West Bengal to be renamed Paschimbanga

Kolkata:  A consensus to rename West Bengal as Paschimbanga was reached at an all-party meeting on Friday.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee suggested the new name and unanimity was reached on it, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee told reporters after the meeting in the state Assembly.

"It has been unanimously decided that state's new name will be Paschimbanga from now in all languages," he said.

"We wanted a change in the name of the state to get the administrative advantage," he said.

The Chief Minister presided over the meeting attended by Trinamool Congress, besides ally Congress and Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) [SUCI(C)], Left Front constituents CPM, CPI, RSP, Forward Bloc as also GJM, among other parties.

Banerjee had earlier empowered Chatterjee and Leader of the Opposition Surjyakanta Mishra to study the new name for the state.

Hewlett Packard's big strategic U-turn

The world's largest computer maker, Hewlett Packard, plans to sell its personal computers business, ditch its line of smart phones, and buy UK software company Autonomy for $11.7bn (£7.1bn) - but how does it all fit together?

For Hewlett Packard, it is a dramatic strategic turnaround.

In January this year, HP was gearing up for a huge surge in the market for consumer products.

HP would become "as cool as Apple," promised its new chief executive Leo Apotheker when I interviewed him on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

In February, he unveiled the Touchpad and a new range of "Pre" smartphones, based on the WebOS software that HP got when it bought mobile phone maker Palm. This was not just about challenging Apple's iPad and iPhone, and the many mobile devices using Google's Android software. WebOS, he said, would soon appear on PCs and printers, creating a new software ecosystem to excite developers.

In March, Mr Apotheker outlined a sweeping vision for HP being the "platform for the cloud and connectivity," with HP setting itself up to become one of the world's top providers of cloud computing services.

HP, Mr Apotheker implied, was the one company capable of combining cool design with security and reliability, to straddle the consumer space and corporate computing.

Beige is profitable

The Touchpad proved not to be a challenger for the iPad

No more. Instead of becoming cool, HP is decidedly turning corporate beige again.

The thing is, beige is very profitable.

HP's strategic turnaround is not an attempt to move the company into Mr Apotheker's comfort zone of enterprise computing (before running HP, Mr Apotheker was chief executive at German enterprise software giant SAP).

Rather, it is a sign of the brutal competition in the computer industry.

Yes, HP was - and still is - the world's biggest maker of personal computers. It has a 17.6% market share, well ahead of second place Dell (12.5%).

But the industry's profit margins are razor-thin; it's the result of technology commoditisation, where there is not much left to distinguish one PC from another. Only Apple has a brand that consumers perceive as so desirable that they are happy to pay a hefty premium for what in the end are perfectly ordinary computers.

Doing an IBM

Commendably, Mr Apotheker did not take long to realise that both the Touchpad and the Pre smartphones flopped with consumers, and that HP would struggle to out-Apple Apple.

So he is taking the bold move to "do an IBM".

When the company that invented the PC was struggling, it sold most of its hardware business to China's Lenovo and built its business around highly profitable services and hardware for enterprise customers.

HP will do the same, focusing on services, servers and software (although it will keep its printer business, which serves both consumers and corporations).

This is where the purchase of UK software firm Autonomy fits in.

Companies have one big IT problem right now: how to process, store and understand the rapidly growing data deluge that is flooding in from ever more connected devices and web services.

It's called "business intelligence" or "business analytics", and Autonomy - best known for software that searches and organises vast amounts of unstructured data - has been pushing hard to make its name in the field.

Can HP elephant dance?

Mr Apotheker's strategy is not without risk.

For starters, he has no buyer yet for HP's computer business, the "Personal Systems Group" (PSG). He hopes to find one over the next 12 to 18 months.

Given today's speed of computing, that's a couple of generations away, and PSG will suffer.

Talent may leave; corporate customers may hesitate. IBM's deal worked because it had lined up a willing buyer.

And while Mr Apotheker knows all about enterprise computing, any IT firm would struggle to integrate successfully a large new division like Autonomy.

It can be done. The man who saved IBM, Lou Gerstner, put it thus: "Who says elephants can't dance?"

Mr Apotheker may be remembered as the Lou Gerstner of the 21st century.

But to succeed, Mr Apotheker will need a lot of luck, and very patient shareholders.

