Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Nov 16, 2007
ePaper
Online edition of India's National Newspaper Friday, Nov 16, 2007 ePaper |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Front Page |
|
News:
ePaper |
Front Page |
National |
Tamil Nadu |
Andhra Pradesh |
Karnataka |
Kerala |
New Delhi |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Engagements |
Advts: Retail Plus | Classifieds | Jobs | Obituary |
Front Page
Ram Sirupurapu, executive director, and Mahendra Pratap, president of Integra MicroSystems, Bangalore, at the Mobile Asia Congress in Macau. Macau: What happens when you enter a flight number — say of Singapore Airlines — in a conventional PC-based Internet search engine? You get a long list of results that might include expansions of the abbreviation SQ... even links to various military squadrons. Enter the same flight number in Yahoo’s recently developed search engine for mobile phones — oneSearch — and you will get right on top the latest arrival and departure timings of the specific flight. The core of the algorithm or logic behind the search leader’s product specially created for portable devices is its ability to second guess what mobile users want. When they are paying for Internet on hand held, they probably don’t want a huge list of results — just one piece of information. oneSearchAt the GSM Asia Mobile Congress which ended here on Thursday, Yahoo announced, that three more Indian telecom service providers — BPL, Aircel and BSNL — would now offer oneSearch to their subscribers. Idea Cellular is already offering the service. While the India development centre of Yahoo had contributed to creating the mobile search tool currently being offered in English by 16 operators in the Asia-Pacific, it would also help create Indian language versions, said Ojas Rege, Yahoo’s vice-president for Global Mobile Products. With five mobile phones selling world-wide for every personal computer sold, the handset is emerging as the Next Wave of opportunity for Internet companies — which explains why a Net player like Yahoo is a prominent presence in what, a few years ago was an annual ‘mela’ for telecom companies alone. “Mobile Internet is still too hard to use,” said Steve Boom, Yahoo senior vice-president for Mobile and Broadband. Tetsuzo Matsumoto, Chief Strategy Office of leading Japanese Net and mobile company SoftBank agrees: “PCs were made with the motto: ‘The user is stupid.’ If something didn’t work, you blamed the user. With mobiles, the user is King. If your application does not satisfy him, he will throw the phone away.” Interestingly, SoftBank co-owns the Yahoo Japan edition, but chooses to bundle the offering with Google, MySpace and eBay. A portable Financial Applications Secure Terminal created by the Bangalore-based Integra MicroSystems took the GSM Association’s award for Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market at the Asia Mobile Congress in Macau. The award honoured Integra’s IMFast terminal — a rugged device that allowed banks to operate in unserviced rural areas, harnessing smart card technology.
He told The Hindu that it had been extensively tried out by the Corporation Bank, Canara Bank and other institutions in Karnataka. The Hindu was one of the first to highlight this technology earlier this year (‘For the cyber age, a digital thumb impression,’ The Hindu April 8)
Printer friendly
page
News:
ePaper |
Front Page |
National |
Tamil Nadu |
Andhra Pradesh |
Karnataka |
Kerala |
New Delhi |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Engagements |
|
 
 
|
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | The Hindu ePaper | Business Line | Business Line ePaper | Sportstar | Frontline | Publications | eBooks | Images | Home |
Copyright © 2007, The
Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu
|
