G K Maestro

Making Delhi livable

2015-12-10T14:35:00.001+05:30

Delhi has been the loved capital of India for centuries. Pampered by the Britishers and patronized by the Indian political masters, it is ironical that Delhi has been crowned the pollution capital of the world.

According to the World Health Organisation report, Delhi’s average annual mean PM 2.5 level is 153 micrograms per cubic metre as against the maximum permissible limit of 25 micrograms per cubic metre, making Delhi’s air quality as the worst in the world. Delhi’s air is laced with high concentrations of fine particulate matter, especially that of 2.5 microns or less in diameter (PM 2.5), which can go deep into the lungs and increase the likelihood of asthma cancer, severe respiratory illness, and severe heart and lung problems. The Delhi High Court has rightly compared Delhi’s environment with a gas chamber.

According to the World Bank report air pollution is one of the biggest threats in the big cities of developing countries. Unless we check the reckless growth pace of our cities, an ecological catastrophe would not be far away. The metro cities provide the educational and employment infrastructure to students and job aspirants, with a promise of better lifestyle. However, hundreds of thousands of people who migrate and live in these cities of dreams have to live with the harsh reality of filthy air, dirty water and rampant squalor.

China’s unprecedented response of shutting down schools in face of the Beijing smog shows its seriousness to the issue of pollution . Every winter we find delhi the Delhi skies enveloped by a haze of toxic cocktail of gases throwing the life out of normal gear. But, we brazenly accept it as a part of urban life. Diwali fireworks aggravate the situation making the air murkier and more noxious. But we are unfazed.

It's high time to treat this situation as an emergency. For, future generations will never forgive us for this blatant disregard for environmental concerns.

Delhi has already has a decent network of metro trains. But, other modes of public transport have to be made more comfortable and attractive, so that people don’t mind leaving cars in their garage. For the local commute rickshaws and battery powered e-rickshaws should be popularized.

Whether the Delhi government’s plan of running even and odd numbered vehicles on different days of the week is successful, only time will tell. The government should discourage people from owning more than one car per family. Vehicles not adhering to pollution norms should to be taken off the roads.

Switching to Euro VI norms could be helpful in curbing emissions from vehicles, thermal plants and biomass burning in neighbouring states. Power plants needs to be regulated, if not shut altogether.

The new Global Burden of Disease report puts outdoor air pollution as the fifth largest killer in India after high blood pressure, indoor air pollution, tobacco smoking, and poor nutrition. To make the Indian growth story a reality we have to ensure sustainable progress of our metro cities and towns, the engines of economic growth and development. Delhi is the epitome of this great Indian dream. Let’s ensure that it becomes breathable and livable for the generations to come.

Vineet 'Ramananda'

KnowEdge : Boiling milk reduces nutritional value

2014-10-28T12:38:00.002+05:30

Did You Know

Boiling milk reduces microbiological contamination, but it also reduces the level of B1, B12, Calcium and Phosphorus present in milk.

Quick Shots: Who is the Chief Justice of India?

2013-12-19T23:49:00.000+05:30

P. Sathasivam (Palanisamy Sathasivam (age 64) is the Chief Justice of India. He succeeded Altamas Kabir on 19 July 2013. He is the 40th Chief Justice of India and the second from Tamil Nadu.

SLS PLUS

The Hindu: Merkel's second ‘grand coalition’ with Social Democrats

2013-12-18T13:03:00.004+05:30

Almost three months after she scored a personal triumph in Germany’s general election, Angela Merkel has begun her third term as the country’s Chancellor, the only woman to do so.

Although the election saw Ms. Merkel emerge as the world’s most powerful woman and Europe’s undisputed leader, she was robbed of an absolute majority by the poor showing of her junior coalition partner the Free Democrats (FDP). This forced her into a “Grand Coalition” with the opposition Social Democratic SDP.

This is the second time the SPD has entered such a coalition, the first being during Ms. Merkel’s very first term in 2005. The party lost massive public support following that exercise in coalition politics and has only now begun reconstituting itself. Over 75 per cent of the SPD’s 465,000 members voted for participating in this second grand coalition.

The SPD’s President Sigmar Gabriel has played his cards well in the three months since the election and has forced Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and its sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social union (CSU) to accept several social reforms including the imposition of a minimum wage of €8.50 an hour.

Germany has not had a minimal wage so far, prompting its European allies to criticise what they call “social dumping”— lowering its wage bill to increase competitivity competitiveness and boost exports. Germany has a two-tier labour market with unskilled workers barely managing to survive on small state hand-outs coupled with “mini jobs” . France, which has the highest minimum wage in Europe, has welcomed the move.

Mr. Gabriel, who has been awarded the crucial portfolios of the economy and energy, will have to shepherd Germany out of nuclear power and towards renewable energy by 2022. The SPD has also obtained other key ministries — six out of 14 — including those of labour, justice and foreign affairs. The Social Democrats also managed to impose the creation of a new ministry of integration, which will be headed by a person of Turkish origin.

Ms. Merkel has placed key persons from her own conservative party in the ministries of the interior, health and defence. For the first time a woman, Ursula von der Leyen has been appointed defence minister. Many say she is being groomed to take over from Ms. Merkel in four years time.

The Hindu

160 years of India's first passenger train journey

2013-04-16T09:58:00.000+05:30

New Delhi: On April 16, 1853, that is exactly 160 years ago, India's first passenger train chugged out of Bori Bunder, in Bombay (now Mumbai), for its destination 34 Kilometers away, Thane.

Google is commemorating that momentous event with a celebratory doodle on its India home page.

The doodle has a train, pulled by a steam engine, chugging along over a background dotted with palm trees and a structure at a distance

The first railway passenger journey in India three steam locomotives, Sultan, Sindh and Sahib, took 400 invited passengers in 14 carriages on a 57 minute journey that had one halt.

Background

Indeed, 16 April, 1853, was the day on which the first commercial passenger train left Mumbai's Bori Bunder for Thane.

The train; pulled by three locomotives - Sindh, Sultan, and Sahib; was greeted by a 21 gun salute when it was pulling out of the platform.

However, this was not the first train running in India. Railway lines for hauling materials had been laid as early as 1835. Most of the earliest railways were pulled by horses or men.

The first steam locomotive in the country was Thomason, commissioned in 1951 for hauling construction material in Roorkee for the Solani viaduct. It had a short life though, and was decommissioned after a boiler explosion within nine months.

The Indian government, in 1953, released a stamp to mark the hundred year anniversary of the event.

Sources: ibnlive.com, Hindustan times.com

Breaking barriers, Vrindavan widows play a colourful Holi

2013-03-27T23:42:00.006+05:30

Breaking the shackles of tradition, hundreds of widows played Holi with gulal and flowers in the land of Lord Krishna.

Around 800 widows participated in the festivities in ashrams of Vrindavan in four-day Holi celebrations that began on Sunday. As part of Holi celebrations, traditional 'Raas-Leela' dance and other programmes have also been organised.

"Vrindavan Holi is an effort to free widows from the shackles of age-old tradition. Not only will the widows play Holi, they will also participate in cultural programmes," founder of Sulabh International Bindeshwar Pathak said.

In the past, widows living in the ashrams could have played Holi only with 'thakurji' (Lord Krishna).

This year, the festival has a different hue altogether as they will enjoy among themselves.

The widows of the holy town feel such celebrations would prove to be an unprecedented step towards ending social prejudice against them, he said.

"In an effort to bring widows to mainstream and help their social assimilation, we have organised several events to encourage them to participate in Holi celebrations at Vrindavan," Pathak said.

As widows do not play Holi traditionally in Vrindavan, the event this year may need some amount of change in the mindset of the society, he said.

