Amazing Pictures

India launches "world's cheapest" tablet Aakash

2011-10-11T14:27:00.002+05:30

Students display Aakash, which means sky, dubbed the world's cheapest tablet computer, after its launching ceremony in New Delhi October 5, 2011. Aakash will be sold to students at the subsidised price of $35 to expand digital access in the Asian giant that lags peers such as China and Brazil in connectivity. (REUTERS/Parivartan Sharma)

A DataWind representative displays the supercheap 'Aakash' Tablet computers during its launch in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. The $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students can be used for functions like word processing, web browsing and video conferencing. 'Aakash' , manufactured by DataWind has a 7"Android 2.2 touch screen and a HD video co-processor. The Indian government intends to deliver 10 million tablets to students across India. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

An Indian student poses with the supercheap 'Aakash' Tablet computer which she received during its launch in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. The $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students can be used for functions like word processing, web browsing and video conferencing. 'Aakash' , manufactured by DataWind has a 7"Android 2.2 touch screen and a HD video co- processor. The Indian government intends to deliver 10 million tablets to students across India. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

Indian students pose with the supercheap 'Aakash' Tablet computers which they received during its launch in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011. The $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students can be used for functions like word processing, web browsing and video conferencing. 'Aakash' , manufactured by DataWind has a 7"Android 2.2 touch screen and a HD video co-processor. The Indian government intends to deliver 10 million tablets to students across India. (AP Photo/Gurinder Osan)

India launched what it dubbed the world's cheapest tablet computer on Wednesday, to be sold to students at the subsidised price of $35 and later in shops for about $60.
Most of India's 1.2 billion people are poor and products such as Apple Inc's iPad are beyond the reach even of many in the fast-growing middle class.
"The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakash will end that digital divide," Telecoms and Education Minister Kapil Sibal said.
The government is buying the first units of the lightweight touch-screen device, called Aakash, or "sky" in Hindi, for $50 each from a British company which is assembling the web-enabled devices in India.
A pilot run of 100,000 units will be given to students for free, with the first 500 handed out at the launch to a mixed response. It supports video conferencing, has two USB ports and a three-hour battery life but some users said it was slow.
India has a reputation for creating affordable products that are easy to use and sturdy enough to handle its rugged environment -- from Tata Motors' $2,000 Nano car to generic versions of pharmaceuticals.
Two years in development, the paperback book-sized Aakash may help the government's goal of incorporating information technology in education, although critics were doubtful of its mass appeal.
Despite being a leader in software and IT services, India trails fellow BRIC nations Brazil, Russia and China in the drive to get the masses connected to the Internet and mobile phones, a report by risk analysis firm Maplecroft said this year.
The number of Internet users grew 15-fold between 2000 and 2010 in India, according to another recent report. Still, just 8 percent of Indians have access. That compares with nearly 40 percent in China.
The Aakash is aimed at university students for digital learning via a government platform that distributes electronic books and courses.
Testing included running video for two hours in temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit) to mimic a northern Indian summer, said DataWind, the small London-based company that developed the tablet with the Indian Institute of Technology.
Rajat Agrawal, executive editor of gadget reviewers BGR India, said the 660 mhz processor from U.S. company Conexant Systems was "decent" for the price, but warned the machine seemed slow and the touch screen not very agile.
"Because of the price there is a lot of excitement," he said. "People might use it initially but if it is not user friendly they will give up within a week."
After first giving them out for free, the government aims to sell them to students for $35 next year. A retail version will be sold in Indian shops for about $60.
The device uses resistive LCD displays rather than a full touch screen and connects via wireless broadband. DataWind CEO Suneet Singh said future versions would include a mobile phone connection, making it more useful in rural areas.
The launch last week of Amazon's Kindle Fire shook up the global tablet market, with its $199 price tag and slick browser a serious threat to Apple's iPad.
Like the Kindle Fire, the Aakash uses the Google Android operating system.
Some of the mainly middle-class technology department students at the event said it needed refinement but was a good option for the poor.
"It could be better," said Nikant Vohra, an electrical engineering student. "If you see it from the price only, it's okay, but we have laptops and have used iPads, so we know the difference."
Some 19 million people subscribe to mobile phones every month, making India the world's fastest growing market, but most are from the wealthier segment of the population in towns.

Steve Job

2011-10-08T09:56:00.000+05:30

Steve Jobs the Short Biography

Youth (1955-75)

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco, California on February 24 1955. His biological parents, unwed college graduates Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah Jandali, had him adopted by a lower-middle-class couple from south of the Bay Area, Paul and Clara Jobs.
Young Steve grew up in a valley of apricot orchards that was already turning into the world center of computer technology: Silicon Valley. It was not uncommon to see engineers fill their garages with all kind of electronic devices in that part of California. Steve Jobs was fascinated by these, and that’s why, in 1969, he met with a computer whiz kid who shared his interests in electronics: Stephen Wozniak — commonly known as Woz. Steve and Woz quickly became friends even though Woz was five years older.
When Steve Jobs reached college age, he decided he would go to Reed College in Oregon. It was an expensive liberal arts college, way too pricey for his modest parents; but they had to keep their promise to Steve’s biological mother, and therefore paid for the tuition. Steve only stayed at Reed for one semester though, after which he dropped out. He then spent a lot of time learning about Eastern mysticism and adopted strange diets, fasting or eating only fruits: it was his hippie period. He even traveled to India with a friend to seek enlightenment at age 19.

