First computer programmer inspires women in tech

In 1842, Ada Lovelace, known as the "enchantress of numbers," wrote the first computer program. 

Fast-forward 171 years to October 15 (which happened to be Ada Lovelace Day, for highlighting women in science, technology, engineering and math), and computer programming is dominated by men. Women software developers earn 80% of what men with the same jobs earn. Just 18% of computer science degrees are awarded to women, down from 37% in 1985. Fewer than 5% of venture-backed tech start-ups are founded by women. 

Those statistics, released by Symantec, the security company, and the Anita Borg Institute, which works to recruit and promote women in tech, provide context for recent debates in Silicon Valley, like why Twitter has no women on its board. 

Given that girls begin to shy away from computer science when they are young, because of a lack of role models and encouragement from parents and teachers, perhaps a short history lesson on Lovelace would be helpful. 

She was the daughter of Lord Byron, the poet, who split from her mother shortly after her birth. Her mother encouraged her to pursue math to counter her father's "dangerous poetic tendencies," according to the University of California, San Diego. 

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, some people sense change in the air. "There's a lot more focus than we've seen in the past, and a lot more hard conversations," said Telle Whitney, chief executive of the Anita Borg Institute . The Symantec and Anita Borg report tried to find a bright side — the wage gap is smaller in technology and engineering than it is in other fields, and the job opportunities are many. 

Astia, which offers programs for women tech entrepreneurs , announced on Tuesday a partnership with Google to expand its lunch series for introducing women founders to investors. And two scientists, sponsored by Brown University, are hosting a mass Wikipedia editing session for people to create and expand upon entries for women in science and technology.

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Tata Docomo launches productivity solution InstaSoft

Telecom services company Tata Docomo announced the launch of Software as a Service ( SaaS) based business productivity solution 'InstaSoft'.

InstaSoft is SaaS-based business and office productivity solution which provides end-to-end solution to enterprises, Tata Docomo in a release said.

Further to this, they can focus on their core business functions and be assured that their office productivity software is always up to date, remotely managed and secured in a scalable and cost-effective manner, the release added.

Announcing the initiative, M A Madhusudan, President - Enterprise Business Solution, Tata Teleservices Ltd, said: "Tata Docomo's InstaSoft Suite enables enterprises to be more agile, nimble and achieve better collaboration, HR management and co-creation."

"Our end-to-end solution allows customers the flexibility to select, evaluate, purchase and customise solutions to match their business needs and that too without deploying any capex," he added.

The InstaSoft suite has a set of solutions that include: InstaOffice- a messaging and collaboration solution.InstaHRMS - an end-to-end HR solution covering all aspects of employee's lifecycle.

It also includes InstaMeet, a one-stop interactive solution that will increase the company's overall reach and enable employees to work together by dissolving time and space differences.

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‘Over 60% Indians refer to social media before shopping online‘

Over 60% of internet users in urban India are influenced by social media in their purchasing decisions while shopping online, a new study by Frost & Sullivan has revealed. 

The study found that more than 60% of internet users in urban India spend four hours and more a day browsing for various purposes such as entertainment, networking, business, academics, shopping, etc. while over 60 million are registered on Facebook and 20 million on LinkedIn. 

Frost & Sullivan found that consumers are increasingly relying on social media to make their purchases, either as informed choices, or through peer conditioning. 

The study found that in the age group of 18 to 35, 60% of the respondents indicated that they shopped online once a month and 40% of the respondents expected to increase their online shopping budgets over the next 12-15 months. 

It was found that for over 30% of the survey respondents, friends or peer-reference influenced their online shopping; 17% were influenced by social media sites that included ads, product reviews, recommendations, product launch announcements, etc. 

The study further revealed that 40% of the respondents indicated that they purchased one or more items after seeing it on a social networking site and many of these purchases were routed through ads on these sites. 

Research Director at Frost & Sullivan, Vidya Nath said that for improved results and generating increased revenues online, companies need to find means to integrate online portals with social media and monitor customer behaviour to chart their marketing strategies. 

