The core philosophy of Yoga is – leading a happier and healthier life accomplished by self-realization and the union of the soul with the Divine. This philosophy of man actually led to the development of the science of Yoga. Since time immemorial, humans have been wanting to harmonize with God, amongst themselves and with nature. The need for this arose as a result of evolution of man. Evolution has numerous by products, positive as well as negative. To overcome the negative by products such as bloodshed, un-ethical competition in the various spheres of life, diseases, stress, fear, hatred, jealousy and consequently loss of peace of mind, confidence and satisfaction, humans experimented and developed the science of Yoga. This science of Yoga roots its seeds in the philosophy that the body, mind, soul and the divine are actually one and cannot be clearly demarcated. Therefore, the whole philosophical aspect summarizes the process of this self-realization through the path of Yoga.

Yoga originated in India thousands of years ago and has explicit references in the Vedas.
But, by far the most authoritative text on Yoga philosophy and practice ever written are the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Sage Patanjali was born in India in the 3rd century B.C. and it was he who for the first time codified classical Yoga-philosophy and practice, outlining the path of Raja Yoga, in a most definitive and systemized form.

Knowledge of the philosophies of Yoga is critical to the successful embodiment of the spirit of Yoga. A Yogi can be successful only if he completely understands these philosophies. Therefore, it can be said that the philosophy and practice of Yoga go hand in hand and the discipline of Yoga would be incomplete without knowledge of either one.
CONFUSION?

Confusion erupts when we don’t know:
Who are we?
Why are we here?
Where are we going?

Result of this confusion leads to failure of human intelligence to take a decision. This is what happened with Arjuna during battlefield of Kurukshetra. He was confused to fight or not! Despite his confusion, Arjuna was intelligent enough to approach the real spiritual master - Lord Krishna and surrender upto Him, who enlightened his intelligence to remove confusion.

CONDITIONED SOUL?

All living entities are originally spiritual (as part of God) but due to the desires they are temporarily covered with material energy and are called conditioned souls. Soul is distinct from body-mind complex. It only resides in body for higher purpose.

GOOD-EVIL?

In the material world, meanings change as per fulfilment or non-fulfilment of desires. Same person or thing becomes good if that serves our purpose. Reverse is true if our desires are not met with. But in the spiritual world, whatever helps you think of Me (God) is good, and whatever causes you to forget Me (God) is evil.

It is truly said, “Those who live immoral and unethical lives are wicked people.” Sometimes evil people seem to flourish-not suffer. Do sins ever go unpunished? We may break the state laws and not be caught but there is no possibility of deceiving God. He is present within the hearts of all living entities, witnessing their attitudes. How long will a sinner flourish? For a life time? For 2-3 lifetimes? Lord Krishna says, ” I am death personified. Just because a fool temporarily gets unpunished, we should’t think that there is no punishment. Rather, he is just being given enough rope to hang himself!

MAYA?

What is maya-illusion? We can understand maya by knowing different meanings of illusion. Illusion is:-
Literal meaning: That which is not.
Misconception: I am this body and these things are mine.
Illusion: As soon as we think “I am the doer.”

Illusion (maya) and truth can’t exist simultaneously just as darkness and light can’t be seen simultaneously.

Most of us remain trapped by maya throughout our lives. Even Arjuna was trapped in maya when be refused to fight in the great war Mahabharata as he was concerned with his temporary blood relations than the eternal spiritual connection with Lord Krishna.

SIN?

In this material world no one can become desireless but we can change quality of desire. Similarly, passions can’t be eradicated but can be educated. Human beings have lots of desires and lots of passions. Urge for sex is the strongest of all material desires. All the senses can be controlled if sex life is controlled, but indiscriminate sensual satisfaction reduces man to a level lower than that of an animal. Thus, it can be concluded that tendencies are not sins. It is the inner consent to wrong tendencies that constitute sin. The urge for pleasure is not sinful. Indulgence in immoral pleasures which create greater bondage and retard our higher self development is sinful. Arjuna asked Lord Krishna: By what is one impelled to sinful acts, even unwillingly, as if by force? Lord Krishna replied, “It is lust only, which is born of contact with material objects of passion, later transformed with wrath, which is sinful of this world.” Disconnecting anything from God is also sin. For instance, as long as your hand is connected to your body, it is very useful and beautiful. But if it is severed, it is ugly and useless, although it may still be called a hand.

LUST?

Regardless of how much of anything we get, we always want more and more. Thus the senses become enraged like a roaring fire. Man’s pure consciousness is covered by his primary enemy, in the form of lust which remains ever dissatisfied. Lust is the strongest bond to material existance. Lust for material things must be changed into hankering for God. When love is perverted, it is expressed as lust.

DEATH?

It is rightly said - “Every date of birth has a date of death.” Death is like an arrow that is already in flight. Your life lasts only until the arrow reaches you. You should live each day as if it were to be your last. You will have to give an account for every moment wasted. Life is short. The vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. Being the only animal capable of knowing that he has to die, man should live his life humbly and prepare for the next life.

LIBERATION?

Libration means becoming free from all reactions of actions. A follower of Vedas voluntarily retires from material life to cultivate Krishna consciousness before death overtakes him.

DO ANIMALS ALSO SIN?

Animals are programmed by nature. They eat according to their nature. Cows eat grass and tigers eat flesh. They act according to their instinct, not itelligence. Therefore, there is no question of sinning.

But, man can sin because he has been given the independence to choose between right and wrong. Without this independence to use the intellect we would be robots. Machines also can’t be sinful. Therefore, greater the gifts, greater the responsibility.

TAYAG - SANYAS?

To give up the results of all activities is called tayag (renunciation) and this stage of life is called the renounced order of life - sanyas. According to Hitopadesa, 1.120, a decrepit (weak due to old age) man can’t enjoy sensual pleasure, nor can he renounce it. That means, if you are not able to do any activity, due to disease or old age, then it is not tayag, because tayag is, doing something, without expecting anything.

SOUL

The word soul means atma in Sanskrit. Atma is the life force which is present in a body. A live body is therefore called a jiva-atma in Sanskrit.

SUPER SOUL

Param-atma is Super soul, who is the creator of all creation and all jiva-atmas - God. In Upanishads, soul and super soul are likened to two birds on a tree. Tree is the material body. One bird; the jiva-atma or the individual soul, is trying to enjoy the fruits of the tree which can be compared to the object of senses of this material world. The other bird; param-atma or super soul, is simply witnessing the activities of his friend the jiva-atma. The super soul - God is waiting for us to turn our attention towards Him, but we are so engrossed in enjoying the objects of senses that we ignore Him.

After Puratchi Kalaignar ‘Captain’ Vijayakanth and ‘Supreme Star’ Sarath Kumar who entered politics, the next in line may be none other than our 'Superstar' RAJNI. Now all politicians and people are closely watching moves as far as politics is concerned. Speculations are rife that his daughter Soundarya Rajinikanth may launch a television channel called ‘SuperStar’ channel after completing her “Sultan the Warrior” film and that would be at the earliest. This may be initial step for Rajni, before stepping into the arena of politicians. Rajni, who is known to be close to the Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi, who has also announced his entry into politics, has a huge fan following in the southern parts of India. It is believed that Rajni will consider entering politics only after two years after finishing this movie ROBOT. Keep visiting for more information.

Microsoft India has said that it will set up technology lab the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The company is investing Rs 90 lakhs initially in the IITM Microsoft Windows Technologies Lab that will harness innovation through research and provide a platform for faculty and students to use it for different kinds of research and training programmes. This lab will offer best to date MS technology for the staff and students to work with and can also from helping students with their B Tech and M Tech projects and also the MS and PhD students in their research programmes. The initial focus in the lab will be on Windows Terminal services, device drivers, networking protocols, windows mobile and multi-modal localisation. Six companies have already spoken to IIT for using the lab and TCS was one of them.

A new survey from Leo J. Shapiro and Associates has shown that most cellular phone users want GPS in their next handset more than Internet access. The survey sampled 450 Americans and found that 24% want GPS in their next phones and 19% wanted Internet access.

