Smart Cards for NRIs

Do you have a job offer from a foreign country but are unable to fly out because of passport/visa/immigration problems? Come August Union Ministry of NRI Affairs is launching Smart Cards. The smart cards are meant to deal with the 'job and relocation problems' faced by Indians seeking employment in foreign countries, especially in the Gulf nations.

The smart card will:

• Be the equivalent of your passport and visa.
• Be mandatory for those travelling abroad and working with foreign companies.
• Carry all essential details of the person, his contact address back home, the sponsor and job contract and an insurance coverage attached to it.
• Be a valid document to claim compensation and other privileges from the foreign companies you are working in.
• Have the details of the job sponsor.
• Allow user to use it as a master card.
• Help speed up embassy-related clearances.
• Be the ultimate document for all legal requirements.

The smart cards are planned to be issued only for new immigrants, but in longer run the cards will be provided to all NRIs.

Anniyan!...

Shankar's long time post production work may shake the producer on recovering Anniyan's 26.38 crores.

Anniyan is still on the lines of Gentleman, Indian and Mudhalvan with social theme and spicing it with pure commerciality. Responsibility is the key and it is being told along with MPD(Multiple Personality Disorder). The technical crew has performed to their excellence. Harris Jeyaraj doesn't dis-appoint but gives a feel ARR will be the best combo for Shankar. Shankar should come out and think other aspects as the film seems to be a repeative one. I am not going to spoil the fun those who haven't seen the movie, but here are the positives and negatives of the movie, so you can decide whether to watch or not.

• Vikram's acting. Especially the climax!
• Camera work dring fights/action sequences (Though a lot of it reminds of Matrix)
• Vivek's Comedy (First half of the movie rocks!)
• Art Direction

• Sadha.
• Script (Has too many logical flaws)

Rediff has a review of Anniyan.

A.R.Rehman's Upcoming Shows...

'Netru Indru Nalai' - This show is performed by A.R.Rehman with Kollywood artists for the cause of The Banyan. This function will be held at Koyambedu Krishna Gardens. The man behind the show is none other than our Maniratnam. It is postponed from June to August 2005. You can call Banyan on August Ist to book the tickets.

A.R.Rehman is performing a live show in UK on July 30th 2005. UK guys can book your tickets from here.

Yahoo Photo Mail...

Yahoo's all new Photomail (IE5.5 or above reqd.). Yahoo! has introduced yet another good service, Photomail. This requires IE (internet Explorer) 5.5 or above in order to work.

All you have to do is to install a 1.11 mb file from Yahoo Photomail.Then, it will be easy to send and recieve photos through Yahoo Mail.

After a long silence...

After 2 weeks back home from US, few tit bits to chew...

• Google gets Personalized page.
• YIM beta version targets internet phone with VoIP.
• Nayakan appears in 'All-Time Top 100 Movies' list, proud of Maniratnam and Nayakan himself.
• Roja appears in the best sound track in 'All-Time Movies' list. Again the credit goes to Mani and A.R.Rehman.
  
• Anniyan confirmed for June 10th, has released the trailers.
• Kana Kandaen worth to watch and spend time. The film has message, romance, science, camera, good music and fascinating direction by K.V.Anand. Prithiviraj proves his excellence.

Google labs...

Google labs innovates more...

• My Search History - A long waited easy access to search history from any computer. Need Google accounts to login.
  
• Google Ride Finder - Find a taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles.
• Google UK Local - Finally Google reaches locals of UK.
• Web Definitions - Know the web definitions of any word or phrase using Google.
  

Google needs your Video...

You worked hard making your video; you deserve an easy way to put it in front of millions of potential viewers. That's the idea behind today's announcement of the Google Video Upload Program, which lets you upload your video to Google for free. Eventually your work will be included in Google Video, where users will be able to search, preview, play and purchase it. We're accepting digital video files of any length and size. So if you have a video - or hundreds of videos - that you want the world to see, show Google what you've got, and stay tuned.

Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu - Kamal's next film

As Sify.com reports the next film of Kamal. Vettayadu Vilayadu is said to be a racy thriller in which Kamal plays his age and the first half is set in New York, second half in Chennai and the climax in a remote village in Tamilnadu. It is directed by the stylish director Kakha Kakha fame Gautham Menon with his own tune Harris Jeyaraj.

Google...Infinity+1

Google_Infinity,
originally uploaded by sethuramalingam.

It might be like an April Fool's joke, but it isn't. Google has just announced that to celebrate the one-year birth of Gmail, the search engine giant is expanding its mail service to two gigabytes of storage space for members.

The new plan dubbed "Infinity+1" offers members twice the storage space - from one gigabyte to two - and adds rich text formatting to the one-year-old Gmail e-mail service.

On it's Gmail website, users can see a counter running showing the storage allocation for the mail service. As of 3:20pm EST the counter had reached over 1550 megabytes of storage.

"Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn't mean you should have to worry about it," Google says on the Gmail website. "To celebrate our one-year birthday, we're giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people's lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs."

The added storage turmps Yahoo's move to one gigabyte last month for its Yahoo Mail.

Mumbai Express

Pic[Galatta.com] Mumbai Express is going digital and hence the theatres are forced to follow the path. Just like how Kurudhi Punal and Thiruda Thiruda urged theatres to upgrade their audio systems to Dolby/DTS. It had saved him over a crore rupees on his film making cost. Kamal's own banner 'RajKamal Films' is involved in the marketing of the film and also the audio, that make a eye rise on the special music done by Music Maestro Ilayaraja. Mumbai Xpress is the first film from south to have been digitally censored. Hope it stays on schedule.

CM Songs...

No politics. I just meant Chandramukhi songs. The film has 5 Tamil songs and one Telugu song. Don’t know what the rationale behind this Telugu song is?. My recommendation is: Better forget this song. Vidyasagar rocks in all songs. The songs are tailor-made for Rajini fans. The displeasure comes in lyrics. No lyric is appealing yet. Most lines were pretty ordinary. Yes this opinion might change after few more listening. Definitely Vairamuthu’s absence is felt. Since we don’t know when Rajini will come up with the next film he should have opted for Vairamuthu. And also it has been long since Yesudas showed up. Still amma yendru(Mannan) and oru pen pura(Annamalai) is ringing in my ears. I expected a song similar to Raajiyam illai (BaBa) or Vidugathaiya (Muthu). I don’t think Asha Bhosle is a right choice for the song Konji Pesa. Even athanda ithanda(Arunachalam) kind of words are working fine for Rajini what is the need for Devuda Devuda? It’s just a thought. Though lots of my expectations are missing, I will go ahead and enjoy it. Wondering why still Ramadoss has not started yelling about Telugu lyrics in Tamil songs (Devuda Devuda).

Yahoo Ups Storage Ante to 1 Gig Email Expansion

Yahoo Ups Storage Ante to 1 Gig Email Expansion: Yahoo is expanding storage capacity for its free email accounts to 1GB. The move allows Yahoo users to accommodate large email attachments such as photos in their webmail.

Yahoo has gradually increased its email capacity several times during the last year, this time raising the storage limit from 250MB. Yahoo will also upgrade the antivirus capabilities offered through its free accounts by providing software from Symantec. Previously only paid subscribers benefited from the service. Yahoo Mail Plus, at $19.95 per year, offers 2GB and other options not available to free users.

The upgrade will be available to users worldwide from April.

Yahoo buys my favorite Flickr Beta, it's not your grandfather's photo sharing site.

Yahoo desktop search reaches beyond the PC - Yahoo is expected to launch on Wednesday the first upgrade to its desktop search tool, adding the ability to index data from Yahoo's instant messenger archives stored on users' PCs and from users' address books residing on Yahoo's servers.

