my fortnightly column a Dose of IT on healthcare ICT Kapil Khandelwal QuoteUnquote with KK www.kapilkhandelwal.com

1. c m y k c m y k
TECHNOMICS
PAGE 13
Stevejobstoberemembered
withstatueinHungary
IBMtobuyanalyticssoftware
companyDemandtecfor$440mn.MONDAY 12 | DECEMBER 2011
BENGALURU
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd
(005930.KS) said on Sunday
its annual mobile handset
sales this year had exceeded
300 million units for the first
time in the company's histo-
ry. The world's second
largest handset maker by
volume said in a statement it
had broken its sales record
by the end of last month.
Handset sales in 2010 were
about 280 million. “We look
forward to extending this
success going into 2012,”
J.K. Shin, President and
Head of Samsung's Mobile
Communications Business,
was quoted as saying.
Samsung said the company's
flagship Galaxy S smart-
phone series — Galaxy S and
Galaxy S II — contributed
significantly to the results.
The GALAXY S II, launched
in April, set a new sales
record for Samsung, gener-
ating 10 million-unit sales.
TWITTER REVAMPED
FOR BETTER VIEW
SSaann FFrraanncciissccoo: Twitter
revamped its website on
Thursday to make the
microblogging service easier
to use and to help compa-
nies better showcase their
brands. The new version of
Twitter, which the company
is gradually making available
starting on Thursday, will
feature a new look and feel
and faster performance, the
company said. The
redesigned website comes
as Twitter is taking steps to
introduce more advertising
on the site and as Twitter
faces increased competition
from Web giants Facebook
and Google Inc (GOOG.O) .
“We have to provide the
simplest and fastest way for
people around the world to
connect to everything they
care about,” Twitter Chief
Executive Dick Costolo said
as he introduced the new
version of the site at an
event at the company’s
future headquarters in San
Francisco. Costolo appeared
alongside Twitter co-founder
Jack Dorsey, who returned
to the company in March as
executive chairman to over-
see the company’s product
design and development
efforts. Twitter allows peo-
ple to send 140-character
messages, or “tweets,”
throughout the network of
over 100 million users. It is
one of the Web’s most pop-
ular social networking ser-
vices, along with Facebook
and Zynga. In October,
Apple Inc (AAPL.O) integrat-
ed Twitter’s service directly
into the software that pow-
ers the popular iPhones.
GOOGLEDEBUTS
DIGITALMAGAZINE
SAMSUNG: 300 M
MOBILES SOLD IN ’11
TTeecchh pplluuss
San Francisco Google is join-
ing a crowd of companies
packaging digital content in
a magazine-like format for
mobile devices. The Internet
search leader released its
version, called “Currents,”
Thursday. It works on smart-
phones and computer
tablets running on Google’s
Android software, as well as
Apple Inc.’s operating sys-
tem and its iPhone and iPad.
Currents is late to the com-
petition. It will be trying to
catch up to Flipboard, one
of the most popular applica-
tions on the iPad, and Zite,
which is owned by Time
Warner Inc.’s CNN. Yahoo
Inc. released a similar prod-
uct called Livestand last
month. Google Inc. says
more than 150 publishers
have agreed to provide
material to Currents. The
participating publishers
include Forbes, PBS,
Huffington Post and
AllThingsD. Details on how
Currents’ ad revenue will be
divided weren’t disclosed.
O
ur Hon. Minister Mr.
Kapil Sibal’s state-
ment to censor the
social media took the
world third largest net
saavy population by sur-
prise and there were
protests in the virtual
world against such a move.
What surprised me was the
timing of this move by Mr.
Sibal. We have been using
the social media for years
and why was this so urgent
now when the country and
the government has some
very pressing business to
attend to in the parliament
passing some very impor-
tant bills.
