I got a call Thursday morning from Fargo, North Dakota, in the United States. The caller was Satya Nadella, and he is corporate vice-president, Microsoft Business Solutions Group. Nadella, a Hyderabad Public School alumnus who has been with Microsoft since 1992, wanted to talk to me about the Microsoft India Development Centre, which, in the popular imagination, is where the company gets the heavy lifting, that is writing code, done on the cheap. Relatively, that is.

Anyways, Nadella told me on the line from Fargo (it was 11 pm Wednesday there, and freezing cold) that "some heavy lifting is still done at the MIDC, but the guys there have been up to some amazing things".What? Well, for instance, the crew at the MIDC is apparently involved up to its knees in "conceptualising and developing" the Microsoft Dynamics Snap. "The entire product was thought up by the MIDC guys, with some support from Redmond (where Microsoft is based) and Copenhagen and they delivered the product in four months," he said.

Dynamics Snap is a collection of four software programmes that "snap" into Microsoft Office. "Dynamics Snap brings a CRM (Customer Relationship Managment) functionality to Microsoft Office 2003. The first ‘snap’ enhances MS Outlook to allow easy computation of billable hours by knowledge workers, while another ‘snap’, developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX 3.0, makes it easy for employees to submit vacation requests, again using MS Outlook," he says. This triggers an email to the approver, who can view details of the request along with the requestor’s vacation history, and approve or reject the request. The vacation time entry is then automatically updated into the Microsoft Dynamics time and attendance module. "This in turn makes it easy for payroll calculation. It also helps in workers increasing their productivity," says Mr Nadella.

The Business Data Lookup Snap-In, developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX, allows business workers to use the Microsoft Dynamics AX task pane to search and browse Microsoft Dynamics AX data using Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel or Outlook, and to copy selected data into Office 2003 documents or attach the Office documents to Microsoft Dynamics AX records.

One of the many useful scenarios for this includes sending order status emails to customers. Using a CRM task pane, users can copy data into Microsoft Office documents or attach the Microsoft Office documents to CRM records.

If Netscape, personal websites and Britannica Online were the standard bearers for Web 1.0, then Google, blogging and Wikipedia are considered the bearers for Web 2.0, say IT experts.

"In the future you could see web pages on Google with security threat levels ratings alongside and we are in talks with Web 2.0 companies on the same. Sites will be rated on feedback received. We like to think of it as Security 2.0 for Web 2.0," said Mr Philip Hickey, consumer product marketing manager, Asia Pacific, Symantec Corp, the US-based world leader in e-security solutions, at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday.

Database management is a core competency of Web 2.0 companies whose examples are Google’s and Yahoo!’s web crawl, Amazon’s and eBay’s database of products or Napster’s song database. iTunes and TiVo demonstrate many of the core principles, while real time traffic monitoring, flash mobs, and citizen journalism are a few of the early warning signs of the capabilities Web 2.0 or what some experts call the ‘live or incremental web.’

Symantec is developing the next generation consumer security service, code named Genesis, for Windows Vista and Windows XP platforms, to be launched later this year, that is expected to provide continuous and up-to-date protection utilising innovative patent-pending technology against crimeware, phishing scams and fraudulent websites.

"Currently users have to personally look out for fraud URLs . The new service will eliminate all that and will give consumers confidence that their data is safely stored," he said.

In a bid to stay competitive, Bharti Tele-ventures and Hutchison Essar on Thursday announced outgoing STD rates at Rs 1 a minute in response similar offers rolled out by BSNL, MTNL and Reliance Infocomm.

Airtel, the brand name for Bharti Tele-ventures’ telecom operations, announced twin offers for its post-paid customers. India Home, at a rental of Rs 299, offers local calls to other Airtel connections at Re 1 for two minutes, while all other calls and SMS across India will be charged Re 1 a minute, according to a company statement.

The "India Roam" plan offers roaming calls at Re 1 a minute. For its pre-paid customers, Airtel introduced a Rs 899 recharge plan that offers talk time of Rs 550. All local and STD calls and SMS will be charged at Re 1 under this scheme. Hutch customers will have to pay a tariff of Rs 250 a month on their existing schemes for making calls to any phone in India at Re 1 a minute.