many others, had been hacked.

Fred Solomon, a PNC spokesman, said Friday afternoon that the bank’s Web site was back online, but that it was still working to restore online bill payment. Asked why the bank was not better able to withstand such an attack, he said that while PNC had systems in place to prevent delays and disruption from hacker attacks, in this case “the volume of traffic was unprecedented.”

Representatives for other banks also confirmed that they had experienced slow Internet performance and intermittent downtime because of an unusually high volume of traffic.

Security researchers said the attack methods were too basic to have taken so many American bank sites offline. The hackers appeared to be enlisting volunteers for the attacks with messages on various sites. On one blog, they called on people to visit two Web addresses that would cause their computers to flood banks with hundreds of data requests a second. They asked volunteers to attack banks according to a timetable: Wells Fargo on Tuesday, U.S. Bancorp on Wednesday and PNC on Thursday.

But experts said it seemed implausible that this method would create an attack of this scale. “The number of users you need to break those targets is very high,” said Jaime Blasco, a security researcher at AlienVault who has been investigating the attacks. “They must have had help from other sources.”

Those sources, Mr. Blasco said, would have to be a group with money, like a nation, or botnets — networks of infected computers that do the bidding of criminals. Botnets can be rented through black market schemes that are common in the Internet underground, or lent out by criminals or governments.

Last week, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview on C-Span that he believed Iran’s government had sponsored the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions. The hacker group rejected that claim. In an online post, it said the attacks had not been sponsored by a country and that its members “strongly reject the American officials’ insidious attempts to deceive public opinion.”

The hackers maintained that they were retaliating for the online video. “Insult to the prophet is not acceptable, especially when it is the last Prophet Muhammad,” they wrote.

It is very difficult to trace such attacks back to a particular country, security experts say, because they can be routed through different Internet addresses to mask their true origin.

But experts said they had seen an increase in such activity from Iran and in the number of so-called hacktivists, hackers who attack for political purposes rather than for profit, based in Iran.

“We absolutely have seen more activity from the Middle East, and in particular Iran has been increasingly active as they build up their cyber capabilities,” said George Kurtz, the president of CrowdStrike, a computer security company, and former chief technology officer at McAfee. “There is also a strong activist movement underfoot, which should be concerning to many large companies. The threat is real, and what we are seeing now is only the tip of the iceberg.”

James A. Lewis, a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that in this case, the attack methods used were “pretty basic” to have been state-sponsored. But he added that even if the attacks were not the work of Iran’s government, the state would be aware of them because Iran monitors its networks extensively.

For Mr. Downs, the small-business owner in Pennsylvania, such half explanations were of little consolation.

“A major bank has a problem and gives no indication of what’s happening, when it started or when it will stop,” he said. “That’s pretty freaky if it’s your own business’s money and you need to do things with it.”

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Graphene may soon replace silicon for tech industry

Norwegian researchers are the world's first to develop a method for producing semiconductors from graphene. This finding may revolutionise the technology industry. The method involves growing semiconductor-nanowires on graphene. To achieve this, researchers "bomb " thegraphene surface with gallium atoms and arsenic molecules, thereby creating a network of minute nanowires. 

Norwegian researchers are the world's first to develop a method for producing semiconductors from graphene. This finding may revolutionise the technology industry.

The result is a one-micrometre thick hybrid material which acts as a semiconductor. By comparison , the silicon semiconductors in use today are several hundred times thicker. The semiconductors' ability to conduct electricity may be affected by temperature, light or the addition of other atoms. Graphene is the thinnest material known, and at the same time one of the strongest. 

It consists of a single layer of carbon atoms and is both pliable and transparent. The material conducts electricity and heat very effectively. And perhaps most importantly, it is very inexpensive to produce. "Given that it's possible to make semiconductors out of graphene instead of silicon, we can make semiconductorcomponents that are both cheaper and more effective than the ones currently on the market," explains Helge Weman of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Dr Weman is behind the breakthrough discovery along with Professor Bjorn-Ove Fimland. 

"A material comprising a pliable base that is also transparent opens up a world of opportunities, one we have barely touched the surface of," says Dr Weman. 

"This may bring about a revolution in the production of solar cells and LED components. Windows in traditional houses could double as solar panels or a TV screen. Mobile phone screens could be wrapped around the wrist like a watch. In short, the potential is tremendous." 

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New apps for Windows 8 is the only way for Microsoft to sustain in smartphone market

BANGALORE: Microsoft may have marched into the record books by bringing together the largest-ever number of developers for a coding marathon in Bangalore, but the jury is still out on whether Indian app makers will wholeheartedly embrace its Windows 8platform for mobile devices.

