In his invitation to Canadian companies, he said, "Though our two countries have great relationship, but it has now to be translated into business. High technology is opening big opportunities for foreign companies in India.”
The minister said India’s IT and BPO exports have touched $60 billion, but Canada’s share was just $600 million. "Which is low by Canadian standards,” he said.
Pilot said the opportunities for foreign companies in India’s telecom revolution can be gauged from the fact the country currently has 560 million mobile subscribers and "adding 15 million each month.”
The telephone density in India, he said, has gone up from just 1.5 a few years ago to 50 percent. But the tele-density was even much higher than this in big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore, he said.
However, the government was targeting rural India to offer broadband connectivity to every village to spread education, provide health care and make the country a knowledge hub, he said.
According to Pilot, the Indian telecom and IT sector will need investments to the tune of nearly $400 billion in the coming years, offering huge prospects for foreign players in software and hardware.
He said most of Forbes’ 500 companies have set up shop in India because of its "great market, R & D facilities and support by the government.”
Pilot said a task force on IT has prepared a comprehensive report to make India a software and hardware hub.
Referring to US President Barrack Obama’s opposition to outsourcing of IT jobs to India and other countries, he said the Indian IT sector has maintained growth rate of 30 percent and not been much impacted by recent global developments.
Pilot will meet top bosses of BlackBerry Thursday before leaving for India.
He is the second minister to visit Canada this year. Kamal Nath, minister for road transport and highways, was here last week to woo Canada companies.
The visits by Indian ministers follow visits by as many as 13 Canadian ministers, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to India last year.

Venkat Selvamanickam, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston, is developing a technology with high temperature superconducting wires that is revolutionising the way power is generated, transported and used.

It is estimated that high-temperature superconducting wires could eliminate 131 million tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and offset the emission of the equivalent of 40 conventional power-generating plants.
"The country’s electric transmission grid currently consists of about 160,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, with forecasters predicting an additional 12,900 miles needed over the next five years to meet increasing demand," said Selvamanickam.
"Superconducting power cables can transmit up to 10 times more power than traditional copper cables without the significant losses of traditional cables and are considered environmentally friendly," he added.
"The goal of my research is to modernise the power grid with high temperature superconducting wires to improve efficiency and reliability."
"Almost anything in the power grid — cables, transformers, motors, generators — can be more efficient if you use high temperature superconducting wires."
"Superconducting fault current limiters can enable uninterrupted power transmission when conventional circuits will otherwise succumb to outages in events such as lightning storms," said Selvamanickam, who did his B.E. (Honours) from Regional Engineering college, Tiruchi, India.
The applications for superconducting wires range from advanced medical imaging techniques like magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to large-scale applications replacing existing copper wires with superconducting wires to raise reliability and cut costs.
"High temperature superconductivity has the potential to revolutionise the way we use electricity, just like the way fiber-optics revolutionised the way we communicate," he said.
"Our research pays immediate returns to the industry. It’s not like something that may be useful 10 years down the line," Selvamanickam added.

Following the placement session getting over, the debate started across the corner that which institute managed the best offer? An IIM-Ahmedabad student was tipped to have bagged an offer for Rs 1.4 crore two weeks ago, which has reportedly been breached by the Rs 1.6 crore offer made by a British investment bank at IIM-Calcutta.

But seeing these eye-popping numbers that have dominated headlines for some weeks, Saral Mukherjee, Placement Chief at the IIM-A said, "The truth is that the readers are being fed garbage" said Saral Mukherjee, Placement Chief at IIM-A.

This year, it has been totally different scenario, as the average salary offered by international banks at the IIM campuses are in the range of Rs.12-20 lakh per annum, while that offered by private sector banks is at just over Rs.9 lakh for IIM graduates. The top 30 percent were offered packages of Rs.12-15 lakh, the next 40 percent get salaries in the range of Rs.8-12 lakh and the remaining 30 percent get offers between Rs.5-8 lakh.

Supporting the range of salary being offered, K Ramkumar, Executive Director at ICICI Bank said, "For a person with less than three years of experience, whoever is paying more than Rs 15 lakh is doing a disservice to their organization." ICICI Bank has picked up 50 students from various IIMs so far this year.

It looks really bad to see that how wide is the gap between the lucky few with ‘Rs.1 crore-plus’ salaries and the rest of the crop from the same elite campuses who are stuck with salaries of Rs 50,000 per month.

