Global fixed broadband connections to hit 720 mln by 2015

The total number of fixed broadband connections worldwide will pass 500 million by the end of this year and will continue to grow to 720 million by the end of 2015, according to a study by Analysys Mason. Fixed broadband will account for 62 percent of the 1.16 billion broadband connections available worldwide by the end of 2015.







Developed regions (Central and Eastern Europe, developed Asia-Pacific, North America and Western Europe) offer limited growth opportunities in terms of new business. The report forecasts that fixed broadband net line additions will grow at a CAGR of 3.9 percent during 2009-2015 in these regions. By contrast, fixed broadband net line additions will grow at a CAGR of 13.7 percent in the emerging regions (Central and Latin America, emerging Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa).



Central and Latin America will have the highest CAGR of all regions in terms of fixed broadband connections at 15.4 percent between 2009 and 2015. However, emerging Asia-Pacific will account for most of the net line additions, growing from 117 million lines at the end of 2009 to more than 250 million by the end of 2015. 



Emerging regions will generate 28.5 percent of worldwide fixed broadband retail revenue by 2015, up from 17.2 percent in 2009. Developed markets accounted for 67 percent of fixed broadband connections at the end of 2009. This will fall to 54 percent by the end of 2015, the researcher said. The Middle East and North Africa's fixed broadband market will achieve reasonable growth during the forecast period. As a result, it will account for an increasing, albeit small proportion of worldwide fixed broadband revenue to 2015. 



 Its share of worldwide access retail revenue will grow from 2.3 percent in 2009 to 3.4 percent in 2015. In sub-Saharan Africa, mobile services will continue to be crucial to the development of the region's broadband market. The number of mobile broadband connections in the region exceeded that of fixed broadband connections in 2009. By 2015, Analysys expects that fixed broadband will account for 9 percent of broadband connections in the region.

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Outotec to build EUR70m water treatment plant in Sri Lanka

Finnish construction and engineering company Outotec Oyj said today the government of Sri Lanka has awarded it a contract of more than EUR70m to build a water treatment plant that will supply drinking water. The company will build the facility in Ampara district on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka under a project for the provision of treated pipe-borne water to more than 75% of the district. Outotec completed the first and second phase of the project in 1999 and 2002, respectively. The completion of the current phase three is expected in November 2013.

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Highlights of proposals in the Budget 2011

Please find below the highlights of the Budget 2011 speech presented by Sri Lanka President, Mahinda Rajapaksa in Parliament on November 22, 2010. The new budget proposals are given below.



Exports

 
* Impose a CESS on all exports in raw and semi processed form to encourage value added exports from Sri Lanka. Exports of finished goods will only be free from such CESS.

 
* Reduce duties and taxes on machinery, equipment and raw material to enable our enterprises to have affordable access to world class technology.
 

* Lower income tax from 15 percent to 10 percent for industries with domestic value addition in excess of 65 percent and Sri Lankan brand names with patent rights reserved in Sri Lanka.
 

* Income tax of all export companies will be reduced from 15 percent to 12 percent to encourage general exports
 

* Reduce income tax on profits from 35 percent to 28 percent.
 



“I hope these drastic reductions of taxes will promote our export- import economy to increase its contribution from 50 percent to 60 percent during this decade.” - President


 Hotels and Tourism 



* Impose a levy of US$ 20 per bed on all five star hotels which charge a room rate that is less than US$ 125 per night from January 2011 in order to compel all hotels to charge better rates.
 

* Reduce tax on income earnings from tourism and related business from 15 percent to 12 percent.



Motor Vehicles

* Reduce duties and taxes on passenger transportation vehicles by 25 percent.

* Exempt the importation of electric and highbred vehicles from Excise Tax and VAT in order to promote environmental friendly tourism.


Banking

 * Abolish the bank debit tax so that withdrawals from banks will not be liable for any tax

* Reduce VAT on financial services from 20 percent to 12 percent.

* Reduce tax on profits of banking and financial institutions, from 35 percent to 28 percent. However, all banking and financial institutions will be required to register separate Investment Fund Accounts with the Central Bank to transfer all tax savings arising from these proposals.








Capital Market

* Recognize expenditure in relation to listing of new companies and debt instruments as a deductible expenditure for tax purposes subject to a 1 percent of the value of the IPO.