"GPS is displaying a rapid and unusual pattern of diffusion," adds Owen Shapiro, Vice President of LJS. "Our research is finding the purchase and use of GPS-enabled devices is not confined to segments of the population in which 'early adopters' are generally concentrated -- the young, highly educated or affluent. Today's GPS-enabled devices are being widely adopted, including among the middle-aged and elderly. As this breakout unfolds, we expect intensifying marketplace competition among the incumbent and newcomer brands as they race for dominance in this explosively growing market."

Hi people.. I received many mails asking if there are proxy servers in India too as it makes your access to blocked websites that much more faster. I did some research and with inputs from friends. Here is the list of Indian Proxy Web servers.

* 210.212.5.73:3128
* 59.92.89.183:6588
* 60.243.121.162:6588

So now you can access the blocked gmail / hotmail / orkut from within your school/office easily.

As the ipl cricket fever soaring high, it destroys the first class structure that props up the International game.IPL has changed the name of "cricket" into gambling rather a development..
As of now if this continues and IPL becomes a fixture, the Ranji trophy won't exist five years from now.With money being the only motive of IPL it has attracted crowds,television coverage and the excitement monopolised by the IPL.
All internationational players have rated themselves for few hundreds of Lakhs, which rated them very less in the young eager player minds.
When the IPL takes over the domestic calendar (already there is talk of shifting it to the winter), the Ranji Trophy will die untended and unmourned. Once that happens, Test teams in India will have to be chosen on the basis of Twenty20 performances. Tickled by this absurdity, Test cricket will die laughing.

As of today according to IPL diary, "n" number of problems,with harbhajan shows of his emotions towards Sreesanth,A heavy loss to all investors whose team has lost players and their matches(Vijay Mallya)........ it goes on..

A FUTURE THINKING:
as of now many business magnates and cine stars are involved in huge investement so goes on IPL

If the same is started in every country Which is better than India in Economy......It makes a big end to International cricket closing its domestic calender

Does this methodology of cricket is required?????????????

i Know i Will

This post is for those people who wish to do something in their life but all their wishes and ambitions takes a back seat when faced by life's routine expectations. I want people to come together and share there desires & ambitions with many of those who could achieve their dreams or those who are like them.

People say "Life is lived when you live it for other".
i believe the real life is when you live it for yourself.

Being on this earth we have no control on what circumstance we may come across... but there is someone who has control on how we'll get across it.
Who is that someone...
Is this someone our father or mother, our sibling our our spouse?
NO
This someone is within us.
For me its me, for you its you.
No one else can give you what you want.

Now the question is what actually can we take with ourself. Is it the wealth we left locked in our bank's locker or the 3 generations we left on this earth to produce further generations?
NO
The stuff that we will take with ourself is our life's achievements. Provided they are driven by your passion by your latent or self inculcated talent.

After reaching a certain age in our life we do settle happily with what we have, be it man or woman. But still there is something which you still want to do. You think about it when you are alone, or when you are too happy .

So, have we moved so far that we have no chance to take a grab of our desire? Are we short of resources to execute our wish? Or we have no support from family and friends?
NO
The only answer is we assume we can't.

But just ask yourself did you ever took the most important FIRST STEP?
My friends just taste the flavor of that first step and see what life holds for you. You'll fill your hands with all what you had came here for.
To make your life worth for others, first make it worth for yourself.

We all know that everyone loves achievers. Even you love achievers. But why can't you be that achiever; to be loved & appreciated by everyone?
Achievement can not be measured by the amount of its materialistic output. If you do what you wish for you are an achiever.

Protect your password in cyber cafe and on public computers:
Source : Email forward

Some time or the other, you must have used cyber dafe or public computers to access internet or mail. Public computers are most prone to password hacking. Anyone can simply install a keylogger software to hack your password. Keylogging is one of the most insidious threats to a user's personal information. Passwords, credit card numbers etc.

It is now very easy for the keylogger to harvest passwords. Each and every keystroke (whatever you type on the keyboard) gets recorded in the keylogger software and the person installing it can easily view what you have typd in.

For example, if you go to hotmail.com and check your mails. Say your ID is aaabbbccc @ hotmail . com and password is snoopy2. the keylogger software records your usename and password in its log file as

www.hotmail.comaaabbbccc @ hotmail . comsnoopy2

Risky isnt it???!!!

There's solution to this problem and you can easily fool the hacker.
The keylogger software sees and records everything, but it doesn't understand what it sees. It does not know what to do with keys that are typed anywhere other than the password or user name fields.

So, between successive keys of the password if you enter random keys, the keylogger software wont ever come to konw where you typed in what..

In the process of recording the keys, the string that the keylogger receives will contain the password, but embedded in so much random junk that discovering it is infeasible.

So...

1.Go to hotmail.com or yahoo.com or any of the site where you need to insert a password or PIN.
2.Type in your user ID.
3. Type in the first characterof the password.
4. Click on the address bar in the internet explorer or Firefox. Type in some 3/4 random charachters.
5. Again go to password field and type in the second character of the password.And probably third too.
6. Again go to the addressbar and type in a few mroe random character.
7. Back to the password field and the next characters of the password.

Keep on repeating the process till you type in the full password in the password field.

Instead of the password
snoopy2 the keylogger now gets:
hotmail.comspqmlainsdgsosdgfsodgfdpuouuyhdg2

Here a total of 26 random characters have been inserted among the 7 characters of the actual password!!!

No doubt it takes a little bit of more time than the usual process, but you're safe and secure that way!!!

(Have you seen recent advertisement of M/S SAINT GOBAIN GLASSES shown in TELEVISION'S? - Then you must have known about 2 Way mirror & is also shown in Hindi Movie HUMRAAZ) How to determine if a mirror is 2 way or not (Not a Joke!)

Not to scare you, but to make sure that you aware.

Many of the hotels and textile showrooms cheat the customers this way & watch privately.

HOW TO DETECT A 2-WAY MIRROR

When we visit toilets, bathrooms, hotel rooms,changing rooms, etc., how many of you know for sure that the seemingly ordinary mirror hanging on the wall is a real mirror, r actually a 2-way mirror i.e., they can see you, but you can't see them). There have been many cases of people installing 2-way mirrors in female changing rooms or bathroom or bedrooms. It is very difficult to positively identify the surface by just
looking at it. So, how do we determine with any amount of certainty what type of mirror we are looking at?

CONDUCT THIS SIMPLE TEST:

Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if there is a GAP between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then it is a GENUINE mirror. However, if your fingernail DIRECTLY TOUCHES the image of your nail, then BEWARE, IT IS A 2-WAY MIRROR! (there is someone seeing you from the
other side). So remember, every time you see a mirror,do the "fingernail test." It doesn't cost you anything. It is simple to do. This is a really good thing to do. The reason there is a gap on a real mirror, is because the silver is on the back of the
mirror UNDER the glass. Whereas with a two-way mirror,the silver is on the Surface. Keep it in mind! Make sure and check every time you enter in hotel rooms.May be someone is making a film on you.

These photos were taken from a helicopter flying into one of the camps before they closed. It's a look into the dry vallies, as well as some emperor penguins at the ice edge hanging out with a leopard seal.
I'm going to take this time to answer a few questions from blog comments from during the week. I'm not going to go in any particular order but i'll do my best to answer most of them.
The auroras we see down here in this part of the world are Australis. They are not something we see every night. Usually we see them on clear nights when the wind is calm and you can look out and see nothing but stars and what looks like a lime green mist floating across the sky.
I've never read the book "Northern Lights".
Jobs down here in antarctica are available to just about everyone, Yes the town is set up like a military base as far as the housing quarters, which means you live with a roommate unless you have a partner. As far as coming down on a tour and visiting, i'm not sure what that entails or what the cost is, but as far as i'm concerned, I would much rather go somewhere and work and get to know the area and people than to pay to visit and then just leave. To me, getting to know people where you travel is the biggest part of the adventure.

