Tata has given a massive makeover to the world’s cheapest car, making it one of the world’s costliest cars.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
World's smallest camera that is just the size of a fingertip...!!!!!
A New York firm has developed the world's smallest commercially-available camera that is around the size of a fingertip, but can take two megapixel images and can even shoot video.
Hammacher Schlememr insists that the 28-gram, one inch-squared device works perfectly well, despite being the size of a marble.
The gadget is set to hit the shelves for 100 dollars.
"Although The World's Smallest Camera is only slightly larger than a marble, it takes still images and records video just like much larger cameras," the Daily Mail quoted Schlemmer's General Manager Fred Berns, as saying.
"It comes with a wrist lanyard that keeps it close to hand and enables ease of portability," he added.
The camera can reportedly take JPEG images with a resolution of 1600x1200 and comes complete with autofocus.
Just like regular pieces of photography equipment, this camera also connects to a computer via a USB cable. (ANI)
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Top 10 websites of 2011
1. Kickstarter
Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform for creative endeavors, was founded in April 2009 and had what many would consider a break-out year in 2010. But the site could be poised for an even bigger 2011. The unique all-or-nothing approach to funding has struck a chord with both creators and funders and is allowing enterprising individuals to bypass traditional establishments to create films, music albums, events, and even products. Kickstarter helped hundreds of projects raise millions of dollars in 2010.
2. OpenLeaks
OpenLeaks may very well be the WikiLeaks alternative in 2011, not as a destination, but as an enabler for media organizations to do the same as WikiLeaks. OpenLeaks, unlike WikiLeaks, seeks to be an intermediary between whistleblowers and other organizations and includes former members of WikiLeaks, most notably, Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The site will focus more on being a technological service for news organizations, likely enabling them to make it easier for their readers to submit such leaks to their own sites. This may keep the scrutiny from politicians and officials — something WikiLeaks has had to battle with this year — away from OpenLeaks, as they won’t be the ones publishing the material.
3. Klout
As social marketing starts to surpass traditional marketing methods, companies will look for influential individuals who can rep their product well. Klout is one of the tools that companies use to gauge who the social influencers are. Look for them to make some big moves in 2011.
4. Hipmunk
Hipmunk is fixing everything that’s wrong with flight searches with a tool whose usefulness is immense. Once people get used to the interface and start telling their friends about it, Hipmunk’s popularity will skyrocket.
5. Gilt Groupe
Gilt Groupe, which hired its 500th employee in 2010, is rapidly expanding into new verticals (such as location-specific group buying deals, a la Groupon) and territories (like Japan). Its next target? Full-priced retail. It’s launching a men’s e-commerce site in February. Expect to see further development in that area and the geographical expansion of its existing products in 2011.
6. Diaspora
Diaspora, the open source social network platform, released its code and opened up to private alpha invitesrecently. The platform was dubbed the alternative to Facebook, during Facebook’s privacy fiasco, andgenerated a lot of buzz. But as the platform opens up to more users in 2011, we’ll see how people react to it and whether it’s something that will actually be an alternative option to the social networking giant.
7. Quora
Quora has clearly found its place with the early adopter set and a number of active, high profile users who make the service interesting to engage with. In 2011, it will be interesting to see if the company is able to expand its audience while maintaining the quality Q&A that has made it so attractive to users thus far. In turn, we’ll see if it’s the next big thing or has a destiny more like that of FriendFeed, a community that was initially popular with early adopters but never found a mainstream audience (but ultimately found a home at Facebook).
8. Grooveshark
Among the many music streaming services in existence today, Grooveshark is one of the few that is both free and available to Europeans. It has a sleek, Google-like interface and a database with a huge amount of music (the service lets anyone upload music, so you can find many obscure, unknown, local or upcoming bands there). It also has an interesting array of features, such as skinnable interface, playlists, music sharing and promotions that don’t feel like ads, and it relies on a freemium business model that offers just enough to entice users to subscribe. Barring possible problems with copyright holders and cash flow issues, which always threaten to shut down services like this, Grooveshark might be the next big thing in online music.
9. Drupal
WordPress might get most of the love in the open source CMS space (for good reason), but Drupal provides a powerful option for individuals, organizations and brands that want to power complex, robust sites. With Drupal 7 set for release in early 2011, the Drupal team is actively addressing the one area the CMS has always received criticism: Usability. Thanks to shops like Development Seed and Lullabot, the Drupal ecosystem is becoming extremely impressive. Acquia, the commercial company from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, continues to raise funding and offer an array of commercial and support services that better enhance the platform as a whole.
