Rs 1 lakh car taking shape at NID -Rediff

Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Design is designing India's smallest and cheapest four-seater compact car. "This is India's smallest car which will cost around Rs 100,000. It will run on both petrol as well as liquefied petroleum gas and will revolutionise the Indian car market with its unique design and technology," Pradyumna Vyas, principal designer, NID.

Avinash Belgamwar, managing director of Conex AvioAuto, added, "We had given the project to NID for designing a small car as it is a pioneer in design. The company is evaluating the market viability of the car and has plans to hit the market with the new car within two years." The car was designed by two NID students, Abhinav Tiwari and Amit Patankar, who are doing the final diploma project sponsored by Conex AvioAuto.

Talking about NID's focus on new avenues in designing, Dr. Koshy, executive director of NID, said the institute was concentrating on animation, computer game designs, automobiles and jewellery, as these segments needed more experiments with designs.

Intel VIIV -ZdNet

Intel, happy with its success launching the Centrino brand for mobile computers, on Wednesday introduced a new brand called VIIV (rhymes with "strive") for entertainment PCs. VIIV includes a dual-core processor, a chipset and a network controller and will require Microsoft's Windows Media Center Edition.

One feature of VIIV will be automatic transcoding -ensuring that audio or video encoded in one format can be translated into one the user's computer can actually handle without user intervention. Another feature will be instant shutdown and start-up that will work as fast as it does in consumer electronic devices such as DVD players. PCs today have suspend-and-resume features that bypass sluggish start-up and shutdown processes, but still aren't as fast as a typical television.

10 years of mobile telephony in India -New Delhi Times
Exactly ten years ago, Jyoti Basu in Calcutta called Sukh Ram in Delhi in what was the first mobile phone call in India. Brick sized cell phones used to cost Rs. 45,000 and each call costed Rs. 16.5/minute. Back then, cell phone was a status symbol. Today, there are over 60 million mobile connections in India (expected to double in number in next 12 months). A local call costs around Rs 1/min and a cell phone can be purchased for less than Rs. 3000.

Wireless technology has been a boon for India. In a country where setting up wired infratstructure is very expensive and time consuming, wireless is the perfect solution to connect remote villages. The timing was also just right as India escaped the burnden of legacy technology and reaped the benefits of latest GSM technology.

Cell phones have not been just about technology. They have brought about a cultural change in the country. SMS is the favorite means of communication for everybody today. Most television programs now come with an SMS contest. A recent headline in a Hindi newspaper read Cell phone companies to ban gayi, ab kaun banega crorepati (Cell phone companies already became millionaires, now who wants to be the next millionaire) in reference an SMS contest to gain entry into Kaun Banega Crorepati.

Of late, cell phones have brought the citizen journalism revolution to India, albeit in an unexpected way. Camera phones and MMS have created our own desi papparazi which spares neither bollywood personalities nor corrupt government officials. The recent DPS MMS scandal even led to wrongful arrest of the CEO of Bazee.com.

Urban India has transformed completely in the last 10 years. Indians have demonstrated that they are not afraid to embrace technology and illiteracy doesn't hinder adoption of technology, provided it is useful to the masses. We have yet to see the same revolution in the computing space. May the next 10 years witness the computer revolution!

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Beware of Ctrl+C !

We copy various data by ctrl+c for pasting elsewhere. This copied data is stored in clipboard and is accessible from the net by a combination of Javascripts and ASP.

Just try this:
1) Copy any text by ctrl+c
2) Click the Link:
http://www.sourcecodesworld.com/special/clipboard.asp
3) You will see the text you copied on the Screen which was accessed by this web page.

Do not keep sensitive data (like passwords, creditcard numbers, PIN etc.) in the clipboard while surfing the web. It is very easy to extract the text stored in the clipboard to steal your sensitive information.

To avoid this, do the following...

1. Go to internet options->security

2. Press custom level

3. In the security settings, select disable under Allow paste operations via script.
Now the contents of your clipboard are safe.

Other option is to use Mozilla Firefox and get rid of the above and many other security problems.

Execution matters, not just the idea

It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea. Ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

Explanation:

AWFUL IDEA = -1
WEAK IDEA = 1
SO-SO IDEA = 5
GOOD IDEA = 10
GREAT IDEA = 15
BRILLIANT IDEA = 20

NO EXECUTION = $1
WEAK EXECUTION = $1000
SO-SO- EXECUTION = $10,000
GOOD EXECUTION = $100,000
GREAT EXECUTION = $1,000,000
BRILLIANT EXECUTION = $10,000,000

To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution.

Mac Hacks Allow OS X on PCs -Wired:
Hackers have found a way to bypass a chip designed to prevent the Mac OS from running on non-Apple PCs, which are often cheaper than Macs. Some of the hackers are running the tweaked version of the operating system on their PCs natively.

OSx86 is designed to run on Apple Computer's next generation of hardware, which some call "MacIntels" and others "MacTels" because the machines will run on Intel microprocessors rather than the PowerPC processor used in current Macs. The hacked version of OSx86 is based on pirated software, which came from copies of the operating system sent to participants in the Apple Developer Connection.

No one knows exactly why OSx86 appears to be running faster on the PCs than the Mac OS does on today's Macs. The hacked OSx86 bypasses a chip, the Trusted Platform Module, or TPM, that is intended to prevent the system from running on ordinary PCs.

Tagging -The Hindu:
THE euphoria of quickly unearthing loads of information by using search engines is often watered down by the problem of plenty. If only the contents were organised in neatly-labelled piles, tracking and discovering things digital may no longer be a grind. This is where `Tagging' helps.

Tagging has taken off on a few Web sites such as Flickr, Furl, del.icio.us, and Rojo. Even while storing the addresses of Web pages of interest, and ensuring they can be revisited subsequently from any computer or browser, the ever-increasing member-base of these Web sites is voluntarily classifying and categorising diverse pieces of content. In doing so, these members add descriptive tags to their bookmarked pages to swiftly rummage through the heap of bookmarks and zero in on their favourites the next time. More importantly, these tags are visible to the other members and help all of them swoop down on content they may never have found on their own.

What sets tagging apart from the search keywords or metadata that Web sites have long embedded is its social facet. In understanding and categorising something for yourself, you are also benefiting hundreds and thousands of other users. More than depending on computer search algorithms, tagging unveils the larger benefits of collective human wisdom.

Time To Abolish Patents For Software -Sadagopan:
Microsoft has filed very high number of patent applications in the US, which are under review currently - the pace of filing: 60 fresh, non obvious patentable ideas every week. Reason for sudden increase in applications - Microsoft says it finds that others file about two patents for every $1 million spent on research and development. If Microsoft was spending $6 billion to $7.5 billion annually on its R&D, it would need to file at least 3,000 applications.

Abolishing software patents would be a very good thing, as increasingly the current system actually impedes the advance of software technology, at the same time that it works quite nicely to enrich patent holders.A patent goes well beyond copyright and trademarks - It protects even the underlying concepts from being used by others - for 20 years. The article highlights that had Dan Bricklin, the creator of VisiCalc, the spreadsheet that gave people a reason to buy a personal computer, obtained a patent covering the program in 1979, Microsoft would not have been able to bring out Excel until 1999.