Congratulation to ISRO for the Perfect Ten!

Image via WikipediaThe Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) added another feather to its cap on Monday by putting in orbit Cartosat-2A, the remote sensing satellite with the best-ever Indian imagery resolution offer of 0.8 metre.

The same PSLV-C9 launcher delivered nine other satellites — the experimental Indian Mini Satellite IMS-1 and eight tiny commercial satellites — into a 637-km near-Earth orbit.

Congratulation to ISRO!!

EarthCaller - Call any phone in USA for free

earthcaller gives the way to make a call to any land line or mobile phones in USA. No need to install any application!! Just dial from a browser. I guess it is supported only for IE now. It is in beta. But it gives clarity voice service. No disturbances. Felt like using the normal phone to make the call.

Google Movies

I came to know about the Google Movies service from a friend (link). It is cool. It gives all movies running on a selected city. If a movie is selected, it gives the list of theatres screening it. It is a easy and useful tool to plan for the weekend :)

I am wondering how Google build their database for this service. There is a standard that the movies will be changed only on Friday. This will make the life easier for Google - they can get their database updated weekly once. But how do they get it get for multiple cities. I noticed that this service seems to be available for tier-2 cities as well.

I guess Google will slowly integrate Google shopping/product with this movies service and introduce the online movie ticket booking. This may affect current online ticket booking service providers.

I was thinking about the olden days when I started to book online tickets in late ninetees. There was a online service providers called www.clicktickets.com. When I was in chennai, I used to use this service extensively. The guys in that company knew me very well. I used to watch most of the movies on the first week. Sometimes, i used to book bulk tickets (about 25) and watched movies with collegues and friends. Now there are many such service providers and but www.clicktickets.com is no more.

What all ways to make the life easier!!! The power of Google!!

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Cool Technology - TV-GPS

You would have seen that your GPS navigator not working when you drive near tall buildings. With the available GPS modules I could not add location information in the photos taken inside home or indoors. I was thinking that GPS cannot work indoor. There is a solution to overcome this problem. Rosum had integrated GPS and TV signals to solve this problem.

Rosum TV-GPS uses commercial broadcast TV signals to provide reliable positioning indoors and in urban environments. By combining TV signals with GPS signals, Rosum provides seamless indoor/outdoor coverage across all environments. That is cool!!

Check out this link for more information.

Bangalore Road Show Series 3

This is not taken in some village. This video was shot in a busy bannerghatta road, near Meenakshi temple on a busy morning.

Bangalore Road Show Series 2

On any working day morning, we can see buses parked on both sides of the narrow road making no way for the normal commuters. This road is located in Electronic City, Bangalore and these buses belong to Wipro. These bus owners think that the road is for them and they drive rashly.



I don't know when these drivers understand the problem of others on the road.

Bangalore Road Show Series 1

I am seeing lot of funny and junk people on the road. Very few people are courteous towards fellow drivers. But, most of them do not bother about others on the road. They just want to get some way to squeeze in and make the traffic chaotic. They don't care about the pedestrians also. I want to share some of my road experiences here in this Bangalore Road Show series

Greener World Earth Day!

On last world earth day, we planted this "flame of the forest" tree in our home along with couple of neem trees. Today after one year, this tree has grown nicely close to 8 feet. Neem trees are also growing nicely. Happy Earth Day! Let us plant more trees and save our world!

Get your Electoral Photo Identity Card from BangaloreOne Centres

Search your name in Bangalore Electoral Rolls Bangalore Electoral Rolls .

Download EPIC application form Form-001 from www.bangalorevoterid.org

Drop the application form along with your Photo in any of the bangaloreOne centre listed below and collect the Electoral Photo Identity Card in next 48 hours from the same centre.

From Times Of India,

Finally, voters can get their Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) without the need to queue up in the heat. The election authorities will roll out the the drop box system — where applications for EPIC can be dropped and cards collected after two days — on Monday.
While the announcement was made, the BBMP and Bangalore Urban electoral officers were caught off-guard. For the past five days, election officers have been scrambling around to put the new system in place.
Following a number of complaints regarding distributiom of forms and facing up to citizens angry about some bloopers, the electoral authorities devised this alternative for distribution of EPICs. The voter ID cards can now be obtained within 48 hours without having to stand in a queue.
The forms can either be collected from BangaloreOne centres, or downloaded online. Afte filling up and attaching a passport size photograph, the form can be dropped at any of the drop boxes. EPICs can be collected in person after 48 hours.

How does the offline facility drop-box scheme work?