* Increase the Share Transaction Levy from 0.2 percent to 0.3 percent.

* Exempt re-insurance commissions and claims from VAT to reduce the transaction
cost of insurance.

* Exempt unit trust companies from the Economic Service Charge while exchange control restrictions on foreigners and foreign funds investing in unit trusts will be exempted.

* Exempt income derived by unit trusts from investments in listed debentures and equity, from income tax

 

IT/BPO

* Establish a knowledge city in each province linked to university townships.
 

* Intensify tax incentives already available for IT/BPO businesses.

 

* Remove VAT and Nation Building Tax on software.





Telecommunications

* Combine all complex taxes in telecommunications industry and impose a Telecommunications Levy of 20 percent.

* A 2 percent licence fee on gross revenue will be levied in place of licence fees and CESS imposed by the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission.

 * Exempt high-tech equipment and machinery items from duties and VAT at the point of Customs.

 * Levy of Rs. 2 per minute for outgoing International calls and reduce the minimum floor rate for local calls from Rs. 2 per minute to Rs. 1.50 per minute from July 2011 for the benefit of consumers.


Gem and Jewellery
 

*Increase foreign exchange allowances granted to import raw gem stones from US$ 10,000 to US$ 50,000 per person.

* A simplified procedure will be introduced jointly by the Customs, Exchange Control and Export and Import Control Departments to facilitate importation of gems to the country for processing

 * Remove all taxes on raw gem stones at the point of import.


SME sector

* The Government will commit its own resources through the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Skills Development to train 300,000 youths in a wide range of new skills.

* Out of a 3 year commitment of Rs. 16 billion, an allocation of Rs. 5 billion is provided in this Budget for investment in skills development

* All SMEs and underperforming business activities will be assisted to restructure to optimize their businesses. The Government has mobilized Rs. 5,000 million from the World Bank for this

* Write off unpaid tax liabilities up to March 2009 of all enterprises with a turnover below Rs. 100

* Exempt SMEs that operate on sub contracting arrangements from the Economic Service Charge from 1st January 2011.

* Offer a concessionary income tax rate of 10 percent for SMEs.


R&D

* A 200 percent deduction of expenditure incurred by R & D enterprises on activities such as Research and Development, registration of patent, trademarks and designs, automation through technology and training of their work force.

* Allocate Rs 1,000 million to set up an Innovation and Technology Development Fund to finance high quality research and innovations.


Liquor,Tobacco and Casinos

* Allocate a sum of Rs. 200 million to implement “Mathata Thitha” initiative aggressively in every single village and township as a national priority.

* Increase tax on profits of businesses engaged in the manufacture and distribution of liquor, cigarettes, and casinos from 35 percent to 40 percent.


Education

Schools
 

* Develop 1,000 well equipped secondary schools throughout the island over a period of 5 years. Each secondary school will be linked to a number of primary schools. Required funding of Rs. 15 billion has been mobilized from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

* “English as a Life Skill” initiative that was commenced in 2009 will be formally expanded in 2011 by the Ministry of Education. For this initiative, an allocation of Rs. 750 million in 2011 has been proposed.

* Allocate Rs. 100 million in 2011 to support programs under the relevant line ministries for “Trilingual Sri Lanka” initiative.


Universities

* A 3 year development initiative with Rs. 3,000 million from 2011 for all state universities to project with a unique core identity for each university.

* This accelerated development program will also aim at developing university townships with required facilities such as transportation, accommodation and recreation.

* Grant a further Rs. 600 million to transform Peradeniya, Moratuwa, Colombo, Sri Jayawardanapura, Kelaniya and Ruhuna universities to become world class universities in their chosen fields. 



* Introduce a Presidential Awards System to our national universities to be assessed based on their academic and research performances.

 

Health

* A 3 year action plan targeting the control of non communicable diseases will be implemented from 2011 through improvements in the primary healthcare system. An additional allocation of Rs 900 million for this has been proposed.

* Exempt the import of pharmaceutical products from Port and Airport Levy to reduce the cost of medicine.

* Exempt high tech medical and laboratory equipment from import duties and VAT to promote investments in health services.

