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The Economic Times is carrying reviews (here & here) of Chetan Bhagat's, first book - 'Five Point Someone – What not to do at IIT!'. The excerpts (here & here) catch the mood of campus life pretty accurately, and at Rs.95 a pop, the book is a steal for just about everybody.

Related Blogs: Purple Cow(?) & more..

Update [2/Jun/2004]: Check here for an interview with Chetan Bhagat.

Siebel, a leader in the market for CRM (customer relationship management) software, has decided to rent out managed servers running it's software, along with selling packaged software. This move has been forced upon them due to the success of competitors such as Salesforce, that host the software and sell access to it.

The Salesforce model has advantages for companies that don't relish the complication, time commitment and expense of installing their own CRM software. And though Siebel remains committed to the idea of selling software packages, it's embracing the idea of hosting the software for customers to rent, said David Schmaier, a Siebel executive vice president speaking at the CeBit America show here.

ZDNet is carrying this story.

Reuters is carrying an interesting story on efforts by the British police forces to get it's investigators upto speed on the use of computer forensics, to tackle the growing number of crimes that rely on digital evidence. The cybercrime division, named NHTCU (National Hi-Tech Crime Unit) was responsible for the recent successes in breaking a Russian phishing ring, and a global paedophile network.

The first quarter figures for 2004 show an impressive spurt in sales in all sectors of the retail computer industry. While HCL had the highest sales figures, it was HP which had the highest figures for comsumer desktops.

The overall desktop segment in the first quarter of ’04 grew 24%, compared to the same period last year, to a total of 7,71,000 units. The commercial desktop segment grew 21% year-on-year to a total of 5,35,000 units, partly due to a surge in demand from the ITES and manufacturing sectors. HCL, HP and IBM grabbed the market in that order.

The Economic Times is carrying this story.

CIOL notes that Reliance is set to roll out it's broadband service - Reliance Broadband, in 30 cities. Initially, only catering to the enterprise segment, it's consumer broadband service, 'Netway' is also due soon.

The company is also stressing on Service Level Agreement (SLA) as another differentiator. The company claims that its SLA has an inbuilt penalty clause and would cover all services under its broadband offering. According to Bajpai, the company’s optimism on meeting SLAs stems from the inherent strength of Reliance’s self-healing ring architecture network. Beside the ring topology, its core network also has more than two alternate paths thereby creating alternate mesh architecture. On the international bandwidth front it treads both the Trans Atlantic and Pacific path.

The story can be read in it's entirety here. I can't wait!

The Economic Times is carrying a background story on yesterday's jobsahead.com buyout. With a combined stake of around 20 per cent in the venture, the two co-promoters - Puneet Dalmia and Alok Mittal, are likely to go back home richer by around Rs 4 crore each.

The full story can be read here. A related Financial Express article can be read here.

The Inquirer is carrying a 'juicy tit-bit' on a former Redhat employee, currently on the payroll of Microsoft, who is openly criticising open source efforts.

The full story is available here.

ZDNet is carrying a interesting story on Microsoft's initiative to develop a Windows product line specially primed for high performance computing.

The HPC Edition is also an example of a Microsoft strategy to increase revenue by creating versions of Windows tailored for specific market segments--for example, Windows for tablet PCs, digital TV recorders and storage servers.

"Another way for them to keep Windows sales moving is to roll out more of these editions," Helm said. "When you've got a product that you need to keep moving, one way to do it is to segment it. You introduce Tarter Control Windows Server and Sensitive Teeth Windows Server."

An interesting read. The entire story is available here.

Zone-H reports on the latest in a string of recent defacements of Microsoft sites. A Portuguese group who call themselves "Outlaw Group" yesterday defaced www.microsoft.com/mspress/uk/. The site has been unavailable until recently. The full report can be read here.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday denied Microsoft's appeal that the term "windows" be considered only as it is understood by the public today—not as it was when the company's Windows was introduced in 1985—as the company's trademark litigation against Lindows continues.

Lindows hopes to prove that prior to the adoption of Windows by Microsoft, 'windowing' and 'windows' were used for a particular feature of computer graphic user interfaces: namely, the ability to open files within so-called 'windows' and of opening multiple 'windows' on the computer screen to work on different programs or files.

eWeek is carrying the full story.