Google's Googly...

[Google Hyderabad]
Hyderabad Google office is out of beta version after 9 months. Google cricket club has googly balls in the land of Hyderabad.

Now you can customize the news page of Google. Click on the customize this page and have your own sections.

April 14th Updates...

Shankar's Anniyan gets delayed till May 15th. All my cells are open to watch this film.
Rajini's Chandramukhi on track. Waiting for the teasers to go live. Count down ....27 days to watch Devuda Devuda...
Kamal's MumbaixPress gets postponed due to post production jobs.

More Google...

Google Code, Google's place for Open Source software.
Google Personalized! You can even set the amount of personalization to be included along with the normal search results. Cool stuff! What seems to be missing is a login functionality. Is Google expecting us to save preferences in every machine that we use?

Interesting Links...

• Wish Sachin for joining the elite club of reaching 10,000 runs in test career
• Yahoo 360 joins with MSN and Google on Blogs - Service is not made active
  
• Chennai vs Bangalore - Significant points to observe
  
• Wikipedia has a link for Madras Bashai
• Amazed by the recent hiring of Indian IT Companies
• Infosys Technologies has been hiring about 50 people a working day for the last nine months
  Wipro adds three employees to its staff every working hour
  Satyam will see an addition of 30,000 to the present 20,000 in the next few years
  TCS’S headcount stands at 43,681 people with over 6,200 added in last two quarters

IIM-B going Global...

IIT's and IIM's always create the top notch professionals for India and the graduates out of the shcool get paid globally.

• Coming July IIM-B is going global with a new School @ Singapore.
• IIT introduces more courses this year.

More Google...

Google moves its desktop search tool out of beta, formally launching version 1.0 with support for more browsers and file types and better protection of sensitive documents.
For developers, Google has provided application-programming interfaces for developing applications that leverage the search product. Google also provides plug-ins that add more capabilities to the product, such as searching the full-text of scanned images, such as faxes.

Looks like we can check gmail from wap. This is a great boon for people like who depend on wap a lot ;-), but this is not affiliated or endorsed by Google. Give a try when it is free..Hope they don't spam the mailbox...

Quick Links...

• Google wants your brain
• Another look into the Google Internals
• Interesting recruitment posters
• On interviewing programmers

4th Time - Narayana Murthy most admired biz leader

For four consecutive years, Narayana Murthy is judged as "Most Admired Biz Leader" by students of 12 Management Institutes. Infosys and Tata Firms are ranked as most attractive to work.

Happy Valentine's day !!!

All things work together for your good when your heart is filled with love...

My heart is filled with love therefore I expect everything in my life to work together to create wondrous blessings for me this and every day.

In my mind's eye I experience the Divine love that dwells within my heart. I imagine that this love is growing larger and larger until it overflows into my body, mind, and world.

I see this love going before me creating joy, peace,prosperity, happiness, health, and success in my life. I imagine this love attracting to me every good and perfect gift that God has planned for me. In my mind's eye, I see myself going throughout my day radiating love to everyone I meet. People and situations are instantly transformed by the power of Divine Love and they respond to me in a loving manner. I am filled with joy and love all day long. I combine these images with joy and let them go, knowing that they will create the good things I am visualizing and thinking...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!...

LIVE ..LAUGH and LOVE-------Sethu

Welcome Dude !!!

[Pic: Kumudam.com]
Happy to read the current projects of A.R.Rehman in tamil films this year. He explains the reasons for his long wait and the time to score a good music for his films. He also talks about tsunami and remember about Kuran's words. Good accolades go to Udit Narayanan and Sadhana Sargam for their voices getting popular in Tamil. Also talks about the individual styles of Yuvan,Vidhya Sagar and Harris Jeyaraj.

2014 - EPIC, GoogleZon, Google Grid

If you have not watched it already, go ahead and watch it. The story is definitely "fascinating, amusing and unnerving". Have a look.