Creating new apps for Windows 8 is vital for Microsoft if it is to make a dent in the smartphone market, where it has a 4 pc share.

Creating numerous new applications or apps for Windows 8 is vital for Microsoft if it is to make a dent in the global smartphone market, where it has a meagre 4 per cent marketshare. Most analysts believe a part of the reason for the tepid response to the earlier Windows-based phones is they had fewer apps-only 1,00,000 or so, compared with more than 5,00,000 for Google's Android and Apple's iOS operating systems.

For Microsoft, which dominated in desktop space, Indians will be crucial to the success of Windows 8 and its attempt to be a significant force in the mobile era. A sizeable chunk of all software code-as much as a third, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer-is written by Indian developers.

More than half of the 2,567 attendees at the 18-hour application development marathon in Bangalore were college students. Of the 700 applications developed, some 300 passed the App Excellence Lab quality tests of Microsoft but only a handful have made it to the App Store yet.

Full coverage of Apple iPhone 5

"The only measure of success would be the number of apps developed and hosted on the platform," said Sanchit Vir Gogia, senior research analyst at Forrester Research.

Many apps developed by Indians have hit the one-million download mark. Cricket Worldcup Fever by Indiagames and Parking Frenzy by Games2win stand out. In last month alone, Parking Frenzy had 10 million downloads on the Google Play store.

Microsoft India, which spent more than a year's developer-engagement budget for the event, collaborated with colleges in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Jaipur to evangelise the engineering students. "We trained 2,000-plus engineering students and also organised webcasts and chat sessions prior to the event," said Harish Vaidyanathan, director of evangelism at Microsoft India.

To sweeten the deal, Microsoft has promised to give developers 70 per cent of the first $25,000 in revenue the app generates and 80 per cent thereafter. In comparison, both Google and Apple give developers about 70 per cent.

Some e-commerce companies are hedging their bets by having a presence on the Microsoft platform. Flipkart's music store Flyte has already uploaded a beta version of its app on Windows 8 phone store.

"Microsoft has made the procedure easy for app developers. We do see a big market for them here and expect to see a lot of tablets and other devices with their new OS," said Gaurav Lochal, engineering manager at Flipkart's Flyte.

AV Krishnan, head of software development at app developer PurpleTalk, said he was getting many enquiries from clients, but only a couple of them have placed orders for an app on the new platform so far.

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BSNL and WishTel to launch tablet PC IRA ICON targeted at youth, professionals

Mumbai-based electronic goods manufacturer WishTel and government owned BSNL will launch a tablet PC IRA ICON featuring 3G, Wi-Fi and bluetooth connectivity on October 1, celebrated as BSNL Day, said a Wishtel statement.

AHMEDABAD: Mumbai-based electronic goods manufacturer WishTel and government owned BSNLwill launch a tablet PC IRA ICON featuring 3G, Wi-Fi and bluetooth connectivity on October 1, celebrated as BSNL Day, said a Wishtel statement. The device is capable of delivering voice, video and data services using 3G and Voice Over Internet Protocol ( VoIP) services.

The Triple Play 7 inch Tablet PC, IRA ICON is a 800X480 pixel full angle TFT LCD capacitive multi-touch screen that runs on Android 4.0 with 1.2 GHz processor and a non-standard 1GB of RAM. It is powered by built in 3G Sim Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). The IRA ICON supports calling features 3G, Wi-Fi and bluetooth connectivity and also comes with built-in stereo speakers and a microphone. The IRA Icon is slim and weighs less than half a kilo.

It has a 0.3 MP front web camera and 2.0MP rear-facing documentation camera to support image capture, video conferencing and collaboration. It comes pre-loaded with applications that include Wish Learning, Wish Studio, Wish TV, Wish News, Wish video calling, among others. The tablet comes engineered with a 4000 mAh battery, which can give users browsing time of approximately 4-5 hours.

The tablet PC has an internal storage of 4GB (expandable to 32GB - MicroSD (TF)). The IRA ICON Triple Play Tablet PC will be available from early next month and is likely to be made available at a highly competitive price of Rs 10,500. IRA Icon is available through a national network of value-added resellers and distributors of BSNL and WishTel.

"The tablet PC has been designed to suit the needs of avid tech - savy youngsters, business environments, multi-tasking homemakers and the student fratenity alike. The BSNL Value added services like Video streaming, Mobile TV and various other applications under BSNL LIVE shall be extended to our valued customers in an increased screen at a very affordable price," said a WishTel statement quoting BSNL CMD, R K Upadhyay.

"WishTel continues to offer enhanced technologies that help Android business users experience the performance and productivity offered by tablet PCs. It is tailored to the needs of business users in markets that depend on high performance mobile workforces" said Milind Shah, CEO of WishTelO.

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