Fill the form - 001 available at EPIC and BangaloreOne centers. The forms could also be downloaded from the website www.bangalorevoterid.org. Along with the filled form, affix photo, undergo identity check by electoral officer and drop the form at the box or handover to the electoral officer. Collect EPIC in person after 48 hours.

BangaloreOne centres

Airport arrival gate Yeshwanthpur BMP complex,
Triveni road BDA ward office,
Nandini layout Near Mahalakshmi Ammanni College,
Quality and Assurance compound, BWSSB, 18th Cross, Malleswaram BDA Shopping complex,
RT Nagar E-1 Sub-division, No. 1, 9th Main Road, 3rd Stage, Tannery Road BDA shopping complex, first floor,
1st stage, 2nd block, HBR layout BDA shopping complex,
Indiranagar City central library,
East zone, 1st Main road,
RT Nagar Divyashree Chambers, first floor, Shanthinagar BMP ward number 24 office, behind Srirampuram police station, Bashyamnagar.
Rajajinagar BMP complex, first floor, 2nd block, Rajajinagar BDA shopping complex, first floor, 2nd stage, 3rd block, Nagarbhavi BDA shopping complex, MRCR (Magadi road - Chord Road) Vijayanagar BSNL office, first floor, A M road, Kalasipalya R V Teachers’s School premises,
Jayanagar BDA park, Anjaneyanagar, HBCS layout,
Banashankari 3rd stage BDA shopping complex, 2nd stage, Banashankari Bank Officer Colony, BTM 2nd stage,
Alcobanagar BMP complex, 9th Cross, 9th Main, 2nd Block, Jayanagar.
S6- Sub-division, ground floor, 14th cross, 1st phase, J P Nagar

Karnataka gets new breed of politicians - Lok Paritran

Image via WikipediaI came to know from NDTV that Lok Paritran, a party formed by engineers and doctors will be contesting elections in Karnataka for the first time. I feel, this is very good. But I don't know how much support they will get from *people*.

M V Krishna Kumar, a candidate of Lok Paritran, who holds a masters degree from New York University. Great!

Seems like there are 10 candidates this time.

I've visited their website and seen their mission statement. It seems good.

Paritran literally means to end the cause of distress permanently. And Lok means 'People'. Thus "Lok Paritran" means "to emancipate the people permanently from the state of distress".
The Mission of Lok Paritran is to make Bharatvarsh a powerful and prosperous Nation and regain its rightful place in the world as the preceptor of the world (Jagadguru).

All the best Lok Paritran!!

Petrol Diesel - Price hike

Recently I read this debatable analogy. It is funny.

Over the weekend, I filled up my car's fuel tank, and I thought diesel has become really expensive after the recent price hike.

But then I compared it with other common liquids and did some quick calculations, and I felt a little better.

To know why, see the results below - you'll be surprised at how outrageous some other prices are !

Diesel (regular) in Mumbai : Rs.36.08 per litre
Petrol (regular unleaded) in Mumbai : Rs.50.51 per litre
Coca Cola 330 ml can : Rs.20 = Rs.61 per litre
Dettol antiseptic 100 ml Rs.20 = Rs.200 per litre
Radiator coolant 500 ml Rs.160 = Rs.320 per litre
Pantene conditioner 400 ml Rs.165 = Rs.413 per litre
Medicinal mouthwash like Listerine 100 ml Rs.45 = Rs. 450 per litre
Red Bull 150 ml can : Rs.75 = Rs.500 per litre
Corex cough syrup 100 ml Rs.57 = Rs. 570 per litre
Evian water 500 ml Rs. 330 = Rs. 660 per litre
Rs. 500 for a litre of WATER???!!! And the buyers don't even know the source (Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
Kores whiteout 15 ml Rs. 15 = Rs. 1000 per litre
Cup of coffee at any decent business hotel 150 ml Rs. 175 = Rs. 1167 per litre
Old Spice after shave lotion 100 ml Rs. 175 = Rs. 1750 per litre
Pure almond oil 25 ml Rs. 68 = Rs. 2720 per litre

And this is the REAL KICKER...
HP deskjet colour ink cartridge 21 ml Rs.1900 = Rs. 90476 per litre!!!

Now you know why computer printers are so cheap ? So they have you hooked for the ink !

So, the next time you're at the pump, don't curse our honorable Petroleum minister - just be glad your car doesn't run on cough syrup, after shave, coffee, or God forbid, printer ink !

Nokia Location Tagger

Image via WikipediaGoogle's picasaweb provides support to add location information for the map. I am too lazy to add location information for all images. I used to give location information for the album level. When I came across this Location Tagger, I was amazed.

