Hallmark unpacks new cards: Global leader in greeting cards Hallmark Inc launched two new series of greeting cards in the country. Hallmark, the second largest card manufacturer in India, introduced 50 designs of `Ink-links' and 150 designs of `Shoebox' designs this year. Shoebox cards are a newintroduction from Shoebox Greetings, a division of Hallmark. Ink-link cards have hilarious black and white cartoon and human caricatures on them. The Indian subsidiary of the US-based Hallmark Cards has a turnover of Rs 25 crore and is present in over 80 cities with 174 hallmark outlets.

Balco union stages protest: Bharat Aluminium Co Ltd (Balco) employees' union has protested and held demonstrations against the government's efforts for strategic sale of the company without holding a dialogue with the recognised unions. "This will lead to serious industrial unrest as it is likely to affect the livelihood of approximately 8,000 Balco employees directly and 2 lakh tribal population indirectly", the union said. Balco union feels that given the condition of the share market, the sale of the company would not fetch any desired price resulting in a national loss.

Punwire bags contract: Punjab Wireless Systems Ltd (Punwire) has bagged a contract worth Rs 8.82 crore from the department oftelecommunications (DOT) for supplying `2 ghz' digital microwave equipment. "It is an achievement for punwire as it demonstrates it's contribution towards a wider telecommunication network in India," Punwire managing director Gurpal Singh said. Punwire is a major supplier of DOT and has already executed orders for the state-owned company in the past. As a part of its diversification strategy, the company has ventured into telecom sector that includes paging services, very small aperture terminal (VSAT) services and radio trunking services, it said.

IIS Infotch chief bags award: IIS Infotech executive chairman and president of Nasscom Saurabh Srivastava has received the Alumnus Award from IIT Kanpur. The award that was presented on January 3 is the most prestigious award given to alumnus from the institution and only nine such awards have been given over the last 40 years. A graduate from IIT Kanpur, Srivastava has over 28 years of experience in the infotech industry in the US, UK, India andSingapore. He is a founder member of National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom).

Hinditron Informatics reconstitutes board: The board of Hinditron Informatics Ltd has reconstituted with the induction of five new members representing Taib Bank and IndAsia Ventures, who acquired 65 per cent of the company. Philippe Silberzahn, a French national and formerly with Andersen Consulting, takes over the new chief executive officer. The new directors are Manabendranath Sen, senior vice president, Taib Bank of Bahrain, LM Singh, vice president of Taib Bank, R Ramachandran, CEO of Taib Capital Corporation of India and Darius Pandole, director of the Mumbai based IndAsia Fund Advisors. Hemant Sonawala will continue as non-executive chairman of the company.

Novell's NetWare performs faster: In a series of performance tests conducted by KeyLabs, Novell's NetWare 5 performed approximately 34 per cent faster than the latest release of Windows NT 4 of Microsoft. KeyLabs, a servicetesting lab for hardware and software products in the network environments, conducted three tests on Compaq ProLiant 1850R, using Ziff-Davies Benchmark operations' NetBench. The average peak throughput for NetWare 5 was 253.3 megabits per second, achieved at 60 clients. Windows NT had an average throughput of 189.5 mbps.