Any censorship of social
media would be regressive
move. It would curb pub-
lishers of content on the
social media and move
back the internet to the
pre-social media era where
all were subscribers to con-
tent. Such unconstitution-
al move to curb freedom of
publishing content to the
social media however so
ever offensive demon-
strates the maturity of our
society and our societal
norms to be tolerant to any
such offensive material
and runs contrary to our
Gandhian norms.
My suggestion is that
rather than spend time on
the social media trying to
figure out the heat maps of
the offensive against them,
our politicians need to be
focusing on improving the
governance and hence the
offensive material posted
would come down.
Ultimately, our political
leaders who champion the
clamp down of social media
must be prepared for resis-
tance, even ridicule; most
important, they must be
prepared to accept social
media themselves and be
used as a dashboard of
their popularity and their
services to the nation.
Ultimately for the sake of a
few hundred MPs who
have lost the people’s trust,
censorship cannot be
thrust on the millions on
the way they use and pub-
lish content to the social
media and exercise their
individuality.
Let us understand that
the fundamental weakness
of social media is the
unhindered access people
have, which also happens
to be the greatest strength
of social media and its use
in healthcare. The power to
provide real time, location
aware information and
influence is phenomenal.
Healthcare as an industry
has a premium on content
and web search, with
search for healthcare being
the third most popular use
of the internet and the
social media. Hence any
such move to censor
healthcare social media
will be regressive. An
example of censorship in
social media having a huge
impact is in the case of dis-
aster management, pan-
demic alerts, shortage of
healthcare resources to
respond to medical emer-
gencies. A case in point; a
country where social
media has been censored
had a delayed response to
disaster response because
the citizens who do publish
on the social media real
time about a catastrophic
incident are not taken seri-
ously. There is a lag of time
before the sites update of
the catastrophy as it would
go through the filters and
the screening process. This
could mean hundreds of
deaths that could be avert-
ed if the people had the
belief on the social media.
In such a scenario, we
would be seeing many hos-
pital fires raging and
nobody reporting on the
social media about the
lapses in the hospitals and
nursing homes they visit
on thee social media due to
the fear of censorship.
The second key area is
enabling research on
healthcare. Online patient
communities are a rich
source of information for
the doctors, government to
understand the need gaps
of healthcare services
being delivered and have
the potential of progress-
ing medical research. Any
curbs will give distorted
view. Education is the next
biggest benefit of social
media when it comes to
health. A large majority of
patient’s family members
review the social media to
share their experiences
and learn from other peo-
ple’s experiences. As our
country becomes the
chronic disease capital of
the world, the activity is
going to intensify. We are
going to deprive our people
the access to information
in an already fledgling
healthcare system.
There may be regular
news reports of privacy
violations, dangerous mis-
information and fraud pro-
moted via social media, but
these reports are not likely
to stop a wave of innova-
tion and conversation on
the social media with
respect to healthcare.
I rest my case in the peo-
ple’s court.
Kapil Khandelwal is
Director, EquNev Capital,
a niche investments bank-
ing and advisory services
firm and a leading health-
care and information com-
munication technology
(ICT) expert.
PPAAMMEELLAA PPAAUULL
THERE’S an intruder in my
marital bed. Bright, colorful,
seductive and easy to cradle, it
is capturing my husband’s
attention at night. And I’ve had
enough.
The interloper is my hus-
band’s iPad, a purchase I object-
ed to strenuously. After a long
day of squinting at my work
desktop, my home desktop, my
laptop and my cellphone, I am
happy to unleash my eyeballs
and retire to the quiet, still
pages of an old-fashioned book.
The iPad, with its cheerful icons
and insistent gleam, invariably
tugs my gaze away from my own
reading material, an
inescapable distraction. I can’t
read next to it. My husband
loves it.
Our tussle over e-reader ver-
sus “dead wood” (as
technophiles would cruelly
have it) isn’t the only device-
based disagreement wedging
itself between otherwise harmo-
nious relationships. Recently,
in an effort to troubleshoot a
glitch on my iPhone, I asked a
colleague for help. “I’ve thought
about getting an iPhone,” she
said wistfully. “But my husband
is very anti-Apple. He doesn’t
want any of their products in
the house.”