Apple’s early years (1975-81)

After Steve came back to the Valley, he focused on Woz’s work on a computer board. Woz was attending a group of early personal computer hobbyists called the Homebrew Computer Club, where he got the idea of designing his own computer (which consisted only of a circuit board at the time). Steve Jobs saw that many people were interested in his friend’s brilliant work: he suggested they sell the board to them. Apple Computer was born.
Apple’s first year in business consisted of assembling the boards in Steve’s garage and driving to local computer stores to try and sell them. Meanwhile, Woz worked on a new, much improved computer, the Apple II, which he basically finished in 1977. Both Woz and Steve knew the Apple II was a breakthrough computer, much more advanced than anything the market had ever seen. That’s why Steve set out to find venture capitalists to fund Apple’s expansion. After a while, he made a deal with Mike Markkula, an enthusiastic former Intel executive who invested $250,000 in their business and assured them their company would enter the Fortune 500 list in less than two years.
Mike was right. The Apple II soon became the symbol of the personal computing revolution worldwide. It crushed all competition both because of its breakthrough hardware features (including its color graphics) and its very large supply of compatible software. The key to Apple II’s success was actually VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program ever brought to market. Thousands of people bought Apple IIs just to use it. As a result, the company grew at a very fast rate, and went public after just four years of existence, in December 1980. Steve Jobs’ net worth passed the $200 million mark on that day — he was only 25.
But Apple’s success was threatened, as industry giant IBM was planning to enter the personal computer market in 1981. Apple had to fight back or they would go out of business in a couple of years’ time. Their Apple III computer had already bombed on the marketplace. They focused all their energy on a project headed by Steve Jobs: Lisa. He had named it after his ex-girlfriend’s daughter, although he denied all paternity (that difficult situation actually caused him to miss Time Magazine’s Man of the Year 1982). The Lisa computer was a breakthrough because it used a graphical user interface instead of a command-line interface. This technology, like many others that would revolutionize computing, was invented at Xerox PARC — but Apple was the first company to bring it to market.

Macintosh (1981-85)

Yet Steve Jobs was soon thrown out of the Lisa project because he was considered too temperamental a manager. Deeply angry, he took revenge by taking over a small project called Macintosh, determined to make it a cheaper GUI computer that would cannibalize sales of Lisa. Macintosh was in development since 1979 and its concept was “a computer as easy to use as a toaster.” Steve Jobs recruited brilliant young engineers in his Mac team and invigorated them by insufflating a spirit of entrepreneurship and rebellion, calling them “pirates”, unlike the rest of the company, “the Navy.”
Even though the Mac project was controversial as it threatened both Apple II and Lisa, and because Steve Jobs antagonized it against the rest of the company, it soon became crucial to Apple’s future because Lisa proved yet another market failure. Steve was supported in his mission by John Sculley, Apple’s CEO, whom he hired in 1983 to help him run the company and groom him into a top executive. In January 1984, he introduced Macintosh in great fanfare.
Although Mac’s first months were encouraging, sales soon started to plummet. There was growing fear in the company that this third flop in a row would put Apple out of business. Besides, Steve Jobs’ continued arrogance drove everyone nuts, starting with CEO John Sculley. After a failed board coup initiated by Jobs in mid-1985, Sculley announced he and the directors had agreed on a new org chart for Apple, in which Steve had no managerial duties whatsoever. He was only to remain chairman of the board.
Steve was stunned. Apple was his life, and he was kicked out of it. He started traveling around looking for new ways to spend his energy. It was actually in that second half of 1985 that he was introduced to a small team of brilliant computer graphics experts that George Lucas was trying to sell. They all shared a common dream of making animated movies with computers. Steve was interested and he eventually bought the company for $10 million in 1986, incorporating it as Pixar.