The organisation has been providing facilities to all the widows in five government run shelter homes here, he said, adding, apart from giving them stipend, Sulabh was also arranging their food and healthcare facilities.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print/1031728.aspx

NDTV Profit: What the Rail Budget means for you

2013-02-28T11:09:00.000+05:30

Februar 26, 2013

New Delhi: Rail Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has produced what is being called a "populist election budget". He said he was committed to making the Railways a better experience, and this is what he has served up for passengers:

How the common man stands to gain:

No hike in passenger fares: Fares were increased by 21 per cent last month and so, the minister said, there would not be another hike. He has, however, announced a hike in supplementary charges for superfast trains and tatkal reservations.
Five per cent fuel surcharge on freight: This is likely to send up prices of goods; the BJP has warned that it will add to inflationary trends. Freight rate for urea has gone up by 5.8 per cent. Freight rates of grain and pulses have been increased to Rs. 1,403.6 per tonne from the current Rs. 1,326.8 per tonne at an average lead of 1,307 km. Similarly, Railways has increased freight rates of groundnut oil to Rs. 1,848 per tonne from the present Rs. 1,746.60 per tonne at an average lead of 1650 km.
GenNext e-ticketing system: The minister has promised to revamp the railway e-ticketing system to support 7,200 Internet bookings per minute. The new system will support 1.2 lakh users per minute on the Railways website. The minister also announced plans for free Wi-Fi facilities in some trains, and allowing train bookings on mobile phones and SMS alerts in for train status.
Better railway stations: The Railways has identified 104 important stations for immediate attention to all aspects of cleanliness, Mr. Bansal said. The project of bio-toilets will be extended on more trains. Over Rs. 100 crore will be spent to spruce up facilities at the Delhi, New Delhi and Nizamuddin stations. Sixty more stations will be developed as 'Adarsh' stations in addition to the 980 already selected. Also, 179 escalators and 400 elevators will be installed at various stations. Braille stickers will be used for the visually-impaired.
New trains launched: The minister announced the launch of 26 new passenger trains and 67 express trains. The run of 57 trains will be extended while the frequency of 24 trains will be increased, the minister said. He also announced the introduction of 72 additional services in Mumbai and 18 in Kolkata.
More jobs: The Railways will fill 1.52 lakh vacancies this year, the minister said. Out of these, 47,000 vacancies will be for the weaker sections and the physically challenged. Ten per cent vacancies in the RPF will be reserved for women. The youth will be imparted railway-related skills at 25 locations. The minister also announced the setting up of a multi-disciplinary training institute at Nagpur, and another institute at Secunderabad - the Indian Railways Institute of Financial Management. Also, five fellowships in national universities will be instituted.

Source: NDTV.com

Summary of Economic Survey 2013

2013-02-28T11:03:00.000+05:30

New Delhi: India's economy is likely to pick up pace in 2013-14 and could grow at 6.1-6.7 per cent according to the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament on Wednesday.

Here is a summary of the key points in the Survey:

More than 6 per cent growth forecast for next fiscal considerable enhancement for social sector spending.
India on verge of creating quality jobs to seize 'demographic dividend'.

Indian economy is likely to grow between 6.1 per cent to 6.7 per cent in 2013-14 as the downturn is more or less over and the economy is looking up. Following the slowdown induced by the global financial crisis in 2008-09, the Indian economy responded strongly to fiscal and monetary stimulus and achieved a growth rate of 8.6 per cent and 9.3 per cent respectively in 2009-10 and 2010-11, but due to a combination of both external and domestic factors, the economy decelerated growing at 6.2 per cent and an estimated 5 per cent in 2011-12 and 2012-13 respectively.

The Economic Survey 2012-13, presented by the Finance Minister Shri P. Chidambaram in the Lok Sabha predicts that the global economy is also likely to recover in 2013 and various government measures will help in improving the Indian economy's outlook for 2013-14.

While India's recent slowdown is partly rooted in external causes, domestic causes are also important. The slowdown in the rate of growth of services in 2011-12 at 8.2 per cent, and particularly in 2012-13 to 6.6 percent from the double-digit growth of the previous six years, contributed significantly to slowdown in the overall growth of the economy, while some slowdown could also be attributed to the lower growth in agriculture and industrial activities. But despite the slowdown, the services sector has shown more resilience to worsening external conditions than agriculture and industry.

For improved agricultural growth, the survey underlines the need for stable and consistent policies where markets play an appropriate role, private investment in infrastructure is stepped up, food price, food stock management and food distribution improves, and a predictable trade policy is adopted for agriculture. FDI in retail allowed by the government can pave the way for investment in new technology and marketing of agricultural produce in India. Fast agricultural growth remains vital for jobs, incomes and food security.

The survey points out that the priority for the Government will be to fight high inflation by reducing the fiscal impetus to demand as well as by focusing on incentivizing food production through measures other than price supports. But unlike the previous year, when food inflation was mainly driven by higher protein food prices, this year the pressure has been coming mainly from cereals.

On the Balance of Payments and External Position, the survey highlights that with net exports declining, India's balance of payments has come under pressure. Moreover, in the current fiscal, foreign exchange reserves have fluctuated between US$ 286 billion and US$ 295.6 billion, while the rupee remained volatile in the range of Rs. 53.02 to Rs. 54.78 per US dollar during October 2012 to January 2013.

The survey had a special chapter focusing on jobs. The future holds promise for India provided we can seize the "demographic dividend" as nearly half the additions to the Indian labour force over the period 2011-30 will be in the age group 30-49. India is creating jobs in industry but mainly in low productivity construction and not enough formal jobs in manufacturing, which typically are higher productivity. The high productivity service sector is also not creating enough jobs. As the number of people looking for jobs rises, both because of the population dividend and because share of agriculture shrinks, these vulnerabilities will become important. Because good jobs are both the pathway to growth as well as the best form of inclusion, India has to think of ways of enabling their creation.

The survey calls for a widening of the tax base, and prioritization of expenditure as key ingredients of a credible medium term fiscal consolidation plan. This along with demand compression and augmented agricultural production should lead to lower inflation, giving the RBI the requisite flexibility to reduce policy rates. Lower interest rates could provide an additional fillip to investment activity for the industry and services sectors, especially if some of the regulatory, bureaucratic, and financial impediments to investment are eased.

On financial sector reform, it takes note of the high level of gross NPAs (non-performing assets) of the banking sector which increased from 2.36 percent of the total credit advanced in March 2011 to 3.57 percent of total credit advanced in September 2012. The survey suggests that revival of growth will help contain NPAs, but more attention will have to be paid to whether projects are adequately capitalized up front given the risks.

Expenditure on social services also increased considerably in the 12th Plan, with the education sector accounting for the largest share, followed by health. In the 11th Plan period nearly 7 lakh crore rupees has been spent on the 15 major flagship programmes. A number of legislative steps have also been taken to secure the rights of people, like the RTI, MGNREGA, the Forest Rights Act, AND THE Right to Education.

However, the survey notes that there are pressing governance issues like programme leakages and funds not reaching the targeted beneficiaries that need to be addressed.

Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) with the help of the Unique Identification Number (Aadhaar) can help plug some of these leakages. With the 12th Plan's focus on 'environmental sustainability', India is on the right track. However, the challenge for India is to make the key drivers and enablers of growth-be it infrastructure, the transportation sector, housing, or sustainable agriculture-grow sustainably.

Dr. Raghuram G. Rajan, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance writes in an introduction to the Survey that these are difficult times, but India has navigated such times before, and with good policies it will come through stronger. Slowdown is a wake-up call for increasing the pace of actions and reforms. The way out lies in shifting national spending from consumption to investment, removing the bottlenecks to investment, growth, and job creation, in part through structural reforms, combating inflation both through monetary and supply side measures, reducing the costs for borrowers of raising finances and increasing the opportunities for savers to get strong real investment returns.

SOURCE: NDTV Profit

Why are school buses yellow?

2013-02-27T14:34:00.001+05:30

First of all, School bus yellow is not pure yellow. Instead, it is a
mix of yellow and orange, similar to the color of the flesh of a
mango.

Some of the reasons for using this characteristic color are:

Many people believe that red is the most attention-grabbing color but
in fact, yellow gets your attention faster than any other color.

Even when you are looking straight ahead, you can see a yellow object
that is not in front of you "in the corners of your eyes" much sooner
than any other color even red. Scientists describe this as follows:
"Lateral peripheral vision for detecting yellows is 1.24 times greater
than for red."

Many experts also point out that colors such as yellow or
greenish-yellow are more visible to the human eye under dimmer
conditions compared to red.

If there's fog or any kind of bad weather, drivers will still be able
to see yellow cars and any moving vehicle fairly well.

Not only are school buses yellow, but also many earth-moving,
road-building and other outdoor machines are yellow because you could
get hurt if you accidentally run into one of them. Many accidents
occur in farms and outdoors because the victim saw the moving object
too late. If it's yellow, you have a strong warning!

Quora.com

Indian sex workers are a shining example of women's empowerment | Andrea Cornwall

2013-02-26T10:21:00.001+05:30

http://m.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/jul/26/india-sex-workers-female-empowerment

It’s a hundred miles to peace- Ela Bhatt, Indira Gandhi Peace Prize Winner 2013

2013-02-21T15:18:00.000+05:30

The 2011 Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development gives us an opportunity to re-examine our ideas of what constitutes peace. The absence of war is not peace; peace disarms and renders war useless. Peace is a condition enjoyed by a fair and fertile society. Peace is about restoring balance in society. In my view, restoration and reconstruction of a society are essential components of any peace process.

