GLOBCOS NetWorks GmbH is a media consulting and satellite communication service company. GLOBCOS has successfully worked in the media sector (Radio and TV) for many years, therefore the real needs of companies working in this sector are well known to us and we are in a position to give our customers professional advice.

GLOBCOS provides its customers with a range of services, starting from program schedule analysis to cost optimization of their satellite platforms. Our target is that our customers are always satisfied with the services provided and that they get the solution which fits their needs and budget.

For detailed information read Globcos Blog please visit: http://globcosnetworks.wordpress.com

Confirming industry talks about its acquisition of iLike, MySpace said it will acquire the largest music application for social networks. However, it did not disclose the deal details.

Owen Van Natta, CEO of MySpace, said in a statement, The acquisition advances our relentless pursuit of innovation and the need to create new distributed social experiences in music and beyond.”

ILike will remain headquartered in Seattle and its management team will stay intact. iLike has 55 million users.

To ensure that their offices don’t get flu-ed out, IT firms in Pune are adopting preventive measures at the workplace including video conferencing and the option of working from home.
One of India’s IT hubs, Pune is home to over 200 IT companies, including the top names in the industry, and employs more than 2 lakh people. The city is among the most-affected by swine flu with their number increasing by the day.

In their effort to keep the flu at bay, most IT companies undertake daily checks on employees and those having temperature of 100–plus degrees Fahrenheit are sent back home. In fact, at Fujitsu Consulting even drivers who drop the employees home have to undergo a temperature check before entering the office complex.

Even employees whose family member at home is not well are sent back home as they are likely be a carrier of swine flu. When they return, they have to produce a medical certificate stating that they are healthy, a Fujitsu official said.

As IT firms are centrally air-conditioned, employees have also been given the option of working from home. Video conferencing has now replaced face-to-face meetings when employees enter the city from flu-hit areas. Infosys Technologies, on its part, has already issued travel advisories restricting travel in and out of Pune.

S.Mahalingam executive director and CFO of TCS said the company is seeing the first signs of a revival of the global economy. He, however, declined to say whether this was the end of the global recession.

Like the most IT companies, TCS has also been severely hit by the global recession. It has experienced a number of project cancellations since September 2008. “As the recession spread across the globe and sunk deeper, a number of customers were canceling their projects with us but lately we see an arrest in this,” said Mahalingam.

But customers remain cautious and are showing discretion in their spending, he said.

Mahalingam said TCS followed a policy of diversification in revenues that has helped in these rough times. Besides the company has also followed the same policy in terms of geography and has been focusing on emerging markets like the BRIC countries for growth.

“India has been a strong market for us besides the other BRIC countries and that has payed off,” said Mahalingam.

On the employee front, he said even though there is a freeze on hiring fresh staff, the company has honored the offer made to 24,500 people earlier.

TCS has seen a strong growth in retail, pharma, utilities verticals over the last few months.

A survey has placed India ahead of countries like the United States and UK when it comes to employee confidence in Q2′09. Indian employees showed a confidence growth of 8.1% for the survey period.

The global survey was conducted by Kenexa, a business solutions provider. The general trend seen is that countries around the world are becoming more positive as the clouds of the global recession begin to fade away. An exception was Japan which had the lowest confidence index of 93.8%.

What had been the lowest scoring component of confidence — job security and a promising future, has now been replaced by a worker’s ability to find employment elsewhere, illustrating that the notion of a jobless recovery is very much in alignment with how the typical employee feels.

Bangalore: Those who test positive for H1N1 - that is causing panic around the nation - can now claim expenses of the treatment, as per their insurance policy. This respite comes following the directive by the Maharashtra government to the private hospitals for treating patients affected by H1N1.

According to The Economic Times, the insurance companies have assured that they will pay for the expensive swab tests as well. These tests costs almost Rs. 10,000 per patient. Narayan Shejawale, Divisional Manager for New India Assurance Company in Pune, said the money spent by a H1N1 patient will be entitled to reimbursement under the Mediclaim scheme. “The only pre-requisite is that the policy needs to be taken out at least 30 days prior to the patient’s hospitalization,” Shejawale added.

