Technology sure does helps people: Just helped me

I was desperately trying to find a book that I had longed to read, since quite a while. But I had such a bad luck that I was not able to find it at the college library or at the public library or even at my friend's giant personal library. What was more frustrating was that even book stores didn't have a copy of the book that I wanted to read. The book was "Physics of the Impossible" by Michio Kaku. So you must be wondering how I got a hold of the book after trying in vain at book stores, libraries, friends and even bit torrent networks. Well I got it on my new Kindle and what the most exciting part was that I did not even have to venture out of my house to get it. One of my friends told me that Amazon was offering a device that could be used to read books, newspapers and even blogs. So I did a bit of soul searching on the internet and ordered a Kindle which was delivered right to my doorstep and it took me just 10 minutes to find the book which I had been searching for quite some time now. And now it seems that I won't ever need to go to a nearby bookstore to find a book that I need because I know whatever I want my Kindle will provide it to me.

$100 Blog Header Contest

I am tired of looking at the same old, plain text header on the top of my blog but I am too busy to design a header. Also I don't feel like going to any web designer to get a header made for my blog. So I have decided why not let you people make a header/banner for my blog that would describe my blog to be related to the field of technology. The contest is open to all. You can mail in your entries to coast.dwane@gmail.com . The winner of the contest would receive $100 in cash which would be paid via paypal. The contest ends on 21 August so hurry with your entries. The results of the contest would be posted on the blog on 22 August and I will transfer the money into the winners account thereafter.

Light Repelling Light

Light repels light! Confused?? Well don't be. This new phenomenon has been discovered by a team of researchers at Yale University. In this extraordinary phenomenon researchers have shown that when tiny beams of light are confined on a silicon chip, then light photons attract and repel each other just like electromagnetic force. So what light repels lights! What impact will this have on us?? Well this new phenomenon could be used to make silicon photonics devices faster which means that high-speed communications, network cards, even video and TV cables would get more fast and more efficient, thus bringing in a new revolution in silicon technology.

Optical highway: Yale researchers generated repulsive optical forces by splitting a single beam of light so that each half traveled through a different length of waveguide. Because one half of the beam traveled farther than the other,they arrived in the center region out of phase, causing the two waveguides to repel each other. When the light beams were in phase, they attracted each other. The two triangular shapes at the bottom are the optical input and output ports.

Kindle: Now only for $299

Amazon has come up with yet another offer to boost its Kindle sales. Kindle is amazon's wireless reading device that gives you the ability to read books, newspapaers, magazines, etc on the move. All you need are your reading glasses. Amazon also boasts of having a database of 300,000 books, newspapers, magazines and even blogs. The device is just over 1/3 of an inch thick and weighs around 10.2 ounces. Also there are no monthly fees to download books and books can be downloaded any time, anywhere. The new kindle boasts of a 25% more battery life and storage memory to store over 1,500 books. It also offers free book samples before you decide to buy a book. It also boasts of a built in text to speech converter. It seems to be a great deal so what are you waiting for? Available at Amazon. Also available Kindle DX: Amazon's 9.7" Wireless Reading Device.

Kodak debuts new digicams: Easy Share Z950, M381& M341

Just a few hours after displaying it 1080p pocket camcorder, Kodak has made the news again. This time it is the launch of three new camcorders from Kodak. The first one is the Kodak EasyShare Z950, a 10x optical zoom, 12 megapixel camera and that too for just $279.99. Next comes the sleek Kodak Easyshare M381, which also offers a dozen megapixels alongside a 3-inch rear LCD, 5x zoomer, easy upload to Facebook / YouTube, face detection, a variety of lovely hues and an MSRP of $179.99. The last cam is the Kodak Easyshare M341, which steps down to a 3x optical zoom and a smaller 2.7-inch LCD for $149.