Today I downloaded it from Nokia's betalab website and installed it on my mobile. It requires the GPS support either from internal GPS module or through the bluetooth GPS receiver. GPS is not working in my N95 mobile. So, I've tried this with the bluetooth GPS receiver. I have to spend some time and see why internal GPS receiver is not working in my mobile. :(

I tried this from my home terrace. It did a good job by adding the tag in the EXIF file format (header?). N95 supports seeing the image on the map also.

After this, I've just uploaded this in picasaweb. It could recognize the header and display the location information correctly.

It seems like EXIF uses the existing image format JPEG, TIFF etc. An image has information about the camera, time, location etc. What next? Is it possible to add other environment like fragrance/smell? That would be helpful for the next generation entertainment (either image or video). How?? There may be some players in future which can understand this fragrance details from the header, and give the same fragrance when some one watches the media.



Tested Nokia Location Tagger from my home

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Nokia N95 8GB

Image via WikipediaFew days back my wife asked me to buy a new mobile for her. I've decided to give my great Nokia 6630 to my wife and buy a new mobile for me. So, i've started studying the latest mobiles. I wanna stick to Nokia phone.

My first mobile was Nokia 8250. I guess this was the first phone with infra red connectivity. But I've never seen it working when i tried to use it with the similar phones. Also this was the first phone with blue backlight. This phone was very good. I've used this phone for a long time.

After Nokia 8250, I've moved to Nokia 6630. I am still happy with this mobile. Now it is time to change this mobile.

I've shortlisted N82 and N95 8GB. After a detailed comparison, i've decided to go for N95 8GB and bought it yesterday.

Overall it is too good...

I liked these features...
- Big screen
- Camera
- Accelerometer (I can think of new applications)
- Wide range of applications

I am not very happy with the internal GPS. I've not seen it working yet. But when i tried my bluetooth GPS receiver with Nokia maps (pre installed application), it is too good.

I've started to explore N95 8GB. I will write more about this in my What I thought... What I Read blog.

Happy Tamil New Year

Some time back, our tamilnadu CM Karunanidhi passed a bill changing the tamil new year from Chithirai 1 to Thai 1. But, i don't believe in changing the tamil new year!!

Wish you all a very happy new year!!

Rhythm Reloaded - Electronic Stethoscope

Image via WikipediaA team of electrical and computer engineering students at Calvin College is designing a digital electronic stethoscope running uClinux as its operating system.

It does the following -
* Stream real-time audio from a wireless chestpiece
* Record high-quality audio data from a patient's body
* Store this audio data in a convenient format
* Use a USB interface to transfer the audio files to a computer
* Reduce the amount of ambient noise that a doctor hears
* Be simple, accurate, and easy to use!

Visit their website for more information.
I've liked this team name - "Rhythm Reloaded" also.

These kind of devices are required for the RPM - Remote Patient Monitoring solutions.

The team has prepared a nice presentation. It is good to see this presentation. Nice comparison about the list of OS considered.

uCLinux was selected by them from list list - uCLinux, No OS, FreeRTOS, eCos, GNU/Linux, Nucleus RTOS, uC/OS

I've seen the following listed as part of the challenges!!

Open source software != functional

I think, this is really true when we try to integrate open source software. We may not get the fully functional and stable version of softwares. *Some times* i feel choosing open source softwares may be overhead for a commercial solution.

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Embedded Systems Conference India 2008 - Call for Abstracts

Embedded Systems Conference India 2008

Nimhans Convention Center
October 14-17, 2008
Bangalore, India
This call for abstracts is open
Deadline to submit: May 14, 2008

Tracks:
Commercial and Open Source Operating Systems, including Linux
Debugging, Verification, and Test
DSP and Multimedia Programming and Applications
Hardware Design, including Programmable Logic
Multi-Core and Multi-Threaded Processing
Real-Time Development
Security
Software Development
Virtualization
Wired and Wireless Networking

More information available at this link

Its time to vote - Karnataka Election

Image via WikipediaI've got my name included in the electoral rolls in Karnataka. Election dates are announced. I am going to register my vote for the first time in Karnataka on May 10th.
CEO's (CHIEF ELECTORAL OFFICER)E-governance is simply good. The electoral roll is available online for Karnataka. Similar site is available for Tamilnadu as well.

Over 40% of Karnataka's 4 crore voters fall in the 18-35 age bracket. Which is why political parties are wooing them. Congress and BJP parties are setting up call centres here. Very soon we can expect phone calls from party leaders (?) asking for the support. :)