Nokia has decided to try their hand at a green phone (eh..... this is getting boring huh??).
Although this is still a concept design, I guess the fact that they are trying their hand at it even is a good sign (especially in these globally warm days).
But here's the twist.... This phone doesn't promise safe disposal or eco-friendly usage. Here's the "
green" part. The phone’s outer shell is created from
old metal cans through a process of
upcycling. The gaskets and the backing for the numeric keypad are made from
car tires, while all the plastic components are made of
recycled PET bottles. Oh yeah... so now you know where your recycled
Coke bottle and that
Dunlop you'd given away goes!!
Here's what it'll look like:
Although the look of it is quite a bit different from the rest on the market ( accept it, its
UGLY!!), the small size would likely make it a bit more of a sought after item. Sadly Nokia don’t seem to be taking this beyond concept stage. Hmmmm.... Here's what I have to say about this:
Nokia Nokia give us this phone, Clean up our planet No plastic, only stone
Nokia Nokia Give us this cell, coz if we wait any longer we'll all be going to hell!! -- Navin (in a poetic mood)
OK, after the Chinese did it, did you actually think that us Indians would be far behind?? Of course not!! After the post in which I wrote about
the Chinese version of the flying saucer, an Indian scientist in the US has come up with his own version of the mystical vehicle.
Subrata Roy, a professor at the
University of Florida, has applied for a patent for his design of a circular, spinning aircraft. The vehicle dubbed
WEAV, short for
Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle supposedly offers several advantages over most other spacecraft prototypes.
Here are some of its features:
- It can hover and take off vertically
- It is remarkably reliable (mainly because it has no moving parts)
- The design is partially hollow and continuously curved (This improves lift and control)
Roy has, in the past worked in the U.S. Air Force-funded plasma research to develop the propulsion system devoid of typical aircraft parts such as propellers and engines.
Here is how it works (I don't really blame you if you don't get it):
Electrodes lining the vehicle’s surface ionize the surrounding air. This creates plasma on the vehicle’s exterior. An electrical current sent through this plasma generates a force that not only produces the necessary lift and momentum. It also stabilizes the vehicle in windy conditions.Roy envisions the craft to be used for surveillance as well as in other atmospheres, such as that of Saturn’s moon Titan, whose high air density and low gravity would be favorable to saucer flight.
A problem pointed out however is that the plasma necessary to fly will obstruct wave transmission used for communicating with a remote source like another plane/ the control tower.
Hehehe..... Us humans are definitely getting smarter, Plasma powered aircrafts, I don't think it'll be a long time before we come up with the question which fits the answer "42" (
Read this for more details)
Of course the risk is huge, but so is the payoff. If successful, we will have an aircraft, a saucer and a helicopter all in one embodiment --Subrata Roy
This has to be the awesomest geek wedding cake ever!! It was a
Flickr user's wedding cake, and it seems to have everything in the
Mario world represented nicely. It’s got
Toad,
Yoshi,
Piranha plants,
mushrooms, even the
Chain Chomp guy. The castle on a planet was inspired from
Super Mario Galaxy. The cake was created by
Beth from
Let Them Eat Cake in California.
Ever wondered why people never divorce with such style?? They should. You’re getting the hell away from each other after all which, according to me, is cause to celebrate!! Marry with a
Mario cake and divorce with a
Zelda cake, that’s what I say. Or how about a
Tetris cake, that can be thrown at each other.
Pure fun huh?? Go Geeks!!
Desi Tech Giants
Infosys has done it again!! Now they have been granted the patent to produce holographic mobile handsets capable of projecting, capturing, and sending
3D images.
In a press release, they have claimed that
by 2010, the patented devices will be capable of beaming 3D films, games, and virtual goods into our laps.
These cellphones will capture and send 3D snapshots of the surrounding world, helping accident investigators, teachers, and doctors work remotely by instantly relaying realistic depictions of car damage, injuries, medical scans, or educational aids.
The device will work on a revolutionary technique with a powerful on-board processor building a series of 2D shots,from a secondary device like from a digital camera, and then convert these into 3D holograms using algorithms called
Fourier transforms to artificially generate the extra third dimension.
I'll write about Fourier Transforms ( if possible) in the coming week!!The
patent, which was granted by the
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, allows Infy to squeeze complex 3D holographic images through the narrow pipes of existing communications networks by sending only the unprocessed data to be translated into the 3D hologram at the other end.
