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Gunnebo Plans To Diversify Into Infra In India

Gunnebo India, a Swedish security group, which has been present in India for over 80 years and makes safe deposit lockers, vault doors, fire resistant cabinets and ATM safes, is now looking for opportunity in infrastructure and banking sectors here.Gunnebo's customers are primarily retail banks, central banks, CIT companies and it is now ready to enter into infrastructure such as DMRC project, airports, entrance control etc.Per Borgvall, Global CEO and President of Gunnebo Security says "with a view on future and to expand our current portfolio in India, we have plans to invest Rs 30 crore in a manufacturing plant at Halol, Gujrat to expand capacity by 75 per cent from the current level."Other than Halol, Gunnebo has another unit in Chennai.He said the company is planning to continue investing in the growth markets like India, China and Indonesia. The four key businesses where the company invests are core banking security and cash handling, secure storages, entrance control (infrastructure security) and global services.India continues to be one of the most important markets for Gunnebo and possesses great potential for growth, says Borgvall.He said currently India contributes to around six per cent of the company's revenues globally and is growing at 25 per cent compounded annual growth rate and that they would like to maintain a similar profit rate in the next two years.Gunnebo is a Swedish listed global security group operating in 31 countries across the globe and with presence on a further 100 markets though agents and distributors. It provides integrated security solutions to customers that set high standards on secure is a world leading supplier of high graded fire and burglary resistant safes.It has been active on the Indian security market through its subsidiary Steelage since 1932. Steelage was acquired into the Group in the year of 2000. It also markets and sells products and solutions for secure storage under the well-known brand Chubb safes.

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AdAsia Kicks Off To A Filmy Start

If you always thought that advertising is all about song and dance, then the ad men did not prove you wrong at the opening ceremony of AdAsia 2011 at hotel Taj Palace in Delhi on Monday evening. The entire gathering took part in a medley of percussions, courtesy ace percussionist, Taufique Quereshi. As he reached the pinnacle of his performance, Quereshi urged the audience to look under their seats -- suddenly every member of the 1,200- strong audience had a percussion instrument to jam with. Even Bollywood funny man Boman Irani broke into a song with a rendition of "We are the world" and Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'. The ad men probably empathised with the lyrics "Yes there were times, I'm sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew" --  a confession to their clients. Ad men turned up in all finery for a traditional evening -- the Nepali contingent standing out in their Nepali Topis, the Japanese showing off their Kimonos and the Koreans their Hanboks. Some like BCCL's top executive Bhaskar Das came in his trademark designer Jacket on stage. When asked about not wearing an Indian attire, Bhaskar quipped, "Oh, I am wearing a made in India jacket". Others like the India Today group Publisher Ashish Bagga came in Kurtas. But Bagga's Kurta was Made in Pakistan. The music continued till the wee hours of the morning (at least, with Bollywood biggie Shah Rukh Khan making it to the morning session was like staying up all night)! SRK gave the audience his own take on advertising, coining slogans like "Early to bed and early to rise, work like hell and then advertise". In a rather filmy avtaar, India's very own brand-wagon SRK, entertained the crowd with a witty speech accompanied by some "chamak-challo" gyrations. Someone once told me that, "If you advertise too much, you stop being a wonder and become a commodity", quipped King Khan, as he went on to glorify the world of celebrity endorsements that he continues to dominate. "Brands in totality are an extension of myself...I wake up to the alarm on my Tag Heuer, check messages on my Nokia N7...sit on a D'Decor couch, slip into a Belmonte Suit, watch TV on a Videocon, use my Linc pen to make notes for the speech, and I got energy this morning from a generous helping of Emami Sona Chandi Chyawanprash...." he went on, leaving the crowd in splits. Before SRK's light hearted act, the Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni remarked that the theme of AdAsia, "Uncertainty. The New Certainty" resembled India's political scene. "The only certainty is that things will always be uncertain," she said.In her crisp address, Soni meant serious business when she said that while her government believes in the freedom of expression and supports Indian advertising's attempt at self regulation, GRP measurement systems need to be robust and representative of the socio cultural dynamics of the country as billions of dollars of marketing money rides on them. "They need to be reassessed from time to time," she said. She further added, that the government is "in the process of revamping the Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity (DAVP) and enhance its professional capabilities. Prof. Ram Charan, took off from where Soni left off by saying that cultural diversity needs to be top of mind for marketers. He said one company in India, has identified 38 distinctive consumer segments. Marketers agreed. Harish Manwani, COO, consumer goods giant Unilever, remarked that in the Indian market, the battle is not for market share but against non-consumption. There are huge opportunities to grow the market he said. "You need to adopt a schizophrenic approach to this market as there are opportunities at both the top end and the bottom end," he said and added that marketers had to find different ways to straddle the pyramid and capture both the 80 mn Internet users, but also the other 300 million consumers who live in media dark areas. "In India distribution reach is more deeper than the media reach, hence it made more sense to sell hard at the points of sale, especially in the other India.