"If they did, they’d think twice about the information they place on sites like Twitter and Facebook," said Rich Gee, President of Rich Gee Coaching in Stamford, Conn. Organizations monitor social networking sites for two basic reasons, says Gee. "First, they want to see what candidates are saying about them; and second, they want to gather information about them. For example, they’re looking at Twitter to find out who is saying bad things about them. Employees and job candidates don’t realize that they are or were ambassadors for their organizations. They could wind up paying a hefty price for having a less-than-stellar presence on the Web."

While companies and staffing companies rank information found on social networking sites differently, Gee finds that Google, Twitter and LinkedIn are the favorites. "First they’ll do a Google search to pick up general information," says Gee. "Next, they’ll check Twitter, followed by LinkedIn to get an overall picture of candidates."

Despite the impact of social networking sites, there are many consulting and staffing companies that are still basing hiring decisions on candidates’ resumes, interview performance and extensive reference checks. Action Coach of Connecticut, a management consulting firm catering to small businesses in Westport, goes even further and advises its business clients to also use psychometric tests as a hiring gauge. Action Coach’s president and founder Jim Malski said the tests consistently deliver precise readings on candidates’ abilities and whether they’ll be a compatible organizational fit.
"The problem organizations have always faced is assessing candidates’ qualifications and differentiating them from their competition," says Malski. An extensive round of interviews reveals a lot about candidates, but it doesn’t tell the whole story, according to Malski.

The good part about the written tests, which typically take about an hour, is that they measure candidates by several variables, and character is one of them. The tests reveal whether the candidate has the aptitude, job and social skills necessary to perform a particular job, according to Malski.

SAP
The surging demand in the ERP market is expected to increase the adoption of SAP in organizations around the globe. "The demand for SAP market is currently booming and with many companies adopting ERP these days, SAP continues to dominate this space," says Harry CD, Executive Director-Operations at 3G Labs India. Currently, SAP and Oracle are the two major ERP players, however the former is having an advantage over the latter when it comes to the demand in the market. The reason behind this dominance of SAP in the ERP market is because of the customer satisfaction, according a study conducted by Panorama Consulting Group. Analysts have also predicted that SAP’s Business ByDesign offering will do well this year, which will drive the demand for more SAP professionals.
Some of the applications developed by SAP that are seeing major demand are:
SAP Web Dynpro: It is a proprietary web application user interface technology developed by SAP. The increasing number of web applications around the globe needs professionals having this skill.
SAP Plant Maintenance: It deals with the preventive maintenance of manufacturing equipment that accompanies a streamlined production process. SAP PM also monitors downtime of equipment, workforce production hour as well as the time, materials and labor necessary for such maintenance.
SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer: With the boom in the retail segment this is one tool that is bound to see growth in the coming days. Advanced Planner and Optimizer is designed to help a company improve production planning, pricing, scheduling, and product shipping. It works by getting real-time updates from retailers about customer demand.
SAP Governance, Risk management and Compliance: Today, every organization must chart its own course to embrace governance, risk management and compliance framework, weighing critical business requirements with organizational maturity and top-level commitment. Companies may choose to start by identifying one or two high-priority risk areas and initiate a business-specific or initiative-driven deployment of the applications.
Java
Today, Java is being used in more than 4.5 billion devices around the world and the usage is expected to rise further because of the growth in the number of mobile phones, personal computers and smart cards. Java applets help to have an improved functionality while browsing the internet also making it more attractive. "Java is in demand because there are more companies developing user interface and web applications for their clients. The rise in popularity of software as a service (SAAS) model is also giving the edge to Java professionals," says Rishi Das, Co-founder and CEO of CareerNet Consulting.
C++
Many believe that the demand for C++ has always been there and there are not many signs that show the fall of this computer language in the near future. Satish Kumar, a HR executive with an IT firm believes that the demand for programmers like C++ remains constant because these are used in segments such as automobile, healthcare and communication systems, which are always in the growth trajectory.
PHP
PHP, which facilitates the production of dymanic web pages, was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 and its growth has been phenomenal. Last year, PHP was estimated to have been installed on more than 20 million websites and over one million web servers, the number would have multiplied today considering the current surge in the online world. Today, there are several companies that are getting into this space that is driving the demand for professionals with knowledge about PHP.

IT Infrastructure Management
With more companies identifying the importance of infrastructure management services, there is a great demand for people who are specialized in this space, says Reuben Prem, an IT Recruiter in Bangalore. According to research firm IDC, currently investments in infrastructure management have the largest single impact on an organization’s revenue. Today, some of the top IT firms have also entered into this segment by identifying the opportunities that are available. Recently, TCS signed a five year contract with Malaysia Airlines for managing the airline’s datacentres, IT networks and IT security.

