Mobile Video Yellow Pages technology innovation

Bay Talkitec recognized by Dialogic USA

Targeted at 3G subscribers, the mobile video yellow pages application allows advertisers to get user feedback on products & services besides the ability to provide mobile coupons for interested users. It adds the crucial viral marketing capability which helps advertisers get more brand coverage & leads. Developed using SmartCall ADT and Dialogic HMP software for Linux, the application uses TDM based technique which cuts video streaming costs by 70% per call over packetized delivery. The mobile video yellow pages will catalyze new vistas in mobile VAS enabling mobile shopping and mobile advertising among others.

Bay Talkitec, a leading provider of next-gen unified contact center and 2.5G/ 3G VAS platform technology has been recognized by US-based Dialogic Corporation for its ''Mobile video yellow pages application". The application developed by Bay Talkitec was chosen as among the most innovative applications worldwide built on Dialogic components, in the first ever 'Innovator Award contest' organized by Dialogic. Bay Talkitec is the only Indian company to find recognition for its unique and path breaking application that responds to a SMS message by pushing a video to the senders' 3G mobile phone over a video call.

Read more at: http://pctelecoms.blogspot.com/2009/12/bay-talkitec-recognized-by-dialogic-usa.html

Thousands of Gaming (??) Factories, China

Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese
One of China's newest factories operates in the basement of an old warehouse. The people working at this clandestine locale are "gold farmers." Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they "play" computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash. That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.
On eBay, for example, 100 grams of World of Warcraft gold is available for $9.99 or two über characters from EverQuest for $35.50. It costs $269 to be transported to Level 60 in Warcraft, and it typically takes 15 days to get the account back at the higher level.
"For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters," said a 23-year-old gamer who works in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. "I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day."
By some estimates, there are well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers, toiling away in dark Internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, small offices and private homes.
Most of the players here actually make less than a quarter an hour, but they often get room, board and free computer game play in these "virtual sweatshops."
"It's unimaginable how big this is," says Chen Yu, 27, who employs 20 full-time gamers here in Fuzhou. "They say that in some of these popular games, 40 or 50 percent of the players are actually Chinese farmers."
"What we're seeing here is the emergence of virtual currencies and virtual economies," says Peter Ludlow, a longtime gamer and a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "People are making real money here, so these games are becoming like real economies."

Want to read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Tourist Remover

Remove moving objects such as tourists or passing cars from your photos. Take multiple photos from the same scene and the “Tourist Remover” blends them into a composite photo without any interfering elements. Swiss software engineering company futureLAB released the new online tool. The removal algorithm is fully automatic and requires only 3-10 photos of the same object taken in succession. There is no need for tripods, it works well with hand-held shots.

“Tourist Remover” is part of the feature-rich Online Photo Manager www.snapmania.com and is free. snapmania is a new way to organize and share photos and offers the ease of use of PC-based applications but runs completely in a web browser. Free sign-up is available at www.snapmania.com/trm including 100 MByte of online storage for photos.

Recycling bins: how effective are these variations?

Recycling Bins From Around the World

Check out this slideshow: http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2009/03/recycling-bins-from-around-the-world.php?page=1

With recycling gaining momentum across the globe, the slideshow brings to us the efforts in 19 different places from Portugal, to Japan to Dubai.

How effective are each of these really? Find out for yourself..

Getting your passport taking a lot of time?

Once the passport Seva Project is completed, new passports would be issued in three days time while in cases requiring police verification, within three days after the completion of the process.
Passports issued in India has gone up 2.2 times between 1997 to 2007, and by 2011, the demand would go up to 1 crore. So have the number of passport offices gone up proportionately? No. There continue to be thirty-seven offices, putting considerable strain on manpower and infrastructure, leading to inevitable delays and headaches. However, the Central Passport Organization managed to increase output and issued about 50 lakh passports in 2007 as compared to around 35 lakh in 2005.
Even though most passport offices are fully computerized, there is a growing need to make available services like real-time online tracking of status of applications; an effective enquiry and grievance redressal system; digital photo capture; and biometric passports.

