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$100 Laptop….A Reality !!!!!!

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MIT Professor’s $100 Laptop A Reality, Thanks To Google

: Another milestone towards bridging the digital divide has been reached. And the credit goes to a man’s belief in his vision of providing low cost computing for the masses.  Google has made John Negroponte’s dream, a reality.

 
John Negroponte is the co-founder of MIT Media laboratory and the One Laptop per Child foundation. Initially, he was criticized for his idea, some saying that it was a market ploy to sell laptops to third world countries. But his determination paid off as a laptop can now be bought at $99.

 
Google has said that the laptops, Series 5 Chromebooks from Samsung, will be available through Dec 21, under the 12/21 program. The laptop doesn’t use traditional and bulky software such as Windows. Instead it uses entirely web based applications, saving money and cutting down hardware costs. All you need is a basic internet connection.
Inside a classroom with Wi-Fi, it is a fabulous tool for learning. Students can access research material and teachers can utilize online classroom instructions and assignments, for example Google apps for Education. They can also be used to write collaborative documents and assignments. The laptops can be personalized with individual login ids, and even come with anti-virus protection. You can also choose to block certain websites. In a nutshell, it taps into the power of the web for an effective and interactive classroom teaching.

 
The best part is that you can place an order for your classroom on DonorsChoose.org and a donor will fund your purchase, if it is upto 30 laptops. The laptops can also be purchased from Lakeshore’s eschoolMall catalogue.

 

source:::::siliconindianet…

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An Interaction With a Visiting NRI !!!!!

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Do Not Miss To Read The Summary at the end

A typical conversation with a visiting NRI…..

Self: Hi! Home for a holiday? Are you going back…..or…?

NRI: Yes…yes…I am going back as soon as possible.

Self: But…your parents are here. There are also many new malls now where you can get everything you want. Its even cheaper than in the US, Europe or Canada or Australia.

NRI: Yes…..things are real cheap here in India….products are very good……the malls are also very good…..restaurants are excellent. But….the roads and the traffic are so terrible….I can’t wait to get back.

Self: Yes…I agree….but….that’s only one relatively small factor….surely you can adjust and put up with that. The situation would improve once the Metro is operational.

NRI: No…No. Why should I put up with the traffic and the crowds and the garbage? Why should I adjust?Its impossible.

Self: OK….lets change the subject. How are your parents? I heard your mother had some health problem. Is she ok now?

NRI: Oh… yeah…she’s ok! Doctors have given her some medicines. Dad is there to take care of her.

Self: But he is old ……how will he manage? Besides, both will be missing all of you so much. Loneliness is terrible. That itself can lead to so many diseases.

NRI: He’ll manage. He has to adjust, I guess.

Self: OK…..how is life in America? What do you eat at home?. The usual Idlis, Dosas Upma etc. that you like so much? Indian food, particularly South Indian food is considered the healthiest! It contains all essential nutrients in a very balanced way.

NRI: Well…no…not really. We normally eat cereals for breakfast….straight from boxes. I carry sandwiches for lunch or eat some salad at the cafeteria (everything is so expensive). For dinner we take out some food stored in the freezer and heat it in the microwave….and that’s it. Its difficult to cook every day, you know….so we cook once a week and store it in the freezer.

Self: But that’s not healthy. Also, eating packaged & processed food every day could lead to many diseases. We read about this every day.

NRI: Oh…. no problem. We adjust. We sometimes eat meat to make up for the proteins.

Self: But you are traditionally a vegetarian, I thought. Vegetarianism is considered a better option for general health, animal rights and for spiritual reasons….. and many westerners are now becoming vegetarians. So…why have you switched to non-veg?

NRI: Well…its no big deal really. One has to adjust.

Self: It must be cold where you live…..you have lived all your life in warm South India.

NRI: Yes…its terribly cold out there with months of snow….but we have central heating. We don’t go out much….but its…ok. We learn to adjust.

Self: How is your wife? Does she also work? What about the children?

NRI: Of course…! She has to work! We can’t manage with one person working. We have mortgages to pay. We both leave our home at 8 am and are back at 6 pm. We have only one child who comes from school and stays alone till we come home. He watches TV and eats something from the freezer. Some of our friends are even opting not to have any children….so that they could save all the trouble. God!…..Children are such a responsibility!

Self: Yes…that they certainly are.

NRI: Children are also very expensive. Their clothes, food, eating out, vacations….buying new stuff every few months just to keep up with their peers in school….its terrible!

Self: So how do you manage? What about the culture? The sexual freedom and so on? Aren’t you worried about these adverse influences on your children?