Next to these kinds of disputes,
political discord à la Mary
Matalin-James Carville feels
very 1994.
In one relationship, the man
may insist on a Kindle while his
wife may use a Nook. For other
couples, it’s the persistent
BlackBerry or iPhone divide or
the old PC versus Mac debate.
One partner uses a Zune rather
than the near-ubiquitous iPod.
Others argue the relative appeal
of tablets over laptops.
Technology can draw couples
closer. How adorable one pair
might look marveling at items
in the Apple store together! How
lovely to trade books on the
Kindle. Isn’t it darling the way
they exchange videos of the chil-
dren on their smartphones? So
cute (or nauseating) when cou-
ples tweet back and forth or flirt
on their partner’s Facebook
wall.
But not all couples get along
technologically. “My boyfriend,
Bill, thinks my cellphone is
ridiculous,” said Amy
Robinson, 28, who still uses a
1990s-era Nokia. “He makes fun
of me all the time: Why do you
still have that phone? What’s
wrong with you?” Bill Rice, 30,
who works at a tech startup,
was among the first people to
get a Motorola Xoom. When the
4G Android was announced, he
counted down the days to its
release. As compatible as a cou-
ple may be as friends, lovers and
domestic partners, technologi-
cal incompatibility can be infu-
riating. Because while couples
love each other, they also adore
their gadgets. Studies have
demonstrated that people devel-
op something akin to love for
their cellphones, for example.
One study found that young
Australians believed “their cell-
phones were part of them.” In
another study, only 1 percent of
American college students said
that were they to lose their cell-
phone they “would try to live
without one.” The introduction
of Siri will probably only exac-
erbate the already documented
tendency to anthropomorphize
our clever little electronic com-
panions.
Melody Chalaban, 35, an
iPhone user and public rela-
tions manager at a software
company, and Michael Swain,
35, Android owner and archi-
tect, illustrated the Save the
Date for their October wedding
with the image of an Android
robot tossing an Apple logo high
into the air. (Which person, if
either, emerged the winner is
open to interpretation.)
Even those who cannot tell a
Birkin from a Bottega Veneta
can become fervent about their
chosen brand of contraption and
fierce when challenged on its
merits. For many, their person-
al chunk of Corning Gorilla
Glass and polycarbonate
becomes symbolic, a kind of
character flag that identifies the
owner as iconoclast, Luddite,
techie or mechanically indiffer-
ent aesthete.
And a couple’s electronic iden-
tities don’t always match. “I
hate both her iPads and her
Kindle Fire,” Charles Ardai, 42,
a managing director at D. E.
Shaw Group and publisher of
Hard Case Crime books, said of
the tablet collection his wife,
Naomi Novik, 38, owns. “I have
an atavistic loathing of books
that are not paper and ink.”
These differences, Mr. Ardai
said, go deeper than a surface I-
like-this-gizmo-better-than-that-
one. “Naomi is the ultimate
early adopter because she’s fun-
damentally an optimist,” he
said.
“And I’m fundamentally a pes-
simist, which is why I write
dark, brooding fiction and have
quaint technological notions.”
(Ms. Novik, for her part, special-
izes in science fiction and fanta-
sy.)
It is interesting to note that
gender disparities in gadget
choices are not significant. A
number of studies through the
mid-2000s found that women are
more attached to their cell-
phones than men are, though
that tendency could change now
that smartphones (with their
capacity for gaming, stock price
tracking and Internet dawdling)
are taking over.
— NYT
San Francisco: It may be
one of the technology
world’s most expensive
efforts to give something
away: Hewlett-Packard
Corporation said on
Friday that it’s making its
webOS mobile system
available as open-source
software that anyone can
use and modify freely.