One of the rising problem now a days is that, as both parents of a house go to work, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to take care of their children. If the child happens to be a toddler, then the parents call for some maid to take care of the child. This is again a problem because, if the house maid isn't a trusted source, then there is every chance that she may kidnap the baby for ransom. This is again an important problem that is arising in India mainly. The rate of kidnapping babies has increased alarmingly in the past few years. So, it becomes very important that you take care of the baby and it is under a secure environment. Another problem with babies is that, they tend to innovate right from their childhood. They tend to always move here and there and since they don't know the seriousness of anything, they even tend to go down the streets. This is because of the lapse of concentration and lack of care on part of the parents. This can be curbed by using a Child GPS which can be used to track the child wherever it goes. This is similar to the one used in mobile technology. These Child gps are available at $400 to $1000 and they are worth the money spent on it as it is very important to safeguard the child. You can get these devices at http://www.brickhouse-childsafety.com/child-gps-tracking-device.html which is the best place for Child GPS and also available at special offer. So, keep in track of your child with this child GPS.

Today is Earth Day, and, accordingly, I've seen a few sites link to 1Up.com's "Gaming Green" article. Being a naive liberal, the environment is fairly high on my list of concerns, but I can appreciate that some well-meaning people sincerely believe that things like global warming are a plot dreamed up by Al Gore in order to enslave God-fearing Americans and create a wacked-out leftist dystopia. So let's sidestep the political considerations for a minute, and see if applying some of these lessons can help you in your daily life without forcing you to help turn America into a worker's paradise.

Even though each one draws little power by itself, multiplying all of them by 24 hours a day adds up. Then consider the living room, where the TV, DirecTV receiver, and DVD player are all doing the same thing. Add the cell phone, iPod, and laptop chargers that all pull down their own voltage, and suddenly you see how much power we're using for no real reason.When we're not watching anything in the living room, we turn that power strip off. All it took was the negligible initial investment in the power strips, and the presence of mind to switch them off when we leave the room. It's not hard.The result has been a reduction of as much as $30 to our monthly electric bill. That's $360 a year! In gaming terms, the energy savings could buy me six games. Or an Xbox 360 Pro. Or more than seven years of Xbox Live.
I only wish I'd started doing this sooner, and not just for the financial and environmental benefits. If you remember, the Wii had problems overheating when left in Connect24 mode for too long. Because I had it running in standby mode for several months at a stretch, I now get graphical artifacting. Had I been cutting the power completely during that time, it would still be working perfectly.
So if you don't want to do it for the environment, or if you're tempted to spite Al Gore and his nanny-state cohort, then do it for me.

Wait, that's not right. Do it for your wallet.

The aftermath of the 8th sem exams and the holiday is a long long period of boredom,loneliness and an endless wait to make the transition to the next "phase" in life.It is one holiday I wish we never had,because there is no looking forward to anything,except the future which is hazy and I'm sure it does not hold as much fun as what the immediate past held...No more getting up late and rushing thru the morning routine,sometimes skipping breakfast and whizzing through the roads to make it to college at least by the end of the first hour.No more rule-breaking,kalaaichi-fying teachers,bunking,college day,symposium,class tests,bits,eating during class,canteen sappadu,parking lot conversations,coffee shop, last minute assignments,OB lab sessions,queuing up outside the principal's office,class trips,fights....too many to list! And,friends.
Every time someone wore a new dress(pudhu chokka :) ),there used be ooooohs and aaaahs all around class, and then, someone flashing a new mobile or a new cute baby ring tone...Dunno what reactions you would get at your future workplace(or grad school)if you did that;probably weird stares and a big disapproving glare from your boss.Anyhow,you can't keep the "i-dont-care-what-you-think" attitude anymore.
It's kinda weird to think that there are gonna be times when you can call your friend only when he is free,and meeting up becomes a once a while thing,a big event by itself.
Yeah,I know what people would say.Things gotta move on.Life is like that.Wake up to reality .It is this way for everybody...OK OK!! Fine. Accepted.Gimme some time..Let me just brood..Let me just dream about the past..Let me soak in those pure,unadulterated memories of college before I get dirtied by the murky life ahead,the responsibilities and the vagaries..

All these years through college, and post-Orkut/Gtalk/Yahoo messenger, there has almost been no day since I stayed offline for more than 12 hours(sometimes I even dreamt I was online :-D ) Semester exams, practical exams,important 'functions' at home, severe illness...nope, nothing deterred me from coming online, at least for 30 minutes;the sem exams never ever did! But now,the compulsive intenet addiction is slowly waning, especially in the past 2 months when I have been preparing for an important quest in life, and have been juggling multiple responsibilities.(!!)[For my college friends, this might sound totally zany, especially coming from me... please consider all that a slight exaggeration.] This period of utter concentration and focus reminds me of Shakespeare's famous soliloquy "All the world's a stage and all men and women merely players..." This goes on to say that every man(or woman) has seven roles(or stages) in life: starting from the infant to the rickety old man. It was weird to apply this to oneself, and try to figure out in which stage one is now in.I guess,for me,the closest one is the soldier, bearded like the pard, who seeks the bubble reputation. Seems weird(and funny).. but the good news is, this period of utter concentration would wane soon again for me,without any doubt. And I should be back to my irresponsible self soon. And what I was trying to imply in the title of this post was that me being the "soldier" is a humungous aberration, if you didn't guess it.

Today is Earth Day, and, accordingly, I've seen a few sites link to 1Up.com's "Gaming Green" article. Being a naive liberal, the environment is fairly high on my list of concerns, but I can appreciate that some well-meaning people sincerely believe that things like global warming are a plot dreamed up by Al Gore in order to enslave God-fearing Americans and create a wacked-out leftist dystopia. So let's sidestep the political considerations for a minute, and see if applying some of these lessons can help you in your daily life without forcing you to help turn America into a worker's paradise.

Even though each one draws little power by itself, multiplying all of them by 24 hours a day adds up. Then consider the living room, where the TV, DirecTV receiver, and DVD player are all doing the same thing. Add the cell phone, iPod, and laptop chargers that all pull down their own voltage, and suddenly you see how much power we're using for no real reason.When we're not watching anything in the living room, we turn that power strip off. All it took was the negligible initial investment in the power strips, and the presence of mind to switch them off when we leave the room. It's not hard.The result has been a reduction of as much as $30 to our monthly electric bill. That's $360 a year! In gaming terms, the energy savings could buy me six games. Or an Xbox 360 Pro. Or more than seven years of Xbox Live.
I only wish I'd started doing this sooner, and not just for the financial and environmental benefits. If you remember, the Wii had problems overheating when left in Connect24 mode for too long. Because I had it running in standby mode for several months at a stretch, I now get graphical artifacting. Had I been cutting the power completely during that time, it would still be working perfectly.
So if you don't want to do it for the environment, or if you're tempted to spite Al Gore and his nanny-state cohort, then do it for me.

Wait, that's not right. Do it for your wallet.

I happened to reinstall my OS once again. As usual as an ordinary-comp-user-of-India , I installed Windows - XP with SP2 ( Service Pack 2). SP2 is suppose to be the supplementary package accompanying Win XP so as to stabilize the internal functions of the OS including the registry and the Database operations.

I quickly established my net connection and I was left with IE to browse. I would rather eat my hat than browsing in IE. As a Mozilla fan, I just couldn't see the use of IE and at one point of time , i just wanted to uninstall the bleeding IE.

I was going thru my feeds and i got a glimpse of Apple's Safari 3.1 browser. Out of curiosity , i just downloaded Safari and it just didnt start ... Though the interface and the features were cool , it wasn't cool enough. Thought this would be the only competitor for Mozilla Firefox in the Web-Broswer section but looks like Safari is having hard time hunting down its bugs... Not a happy Safari for Apple i guess ...

As pretty as a rose
as sweet as honey
reminds me of a
clown so funny
cheers me up
when i am sad
calms me down
when i am mad
i'll never have a
better best friend
we'll be together
until the end
and when i am
cold and lonely
who cheers me up
the one and only
You
My best

Our noses can quickly learn to link even subtle changes in smell with danger, claim scientists.

Volunteers who could not differentiate between two similar smells found they could do it easily after being given a mild electric shock alongside one.Brain scans confirmed the change in the "smelling" part of the brain.The US research, published in the journal Science, suggests our distant ancestors evolved the ability to keep us away from predators.

