Mukesh Ambani’s new house – Antilla

Thought it will be interesting to cover the house being constructed in Mumbai’s Altamount Road by the world’s richest man – Mukesh Ambani. Yep, he’s officially the richest now with the skyrocketing share prices of RIL.

The house (called Antilla) is being valued at Rupees 4000 crores and will be 173 metres tall. Normally that is the equivalent of a 60 storeyed tower, but in this case each floor is more than twice the height of a normal floor, with the result that the building will only have 27 floors when completed. Given the prevailing state of skyscrapers in Mumbai, this building will be more than twice as tall as the earlier tallest buiilding. The view from the top will be breathtaking, no doubt.

Some other absurd facts about this ‘house’..
3 helipads on top. Mumbai corporation has not given permission for making this operational yet.
Hanging gardens within the structure
Swimming pool within the structure
A two storey Health centre
Parking space for 168 cars (6 floors). I initially thought that meant there will be a mini office in the building but apparently that is not the case. All these cars will belong to Mukesh Ambani! Just in case you are interested, he drives a 5 crore Maybach now.
A floor exclusively for servicing these automobiles within the building.
A floor for Home theatre – sitting capacity of 50

Most absurd of all, the house will have a staff of 600 (sic) to do the maintenance activities. That gives a ratio of 1:100 for people living in the house and those who are paid to take care of it. The six lucky (?) ones are the man himself, his wife, his 3 children and his mother Kokilaben. The family will be moving in from their old home ‘Sea Wind’ which was a 14 floor building at Cuffe Parade.

In fairness, Mukesh bought the property in 2002. So he has not spent anywhere close to the $1 billion people are now valuing the property at. And it is not just him, plenty of other rich tycoons have indulged in their residences. Two people who immediately come to mind are Mittal & Gates.

UK-based steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (he is still an Indian citizen though) bought the most expensive house in London last year, paying £60m for a place in Kensington Palace Gardens.Microsoft founder Bill Gates had his house built as technology showpiece several years back. The house is reputed to have cost upwards of $100 million. I will write about this particular property sometime in the future. It is much more interesting than the Ambani house, because Gates tried to implement many new, yet to be proven technologies in his blueprint.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Launched

Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play smartphone has 4-inch capacitive multi-touch display that supports FWVGA 480X854-pixel resolution. Xperia Play's display slides out to reveal the action buttons, Directional Pad, Touch Pad and selection buttons. The phone also has two shoulder buttons. In short, the flat panel when slided out works as PlayStation controller. The corners are rounded.
Under the chassis, the Xperia Play has 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with Adreno 205 GPU. This smartphone will come preloaded with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which will carry the TimeScape UI on top of it. Sony promises basic 3D gameplay at 60 frames per second on the smartphone.
Other features include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, and Digital Compass. Since it runs Gingerbread, one would be able turn Xperia Play into a mobile hotspot for connecting up to 5 Wi-Fi devices.
Xperia Play would be introduced in GSM and CDMA versions for select markets. For GSM networks, Xperia Play would support Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and quad-band UMTS HSPA for faster and better telephony.

HTC launched 5 new smartphones and tablets

HTC unveiled on Tuesday two social networking phone models introducing its first tablet computer to a crowded marketplace.
Along with this the world's fifth-largest smartphone maker also introduced new versions of its hit models Desire, Wildfire and Incredible. All six new devices will run Google's Android software, which ended the 10-year reign of Nokia's Symbian as the pre-eminent smartphone platform last quarter.
HTC joined the throng of tablet makers with its Flyer model, which comes with a 7-inch screen and a separate stylus.
HTC positioned the tablet in the premium price category, but said it was ready to sell new social networking phones at keenly competitive price levels.
HTC's new social networking models come with a dedicated hard-key for Facebook, enabling users to post information to their Facebook account with just one keystroke.

Cultural History of India

India has a rich cultural history and continues to preserve it beautifully. India has accepted gracefully the good qualities of different religions which led to the rise of many different cultures in this mystical sub-continent. Different rulers and empires came here and ruled and left behind a rich legacy of their cultural heritage. The Indian cultural history is very rich and has carved a niche of its own. It continues to inspire other cultures of the world. Every state in India has a culture of its own and even then they all stand unified and form one single culture of India. Read about the cultural history of India.

