RBI makes it mandatory for banks to provide additional authentication for online shopping
According to a new ruling, the Reserve bank of India -RBI has made it mandatory for all banks issuing credit and debit cards to provide additional authentication information over and above what is visible on the card. To prevent fraud and to make online shopping safer, the RBI has made it mandatory, from 1st August onwards, for all online 
transactions to have increased security via registering each and every card with its respective merchant. This means that every time you make an online transaction you will have to enter this additional password given by the merchant. This is commonly known as VBV - Verified by Visa or MSC - MasterCard SecureCode
I bank with HDFC and I can vouch that they already have certain systems like NetSafe which generates a code which can be used only one time, along with that there is virtual keyboard that enhances the security if you are using a public computer. I am sure other major Indian private sector banks Like ICICI and Kotak would also have such systems in place. This new ruling will add an entirely new dimension to online security and as per the directive issued by the RBI on February 18, also mandates a system of online alerts to the cardholder for all ‘card not present’ transactions that exceed Rs 5,000. The circular adds that banks would be penalised for non-adherence to the directive under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007.
How will VBV /MSC work:
Once your card is activated with the Verified by Visa / Master Secure service, your card number will be recognized whenever you make an electronic payment. After you provide your credit card details online, you will be redirected to your issuer website and then required to specify your Verified by Visa / Master Secure authentication details. Your identity will be verified, and the transaction will be completed. Based on the authentication provided by your issuer, the transaction will be processed & you will get a confirmation. View the demo of how VBV/MSC work
How can you get VBV or MSC password:
- HDFC Bank
- ICICI Bank
- Citibank
- HSBC Bank
- Standard Chartered
- Deutsche Bank
- State Bank of India
- Axis Bank
- ABN Amro
With successful implementation of this enhanced security system people can breathe easy while swiping their credit cards at various establishments like restaurants, petrol pumps and areas like grocery stores without any fear as credit number, expiry date and CVV number will not be enough to make fraudulent transactions online.
Nandan Nilekani and Congress initiate unique identification card project
On 26th June 2009 times of India carried the headlines “Infy boss to join the government as a cabinet minister.” I am proud of Nandan Nilekani for taking a though call (quitting Infosys) and Congress government 
making him cabinet minister. Such events are very rare in the Indian context as we don’t see many corporate leaders leave their ivory tower and get into a government job to help shape the future of India. In this case the government has taken the lead and have shown their willingness to embrace the professionalism and expertise brought in by the corporate leader thereby creating an opportunity to co-exist and work towards a better tomorrow. Successful execution of this project will mean more and more corporate leader will be able to work closely with the government and act as a change agent.
The UIC project
Unique Identification Card project will ensure that every Indian will have a unique smart card which will act as their identification proof. This is a highly ambitious Rs 150000 Cr project which will include details like Name, sex, address, marital status, photo, identification mark and finger biometrics of every Indian. More details on unique identification project.
The national ID card project (popularly called UID project) is expected to provide an impetus to the domestic demand for IT products and solutions. A billion smart cards for a billion population means a multi-billion dollar business opportunity for domestic IT companies. Some estimates suggest that the project will create at least 100,000 additional jobs in the country in the next three years. The government had earmarked Rs 100 crore in the interim budget to kick start the UID project. The entire ID card project is estimated to be in the range of around Rs 1.5 lakh crore, with the first phase - which will cover ultra urban, urban, and semi-urban populations - offering an Rs 6,500 crore business opportunity.
According to the plan, govt proposes to issue a unique identification number to all citizens by 2011. The Unique Identification Authority of India shall own and operate the unique identification number database and also look after its updation and maintenance on an ongoing basis. In the beginning, the UID number will be assigned based on the National Population Register or electoral rolls. Photographs and biometric data will be added to make the identification foolproof. (Source Indiatimes.com)
The Scheme was introduced in early part of 2003 but the government has been delaying it all this while and i am glad and confident that this time around the project would be complete on time. Can’t wait to get my smart card.
