Friday, February 29, 2008

The Curvy Revolution...


The new design of Imac Iview shows it to be a curved screen. This design is given by designer Nuno Teixeira and the design stands out to be the best attention grabber. Though this is an unofficial concept of the apple products, it is really a revolutionizing design.

I am not a big fan of apple products except for the ipod, but I liked this design whole-heartedly. It would be better if this comes out of the shelf of Dell Inc., as I am a devotee of them.

The design shows the Iview has a screen on the flip side too. There are two webcams, one on each side and the users can interact with each other. The design is pretty slim, which means tucking in two operating systems for both the displays is out of question. But who knows, this could become inevitable by the passage of time. Till then hold cash in hand to become a proud owner of Iview.

Bill Gates endorses LinkedIn


Bill Gates sets up his own LinkedIn profile. Microsoft Corp.'s big investment on Facebook's online social network isn't stopping Chairman Bill Gates from promoting other popular Internet hangouts. I guess he is still young at heart or is he spying on steve.

Gates is helping out LinkedIn Corp.'s online professional network by setting up a profile on the service and posing a question to help draw more attention to a makeover of the Web site's front page.

Microsoft late last year invested $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc., whose 66 million members make it the Internet's second largest social network behind News Corp.'s MySpace.

Enthralling Trivia-5

In 2001 a car hit Matthew Mcknight of Pennsylvania at 70 mph, throwing him 118 feet-- He Survived!!!

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Itunes music retailer now at no.2


The Itunes music downloader has just crossed the 2nd best, Best Buy music retailer to claim the second position in this industry. The music downloading thing has come of age and is entering into a new era with the Itunes. This is really a good news for Apple.

Now it is just the Walmart who are ahead of Itunes in this field. With the rate of increase in music downloading from Itunes, they are going to top the charts within no time. It is a pretty good sign for the music industry who are crying foul of illegal downloads of music. The rise in legal downloads is going to add to the revenue of the music industry in a pretty big way.

Hope all the guys who download the music illegally are hearing this.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Guess Who????? My latest crush..


Yes. She is my latest crush. I was just surfing the net and I came across this girl, who is a sexy damsel. I was completely floored by her. The black top that she wore just added to her beauty rather the top got that look just because she wore it. What a smile she has. Oh my God I am dumb-dead. Someone just wake me up, am I dreaming.




And coming to the guessing part there is this mesage going around which says that she is none other than the daughter of the richest man alive on earth Mr. Bill Gates. I don't care who she is but I am down with fever(love fever). Hope you jerks don't like her.....

Enthralling Trivia-4

Alexis Lemaire of France, can find the 13th root of a 200-digit number, calculating the correct answer in his head from among 395 trillion possible answers, in under 71 seconds!!!

Stage6 Shut Down- A blow for many...


The news of Stage6.com website shutting down has come as a rude shock for me. This morning I saw this news on one of the tech websites. I was a good follower of this site. They have some real good stuff out there and the best part is that, they are free. The videos hosted in their site were all of high quality, unlike the other video hosting sites like YouTube or MegaVideo, etc....


The videos hosted on their site are all divx formatted. The most remarkable part about these videos is that they are downloaded within no time unlike the megaupload or rapidshare sites, which piss us off by their time limits.


The main reason for the closure was sited to be a financial crisis that hit the company pretty badly. The article is posted on the main page of their site. I had a pretty good outing with them though and I enjoyed the most part of it. Hope they bounce back ASAP.

Monday, February 25, 2008

iTunes Control - Something for the Mac

The application iTunes Control is an add-on for Apple’s iTunes software. It mainly adds two functions to iTunes, the first is a customizable on screen display of the track that is currently playing and the second are more than 20 hotkeys that make it easier to run iTunes in the background.

The hotkeys however make this iTunes add-on worthwhile. They can be used to pause and mute songs, play the previous or next one, turn the volume down or up, rate songs and set a sleep timer. It’s pretty useful if you consider that there are no global shortcuts for iTunes by default.


Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Oscars Who and Whose......


Performance by an actor in a leading role::
Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood”


Performance by an actress in a leading role::
Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose”


Achievement in directing::
“No Country for Old Men” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen


Best motion picture of the year::
“No Country for Old Men"


For more nominations and the prestigious winners Click Here.