"In the year 2014,The New York Times has gone offline. The Fourth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happened to the news? And what is EPIC?"

The 'Evolving Personalized Information Construct' (EPIC) is a look at how the media industry might be like in 2014. It is an 8 minute flash presentation by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson. Pick a random mirror.

It also talks about GoogleZon (the alliance of Google and Amazon in 2008) and the Google Grid.

Also read the article from News.com

My New Favorite Word

Dooced - Losing your job for something you wrote in your online blog, journal, website, etc. The thing that's funny to me is that this happens so frequently that there is an actual word to describe the event...

Finally Mark Jen talks about his termination from Google as he revealed the financial information and future products of search giant Google. One more of the same kind is published at Washington Post

VISA Credit Card Verification....

Neat move being enforced. A short while from now onwards, it appears that all 'Visa' credit card holders will mandatorily get and have to use username and passwords for online transactions. Hopefully this will reduce online credit card misuse/fraud.

Dear Member,

Please accept grateful thanks from www.irctc.co.in for your continued patronage and support for our services. As you know we have been continuously upgrading our services and making them more user friendly and secure, as a continuous on going effort. We now wish to familiarize you with the latest facility to ensure the security of your Visa Credit Cards.

The new programme is 'Verified by Visa' and covers the Visa Credit Cards issued by all the banks across the world. This facility is being just introduced in India and IRCTC is proud to be the only website in India to have this facility introduced.

The banks participating in 'Verified by Visa' Programme would be issuing secure passwords and / or user Ids to all their credit card holders. The card holder while transacting on our site would be required to give input of these additional passwords / user Ids by which it will be fully ensured that a particular credit card is being transacted on the site only by the person in whose name the card has been issued.

This facility is being introduced in our website on the ICICI Payment Gateway within the next couple of weeks and is expected to benefit a majority of credit card users on our website.

Booking Process :-

1) On selecting the ICICI PG option you will enter the normal particulars of the card such as Card No., type, Validity and the CVV 2 value.

2) You will be taken to a secured page of VISA where you will be asked to enter the VbV user id and password issued by your credit card issuing bank (please get in touch with the bank which has issued your Visa Credit Card for the user id and password).

3) Once the details are entered, your card will be authenticated and the necessary amount processed for crediting to IRCTC and your tickets subsequently booked.

Initially, for a transaction period the option to purchase your tickets with and without the VbV facility will be available to you for a short while. After the initial period VbV compliance process would be mandatory for all Visa Card holders.

This new facility is going to be of immense benefit to you as a customer and also to IRCTC since it will be ensuring that no unauthorized person would be able to use a Visa Card on our site.

For further details on this scheme please visit this Page.

Thanking you and offering our best efforts in your services AS always.

Yahoo Toolbar embraces Firefox !!!

Yahoo today released a beta version if its Yahoo Toolbar for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, bringing the toolbar's personalization features to the popular open source browser.

The Yahoo Toolbar for Firefox can be downloaded here. Currently the Toolbar is available for Windows only. The Anti-Spy security feature of the Yahoo Toolbar is not yet ready for Firefox but will be offered in a future update.

HP ousts CEO Carly Fiorina

The board of directors of Hewlett-Packard Company has announced the dismissal of Carleton S Fiorina with immediate effect. She is judged as the world's most powerful woman in business for three years by Fortune magazine!! I am really surprised how HP can take such a dumb decission?
*Updated News!
HP to pay $21M severance package.

Google Updates...

Google India Code Jam 2005. Java and C++ geeks, get-set-go and face the challenge.

Google Maps [Beta] was out yesterday. For Google users in the US it's a huge welcome as Google maps is well integrated with Google Local. A very nice analysis of how Google Maps work.

Week end film tit bits !!

I bet no one can write a better review like Lazygeek Guru for BLACK. I am completely driven by his review. I wish his review to get published to a National News paper or any website. Rediff has showcased Black. MSN review on Black. Also read Ravi K Chandran's interview on working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Maniratnam at Vikatan.