Earth Hour is an annual international event held on the last Saturday of March that asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour on the evening. The event is promoted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia and the Sydney Morning Herald.
The first Earth Hour was held on 31 March 2007 in Sydney, Australia between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. The 2007 Earth Hour is estimated to have cut Sydney's mains electricity consumption by between 2.1% and 10.2% for that hour, with as many as 2.2 million people taking part. Earth Hour 2008 was held internatioanlly on 29 March 2008 at 8 pm local time until 9 pm, marking the first anniversary of the event with many partner cities and individuals around the world participating. Earth Hour may also help reduce light pollution, and in 2008, coincides with the beginning of National Dark Sky Week in the USA. The 2009 Earth Hour will be held on March 28, 2009.
Earth Hour 2008

Strong backing from the City of Sydney and its Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, helped to make Earth Hour 2008 an international event.The official Earth Hour website has confirmed that over 286,000 people and over 20,000 businesses have signed up for the event as of 1pm GMT.

As of 30 March, over 11,900 businesses and nearly 300,000 individuals had registered to indicate their intention to participate.

Participants

Google

A web screenshot of Google's 'darkened' homepage on March 29, 2008.

Earth Hour has also received the backing of the Google corporation. From 12:00 AM on March 29, 2008 until the end of that day, the Google homepage in the United States, Canada, Ireland and the UK was turned to a black background. Their tagline is, "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn - Earth Hour." Also on their website, Google explained that everyone should turn their lights out from 8:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. in your specific local times. According to their website:

Google users in Canada [or Ireland, UK, US] will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, Vladivostok, Cairo, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

Given our company's commitment to environmental awareness and energy efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope will be a highly successful global event.

If you follow the digital media space at all (and, because you signed up to receive the DivX News, I have to assume that you're at least somewhat interested in digital video), you know by now that the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD has finally ended and that Blu-ray has won. Now that the war is over, chances are a lot of you will be looking to upgrade your home theaters to get in on all that HD goodness. But before you run out and drop a wallet-full of cash on a new Blu-ray player, remember that not all Blu-ray players are created equal. While they'll all play the new HD Blu-ray discs, some of them are DivX Certified as well, meaning they'll also play your collection of DivX videos.
But let's back up a bit. What exactly is Blu-ray, how is it different than HD DVD and what does the end of the format war really mean? Blu-ray was developed by a team of technology companies and movie studios led by Sony, while HD DVD was the brainchild of a different set of companies and studios, led by Toshiba. Both HD DVD and Blu-ray players use a blue-laser to read information off a disc which looks identical to a standard CD or DVD. However, because the blue lasers used by the devices are more precise than the red lasers used in standard definition DVD players, the information on the disc can be written smaller so it takes up less space, allowing for more data to be stored on the disc. With a few exceptions, the user experience each of these formats offer is the same: higher resolution video and audio. For reasons that have a great deal more to do with business alliances than any real technological differences, Blu-ray won.

What then, does the end of the format war and the death of HD DVD really mean? In a nutshell, it means anyone who already purchased an HD DVD player just inherited a very bulky paperweight because after current catalogs run dry, no one will be releasing films on HD DVD compatible discs. But to understand the format war itself, the best way to get some perspective on this may actually be to look into the past. For those of us old enough to remember the 80s, there's a striking similarity here to an earlier format war waged between two videotape technologies, Beta and VHS. During the late 70s and early 80s, these two formats competed to become the standard format for home videotape decks. There was even a time when most video stores (if you're too young to remember video stores, think Netflix without the web) had two sections of tapes, one for Beta and one for VHS. So how'd it all end? Spoiler alert: VHS won the format war and all those Beta players (which actually offered superior video quality) were instantly rendered nearly useless. What's the lesson here? As a consumer, there's not much sense in fighting the tide of technology standards adoption. Pick the wrong one, and you're out of luck. But now that the format war is over, you can rest safe in the knowledge that a Blu-ray player you buy today will have plenty of content available from all the major studios ... until the next thing comes along, but that shouldn't be for another decade or so.
So what should you do if you already bought an HD DVD player? Put it in the closet next to your Beta player, and chalk it up to a learning experience. Sorry, those are just the early adopter breaks

China's main mobile phone company said Friday it will launch trial service of the homegrown Chinese next-generation standard next week, possibly moving the huge market closer to the long-anticipated rollout of new services.Companies expect a multibillion-dollar wave of spending on equipment once China awards licenses for third-generation, or 3G, service. But Beijing has delayed a decision while it tries to develop its own system to compete with global standards.China Mobile Communications Corp. said in a statement it will test the standard, known as TD-SCDMA, by issuing 20,000 phones and 5,000 data cards on Tuesday in Beijing
Other Tech Photos
The statement gave no indication how long the test would last, whether it would be expanded to other areas or when licenses might be awarded.China has the world's biggest population of mobile phone users, with some 520 million subscribers, and standards decisions could have a far-reaching impact on the equipment market.
Third-generation mobile phone standards are meant to support features such as video and Internet access.
Beijing has been trying to create its own standard since 2001, hoping to create opportunities for its telecoms companies and reduce the need to pay license fees to developers of the global standards, known as WCDMA and CDMA-2000. China also has approved those standards for use.The 3G decision comes as regulators are believed to be preparing to restructure China's telecommunications industry. The overhaul is expected to reassign mobile and fixed line assets among the main state-owned phone companies in an effort to create healthier competitors. The government has given no time frame for the changes.
The government said previously it hoped to have a 3G network in place before the Beijing Olympics open in August.

Suppliers such as Nokia Corp. and Motorola Inc. say they are ready to produce equipment based on the Chinese standards once the government picks carriers to receive 3G licenses.
TD-SCDMA has failed to attract users abroad, but industry experts say regulators are pressing Chinese carriers to use it alongside the global standards.
Chinese Mobile and its main rival, China Unicom Ltd., have declined to comment. Chinese news reports say they are reluctant to use TD-SCDMA because it doesn't work as well as the global standards.
U.S. officials say China has promised to let carriers pick their 3G standard but express concern they are being pressed to use TD-SCDMA. They say that would violate Beijing's free-trade commitments.

Motorola Inc. bowed to pressure from investors Wednesday, announcing a plan to split its struggling cell phone business from other operations to form two separate publicly traded companies.The widely expected deal comes as the suburban Chicago cell phone maker faces a second straight year of agitation from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who has become increasingly frustrated with Motorola's eroding phone sales.Executives said the move will allow the two companies to better focus on their respective strengths and weaknesses, while accelerating the turnaround plan for the cell phone unit, which has seen its fortunes slip after
Other Tech Photos
Samsung Cuts Sales Forecast
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trend-conscious customers lost interest in the Razr flip phone.

"The creation of the two independent publicly traded companies provides improved management focus and a capital structure that's more tailored to the individual business needs," said Chief Executive Greg Brown, who will remain at the helm of the split company's non-cell phone unit. "And it will provide some improved alignment and agility and will help us going forward."

Specifics of the deal haven't been disclosed, but Motorola said its handset business will operate separately from another company offering its TV set-top boxes and modems and its computing and communications equipment.Schaumburg-based Motorola said it anticipates the transaction will be tax-free, allowing shareholders to own stock in both of the new companies. If the deal is approved by regulators, the two units would be separated in 2009.
Officials haven't said whether one company or both will retain the Motorola brand name or which company will distribute stock to existing shareholders.
Icahn called Wendesday's announcement "much delayed and long overdue" and continued to push for the election of his four board members.

"As one of the largest Motorola stockholders, I continue to have concerns about the speed and manner in which a new management team is selected for the mobile devices business and the separation transaction is consummated," he said in a statement.

"Time is of the essence, and decisive action is required to reposition the Mobile Devices business for success as an independent company," Icahn said.

Is it a mouse? Is it a gamepad? No, it's the Genius Navigator 365!


This USB mouse is also a 8-buttons-gamepad. Just open it and use the progammable buttons to play your favorite games.
The mouse has a laser engine with a resolution of max. 1600dpi and fits the demands of an average gamer.
Do you see the advantages? Only one USB port occupied and one device less around your computer.

