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A religious function is being organized by Iskcon (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) at my home in a few days.
Getting ready for the function that will keep me busy for a couple of days. Lots of arrangements to make!
It feels so lucky that we have got this golden opportunity to arrange this religious function celebrating the life of Lord Krishna at our house.
The function is being organized by the Iskcon devotees that will take one through different aspects of Lord Krishna’s life and knowing more about Lord Krishna.
The function will culminate with a sumptuous feast for everyone. Anybody interested in being a part of it can definitely get in touch with me.
Hare Krishna to All!
Disclaimer: The name(s) used or referred to in the above post are respective properties of the organization concerned.
A unique image of US President Barack Obama’s inaugural address has been captured with the help of NASA’s technology which enables users to see highly detailed view of the function.
The special thing about the picture is that it allows one to see the complete view of the function besides enabling one to zoom in the image to such a detail that even the face of each and every spectator can be seen easily.
Photographer, David Bergman used the Gigapan camera system to generate this image.
The Gigapan camera system is a NASA spinoff technology also used in Mars exploration rovers and can capture thousands of digital images and weave them into a uniform high-resolution picture of more than a billion pixels.
The technology is based on the panoramic camera system that the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity is being used to explore the Red Planet for more than five years.
The Gigapan system was developed through a two-year collaboration between NASA and Carnegie Mellon University.
Interested to see the image right now?
Just click the link below:
Online advertising is getting popular with business houses day by day. Online advertising is witnessing a fierce competition with more and more companies trying hard to grab maximum number of prospective online customers.
Google is organizing a global online advertising challenge where 20,000 students from 466 universities in 61 countries will participate. Google will organize these students in groups and the groups will be offered US $200 vouchers to spend on Google Adwords advertising. The teams will be working with local business houses to devise effective online marketing campaigns for them.
The teams will start with an effective advertising strategy followed by running the campaign, assessing the results and recommending further ideas to increase the online advertising ROI for the business houses.
The teams will be offered 3 weeks to work on the online strategy concerning their respective business houses. During the competition, 2 campaign reports will be submitted – one before start of the challenge and one after the competition has ended to assess the progress of various teams.
An international panel of professors will judge the strategies and campaigns of various teams. Winners will be selected based on their campaign success rate and quality of reports concerned.
Referred from:
http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/index.html
I recently attended a seminar conducted by Microsoft at Chandigarh and here are the details of that seminar session.
As the seminar was scheduled to start at 7′ O Clock in the evening, I reached the venue at around 6:30 pm for completing the registration process (my name was already there in the records) and other formalities. The organisers gave a warm welcome to all of us with a tea and snacks party. Welcome kits were distributed among us. Officials from various other IT companies around Chandigarh were present at the venue.
Around 7:15 pm, Microsoft officials finally arrived at the venue. Their team comprised of a technology specialist, a business manager and one more lady (don’t know what her profile was, seems like she was a co-ordinator for the entire event). The event was already running behind the stipulated time. The seminar finally started at around 7:30 pm. First of all, a brief introduction was given by the Business Manager from Microsoft Corporation. He discussed various policies of Microsoft and summarized about what this seminar has in store for all of us. After this brief introduction, the seminar finally entered into its technical front. Technology Specialist from Microsoft Corporation started off with a technical discussion on Microsoft products and policies. His way of talking and speech quality impressed me a lot. Overall he appeared to be a quite knowledgeable and techie person to me with a fascinating outlook.
The first thing he mentioned was a line from “Jim Collins” book:
“Good is the enemy of great”.
He also told all of us about the Gulf war between US and Iraq armed forces (operation:Desert Storm). Iraq army was having far more number of soldiers as compared to US troops. Inspite of that more Iraq soldiers died as compared to US soldiers in the battle. The main thing which he wanted to emphasize by quoting this example was that technology is a must thing today. Just because the US army was much more technically advanced than their Iraq counterpart, there were very few deaths of US soldiers as compared to Iraq ones. See what impact technology can have on all of us!
