LG launches Optimus L7 at Rs 19,900

Korean phone manufacturer LG has launched its latest Smartphone the LG Optimus L7 in India. Expanding its Optimus range of phones, LG Electronics actually launched two Smartphones on Friday, the Optimus 3D Max and the Optimus L7 Smartphones.

The LG Optimus L7 is priced at Rs. 19,900 in India. The sleek and stylish mid-range Smartphone runs on Google's latest Android operating system Ice Cream Sandwich or Android 4.0. The device is the first one to be equipped with the company’s Optimus UI 3.0 custom interface.

The Smartphone is equipped with single-core 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal memory which can be expandable up to 32GB with microSD.

The LG Optimus L7 sports a 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen having with 800x480 pixels resolution. Coming to Connectivity options, the device includes 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. There's a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, autofocus and VGA video recording.

Further, the Optimus 7 is pre-loaded with LG Mobile TV, an app where users can view more than 50 live TV channels, Online Widget Support, on demand service and Free TV Viewing for two months from the date of activation. Battery of the device is powered enough to run up to 6 hours.

The device also sports a 5-megapixel camera with LED Flash at the back and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera.

Buy Low-Cost Laptop at Rs.4, 999

Can you imagine? Now you can grab a laptop (computer) at a price less than even five thousand. A specialist brand of laptop from the UK, the Allied Computers International (ACi) has launched the ACi Icon 1100 laptops in India which is available at an unbelievable price of Rs. 4,999 in India.

ACi is UK’s longest standing computer specialist brand which has presented this device that is fully-functional having with a high-resolution screen.

The laptops will also be marketed by the BSE-listed group company, Allied Computers International (Asia) Ltd in India.

ACi (Asia) MD Hirji Patel intimated about their target of selling around 2 lakh units of these low cost computers in the country in the first year. When quizzed about the viability of the project, Patel said “the company will import the product from China and offer products to Indian consumers at a very thin profit margin.”

He also informed that they are not going to compromise in quality of the product irrespective of its price. Patel described that although laptop use in India has been enhanced to a considerable level, still it is just a small achievement when compared with UK or USA.

Patel also cleared about the company’s intention towards providing the device to the state govts. of India such as Tamil Nadu, UP and other states, who are in these days on the verge of providing laptops to their students.

IITs agree to follow New Format from 2013

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have agreed to follow the new format starting next year for the entrance for undergraduate courses after several weeks of tussle with the HRD minister Kapil Sibal. 

The 15 IITs including New Delhi, Kanpur, Mumbai, Kharagpur, Chennai, Roorkee, Guwahati, Rajasthan, Gandhi Nagar, Patna, Hyderabad, Ropar, Mandi, Bhubaneshwar and Indore, agreed to implement the new admission format from 2013 at a meeting of IIT council in New Delhi on Wednesday. 

As per the new format, the students, who will score in the top 20% of their board exams (state, CBSE or ICSE), will become eligible to take the advance test that will be controlled by the IITs. The marks obtained by the aspirants in the advanced exam will be considered for the IIT merit list.

Kanpur IIT, which had opposed to the proposal by the central government, gave full support to the new admission format. "There is no compromise. It is just a single proposal with all steps clearly spelt out. All doubts have been sorted," said IIT-Kanpur Council member G Anandkrishnan. 

Sibal, who is also the IIT Council Chairperson, skipped the meeting as he wanted the IITs to sort out the issue among them.

Globalization without Trust

Despite the urgent need for increased global cooperation, such cooperation has been slipping away in recent years. Technological advances in transport, communication, and information have brought us closer together than ever economically. Market forces harnessed to those technologies have created a global division of labor of unsurpassed complexity and productivity and played a major role in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty.

Yet even as the global economy has become more intertwined, global society has seemed to become more divided, acrimonious, and fearful. Fleets of jumbo jets ply the skies of our interconnected global economy, yet our fear of terrorism is so that great we are rationed in the toothpaste and shampoo that we can carry onto the planes.

The paradox of a unified global economy and divided global society poses the single greatest threat to the planet because it makes impossible the cooperation needed to address, the remaining challenges. A clash of civilizations, if we survived one, would undo all that humanity has built and would cast a shadow for generations to come. We've actually been there before. The first great wave of globalization in the nineteenth century ended up in the blood-drenched trenches of Europe in World War I. It is especially sobering to realize that before August 1914, globalization and the march of science seemed assured, as they seem to many today.

Jagannath Rath Yatra begins in Ahmedabad

While millions of people are gearing for Lord Jagannath's Rath Yatra in Puri in Odisha, Ahmedabad took the lead to kick off its 135th Rath Yatra amidst tight security arrangements.

The Rath Yatra began at the 400-year-old Jagannath Temple in Jamalpur area in Ahmedabad. Gujarat CM Narendra Modi took the lead by performing the "chhera Pahanra" and "pahandi vidhi".

The Chief Minister himself pilled the chariot of Lord Jagannath along with other people. The 14-km-long procession will pass through all major localities in Ahmedabad. Around 20,000 policemen have been deployed to prevent any untoward incident.

IBM tops World's Fastest Supercomputer List

 IBM’s ‘Sequoia’ has been declared as the fastest supercomputer in the latest Top500 list of the world’s fastest systems. The supercomputer has been developed for US government nuclear simulations and to study climate change and the human genome.