There are millions and millions of people around the World who are all great fans of playing casino. There are also many crazy fanatics who have had great passion for the game. Just because Casino is played in posh places and it is mainly depending on luck. You don’t just need to be a real genius in order to play casino online. But, more than talent and hard work, the main thing that is needed to win is luck. If you are also one such lucky guy and in a way have become one of the most experienced campaigners in the field of online casinos, then you can be damn sure of knowing which game to choose in order to make your win more possible. It is for this reason has the concept of casino guide been created by experts. This http://www.casinonewbies.com/ provides important information on all that a person needs to know about the game of casino. There are also the casino affiliate programs and also the free casino tutorial programs and apart from this, they have also got free flash games in this site to keep you entertained at all points of time. At http://www.casinonewbies.com/, you have also got the Casino reviews on what is hot and what is not and also apart from that, updates on important gambling news. This site is nothing but an online review directory and you can also avail special bonuses in this site. So, choose the best casino using the best casino guide and earn your way through the best source of entertainment.

There's a video playing these days at New York's Museum of Modern Art about a curvaceous cell phone called "Morph." Unlike your typical phone, this one's form-fitting: It wraps around your wrist like a bracelet when you're not using it for calls. It also kills germs and looks out for your health by "sniffing" the surrounding air and analyzing your sweat.
And oh yeah, it's made with a derivative of insulin. Not all of it. There's still plenty of the silicon, metals, and synthetic materials commonly used to make consumer electronics. But the Morph, which is Nokia's (NOK) equivalent of a concept car, is but one hint of an emerging body of research that taps into biology for the good of gadgetry.
Viruses, silkworms, salmon sperm, and potatoes are among the multitude of living organisms that scientists at companies and universities are trying to harness to make better parts for computers, MP3 players, cell phones, and other devices. In addition to Nokia, companies pursuing this path include IBM (IBM), Motorola (MOT), Fujitsu, Honeywell (HON), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and dozens of startups.

For a common people and for his basic need a small home with basic facility are more than enough to live in. We call home where we can seat and relax ... where we can enjoy our life with our close ones ... but below given homes are more than that ... they are the symbol of wealth ... they are the perfect definition of luxury ... so friends these are the top expensive homes from all all round the world. Just have a look -

$165 million
Beverly Hills, Calif.

Once owned by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, this expansive villa sits on six and a half acres in Beverly Hills.
A massive 75,000 square feet of living space is spread across three stories. The home boasts 29 bedrooms and 40 bathrooms.
The home was built in 1926 in the style of a Mediterranean villa and was featured in the 1972 film The Godfather. The compound comprises six buildings, three swimming pools and a movie theater.

Music is the oldest tension buster, that’s why in old age kings always carry singer and poet with them. You and me can also call ourselves as king as we also carry our singer and poet … but not with us … in our pocket … Yes … I am talking about top 10 Mp3 players. If you are planning to purchase … then read these tips and reviews

Outstanding features: Available in black and white and colour, the iPod Video 30Gb can hold 7,500 songs or 75 hours of video playback and is the best-looking player your money can buy.

It features a large 2.5 inch colour screen capable of displaying images and videos at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels.

The circular touch-pad navigation is easy to use. Besides support for audio and video, it can entertain you while you are on the go with Podcasts and audio books.

With a built-in calendar, contact list, notes, world clock, stopwatch and a few games, it also acts as ap personal information manager (PIM).

A single battery charge can last 20 hours.


Drawbacks: The LCD is too small for playing videos.

The screen is scratch prone, so be sure to invest in a protective casing. Also, the lack of in-built speakers and A/V cables (you need to buy them separately) make it a not-so-ideal portable media solution.


Final word: The name, iPod, is synonymous with MP3 players today. Though slightly expensive, it is undoubtedly the best music player around. But if you are a true audiophile and do not mind spending a few bucks extra, look no further.

These are the world most expensive and master piece car ... every one would love to have either one or more than one ... really ... you can fall in love with these cars ... just take a look into these cars ...

Bugatti Veyron 16.4

$1.4 million
The Veyron 16.4 is reported to be the only production car with more than 1,000 horsepower, at 1001 hp. Unless someone is building one in a secret lab somewhere, it’s also the only one that costs more than $1 million. It has a 16-cylinder engine that forms a "W" out of two Vs .

Version 2.0 of the popular iPhone's firmware, which is due to be launched in June this year, could turn the device into an indispensable medical tool in hospitals.

Doctors are quite optimistic about the new version of the mobile phone as it could serve as an electronic alternative for the old-fashioned clipboard and X-ray light box.

According to Adam Flanders, director of informatics at Thomas Jefferson University and an expert in medical imaging, "If you could use the gesture-based way of manipulating images on the iPhone and actually manipulate a stack of X-rays or CT scans, that would be a huge selling point."

To date, such a feature has remained an impossible dream due to most smart phones' inability to handle the sophisticated compression techniques used on large medical images. Also, most phones lack the requisite memory and image-processing capabilities.

L.A. Cicero Camera researchers

Philip Wong, Abbas El Gamal and Keith Fife are developing a digital camera that sees the world through thousands of tiny lenses, providing an electronic “depth map” containing the distance from the camera to every object in the picture.
L.A. Cicero testing platform for the image sensor chip.

The testing platform for the multi-aperture image sensor chip.

The camera you own has one main lens and produces a flat, two-dimensional photograph, whether you hold it in your hand or view it on your computer screen. On the other hand, a camera with two lenses (or two cameras placed apart from each other) can take more interesting 3-D photos.

But what if your digital camera saw the world through thousands of tiny lenses, each a miniature camera unto itself? You'd get a 2-D photo, but you'd also get something potentially more valuable: an electronic "depth map" containing the distance from the camera to every object in the picture, a kind of super 3-D.

Stanford electronics researchers, lead by electrical engineering Professor Abbas El Gamal, are developing such a camera, built around their "multi-aperture image sensor." They've shrunk the pixels on the sensor to 0.7 microns, several times smaller than pixels in standard digital cameras. They've grouped the pixels in arrays of 256 pixels each, and they're preparing to place a tiny lens atop each array.

"It's like having a lot of cameras on a single chip," said Keith Fife, a graduate student working with El Gamal and another electrical engineering professor, H.-S. Philip Wong. In fact, if their prototype 3-megapixel chip had all its micro lenses in place, they would add up to 12,616 "cameras."

Point such a camera at someone's face, and it would, in addition to taking a photo, precisely record the distances to the subject's eyes, nose, ears, chin, etc. One obvious potential use of the technology: facial recognition for security purposes.

But there are a number of other possibilities for a depth-information camera: biological imaging, 3-D printing, creation of 3-D objects or people to inhabit virtual worlds, or 3-D modeling of buildings.

The technology is expected to produce a photo in which almost everything, near or far, is in focus. But it would be possible to selectively defocus parts of the photo after the fact, using editing software on a computer

Knowing the exact distance to an object might give robots better spatial vision than humans and allow them to perform delicate tasks now beyond their abilities. "People are coming up with many things they might do with this," Fife said. The three researchers published a paper on their work in the February edition of the IEEE ISSCC Digest of Technical Papers.

Their multi-aperture camera would look and feel like an ordinary camera, or even a smaller cell phone camera. The cell phone aspect is important, Fife said, given that "the majority of the cameras in the world are now on phones."

Here's how it works:

The main lens (also known as the objective lens) of an ordinary digital camera focuses its image directly on the camera's image sensor, which records the photo. The objective lens of the multi-aperture camera, on the other hand, focuses its image about 40 microns (a micron is a millionth of a meter) above the image sensor arrays. As a result, any point in the photo is captured by at least four of the chip's mini-cameras, producing overlapping views, each from a slightly different perspective, just as the left eye of a human sees things differently than the right eye.

The outcome is a detailed depth map, invisible in the photograph itself but electronically stored along with it. It's a virtual model of the scene, ready for manipulation by computation. "You can choose to do things with that image that you weren't able to do with the regular 2-D image," Fife said. "You can say, 'I want to see only the objects at this distance,' and suddenly they'll appear for you. And you can wipe away everything else."

Or the sensor could be deployed naked, with no objective lens at all. By placing the sensor very close to an object, each micro lens would take its own photo without the need for an objective lens. It has been suggested that a very small probe could be placed against the brain of a laboratory mouse, for example, to detect the location of neural activity.

Other researchers are headed toward similar depth-map goals from different approaches. Some use intelligent software to inspect ordinary 2-D photos for the edges, shadows or focus differences that might infer the distances of objects. Others have tried cameras with multiple lenses, or prisms mounted in front of a single camera lens. One approach employs lasers; another attempts to stitch together photos taken from different angles, while yet another involves video shot from a moving camera.