3D to stop piracy

The movie industry has come up with a unique idea to prevent piracy and to get people back to the screens. 3D is being touted by the movie industry as the new revolution in movie making that will take the movie industry to new creative heights and also stop the menace of piracy.
According to film makers this comes as a boon to the people as film making will reach greater heights and the audience will get to see things that they have never seen or even imagined before. 3D movies would be made to encapsulate the people into the realm of the movie and to make it appear that you are part of the movie. Only time will tell whether this idea would eventually pay off or not. Till then it is back to the good old 2D flicks.

Jackson's Doctor Implicated

The authorities investigating Michael Jackson's death have said that they believe that Jackson's doctor Dr. Conrad Murray administered Jackson a powerful drug, which they believe could have killed the singer. Murray, the Texan based cardiologist reportedly gave Jackson a dose of anesthetic propofol, 24 hours before he died.
Last week, Texas authorities searched Murray's Houston medical office and storage unit, looking for "evidence of the offense of manslaughter," according to court documents. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County coroner's office continues to investigate the cause of Jackson's death on June 25. It has been waiting on toxicology lab results, but a final autopsy report is expected as soon as this week, a coroner's spokesman has said.

Massa still in Induced Comma

The doctors at the AEK Hospital in Budapest have said that Felipe Massa has undergone a sucessful skull operation and is being kept under intensive care in the hospital. The condition of the Ferrari driver is said to be stable but still quite critical.
Felipe Massa underwent a head surgery after crashing in the final qualifying at Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix. The driver was reported hit on the helmet by a piece of debris which flew off from the Brawn GP compatriot Rubens Barrichello. The debris left Massa stunned which caused Massa to crash into the tires in the qualifying session. Fans are offering prayers across the world for the driver to get well soon

No Google Voice App for iPhone

The Apple Corporation has decided to pull the plug on Google Voice based GV Mobile app and it has blocked Official Google Voice app from the Apple Store too. The reason cited by Apple for this is that the Google app imitates features already built into the phone.
Google Voice apps are being blocked on the theory that AT&T might be the influencer to force it. Google Voice allows texting, sending voice mails and offers international calls at lesser rate. Whatever the truth might be, the rejection of two apps back to back might create some uncomfortable relations at development level between Apple and Google.

Tour de France concludes: Armstrong on podium but not quite there

The 96th Tour de France came to an end on Sunday with Lance Armstrong reaching the podium but not quite able to match up with the winner and the man of the moment, Alberto Contador. Armstrong though reached the podim for the 8th time in 11 summers he couldnt't make it to the top of the grandest stage of all in cycling.
Armstrong trailed behind Contador and the runner-up, Andy Schleck, as they went to their respective spots. Armstrong barely acknowledged the new champion, offering a quick, perfunctory handshake, but then he warmly greeted Schleck, placing his left hand on Schleck's right shoulder as he offered congratulations. It seems Armstrong may have got a big contender for next year's race but he thinks that he can pull it off next year by banking on better preparation and changed team dynamics.

Potter Toppled

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince toppled from the top spot at the Box office when a trio of animated secret agent guinea pigs raked in millions on the opening week on Box Office. The Disney movie G-Force generated a revenue of $32.1 million on the weekend whereas Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince could only manage to rake in $30 million thus losing the top spot at the Box office to the Disney production.

Hubble captures Jupiter's black spot

Windows XP to Windows 7: Will Be a Bumpy Ride

It seems Microsoft has made a big mistake by not allowing an upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. This means that the users of Windows XP have no option of upgrading to Windows 7 and will have to buy and clean install Windows 7.
Microsoft has said that the new Windows 7 operating system can easily run on netbooks and this has even been demonstrated by Windows 7 developers, but it seems that Microsoft didn't realize that most netbooks are running on Windows XP and since Microsoft has not offered any upgrade path form XP to Windows 7, most users will be reluctant to change to the new operating system. It seems that this time Microsoft has got itself into a situation that is going to be very tricky to handle.

Megan Fox Talks Dirty

The "Jennifer's Body" star talks Princess Leia outfits, satanic rituals, and more at Comic-Con 2009.

