TECHNOLOGIES TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2009 - part 1

Goodbye 2008 and welcome 2009! The past year has seen a slew of products being launched and new technology replacing the old. The New Year too promises us better technology for faster and more efficient functioning. We think this is the right time to get you started with what upcoming technologies you can expect this year. We shall cover a few areas which we think will be important and will make a difference in most people's lives. So buckle up as we take you for a quick tour.

Windows 7 :

Windows Vista has been a failure and that is no secret. But Microsoft has been working on its successor since the past few years. Slated to be released in 2009, the new operating system known as Windows 7, will try to succeed where its predecessor failed, or at least that is what the plan is. If we go by the beta versions, and if that is any indication of what the final thing would be like, then we see light at the end of the tunnel.

While it looks a lot like Vista, at least cosmetically, Windows 7 has certain things that will delight you. It will support native reading and writing Blu-ray discs. A new platform for interacting with removable devices - Device Stage will be featured. It will have support for Virtual Hard Drive images and have improved backup and restore mechanisms. Seamless audio transfers to Bluetooth 2.1 audio devices will be there. Since Microsoft no longer talks about DirectX 10.1, this will come with DirectX 11 and have improved tessellation, shading, and multithreaded rendering support. Speeds and accuracy of pen input devices will be much better.

There will be inbuilt support for many GPS positioning sensors, so you may probably roam around with your ultraportable lappy with GPS and get to know where you are heading to using Google Earth. Remote computing is another area where there will be improvement, thanks to DirectAccess tool, which will let you access your Windows 7 desktop from anywhere in the world. Those who have used Vista will probably agree that the UAC has proved to be a nightmare at times. Windows 7 will have UAC with simpler, clearer and fewer messages. In addition to a few additional accessibility tools, the bootup and shutdown times will be much faster.

Monitors :

There are going to be a lot of changes in the display technology and if you are about to buy an LCD monitor, we suggest you hang on a bit. We are already seeing LCD monitors moving from 16:10 aspect ratio to 16:9, which is the proper wide-screen ratio accepted by motion pictures. There are only a few such monitors available today, but 2009 will see them completely occupy the market and the new aspect ratio will result in monitors with weird sizes such as 15.6, 18.5, or 21.6 inches. As their prices drop, bigger LCDs with better viewing angles, higher resolution, faster response times (as low as 2 ms) and high contrast ratios due to technical enhancements will become the norm.

As an example of how new technology can improve displays, Viewsonic had demonstrated a 22-inch monitor at NVISION 08 earlier in 2008 and this featured a 120 Hz desktop with a 3 ms response time that makes motion artifacts and ghosting, a thing of the past.

LCDs and TVs with inbuilt digital media players will also start coming into the market this year. You will therefore not need to boot up your computer to watch your favorite movie or listen to your favorite track. All you need to do is simply copy it to your USB drive, plug it in the monitor's USB port and watch it on the monitor, which will play it.

The 22-inch AOC 2230Fm is one such monitor.

Multi-touch has been seen to appeal a lot to people and though there are no concrete plans to introduce any of these in the form of PC monitors, things may change suddenly, because Windows 7 has support for multi-touch and it is going to launch this year. There are other technologies such as OLED, LED and 3D display, but we do not expect to see them come into the market, or at least the Indian market, this year.

EXTRA SECOND (LEAP SECOND) ADDED TO 2008

Those eager to put 2008 behind them will have to hold their good-byes for just a moment this New Year's Eve.

The world's official timekeepers have added a "leap second" to the last day of the year on Wednesday, to help match clocks to the Earth's slowing spin on its axis, which takes place at ever-changing rates affected by tides and other factors.

The U.S. Naval Observatory, keeper of the Pentagon's master clock, said it would add the extra second on Wednesday in coordination with the world's atomic clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.

That corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST (23:59:59 GMT), when an extra second will tick by -- the 24th to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.

UTC is the time scale kept by highly precise atomic clocks around the world, accurate to about a billionth of a second per day, the Naval Observatory says. For those with a need for precision timing, it has replaced Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT.

The decision to add or remove a second is the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, based on its monitoring of the Earth's rotation.

The goal is to make sure clocks vary from the Earth's rotational time by no more than 0.9 seconds before an adjustment. That keeps UTC in sync with the position of the sun above the Earth.

Mechanisms such as the Internet-based Network Time Protocol and the satellite-based Global Positioning System depend on precision timing.

The first leap second was introduced into UTC on June 30, 1972. The last was added on December 31, 2005.

They have been added at intervals ranging from six months to seven years, Daniel Gambis, head of the IERS Earth Orientation Center at the Observatoire de Paris, wrote in an explanatory piece this month (http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/).

Among the reasons for Earth's slowing whirl on its axis are the braking action of tides, snow or the lack of it at the polar ice caps, solar wind, space dust and magnetic storms, according to the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, another timekeeper.

By contrast, a leap day, February 29, occurs once every four years because a complete turn around the sun -- our year with all its seasons -- takes about 365 days and six hours.

In 1970, an international agreement established two time scales: one based on the Earth's rotation and another on highly accurate atomic clocks.

The U.S. Naval Observatory's master clock is based on a system that now includes 50 atomic clocks, 36 based on the element cesium and 14 known as hydrogen masers.

With the Earth's rotation gradually slowing, the periodic insertion of a leap second into the atomic time scale is needed to keep the two systems within a second of each other.

SATYAM SAGA SHOWS HOLES IN INDIA CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

Just three months ago, India's fourth-largest software services exporter, Satyam Computer Services received a Golden Peacock award from a group of Indian directors for excellence in corporate governance.

Now its board is in turmoil and its shares have plunged after a botched attempt to buy two infrastructure firms in which management held stakes, sparking concerns about conflicts of interest and a lack of transparency.

Analysts say the saga exposes serious shortfalls in corporate India that must be addressed to ensure its credibility in an increasingly globalised and competitive world.

Four independent directors have resigned from the board of Satyam since the scandal erupted. But that does not fix the problem, said Premchand Palety, director of the Centre for Forecasting and Research in Delhi.

"Independent directors are supposed to be the watchdogs, the ones responsible for safeguarding the interests of minority shareholders. They clearly failed in their duty," he said.

Satyam says it adhered to corporate governance rules, appointing the requisite number of independent directors with excellent credentials, including the dean of a top business school in its hometown of Hyderabad and a professor at Harvard business school.

But there are concerns that some directors may be too close to Satyam's chairman to be considered truly independent, and all of them failed to ask tough questions about the now controversial infrastructure deals, Palety said.

"If Satyam's board was convinced about the merits of acquiring (the two firms), then good corporate governance demanded that it should have taken into confidence at least the major institutional shareholders," he said.

Even though the company aborted the plan, the damage was done: New York-listed Satyam's shares have plunged by a third since it first announced plans to acquire two sister firms for $1.6 billion and then abandoned the deal two weeks ago.

Satyam's board will meet on Jan 10 to consider more options to improve shareholder value and corporate governance.