Oracle
Though there seems to be more demand for SAP professionals compared to Oracle, the demand for professionals in the overall ERP software market is on the rise. Forrester Research predicts that ERP software revenue from new licenses would have fallen 24 percent in 2009. However, 2010 looks good for ERP for several reasons such as the growth in open-source market and players like Microsoft broadening its ERP offerings. Anuj Agrawal, Director of Zyoin believes that the acquisitions that Oracle has been making in the recent past, especially the Sun Microsystems deal, may alter the ERP market and give some advantage to Oracle over SAP. In the financial services space Oracle applications still holds a high position with Oracle Financials, Oracle HRMS, Oracle Projects, Oracle CRM and Oracle PO considered as the most widely used applications and demand for them is moving upwards.
.NET
Since the birth of multi-core computing, there has been a requirement for parallel-programming architecture. Incidentally, almost every programmer considers .NET Framework 3.5 as getting distant and out of the way. To prevent its programming market fiasco, recently, Microsoft released the beta version of .NET Framework 4. Primarily, the MSDN site shows that the parallel extensions in the .NET 4, has been improvised to support analogous programming, targeting multi-core computing or distributed computing. Thus, making it the right time to be equipped with the .NET skills.
Embedded C++
The increasing demand for embedded systems is driving the growth for Embedded C++, which was defined by an industry group to address the shortcomings of C++ for embedded applications. The official website states the goal of Embedded C++ as to provide embedded systems programmers with a subset of C++ that is easy for the average C programmer to understand and use. "If your interest lies in embedded systems, having the knowledge of Embedded C++ will surely get you a job," says Kumar.
C
C is still one of the most popular programming languages though it was developed nearly three decades ago and there are very few computer architectures for which a C compiler does not exist. C has greatly influenced many other popular programming languages, most notably C++, which originally began as an extension to C. "For all those who have been working on C, the demand still exists in the market because their application is wide," says Prem.

Walking down the roads of Bangalore, the 22-year old Gaurav Jain saw a place bustling with young boys and girls holding big files. And on enquiring, a boy standing at the end of the queue replies, "This is a walk-in offer for a job for freshers, but I may not get a chance for this walk-in due the huge crowd and less time for interviewers." And having been stimulated with the struggling lives of these job seekers, Jain came up with an idea of YuvaJobs.com, an online platform which not only provides job information to freshers, but also for the experienced candidates.

Founded in 2004, Bangalore-based, YuvaJobs is an entrepreneurial venture by an Indian Senior Web Designer Gaurav Jain. He has also been its Chairman since its inception. A Post-graduate in Information Technology from the Technical University of Punjab, Jain had stints at a U.S. based web development company for one and a half year. Under his direction, the Yuva Group has expanded regionally. Having an envision to become one of the leading Internet recruitment websites in the Asia-Pacific, YuvaJobs.com is revolutionizing the way recruitment is done today. Now, it is a forum where employers, placement agencies and job seekers can exchange information, quickly, effectively and inexpensively. Besides providing job information to the job seekers, the portal also provides all papers and articles needed for interview, questions for HR and technical and aptitude questions and many more. It is a common platform where corporate recruiters and freshers come under one roof. "I started off the website by providing a small interface and some job information. Then I started learning ASP using online tutorials and started implementing the portal," says Jain.
Confident and unshakable Jain claims that it is a one stop information clearing house about jobs and careers for Indians. According to the company, job seekers can advertise for a job, search for a job, place your home page, visit employers’ home pages and also visit other Indian and International career sites. In order to keep the portal updated with the job offers, Jain and his dedicated team has integrated several technologies like resume submission system, resume search, job search in different ways and many more to lay a bridge for better communication between freshers or job seekers and employers, where they can work together. "Strong technical and business teams will be deployed to further develop the market and orient it towards job requirements in the market. All our categories have been designed keeping the users in the mind and the specific problems they face," asserts Jain.
However, it was never an easy expedition for Jain and his team to carve out a stand out position for the company in the market. "In the initial days, I did marketing myself by going to colleges and distributing pamphlets and different kind of promotions alone. And after two years in 2006, I open my small office and recruit two freshers to work on marketing and both were freshers," recalls Jain. But with an aim to fan its wings in the market, Jain updated his team and himself on the growing technology, and then further implemented new innovative features for job seekers and employers.
Growing day by day in just five plus years, the company has got over 300000 resumes and also more than about 3000 registered employers. Today, YuvaJobs.com has now managed to establish a convincing position in the market to do any kind of direct placements. "And now we have almost five big portals in our network," asserts Jain. Looking forward to leverage its business and get closer to customers, the passionate YuvaJobs.com is all set to become the most dynamic company in enhancing job opportunities the country

Bangalore: The global economic slowdown has impacted corporate in many ways. Companies started cutting their IT spend and this seems to have taken away the edge from the MCA degree. Software programmers are also being edged out by professionals with engineering degrees, as outsourcing work gets more complex. A sharp increase in the number of engineering colleges in the country has given students a wider choice in the form of a B Tech or a BE degree, which is preferred over MCA by employers, according to Economic Times.