NRI: No one bothers about all that. Its part of life. If my son adopts that lifestyle…that’s ok with me. We need to adjust and get on with life.

Self: I understand that due to the recession and its aftermath there is a subtle antagonism towards foreigners and immigrants. Is that true?

NRI: Well….yeah…sometimes you do sense a mild discrimination and bigotry. Recently in fact, someone shouted out an abuse at my wife when she was out shopping. Someone at school called out ‘Paki go home’ to my son. But these things are rare…. because…. by and large, we keep to ourselves. We rarely interact with the whites or the other immigrants. Even they prefer to keep to themselves. We have our own small Indian groups with whom we socialize. So…such racist incidents are kept to the minimum. We adjust and learn to manage.

Self : What about entertainment? Do you get Indian TV channels and programs? Do you eat out often?

NRI: Indian channels are usually pay channels and very expensive. So…we don’t have them. We manage with the local english programs. We do see Indian movies sometimes. They are expensive and you need to drive for an hour to get to the cinema hall. So….we don’t do it very often. Eating out is very expensive. Indian food is even more expensive.

Self: Where do you live in the US and do you own a house?

NRI: We live in a locality with lot of Hispanics, Koreans and Chinese. We have bought a house on mortgage recently. Its not very big actually. Just a two bedroom twin home of about 1000 sq ft. Unfortunately prices have dropped recently. But we like it.

Self: But you have a fairly big home in India………

NRI: Yes……but…..what have I got in India? Nothing!

Self: What do you do if one of you is ill? Do any neighbors help?

NRI: Actually….one of my neighbors is a Korean man who lives with his girlfriend. On the other side are two….er…..too. We have to help ourselves most of the time. Our Indian friends live some distance away…..and no one will help if we are ill. Everyone is so busy with their own work.

Self: What sort of work do you do in the US? Is it some highly specialized cutting edge work……. for which you cannot get a job in India?

NRI: Actually…..I am a software engineer. I had a good job till recently, but I got laid off and had a terrible three months. I have recently been called for an interview for a temporary contract position. I may get it. Things are looking good…yeah…..I am ok!

Self: But you would be able to get a very good…highly paying job in India. India’s booming with a very high rate of growth!

NRI: Yes…I know. I’ll probably get a much better salary than what I get in the US…. and maybe I’ll be able to save much more too….but…it’s so difficult to adjust to the traffic and the crowds in India…you know. Its impossible to come back.

Self: OK then….. goodbye and good luck!

(I think to myself as I say goodbye)……Yeah.. right! You can adjust to packaged food and poor health, small dark wooden home, heavy mortgages, terrible weather conditions, lack of family, lonely parents, bad cultural environment, racial abuse, loss of dignity & self respect, job insecurity and even your basic principles……but you can’t adjust to simple traffic conditions in India! )

source:::::unknown…..input from one of my NRI friends !!!!
Natarajan

Dealing With a Metrosexual Patient !!!!!

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December 1, 2012

Dealing with a metrosexual patient

DR. V. JOHN BENNO   in THE HINDU

Do you think the metrosexual is going to believe your last-century clinical skills? He believes only in echos, endos, angios and tomos.Don’t rub the wrong side of the metrosexual and end up being the twitters’ target!

A metrosexual patient can be defined as one who talks, walks, laughs, coughs, wheezes and sneezes like an American. He has set foot in the dreamland — America (never mind, if it was only to sit in the bench between breakfast and lunch and catch the next return flight).

Need proof of his American-ness? Well! He comes to your clinic clad in shorts and addresses you, “Doc!,” unlike the pants-clad locals who call you, “Doctorrr!” or “Sarr!” Sometimes, he prefers your second name. Oh, I forgot an important thing! Whenever I say ‘he,’ please insert an ‘s’ in brackets before ‘he.’ (Beware the female metrosexual!).

The intro (don’t you know the short form of introduction?) to the metrosexual patient’s complaints starts like this: “Doc! You know my eyes are sooo… precious to me!” (For all others, they are optional accessories!). And then he elaborates his complaints. You should be grateful to him that during the whole conversation, he keeps his notebook closed, ignores his i-phone calls and fancy SMS tones, all…….. for your sake.

Try to concentrate on his talk and suppress the temptation of yawning, or worse, laughing. Other points to remember before you lose any more of your metrosexual patients: 1.The best way (or the worst way?) to insult a metrosexual patient is to talk to him in the local tongue.

