Apple, earlier we used to refer this fruit as a symbol of health which keeps docs away and then we learnt the relationship of this fruit with Newton, but this generation is crazy about Apple…. oops, the fruit of Steve Jobs. So here are some quick and interesting things that we probably don’t know about the creator of Apple, Steve Jobs. Enjoy reading !

credit:onlineschools.org

See how the evolution really happened with YouTube through the graphical representation.

Credit: Onlineschools.org

We have seen some of the finest Journalists in TV journalism in the recent times. They have given a different look and feel to the once very monotonous news reading and news channels. Lets have a brief overview of professional and personal journey of some of our star journalists.

credit: indiantelevision.com

Dr. Prannoy Roy:

The 60 year old prominent journalist founded the largest private television production house, New Delhi Television (NDTV) in 1988. The president of NDTV is also the Director on board of NDTV Media Limited, NDTV News Limited , NDTV Imagine Limited, NDTV Lifestyle Limited, NDTV Convergence Limited, NDTV Labs Limited, NDTV Investments Private Limited, RRPR Holding Private Limited, Metronation Chennai Television Private Limited, Alliance Lumiere Limited and NGEN Media Services Private Limited. Also, he is a Member of the Shareholder’s Investors Grievance Committee of the Board of Directors of the Company.

Born on October 15, 1949, to a Bengali Father and an English mother, he spent his childhood in Kolkata and Dehradun, studying in La Martiniere Calcutta and then in The Doon School, Dehradun. He then received a scholarship to study at the Haileybury, a renowned public school in England. He graduated in economics from The Queen Mary College, The University of London in 1973. He completed his doctorate from the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. He worked as chartered accountant for sometime and then for 2 years (1985-1987) he was with the Ministry of Finance, Government of India working as Economic Advisor.

Prannoy Roy, who also is famous writer Arundhati Roy’s cousin, got married to Radhika Roy (Director NDTV, a speech therapist and Brinda Karat’s sister) in 1973 and is father of two children.

One of his most noteworthy contribution is his election analysis, that he does with Vinod Dua.  Dua-Roy duo has analyzed every election since 1984. Amongst the myriad of awards he has been acknowledged with, a few are: the B. D. Goenka Award for excellence in Journalism in 1994 and 1995, Ernst & Young – Entrepreneur of the year award (Media), the Screen Videocon Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1998 and the Limca Book of Records -Person of the Year award in 1998. 

credit: indiantelevision.com

Vinod Dua:

Vinod Dua, the anchor, the election analyst, the political commentator, he is one of the most famous and influential personalities Indian Journalism has witnessed. He was born on March 11, 1954. He is from a very humble background with his early days spent in refugee camp in Delhi, but his achievements are not as humble. He graduated in English Literature from Hans Raj College, University of Delhi. He completed his Masters in literature from the same university.

He made his debut in Indian television on 27th November 1974,  appearing in Yuv Manch, a youth program on Doordarshan. Subsequently he anchored a series of youth programs like Yuv Jan( for Satellite Instructional Television Experiment), Jawan Tarang ( for Amritsar TV).  Co-anchoring the election analysis programs on Doordarshan with Dr. Prannoy Roy gave him the well deserved breakthrough in his career. He hosted a program called Janvani, which was the first program in the history of Indian television to have allowed direct questions from common man to the politician. He ventured into direction and production business with the current affairs magazine Newsline(first one to be produced and sponsered privately), anchored by eminent journalist M.J. Akbar, and promoted by Ananda Bazar group. In 1987, after working as chief producer in T.V. Today, he started his own production company ‘The Communication Group’ to produce and anchor current affairs programs, budget analyses and documentary films.

Chakravyuha on Zee T.V, Parakh, on Doordarshan, Tasveer-e-Hind on DD3, Chunav Chunauti on Sony Entertainment Television, election analysis on Zee News, Pratidin and Parakh on Sahara T.V. and Kaun Banega Mukhyamantri on Star News have been some of the memorable programs with Vinod Dua’s involvement. As of now he is associated with NDTV,  for daily news analysis, election and budget analysis. He also produces a weekly show Zaika India Ka for food enthusiasts.

