Infy to hire more freshers  
May 24, 2008
Source: PTI

MUMBAI: IT services provider Infosys on Thursday said it would be hiring most of its engineers from the top 250 engineering colleges in the country. “Jobs are changing. They are not the typical maintenance jobs. Now we have jobs in systems, consulting, BPOs and lots. So we want the best engineers,” Infosys VP & HR head Nandita Gurjar told reporters. 

For this year, Infosys has said it would be recruiting 25,000 despite the fear of a slowdown in the US. Infosys maintained that it would be going ahead with recruiting the 25,000 in this financial year. 

“Last year, we said we would hire 25,000, but ended up hiring 30,000. So this year also we would hire 25, 000,” Gurjar said. 

TCS to process passport applications        
May 24 , 2008 
SOURCE: TNN

MUMBAI: In what could be one of the most prestigious and lucrative wins in the domestic outsourcing market, infotech major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has won the contract for processing Indian passport applications. 

This is the first time passport processing has been outsourced, and the race is believed to have been keenly contested by some large public sector undertakings as well as IT and BPO firms with some large government contracts to their credit. 

TCS will now handle all the processing work related to the issuance of passports, including police verification and other procedures, the only exception being the printing of the passport, which will continue to be with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), sources close to the development told ET. 

“TCS emerged as the lowest bidder after the technical shortlist,” a source said. The contract size could be larger than Rs 1,000 crore, considering the volume of applications processed every year. 

The MEA processes close to 80 lakh passport applications a year and the number is growing every year at close to 20 per cent. 

The bid put in by TCS is learnt to be a little less than Rs 200 per passport, giving it around Rs 900 crore in revenues over the six-year duration of the contract, even if the volumes do not grow. 

TCS refused to confirm or deny the development. When contacted, a TCS spokesperson said the company had no comments. 

However, sources said the bids were finalised this week and Spanco Telesystems, along with Siemens and ILFS, was one of the four bidders after the list was narrowed down from six bidders. 3I Infotech, Wipro, Bharat Electronics and Electronics Corporation of India were also reportedly in the race. 

Wipro is believed to have made it to the final shortlist, but a source said it had quoted a higher processing fee. Based on the pricing, the contract was eventually awarded to TCS. 

Unlike the earlier contract from the Railways, the MEA contract will not have any revenue-share component. The transaction fee of Rs 200 or so will be paid by applicants directly to TCS, which will run the passport centres out of 72 locations in the country. 

The government and state-run departments are among the largest customers for IT vendors and service providers targeting the domestic market. Multinational vendors such as IBM and Hewlett Packard have identified the government sector as their key focus area, along with telecom and financial services. 

From an IT vendor’s perspective, the size and complexity of the projects not only make it lucrative but also offer huge opportunities for learning and the ability to take on similar projects in overseas markets. 

Now Adobe Flash Player 10 in Beta 
May 24, 2008 
SOURCE: Google

Adobe has launched a beta version of Adobe Flash Player 10, codenamed "Astro", which is claimed to include better 3D animation support helping create better special effects and Web experiences. "Astro" boasts Adobe's free pixel bender tools that support custom visual effects. 

Some of Flash Player 10's new features will also be incorporated into a future release of Adobe AIR and Open Screen Project, the company said. 

The beta version of Flash Player 10 includes 3D animation capabilities, and a rich-text layout (vertical and bi-directional) to support creating rich Internet applications like interactive e-books and online publications in different languages. New bit-rate video streaming between the Flash Player and intended future releases of Adobe Flash Media Server would automatically adjust video quality to changing bandwidth without the need to re-buffer, Adobe said. This would provide a seamless playback experience, the company said. 

Flash Player 10 is expected to be released later this year. It will run on Windows Vista/XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, Mac OS X, and Linux.