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

A GUIDE TO WHAT'S NEW IN THE AUDIO, VIDEO WORLD India: Industry News The retail of car-stereo and tape/CD players is in doldrums. The reason for the above fiasco is two-fold. All present generation cars come in with a built in stereo system. Every car manufacturer buys the systems in bulk direct from the manufacturers of popular brands. These sets are fitted at the production level and generally produce high quality sound not necessitating installation of systems available in the retail market. Secondly, tape players have faded out from the car installation front, today's favourites being CD players and FM tuners. The CD players too are facing competition from MP3 players. At present, the pre-fitted car audio systems mostly come with the MP3 player compatible inputs. MDU (Multi Distribution Unit) networks Builders are opting for DTH network cabling . With the trend of new flats coming in with ready fittings, the builders are supplying sockets for direct installation of sate

Once you have sent your resume to an organization, be warned –– any telephone ring could find you answering questions from your employer-to-be. These days due to time crunches, most organizations have instituted a new recruitment practice that of the telephonic interview. The telephonic interview is now utilized by companies as a preliminary assessment to sift through the large number of applicants. And since it's still quite a novel phenomenon, apprehensions and the occasional falter is only natural. So how do you ace that dreaded telephonic interview? Since the telephonic interview is mainly preliminary in nature, you can expect not to be asked any questions of a technical nature - that will in all probability be saved for the main interview. Right now, the focus is on gauging your communication skills. So do your homework. There are always going to be questions that will be unexpected. You need to be prepared for those. Keep some important documents and a pen

Kakle is the new search engine that is making a stir in the Net. It is elegant, rather understated in presentation and is getting ready to take on giants such as Google, Yahoo and MSN . As soon as a search query is given, Kakle.com gives several options to the user. For instance, if you type Emerson, Kakle asks you instantly whether you are looking for Emerson Cement or Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also gives the thumbnails of pages alongside the results. It scores one over other search engines by offering free email with 5 GB storage. Even Gmail offers only 3 GB storage. Kakle also has messenger, chat, games, forums, blogs, and audio, video uploads. It has been in beta version for the last six months and will soon be spruced up further.

Oktoberfest is a two-week festival held each year in Germany during late September and early October (27-9-2007 to 7-10-2007) . It is one of the most famous events in the city and the world's largest fair, with some six million people from around the world attending every year. The festival originated in Theresienwiese (also known as Wies'n) in the 1800s when Crown Prince Ludwig, later to become King Ludwig I, was married to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen on October 12, 1810. The citizens of Munich were invited to attend the festivities on the fields in front of the city gates. Horse races that were first held at the wedding celebrations became so popular among the people that they decided to repeat them every year. This gave rise to the tradition of Oktoberfest. An added feature to the horse races was the first agricultural show, designed to boost Bavarian agriculture. show.Visitors at this show were able to quench their thirst at small beer stands which grew r

London: Cheap flights, strong economy and easily available cheap alcohol have led Britons to behave badly abroad too . The mayhem caused by British yobs holidaying abroad , mostly due to binge drinking, has been revealed in a report by the foreign and Commonwealth office. Called the British Behaviour Abroad Report, the FCO publication covers the period between April 2005 and March 2006. At least 1,549 Britons were arrested in Spain in 2006, 1,368 in the United States and 330 in Cyprus during this period . Also, the staggering increase in British stag and hen parties being held in Prague has seen the Czech Republic climb high in the list of countries where Britons need the most consular assistance. The proportion of Britons who lose their passports and are hospitalised in the Czech Republic is very high in comparison with the number of Britons visiting the country. Spain was the favourite destination for most Britons - 13.8 million of them visited Spain in 2005-06. Franc

Finally here is Tata’s 1 lakh car Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata’s dream project, the “people’s” car, is all set to become a reality by 2008. “The car should be out some time in 2008. Its cost will be somewhere between a motorcycle and a car: Rs 1.10 and Rs 1.25 lakh”. Here is the Renault’s 1.35 lakh. Car. Renault has just launched their Logan car in collaboration with Mahindra in the Indian market. The car is priced competitively and should give massive competition to existing players in the market including Maruti and Tata. Now, Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of French carmaker Renault and also Nissan Motor Co has hinted that they are considering developing a brand new car for the Indian market. This product could be made in collaboration with Mahindra & Mahindra and its targeted price is set at $3,000 or about Rs 1.35 lakh. If the plan goes ahead, it would become the firs

Top software professionals have chosen Internet Explorer as the most influential technology product in the last 25 years. Techies overwhelmingly voted for IE in a survey conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association recently. The next three places were also occupied by products from the Microsoft stable. MS Word came second and Windows 95 came third. The fourth place was shared by MS Excel Spreadsheet software and Apple's iPod . Other technology products that have impressed geeks over the years are Blackberry, Ad-obe Photoshop, McAfee's VirusScan, Netscape Navigator, and PalmPilot . The survey was conducted in connection with CompTIA's 25th anniversary. More than 22,000 companies in 100 countries are members of the association. Moto Q launched The stylish and ultra-svelte Moto Q phone has been launched in India by Motorola and Tata Teleservices . It has a Qualcomm Multimedia Platform chipset which enables highspee