English-Hindi Dictionary (Free)

Need to learn how to say Hello in Hindi? Or for that matter FISH ? Or better still if you are an advanced Hindi learner or even a native speaker and need to find how to say exchange in Hindi. Well don't scratch your head, go no further than Shabdkosh.com.

Created by an IIT grad Mr. Maneesh Soni in 2003 this website serves as an online English-Hindi as well as Hindi-English dictionary. It started out with a database of 15,000 words it has now expanded the base with the help of contributing users. Starting from Hindi it now contributes words from many other Indian languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.


It now features a User -Forum and sections like "Quote of the Day" and "Word of the Day". You can type in Romanised Hindi and even listen to the correct pronunciation of Hindi words. If you don't have an internet connection and intend to use it offline you can download the dictionary here. If you feel like it, you can contribute to the site.

It is a wonderful site, certainly one of the best available today for English-Hindi translations. I have been using it for more than three years and I joined as a member today. I hope to make some serious contributions to the website in near future. Right now, I just want to spread the word.

If you happen to register with the website, just drop by and say hello to me!

PAC-MAN redux

I wrote about PAC-MAN about two years ago and since then its popularity has increased multifold if anything. Last week Google launched a 30 anniversary PAC-MAN doodle. Google has a tradition of putting up special logos (doodles) on its webpage for various occasions.

Google blog says PAC-MAN is a natural fit for the Google homepage as they are both "deceptively" straightforward, hiding their complexity under the hood. Now, Google has made the game permanently available here. Wow my search engine can play games too! :)

So go ahead and play. I just did!

Talent hiring

I am a big fan of Eric Lippert and his blog. If you don't know about him already, you could go to his About me page. Although he usually writes about stuff that I barely know about (VBScript, JScript, C# among others), I have a deep interest in his writings. Even his non-technical write-ups make up for interesting reading.

He recently wrote about attracting talent into an organisation. I am going to discuss about it a bit here in next few paragraphs. Essentially he wrote about things that make a job posting unattractive/attractive to a prospective job-seeker.

Things that make a job posting un-attractive:

1. Technology vomit/alphabet soup
EIGRP, SOA, HSRP, OMG, BBQ, WTF....Vinay Khosla from Fashion would cringe "Spare me the horror!". I can't recall the number of times where I have been annoyed at the spit of these alphabets!

2. Over-emphasis on specific existing knowledge Vs. ability to learn new
"Imagination is more important than intelligence", said Einstein and with good reason. Ability to grasp things quickly and effectively is more important than cramming it up. Intellect minus experience catches up with experience minus intellect pretty fast.

3. Full of jargon / too few specifics
"A worldwide leader, A premier IT service provider, Fortune 500 company seeks ...." oh gimme a break. I would like to see, clearly, what are we talking about here and not in cryptographs please.

4. Asking for things that ought to be assumed
I recently came across an advertisement by a 'leading provider of IT services' for a Developer/ Lead. It stated that "the candidate must be able to do coding". How's that!

5. No indication of work environment
Do they have fresh beans or stale powder? As a rule most of the job postings don't give any insight about the work culture of a company.


Things that make a job posting attractive

1. Challenging work
Work is challenging, requires innovation. A ex-colleague mentioned that the most challenging work he did during the whole day was to "sort out which bus he had to take back home". Needless to say how much he abhorred office. Also, being involved in design process is a huge encouragement.

2. Work life balance
Many of us, including me, wouldn't like to spend their weekends at office - not for any dole of $s. I have already turned down job offers that required me to work in shifts. The job should allow opportunities to pursue their own interests. If you are real good, stretching after office hours won't be necessary (unless you're cleaning up someone else's mess)

3. Chance to work with industry leaders
When you work with the best in business, some of it rubs off onto you. Working with leaders is a big incentive. I, for one, would forgo couple percentage of hike for a prospect of working with a leader in the technology.