Beware and Prepare for floods in Mumbai – June and July 09
Beware and Prepare for floods in Mumbai - June and July 09
I would like to use this platform to spread the message so that more and more people in Mumbai can be aware about 
the weather and rain forecast this season (June-July 2009) and be prepared to tackle the floods in a better way. I request the you to help me spread this message further in your own networks, who knows you could save a life.
The city of Mumbai was flooded on 26th July 2005. There was major flooding across the city leading to tremendous loss of property most importantly more than 1000 lives. Flooding lead to a huge chaos as the civic authorities were not prepared for this kind of a disaster and there was very little that one could have done, especially when you are in a reactive mode. The memory of floods in Mumbai haunts every mumbaikar and every year one hopes that it doesn’t flood this time around.
This time around we are smarter with experience and with available warnings in advance we should be able to take necessary precaution. Our very own BMC has done lot of good work to make sure that they are well equipped to tackle such unfortunate events. I would like to urge the citizens of Mumbai to play their own role in reducing the effect this time around by being well informed and being prepared.
Information to keep in mind:
Floods in Mumbai are attributable to simultaneous occurrence of rainfall and high tides. If, the rainfall is in excess of 200 mm in a day (24 hrs), floods can occur anytime irrespective of tides. However, if there is moderate rainfall but the tide is in excess of 4.50 meters at the same time, the city of Mumbai is sure to get flooded. Accordingly, heavy floods are anticipated on the following days in Mumbai, if there is excessive rainfall at the time of high tides.
| Date | Day | Tide (Meters) | Time |
| 24/6/09 | Wednesday | 4.95 | 13:41 |
| 25/6/09 | Thursday | 4.97 | 14:24 |
| 23/7/09 | Thursday | 5.01 | 13:23 |
| 24/7/09 | Friday | 5.05 | 14:03 |
| 25/7/09 | Saturday | 4.94 | 14:43 |
.
The BMC wants the state government to declare a holiday on 24 July 2009, since the tide level will be the highest since the last century. Mumbaites are, therefore, requested to cooperate with the administration by restricting their movements and certainly not to take their vehicles out on the roads these days. There are speculations about very high waves on 22 July 2009 as well due to solar eclipse. Public should, therefore, keep away from the beaches that day. Also, please advise your friends and relatives outside Mumbai not to plan a trip to Mumbai around these days.
Microsoft Bing – search and decision engine
This week has been excellent for social media enthusiasts. The second big news in of the week is the pre-launch of 
Microsoft Bing, its redefined version of search. The search engine will be launch officially on June 3rd. I have been using it for a week and as heavily as i use Google search and I must say Bing is refreshing and it really takes a step further in terms of competitive search market. I really liked the way they have positioned Bing as a decision engine and not as a search engine. Microsoft has positioned Bing as an engine that will help its users take a well informed decision once the search has been made. The sneak preview suggests that Bing delivers the decision making experience.
I especially liked the way in which Bing is designed in terms of its layout, site architecture and structure. Microsoft has been trying hard to offer an integrated option for msn search, msn portal and Windows life (profiling / social networking) and it can be said that they have been fairly successful to a certain extent. Via Bing, Microsoft has made it clear that they are going to fight the search battle head on and have its share of the pie too.
Bing adopts a new approach by enhancing the user experience level via intuitive tools. Initially that will help users making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business (Source: Microsoft website)
Important features:
- Guided Search: The most important thing is guided search, most users are good at first level search and while refining search they are lost for words or techniques or just of appropriate keyword. Bing really scores in this area. The best match features is also very useful in avoiding smart SEO players with poor content.
- Image search: The image search and display is excellent and especially when it shows just like windows explorer is the icing on the cake. Images can be sorted by Size, Layout, Colour, Style and People.
- Video Search: video search results are very well structured and just by hovering on a particular video it starts playing right in the search so you can preview and move on. Same way video search can be further refined by Length, Screen Size, Resolution and Source.
- News and Maps: heaps better as compared to Windows Live search.
- xRank: Microsoft has developed their own ranking system. xRank will show a detailed report on why that particular keyword has been ranked high or low. The ranking largely depend on the links that are being viewed the most for that particular keyword/key phrase.
