Business Networking

Business networking is more than just a clever tactic that most businesses use to draw in more clientele. For many small businesses that rely upon word of mouth, proper networking skills are completely necessary for the continued success and even existence of the company. Business networking is the fundamental act of referring business to other businesses, and in the process doing the same for you. Understanding how to give quality referrals is an art form in itself, and something that is extremely important in business networking matters. The old adage of, “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine”, has never applied to anything more than to business networking.

Business networking, however, takes many forms, and you just might not realize how common it is. Whether a business is cold calling some of its clients on the phone, or meeting other business professionals for dinner or lunch, the networking is always taking place. Successful networking leads to referral business, new business ideas, and can help you to learn from other professionals in your field. Many businesses choose to become part of networking organizations such as different local chambers of commerce in their selected area. These organizations are excellent ways for business owners to participate in business advocacy and lobbying efforts, and offer a way for business owners to cooperate for their own protection. They often have meet and greet sessions where business leaders can meet together to discuss certain business topics that might be affecting them, the current business climate in their area, and formulate collective plans for the future.

Some say that up to 70 % of new companies get their business through word of mouth. Networking allows you the opportunity to formally introduce yourself and your business, to other business professionals in your area, to not only get to know them, but to get to know the services they offer as well. If business leaders can meet you and can trust you, they will have no problem sending business your way, and no problem receiving some from you. This is all part of the relationship building process that is so vital to successful business networking. It is a relationship built on trust and mutual interest.

In today’s high tech world, business networking has never been so easy and available. No longer do you need to live in the same area to network with business clients, or even in the same country. Due to popular online networking services, you can network with anybody all over the world. You no longer have to be a big shot to talk to big shots, or even speak the same language. Today you can have a dialogue, share ideas, and expand your business, all with the click of a mouse.

The Thousand Years Old Man

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Consider Yourself LUCKY

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Bharti Makes Management Changes

Bharti Airtel Limited, has announced key apex level organisational changes aimed at laying the foundation for the company’s next phase of growth. The new structure has been designed to manage future growth opportunities, exploit scale & building cost synergies, while continuing to derive advantage from on- the- ground focus on sales and enhanced levels of customer service.

Making the announcement Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman & Managing Director, Bharti Airtel said “Over the last couple of years, we have been able to build a world-class organisation. The company has grown not just in terms of revenue and market share but also in terms of strengthened processes, capabilities and governance. It has been our endeavour to empower our top management team, which has performed very well and is amongst the finest in the telecom world. Today, we have taken another step in further empowering the top management team and laid a strong foundation for embarking on the next phase of our exciting growth journey.”
Manoj Kohli, CEO & Joint Managing Director, Bharti Airtel will increasingly focus on strategy development, governance and organisation development. He will lead the overall transformation programme including creation of factories and shared services with the objective of building the right capabilities to enable the company succeed in the next phase of its growth. He will also provide additional focus on building the B2B powerhouse.

Sanjay Kapoor has been elevated from President – Mobile Services to a newly created position of Deputy CEO. In his new role, Sanjay will lead the Mobile, Telemedia and DTH businesses. Sanjay will report to Manoj Kohli.

Having led the transformation at the Telemedia business, Atul Bindal will take over as President – Mobile Services. K Srinivas who was Executive Director (East) – Mobile Services and in-charge of Sri Lanka operations will take over as Joint President - Telemedia Services. New business verticals such as M-commerce and M-entertainment etc. are being created to generate new revenue streams.

Atul and K Srinivas will report to Sanjay Kapoor.

David Nishball will continue as President - Enterprise Services and will report to Manoj Kohli. On the Enterprise side, the company’s aim is to build a B2B powerhouse over the next 5 years with enhanced focus on global wholesale voice and data, advanced Enterprise voice & mobility services, Enterprise solutions, Managed services and lead industry transformation projects.

SMS Goes Video!!

Kirusa, the world’s leading vendor of Voice SMS and a leading developer of mobile value added services, in partnership with Tetco-Voxpilot, a specialist in voice/video/data convergence, haS announced the world’s first ever Video SMS product. Exclusive previews of the Kirusa Video SMS solution, deployed on Tetco-Voxpilot Open Media Platform, are being demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Video SMS is the first in a series of 3G initiatives being developed by Kirusa as a logical extension to its current flagship Voice SMS offering.