2. Don’t ask him: “Do you work on computers?” Not only because it is so obvious, but also because this silly question will, in his eyes, downgrade you to the level of computer illiterates, who call the computer a computer. (‘Computerologists’ call it ‘SYSTEM’)

And then graciously he lets you examine him, with milder comments like, “It’s so hot doc! Can you please increase the AC?” or “Are you sure you are qualified to do this, doc?” You have to increase the AC though you might feel a shiver and assure him that you were a gold medallist in medical school. (Remember! In the U.S., it’s medical school, not college!)

After examining him, you ‘must’ order special investigations. Do you think the metrosexual is going to believe your last-century clinical skills? He believes only in echos, endos, angios and tomos. (Come on! I can’t keep expanding every short form!) Mind you, the report printouts should be of the ultimate quality and in multicolour. He asks you to explain every aspect of the report and listens intently, though he doesn’t understand an iota of your explanation. He loves to carry these coloured papers, but still asks for a soft copy. (CDs and pen drives are much harder than papers, why the hell call them soft!)

Then, he asks for the diagnosis. Don’t be stupid and say things like ‘cold with fever.’ Be exact — ‘Acute viral laryngopharyngitis with pyrexia.’ He immediately googles it in his laptop/ i-phone/both and comes back with lots and lots of information (or misinformation) and starts asking you the most intelligent questions like, “Doc! Is it heat? You know, I missed my oil bath last week!” or “Doc! I had those stupid idlis for breakfast. Is it gas?” Don’t get angry at these queries; but politely say “no.” Don’t rub the metrosexual up the wrong side and end up being the twitters’ target!

After all these ordeals, the metrosexual firmly denies any form of treatment whatsoever; he has come to you only for an assurance that everything is all right with his physique. He is a member of two gyms, you know, (don’t bother him by asking whether he has ever seen the interiors of the gyms) and does pranayama regularly (twice a year). Obviously, he is in good health and doesn’t need to spend unnecessarily (!)

At last, somewhat satisfied, the metro asks you to quote your fees. He searches for petty cash (read one hundred rupees) among his platinum and gold cards; luckily he finds a hundred ‘bucks’ note. After paying, he asks you for a receipt (for the silly tax formalities, you know). After looking at the receipt a couple of times, he asks in a hushed tone, “Doc! Can you make it two hundred, please?” After all, Dil hai Hindustani!

(The writer is a consultant ophthalmologist. Email: johnbennov@yahoo.com)

2012…End of The World??!!!….NASA Scientist Tries to Ease the Fear!!!!!

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source::::: ABC NEWS…Good Morning America…
By KEVIN DOLAK (@kdolak)
Dec. 1, 2012
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It was 10 years ago that veteran NASA scientist David Morrison began to answer a question a day from the public about the origin of life on Earth, evolution and the mysteries of the cosmos.

Lately, though, Morrison, senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, has been inundated with questions about both Doomsday 2012 and the Nibiru cataclysm, a supposed apocalyptic event in which Earth will collide with a massive rogue planet.

Some of these questions, he says, are increasingly alarming, and include threats of murder and suicide.

“I think it was about 4 years ago, early in 2008, I started getting 5 questions a day about 2012, and now it has increased,” Morrison told ABCNews.com. “The most common question is, ‘Will the world end on December 21, 2012?’ I find that strange because the idea of the world ending is absurd. Do they really think, ‘The world is ending, but if I build a bomb shelter in my back yard, I’ll survive’?”

The frequency of the queries has even led Morrison to add a disclaimer to the NASA “Ask an Astrobiologist” page, noting that he has now answered 400 questions about Nibiru and 2012, and to please read these before submitting a new query.

“The most specific questions are about this rogue planet Nibiru,” he said. “I think, if it were four years ago, you could say, ‘maybe.’ If it were real at this point, it would be the brightest thing in the sky.”

But over the past few years, some of the questions he’s receiving are increasingly alarming, and include a number of children who, faced with a perceived threat of impending doom, say they are planning their own deaths.

“I get 1-2 a month from a person who self-identifies as 11-12 years old, who is contemplating suicide,” he said. “It happens often enough to disturb me … to hear that children are considering ending their lives.”

Morrison said that one letter was from a middle school teacher in Stockton, Calif., who said that the parents of a student said they were planning to kill their kids and themselves. Another was from an elderly person, who said that her best friend was a little dog. The writer asked when the dog should be put to sleep, so it doesn’t suffer when the world ends.

Though he finds these messages alarming, Morrison said that he only has limited information on the people writing in. He said he does whatever he can to soothe their fears, but at the end of the day, people’s beliefs and fears are out of his hands.

“I can tell them there is absolutely nothing to be worried about. But I am in no position to provide psychiatric advice,” he said.

From theories about pole shifts to the black hole at middle of the Milky Way to galactic planet alignment, Morrison says he has heard a number of doomsday theories — the most popular of which relate to the Mayan calendar – a modern hoax. The Mayan calendar, which is made of cycles of day counts, does not end this year, he says. Rather, one cycle ends and the next cycle begins.

“It’s purely a fantasy,” he said. “It amazes me you can get so much … I sense that some of these people are into the conspiracy issues.”

Morrison says that he will give up from answering the public’s questions next year. But in the meantime he is carrying on, weathering the public’s theories and phobias. Although some of the queries border on the nasty — suggesting government conspiracy and NASA cover-ups, he said he doesn’t let it get to him.

“I’ll ask for apology on Dec 22,” he said, “when none of this happens!!!

Road to Happiness!!!!!

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source:::
An excerpt from Book
“The Road to Happiness”
by Mac Anderson and BJ Gallagher

When I travel on business, I like to talk to the taxi drivers who take me from the airport to my hotel, or to a convention center, or to a restaurant. Taxi drivers are often immigrants with interesting personal histories and unusual cultural backgrounds. I ask them how long they’ve been in America, how they chose which city to live in, and what they like best about where they live. Of course, I also ask them for advice on good local restaurants and any special attractions they’d recommend to a visitor. I’ve had some great experiences on my travels, thanks to the advice of taxi drivers!

On one trip about ten years ago, I was making conversation with the taxi driver, asking him my usual questions about how he came to live where he lived. Then I asked him a hypothetical question: “If you could live anywhere in the world-and if money was no object-where would you live?”

Without hesitating even for a second, he replied, “I live in my heart. So it really doesn’t matter where my body lives. If I am happy inside, then I live in paradise, no matter where my residence is.”

I felt humbled and a little foolish for my question. Of course he was right-happiness is an inside job. He had reminded me of something I already knew, but had forgotten. If you can’t find happiness inside yourself, you’ll never find it in the outside world, no matter where you move. Wherever you go, there you are. You take yourself with you.

I am grateful for the wisdom of that taxi driver. And I’m grateful for all the wisdom others have shared with me about how to be happy.

Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.”

Natarajan

6 Indian Americans in Top Global Thinkers List ….

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“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” Freedom of speech and expression is something which we all boast about, but only few personalities have shown real courage in taking their ideas and thoughts to the public. Foreign Policy magazine recently came up with a list of the top 100 “Global Thinkers” and six Indian Americans were successful in making it to the list.

 
Narayana Kocherlakota

 

Narayana Kocherlakota, an economist who serves as the president of Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis came 10thin the list.

Kocherlakota made a public announcement in the month of September, asking the Federal Reserve Bank to reduce the interest rates to zero until unemployment falls below 5.5 percent, reports Foreign Policy.

Kocherlakota was appointed to the post of president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank in the year 2008. Prior to this, he was a member of the Minneapolis Fed’s Research staff and also worked as a Research consultant for the Bank.

Born in a Telugu Brahmin family, Kocherlakota holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1987 and an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton in 1983.

Ruchir Sharma

Ruchir Sharma is a Managing Director and the head of the Emerging MarketsEquity team at Morgan StanleyInvestment Management.

Sharma holds great passion towards writing and is the author of the economic bestseller ‘Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles’ (Breakout Nations). His outstanding contribution to the intellectual debate in 2012 and his book made him eligible for this recognition. Breakout Nations ”debunks the conventional wisdom that the emerging markets of the last decade will continue to drive global growth in the next one’’, reports Foreign Policy.

Sharma worked as a contributing editor with Newsweek earlier and his op-eds used to appear in prestigious publications such as The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New York Times and Foreign Affairs. Apart from this, he also writes columns on global financial markets for The Economic Times.

Sharma completed his graduation from Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi.

 

 

Raj Chetty

 
Raj Chetty is a professor of economics atHarvard University and he also serves the post of the director of the Lab for Economic Applications and Policy at the university. He was a former professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chetty has been successful in overturning several age-old assumptions related to economics and ensured a place for him at the U.S. policy debate, by discussing everything from unemployment benefits to tax breaks.

Chetty, a 2012 MacArthur Fellow has published numerous papers in prestigious journals, such as American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Journal of Political Economy. He was listed as one of the top 8 young economists in the world by The Economist in the year 2008 and he is one among the most cited young economists in the world.

Chetty holds a graduation in arts from Harvard University and he also received a Ph.D from the same university in the year 2003.

 

 

Raghuram Rajan

 
Raghuram Rajan is an economist who serves as the Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. He also works as Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago and as a visiting professor for the World Bank, Federal Reserve Board, and Swedish Parliamentary Commission.

In the year 2005 Rajan delivered a controversial paper “Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier?’, in which he criticized the  financial sector and “argued that disaster might loom.” Even though Rajan received negative response from everyone at that time, his views were seen as prophetic after the 2008 economic crisis.

Rajan, who took charge as the Chief Economic advisor few months before is in the running for the next RBI Governor of India.

Rajan holds a degree in electrical engineering from IIT Delhi, Post Graduate Diploma in Business Administration from IIM Ahmedabad and a PhD in management from MIT.

Vivek Wadhwa

Vivek Wadhwa is a technology entrepreneur and academic.

Wadhwa plays a prominent role in instituting start-up visa, which will help entrepreneurs with proven job creation and company size obtain long-term visas. According to Wadhwa if this movement is not executed skilled immigrants will be gone. He also adds, ‘’they’ll be back home building the next Googles and Intels in other countries, and we will wake up five years from now and wonder how we let this happen.”

Wadhwa was honoured with the title “leader of tomorrow” by Forbes magazine in the year 1999 and he received the “2012 Outstanding American by Choice” award by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Wadhwa holds a B.A. in Computing Studies from the University of Canberra, in Australia, and an MBA from New York University.  He is founding president of the Carolinas chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE), a non-profit global network intended to foster entrepreneurship.

Ricken Patel

Ricken Patel is co-founder and executive director of Avaaz.org, a global civic organization launched in January 2007 that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. The mission of the organization is to “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want”.

With this new movement, Patel has established a model for advancing human rights and democracy. He worked as an analyst in conflict zones such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone and his organization took inspiration from the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org.

Patel was voted “Ultimate Gamechanger in Politics” in the year 2009 by the Huffington Post and was named a Young Global Leader by the Davos World Economic Forum.

He studied PPE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) at Balliol College, Oxford University and holds a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University.

source::::::silicon india net

Natarajan

9 Most Expected Apple Products of 2013!!!!

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: Apple’s 2012 schedule has been incredibly busy; the iOS6, iPhone 5, iPad mini, new iPods, and updated Macs with specialties like retina displays and bigger sizes. And then a question arises, what’s the Apple line ups for 2013? The company had already given hints about some interesting devices, including a low cost iPhonecooking inside the Cupertino giant’s executive kitchen. Here are the speculated Apple devices which will see the light of the day in next year as compiled by Business Insider.

 
1. Apple television?

 
Apple came up with the updates of just about everything at the end of 2012. This gave birth to the speculation that Apple either planned nothing for the spring or on the contrary it’s got something big to unveil.

 


So the next possible big release from Apple’s bag of products for the spring could be its “television”. Rumors of an Apple television have been rampant for years. So the year 2013 can be the best period to wave a green flag for the Apple TV or which may be called ‘iTV’ as Apple’s nomenclature follows.

2.  iPad Mini with Retina display

 
Apple’s iPad mini made waves in the media prior to its release and was also hit the market with the blast. But all the fanfare was fizzled and as the Apple bloggers place it “iPad mini is the real iPad, there’s only one problem which took the sheen out of device and it’s the screen”. So Apple, to rectify this problem may come up with a smarter display, the new Apple innovation “retina display”. This spring we can hope for a iPad mini which along with other things can come up with retina display.

 

 
3. iRadio

 
Apple has intensified talks with music labels to unveil its own advertising supported streaming radio service and it will be the competitor to Pandora Media Inc. The iRadio is supposed to start early next year, according to people with knowledge of the negotiations who want to stay anonymous.

 


 “Radio is a natural step for Apple,” Rich Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG LLC in New York, said in an interview, reports Bloomberg. “This helps Apple dominate in cars, where people listen to an average of two hours of radio a day.”

4.Apple TV app store

 
So once the Apple TV gets big launch the next best possible offering from the Applecould be an App Store exclusive for its TV. And the company may also open up its gates for the developers to contribute the apps for its new device, in turn creating a whole new experience with the TV.

 
5. OSX 10.9

 
Apple has reported to be actively testing its new version of Mac OS, called as OS X 10.9. And there were rumors that the Apple Mountain cat is about to take a big leap and include the key features from the popular iOS mobile platform. OS X 10.9 is supposed to include the Apple Maps along with Siri, the company’s virtual personal assistant that was first introduced on the iPhone 4S in late 2011.

 
Apple says it’s going to start updating its desktop software more frequently. Now that the person in charge of iOS is in charge of OSX, we expect the release schedules to be linked. And we expect more cross over between the two operating systems in terms of features. This new release is rumored to have Siri and Apple Maps.

 

 

6. : iOS 7

 
Apple, in each new version of iOS attempts to deliver an upgrade to add new user experiences. The iOS 6 is a good OS but for its Apple Maps and some Notification Center issues. So the next update is expected to deliver on these two discontents along with offering other new features. If one follows the pattern of Apple’s software releases , we may expect to see the iOS 6.1 this spring and later iOS 7 at

 
With each new version of iOS, Apple delivers an upgrade to parts of the user experience and this Notification Center mock-up shows one of the features we hope Apple includes in iOS 7.

 

If Apple follows their pattern for software releases, we can expect to see iOS 6.1 this Spring and the announcement of iOS 7 at The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2013, with the possibility of an iOS 7 release date tied to the iPhone 5S release, or whatever Apple calls the next iPhone.

7.  iPhone 5S

 
The rumors of the iPhone 5S were sparked amazingly just weeks after iPhone 5 release. A report from the Chinese Commercial Times added fuel to the rumors stating that Apple would be manufacturing 50,000 to 100,000 test units of the “iPhone5S” in December this year.

 
As for the rumor goes the iPhone 5S will possibly be unveiled in the middle of 2013 as opposed to the end of next year. Apple has launched iPhone 4S in October last year and the iPhone 5 in September this year, so there was a gap of nearly a year for the launch of new iteration. But this time, as the rumor goes, Apple fans will be in for a surprise as the Cupertino giant will put in orders for the iPhone 5S starting in March or April of next year, way earlier than many assumed.

 
The Apple may choose the summer launch next year to boost the sales of its device in holiday season and also to take on with its rival Samsung.

 

8. The iPad 5

 
Apple shocked technophiles and industry experts around the world with its unexpected unveiling of the iPad 4, alongside the iPad Mini, at an event in California last month.

 
The company’s near 12 month cycle for the new iteration’s launches, which use to be under wraps, has become predictable. But the launch of iPad 4 was so covert that the rumor mill was completely unaware of its existence until it launched.

 
Nevertheless this new strategy from Apple is not stopping the rumor mill from speculating the launch of iPad 5. The rumors are already abounding about that the new sleeker, lighter and loaded iPad 5 will hit the shelves early next year.

 

9. WILD CARD: A cheap, totally different iPhone

 
Apple iPhones were considered to be costlier with respect to its rival android devices. So Apple may come up with the iPhone which would be cheaper and totally different from the existing iPhones to gain market especially in the developing countries like India and China. May be it will be a reality in next year.
source::::: silicon india net

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10 Renowned Tamilians in America!!!!!

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source::::silicon india net…
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The outstanding achievements of Indian Americans in various sectors ranging from business and academics to media and politics make us proud of our rich Indian heritage and culture. It is not a matter of surprise to note that there is an increasing number of Tamilians representing our country in the U.S.Indra Nooyi

Indra Nooyi, an Indian-origin American executive who hails from Chennai is the current Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. She was one among the highest paid CEO’s in America, according to a recent survey report. Nooyi’s name appeared in the list of 50 women to watch in 2007 and 2008, according to a survey conducted by Wall Street Journal. She was one among Time’s list of 100 most influential people in the world and she also bagged the top position of most powerful woman in business, by a ranking done by Forbes (2009 and 2010).

According to Nooyi, ”Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I’ve never forgotten that.”

Nooyi joined the company PepsiCo in the year 1994 and was appointed to the post of CFO in 2001.She rose to the position of CEO in 2007 and has been contributing a major share in the development of the company for more than a decade.

Nooyi completed graduation from Madras Christian College and post graduation in Management from Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. She began her career as a product manager at Johnson & Johnson.

Meyya MeyyappanMeyya Meyyappan is the Chief Scientist for Exploration Technology at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. Until June 2006, he served as the Director of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames.

Meyyappan has authored or co-authored over 225 articles in peer- reviewed journals and made over 200 Invited/Keynote/Plenary Talks in nanotechnology subjects across the world. His research interests include carbon nanotubes, graphene, and various inorganic nanowires, their growth and characterization, and application development in chemical and biosensors, instrumentation, electronics and optoelectronics.  He has worked to include nanotechnology products into space missions as well as transferring technologies to industry for commercialization.

Meyyappan is a founding member of the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology (IWGN) established by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).  The IWGN was responsible for putting together the US National Nanotechnology Initiative.

For his sustained contributions to nanotechnology, Meyyappan was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame in February 2009.

Padma Lakshmi

Padma Lakshmi is a well-known internationally accepted model, who was the favourite of top designers such as Emanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren and Alberta Ferratti. She started her modeling career when she was just 18 and has appeared on the covers of many promonent magazines like RedBook, Vogue India, FHM, Cosmopolitan, L’Officiel India, Asian Woman, Avenue, Industry Magazine, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and Newsweek.

She says, “I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York. I’m the first one to admit that I was a novelty.’’

Along with modeling, Lakshmi started hosting cookery shows such as Padma’s Passport and Top Chef and she also published many cookery books.”Easy Exotic”, her first cookbook was named as the Best First Book in the year 1999 at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards conducted at Versailles. She was also nominated for Emmy Award as “Outstanding Host on a Reality-Competition in 2006.

Padma is basically from an Iyengar Brahmin family based in Chennai, who did her schooling and higher education in U.S. She completed graduation in Theatre Arts from Clark University in Massachusetts.

Kamala HarrisKamala Harris is the current attorney General of California who was featured as one of ‘America’s 20 Most Powerful Women’, by Newsweek. Prior to this, she served as the District Attorney of San Francisco for six years, from 2004 to 2010.

Kamala is the first female to be elected as the attorney general of California and the first Asian-American to serve this prestigious post .

During her tenure as the District Attorney of San Francisco, Kamala fought against violence, crime and she was also behind the implementation of tough gun charging policies. Moreover, she focused on child assault, public integrity and environmental crimes. She increased the conviction charges for serious and violent crimes and extended helping hand to the victims of crime and their family members.

Born to a Tamil mother and African- American father, Kamala was bought up in California and she completed her higher education from the universities of California and Howard.

Ram ShriramKavitark Ram Shriram is a board member of Google and one of the first investors in Google. He runs his own investment firm, Sherpalo Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in promising new disruptive technologies, established in the year 2000.

In 2005, Shriram was named as one among the top three high-tech dealmakers by Forbes, recognizing his talents and foresight. Recently, he also made it to Forbes’ list of ‘richest Indian Americans’, with a net worth of $1.6 billion.

‘He is always eager to roll up his sleeves and work closely with founding teams on the challenging issues that confront and sometimes confound early stage ventures,’ saysGoogle, reports Rediff.

Shriram is also an investor in a global mobile Ad Network, InMobi. He serves on the boards of StumbleUpon, Zazzle, Next Jump, Mevio and PaperlessPost.com, and also serves on the advisory board of Naukri.com.

Shriram completed his graduation in science from Loyola College of Chennai, Madras University and holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business affiliated to University of Michigan.

Balamurali AmbatiAmbati is a Tamil-origin ophthalmologist, educator, and researcher who made it to the Guinness Book of World Records by becoming the youngest doctor; at the age of 17! He was successful in re-defining the minimum age limit for a person to join medical school in the west.

Presently, he works as the Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences & Director of Corneal Research at the University of Utah.

Ambati has showcased extreme skills in various fields of science from early childhood and has now turned out to be a highly esteemed personality in the world of medical science. According to him, being a good listener, being thoughtful and perseverance are the three traits a successful person should possess.

His contribution in correcting myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism through LASIK is quite noteworthy.

Balamurali has received many prestigious awards for his medical brilliance which includes Raja-Lakshmi Award from Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation, Chennai, in the year 1995.

Sendhil RamamurthySendhil Ramamurthy is an American actor, who was born in Chicago to Hindu Tamil immigrant parents from India.

He has acted in many popular movies such as Love & Debate, Orient Express, Blind Dating, Little India, Shor in the City and It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.

He has also appeared on several TV shows, including Ellen, Casualty, Guiding Light, Grey’s Anatomy, Ultimate Force, CSI: Miami, Heroes, Covert Affairs and Numb3rs.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and then attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from which he graduated in the year 1999.

Aziz Ansari

Aziz Ansari, an Indian-origin American writer and stand-up comedian has huge fan following him, which goes up to more than 1.7 million on Twitter. Ansari, who holds a graduation in marketing from Leonard N. Stern School of Business at NewYork University, started his career performing stand-up comedy. He got a place in the “Hot List” of Rolling Stone in the year 2005 and was also honoured with the Jury Award for “Best Standup” at HBO’s U.S Comedy Arts Festival in the year 2006.

S.Somasegar

S. Somasegar is the Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corporation. Till September 2011, he served as the Senior Vice President of the company.

He is responsible for engineering and marketing for developer tools and services, programming languages and runtimes designed for a broad base of software developers and development teams, including the Visual Studio and Expression families of products, .NET Framework, and Team Foundation Server.

Somasegar started the India Development Center in Hyderabad and the Microsoft Canada Development Center in Vancouver.

He was honoured with the Asian American Engineer of the Year Award in  2008.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from College of Engineering, Anna University and an M.S. in computer engineering from Louisiana State University.

He is the owner of four patents and before joining as the head of the developers’ division, Somasegar had worked on eight different operating system releases.

Jaishankar Ganesh

Jaishankar Ganesh is the first permanent dean of Asian Indian descent at Rutgers School of Business–Camden.

“Dr. Ganesh is an exceptional administrator and scholar, and an energetic visionary. I am confident that he will help to advance the Rutgers School of Business–Camden to its rightful place as a premier center for education and business development in our region and state,” said Richard L. McCormick, president of Rutgers, while announcing the appointment of Ganesh. He also added that “his focus on developing new models for business education that address the career demands of the coming decades will help to lead Rutgers to the next level of prominence in undergraduate and graduate business education.”

Ganesh holds a Ph.D. in Marketing and International Business from the University of Houston and an MBA degree from the same university. He received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from the Loyola Autonomous College, Madras and second degree in Instrument Technology from the Madras Institute of Technology.

Why U.S.A. Can”t Get $20 Tablets Like India?!!!

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Aakash, India’s low cost tablets made recent headlines by being the cheapest one available in market. Students were in store for a big surprise, as Datawind, the makers of Aakash 2 offered the tablets to them at just RS. 1,132, which hardly touched the $20 mark, after a government subsidy. For others, it’s made available for $45 retail, yet retaining the tag of cheapest tablet in India, probably the world too.

The price of these gadgets, along with almost all the “smart” functions similar to high end devices, will bring a lot of people to computing world, a sure excitement for the people of developing nations like India and china.

But the people of developed countries just can’t get the tablets with same functionality as of Aakash 2 at its price. Though the tablets are cheap, the distance from supply chains or the manufacturing base of these devices to the countries where they are marketed, will add 100 percent to the cost of tablets, and then it’s not cheaper any more.

We can take the example of iPhone 5, which was recently released in India. The device follows a stiff route till it gets into the hands of users. There are shipping charges, import duties, margin for the importer, the new warranty charges, as its original warranty isn’t valid in the country of import. And in India there are three levels of distributors—the importers, who brings the goods into the country, then he sells it to super stockiest, like wholesaler, then wholesaler sells it to distributers, who in turn sells it to retailers, and finally retailer sells it to customers, each levels have their cuts in turn shooting up device prices.

Aakash was able to overcome all this and reach the customer carrying the tag of “cheapest tablet.” But how? According to Suneet Tuli, CEO of Datawind, who spoke to Mashable about strategy the company follows to bring the tablets at amazing lower costs, “the Micromax Funbook, which has approximately same specifications as that of Aakash 2, costs around Rs 6,500 or about $120, which is about twice the prize of their device. The reason is that Datawind assembles the tablet in India upon importing parts from South Korea, china and U.S., which is cheaper than importing completely assembled devices.” Then the company markets the products online or by couriers, saving the commission on distributers and retailers.

In China, it’s a similar story, says Jay Goldberg, a financial analyst. Functional 7-inch tablets can be had at Shenzhen malls devoted to electronics for as little as $45. That’s because the supply chains required to build these devices are located in the city and in nearby provinces.

Many of China’s cheap tablet manufacturers hit on the idea accidentally, says Goldberg, and it all started with the manufacturing cell phones which were cheap too.

“Not quite 10 years ago, Mediatek of Taiwan entered the cell phone market,” says Goldberg. MediaTek Inc, a fabless semiconductor company, designing and selling components for wireless communication and other electronic gadgets, found contract manufacturers in mainland China that had machines to put chips on circuit boards, and they were mostly doing this as subcontractors, churning out parts for larger electronics companies with recognizable brands.

Later the company figured out it could save money by handing these manufacturers both the chips required to build a phone and a complete blueprint for assembling them into basic phones. That transformed thousands of small manufacturers from subcontractors into factories for completed products. This same strategy led to development of cheaper Smartphones and tablets too.

source:::: silicon india net…

Natarajan

If You Love Modi, Re-elect Joe Walsh {R} …An Election Slogan in US !!!!

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Narendra Modi shown by Mr. Walsh for his 2012 campaign

VERY INTERESTING… AN INPUT RECD FROM ONE AMERICAN CONTACTS SHOW AN ELCTION PAMPHLET SHOWING A CANDIDATE USING MR.MODI”S STRENGTH  FOR THE   CANVASSING OF VOTES FROM FELLOW US MEN  HIGHLIGHTING THE ENTREPRENEURAL SKILLS OF  MR. MODI AS A LEARNING FOR AMERICANS  FOR THE GROWTH OF US ECONOMY AND JOB CREATION !!!!!

CERTAINLY A PIECE OF INFORMATION TO BE SHARED WITH ALL OF YOU…..

Natarajan