If we look at our world, we find that where there is an unfair distribution of resources, there’s unrest. When people cannot enjoy the fruits of their labour fairly, when they are forced off their land, we have the basis of an unjust society. Where there is violence and conflict, we find poverty. And where there is poverty, we find anger and struggles for justice and equity.

I have often stated that poverty is violence. This violence is by consensus of society that lets other human beings go without roti and kapada and makan. Poverty is day-to-day violence, no less destructive than war. Poverty is lack of peace and freedom. In fact, removing poverty is building peace. To me, ‘Garibi Hatao’ meant ‘Shanti Banao’. Garibi Hatao is a peace song.

In India, we are proud of our multicultural society. ‘Bahudha’ is at the heart of what makes us who we are: social diversity, political diversity, religious diversity, biological diversity. But in our rush to modernise, let us not forget one of our greatest assets, our economic diversity. In our markets, we have the vendor, the cart seller, the kiosk owner, the shop owner, and the supermarket owner, all plying their trades at the same time. Let them cater to different strata of society, co-existing and competing in a natural, organic way.

Gandhiji talked about Swaraj; he talked about economic decentralisation. I would urge us to ensure that six basic needs —food, shelter, clothing, primary education, primary healthcare and primary banking — are met from resources within 100 miles around us, we will have the growth of a new holistic economy that the world will sit up and take notice of. I call it the 100-mile principle. Catching up with the western economic models will turn us into incompetent followers, not leaders. The 100-mile principle is not a recipe for isolation; in fact technologies can help to share knowledge and ideas across countries. However, we do need to get away from a world where people grow what they do not eat, and eat what they do not grow; where they have become part of a system whose outcomes are determined by people far away in a manner not in their interest nor control.

And where do we start? I have faith in women. Women have shown that disarmament in the end is not a treaty by two nations to render arms useless, though such a treaty is much needed in this world. Focus on women, and you will find an ally who wants a stable community. She wants roots for her family. Women bring constructive, creative and sustainable solutions to the table.

In my experience, productive work is the thread that weaves a society together. It builds peace because work gives people roots as well as allows them to flower; it builds communities and it gives meaning and dignity to one’s life. By work, I do not mean sweatshops and cheap labour in factories. Treating land and forests and people and even work as a commodity cannot build a fuller human being, nor a holistic society. Such work strips them of the multifunctional, multicultural character of work that fosters dynamic and organic growth in society.

A woman who tends a small plot of land, grows vegetables, weaves cloth, and provides for the family and the market, while caring for the financial, social, educational and emotional needs of her family is a multifunctional worker and the builder of a stable society. One who labours long hours at a factory where he has no control of his work or his skills, contributes one product to society whose work is ‘measured’ and so given greater credence by us, while her work is unaccounted and ignored. It is the GDP at the household level that matters. The use of the word ‘domestic’ in GDP should not be overlooked; peace and development cannot be measured in numbers.

This is an edited excerpt from Ela Bhatt’s acceptance speech after she received the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. Bhatt is the founder of the Self-Employed Women’s Association of India

Amazing apps to enhance your FB and Twitter experience

2013-02-05T17:08:00.000+05:30

'Let's connect' by Mihir Patkar, TNN Feb 3, 2013, 05.39AM IST

A portal to see all your social network streams and post to them; a search engine for what the web is saying about any topic; the best five tweets of the day delivered straight to your inbox; and a whole new look for your Facebook. Mihir Patkar lists some of the top free web apps to supercharge your online social life.

Twitter only
news.me

Once you start following more than a hundred people on Twitter, your feed can get a bit too much to handle. Of course, you are bound to miss a few important tweets in the process. But not if you use News.Me which creates a daily digest of the top five tweets (based on retweets, replies and favourites) from your feed and mails it to you the next morning. Simple and efficient.

www.news.me

Postpost

The people you follow on Twitter share a lot of linked content. PostPost collates all of these and displays them in a single interface. You can use filters for web links, photos and videos, or use the readymade list of suggested topics such as cricket, book, space, etc. And of course, there's a very handy search bar to find what you want.

postpost.com

Trendsmap

There's perhaps no better service to figure out what the web is talking about than Trendsmap. Trends are represented on a global map and users can surf the graphical interface to figure out the trending stories on Twitterverse. Besides, you can also use the many filters - region, country, city, topics, etc - to find the hottest buzzwords. You shouldn't miss this.

trendsmap.com

Twiangulate

Enter the Twitter handles of any three people on Twiangulate, and the service will display common followers and friends, influential tweeters, etc, thus helping you discover new people to follow. The service also analyses a tweeter's 'reach' to show you how influential they are and even creates a Venn diagram showing the overlaps between followers for the three users you have compared.

twiangulate.com

Facebook

sunrise.im

When you wake up in the morning, wouldn't it be convenient if your inbox had a mail that gave you your day's schedule, as well as reminded you about meetings, birthdays and more? Meet Sunrise which links your Facebook and Google calendars to give you a daily briefing first thing in the morning.

www.sunrise.im

Aherk

If you need a kick up your seat to make sure you finish a task, Aherk will let you blackmail yourself into doing it. What does that mean? Well, you need to upload an embarrassing photograph of yourself to Aherk, and list a task that you're trying to complete, along with its deadline. Aherk will ask your Facebook friends if you've met the deadline. If yes, that's great; but if you didn't, the photo gets uploaded to your Facebook wall. Now if that isn't reason enough to get off your butt, nothing is.

aherk.com

Octofeed

Don't like Facebook's default interface? For a more beautiful, minimalistic design, check out Octofeed. All you have to do is sign in with your Facebook ID and it will fetch your wall and lay it out in a whole new avatar of turquoise, grey and white, with separate tabs for playlists, photos, links and statuses. Even notifications get a makeover that's unobtrusive and easy on the eye. And yes, it's a lot better to use on tablets too.

www.octofeed.com

All-in-ones

kurrently

Search engines don't crawl social networks. This means it's not possible for you to quickly look through the latest posts on any topic. But hey, who needs Google when you have Kurrently? Type in a keyword and this social engine will show you chronologically-arranged posts across Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You can choose the speed at which Kurrently refreshes results (0.5x, 1x, 2x or Pause), as well as filter them by network. If you find any post that you like, you can quickly save it for future reference; however, this needs a Twitter sign-in. So whether you want to monitor your brand's online presence or simply find out what the general consensus is on any topic, you know where to head.

www.kurrently.com

Storify

This is one of our personal favourites. Storify lets users do something long needed with the amount of social updates we get: Collate them into a meaningful narrative. The first thing to do is to login via Facebook or Twitter, or create a new account. You will be taken to a window with two panes. The first is a large blank canvas, ready for you to add a headline, description, posts and links. In the second pane, you can search several social sharing services - Twitter, Facebook,Youtube, Flickr, Instagram, Google (web, news, images), Tumblr, etc - for a keyword, user or image, and just drag-and-drop your results into the canvas.

You can also embed direct URLs, add other Storify stories, or annotate your canvas with words of your own. It's a simple, intuitive interface that takes very little time to understand and start using. Once you have created your 'story', hit the 'Publish' button and share it on your own networks. Simply fantastic.

storify.com

Prismatic

Your activity on social networks - what you like, what you share, what you comment on, who you follow - is a good indication of your interests. Prismatic takes this data and creates a personalized web page with news that you would be interested in.

It'll also throw up a few suggestions of people, websites or sections to follow, and the 'World News' tab shows the latest happenings across the globe. What's more, you can also search for your interests to add more channels to your reading list.

getprismatic.com

Cue

Your social information is scattered across many networks, so looking up a person, an event, a post or a link ends up being a Herculean task if you don't know where to begin searching. Enter Cue - a single window that helps you find anything from your personal profiles. All you have to do is link it up to all your networks, mails as well as cloud sharing services.

