Information
Resources – Apr-Jun 2018
Compiled by
Mr. H.R. Mohan
Editor, IEEE India Info – The Newsletter of IEEE India Council
ICT Consultant & Former AVP (Systems), The Hindu, Chennai
Compiled by
Mr. H.R. Mohan
Editor, IEEE India Info – The Newsletter of IEEE India Council
ICT Consultant & Former AVP (Systems), The Hindu, Chennai
eBook: The First Ten K R Narayanan Orations: The rapidly
transforming Indian economy has thrown up a number of possibilities as well as
several challenges with profound implications for India’s vast population as
well as globally. The K R Narayanan Oration Series at the Australia South Asia
Research Centre in The Australian National University has been devoted to
in-depth examination of this important issue by leading experts. The present
volume collects the first ten essays in this series. Contributors include Dr
Raja Chelliah, Dr U R Rao, Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati, Mr P. Chidambaram, Dr C.
Rangarajan, Lord Meghnad Desai, Prof. Pranab Bardhan, Dr Vijay Kelkar, Dr M S
Swaminathan, and Dr K. Kasturirangan. The essays cover a broad array of topics
from various aspects of economic reforms, the political economy of India’s
development, the role of agriculture in India’s food security and the role of
space research in India’s economic development. His Excellency Dr Narayanan and
his successor as President of India, His Excellency Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, have
provided introductory messages to the orations. Free Download from https://goo.gl/81Btr1
eBook: The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: The moral economy of mobile phones implies a field of
shifting relations among consumers, companies and state actors, all of whom
have their own ideas about what is good, fair and just. These ideas inform the
ways in which, for example, consumers acquire and use mobile phones; companies
promote and sell voice, SMS and data subscriptions; and state actors regulate
both everyday use of mobile phones and market activity around mobile phones.
Ambivalence and disagreement about who owes what to whom is thus an integral
feature of the moral economy of mobile phones. This volume identifies and
evaluates the stakes at play in the moral economy of mobile phones. The six
main chapters consider ethnographic cases from Papua New Guinea, Fiji and
Vanuatu. The volume also includes a brief introduction with background
information on the recent ‘digital revolution’ in these countries and two
closing commentaries that reflect on the significance of the chapters for our
understanding of global capitalism and the contemporary Pacific. Free
Download from https://goo.gl/GjFztR
eBook: Opening Government: Transparency and Engagement in the
Information Age:
Transparency and citizen engagement remain essential
to good government and sound public policy. Indeed, they may well be the key to
restoring trust in government itself, currently at an all-time low in
Australia. It is ironic, then, that this has occurred at a time when the
technological potential for information dissemination and interaction has never
been greater. This book, “Opening Government: Transparency and Engagement in
the Information Age”, explores new horizons and scenarios for better governance
in the context of the new information age, focusing on the potentials and
pitfalls for governments (and governance more broadly) operating in the new,
information-rich environment. Its contributors, a range of international and
Australian governance academics and practitioners, ask what are the challenges
to our governing traditions and practices in the new information age, and where
can better outcomes be expected using future technologies. They explore the
fundamental ambiguities extant in opening up government, with governments
intending to become far more transparent in providing information and in
information sharing, but also more motivated to engage with other data sources,
data systems and social technologies. Download from https://goo.gl/vBGs3V
FontCode: Hiding information in plain text, unobtrusively and across
file types:
By imperceptibly changing, or perturbing, the shapes of fonts, Columbia
researchers have invented a way to embed hidden information in ordinary text,
without the existence of the secret message being perceived. The method, called
FontCode, both creates font perturbations, mapping them to a bit string, and
later decodes them to recover the message. To ensure robust decoding when font
perturbations are obscured, researchers introduced redundancy using the
1700-year-old Chinese Remainder Theorem, and were able to demonstrate that a
messages can be fully recovered even with a recognition failure rate of 25%
(and theoretically even higher). FontCode works with all fonts and, unlike
other text and document methods that hide embedded information, works with all
document types, even maintaining the hidden information when the document is
printed on paper or converted to another file type. While having obvious
advantages for spies, FontCode has perhaps more practical application for
companies wanting to prevent document tampering or protect copyrights, and for