The NeXT years (1985-95)

Yet his main passion was still to make great computers. In September 1985, he announced to the Apple board that he was going to found a new company, called NeXT, to build an advanced computer for higher education and scientific research. He was going to take with him some of the best engineers and salesmen from the Mac team. Apple disapproved and threatened to sue him. It was at that point that Steve left his company for good and sold almost all of his stock in disgust.
NeXT started work on its computer in early 1986, after Apple dropped its lawsuit. Steve aimed at the highest possible standards for his new machine: he wanted the best hardware, built in the world’s most automated factory, and running the most advanced software possible. He decided the computer’s operating system, NeXTSTEP, would be based on UNIX, the most robust and most complex system in the world — but that it would also be as easy to use as a Macintosh, thanks to its own graphical user interface. In addition, it would make software development real easy with its object-oriented programming technology. These ambitious plans put off the release date of the computer — called the NeXT Cube — to October 1988.
However great it was, the NeXT Cube didn’t sell. It was overpriced and missing useful software. NeXT struggled for years to sell it, expanding its target from just education to businesses, and introducing a cheaper box, the NeXT Station. Yet the number of computers they sold each month remained in the hundreds. The company was bleeding money and all its co-founders left one after the other, as well as its first outside investor, Texan billionaire Ross Perot. By 1993, NeXT had to give up its hardware business and focus only on promoting its advanced software technology. NeXT Software, far from beating Apple, had turned into a niche software development business. Steve was devastated.
In addition, his investment in Pixar also seemed to lead nowhere. The small company had tried to sell advanced graphic workstations to specialized markets since it had been founded, without success. Jobs shut down Pixar’s hardware operations in 1990, decided to focus on developing an advanced 3D language called RenderMan. He kept the animation division, headed by John Lasseter, only because its work on TV commercials were one of the company’s only source of revenues. Hope was brought by a contract with Disney to make a full feature film with computers in 1991. But by the end of 1993, the contract was canceled by Burbank. With both his ventures failing, Steve had reached the nadir of his career. He spent most of his days at home with his young son Reed and his wife Laurene, whom he had married in 1991.

Comeback (1995-97)

Fortunately, as John Lasseter came back to Disney with an improved script for the feature film, called Toy Story, the project got back on track. The movie was to be released for Thanksgiving 1995. As the date approached, Steve Jobs realized what an incredible power the Disney brand was. He decided Pixar would go public the week after the release of Toy Story, cashing in on the media hype surrounding the first computer-generated animation movie of all time. It worked wonders: Toy Story’s box-office success was only surpassed by the Pixar stock’s success on Wall Street. Steve Jobs, who owned 80% of the company, saw his net worth rise to over $1.5 billion — five times the money he had ever made at Apple in the 1980s!
Speaking of Apple, the fruit company was in the midst of his worst year ever. After the release of Windows 95, the Mac, which had turned profitable but had failed to evolve for a decade while Steve Jobs was away, started losing market share at an alarming rate. By 1996, the company’s newly appointed CEO, Gil Amelio, was looking for new software to replace the old and bloated Mac OS. He eventually chose Steve’s NeXTSTEP. Apple paid $400 million to acquire NeXT, and Steve was back to the company that had thrown him out a decade earlier. His official title was that of “informal adviser to the CEO.”
But when Amelio announced Apple’s losses of $700 million for the first quarter of 1997, the board decided it was time to get rid of this terrible manager. Steve Jobs organized a board coup and was named interim CEO of Apple in July 1997. He immediately started an extensive review of the whole company, cutting the number of projects from hundreds to a dozen. The number of hardware products would be cut down to just four. He also made a shocking announcement at Macworld Boston in August: Apple would be teaming up with its arch-rival Microsoft, in an unprecedented deal that would put an end to interminable patent disputes.

Apple back on track (1998-2001)

Steve Jobs quickly gave confidence back to the Apple community. The company launched a revolutionary marketing campaign around a new slogan: Think Different, spreading the idea that people who used Macs were dreamers who could change the world. As the Apple brand grew stronger, the company launched a couple of new successful products, the Power Mac G3 and the PowerBook. Six months after he had come back, Steve Jobs had led the company to profitability.
Yet Apple’s resurgence really came a little later, when Steve introduced a new, amazing consumer desktop computer: iMac. Introduced in May 1998, it was Apple’s first really innovative product basically since the original Macintosh in 1984. The iMac’s stunning translucent design blew away the whole personal computer industry, which had failed to produce anything but black or beige boxes for over a decade. Moreover, iMac was a hot seller, and it was essential in bringing back tons of developers to the Mac platform. Design innovations continued throughout 1998 and 1999 with the colored iMacs and iBook, Apple’s consumer notebook. After three years in charge, Steve Jobs had brought Apple back to greatness. That’s why he finally accepted to become full-time CEO of Apple in January 2000 — the first time one man became CEO of two public companies at the same time.
Still, the very reason Steve Jobs was brought back to Apple had not yet materialize — it was to bring NeXT’s software technology to the Mac platform. This eventually happened in early 2001, as Apple released the first version of its breakthrough operating system, Mac OS X. Mac OS X was really NeXTSTEP with a Mac facade. But it turned out an essential asset to Apple as the company developed breakthrough applications for its Macs as part of the digital hub strategy.
The digital hub strategy was unveiled by Steve Jobs at Macworld San Francisco in January 2001. It was a vision for the future of the personal computer. Although many analysts and self-appointed experts were proclaiming PCs would disappear within a couple of years to be replaced by Internet terminals, Apple believed they would evolve into digital centers or hubs for our new digital lifestyles. In other words, the PC would become the centerpiece of our new lives filled with digital cameras and camcorders, MP3 players, smart phones and other digital devices. The digital hub strategy led Apple to develop a suite of applications designed to manage our new lifestyle, the so-called iApps: iMovie (1999), iTunes (2001), iDVD (2001), iPhoto (2002), iCal and iSync (2002), GarageBand (2004) and finally iWeb (2006). The iApps were a strategic move in Apple’s greater plan to gain market share over the PC, as there was simply no equivalent solution on the Windows platform. Other moves included an aggressive ad campaign (Switchers) and the start of Apple’s retail operations in mid-2001.

