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Tower Semiconductor, the second largest fab company in Israel, has zoomed in on India to transfer technology in chip making and provide specialised services to design companies. The Israeli company, which rakes in $60-million revenues every quarter, is in talks with SemIndia and Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (HSMC) for transfer of technology (ToT) agreements.

Tower has two fabs in Israel and serves clients in the US and Asia Pacific region. The company is also looking at forging ties with design companies such as Sankalp Semiconductor, Cosmic circuits, Insilica and the wipro-SanDisk centre to provide specialised technologies. It may look at investments in India as well in future.

Hagay Dvir, vice-president, Tower Semiconductor said that they provide specialised technologies including complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, among other things. He also said that they are exploring opportunities in India to supply high-end technologies.

Dvir is a member of a trade delegation from Israel that is visiting India to explore tie-ups in high end technology areas such as chipmaking and IT. Companies from Israel want to cash in on the booming semiconductor sector in India.

Andra Pradesh is, emerging as a chip manufacturing hub, with consortiums like SemIndia and HSMC planning a cumulative investment of over $5 billion. SemIndia has technology partnership agreements with AMD and HSMC with Infineon.

CCD and CMOS sensors capture light and transform it to charged patters or electronic image. It is used in cameras and mobiles. Tower is also negotiating with design companies in the country for providing similar services.

Dvir said that they would look at investing in the country for setting up joint ventures depending on the future business outlook.

Logitech has introduced its rechargeable cordless mouse in India. It works both on the desk and on-air like a TV remote. The MX Air mouse will enable people to sit back and control their computer as they wish. It combines three important technologies - freespace motion control, gesture command and wireless to help people play media files with just a flick.

One major advantage of the cordless mouse is its ability to distinguish between intentional and unintentional hand movements. It ignores the involuntary shake of the hand. Instead of the scroll wheel, the stylish mouse has a touch-sensitive scroll panel.

Probably one of the biggest rages to hit India is that of the Internet, which has grown to become survical requirement for many Indians. This would probably explain why finding and internet cafe today is not such a cumbersome task in urban India and is slowly creeping to rural India as well.

Moreover, there is a noticeable evolvement in the usage of Net. What was once used to simply access one’s e-mails, is now being used for a variety of purposes right from research, mobile downloads, advertising, shopping and even business.

Today names like Google, Yahoo et al are synonyms to search, mail and chat and claim a large user base. However, an interesting observation would be the rise of Indian portals that dare to challenge the might of already established global names, the most popular being Rediff.com, Sify.com and Indiatimes.com.

When rediff came out with its email service in 2004, it promoted its service as ‘lightning fast’ email service that probably caught on with the indian crowd just as fast. Today, Rediffmail can proudly boast of having a user base that stands at 53 million registered users. However, this does not deter counterparts like Sify.com and Indiatimes.com that too have become just recognised names.

While sify might not be really big in its emailing business, it is actively involved in the Internet business that it involves itself in everything to do with the Internet in India ranging from its portals to enterprise services, Internet service providers to gaming. Not to be ignored is Indiatimes who is all set with its latest product that they cal, ‘My Indiatimes’, in efforts to allow users to customise their homepages and inbox to suit their tastes and needs.

While this is the first attempt from an Indian web portal, such services are already provided by giants - Yahoo and Google through their products My Yahoo and iGoogle respectively.

Regarding the launch of the new Indiatimes mail, Dinesh Wadhawan, Managing director and CEO of times Internet Ltd says that the new Indiatimes mail is based on latest AJAX, Web 2.0 technology which offers a user friendly interface and the most advanced features which will allow users to virtually ‘Live out of the Inbox’. The enhanced functionalities and young look will appeal to today’s netizens and new adopters. I am confident that the new Indiatimes mail with its futuristic features will definitely change the paradigm of e-mail usage.