But El Gamal, Fife and Wong believe their multi-aperture sensor has some key advantages. It's small and doesn't require lasers, bulky camera gear, multiple photos or complex calibration. And it has excellent color quality. Each of the 256 pixels in a specific array detects the same color. In an ordinary digital camera, red pixels may be arranged next to green pixels, leading to undesirable "crosstalk" between the pixels that degrade color.

The sensor also can take advantage of smaller pixels in a way that an ordinary digital camera cannot, El Gamal said, because camera lenses are nearing the optical limit of the smallest spot they can resolve. Using a pixel smaller than that spot will not produce a better photo. But with the multi-aperture sensor, smaller pixels produce even more depth information, he said.

The technology also may aid the quest for the huge photos possible with a gigapixel camera—that's 140 times as many pixels as today's typical 7-megapixel cameras. The first benefit of the Stanford technology is straightforward: Smaller pixels mean more pixels can be crowded onto the chip.

The second benefit involves chip architecture. With a billion pixels on one chip, some of them are sure to go bad, leaving dead spots, El Gamal said. But the overlapping views provided by the multi-aperture sensor provide backups when pixels fail.

The researchers are now working out the manufacturing details of fabricating the micro-optics onto a camera chip.

The finished product may cost less than existing digital cameras, the researchers say, because the quality of a camera's main lens will no longer be of paramount importance. "We believe that you can reduce the complexity of the main lens by shifting the complexity to the semiconductor," Fife said.

#1 Warren Buffet

Age: 77

Fortune: self made

Source: Berkshire Hathaway

Net Worth: $62.0 bil

Country Of Citizenship: United States

Residence: Omaha, Nebraska , United States, North America

Industry: Investments

Marital Status: widowed, remarried, 3 children

Education: University of Nebraska Lincoln, Bachelor of Arts / Science Columbia University, Master of Science

America's most beloved investor is now the world's richest man. Soared past friend and bridge partner Bill Gates as shares of Berkshire Hathaway climbed 25% since the middle of last July. Son of Nebraska politician delivered newspapers as a boy. Filed first tax return at age 13, claiming $35 deduction for bicycle. Studied under value investing guru Benjamin Graham at Columbia. Took over textile firm Berkshire Hathaway 1965. Today holding company invested in insurance (Geico, General Re), jewelry (Borsheim's), utilities (MidAmerican Energy), food (Dairy Queen, See's Candies). Also has noncontrolling stakes in Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo. Insurance operations flourished in 2007. "That party is over. It's a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008." The Oracle of Omaha issued a challenge to members of The Forbes 400 in October; said he would donate $1 million to charity if the collective group of richest Americans would admit they pay less taxes, as a percentage of income, than their secretaries. Had long promised to give away his fortune posthumously. Irrevocably earmarked the majority of his Berkshire shares to charity in 2006, mostly to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gift was valued at $31 billion on day of announcement; donation will far exceed that sum so long as Berkshire shares continue to rise

So the era of 13 years come to end ... Bill Gates dominated last 13 years at the top position of Billionaire list ... in these 13 years many poor countries people come to know about the terms of BILLIONAIRES ... and when they do not understand the meaning of Billionaires they show the photos of Bill Gates and tell ... see this is called Billionaire ...

No doubt he make the revolution in computer world ... and his product windows (and tailor made concept) makes him and reached him at this level ... earlier when people were wealthier they show off with quality clothes and with everything which proves them wealthier but he is really wont care about those things ... just like as his arch rival Steve Jobs ...

So Hats off to you Mr. Gates ... now we have to purchase new photo to make people understand what is the meaning of Billionaire ... Mr. Buffest can I have your close up photo ... please ...

Guys ... you are going to see Top 10 Billionaire of the world ... courtsey to Forbes.

Microsoft Corp and Yahoo Inc met on Monday to discuss Microsoft's takeover offer for the Internet company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The meeting was said to be the first since Microsoft made its unsolicited offer for Yahoo, worth nearly $42 billion, on Jan 31.

Yahoo rejected the offer as inadequate last month. The Journal said the meeting wasn't a negotiation and that no bankers were present.

The session was intended to allow Microsoft to present its vision of a combined company, and Yahoo executives mostly listened, the Journal quoted one of the sources as saying. Microsoft and Yahoo spokesmen declined to comment.

Few companies will look at India as their destination for offshore R&D centres in the next 18 months. In fact, there is already a sort of slowdown in the number of such units being set up in the country.

From 75 new offshore R&D centres in 2005, the number has dwindled to just 15 last year. There are about 600 MNC captives in India and R&D offshoring activity in the country is estimated at $6 billion and is seen as growing at 23%. Software product development captures over 50% of R&D market, with the balance contributed by embedded systems space.

According to a study by Zinnov Consulting, some key reasons for this trend were cost escalation of 8% to 15%, attrition of up to 20%, difficulty in scalability and lack of recruitment bandwidth. However, the silver lining is that many of the large and established R&D centres will lend a lot of buoyancy to R&D activity from India.

In fact, large companies will grow till their head count reaches 30%-40% of their global R&D workforce, the study says. While there are several challenges, what has worked for some of the successful R&D captives in India is stable and strong leadership team that has spent a good number of years to stabilise the centre

IT sectors stopped sucking Indian brains
very happy to see more R&D ,which will move India a step ahead....................

Wouldn’t it be nice to drive a car into town without worrying about finding a parking space?Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised just such a vehicle, a futuristic “City Car” that could even drive itself. Once at your destination, the vehicle’s computers would, at the press of a button, look for a parking spot behind others like itself, then fold roughly in half so you could stack it there as you would a shopping cart.

“We have reinvented urban mobility,” said Bill Mitchell, a professor in architecture and director of the project at an MIT think tank in Cambridge, just outside Boston. The vehicle hasn’t yet been built. But a miniature mock-up version has gone on display at a campus museum, and there are plans to build a full-scale model this spring.

The dozen or so engineers and architects on Mitchell’s team are confident their computer-generated work is on target. They feel their golf cart-sized vehicle could provide a novel solution to the chronic traffic congestion afflicting cities across the United States, Europe and Asia — not to mention pollution and energy use, since it would run on a rechargeable battery, the researchers say.

On the drawing board, their two-seater is roughly half the size of a typical compact automobile and a little smaller than the Smart car made by Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz. “It’s a virtual computer on wheels,” said Franco Vairani, designer of the vehicle’s foldable frame, which he predicts will shrink the car to as little as an eighth the space needed to park the average car. While parked, it would hook up to an electricity grid for recharging, he added. Hundreds could be stacked around a city and “you would just go and swipe your (credit) card and take the first one available and drive away,” Vairani said, seated by his computerized drawing board.

People wouldn’t have to worry about where to park their cars in town and automobiles would take up less urban space, leaving more room for parks and walkways, he added. Peter Schmitt, a team engineer, says the car would have independently powered robotic wheels and be controlled using a computerized drive-by-wire system with a button or joystick. Mitchell said he would like to bring the car to the manufacturing stage within the next three to four years.

But a key consultant for the project, Christopher Borroni-Bird, director of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts at US automaker General Motors Corp, said he doesn’t think City Car is quite ready yet for the road.

“What we have is a very intriguing concept,” Borroni-Bird told Reuters in a telephone interview. “It is certainly a very promising idea, but I don’t want to say it is ready for production ... there’s still a lot of work yet to take it from concept to production.”

Sony Ericsson said on Monday that it was reviewing its business ties with NTT DoCoMo, Japan's top mobile telephone operator, which is struggling amid an industry price war.

But the company, a joint venture between Japan's Sony Corp and Sweden's LM Ericsson, declined to confirm reports it will stop making handsets for DoCoMo.

"It is true that Sony Ericsson is reviewing part of its product development plans with DoCoMo," said company spokesman Toshiyuki Kawamura.

But he said the firm would continue to provide products to DoCoMo. The Nikkei business daily reported Monday that Sony Corp would stop making mobile phones for NTT DoCoMo and instead focus on overseas markets.

Sony Ericsson will end production for DoCoMo after introducing new models this summer, the newspaper, without citing sources.

But it plans to keep NTT DoCoMo as a customer by procuring handsets from other Japanese manufacturers and selling them under the brand of Sony Ericsson, the report said.