February 14 - Kadal pirnathanal to be directed by Hosimin. Another director coming out from Shankar's team. Kadal by Balaji Sakthivel of S (Shankar) films is already making a big wave.

Kamal's assistant director Ashok is directing his debut film "Ayul Rekhai".

Raghuvaran a versatile actor speaks out from his inner mind. Yesudas and his wonderful thoughts behind Tsunami. Yuvan tunes for his life with sweet heart Suja to be released on March 20. Ace spinner Mutthiah Muralidharan is clean bold in his life by Mathi Malar and this match is scheduled for March 21.

Malayalam director Lokidha Das, who was behind every one to get awards from MohanLal to Meera Jasmine is entering into Tamil Industry for making his successful film "Kasthuri Maan", which was highly successful in Kerala.

The wait is over!. James Bond has found his next director!

Yahoo's Y!Q Contextual Search Beta

"Just days after Microsoft unvieled its new MSN search, Yahoo released a new search tool called Y!Q that allows users to search within the context of the web pages they are currently viewing. It's not the typical textbox input search, and you don't even have to leave the current page you're on to use it. The current release is only the beta version."

You can embed the Y!Q in your own page and I have it in my "Get Firefox 1.0" post below. You can also extend Firefox to use Y!Q.

Get FireFox 1.0

It's really encouraging to use Firefox. I really can't say enough about how great it is. I use Firefox exclusively for web browsing on both my PC and my Laptop. It's not even about not using Microsoft products; it's just a better browser.

For those of you who aren't using Firefox, kids, what are you thinking???

(If you're using Safari or something, I'll let you go.)

I have two words for you: tabbed browsing. I promise once you try it, you'll never be able to go back. It's hard to explain why it's better than having multiple Internet Explorer windows open, but it really, really is. Get Firefox and it has tons of cool extensions.

Technology Trendz - Job alerts on Mobile

Job seekers can register with RecruitGuru and receieve job alerts from Airtel. This service is currenly available in Mumbai and free till Feb 28th 2005.

Kollywood Kalakals

Vikram has bagged the best actor for Pithamagan and Meera Jasmine for best actress as their National Award for the year 2003.

Selvaraghavan gives a back up for Dhanush on a comback trail. Selvaraghavan - Dhanush - Sonia - Yuvan - Arvind Krishna join hands(again !) for Pudhupet [not Oru Naal Oru Kanavu], this could probably be Dhanush's ladyluck for 2005. All the best mappilla.

Cheran would probably change back his new flicks's name from Touring Talkies to Thavamai Thavam Irundhu. The movie is rolling in Kaaraikudi.

Also check out Raam. Trailer seems to be exciting and the music score is also good by Yuvan.

India gets a desi Schumacher

It's official now. Narain Karthikeyan, India's fastest driver, has finally steered into the fast lane of motorsport which is Formula 1. He will be driving for Team Jordan for the 2005 season, which comprises of a total of 19 races, starting in Australia on March 6 and concluding in China on October 16.

Priya - A New Woman Director for Tamil

Pongal releases were sink, except S Films (Shankar's production) Kadal doing good even in tsunami affected areas. Expecting a few good flims for this year like Rajini's Chandramukhi, Shankar's Anniyan, Kamal's Mumbai Express and to add....

In Tamil movies, women directors are a rarity. Priya, who worked as an assistant to Mani Ratnam, is about to become an exception -- she is working on a love story. The producer of the film is the National Award winning actor Prakash Raj. He had earlier made a small but successful film called Azhagiya Theeye.

Prasanna, who acted in Azhagiya Theeye, plays the lead in Priya's film as well. The movie also stars Karthik Kumar, Laila and Revathy.

The movie Kana Kanda Naal Muthal is a triangular love story, but with P C Sreeram behind the camera, it is likely to be different. He is one cinematographer who would not accept a project unless he felt passionately about the story.

Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy

Bill Gates on US Visa restrictions and his view on India and china
Building a great company by Infosys Chief Mentor N.R.Narayana Murthy

Top Acquisitions of Jan '05

Two top industrial mergers happened in the month of Jan '05.

Procter & Gamble to buy Gillette for 140 billion USD
SBC to buy AT&T for 16 billion USD

A Day Shift

It was a terrifying experience in packing, cleaning and moving the apartment during winter and Snow flakes. With out Gopi's help it wouldn't have been possible, Sat night we (myself and Sam) packed all the suitcases, kitchen items, and did the first round of cleaning. Sun morning we first loaded and moved the heavy weight items to the new apartment. Later took a 14 inch UHAUL truck to move the larger items. The smaller items took much time to pack. By 1.30 we were exhausted and had a very good lunch (akora pasi) prepared by Swarna (Gopi's wife). Then off- loaded the contents of UHAUL and returned the truck. Then the final house cleaning took more than 4.5 hrs (not expected, but happened!). By that time felt the pains through out the body and Gopi came and picked us to the new apartment. On our way we got our dinner (7 layer bean burrito from Taco Bell). Took a good bath and went to sleep. It was nice to enjoy this experience.

Google & Yahoo! Video Search

You can now search recent TV programs online at Google Video
and Yahoo! Video. Want to know more read Suntimes

Republic Day - Online Flag Hoisting

Be Proud of an Indian and hoist the Indian Flag online

Farmer's Prayer : 'Shocking!'

The farmers are up in arms against the idea of setting up more IT firms in villages around Bangalore

Pongal Film Ratings

Ayya - Nice mix of everything (40/100) at Vikatan.com
Ayudham - Not a powerful weapon (34/100) at Vikatan.com
Devathaiyai Kandaen - Dhanush's wait continues... (36/100) at Vikatan.com
Kadhal - Earthy, native, realistic and emotional...My top rated film and also at Vikatan.com(52/100), I missed watching this film along with 18 of my college friends and roomates, who enjoyed watching this movie at Chennai on January 1st 2005. But had a chance to watch later.
Thirupachi - For Vijay’s fans (40/100) at Vikatan.com

Tsunami - Fund Raisings

Initially there were prayer meetings and fund raisings at the Hindu Temple on December 28th 2004.

The contribution from pongal celebration function held at Hindu Temple on January 15th 2005 was also donated to Red Cross for Tsunami Victims.

Friday January 21st 2005, Indian Association of Nebraska (IAN) and Indian Students Association (ISA) at University of Nebraska (UNO) organized a dinner ($100 per plate) for the Tsunami victims at Milo Bail Student Center, University of Nebraska. The special guest was Mr. Mike Fahey, Mayor of Omaha. The cricket club of Omaha got 20 tickets. Gopi got the tickets for us (Sethu, Sam, Shiva, Shankar and Viswanathan). The entire amount collected was given by Mayor to Jim Brown, the local American Red Cross president. Mr.Balaji, ex-president of IAN was in Chennai during the Tsunami, he explained the worst affected areas with his motion pictures.

There is one more Tsunami lunch at Hindu Temple on Sunday Jan 23rd 2005.

Vikatan.com - Pay Site from Feb 15th 2005

After 7 years of the free Vikatan online version, an all time favorite tamil magazine Vikatan is becoming a pay and use site by the end of Valentine's day February 14th 2005. There are high chances to see the competitor Kumudam also to follow the same lane. For more details, you can go to Vikatan.com

Wi-Fi at US President's Inauguration

The volunteers of The Open Park Project, a Washington D.C based non-profit organisation is making sure broadband wireless internet is available at the grounds outside US Capitol Hill. This is the place where the presidential inauguration is slated to take place today. Here are the photos of the launch of hotspots at Capitol Hill. The availaility of Wi-Fi would mean a good deal of bloggers will be covering the events live on their blogs.