The Kirusa Video SMS application is a combination of the most popular 3G technologies available today. The application provides captivating features such as sending Video SMS messages, replying to Video SMS messages, forwarding Video SMS messages, and group Video SMS messaging, greatly enhancing the reach of video messaging to a wider population of mobile users. Kirusa Video SMS messaging is useful in a wide variety of consumer and business situations specially tailored for 3G networks. Carriers can offer the application to drive 3G revenues leveraging their existing network infrastructure.

How it works?
Video SMS is a 3G service, based on video calling, and is used to send short video clips. The Video SMS application allows people to send live video via an SMS message.

A mobile subscriber sends a Video SMS message, similar to how he sends a Voice SMS message -- he dials the * (star) key followed by the mobile number of recipient from a 3G phone, and chooses to make a video call. The camera then gets activated, allowing the subscriber to record a live video message. After finishing the recording, the subscriber may drop the video call, or review and re-record the video SMS message. The Video SMS message is sent to the recipient as a simple SMS notification with an embedded DirectListen™ number, which when dialed to make a video call, takes the recipient directly to the Video SMS message he has received. After viewing the message, the recipient can reply to or forward the Video SMS message.

The industry says that Kirusa’s Video SMS application is easy to use, integrates seamlessly into how mobile subscribers use video calling, requires little or no learning curve, and works with the existing 3G infrastructure, and therein lies its appeal.

Well, it is now the time to pray that 3G comes to India soon because as per reports the deployment of 3G has further been delayed to late 2009-2010. It was earlier scheduled to launch by the 2008-22009. Till then lets wait with baited breath.

And the Award Goes to!

The GSMA Awards have been announced @ the MWC 2009.

And the winners are

Best Mobile Game
Winner: Gameloft - Real Football 2009

Best Mobile Music or Video Service
Winner: BBC iPlayer on Mobile

Best Mobile Advertising Service
Winner: Turkcell - Tonla Kazan

Best Mobile Brand Campaign
Winner: R/GA London - Nokia Urbanista Diaries

Best Mobile TV Service
Winner: MobiTV - MobiTV

Best Mobile Enterprise Product or Service
Winner: Vodafone - Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited

Best Mobile Internet Service
Winner: Nokia - Nokia Sports Tracker

Best Mobile Money Service
Winner: Safaricom and Vodafone - M-PESA

Highly Commended: Digital Chocolate - AvaPeeps: FlirtNation

Best Mobile Handset or Device
Winner: INQ - INQ1

Highly Commended: Nokia - Nokia E71

Highly Commended: T-Mobile - T-Mobile G1

Best Broadcast Commercial
Winner: KT Freetel – ‘Show is…’

Best Use of Mobile for Social and Economic Development
Winner: Nuance Communications - Airtel-T9 India Consumer Vernacular Messaging Campaigns

Best Network Technology Advance
Winner: Nokia Siemens Networks - Flexi Multimode BTS Software defined HSPA/LTE

Best Service Delivery Platform
Winner: NewBay Software - LifeCache Social Networking Solution 2.0

Best Billing & Customer Care Solution
Winner: Expert System - COGITO Answers

Best Mobile Technology Breakthrough
Winner: RIM - BlackBerry Storm 9500 SurePress Screen

The Green Mobile Award
Winner: Smart Communications - Alternative Power for Cell Sites program

GSMA's CEO Award for Outstanding Environmental Contribution
Winner: Nokia

Government Leadership Award
Winner: The Government of France

GSMA Chairman’s Award
Winner: Research in Motion (RIM)

The 2009 mobile innovation global award champion
Winner: Cootek, China (Most Innovative Wireless Device-centric Technology)

The 2009 mobile innovation global award competiton
Winner: EMEA TOURNAMENT

Most Innovative Wireless Device-centric Technology
Winner: Intivation, Netherlands

Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform
Winner: Sunbay, Switzerland

Most Innovative Mobile Application in a Vertical Market
Winner: WorldMate, USA

Most Innovative Consumer Application or Service
Winner: Mobile Nordic AS, Norway

Most Innovative True Mobile Start-Up
Winner: Advanced Receiver Technologies, USA

We appreciate and applaud them for their outstanding contribution to the mobile industry !!!

