War of the Titans

Yes, I am talking about the war that has been sparked between two technological giants, Microsoft and Google. At this point of time Microsoft is valued at $222 billion and Google at $149 billion. Google has gained on the market value of Microsoft. One of the most interesting things that has happened is the announcement by Google that it is going to launch its own Operating System called Google Chrome. This is not the browser but actually a new Operating System. No doubt that it will take a lot of time for Google to gain momentum, but one thing that can help them is the quite large price tag that Microsoft has ended up having on Windows in order to grow their revenue and it leaves them vulnerable when Google says that they would make a quality operating system focused on today's Internet use and do it FREE.

Even if we compare the Google Docs, Google Text and Google Spreadsheet with the Microsoft Office, though cannot compete to the functionality that MS Office provides but they can make improvements over the years. Also Google provides all these features for free is a huge advantage to Google. Microsoft has also realised the same and thus it introduced Bing as a search engine in competition to Google.

The war is definitely on, it is good for us as we shall have more options to choose from. It is also good when there is competition as then both the giants will have to work hard to beat the other. At this point Microsoft stands ahead of Google but things may change very soon. I am so very excited and am enjoying this Cold War and waiting for it to get more intense. It is eventually going to be good for us as users irrespective of the fact who wins as we shall be the winners anyways.

Google Gmail Loses Contacts

Within a period of one month, Google Inc's web based service Gmail suffered its second high profile technical problem. I saw a message appearing on the top of Gmail that read "Gmail is temporarily unable to access your contacts. You may experience issues while this persists." Before this there was an outage of Google services for which Google said "the outage was due to some of its routers becoming overloaded during a routine upgrade". They even called it a big deal on their official blog. Then it was last Tuesday that Google News was not available for nearly two hours.

It is really surprising that Google has undergone such outages so frequently. We generally do not expect players like Google to be down and out. I believe that Google is one of the most used website that is presently available. Google's GMail has millions of users attached to it, it also has lots of other services to offer to almost all type of people. But as an ardent fan of Google I personally believe that such mishaps do happen and should just be ignored. But we cannot say the same for Google as it is the one which has accustomed us to almost 100% up time. I firmly believe that they would rectify the little flaw that might have just crept in and would be back to their helping self pretty soon.

Tendulkar verses Rest Of the World

ODI centuries: INDIA - 163, Australia - 146, Pakistan - 141, W.Indies - 130, Sri Lanka - 98, England - 90, South Africa - 85, New Zealand - 70 AND SACHIN - 44. I read this line and it made me take a bow to salute the aura of the great man, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. The statistics outline the number of centuries hit by all the players combined for a country and the individual effort of Sachin Tendulkar. This is an amazing stat that shows the amount of dominance that Sachin has on world cricket. He has been a great servant to the game of Cricket and his contributions to the Indian Cricket has been second to none. The only thing lacking in his marvellous career is a World Cup Victory and we hope that he gets his wish in the coming Work Cup.

I have heard many criticism against Sachin extending to the fact that he is not a team player and he never performs in crunch situations or when the team needs him the most. I would like to re frame this statement to say that when Sachin has performed there was not much need of the others and he had won the match convincingly that there was no pressure at all. His statistics are the dream figure for any cricketer. He is respected by all cricketers world wide and has been christened 'GOD' by his fans in India.

I thank him for bringing us pride and entertaining us throughout his carer, he has achieved almost all the feats and we wish that India win the next World Cup with Sachin playing a major role in it. That should be the proper end to a fabulous carer, he has been a role model, ideal for many players and has brought great pride for our country.

Fake Currency In India

Fake currency issue is not new to the Indian Economy, it has been there for some time now. Sources believe counterfeit currency worth Rs 169,000 crores (Rs 169 trillion) is in circulation in the country. This is a very sensitive issue and needs to be taken care of and dealt with great care. I believe the government, banks and the Reserve Bank of India are all in denial mode when dealing with the issue. That attitude has to change. Instead of denying the facts they should stand up together and act against it.

The RBI gets to know when an entire series of currency notes has been faked. The RBI should immediately withdraw the series once such things happen. The Banks follow a process where they simply destroy the fake currency when it comes to them. They should instead lodge a police complaint and try to reach the origin of the problem. The police shall also refrain themselves from troubling the person who has reported such a problem. That should solve the problem to a great extent.

I believe the Government importing ink and paper for currency is one major issue and a weak link. Why can't we manufacture these within the country. It is also believed that the Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence directorate is allegedly a key player in this menace, thwarting attempts by Indian security agencies to crack down on the racket. It is always the common man who suffers. If you by chance get hold of fake currency, you will end up paying it from your pocket. It has a direct impact on us, we need to stand up aginst it.

Comedy Of Errors

I have read it several times 'you better be careful what you say because it might turn around on you' but yesterday I experienced it for the first time. Though in my case the situation has not taken a bad shape and it has remained as a good joke but things might have worsened.