I would say it’s very nice to have another option to search besides Google. Services like these will push each and every player in the search space and eventually users like us will derive huge benefits. As stated by Steve Ballmer “There is no way to change the whole game in one step.” But search “deserves a good feature war.” And Bing will be rolling out new features as it goes forward.
If bing is able to really guide users to make better decision and there by save a lot of search time and improve accuracy then it will surely put pressure on Google.
Download the complete Microsoft Bing feature list here
Digital Sky Technologies invests $200M in Facebook
Facebook has announced that Digital Sky Technologies (DST), one of the leading internet investment groups globally with significant stakes in Eastern European and Russian internet businesses, has made a $200 million investment in Facebook in exchange for preferred stock, representing a 1.96 percent equity stake at a $10 billion valuation.
In addition, DST has indicated that it is planning to offer to purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing common stockholders that would facilitate liquidity for current and former employees’ vested shares in the company.
About Facebook
Founded in February 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment. Facebook is a privately held company and is headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.
About Digital Sky Technologies
DST was founded in 2005 and is the largest internet investor in the Russian-speaking and Eastern European markets and one of the leading investment groups globally to exclusively focus on internet and internet-related companies. DST is a privately held holding company backed by leading Russian and Western financial institutions. DST has offices in Moscow and London. For more information please visit http://www.dst-global.com.
Here is what some of the industry analysts say about this investment, “Facebook hasn’t yet learned to earn money, and there are delusions in the market about growth potential for these social networks. Digital Sky became a victim of such a delusion.”
My Question is Will Facebook and its other rivals Twitter, MySpace etc will be able to match the profits of their Internet predecessors?
Google Wave – web based real time communication platform
During the Google I/O keynote, Google utilized the opportunity to launch its new communication platform called Google Wave. We all know that Google likes to surprise the world by developing application that changes the rules of the game. This time around they have raised the bar further by launching Google Wave as an open source application. Earlier anyone outside of Google never knew what they are up to or what’s next, but this time around they have launched as open source and the lucky few who got to attend the Google I/O Keynote will all get Google Wave accounts to play with and give feedback. You can view the detailed video where Google’s VP of engineering, Vic Gundotra shared the vision behind Google Wave and where the immense possibility with HTML 5 standards to do all those cool stuff within your browser.
The way I look at it - Google Wave will provide single and integrated interface for Email, Chat, Social Media, collaborative communication, knowledge management, sharing of information and various productivity tools. It will enable Real Time communication right from your browser. Real time communication is the next big thing to happen on the internet and Google wants to take early lead by having an army of open source developers helping them build wonderful gadgets, widgets, extensions using Google Wave API.
If Wave gets acceptance level that Gmail has today then I am sure that it will change the Social media communication landscape forever.
What all can I do with Google Wave using its single interface:
- Emails - They prefer to call it a wave as according to Google Email is dead
- IM - In a new Wave and also within an email conversation
- Micro blogging
- RSS reader
- Documents sharing and collaborative editing
- Project Management, Task allocation, and measurement (extent not knows as yet)
- Google Maps
- Games
- Post articles on my blog , receive blog comments and reply blog comments
- Social and Business networking
- Information aggregator
- Let me not forget - Search
- And much more as going forward individuals will find newer better ways to use Wave to communicate across applications.
My research and experience on how to manage multiple twitter accounts.
Twitter has already become an integral part of every marketer’s social media strategy. During the initial days of twitter people were not too sure on its business potential and only thought of it as a personal / social networking tool. The sheer volume of twitter follower and tweets has forced everyone sit back and have a close look at twitter and find innovative ways to use twitter for personal as well as business use. I have been a twitter user since its early days and the challenge for me is multi-fold, I would like to:
- Use twitter to manage my personal and professional contacts
- At the same time I would like to promote my blog, a niche concept / service
- Tweet on behalf on behalf of my company.
As a result today I have 4 twitter accounts and I know for a fact that there are many people like me who have multiple twitter accounts. Since twitter is such a cool concept that a lot of people have created businesses by developing some really nice applications to work with twitter. I researched the internet and found a lot of options but no conclusive answer.
I decided to use each application for a couple of days and see which application is the best way to manage multiple twitter accounts.
