Cisco's new telepresence systems

Cisco announced and demonstrated a video conferencing solution (called telepresence) recently in India. This solution brings people together as if they are in same room. See these videos to feel the experience.







PS: There are poeple who say that Cisco now sells furniture also. Yes, they say that you need special type of furniture and Cisco sells it as a bundle along with telepresence. (I didnt read this from any trustable source).

Wireless Power Transmission

MIT wants to say good bye to wires!!

It seems to me that our sons or grandsons would see efficient wire-free transmission of electricity. I read couple of articles
related to this topic recently and got astonished after knowing what MIT has achieved few months ago.

MIT team experimentally demonstrated wireless power transfer, potentially useful for powering cell phones, gaming devices, hand held devices, PDAs, laptops without power cords. MIT researchers were able to light a 60W light bulb that is seven feet away; there was no physical connection! The MIT team have christened their technique, WiTricity.

The MIT design consists of two copper coils. One, attached to the power source, is the sending unit. It fills the space around it with a magnetic field oscillating at a particular frequency. The second copper coil is designed to resonate with that oscillating magnetic field. A copper coil within an oscillating magnetic field generates a current, enough, in MIT's case, to power a light bulb.

Do you think its safe to live in this type of magnetic field?

IndLinux - A computer for Indians

Most of the Indians (especially in rural areas) get basic education in their local language (non-English). Not all people who study English in India have a high command of the language. Many times language barrier becomes a bottleneck in bringing and sharing a lot of opportunities. With more than a billion people and lack of good infrastructure, the localized software will help India to reach rural areas.

India needs localized software to move to the next decade!

There are many companies that are providing proprietary software solutions for Indian languages (including Microsoft). But IndLinux is a project started by Prakash Advani and Venkatesh Hariharan in Dec 1999, that localizes tools used for Linux and other free software environments into Indian languages.

Currently there are teams for Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriaya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. The task of localization involves writing I/O modules, development of fonts, kernel enablement, word translation etc., The project always looks for volunteers to help them. Are you one of them? then go here.

For more details on IndLinux project visit: http://indlinux.org/

Are there any Indian software product companies?

I read somewhere (numbers may not be exactly correct): "India produces nearly 3,50,000 Engineers per year. Whole of Europe produces 1,00,000 Engineers a year and US produces only 70,000". I also read, " Many bright Indian minds (are we??) opt for computer job to become part of the Indian IT industry."

What are Indian best tech companies? Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Satyam and HCL. How many of these tech companies influenced the technology world? Answer is none. India didn't create IBM (that defined PC standard), Microsoft (cause for worlds popular Operating system), HP (famous for printers, enterprise servers), Google (you cant imagine world without search) or Sun (the inventor of Java).

The evident difference between these companies is that the former are service companies and later are mainly product companies. I am not undermining any Indian IT services companies. They achieved a lot so far. They helped build an Indian brand, brought global work cultures, introduced corporate governance. They are globally successful companies. But my point is they are not innovating enough.

Well, some of you might be wondering, what is the difference between service company and product company. Service company sells service. It creates software that is for a specific situation with relatively low level of leverage and reuse. Product company builds products that are useful for wide range of customers.

I agree that there are few software product companies in India, but they are small size. I feel that the time has come for Indian product companies. India has a very good brand value. Now for a good product idea, there are funds available in India and it is getting better everyday. And also many Indians with good product design experience are returning home.

But product companies are risky (normally only 4% succeed). Product companies need a higher level of innovation, higher technical abilities. But bigger risks always leads to bigger rewards.

Finally there is another question. Instead of building new product companies in India, is it possible to transform the existing big services companies into product companies? My answer is No. Its very tough because, a software services business is very different from a software product business. It will have different financing, different client interaction, different goals and different decisions. But there are few companies that made this transition before; Oracle is one such company.

GPS navigation launched in India

What is GPS navigation?

Global Positioning System (GPS) is a system that communicates with satellite to trace the location and position of vehicles on earth (This technology is widely used in mobile phones also).

How is it useful in cars?

A GPS enabled simple, smart and sleek gadget can be mounted on a car that determines your current location. This gadget accepts any destination and the navigator in the gadget will guide you, turn-by-turn, with graphical map instructions supported by voice prompts. Search for points of interest (nearest ATM, nearest shopping centre, nearest petrol pump, nearest attraction etc.,) will be available.

Where is it available in India?

MapmyIndia Navigator is currently available in two hardware models: Delphi and AMAX. These devices comes with pre-loaded maps that give complete coverage of streets and points of interest in 18 major cities.

"MapmyIndia Navigator" is currently available with car accessory and consumer electronics dealers in major cities. It is also available online via Indiatimes and MapmyIndia.com.

Want to know how it looks?




How much does it cost?

Techtree reported that in Delhi, the device costs Rs 21,000 while in other states, it comes for Rs 22,000.
Indiatimes is showing price range as Rs. 16000-19000 for online buying.

Is it worth in India?

In countries like USA, where there are names for each road, number for each block (building) the GPS gadget may be most reliable, intuitive and accurate. I doubt how much this will be useful in India, where roads dont have names. Even there are names for some roads, they change if government changes. Also, in India wherever you are, there are local people (or) auto-wallah who can tell you the best way to reach certain destination. I know most of us prefer that way, because roads become unusable or change (two-way to one-way) frequently in India and only local people will know better.

If you are a gadget savvy and have a car, tryout one.

courtesy: techtree, mapmyindia

Forgot Linux ‘root’ password? How to reset?

I forgot the root password. How do I login now?

This is a common question asked by people especially if they didn’t boot their computer (with Linux) for a while. Here I am giving a way on how to reset root password from a Linux system.

Please note that you can not perform this remotely. You must be physically at the computer.

• reboot the system
• When you first start the computer, the GRUB screen appears. Select Linux that you want to boot into, but press the ‘e’ key instead of ‘Enter’ (to stop the grub).

• Hit ‘e’ again and you will go to different screen
• Select ‘kernel’ as choice, and hit ‘e’ on your key board.
• Type ‘single’ (or 1 in some versions) to enter ‘single user’ mode and then enter ‘b’ to boot. ( now your system is in single user mode as root)
• Now you can change the root password by using ‘passwd’ command

Now if you reboot the machine, you will be able to login with new changed password.

DNA Computing - The future of computing

Advances in biochemistry show that living cells are much better at computing than the traditional silicon based chips.

Instead of traditional silicon based computing, DNA computing uses DNA molecules that has the potential to perform calculations many times faster than the worlds fastest computer. Also DNA computers will be capable of storing billions of times more data than the traditional PC.

The computing capability of DNA is first demonstarted by Leonard Adleman by solving the famous traveling salesman problem.

So is the silicon computer gone? No. The DNA computer may be able to solve NP-Hard problems efficiently , but the PCs (and traditional silicon based computers) are most practical and can let you play games and browse Internet!!!


Exited?? Want to know more about DNA computing?
Wikipedia
How Stuff Works

How to sleep using select() call

On many UNIX systems, the sleep() system call does not support msec granularity. But using the select() system call, the process can sleep at micro sec granularity. Here is how it can be done to sleep in milli sec granularity:

/*
* sleepms(): sleep (msecs granularity) using select.
*/
int sleepms(int msecs)
{
struct timeval timeout;
if(msecs == 0)
{
return 0;
}
timeout.tv_sec = msecs/1000; /* in secs */
timeout.tv_usec = (msecs % 1000) * 1000; /* in micro secs */
if((select(0,NULL,NULL,NULL,&timeout))==-1)
{
perror("select failed\n");
return -1;
}
return 0;
} /* sleepms()*/