Many religions took birth India like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, etc. These religions influenced not just our country but nations all over the world. With Islamic rule in India, Islam became one of the religions in India. Ancient architectural specimens and monuments of India stand testimony to the confluence of different religions in India. The Hindus and Muslims took inspiration from each other and formed new architectural styles like rounded domes and construction of pillars.

Art developed right from the Stone Age when early man used to draw animal figures and paint them in caves. This developed to a much more refined formed of painting as time went by like decorating the front porch of the house. This custom is still followed in modern India in many homes in the southern regions. Music and dance developed from a crude form to a beautiful refined form and took the form of present classical music and dance forms like Carnatic, Hindustani, Kathak, Bharatanatyam, etc. With the development of regions and states, they developed their own folk dances that were exclusive to one particular region.

There was great advancement in literature since ancient times. India has been the birth land of great thinkers, philosophers and scholars. This is evident in great literary works like Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, etc. which are considered no less than holy epics. With time, languages developed and many great literary masterpieces and plays were written like Shakuntalam, Shilpadhikaram, etc. With the culmination of different religions, different cuisines came into the limelight that are now considered to be the traditional food of India. The culture of India is truly the blend of some of the best cultures of this world and is one of those very few cultures that are surviving since ancient times.

Abhayanand and Anand Kumar freee IIT-JEE Coaching Classes

Patna: The Ashok Rajpath Street in Patna is where one can find literally hundreds of coaching centers.

It is in fact, a haunt for many young people in Bihar hoping to crack various entrance exams and secure a bright future for themselves.

However, there is another coaching institute in Patna that is a league apart from all these.

The students attending it are mostly poor, are housed, fed and coached for free. And it boasts a success rate of almost 95 per cent in the IIT JEE.

It is called the Super 30 and it is run by an IPS officer Abhayanand and a mathematics teacher, Anand Kumar.

Abhayanand, a 1977 batch IPS officer, is currently posted as Inspector General, Economic Offences, with the Bihar government. Two years ago, while coaching his own children for the IIT entrance tests—both IITians now—he thought of the many underprivileged students who didn’t have access to such facilities. Yet many could make it with just a little help. That’s when it occurred that he could start a tutorial for poor rural students.

"I felt it was time for me to pay back to society in some way or the other. I took up the challenge," recalls Abhayanand.

His idea was seconded by Anand Kumar, a mathematics teacher. He too came from a poor family and was conversant with the struggles of deprived students. Kumar runs his own coaching institute but was keen on the project. In 2002, the duo began Super 30—a free tutorial to coach 30 bright youngsters from underprivileged families of rural Bihar for the IIT entrance test.

Abhayanand, 50, says coaching the students was a challenge but he was confident of success. A BSc physics topper from Patna Science College, the IG spends his free time with the students and says he has had to brush up on his physics before taking on the assignment.

The Super 30 are selected after rigorous screening and aptitude tests. Anand Kumar, who bears the entire expenses, has set aside a part of his house in Mithapur, Patna, for the centre. Food expenses come to Rs 1,000 per month per student. Yet, the frugal lifestyle has not deterred them.

“We wanted to help the children who were intelligent but who did not have enough money to pay the IIT coaching fees as they are quite expensive,” says Anand Kumar. The two of them consulted teachers, principals and schools before short listing their first batch of 30 deserving candidates.

Most of the students who enrolled were the children of marginal farmers and from panchayat schools.

They were brought to Patna, provided food, lodging and coaching under one roof and free of cost.

And the results speak for themselves - when the entrance results for 2003 were announced, 18 of the 30 had made it. And this year, 28 students made it to IITs.

But as a testament to the teaching methodology at Super 30, the students compete not on the basis of caste or quota, but sheer competence.

And every year, battling funds crunch and poaching by rival coaching institutes, Abhay Anand and Anand Kumar make sure that at least 30 deserving students like get a shot at making their dreams a reality.

