Pune-based C-DAC(Centre for Development of Advanced Computing technology,Under Ministry of deity) has launched Mercury Nimbus, which appears to be an online EMR (electronic medical records) software suite, on the Windows Azure cloud platform, that doctors and hospitals can use to share patient data This technology promises reduce cost of telemedicine by at least 80%

It is based on cloud computing, can be used by doctors and hospitals on devices including tablets, smart phones and laptops with internet connectivity. Telemedicine is the use of telecommunication and information technologies to provide clinical health care at a distance.

 Pradeep K Sinha, head of the department of medical informatics group, C-DAC, declared the launch of the technology  on 1Sept 2013 during the MahaTelemedicon conference of the Maharashtra chapter of the Telemedicine Society of India, organised by the Indian Medical Association.

According to Times of India article :
"At present, doctors and hospitals have to invest a lot on creating the entire infrastructure to establish patient to doctor, doctor to hospital or hospital to hospital connectivity. With the new technology, connectivity between all these parties becomes simpler and faster, thereby reducing the cost of creating the computing infrastructure," said Sinha.
Gaur Sunder, principal technical officer at C-DAC, said that if a cancer patient goes to a nearby clinic and the doctors refers him to a hospital outside his present location, town or state, than in such a case, through 'Mercury Nimbus,' the doctor can virtually refer his case to the specialty hospital along with all the details of the patients, records and reports.

The doctor at the specialty hospital can study the records and through video conferencing prescribe immediate treatment to the patient and also give the next date of visit. The next time the patient visits the clinic, his reports would be sent again to the hospital and accordingly the specialty doctor can give him the time and details of his treatment or surgery date.

"In such situations, the patient's energy and money is saved from travelling within the city or from one city to the other. It is more useful in rural areas and public health centres where specialty doctors are never present. Also, the doctors will have the medical history of the patient electronically created, which will help in case of an emergency," said Sunder.

Broadly known as telemedicine, Sunder said that more and more doctors and hospitals are becoming aware of this technology that combine communication ways with information technologies for the delivery of clinical care.

All that the doctors or hospitals need to do is subscribe to Windows Azure, which is a cloud platform, through the device they own and secure a licence from C-DAC for usage. Once this is done, the doctors and hospitals can use the technology on their laptops, tablet or smart phone. They do not even have to maintain the system or have a server for storage.

Sunder said, "It is as easy as subscribing to Gmail to open an account and carrying out activities such as sending and receiving email, creating drafts and documents or pictures among other things. The rest of the part such as storage, up gradation and maintenance of the account is done at the backend." The subscription charges range from $15 to $150 per month.

I came across very interesting scenario where I was suppose to transfer contact of a NOKIA phone to Blackberry/Android. First method that came in mind is just copy the contact to SIM memory and then tranfer to another phone. Here I am going to explain few method by which you can transfer your contact from one phone to another.Now a day people switching to smartphone then it become cumbersome to copy so much contact one by by so I am going to present few method which will help you to easily switch to smart phones.

1) Transfer Contact using SIM memory: In this method if you have limited contact on phone memory say like less than 200 contact then you just need to COPY/MOVE all your contact from OLD phone to SIM memory. Now you can place the SIM on new PHONE and start using.Here I want to state that you can even COPY/MOVE the content of SIM to NEW phone book.If you have more than 200 contact including SIM and PHONE book  then first  you need to MOVE the contact of existing  SIM memory and then place the SIM on new phone there you need to MOVE content from SIM to NEW PHONE.Once the SIM content is empty now place the SIM on OLD phone move the PHONE book content on to SIM and again place the SIM to new PHONE and move the content to new phone book, continue this process until your OLD phonebook get empty.

2) Transfer using Computer: The SIM card based approach is good when transferring basic phone numbers but if your phone’s address book includes long names, email addresses,then you need corresponding phone application to transfer.For instance if you have a NOKIA phone and you are shifting to BLACKBERRY or iPHONE or ANDRIOD then use NOKIA OviSuit application to copy your phone'address book to Microsoft Outlook on your desktop. Once it is copied to to your Outlook then you can use BLACKBERRY Desktop Manager software or HTC sync or iTunes in case of iPHONE or Kies for Samsung glaxy to Transfer from Outlook(PC) to your new phone's address book

Windows Mobile users, like Samsung Omnia or HTC HD2, may again use Microsoft’s Device Center (or ActiveSync for XP) to copy their phone address book to the desktop via Outlook. If you are simply switching from one Windows Phone to another, you can transfer contacts via the cloud itself using Microsoft’s My Phone service.