10. Foursquare
I expect Foursquare to scale to an even bigger level in 2011. I won’t be surprised if it starts to acquire smaller companies or make a major move to Silicon Valley, in order to make that happen.
OpenLeaks may very well be the WikiLeaks alternative in 2011, not as a destination, but as an enabler for media organizations to do the same as WikiLeaks. OpenLeaks, unlike WikiLeaks, seeks to be an intermediary between whistleblowers and other organizations and includes former members of WikiLeaks, most notably, Daniel Domscheit-Berg. The site will focus more on being a technological service for news organizations, likely enabling them to make it easier for their readers to submit such leaks to their own sites. This may keep the scrutiny from politicians and officials — something WikiLeaks has had to battle with this year — away from OpenLeaks, as they won’t be the ones publishing the material.
3. Klout
As social marketing starts to surpass traditional marketing methods, companies will look for influential individuals who can rep their product well. Klout is one of the tools that companies use to gauge who the social influencers are. Look for them to make some big moves in 2011.
4. Hipmunk
Hipmunk is fixing everything that’s wrong with flight searches with a tool whose usefulness is immense. Once people get used to the interface and start telling their friends about it, Hipmunk’s popularity will skyrocket.
5. Gilt Groupe
Gilt Groupe, which hired its 500th employee in 2010, is rapidly expanding into new verticals (such as location-specific group buying deals, a la Groupon) and territories (like Japan). Its next target? Full-priced retail. It’s launching a men’s e-commerce site in February. Expect to see further development in that area and the geographical expansion of its existing products in 2011.
6. Diaspora
Diaspora, the open source social network platform, released its code and opened up to private alpha invitesrecently. The platform was dubbed the alternative to Facebook, during Facebook’s privacy fiasco, andgenerated a lot of buzz. But as the platform opens up to more users in 2011, we’ll see how people react to it and whether it’s something that will actually be an alternative option to the social networking giant.
7. Quora
Quora has clearly found its place with the early adopter set and a number of active, high profile users who make the service interesting to engage with. In 2011, it will be interesting to see if the company is able to expand its audience while maintaining the quality Q&A that has made it so attractive to users thus far. In turn, we’ll see if it’s the next big thing or has a destiny more like that of FriendFeed, a community that was initially popular with early adopters but never found a mainstream audience (but ultimately found a home at Facebook).
8. Grooveshark
Among the many music streaming services in existence today, Grooveshark is one of the few that is both free and available to Europeans. It has a sleek, Google-like interface and a database with a huge amount of music (the service lets anyone upload music, so you can find many obscure, unknown, local or upcoming bands there). It also has an interesting array of features, such as skinnable interface, playlists, music sharing and promotions that don’t feel like ads, and it relies on a freemium business model that offers just enough to entice users to subscribe. Barring possible problems with copyright holders and cash flow issues, which always threaten to shut down services like this, Grooveshark might be the next big thing in online music.
9. Drupal
WordPress might get most of the love in the open source CMS space (for good reason), but Drupal provides a powerful option for individuals, organizations and brands that want to power complex, robust sites. With Drupal 7 set for release in early 2011, the Drupal team is actively addressing the one area the CMS has always received criticism: Usability. Thanks to shops like Development Seed and Lullabot, the Drupal ecosystem is becoming extremely impressive. Acquia, the commercial company from Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, continues to raise funding and offer an array of commercial and support services that better enhance the platform as a whole.
10. Foursquare
I expect Foursquare to scale to an even bigger level in 2011. I won’t be surprised if it starts to acquire smaller companies or make a major move to Silicon Valley, in order to make that happen.
Time Machine: World's First Computer Mouse
Proving that things were way cooler back in the day, is the world's first computer mouse. Made by Douglas Engelbart in 1964, it "consisted of two gear-wheels positioned perpendicular to each other -- allowing movement on one axis." Just look at this thing. Ergonomic shape, great button placement -- and it's made of wood. If that ain't style, then I don't know what is. Sure the front has rotted out, but who cares. My mouse looks like that, and it's brand new. That's just what happens when porn doesn't download fast enough and you start slamming the mouse on the desk.