The iPod revolution (2001-2006)

However the greatest momentum for Apple came from an unexpected source: the iPod. iPod was an integral part of the digital hub strategy. It was started in early 2001, when Steve Jobs realized that he had misplaced his enthusiasm for “desktop video”, i.e. the ability to edit movies on the computer — which was still far from mainstream. What was really hot at the turn of the century was not movies but digital music, as exemplified by the success of Napster. He focused on catching up and bought an outside hardware developer to work on Apple’s own MP3 player, which was brought to market in record time, just in time for 2001’s holiday season.
iPod’s breakthrough features — its beautiful design, its brilliant user interface and click wheel, its fast FireWire connectivity and its ability to sync with iTunes seamlessly — made it a hot seller from the start. For the first time, people were buying Macs just so they could use this little music player the size of a cigarette box. Apple cashed in on that success and went further in the following years, first by making iPod Windows-compatible in 2002, then by opening the iTunes Music Store and developing a Windows version of iTunes in 2003.
As of 2006, after Apple had continually pushed innovation in its music business by introducing iPod mini in 2004, iPod shuffle then iPod nano in 2005, and expanded its Music Store internationally, it had become the undisputed leader of the new digital music era. A significant landmark was passed in 2006 when Apple’s revenues from iPod equaled those made on computers. For the first time in its history, the firm from Cupertino had left its niche markets to become as influential a player in consumer electronics as Microsoft was in the PC space. iPod’s market share was close to 75%!

The Pixar-Disney merger (2003-2006)

Interestingly enough, iPod also played a critical role in setting Pixar’s future. After having released success after success (A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Monsters Inc. (2001) and Finding Nemo (2003)), the animation studio had decided to let go of its distribution deal with Disney, mainly because of increasing tensions between Steve Jobs and Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Steve Jobs openly said he would not make another deal with the Magic Kingdom until Eisner was out. Turns out his opinion was shared by many an executive at Disney — including Walt’s own nephew, Roy Disney, who started a public campaign to oust the company’s CEO. This led to the nomination of Bob Iger as new CEO in March 2005.
Steve Jobs and Bob Iger started working together because Apple decided to sell TV shows on its iTunes store. In October 2005, in front of an audience of stunned journalists, Steve Jobs shook hands (as Apple’s boss) with the new CEO of Disney — implying a renewed cooperation with Pixar in the near future. This eventually led to no less than the merger of both companies, announced in January 2006. Steve Jobs, who still owned half of Pixar’s stock, became Disney’s largest individual shareholder (owning 7% of the company’s stock). As for Pixar executives Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, they were given critical roles in the new studio.

Apple Inc. (2006-today)