Vinod Dua was awarded esteemed BD Goenka Award for excellence in journalism in 1996. Dua has been honored with the Padma Shri  for Journalism in 2008.

Rajdeep Sardesai:

Rajdeep Sardesai, the editor-in-chief of CNN-IBN was born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat on 24 may,1965. His father, Dilip Sardesai is a former Indian Test cricketer and mother, Nalini Sardesai, former Head of the Department of sociology, St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai. He did his schooling from Cathedral and John Connon School, Campion School in Mumbai.  He holds multiple degrees like Bachelor’s in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai,  Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, and Bachelor of Civil Law from University College, Oxford.

He started his Television journalism career as Political Editor in NDTV in 1994 and then later he became the Managing editor of NDTV 24/7 and NDTV India. He came into limelight because of the super hit show ‘The Big Fight’ that he hosted. Later in his career he quit NDTV on April 17, 2007 and founded Global Broadcast News (GBN) in collaboration with CNN and Raghav Bahl’s TV18.  Then the channel named CNN-IBN with Rajdeep Sardesai as Editor-in-Chief went live on air. CNN-IBN overtook Channel 7, buying 46 percent stake in the channel. Since then Channel 7 is known by the name of IBN-7. He was conferred with prestigious Padma Shri award in 2008 for his contribution to journalism.

Rajdeep married his colleague, senior editor and anchor at CNN-IBN, Sagarika Ghose in 1994. They met in Oxford University. They are blessed with two children, son Ishan (14) and daughter Tarini (12). His out of domain interest includes cricket and has played for the Oxford University team as a right-hand batsman and a right-arm offbreak bowler.

Check out the next one:  popular-faces-of-indian-journalism-2

On 23^rd Sept 2009, Intel, in its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) unveiled a new high speed optical cable technology devised to connect electronic devices to each other, the technology being code named as ‘Light Peak’. Bundles of copper wires to connect your computer to peripherals, disk drives, displays, workstations etc will soon be a matter of past. Let’s find out:

Why is Light Peak necessary?

As of now we only use electrical cable technology in most of the computing devices, but due to electro-magnetic interference and various other issues this technology is reaching its limits in terms of speed and length.  This limiting factor (EMI) is overcome with the use of optical fibres, which uses light to transfer data instead of electricity.

Technology Behind Light Peak:

From the little that has been revealed about the technology: All the devices and platforms supporting light peak will consist of a controller chip and an optical module. The optical module, using miniature lasers and photo detectors, converts electricity to light and vice versa.

Why is Light Peak considered as a revolution in device connectivity?

• Its bandwidth start with 10 Gbps and can be scaled up to 100 Gbps
• It can run multiple protocols simultaneously over one cable. This feature makes it possible to connect multiple devices through one port.
• It provides thinner, longer and more flexible cables.
• Intel is working on bundling the optical cables with copper wires so that Light Peak can be used to power devices plugged into PC.
• In near future, it is seen as a replacement to USB, Firewire and HDMI.

Light Peak in is expected to make its way to the market by 2010. Its pricing is still to be decided. There still exists a massive task to standardize this method of device communication and to have ports in devices that support this technology.

Light peak is going to redefine the way we connect to devices, definitely until Intel comes up with something solid from the research it has taken up on Ultra Wideband Technology (UWB) that will enable wireless communication between various devices.

More to come on this technology area … keep reading & commenting!

We have heard enough of Web 2.0 and with it the various sorts of terminologies like Blogs, Wikis, RIA and obviously Mashups.

Though I covered Mashups in detail is one of my earlier posts, but I cant resist to share with you all the power and level where we can now see the Live Mashups in action.

We have shown Real estate to Shops to office building to landmarks etc through the Mashups using the powerful Ajax technology under RIA.