The global 3D screen market is forecast by the industry to grow to
8.1 million units by
2010.
Well I only hope that Infy is calculating time as per
IST (
Indian Standard Time) and not
IST (
Indian Stretchable Time)!!
Holographic handsets have the capability of enriching the user experience with an actual 3D experience and higher-quality images. This gives users a more realistic experience in areas like gaming, medicine, movies etc --Infosys representative
In one of the best online gags that I have come across in the last few months, especially at this time, with
Yahoo!'s top execs quitting, someone seems to be having some fun at Yahoo!'s expense.
Planning on quitting Yahoo!?? Simply visit the newly created site
Yahoorezinr.com and fill up the "
DIY Yahoo! Resignation Letter" which provides you options in the form of drop down menus and you're done. Yahoo! employees can expedite their resignation to Yahoo! Chief and Co-founder
Jerry Yang with a host of
"Mad Libs"-style pull-down menus.
For example, one sentence reads: "My last day here will be two weeks from
today/ tomorrow/ the best day of my life you f@$#ing incompetent nincompoops" . All you have to do is select the most appropriate choices for your resignation letter. Then upon clicking submit, your default email editor opens up with the subject "
Get bent a$$hat" and the to email id "
JerryYang@Yahoo.com"
Some points in the letter are obvious hyperbole. In one of the menu options, the letter suggests that Yahoo doesn't understand how to run a taco truck, much less a $30 billion business. The rants may reach Yang himself, but that's unclear, too. The form letter is addressed to
JerryYang @Yahoo.com which frankly I cannot confirm is Mr. Yang's id!!
Anyways, disgruntled employee or a competitor having a laugh at Yahoo!'s cost, this tool is a must try....Give it a go!!
Great news for
GMaps fans!! You can now use a simple plugin to doodle on Google maps and share your doodles with friends with a single click!!
When Google launched the MyMaps feature last year, many people criticized the fact that you couldn't actually customise maps. For ex. to show someone in school the way to your home, or the way to that uber-cool club from your workplace. While google has done a great job adding a directory of special layers, the tools for creating your own maps have not seen that same advancement.
To answer that call
Quikmaps, a third party tool that plugs into the Google Maps data, is a far simpler solution letting you simply doodle on the map. I doubted the power of this tool but once i started using it, I simply fell in love with it!! In most cases this plugin is a breeze to use and is much more understandable than Google's straight line tool The best part is that the results will scale when you zoom in and out. However you cannot measure the distance between two points using this plugin.
Map creations can be embedded, which you can see below, and can be shared via email or with a simple URL.
Go ahead....try it and I'm sure you'll never stop!!
A computer model has suggested that an icy, unknown world might exist in the distant reaches of our solar system beyond the orbit of Pluto!!
The hidden world is predicted to be much bigger than Pluto by on the model and its existance would satisfy the long-held hopes for a "
Planet X" envisioned by scientists and sci-fi fans alike.
This Planet X could also explain unusual features of the
Kuiper Belt, a region of space
beyond Neptune littered with icy and rocky bodies.
The computer model was created by
Lykawka and
Tadashi Mukai, from the
Kobe University. The Model has been described in a recent issue of
Astrophysical Journal.
If this Planet X is confirmed, it would technically not be a planet, but
a plutoid.
Read This Older Post to understand why!! Under
IAU definitions, the new world will be the largest known plutoid!!
The Kuiper belt has always wed astrophysicists with its myterious characteristics. For example
Sedna, a rocky object located
three times farther from the sun than Pluto. Sedna takes
12,000 years to travel once around the Sun, and its orbit ranges from
80 to
100 astronomical units (
AU).
Obviously, now the question rises, can this planet X support life?? Well, frankly, at that distance, any surface water completely frozen. However a subsurface oceans (like those suspected to exist on some planetary moons) may exist.
We are still scratching the edges of that region of the solar system, and I expect many surprises await us with the future deeper surveys --Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, Arizona.
Nasa's Phoenix lander has unearthed compelling evidence of ice on Mars, the US space agency believes.
Chunks of a bright material found in a trench, informally known as
Dodo-Goldilocks, dug by the craft, have disappeared over four Martian days, suggesting they have vapourised.
The dice-sized chunks were unearthed on the 20th day of its stay on Mars.Four days later when the trench was snapped again, some of the chunks had disappeared.