Here is how it all started, while I was in Allahabad last month, I was caught by this very irritating person about whom we have the concept that you better you accept what he says else you are inviting trouble. He asked rather announced that I am working for Tech-Mahindra, I was not in mood for arguments so I just remained silent and things were left there. Now a old student of mine whom I taught in Aptech Allahabad Centre added me as a friend on Orkut. He then sent me a scrap which read 'Sir Aap Tech Mahindra mein hain plz give me your contact number'. Then this friend of mine who has this habbit of religiously following my scrap book read the scrap and assumed that I have actually joined Tech Mahindra without informing him.

I casually called this person yesterday and he asked me why didn't I inform him about joining Tech Mahindra, I was also in a jolly mood so carried on the conversation without letting out the truth. He told me that Tech Mahindra has a office in Noida, I agreed. He further said that you must have got a good pay increase. On this point I extended myself and told him that I am directly going client side [London] and shall be leaving India by Deepawali for a minimum period of 8 months. This person was shattered and was so depressed hearing that I shall be out of India for 8 months that he decided to come over to my place and as I write this post he is on his way to my residence.

My remaining silent for that minute in Allahabad has led to such a great story revolving around me. It is fun but I feel sometimes it may take ugly shape. I have not yet decided what I will do when this person comes to my place, I will tell him the truth but not before I tease him a bit.

Have You Changed My Password ?

I was shocked to read a mail with 'Your Yahoo! password was changed' as subject. The contents of the mail read "The password for your Yahoo! ID was recently changed. You don't need to do anything, this message is simply a notification to protect the security of your account. Your new password may take a few moments to become active. If it doesn't work on your first try, please try it again later." I was totally unaware of the fact that I had changed my password. Actually I had not changed it.

This is a real strange mail that I received and was surprised. I then strolled through my memory to check if I had given out my password to anyone but to no avail. Infact I had changed my password some 10 days back so it was not very difficult to remember if I had given it to anybody. How could this have happened, is the question that I am unable to answer. The message body said that "1. Someone changed your password on 10/09/2009 at 11:04AM. Please sign in to your Yahoo! account to confirm you still have access after the change." I could not access my account so I reset my password and even changed the security question. Lets see what happens now. If anyone of you has any idea what might have prompted this do let me know.

To add to my wounds, even my GMail password is gone, I have this GMail account through which I access Facebook, Orkut and Gmail has also been lost. This is the 3rd time in a span of over a month that my GMail password has been rejected. I don't know if someone changed it or I am having problems remembering things. It has been a day of surprises, but none of them so far has been good. I am totally fed up with this mess, boy I need to get over it as soon as possible, it is killing me from inside.

Another Feat for Mahendra Singh Dhoni

Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has topped the list of world's 10 top earning cricketers compiled by Forbes. The list also includes four other players from the sub-continent — Sachin Tendulkar, Yuvraj Singh, Rahul Dravid and Sourav Ganguly. Dhoni is at the top of the chart with an earning of $10 million, followed by Tendulkar at the second spot with earnings worth $8 million in the list of 'The World's Top-Earning Cricketers'.

The list is as follows:

1. Mahendra Singh Dhoni with $10 million
2. Sachin Tendulkar with $8 million
3. Yuvraj Singh with $5.5 million
4. Rahul Dravid with $5 million
5. Andrew Flintoff with $4 million
6. Saurav Ganguly with $3.5 million
7. Ricky Ponting with $3.5 million
8. Kevin Pieterson with $3 million
9. Brett Lee with $3 million
10. Michael Clark with $2.5 million

The figures here tell us that there is no recession when it comes to cricketers. The IPL earnings also played an important role, and the heavy money involved in IPL has had a direct impact on the ranking. Out of the top 10 in the list of 'The World's Top-Earning Cricketers', 8 played the IPL.

It is good to note such good figures in times of recession where we really appreciate such news which shows the growing economic conditions. But this time things are a bit different, the wealth is getting concentrated to a few individuals and thus the flow of money is being restricted. Still I feel satisfied and content that the Indians are sitting pretty on top of the snobbish Aussies.

Teacher's Day

Indians have always respected and idolized their teachers. Earlier, we used to call them 'Guru' and now 'Sir' or 'Madam' but the role of teachers has remained the same. They were, are and will continue to be our guiding light, creating conditions conducive to our overall development. We will always be thankful to them for their constructive support. It is as an expression of this gratitude only that we celebrate Teacher's Day in India.

Teacher's Day is a tribute to the hard work and devotion of the teachers all year long, to educate a child. On this day, we gratefully remember the great educationist, apart from honoring all the teachers that have made our life much more knowledgeable and fulfilled, as serving as our beacons of light. Indian Teacher’s Day is dedicated to Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who was a zealous advocate of education and one of the greatest scholars and teachers of all times, apart from being the first Vice President and the second President of India. As a mark of respect to this phenomenal teacher, his birthday came to be observed as Teacher’s Day in the country.

We used to have a great function at school level to celebrate teacher's day and to honor the hard work that our teachers put up just to make our future bright. I take this opportunity to thank all my teachers and wish them a very Happy Teacher's Day. I shall always be grateful to them for helping me develop and reach the place where I am today. I thank them for believing in me and making me believe that I can.