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Who Moved My Twitter

Imagine what you'd feel like if you were to come home one evening and find your wife had changed the position of every piece of furniture in the house. Sensible as women are, she would probably find a layout that works way better than it was doing. But even knowing that, you can't help feeling you're in someone else's house…That's exactly how seasoned Twitter users are feeling about the overhaul to the microblogging site. Things that used to be on the right are on the other side, everything has become renamed and it all looks overly neat and tidy — and different. So, not surprisingly, they're disoriented and annoyed. Inevitably, some things are not as functional in the same way as they used to be, and that causes much irritation, especially for iPhone users.  Me, I don't mind a bit, really. The neatness is appealing and everything looks well-fitted. If you haven't yet got what users are calling NewNew Twitter, because it's the second big redesign since one that took place about a year ago, you will. Download the Twitter app on the iPhone or Android and you can see it immediately.One reason I'm not worked up over the changes is because I don't see how Twitter has a choice but to tweak, or even completely reinvent. Here are the reasons that led up to the new design.Cutting Through The NoiseTo anyone new to Twitter, it's a confusing place. Who's saying what? What are these fragments of conversation? What am I supposed to do here? How come everyone else seems to be comfortable and knows exactly what going on? It's like being in a huge party where you don't know anyone and everyone's speaking in foreign languages. With the new design, things are definitely clearer because you don't have to flail around wildly to find your way about. The buttons or tabs are the explanation. You don't have to wonder at the @ and # signs. Click into the tab and it will be evident. You no longer have to wonder about tweets not making standalone sense. Click on the Open button and you can see conversations and understand the context. Well, mostly. This in itself clears much of the stage fright newbies on Twitter must feel. The Home, Connect, Discover and Me tabs don't need any explanation. On an information network where the biggest enemy has been the poor signal-to-noise ratio, I think simplicity was much called for.Consistent ExperiencesFor years the features and functionality of Twitter has come from users and third-party developers. So, everyone's experience of Twitter has been different depending on what they use. But if Twitter wants to take charge, it's got to be able to control these and give users a consistent look and feel. Now, the look is the same and the buttons are to be found in the same place across different platforms if you use the Twitter site or official Twitter app. Savvy users have of course stuck to the apps they used or quickly found alternatives such as Tweetbot. But from Twitter's point of view, consistency is even more important when you realize that we're no longer limited to one device per person and could be using different ones to connect to Twitter.The Competition's Doing ItWith all the big networks fighting tooth and nail to get and keep the biggest user bases, Twitter can't very well remain what it has been for years. It too needs to add new users. And that means reinventing to make them comfortable. What Twitter hopes to achieve with its current redesign is to build up a user base as big as that of other social networks. While many may be miffed at the New New Twitter today they would also be impatient if Twitter were to lag behind looking like it never tried to move with the times. Although they don't plan to change so much or so often as to cause complexity, they do want to improve.To Complete The Picture  Twitter's founders certainly didn't think they would be dealing with photos, videos, songs and audio files becoming staple diet on their network. But of course you can't separate media from anything shared online today. One of the nicest and most attractive things about the new design is that you can see photos and videos along with tweets just by clicking to do so. The Discovery tab has packages of trending stories - particularly nice if you've just joined Twitter and don't know what to do. Serendipity is meant to come to the rescue here and hopefully we'll see less of "Just trying to figure out Twitter" first-time statuses. Many think the look with photos and videos rather Facebookish but I remember Facebook being accused of being Twitterish when it put in the status update long ago.Time To Do BusinessFinally, one big reason for changes to Twitter is that the network needs to have a strong business model. The new design means that it now has customizable brand page options for companies that can use large headers and make other changes to attract customers. Well, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ all have functionality for businesses, and it's really only been Twitter that lagged behind. All said and done, despite the furniture you may unexpectedly bump into, we'll find ourselves getting accustomed to New New Twitter - and we may as well, for there are more changes in the offing.Mala Bhargava is a personal technology writer and media professionalContact her at mala at pobox dot com and @malabhargava on Twitter

