There is a fine balance between the often astronomical prices charged by software companies and doing all that is necessary to spread computing in developing countries.  If you try to charge a poor man thousands of rupees for an operating system or to use MS Word, do not pretend to be shocked if he makes a copy rather than buy it. Some States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu have to be commended for pushing open source so that their middle and lower classes can cross the digital divide. More...

European telecom services provider Orange is reducing its BPO involvement in India.  As part of this downgrade, Orange has ended its call centre services contract with BPO Company 24/7.   400 Agents and management at the Gurgaon Call Center of 24/7 supported Orange customers in Europe.   Orange continues to use other Indian BPO companies like EXL but all the signs are that it is trying to consolidate services in UK. More...

A couple of months ago distinguished cricketer Kapil Dev, at the function to inaugurate the .Asia domain names was quoted as saying:  “Yes, I lost out on securing KapilDev.com and KapilDev.in for myself”.  I was intrigued and outraged at the possibility of such an eminent cricketer not having access to his domain names, and decided to explore the legal options available to this ace cricketer. More...

After the recent turbulence at the Barclays Bank India Process in Sparsh, a new Vice President has been recruited and has joined since the past week. Vijay Venkatesh, the Vice President of Sparsh BPO Services handling  the Barclays process in the West and South,  has begun the handover of the Barclays Process to the new Vice President Arindam More...

On June 25, Google made a public announcement about the appointment of Patrick Pichette as its new Chief Financial Officer and Senior VP.  Patrick, 45, will be joining the Google HQ in USA on August 12, 2008. How much will Google pay its CFO? According to Google documents filed with the American Government, Patrick’s annual base salary will be $450,000 and his discretionary target bonus percentage will be 150 percent of his annual base salary.  More...