It's nice to read the letter of appreciation from the US government.

Demanding Kamal - Awarded Doctorate

[Pic: Hindu]

Not just this post but also the doctorate itself was by a popular demand. This guy is certainly worth one. Dr. Kamal Hassan. Doesn't that sound a little odd ?. I perfer to call him simply by his first name, Kamal.

Just noticed that the previous post was on Rajini. Can't beat this combo.

Rajini's Chandramukhi

Chandramukhi is on the sets. Rajinikanth looks much younger, just like the Arunachalam make-over. IdleBrain and Behindwoods are up with galleries. Check out.

Pic:[rediff.com]

Also see Rajni poses with Gandhi!.
*Updated News! Chadramukhi troops has just completed the B'lore Phase and back to chennai.

New Jersey Visit - Jan 14 2005

[E*Pro Team]

For the first time on a Friday evening (Jan 14 2005) since June 2004, we (Myself and Sam) started our trip with in US from Omaha to New Jersey for E*Pro Party at Wood Bridge, Iselin. We were initially informed of the united airlines delay to Chicago, but to our good luck, we boarded on time and reached Chicago. We waited for an hour to board the next flight to Newark. Mean while we had Fish Fillet from McDonalds. We boarded Newark flight on time and reached Newark Liberty International Airport. We had Kumar waiting to pick up us to the E*Pro corporate apartment. We reached the apartment located at Woodbridge around 1.30 a.m. (Saturday early morning). We planned for the next day and went to sleep.

We got up at 6.00 a.m again, refreshed ourselves and Kumar drove us to New Jersey - Liberty Statue Ferry Parking at CRR-NJ Rail Terminal. The weather was cold outside and the Rail building was very old. We watched the tall buildings of NY (Empire State and others, TWIN TOWERS was missing). We took some snaps outside and took the ferry by paying 10USD for adults. It includes a round trip to Liberty Statue, Office of Immigration and Manhattan (NY). After seeing the Liberty Statue we decided not to go to NY, since we were running out of time on the ferry car parking (2 hours). I called Vidhya and asked about the place where she stayed. Mean while we decided to go to Bridge Water Sri Venkateswara Temple. We offered our prayers for the tsunami victims and also for every one. It is a very good temple to visit and good crowd on Saturday morning. We took few Indian foods at the temple cafeteria. We finally reached Vidhya's house and had a wonderful lunch. We had a quick chat at her house and started back to apartment as Priyabrata Mukherjee (a consultant) from India were on the way to our apartment. We picked up him with his friend at Bestbuy. We refreshed again and started to the E*Pro Party.

Finally we met the entire E*Pro employees in the Wood Bridge, Hilton, Iselin Party. We arranged for the eSolv's back ground presentation along with Naren. It was very good to meet every one at one place and the buffet started around 7.30 p.m. The crowd slowly started filling with Vendors, Clients, E*Pro employees with their family members. DJ started the performance and the lively dance started with the mix of Hindi and English songs. We had a good time watching every one dancing. The party catches up slowly and it went on till 11:30 p.m. We reached home and went to bed.

Got up on Sunday morning at 9.00 a.m and planned for the rest of the day. We started from home at 10:45 a.m to see the E*Pro office, but unfortunately the code to open the office gate didn't work, so we moved to Subhzi Mandi to buy the Indian Groceries. We bought for us, Kumar's home and also for Gopi at Omaha. We reached Dosa Express at Green Street to have the brunch. We had a delicious south Indian food. We started back to EWR (Newark) Airport and flied back to Omaha. We reached our Home back at Omaha by 7.40 p.m. by cab from Omaha Airport. It was a memorable trip.

India: 2020's Super Power

Surprise Surprise. The National (US) Intelligence Council predicts that around the year 2020, India will join China in challenging the US position for Global Economic supremacy. Sounds cool huh, so do the other peek into the past.

