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Malhotra's website, designed by his daughter Anupama Malik and granddaughter Megha Malhotra, was launched by party leader L K Advani at state party office. ``BJP was the first political party to launch its website in 1998. I launched my website sometime back and now my longtime colleague is launching his website,'' Advani said at the function.

Anupama is a research scholar at IIT, Delhi while Megha is a student of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. The website projects Malhotra as a `Man of Vision' and also a leader who is out there to bring revolutionary change in the city, if voted to power.

The site also features messages from former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Advani besides a photo gallery of various aspects of Malhotra career in public life.

This website also contains black and white photographs from Malhotra's past, including the ones of taking oath as the chief executive councillor of Delhi. There are also photographs of the leader participating in social, cultural and sports activities and some on his foreign tours.

Starting in April, the century-old, Boston-based publication that is known for its international and analytical news coverage said it will push daily stories onto a revamped website and roll out a magazinestyle weekly.

The non-profit newspaper, which has won seven Pulitzer Prizes, produces a daily paper Monday through Friday that is distributed through the mail with an annual subscription rate of $210 a year.

Monitor editor John Yemma said the moves, which could result in a reduction of 10-15% of its business and editorial staff of 123, are aimed at cutting the company's $25.7 million (Rs128 crore) budget.

He said the new model of shutting down the daily newspaper and focusing reporters' efforts on the website could be a blueprint for other newspapers.

"By freeing people from the print production ball and chain, we make a much more competitive website and we will help the journalists be much more competitive," he said. "Everybody seems to recognize that print is on its way out." The move comes as US newspapers struggle with sharp drops in circulation and advertising dollars and more readers turn to the Web for their news, classified ads, and other information.

Newspapers across the US suffered an average circulation drop of nearly 5%, according to data released on Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Monitor's circulation fell from a peak of 230,000 in the early 1970s to about 52,000 today.

In an effort to hold on to readers, many newspapers have been investing more time, money, and staff to make their websites better, while some smaller, local publications have stopped printing a daily paper altogether to focus on their online operations.

"I think we are going to hear of this happening a lot more. I know there are a lot of newspapers teetering on the brink of instability," said Kelly McBride, ethics group leader for the Florida-based Poynter Institute, a non-profit resource for journalists.

"We don't know whether this will be a last dying gasp or whether it will be the first steps of transformation," McBride added.

On a warm day, in the deserted Knowledge Park in Greater Noida, Sanyam Jain stands at an intersection with a clipboard in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. He looks intently at his surroundings--a bus stop, a food kiosk, a photocopy shop--and makes quick notes.

Then, looking at his phone, he sets off at a purposeful pace down the road, looking like a prosperous surveyor with a lot of surveying on his mind. "Everything in Greater Noida is far away from everything else --even simple things like photocopy shops," he says. "People need to know where they are."

Later that night, after his wife is asleep, Jain will log on to Google Map Maker and mark the photocopy shop--as well as the bus stop, the kiosk, and the names of half-a-dozen colleges--on the Google Map of Greater Noida. And he'll add more the next day and the next, just for the satisfaction of seeing his township swell in detail online.

From being simply a practical tool to find the nearest Chinese restaurant, the launch of Map Maker two months ago spawned an excuse for many people to go offline--to set off on mapping sorties, as Jain does, and to help refine the maps of Indian cities and towns in their own time.
Also Read Wikimapia now has competition from Google's Mapmaker

There's no underestimating the power of local knowledge, Jain points out, sounding a little like a bank motto. "A satellite picture would never have been able to capture areas like Chandni Chowk in New Delhi" --areas, he explains, that consist of tiny, labyrinthine alleys invisible from space. "Or even that kiosk, for instance."

Google had fully intended to rely on this local knowledge, as Mint reported at the time of Map Maker's launch in late August.

In that sense, it resembles Wikimapia, a similar collaborative mapping tool that was launched in mid-2006 and is now a cartographic directory of more than seven million locations across the world.

When much of Google Maps still consisted of basic satellite photos, Google began releasing Map Maker in instalments. "First we asked our employees to build the areas they knew, then phased it to the friends and families of employees," says Lalitesh Katragadda, the creator of Google Map Maker.

Google Maps works as a simplified graphic overlay to satellite pictures; a road on the satellite image will show up as a road on Maps only after it has been traced and labelled.

Map Maker opens that activity up to everyone, relying on the crowd sourcing for breadth and accuracy much as Wikipedia does.

Labelled as competition to apple's iphone, which ie priced at Rs 31,000 for the 8GB model, the HTC G1 model priced cheaper to maintain an edge in India

Taiwanese handset major High Tech Computer (HTC) is planning to launch the Android platform-powered phone (popularly referred to as the Google phone) in India this December.

The price, however, will be higher than the US debut tag of around Rs 8,200 ($179).

Ajay Sharma, country manager, HTC (India), told Business Standard: "We would prefer a mobile operator tie-up to introduce the Google phone in India in December."

HTC's G1 (the Google phone model) will cost more since "the Indian market does not work on the handset subsidy model".

Android is a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices that was announced in November last year and developed by the Open Handset Alliance -- a group comprising players like Google, HTC, Intel, Motorola and Samsung.

Research firm Strategy Analytics has predicted that the G1 could sell 400,000 units by the end of 2008, accounting for 4 per cent of the smart-phone market.