Cue is also testing an 'Events' service that displays your schedule across different calendars, such as Google and Facebook. A premium account also lets you hook up services such as Basecamp, Evernote, Google Reader, Tumblr, Yammer, Reddit and Pinboard.

www.cueup.com

Streamified

This web app lets you view all you networking streams in one place. Users can add their accounts from services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare, Tumblr, Google Reader, Instapaper, Pocket, RSS Feeds, and even blogs. The main window displays constant updates, while all your other accounts are in a sidebar, allowing you to quickly switch to them individually. And yes, you can also post to all your networks in one go. While the design isn't great and the site is a bit heavy, it still beats all the others in functionality.

streamified.me

Pixable

Photos are shared everywhere: Facebook feeds, Instagram, Twitter, Google Drive, Dropbox. Pixable, however, lets you see all these pictures - uploaded by you or your friends - in one place. It works best for Facebook, with filtering options such as 'most recent', 'top of the day', 'new profile pics', 'new cover photos', etc. And it even lets you follow 'interests' such as the Presidential Inauguration, Celebs, Funny, etc. Throw in a search bar to quickly look up a friend and you're set.

www.pixable.com

Faveous

While browsing through your social networks - Facebook, Twitter, Pocket, Tumblr, Youtube, Instapaper, RSS - you come across links and posts that you 'Like', 'Favourite' or add to your list of must-sees. Faveous brings these favourites under one URL. Create an account (you might have to tweet/post on your Facebook wall to get an invitation) and start adding your services. It's an extremely convenient solution for looking at your most-liked online items.

www.faveous.com

The Times of India

Aishwarya Nair brings champagne culture to India

2013-01-30T15:27:00.004+05:30

The affair started as a mere liking but soon developed into a serious passion. Less than a decade into the relationship, wine connoisseur and epicurean, Aishwarya Nair’s sweet-n-citrusy bond with the bubbly achieved it’s crescendo on Tuesday when she was awarded with a Diplome d’ Honneur by the Corporation des Vignerons de Champagne and the Comite Interprofessionel du Vin de Champagne (CIVC) — world’s two top bodies for wine producers and champagne grape growers — for her contribution in promoting the champagne culture in India.

“Being the first Indian woman to receive such an honour is a feeling unlike any other... it makes lives’ difficulties worth it,” says the corporate food and wine consultant of The Leela Palace, Hotels and Resorts, who studied at the Culinary school in New York, but has been instrumental in educating Indians about wine and champagne. “I wouldn’t have imagined this honour when I started studying wine. I guess this is a great example of where passion can take you,” says the 27-year-old, who feels the champagne culture in India is developing at an accelerating speed.

Quick bytes with champagne

The beauty of champagne is that it has the ability to pair with most cuisines, feels Nair. But if you want to know the best match, hear it out from the expert, herself. “I would recommend champagne as an aperitif with some fresh oysters for the perfect balance in food and wine. Richer, creamier foods tend to balance the acidity of the wine. Paneer tikka would be the best Indian bite to pair with a medium bodied champagne with more of chardo-nnay in the blend,” says Nair.

Champagne drinking etiquette

Six degrees is the ideal temperature to serve champagne
When it comes to champagne, glass flutes are generally the preferred choice
Always hold the glass by the stem so that you don’t disrupt the ideal temperature
To avoid spillage, use a napkin or paper tissue to cover the bottle while serving the drink
After opening a bottle, always place it in an ice bucket to maintain the temperature.

Burning Issues: The danger to women lurks within us

2012-12-28T13:43:00.001+05:30

Even as public anger on rape mounts, it is important to understand that policing is a small part of the problem — and can only be a small part of the solution

“I ripped away at this and that and the other, the others going haw haw haw still,” recalled Alex, the hyper-violent teenage protagonist of Anthony Burgess’ masterpiece A Clockwork Orange, “and real good horror show groodies they were that then exhibited their pink glazzies, O my brothers, while I untrussed and got ready for the plunge. Plunging, I could hear slooshy cries of agony”. “Then,” he went on, “there was like quiet, and we were full of hate, so we smashed what was left to be smashed — typewriter, lamp chairs.” “The writer veck and his zheena were not really there, bloodied and torn and making noises,” Alex concluded. “But they’d live”.

Following last week’s hideous assault on a New Delhi resident and her boyfriend, few Indians will need a dictionary of the teenage slang Burgess invented to grasp the horror of this passage — without doubt the most searing description of gang rape in the English language canon.

The text, though, is also of historical significance. In 1962, when Burgess published A Clockwork Orange — in part a working-through of the gang rape of his first wife — feminist campaigns against sexual violence were beginning to garner momentum. Burgess was hostile to efforts to remake masculinity, seeing them through his Catholic ideological prism as assaults on god’s domain and free will; his Alex was redeemed by a quasi-mystical encounter with the idea of fatherhood.

Battle against sexual violence

Yet, we now know, sexual violence against women can be successfully fought. Figures derived from the United States Justice Department’s authoritative National Crime Victimization Survey — designed to capture rape cases which do not make it into the criminal justice system — show the incidence fell from 2.8 per 1,000 in 1979 to 0.4 per 1,000 in 2004.

There are important lessons in this experience. In particular, the limits of solutions that centre around policing need to be clearly understood. The decline in rape in the U.S. has mainly come about not because policing has become god-like in its deterrent value, but because of hard political and cultural battles to teach men that when a woman says no, she means no.

In 1980, Diana Scully and Joseph Marolla began an extraordinary series of conversations with evil. The scholars interviewed 114 rapists serving time in a Virginia penitentiary for hideous crimes: among them, one who had forced a vacuum cleaner hose into his victim’s vagina, before severing her nipples with his teeth; another, a college student who, as part of a gang of four, forced his victim to lie naked on a snow to add to her pain; a third who raped and murdered five women, because he was heartbroken, or so he said, that his girlfriend had left him.

Like the gang rape in Delhi, these stories lead many to believe that rape is a psychopathology; the work of a handful of evil men. It isn’t: data from across the world shows rape is extraordinarily commonplace.

Every year in the U.S., the highly-regarded Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) estimates, over 200,000 women suffer sexual assault — one approximately every two minutes. In 2000, the United Kingdom survey concluded that 4.9 per cent of all women had experienced at least one rape or sexual assault; a more recent survey put the figure at above 10 per cent. Ireland, Sweden and Germany have survey estimates that range from 25 per cent to 34 per cent.

Likelier than not, the 24,206 cases reported to police in 2011 are almost certainly the tip of the iceberg. Fifty-three per cent of 12,000 children polled in a 2007 government survey said they had encountered “one or more forms of sexual abuse.” More than a fifth, over half of them boys, reported severe sexual abuse. It is almost certain that even more encountered sexual violence.

Scully and Marolla pointed out that the sheer pervasiveness of sexual violence rebuts the notion that rape is the work of a “small lunatic fringe of psychopathic men.” Even though the men they interviewed had committed acts of maximal violence, they were also entirely normal in their values and behaviour.

The men, notably, made no effort to hide the fact that they saw hurting women as entertainment. “I always felt like I had just conquered something”, one prisoner said, comparing his serial rape experiences to a visit to a famous amusement park ride in Dallas, “like I had just ridden the bull at Gilley’s.” Few rapists indicated that “guilt or feeling bad was part of their emotional response” to their crimes; 92 per cent said “they felt good, relieved or simply nothing at all.” Like so many other things, Scully and Marolla concluded, “rape is a learned behaviour.”

Culture of misogyny

None of this ought to surprise us: though we might condemn rape, our culture shares the rapist’s values. India’s mass culture is replete with misogyny. Few films ever seek to escape romantic memes which involve men pursuing, and eventually conquering, women who say no; it is no coincidence that pop singer Honey Singh, whose lyrics valorise the taming of liberated women, has become a youth icon. Even a cursory YouTube search for rape takes us to a plethora of film-clips eroticising the crime. This mass culture, in turn, accurately reflects the values of a son-worshipping society in which large-scale violence against women is seen as entirely legitimate — running the gamut from street harassment on Holi to female foeticide.

Policing can’t change a culture that produces and legitimises violence against women. From the western experience, it also becomes clear that even the best-resourced policing can have only a limited impact on deterring and punishing rapists.

Figures derived from RAINN’s official statistics graphically illustrate the point. For every 100 rapes that take place in the U.S., only 46 are reported. The 46, on average, lead to just 12 arrests — one for every fourth victim. Nine of the 12 arrested perpetrators go on to be prosecuted — but only a third of these are eventually convicted of rape. Put simply, just 3 of every 100 rapists ever see the inside of a prison cell.

In the U.K. , 58 per cent of rape trials end in a conviction — but only because the crown prosecution service rigorously weeds out cases unlikely to survive legal challenge. The stark fact is only six of every 100 women who report an offence will see the perpetrator convicted.

Conviction rate

The point here isn’t that India’s less-than-luminous conviction rates — 26.5 per cent nationally, similar to the U.S. average; 41 per cent in Delhi — are less grim than they seem. Rather, it is that policing isn’t a panacea. The utter failure of highly-resourced U.S. campaigns to stamp out narcotics use is a case in point.