2006 was a critical year for Apple in three respects.
The first was the success of the Mac. Mac sales were finally taking off, and after years of struggle to gain market share, its growth rate was exceeding that of the PC. Several factors accounted for this historic change: the success of iPod of course, and the positive side effect it had on the Apple brand. The move to Intel as well: after years of fighting the so-called Wintel monopoly, Steve had announced in 2005 that the company would start using Intel processors in their Macs form then on. The entire product line was transitioned over in less than a year. Intel Macs were faster and cheaper, but their main advantage was their ability to run Windows — which was a key argument in making Windows users switch, afraid as they were not to find their favorite software on the Mac. Finally, Apple was encountering unexpected success with its chain of retail stores, the fastest growing in the US.
The second crucial development from 2006 was the full acceptance by Apple of its new status of consumer electronics powerhouse, thanks to the success of iPod, the walkman of the digital age. It became obvious in February 2006, when the company released iPod hi-fi, a boom-box designed to work only with iPod (which was discontinued the following year), and Apple TV less than a year later. But the biggest move of course came in January 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced iPhone at Macworld. iPhone was arguably the ultimate Apple product. Its beautiful hardware ran no less than Apple’s full operating system, OS X. Its multi-touch technology, Web surfing and iPod capabilities, easy-to-use interface, and more, made it a smartphone “light-years ahead of its competition”, as Steve Jobs said. It shook the phone industry to its core, down to the exclusive deal that Apple cut with AT&T for subscription plans. Three years after it was introduced, it is already fair to say that iPhone will go down in history as the first digital convergence device, equivalent to putting a computer, an iPod and a phone in your pocket. It was such an obvious part of Apple’s move outside the PC business that Steve announced at the end of Macworld 2007 that the company’s name would be changed from Apple Computer Inc. to Apple Inc.
Finally, the third major event of 2006 for Steve was the so-called backdating scandal. Backdating consists of picking a date in the past, when a stock's value is lower, to assign the exercise price of options. It is an illegal practice that was commonplace in Silicon Valley until it was exposed by a Wall Street Journal article in 2006. Apple swiftly hired lawyers to lead an internal investigation of its own records. They did find irregularities, which were confirmed by the SEC in mid-2007. Two big frauds were unveiled that took place in 2000 and 2001, under Steve Jobs’ leadership. However he was cleared the following year as the SEC found out he had no idea of the legal or accounting implications of the matter. The SEC only charged Apple’s former CFO and legal counsel with fraud. The scandal was significant in the sense that it raised the issue of Apple’s future without Steve Jobs... But the main occasion this issue was raised was not the SEC investigation, it was unfortunately after Steve’s health problems.
In late 2003, Steve was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Fortunately, his tumor was not of the deadly type: Steve would be saved if he agreed to have surgery. But he didn’t, and for nine long months, followed a special type of diet that he thought would cure him from the disease. It was only in August 2004 that he agreed to have the surgery. Everybody thought the troubles were over, as he claimed he was “cured”. Of course there is no such thing as being cured from cancer, and in 2008, people started commenting heavily on Steve’s being increasingly thinner. Although he and Apple kept on denying any serious problem, in December 2008, they announced to everyone’s surprise that the CEO would not go on stage for the last Macworld keynote in history in January 2009. Steve Jobs took six months off (the first half of 2009), as he was awaiting a liver transplant — which he got in April 2009. The whole story of Steve’s cancer raised many a discussion about a public company’s necessary transparency regarding its CEO’s health, especially when that CEO is as essential to its market value as Steve Jobs is to Apple’s.
2010 has seen the incredible rebirth of Steve Jobs as a very active CEO. In sharp contrast with 2009, he came back on stage for many Apple events that year, and surprised the world many times over with insanely great new Apple products. The biggest announcement of all was undeniably iPad, Apple’s iOS-based tablet, which Steve unveiled on January 27, 2010. At the industry conference D8 in June 2010, Steve Jobs clearly stated that in his opinion, iPad had started the post-PC era, and that PCs would eventually become “like trucks”, a marginal part of a market dominated by portable tablets... If this comes true, this one man Steve Jobs will have played a crucial part in both giving birth and putting an end to the personal computer industry.

Conclusion

Steve Jobs is undeniably an extraordinary man by any standard. He has left his mark on no less than five industries: personal computers with Apple II and Macintosh, music with iPod and iTunes, phone with iPhone, and animation with Pixar. The middle-class hippie kid with no college education that he was built a computer empire and became a multi-millionaire in a few years, was fired from his own company before coming back a decade later to save it and turn it into one of the world’s most influential corporations, with millions of fans around the world. He has also contributed to the creation of the new leader in animated movies for decades to come. He has been called a fluke for years, but is now widely acknowledged as one the world’s most eminent business executives and an unrivaled visionary. He has changed millions of lives by making technology easy-to-use, exciting and beautiful.… And you know what the best part is? He’s not done yet.

The two-foot teenager World's Smallest Girl !!

2011-10-03T16:50:00.000+05:30

Her tiny form is disarming. But Jyoti Amge's dreams are as big as those of her friends.At 15 she stands just 1ft 11½in tall and weighs less than a stone, giving her one very big claim to fame - as the smallest girl in the world.Doctors believe Jyoti is a pituitary dwarf but have never been able to pinpoint her condition.Such dwarfism is caused when the body fails to produce enough growth hormone.

Jyoti, centre, with some of her classmates - also aged 15. Her little grey uniform is specially made for herSpecialists have told her she will remain the same size for the rest of her life.'When I was three I realised that I was different to the rest of the kids,' she said.'I thought that everyone was bigger and I should get bigger too.'Jyoti has her own mini grey uniform and school bag and even a tiny desk. But she looks like a doll next to her teenage classmates.She said: 'I am proud of being the smallest girl. I love all the attention I get. I'm not scared of being small, and I don't regret being small. Jyoti, centre, is the world's smallest girl - but still attends school with her classmates, who she says don't treat her any differently..

