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In what may herald a whole new democratic culture, India Inc. has begun to believe that such "social media" are vital office communication tools.

Mustafa Syed, a marketing analyst and project manager with interactive agency Webchutney, follows 40-odd colleagues on Twitter, a microblogging service accessible from cellphones and PCs, some of whom he has never met. "Everyone in the company is on G-chat as a rule, so there is no initial awkwardness communicating with people you have never met." Employees chat online with the CEO as well, taking up problems and discussing ideas. And when Webehutney CEO Sidharth Rao recently went to Bangalore to make a customer pitch, he was micro-blogging about the presentation live to employees in Mumbai and Delhi.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is trying to leverage online social networking for knowledge creation in its 110,000 employee-strong organisation "Socia1networking is popular with a very significant employee base," says vice president and Chief Technology Officer, K. Ananth Krishnan.

Part of the "highly connected and open culture" at TCS is 'My Site' - a website for every employee, embedded with social networking tools. Then there's Idea Storm - a site on which everybody is invited to comment on a theme. "We got 20,000 ideas out of a dialogue in 5 days," says Krishnan.

At Cognizant, newsletters and other types of internal communication have already migrated to the blogging platform. Employee blogging is central to Sun Microsystems' marketing communications strategy Top boss Jonathan Schwartz believes that employee blogs have "authenticated the Sun brand as much as or more than a buion dollar ad campaign could have done."

Schwartz's posts neither hype-up Sun products, nor over-slay competitors. Employees write about mundane problems like product delays, and invite readers to submit bug reports and suggestions. Says Ananth Shrinivas, 24, a Sun engineer whose posts are among the most widely read ones on technology, "Blogging is a way for employees who aren't related to a particular product or policy, to write about their valid concerns." Santhosh D'Souza, the Sun chief technologist, uses his blog as an extension of himself to write about whafs new in Sun technologies for potential customers.

Some bloggers, like Gaurav Mishra, Indica's brand head, are using their personal brand - created over years of blogging - to promote the brand they work for Mishra recently promoted an ad campaign for his brand on his blog and Facebook account.

A serious concern for employers could be what their employees say publicly on such sites. Says Mishra, "I ensure that my entire web presence is squeaky clean." TCS's Krishnan says if there is criticism of the company online, "we take it constructively". Microsoft doesn't review, edit, censor or endorse individual posts, says Joji GE, director HR, Microsoft India. "It's such freedom that inspires employees to blog responsibly and tap into unstructured knowledge networks online," says Abhishek Kant, a Microsoft community programme manager, one of the founders of Delhi Bloggers Association.

Cyberlaw expert Pavan Duggal says, "Employees should neither disclose anything confidential nor post defamatory content," he says.

This is where Carmen V. Russoniello, lab director and a professor in the College of Health and Human Performance at the university, is trying to determine whether some video games can be good for you.

"I've always thought there's something special about the concept of fun; it's one of the most powerful words in the English language," Russoniello, a former president of the American Therapeutic Recreation Association, said in North Carolina recently, just yards from a wall covered with diplomas, professional citations and the medals he earned in the Vietnam war.

"As scientists," he said, "we know there is a cascade of beneficial biochemical and hormonal effects in people when they are engaged in an activity they perceive as fun. What we're seeing here is that some video games fit into that mould and that some games can have a positive health effect on people."

Formally, Russoniello's research project is called A Randomized, Controlled Study of the Effectiveness of PopCap Video Games in Reducing Stress and Improving Mood.

Informally, that means that the professor is in the process of bringing 120 test subjects in, wiring them up like Woody Allen in Sleeper (1973), sitting them in front of a computer and then measuring their brainwaves and heartbeats as they play simple games such as Bejeweled, Bookworm Adventures and Peggle. PopCap, the Seattle company that makes those games, is paying the $23,500 (around Rs9.4 lakh) cost of the study. Russoniello intends to announce his results later this year.

Yahoo Labs Bangalore will be a centre of excellence for next-gen eration search and advertising technologies, focussed on making the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers. Rajeev Rastogi, a fromer Bell Labs director, has been appointed as vicepresident and head of the new lab.

THE NEW laboratory-with an initial team of 100 scientists and engineers-will be part of the expansion of its R&D operations in the country
YAHOO LABS Bangalore will be a centre of excellence for nextgeneration search, focussed on making the Web more relevant and simple for users

"Yahoo Labs Bangalore intends to build a world-class team focused on delivering the most valuable insights and leading-edge technologies to delight all of our customers worldwide," according to Prabhakar Raghavan, senior vice-president and head of Yahoo! Research.

He told a news conference in Bangalore, "As an extension of our research and development (R&D) operations here, Yahoo! India Lab will initially have a 100-member team of scientists and engineers. They will work on multiple projects to make the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers worldwide. The India lab will work in tandem with the other labs in the US for deriving new algorithms to enhance the performance of our search and retrieval tools. While the R&D centre will write software codes for various functions, the lab will develop products for databases," he said.

"I aim to arouse the pride of young Sikhs through my writings," says Singh, who started blogging on his phone last May "Many of my S e voted for Ludhiana's Ishmeet Singh in Star Plus's Voice of India - and con- tributed to his victory," he adds. Singh has hired two people to get him cell numbers of 200,000 Sikhs, be- cause he wants to reach "one in 10 Sikhs soon".