 

Airlines
 

* Sri Lankan Airlines and Mihin Lanka will be expanded with new aircrafts to increase the fleet to 30 by 2012.

* Exempt SriLankan and Mihin Lanka from all taxes for a period of 10 years to strengthen the two enterprises.


Board of Investment (BOI)

* Revise BOI regulations to offer its incentives to carefully targeted priority sectors.

* Cancel forthwith, all BOI approvals granted before 30th June 2010, if such investment has not commenced or has remained closed as of today. Those who have not commenced work but wish to proceed must obtain fresh approvals.

 

Tourist Boards

* The separation of the former Sri Lanka Tourist Board into four agencies has not served the intended purpose. It has therefore been proposed to merge all agencies except the Hotel School as a single agency capable of effectively promoting tourism.

* New legislation will be introduced to enable this in the first 100 days of 2011.


Income Tax

* Reduce the current tax rates on personal income ranging from 5 to 35 percent to 4 to 24 percent.

* Increase the tax free threshold income from Rs. 300,000 to Rs. 500,000 and the tax slabs from Rs. 400,000 to Rs 500,000.

* Extend this to non-resident Sri Lankans as well.

* Exempt any employee earning Rs.600, 000 per year (Rs.50, 000 per month) from PAYE tax.

* Applicable tax rates for employees earning over Rs. 600,000 will be reduced subject to a maximum rate of 24 percent.

* The new PAYE system will be a final tax at source. Employees will not be required to file returns unless they have other sources of income. 



* Apply the new PAYE system to the public sector as well.

* Increase the tax free threshold on interest income from Rs. 300,000 to Rs. 500,000. The applicable tax slab will also be increased to reduce the tax burden on those who live from interest income.

* Exempt terminal benefits from Employees Provident Fund from income taxation.

* Set up an Employees’ Pension Fund to provide post retirement pension benefits to employees in the private and corporate sectors. Towards this, a 2 percent contribution from employees and a 2 percent contribution from employers to this fund has been proposed.

* The employers will be required to transfer the entirety of the gratuity payment to this fund.

* Employees too will be required to transfer 2 percent of their Pension Fund balance at the time they withdraw the Pension Fund, in lieu of future pension benefits from the Employees’ Pension Fund.


Pension Fund

* Set up an Overseas Employees’ Pension Fund (OEPF) for Non Resident Sri Lankans

* Each employee will be required to contribute at least Rs. 12,000 per annum to this fund. The contribution can be made in stages during the year.

* Set up a Citizens’ Pension and Insurance Fund (CPIF) for the unorganized sector.

* Merge all existing schemes under various agencies to this new Citizens’ Pension and Insurance Fund. Every one seeking membership would have to contribute a minimum of Rs 5,000 per year as and when they have money. Pension will be available after contributing for a period of 10 years and after reaching 65 years of age. The Government will contribute Rs 1,000 million in 2011 to form this new fund. Nearly 3 million persons engaged in agriculture, fisheries, transport, construction, self employment etc. will be the target groups of this fund.


Construction

* Reduce income tax on the construction industry from 15 percent to 12 percent.

* In order to maintain a proper data base and to ensure that every house is added to the system, an Information Secretariat will be established.

* Allocate Rs. 500 million for the early completion of the already initiated housing schemes.





Plantation

* Increase the subsidy by Rs. 50,000 per hectare to small holder tea in order to encourage replanting and new planting

* Give a 6 months notice period for companies to put unused lands in to productive use. If plantation companies do not comply with this deadline, such unutilized lands will be distributed among small holders for re-plantation.

* Increase the export CESS on bulk tea to Rs. 10 per kg.


Raw rubber production

* Give a 50 percent subsidy to popularize the use of rain guards, to increase production from the existing plantations. Therefore, increase the budgetary allocation of the Department of Rubber from Rs. 500 million to 750 million.

* Increase the CESS on the export of raw rubber from Rs. 4 per kg to Rs. 8 per kg to encourage value added exports.


 

Agrarian Economy and Food Security
 

* A 3 year accelerated seed farm development initiative from 2011 at a cost of Rs. 700 million is to be established.

* Grant a 5 year tax exemption for investment in seed farming.