None of this is to say improved policing can’t mitigate the problem. More officers, particularly women officers, on the streets, will deter street sexual harassment and stalking. Capacity building for investigation and prosecution will lead to a more effective punishment of perpetrators. Even better lighting in public spaces has been shown to yield results. Harsher police action on street crime, elsewhere in the world, has often correlated with declines in rape rates.

Yet, we ought not to delude ourselves about what can be achieved. There is no reason, for example, to believe more police checkpoints will deter rapists, when they have done next to nothing to apprehend terrorists or robbers. Forensics will also help — but, outside of crime-fiction shows, DNA isn’t a magic anti-criminal bullet. Leaving aside the fact that forensic evidence can be matched to perpetrators only in a tiny percentage of cases, criminals have become increasingly adroit at covering their trail. Even a Mumbai suspect recently forced his victim to bathe after raping her, demonstrating a robust grasp of evidence destruction. Lapsing into pseudoscience fantasies that the screening of possible perpetrators will help detect rapists, as judges of the Delhi High Court recently did, helps not at all.

Legal reform

Legal reform, another centrepiece of the ongoing campaign, is also needed — but will achieve nothing unless it is backed by investigative and prosecutorial capacity. Past legal reforms, it bears mention, have done little to stem the decade-on-decade decline in rape conviction rates, from 44.28 per cent in 1973 to 26.5 per cent in 2010. India’s experience of extraordinary slow fast-track terrorism courts give little reason for optimism, either, that fast-track rape courts will work better.

Fixing the police and the justice system, thus, will achieve only so much — and that so much is not a great deal. The real battle is one that women’s organisations have fought to address for decades — to change the ways in which men relate to women; to create a culture of masculinity that does not involve subjugation. For progress to be made, we must begin by acknowledging this one fact: the problem isn’t the police, the courts or the government. The problem is us.

The danger to women lurks within us, The Hindu, December 27, 2012

Business Today: 20 ideas to make money online

2012-12-04T15:26:00.000+05:30

HARPREET SINGH
A cash cow for the enterprising, the Internet is littered with opportunities to make a fast buck. While it rarely qualifies as a solitary source of income, the Net can easily help you supplement it. However, the amount you earn depends on the time and effort invested. Go through these 20 options and find out which ones work for you.

Blogging
If you're a passionate closet writer who wants to be published but can't find a way to do so, make each keystroke your way to wealth by penning your own blog. Starting a blog doesn't require extensive technical skills but it's important that you have expertise in the field you are writing on. This will attract visitors to your site. Building a large following will enable you to earn profit by luring advertisers, writing paid reviews or getting commissions for promoting other people's products.

Paid Writing
If maintaining a blog is difficult for you but you still want to indulge your passion for writing, you can jot down articles for other blogs or sites such as Weblogs, Helium or PayPerPost. Writing an e-book can also be a good option. E-books are investment free, with no cost for printing and shipping. If you have a strong command over languages, you can become a copy editor, where Webmasters will pay you to read articles and correct grammatical errors, sentence fragments, etc.

e-tuitions/Webinars
The demand for tutors is high and growing. So, if you like helping others learn, e-teaching could be the earning ticket for you. All you need to become an online tutor is expertise in your subject and a few spare hours per week. TutorVista, e-tutor, SmartThinking and Tutor.com are some of the sites you can enroll with. If you gain a good reputation as a coach, you could even conduct Webinars-lectures or seminars transmitted over the Net. College and university students are willing to pay to gain entry to a well-respected Webinar.

Affilliate/Reseller
For those who have the knack of selling, one of the best ways to make money online is to become an affiliate/reseller. An affiliate is a person who gets a commission for selling every product that he promotes, whether on his Website or through any other avenue such as eBay. You don't have to own the product. You only need to sign up for an affiliate program with a company and start selling its products under your referral link. Firms such as Commission Junction or Click Bank have a large pool of products.

Buying/Selling domains
Buying and selling domain names is another way to make money from home and requires very little investment or time. You can buy domains at their registration prices or even cheaper and trade them at a profit. However, always research on sites such as sedo.co.uk, afternic.com, ebay.com or other domain auction sites to get an estimate of the hottest selling names. The best way to find good ones is to use terminated domain lists, which contain several expired names that are back in the pool.

Freelancing for Professionals
Freelancing is a great option for professionals who are experts in their respective trades and know how to ensure customer satisfaction. Various freelancing and project-oriented sites allow companies that need help to describe their projects. Freelancers and small businesses offer bids, ideas or proposals, from which the buyers can choose what they find most suitable. Websites such as Elance cover everything from programming and writing to data entry and design, while RentACoder focuses on software programming.

Advertising
You can sell space on your Website or blog for advertisements and you earn when these ads are clicked by visitors to your site. The sorting and placing of ads is free. The profitability of pay-per-click advertising depends on the traffic level of the Website and, most importantly, on the clickthrough rate and cost per click. Google AdSense is the most popular option, while others are BidVertiser, Text Link Ads and Blogads. Direct banner and RSS feed are some other forms of online advertising.

GPT Programme
GPT or Get-paid-to sites are becoming increasingly popular among teens. You get paid for signing up for free Websites, newsletters, playing games and filling out online surveys. These are suitable for people who don't have a skill set but want to earn extra money. Taking online surveys is simple- register with a few legitimate, paid survey sites and answer questions. The topics range from shopping to politics. This might not help you make a living, but you can earn good pocket money. Contests2win is one of the trusted GPT Websites.

Online Marketing
Once a Website is created and optimised for search engine (SEO), the SEM or Search Engine Marketing begins. A treasure trove lies hidden here. An SEO/SEM expert, who is responsible for marketing a Website, can promote it in various ways. These include article marketing, writing press releases, forum posting, blog posting, submitting your site to directories and search engines, social bookmarking, etc. Most companies don't do this in-house and pay you to conduct the SEM for them.

Making themes
As more and more people seek an online presence, the demand for Website templates and WordPress (Blog) themes will keep increasing. If you are good at Web designing and coding, you can earn a lot from designing Web themes. In this segment, there are mainstream Websites, such as TemplateMonster and ThemeForest, which act as a marketplace where you can sell your themes. Templates are sold and priced depending on the rights and features that are bundled with them.

Selling photos
If you enjoy photography and are good with a camera, you could be sitting on a huge reserve of revenue. There are people who will be interested in your collection of images. Nowadays, it's easy to take your photos to the public, providing a convenient way to build a secondary income stream. Many stock photo agencies, such as Fotolia, Dreamstime and Shutterstock, offer incentives for people to earn from their photos.

Support & service
Providing coding or fixing other Webmasters' issues is another great way to earn extra bucks. There are simple jobs ranging from adding a script to setting up sites, but knowledge of Web coding is essential. One can offer support for Web CMS (content management systems) like Drupal or Joomla. After you are comfortable with your own installation, you can help other people to set these up and configure them.

Stock/forex trading
Joining the stock/forex market may seem a bit risky. However, you can start small and continue researching till you gain experience in this area. Once you do, it will be easy to earn from exchanging foreign currencies and/or stocks. Their rates fluctuate depending on supply and demand, and economic and political influences in the world. The aim of any trader is to spot which currency/stock is likely to rise or fall in value against another. The more time you put in, the more you will earn.

Selling your own brand
If you have a flair for designing cool images, don't bother about creating your own inventory. As long as your design can be printed on a product, you can pocket some money. You can upload designs on various Websites such as CafePress, and if somebody orders these designs, the company will print them and distribute the products. It could be designs for T-shirts, hats, bags, books, posters, calendars, greeting cards, etc. You will receive a commission for each sale. Other such sites include Lulu and Zazzle.

Virtual Assistant
Small businesses always need help in running their processes, but may not be willing to hire a full-time employee. As a virtual assistant, you are expected to perform practically any administrative task that a traditional secretary or assistant would, such as make travel reservations, handle expense reimbursements or pay bills. You can do it from the comfort of your home, interacting with clients either online or by phone. Your expertise will decide how much moolah you rake in.

Inbound call centre
Many companies, who are facing space constraints, especially those in metro cities, prefer to hire workers outside their offices or outsource certain processes. You can set up an inbound call centre at home to handle such jobs. Research different companies that are outsourcing their work as they may have opportunities for inbound call centre agents. You can work for more than one company. This can be either a part-time or fulltime engagement, depending on your need.

You Tube
If there's a dramatic performer hidden inside you who craves applause and adulation, upload yourself on YouTube. You can be a filmmaker, musician or comedian who wants a wider audience. Your earnings will come from ads displayed on your video page. This process is similar to the pay-per-click advertising program common to other Websites and blogs. Sites such as Flixya and Mediaflix can be helpful in this regard.