Nath further explained that the benefits of social media in terms of investment and returns appear visibly higher than incumbent methods of marketing and advertising but it must be noted that what works for one company, may not work for the other, hence social media marketing has to be carefully and strategically implemented to see tangible results.

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Social media, mobile phones easing disaster impact: IFRC

Social media and mobile phones are saving thousands of lives in disaster-prone countries but many vulnerable communities still need to be equipped with modern communications, the Red Cross said on Thursday. 

In its latest World Disasters Report, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) said the number of people affected by disasters dropped worldwide in 2012, although poorer rural areas were hit harder. 

Far-flung countries like the Philippines and Indonesia are successfully tapping modern communication to gather and spread information when disasters strike, it said in the report released in Singapore and other cities. 

But first responders in the world's most impoverished nations remain encumbered by their lack of access to basic technological tools such as early-warning systems and network infrastructure, it said. 

"Although the overall number of people affected by disasters decreased in 2012, the number of people affected in the poorest countries increased, with over 31.7 million affected," the report's editor Patrick Vinck said in a statement. 

"They are also often the ones with the least access to technology." A total of 15,706 people were killed and nearly 139 million affected in 552 natural and industrial disasters in 2012, according to the report. 

It lauded the widespread use of Twitter and text messaging in disaster-relief efforts in the Philippines when Typhoon Bopha slammed into the south of the country in December last year, leaving more than 1,800 dead and missing. 

"Thousands of lives were saved because 99% of the population have access to a mobile phone and could receive early warnings and information on staying safe," Bekele Geleta, secretary-general of the IFRC, said in a statement. 

The report said studies showed many around the world were deprived of access to technology because of "inequalities across gender, income and urban/rural divides". 

It cited the example of the Central African Republic, where 47% of women living in the capital Bangui depend on others for all types of information, compared to 30% of men. 

Nationwide, most of the poorest 20% of the population depend on others for information, while only 9% of the richest 20% were deprived of direct access to information. 

"These differences may not be surprising, but they have important implications for an increasingly technological humanitarian world, namely the potential for digital exclusion of those most vulnerable to disasters," it said. 

It also warned that even the most cutting-edge technologies cannot replace the human touch needed to reach the most vulnerable during disasters. 

"Even traditional means likes radio fail to bridge the 'last mile' and reach the 'information poor'," it said. 

In 2012, the Americas were hit the hardest in terms of damage caused by natural disasters, with Hurricane Sandy a key factor in the $103.6 billion in destruction incurred by the region. 

Globally, disasters caused an estimated $157.6 billion worth of damage.

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TCS revises hiring plans

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), country's largest IT services exporter, is considering accelerating its hiring plans after beating quarterly profit expectations on increased demand from financial clients and in Europe. 

Companies such as TCS have stepped up efforts to increase their market share in continental Europe in recent years to reduce dependence on the United States, which is by far the biggest market for country's $108 billion IT services industry. 

TCS and rivals such as Infosys and IBM won a record $6 billion of IT contracts in the three months to September 30, according to the Information Services Group consultancy, partly driven by IT outsourcing by European companies looking to cut costs. 

Continental Europe contributed 11.2% of TCS revenue for the quarter, against 9.7% in the same period last year. 

"Our pipeline is good, and I think from here we need to look at scaling in Europe," TCS chief executive N Chandrasekaran told reporters after the company posted consolidated net profit for the quarter up 34% year on year to Rs 47 billion ($760 million). 

That compared with an average of 44.7 billion rupees in estimates by 27 analyst, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. 

TCS, which employs 285,250 people, is on track to hit its gross hiring target of 45,000 to 50,000 staff for the financial year to March 31 and would consider going beyond that figure, said head of human resources Ajoyendra Mukherjee. 

"We're quite positive, so we may increase hiring numbers," CEO Chandrasekaran added. 

Shares in the company, country's largest company by market value, hit a record high on Monday in expectation of the earnings announcement after the stock market close on Tuesday. The shares were little changed on Tuesday, finishing the day at Rs 2,215.40. 

TCS's operating margin rose to a record 30.1%, with the rupee's decline against the dollar lifting the margin by three percentage points. The bulk of the company's contracts are in dollars. 

