Are you a designer, developer, entrepreneur, operations manager, Project Manager, business strategist or marketer seeking to create and leverage the new web? Then attend Web2.0 EXPO where you can learn, network, share, and celebrate the Web 2.0 community.

Web 2.0 Expo is an annual gathering of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals who are building the next generation web. Web 2.0 Expo features the most innovative and successful Internet industry figures and companies providing attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web 2.0 world to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities.

Web 2.0 Expo is explicitly designed to address the needs of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals building the next generation web,including

• Business strategists
• Web and UI designers
• Product managers
• Marketing professionals
• CxOs and IT managers
• Business managers
• Developers in established companies
• Grass roots developers and hackers
• Companies and organizations tracking emerging technologies
• VCs and entrepreneurs

For more details visit

HCL Infosystems Ltd has launched HCL Beanstalk 2007 collection which includes the HCL Beanstalk Nano a 42mm high, small computing powerhouse, with big functionalities; HCL Beanstalk Lyfestyle features a complete 10-foot wide digital user interface and an entertainment enabler; HCL Beanstalk Dominator is a gaming PC with graphic and processing capabilities; and HCL Beanstalk Slim is an ultra-slim PC with all-in-one capabilities. It can be connected to just about anything because it is a single entertainment hub video recorder and player, a media jukebox, a gaming device, a digital album and a complete TV web browser and stereo system. HCL Beanstalk Nano can also be connected to a high definition TV and 5.1 speaker system to create a home theatre environment.

Read more here>>

In our recent post about SANIsoft Technologies, we have promised to get you the exclusive interview with Dr.Tarique Sani and here we go….

Storm: Sharing knowledge with your peers might be the only way to stay in business…..said by CEO Swati of SANisoft” How do you explain this to startups ???

Dr.Tarique: May be my CEO can explain it better {Swati Sani ,CEO, wife of Dr.Tariuqe Sani}

Okay, Ants! If you look at the natural history of Earth ants have survived the longest without much change. As everyone knows that ants are incredibly evolved as a co-operative.

Translating this for early stage startups would be a bit difficult because the “blaze of glory” syndrome attitude which inflicts most in the beginning. In my opinion, the key for service oriented startups is that market is large enough to accommodate several players so sharing knowledge is unlikely to harm your present clientèle and it is more likely that you will gain more than what you already know.

I am of the firm belief that whatever I am doing right now there are several people much smarter than me out there doing the same and at least some of them want to let me know that they are smarter and not necessarily in a “rubbing it in” manner.

Storm: Same extended to open source business model??

Dr.Tarique: This one is simpler to explain – Open Source exists because of sharing, sharing enables showcasing, showcasing gets you clients.

Storm: You cater to wide variety of clientele … is that with the same model??? Technology and business??

Dr.Tarique: Yes! All our current clients are those which either used or saw some open code written by us or were helped in some way by our code or posts to the forums or mailing list.

It is not that we do not market our services but by grace of open source we are not required to hard-sell ourselves in the conventional sense.

Storm: Indian Foss has a long way to go… how do u see the road map coming years.. With so many service industries taking away the talents mine??

Dr.Tarique: Indian FOSS has a long way to go but then it has come a long way as well. I don’t really have the capability of a FOSS soothsayer but going by the past trend I would say FOSS is here to stay and grow.

Service industries were always there and they will be there always – Here I would specifically like to say that to contribute to FOSS it is not at all necessary that you do it while you are at work and the excuse that there is hardly any time left after work is pretty lame as well.

Storm: CopperMine Photo gallery has caught enough fire!! Can u tell us your about CopperMine, how it started? Concept?

Dr.Tarique: With 3 million+ downloads I am sure everyone will agree with the fire part.

Though I am the lead developer on Coppermine I am not the creator. The earliest version of Coppermine was created by Gregory Demar who for various personal reasons abandoned it.

I personally got into developing Coppermine because it scratched an “itch” - I wanted a nice looking picture gallery which used MySQL instead of flatfiles for data storage. There were several features missing which I coded and gave it over to a then small community. A few more people and several more iterations of similar itches and here we are…

Storm: About your journey of SANIsoft so far?

Dr.Tarique: Tough, at times very tough but incredibly exciting. We have never had a dull day in past 9 years.