Researching for others
Don't be morose if you can't write, design or code. Lack of talent cannot stop you from making money online. If you're willing to work hard for a few hours a week, you can take up simple research jobs for other people who don't have the time to do it themselves. You could search for opportunities in organisations that provide funding for research and offer to assist them through online investigation.

Building Applications
With smartphones gaining popularity, the demand for their applications, or apps as they are popularly known, has also shot up. There are over 3 million apps for the iPhone and over a million apps in Google's Android market. Most of these are selling like hot cakes. Developing and selling your own smartphone app is becoming a lucrative way to make money on the Internet. Apps cost virtually nothing to develop and entail no storage or shipping costs. So they enjoy the best profit margins.

Transcription
Medical transcription involves making written copies of oral material dictated by doctors or other medical experts. These may include history and physical reports, clinical notes, consultation notes, reports, letters, psychiatric evaluation and so on. The dictated material needs to be transcribed swiftly and accurately, which is the most challenging aspect of the job. To become a medical transcriptionist, you need to have a good knowledge of medical terminology and a high typing speed along with accuracy.

Courtesy: Business Today

What's the safest 4-digit PIN? Not 8068 -- anymore

2012-09-19T12:31:00.000+05:30

The safest 4-digit PIN is '8068' — or at least it was, until researchers at Data Genetics told everyone this week. The researchers there went through a set of 3.4 million four-digit personal identification numbers and found "8068" came up only 25 times.

But now that this news is out, that's probably a PIN to stay away from. As Softpedia pointed out, would-be thieves may start trying that combination right after they hit "1234" ― the most common PIN, with nearly 11 percent frequency.

While not as common as 1234, there are several numbers that people seem drawn toward. For instance, PINs starting in "19" are common because people like to link their identification numbers with a significant year. In fact, all PINs that start in 19 fall into the top fifth of the dataset.

The top 20 includes all the series in which the first number is repeated throughout (such as 3333) plus 4321, 1212 and 2001. The study also found that many PINs are based on visual clues. Coming in at No. 22 is 2580 ― the numbers that run down the middle of a phone or ATM keypad.

Based on this report, more than10 percent of all bank accounts can be hacked with one guess. Beyond that, one-third of all PINs are made up of just 61 variations.

Even when PINs get longer, security doesn't seem to improve. Regardless of length, the most popular personal identification numbers appear in sequential order. As for the second-most common combinations, among seven-digit PINs it's 7777777. Six digits? 123123. What about nine? 987654321.

It's also important to note that PIN users are fans of 1980s band Tommy Tutone. "Jenny's" number, 8675309, is the fourth most-popular seven-digit PIN.

So what is the most secure PIN now that 8068 has been outed as the least popular? It's the one you make up, don't write down and don't share with anyone. As long as you don't use your birthday (or your spouse's or child's), or 1234, your PIN should be just as secure as the gentleman's at the ATM in front of you.

Courtesy: NBC Tech

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2012-09-19T11:09:00.000+05:30

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What is 'God particle' and what it does?

2012-09-03T10:32:00.003+05:30

Scientists at the CERN research centre near Geneva, Switzerland, on Wednesday unveiled their latest findings in their search for the Higgs boson, a subatomic particle key to the formation of stars, planets and eventually life after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

WHAT IS THE HIGGS BOSON?

The Higgs is the last missing piece of the Standard Model, the theory that describes the basic building blocks of the universe. The other 11 particles predicted by the model have been found and finding the Higgs would validate the model. Ruling it out or finding something more exotic would force a rethink on how the universe is put together.

Scientists believe that in the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was a gigantic soup of particles racing around at the speed of light without any mass to speak of. It was through their interaction with the Higgs field that they gained mass and eventually formed the universe.

The Higgs field is a theoretical and invisible energy field that pervades the whole cosmos. Some particles, like the photons that make up light, are not affected by it and therefore have no mass. Others find it drags on them as porridge drags on a spoon.

Picture George Clooney (the particle) walking down a street with a gaggle of photographers (the Higgs field) clustered around him. An average guy on the same street (a photon) gets no attention from the paparazzi and gets on with his day. The Higgs particle is the signature of the field - an eyelash of one of the photographers.

The particle is theoretical, first posited in 1964 by six physicists, including Briton Peter Higgs.

The search for it only began in earnest in the 1980s, first in Fermilab's now mothballed Tevatron particle collider near Chicago and later in a similar machine at CERN, but most intensively since 2010 with the start-up of the European centre's Large Hadron Collider.

WHAT IS THE STANDARD MODEL? The Standard Model is to physics what the theory of evolution is to biology. It is the best explanation physicists have of how the building blocks of the universe are put together. It describes 12 fundamental particles, governed by four basic forces.

But the universe is a big place and the Standard Model only explains a small part of it. Scientists have spotted a gap between what we can see and what must be out there. That gap must be filled by something we don't fully understand, which they have dubbed 'dark matter'. Galaxies are also hurtling away from each other faster than the forces we know about suggest they should. This gap is filled by 'dark energy'. This poorly understood pair are believed to make up a whopping 96 percent of the mass and energy of the cosmos.

Confirming the Standard Model, or perhaps modifying it, would be a step towards the holy grail of physics - a 'theory of everything' that encompasses dark matter, dark energy and the force of gravity, which the Standard Model also does not explain. It could also shed light on even more esoteric ideas, such as the possibility of parallel universes.

CERN spokesman James Gillies has said that just as Albert Einstein's theories enveloped and built on the work of Isaac Newton, the work being done by the thousands of physicists at CERN has the potential to do the same to Einstein's work.

WHAT IS THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER? The Large Hadron Collider is the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator, a 27-km (17-mile) looped pipe that sits in a tunnel 100 metres underground on the Swiss/French border. It cost 3 billion euros to build.

Two beams of protons are fired in opposite directions around it before smashing into each other to create many millions of particle collisions every second in a recreation of the conditions a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, when the Higgs field is believed to have 'switched on'.

The vast amount of data produced is examined by banks of computers. Of all the trillions of collisions, very few are just right for revealing the Higgs particle. That makes the hunt for the Higgs slow, and progress incremental.

WHAT IS THE THRESHOLD FOR PROOF?
To claim a discovery, scientists have set themselves a target for certainty that they call "5 sigma". This means that there is a probability of less than one in a million that their conclusions from the data harvested from the particle accelerator are the result of a statistical fluke.

The two teams hunting for the Higgs at CERN, called Atlas and CMS, now have twice the amount of data that allowed them to claim 'tantalising glimpses' of the Higgs at the end of last year and this could push their results beyond that threshold.

Watch the video Evidence of God particle found:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/Evidence-of-God-particle-found-CERN/videoshow/14669610.cms …

Courtesy: Times of India

First man on moon Neil Armstrong passes away

2012-08-28T12:58:00.000+05:30

Former United States astronaut, and global icon Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, passed away at the age of 82, on Saturday.

Armstrong underwent a heart-bypass surgery earlier this month, just two days after his birthday on 5th August, to relieve blocked coronary arteries.

As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969. As he stepped on the moon's dusty surface, Armstrong said: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

The Apollo 11 moon mission turned out to be Armstrong's last space flight. The following year he was appointed to a desk job, being named NASA's deputy associate administrator for aeronautics in the office of advanced research and technology.

He left NASA a year later to become a professor of engineering at the University of Cincinnati. The former astronaut lived in the Cincinnati area with his wife, Carol.

Armstrong was born 5th August, 1930, on a farm near Wapakoneta in western Ohio. He took his first airplane ride at age 6 and developed a fascination with aviation that prompted him to build model airplanes and conduct experiments in a homemade wind tunnel.

As a boy, he worked at a pharmacy and took flying lessons. He was licensed to fly at 16, before he got his driver's license.

Armstrong enrolled in Purdue University to study aeronautical engineering but was called to duty with the U.S. Navy in 1949 and flew 78 combat missions in Korea.

After the war, Armstrong finished his degree from Purdue and later earned a master's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He became a test pilot with what evolved into the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, flying more than 200 kinds of aircraft from gliders to jets.

Armstrong was accepted into NASA's second astronaut class in 1962 - the first, including Glenn, was chosen in 1959 - and commanded the Gemini 8 mission in 1966. After the first space docking, he brought the capsule back in an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean when a wildly firing thruster kicked it out of orbit.

Armstrong was backup commander for the historic Apollo 8 mission at Christmas time in 1968. In that flight, Commander Frank Borman, and Jim Lovell and Bill Anders circled the moon 10 times, and paving the way for the lunar landing seven months later.

Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 spacecraft, alongwith fellow astronauts Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr that landed on the moon July 20, 1969, capping the most daring of the 20th century's scientific expeditions.

An estimated 600 million people - a fifth of the world's population - watched and listened to the landing, the largest audience for any single event in history.

Courtesy: DD News

NASA's rover 'Curiosity' on key mission lands on Mars

2012-08-07T17:09:00.000+05:30

In an ecstatic moment of triumph for outer space exploration, the NASA's robotic 'Curiosity' spacecraft successfully landed on Mars to begin its pioneering two-year hunt to find out if the red planet once hosted conditions suitable for life.

"Touchdown confirmed," the triumphant NASA engineer Allen Chen claimed in the control room as America's most high-tech interplanetary rover survived a harrowing plunge through the Mars' thin atmosphere to touch down on the red planet at 05:30 GMT,Tuesday (11:00 IST).

"We are safe on Mars," the NASA engineers said as the Curiosity started beaming live images from inside the crater where it had landed.

The USD 2.5 billion spacecraft is the largest and most advanced ever sent to another planet. The car-size, one-tonne rover's descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it in a "sky crane" maneuver to the surface of the Mars.

Applause erupted across the campus of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge and engineers inside mission control could be seen hugging and weeping with joy as it received the first photos from its Curiosity rover.

Just minutes after the signal arrived that the landing had gone off successfuly, Curiosity beamed back its first black-and-white thumbnail image of Mars. Soon after, a bigger image 256 by 256 pixels large showed up onscreen at the laboratory.

Curiosity is expected to revolutionize the understanding of Mars, gathering evidence that Mars is or was capable of fostering life, probably in microbial form.

The spacecraft is also expected to pave the way for important leaps in deep-space exploration, including bringing Martian rock or soil back to Earth for detailed analysis and, eventually, human exploration.

Scientists have found signs of water on the red planet, though it is now a dry place with a thin atmosphere, extreme winters and dust storms.

Curiosity is not equipped to search for living or fossil microorganisms but it will look for basic ingredients essential for life, including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulphur and oxygen.

Curiosity traveled nearly 570 million kilometers since it was launched in November.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks from a distance.

Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

The landing site was 154 million miles from home, enough distance that the spacecraft's elaborate landing sequence had to be automated.

Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover.

More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms.

"Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars," said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Over the first week, Curiosity is to deploy its main antenna, raise a mast containing cameras, a rock-vaporizing laser and other instruments, and take its first panoramic shot of its surroundings.

NASA will spend the first month checking out Curiosity. The first drive could occur early next month.

The rover would not scoop its first sample of Martian soil until mid-September at the earliest, and the first drilling into rock would occur in October or November.

Because Curiosity is powered by electricity generated from the heat of a chunk of plutonium, it could continue operating for years, perhaps decades, in exploring the 96-mile-wide crater where it has landed.

(Courtesy: DDI NEWS)

The Power of One - by Aamir Khan

2012-07-30T12:29:00.001+05:30

What can I do alone? I am just one among 1.2 billion. Even if I change what good will it do. What about the rest? Who will change everyone? First get everyone else to change then I too will change. These are some of the most negative thoughts I have heard resonating all through my life. The story of Dhashrat Manjhi is a fitting reply to all these statements. It tells us what one man can achieve. It tells us about the power of one. It tells us that man can indeed move mountains.

Gehlor a small village in Bihar was surrounded by rocky mountains. The villagers had to travel more than 50 kilometers to reach the nearest town which was in fact 5 kilometers away, but the path was blocked by a tall mountain. The presence of this rocky mountain plagued the lives of the villagers of Gehlor for decades. One of them, Dashrath Manjhi, decided one day that he would cut a pass through the mountain. He sold his goats, bought a hammer and a chisel, and started hammering away at the mountain. Everyone laughed at him. They ridiculed him, dissuaded him, told him it was not possible. He refused to be swayed and kept at it. It took him 22 years to cut a road though the mountain but he did it.

For a moment let us imagine what he must have gone through on day one of his attempt. One man with a hammer and a chisel against the mountain! How many cubic inches of rock could he have broken on the first day? What did he feel while walking back home that evening? How far did he get at the end of week one? What were his thoughts then? No doubt the task would have seem even more impossible at the end of the first week. What did he feel when people made fun of him and discouraged him? What kept him going for 22 long years?

What you and I have to decide is, do we want to be like Dashrath Manjhi, or do we want to be like the villagers who tried to dissuade him? And there is a clear choice before us. What he was attempting to do was for everyone's benefit. Still instead of joining him, his own fellow villagers made fun of him. So, should we be like those villagers or should we live our life like Dashrath Manjhi, who, with single-minded determination continued to do what he believed he in. Each of us has to ask ourselves this question, and in our answer lies the reality of our future. In our answer lies the answer to the following question as well - Do I want to contribute to nation building? Do I want to be a believer or do I want to be a critic? Do I want to follow my dreams relentlessly and without compromise, or do I want to be a cynical, discouraging naysayer.

I believe….

I believe in India. I believe in the people of India. I believe that each and every Indian loves his/her country. I believe that India is changing. I believe that India wants to change. I believe in the dream that our forefathers saw when they fought for Independence. A dream that they wrote down in the preamble to our constitution.

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:

JUSTICE, social, economic and political;

LIBERTY, of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;

EQUALITY of status and of opportunity;

and to promote among them all

FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation; …

There are many who say that this dream is dead, but I don't agree. While it is true that it has not been achieved, it is equally true that it is not entirely dead. Even today there are thousands of Indians who live by this dream. Many have spent their lives upholding this dream. Most of them are perhaps not even aware that in living their lives in the way that they are, they are upholding the constitution of India, the dream that our forefathers saw.

I think somewhere too many of us have become a little too clever, a little too practical, a little too cynical, a little too materialistic, a little too selfish. Maybe, we need to let go a little. Allow a little space in our hearts for hope, for idealism, for belief, for faith, for trust, for innocence and… for a little madness. If one Dashrath Manjhi can move a mountain, imagine what a 120 crore Dashrath Manjhi can do.

My journey of Satyamev Jayate is coming to an end. But I would like to believe that this is not the end, but is, in fact, a beginning. And in this hope filled moment of a beginning, I would like to bow my head in a prayer that was first expressed by Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Jaihind. Satyamev Jayate.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times

TECH TONIC: Overhauling YOUR PC

2012-07-17T01:15:00.003+05:30

Javed Anwer

IT is a universally acknowledged truth that Windows computers tend to get a bit sluggish after a few months of use.The PC that felt responsive and snappy when it was new starts taking those extra seconds to perform basic tasks.It boots up,but its a couple of excruciating moments before you can begin to work on it.The folders can be accessed,but only after a slight lag.Programs launch,but lethargically.

No,it has nothing to do with hardware.The problem lies in the operating system (OS) itself.As you use Windows more and more,installing and uninstalling software,it starts collecting junk.And this detritus,if not taken care of,bogs down your machine.The solution is to clean up your PC from time to time with some nifty tools that go deep into Windows and flush its nooks and crannies.

Get a cleaner

When it comes to basic PC cleaning,few software can match up to CCleaner (or Crap-Cleaner ).By default,it checks for temporary internet files (if not cleaned for months,these can take gigabytes of disk space),temporary system files,cookies,etc.But if you want to scrub your PC totally clean,you can use its advanced options.For most users,however,the default option should do the trick.Before deleting files,CCleaner prepares a report of what will be deleted and once you hit OK,whoosh,its all gone.Run CCleaner every month or so.www.piriform.com/CCLEANER

Keep an eye on Windows Registry

After all these years,the jury is still out on whether users should edit the Windows Registry or not.Simply put,the Registry is a sort of index that helps the OS organise and access software information.

Unfortunately,Windows is pretty lax at maintaining this index.The result: Even if you uninstall a program,its registry entries might still remain.Now,we definitely DO NOT recommend that you venture into the Registry because it holds a lot of information that is crucial to the whole OS.But we have found that running the Registry Cleaner built into CCleaner every six months or so does help in clearing away junk entries.

Boot fast

A crowded boot process is another reason why your PC might feel slow.Most software,when installed,are set to run when the computer boots.But in many cases,you dont need these programs or processes to start as soon as you log on to your computer.

One way to deal with this problem is to uncheck the run at startup or run at boot option when installing a new program (unless it is anti-virus software ).The other way is to periodically check which services start during boot and disable the ones that you dont need.You can do it through the tools provided in CCleaner or by typing msconfig in Search under the Windows 7/Vista Start menu (in Windows XP,the command can be executed through Run prompt).Once MSConfig opens,go to its Startup tab and disable services you dont need.

