Canaan Partners, a multibillion-dollar global venture capital company, has appointed Sharad Sharma as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

Sharma previously led Yahoo! India R&D, where he was responsible for product engineering for all emerging markets and for several global products.

“This is the first time a global EIR is appointed out of India. Sharad’s ability to bridge US operations with global markets is a great fit for Canaan. Cloud computing is a global phenomenon, and Canaan is well-positioned to be a partner for pioneering companies worldwide. Sharad will help us expand our investments in this space by identifying key trends and attracting innovative entrepreneurs across the globe,” said Alok Mittal, General Partner at Canaan.

“Sharad brings a mix of investment, leadership and product experience in both infrastructure technology and global markets to Canaan. His experience will be an asset as we continue our growth in India and other global markets. Sharad’s insight will also help us build on the momentum we’ve established in the virtualization and cloud computing markets with investments in companies like Virsto,” said Maha Ibrahim, General Partner at Canaan.

Sharma has more than 22 years of global experience in the Internet, enterprise software and infrastructure markets.

Bentley Systems, a provider of comprehensive software solutions has released its ProjectWise Dynamic Plot V8i, a software service that brings paper into the digital age.
This is done by creating an intelligent link between paper plots and digital models, shrinking the time required to sync written comments and digital data from days to seconds, and sustaining and extending the value of project information plotted to paper. With paper plots and digital models always in sync, markup and review workflows become error-free, mitigating project risk.

Using the advanced publishing capabilities of ProjectWise InterPlot, the new software adds a unique pattern of dots to a drawing as it is plotted. Because this pattern carries with it embedded provenance, it establishes an intelligent link between the paper drawing and the model. The markups are applied to the plot as usual, but with a digital pen, and simultaneously they are captured and stored in memory. Later, the markups are transferred to the ProjectWise managed environment for automatic synchronization and association with the model, thereby ensuring a single source of truth for collaborative teams.

Harry Vitelli, Bentley vice president, MicroStation and ProjectWise, said, By making paper dynamic (adding provenance and enabling change-management), ProjectWise Dynamic Plot helps users create new value from their preferred review medium. Because paper is portable, recyclable, and scalable, it is perfectly suited for everyone who reviews designs, marks up as-built drawings, inspects facilities, or simply makes notes in the field. Today, those same people can use ProjectWise Dynamic Plot to faithfully and flawlessly capture and instantly sync hand-marked revisions on small to large plots.

Vitelli said that given the current state of the global economy and today s challenging resource constraints, now is the perfect time for organizations to invest in information technology like ProjectWise Dynamic Plot that will yield both immediate and long-term returns on the innovation it affords.

The ProjectWise Dynamic Plot workflow provides the additional advantage of automatic digital backup for all reviewer markups, which can easily be lost or destroyed in the field in paper form or overlooked during manual transfers to a computer. At the same time, it establishes a markup audit trail for management accountability. As a result, owners are assured that all as-built markups are accurately recorded increasing quality and improving safety and never lost, further reducing risk throughout the project lifecycle.

The number of mobile payment users worldwide will total 73.4 million in 2009, up 70.4 % from 2008 when there were 43.1 million users, according to Gartner. The research has also predicted that m-payments will go mainstream by 2012, with nearly 3% global mobile users using m-payments.

Momentum in the mobile payment market gathered further in 2008 with a number of high-profile launches of mobile money transfer services in multiple markets, participation of major global institutions in near-field communication (NFC) payment trials, as well as new payment solutions entering the market, said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. However, at the same time, security concerns, an inadequate ecosystem and undefined areas in banking regulations remain challenges for mobile payment.

Gartner defines a mobile payment as paying for a product or service using mobile technology such as a SMS, WAP, unstructured supplementary service data (USSD), and NFC.

It includes transactions that use banking instruments such as cash, bank accounts, or debit and credit cards, as well as noncarrier stored value accounts, such as travel cards, gift cards, or Paypal. It does not include transactions that use mobile operators billing systems, such as purchase of mobile content or telebanking by mobile to the service center via an IVR system.

In terms of both number of users and transaction volumes, Gartner expects Asia/Pacific and Japan to maintain a larger share of the market through 2012.

The most profound impact of mobile banking and payment services is that they provide the nonbanking population with access to modern financial services, giving them tools to improve their living standards, said Shen. For mobile operators, mobile payment can help attract and retain users and generate new revenue streams. For financial institutions, mobile payment is an opportunity to reach users who may have been previously unreachable, due to a lack of retail infrastructure.