Having said that, the above factors are not really important in Indian job market. Indian IT industry is relatively raw and inexperienced. There is a huge amount of young engineers being churned out every year. There is no dearth of software developers around. However, I believe that over a period of time, as the current crop matures into 10-15+ years things are bound to change. Till then, IT companies can get away with their shitty ads :)

End of Internet?

Just found this while reading items on Google Reader. Funny!

Click on image to enlarge.

Please Rob Me!

"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the later for everyone else." - David Brin

We are born in a free world, a free nation and open society. With the advent of internet, information can be shared across the globe almost instantaneously. We love to chat, email, tweet, blog, scrap and share our 'status updates' on social networking websites. While doing so, we also reveal our personal choices and interests.

"Off to Mauritius for a week" - seems like an innocuous update on twitter out there for every Tom, Dick and Harry to quip at. But would you really hang a sign on your door saying that?

Ok! Before you think I am being a dork I am out of here. But give it a thought!

Still not convinced? Have a look here.

The HITEC city

Hyderabad is overly proud of the swanky HITEC city – (Hyderabad Information Technology Engineering Consultancy) aka Cyberabad. This place houses offices to some of the software powerhouses like MS, ORACLE, GOOGLE – Indian Giants like TCS, Wipro,Infosys and Satyam besides numerous other BPOs, KPOs ,LPOs and God knows what 

Every other person here worth his/her own salt (except perhaps the auto-cab drivers , street vendors and the naked child beggars who cajole you for money once you stop at a red signal) has a ID card here. Having an ID card gives you special rights – it will get your work done at a bank, you don’t have to wait at queues for long(unless you are really dumb!), you have access to places. People look down on you if you don’t possess one.

A friend remarked once, “The HITEC city has been sold ( to IT companies) in the name of the Cyber Tower.”

Chandrababu Naidu the IT-savvy former CM of AP salted the HITEC mines to the firangs. The Cyber Tower stands tall in the bosom of HITEC city – its a crowded place at the intersection of busy roads. The traffic is slow as usual – at peak hours lines upto 2-3 kms are not uncommon! This problem is compounded by the utter lack of traffic sense among people. Cutting lanes , jumping signals and tripping is very common (more about HYD traffic later in other post).

Pizza and LHC!

“There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom” - Albert Einstein.

The Large Hadron Collider might have disappointed many nay-sayers around the world. It did not spurn the Doomsday by spinning off 'micro black-holes' that engulf the world but looks like it certainly can cook up a pizza pretty fast.

The 'forward thinking' editors at Sciam made an estimate on how long it will take a LHC to de-frost a pizza. As per the calculations, it would take about 3 * 10 ^(-8) seconds to defrost a pizza. This is about the same time taken by light to travel 1 meter.

Pretty fast, huh?

Image credits : Wikipedia.

How safe is my data?

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” - John Allen Paulos

Imagine having your laptop stolen! It was insured alright ensuring you suffer no financial losses, but how about the data? No worries there.. my machine is password protected you might say or I use disk encryption softwares. Really? Read on... : )

According to researchers at Princeton University, data stored on your machine can be recovered - yes, even if you locked it - with the help of something as innocuous as a dusting spray!

How does it happen?
DRAMs (Dynamic Random Access memory) is a type of memory that is used to store data while your machine is running. It is a kind of "leaky bucket" (a capacitor) which has to be filled in periodically (charged) otherwise it runs out of water. It was believed that DRAM loses its data as the power is switched off. But actually it fades out over a period of seconds to minutes, depending on the chip manufacturer.

The researchers found out that cooling the DRAM chips with a spray of "canned air" would make the chips retain their contents for as long as 10 minutes! Use of liquid nitrogen would prolong this to hours. The chips could then be removed from the laptop and their data read from.


How they did it!




