Paranoid Hacker

Orient green power raises $ 55 million in a private equity funding

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:55:00 +0000

Recently, cleantech sector India has seen surge in VCs investment. It seems, all big VC firms are making beeline to invest in Indian cleantech sector. Last such investment is from Olympus capital who are investing $35 million in Orient green power. Bessemer venture partner and Shriram EPC are also investing $ 10 million each in same round.
source:- vcccircle

Exro designs a new turbine generator, 50 % more efficient

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:07:00 +0000

Well I can't help covering renewable energy.. ExRo, a wind energy start-up, has reinvented turbine's generator such that its efficiency has gone up 50 %. This new design has replaced traditional mechanical transmission with electric transmission. This new design can adapt to change in wind direction and speed with a bit of blade pitching and maintain optimal rate of electricity production. It uses stack of generator instead of a generator with large diameter to generate more power. Usage of stack allow easy customization of turbine with respect to local wind condition. Read the full article here.

Paper thin speakers, made from nanotube

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Researchers in china are developing next generation paper thin speaker which will be transparent, flexible, and stretchable. Made of carbon nano tube, It can be mounted on various shapes, such as room walls, clothes or gadget surface and will throw sound in all directions. This research is definitely going to revolutionize the speaker industry replacing traditional coil-magnet type of speaker. So soon we will be seeing slicker mobile phones and a film replacing ear phones. read the full article at sciencedaily.

Nokia N96 Bruce Lee Edition :)

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:33:00 +0000

I really don't want to talk about N96. I am posting this video just because I am big fan of Bruce Lee :)

Wave energy converter- providing clean energy

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 04:04:00 +0000

A buoy like device, searaser, that harness the the power of sea wave to pump water to 60 feet can help to generate clean electricity for more than 470 homes. Searaser first pup water to height of 60 feet and then same water travel downwards to hydroelectric generator. It uses 100 percent clean energy stored in sea wave. Not sure about the cost, but world need such innovation to fulfill ever increasing energy needs. Read more here.

Nuclear or Wind and Solar power

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:46:00 +0000

I have witnessed drama surrounding India-US nuclear agreement and always wondered whether electricity generated from nuclear reactors will satiate the ever increasing energy needs. One of the reason I didn't like this agreement because of radioactive generated waste, which will be generated by proposed nuclear power plant. Where we are going to dump those waste. India is not sparsely populated and for doing any such project government will have to relocate large chunk of population. This article discuss something similar. Guess what problem is much bigger than I thought.

Few points mentioned are:-

1> The cost of electricity generated from nuclear power plant is twice that of renewable power plant(wind).

2> There are many hidden costs, which include waste disposal, massive insurance premiums and decommissioning of plants when they reach the end.

3> Cost of constructing a nuclear plant has doubled in last of couple of years. And uranium has been six time more expensive.

4> Cost of catastrophic accident is 70 times more than collective liability on nuclear plants.

Indian government will have to decide which way they want to go. They want to use faded and outdated nuclear technology or want to invest in renewable energy power plant, which is clean, create more jobs and generate more energy for same investment.

iPhone glitch :- Picture automatically attach to e-mail :)

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:21:00 +0000

God this is really hilarious. Please read this discussion on apple community. A lady was searching through her husband mobile phone when she found a raunchy picture of him in sent email folder. When she inquired about it to her husband, he said that he never sent it and it was an apple glitch and he got it confirmed from local apple store. He thought she would believe him :).

Azure power raises series A funding from Helion and Foundation capital

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:40:00 +0000

Azure Power, has raised undisclosed sum of series A funding from Helion Venture partners and Foundation capital, as reported by vccircle. Azure is a top solar energy provider in India. It provides solar energy solutions to commercial, utility and government customers, involving design, finance, construction, operation and maintenance of system.

This investment just came few days after KPCB and Sherpalo investment in Kotak Urja. From seeing these developments, we can safely assume that renewable energy sector will be really hot and we will see few more such investments in cleantech. Although entry cost in this sector is considerably higher than web or software startup, opportunities and funding scenarios are much better.

PS: All those share market freaks ruing over there lost money can invest in cleantech sector before it becomes overhyped and overcrowded.

Adobe to release FLASH 10 and AIR on smart phones

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:59:00 +0000

There could be more than two drawbacks of Flash Player and AIR, technologies released by Adobe, if we ask developers their opinions. But two major drawbacks upon which all developers would agree are 1> Flash and Air applications are very cpu intensive. and 2> They don't have high mobile penetration as compared to desktop(98%).

