Recently in Bangalore Category

The National Geographic Channel has launched a nationwide quest to discover India's most innovative and creative ideas in a program sponsored by Yamaha as part of its 'Shaping the Future' media campaign.

The initiative seeks to identify potential and relevant innovations that could lead to technological or scientific breakthroughs or those that help improve quality of life. The innovations will be evaluated across four categories: Environment Edge, Technology Edge, Human Edge and Re-Engineering Edge.

The nationwide campaign seeks to identify the most promising inventions and innovations across India where it is looking for innovations that can "make a difference to our life, our world and the future."

The second edition of the Global Innovation Index in 2008 ranked India 41 in the Top 130 list of the World's Most Innovative Countries.

Individuals from all corners of the country will get an opportunity to showcase their innovations that they believe has the potential to make a difference to society and to India. To enable this, the National Geographic Channel has collaborated with some of India's leading educational institutions including the FITT, IIT Delhi (Foundation for Information & Technology Transfer of Indian Institute of Technology), SINE, IIT Bombay (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of Indian Institute of Technology), NSRCEL IIM, Bangalore (Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the Indian Institute of Management) and TePP, DSIR (Technopreneur Promotion Programme at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research.)

Rajesh Sheshadri, Senior Vice President, Content and Communication, National Geographic Channel - India, said, "We believe that the innovation potential of India is immense and that much of it remains untapped and hidden. The real endeavor of the program is to unearth this and to also provide a relevant platform that showcases India as an innovation powerhouse. We believe this will further help to create an enabling environment that further stimulates innovative thinking that is focused on important social and technological issues to help make a difference to society and environment,"

According to National Geographic the selection process of this campaign will span across six phases. The online registration began 10th August, where participants have been encouraged to register themselves at the  www.msnindia.com/ngc web site. The shortlisted projects will be judged by a panel of eminent academicians, technicians and industrialists. All the projects will be awarded across four categories namely Environment, Technology, Human and Re-Engineering. A jury will choose four teams spanning all categories after a stringent set of evaluations and presentations.

The program will be extensively promoted across media - on-air, on-ground, radio and on-line. The National geographic Channel has an exclusive tie-up with the leading online portal, MSN.

For further details visit this website http://specials.msn.co.in/sp09/shapingyourfuture/
or contact: priyam.chaturvedi@bm.com or swatee.dobriyal@bm.com

India and Russia have jointly developed the spacecraft, landing platform and moon rover vehicle for a planned mission to the moon, according to siliconIndia.

The Chandrayaan-2 mission involves an unmanned lunar orbiter to be sent to the Moon in 2011-2012.

Russia's main task is developing the moon rover, which is expected to collect and analyze samples of the lunar soil and transmit the resulting data.

The development collaboration started after the launch of India's first unmanned mission to the moon, the Chandrayaan-1, in October 2008. The successful launch of the Chandrayaan-1 on board the Indian-built rocket made India the third Asian country after Japan and China to send an unmanned probe to the moon.

India has also begun building an astronaut training center in Bangalore, designing a new launch pad and modifying launch vehicles to prepare for an ambitious manned spaceflight.

A feasibility study expects the mission to occur in 2015-16. The aim is to build and demonstrate the capability for carrying humans to low earth orbit and their return to earth.

Technology firms are finding India's talented researchers enhance the country's potential for offshore R&D work, according to a Reuters report.

Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Ericsson and Suzuki Motor have all gone beyond low-end coding and tweaking products for the local market, with hefty investments and recruitment, the report said.

Microsoft in Bangalore developed a Bing tool which enables searches for locations with incomplete or even incorrect addresses. Half of Cisco's core R&D work, including innovations in WiMAX and optical networks, and about 40 percent of SAP's ideas for processes and product development come from India. IBM's India Research Labs do a "fair share of patenting."

R&D costs are cheaper in India than in China for R&D, but salaries in India have been rising by about 15 percent annually and may soon reach parity with China.

China has more than 1,100 R&D centers compared to less than 800 in India, despite lingering concerns about rule of law and intellectual property rights.

Where are the Top 10 Tech Cities around the world? There's a good starter list here naming and qualifying the following metrotech centers: Tel Aviv, Israel Munich, Germany Bangalore, India Helsinki, Finland Seattle, Washington San Francisco Bay Area, California Hong Kong, China Singapore Seoul, South Korea Tokyo, Japan.