BT Dot.com: 1st Anniversary: e-tcetera

It's the online version of the photo-copying store, the video parlour...or even the PCO. ok, ok, the cyber cafe hasn't penetrated those levels of reach (though some feel it will, very soon), but can be safely compared to the kiranawalla grocer. And that image is changing: cybercafes have mushroomed all over the country. There's Satyam Infoway, Junction 96, Dishnet DSL, BPLnet, with Godrej & Boyce, and Mantraonline waiting in the wings. ''The consolidation is natural,'' says Veep (Hubs), Sify, V.V. Kannan. ''There will be independent stand-alone cafes with their own USP, but it will be the branded outlets that will propel traffic.''

There are two schools of cafes. The ISP biggies-Dishnet DSL and Satyam-are focusing on promoting the internet, rather than transforming cybercafes into retail one-stop shops. For, in these uncertain times for ISPs, cybercafes drive up Net services usage; and, hopefully, build up a dedicated clientele. ''Attaining critical mass is important,'' explains Dishnet's Veep (Hubs) Charles Chacko. On the other hand, non ISP chains like Junction 96 will provide value-added services like video conferencing and e-commerce fulfilment. Either way, they've got a good thing going: the market is growing, casualties are low. Why, cybercafes have already become a lifestyle statement. Now for consolidation.

Pros and cons of IT Act 2000 e-commerce bytes
PROS	CONS
E-signatures are now legal. But who's the Certifying Authority? The companies? The RBI? Or both? We'll soon know.	E-com's comfort levels are yet to be raised. Also, the fine art of sifting through electronic evidence must come into play.
E-mail is now a legal form of communication. Hackers, if convicted, can be fined up to Rs 2 lakh, or jailed for 3 years. Or both.	The offences defined in the Act are not exhaustive. Existing laws are not yet sufficient to deal with cyber crimes.
It's not static. The government has constituted a 21-member Cyber Regulatory Advisory Committee for it Act 2000.	The Act doesn't deal with domain name disputes. Rights and liabilities of domain name owners would have been useful.

Good ol' radio! While all the attention is focused on broadband services and multimedia, internet radio has the makings of the proverbial dark horse.

Here's why: with sound network, internet radio works better in a constrained bandwidth environment. ''It may be a nascent industry yet, but India has got a strong radio medium,'' said Raj Raman, Veep, Sify.com. Leading the way is 123india.com, which recently launched its web radio channel along with radioofindia.com.

There are hurdles, of course. Acquisition of content, programming of channels, and network infrastructure. That's the headache of Silicon Valley firms like radioofindia.com and induslive.com, which are offering end-to-end solutions. Revenues from radio internet? Advertising, in audio and video. Go figure.

In a year that witnessed the music industry's obsession with Napster-captured by the toon-makers at campchaos.com in a 3-minute satire that had Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich repeatedly growling Napster, Badddddddd-the evolving Indian music scene ranged from a clutch of non-resident sites like desivibes.net, dishant.com, and punjabimp3.com, through a few internet radio sites like musiccurry.com, and one specimen of that rare species, a music e-tailer which permits buyers to customise CDs, hamaracd.com.

The last, an offering from the RPG group's Gramaphone Co of India was a nice touch. Still, it wasn't as if the find, download, burn revolution has caught on in India. Courtesy, sites like napster.com, scour.com, and gigabeat.com, search engines like mamma.com, and CD-writing software like adaptec Easy CD, it's possible to convert mp3 files one downloads from the www into audio tracks and burn them on to CDs. Indeed, it's even possible to capture tracks from an audio CD, store them in the computers and burn them onto a recordable CD-a strange sort of transfer but one that needs to be effected when you're speaking about CDs that are a little difficult to source.

If it's rock (ah!) or pop (ugh!) that you're interested in, the Indian space isn't very different from the US. You can see and hear the newest releases at launch.com, and download mp3s (some legal, others not so) from any of the sites mentioned above. Hindi film music (and Indi-pop) is a different kettle of fish: if you're lucky you'll come across a illegal site hosting hundreds of mp3s. If you aren't (and I wasn't) you'll probably end up with sites like bollywoodmusic.com, which have moved from original Hindi film music to remixes (Bollywoodmusic, for instance, has remix collections under heads like Mission Impossible 2 and Nitelif ntc).

It should theoretically be possible to access Hindi music resident on someone else's hard disk using a p2p utility, although I haven't come across any (I didn't really try hard). With companies like Spectranet and Mantra launching their cable-modem enabled internet-access services, bandwidth-woes should fade away and the Indian mp3 scene should boom. Happy listening.

Nine months after online trading was flagged off in India (February 1, 2000), there are about 20 online brokers offering trading facilities. That includes the FIs (ICICIdirect and investmart), brokers (sharekhan, kotakstreet), or websites (indiabulls, indiainfoline, 5paise). How are they faring? Well, only one per cent of internet users are trading online. Apart f internet users are trading online. Apart from the bear phase, surfers are not yet comfortable trading online. Now if only the markets would perk up...

The battle against English on the Net has begun. Not only have the large portals, including Sify and Rediff, set up editions in local languages, and Webdunia has launched India's first Hindi portal; there's tonnes of action in the Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu spaces. But the problems far outnumber the surfers: identification of browser-friendly fonts, optical character recognition software; availability of localised content, non-standardisation of keyboards and software. And revenues...it's early days yet.

While voice over internet protocol as a technology has come a long way in the last couple of years, industry watchers give it another 18-24 months to mature in India. Basically, VOIP will first become the core technology for carrier networks. Only later will it be used for last-mile access. Of course, while VOIP offers cost advantages, the quality of service needs improvement. Finally, the ban over voice over internet (over public networks) is expected to be lifted this year. About time too.