Saturday 27 August 2011

Karbonn A1 - Another Android for the masses

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Android is the current flavor of the smartphone market, irrespective of the budget you have in mind. After budget mobile manufacturers like Micromax and SPice, now it is Karbonn that recently launched the A1 phone, running on Froyo (Android 2.2). And just like the Micromax A60, the Karbonn A1 has also been priced at Rs 6,990.

Take one look at the phone and you can't help but remember the Micromax A10. Both of them look almost the same in form factor and design. Had there been no manufacturers' logo, you could easily confuse them as the same one. Nonetheless, for the price of also Rs 7,000, the hardware specs do look pretty. 

Thursday 25 August 2011

Steve Jobs' resignation: Where now for Apple


Steve Jobs
It was hardly a surprise. We have known for a long time that Steve Jobs was ill and rumours of his impending departure have repeatedly rocked Apple's share price over the last couple of years. But the news that he was bringing down the curtain on his illustrious career was still greeted with shock.
After all this is the man who transformed the business he co-founded from an ailing also-ran into the undisputed champion of the technology industry - so it is natural to ask what Apple will be without Steve Jobs.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Short Biography of Anna Hazare (The Father of Nation , Bigger than Bharat Ratna)



Short Biography of Anna Hazare – Story of Army Driver becoming
the Father of Nation Bigger than Bharat Ratna


Name - Kisan Bapat Baburao Hazare known as Anna Hazare

Birth date - 15 January 1940

Anna Hazare was born in Bhingar village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra state in western India to Baburao Hazare and Laxmi Bai, an unskilled labourer family
He was raised by his childless aunt in Mumbai but could not continue beyond VII standard and had to quit midway due to problems.
He has two sisters.

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Google vs. Microsoft: Who's Winning???




Google and microsoft are at each other's throats over everything from patents to Android and Windows Phone market share.


Google and Microsoft are at each other’s throats over Android.The simmering rivalry between the two tech giants exploded this week, with executives trading barbs on Twitter and blog posts over patents related to mobile technology.

This newest burst of aggression has its roots in a high-stakes auction that took place earlier this year. Microsoft and a handful of other companies submitted a $4.5 billion winning bid for some 6,000 patents and patent applications formerly owned by Nortel. Google wanted the same property, but its own bid of $900 million couldn’t quite seal the deal.


Now Google seems concerned that Microsoft and its consortium partners (which include Apple, not exactly the search-engine giant’s bosom buddy) will use those patents to sue Android manufacturers into the ground. Indeed, Microsoft is rapidly making an industry out of what it claims are Android’s violations of its intellectual property: in addition to squeezing royalties from any number of Android-device manufacturers, the company has filed patent-infringement suits against Motorola (maker of Android-based smartphones and tablets) and Barnes & Noble (which produces the Nook, an Android-based e-reader).

“Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other’s throats, so when they get into bed together, you have to start wondering what’s going on,” David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, wrote in an Aug. 3 posting on The Official Google Blog. “Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anticompetitive means—which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop.”

He went on to claim that the Justice Department is “looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anticompetitive means.”

Microsoft executives felt compelled to fire back.

“Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, wrote in an Aug. 3 Tweet. “Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said no.”
The same day, Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of corporate communications, also Tweeted: “Free advice for David Drummond—next time check with Kent Walker before you blog.”
He included a link to an Oct. 28 email sent to Brad Smith by Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, suggesting that “a joint bid wouldn’t be advisable for us on this one.”

Rather than let Microsoft blow a hole beneath the waterline of his tight little narrative, Drummond updated his original post Aug. 4: “If you think about it, it’s obvious why we turned down Microsoft’s offer,” he wrote. A joint acquisition of the patents “that gave all parties a license would have eliminated any protection these patents could offer to Android against attacks from Microsoft and its bidding partners.”

A number of analyst estimates have Android leading the mobile market. According to recent data from Nielsen, for example, Android held 39 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, followed by Apple’s iPhone with 28 percent, RIM with 20 percent, and Microsoft with 9 percent. Similarly, research firm comScore placed Android’s share of the U.S. market at 40.1 percent, followed by Apple with 26.6 percent, RIM with 23.4 percent and Microsoft with 5.8 percent.

Combined with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s recent admission that Windows Phone’s market share is “very small,” it seems Android is handily winning the mobility wars despite Microsoft’s patent maneuvers. That being said, Microsoft seems to have found a viable source of revenue in its latest string of Android lawsuits and “royalty agreements,” something the company is likely to vigorously push in quarters ahead; Jack Gold, founder and principal analyst of J. Gold Associates, recently theorized that Microsoft’s cash stream from Android royalties could even top that of Windows Phone.
Meanwhile, Google’s core business—search—continues to outpace Microsoft’s Bing, although the latter has enjoyed incremental market share gains over the past several quarters. Microsoft has demonstrated a willingness to burn hundreds of millions of dollars to keep itself in the search game, something that makes its investors nervous—but doesn’t seem to have any appreciable effect on Google’s ability to earn lots of cash from advertising.

So Android continues to handily dominate Microsoft in the actual mobility and search markets, but Microsoft has a variety of good legal cards to play in order to make life more difficult, both for Google and its manufacturing partners. In other words, look forward to some messy battles (and more irate blog and Twitter posts) to come. 

Tuesday 9 August 2011

Solar Thermal Technology Adds Another Big Boy In GE


General Electric Co. is the latest industrial behemoth to get into the solar thermal power space, with an up to $40 million investment in eSolar Inc., via its GE Energy business unit, along with a licensing agreement.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
With GE in, the game now includes Alstom, which is a backer of Brightsource Energy Inc.; Areva SA, which has started bidding and winning business with solar thermal technology it bought from Ausra Inc. last year; and Siemens, which is in the market using technology from Solel, which it purchased in 2009.
All of these technologies use solar rays to heat up a liquid, turn it into steam, and power a steam turbine. Each has different configurations, efficiencies, and optimal size of their power plants, as well as costs.
“It’s clear that the world’s leading power companies see solar thermal as a critical resource for meeting the world’s growing needs for cost-effective and reliable energy,” wrote Keely Wachs, spokesman for Brightsource Energy, in an email to VentureWire.

Monday 8 August 2011

Top 10 World’s Most Polluted City


Every year in the U.S. factories release over 3 million tons of toxic chemicals into the land, air and water. This hazardous waste causes us to lose over 15 million acres of land every year, it leads to respiratory complications and other health problems and it makes our rivers and lakes too polluted for us to swim in and drink.
But factories are only part of the problem of pollution. Pollution is caused by industrial and commercial waste, agriculture practices, everyday human activities and most notably, modes of transportation. No matter where you go and what you do, there are remnants of pollution.

L&T confident on sales growth as margins pressured



MUMBAI (Reuters) - Engineering conglomerate Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L&T) said it was optimistic about growth this year while warning that a slowing global economy and higher costs may erode profit margins.
L&T on Monday reported a higher-than-expected 12 percent rise in fiscal first quarter profit, helped by a pick-up in project execution, and said higher orders in the infrastructure, upstream oil and gas and fertiliser sectors are likely to drive growth in coming quarters.
"The comfort which we have based on the numbers is reasonably high. Therefore, in terms of our overall guidance and indication to the market there is no change," Chief Financial Officer Y.M. Deosthalee told reporters.