But I have Disk Encryption Software on my machine?
Very well! The disk encryption softwares store their master decryption keys in DRAM. This is something like handing out the keys of the locker to the thief! The attacker can easily extract the keys from your DRAM and access your data. In this process, the researchers were able to beat the commercially available disk encryption software Bitlocker that comes with Microsoft's Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 OS.


Security Risk
According to a report by Symantec, average laptop contains data worth approximately $972,000. Sometime back, GE reported the theft of an employee's laptop containing Social Security Numbers (SSN) of 50,000 employees. Ernst & Young, Fidelity investments, The Boeing Co., Ameriprise Financial are just some of those who suffered due to loss of a laptop containing sensitive data.

It is time the security experts do a rethink!

Cobama or Billary ?

“I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there”
- Maureen Reagen (daughter of R. Reagen)

Its election time in the United States again. This time its a race between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama to the top seat. Funnily enough the Republicans are counted out even before the voting takes place. Looks like the Democratic party's nomination for the Presidential seat is a sure shot. Just to re-emphasize the impression the "dumb guy" has made on the Americans.

Remembering 2000...
The elections in U.S. are generally hard fought and closely contested. The Presidential elections of 2000 contested (primarily) between Bush and Gore were certainly one of the closest in recent history with the State of Florida being the center stage. With 85 % of votes being counted in Florida, Bush had been leading over Gore by over 100,000 votes - leading the media to declare Bush as the next President. But with votes coming in from the remaining 3 heavily Democratic counties the lead dwindled to 2000 votes. The media retracted its predictions and Al Gore, who had conceded the elections to Bush, promptly took it back!


After first recount the lead came down to 500 votes - leading to cries of hand recounts and foul play. Finally the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in, ending the recounts and finally Bush's lead was declared to be 537 votes (out of 5.8 million cast). It was later found that 175,010 votes were never counted in Florida. Interestingly enough, under the recount rules originally requested by Bush, Gore would have won and vica-versa! (Source : Wikipedia)


2008 - Time for change?
The 2008 US Presidential elections are unique in many ways. This is the first election since 1958 when neither an incumbent President nor Vice-President is running for their party's nomination. This is the first time when You Tube viewers quizzed the candidates by submitting videos of their questions. First time the Americans abroad could vote online. If Hillary gets it right, she would the first woman in American history to be the President. The same goes true for Honolulu born Obama who would be the first African-American to go to the highest seat.

The Hillary Vs Obama debate is being played out on all fields - sample these You Tube videos.





So far the election has been dominated by themes of race,gender and faith with Bill Clinton saying, "As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender". He also said that voting along race-gender lines "is understandable, because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time."

Voting woes
But as far as technology goes, its back to the future this time. The voices against electronic voting machine's vulnerability to fraud received another boost when a computer science professor at Princeton published images of unattended e-voting machines on his web page.

On the "Super Tuesday" voters reported more than 1100 separate incidents of problems with E-Voting machines. This, however may seem trivial considering that almost 50 million used the machines this Tuesday. In addition there were problems of machines not booting or failing in several states. The state of California has made a decision not to use e-voting after serious flaws were found in the machines.


The Indian connection
The elections have already received a Desi tone with Obama labeling Hillary as "Sen. Clinton (D-Punjab)" or the senator from Punjab referring to the cash support from Indian-Americans to her campaign. At a recent fund-raiser, she reportedly joked, "I can certainly run for the Senate seat in Punjab and win easily." Whatever it might turn out to be, these are anxious moments for the Americans and exciting for the rest of us :)

Kilo gets lighter...

“The nicest thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”
Andrew S. Tannenbaum

Watch out for the weight next time you step out to buy grocery because the kilogram just got a little lighter. "Le Grand K" - the cylinder of platinum & iridium is the only object known to scientists that has a mass of exactly 1 kg. It is the reference object from which the unit of mass is derived. All objects measured in kilograms - grocery to a warship are defined by Le Grand K's mass.