Now Monkeys get reform school in India

According to a report, India is planning to open a reform school for the large number of monkeys in the country. This decision has been taken by keeping in mind the large number of monkeys in India and the nuisances caused by them.
The problem of rogue monkeys is particularly severe in towns close to India's north-western border with Pakistan. Officials accuse them of a variety of bad behaviour from terrorising children, snatching food from people and destroying property. To protect the people from this menace, it has been planned to open monkey reform schools to help contain the problem by putting these offending monkeys through a crash course in good manners.

Gates Quits Facebook

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had a very unusual reason to give when asked why he quit Facebook. According to him, he quit Facebook as too many people wanted to be his friend. According to him, he had 10,000 people waiting to be his friend.
"It was just way too much trouble so I gave it up," Gates told the business forum. Gates was on a visit to New Delhi to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, awarded by the government of India for his work for the charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Verizon to Offer Android base Motorola Handset

Verizon is set to offer the new Motorola Android based handset to the people sometime by the end of the year. This move is cited to have great impact on the telecom industry. Though Verizon has confirmed the news that it is going to offer an Android based Motorola handset to its customers it is still not known that the set would be the famous Motorola Calgary or not.
It is speculated that the new Android phone would have a full Qwerty keyboard with built in GPS and WiFi capability. If Verizon is able to market this phone and the phone makes it big then we might see Motorola from winding up in the Mobile Phone industry.

Monstrous Black Hole found

In yet another major finding NASA has discovered a massive Black Hole at the center of a galaxy which is about 50 million light years away from us. The Massive Black Hole is about 100 million times the mass of our sun. The star-ringed black hole forms the eye of a galaxy called NGC-1097 which was photographed by the US space agency's Spitzer Space Telescope in California.
The galaxy in the photograph is spiral-shaped, like our Milky Way, and extends long arms of red stars into space. The picture shows a fiery ring around the black hole which is packed with brightly-burning newborn stars. The blue dot next to the galaxy depicts another companion

"iPhone 3GS encryption useless", Hacker

The Apple corporation has tall claims that the iPhone is being used by several large corporations and businesses across the world and is a great phone when it comes to security of the data sent through the phone, but all this has been proved wrong by a hacker who claims that one can crack the encryption used in the iPhone within a span of several minutes by using easily available freeware tools.
Jonathan Zdziarski, the hacker and the teacher who has this claim says that "“It is kind of like storing all your secret messages right next to the secret decoder ring. I don’t think any of us have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before, which is why it’s hard to describe why it’s such a big threat to security”. Contrary to Apple’s claim that the new iPhone 3GS is more enterprise friendly the new iPhone 3GS’ encryption feature is “broken” when it comes to protecting sensitive information such as credit card numbers and social-security digits, Zdziarski said.
Though Apple has declined to comment on iPhone security issues, the company has more or less admitted iPhones are vulnerable to security threats, because an emergency measure exists.In August 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs acknowledged the existence of a remote kill switch for iPhone apps, meaning if a malicious app made its way onto iPhones, Apple could trigger a command to delete the app from users’ devices.

Palm Pre available on Sprint

The new Palm Pre is now available on Sprint. The new palm Pre is a 3.1 inch touchscreen with a great user interface. One can navigate between applications quickly and easily. It also features a slide out Querty keyboard that can change the phone in a super typing machine ideal for business applications and writing long emails and making presentations. The design of the palm pre is also very nice with smooth round finishing so that it can easily fit in your hand and in your pocket. The Palm pre is available on Sprint network for $199.99 for a 2 year contract. This includes a $250 instant saving a $100 mail in rebate. So what are you waiting for?

Yahoo redesigns Home Page

The Yahoo Corporation has come up with a new idea to boost its dropping popularity. Yahoo has come with a new Home Page to attaract people. Although the new page looks very much similar to the old one, Yahoo officials have said that the new web page is a way to get away from building a portal around the services offered by Yahoo itself.