* Implement a 5 year subsidy scheme for planting and replanting of spices

* Rs. 900 million will be allocated for a 3 year partnership initiative between the Provincial Councils and the Department of Agrarian Services to rehabilitate all minor irrigation schemes in the country.

 

Fishing
 

* Remove registration fees, renewal fees and operational charges on annual licences for fishery boats to give relief to small holder fishery activities and simplify administration.

* Grant credit facilities at a concessionary interest rate of 8 percent to promote inland fishery and aquatic resources activities.

* Implement a long term concessionary loan facility for deep sea fishing.

* Exempt the fisheries industry from income tax for period of 5 years.

* The Tourism Development Authority will allocate Rs. 300 million for the development of traditional fishery villages and improve fishery industry based tourism.


Self employment

* Remove the VAT on leasing of assets for three wheeler operators, lorry and truck operators and private bus operators.

* Custom duties on spare parts will also be reduced to moderate the maintenance costs.


Electricity tariff

* Reduce tariff by 25 percent to religious places, government hospitals, schools, vocational training institutions and universities. The present tariff rate will continue for small businesses and SMEs.

* An 8 percent increase in tariff for other users except for the first 90 units.

* The Economic Service Charge will be simplified within a four band rate structure.





Other proposals

* Reduce the Nation Building Tax from 3 percent to 2 percent.

* Remove the Provincial Turnover Tax

* Abolish the Social Responsibility Levy, Rural Infrastructure Development Levy and Debit Tax to simplify taxation.

* Introduce a new legislation within first 100 days of 2011, towards countering anti competitive practices in shipping and trade.
 

* Exempt government agencies from Construction Guarantee Fund Levy to reduce the cost of public investments

* Exempt Ceylon Electricity Board, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, National Water Supply and Drainage Board and Sri Lanka Ports Authority from income taxes for a period of 5 years.  However, they will be required to pay one fourth of their profit as deemed dividend to the Government



       

Compiled by Azhar Razak

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40 People Who Changed the Internet

The world has become tightly connected since the internet. The web itself has replaced the practice of reading newspaper. Most of us now communicate through e-mails instead of paper and pen. We now watch networks or movies online, it has even become a wide business venture, so much so we can now make purchase and pay our bills through the internet. The web has also transformed friendships through various social media. It also provides us the possibility to reconnect with people from our childhood and it can be a life changing event.

Having a great idea is one thing. Turning that idea into a booming company through innovation and execution is what that matters most. Here, these are the people who have the biggest impact on the direction of the web: past, present, and future. They changed the internet and revolutionized the way we lead our lives today. Just imagine the world without internet. You can't because it has become our daily life.

Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn

Father of the Internet.

The Father of Internet Vint Cerf, together with Bob Kahn created the TCP/IP suite of communication protocols. a language used by computers to talk to each other in a network. Vint Cerf once said that the internet is just a mirror of the population and spam is a side effect of a free service.

Tim Berners-Lee

Inventor of WWW.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He wrote the first web client and server and designed a way to create links, or hypertext, amid different pieces of online information. He now maintains standards for the web and continues to refine its design as a director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Ray Tomlinson

Father of Email.

Programmer Ray Tomlinson, the Father of Email made it possible to exchange messages between machines in diverse locations; between universities, across continents, and oceans. He came up with the "@" symbol format for e-mail addresses. Today, more than a billion people around the world type @ sign every day.

Michael Hart

The birth of eBooks.

Michael Hart started the birth of eBooks and breaks down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy. He created the Project Gutenberg and was considered world's first electronic library that changed the way we read. The collection includes public domain works and copyrighted works with express permission.

Gary Thuerk

The first Email spam.

Spamming is an old marketing technique. Gary Thuerk, sent his first mass e-mailing to customers over the Arpanet for Digital's new T-series of VAX systems. What he didn't realize at the time was that he had sent the world's first spam.

Scott Fahlman

The first emoticon.

Scott Fahlman is credited with originating the first ASCII-based smiley emoticon, which he thought would help to distinguish between posts that should be taken humorously and those of a more serious nature. Now, everybody uses them in messenger programs, chat rooms, and e-mail.

Marc Andreessen

Netscape Navigator. (wikipedia)

Marc Andreessen revolutionized Internet navigation. He came up with first widely used Web browser called Mosaic which was later commercialised as the Netscape Navigator. Marc Andreessen is also co-founder and chairman of Ning and an investor in several startups including Digg, Plazes, and Twitter.