Now, something more interesting…. guess what ! tracking live aircraft movements in the sky using Mashups. There are couple of sites offer this, but like to refer here 2 good ones.

pic credit: Gmaps

and another, which tracks the flights in Netherlands area.

pic credit: casper.frontier.nl

Check out these and let there be no boundaries on what is possible now, maybe we soon we all will be tracked similarly though some technology areas. Keep reading and commenting !

Also, dont forget to subscribe to my RSS Feed To automaticlly remain updated !

]]> http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/techsavvy/flight-tracking-using-mashup-apps-and-ria/feed/ 1 http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/techsavvy/flight-tracking-using-mashup-apps-and-ria/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalThought/~3/Bd0g1hQElFQ/ http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/gadgetzone/dell-streak-world-into-5-inch-screen/#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:31:27 +0000 Sadhan http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/?p=1283 Dell Streak – Compact Entertainment Gadget

“We fit the whole world into a 5-inch screen”
Dell says this to be The perfectly-sized, go-anywhere entertainment, social connection and navigation device.

• Widescreen display optimally designed for mobile web, video and movies
• Integrated social networking widgets and apps, plus tons of apps through the Android Marketplace
• Crystal-clear damage-resistant Gorilla®  glass screen
• Google MapsTM  with navigation and text-to-voice, turn-by-turn directions with Street View
• Multitasking Google Android OS that gives you the freedom to do what you want

A brilliant 5″ screen lets you surf, watch videos and stay connected1, with less squinting and pinching, plus front-and-back cameras capture photos and videos on the fly with 5MP2 resolution. Watch streaming video on YouTubeTM , then post your own movies directly from your Streak.

With compact 6″ wide x 3.1″ high x .4″ thin dimensions, there’s plenty of space to take full advantage of the multi-touch display, plus the high-quality scratch-resistant Gorilla®  glass means your view stays crystal clear.

Ultra-intelligent facial proximity and ambient light sensors automatically adjust screen brightness, optimizing your battery life. The Dell Streak ensures that you can multitask and play without delay (including music and games), with the powerful yet efficient 1GHz Qualcomm SnapdragonTM  processor speeding things along using Google’s Android-based OS with multi-touch Dell user experience.

3G mobile broadband, WiFi and Bluetooth®  mean you’ve always got an easy way to connect, while swappable microSD memory cards mean virtually limitless storage for movies, music and pictures — up to 42 movies, 32,000 photos or 16,000 songs3 on each of your individual 32GB memory cards.

Facebook® , TwitterTM , Gmail, a phone call — however you like to stay connected5, the Streak keeps the lines of communication open. The Streak is a full-function 3G phone with IM and SMS/text capabilities, plus you can take photos for sharing using the rear-facing camera with dual-LED flash. Integrated real-time Facebook and Flickr® upload abilities put your photo or video online in no time.

In the future, we will invariably die two deaths: The first will be physical and the second, and potentially more noticeable death will be digital (Facebook memorializing, stagnant Twitter accounts, lost passwords). Just recently, Twitter established a policy to handle accounts after the death of a user. Family members and close friends can now petition for the removal of a loved one’s account, after filing the right paperwork.

According to the new policy page, requests must be sent to the site along with:

1. Your full name, contact information (including e-mail address), and your relationship to the deceased user.

2. The username of the Twitter account, or a link to the profile page of the Twitter account.

3. A link to a public obituary or news article

If the paperwork checks out, Twitter can opt to either delete a deceased user’s account, or create an archive of the user’s tweets for family members. Similarly, Facebook’s deceased user policy, which was put in place in October, includes an option to deactivate. Alternatively, the policy also offers to keep the account open as a digital memorial, meaning that the user’s profile is still visible (only) to friends, though all status updates and contact information have been removed.