The system is armed with more than 1.57 million Power cores that are capable to hit a performance of 16.32 petaflops per second that is about 1.5 million times faster than the average speed of a most efficient laptop.

U.S. has gained the position after three years. ‘Sequoia’ is much faster than the now number 2, the Fujitsu’s K Computer which had a performance of 10.5 petaflops.

The Sequoia supercomputer is made of 96 large towers. Each tower contains 32 racks filled with 32 cards. The computing power is equivalent to nearly 99,000 laptops.

The machine uses water instead of air to cool it which is the most difficult challenge because the water should reach to every single component of the 1024 processors, which is too tough a task to be performed.

IBM has been developing supercomputers since 2000. The Sequoia is 90 times more powerful than even IBM's first supercomputer.

The Sequoia is an IBM machine that is part of a generation of IBM supercomputers known as BlueGene/Q. It is based at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The supercomputer is a highly interconnected cluster of 1,572,864 processors, mounted on 98,304 compute nodes that are arranged on a series of 96 standing racks across 318 square meters of floor space.

The list was revealed on Monday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg.

The supercomputer works for National Nuclear Safety Administration, astonishing medical therapy and many more important works.

Dial 104 - New Free Medical Service

A free medical consultation helpline HIHL (Health Information Helpline) is all set to work within a month in the state of Karnataka. The service will provide prescription of a doctor sent across through SMS apart from other allied medical services when someone will dial 104 to get the service.

HIHL is like the 108 ambulance services. At the outset medical arrangement and equipments to handle 100 calls at a time will be installed and if needed, will be expanded to 300 calls.

On receipt of a call, the phone receiver will note down the details of the disease/medical urgency and then seek medical advice from a panel of doctors and forward it to the caller through SMS facility.

Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs of Karnataka S. Suresh Kumar said that HIHL will work under the supervision of the Department of Health and Family Welfare.

The call centre which will carry and forward the call will work in three shifts round the clock and assistance will be available on all days of the year. One can also avail information regarding availability of blood in the nearest blood bank of the caller.

Tatra Truck deal: BEML Chief VRS Natarajan suspended

Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML) chief VRS Natarajan on Monday was suspended in connection with the Tatra deal case. He was under the CBI scanner after the allegation of bribery was made by former Army chief VK Singh. 

Ministry of Defence (MoS) confirmed the suspension of Natarajan on Monday. Following the suspension, senior most functional director P Dwarkanath will be the in charge of the CMD post. 

The CBI is currently investigating into charges against Natarajan after General VK Singh claimed that Tatra trucks were not only sold to the army at high prices, but also were sub-standard in quality. 

Singh was reportedly offered a bribe of Rs 14 crore for clearing the order to supply an additional 600 Tatra trucks to the army.

Fail Cheaply

Failures in the innovation process can be costly and time consuming. So why not reduce your failure rate to as close to zero as possible?

It's a lofty goal and one that very few innovative companies have ever achieved. Plus, failure is important to innovation - how else do you learn? Rather than eliminating failure, focus on reducing the cost of failure by doing these three things:

- Make your experiments cheaper: Experiments need not be expensive. You don't need to recreate a concept exactly to test it. Find low-cost ways to test assumptions.

- Change the order of experiments: Test strategic assumptions before logistical ones. Confirm the market need before perfecting a product.

- Make decision faster: Larger organizations often let bad ideas linger. Accelerate decision making when it comes to innovation and get rid of flawed projects before they cost you time and money.

 'Rowdy Rathore’ (RR) has earned Rs. 29.8 crore just in two days of its release. The Akshay Kumar and Sonakshi Sinha starrer action romance was released last Friday.

The above statistics confirms that audience has widely accepted Akshay Kumar again in an action film even after a span of seven years. The film directed by Prabhu Deva is Akshay's widest release so far on 2,800 screens in the country. 

RR was made on a budget of Rs.45 crore which has earned Rs.15.10 crore on the opening day only. The film is co-produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Ronnie Screwvala.

The film is a full-fledged ‘Masala’ film with lot of action, dance, drama and other means of Bollywood entertainment. Sonakshi is superb in her role as well as look. Her natural smile adds to her character a lot.

‘Akki ki toh nikal pade...’

Farah Khan makes Acting Debut with Boman Irani

The choreographer-turned-director Farah Khan will be seen soon opposite Boman Irani in an upcoming Bollywood film ‘Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi’. This is her debut as an actor. 

The director of ‘Om Shanti Om’ will be seen in the character of a Parsi woman in the film, who falls in love with a 45-year-old man, played by Boman, from the same community. 

The film is directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali's sister Bela Bhansali Sehgal.

Farah, who is also known for her catty sense of humor, mimicked one of Madhuri Dixit's best remembered scenes from ‘Hum Aapke Hain Kaun’ along with Boman for the first poster of their forthcoming film. It is said that Madhuri was so pleased with the acting that she at once became agreed to promote the film. 

The first look of the film was unveiled by Bollywood diva Madhuri Dixit. "The film has an unusual story and is going to do well. Loved the promo... I worked with Farah on ‘Hum Tumhare Hain Sanam’ and it was fun. She is fun and wonderful," she said. 

Plot of ‘Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi’ is reportedly based on some dirty subjects.