Apple denied FLASH and AIR on iPhone, because of their high cpu intensive and power consuming operations. And apart from that they were not optimized for ARM's processor on which iPhone was built. Adobe seems to provide solutions to all these problem at Adobe MAX 2008. First they are going to give demonstration of full Flash player 10 over smart phones, which were till now only supporting a light version of Flash. Second, they have announced a technology collaboration with ARM to optimize and enable FLASH and AIR on ARM powered devices.

"The collaboration is expected to accelerate mobile graphics and video capabilities on ARM platforms to bring rich Internet applications and Web services to mobile devices and consumer electronics worldwide."

Both of these announcements hold great significance for FLASH and AIR developers community. First , It will provide an access to big mobile market. Second, It will help to optimize FLASH and AIR so that they are less cpu and power intensive. Which will in turn increase popularity of FLASH and AIR applications on Mobiles and in countries with low Internet bandwidth.

India conquers the moon

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Today at 8.31 pm (IST), India became fourth nation to plant its national flag on Moon. This is really proud moment for every Indian. Chandrayaan symbolize everything Indian .. hope, aspirationn self confidence and dream of a better tomorrow.

Newspaper coverage:

1>timesofindia

2>hindu

3>ndtv

Where did my life go

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:13:00 +0000

Credit:- we the robot.

Interview with Grameen Bank founder

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Recently, venturebeat published interview with Grameen Bank founder and Noble prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Read the interview here.

Main points in interview were:-

On Micro-Credit

"The borrowers own the bank. The bank makes a profit and it goes back to the owners. There is no collateral, no lawyer. Nothing."

On Technology

"Technology can do miracles. Take the case of a cell phone. The power of a cell phone alone. It can revolutionize the whole banking system, the credit system, healthcare."

Other than that he talks about different aspect of social entrepreneurship and how it is different from philanthropy. And how technology going to impact future of micro-credit. A must read.

Free Software

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:40:00 +0000

In one of my post I advocated for open source or "real free" software instead of free propriety software's given by Microsoft to students and start ups. Not only in India but all most everywhere free software has much less number of user and developers than propriety software. Because of lack of awareness about free software, it is not that popular among software developers or students. And lack of contents or training materials make job of trainers and teacher really hard.

The SELF, an EU funded project, wants to change all this. It aims to be community driven platform for the production and distribution of educational materials on free software. They are trying to evolve like wikipedia community, which thrives on edited user generated contents. For them "free" in free software refers to freedom of use, modification and distribution, resulting in programmes that tend to be more adaptable, scalable and more cost effective than their propriety counterparts.

What we can do?

I use "real free" software for all kind of software development. I must confess that although there are great user generated educational contents on free software, many free software definitely lack good documentation or training materials with examples. I will urge you to join the SELF project and help in making free software really free by contributing in its cause. Anybody can contribute.

Fresher Recruitments

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:39:00 +0000

Courtesy VCCircle

Laptop batteries developed in Korea to last 8 times than current ones

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:32:00 +0000

Researchers at Hanyang university, Korea under the supervision of Prof Cho Jae-phil have developed Lithium secondary batteries for portable electronic devices(mobile phones, lap tops) that will last eight time more than existing batteries. This improvement in batteries life was achieved by using silicon cathode instead graphite. read the story here.

SKS Microfinance raises $75 million

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:51:00 +0000

SKS microfinace has raised $75 million in fourth round of funding, largest investment in any institutions in micro finance sector. They want to use this fund to leverage access to commercial finance and scale their outreach. Read the full article here.

SKS Nicrophone was started by Vikram Akula in 1998 and has more than 3.3 million clients across India. Money lenders in villages or small towns are going to face stiff competitions from SKS if they don't change their money-lending practice. In last few days we have seen investment in solar renewable and micro finance, I will say great days are coming for India.

KPCB, Sherpalo to invest $8 Mn in Kotak Urja

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:21:00 +0000

KPCB, Sherpalo and a US company Applied Materials have invested $8 million in Kotak urja, which manufactures solar appliances and promote eco friendly and environment safe renewable energy propagation through its product.

Kotak urja is planning to invest this fund in expansion and creating infrastructure to handle big projects. Big VCs firm investing in green technology is definitely a good sign. Doing so not only good for countries like India and china with ever increasing demand for energy but will also encourage entrepreneurs to invest their time and energy in green technology. I think this kind of development will touch everyone in India or elsewhere just like television or mobile technology did.