In an unrelated move, the US says it's willing to push India's request for Permanent membership at the U.N.

Interview with Bill Gates on Blogging

Interesting interview. Shows the amount of importance Microsoft's top man gives to blogging. Here's one of his lines "I think blogigng is super-important and we've got to do a lot more software." Read the full interview

Shankar's Anniyan

[Pic: Vikatan]

Shankar's Promo for Anniyan has just began. In his quick inteview[needs user id/password] with Ananda Vikatan, Shankar seems to be happy about the shoot until now.

He describes that when an Indian travels to the foreign nations, more often, he behaves like a green-eyed monster on their lifestyle, cleanliness and financial growth. Anniyan is an answer for the never-ending question of "When will India shine?". He is also happy with Harris Jayaraj's music.

Shankar also reacalls his experiences with Kathal as a producer.

More on Vikatan with lot of Stills and Wall Papers

*Updated News!
Special News at Kumudam issue dated Jan 31st 2005.

Lot of movies gearing for Tamil New Year -2005 - Rajni's Chandramukhi, Kamal's MumbaiXpress, Vijay's Sachin, Surya's Maayavi. Expecting a good race on the Kollywood.

Google Suggest

Google Suggest

Google has launched a new feature that tries to guess what people are looking for as they type queries into a search box.

The feature is pretty cool. Try it out.

More info:
- http://labs.google.com/suggest/
- http://labs.google.com/suggest/faq.html

Google SMS

Google SMS

I came across Google SMS. It is a service (still in Beta) introduced by Google where users can send phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices etc. I decided to try it out.

Note: The queries need to be sent to 46645 (GOOGL).

------------------------------
Case 1 (Local business info)
------------------------------
Query: papa john 37919
Reply:
Papa John's Pizza: UT Campus
South 1819 Lake Ave
Knoxville, TN 37916
865-522-7272

Papa John's Pizza: Northwest
5617 Western Ave
Knoxville, TN 37921
865-546-7272
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Case 2 (Zip code info)
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Query: 37919
Reply: zip code for Knoxville, TN
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Case 3 (Area code info)
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Query: 865
Reply: area code for Eastern Tennessee
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Case 4 (Word definition)
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Query: define alacrity
Reply: Glossary: * alacrity: liveliness and eagerness; "he accepted with alacrity". Source: www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
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I think the service is pretty interesting and very useful too. I intend to use it more in the future. But this is now limited only to major wireless in US, Google is trying to slowly move to other countries as well.

Yahoo! Says, "Me Too!" -- Again

Ah, yes. It's another yawner -- Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) launched its desktop search application today in beta, as has become the customary way of search function launches. This word is no surprise whatsoever, given the historical progression of the search wars -- not to mention, Yahoo! had already made the promise.

Major rival Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) launched its own desktop search product quite some time ago. And then several other search players followed suit, including Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) MSN service and Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq: ASKJ). Rich Duprey didn't see anything too revolutionary about the trend last month.

With those things considered, today's desktop search news from Yahoo! seems barely worth the press release, other than the fact that those who are stalwart Yahoo! users know that they've now got the option.

On the other hand, Yahoo!'s product seems to do everything that the rivals' functions do, including desktop search of video and MP3 files. Other features including previewing of content before launch and allowing users to specify the content they don't want indexed for search.

However, there's an interesting aside -- Yahoo! seems to have relied on an outside entity called X1 Technologies (a company that's related to Idealab, a name that might ring a bell to many of you) to actually provide the technology for the product.

I personally got a little more excited about Yahoo!'s recent word that it was launching video search and real-time traffic reports, both of which seemed to up the ante in the struggle for Internet users' eyeballs and advertising dollars. It definitely catered to the idea that Yahoo! needs to not only provide what the other guy does but also come up with its own innovations as well.

At any rate, Yahoo!'s desktop search launch seems like a case of same story, different day, different search giant. In this arena, it seems to me that Google's still got powerful first-mover advantage on its side.