by Sujoy on January 11, 2008
If you missed the NEWS of the year, read this. TATA Motors just launched the World’s cheapest Car costing a dealer price of Rs.1 lakh (2500 USD approx). And more shockingly it looks like this.
TATA promises it to be Eco Friendly, Fuel efficient (20kmpl expected), meets all safety standards ( frontal crash limits as well as off-set and side-impact crash test), and yet somehow managed to be in style.But they claim, this isn’t the first one. As in, the first of the cheapest lot. Pakistan’s take on the Rs. 1 lakh car, aptly called “Sitara”, is manufactured by Habib Motors. And here it is.
But the joyride doesn’t stop here. Visit the official website of Habib Motors, and you will witness an online joyride, somewhat an unmatched experience. The Official website of Sitara is a flash based homepage, with not only the Image Gallery, but also a 360 degrees view. There is an Open Top option, in case you want to have a bit of your sunbath while you drive to your golf course. Available in Two seater and 4 seater models, it sports a 200 cc Four Stroke engine. The real treat is given in the description part of it and you need to read it to believe it. It goes:-
The Sitara city cart is built rugged and strong for harsh local road conditions. Keeping safety in mind, seatbelts in the front and the rear have been provided, with a roll bar and firm handles strategically placed. Soft padding all over adds to the safety and comfort.
And then I just lost it, when I read the bulleted points. [Continue Reading]
by Sujoy on January 11, 2008
There are no second thoughts about the mobile industry being totally swept by the charm, the intelligence and the utility of Apple’s biggest gadget ever( you think it’s the Nano, fight me), iPhone. Not only has it given immense competition to market leaders Nokia and Motorola, but it has also spawned a huge list of iPhone wannabes, predictably from the Chinese manufacturers, even before it was officially released. The latest addition to the list is a DAP from Taiwanese company Digisino which sports a touchscreen interface, has a voice recorder and FM Radio as well. More surprisingly, it is being displayed at CES 2008. Wonder how Steve would react to this?
Check out the specifications( after the jump):- [Continue Reading]
by Sujoy on January 9, 2008
If Apple has the stuff right now, it won’t let CES take over the headlines, even if Macworld is scheduled next week. That’s what they showed, with the Mac Pro Launch, the fastest Mac ever, launched with the Premiere of Intel’s Quadro-Core Processors, PENRYN. This is BIG NEWS actually, because Intel is choosing Apple as the very first computers to use the new Chip technology. And to have announced that a week prior to the Keynotes at Macworld is quite shocking. Or as Gizmodo guys suggest here, is it just the tip of the iceberg? Only Steve knows what he has under his sleeve. So what can we expect from Macworld 2008? Industry experts are rumoring about iTunes with HD Support, New Office and a Better Leopard. What do we expect over here? Is it too early to ask for the launch of the iPhone Mac OS SDK?Or perhaps, a further reduction of the iPhone price? Or may be more bizarre, an unlocked iPhone totally, no holds barred, thumbs down to AT&T. I should really stop speculating now and let Steve reveal the STUFF in a week.
Image Courtesy: F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Episode:3.19:TOW The Tiny T-shirt
by Sujoy on January 8, 2008
If there was a Technorati-Indian edition, the top keyword search today would be CAT, IIM, CAT RESULTS or IIM CAT. This year, 2 lakh aspirants appeared for the B-School entrance exam. So considering an aspirant would have another 3 concerned people checking for their results (on an average comprising of their mom, dad and boyfriend/girlfriend ), it would total to approximately 8 lakh (800,000) people hitting the results site now as we speak, almost every second since they were officially announced at around 3 PM today (8th of Jan 2008) on the IIM websites. The irony however is the IIM websites cannot handle such traffic, and hence the people who want to check the results end up getting a server error page. This is something that we can term as CAT in a mouse-trap.
Let’s have a check at the technical details of the requirements. The result page needs a Date of Birth and an Exam ID for verification or mapping of the corresponding results. This page would be around 100 KB in size (including say the query data that is being handled to fetch the results), considering it has almost no graphics , and only static content, except for the displayed numbers. Considering 800,000 people accessing it by clicking their mouse buttons on the Submit button simultaneously, the query to fetch the data from the results database and display would definitely be handled by the server. This means a total data of around of approximately 80,000 MB or approximately 80 GB of data is being handled by the servers every second (of course assuming, all the users are hitting the website simultaneously). The question is why the IIMs don’t outsource this task to some third party WebHosting company who can handle this amount of data and bandwidth and avoid the inconvenience caused. Of course, there are other means like SMS alerts for results etc, but to check for the IIM call list, website checking is the only way out. If you already have an account at CAT forums like Pagalguy.com, you’re quite aware of it, else you’ll be surprised at the sheer size of threads that must be running today, with announcement of results. [Continue Reading]