She works from her custom made chair and table but her pens and books are still rather too large for her'I am sure there are many people in this world who are dwarfs like me.'I'm just the same as other people. I eat like you, dream like you. I don't feel any different.'Weighing 12lb - only 9lb more than her weight at birth, Jyoti dreams of becoming an actress.Despite her size she insists on living as normal a life as possible in her home town of Nagpur in India - including going to the local school.'When I first went to school everyone was so big I used to get scared but I'm okay now, I like it. I have a different desk and chair that were made for me. I'm a normal student.

Jyoti with a family friend - who, at 13 months, is already bigger than she isShe is also like any other teenage girl. 'I have a huge collection of dresses. I like to shop for more. Everyone in my family gets things for me. I love make-up and like dressing up like beautiful models. I would like to be an actress when I grow up. My dream is to do films.'Jyoti has already had a taste of fame in a pop video for Indian star Mika Singh.'They asked her to appear in the video for a song on his album,' said her mother Ranjana Amge, 45.However, Jyoti's dreams of stardom could be ruined because of fractures to both her legs that have never healed because of problems with her size.

Baby of the family: With sister Rupali, 18, Archana, 23, mother Ranjana Amge, 45,, father Kishan, 52, and brother Satish, 22

Jyoti is taken to school on brother Satish's motorbike, along with sister Archana'First I could walk, but I slipped on ice during a holiday and hurt my leg. I find it strange that my legs just don't heal. I don't like it, it causes me pain.'Mrs Amge said: 'No-one knows why she is so small. Jyoti is small, yet cute, and we love her very much.'People in the region of India where the family live flock to see the teenager and some even treat her as a goddess.She receives a lot of support from her brother and two sisters. Oldest sister Archana, 25, said: 'I have been taking care of her since she was a small baby. She is so delicate and fragile.'During her first five years of life, brave Jyoti was in and out of hospital as she constantly fell sick, but eventually she grew stronger.The teenager's father Kishan Amge, 52, a construction worker, said:

Tags: unbelievable little girl tiny smallest girl baby women baby little girl facts world facts animal facts hard fact animal facts human facts accidents world record dictionary sex facts fastest strongest longest dangerous horrible love and romance facts

Movie Review Force

2011-10-03T16:16:00.000+05:30

EDITOR'S RATING:

Cast: John Abraham, Genelia D'souza, Vidyut Jamwal
Director: Nishikant Kamat

Story: Supercop ACP Yashvardhan ( John Abraham) thinks his strength lies in the fact that he is a loner, hence he can go all out against the drug mafia with no fear. But things change when he falls in love with the vivacious Maya ( Genelia D'souza) in the middle of a tough assignment where he must contend with a fierce opponent ( Vidyut Jamwal), hungry for revenge. Will love become his weakness or can the tough cop carry on his mission, undeterred?

Movie Review: A remake of the 2003 Tamil blockbuster Kaakha Kaakha, Force is a heady cocktail of high powered action and breezy romance that ensure there's never a dull moment. Director Nishikant Kamat too goes the Rohit Shetty-Abhinav Kashyap (Singham-Dabangg) way and tries to create an old-fashioned action film which sticks to the tried-and-tested formula of pitching the hero against the villain in umpteen high testosterone sequences of pure mara-mari. And for punctuation, there are the romantic interludes where the macho superhero, awkward with emotions, tries his best to forge a strange new relationship which demands a totally new passion from him: one that has nothing to do with battering heads and smashing vehicles.

But hey, it's the age of serenading the vintage, isn't it and retro is truly in vogue. Also, the fact that Force showcases some superb craftsmanship, both in its action and emotional sequences and has a second half that literally hurtles at a frenetic pace, ensures that you never lose interest in the onscreen proceedings. Things to enjoy: oddballs John and Genelia trying to find a common meeting point, with Genelia openly declaring she wants to make love to the hunky cop, the cop quartet that tirelessly wages a war against the drug cartel, the fight sequences shot with art and finesse by Ayanankar Bose, the high emotional quotient in an out and out action film....And yes, how can we forget this: John Abraham's pure beefcake appeal.

Go for it, all you Gods of War enthusiasts.

Author: Nikhat Kazmi

Movie Review Mausam

2011-10-03T16:12:00.001+05:30

Director: Pankaj Kapoor

Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor, Supriya Pathak, Anupam Kher and Aditi Sharma

Rating: Two and a half stars

She sighs beautifully. He grits his teeth manfully. She arches her neck just so she can drape it over his arm when they dance. He holds his spine ramrod straight the minute he puts his aviators on. She skulks on stairways hoping he will recognize her. He wades through snow to rush back to her. She is a Kashmiri Muslim fleeing from militancy. He is a Punjabi scarred by Operation Bluestar. Together they traverse India's modern history, meeting and parting at key points.

She has to leave the tiny fictional village of Mallukot because of tension after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992. He has to leave Scotland where he is training because the Kargil war breaks out in 1999. 9/11 features as do the Godhra riots. She weeps silently, he gnashes his teeth some more. But as the young star-crossed lovers span continents and circumstance, he an Indian Air Force pilot and she a sometime ballet dancer-sometime shopkeeper, the audience loses the plot.