Quit Smoking, Live Longer

Smoking is a growing problem in England where thousands of people succumbs to death because of it.

Every year, medical authorities spend nearly £60m to provide services to smokers to help them quit smoking.

Recently, figures revealed that for the current year the NHS Information Centre invested an amount of £84.3m, which was more than £500,000 of previous year. However, the number of smokers for the period has remained steady at 22% men and 20% women.

There are many trying to quit smoking. According to a report, about 384,000 smokers were successful in quitting smoke 2001/2002. Since then they have not picked up smoking again. A Spokesperson for the Department of Health said, “A record number of people have stopped smoking, which is a testament to the excellent work of NHS professionals in local stop smoking services”.

Motorola shareholder sues Google, asks for higher price

Google had recently proposed to buy out Motorola Mobility at the price of $ 12.5 billion, at the cost of $40 a share. While Motorola's stocks closed at $24.47 when the deal was made public, the prices have risen up since then and have traded over $38 most of the time. While most of the industry experts feel that the 63% premium agreed upon by Google a little too steep, John W. Keating, a Motorola Mobility shareholder, doesn't seem to echo the same sentiment. He feels that the Mountain View based firm is buying Motorola Mobility for "pennies on the dollar".

John W. Keating is filing a complaint in the state courthouse in Chicago against both Motorola and its CEO Sanjay Jha. The suit also names Google and the other 9-member Motorola Mobility board as defendants. John feels that the price of $12.5 billion is not good enough keeping in mind the 17,000 patents currently held by Motorola and their importance to Google, along with the current market price of the company.

The lawsuit argued Motorola was just beginning to bear fruit from the restructuring this year that split the company in two. Because they will be cashed out by the board's decision to sell, shareholders are missing out.

"Instead, any economic upside will enrich Google," said the lawsuit.

Keating also condemned the board members, claiming they violated their duty to investors, and accused Google to assist and abet a violation of these duties. Keating said that he would also seek class action, and asked the court to prohibit the completion of the transaction.

Google’s Most Ambitious Photo-Sharing App Photovine Grows Ready For Public Use

Google’s Slide team has been busy. In the past few months,they’ve unleashed a range of social apps meant to fulfill different needs. But the strange thing is that Google hasn’t done a thing to promote any of them. That has been on purpose. Google is giving the Slide team, which operates on its own within Google, room to maneuver and fly under the radar. But with Photovine, they’re actually communicating a bit. And for good reason — the app is pretty slick.

If you’ve heard of Photovine before, it’s either because you read that Google registered the domain, or that they pushed the app into the App Store. But until now, the app has been in closed beta testing with a very limited number of users. Not anymore. As of now, the app is open for all to sign up.

So what is Photovine? It’s a photo-sharing application for iOS that puts an emphasis on “vines”. That is, photo-centric moments or ideas that connect you with other users. Yes, that sounds a bit pretentious. And the best way to understand it is to watch the video below. But think of it this way: you take a picture of your favorite cologne. This prompts another user to take a picture of their favorite fragrances. And that prompts another user to do the same. Etc. It’s more or less theme-based picture-taking.

This is an interesting concept because it spurs users into action. With an open-ended picture app you can take a picture of anything, and to some users, that’s daunting. What do you take a picture of when you can take a picture of anything? With Photovine, the experience is more guided. Or, if you wish to take a picture of anything, you can simply start your own vine.

In Google’s view, this amounts to storytelling with pictures. Maybe a picture tells the story of your “perfect weekend”. Someone else sees that and takes a picture to tell their own story of the same idea. Fundamentally, the idea stems from the staring up at the stars at night and wondering who else is doing the same thing? Point being, there are thousands, if not millions, of people around the world doing what you’re doing at the same time. Photovine’s goal is to connect those people.

If you’ve heard of the app Piictu, this is similar. But unlike so many Google products, Photovine is very well designed. In fact, it’s one of the more slick-looking iOS photo apps out there right now — again, just to be clear, technically Google-made.

Naturally, none of this ensures that app will find success. But it’s a compelling idea with a good user interface. It reminds me a bit of Treeshouse, a former Y Combinator-backed project — which shouldn’t be surprising at all considering that the founder of that startup, Chrys Bader, now works for Google/Slide on this project.

And yes, Photovine includes ways to share images out to Facebook or Twitter. But the actual social graph is their own.

You can find Photovine in the App Store here.