3) Transfer using Cloud : If you have internet enable handset  then you can copy your old phone contat to new phone over cloud without even a computer. A online seriver called Mobical which is free and works with moost of mobile phone form NOKIA,Motorola.SONY etc.All you need to setup  MOBICAL on old phone and will create back up of your phone on cloud, Now setup Mobical on the new phone using same  login detail and it will automatically download all the contact form cloud to new phone

Another intresting method on is GOOGLE SYNC, a cloud based service that works with BLACKBERRY,iPHONE,NOKIA and most other phones that are SyncML capable. Google sync keep address book in sync with Google contact.If you install google syn on two diffrent phone and use same login detial then it will automatically syn the both phone You can install Google syn on old phone and and just sync with google contact. Once you have finished sync with old phone now install google sync on new phone and use same credential to sync. All the Google contact corresponding to that login will automatically sync.

Remember the Rs. 1500 Indian laptop? The one that got the world making fun of India in general and me never having faith in Kapil Sibal again?
The one that actually turned out to be an expensive storage device, and then somehow metamorphosed into a tablet?
It's being announced that the "Sakshat" (which sounds conspicuously dirty in Americanese), the $35 tablet codenamed 'Sakshat' is expected to launch by the end of this month.

While the Indian media is huffing up the desi-pride angle with talks of "Indian-iPad". there's very little for a complete tablet experience. And there's nothing desi about it; the tablet is made by Canadian firm Datawind Ltd.
The7-inch touchscreen tablet features a inbuilt keyboard, video conferencing facility, multimedia content, Wi-Fi, USB port, 32GB hard drive and a 2GB RAM. There's support for Open Office, SciLab and Internet browsing.

However, this means nothing for the aam-aadmi it was intended for, but there is a desi crop of real tablets worth checking out.
10,000 Sakshat tablets will be shipped to IIT Rajasthan by June-end, following by the launch of over 90,000 tablet units in the next 4 months.

Sakshat: Other Specifications

QWERTY keyboard, mouse and a minimum display of 7” colour LCD/TFT (touchscreen optional)
2 USB 2.0 ports and USB hosts
three hours
batteryless device
SD card slot (8GB expandable memory)
Support to connect LCD projector
Support for external hard disk drive (Minimum 32 GB)
Ethernet port
WLAN
80% shock resistant

While the tablets will be priced at Rs 2,200, there are reports of plans for later subsidies of 50%. The 1500 Rupee tablet might go for Rs. 1100, and has been developed as a part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology to bring together 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in the Asian subcontinent in an e-learning initiative. (MensXP.com)

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet.[1][2] Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.[3]

The concept generally incorporates combinations of the following:

* infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
* platform as a service (PaaS)
* software as a service (SaaS)
* Other recent (ca. 2007–2009)[4][5] technologies that rely on the Internet to satisfy the computing needs of users. Cloud computing services often provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on how the Internet is depicted in computer network diagrams and is an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it conceals.[6]

The first academic use of this term appears to be by Prof. Ramnath K. Chellappa (currently at Goizueta Business School, Emory University) who originally defined it as a computing paradigm where the boundaries of computing will be determined by economic rationale rather than technical limits.[7]

Characteristics

Cloud computing customers do not generally own the physical infrastructure serving as host to the software platform in question. Instead, they avoid capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use. Many cloud-computing offerings employ the utility computing model, which is analogous to how traditional utility services (such as electricity) are consumed, while others bill on a subscription basis. Sharing "perishable and intangible" computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not unnecessarily left idle (which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development). A side effect of this approach is that overall computer usage rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak load limits.[13] Additionally, "increased high-speed bandwidth" makes it possible to receive the same response times from centralized infrastructure at other sites.

[edit] Economics
Diagram showing economics of cloud computing versus traditional IT, including capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx)

Cloud computing users can avoid capital expenditure (CapEx) on hardware, software, and services when they pay a provider only for what they use. Consumption is billed on a utility (e.g. resources consumed, like electricity) or subscription (e.g. time based, like a newspaper) basis with little or no upfront cost. Other benefits of this time sharing style approach are low barriers to entry, shared infrastructure and costs, low management overhead, and immediate access to a broad range of applications. Users can generally terminate the contract at any time (thereby avoiding return on investment risk and uncertainty) and the services are often covered by service level agreements (SLAs) with financial penalties.[14][15]

According to Nicholas Carr, the strategic importance of information technology is diminishing as it becomes standardized and less expensive. He argues that the cloud computing paradigm shift is similar to the displacement of electricity generators by electricity grids early in the 20th century.[16]

Although companies might be able to save on upfront capital expenditures, they might not save much and might actually pay more for operating expenses. In situations where the capital expense would be relatively small, or where the organization has more flexibility in their capital budget than their operating budget, the cloud model might not make great fiscal sense. Other factors impacting the scale of any potential cost savings include the efficiency of a company’s data center as compared to the cloud vendor’s, the company’s existing operating costs, the level of adoption of cloud computing, and the type of functionality being hosted in the cloud. [