Friday, February 22, 2008

Optimus Maximus Keyboard Wow Factor Prevails



This is kinda cool fellas. I was amazed at the options that we bring home with this all new Optimus Maximus keyboard which is one hell of a gadget.
Hope I bring one home pretty soon or before all this media galore dwindles. But one factor hindering its fame is its length. Its pretty bulky compared to the mac keyboard but who the hell cares for the length with all the features in the store for you geeks. So, lets get out on the beach and enjoy the ride....

Got Some Brains


Click on the pic for enlarged view....

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Enthralling Trivia-3


Until he was put on display in November 2007, less than 60 people had viewed the remains of 19-year-old Pharaoh, Tutankhamun since his entombment 3,000 years ago!!!

.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Deadly Spy Sattelite Shot Down

A Navy missile soaring 130 miles above the Pacific smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday and probably destroyed a tank carrying 1,000 pounds of toxic fuel, officials said.

The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles not orbiting satellites launched the attack at 10:26 p.m. EST, according to the Pentagon. It hit the satellite about three minutes later as the spacecraft traveled in polar orbit at more than 17,000 mph.

Because the satellite was orbiting at a relatively low altitude at the time it was hit by the missile, debris will begin to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere immediately, the Pentagon statement said."Nearly all of the debris will burn up on re-entry within 24-48 hours and the remaining debris should re-enter within 40 days," it said.

The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates not a military commander was to make the final decision to pull the trigger.


Microsoft "Out"Sourcing


Monday, February 18, 2008

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Website Ranking by Alexa.com

1 yahoo.com
2 youtube.com
3 live.com
4 google.com
5 msn.com
6 myspace.com
7 facebook.com
8 hi5.com
9 wikipedia.org



This ranking is based on the tracking info available with Alexa.com. They have been tracking the visits each website gets and are giving out the ranking. It is interesting to see that our very new Youtube has pushed google.com down and has occupied the no. 2 place in this prestigious list. Is it a good sign or not? This discussion is not in my jurisdiction but hope my hands stretch as far as that.

Friday, February 15, 2008

An Interesting Find


Yahoo search page way back in 1996, when not even a few 1000's of us used to search the web using the search engines.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Enthralling Trivia-2

When was the toothbrush invented?


1.3000 B.C.
2.1498
3.1938


The toothbrush earliest forms known have been around since 3000 B.C., but the bristle toothbrush, similar to what we use today, was invented in China in 1498. Hog's neck hairs were used as bristles. The use of nylon bristles started in 1938.

Cool FREE Widget Platforms for your PC

Yahoo Widgets comes with the biggest widget gallery, featuring over 4000 custom user-contributed widgets. Widgets are nicely categorized, commented on and rated by users.


Google gadgets is one of the goodies that comes with the Google Dektop software. Basically, these are the same gadgets that can be added to your personal Google Homepage (aka iGoogle).

To run Opera widgets you’ll need an Opera Browser (version 9 or above). To get an idea on the kind of widgets you get and how they look, check out ‘top downloaded widgets’ section here.

Adobe AIR (formerly ‘Apollo’) is a “cross-operating system runtime …” OR in simpler terms, a tool that can be used to run certain web services right on your desktop which results in a faster and much more interactive experience.

Klipfolio is a powerful personal dashboard and sidebar for windows users. It’s highly-customizable and counts over 4000 embeddable widgets (aka Klips). And unlike all other widgets, Klips are rather compact and tiny in size. Thus, Klipfolio can accommodate lots more Klips on its sidebar than any other widget sidebar.

AmnestyGenerator isn’t a widget platform but a really handy utility that can grab any web embeddable widget (i.e. for blogs, Myspace) and convert it to work on Vista Sidebar or Mac Dashboard.


Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Lover's day - I never get it straight

The day, most lovers wait for expressing their love to their loved ones, in a lovely way is just around the corner. But what actually it is? Is it the day for friends to become lovers or a platform to express one's feelings to the other? I am bit confused because I could never dare to express my love to my ......., even on this day for the past 10 years. How could I, when I even couldn't talk more than 3 words with her.

But is this day just for the so called lovers or is it something else? Every February 14th, across the country, candy, flowers, and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But there are lot of stories doing rounds regarding the Valentine's day.


One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl, who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today.
Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure.


