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DQI Bureau

10 May 2010 00:00 IST

New Update

Manglik New Chairman, Nasscom

Nasscom has announced Harsh Manglik as the new chairman of its executive
council for 2010-11. Manglik who succeeds Pramod Bhasin, chairman for the year
2009-10, has taken on his new role with effect from April 20, 2010. Previously
Manglik has been a member of Nasscoms executive council and is currently the
chairman and geography MD for Accenture in India. Nasscom also announced the
appointment of Rajendra S Pawar as the vice chairman of the executive council.
Pawar is the chairman and MD of NIIT Technologies. As chairman of the executive
council, Manglik will lead and assist Nasscom in catalyzing the growth of the
Indian software industry and enabling the fulfillment of its future goals and
aspirations.

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Aptech Names Easwaran HR Head

Aptech has appointed Easwaran Krishnan as its new head of human resources. As a
new member of Aptechs human resource team, Krishnan would direct the companys
HR functions to ensure that they align with the companys goals and objectives.
He brings to Aptech more than fifteen years of HR experience in change
management, recruitment and retention, succession planning, conflict resolution,
and labor relations. Before joining Aptech, he was serving as the head, HR,
Barclays Bank, Mauritius, leading fourteen HRMs and 1,200 people.

A Bored Internet Millionaire

An Australian, who became a millionaire at the age of twenty-five by setting
up an Internet firm, says he has never been so bored in his life. Leon Hill, a
Brisbane resident who founded uSocial.net, angered social networking sites when
he developed a service that sells Twitter followers and Facebook fans. Courier
Mail reported that Hills business zoomed in the past six months. He offers
1,000 Facebook fans for $197 or up to 5,000 fans for $727 while over 1,000
Twitter followers cost $87. Lawyers were hired by Facebook and Twitter to pursue
uSocial.net, but they recently ceased all action as Hill says he was doing
nothing illegal.

Hill, who is now semi-retired, has raked in over $500,000 this year, and has
$1 mn worth of business assets. He says now his only worry is boredom. With the
business pretty much able to run itself now, I dont really have to do anything.
Ive never been so bored in my life and I really need a hobby, Hill was quoted
as saying.

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The MobileStore, a telecom retailer promoted by the Essar Group, has
announced the appointment of Srikant Gokhale as its CEO. Gokhale was the CEO of
X-cite, a large format consumer durables and IT store chain (CDIT), recently
acquired by The MobileStore. In his earlier assignments, Gokhale has led Al
Ghanim Industries as MD, retail, and was responsible for its Kuwait and China
operations. The MobileStore said Gokhale takes on the reins from Rajiv Agarwal,
who was instrumental in setting up the retail chain. Agarwal now moves within
the Essar Group to a new assignment. As the new CEO, Srikant Gokhale would be
responsible for running The MobileStore business and also drive the groups
entry into retailing of CDIT products

Singh is MphasiS Director

MphasiS has appointed Rajiv Singh as its regional director for India & SAARC
operations. Singh will play a pivotal role in augmenting sales and strengthening
client relationships in this region. Prior to this, he was the president of TATA
Communications Banking InfraSolutions, TATA Groups venture in banking services,
which he initiated and fortified. Singh also set up and led Diebold India as its
MD, and was also the MD of CA, India & SAARC.

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Lenovo India Management Reshuffle

Lenovo India recently announced changes in its executive management team.
Rahul Agarwal, who has been the architect of Lenovos global marketing
communications and services, took over as executive director, key account
business (KAB), Lenovo India. As head of Lenovos global marketing
communications and services, Agarwal was instrumental in the development of the
recent global master communication platform. Meanwhile, Rajesh Lakhani took
charge as head, services support, Lenovo India. He would be responsible for
service delivery operations, parts management and service sales. He will be
responsible for growing and overseeing Lenovos services network in India and
maintaining high levels of satisfaction for Lenovos products among customers
and partners.

Menon is Venture Infotek SVP

Venture Infotek has appointed Sunith Menon as senior vice president and
head, merchant business unit. Prior to joining Venture Infotek, Menon was
business head at ICICI Bank, where he headed its merchant acquiring business for
the last three years. The merchant business division of Venture Infotek not only
offers multi-application point of sale terminals to merchants, but also
innovative products such as ExchangePlus, a currency conversion solution, and
Eazy2Pay, a fully secured Internet payment gateway.