It is to address issues like these and many more that the Indian government decided to launch the ambitious Passport Seva Project. The objective behind the project is to deliver all passport-related services to citizens in a timely, transparent, accessible, and reliable manner; and in a comfortable environment through streamlined processes, says Dr TV Nagendra Prasad, director (PV) & project director (Passport Seva Project).

With the first phase expected to be completed by January 2010, four pilot Passport Seva Kendras (PSKs) would be established at Chandigarh, Bangalore and New Delhi. Under the project, TCS would be required to open 77 PSKs across India.
Read full article: http://dqindia.ciol.com/content/egovernance/2009/109012402.asp

Rent a movie/ car/ house/ ANIMALS???

Rent-a-friend in Japan : Can’t afford a full time pet? Rent one…
Lola is a Persian cat who works at the Ja La La Cafe in Tokyo's bustling Akihabara district. It is one of a growing number of Cat Cafes in the city which provide visitors with short but intimate encounters with professional pets.
There are more than 150 companies in Tokyo which are licensed to hire out animals of various kinds and although beetles may be cheap, dogs are much more popular. First you pay a deposit and a hire fee. Then you are issued with a leash, some tissues and a plastic bag and given some advice on how to handle your new friend.
The right pet ? It costs about £8 ($10) an hour to spend time in a Cat Cafe.


Check this really interesting story at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7818140.stm

Monkey replaces men as waiter

We’ve heard of hi-tech hotels, classy restaurants, this one beats them all..
Your next drink will be served by a Monkey!
The Kayabukiya Tavern, north of Tokyo has employed and trained Monkey’s to wait tables. They were the tavern owners pets, but when they began to get stuff for him around the house, he decided to hire them for PEANUTS!!
Video of simians serving drinks and hot towels in a Japanese restaurant became a hit on YouTube, where a news clip circulated in which the restaurant owner, Kaoru Otsuka, said he did not teach the monkeys waiting skills. Apparently, they learned by observing humans.
Although the macaques work only two hours a day, they never get any days off.

Check the story at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1071289/Pictured-The-amazing-monkey-waiters-serve-tables-Japanese-restaurant.html

Youtube video: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=O1DBuFgt_Ug

Navigating Cities By Mood

Guidebooks and recommendations are all very well, but there's very little point in discovering a new activity, restaurant or shop if you're not in the right headspace to enjoy it. Enter I Feel London (or Toronto, or New York as is appropriate), a site that lets users search for things to do based on their mood...

Currently in beta, the I Feel sites bring a new spin to Google Maps. There's a map for nine moods covering such feelings as naughty, hungover, girly, sophisticated and broke. Andy Whitlock, I Feel's London-based founder, has kick-started each map by populating it with a handful of activities, with future contributions to be made by anyone who requests an invite.

A unique service in the travel industry check out site at: http://www.ifeellondon.com/

Taste Before you Buy

SAMPLING THROUGH PEEL ‘N’ TASTE STRIPS: a service breakthrough

A young entrepreneur has developed a way to capture flavour and create new avenue for marketing and virtual snacking.
Food and beverage marketers have long known that there's nothing quite like sampling to convince a consumer to try something new, but the high cost and limited reach of traditional sampling campaigns are often prohibitive. Enter First Flavor, which converts flavours into Peel 'n Taste strips that can be mass-distributed in a broad-scale tryvertising campaign.

First Flavor's strips contain no sugar or calories, and all ingredients have been FDA-approved. They're produced in bulk quantities of 100,000 to 10 million or more, and quantity-based pricing ranges from 7 to 40 cents per strip. Possible uses for the strips include not just print advertisements but also direct mail, product-on-product, and in-store coupon dispensing applications. Definitely an impactful move in the packaging industry.

Check out: http://www.firstflavor.com/page.cfm?c=orange
http://www.firstflavor.com/PDF/Canada.com%20Article%20(Move%20Over%20Scratch%20&%20Sniff)%201-3-07.pdf