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

Shilpa Shetty will launch her own production house S2 Productions to make her DVD video on yoga this month. "After her per fume S2 reached the number one slot on the UK perfume charts, Shilpa was thinking about what her next step should be. She wanted to do some thing she had not ventured i n t o before, when she hit upon the idea of producing her DVD video herself," informed her spokesperson and publicist Dale Bhagwagar. To be shot from August end for a week at the backwaters in Kerala, the yoga DVD video , span ning two hours, will be directed by Manish Jha (of the critically acclaimed feature films Matrubhoomi and Anwar fame). While Arghya Lahiri is writing the script for the video, the camera work will be handled by Englishman Jamie Sowlds. Currently, a team is in Kovalam scouting the best locations and backdrops for the shoot. The DVD video will concentrate on yoga, fitness and lifestyle and will be available in the UK and Duba...

Satyam Computer Services Ltd on Friday kick started its " India's digital car " project Hera FxV, a "technology demonstrator" aimed at attracting research and development in the automotive sector. Hera FxV would help car makers convert a concept into technology and would help in reducing time to design products from 36 months to 18. The framework is expected to be ready in 24 months. Satyam launched the initiative at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conference titled e-Automotive R&D 2007: The Opportunities Ahead. Satyam Computer Services chairman B. Ramalinga Raju said, "Now the time has come for India Inc to go beyond being a services outsourcing destination and get into the league of IP led innovation driven services and thereby being acknowledged as the global R&D, design and innovation hub." The digital car project is the effort of a consortium of different players like educational institutions and auto component majors, w...

By Corinne Heller JERUSALEM (Reuters) - If you are at work, chances are you are probably doing it right now. Walk into any large office, and you will most likely hear the telltale computer bleeps of chat programs and online games, accompanied by furious mouse-clicking. Employees may seem busy, but many are wasting time on the Internet, or " cyberslacking ". Studies worldwide suggest employees spend about a fifth of their work shifts engaging in personal activities. Their favourite time waster? The Internet. Patricia Wallace, author of the 2004 book "The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology Is Transforming Work", said employees have always found ways to avoid working too hard. "The issue is now you have something that seems to be genuinely irresistible because it's such a gateway to the whole planet that's right there on your desk and easily concealed to people passing by," said Wallace, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Balti...

ALISON ROBERTS: Size does matter after all when it comes to sexual satisfaction, according to Dr Daniel Amen. Forget those enlargement offers in your e-mail inbox: We're talking about the Big B - the Brain. "In order to have a great sex life, you have to have a great brain," Amen says. Brain greatness, he explains, requires avoiding activities that can literally shrink the brain, including abusing drugs and alcohol. Amen is a clinical psychiatrist and brain-imaging expert who also brings a single guy's interest to the topic. "I like to look, that's all I can say," he says, savoring the double-entendre of expressing his love of the view inside the skull. His latest book, Sex on the Brain: 12 Lessons To Enhance Your Love Life, falls into his growing catalogue of writing about how to enhance the good life. "It just seemed like nobody was putting the brain right in the middle of our sex lives," Amen says. The way he looks at it, sex largel...

Bigger Than Las Vegas? That’s Macao’s Bet The casino offers 3,000 rooms and a stadium that seats 15,000 people. The $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort , scheduled to open here Tuesday, will give Sin City more than a run for its money. The Venetian has more floor space than four Empire State Buildings. The hotel’s slot machines, baccarat tables and other games of chance sprawl across a casino more than three times the size of the largest casino in Las Vegas. The 15,000-seat sports arena nearly rivals Madison Square Garden, the convention center has a 6,000-seat banquet hall and the luxury shopping mall has three indoor canals with singing gondoliers; the Venetian in Las Vegas has just one.

Hollywood Oscar nominated actor Owen Wilson has been rushed to hospital after cutting his wrists and taking a lot of pills during a suicide attempt at his Santa Monica house, according to the National Enquirer and Star Magazine. The report claims that he was discovered by a family member who summoned help. Police and an ambulance responded to a 911 call from Owen's house around noon on Sunday and witnesses claims that his wrist was sutured and bandaged at the hospital. The 38-year-old star of Wedding Crashers and Zoolander was said to be in good condition on Monday at the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre, where he was transferred on Sunday after paramedics were called to his Santa Monica home. "I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time," Wilson said in a statement released by his representative to celebrity website TMZ.com.