10 Kms Long Traffic Jam on N.H. 24

The jam started when the residents of Ghaziabad protesting the demolition of unauthorised colonies on the bank of river Hindon and neighbouring areas blocked traffic and hurled stones at police. They also set afire vehicles, blocked traffic and indulged in heavy stone-pelting on Saturday. They set ablaze 6 vehicles of on N.H. 24 near Vijay Nagar.

Atleast 25 people were injured, which included seven policemen, in this act of violence. This sparked long traffic hurdles and there was a massive traffic jam which got extended to 10kms. It was also known that Police swung batons and fired teargas shells to scatter the protesters. The residents also say that there were air firings but the officials denied it.

It is a very shameful thing that such incidents just keep happening across the country for no basic reason, also the people who got injured or the vehicles that were set ablaze had nothing to do with the situation. Things such as this always harm the general public and trouble the common man. The people who had been victim to such violent acts were common people who just happened to be caught at the wrong place and at the wrong time. I think it is high time that we grow up and act more sensibly and be more responsible so that incidents like these don't happen again.

BrainPort Vision Device

We are all aware of the technological enhancements that are taking place in the world around us. Technology has had its good and bad effects. But then everything thing has a negative angle attached to it. So not going into the negative impacts let me walk you through the latest technological enhancement. In Australia, scientists have created an electronic device that may allow blind people to "see" using their tongues.

The tool is called the Brain Port Vision Device and resembles a pair of sunglasses attached by cable to a plastic lollipop. It works by taking pictures filmed by a tiny camera, and turns the information into electrical pulses, which can be felt on the tongue. Tests have shown that the nerves send messages to the brain, which turn these tingles back into pictures.

The device collects visual data through a small digital video camera about 2.5cm in diameter, which sits in the middle of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. The information is then transmitted to a hand-held control unit, which is about the size of a mobile phone. The unit converts the digital signal into electrical pulses and sends this to the tongue via the lollipop that sits on the tongue. The lollipop contains a grid of 600 electrodes, which pulsate according to how much light is in that area of the picture. The control unit allows users to zoom in and out and control light settings and electric shock intensity.

It has been learned that this device could be available for sale later this year. Devices such as this are the real use of the Technology as it enables a person to overcome his physical or mental disorders. This is an amazing innovation. As per Robert Beckman, president of US-based Wicab which is developing the BrainPort, "It enables blind people to gain perception of their surroundings, displayed on their tongue. They cannot necessarily read a book but they can read a sign."

Congratulations!!!

This is a very personal post and references that I shall be making may not be known to most of you. Still I had promised myself that I would dedicate a post in my Blog to a very dear friend. I have this very good friend of mine who had been a victim to the ongoing recession and was out of business for last few months. This person had a very positive attitude that helped him keep his cool. He did not panic and kept on working towards his goals. Today though he has no job in hand but has achieved what he has been working for the last few years. This one is you my friend.

I have intentionally kept the name a secret as I don't want to expose the person. He had been pursuing a professional course along with the job, even after he was stripped of his job, he didn't give up and kept up the pace. He finally got what he was working for. Today he got the results and he has qualified and thus crossed the last hurdle that stood between him and his dream. He is now fit to apply for any job in his domain. Though the gap in service may prove to be a draw back, he still has the chances of getting his dream job. This has also taken him one step closer to his final objective of starting his own firm.

This is a good example for all of us, where we see how a person even under the worst of situations, held himself and came out with flying colors. I would take this opportunity to Congratulate him on his much deserved success. May God be with you and help you achieve many more dreams. May you achieve all that you aim for. Take care and CONGRATULATIONS !!!

Aaj Pahli Tareekh Hai

The Latest trend in the advertisement industry is the new concept introduced by Cadbury Dairy Milk: Din Hai Suhana, Aaj Pahli Tareekh Hai, Khush Hai Jamana, Aaj Pahli Tareekh Hai. The basic concept behind this advertisement is to hit the 2 and 3 tier towns where chocolates haven't made it to the celebratory occasions. The smaller towns give a high importance to pay day and hence the concept.

But when I tried to analyze the concept with reference to my or corporate lifestyle, I didn't find much pleasure in realising that today is the 1st day of a new month. Rather I was disappointed to note that there are 30 days left before the salary gets Credited into my account ;). I have almost parted away with half of my salary to prior commitments and/or EMIs. So it does not make me happy to note that this is the 1st day of the month. We feel more excited and thrilled on the last day of the month, last working day to be precise as we wait anxiously for the salary to come. But as I said that the concept is to target the Tier 2 and 3 towns, it is a very good concept.

Still I believe there are so many positives, after all it is a new beginning. Even Factually 1st September is Haryana Tourism Day. It was on 1st September that 1971 that Haryana Tourism came into existence. To celebrate this day, Cycle rally-cum-race is held from Chandigarh to Panchkula Town. The day also marks on "Pakwan Pratiyogita", Blood Donation camp and Run for Fun events. Life Insurance Corporation and Indian Oil Corporation were founded on 1st September 1956 and 1964 respectively. So this is and has been quiet an eventful day indeed.