"A candidate with an MCA degree might be good with programming, but when it comes to design and technical know-how, he is in a disadvantageous position compared to a BE or a B Tech degree holder," says Pradeep Bahirwani, VP, talent acquisition, Wipro.

In such an environment, fewer students are applying for the MCA entrance test every year. Nearly 9,276 students took the entrance test in 2009, while 10,398 students had taken it in 2008.
Universities and institutes across the country are also witnessing dwindling interest in the course. There were just 29 takers for the 39 seats on offer last year at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University, whose MCA course is considered among the best in the country. At the National Institutes of Technology or NITs, 6,504 students appeared for the combined entrance exam in 2009, compared to 8,223 in 2008. Of the 20 NITs spread across the country, 11 offer the MCA programme, with 766 seats in all.

Many experts feel that the time duration of the course should be reduced. "Instead of a three-year programme, MCA should be made a two-year programme to make it competitive vis-a-vis the B Tech programme. The industry considers an MCA degree equivalent to a B Tech one, whereas one takes longer to finish the MCA," says ARKS Srinivas, Director, TIME Mumbai, a coaching institute.
However, the colleges offering MCA degree are considering to increase the number of seats. For instance JNU will be offering 46 seats in this year. Number of seats in Maharashtra could be risen by up to 20 percent this year. Seats in various NITs are also on the rise.

One of the students Shreya GhosaI said that  “ I agree about reducing the total duration of MCA to 2 year. Also the course syllabus should be reviewed every year to include the latest technologies which makes the students more employable. The overall structure and education system should also consider having best of the faculty members to train the student. To me – most of the faculty members in computer science field are only in that profession because they are not getting a job offer by a MNC. They are neither passionate about teaching nor have the right exposure to how actual work gets done in Software/IT industry. The point here is to make more industry associations and provide better education to student. Comparing BE and MCA is irrelevant because Masters degree always gives a different perspective of life and brings maturity.”

Follow all steps in the Web Development with ASP.NET  – RampUp Guide  – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/rampup/dd861531.aspx

Step 2:

Watch General ASP.NET Concept Videos

http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/

Watch the Data Access “How to” Videos

http://www.asp.net/learn/data-access/

Watch the ASP.NET 3.5 “How to” Videos

http://www.asp.net/learn/3.5-videos/

Step 3:

Follow all the steps in the WCF section

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms735119.aspx

Other Resources:

Recommended Microsoft E-Learning

These e-learning courses allow you to learn at your own pace—any time and any place.

• Collection 5160: Core Development with the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Foundation *

• Collection 5161: Advanced Development with the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Foundation *

• Collection 6463: Visual Studio 2008 ASP.NET 3.5
• Collection 6464: Visual Studio 2008 ADO.NET 3.5

* Free access to verified students through Microsoft DreamSpark

Certification exams

Certification is a validation of your skills and can help differentiate you in today’s IT job market.

• Exam 72-536: Microsoft .NET Framework – Application Development Foundation
• Exam 72-562: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development

Webcasts and virtual labs

Tune in to webcasts or try out the latest version of a technology in a virtual lab. It’s simple—no complex setup or installation is required.

• Beginner developer Learning Center
• Web development webcasts
• Web development videos
• Web development virtual labs

• Web development "How to" videos

http://code.google.com/p/nunitex/wiki/SyntaxOverview

Just as an example – ProfessionalControllerTest.

Index_IntegerAsParameter_ReturnsProfessionalView() used to have the following Assertions:

        Assert.AreEqual("Index", viewResult.ViewName);

        Assert.IsNotNull(viewResult.ViewData.Model);

        Assert.IsInstanceOf<ProfessionalProfile>(viewResult.ViewData.Model);

This is now written as

       viewResult.ViewName.Should().Be.EqualTo("Index");

       viewResult.ViewData.Model.Should().Not.Be.Null().And.Be.InstanceOf<ProfessionalProfile>();

It’s more verbose for sure (Should() and Be seem almost superfluous), but there is now ZERO doubt as to what each assertion does, and that helps readability and thus maintainability.

Note that you don’t have to use this syntax, but you can.