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Bleak House

Last week, the Indian market as expected corrected itself after the previous week's sharp upturn with the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) 30-share Sensitive Index (Sensex) losing nearly 4 per cent to end at 16,213.46. The fall was more to do with domestic events than global. Players offloaded their position after the government suspended it plans to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail. The inability to implement policy reforms by the government has been the biggest concern for the market. Concerns over the government's finances, particularly rising fiscal deficit after it cut India's economic growth forecast to 7.25-7.75 per cent from the earlier 8 per cent also added to the woes."Until know, despite all the poor economic indicators, growth wasn't impacted. This is the first time we are witnessing bleak economic growth and that is bad for the market," says Avinash Gorakshakar, vice-president and head research at Edelweiss Financial Advisors. He adds that the fall in the market is also because players have sold their position ahead of the dismal IIP numbers on Monday. "The IIP number is expected to be poor than the September months' number and the market has already factored it in the price," says Gorakshakar. The broader consensus on the October 2011 IIP numbers is at -0.7 per cent on a year-on-year basis. The inflation data on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) policy on Friday, 16 December 2011 are some important events that would provide direction to the markets. Analysts expect inflation to slip on a year-on-year basis to 9.04 per cent compared to 9.73 per cent.Meanwhile, the third quarter advance tax collection on 15 December 2011 will be crucial for the market as it will give indication about the December-end quarter results of India Inc.In India there is a lot of concern about the lack of governance and poor accountability within the government. A consistently high inflation is the other concern. Today the problem for the Indian market is if FII flows don't start pouring in it could lead to depreciating rupee and lower exports and impact our ballooning fiscal deficit further. In an environment of high inflation and fiscal deficit, RBI doesn't seem to cut rates in a hurry.The outcome of the EU summit despite being in line with market expectations, is not going to help the market in a bigger way. The EU consensus does not end the problem with the European Union and global economies. In the next 6 months, there are going to be elections in the leading European countries like Germany and France. The ruling Christian Democratic Union has faced defeat in all the six state elections in Germany until September 2011. This is probably an indication that Chancellor Angela Merkel has not been able to convince voters to accept the rescue plan for the Euro Zone. The next federal elections in Germany are due in September 2013. At present, it looks like taking tough decisions may be difficult. Similarly the environment in the US also looks bleak. The US is still grappling with problems of low employment, lack of growth and no consensus to reduce spending levels and manage debt. The ability to keep debt at manageable levels is exacerbated by the need to replace or upgrade infrastructure that has been created almost 50 years ago. With the US Presidential elections scheduled in 2012, the task of announcing measures that make economic sense becomes even more difficult. In such a scenario, the crisis in the west has not yet reached its conclusion and thus uncertainty will continue to prevail in the global and domestic markets. Faced with uncertainty, the markets will remain fragile. Meanwhile, high volatility has become a part of the Indian market and the Sensex swing between its intra-day high and low is close to 2 per cent. Until India specific issues are not adressed, particularly regarding opening investment windows, it is difficult for equity markets to witness a clear upmove. Satish Menon, executive director at Geojit BNP Paribas Financial Services, feels, "Though we aren't in a bear market, it is possible that due to external and internal concerns markets may continue to witness swings, maybe with a downward bias over the next 3-6 months."