The newspaper said Sony Ericsson was planning to shift its business focus to China, Europe and North America as it battles Finnish giant Nokia, which dominates the global mobile telephone market.

But Sony Ericsson insisted it remained committed to the Japanese market. "Sony Ericsson does not intend to reduce our development plan for the Japanese cell phone market," said Kawamura.

Japan, a nation of 127 million people, has more than 100 million mobile phones in operation, creating a major challenge for service providers to achieve growth and sparking consolidation among handset manufacturers.

Sanyo Electric announced last month it would sell its mobile phone production unit to Kyocera Corp while Mitsubishi Electric said last week it would stop making cellphone.

Apple Computer, the maker of iPhone, iPod and Mac PCs, has topped 20 most admired global companies in a list prepared by Fortune magazine.

PepsiCo, headed by India-born Indra Nooyi, at 13th position is more admired than archrival Coca-Cola at 19th spot, according to the list published in the latest edition of the US business magazine, famed for its authoritative Fortune 500 lists of US and global corporations ranked on gross revenue.

Apple in the most admired list is followed at second place by General Electric, the diversified industrial conglomerate, while Japanese auto major Toyota occupies the third place.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, is the fourth most admired company.

Others in the top 10 include courier firm FedEx at sixth, Johnson & Johnson (7), known for its baby products, luxury car maker BMW (9) and software giant Microsoft (10), which is trying to acquire Yahoo!.

Aircraft maker Boeing is way down at 16th, the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart at 17th and Japanese automaker Honda Motor at 18th.

Fortune said it surveyed over 600 companies in 65 industries for the list. It partnered with global management consulting firm Hay Group for the study. Over 3,500 businesspeople were asked to vote for the companies that they admired most, from any industry.

The companies were ranked on the basis of eight attributes - innovation, people management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, quality of management, financial soundness, long-term investment and quality of products/services.

In Fortune's list of America's most admired companies, Apple is again at the top, followed by Berkshire and GE at second and third place respectively. Pepsi figures but not in the top 20, for whom the rankings have been given.

Adobe Systems, a software company led by Indian American Shantanu Narayen, has also made it to the club, but way down among the 317 companies listed.

India added six million GSM mobile subscribers in February to reach 184.67 million, industry body Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said Monday.
This, however, excludes the number of users added by Reliance Communications, which is mainly a CDMA major, a rival technology to GSM.

Bharti Airtel, India's leading mobile phone service firm, added 2.25 million subscribers, taking its total base to 59.67 million and market share to 32.31 percent.

Vodafone-Essar, promoted by British telecom giant Vodafone, registered 42.55 million subscribers by adding 1.41 million new users in February against the preceding month's 1.28 million.

Aditya-Birla Group's Idea Cellular added 918,871 users last month, and as of Feb 29 had a total customer base of 22.87 million.

State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) added 824,284 new users taking its total subscriber base to 34.57 million and a market share of 18.72 percent, COAI said.

India is the world's fastest growing mobile phone market with the lowest call tariffs of below two US cents. The market has emerged as the cynosure of global telecom giants. The latest to make a foray is the Richard Branson-promoted Virgin Mobile, which announced it entry into the Indian market last week in partnership with Mumbai-based Tata Teleservices.

The Indian government has set a target of 500 million users by 2010; half of this, 250 million, was reached last year.

A camera that can "see" explosives, drugs and weapons hidden under clothing from 25 metres has been invented.

The ThruVision system could be deployed at airports, railway stations or other public spaces.
It is based on so-called "terahertz", or T-ray, technology, normally used by astronomers to study dying stars.

Although it is able to see through clothes it does not reveal "body detail" or subject people to "harmful radiation", according to the designers.

"It is totally and utterly passive - it receives only," said a spokesperson for Thruvision.

The portable camera, which has already been sold to the Dubai Mercantile Exchange and Canary Wharf in London, will be shown off at the Home Office scientific development branch's annual exhibition later this week.

Body glow

Unlike current security systems that use X-rays, the ThruVision system exploits terahertz rays, or T-rays.

This electromagnetic radiation is a form of low level energy emitted by all people and objects.

These are able to pass through clothing, paper, ceramics and wood but are blocked by metal and water.

The system works by collecting these waves and processing them to form an image which can reveal concealed objects.

"If I were to look at you in terahertz you would appear to glow like a light bulb and different objects glow less brightly or more brightly," said the firm's spokesperson.

"You see a silhouette of the form but you don't see surface anatomical effects."

In addition, the system does not involve any of the "harmful radiation associated with traditional X-ray security screening", according to the firm.

The company has made previous versions of the camera, but the T5000, as it is known, is the first that works both indoors and out.

In changing sweepstakes in world’s billionaire club, India’s Anil Ambani has emerged as the biggest wealth creator, while famed American investor Warren Buffett has overtaken software czar Bill Gates and Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim to lead the list of world’s richest people released by Forbes on Thursday.

As many as four Indians — steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and realty baron K.P. Singh — have made it to top 10 positions, as against just one, Mr. Mittal, a year ago.

India has retained its position as the top source of billionaires in Asia with total 53 persons, who have a cumulative networth of $340.9 billion on Forbes’ 2008 World’s Billionaires list consisting of 1,125 persons with a combined wealth of $4.4 trillion. A year ago, there were just 179 billionaires, Forbes said.

With a networth of $62 billion, Mr. Buffett has topped the list, followed by Carlos Slim Helu ($60 billion) and Mr. Gates ($58 billion) on second and third positions.

They are followed by three Indians — Lakshmi Mittal ($45 billion), Mr. Mukesh Ambani ($43 billion) and Mr. Anil Ambani ($42 billion) on fourth, fifth and sixth ranks.

Besides, DLF’s K.P. Singh ($30 billion) has been ranked, after Sweden’s Ingvar Kamprad ($31 billion).

Forbes said Mr. Anil Ambani is the biggest gainer with wealth soaring by $23.8 billion since the last list. He is only one billion dollars behind his brother, who is the second biggest gainer with a rise of $22.9 billion in his networth. Mr. Mittal has gained $13 billion from last year, pushing him one place higher to fourth rank this year. Among Indians, Mr. Mittal, the Ambanis and Mr. Singh are followed by Essar group’s Shashi and Ravi Ruia at 43rd rank globally with a combined networth of $15 billion, Wipro’s Azim Premji (60th with $12.7 billion), Sunil Mittal and family (64th with $11.8 billion) and Kumar Birla (76th with $10.2 billion).

These are followed by Unitech’s Ramesh Chandra (86th with $9.6 billion), Guatam Adani (91st with $9.3 billion), Savitri Jindal (110th with $8.2 billion), Anil Agarwal (164th with $6 billion), Adi Godrej (178th with $5.5 billion) and GMR’s GM Rao (198th with $5.2 billion).

Forbes said the number of billionaires had crossed into four figure for the first time and two-third of them are self-made billionaires, having built their empires from scratch. The total number of Asian billionaires jumped by a third to 211 with a total wealth of $804 billion.

Yahoo launches research lab in Bangalore Yahoo launched its first research lab in India on Tuesday. Yahoo Labs, the facility in Bangalore, will focus on search technologies and computational advertising.The research will be focused on search technologies and computational advertising.

Yahoo Research, said the company’s research in computational advertising would enable searches by users to be matched with relevant advertisements.

Whenever I visited the Electronics goods shop one thing surely made my hand to scratch my head ! What is that DVD+R and DVD-R ? Out of ignorance and negligence I would simply forget that topic and return home after purchasing the goods that i needed... Last week I made up my mind to find what those "+R" and "-R" meant!

Um not a big difference @ the customer's end but a great deal at the technical aspects..... So here it goes : Well, there are really only two "families" of DVD at the moment (unless you want to count the red laser vs. blue laser stuff that's starting to come on to the market at the high end), and one "outcast". You've got the "minus" ("-") formats (DVD-R, DVD-RW) and the "plus" ("+") formats (DVD+R, DVD+RW), then there's the older DVD-RAM format that's harder to find these days. All of these are for data, of course -- all but the newest DVD video players will choke on those, in the same way early CD players choked on CD-R discs.