Jeremy Toeman, who is the CEO and founder of Legacy Locker–a site that acts as a digital safe  for things like Web site log-ins, and messages to family members that can be accessed after a person dies–thinks Facebook’s relationship requirements just aren’t good enough. In a post on Legacy Locker’s company blog Toeman notes:

“This policy lacks the concept of desired intent. What if an individual wanted their Twitter stream archived (and not just by the Library of Congress)? What if another user wanted it wiped out (a challenge with any service, we acknowledge) completely? What about any situation wherein the desires of the user who dies are in conflict with those who support them, or a conflict within the surviving family members?”

Facebook will not just give your next-of-kin access.  They clearly state that it’s against their Privacy Policy to do so.   Furthermore, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act prevents the disclosure of stored communications unless there is a court order.  This means litigation.

So, with these 2 lives, Physical and Digital, time has come when we would be required to have the formalities to end the digital life !!You never know, maybe we would soon have e-will (to pass the digital estates) like Adsense revenues, Followers, Subscribers and Fans to be transfered to someone, mentioned in the will.

Now Listen to Blogs and Articles as MP3

Are you hard-pressed with time and that is the reason you find sometimes difficult to be updated with the latest articles, news snippets and blog posts? To make reading simple, here is a latest innovation that will help you to convert your text article to audio file. Amazing isn’t it? Additionally it can happen in just few simple steps. Just read on…

Carryout Text is the latest FREE web service that will help you convert your simple text file into an audio file.This software is simple to use and is available with no additional cost.

Instead of spending time by reading an article, you can convert that particular text file into a MP3 format and listen to it while working out in the treadmill.

So, the greatest advantage of Carryout Text is to get more things done in less time.

How to use this software application?

In the Carryout Text website do a copy and paste of the selected article and finally click on the submit to process button. This will help you get the MP3 file. All you need to do is download it into MP3 player or iPod and tune into the latest buzz, news and views. Remember to download the created audio MP3 files because CarryoutText does Not keep them stored for long time. Automatically these files will be removed the next day after creation.

Isn’t it cool guys !  Dont forget to CLICK HERE to get my updates….

Few weeks back one of my close friend Navin shared this interesting story of an One Many Army who has started a unique way to teach millions of people or students through the medium of YouTube channel, and that too totally FREE !

His name is Salman Khan and google his name to know more about his ‘Khan Academy‘

Check out this video to learn more …

Express your views…

WiMax (Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access) is the latest technology which enables  high speed and reliable internet access anywhere and everywhere. It is seen as the alternative to DSL, Cable modem, T1, T3 lines Wi-Fi, and dial up connection.  To understand more about it lets discuss:

Why is it important to have a WiMax?

• It overcomes the problem of small coverage area and high cost associated with Wi-Fi and broadband. It comes with high speed of broadband, ‘Wirelessness’ of Wi-Fi and broad coverage area like a cell phone network.
• Keeping in mind the increasing demand and use of high bandwidth application, WiMax is seen as the only solution that is 3-5 times faster and 5 times more cost effective than present 3G technologies.

• WiMax is going to make ‘Internet on the go’ a reality, a scenario where you can just connect a device, connectable to internet and enabled with WiMax(Like Wi-Fi), anywhere. You can experience connectivity to its max, which is going to become on of the basic necessities in near future (very similar to mobile phones today).

How WiMax works?

The operation of WiMax is quite similar to Wi-Fi but at a higher speed and encompassing a large coverage area.

A WiMax system is composed of two parts:

1. A WiMax tower: Providing a coverage area of around 3000 sq. miles ( 8000 km²)
2. A WiMax receiver: The receiver and antenna can be a PCMCIA card small box, a laptop or any device built-in with WiMax.

A WiMax tower and receiver communicate via radio signals and a device equipped with WiMax would receive encrypted data keys to prevent any unauthorized access. This communication is done in two ways:

1. The Non-line-of-sight way: Using this we can connect an antenna on a computer directly to the transmitting tower but it uses a lower frequency range of 2 GHz to 11 GHz.
2. The line-of-sight service: A dish antenna from a rooftop or pole points and connects straight to WiMax tower. This uses a higher frequency of around 66 GHz with very less interference and more bandwidth.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) provides efficient support for many users using the service simultaneously.