retailers and artists wanting to embed QR codes and other metadata without
altering the look or layout of a document
eBook: Global Water: Issues and Insights: This
book brings together some of the world’s leading water researchers with an
especially written collection of chapters on: water economics; transboundary
water; water and development; water and energy; and water concepts. Download from https://goo.gl/8kq4kV
Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft Battle for K-12 Market, and Loyalties
of Educators:
Dominant Players Revamp School Options for Digital Devices, Operating Systems,
and Most Recently, Procurement. If there’s a common thread that unites the
rival technology giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft in the education market, it’s
this: They’re big. The three major tech companies—along with Amazon, a
relatively new player on the scene—go head-to-head in vying for big chunks of
school business, most notably in sales of devices and operating systems, and
they try to forge their own paths in others. At the same time, all of them are
best known for their work outside education, through their sales to consumers,
businesses, or both. Full Post at https://goo.gl/q7tc13
Huge
List of 65 Computer and IT Certifications: Becoming IT certified in a specific skill or
product is a way to prove that you have the necessary knowledge to perform a
job in a given field or a job that uses specific technologies. Earning
certification is a good way for computer science graduates and entry-level IT
professionals to improve their resume. Employers often look at a candidate's
computer and technology certifications in order to assess whether or not the
individual is a viable candidate for a position. From Official Microsoft
certifications to cyber security and Linux exams, Webopedia compiled this
alphabetical list of different certifications related to computer technologies
with a brief explanation of each certification and links to help interested
learners find additional information. Know them at https://goo.gl/osZEFR
From
AT&T To Xerox: 73 Corporate Innovation Labs: Innovation is critical for
established companies to stay relevant in the face of disruption. Here's our
list of corporate innovation labs. Corporate innovation is critical for
established companies looking to stay relevant in the face of disruption from
up-and-coming start-ups. With industries being unbundled left and right
(supermarkets, banking, cars — just to name a few) more companies are opening
up in-house innovation labs every day. Sometimes
corporate innovation goes wrong, and we’ve written about corporate innovation
theater before. Now here’s our list of innovation labs, both newly formed and
well established, working to turn new ideas into new opportunities at
long-lived companies. Know these innovation labs at https://goo.gl/RiwiBW
Informatics
for information professionals: Are you a librarian or other information
professional (or soon-to-be) who’s comfortable with numbers? If so, you might
want to take a serious look at the growing career path of informatics. Although
it’s already become a key driver in the medical and healthcare industries, the
use of informatics is now also providing decision support in law firms,
libraries, corporations, government agencies, and pretty much any organization
able to gather and make use of data. In fact, notes Brad Rogers, LibGig
Director of Recruiting, “An increasing number of employers are looking for
informatics and other data-analytics skills across all industry verticals as
companies rely more on data for decision support.” Read the full story at https://goo.gl/janmeL
What
is a data scientist? A key data analytics role and a lucrative career: Data scientists are responsible
for discovering insights from massive amounts of structured and unstructured
data to help shape or meet specific business needs and goals. The data
scientist role is becoming increasingly important as businesses rely more
heavily on data analytics to drive decision-making and lean on automation and
machine learning as core components of their IT strategies. Becoming a data
scientist varies depending on industry, but there are common skills,
experience, education and training that will give you the leg up in starting
your data science career. Read the full post at https://goo.gl/zs2UPQ
AICTE & NPTEL sign
MOU to recognise NPTEL MOOCS as FDPs for faculty promotion under CAS: Copy of the agreement/MOU is at https://www.aicte-india.org/sites/default/files/MoU_NPTEL_AICTE.pdf
Notification
from AICTE and the details reg. NPTEL courses is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BLdGg2Yz4f1MGTFqVCyvO1JireESdt8s/view?usp=sharing
Mr. H.R. Mohan, the author of this
column, Information Resources, on a regular basis, once in five days publishes
blog posts on “interesting Reads” – a compilation of informative and
interesting resources. You can access these posts at http://infoforuse.blogspot.com
Further, these posts are also sent by email to the members of the google group
– scitech-trends@googlegroups.com If you are interested in joining, you can
send an email request for inclusion in the google group,to hrmohan.ieee@gmail.com