Storm: Coppermine announces the ” Google Summer Code 2007 ” why are you aiming student fraternity?

Dr.Tarique: Simple - Catch them young and they will be faithful forever, we need more faithful in the flock.

Storm: Finally, any message to wanna-be-entrepreneurs?

Dr.Tarique: Surviving is more important than monopolizing.

——————————-****———————————————–

Special thanks to Dr.Tarique Sani for giving his valuable time.

For rest all of you Techies, just stay tuned, we are going to bring you more of Xclusive series of interviews and talks.

Microsoft has acquired technology firm TellMe.The purchase gives Microsoft access to various specialty areas that TellMe focuses on, including speech recognition and mobile search technologies.Microsoft and Tellme share a vision around the potential of speech as a way to enable access to information, locate other people and enhance business processes, any time and from any device. Combining Tellme’s talented people and expertise in high-volume voice services with Microsoft’s platform, resources and worldwide customer reach will inspire new and innovative solutions.

Tellme is a leader in voice services for the phone, including its popular mobile search services on 1-800-555-TELL.TellMe also provides enterprise solutions, such as the voice portals it operates for FedEx, American Express and others.

“We’re big believers in speech as the natural interface that is going to open up computing and the potential of computing to literally billions of people,” Microsoft Business Division President Jeff Raikes said.

Read more >>

via:marketingvox,zdnet

Rare are the companies who contribute, get recognized and grow as a trusted brand.

SANIsoft Technologies is one of those rare identities.

Think of the word “SANI” and all coffee-fueled coders will think of the man who is well-known and respected in accelerating and contributing to PHP, Dr.Tarique Sani.

SANIsoft Technologies specializes in developing large, mission-critical e-biz applications which includes a big clientele. Knowingly or unknowingly you must have used either of these or atleast heard of these Open Source projects

* Coppermine Gallery

*  CheeseCake PhotoBlog * WAPpop   

 *   PHPZipLocator  

Yes, all these are the babies of SANIsoft Technologies.

People Behind it: 

 Dr.Tarique Sani: Needs no introduction!!! Still you are curious enough read it here

Swati Sani: She spearheads the business development and administration at SANIsoft.

Concept:

Adopting Open Source business model helps in many aspects of business but above all personal satisfaction of being part of a much better world.  

The logic behind SANIsoft seems pretty simple. Contribute, Collaborate and grow. 

We are bringing an Exclusive interview with Dr.Tarique Sani, he will be discussing about Open Source business model, guiding start-ups, and ofcourse about CopperMine Gallery!!!!  

Stay Tuned for some real action

OJAX is the new open-source federated search tool.It provides a highly dynamic AJAX based user interface to a federated search service for OAI-PMH compatible repository metadata.

OJAX is simple, non-threatening but powerful. It attempts to minimise upfront user investment and provide immediate dynamic feedback, thus encouraging experimentation and enabling enactive learning.

Benefits of OJAX

• Provide a single search interface across all the repositories in use in an institution or consortium.
• Or provide an improved search interface to a single repository
• Faster resource discovery.
• Easy to use, and support.

Features of OJAX

• Auto-completion of search terms
• Triggering of auto-searches
• Dynamically scrollable search results - no more navigating between pages
• Auto-expansion of search result details
• Rapid sorting of results
• Integrated with the Firefox 2 / IE 7 search feature
• Supports OpenSearch Discovery
• Stored searches as Atom feeds
• Includes an OAI-PMH harvester
• Easy to install in your own institution

Installation 

OJAX can be installed as a Web Application in any J2EE compliant servlet engine.

Packages Available

1. OJAX GUI, Web Services & Harvester
2. OJAX GUI, Web Services, Harvester & example repository index

People behind it

• Dr. Judith Wusteman
• Pádraig O’hIceadha

This software was developed by UCD School of Information and Library Studies, Dublin, Ireland, with collaboration from Industry.It leverages open source solutions funded by Sabre Holdings.

Disappointing Feature

The only disappointing feature of OJAX version0.7 is, auto-expansion of individual fields works in Firefox but does not work in versions of Internet Explorer before 7.0 because of limitations in earlier versions of IE.