In Delhi, Lalchung Siem, a 33-year-old Food Corporation of India employee, whips out his phone several times a day to blog in Hmar, a language spoken by a small group of people in India. His posts are sent free to 6,106 readers in the Northeast by SMSGup- Shup, a microblogging platform. "Recently, I got an SOS call after two boys fell in a river in Saidan village, Manipur I flashed the SMS on my blog, and within minutes, a hundred people reached the spot and managed to rescue one of the boys," he says.
Micro blogging, that is, blogging on cellphones by SMSes has become a sellout among compulsive cellphone users and enthusiastic communicators.

For set-top boxes, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) will look into specifications for IPTV to help cable operators design IPTV networks, said a TRAI official.

This will give a boost to the two PSUs, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), which own close to 90 per cent of the country's total fixed telephone lines.

IPTV permits a telecom service provider to offer TV through telephone lines. A special modem is required at the customer's premises for transmitting TV signals. It uses Internet Protocol (IP) and is, thus, called IPTV. Aksh, Exicom and IOL are some of the leading IPTV service providers that have joined hands with BSNL and MTNL for IPTV services.

They are working on a franchise basis with the two PSUs.

Under this scheme, BSNL gets 10 per cent of revenue earned by the franchisee.

Now, with the government settling the regulatory issue, the two PSUs will be bullish on IPTV. Telecom operators with unified access service li cences and cellular mobile telephony service licences to provide triple-play services, as well as Internet service providers with a net worth of more than Rs 100 crore with permission from the licensor to provide IPTV, can provide the services.

Bharti Airtel started IPTV trials a year ago in 1,000 households in Gurgaon and is slated to launch its services in the first half of the next fiscal. RComm, too, plans to launch the service in 10 cities around the same time. State owned BSNL recently launched multi-play ser vices for broadband cus tomers in Pune. VSNL, too, is expected to launch IPTV ser vices soon.

India has one of the lowest average revenue per user (ARPU) in the world, both in mo bile and fixed line services. Fixed line service providers are looking at IPTV ser vices as a saviour for them. They believe that IPTV services will be able to increase their revenues.

However, the cable industry views IPTV services by telecom operators as an encroachment on their area of operations and a threat to their business model. The advantage of IPTV over cable TV is that it is a two-way medium and, therefore, more interactive in nature.

Since telecom service providers with UASL licences are permitted to provide tripleplay services, questions have repeatedly been raised on whether these operators need further regulatory clearances.

During a hearing on a petition challenging Rule 36 of the BCI that prohibits advocates from advertising their services, BCI counsel Sanjeev Sachdeva said the BCI and Sate Bar Councils have passed a resolution agreeing to amend the Rules of Professional Conduct and Ethics to enable lawyers to provide information regarding their address, standing, qualification and specializa- tion through websites.

Such information will have to be provided in the form prescribed by the BCI and respective State Bar Councils, Sachdeva told a bench headed by Justice B.N. Agrawal.

The court asked the BCI to amend rules with regard to websites and place it before it within 10 weeks.

Earlier, the BCI and the Centre had opposed the petition, saying the legal profession is not a trade.

Petitioner V B. Joshi has challenged Rule 36 terming it as archaic. Half-a-million odd lawyers, arbitrators and legal experts in India can offer their services to the world with the help of advertising, he contended.

TO its true believers at small businesses, it is a low-cost, high-return tool that can handle marketing and public relations, raise the company profile and build the brand. That tool is blogging, though small businesses with blogs are still a distinct minority. A recent American Express survey found that only 5 percent of businesses with fewer than 100 employees have blogs. Other experts put the number slightly higher.

But while blogs may be useful to many more small businesses, even blogging experts do not recommend it for the majority. Guy Kawasaki, a serial entrepreneur, managing partner of Garage Technology Ventures and a prolific blogger, put it this way: ?If you?re a clothing manufacturer or a restaurant, blogging is probably not as high on your list as making good food or good clothes.

Blogging requires a large time commitment and some writing skills, which not every small business has on hand.

But some companies are suited to blogging. The most obvious candidates, said Aliza Sherman Risdahl, author of ?The Everything Blogging Book? (Adams Media 2006), are consultants. ?They are experts in their fields and are in the business of telling people what to do.

For other companies, Ms. Risdahl said, it can be challenging to find a legitimate reason for blogging unless the sector served has a steep learning curve (like wine), a lifestyle associated with certain products or service (like camping gear or pet products) or a social mission (like improving the environment or donating a portion of revenues to charity).

Even in those niches, Ms. Risdahl said that companies need to focus on a strategy for their blogging and figure out if they have enough to say.

?As a consultant, blogging clearly helps you get hired,? she said. ?If you are selling a product, you have to be much more creative because people don?t want to read a commercial.?

Sarah E. Endline, chief executive of sweetriot, which makes organic chocolate snacks, said she started blogging a few months before starting her company in 2005 to give people a behind-the-scenes look at the business.

The kind of transparency is a popular reason for blogging, particularly for companies that want to be identified as mission-oriented or socially responsible.