Every scene is beautifully shot, the romance is meant to grow on you with its artful glances and coy exchanges. But instead of a slow burn, it's just plain exhaustion. In the age of instant email and easily transported cellphones, the lovers leave no forwarding addresses or contact numbers. They rely instead on the goodness of neighbours and the willingness of relatives.

This is Pankaj Kapoor's first film as director and clearly he's aiming for an old fashioned epic. He pours his heart and mind into it, tying it up in a neat little bow into a message for insaniyat in the time of brutality, but I wish his lovers had been more ardent. And more suited to each other. He's a peacock and she's a swan and the twain shall never mate.

Madame Tussauds

2011-09-28T11:54:00.000+05:30

Diffrence between ferrari launch & Truck launch

2011-09-26T16:49:00.000+05:30

Past..present....future...

2011-09-26T16:43:00.002+05:30

NASA released photos of planet Mars

2011-09-26T16:31:00.000+05:30

Moneyball

2011-09-26T10:16:00.000+05:30

Moneyball is a movie about baseball...but it's not a sports movie.

Grouping the latest film from star Brad Pitt with heartwarming, Americana, it-all-comes-down-to-the-big-game films doesn't quite make sense—no matter how much Pitt looks like Kevin Costner or Robert Redford. Moneyball is an underdog tale of a different kind, one that questions the enchantment of the game rather than embraces it. While a film driven by sports statistics and business may sound drab, Moneyball manages to discover its own, unique sentimentality thanks to strong performances and a restrained style.
We pick up with Billy Beane (Pitt), GM for the Oakland A's, after yet another disastrous season. Surrounded by aging scouts convinced of their ability to hone in on a player's intangible skills, the keen manager grapples with the loss of his best players, a recruiting budget dwarfed by his competitors and no solution in sight. After all, baseball is a game of the coin—buy the talent, buy the wins, buy the championship. Wheeling and dealing across the country, Beane realizes the A's need a new strategy or they'll be forever at the bottom. He finds that innovation in Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a statistics wiz who introduces Beane to the baseball equivalent of counting cards: the theory of sabermetrics.
Thankfully, watching and enjoying Moneyball doesn't require an extensive background in math, as Beane allows the stuffy, subdued Brand do the number-crunching. Much like writer Aaron Sorkin's Oscar-winning The Social Network, the script (co-written with Schindler's List and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo writer Steve Zallian) pulls back the curtain on a complicated process, but makes it easily digestible, and more importantly, emotional. Beane puts his job and reputation on the line for Brand's theory, which boils down to the idea that all you need to win a baseball game is runs. Who needs star players when MLB rejects can make it to home base?
Pitt's depiction of the real life Beane isn't a showy, star performance—but it's one of his best to date. The character is reserved and hushed, exploding when the gravity of his situation but quickly pulling himself back into professional mode. In order for Beane to enact Brand's plan, he has to de-romanticize a game that means everything to him. Beane goes to great lengths to remind himself that baseball can't be fun—he doesn't watch the games, he commands his team to hear the sorrow-filled silence of a loss and he emphasizes that no matter how many games he wins, the only one that matters is the last. Beane keeps this light and cool with his co-workers, but underneath—where Pitt shines—he struggles.
While Moneyball is Pitt's show, his ensemble of co-stars deliver equally impressive work. Hill plays against type, keeping his usual fast-talking humor in his back pocket and letting the larger-than-life Pitt properly wow him. Philip Seymour Hoffman appears briefly as the A's manager Art Howe, who butts heads with Beane over the direction of the team. What could have been a surface-level villainous role is elevated by Hoffman, who makes the old school way of thinking sound perfectly reasonable.
The film, directed by the Oscar-nominated Bennett Miller (Capote), is slow and methodical, paving the way for exhilarating moments between Pitt and Hill as they juggle phone calls, fire off statistics, educate their players and compile the misfit team. Miller intertwines flashbacks of Beane's early career and real life footage into the main narrative, capitalizing on a variety of filmmaking techniques that organically stem from Beane's perspectives. This isn't squeaky clean Hollywood filmmaking, but it's slick. Mychael Danna's score stands out as a thrilling companion to the visuals, ethereal tunes that add a touch of humanity to a bookish drama.
Moneyball isn't this year's Field of Dreams or The Natural or Little Big League, but it is great drama. Compelling and sweet, the film takes a relatively unknown aspect of a well-known sport and turns it into something grand. Baseball's always made for a great life metaphor, but Moneyball shows us one we've never seen before.

India's

2011-09-21T15:00:00.000+05:30

India is home to over 1.2 billion people of wildly varying religions, cultures and levels of wealth. Only 61 years since declaring its Independence from English rule, modern India is still defining itself, sometimes against the friction inside and outside of its borders. Recent newsworthy events in India include vast Monsoon flooding, conflicts in still-disputed Kashmir, and religious clashes between Hindus and Christians - and celebrations conducted by Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and more. Though there's no possible way for these images to be comprehensive, here are some recent photos of scenes in India.