To support a huge data traffic WiMax uses multiple, Multiple Input/Multiple Output(MIMO) smart antenna.

This 4G wireless technology, built on IEEE 802.16e-2005 air interface standard, provides:

• high data transfer rates
• Low cost
• Based on all-IP network architecture, it is more scalable and efficient network for video, voice and data (This is called Quality of Service).
• Reduced Network complexity
• Backward compatibility with existing 2G and 3G cellular network deployment, making it easier to deploy WiMax.
• Holds equally good for fixed environment very similar to DSL or cable modem service.

With Giants like Intel and service provider, Clear coming into play, it is definitely going to revolutionize the broadband access like cell phones did it for phone access.

WordPress – is an award-winning CMS, which enables you to build Blogs, Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made WordPress the most popular blog software available. Best of all, WordPress is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

There are hundreds of WordPress themes online waiting to be paid for. Some of them are worth it, some are not. Just because many of our followers decided to stay with Premium themes, that doesn’t mean Free Themes are ugly, cluttered, and boring.

In this showcase below, I have handpicked some Excellent Collection of Fresh High-Quality Free WordPress Themes Around because We all know that we’re going to use our blog as a tool to promote our business, with a clean, professional, corporate look.

Most important they are FREE !!

1.  Foodiary

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

2.  ThrillingHeroics

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

3.  Morning After

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

4.  Berryllimous

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

5.  Mayumi

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

6.  WP Premium WordPress Theme

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

7.  Florance WordPress Theme

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

8.  Monkeypr

PREVIEW – DOWNLOAD

Hope you will enjoy using them and make your Blogs worth a visit !

]]> http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/information-entertainment/best-free-wordpress-themes/feed/ 1 http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/information-entertainment/best-free-wordpress-themes/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DigitalThought/~3/S33uIithjac/ http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/information-entertainment/internet-explorer-9-coming-soon/#comments Sat, 14 Aug 2010 02:34:30 +0000 sadhan http://www.sadhanbiswas.com/myblog/?p=1140 Microsoft’s Plan for Internet Explorer 9

This month is the 15th anniversary of the release of Internet Explorer, actually it was released at midnight on August 13th 1996. Since then, it has been a long journey especially in the war of browsers like with Firefox and Chrome. But now, Microsoft plans to launch the beta of the Internet Explorer 9 Beta browser on Sept. 15, 2010.

Microsoft HQ, Redmond is counting on IE9 to get it back in to serious technical competition with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. This IE 9 Beta needs either Windows Vista or Windows 7 (no XP).

People would eagerly wait for the new promises that Microsoft brings with their latest Internet Explorer Browser 9.

Now is the time to start getting their sites ready for Internet Explorer 9 Beta. What are the key new things?

• Internet Explorer 9 would help enable the same markup to work across browsers
• Internet Explorer 9 would be all-round fast
• Through Windows and modern hardware, Internet Explorer 9 would unlock the next class of experiences for the web
• Enabling the same markup to work across browsers
• Delivering all-round performance
• Through Windows and modern hardware, unlocking the next class of experiences for the web with hardware acceleration

The software giant few months back released another platform preview of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) in the form of IE9 Preview 2 and this latest incarnation scores 68 out of 100 on the Acid3 test.  The latest build also claims to improve JavaScript and HTML5 performance while the full hardware acceleration for HTML5 on IE9 is able to take the workload off your computer’s processor, shifting it to the graphics chipset.

Credit Net Apps

Developers and partners have been excited to experience the new IE9 web development and design capabilities, including fully hardware accelerating all graphics and text through Windows, the new Chakra JavaScript engine, as well as the support for modern standards like HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1 and DOM.Interestingly, we saw coverage about Internet Explorer posting a worldwide gain in usage share. That encouraging news continues today with Net Applications’ release of their July usage share numbers.