HP snagged the intuitive
webOS software when it
paid $1.8 billion in 2010 for
Palm Incorporation in
what became a failed
effort to revive the flailing
smartphone pioneer.
HP said it still plans to
develop and support we-
bOS. First released on the
Palm Pre smartphone in
2009, webOS ultimately
ran on several smartph-
ones.
In July, HP also used it
on its tablet computer, the
TouchPad. The webOS
software was marked by
its multitasking capabili-
ties and the ability to view
open apps as “cards” that
you can slide across the
screen, tap to enlarge or
flick to dismiss. Initially,
it was generally well-
reviewed by technology
critics.The mobile devices
never caught on with con-
sumers, though, many of
whom were more enticed
by Apple Incorporation’s
iPhone and iPad and
smartphones running
Google Incorporation’s
Android software.
Developers also weren’t
that interested in creating
apps for such a small audi-
ence. HP hopes that by
offering it to the open-
source community, more
mobile apps will be devel-
oped. The move could also
mean that other con-
sumer-electronics manu-
facturers would decide to
make devices that use the
software. Forrester
Research analyst Frank
Gillett called HP’s deci-
sion creative. He suspects
companies would have
been interested in buying
webOS from HP, but he’s
not sure how much they
would have wanted to pay
for it.
This way, HP gets to
make a limited invest-
ment in webOS’ future
and keep a hand in mobile
software. ‘If you decide
you can’t afford to get in
the game fully with both
feet, absolutely at least
keep your options open,”
he said. HP’s decision is
not unlike what AOL did
with the Netscape browser
years ago. After losing to
Microsoft’s Internet
Explorer, Netscape was
released to the open-
source community. Its
successor, Firefox, is now
one of IE’s leading rivals.
Google also has seen suc-
cess letting developers use
its open-source Android
software. The future of
webOS had been uncer-
tain since August, when
HP said it would stop mak-
ing tablet computers and
smartphones, part of a
blundered announcement
by then-CEO Leo
Apotheker, who also said
then that HP was looking
into putting its PC busi-
ness up for sale. —AP
A Dose of IT
Kapil Khandelwal
Censoring social
media is regressive
SSAANNGGEEEETTHHAA CCHHEENNGGAAPPPPAA || DDCC
BENGALURU, DEC. 11
Techie Nikhil Parakh, who is a
regular at coffee cafes like
Matteo, Café Pascucci, Java City,
Café Coffee Day and Barista,
often switches on his Wi-Fi to
access Internet in these cafes,
while waiting for his friends to
join him after a hard day at
work. While some of these cafes
offer Wi-Fi services for free, oth-
ers charge anywhere between `
30 – `50 for every 30 - 60 minutes
of Internet access time.
“Not all the cafes I visit offer
free Internet connectivity. It
would certainly be great if it is
free, as I often end up paying
upto `50 per hour to check my e-
mails and surf the net on my lap-
top, smart phone or even on my
iTouch” said Nikhil.
Retail coffee chains are going
all out to engage their customers,
largely comprising of students
and young professionals with a
lot of freebies. While music and
airconditioning are a given in
most of these cafes, retailers are
throwing in a lot more to delight
their customers.
Café Coffee Day brings out a
monthly tabloid – Café Chronicle
which provides a good read at its
cafes; Barista Lavazza has gui-
tars, scrabble and chess boards
to engage their customers as well
as a new menu introduced every
6 months. Now, the race is on to
provide free internet connectivi-
ty as well.
With Barista Lavazza’s recent
announcement of free internet
connectivity across all its cafes,
consumers are in for a big treat,
or so it seems on the surface. Dig
a little deeper and there’s a catch
to the free offer. First of all, only
128 of the 155 Barista Lavazza
cafes across the country will
offer free internet connectivity
to its consumers.