Jarkko Oikarinen

Internet Relay Chat, IRC. (wikipedia)

Jarkko Oikarinen developed the first real-time online chat tool in Finland known as Internet Relay Chat. IRC's fame took off in 1991. When Iraq invaded Kuwait and radio and TV signals were shut down, thanks to IRC though up-to-date information was able to be distribute.

Robert Tappan Morris

First Worm Virus.

The concept of a worm virus is unique compare to the conventional hacking. Instead of getting into a network themselves, they send a small program they have coded to do the job. From this concept, Robert Tappan Morris created the Morris Worm. It's one of the very first worm viruses to be sent out over the internet that inadvertently caused many thousands of dollars worth of damage and "loss of productivity" when it was released in the late 80s.

David Bohnett

Geocities. (wikipedia)

David Bohnett founded GeoCities in 1994, together with John Rezner. It grew to become the largest community on the Internet. He pioneered and championed the concept of providing free home pages to everyone on the web. The company shut down the service on October 27, 2009.

Ward Cunningham

The first Wiki.

American programmer Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki as a way to let people collaborate, create and edit online pages together. Cunningham named the wiki after the Hawaiian word for "quick."

Sabeer Bhatia

Hotmail. (wikipedia)

Sabeer Bhatia founded Hotmail in which the uppercase letters spelling out HTML-the language used to write the base of a webpage. He got in the news when he sold the free e-mailing service , Hotmail to Microsoft for $400 million. He was awarded the "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Draper Fisher Jurvertson in 1998 and was noted by TIME as one of the "People to Watch" in international business in 2002. His most exciting acquisition of 2009 was Jaxtyr which he believes is set to overtake Skype in terms of free global calling.

Matt Drudge

The Drudge Report. (wikipedia)

Matt Drudge started the news aggregation website The Drudge Report. It gained popularity when he was the first outlet to break the news that later became the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Google. (wikipedia)

Larry Page and Sergey Brin changed the way we search and use the Internet. They worked as a seamless team at the top of the search giant. Their company grew rapidly every year since it began. Page and Brin started with their own funds, but the site quickly outgrew their own existing resources. They later obtain private investments through Stanford. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and their company Google, continue to favor engineering over business.

Bill Gates

Microsoft. (wikipedia)

Bill Gates founded the software company called "Micro-Soft". a combination of "microcomputer software." Later on, Bill Gates developed a new GUI (Graphical User Interface) for a disk operating system. He called this new style Windows. He has all but accomplished his famous mission statement, to put "a computer on every desk and in every home". at least in developed countries.

Steve Jobs

Apple. (wikipedia)

Steve Jobs innovative idea of a personal computer led him into revolutionizing the computer hardware and software industry. The Apple founder changed the way we work, play and communicate. He made simple and uncluttered web design stylish. The story of Apple and Steve Jobs is about determination, creative genius, pursuit of innovation with passion and purpose.

David Filo and Jerry Yang

Yahoo. (wikipedia)

David Filo and Jerry Yang started Yahoo! as a pastime and evolved into a universal brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

Brad Fitzpatrick

LiveJournal. (wikipedia)

Brad Fitzpatrick created LiveJournal, one of the earliest blogging platforms. He is seen on the Internet under the nickname bradfitz. He is also the author of a variety of free software projects such as memcached, used on LiveJournal, Facebook and YouTube. LiveJournal continues today as an online community where people can share updates on their lives via diaries and blogs. Members connect by creating a "friends list" that links to their pals' recent entries.

Shawn Fanning

Napster. (wikipedia)

Shawn Fanning developed Napster, a peer-to-peer file-sharing program designed to let music fans find and trade music. Users put whatever files they were willing to share with others into special directories on their hard drives. The service had more than 25 million users at its peak in 2001, and was shut down after a series of high-profile lawsuits, not before helping to spark the digital music revolution now dominated by Apple. Napster has since been rebranded and acquired by Roxio.