Several copies have been distributed across the world to act as arbiters of mass. They are measured against Le Grand K to ensure the integrity.


Losing some weight
But there is a fluctuation of mass between the sisters with either the Le Grand K losing some mass or others gaining some. However as they all are measured against each other, finding out the "one" is difficult.

Common man can however lay to rest his concerns as the fluctuations are about 50 parts in a billion. Although tiny, the difference is crucial to scientific community as these cylinders act as reference for kilogram.

New standards
As a outcome of the drift scientists are devising new ways of defining the kilogram. The basic idea is to measure kilogram in terms of constants of nature just the way a meter is defined as the distance traveled by light in vacuum in a precise fraction of a second. Another idea may be to redefine the kilogram on the basis of the mass of an atom.

What ever it may be one thing is sure - the small lump of metal in Paris is going to be used for some time to come.


Image Credits: Wikipedia

BroadBand Blues - anyone?

Broadband Blues
There is good news in sight for people who paid up big bucks for their “high speed Broadband” Internet connection but feel they are being cheated. According to a recent BBC news item, top Internet firms in UK are being asked to explain why customers do not get the speed firms advertise.

Just a trickle?

The hunger for higher speed has increased with the advent of bandwidth hungry applications like video sharing sites, music and movies downloads and flash enabled web pages. It is estimated that 62% of readers who carry out speed tests get less than half of the top broadband speed advertised by their service provider. Of course the top speeds are advertised assuming a perfect connection, right from the service provider (ISP) to your machine. But even after considering the transmission, absorption, radiation and all other kind of loss involved, the final speed available to a consumer is a pittance.

Following YouTube video gives you a way to achieve upto 5 times faster Broadband speed..



Good times ahead..
The firms have been asked to find ways to deal with the technical problems so consumers are more informed about the potential broadband speeds in their neighborhood. Another proposal involves allowing the customer to test connection speeds before they sign a contract and letting them terminate the contract early if speeds are well below what is advertised.

With the government considering intervening in the way broadband is rolled out, surfers can expect happier times ahead.

Big brother is watching you...

According to a news item published in the BBC, citizen surveillance is on the rise. USA and Britain are the countries using state of the art gadgets to keep common people under their watch. The goal is to create a system that will match the facial image of the person with their gait, height, weight and other elements to identify a person instantly. With newer technology, radio waves can be used to find out if anyone is on the other side of the wall and may be their heart and breathing rates as well.

"As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you. These are all things that don't need the cooperation of the individual." said Professor Challapa from Maryland University.

Changed times

Since 9/11 terror attacks are on the rise throughout the globe and countries like US and UK are always on the hit list. Round the clock surveillance gives rise to privacy issues even though it might lead to reduced crime rates. The terror suspects come from various strata of the society often mingling with the unsuspecting crowd making peer to peer surveillance nearly impossible. This system will provide means of non-contact surveillance.

However the public doesn't seem to mind! Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance.

Yahoo Photos closes down..

Yahoo's first generation photo sharing site Yahoo Photos closes on September 20th 2007 at 6 pm. The users can move their photos to the photo sharing site Flickr. Yahoo! is not accepting any new accounts or allowing existing users to upload new photos. Users have the option to transfer their photos to other photo sharing sites like Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and Photobucket.



This follows after Yahoo's share in the photo sharing market has been cut down to 5.8 % (in the US market). Yahoo! bought Flickr in 2005 which has seen a phenomenal growth in the users and the volume of photos uploaded. Yahoo Photos is a more conventional photo-finishing site, full of family snapshots, while Flickr has attracted a passionate fan base of amateur and professional photographers who use the site to share digital photos online, and for whom printing is largely an afterthought. Yahoo! had been maintaining both the sites for the past two years keeping in mind the different user base but has decided to pull the plug now.

Latest Tech News..

I have not been around for some days now....

So here are some latest tech news..