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Technology For Early Man

Within the first year of its launch, Apple's ipad had notched up sales of 15 million pieces. No matter what I write here about the iPad but my reader knows I cannot overestimate the revolution that iPad has brought to our world. When launched at $500 a piece, iPad was by no means cheap yet it was desirable and people lined up outside stores to buy that object of desire. Many believe today that it is only a matter of time before the computing will move to tablet platforms and there is no doubt that it will.Yet the tablet concept when launched in 2010 by Apple was not new. This was a dream that took 18 years in the making. Many companies had dabbled with the dream before; but none as madly as Apple. Apple had dreamt of a tablet based computing device way back in 1990s when it had launched the 'Newton' in 1993. Newton was a personal computing device that started its product development journey deep inside the Apple's research labs as basically a tablet platform. The project was aimed to completely reinvent the computing platform and took on codenames such as 'Cadillac'. The project was originally built to bring out a tablet computing device which was to be named 'figaro'. If you look at the Newton, it has an uncanny similarity with its modern successor, iPad. It had no keys and was supposed to be operated using a touch stick. It also featured a handwriting recognition feature.Yet Newton failed gloriously. It often appears at the top of the list of Apple's biggest failures. This was the only failed Apple product with which the company persevered the longest. But the tablet dream was never given up even though when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, Newton product division was among the first he dispensed away with. Only to come back a decade later with iPad that did what the original Newton wanted to do.Many pundits feel that Newton was too early for its time and this became the reason for its failure. It was like throwing a light bulb to the early man when he was still huddling around the fire! Yes, the Newton was ahead of its time and its technology basics were yet to mature.Technology may sometimes come earlier than its need is felt by man but that is no reason to keep waiting. Sometimes the earliest prototypes of some concepts are not adequate to exhibit very clearly the power of the ideas behind them but they eventually win over, if they persist. As in the case of Newton and iPad, the basic design philosophy was similar. The concept of a touch based interface was present in both yet it was the maturity of iPad's touch interface that made the dream a reality. A reality that is hard to escape.Clean Technology is a similar dream. It holds the promise to change the way we consume, manufacture goods and the way we run our modern economies. Given the challenges that the planet faces today, Clean Technology is more important than ever before. Yet there is a feeling that Clean Technology is still struggling to sustain the growth momentum it has seen in recent years. In a recent survey, two of the top three reasons cited by experts as challenges for the growth of Cleantech future were about technology immaturity and the technology being too early for its time.And Clean Technology could be young and also be ahead of its time. But that is no case for pessimism about the promise of Clean Technology. Much like the persistence of Apple with the tablet dream gave it iPad, Clean Technology will also usher in long lasting market shifts and reward those who persist with it. In order to push the Human race forward, the early man from fire to light bulb and then to CFL! It is necessary to keep persisting with Clean Technology. A dream it may be but one worth keep dreaming.Yash Saxena is a sustainability consultant with Emergent Ventures, a climate change mitigating consultancy. He also works on innovation evangelism with Techpedia

