By E. Kumar Sharma

Horizontal portals are often blamed for spreading themselves too thin between various services. But it does help to have a portfolio of services-some idle, others, not so-as several Indian portals are discovering to their benefit.

''In the week following the attacks on the US, we noticed a 95 per cent to 205 per cent increase in pageviews,'' says Sify President and coo George Zacharias.

The story isn't very different for other portals. Pageviews doubled for Rediff and Indya registered ''an over 10 per cent increase in page views in the fortnight after the incident.''

Sitting in ravaged New York, Rediff Chairman and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan, is disturbed by the ''great sense of loss around the place,'' but nonetheless admits that he is happy at the increase in traffic to his portal and is keen to ''retain this traffic by offering better content and trying to contantly improve on that.''

The rush began with the mad race for the latest flash news on the disaster and steadily graduated to e-mail services.

More than a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the traffic has not abated much. However, one thinks it may be a bit too much to expect part of this traffic to trickle down to the nether regions (read e-commerce) of the portals.

Says Amit Khorana, Manager (IT), IDBI Bank: ''The Indian portals were quick with news-breaks. But I was more keen on using instant messenger and e-mail services to find out about my friends in the World Trade Center.''

The action is not just limited to eyeballs; Zacharias notes the revival of interest in online advertising: ''Advertising companies are more conscious now of the use of the internet.''

That sure is a welcome development in a market scenario where most companies have been cutting adspend. Predictably, banner-rates have gone up.

But then, the unpredictable exponential growth in users has only underscored the need for portals to invest in scaling up their operations. Concludes Sify's Zacharias: ''Both flood and famine are difficult to deal with. But still, a flood is better.''

Mahatma Lab

The world's biggest infotech think-tank, the MIT Media Lab, seems to be working towards Mahatma Gandhi's idea of India. That's evident from the initial projects lined up by Media Lab Asia.

The first of these projects, which will be based in Lucknow, Kanpur, and Varanasi, involves handicrafts and is about finding infotech-based solutions to connect rural artisans with the outside world.

The second project titled 'Info-cart' is about the development of a tricycle with on-board hardware and software, which will enable operators to provide internet-based services (like banking) in rural areas. A third 'Info-sculpture' project will focus on preserving the cultural heritage of the country by using digital tools and low-cost technology.

Another project called 'Info-Trans' will use digital technology for improved, safe and efficient rail transportation system. This will be implemented in partnership with Indian Railways and others.

Beside these projects, the Tamil Nadu hub of the Media Lab will focus on projects concerning language systems, user interfaces, and community computers. And the Delhi hub will develop applications, e-commerce and e-governance tools.

Sources at Media Lab Asia say the organisation will spend a total of Rs 65 crore in its first year of operation.

Bridging Divide, Building Bonds

We didn't know this was coming when BT caught up with NGO-dotcom tarahaat's CEO Ashok Khosla just a fortnight back for an update on the alternative digital hope. Now, the company has won the prestigious Stockholm Challenge award for its work in bringing digital technology to rural India. tarahaat shares the award with the Chennai-based Information Village Research Project-an organisation working in Pondicherry along the same line as tarahaat.

According to the jury, the two were recognised for their efforts to ''become commercially sustainable while serving the needs of less fortunate members of society.'' But the Indian connection at the awards didn't stop with the two. One hot contender that didn't manage to win an award (it was one of the finalists under the rehabilitation efforts category) was the United Nations Information Technology Service (unites), for its net-based rehabilitation efforts after the 1999 Orissa cyclone.

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