Things from, of and about the head on the shoulders.
A year ago, ISRO announced Cartosat-1. Yesterday, on May 05, our PSLV put it in orbit along with another micro-satellite (HAMSAT) while the President watched on from the Mission Control Centre. Reuters’ story has a cool photograph of the PSLV launching off with the Cartosat-1 remote sensing satellite. Read the ISRO’s official press release for […]
Well, looks like we might have one soon. Rediff is reporting reporting that our IT Minister is going to meet Intel top brass end of May just to make that happen. "I am meeting Intel chief Craig Barett in the end of this month and I have one point agenda to press him for setting […]
I just read that ESA is going to back Indian moon mission titled Chandrayaan. This is good news! India is perhaps the only country to have not used its satellite technology and launch ability for massively military purposes. Most of our satellites are remote sensing polar orbiters with a few primarily communication geo-stationery ones. It […]
I had an amazing experience a few minutes ago. I walk out of the office to go downstairs and what do I see? Three monkeys just outside the glass in the lobby sleeping in a hugging position. I rushed back in, got my phone and shot a small video and 4 pics. You have to […]
I was supposed to be in New Delhi yesterday. I had an acquaintance from US going through the city and it was a perfect chance to get to know each other. He’s from my profession too and well, I admit, part of the zeal to meet up stemmed from a greed that something might come […]
I cast my first vote ever today. A citizen becomes eligible for voting on attaining the age of 18. It has been 8 years since and in the numerous elections that have gone by, I’ve not been able to vote because I was not a registered voter. This time, when the Assembly (State) elections came […]
All of a sudden, I’m finding more and more people using the term ‘Bangalored’ to mean something that has been outsourced. Statements like “They’re Bangaloring it to Asia” and “More IT jobs are getting Bangalored to China than to India now”. Dunno who coined the term but it’s picking up fast. Turns out (and I […]
Ferrari‘s pit in the 2005 F-1 season will have a few familiar faces. Familiar because they’ll be Indian. BBC reports that TATA has signed a deal with Ferrari to not only provide information technology services (through TCS) but also engineering services for the car itself! It this cool or what!?
Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer, is to start making handsets in India. I wonder if this means cheaper Nokia sets. 😉
Yes, it’s true according to The Guardian‘s this report. Instead of paying hefty fees to international chemical companies for patented pesticides, they are reportedly spraying their cotton and chilli fields with Coca-Cola. What is funny is towards the end of the report, at least one uncorroborated use of New Coke and some other proven uses […]
Looks like BlackBerry is in India through a tie-up between Research in Motion and Airtel, part of India’s largest telecom conglomerate, Bharti Enterprises. The wireless service is designed to forward customers’ e-mails from a desktop to a mobile device and synchronize changes between the two. RIM will offer three BlackBerry wireless devices–the 7730, 7230 and […]
Came across the story India Emerges as Innovation Hub on Wired today. It highlights 4 technologies in development in India that are aimed at rural/backward areas of the country and which could find widespread use in the so-called Third World countries: Script Mail (a regional language handwriting recognition & mailing system) – HP Research Centre, […]
My friends at UCIL got interviewed and published on Sunday in Hindustan Times. I’ve been associated with them for over 4 years now. My first decent job (and the second in total) was at the cybercafe UCIL’s CEO Anuj and his elder brother Amit had started way back in ’99. We were the first cybercafe […]
According to C|Net, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata just bought a 96-processor XD1 supercomputer (datasheet) from Cray. The specifications page does’t list a 96-processor unit but from the looks of it, it should be around 500 Gflops. That makes me wonder why they didn’t purchase a supercomputer from C-DAC which is making and […]
The Indian national daily The Hindu has reported that the Indian President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has “advised defence scientists to shun proprietary systems and opt for open source codes to enhance software security in defence networks.” Open source codes can easily introduce the users to build security algorithms in the system without the dependence […]
The Times of India reports that in light of Marvel Comics’ plan to indianise the superhero to take advantage of the popularity brought on by the two motion pictures, “Peter Parker of Queens, the hero under the classic Spiderman mask, will be replaced by a young, Indian boy named Pavitr Prabhakar” from Mumbai (Once upon […]