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Inflection Point 2011

Notwithstanding that the Parliament has remained paralysed throughout 2011, many reform laws are not being passed, inflation is on the edge of control, the rupee continues to sink and the civil war in Maoist India rages unabated, I believe strongly in the India story. Indeed, I am inclined to the view that in the long run, everyone will agree that this was the year in which India reached something of an inflection point on its climb to the global summit of economic and political leadership. There are at least four reasons that help us identify this inflection point. First, in a manner unprecedented in India, we decided to apply the same law to both the powerful and the powerless. For India, this is deeply shocking and I am not being rhetorical. Our society is structured around the fundamental principle that if you are powerful, you are above the law. If you flag down a VIP car flying down the wrong side of the road, you would expect the irritated politician to thunder "don't you know who I am?" VIP's expect not to be frisked at airports. Movie stars expect not to be caught at customs carrying jewellery. Bureaucrats don't stand in railway reservation lines.To now say that if you take or pay a bribe, you will go to jail is a disturbing, indeed alarming, movement of the goal posts. The greatest impact on this paradigm shift is seen in the 2G case in which MP of ruling party allies, heads of India's largest corporations and political organisers of international sports events were sent to jail. Naturally, all major paradigm shifts bring new issues and I've written about some of these too (Judicial Collateral Damage). That said, no one will deny that if the same laws apply to everyone, a lot of very powerful people will have to clean out their act. The long result will be a fairer, more egalitarian society. It won't happen first thing in the morning, but the shift has begun.Second, 2011 saw Indians become orders of magnitude more serious about doing something about corruption in high places. Corruption management in India has long been best described in that delightful Indian word 'tokenism'. Since we did not want to fix the problem, we would earn brownie points by catching a DTC bus conductor here and a well-past-the-best-before-date politician like Sukh Ram there. If a smoking gun led to someone genuinely powerful, it was understood that the effort would degenerate into a theatre of the absurd such as Bofors. Since I've also written about this recently (Scam Mela and Systemic Scamming), I will pass on with the observation that since corruption is ultimately about funding elections, the long term impact of these events may well be a fundamental change in the manner in which we finance our democracy. I wait for a pragmatic debate on this subject to begin.2011's third major change is our changed attitude to the manner in which we rob rural and tribal Peter to pay urban Paul: I speak of course of land acquisition. This has always been a brutally unfair law on which I have had a lot to say over the years (especially Land Acquisition Angst and Pandora's Real Estate Box). At the time of writing, the new land acquisition dispensationis still a work in progressand as a nation, we are addressing three issues: (a) the price at which we compulsorily acquire agricultural land, (b) the mechanism by which we acquire this land, and (c) the purposes for which we may with justification acquire this land. Early symptoms suggest that we are now overreacting in the other direction — a sure fire recipe to kill industrial development — but be that as it may, in changing this law, we would have substantially changed the basic structure of our society.     The final big picture shift is in the nation's handling of its "law and order" situation. If I didn't love this very charming Indianism quite so much, I would have called it the state's abdication of its sovereign function. The Government of India delights to engage in self-indulgent excesses far removed from its job — hotels, airlines, booze shops and handcraft stores - sometimes at great cost to the exchequer. Yet, when it comes to essential sovereign functions — and what can be more sovereign than maintaining infrastructure or policing the people — the government is completely dysfunctional. In recent years, human rights activists have had much to say about the havoc that government sponsored private armies have wrecked in Chhattisgarh. The result has been a rising cycle of violence and counter violence. We got away with this privatisation of sovereign duty in the past — and "terrorist infested" Punjab is a case in point — but in truth, can a modern civil society fund one side of a raging undeclared civil war? On 5th July, 2011, the Supreme Court of India ruled on this question in Nandini Sunder versus State of Chhattisgarh. In this case, the court was invited to determine if the state should be allowed to recruit 'Special Police Officers' in "Maoist infested" areas, to arm and fund them and to then prevent their activities from being registered as crimes. No, said the court, and for a variety of reasons. First, to do so was to violate the constitutional rights of the people the state was recruiting. Poor uneducated and negligibly trained tribal youth could not be exposed to the inherent dangers in counter insurgency operations, nor could they be exposed to the risk of retributive killings after their appointment ceased. Second, these tribal youths were themselves responsible for human rights violations — looting, arson, violence — because arms in the hands of the illiterate and the untrained endangered society generally. Third, the court observed that it is the duty of the State to protect the fundamental rights of its citizen. To pay an "honorarium" of Rs 3000 per month, and outsource this responsibility to those manifestly incapable of discharging this burden, is illegal.The long term consequences of this judgment aredebatable. On a practical level, to declare a reactionary counter insurgency group illegal is not to repress the insurgency, leave alone address the conditions that led to the insurgency in the first place. Astute political thinkers have criticised the judgment for its ideologicalleanings. Doubtless, the judgment is not at a loss for rhetorical expansiveness with catchy quotations such as Cicero's "Laws cannot remain silent when the canon's roar". It delves deep into Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. It tries to explain the violence in Chhattisgarh. It even condemns the "amoral political economy that the State endorses, and the resultant revolutionary politics that it necessarily spawns". It castigates the "culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned by modern neo-liberal economic ideology, and the false promises of ever increasing spirals of consumption leading to economic growth that will lift everyone, under-gird this socially, politically and economically unsustainable set of circumstances in vast tracts of India in general, and Chhattisgarh in particular". It condemns the State's "subsidies to the private sector, giving it tax break after tax break, while simultaneously citing lack of revenues as the primary reason for not fulfilling its obligations to provide adequate cover to the poor through social welfare measures. On the other hand, the State seeks to arm the youngsters amongst the poor with guns to combat the anger, and unrest, amongst the poor. Tax breaks for the rich, and guns for the youngsters amongst poor, so that they keep fighting amongstthemselves, seems to be the new mantra from the mandarinsof security and high economic policy of the State". If it wasn't for the paper on which it was printed, I would have put the lot down to the work of Arundhati Roy! But be that as it may, the fact of the matter is that the court has held — and I just have to quote the judgment here — that "the constitution does not support the institutionalisation, of a policing paradigm, the end point of which can only mean that the entire nation, in short order, might have to gasp: The horror! The horror!" A legal principle has been decided and as its consequences percolate down into national consciousness, we would have changed another fundamental basis on which our democracy deals with underprivileged communities. Ultimately, all these four changes are about equality before the law, indeed equal protection of the law. If we can actually get to that point of political, administrative and judicial equality, we would have ushered in a real democracy in India.The author is managing partner of the Gurgaon-based corporate law firm N South and author of the pioneering business book Winning Legal Wars. He can be contacted at rcd@nsouthlaw.com

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Market To Remain Range-Bound