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Desi CIOs Rule the US Government

After taking over the senior positions in the largest tech companies in the US,
and succeeding as technopreneurs, the next stop for the desi tech professionals
in the US seems to be in the governmentboth federal and state levels. While the
appointment of Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopra as the fedearl CIO and CTO
respectively by President Barack Obama sometime back brought the trend to
limelight, the growing clout of Indians in the US public sector (government, as
it is referred to there), is not exactly a new phenomenon.

It is surely a great acknowledgement for the Indian community, but it is not
an isolated case says Hardik Bhatt, CIO of Chicago city. Bhatt, who spoke to
Dataquest about the role of a CIO in the public sector in America, himself has
been the CIO of the third largest city of America for more than four years. He
was appointed by the city mayor in February 2006.

Some of the states too have appointed Indians to the highest technology
positions. That includes the largest populated American state, California. PK
Agarwal served as the director of Californias Office of Technology Services
till last week. He was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, and
left a month back to take over as global head of TiE. In 2005 even another large
American state, Minnesota, saw an Indian, Gopal Khanna, being appointed as the
state CIO by the governor. Even Kundra himself has been serving the government
in various senior technology positions, including that of a CTO of the District
of Columbia since 2007. Chopra, too, was serving as the secretary of technology
in the state of Virginia since 2006.

Incidentally, both Kundra and Chopra are the first occupants of the office of
federal CIO and CTO. The positions were created by President Obama. Some of the
other important senior technology positions occupied by Indians include the
position of director of technology in the city of Santa Clara, occupied by
Gaurav Garg; and the CIOs in the federal departments of Interior and
Transportation. Sanjeev (Sonny) Bhagowalia serves as the CIO of Department of
Interior, while Nitin Pradhan, another Indian techie serves as the CIO of the
Department of Transportation in the federal government.

While the technology roles played by the public sector CIOs that is fairly
akin to the roles in the private sector, the former also serves as the
technology face of the government, driving community initiatives in the area of
technology and application of technology in areas like healthcare, education and
energy. Interestingly, this is one area where the government pays more as
compared to the private sector, according to the latest data available from the
US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In the Computer, information systems
manager segment, the annual average salary of government professionals were
$122,020 as compared to $115,705 in the private sector. A salary survey
conducted by American IT magazine InformationWeek confirmed the same trend.
According to the magazines survey, on an average, federal IT managers earn
$121,000 in median total compensation, compared to $110,000 for IT managers
across all industries surveyed.

Shyamanuja Das

shyamanujad@cybermedia.co.in

Gokhale MobileStore CEO

The MobileStore, a telecom retailer promoted by the Essar Group, has announced
the appointment of Srikant Gokhale as its CEO. Gokhale was the CEO of X-cite,
a large format consumer durables and IT store chain (CDIT), recently acquired by
The MobileStore. In his earlier assignments, Gokhale has led Al Ghanim
Industries as MD, retail, and was responsible for its Kuwait and China
operations. The MobileStore said Gokhale takes on the reins from Rajiv Agarwal,
who was instrumental in setting up the retail chain. Agarwal now moves within
the Essar Group to a new assignment. As the new CEO, Srikant Gokhale would be
responsible for running The MobileStore business and also drive the groups
entry into retailing of CDIT products

Facebook Disables Osamas Account

Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Ladens Facebook account, which showed his address as
mountains of the world, has been disabled, after a security expert raised the
issue with the websites US owners. It was earlier reported that he was using
the social networking site to show videos and speeches to militants. With a
multi-million dollar reward for his capture, the elusive Al-Qaeda chief is
believed to be hiding in the mountains lying on the border between Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Osamas profile page was called, The leader of the Mujahideen,
Osama bin Laden.

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Talking about the decision to disable the profile, Facebook spokesman Andrew
Noyes said that the company could not ascertain if the profile belonged to Osama
or was fake. People often attempt to register fake accounts under the name of
famous or infamous people, and we have a number of technical measures designed
to prevent this behavior, a Fox News report quoted Noyes as saying. According
to a report in The Sun the page became active less than a month ago and had
attracted nearly 1,000 people. Initially, the language was Arabic, and messages
in English had also started to appear recently.