Peter Thiel

Paypal. (wikipedia)

Peter Thiel is one of many Web luminaries associated with PayPal. PayPal had enabled people to transfer money to each other instantly. PayPal began giving a small group of developers access to its code, allowing them to work with its super-sophisticated transaction framework. Peter Thiel cofounded PayPal at age 31 and sold it to eBay four years later for $1.5 billion.

Pierre Morad Omidyar

Ebay. (wikipedia)

Pierre Omidyar set up an online marketplace that brought buyers and sellers together as never before, and pioneered the concept of quantifying the trustworthiness of an anonymous user. In building his auction empire, Omidyar counted on the power of the individual. Omidyar's greatest strength is his insight into human nature. He understood that people would buy just about anything. one man's junk is, in fact, another's treasure.

Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia. (wikipedia)

Jimmy Wales founded the world's largest encyclopaedia which carries articles that can easily be edited by anyone who can access the website. It was launched in 2001 and is currently the most popular general reference work on the Internet.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake.

Flickr. (wikipedia)

Photosharing website has become a part of everyday online life for millions of people. Stewart Butterfield, who with his wife Caterina Fake created Flickr that was born out of an online multi-player game that seemed to sum up everything the Web 2.0 people were trying to do. Flickr came along with an idea that you no longer had an album. Instead, you had a photo stream. Yahoo later on acquired Flickr in 2005.

Jonathan Abrams

Friendster. (wikipedia)

Jonathan Abrams built Friendster, together with Cris Emmanuel, offering many tools to help members find dates. He took the idea from Match.com. It's the first social network to hit the big time and go mainstream. Members create profiles listing favorite movies and books (and dating status) and link up to friends, who linked to their friends, and so on.

Niklas Zennstrom

Skype. (wikipedia)

Niklas Zennstrom co-founded the fastest growing communications trend in history called Skype. It offered consumers worldwide a free software for making superior-quality calls using their computer and expanded its offering for Linux, MAC & PC and mobile/ handheld devices.

Bram Cohen

Bit Torrent. (wikipedia)

If Napster started the first generation of file sharing , Bram Cohen changed the face of file sharing by developing BitTorrent which has a massive following of users almost instantly. It uses the Golden Rule principle: the faster you upload, the faster you are allowed to download. BitTorrent breaks up files into many little portions, and as soon as a user has a piece, they instantly start uploading that part to other users. So almost everybody who is sharing a given file is simultaneously uploading and downloading pieces of the same file.

Reid Hoffman

LinkedIn. (wikipedia)

Reid Hoffman, a former executive vice president at PayPal, created LinkedIn as a professional social network allowing registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. Members can search for jobs, trade resumes, find new hires and keep up with the competition.

Matt Mullenweg

WordPress. (wikipedia)

Matt Mullenweg founded the world's most used open source blogging and the greatest boon to freedom of expression known as WordPress. Some of the most popular websites run on WordPress are Techcrunch, Huffingtonpost, Mashable and more.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim

Youtube. (wikipedia)

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim met as early employees at PayPal. They later started the internet's most popular video-sharing site YouTube which is broadcasting more than 100 million short videos daily on myriad subjects. When creating YouTube, the three divided work based on skills: Chad Hurley designed the site's interface and logo. Steve Chen and Jawed Karim divide technical duties making the site work. They later split management tasks, based on strengths and interests: Chad Hurley became CEO; Steve Chen, Chief Technology Officer. A year and a half later, Google acquired YouTube for a deal worth $1.65 billion in stock.

Craig Newmark

Craigslist. (wikipedia)

Craig Newmark started a site that dramatically altered the classified advertising universe called Craiglist. It was an object of fear for newspapers who felt threatened by the free-for-all classified advertising site. It began as an e-mail list for Newmark's friends in the Bay Area. Since then, it has grown into an online database for classified ads for those seeking everything from housing to romance.

Julian Assange

WikiLeaks. (wikipedia)

Julian Assange founded a website dedicated to publishing classified documents stolen from around the world. He designed an advanced software for the Wikileaks shielding the identities of the thieves who steal these documents by completely erasing their identities before spreading the stolen documents to servers 'all over the world'. As a result, no one can trace who's given him what or when. The site depicts itself as the "uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis" and has developed to be regarded as the most extensive and safest stage for whistleblowers to leak to.