Lenovo Comes Off Age

Lenovo has launched the ThinkPad W700, claimed to be the first-ever 17-inch widescreen mobile workstation engineered to deliver unparalleled performance to data and graphics-intensive user environments, in India. It incorporates the built-in digitiser and colour calibrator in a mobile workstation and combines these innovations with technologies such as new NVIDIA Quadro FX mobile graphics.

The workstation supports the upcoming Intel mobile quad core processor which delivers the ultimate computing performance for mobile computing professionals. In line with Lenovo’s environmental commitments, the ThinkPad W700 meets and exceeds criteria for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star 5.0 programme for computers, which takes effect in July 2009.

The ThinkPad W700 can be configured with up to 8GB of memory. It includes WiFi wireless connectivity. Additionally, users can connect to other devices wirelessly using mobile workstation models featuring Bluetooth and ultra wideband technology. Models supporting WiMAX will be available later this year. This mobile workstation can also be equipped with dual internal hard drives with RAID configurations, including solid state drive storage.

The notebook comes equipped with an optional 400-nit WUXGA display that provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstation models and the 72 per cent wide colour gamut provides more than 50 per cent greater colour intensity. A 7-in-1 multi-card reader and five USB ports give users flexibility in transferring and accessing digital content. Additionally, the workstation comes with an optional compact flash reader and Blu-ray DVD burner/ player. RAID 0 configuration help users’ access and save their data faster than traditional disk-writing methods. Users can also opt for RAID 1 for mirrored data redundancy.

An optional mini-dock extends the mobile workstation’s capabilities with eSATA and digital audio ports as well as convenient cabling for power, external monitors and peripherals. The ThinkPad W700 also features BIOS/port disablement and an optional fingerprint reader, a smartcard reader and hard drives with full-disk encryption. It carries more than 20 certifications from independent software vendors.

Priced at Rs 1,49,000, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation is available through www.lenovo.in and Lenovo business partners.

SHIFT + DEL Your Computing Dilemmas

The creator of the first keyboard-and-mouse desktop set, Logitech, is up for surprises yet again. And this time their innovation, the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution, surely aims to help people navigate through today's complex digital environments with ease. With a warranty of three years, the premium keyboard-and-mouse combination features a cordless laser mouse, a dynamic keyboard display and Bluetooth wireless technology.

The cordless laser mouse will transform many people's expectations about mouse navigation. Its MicroGear Precision Scroll Wheel technology offers people various modes of navigation. Firstly, they can fly effortlessly through long documents and web pages, spinning the scroll wheel freely to move through up to 10,000 lines of a spreadsheet in seven seconds. Secondly, they can set the scroll wheel to click-to-click mode, which allows precision movement through lists, slides or photos. And that’s not all. Its one-touch search, allows people to obtain Internet search results for any word or phrase on a web page or in a document. Finally, the thumb wheel can be set to launch the Windows Vista Flip 3D feature or to zoom in and out of documents and photos. And the rapid-charging stand eliminates the inconvenience of replacing batteries.

Well, the surprises of MX5500 don’t end here. It comes with a dynamic keyboard display which has a 2.95-by-.79 inch built-in LCD screen. It shows the time and date, calculator, temperature, Web site favorites, a keystroke counter, e-mail updates and media information, such as band and song titles.

Last but not the least the cordless desktop MX 5500 features Bluetooth 2.0 Enhanced Data Rate (EDR) wireless technology, which provides an easier setup experience, as well as a more robust and reliable connection than with previous generations of Bluetooth technology. But why is Bluetooth so important, one wonder. Its worth a mention because it allows users to use the desktop at a distance of up to 30 feet (10 meters) from their PC.

And there are no collaboration problems. Because the keyboard, mouse and receiver are pre-paired during manufacturing, people need only plug in the mini-receiver to a computer's USB port to connect the keyboard and mouse to the PC. The MX 5500 desktop's receiver can also be used as a Bluetooth hub, enabling other Bluetooth devices, such as a Bluetooth-enabled cell phone or a PDA, to connect to a computer through the hub. All a computer needs is a compatible Bluetooth stack installed for this mode to be functional.

To top it all the Logitech Cordless Desktop MX 5500 Revolution is priced at INR 11,495 and is available at all leading electronic stores in India.