Command centre - the nerve of the Beijing Olympics 2008

Beijing's first government data pool and emergency command center has commenced operations.
The center will operate during and after the Olympics.
The Digital Beijing Building, located a few hundred meters northwest of the National Stadium, the main stadium for the Games, will be the central powerhouse of all statistical, visual and audio information from all 37 venues nationwide during the Olympics.
The center will be able to receive live images from spectator stands at all venues, sources told China Daily.

The center, 11 storeys high and two levels below ground, will continue to be the government's command headquarters in the event of an emergency after the Games.
"Here we have access to the cell phone network, the land phone network, the government's network and the police network, either cable or wireless networks. That's why we are able to respond as the command headquarters in times of an emergency," an official from the municipality's IT office, who requested anonymity, said.
"Because we have been working with five telecom and Internet service providers, we are basically a telecom headquarters."
Experts said that with such a network, the city would be able to track phone and Internet communications in the event of a terrorist attack.
"Unlike the US where reportedly 100 percent of phone communications and 80 percent of Web communications are monitored, our country has not obtained advanced technologies like that," said Liu Jianwei, an electronics information expert from Beijing-based Beihang University.
"At the moment, problems like web communication filtering have not been solved. But I believe both citizens and the technical personnel should conduct themselves under the framework of the law."

courtesy : xinhua

Short Codes - short circuited ?

What was the response you got on the last ODI between India & England when you SMS'd for the scores?

Did you check your stars and sun signs this week, using your AstroLive SMS?



Was this the reply you got ....“Please send your message to a different number. The numbers have changed as per a government order”.



Mobile VAS industry (estimated at INR 4560 Crores) is claiming the recently implemented rule of adding an extra digit '#5' in all the short codes by TRAI, is hurting their revenues & for the telecom operators as well.



They also claim the operators have Pre-installed the Short Codes for an estimated 120 Million subscribers for accesing their LIVE services through these short codes and it'll be really expensive and time consuming exercise for changing these physically.



But a visit to the TRAI website indicates the Operators & VAS service providers have been given time since 31st July 2006.



The content providers and the operators could have used the technology platform in educating the users of these services atleast indicating to alter the Short codes in near future. Though one might argue its not possible to inform all subscribers, they could have atleast informed people availing these services using their already existing software tools.



Looks like the providers wake up only in the last moment, inspite of of extension in deadlines by TRAI.



So much for customer care ............