Friday, September 16, 2011
The Pendulum Clock
The first accurate, modern clock was the pendulum clock. It was invented in 1656 by a Dutch scientist, Christian Huygens. When he first built the pendulum, it had an error of 1 minute per day. A lot of tweaking later, he had reduced it to only 10 seconds a day. The famous astronomer, Galileo Galilei, also dreamed up a pendulum design- but he never got to build it during his lifetime.
Different inventors later made improvements on Huygens’ invention. George Graham reduced the error margin to 1 second. John Harrison won an award for inventing a chronometer for use at sea. It was accurate to within 1/5 of a second. In 1889, Siegmund Riefier narrowed down the clock’s inaccuracy further to just 1/100 of a second. But his invention was overshadowed by the W.H. Shortt clock in 1921. The Shortt clock had two pendulums, with the “slave” pendulum pushing the “master” to move and also keeping the hands going.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
India's First Humanoid
A humanoid robot is a robot having an overall appearance based on the human body and is created to imitate the same physical/mental tasks that humans perform daily. A new approach of creating humanoid robots is the branch of Biomechanics.
The Indian Humanoid is named AcYut-4.
The AcYut team consisted of Tushar Agarwal, Apoorv Shrivastava, Deepak Gopinath and Dhairya Seth. The team leader, a third year Mechanical engineering student, Akash Gupta, had the following information about the AcYut-4: “The robot can walk long distances, bend and pick up things, climb stairs and detect objects. It can even play autonomous soccer”. The robot has an autonomous weight-lifting record in its category and has even performed at the Robogames 2011 held in San Francisco a month ago.
The name AcYut is derived from the Sanskrit word “Achyut” meaning “one who never falls”. The 4 in the name indicates that this is the 4th in the series of robots built by the team. The team started by building a prototype biped with scrape aluminium and old motors in the robotics lab in BITS, Pilani.
The AcYut team consisted of Tushar Agarwal, Apoorv Shrivastava, Deepak Gopinath and Dhairya Seth. The team leader, a third year Mechanical engineering student, Akash Gupta, had the following information about the AcYut-4: “The robot can walk long distances, bend and pick up things, climb stairs and detect objects. It can even play autonomous soccer”. The robot has an autonomous weight-lifting record in its category and has even performed at the Robogames 2011 held in San Francisco a month ago.
The name AcYut is derived from the Sanskrit word “Achyut” meaning “one who never falls”. The 4 in the name indicates that this is the 4th in the series of robots built by the team. The team started by building a prototype biped with scrape aluminium and old motors in the robotics lab in BITS, Pilani.
When and why do we celebrate Engineer's Day?
September 15 is celebrated every year in India as Engineer's Day to commemorate the birthday of the legendary engineer Sir M. Visvesvaraya (1861-1962).
Internationally recognised for his genius in harnessing water resources, he was responsible for successful design and construction of several river dams, bridges and implementing irrigation and drinking water schemes all over India.
He served as the dewan of Mysore State and was considered to be the architect of the all-round development of Karnataka.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Women CEOs of India
Leading Business Women of India
1 | Akhila Srinivasan, Managing Director, Shriram Investments Ltd |
2 | Chanda Kocchar, Executive Director, ICICI Bank |
3 | Ekta Kapoor, Creative Director, Balaji Telefilms |
4 | Jyoit Naik, President, Lijjat Papad |
5 | Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon |
6 | Lalita D Gupte, Joint Managing Director, ICICI Bank |
7 | Naina Lal Kidwai , Deputy CEO, HSBC |
8 | Preetha Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals |
9 | Priya Paul, Chairman, Apeejay Park Hotels |
10 | Rajshree Pathy, Chairman, Rajshree Sugars and Chemicals Ltd |
11 | Ranjana Kumar , Chairman, NABARD |
12 | Ravina Raj Kohli, Media personality and ex-President, STAR News |
13 | Renuka Ramnath, CEO, ICICI Ventures |
14 | Ritu Kumar , Fashion Designer |
15 | Ritu Nanda, CEO, Escolife |
16 | Shahnaz Hussain, CEO, Shahnaz Herbals |
17 | Sharan Apparao, Proprietor, Apparao Galleries |
18 | Simone Tata, Chairman, Trent Ltd |
19 | Sulajja Firodia Motwani, Joint MD, Kinetic Engineering |
20 | Tarjani Vakil, former Chairman and Managing Director, EXIM Bank |
21 | Zia Mody, Senior Partner, AZB & Partners |
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