T20 World Cup Schedule 2009
The 2009 ICC World Twenty20 is a Twenty20 cricket tournament scheduled to take place in England in June of 2009. It will be the second World Twenty20. The tournament will have 12 teams, just like the 2007 ICC World Twenty20 in South Africa in September 2007.
World Twenty20 Schedule - http://www.20-20.in/world_cup_twenty20/2009_england/schedule.php
The team selection committee of India headed by Chairman of selectors Krishnamachari Srikkanth announced the final 15-man squad to defend the World Twenty20 title in England next month.
The squad included,
- Mahendra Singh Dhoni (captain),
- Virender Sehwag (vice captain),
- Gautam Gambhir,
- Suresh Raina,
- Yuvraj Singh,
- Yusuf Pathan,
- Rohit Sharma,
- Harbhajan Singh,
- Zaheer Khan,
- Ishant Sharma,
- Praveen Kumar,
- R P Singh,
- Ravindra Jadeja,
- Pragyan Ojha
- Irfan Pathan.
However, a few names from the 2007 World Cup winning squad missed the bus to England. These include Ajit Agarkar, Piyush Chawla, hard- hitting batsman Robin Uthappa, S Sreesanth, fighting fitness problems and Joginder Sharma, who hasn’t come up with anything exceptional so far in the IPL.
Vodafone’s ZooZoo Advertisements
Vodafone’s new series of advertisements feature lovable white, large-headed creatures that have attracted more than 28,500 fans on Facebook. “They are so cute,” gushes Khialani. “They remind me of Casper who was my favourite cartoon.”
But for all those who think the Zoozoos are animated, here’s the shocker: they are real people in costume.
Rajiv Rao, executive creative director (South Asia) of Ogilvy & Mather, the agency that handles Vodafone advertisements, said: “We wanted to make real people look as animated as possible.”
Bangalore-based Nirvana Films shot the ads in Cape Town, South Africa, just in time for IPL. Said Prakash Verma, Nirvana’s owner and director of the Zoozoo campaign: “Our actors were small-bodied, thin women covered in layers of white fabric. Each facial expression was made of rubber and pasted on the actors.”
A film shot at 20 frames per second made the Zoozoo’s movements hurried and comical. Of the 29 different Zoozoo ads created for the IPL, there will be a new one everyday.
So which is your favourite Zoozoo? share your ZooZoo expereince and let us know why you like specific one.
IPL T20 - A $2 billion brand to be listed on stock exchange
I was reading this interesting article on Economics Times and would like to share this with the readers of GT.
The slam-bang version of the gentleman’s game has also brought a bang for the bucks for BCCI and 
the eight franchise owners. But the real proof of success will be when the teams are listed on stock exchanges…
A 2-YEAR-OLD toddler, and already worth over $2 billion — a feat even the most street-savvy global marketer will find hard to emulate. That’s the Indian Premier League (IPL) for you. For all the controversies, twists and turns that have dogged the 20-20 cricket tournament since its inception last year, as an enterprise, IPL is already worth more than $2 billion and counting, says UK-based brand valuation consultancy Brand Finance.
Brand Finance report pegs T20 league’s brand value at $312 m.
The IPL brand alone has a value of over $312 million, according to a Brand Finance report available exclusively to ET. With cricket-crazed Indians lapping up the shorter version of the gentleman’s game, once derided by purists as ‘pyjama cricket’, IPL has generated huge economic value for both its owner, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), and the eight team franchisees.
And it has set the stage for the franchisees to list their teams on the stock market. “The ultimate proof of the success of IPL Branded System will come when the franchisees decide to list their teams. This is a real possibility at least in the next 2-3 years,” Unni Krishnan, managing director of Brand Finance India, said.
“The example of the English Premier League football teams, a number of which are listed, is there to follow,” he added.
Why not? The most-valued IPL team — surprise, surprise! — Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), which is languishing at the bottom of the table in the second edition of IPL, currently going on in South Africa, has a brand value of $42.1 million.
CLEARLY, the efforts of celebrity co-owner Shah Rukh Khan at hard selling the KKR brand seem to have more than made up for the team’s poor on-field performance.