The financial sector accounted for 43.1% of the company's quarterly revenue, up from 42.8% a year earlier. 

On Friday Infosys, country's second-largest IT services provider, said that improving macroeconomic conditions augured well for client spending on IT outsourcing and raised the lower end of its revenue forecast range.

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Google Nexus 5 price leaked

News details are trickling in about the Google's upcoming Nexus 5 smartphone. A Romanian Android blog has revealed the device's pricing. According to the blog, the 16GB Nexus 5 will be priced $399, while the 32GB model will have a price tag of $449 in Play Store.

The blog notes that the new Nexus will be priced higher than Nexus 4 as Google would be launching a 4G LTE variant of the Nexus 4 at around the same time. The new model is reported to have the same technical specifications as the current-generation Nexus 4 except in terms of internal storage, the LTE-enabled model will come in either 16 or 32GB storage options.

Google is likely to launch Nexus 5 at the end of this month along with the next Android OS version called KitKat. Several details about Nexus 5 have leaked on the internet. Codenamed Hammerhead, Google Nexus 5 is said to run on Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 800 chipset, which is the most powerful in the world right now. The quad-core application processor will be clocked at 2.3GHz and will be complemented by Adreno 330 graphics processor. Its display will have 1920x1080p resolution, with on-screen resolution being 1794x1080p.

It is said that the next Nexus smartphone will be manufactured by LG, which makes the current model. Nexus 5 is said to be based on the recently unveiled LG G2 smartphone and it is expected that the device will feature a 4.96-inch display, 2GB RAM and 13MP rear camera.

There are also speculations that Google will also unveil Nexus 10 tablet alongside Nexus 5 and Android KitKat. This tablet is rumoured to be manufactured by Asus this year, instead of Samsung which made last year's model, and have a full HD screen.

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Suggest external hard drives within Rs 12,000 range

I'm looking for an external hard drive within a budget of Rs 12,000. Could you please inform me of what I should be looking for, and also suggest a few models?

— Siddharth Sharma, Manav Parekh, J Rodricks

External hard drives are of two types: portable and desktop. Regardless of whichever you decide upon, make sure it supports USB 3.0. Portable models are smaller in size. If you decide on this type, opt for one with rugged, shock-proof protection. Desktop models, while bulky, are faster performers, and you can also get higher storage capacities. Here, opt for a drive that comes with a network (Ethernet), as well as an extra USB port.

The network port will allow you to connect the drive to your home network via your router. The additional USB port will allow you to connect pen drives, whenever required. Opt for hard drives that come with good software: automated back-up and some sort of digital encryption for data security.

That said, here are a few suggestions...

For capacity

The Seagate Backup Plus Desktop 3TB (Rs 11,750) supports USB 3.0 connectivity and includes backup software that can not only back up your entire system, but can also be used to make a copy of the media posted on your social network sites.

For networked storage

Here, consider the Seagate Central Shared Storage 2TB Wireless Network (Rs 12,560). This model cannot be connected directly to a computer via USB. It is meant to be accessed over a network via a cable (RJ45) or wirelessly. Seagate's mobile app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone can also be used to access its contents. A USB port on the hard drive lets you connect flash drives as well.

For portability

The Transcend StoreJet 25H3P (Rs 5,300) or the Adata DashDrive HD710 (Rs 5,800) offer 1TB portable storage in a toughened shell to withstand the rigours of rough use. Both support USB 3.0 and include backup software.

While the Transcend StoreJet sports a dedicated one-touch back-up button, the Adata DashDrive boasts a military-grade waterproof exterior. If you need more storage space, you can pick up the 2TB WD My Passport (Rs 9,300). Unlike the StoreJet and DashDrive, the Passport is not a rugged hard drive.

Best value

The WD My Book Essential 3TB (Rs 9,950) offers value for money if storage capacity is of utmost importance. It must be noted that it uses a slower 5,400rpm hard drive compared to the 7,200rpm drive in the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop. This shouldn't be of great concern if backups and hard drive access are going to be infrequent.

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