Developing location-based services

The article was published in the Hindu on February 26, 2012

This workshop, being organised by city-based tech event management firm HasGeek, is open to developers, neogeographers and entrepreneurs working on location-based services who want to understand how to use advanced tools to manage and represent their geographic data.

The workshop will be conducted by Mikel Maron and Schuyler Erle, both from the OpenStreetMap project. The event is being held at the Centre for Internet and Society in Domlur. 

For more on this, log on to workshop.cartonama.com or contact [email protected] 

Cloud 20/20: online technical paper contest

Unisys India announced the results of Cloud 20/20 Version 3.0, the third edition of one of India's largest technical paper contests, designed to encourage innovative ideas and recognise emerging technical talent from among the country's leading engineering colleges.

Following several rigorous rounds of evaluation, the judges selected Dharmesh Kakadia from International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, as the first prize winner for his entry on ‘Network Virtualisation and Cloud Computing'. The runner-ups were Sridhar S. from Anna University, Chennai, and Poornima J.R. from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology. 

A system to protect confidential data

Xerox and computer security firm McAfee have teamed up to design a security system to help companies protect against threats to confidential data, a release from McAfee stated.

This involves integrating embedded McAfee software into Xerox technology. The two companies plan to use a whitelisting method that allows only approved files to run, offering significantly more protection than traditional blacklisting tactics, where a user has to be aware of and proactively block viruses, spyware and other malicious software.

Additionally, the solution provides an audit trail to track and investigate the time and origin of security events, and take action on them, the release added. The companies claim that the decision to partner on this was a result of a survey commissioned by the two firms that found that 54 per cent employees in India do not follow their company's IT security policies, even fewer (33 per cent) are aware of these policies. 

Automating healthcare and insurance

IT major Wipro Infotech announced that it has successfully implemented the digitisation of the Employees' State Insurance Corporation's (ESIC) Project, Panchdeep, the healthcare administration programme that automates healthcare services to over six crore beneficiaries across the country.

This is the largest e-governance programme in this sector, providing online facilities to employers and insured people for registration, payment of premium and disbursement of cash benefits.

It also automates medicare services to all insured people, and an estimated 75,000 people use this every day.

HP launches new press

Hewlett-Packard announced the launch of HP Indigo W7200 Digital Offset press for the Indian market. This has been installed at Bangalore-based printing press, the KolorKode digital press. With its robust productivity this new press offers the ability to address a wider range of long-run jobs. It will be able to deliver a broader range of jobs for a dynamic market place meeting the demands of monochrome to seven-color jobs, from spot to highlight color during a single run, without stopping or changing the settings, a press release from HP stated.