---> You Tube faces ban in Turkey over a clip insulting Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who was instrumental in shaping modern Turkey. This led to a "virtual war" between Turks and Greeks, with each side berating the other by posting videos on the website. Similarly Jack Straw, leader of Commons also supported plans to impose "control" on You Tube.

And ... similar to Anna Nicole's death it led to Wikipedia temporarily suspending editing of an article on Ataturk.

---> In a challenge to Yahoo! and Google, the founder of Wikipedia plans a search engine. "The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now," he said. The new search engine plans to take as much as 5 % of the search market.


----> To add to the "blocking" rage around the world, Wikipedia was banned in China.Founder Jimmy Wales accused Yahoo! and Google of aiding censorship in China saying "This is something I would never do. I think access to information is a fundamental human right."
In response to the block, the main page of the Chinese Wikipedia has added a message at the top directing any mainland China user who succeeds in getting through to a special status page.

More later...

Race for faster chips..

The Race for faster chips is on...
As the Moore's Law goes - "The number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every 18 months or so " - this remarkable rate of advancement has resulted in smaller feature sizes, improved manufacturing techniques, which allow making larger chips and wafers and more efficient circuit designs and materials, which allow better circuit performance.



But as the size of transistors shrank and chips became more & more crammed - the fundamental physical constraints came into play. In fact, the consequences of miniaturization were predicted to be opposite to their original purpose, with smaller transistors performing even worse.

A different approach is to work with multiple processor chips working in parallel. But all such approaches will plateau some 10 or 15 years later, paving the way for research in nanoelectronics. As the components involved achieve smaller dimensions, their quantum effects cannot be ignored.

IBM, on Wednesday announced that it has devised a way to triple the amount of memory stored on microchips and double the performance of processors. This development is expected to speed the movement of graphics in gaming, networking, and other image intensive, multi-media applications.



In a statement, Subramanian Iyer, Development Director, IBM, said, "IBM is effectively doubling microprocessor performance beyond what classical scaling alone can achieve. As semiconductor components have reached the atomic scale, design innovation at the chip-level has replaced materials science as a key factor in continuing Moore's Law. Today's announcement further demonstrates IBM's leadership in this critical area of microprocessor design innovation."

IBM plans to use dynamic RAM (DRAM) instead of static RAM (SRAM) as the embedded memory cache built onto each chip. The change will allow each chip to store its data in one-third the area and use one-fifth the electricity for standby power. IBM is already using the new embedded DRAM (eDRAM) in 65nm prototype chips, and plans to roll it out commercially by 2008 for its entire range of 45nm chips, including its Power line.

Google setback on copyright

For those (incl. me) who regularly look at Google News as a source for current updated news on international and domestic affairs, sports, science and technology, health and entertainment, the recent ruling of a Belgium court might be a little upsetting.

Ruling that Google news and Google search for Belgium cannot show excerpts of news from French- and German-language Belgian newspapers, the court put up a fine of $32,500 if Google violates the ruling. This follows the suing of search engine in March 05 for atleast 17.5 million dollars by the world's oldest and 3rd largest press agency( behind AP and Reuters)- Paris based Agence France Presse.

However Google has decided to appeal the ruling. " It is important to remember that both Google Web Search and Google News only ever show a few snippets of text. If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the Web publisher's site where the information resides. We believe search engines are of real benefit to publishers because they drive valuable traffic to their Web sites." , Google spokesman Ricardo Reyes said.




This ruling could possibly have an impact on other European countries who might follow suit. This ruling is in line with various such noises that have arisen in the past against Google's privacy and copyright policy.

Meanwhile Le Soir and La Derniere Heure - two of the Belgian papers represented by Copiepresse, the group of French and German language publications that filed the suit against Google - show a slight decline in traffic over the past year (vindicating Google's stand?).

This ruling and the subsequent appeal are being watched closely by Yahoo! and MSN as Copiepresse had previously warned them to remove the articles, pictures and links from their search websites.