“Only the first 15 minutes of
Internet access is free for our
customers. After that, only those
customers who bill above `200 in
our Espresso bars and `250 in
our premium Creme cafes, will
be offered another 30 minutes of
free Internet access time. If they
require more time, they can opt
to pay either `50 for 60 minutes
or `30 for 30 minutes of addition-
al Internet time” said R
Shivashankar, Director – South
Asia, Lavazza.
Elaborating on the offer, he
said “We have launched a brand
new section called “Hot Deals”
on our website. Till now, con-
sumers visiting the café were
required to carry print-outs of
the deals being offered, but with
free Wi-Fi services, they will be
able to simply download these
deals and avail the offer in the
café itself. We want to engage
with consumers not just in the
traditional space but in the digi-
tal medium as well.”
Market leader, Café Coffee Day,
which has 1,200 cafes including
its premium lounges across the
country, currently offers Wi-Fi
access in 130 cafes, of which only
65 cafes offer it for free.
“We are working toward offer-
ing free Wi-Fi connectivity in
700-800 of our cafes located in big
cities/towns in six months. At
present, we are charging at the
rate of `27 for 30 minutes of
Internet time at 65 cafes” said K
Ramakrishnan, President –
Marketing, Café Coffee Day.
Smaller coffee café chains like
Pascucci and Matteo offer free
internet connectivity in all their
outlets as they are located well
within the central business dis-
trict where there is no shortage
of providers. However, for large
chains like Café Coffee Day and
Barista Lavazza, providing inter-
net connectivity in highway
cafes and other remote tourist
hubs is proving to be a big chal-
lenge.
“Very soon, free Wi-Fi services
will become a hygiene factor and
most coffee cafés will have to
offer it, if they want to engage
their customers” said
Ramakrishnan.”
Free Internet with a cuppa
DIVISIVE DEVICES
Eeks! There is a gadget intruder in my marital bed
WebOS is now an open
source project, says HP
PPAATTRRIICCKK CCOONNDDOONN
ST. PAUL, MINN.
The University of Kansas
is buying up website
names such as
www.KUgirls.xxx and
www.KUnurses.xxx. But
not because it’s planning a
Hot Babes of Kansas site or
an X-rated gallery of the
Nude Girls of the Land of
Aaahs.
Instead, the university
and countless other
schools and businesses are
rushing to prevent their
good names from falling
into the hands of the
pornography industry.
Over the past two months,
they have snapped up tens
of thousands of “.xxx” web-
site names that could be
exploited by the adult
entertainment business.
“Down the road there’s no
way we can predict what
some unscrupulous entre-
preneur might come up
with,” said Paul Vander
Tuig, trademark licensing
director at the Lawrence,
Kan., school.
The university spent
nearly $3,000 in all. It plans
to sit on the .xxx names
and do nothing with them.
The brand-new .xxx suf-
fix is an adults-only varia-
tion on .com. The .xxx
name went on sale to the
public for the first time
last week, promoted as a
way to enable porn sites to
distinguish themselves
and a means of making it
easier for Internet filters to
screen out things parents
don’t want their children
to see.
ICM Registry of Palm
Beach, Fla., is the exclu-
sive manager of the .xxx
names and sells them
through a dozen middle-
man companies such as
GoDaddy.com for an aver-
age of $100 a year.
Indiana University
spokesman Mark Land
said the school spent $2,200
to buy www.hoosiers.xxx
and 10 other such names.
Other Indiana schools took
the same step, including
Purdue University and
Ball State University.
“This is just a modest cost
of doing business in the
world we live in,” Land
said.
ICM sold .xxx names for
the past two months exclu-
sively to companies and
others that wanted to pro-
tect their brands from the
porn industry. During the
so-called sunrise sale, ICM
registered nearly 80,000
names, said chairman and
CEO Stuart Lawley.
Colleges buy up
.xxx websites
PRE-EMPTING PORN
Coffee chains in India are increasingly offering wireless Internet
access to draw customers. But beware the 'free' hype.
TTeecchh uuppggrraaddee
TTeecchh ssccaann