The patient’s admission to the hospital would be not be charged, although the insurance claim for the fee paid for the swab test will be settled retrospectively, within 30 days of filing the claim, Shejawale said. He also clarified that patients can prefer a claim, whether he is covered individually or under a group medical insurance plan.

Bangalore: The Indian government is planning to set up an expert body called as ‘Market Research and Analysis Unit (MRAU)’, which will collate and analyze business data of companies raising capital through initial public offerings (IPOs) in an attempt to detect early the possibility of fund raising with fraudulent intent.

The intent behind the new agency, which will be a part of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, is to make investment in IPOs a safer option for retail investors, a government official told economic times on condition of anonymity.

The new body will get the inputs from all the parties such as banks, deposit holders, investigation agencies that are related to the company raising capital. The agency will, apart from scrutinizing data made available in the offer document, also look at details available with the ministry’s computerized data repository.

According to MCA-21, the government’s e-governance programme MCA-21, details of financial data of companies are maintained in a prescribed format and can be accessed at the click of a button.

Besides, analyzing the credentials of the companies, the body has to monitor the end-use of funds raised by companies. According to the data provided by the ministry of corporate affairs, 238 companies, which raised capital through IPOs between 1992 and 2005, have vanished. However, the ministry has managed to track down 117 out of these 238 companies.

New Delhi: India’s arms imports are expected to touch $30 billion by 2012 even as the domestic defence market is poised to grow to $700 million in five years, according to an industry lobby report.

The report submitted to the defence ministry by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham) said: “India’s arms imports alone would rise to $30 billion by 2012.”

“The Defence Offset Facilitation Agency (DOFA) and the armed forces in consultation with India Inc should work out a comprehensive strategy to ensure that defence imports happen at extremely competitive rates,” Assocham President Sajjan Jindal said.

DOFA, under the Department of Defence Production, is a single window agency to implement the government’s defence offset policy.

Assocham has urged the government to allow India Inc to participate in defence deals as the domestic defence market would expand to over $700 million in four-five years.

According to the chamber, if the Indian economy grows at a steady rate of 7 percent, the defence spending would exceed 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in future.

“This could be used to finance additional capital outlays for modern equipment,” the Assocham report said.

Currently defence expenditure accounts for around 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). India has upped its defence expenditure by 34 percent to Rs.141,703 crore ($28 billion) for the fiscal 2009-10.

India is the world’s largest importer of defence articles with its armed forces buying over $6 billion worth of military hardware every year.

The paper also called for raising the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in the defence sector to 49 percent from the current 26 percent.

Higher FDI will help procurement of latest technologies as per provisions of the latest defence offset policy, Assocham said.

Google has launched an unfinished new search engine Google Caffeine Search Engine. The search engine is expected to improvise on the index size, speed of the queries and most importantly, changes the value of search engine rankings.

A post describing the new search architecture, code named Caffeine, mentions that the new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results.

Some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet, so we’d welcome feedback on any issues you see. The Google’s new infrastructure is found at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/.

“Right now, we only want feedback on the differences between Google’s current search results and our new system. We’re also interested in higher-level feedback on ranking discrepancy as engineers will be reading the feedback,” wrote Sitaram Iyer, staff software engineer, and Matt Cutts, principal engineer at Google, in the official blog site.

The public testing of the new engine comes two weeks after Microsoft Corp. struck a deal to replace Yahoo Inc.’s search engine, with its own Google competitor, called Bing. Yahoo Search and Bing are the second- and third-most popular engines after Google

Microsoft is likely to soon announce a partnership deal with Nokia to help get its Office software onto Nokia mobile phones. The two sides aren’t talking details, but both have confirmed a press conference today and are expected to discuss on the lines of alliance.

The software-maker had earlier announced that its next version of Office will be compatible with browser, and had announced web-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. (However, Microsoft has yet to start publicly testing the browser-based versions. The final version of Office 2010 is due next year)

These programs will be able to run inside Safari and Firefox in addition to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. That means Office, for the first time, will run on Linux-based machines.
Although Nokia and Microsoft have long been rivals in the phone business, the two have struck deals at times. Nokia already has a license that allows its phones to connect to Exchange Servers using Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol.