Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

By the time u guys read this news, the body of Major Manish Pitambare, who was shot dead at Anantnag, would have been cremated with full military honors. On Tuesday, this news swept across all the news channels 'Sanjay Dutt relieved by court'. 'Sirf Munna not a bhai' '13 saal ka vanvaas khatam' 'although found guilty for possession of armory, Sanjay can breath sigh of relief as all the TADA charges against him are withdrawn' Then many personalities like Salman Khan said 'He is a good person. We knew he will come out clean'. Mr Big B said "Dutt's family and our family have relations for years he's a good kid. He is like elder brother to Abhishek". His sister Priya Dutt said "we can sleep well tonight. It's a great relief" Sanjay Dutt In other news, Parliament was mad at Indian team for performing bad; Greg Chappell said something; Shah Rukh Khan replaces Amitabh in KBC and other such stuff. But most of the emphasis ...

The open source browser, Firefox, which can be freely downloaded, now has a child-friendly extension called Glubble. Glubble, ( www.glubble.com ) which has a Walt Disney sound and look to it, will make browsing the Internet an easier game for kids. Designed by Glaxstar, a company which has built other free addons for Firefox, the browser is user specific (you need to create a user name and password to browse) and parents can tweak it easily to restrict access to sites according to the age of the child. In that sense, it is parent-friendly too. It initially gives access to some 350 sites including Disney, National Geographic and Animal Planet, which kids dote on. Parents can add on or delete as they wish. Even if searches are given on Google or Yahoo, kids will get to see only those sites which fit Glubble specifications.

Baywatch star Pamela Anderson , who is currently in Finland, has thought of a unique business idea to honour her Finnish heritage - opening a chain of strip clubs ! "I thought of a great way to celebrate my Finnish heritage at home," she wrote on her blog. "I'm going to look into opening a chain of strip clubs and I'll call them Lapland!!!" Anderson, whose great grand father was Finnish, is touring the Scandinavian country with her dad, Barry Anderson. "Our heritage is here. We are both excited. We will be taking lots of saunas. Save my liver," Anderson added. The actress has also appealed for the closure of fur farms. "Sweden and England have banned it Let's hope Finland will too,"she said.

LONDON: “Blog”, “netiquette”, “cookie” and “wiki” have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published recently. Topping the list of words most likely to make web users “wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard” was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system. “Blogosphere” , the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; “blog” itself was third; “netiquette”, or Internet etiquette, came fourth and “blook”, a book based on a blog, was fifth. “Cookie” , a file sent to a user’s computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while “wiki” , a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth. The other two words in the top ten are "Vlog" and " social networking ." British pollsters YouGov questioned 2,091 adults earlier this month for the poll commissioned by the Lulu Blooker Prize, a literary award for books, which released the results in a statement. Earlie...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc.'s widely anticipated music- and video-playing iPhone will allow subscribers to wirelessly stream material from Google Inc.'s popular video-sharing site YouTube, Apple said on Wednesday. YouTube, which has developed a huge audience on desktop computers but is not widely used on cell phones, has begun encoding its videos in a new format to improve quality and save battery life when viewed over wireless devices. The iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the new format, Apple said. More than 10,000 videos will be available on the iPhone when it hits stores on June 29, with more material added each week, it said. AT&T Inc. has an exclusive deal to sell iPhones with its wireless subscriptions. While the phone will not support AT&T's highest-speed cellular data links, Apple said YouTube would work well on the phone's short-range Wi-Fi network connection. Prior to the development of the new mobile format, Verizon Wireless, a ve...

The ‘dark' version of Google, aptly termed ‘Blackle,' is making waves in the Net. Darker does not have any disturbing moral connotations here. In fact it is quite ‘lighter' in terms of the monthly power bill. Blackle is the same as Google except that the background is totally black and the text is in light grey ( www.blackle.com ). It was set up by Heap Media, an Australian firm, after environmentalists proved that black screens consumed only 59 watts of power while white screens consumed about 79 watts. You can save lots of power by using black background. Heap Media founder Tony Heap said that Blackle would not solve the world's energy problem but was a small effort in that direction. The response to Blackle has been so great that the site even crashed several times. But Google said it has no plans to have a black background.

Microsoft has agreed to make changes to its Windows Vista operating system in response to a complaint by Google that a feature of Vista is anticompetitive, lawyers involved in the case said on Tuesday. The settlement, reached in recent days by state prosecutors, the Justice Department and Microsoft, averted the prospect of litigation over a complaint by Google that Vista had been designed to frustrate computer users who want to use software other than Microsoft's to search through files on their hard drives. Google had made its complaint confidentially as part of the consent decree proceedings set up to monitor Microsoft for any anticompetitive conduct after it settled a landmark antitrust lawsuit five years ago that had been brought by the states and the Clinton administration. The US government and the states were planning to file a joint status report by midnight on Tuesday in the consent decree proceedings that outlined the changes Microsoft would be making to Vista. St...

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams is all set to return home on June 21 after a record-breaking 194-day space odyssey by a woman with the mission managers giving the green signal. Sunita and six other astronauts, who came on June 10 to fetch her bid farewell to her replacement Clayton Anderson and two Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) before the hatches between their spaceship and the station closed at 6.51 pm on Monday (4.21 am IST on Tuesday). "I'm sad to say goodbye, but that means progress is being made and it's time for the International Space Station to grow a little more," Williams told ground control before the astronauts floated into space shuttle Atlantis that would take them home. Undocking at 10.42 am (8.12 pm IST) on Tuesday, Atlantis is scheduled to touchdown at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida at 1.54 pm (11.24 pm IST) on Thursday, US space agency Nasa said. Sunita had set off from here on December 9 on spa...

Aishwarya Bachchan talks about life after marriage for the first time You took a major decision in your life some time back. Now tell us about your life, post-marriage. Yes, I took a very important step in life and I’m very, very glad about it. I feel blessed, I think it’s wonderful to be married to your best friend. There is immense love and respect. I have the most wonderful father-in-law and mother-in-law, who treat me like their daughter. And what kind of a husband is Abhishek? Arre, if I start on that, we’ll have to get onto an autobiography.... In short, I’m in a happy place. Now will you be doing more films with Abhishek? It’s a good thing if we get to work together. Time is precious and we actors always have hectic schedules. Abhishek and I have done many films together in the past and he has been a wonderful co-star. As a colleague , it was always fun to work with him. It will be great to work with my husband as we will get to spend more time with each other. There were many c...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts gave birth on Monday to a baby boy, her third child with husband Danny Moder, People magazine reported on its Web site. Roberts and Moder, who are also parents of two-year-old twins, welcomed Henry Daniel Moder at a Los Angeles hospital, her spokeswoman told People. Julia Roberts, 39, who won an Academy Award for playing the title role in the 2000 film "Erin Brockovich," married Moder, a 38-year-old cameraman, in 2002 at her ranch in New Mexico. Julia Roberts gave birth to twins Phinnaeus and Hazel in November of 2004.

Ferrari gets in Guinness with record 385 cars at Silverstone Last Saturday, Ferrari finally got its wish and set the Guinness World Record for the Largest Parade of Ferrari Cars. It wasn't easy, requiring 385 cars to drive a distance of at least two miles with each car being no farther than two car lengths apart. The process for Guinness World Record certification also dictated that a representative be on hand to verify the attempt, as well as count the total number of cars at the beginning and end of the parade lap. Ferrari estimates that over £60 million worth of Italian automotive exotica was on the Silverstone Circuit at once, including everything from a 250 California Spyder to a 250GTO to F40s, F50s, Enzos and ultra-rare FXX. The record attempt honors Ferrari's 60th Anniversary , as well as the 40th Anniversary of the Ferrari Owners Club of Great Britain, the latter of which provided most of the cars for the record-breaking lap of Silverstone. The event was also one of t...

After Salman Khan in Tere Naam, it is Aamir Khan's turn to go bald for his yet untitled home production which is a remake of the South hit Ghajini. A source close to Aamir says that since the script demands that in the second half of the film, Aamir's character should sport a bald look to avenge his girlfriend's murder by the villain, the actor decided to do it. "Aamir has seen the original Tamil film and was so impressed by it that he wanted to produce its remake, apart from acting in it. The shooting of the film is currently on in Mumbai and Aamir is planning to go for the bald look in a month from now when they start shooting the film in Chennai," adds the source. Aamir sports fluffy hair in the first half of the film as he plays a business tycoon . The twists in the film's story lead to his girlfriend in the film, played by Asin, getting murdered and him being hit by a rod on his head. This results in a temporary memory loss for his character. Aamir's...

Manufacturer PLANon Systems Solutions ( planon.com ) advertises the RC800 as a full-color scanner capable of recording 100 pages, each in as little as four seconds. Planon introduces the DocuPen RC800 color handheld scanner - the latest technology breakthrough from our R&D efforts. We have been able to achieve full color 24 bit scanning in a remarkably compact and light form that provides you with the ultimate convenience. The RC800 is capable of storing 100's of pages into memory and it takes just seconds to scan a page. Choose the mode you want to scan: black and white, standard color or high 24bit color and the resolution from 100 to 400 dpi. Now you can scan your letters, color documents, pictures and bring them into Paperport software (included with the Docupen). The DocuPen is different from other pen sized scanners in that...

Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you've never heard of, reports Business 2.0 Magazine. Here's how the master of Web domains built a $300 million empire. (Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Kevin Ham leans forward, sits up tall, closes his eyes, and begins to type -- into the air. He's seated along the rear wall of a packed ballroom in Las Vegas's Venetian Hotel. Up front, an auctioneer is running through a list of Internet domain names, building excitement the same way he might if vintage cars were on the block. As names come up that interest Ham, he occasionally air-types. It's the ultimate gut check. Is the name one that people might enter directly into their Web browser, bypassing the search engine box entirely, as Ham wants? Is it better in plural or singular form? If it's a typo, is it a mistake a lot of people would make? Or does the name, like a stunning beachfront property, just feel like a winner? When Ham wants a domain, he leans over and quietly ins...

Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller are among the world's most respected authors, but for a while they had a hard time finding a publisher. Rather than seek a mainstream outlet for racy novels such as The Black Book and Tropic of Cancer, they used the Obelisk Press, a French publishing house started by Jack Kahane to print his own novel. That was the 1930s. Now, a young Henry Miller could use new Internet companies like Blurb.com, i-Universe, Lulu.com or Xlibris to print his book - and even sell it through their online stores. Gwen Fuller used Blurb (www.blurb.com) to publish her book, Do Mallet the Suitcase, a collection of spam e-mail arranged as haiku. Avoiding traditional publishing was a plus for Fuller, 48, a life coach in Menlo Park, California. "There was a process that I was sort of unwilling to get engaged in when there was something that could so immediately deliver a quality book," she said. Blurb requires customers to download its software, which then lets th...

London: Cyclists in Britain and around the world are gearing up to celebrate the fourth World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR), in protest against global oil dependency. According to the WNBR Web site, bike races are planned in Brighton, Bristol, Bath, Edinburgh, and London and are open not just to cyclists, but also nude roller skaters ment. and skateboarders. The main event is expected to be in London with around 1,000-2,000 participants lining up at the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park for a 10 km ride, which will pass some of London's most famous tourist sites, including Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament.

Malaysia's Prime Minister wed on Saturday for the second time, marrying a longtime family friend with whom he fell in love after the death of his first wife nearly two years ago. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, 67, and Jeanne Abdullah, 53, were married in a simple Islamic ceremony at the Prime Minister's official residence, according to a statement issued by Mr Abdullah's family through national news agency Bernama. Mr Abdullah and Ms Jeanne were scheduled to visit the grave of Endon Mahmood, the Prime Minister's first wife of 40 years, later on Saturday. She died of breast cancer on October 20, 2005. Although stunning, the news of his remarriage did not come as a total shock, since Malaysian news websites and blogs carried rumours early in 2007 that Mr Abdullah was contemplating wedlock. Many Malaysians believe it is appropriate for Mr Abdullah to remarry so he has a companion in his old age and the country has a first lady

Asha Bhonsle and Himesh Reshammiya rendered a song together for the first time for Himesh's debut film Aap Kaa Suroor - The Moviee. The song Mehbooba Mehbooba, which is a tribute to Panchamda, was recreated for the film by T-Series. Mallika Sherawat added spice to the screen with her moves while dancing to mystic and eternally alluring Mehbooba associated with the legendary Helen. Another surprise in the remix version is that Himesh is seen without his trademark cap in the number. Mallika also plays a negative role in the film, that stars Himesh in the lead with Hansika Motwani. The initial portion of the song shows Mallika dancing against the backdrop of tents. Designer Ashley Rebello has designed a gypsy skirt (with frills) and a tiny, colourful blouse for Mallika. The latter portion of the song is shot in a lavish set-up depicting the interiors of a casino. For this por- tion, Rebello designed a translucent black gown for Mallika. Director Prashant Chadha is taking all the ...

The latest survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit has revealed that Sweden is the most e-ready country in the world. Many variables are taken into account by the EIU for testing e-readiness. They include the amenability of the country's market to e-business, Internet penetration, consumption of digital goods and the like. Sweden is followed by Denmark and Netherlands . The United States and the United Kingdom come only after them. It was not highprofile spending on technology but rather a quiet Internet revolution that brought the Scandinavian countries to the top, say EIU researchers. When the EIU first took up the survey in 2000, the United States was the most e-ready country. But things have changed much in the last seven years. And despite all the trumpeting, India is not one of the top eready countries.

Los Angeles: Apple peel may either inhibit or kill cancer cells, a Cornell University research has found. Cornell researchers analyzed the peel from 230 pounds of red delicious apples and isolated their individual compounds. After identifying the structures of the promising compounds in the peel, the researchers tested the pure compounds against cancer cell growth in the laboratory. They identified a dozen compounds - triterpenoids - in apple peel that either inhibit or kill cancer cells in laboratory cultures, according to the research published this month in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Three of the compounds have not previously been described in the literature. Lead researcher Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science, said three of the compounds have not previously been described in the literature. "We found that several compounds have potent anti-proliferative activities against human liver, colon and breast cancer cells and may be partially ...

A senior aide of Princes William and Harry has written a letter to Channel 4 on their behalf urging the channel not to use graphic photos of the crash that killed their mother, Princess Diana. The programme, called Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel, is to be telecast on Channel 4 on Wednesday. It will include pho tographs taken by French photographers immediately after the car crash and interviews with them and the other witnesses. "I must ask you not to broadcast those photographs that depict the crashed car whilst the princes' mother lies dying in its wreckage. Also, I ask on the princes' behalf that the shot of the ambulance, with a medic clearly administering emergency treatment to the unseen figure of the princess, not be broadcast, Princes William and Harry's private secretary Jamie LowtherPinkerton wrote to Channel 4 on Friday. "These photographs, regardless of the fact that they do not actually show the princess's features, are redolent with the atmos...

Bobby Deol is excited as he has four films lined up for release in the forth coming months. Yash Chopra's Jhoom Barabar Jhoom , Anil Sharma's Apne , Sameer Karnik's Nanhe Jaisalmer and Abbas Mustan's Naqaab . But it's Apne which is closest to his heart. "I am looking forward to all the films, but at the same time, I am nervous. We are all attached to Apne because it is the first time that we were all working together and that made us very emotional," says Bobby. He adds, "I have always been watch ing my father and learning from him on his sets during since childhood. I have known him to be a very humble person and very helpful to his co-actors. But this time, I also noticed that he was always improvising on the sets. I believe he is a superb actor and the best." "Well, I was very nervous on the sets working with Papa. Everyone knows how he is," smiles Bobby. After Shakalaka Boom Boom, is Bobby playing a rock star once again in this fil...

BREAKING STORY (London): A love letter by Napoleon, words of comfort from John Donne, a plea for tolerance from Mahatma Gandhi are among the hand-written treasures from a private collection up for auction in London next month, Christie's auctioneers said on Monday. The extensive collection, estimated to sell for $4 million at the July 3 sale, was quietly amassed over three decades by the late Albin Schram, who kept them in a filing cabinet in his home in Lausanne, Switzerland, according to Christie's. The star of the collection is a letter by Donne, the celebrated priest and poet, which Christie's said is "the finest manuscript by his hand in existence" and is estimated to sell for $240,000). Donne wrote to Lady Kingsmill in 1624, offering consolation for the death of her husband. "Let us not, who know in God's house there are many mansions, but yet have no model, no design of the form of that building, wonder at his taking in of his materials, why he tak...

Lynwood, California: Paris Hilton has reported to a Los Angeles county jail to begin a three-week stay for violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. The 26-year-old heiress was booked late on Sunday into the Century regional detention facility in an industrial area about five miles (eight km) southeast of central Los Angeles, according to the sheriff's inmate locator web site. Though a judge sentenced her to 45 days behind bars, Hilton was expected to serve only 23 days because of a state law that requires shorter sentences for good behaviour. Earlier on Sunday, Hilton attended the MTV Movie Awards, where she briefly spoke to reporters about her sentence. "I am trying to be strong right now," Hilton said. "I'm really scared but I'm ready to face my sentence." The 13-year-old jail has been an all-female facility since March 2006. The concrete building sits in an industrial neighbourhood, beside train tracks and beneath a bustling fr...

Google has launched a new product, Gears, which will allow users to have access to online applications while they are offline. This means that even without logging on to the Internet, you can open your mail or read Google news. Gears is an open source software which can be added on to browsers and developed as users deem fit. Using the new tool, people can store their online data in their computer and access it when they are off the Net. When one goes online, the data will be synchronized with that in the web server. According to Google, Gears ‘fills a gap' which had always perturbed Net users and makes browsing a ‘seamless experience'. To begin with, Google's services can be accessed offline. Soon other major sites will shift ‘gears' to incorporate the new tool.

Amsterdam (Netherland): Dozens of women posed naked on their bicycles on a bridge over one of Amsterdam's historic canals on Sunday - a unique sight even in a city famed for its relaxed attitude toward nudity and sex. They were among 2,000 men and women who participated in a series of four nude group photos in the city in the early hours of the morning as part of the latest project of US photographer Spencer Tunick. The first and largest composition was in a decidedly prosaic location: a parking garage on the outer ring of the city. But what the location lacked in romance, it made up for in style. Participants lined the railings of the garage's twin circular towers, creating a pattern of multicolor stripes against the white building and an overcast sky. The women on bikes were selected from the larger group and posed with their chins pointed triumphantly upward toward the sky. Other compositions included a group of men posing together near the parking garage and a mixed group ...

Kuala Lumpur: Malaysian researchers claim they have created a nutty alternative to Viagra based on walnuts in a pill more healthy than its pharmaceutical counterpart, according to a report on Sunday. Kim Kah Hwi, who headed the team of researchers from the University of Malaya , said he was inspired to look into walnuts after reading about their use in history, the Star daily reported. "I read articles about the Romans and French having eaten walnuts for this purpose. I thought if it had been documented that long ago, then there surely has to be something there," he told the newspaper. It took Kim and his research team two years to develop " N-Hanz ", tablets which contain walnut extract and have shown positive results on 40 volunteers against erectile dysfunction. "It takes about an hour for the effects to set in and it will last for about four hours," said Kim. "Furthermore, because it is not a drug, it is safe for those with hypertension or diabet...

London: The latest season of Big Brother in Britain started on Wednesday with a twist. It featured an all woman cast of 11 house mates, including a Mumbai born accounts executive, former Cambridge don, a former lap dancer, and a set of twins. The eighth series of the show stared with an apology over the Celebrity Big Brother race row involving Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. Last week, Of com, the TV watchdog, had ruled that the show had breached its code of conduct thrice. House rules have been updated this time to warn against bullying and to make clear that it is unacceptable to make offensive remarks on the grounds of race, religion or sexuality. The all-female house will be getting its first shot of testosterone when a man will enter as a house mate on Friday. After a controversy over its handling of a vote during Celebrity Big Brother in January, Channel 4 said it will not profit from phone lines this season. 27-year-old Nicky Maxwell, adopted from Mother Teresa's orphanage...