High tech robbers

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:29:00 +0000

How often have you been to a locksmith? I have been many times. Sometimes I would go to make a copy of my key for my visiting friends or relatives or sometimes just to get a duplicate for a lost key. The locksmith would pick one key with no cuts on it but size similar to that of original. And would make few cuts here and there and within 10 minutes duplicate is ready. I remembered many of the locksmith would claim that they can make duplicate after just having a look at original. You might be wondering why I am talking about locksmith..

Recently, researchers at University of California San Diego have created a software "sneaky". It process digital image of a key and measures the depth of each cut and generate some numbers which generally locksmith uses to make a duplicate key. This software works for blur image or image taken at any angle. And according to researches anyone with basic knowledge of MATLAB and computer vision could create similar system. Read the full article here.

I am not telling you to be paranoid. But just to be little careful of High Tech burglar. Don't put pictures of your key of cars or home on social networking sites or on display on your lunch table at public places and keep it always in your pocket.

Iphoneize your website

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:40:00 +0000

You can make iPhone version of your website using a simple tool Intersquash, developed by Jon Wheatley. this tool just needs RSS feed of your site and site name and it returns it provides code that ypu have to embed in your website. read full article here.

Youtube's fourth founder

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:13:00 +0000

A person named Herbert Elwood Gilliland III claims in his mail to techcrunch that youtube's name and idea were his and he never got any credit for that. Read the whole story here.

Portable tiny solar cells

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:24:00 +0000

Researchers at University of South Florida have developed solar cells, which are one fourth size of a rice grain. Using 20 such cells they have manage to generate 7.8 volts of electricity. These cells are so tiny that they could be sprayed over any surface that are exposed to sunlight -- a uniform, a car or a house. Read full article here.

I see great implication of such discovery. A large chunk of Indian villages don't have electricity connection and those villages which have face frequent power cut. Replacing conventional electric connection will be distant dream but this research can have a lot of utilities for villagers- For example - torch or emergency lamp. Mobile company like Nokia who are targeting rural Indian population can pump in money in such project as solar charger or mobile with solar battery. And Indian universities should also take lead in research on solar and wind energy instead wasting time on computers and e-something bla bla.

Russian company to sue google for $ 3 billion

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:47:00 +0000

Google may face a lawsuit worth $ 3 billions from a Russian company "Era Vodoleya" who claims that they patented contextual advertising technology a year before Google started using it. There is no response from google yet so we can wait and see. Read the full story here.

I have few doubts on Russian company claim and the nature of patent granted them. It is possible that many companies started developing contextual-technology at the same time. Earliest version of contextual ads was developed by GoTo(Overture) in 1998, which was later acquired by yahoo in 2003.

Microsoft offering free software developing tools to stundents and start ups

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:24:00 +0000

Microsoft is offering developer tools like windows server, microsoft visual studio, XNA game and many more softwares for free to college and high school student under dreamsparkindia program. Is it Microsoft being altrustic or they want to catch impressionable mind at young age. So they get used to Microsoft softwares for developing softwares and demand similar software setting in their professional life.

On a similar note, Microsoft is offering free softwares to startup in US under the bizSpark program. Apart form this Microsoft will also provide development and marketing support to these startups.

Both of these act are so un-microsoft in nature. I think they will start charging once these companies get out of start up mode and by that time their application or software will be highly dependent on microsoft properirty softwares.

My suggestion for schools and colleges:-

They should not only go for free softwares but also open source. And both are not same thing.

Nokia 1202

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:42:00 +0000

Two days ago Nokia launched its cheapest mobile set:- Nokia 1202. This mobile is tailor made for low income group in Asian and African subcontinents. It has dust resistant keypad , a flashlight, elongated battery life(talk time 9 hours) and has five separate address book. It will be one of the cheapest mobile in India -- approximate price 1300-1500. I can see really good usage of 1202 in small towns and villages. So anybody can see all these features are aimed at rural population who have long and frequent power cut, have to travel on dusty country roads and have to share a phone with whole family. As Nokia is trying really hard to break into rural population, it should also try to build electricity free battery charger. Because of frequent power cut charging battery in a village is really a painful task. I think some solar or mechanical battery charger will be something that will separate Nokia from others.

Nokia has also planned to launched "Nokia Life Tools, which will help rural users to have agricultural information and education services . They are trying really hard to bridge the digital divide in India. Read the press release here.

Mp3 search using google

noreply@blogger.com (Ninja) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:54:00 +0000

All of us know downloading copyright music is illegal and therefor many torrent searching sites has been black-listed by authority. But we can search Mp3 using google also. By simply using this simple query

-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) " BANDNAME/SONG"

Read full article here which was on digg front page. Though this query isn't that effective for bollywood mp3s but it was showing relevant results.
Warning:- Downloading pirated mp3s is illegal.