Net Applications reports overall Internet Explorer share grew 0.42% worldwide in July, while Firefox lost 0.90% share and Chrome dipped 0.08% in share. Most interesting is the fact that Internet Explorer 8 continues to be the fastest growing browser with a 0.98% increase worldwide in July – and now represents more than 30% of browser usage worldwide.

It is iPhone or Blackberry, the dream smartphone for most where one can sent a tweet; check the important emails as well make a purchase while listening to the latest music tunes. But a distant dream to owe such a high-end phone for lot many people. There is an ever increasing market potential for mobile phone usage in the emerging market economies. According to Gartner, the mobile-phone usage in India alone is going to take a quantum leap from usage of 38.7 percent in 2009 to almost 63.5 percent in 2013. 

Microsoft, the leading software giant has been quick to tap this huge market potential. And read on to know what they are going to launch in two weeks time from now. 

Microsoft has developed software called OneApp that will allow users with non-smartphone devices to send a message in facebook and check their emails. This software has been the result of research by Microsoft Unlimited Potential Group that uses their brain to bring out revolutionary ideas and products for poor people living in the developing countries. 

So, how much memory will this particular application software from Microsoft will eat up? The answer is simple and that is not much. This is because it has been so designed that feature phones can use and access one application at a time and the graphics will not have high resolution as the iPhones or Blackberry. 

Amit Mital who leads the team of researchers of Unlimited Potential Group at Microsoft is of the opinion that this software program will not eat up a lot of energy. The underlying reasons behind developing this application are: 

First, to tap the growing market potential in the developing countries as people would love to have smarter feature phones since there is a growing market demand for applications for low-end phones. 

Second, Microsoft wants the concept of Cloud Computing to take a big leap so that low-end consumers with their handsets would be able to access the cloud computing services of this IT giant. This will enable the company to enhance their market share manifold. 

Third, though this OneApp program is designed for the developing countries nonetheless it might get popular with the developed-world consumers when they would find that applications can be used without much usage of data storage and energy. 

Next, Microsoft wants to soak their feet in the promotion of mobile wallets and that is using of mobile phones as a purchasing tool. This has led to the tie up of Microsoft with Blue Label Telecom that has become popular for its mobile-wallet concept usage as the company does lot of mobile phone payments. 

The launch of OneApp will initially feature a lot of free applications but soon growing entrepreneurs and programmers can generate revenue by developing application for this program and thereby charging for the same. 

So, if you cannot owe an iPhone or Blackberry, don’t be worried. Just be happy as Microsoft is here to make your dream come true with OneApp that will transform dumb phones into smartphones. 

Ain’t this good… keep checking for more updates on this. Would like to hear your comments as well.

Google or Bing Map-based mashups abound these days. Mashups require services that can be mashed up. Location-based mashups need services that provide boundary information. With Web-based mapping providers, you can easily create a map-based mashup with little or no capital investment and now it covers wide variety of areas starting from Celebrity location to Real Estate to YouTube video popularities.

See some of them in Action here, following site www.taxiwiz.com helps you to calculate the Taxi Fares, mostly though in US cities. Check out !

Since Google and Bing have its’ Maps API, numerous applications, called Mashups, have been developed that integrate customized data on top of Google’s map interface. With the Maps API, it’s straightforward to center a map at a given location, add markers, and display content in info windows—especially if the location is static. However, if the location is driven by user input or retrieved dynamically, the process is somewhat more complex because of the need to geo-code the address.

The following is one cool example that provides a map of all the airports in the world along with routes from those airports and operating airlines. Also provides the ability to read and write reviews for each airport and airline.

Check it out at: http://www.whereables.co.uk/

Finally, see the way to follow the Centuries hit by Sachin Tendulkar, again based on Maps.

Find out more at http://www.mibazaar.com/cricket/sachintestrecord.html

Do let me know how you like these. Also read “Mashups” to know what it means.

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