The next thing he discussed about was the “Corporate Challenges” being faced by the IT companies today. Some of the challenges he mentioned were:
a) Infrastructure Challenges (Needs to be simplified)
b) Cost and Complexity Challenges ( Needs to be reduced)
c) Data and Network Security Challenges (needs to be improved)
Besides, he presented a host of slides summarizing each issue well in detail. He then moved over to discuss about “Microsoft Response to Key Challenges Today”. He told us how Microsoft plans to tackle these challenges which are being faced by present day companies specially by small level enterprises.
Next he told us about how Microsoft products and technologies helped some of the organisations all over the world to reach new heights. He specially mentioned about the following companies and showed their video slides as well:
a) Gates Corporation
b) AIS (A glass manufacturing company)
c) Navigent Consulting
Next he discussed about an “Infrastructure Optimization Model” showing us through the medium of various audio and video slides as to how the infrastructure of a small level IT enterprise can be optimized to yield more profits for the organisation.
As the discussion was going on, suddenly a question popped up from the listeners. One of them asked “Why Windows Vista is not compatible with many old software applications?” to which he(Microsoft person) replied intelligently “Legacy old software applications don’t work with Windows Vista as the companies who made these applications don’t work with latest tools and technologies. These companies are still using old software principles and methods. The responsibility to make their products compatible with Microsoft Vista lies solely on these manufacturers rather than Microsoft.” He also assured all of us that in the coming 6 months most of the products available in the Indian market will be Vista compatible.
Next he moved on to discuss some latest Microsoft Vista features. He told all of us about “Defender” and “Spyware Protector” feature in Vista. We were told how these features can protect your system from spyware and other malicious programs. All the things were well summarized using video demonstrations.
Another thing which he discussed about was “Phishing Filter” in Vista. We often get fake emails in our inbox telling that we have won a lottery, we have won this prize, blah blah blah.. Sometimes we fill the asked information and are taken to some non-trusted sites which can use this information for wrong reasons. What this “Phishing Filter” does is that it verifies the authenticity of the site by reverting back to “Domain Name Server” and identifying if the site clicked just now is genuine or not. If the two IP addresses does not match, it issues a warning asking if you want to progress or not.
Next he moved on to discuss another important highly technical feature in Vista named “Active Directory” which is a highly powerful search tool being offered in Microsoft Vista. Since the seminar was already running behind the schedule a brief discussion was made about Windows Exchange Server. The discussion about this part was highly technical. Using video slides it was demonstrated how Exchange Server can play an important role in an organisation. A video case study was also shown for this application.
Case Study:
— “A company head has a scheduled meeting with the other employees of the company. He gets stuck in a traffic jam. Now suppose there are 15 employees in the company. Is it possible for the company head to inform all the 15 employees of the company that he will be late for the meeting using a single mobile call?”
Its not !
Here’s where Exchange Server comes in !
A complete video slide was demonstrated showing how events can be scheduled in Exchange Server, how Exchange Server can inform all the employees of the company about the late arrival of the company head at the meeting all at once. This was really a very interesting video to see and really defined the power of advanced Microsoft Technology. Another feature named “Unified Messaging in Exchange Server” was also discussed through which we can synchronize our cell phone with Exchange Server instantly.
Now the time was already 10:30 pm. Microsoft officials were keen to wrap up the seminar as soon as possible now. In the end they quickly discussed some general features about Microsoft Vista. They showed how search feature has been simplified in Vista. How you can put interesting gadgets on desktop like RSS feeds, calendar and clock. How “Font preview” has been made dynamic in Vista. “Preview” of files is shown as soon as you click them in the right pane. How deleting history is just a matter of one click in Vista. “Arrow glass” feature of Vista was told. “How simplified word and excel have been made” was elaborated. Ribbon functionality has been provided on top of Word and Excel which automatically predicts the future actions. In fact there has been an amazing breakthrough in the latest Microsoft Office products really!
Next a very brief discussion was made about SQL Server and Forefront. Windows legalisation policy was told where you can upgrade to latest Microsoft products by procuring a paypal license from a trusted Microsoft Partner.
The technical part of the seminar ended here itself and the speakerphone was finally handed over to the Microsoft Business Manager who thanked all of us for attending the seminar and made a formal announcement for the dinner. Finally we all were given a delicious and sumptuous dinner treat from Microsoft people. The event came to an end at 11:30 pm with our polite thanks to the Microsoft people for educating all of us about the latest technical trends and treating us so well during the entire event.
It was really a memorable experience for me!
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