To spur the growth of third-party applications, Google recently announced the Android Market, similar to Apple's App Store, where consumers can buy and download content for its mobile platform.

Labelled as competition to Apple's iPhone, which is priced at Rs 31,000 for the 8GB model, the HTC G1 could be priced cheaper to maintain an edge in India. Currently, HTC has smart-phones in the Indian market priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000. Google India officials were unavailable for comment.

HTC's device is a 3G phone with a touch-screen, slider keyboard, GPS and Wi-Fi.

HTC India, which has an exclusive partnership with Airtel, is also open to selling the G1 phone through independent retail channels. "We will decide the business model soon," said Sharma.

He believes that Google's software platform and operating system for mobile devices has the benefit of leveraging on more than 100 million online web users as well as its open source development platform and advertising-oriented business model.

Although India does not have 3G yet, Sharma said applications like maps and search could find takers. "We expect to build volumes in India and the Android-based phone should make HTC a bigger player in the wireless handset market," he said.

HTC India hopes to sell 600,000 mobile devices in 2009, having doubled sales this year from 100,000 in 2007.

His first stint as a blogger lasted all of three months.

Prasad blogged on a range of issues--the Gujjar community's agitation in Rajasthan, inflation, the Indo-US nuclear deal--but found that irrespective of his subject matter, the debate he sought to start would inevitably end up in complaints about the Indian Railways or the government.

"Dear Laluji, sadar pranam (salutations)!" read a comment on his post on the Gujjar agitation. "My husband Baba Sidhaye, (an) ex-western railway employee, is the first and only deaf and dumb by birth international cricketer in the world from India among 110 crore of Indian population. I would like to know: What your railway ministry has done to recognize his exemplary services to the nation and Indian Railways? I think that he is eligible for all the awards of government of India..." On 25 July, Prasad wryly remarked, "I would like to thank all those who have posted their comments on my blog. It has come to my notice that most of the comments are related to the functioning of railways, where people have pointed out various deficiencies in the services. We are studying all the suggestions and will try to implement them." He has not written since, though he may return to blogging later.

Prasad's blog is a case in point about why Indian politicians and political parties are reluctant to tap the growing number of Indian Internet users to further their agenda. As of September 2007, India had 49 million Internet users, according to a study by the eTechnology Group of IMRB International, a South Asian market research firm.

Access to a politician lies at the root of this reluctance, says Sanjay Sharma, managing director of QuBitTechnologies Pvt. Ltd, which has been running the official website of Indian Olympic Association president and Congress politician Suresh Kalmadi (www.skalmadi.org), the unofficial website of minister of state for information technology and communications Jyotiraditya Scindia (www.jyotiraditya.com) and an unofficial Congress party website, www.congress4india.com.

"The problem comes up when there is a flood of small and big requests. When you open up access to a politician, this happens and it is difficult to manage. Politicians have a group of handlers who restrict access and act as filters," Sharma says. "But when access is opened up, the equations get topsy-turvy and there is a fundamental conflict. The politician just wants to say things and find a way to filter access to him." Congress party's computer department chairman Vishvjit P. Singh, agrees. "The problem with interactivity is not only the bandwidth requirement but also that anyone can say anything they want." `Intolerant people'?

Qubrex recommends "Raheja Srishti" as a Good investment.

Qubrex has launched a new website Raheja Sristhi - www.srishti109.com to provide details and discussion about the new project called Raheja Srishti, located in sector 109, Gurgaon.

In addition to proximity to the 150m Dwarka Expressway, along which the Metro is slated to run, the site is one of the closest to Delhi border. Qubrex recommends this as a good investment with a time-horizon of 2 years and more.

Zillow's offering will target advertising from real estate agents and industries looking to serve new homeowners. That could include telecommunications companies wanting to pitch new phone and Internet services and retailers wishing to sell new furniture.

Display ads can appear at Web sites run by Zillow or one of the participating newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle and Denver Post. Publishing chains working with Zillow include Hearst Corp., MediaNews Group Inc., Lee Enterprises Inc. and The E.W. Scripps Co.

Newspapers hope they can charge more for online ads by connecting advertisers with the visitors most likely to buy their products. By forming networks, they are giving advertisers the type of one-stop service that is the specialty of Google and other Internet companies.

Yahoo also has helped newspapers form an advertising consortium; initially it involved help-wanted ads, but it is now broader. Some newspapers, magazines and broadcasters also belong to graphical ad networks targeting parenting, lifestyles, finances and other topics, but those tend to either be smaller or involve partnerships with independent blogs.

National brands that spend tens of millions of dollars "traditionally wouldn't be in a position to want to call 282 papers," explained Greg Schwartz, Zillow's vice president of advertising sales.

Schwartz also said that with the weak economy, targeting ads is increasingly important because "marketers need to be more precise in how they spend ad dollars."

Zillow will use targeting technology so that real-estate and related ads can appear anywhere on a newspaper's site, not just with the real-estate section.

Zillow identifies an Internet user as a likely home buyer based on visits to its site, Schwartz said. At Zillow, Web surfers can list a home for sale or see what it might sell for. Once a home is off the market, traffic to that listing tends to come mostly from its new owner, letting Zillow flag the visiting computer as belonging to a recent home buyer.

Late last year, Zillow launched a revenue-sharing partnership with the 282 newspapers that allows them to sell classified real-estate ads on Zillow's site. The expansion extends the opportunities to graphical ads and lets Zillow place ads on newspapers' sites, too.