Yahoo! combine email & IM

There is good news for people who are hooked to chatting. Taking a cue from Google, which has already integrated chatting into its email service Gmail, Yahoo! also plans to do away with installing the Yahoo! messenger client on the machine. The users can now access the Yahoo! messenger from within the Yahoo! mail page.



The new feature, built on the Yahoo! Messenger platform, began rolling out today to Yahoo! Mail beta users worldwide, and will be available to all users in the coming months.

"Yahoo! is focused on making it easier for people to connect to those who matter most to them," said John Kremer, vice president, Yahoo! Mail. "By bringing Yahoo!'s leading instant messaging capabilities to e-mail users, we're transforming Yahoo! Mail into a tool that's about communicating; regardless of the form that communication takes."



The users will be able to see the online status of their contacts and then exchange messages real time. This brings an end to the tiresome part of downloading and installing the IM client and will bring along a seamless experience across various applications - the best part of Web 2.0.

Vodafone tie-up

I witnessed with interest and curiosity, the recent battle between corporate bigwigs like Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Hindujas and Essar group to win the controlling 67% stake in Hutchison Essar. Ultimately the battle was won by Arun Sarin headed Vodafone which beat suitors with a $11.1 bn bid ( hence valuing the firm at $18.8 bn). Although Vodafone was accused of overpaying, its shares rose immediately after acquisition by 1.8 %.



It is interesting to note that the shares of Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd. had risen 28 percent since the start of November in anticipation of a sale!

Vodafone also sold its 5.6 % direct stake in Bharti Airtel to Sunil Mittal's group for $1.6 bn as per TRAI regulations. However for people on Hutch's network, there is good news in store.

After signing deals with popular online services like MySpace (where customers can access their MySpace accounts through their handsets), eBay( to search and buy items) and Google's Youtube (watch and upload videos to YouTube), Vodafone announced yet another agreement, this time with Google Maps.



The deal will allow Vodafone users to access the Java application, Google Maps for Moblie, offering local listings, search and navigation facilities. However there is still some wait for users in India, as the service is primarily focused at customers in UK and other EU nations.

Note: The image as well as the trademark "Hutch" are proprietary (Courtesy Hutchison Essar Limited).

Social Networking

I first heard about Social Networking through MySpace, later Google opened up its own social networking site Orkut which has since gained a lot of ground in India.

Social networks connect people with all different types of interests, and one area that is expanding in the use of these networks is the corporate environment. Sites like Linkedln and Ryze are examples of such networks.Businesses are beginning to use social networks as a means to connecting employees together and helping employees to build profiles. This makes them searchable and be connected to other business professionals.



Cisco's move to buy a social networking company based in San Francisco, that has developed software that allows large companies to easily add social-networking features to their Web sites.Using this tool, companies will be able to create communities in which users can share audio, video and photos, as well as post blogs, podcasts and profiles.

It seems odd that a hardcore "hardware" company like Cisco would but up a social networking company! Sometimes back this would have been dismissed with a laugh, but not now. For more than a year, Cisco has been implementing a strategy to broaden its product portfolio beyond simply being the "plumbers of the Internet."

Cisco executives say this acquisition will likely be the cornerstone of the company's digital media strategy, because social networking is an important way that people connect with and discover content.

Disney has already seen the value in the social networking phenomenon. It recently revamped its Web site to create a MySpace for tots. Kids are able to play games, watch music videos, customize their Web sites with Disney characters like Tinkerbell or chat with other kids.

This trend might be followed by many more businesses across the world.

-##-Updated on 15 Feb,2007 -##-
Hello, found this article on Social Network Analysis.

Gmail to open its gates..

Google's email service, Gmail is ready to open up its services to all. Until now, Gmail was available through invitation only. Although it was not much of a restriction, as every user was allowed 100 invitations.



But now Google wants to do away with all this..although the "beta" tag still remains.
Read the AFP report here.