A post on Yahoo's corporate blog suggests that Yahoo is giving up on the idea of building a Web portal around its own services. This seems to be a good idea if Yahoo wants to improve their market share which is constantly being devoured by giants like Microsoft and Google. On the new yahoo Home page one has the option of adding apps directly to their page. One can choose from about 65 different apps which includes content from different email providers, content generators and social networking sites. Although Yahoo's idea is not original but it will surely help the website in driving more traffic towards it.

MS Office in China: $29 only

Do you know how much one has to spend in the Chinese mainland to get a license of the Microsoft Office Suite?? Try and guess. Is it $200? No. Is it $100? No. In fact it is actually $29. Yes you read it right the first time. One can get the complete office suite in China for a mere $29.
According to the Microsoft Corporation this one of the newest ideas to prevent piracy in the Chinese mainland. According to a report about 95 percent of all copies of Office in China are illegal copies. Thus to stop this act Microsoft has decided to sell its Office Suite at such a small price. And the technology giant has profited from the technique. According to senior Microsoft officials, the sale of Microsoft Office Suite in China has increased by 800 percent since the start of this scheme in September last year.
This surely appears like a case where crime pays big dividends, surely robbing people in the west who still have to pay through the roof to get Microsoft products. We wonder when will we get a price break?

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World to end mid-November now

The ambitious Large Hadron Collider has yet again come in the limelight. And this time it has come out not beacuse of the controversy that surrounds it, that it can end the world, but because the multi-billion dollar project’s restart is getting delayed time and again.
The Collider’s restart has been delayed again exactly one month after its previous delay. According to CERN, the body that controls the experimentation and the working of the project, this time the delay has been caused by a couple of vacuum leaks. According to the agency the Collider is unlikely to be started before the mid of November as repair works were on and all equipments were being tested.
So it appears that there is a sign of relief on the faces of those who believe that the Collider is devil’s device that would destroy the whole world. So happy living till mid-November!!

The Hangover: Biggest R-Rated Comedy

Todd Phillips’ The Hangover has been accredited to be the biggest R-Rated Comedy movie in the history of Hollywood. As the Box Office numbers rolled in this week, The Hangover became the highest grossing Rated R movie of all time. The movie has done a business of close to $235 million domestically and has broken the record for the highest grossing Rated R movie by beating the previous record holder Beverly Hills Cop.
Even though the movie contains no major stars, the movie has been hit due to its intense comedy and a great storyline. Even before the movie had released critics had a view that the movie would do good on the box office but nobody predicted that the movie would become the highest grossing Rated-R movie of all time. I don’t think there’s any question now that a sequel to The Hangover is going to happen sooner rather than later.

Kingston unveils 256 GB thumb drive

Kingstone has finally released the much awaited 256 GB thumb drive which they have been promising to launch for quite some time. The thumb drive would be a great tool for those who require a large storage capacity but get wary of the size and weight of external hard drives.
The thumb drive boasts of transfer rates of up to 20 MB/sec. read and 10 MB/sec. write. The drive also comes with Ready Boost technology for all those who have a Windows Vista operating system. The drive is up for sale in Europe and UK and the bad news is that it is custom made on your order request and can cost you upto £565.67 ($924).

Windows 7 Family Pack

Microsoft on tuesday announced that they are going to give the customers an option to have a Windows 7 family pack that could be installed on three computer. The family pack would be there only for Windows 7 Home Premium edition. Microsoft have not yet given any specific price tag to the family pack versionofWindows 7. Earlier this month, Microsoft ran a deal where people in the U.S. could order Windows 7 Home Premium for $49 and Professional edition for $99, but that deal has ended.

Obama honors Apollo 11 astronauts

The United States President Barack Obama honored Apollo 11 astronauts in a special function organised at the Oval Office. The special function was attended by Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins and by the newly sworn NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.
“We are confident that they are going to be doing everything that they can in the decade to come to continue the inspirational mission of NASA,” Obama said, referring to the new NASA leadership.Obama recalled sitting atop his grandfather’s shoulders in Hawaii as an 8-year-old boy to welcome home the Apollo crew with a waving flag. Obama awaits the results of a top-to-bottom review of the manned space program due by the end of August that could overhaul the scope, budget and timetable for manned exploration after retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2010.

The latest movie in the Harry Potter Series, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince severed several records when it recorded worldwide revenues to the tune $104 million on the first day of screening across the world.
Though the film has created a dramatic impact on the Box Office fans are not that much delighted by the movie because of the movie being too far away from the story line in the book. According to the fans the plot of the movie is depicted too far away from the actual story in the book and several of the important elements have been left out and filled in with follies.
The movie focusses more on the blooming relations between the characters of the movie and their romances than on the actual plot of the movie. Fans complained that most of the events of the 600 page book have been left out of the storyline of the movie. Even the fight of the death eaters whne they come down to Hogwarts have been left out of the movie. For the fans the movie may have been a disappointment but for the makers of the movie it is raining money all over.

Sony Launches Pro Audio Recorder

The Sony’s PCM-M10 pro-grade audio recorder is the cheapest in the market at $400. It can record upto 4GB of data on its flash memory (expandable via MicroSD or Memstick), has a built-in speaker for playback, and is also Sony’s first to spit out ready-to-upload MP3 files. It comes bundled with Sound Forge Studio Recorder Edition and a pair of AAs.

Empire strikes back: Microsoft v/s Google

The news of Google thinking about launching its new web based Operating System has had some dramatic effect on the technology giant Microsoft, with Microsoft hinting towards offering lightweight Office Suite Software on the web for free. Microsoft taking this step relays the fact that Microsoft is serious about Google’s foray into its Operating System sector.
Microsoft said it has plans to offer free versions of popular applications, including Word and Excel, to the people over the web. Matt Rosoff, a seniro analyst at Directions has said that it would have been very unlikely that Microsoft would have thought of offering web base Office Suite if Google had not launched its Google Docs services.
This move by Microsoft is being seen as a direct challenge to the operability of Goolge Docs and this shows that Microsoft wants people to know that Microsoft Office can give Google a run for its money even on the internet.
Microsoft has said that the trimmed-down version of Office which will be launched next year and will be available for free to its 400m Windows Live customers, but businesses will have to pay for licenses.
It appears that Microsoft is taking serious steps in this war for Internet Domination and its next step would be to counter the new Google operating system that Google plans on launching for small laptops or netbooks.
Whatever be the case this war would surely result in a win win sitaution for the customers who would seen some serious innovation taking place in the next couple of years.

Twitter Hacked: Again

For the second time this year Twitter, the name most of us are familiar with, has been hacked by a hacker who calls himself “Hacker Croll”. The company that manages Twitter has been having some serious problems this year with Twitter’s security being compromised twice this year. The has had some serious implications for the company and customers have started doubting Twitter’s security.
The attack occured when a hacker gained access to the Google Apps account eg. Docs, Calendar and other free web based services Google offers. This was apprently due to the secret question asked during validation being not that secret. The hacker then took all information and mailed it to TechCrunch.
The information included financial projections, product plans, meeting notes that have been published by TechCrunch. But the list could contain other information as well such as salary data, names of people who had interviewed at Twitter, employment agreements, calendars of the founders, new employee interview schedules, etc.
TechCrunch and Twitter are in negotiations about whether to publish the data or not. This attack seems to be one of the most embarrassing and humiliating attacks on a company in the history of the internet.

Pope Breaks Wrist

Pope Benedict XVI has suffered a minor wrist fracture after falling while on aholiday in northern Italy. The Pope’s condition is said to be fine and the doctors have said that it is nothing serious.
The Pope, 82, was taken to a nearby hospital in the alpine town of Aosta. The doctors informed the media that the Pope had suffered a minor fracture in his right wrist and that there was nothing to worry about.
According to certain reports, the Pope was accompanied to the hospital by an aide. According to hospital authorities the Pope’s wrist was X-rayed and that further checks were continuing.
The Pope formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pontiff in 2005 and had been staying at a house in the village of Les Combes in the Valle d’Aosta region.