The Net is abuzz with reports that web major Google is holding talks with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Essar and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited to launch its muchhyped Gphone in India. If the speculations of bloggers are to be believed, Google is planning a worldwide release of its Gphone within two weeks. It is expected to be a sleek machine which will provide users easy access to all of Google's services including mail and search. Google has neither denied nor confirmed that the Gphone is in the pipeline. The success of Apple's iPhone has taught it that speculation and expectation are free publicity. If all goes well, Indians will be able to lay their hands on a GPhone even before the coveted iPhone hits the market.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said on Sunday it was giving its e-mail users more ways to reach friends and online contacts by allowing them to trade messages with mobile phone users. The new e-mail-to-phone connection is one of the features the Internet media giant plans to add as it makes available to the more than 250 million Yahoo Mail users a new version of the world's most popular e-mail program in coming weeks. The Yahoo Mail overhaul is part of a drive to transform its e-mail franchise into more of a social activity that blends the convenience of instant communication with the implicit network of relationships found in one's online address book. Already this year Yahoo has been testing another feature that lets its e-mail users communicate using conventional e-mail or via instant messages using either Yahoo Messenger or Microsoft Live Messenger . "Our goal is to make (Yahoo) Mail a more social experience," John Kremer, vice president of Yahoo Mail, said i...

Salman Khan was on Saturday lodged in the same jail and barrack where he had spent two days and three nights in 2006. He was arrested and jailed soon after landing in Jodhpur from Mumbai to surrender in the black buck poaching case, after the Jodhpur district and sessions court on Friday rejected his appeal against a five-year prison term awarded by a lower court. He was picked up from the airport here by a police team headed by additional superintendent of police Sawai Singh Godhara when he arrived with his brother Sohail and lawyer Dipesh Mehta. Salman was produced before the chief judicial magistrate who had issued the non-bailable warrant, since he was not present in the sessions court when his appeal was rejected. Hours later, a revision petition was filed on his behalf by his lawyer Hastimal Saraswatin at the Rajasthan high court challenging the five-year jail term. Katrina Kaif visits Salman Khan in jail The star, who is being held in barrack number 1, had a sleepless nig...

LONDON (Reuters) - Popular mapping service Google Earth will launch a new feature called Sky, a "virtual telescope" that the search engine hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers. Google, which created Google Earth to give Internet users an astronaut's view that can zoom to street level, said the service would be a playground for learning about space. "Never before has a roadmap of the entire sky been made so readily available," said Dr. Carol Christian of the Space Telescope Science Institute, who co-led the institute's Sky team. " Sky in Google Earth will foster and initiate new understanding of the universe by bringing it to everyone's home computer." Like Google Earth, Sky will enable users to float and zoom in on over 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. Users will view the sky as seen from earth. It has created different layers which will show the life of a star, co...

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Tuesday it plans to introduce a computer mouse designed for PC gaming, in an effort to capture a growing segment of the computer peripheral equipment market. Microsoft's new SideWinder mouse , which will target hard-core computer video game fans, allows nearly 5,000 different adjustable settings, including weight, materials and touch . The new mouse comes with a small liquid crystal display between the thumb and index finger to keep track of game functions and settings . Executives at Microsoft said computer gaming is growing rapidly and sales of mice catered to video game use has increased at a double-digit pace. Rivals Logitech and Razer Group also manufacture computer mice for video games. The SideWinder mouse will sell for $79.95 when it becomes available in October. Microsoft's Sidewinder mouse in an undated handout photo. Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to introduce a computer mous...

They did not bother to talk to me before announcing this. I think they felt it's below their dignity to talk to me. They (BCCI) have been doing this for the last 70 years and I'm afraid, they would continue like this. As expected, the 1983 World Cup winning captain Kapil Dev was sacked as the National Cricket Academy's chief by the Indian cricket board for his association with the breakaway Indian Cricket League. The board, at its special general board meeting at the BCCI centre on Tuesday said that anyone including the players aligned with any private association not approved by the parent body, would lose all the benefits they were entitled to. The decision did not come as surprise as the board had earlier made it clear that anyone who would join the rebel league will be banned from the BCCI. The Haryana Hurricane was appointed chairman of the ICL's executive committee by the Subhash Chandra-owned Essel Group. The man to replace Kapil Dev will be Maharashtra Cricket A...