Partnership

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Naukri Facebook Integrate

Naukri.com, Indias #1 job site has announced integration with Facebooks
new social plugins on the site to make the user experience personalized and
social. In India, Naukri.com is the only job site to partner with Facebook and
feature the like button, and activity feed plugins on the site. This
integration will give users the ability to share job postings within their
circle of friends and view jobs posted by their friends on Facebook using the
Naukri platform.

IMImobile Partners with IL&FS

Technology services provider, IMImobile, and education and training company,
IL&FS Education and Technology Services, has announced the launch of English
Seekho on mobiles. Introduced with an intent of teaching conversational English
language to the non-native speaker, the initiative will offer a complete
on-the-go learning solution. IMImobile and IL&FS together have taken the
initiative to cut down the communication barriers and make the learning
experience easy so that casual lessons enable a non-native English speaker to
learn English. The initiative would address the problems faced by non-native
English speakers like restaurant waiters, farmers, etc, who face problems
understanding the English language and conversing in English. The content is
available for users proficient with seven Indian languagesHindi, Tamil,
Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalamand it also provides its users
grammar lessons through SMS.

Boobquake in D-cup!

Are promiscuous women causing earthquakes? Before answering the question
lets go straight to the controversy! Whether immodestly dressed women
create earthquake or not, this young lady has literally created an
earthquake with her campaign on Facebook, called Boobquake. US student,
Jennifer McCreight has launched the campaign to protest a statement by an
Islamic clerics suggestion that immodestly dressed women cause
earthquakes, by asking women worldover to show maximum cleavage and shake
the world.

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we
should be able to test this claim scientifically, wrote Jennifer. On
Monday, April 26, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes,
the one usually reserved for a night on the town, added the lady behind the
campaign. She added, So, whos with me? I may be a D-cup, but that will
probably only produce a slight tremor on its own. If youll be joining me on
Twitter, use the tag #boobquake!

The tremor began with a statement by Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem
Sedighi: Many women who do not dress modestly... lead young men astray,
corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently)
increases earthquakes, as quoted by the Courier Mail. Though it agitated
women groups worldover, no one expected that it would result in such a
campaign. Since launching the Boobquake Facebook page, she has enlisted
more than 30,000 supporters, say reports. So who is there to join McCreight?
Of course, this is a no-mans campaign!

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Religare Ties Up with Marco Polo

Religare Technova, a provider of software solutions to the global capital
markets, and Marco Polo Capital Markets, have announced a global strategic
partnership with to develop a joint global footprint and product offering. This
has been executed through the Religare Promoter Groups vehicle, Religare
Infotech. Marco Polos One Connection Zero Boundaries solution provides
financial institutions with a high performance platform to diverse execution
options within individual markets. The platform encompasses all global markets,
including the US, Europe and Japan, and all exchange traded asset
classesequities, fixed income, derivatives, and commodities.

India 3rd in Seeking Google Censorship

China might have been straight forward in terms of censoring Google, but
there are other countries too who bear a grudge against the search engine
for promoting unpalatable content. India has been ranked the third country
among those who regularly ask Google to remove such unpalatable content,
showed a new Google tool. Brazil and Germany came first and second with 291
and 188 requests, respectively, made over a period of six months. India made
142 requests for removing such distasteful content. Over the same period,
India also made 1,061 requests for data, ranking #4 on Googles list on
this. The top three countries in this category are Brazil (3,663), the US
(3,580), and the UK (1,166), said Business Standard report. Since China has
blocked Googles content, it did not figure in the Google rankings.

In the last month, Google had moved its China Internet search service to
Hong Kong in a bid to resolve its dispute with Beijing over censored search
results. Following a hacker attack it faced in China, Google had stopped
censoring the search results in its Chinese language website.

Flaying the search engine for this move, a Chinese government official
had said Google had violated its written promise and was totally wrong by
stopping censorship of its Chinese language search results. Like other
technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from
government agencies around the world to remove content from our services or
provide information about users of our services and products, said Google
website, according to the business daily. The map shows the number of
requests that we received between July 1, 2009 and December 31, 2009, with
certain limitations, reads the website.

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