The finds almost completely agree with the hypotheses that water is locked up in a permafrost layer close to the martian surface.
"It must be ice," said Dr Peter Smith, Phoenix's principal investigator, who is based at the University of Arizona.
There had been some question whether the white material was salt as I had mentioned
in this post.The sublimation test is confirmation that the substance is ice because
salt doesn't sublime!!
While evidence of ice on Mars has been gathered before, part of Phoenix's mission is to search out evidence to support the idea that the polar region of the planet could be habitable.
Further confirmation of the ice theory came from another trench, known as
Snow White 2.
These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice --Dr Peter Smith
Related Posts:
Phoenix Strikes "Something White"Mars Orbiter To Phoenix- "Say Cheese"Phoenix Has LandedPhoenix Set To Land
The Phoenix space rover has struck something white..... Is it ice?? Is it salt?? Whatever it is, it shows that substances do exist below the topsoil of Mars.... What exactly is it?? Only time will tell...
And you know where to come for all your updates......
Pictures of the "
White Substance"
The substance could not be studied today as there was a small glitch in the flash memory of the probe....
In NASA's words: "
NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission generated an unusually high volume of spacecraft housekeeping data on Tuesday causing the loss of some non-critical science data.
Phoenix engineers are analyzing why this anomaly occurred. The science team is planning spacecraft activities for Thursday that will not rely on Phoenix storing science data overnight but will make use of multiple communication relays to gain extra data quantity"
Hopefully, all problems will be sorted out soon!!
Related Posts:
Mars Orbiter To Phoenix- "Say Cheese"Phoenix Has LandedPhoenix Set To Land
This may seem amusing to some, but only victims of shoulder surfing or ‘
over the shoulder’ (OTS) data theft know how destructive it can be.
OTS data theft often leads to untraceable leakage of sensitive data like passwords, credit card numbers, phone-numbers etc. The problem is that in most cases, victims remains clueless about the stalker!!
To cope with this type of destructive data theft,
Cell Savers have come up with
Magi-Privacy™ screen - a thin, one-size-fits all type of coating to the screens of handheld devices due to which the screens would appear black when tilted, allowing only the user perfectly interact with the device!!
The screen has compatibility with almost all cell phone brands ranging from BlackBerry, HTC, LG and Motorola to Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and even Toshiba, to mention a few, and fits portable screen sizes of
up to 4.5 inches. The
Magi-Privacy screen can be pasted without any adhesives and can be stripped off without any residual remains.
It retails for
£7.99 (
$15.20 USD). Interested Indians can
buy it online!!
Cell-Savers future plans include the addition of the
Magi-Privacy Screen™ filter for use on computers and notebook screens and the
Magi-Mirror Screen™ which converts the screen of mobile devices in to a portable compact mirror. Both the
Magi-Mirror Screen™ and
Magi-Privacy Screen™ function as tough screen protectors, protecting the handheld device screen from damage caused by scratches and preventing glare.
Stay Safe!!
Oh yes, thats right... the Chinese may not be among the automobile producers on Earth, but outside our planet, Chinese automobiles are all the rage!! Space-crafts made in China are selling like hot cakes in the
post-Magellanic region, not to mention the popularity of these space-crafts in the
Andromeda galaxy....
OK, maybe this is a little exaggerated, just a little, but this may soon be true!! A Chinese company has developed a prototype
UFO-like aircraft capable of flying at an altitude of
around 1,000 meters with speed
up to 80 Kmph!!
The disc-shaped craft, developed by
Harbin Smart Special Aerocraft Co Ltd, is
1.2 meters in diameter and weighs
10 kilograms. It is pretty obviously unmanned and uses a single propeller. It can take off and land vertically and hover in the air.
Amazingly, it is environment friendly and uses
methanol for fuel!!
The scientists at the
HSSA Co Ltd, say that it took
around 12 years and around
$4 million to develop the aircraft which can be used for
aerial photography,
geological surveys and
emergency illumination.
At the time of writing, no abnormal spacecraft sightings or abductions have been reported in China. Honest!! Hopefully we Indians will in on the act too. That way, we can perfect the Flying Saucer and give some payback to alien worlds!! Lets see how they respond to '
Saas-Bahu' serials......
Here's a question for you.... How many songs do you think an average teen has on his
iPod?? And what percentage of those tracks are pirated?? A recent study has answered these questions and the results are shocking!!