Washington: US immigration authorities have received about 300,000 applications for employment visas from foreign professional workers in a deluge unleashed by a bit of "Gandhigiri" by unhappy Indian green card seekers. The Indians sent thousands of flowers to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) director Emilio Gonzalez in the second week of July to protest a last minute reversal of a June announcement offering expedited processing for H1-B visa holders. USCIS said it was swamped by applications for permanent residence visas, known as green cards - numbering more than double the annual limit of 140,000 - after it gave an additional period ended August 17 to immigrants with professional skills to file such petitions. The applications came pouring in after the federal agency first said it would not accept any applications for such visas during July and then reversed course following a unique protest by Indian applicants for per manent residency. "The public rea...

Two-time Indian Idol judge has nothing against talent hunt shows. In fact, he is happy that young budding talent which otherwise would have gone unnoticed is being discovered and given a platform through television. But what he doesn't like is the fact that in these shows marketing overshadows talent. "Ideally there should be fair mix of singing and marketing. But it is the latter that gets more importance and the participants get such huge exposure that they become celebrities overnight. But real good singing is all about everyday riyaaz and not hype," says the well-known singer who came on Indian Idol as celebrity judge on Friday. Sonu says he could not do the third season of the popular talent hunt show because of his commitment to concert tours in America and Europe. "But I had heard a lot about the show and the contestants and also watched a few episodes in bits and pieces. That is why I decided to come as a celebrity judge and was pretty impressed with the t...

There are many well-known expressions in English language. One of them, son of a gun , means a rogue or scamp and it is used mostly in America: "You are really naughty, you old son of a gun." Do you know how the expression ‘son of a gun' originated? Well, it is commonly an expression of surprise, based in maritime folklore in the 19th century. This is because at this time of war, when wives accompanied their husbands to sea, births often took place on one of the tables between the two guns on the lower deck, with only some canvas draped across to provide some privacy. Research ascribes the first appearance of the expression in 1708. William Henry Smyth's Sailor's Word Book (1865) coins the term, defining it as an epithet applied to boys born afloat, when women were permitted to accompany their husbands to sea. One admiral declared that he was thus cradled under the breast of a gun carriage. Another expression ‘ Red Herring ' means any diversion intended ...

A new survey has found that Net users are more satisfied with Yahoo than Google. Yahoo scored 79 points while Google got 78 points in the survey conducted by the University of Michigan. Though Yahoo has only a slight edge over Google, it has much to gloat about. Last year, Google had a five point lead over Yahoo. It was the comprehensive services offered by Yahoo's portal which shifted votes in its favour, researchers said. Though Google is still the favourite search tool, it has not been able to promote its other services as robustly as Yahoo. Larry Freed, president of Foresee Results which did the survey for the university, pointed out that users don't see anything different in Google's portal from what they saw three years ago. But Yahoo has refurbished its portal and gained in points. Microsoft offers update Microsoft on Tuesday released 14 critical updates to plug loopholes in several of its applications. Those who don't make use of the auto...

Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney has broken his left foot, his club said delivering a major blow to the Premiership champions and England's Euro 2008 hopes. " Wayne Rooney has suffered a hairline fracture of his left foot ," said a statement released by the English champions on their official website. The 21-year-old lasted just 45 minutes of Sunday's 0-0 Old Trafford draw against Reading, the team's opening league match of the season, before being replaced by Nani following a collision with Michael Duberry. The news will be a blow for United as well as England who face crucial Euro 2008 qualifiers against Israel on September 8 and Russia at Wembley. The club didn't comment on how long the star striker would be sidelined but it's expected to keep him out for a month making him unavailable for the matches against Ports-mouth and Manchester City and England's friendly with Ger many on August 22. FACTFILE June 2004: Playing for England, ...

Google will take a fee $20 per year from those who want additional storage in its Gmail and Picasa applications. As of now, Google offers free storage space of 2.8 GB for Gmail and 1 GB for Picasa. By paying $ 20, users can have extra 6 GB storage. Yahoo, on the other hand, offers unlimited storage in its mail service. Microsoft has also refurbished its Windows Sky drive application and now offers 500 GB storage for free.You can put your files there and access them from anywhere in the world. All you need is a Hotmail ID. Internet is not kid stuff A survey by security firm Symantec has confirmed the worst fears of parents. It warns that most teens and kids who browse the Internet are doing dangerous things online. While most parents thought that kids were online only about three hours a week, in reality, they were online for more than seven hours. And more than 25 per cent of them confessed that they were doing things that would make their parents shudder. The survey reve...