A DVD-R is a write-once format: once you've burned the data onto that DVD platter, the disk is forever frozen with that information. Add the "W" to that, and you'll find that DVD-RW can be erased or rewritten up to a thousand times. Seems kinda weird, but if you can do so, DVD-RW obviously has significant advantages over DVD-R. DVD-RAM was even more flexible, however, since it let you erase and rewrite sections of an existing DVD, something that you cannot do with DVD-RW.

Moving to the plus side is where things get a bit confusing, because DVD+RW came before DVD+R. The plus formats have the same data storage capacity as the minus formats (4.7GB), but DVD+RW offers faster writing, better internal linking (a technical obscurity you don't have to worry about), and support for drag-and-drop desktop files, which makes it easy to compose the contents of a disk. DVD+R is a write-once format intended to be more compatible with more DVD players, though at this point it seems to be about even with DVD-R, which remains the most compatible computer-burned DVD format.


In your case, since your drive is a DVD-RW, you're effectively limited to DVD-R and DVD-RW format discs. Stay away from any of the "plus" formats, as those won't work with your drive (and being newer, they cost more anyway).

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it plans to cut prices of its Windows Vista operating system sold at retail outlets in a move aimed at pushing customers to switch to the newest version of Windows.The world's largest software maker said it plans to lower retail prices for Vista in 70 countries later this year in tandem with the shipment of the first major update to Vista, known as Service Pack 1 (SP1).Packaged versions of Windows Vista sold at stores and on the Web account for less than 10 percent of all licenses of the dominant Windows operating system that sits on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers.Most consumers opt to buy a new PC, which comes preloaded with the latest version of Windows. In the United States, Microsoft will reduce prices for Windows Vista Ultimate, the company's top-end operating system, to $319 from $399 for the full version and cut the price for an "upgrade" version to $219 from $259 for consumers who already run Windows XP or another edition of Vista.It also cut prices for upgrade versions of Vista Home Premium, its mainstream product, to $129 from $239. The price cuts vary by country. It also cut prices for upgrade versions of Vista Home Premium, its mainstream product, to $129 from $239. The price cuts vary by country.In emerging markets, Microsoft will stop selling "upgrade" versions of Vista, because, for many customers, it will be the first purchase of a genuine copy of Windows. The company will instead sell Vista Home Premium and Home Basic, a stripped-down version, at the upgrade prices.Microsoft has sold more than 100 million licenses of Vista since its January 2007 release and its adoption has underpinned strong earnings results at the company in recent quarters.Nonetheless, some consumers have raised issues with Vista's performance, stringent hardware requirement and lack of support for other software and devices like printers. Microsoft said it would continue to sell Windows XP until June 2008, delaying a scheduled transition to Vista.

Alienware is an American computer hardware company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dell.It mainly produces desktops and laptops specialized for video editing, audio editing, and gaming. Alienware is also a producer of computer peripheralsThis is the first Core 2 Duo/SLI laptop available, and its speed blew our minds.The new Alienware Area-51 m9750 is with Core 2 Duo T7600 processor and dual 512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPUs (in an SLI configuration) to be fast--but the numbers were off the charts. This is the first (and only, at test time) Core 2 Duo/SLI laptop available, and the speed this potent combo delivers makes the m9750 our hands-down pick for gamers. The 17.1-inch 1920 x 1200-pixel widescreen is one of the glossier ones we've seen and is prone to reflection in bright environments.

Alienware offers a Blu-ray drive option to put the gorgeous screen (and Nvidia Purevideo HD technology) to work. The display can handle full 1080p HD resolution, and high-def movies showed visual pop and excellent detail in shadow areas. The screen's good viewing-angle performance makes the m9750 ideal to share (again, just watch for reflections from lights and windows). Sound quality from the 2.1 sound system was better than what most laptops deliver, and volume was adequate Vista is available on this model, but (surprisingly) Nvidia had not yet finalized SLI drivers for use with it. Two 7,200-rpm hard drives deliver a total of 400GB of space.

Maxtor Corporation was an American manufacturer of computer hard disk drives founded in 1982 and acquired by Seagate in 2006. As of December 2005, just prior to the acquisition, Maxtor was the world's third-largest manufacturer of hard disks. It now operates as a subsidiary of Seagate.In the last few years, hard drive manufacturers have had to come up with ingenious ways and incorporate more and more features in order to make a "difference" in the market. One of the giants in hard drives is Maxtor, the company that pioneered the revolutionary "push-button" approach to data storage backup.The company has developed an interesting feature designed to let computer users back up their files and folders with just the touch of a button. And while it sounds easy to use, it's also just as easy to setup. The One Touch II is the newest addition to Maxtor's very good, external drive family.

WHAT it is and HOW it works

The One Touch Backup system was originally developed at Quantum laboratories, before that company was acquired by Maxtor in early 2001. Maxtor simply had to improve the system before releasing it onto the market.

The process starts when the user presses the button on the One Touch external drive, initiating the backup process. It's simply the fastest way possible to perform a backup, faster than CD or a removable cartridge system and certainly faster than floppies. Backup and Restore is handled exclusively by Daunt Retrospect software.

Simplicity

Throughout the entire backup or restore process, you won't find any complex menus or commands and there's no need for any technical knowledge in order to set up and use the Maxtor One Touch II drive. Even installation of the One Touch software is a matter of a few clicks with the mouse and some simple questions such as the user's name and preferred language.
By leaving everything to default settings, Retrospect backs up everything on the local drives, including Internet favorites, address books, my documents folders, outlook express mail folders, operating system folders, applications, etc.
Retrospect allows for two modes of backup called Comprehensive and Duplicate. The backup files created by Retrospect when doing Comprehensive backups are compressed automatically and their format is such that they are not accessible directly. Only with Retrospect can the administrator of the PC access all the backed up files and restore any particular file or files back to the PC. Comprehensive backup creates restore points so that the user can for example create a backup for each day of the week rather than simply overwriting the previous backup.
With Duplicate backups, older saved files are overwritten with newer versions.
Retrospect also includes a disk self management facility that makes best possible use of available disk space on the the Maxtor One Touch, erasing any unnecessary files and always keeping free space at a maximum.
The Maxtor One Touch drive - just press the button and your files are backed up in one, simple step. It's simply the fastest backup.

Drive Lock Security

Maxtor offers a new Drive Lock feature for greater data protection. This is a password protection scheme that can keep unauthorized users from viewing sensitive data. Once the original user switches off the computer or the drive is disconnected from the system, access to the drive will be denied until the right user name and password are provided. This is something extremely important for professionals and power users where security is necessary.

Restore

When the worst happens and data is lost, restoring files from a previous back up on the Maxtor One Touch is a very simple task. It is a three step process:

* First, you are asked for the preferred time of the restoration point, which can be any time we had a backup.
* Second, you must choose what will be restored, either individual files or folders, groups of files and folders, or even the whole disk.
* And finally you must choose where on your system the files will be restored.

Friendly Interface
The graphical interface for One Touch software has been redesigned by Maxtor since the previous version, making setup and restore, drive management and security settings a lot easier to manage.

Connection

Maxtor's One Touch II is easy to install, requiring only power and a USB 2.0 or Firewire connection.
It is expandable, making it easy to connect up to 63 drives via Firewire, or 127 USB 2.0 drives with the use of USB.2.0 hubs.
Needless to say, the drive is hot-swappable (thanks to the USB and Firewire interfaces) making it easy to connect to and disconnect from any computer at any time.
All the connection ports are conveniently located on the back of the device for easy connection with the PC. However, something that may be worth considering is the inclusion of a connection on the front, since quite a large number of users may want to connect their digital cameras or DVD camcorders for example, directly onto the drive to download their media files.
The drive is made from high quality anodized aluminum and gives the impression of a device that will last.
The One Touch II, features a handsome, rugged aluminum enclosure with a single illuminated push-button on the faceplate. The push-button activates the automated backup process. The construction is "bulky" but by no means heavy, making it easy to transport from location to location.
You're also not likely to hear any noise from the drive itself, since it is barely audible except during intense disk activity when you can hear the odd muffled whirring noise.
The first generation of One Touch drives lacked a power switch, which meant that there was no easy way to turn the device on and off. The new design adds a switch making it easier to power up or down the drive under all possible conditions