Monday, February 11, 2008

Enthralling Trivia-1

Every TRAFFIC LIGHT and STOP sign was removed from the town center of Bohmte, Germany, to help cut down on Traffic Accidents.

Metropolitan Chaos

Also known as The City of Nizams, Hyderabad is today one of the most developed cities in India and a modern hub of information technology, ITES, and biotechnology. Hyderabad has an estimated metropolitan population of 6.1 million, making it an A-1 status city and India's sixth-largest metropolitan area.

The development of a township with state-of-the-art facilities called HITEC City prompted several IT and ITES companies to set up operations in the city. An aggressive promotion of growth in this area has led civic boosters to call the city "Cyberabad". Hyderabad is home to some of the best Fortune 500 Corporations. Microsoft has its development centre in Hyderabad which is its largest Product Development Centre outside the headquarters in Redmond, USA.


But what are the civic amenities providers doing. Whenever there is even a slight downpour, the city is completely flooded as if there were some flash floods. This is not going to help the cause of Hyderabad, trying to gain the tag of technological hub of India. If this is going to be the condition when an International summit is held, then it is going to send wrong signals to the so called big investors, who are really very important in the growth of any market.





The drinage system can be rated as one of the worse among some other metropolitans. The traffic system isn't that great either with a lot of traffic jams in place every now and then.Hope the concerned authorities wake up as early as possible and see it to that these situations don't repeat again in future.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

India Without Beggars and Thieves


This sounds very interesting, right. This was the state of our country in the 1830's. But look at our country now.

Hope we can get back to those good olden days. May be a time machine might help us...

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Tips for Googler's googling..

Google began in January 1996, as a research project by Larry Page, who was soon joined by Sergey Brin, two Ph.D. students at Stanford University, California. They hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. Their search engine was originally nicknamed "BackRub" because the system checked backlinks to estimate a site's importance.Searching on Google can be a magical experience once you findout how to make your search queries efficient. By making efficient I mean using some tricks or the cheat sheet provided by Google itself to quickly find what you actually require. I just found these tips by one of my fellow geek Nitinpai, written for TECHtracer. I thought this could be useful for some of you, hence I am posting the link here.

Friday, February 8, 2008

Welcome LINUX ......


Hey guys, I found this pic pretty funny. I just wanted to share it with you. Hope this is not the case with Linux in real world as well. By the way is the Linux guy ready for the onslaught.

A small Announcement

From here-on I would try to increase the dose of entertainment by adding some interesting facts under label Enthralling Trivia.

Hope you enjoy the ride with a moron like me.


Powered by ScribeFire.

Calvin and Hobbes

Something for those fun lovers and the fans of Calvin and Hobbes(actually I am one of them).


Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, following the humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and satiric toy tiger. The pair are named after John Calvin, a 16th century French Reformation theologian, and Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century English political philosopher. The strip was syndicated daily from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995. During its hay-day, Calvin and Hobbes was carried by over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. To date, more than 30 million copies of the 18 Calvin and Hobbes books have been printed.

The broad themes of the strip deal with Calvin's flights of fantasy, his friendship with Hobbes, his misadventures, his unique views on a diverse range of political and cultural issues and his relationships and interactions with his parents, classmates, educators, and other members of society. The dual nature of Hobbes is also a recurring motif. Calvin sees Hobbes one way (alive), while other characters see him as something else (a stuffed animal).

Still More

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Evolution of Logos....

We see these logos everywhere around us, but did we ever wonder how they came into existence? Did we ever think about what gave way to these logos? Did we know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

Presenting to you the evolution pictures of some of the most sought after biggies....





The IBM latest logo is one of the best logos ever designed, because of its simplicity and, the solid letters with horizontal stripes suggests “speed and dynamism”". The horizontal stripes also widen from left to right (or viceversa, can’t remember) to emphatyze that.

Credits to the original poster...

For some more of these evolutions just visit the link below...

Click Here

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Super Tuesday Fever...

In the United States, Super Tuesday commonly refers to the Tuesday in early February or March of a presidential election year when the greatest number of states hold primary elections to select delegates to national conventions at which each party's presidential candidates are officially nominated.In 2008, Super Tuesday is February 5. 24 states will hold primaries or caucuses on this date.

