Samsung made intuitive, humanising software front and centre of the Galaxy S4, which is launched last week at a lavish event in New York.

FORBES: Move up http://i.forbesimg.com t Move down

Their bet is that India will be an outsourcing centre not just for software but for call centres and other back-office services that can be delivered by wire.

ECONOMIST: A survey of India's economy

Then this week Infosys, a big software firm, put on hold a development centre that would have created over 10, 000 jobs.

ECONOMIST: Banyan

Hours after he uttered those words, Wipro, an Indian pioneer of software services said it would open a new development centre in Atlanta, Georgia, that will report to its headquarters in Bangalore.

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In some cases, as software and browser changes render original works obsolete, the centre will be translating poems into newer formats.

BBC: 'E-poetry' creates electronic sonnets

Cisco will soon start selling servers, and has formed an alliance with several smaller hardware and software firms to build, in effect, a data centre in a box.

ECONOMIST: Computing

This September, a new shopping and leisure centre, the Oracle (no relation of the software firm), is due to open in the middle of the town.

ECONOMIST: The south-east

That means its software can do things such as suggesting answers to a call-centre operator or monitoring television channels for words or subjects.

BBC: Profile: Autonomy