Sometimes no bad news can be good news and that helped the Indian market last week which ended with a gain of over 5 per cent. Though news flows from the domestic as well as global market fell in line with market expectations, the news of European leaders striking a deal to resolve the two-year-old Euro-zone sovereign debt crisis helped the market to end positive.This week, investors' focus will turn to the G-20 meeting in Cannes, in southern France where details of Thursday's (27th October 2011) anti-crisis measures for the Euro-zone are likely to emerge. While October has been pretty solid for equities with over 1,351 points, it remains to be seen whether the momentum can be sustained in November. We will also see the Indian markets reacting to monthly auto sales, cement volumes, trade data and manufacturing PMI data. Global events — especially results from the policy meetings of federal open market committee (FOMC) and European central bank (ECB) — will be eyed and will have a bearing on the Indian market.Meanwhile, for the week ended 28 October 2011, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensitive Index (Sensex) ended with a gain of over 1,000 points to close at 17,804.80. "With the Euro issue being resolved temporarily, investors took fresh position in select stocks. Better than expected US GDP data and expectation that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may not hike rates in December also helped improve sentiments in the market this week," says Samir Gilani, Head Derivatives & Co-head Equities at Mape Securities, a Mumbai-based financial service firm.Last Thursday, European leaders announced the deal that would wipe out 50 per cent of the investments of Greek bonds held by private holders. Banks would be recapitalised and the size of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) raised to $1.4 trillion.Though investors were focusing on the broad contours of the Euro-zone debt plan and encouraging economic data out of the US, Gilani feels there are several risks in the Indian market that will restrict the sensex rise. "It's no more a bull-run in the Indian equity market and there are several risks associated with the market –structural as well as systemic issues," says Gilani. He feels that until the government spending increases in building infrastructure and issues in sectors like infrastructure, power and real estate are resolved and reforms process like GST, mining and metal policy, etc that have hit the bottleneck not eased, there isn't expected to be conducive growth in India. "Unlike 2009 when market rallied due to lower interest rates, low inflation, fall in commodity and oil prices and a stable Indian rupee, today things are quite the opposite. If the Indian market has to see a bull-run all these factors have to turn favourable." However indication of a pause in interest rates by RBI has been positive. Last week on 25 October 2011, the RBI raised rates for the 13th time in last 19 months. The central bank announced a 25 basis points hike in repo rate to 8.5 per cent.The Sensex is moving in a narrow band of 1,000 points on low liquidity. Though all the bad news is factored in the price, uncertainty still prevails in the global market and therefore Indian market is not going anywhere in a hurry. Even though select blue-chip stocks have been moving up, the current market gives ample opportunity to investors wherein they are able to pick these stocks at their price. This is a good time to start building long-term portfolios.

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Memory & More

For all the busy digeratis forever looking for one-stop applications spanning their internet and mobile  gadgets, here's another one - the Evernote.Launched in 2008, Evernote is the note taking application that can be accessed anytime and anywhere over the internet.  One can save or make documents, photos and videos in it. For documents, it has unlimited space. However, photos and videos have limited space till 60MB in free version and 1GB for Premium users. Plus side, there is no overall account limit.Started in California in 2007 by Stephan Pachikov, founder of ParaGraph and ParaScript and Phil Libin of CoreStreet, Evernote is planned as an extension of the human memory. Dmitry Stavisky, VP of International Operations, Evernote Dmitry Stavisky, VP of International Operation, Evernote says: "The idea came about because no one is satisfied with one's biological memory, we all forget things. Everyone wants a better memory. So we decided to build an external brain".Evernote service can be accessed using the web client (www.evernote.com) or native apps on many platforms, including: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS (iPhone, iPod, iPad), Android (smartphones and tablets, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, Palm WebOS."We love working with mobile carriers. A great example is DOCOMO and provider of comprehensive mobility solutions for Japan and overseas markets. DOCOMO has preinstalled Evernote on all of its Android devices, and Docomo provides one-year of Evernote Premium for free to its customers", added Stavisky.Over 14 million people use Evernote worldwide and the company is adding over one million new users every month. Of this, about 5 per cent are Premium users paying $5 a month for a more fully-featured version.How it is different from other similar applications? Evenrnote has a search function combined with tags which allows you to be as organised or disorganised as you like, and you'll still find the info you're looking for."Dropbox is an extension of your file system. The two don't actually compete, but are in fact complimentary", said Stavisky.The extra features come with the Premium account, the main ones being: Higher monthly upload of 1GB (overall account total has no maximum for free or Premium) Access to notebooks offline (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) when you are travelling outside of your mobile territory.  For example, accessing applications on your phone while abroad or on roaming fees can quickly add up, Evernote Premium gives you a way around these fees. Editing of shared notebooks. Ability to search within scanned PDFs

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