Get an uninstaller

During the process of installing a program,its installer performs many tasks copying files to a folder,creating file associations and registry entries (to tell Windows that a new program has been installed).Ideally,uninstalling should reverse these changes.But most software leave residue even after they have been uninstalled.

The solution to this problem is to get an app like Zsoft Uninstaller.After installing any new program,simply run Zsoft.The tool prepares a report of the changes made to the system by the newly-installed program.Later,when you want to uninstall the software,click on the Analyzed Programs tab in Zsoft and remove the application from there. Zsoft will make sure that the removed application doesnt leave any unwanted traces.www.zsoft.dk/index/software_details/4

Defragment hard drive

When you store data on your computer,the information is broken down into smaller pieces and is written into sectors on your hard drive.These sectors might not be written in continuous blocks,thus leading to your files being fragmented.Now if a files fragments are spread across your hard disk,your PC might take longer to fetch it for you.The solution here is defragmentation.

The inbuilt application in Windows called Disk Defragmenter (Start > Accessories > System Tools) will suffice for most users.But if you are looking something better and faster,especially if you are still using Windows XP,you can try UltraDefrag.ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

COURTESY: TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Goodbye software: Free web apps for everyday tasks

2012-07-17T01:10:00.000+05:30

Mihir Patkar
FROM a simple notepad or a to-do app to unzipping files and converting them,web apps can accomplish most tasks,relieving you of the burden of finding and installing software.And yes,given their nature,you can access these web tools from anywhere.Here are a few of our favourites.

A Notepad-like app

Wrttn is a simple and efficient notepad app,presenting you with a blank page when you visit the site.Write what you want and hit the Create button to make your own Web-accessible notepad file.Save the admin URL you get.Any time you want,you can simply go back to this URL to see and edit your note.And you can share a read-only file through the Public URL option.Wrttn.in

For To-Do lists

Head to Daily To Do and click the green Create your daily to-do list button.Its that simple.Next,just add tasks a new one on each line and hit Save Tasks to finish.Youll get a custom URL (like in Wrttn),which you should save to access from other PCs.But the next time you visit the site from the same PC,itll remember your last list and open it immediately,so you can check the items youve finished.www.dailytodo.org

To shrink your photos

Your photo folder is bulking up in size and you want to cut some flab.No need to install a fancy image editor.Just head to JPEGMini,upload your files and let it run its magic.The smart web app retains the quality and the resolution of the original image while reducing kilobytes,sometimes making photos 1/5th their original size.Its great for saving space on your drive,or for when you want to upload your pictures to the web.www.jpegmini.com

Convert your files

Need to convert a document from.Docx to.Doc or PDF Or change an image from TIFF to JPEG,a video from FLV to AVI,or a song from FLAC to MP3 Zamzar has all your conversion needs covered;complete with the ability to send the file or its link to your inbox.www.zamzar.com

Zipping it up

Simply go to ZipMe,point it to each file you want to zip together and itll work its magic.And just in case someone sends you an archived file and you dont have the right tool to extract it,Wobzip will do it for you,with its support for a wide variety of formats,including 7Z,RAR,TAR,XAR and XZ.www.zipme.jbi.in wobzip.org

COURTESY: TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Wallet-friendly tablets

2012-07-17T00:30:00.000+05:30

Gagandeep Singh Sapra
Suppose you want to showcase visuals or a presentation, and carry your information in a memory card or a USB drive, but your budget is no more than Rs. 12,000. What sort of a device can you use?

A laptop, or even its cheaper cousin, the netbook, are priced out of your budget. Expensive tablets such as Apple’s iPad are also ruled out (it does not accept a memory card anyway). Thanks to an explosion of digital devices, you can find lots of cheap look-alikes and act-alikes on gizmo websites and the grey market — but then, many of these gizmos (often sporting Chinese names and all-Chinese manuals) offer no guarantee or warranty, though at prices as low as Rs. 3,000, this absence should not come as a surprise.

Do these things work? I did spend good money on one of these to try and gauge quality, but it stubbornly refused to boot up when I took it home. Hindi-Chini is not bhai-bhai in this, I thought.

Jokes apart, though, there are indeed a few tablet devices that still figure in the above-mentioned budget range — and are known brands, at that. Let us look at three of these.

Zen Ultrabook - Rs. 6,199

Surprisingly, the Big B of Bollywood graces the box of this tablet. Why would a company spend to hire Amitabh Bachchan to sell a low-cost tab? The answer is inside the box.

The Ultrabook doesn't feel low-cost at all: the build quality is superb, and this is the first tablet designed for the latest version of the Android OS (Ice Cream Sandwich), on which the others in this review also operate.

It looks much more sleek than the Micromax tablet, and does not sport any front-facing hardware buttons. Hardware specifications are similar to the Micromax Fun Tab — 1.2GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, 4GB on-board storage, TF card slot — but the front-facing camera is 1.3 MP, which can take decent pictures. Alas, there is no rear-facing camera.

It can also connect to 3G networks using an external dongle. And, while Zen too has gone in for some partnerships, Micromax wins hands down on this count, though the Zen scores on sound quality and sheer looks.

Micromax Funbook Rs. 6,499

One of the more established players, and the first to bring a price-sensitive tablet to the market. Finished in silver and black, this tablet feels nice in the hand, and works efficiently. There are three hardware buttons (home, return, menu) on the front panel, and volume control buttons. Input slots are HDMI, micro-USB and TF card. Powering it is a 1.2 GHz processor with 512 MB RAM on board, and 4GB of in-built storage. The camera is only front-facing with 0.3 megapixels — just for video calls.

The connectivity is through WiFi and 3G, the latter using a dongle. Micromax has a bundled Tata Photon+ data card offer with the tablet, and also has a lot of content partnerships. The performance is reasonably fast.

Zync z999 Rs. 11,990

This is the most expensive PC in this sub-Rs. 12,000 line-up. Hardware specs are slightly different, in that Zync uses a 1.5GHz Cortex A8 ARM processor, though RAM is the same at 512 MB.

In performance, though, it gave the impression of actually lagging the other two tablets. It has three features that sets it apart — a built-in SIM card slot (bye-bye dongle), two cameras (front- and rear-facing) , and 8 GB of on-board memory.

Zync lets you make voice-calls (if holding it like a phone is clumsy, one could use a bluetooth handsfree), and the 2MP rear-facing camera can come in handy in an emergency.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times

Tools to keep your kids safe on the internet

2012-07-17T00:24:00.000+05:30

Javed Anwer

THE World Wide Web can be a wonderful source for information and education.Yet,it can also prove to be a dangerous place for your young one.From websites full of graphic and violent content to predators that use the web to prey on innocents.How do you ensure the online safety of your kids Cutting off their access is definitely not an option.The internet is too valuable a tool for that.The solution lies in installing a few safeguards.

Create a password for your PC

It is recommended that you have a password for your computer.If your children are too young,dont disclose the password to them.Instead,log on to the system yourself every time they need to use it.
If they are teenagers,create a separate account without administrative privileges and give them the password for that.Also,configure the new account to use parental controls.This way,you can control whether your children can install a program or not and what programs or files they can access.The new account can be created by going into Control Panel and then Accounts in Windows.For information on parental controls,visit www.windows.microsoft.com/ en-us /windows7/Set-up-Parental-Controls

Cut off access to adult websites

Once your kids get access to the web,they are at risk of accessing adult content.The easiest way to deal with this problem is to use OpenDNS an online tool that is pre-configured to block adult content on your internet connection.
To use the service,you will have to create an account with OpenDNS.After that you can use its free Family Shield,which ensures that your kids are not granted access to inappropriate websites.The filter is always up-to-date,adding new sites 24/7.The only problem with OpenDNS is that it is not entirely kid-proof.Older children might actually figure out ways to circumvent this tool.To configure openDNS,go to www.opendns.com/homesolutions /parental-controls

Install K9
For kids who can bypass OpenDNS,you need a program like K9 Web Protection.Unlike OpenDNS,which is a web-based service,the free K9 has to be installed on your PC.Once installed,it can be used to control internet access.It blocks harmful websites and ads as well as keeps a log of which URLs were accessed,what sorts of keywords were used to search and what content was blocked.www1.k9webprotection.com

Get a childrens browser

If your children are under 10 years of age,it is good idea to install the Kidzui browser for them.The software allows access to only those websites and links that are vetted by the KidZui team.This means the content is absolutely safe.Get it from www.kidzui.com Alternatively,you can also try out the free Pikluk from www.pikluk.com.

Courtesy: Times of India