Convincing wins in Super Tuesday primaries have usually propelled candidates to their party's nomination. Since Super Tuesday primaries are held in a large number of states from geographically and socially diverse regions of the country, Super Tuesday typically represents a Presidential candidate's first test of national electability. In 1996, Republican Bob Dole's Super Tuesday sweep sealed his bid for the Republican nomination. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush cemented their nomination bids with Super Tuesday victories, and both went on to win their parties' nominations.

To increase importance of their votes, many states have moved up their primaries to February 5, 2008. In the spring of 2007, 24 states with over half the delegates to the national conventions moved to change their primary dates to February 5, 2008, creating the largest "Super Tuesday" to date. This is going to be a big test for Hillary and Obama.

Is she really 38? Naahhh.......

TABU aka Tabassum Hashmi Khan is an actress who never ages. She is famous for her on-screen sexy image and much publicised affair(though denied by her every other day) with a well known south Indian actor Nagarjuna and who can take away the credit of national award winning performances from her.


She has won the National Film Award for Best Actress twice for Maachis and Chandni Bar respectively. She was born in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India on November 4, 1970. Her fans range from 6 years to 60 years all around the globe. Her recent multi-lingual film 'Namesake' has received good reviews and stood in US top ten for some days. She is presently working in a telugu film named 'Idi Sangathi' being directed by Chandra Siddhartha well known for his off-beat films.


In a recent photo session Tabu was looking really glamorous. None could dare to say that she has aged. She was looking like a heroine in her 20's. Other actresses these days must be envious of her looks. She is still pretty hot unlike other ladies at the age of 38. Guesses apart she is going to rule the film industry for some more time rather years to come.

Friday, February 1, 2008

Is Yahoo going to be MS.Yahoo

Are we getting ready for another big takeover. The answer might be YES.



In a bid to withstand the cyclone of Google, Microsoft has tried its hand at different fields but none worked against Google. In a fresh strike Technology giant Microsoft, offers to buy the search engine company Yahoo for $44.6bn in cash and shares. The Microsoft-Yahoo report follows Google's $3.1 billion acquisition last month of online advertising firm DoubleClick. This has come as a surprise for many as the work cultures of both these firms are completely opposing.


Shares of Yahoo surged this morning after a newspaper report that Microsoft had asked the online rival to enter formal negotiations about a merger. A combined Microsoft-Yahoo "would still trail Google in market share and search advertising . . . but they would be a much bigger threat to Google," Stanford Group analyst Clayton Moran told CNBC this morning. "In terms of their Internet advertising exposure, Microsoft hasn't had much success. They either need to right their own ship or go out and acquire assets."

Microsoft executives hope that Yahoo's strength in search and advertising categories would give the company a stronger foothold on the Web, the report said.

Australia Beat India for the First Time in T20

Indians have done it again. They are the only team that can fondle with world no. 1 Australia's top ranking and the very next match can droop down as the lowest ranking team. The Indian batsmen, yesterday(except for Pathan) were in a hurry to give away their wickets as if they were playing their first T20 match. The acclaimed Indian team, never did show a sign of their world champion status in the shortest form of International cricket yesterday.



The T20 match reminded me of my college days, when I used to play cricket( 12 or 15 over matches) where a new batsman used to walk-in every other over. The carelessness in the shot selection, misjudging the running between wickets(in the case of Sehwag), lack of serious pace in the bowling, all were nothing but to be seen in a university team. When you are playing at the highest level, you need to concentrate more, rather most. But this concentration wasn't evident yesterday. Everybody wants to be a hero by hitting the ball high but you have to wait for the oppurtunity. Not every delivery is a bad one.

Here I would like to mention Pathan, who is having a ball after his re-entry into the Indian team. He has been faring really well with the willow but he needs to concentrate more on his primary weapon, i.e., his swing. Yes, the Indian team is missing its primary batsman Yuvraj but no cricket match is played with just an individual, its a team game and what for are the extras taken into the team.

May be the team needs a little bit experience from the great Sachin. It may be premature to right-off this world champion team but anyone who witnessed yesterday's match would get similar doubts on this so-called younger side. The captain Dhoni should take a feather from the Aussie T20 captain Michael Clark, who led his team from the front with an excellent runout and the major part of scoring as an opener.

Adios to Gilly from this form of cricket as well.