The survey, conducted on iPod owners in the age group of 14-24, by the
British Music Rights has shown that
over 50% the average
1770 tracks on an MP3 player pirated ones.It also revealed that
95 % of teenagers and young people copy music in some way or the other.....Illegally!! This means that an average owner keeps
£750 (Roughly
Rs. 60000!!) worth of copied music on their iPods!!
Here are some statistics from the survey:
- 58 % of the surveyed audience admitted having copied music from a friend’s hard drive to their own,
- 63 % download music using P2P file sharing networks, and
- 42 % allow P2P users to upload from their own computers.
WOW!!
However there was some relief for the legal music lobby:
- 60 % of the surveyed audience said they would carry on buying original CDs.
- 80 % of current P2P users said that they would be interested in a legal file-sharing service, and would even be willing to pay for downloading legal tracks.
I don't really know if this is the future is bright for the legal music industry or not!! What is more shocking, atleast for me is the fact that this survey was conducted in the UK, a country known for its openness to "
legal- file sharing". What do you think Indian music enthusiasts will say?? I can bet that the amount of pirated music on "Indian" music players is far greater than their UK counterparts.....
71 thousand jobs are also lost every year due to music piracy. And with the advent of newer, better
software with extended search capabilities like Vuze, it seems that this number will only rise over the next few years.
First and foremost, it is quite clear that this young and tech-savvy demographic is as crazy about and engaged with music as any previous generation. Contrary to popular belief, they are also prepared to pay for it too. But only if offered the services they want --Feargal Sharkey, BMR’s chief executive
If you've heard
P2P then you've most probably heard of
Azureus, one of the most popular torrent client available. Now Azureus has changed its name to
Vuze. Along with the name, Azureus has also filled up its trunk with some new and nifty social-networking features in its latest upgrade (
version 3.1).
The name Vuze, has been adopted from the name of a desktop video player that was launched last year. The new client bundles the player and torrent-client together and binds them with some new features.
Vuze 3.1 features a search engine which users can use to spider across multiple torrent-tracking Web sites such as
MiniNova,
SuprNova or
The Pirate Bay while looking for content.
Other new features included in Vuze 3.1 are the social networking features. These features let you share your favorite torrents directly with friends and create profiles. One grouse is that chatting haven't been introduced in this release. However Vuze has maintained itself Open-source.
Azureus has had a rough patch over the past few months, especially with the introduction of plug-ins that track statistics on ISP throttling behavior. It seems like the merge was one of the few options it had left. Being a Azureus user in the past, I felt pretty much at home with the new Vuze... However I can't really say how many Azureus users will readily jump to Vuze. Guess we'll just have to wait and watch.
Just a list I
stumbled upon!! might help you if you've just completed your
10+2 or are planning to pursue your higher education in
India..... please note, this list is not my personal opinion!!
| RANK | Name of Institute | City |
| 1 | IIT Kanpur | Kanpur |
| 2 | IIT Kharagpur | Kharagpur |
| 3 | IIT Bombay | Mumbai |
| 4 | IIT Madras | Chennai |
| 5 | IIT Delhi | Delhi |
| 6 | BITS Pilani | Pilani |
| 7 | IIT Roorkee | Roorkee |
| 8 | IT-BHU | Varanasi |
| 9 | IIT-Guwahati | Guwahati |
| 10 | Coll. of Engg, Anna Univ. | Guindy |
| 11 | Jadavpur University , Faculty of Engg & Tech | Calcutta |
| 12 | Indian School of Mines | Dhanbad |
| 13 | NIT- W | Warangal |
| 14 | BIT, Mesra | Ranchi |
| 15 | NIT- Trichy | Trichy |
| 16 | Delhi College of Engg. | New Delhi |