The History of Google

Everyone knows the name Google. Whether young or old, computer smart or not this name will pop up in any conversation about computers. Google has created some very impressive milestones of its time and continues to grow rapidly every day. It all started when Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in Stanford. Larry was 22 and a graduate of University of Michigan was there considering attending the school. And low and behold Sergey, who was 21, was there to show him around. Talk about a match made in heaven!

However, according to some they disagreed on just about everything during their first meeting. In 1996, now firm friends and both of them computer science grad students, began developing a search engine called BackRub. This search engine had operated on Stanford servers for just a little over a year when it started taking up to much bandwidth to suite Stanford. So they decided to switch servers and renamed the search engine in 1997, calling it Google. The name comes from a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zero’s. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.

In august of 2008, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes them a check for $100,000 to a company that didn’t even exist yet. It was at this very moment that they realized what they had and went and incorporated the name Google Inc. Their knowledge was great, but not great enough to impress the money boys or the major internet portals. Oh how they wish they invested in them now! So they began struggling for financial support. Andy was one of the few to see true potential of what these boys had created. During their presentation to him, Andy said he had to duck out for another meeting and offered to write them a check. The check was for $100,000 and that indeed had got things moving for them.

In September the boys moved into the their workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park, CA. They then went on to file for incorporation in California on September 4 1998. Shortly after completing this important task, the boys went an opened a bank account in the name of Google Inc., their newly established company, and deposited the $100,000 dollar check Andy Bechtolsheim had given them. Shortly after they have established there new business they began hiring employees. There first one was Craig Silverstein, a fellow grad student from Stanford as well.

In December of 1998 PC Magazine wrote: “The 25 million pages currently catalogued seem to be good choices. The site has uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results. There’s much more to come from Google, but even in its prototype form it’s a great search engine.” . They went on to say that Google had made its mark as one off the Top 100 websites for 1998. Even at the very beginning they received only the best reviews.

They then went on to become the most successful internet company ever. Early in 1999 they struck a deal with Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins for $25 million. In November 1999 Charlie Ayers joined Google as the company’s first chef. In April of 2000. Google announced the MentalPlex program, which envisages the software’s ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. In June of 2000, Google partnered with Yahoo! to become their default search provider. Also in June they announced the first billion URL index, making Google become the world’s largest search engine. In September of 2000 they started offering searches in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean , bringing their total number of supported languages to 15. In December 2000 Google toolbar was released.

They have been going strong ever since, making them the largest and best search engine site today, with multiple enhancements. They will continue to be at the top of their game for years to come.

History of Computers

The development of the modern day computer was the result of advances in technologies and man's need to quantify. Papyrus helped early man to record language and numbers. The abacus was one of the first counting machines..
Some of the earlier mechanical counting machines lacked the technology to make the design work. For instance, some had parts made of wood prior to metal manipulation and manufacturing. Imagine the wear on wooden gears. This history of computers site includes the names of early pioneers of math and computing and links to related sites about the History of Computers, for further study. This site would be a good Web adjunct to accompany any book on the History of Computers or Introduction to Computers. The "H" Section includes a link to the History of the Web Beginning at CERN which includes Bibliography and Related Links. Hitmill.com strives to always include related links for a broader educational experience.
Hitmill.com has a blog for students about Computers, Internet, Digital Graphics, and the History of Computers, with weekly blogs at http://galcalia.wordpress.com. The I.T. Twitter where we tweet to students is http://www.twitter.com/Calgalia.
Why we are not on Facebook: Facebook has huge security issues in which personal security of each individual is frequently breeched and in protest, we are not participating by having a Facebook link... people running the company need more coursework in ethics, and computer server security, and how to protect the indivdual information of their clients. A company should never ask a user to opt out of a general plan when the user may not even be aware of the change. The company has a committment to allow a user to "opt-in" to the plan instead, and to advertise the availability of the plan, once, to users. Facebook is not allowing the user to decide who gets their personal information. If you have a friend's list and any member of that list is gaming, facebook states they can use your personal information and photographs, by association. Read privacy rules before playing any Facebook game. It is the personal belief of this site, that the Facebook social network is not ethical. We opt to not join Facebook because we disagree with their decisions about people's privacy.