Today most of the websites are Ajaxified.A pretty good example which i would like to showcase is, FlickrCash.

FlickrCash is a Multi-parameter Flickr search using jQuery.(jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery changes the way you write JavaScript.)FlickrCash searches for photos on Flickr in the most efficient way.You can see as many thumbniles as will fit in your browser.It loads upto 10 pages in the background,so it is very fast to browse through, to find the photos you need.When you move the mouse over any picture an “up arrow” and “close” button appears.When you click the thumbnile a preview of the image will popup,listing all the sizes that are available for the picture.

Can I save my search results? Yes,you can.Sign up and create an account for free(Activate your account) and save your search result by putting it together in a “lightbox” of photos with a secret URL.You can also share your lightbox.
Still you have doubt??Just click here.

Person behind it:  
Jesse Skinner-a freelancing web developer specializing in JavaScript, Ajax and CSS. More about him.

Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia and Wikia has announced that he is ready to take on search domain says a Reuters report.

He feels community powered search technology is less susceptible to spam. He said, the ranking algorithms should not be “hidden”, pointing to the counterparts which includes Google, Yahoo! and others.

At the conclusion, he also added that Wikia will be even bigger, better and popular than the flagship Wikipedia.

Read the complete story here….

Courtesy: TechTree.com http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Wikia_to_Take_on_Google_Yahoo/551-79691-643.html

In a remarkable series of events, Intel buys into Bangalore based Comat for $4 million.

Comat Technologies provides business solutions and services for Government, Healthcare and Legal streams.

Intel has taken up marginal stake in Comat which is a pure sign of Intel investing in e-governance service space.

Intel is believed to invest $4 million in the deal and which only boost up Comat to be a market leader in e-government service sector.

The company executives have confirmed the news of Intel investing in their venture.

Comat already have some of the key projects operating and has partnered some of the best providers and promoters as well.

Courtesy: SillionIndia.com
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/35203

Pageflakes is an Ajax-based start page.The site is organized into tabs, each tab containing user-selected modules called Flakes containing information such as RSS/Atom feeds, Calendar, Notes, Web search,weather forecast, del.icio.us bookmarks, flickr photos and user-created modules.You can choose to share a certain page with invited visitors or the world.Any number of pages can be added.It offers a scrollable view.Also the layout of each page is customizable.

Adding Feeds/Flakes:

You can add feeds,flakes to your page.Feeds based on Several categories are available.Pageflakes is one of a few sites that put RSS feeds, YouTube videos, web search, a to-do list and other modules in one place.You can also add your own feed.

Is the Flakes editable?

Yes, ofcourse.If you are adding Pageflakes News in your page,you are free to mention how many number of posts should appear,whether tooltip and description about the post is required or not.In the case of Flickr flake,you can view,the photos by giving the tag name or the most recent or intersting one.Single picture or 9 pictures can be viewed at a time.

May i  know the upcoming events in my city?
Yes,you can also know the upcoming events in your city by giving your Zipcode(US only).Even here you can specify the number of events to be diplayed per page.

Email configuration:

 You can also configure your email account.It supports several account types.

Search Offered:

Google search.

People behind it:

Dan Cohen, CEO -Prior to Pageflakes he was the head of My Yahoo!, Yahoo’s personalized homepage, and before that led product management for personalized products at Google, including the Google Personalized Homepage.

Christoph Janz, CPO-Back in 1997, Christoph co-founded German Internet startup DealPilot.com, one of the first comparison shopping services which got funded by Bertelsmann and has later been acquired by Shopping.com.

Omar AL Zabir, CTO-He developed projects for companies like HP, Bank of America, Citibank and other companies in the US, Australia, Germany and Bangladesh

Ole Brandenburg, CMO-He held marketing positions for several other Internet companies including Jamba, which he co-founded, Dooyoo and myBet.

Uday Walia, CIO-He was co-founder and CTO of GetSmart, JobFlash and Done.com, three VC-funded Bay Area startups. Prior to that, Uday held executive and managerial positions with at Wells Fargo Bank and Nortel. 

Storm Analysis:

In the startpage market, the independent companies seems to be innovating much faster than the grown ups.So, could Google or Microsoft be interested in acquiring a startpage, despite having their own products ?