CHAK DE INDIA CAST: Shah Rukh Khan, Vidya Malavade and DIRECTOR: Shimit Amin Chak De India is a paint-by-numbers sports movie, dozens have come out of Hollywood by now. The formula puts tremendous obstacles in the path of a bunch of underdogs, they overcome all, silence the naysayers and win. Shimit Amin (inspired by Miracle and other similar films) takes a bit of a chance by making a film about hockey in a country that cares only about cricket - a point he makes here too. Then, it's women's hockey, which nobody cares about, not even the authorities who should. Into this he stirs in the masala of national integration and patriotism and it's an almost potent mix - but for the predictability at every step. (Just one exception - the girls' match with the men's hockey team.) Kabir Khan (Shah Rukh Khan) , former hockey team captain, hounded out as a "traitor" with accusations of throwing a match to Pakistan, returns seven years later and wants to coach ...

The denims look tattered and frayed, but shoppers in Europe and the United States are prepared to pay good money for " distressed" jeans and Sri Lanka is cashing in. In the industrial town of Avissawella, east of the capital Colombo, it takes workers around 13 minutes to cut and sew basic five pocket denims . They then spend another four days torturing the pants by dying, bleaching, and sand papering them to get a "distressed" look. "Each garment is dyed or dipped around 16 and sometimes as many as 30 times to achieve the proper torn, tattered look," . "We earn more money by making denims look dirty and torn, the classic clean look doesn't bring us much," Mr Kumarasiri said. Basic denim jeans cost around $6 to make, but the shabbier "premium" ones cost twice as much, he added. "In many ways, premium denims are replacing the little black dress as the wear anywhere fashion staple," he said. Overseas buyers such as Lev...

NASA and Microsoft have teamed up to give people a 3D photographic look at the space shuttle Endeavor before its launch this week, in a public-private partnership that could lead to more use of digital imagery in future space-agency missions. Microsoft on Monday released a downloadable viewer including hundreds of photos of the space shuttle, NASA's vehicle assembly building and the shuttle's launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center (Endeavor is scheduled for flight Wednesday.) The viewer, created with Microsoft's Photosynth technology, gives people a three-dimensional perspective on the space center, letting people zoom in for a close-up, high-resolution look at heat tiles on the shuttle, for example, or zoom out to see a panoramic of Cape Canaveral. The technology automatically knits together digital photos to give people a perspective from many angles. "It's much like a 3D video game - people can explore, walk around or fly around the shuttle," said Ada...

An Indi an woman in a flowing, beaded gown glides through a pond. As the drumbeat of the Indian countryside patter, a dancing phalanx of tunic-clad women twirls. A mosquito net brushes over the woman's lover. A silver anklet splashes into a pond. These are scenes from the trailer of a forthcoming movie, Saawariya. The film, whose Hindi title means beloved, has an Indian director and cast. It is melodramatic. Its characters speak Hindi and burst into eight song-and-dance routines. It is, in other words, vintage Bollywood - but for one thing. It is brought to you by Hollywood. The studio behind Saawariya , Sony Pictures , is the first in what will become a wave of American studios to produce their own kaleidoscopic, song-anddance Bollywood films. The American studios are keen to make money in India, but in a nation where $19 of every $20 spent at the box office goes to domestic films, the studios are deciding to join Bollywood, not try to beat it. "The importing of American fil...

Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are vying to buy Rediff.com India Ltd., the Hindustan Times reported citing an unnamed source. The paper said the potential takeover could value the Mumbai, India-based news, entertainment, shopping and search site at close to $1 billion. In addition to Mountain View based Google and Sunnyvale based Yahoo , the paper said Time Warner Inc.'s America On Line unit may be a suitor. Besides the Web site, Rediff.Com India limited publishes two weekly newspapers aimed at Indian-Americans, India Abroad and India in New York. Rediff share price has risen recently on speculation that the company may be a takeover target. It’s possible that Rediff could be in talks, but speculation that it’s Google or Yahoo that is looking to acquire Rediff is exactly that: speculation, and with no basis in fact. On recent history, Google and Yahoo are actually unlikely suitors; although Rediff’s market cap and therefore rough takeover price of $738.9million would put it into the...