| 17 | Punjab Engineering College | Chandigarh |
| 18 | NIT- K | Suratkal |
| 19 | Motilal Nehru National Inst. of Technology | Allahabad |
| 20 | Thapar Inst of Engineering & Technology | Patiala |
| 21 | Bengal Eng and Science University , Shibpur | Howrah |
| 22 | MANIT | Bhopal |
| 23 | PSG College of Technology | Coimbatore |
| 24 | IIIT | Hyderabad |
| 25 | Harcourt Butler Technological Institute | Kanpur |
| 26 | Malviya National Institute of Technology | Jaipur |
| 27 | VNIT | Nagpur |
| 28 | NIT- Kozhikode | Kozhikode |
| 29 | Dhirubhai Ambani IICT | Gandhinagar |
| 30 | Osmania Univ. College of Engineering | Hyderabad |
| 31 | College of Engineering , Andhra University | Vishakhapatnam |
| 32 | Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology | New Delhi |
| 33 | NIT- National Institute of Technology | Kurukshetra |
| 34 | NIT- National Institute of Technology | Rourkela |
| 35 | SVNIT | Surat |
| 36 | Govt. College of Engineering | Pune |
| 37 | Manipal Institute of Technology | Manipal |
| 38 | JNTU | Hyderabad |
| 39 | R.V. College of Engineering | Bangalore |
| 40 | NIT- Jamshedpur | Jamshedpur |
| 41 | University Visvesvaraya College of Engg. | Bangalore |
| 42 | VJTI | Mumbai |
| 43 | Vellore Institute of Technology | Vellore |
| 44 | Coimbatore Institute of Technology | Coimbatore |
| 45 | SSN College of Engineering | Chennai |
| 46 | IIIT | Allahabad |
| 47 | College of Engineering | Trivandrum |
| 48 | NIT Durgapur | Durgapur |
| 49 | SIT | Calcutta |
| 50 | Mumbai University Inst of Chemical Tech | Mumbai |
| 51 | Sardar Patel College of Engineering | Mumbai |
| 52 | P.E.S. Institute of Technology | Bangalore |
| 53 | Maharashtra Institute of Technology | Pune |
| 54 | Amrita Institute of Technology & Science | Coimbatore |
| 55 | National Institute of Engineering | Mysore |
| 56 | B.M.S. College of Engineering | Bangalore |
| 57 | Laxminarayan Institute Of Tech. | Nagpur |
| 58 | Nirma Institute of Technology | Ahmedabad |
| 59 | IIIT | Pune |
| 60 | Amity School of Engineering | Noida |
| 61 | JNTU | Kakinada |
| 62 | S.J. College of Engineering | Mysore |
| 63 | Chaitanya Bharathi Inst. of Technology | Hyderabad |
| 64 | IIIT | Bangalore |
| 65 | SRM Institute of Science and Technology | Chennai |
| 66 | SASTRA | Thanjavur |
| 67 | Bangalore Institute of Technology | Bangalore |
| 68 | The Technological Inst. of Textile & Sciences | Bhiwani |
| 69 | III | Gwalior |
| 70 | JNTU | Anantpur |
| 71 | M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology | Bangalore |
| 72 | Gitam | Vishakhapatnam |
| 73 | NIT- Hamirpur | Hamirpur |
| 74 | NIT- Jalandhar | Jalandhar |
| 75 | SV University Engineering College | Tirupati |
| 76 | NIT- Raipur | Raipur |
| 77 | Vasavi College of Engineering | Hyderabad |
| 78 | The ICFAI Inst of Science and Technology | Hyderabad |
| 79 | NIT- Patna | Patna |
| 80 | Cummins Colleges of Engg of Women | Pune |
| 81 | VIT | Pune |
| 82 | Shri Ramdeo Baba K.N. Engineering College | Nagpur |
| 83 | Muffakham Jah Engineering College | Hyderabad |
| 84 | Karunya Institute of Technology | Coimbatore |
| 85 | D.J. Sanghvi | Mumbai |
| 86 | Sathyabhama Engineering College | Chennai |
| 87 | Kongu Engineering College | Erode |
| 88 | Mepco Schlek Engineering College | Sivakasi |
| 89 | Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College | Ludhiana |
| 90 | Hindustan Inst of Engineering Technology | Chennai |
| 91 | SDM College of Engineering | Dharwad |
| 92 | R.V.R. & J.C. College Of Engg | Guntur |
| 93 | Jamia Millia Islamia | New Delhi |
| 94 | K.L. College of Engineering | Veddeswaram |
| 95 | Dharmsinh Desai Institute of Technology | Nadiad |
| 96 | S.G.S. Institute of Technology & Science | Indore |
| 97 | Jabalpur Engineering College | Jabalpur |
| 98 | Sree Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering | Trivandrum |
| 99 | G.H. Patel College of Engg & Technology | Vallabh Vidyanagar |
| 100 | Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology | Bhubaneshwar |
Do you agree with this list??