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Nice...........................

2011-09-20T16:56:00.000+05:30

The Most Easy Way For A Space Trip For U................

2011-09-17T17:06:00.002+05:30

Nice Kids

2011-09-17T16:59:00.000+05:30

Hollywood Makup...........

2011-09-17T16:56:00.000+05:30

World's Longest EsCaLaToR

2011-09-17T16:52:00.000+05:30

If You Love Chocolates You Will Like Them Even More

2011-09-17T16:50:00.000+05:30

Amazing Nature Pics

2011-09-17T16:45:00.000+05:30

Nice Dogs

2011-09-17T16:42:00.002+05:30

2011-09-17T16:39:00.001+05:30

2011-09-17T16:35:00.001+05:30

Nature:Fantastic Railway Pictures

2011-09-17T16:28:00.000+05:30

Stunning Nature Photos Of Austria......

2011-09-08T16:27:00.000+05:30

2011-09-08T14:32:00.000+05:30

Dubai- Metro Driverless Train launch

Dubai Metro launch
Dubai unveils $7.6-billion mass-transit rail system...

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, boarded the first ever Dubai Metro train on Wednesday night.

Fireworks lit up the sky around the Mall of the Emirates station to commemorate the event.

Before boarding the train, Shaikh Mohammad introduced the blue Nol travel cards, which are personalised with his picture.

The train is pictured leaving the Mall of the Emirates station on its maiden journey.

Members of the public will be able to use the Metro from Thursday, September 10.

Shaikh Mohammad punched in the first ticket exactly at 9pm, 9 minutes and 9 seconds, on 09/09/09.

Nakheel Harbour and Tower Metro Station was the official opening station for lucky winners of the Golden Ticket competition.

A conductor makes an announcement on the first journey of the Dubai Metro train

People queue up to use their Nol cards to gain entry at the Nakheel Harbour and Tower Metro Station.

The inside of the Nakheel Harbour and Tower Metro Station.

Earlier in the evening, Shaikh Mohammad, accompanied by officials and members of the press, arrived at the Mall of the Emirates Metro station for the official launch.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad with Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Minister of Finance, Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA, with officials after the inaugural Dubai Metro train arrived at Al Rashidiya Station on Wednesday.

His Highness Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum (extreme right), Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, officiated the launch of the Dubai Metro on 9th September 2009.

The metro will eventually become the world's longest driverless train system...

Dubai Metro, the world’s longest automated driverless train system built in just 4 years.A Metro train makes a trial run on the Red Line on Shaikh Zayed Road. The Metro will help commuters reach strategic areas of the city, and will also branch out into the suburbs through future extensions.
It is the world’s largest automated driverless train system – with just under 75km of magnetic track. The Metro will be able to carry up to 27,000 passengers in each direction every hour.

Winners of the RTA 'Gold Ticket' competition had the privilege of riding in the first Metro train from Nakheel Harbour and Tower to Mall of the Emirates station.

Sheikh Mohammed at Al Rashidiya station.

The Burj Al-Arab hotel provides the backdrop as the new Dubai metro train undertakes a final test run.

The new Dubai metro train will run both above and below ground.

Workers make the final preparations for the opening of a metro station in Dubai.

The Dubai metro track is seen along Sheikh Zayed Road, adjacent to luxurious new high-rise towers.

trial run

2011-09-08T13:53:00.000+05:30

World's smallest aquarium.

Here is the perfect home for small fry: the world's smallest aquarium.
Created by Russian artist Anatoly Konenko, who specialises in miniatures, the tiny tank is made of glass, contains tiny stones and plants and is home to a group of tiny fish.
It is just 30mm wide, 24mm high and 14 mm deep - enough to hold just 10ml of water, or about two tablespoons' worth.
Scroll down to see video... and more of Konenko's art

Small fry: The tiny fish tank was made by a Russian artist who specialises in miniatures

The water has to be applied using a syringe so as not to disturb the landscape the Siberia-artist lovingly created.
Konenko, who calls his art 'micro-miniatures', even made a minuscule fishing net which he used to place the fish, baby Danios.
The adults are usually a favourite with more normal sized tanks but the tiny fish look at home in Konenko's construction for which he has since added a specially built air pump.

In the net: Anatoly Konenko made a small net to match, and tiny Danios fish swam around in the tank, which takes only two teaspoons of water to fill

Something fishy: The tank is just 30mm wide, 24mm high and 14 mm deep

Konenko is also a painter and is in the Guinness World Records book for making the world's smallest book.
He said: 'I've been doing microart for 30 years, doing the smallest things in the world.
'This tank was made out of curiosity.'

He works using a microscope for most of his work and has won awards in his home country and round the world.