Dick Costolo

FeedBurner. (wikipedia)

People generally check their preferred sites every now and then to see if there's anything new. FeedBurner founder Dick Costolo created a news aggregator that automatically downloads an update that is visible in the places that interest you. An RSS feed, short for Really Simple Syndication, delivers those latest bits of media from their creator's website to your computer. FeedBurner was later acquired by Google in 2007. Currently, Dick Costolo is Twitter's Chief Operating Officer making twitter the next generation RSS.

Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook. (wikipedia)

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook to help students in universities keep in touch with friends. The "status update" started its rebirth in Facebook, where user after user tell their extended network of trusted friends what they're doing. They also show off photos, upload videos, chat, make friends, meet old ones, join causes, groups, have fun and throw virtual sheep at one another. The site, which is believed to have 500 million registered users worldwide, has only four remaining countries left to conquer: Russia, Japan, China and Korea, according to Zuckerberg. Facebook is now twice as huge as Rupert Murdoch's MySpace.

Jack Dorsey

Twitter. (wikipedia)

Jack Dorsey created Twitter to allow friends and family know what he was doing. The world's fastest-growing communications medium let users broadcast their thoughts in 140 characters or less and repost someone else's informative or amusing message to their own Twitter followers by Retweeting. No one thought people would want to follow strangers, or that celebrities would use Twitter to tell fans of their activities, or that businesses would use Twitter to announce discounts or launch new products.

Bonus: 3 More…

Christopher Poole

4chan message board. (wikipedia)

Christopher Poole, known online as "Moot," started a message board called 4chan where people are free to be wrong. Unlike most web forums, 4chan does not have a registration system, allowing users to post anonymously. Moot believes in the value of multiple identities, including anonymity, in contrast to the merge of online and real-world identities occurring on Facebook and many other social networking sites.

Joshua Schachter

Delicious. (wikipedia)

Del.icio.us is a more sophisticated multiuser version of Muxway, wherein his first implementation of tags. Joshua Schachter began del.icio.us as a way for people to store and share their favorite Web-browsing bookmarks online. Instead of organizing them himself, or even creating a standard taxonomy of categories, Schachter used something called user tagging-people simply labeled the bookmarks by any name they wanted, and eventually the group as a whole effectively voted on them by either adopting those tags themselves or rejecting them. And now del.icio.us has been gobbled up by Yahoo, which hopes to extend the tagging principle to all sorts of its services.

Jeff Bezos

Amazon. (wikipedia)

Jeff Bezos founded the world's biggest online store known as Amazon, which was originally named Cadabra Inc. He made online shopping faster and more personal than a trip to the local store. The company now introduced Kindle allowing readers to download books and other written materials and read them on this handheld device.

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Sri Lanka Exports More Pepper In 2010: IPC

Up to September 2010, export of pepper from Sri Lanka to India has reached 9,073 mt as against 3,710 mt in the same period last year. In 2010, Sri Lanka is estimated to produce around 16,700 mt and it is expected that more than 10,000 mt is for export.

Sri Lanka, one of the IPC member countries, produces around 13,300 mt and exports around 7,300 mt annually (average 2004-2008). In the recent IPC meeting held in Kochi, India on 9 November 2010, representative from Sri Lanka reported that production of pepper during 2009 in Sri Lanka was 13,800 mt, out of which 6,620 mt was exported, mainly to India.

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Sri lanka cuts bank taxes but hikes tax on stock trading

Sri Lanka has cut a series of taxes on banks in a bid to increase banking activities, but raised a tax on stock trading, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said presenting the budget for 2011 in parliament.

A debit tax on withdrawals from banks would be lifted and a so-called financial value added tax would be cut from 20 to 12 per cent, Rajapaksa said. 

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Sri Lanka overhauls telecom taxes

Sri Lanka has changed the taxes for telecommunications services and also imposed regulatory licence fee of 2 percent of revenues. While high tech telecommunications equipment imports will not be charged VAT, the government has imposed a LKR 2 per minute tax on outgoing calls. The 20 percent tax replaces the VAT, a mobile subscriber levy, and an economic service charge, The Lanka Business Online reports.  Furthermore, from July 2011, the minimum call rate of LKR 2 per minute will be reduced to LKR 1.50 per minute, president Mahinda Rajapaksa said in the budget speech.





       

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