Let me ask a question first. What type of economic strength is preferable to India? A) A strong Indian economy fueled by its cheap labor due to a weaker rupee against dollar, where the Indians end up working in shifts, late nights, whole nights and what not… only doing low profile jobs which foreign companies want to offload to India, so that they can concentrate on high end works and become even better. For instance in IT field, providing BPO services, support and maintenance work for products OR B) A strong Indian economy fueled by its strong innovations and products, no matter whether the rupee is strong or weak against dollar where Indians work only in regular office hours of 9 to 6, developing cutting edge technologies and solutions, selling our world class products both inside and outside India. For instance in IT field, imagine operating systems, compilers, databases etc all coming out of India.. I do not deny the fact that the IT boom in India came to a large extent becau...

Noted director Buddahdeb Dasgupta's Bengali movie Kaalpurush-Memories in the Mist has been chosen as the best feature film in the 53rd National Film Awards for 2005, while the best child artist award has been given to Sai Kumar for the Telugu movie Bommalata-A Bellyful of Dreams , which was announced by the government on Tuesday. In the best popular film category, the award has gone to the Hindi movie Rang de Basanti . It has also walked away with the awards for the best audiography and the best editing. The award for best actor has gone to Amitabh Bachchan for the Hindi movie Black for his "dramatic rendition of a a reformed alcoholic who struggles to give a physically handicapped child a new life." Black has also won the award for the best feature film in the Hindi films category. Actress Sarika has got the award for the best actress for the English movie Parzania "for her rendition of a crusading mother who fights for justice against all adversity in a commun...

Young Britons of South Asian origin have very traditional opinions on issues like homosexuality and mixed marriages , a survey has revealed. Nearly half of young Britons of South Asian background aged between 16 and 34 years would only marry someone of their own race. Leave marriage, nearly half of them would not even consider dating a white person and over half of them would not consider dating a black person. The survey, commissioned by BBC's Asian Network as part of an Asian Nation season, was designed to gain an insight into the mindset of UK Asians those identifying themselves as from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan backgrounds. The survey by ICM reveals that 44 per cent of Britons of South Asian background would only marry someone from the same race, compared to just 9 per cent of white respondents. The survey has revealed markedly different attitudes, shaped by their cultural identity, to friends and relationships of Britons of South Asian background as co...

London: Four Indian edu cation institutions figure in the latest world university rankings, which continue to be topped by the universities of Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford , for their strengths in teaching and research. The four Indian institutions are the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Delhi University (DU) . The IITs rank 57th in the world's top 200 universities list and the IIMs rank 68th. The JNU comes 183rd in the last . The Times Higher Education Supplement, an authoritative journal in academia, announced in the third edition of the rankings. In the list of the world's top 100 science universities, IITs rank 33rd , while in the list for top technology universities, the rank of IITs jumps to the third place after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, Berkeley . The IIMs rank 68th in the list of top technology universitie...

Shah Rukh Khan's bunch of young and fiesty women hockey players are ready to hit the screens on Friday when Chak De India releases all over. The film revolves around the story of an Indian women's hockey team , that goes on to win a World Cup. Real life women hockey players are now hoping that it gives their sport a big boost. There were initial reports that Vidya Stokes, the President of the Indian Women's Hockey Federation was unhappy with the on-screen portrayal of the players. But it now seems that it was a clear case of misunderstanding. "She was asked if women's hockey is zero, and if they're being shown as hero, so she obviously reacted to it. Everyone knows the results, and my girls are doing very well, that's a fact. So neither are we unhappy, nor have we asked for a separate screening. We have no hassles with Yashraj at all," said Amrit Bose, Secretary, IWHF. The much-awaited blockbuster is the tale of a former Indian hockey goalkeeper, pla...

OEDB : Research can be a time consuming and sometimes tedious task. How can you make it easier for yourself? While there is no complete substitute for a good old-fashioned trip to the library, you can find a wide variety of information with many research tools. Here are a few sites listed in alphabetical order. You might not be familiar with some of the resources, but they can help supplement and improve your research. Artcyclopedia - If you're looking for information on artists or art movements, Artcyclopedia is a great place to begin. The site provides links to museums worldwide where works by over 8,200 artists can be viewed. While most of the artists listed are painters and sculptors, you can also find photographers, decorative artists, and architects. Any art or art history research can benefit from this site, at least as a starting point. BioMedCentral - BioMedCentral is an archive of over 170 biology, chemistry and medical journals. The ar...