digital thoughts

If you are a computer science graduate, you might have heard about Big-O. It’s basically a way to analyze the performance of your algorithm. There are lots of web pages that go in deep to explain Big-O, for example Harvard University page dives deep into this concept. I was looking for pretty simple explanation, finally found it at http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=227909

Related Link: Big-O Notation – What it is good for?

Apple takes a shot at the size of the iPod one more time. It reduced the size of the new iPod shuffle to almost the size of….

New iPod Shuffle has all the controls in the headphone cord. This iPod shuffle can store upto 1000 songs and costs $79. It also has a function called “VoiceOver” — iPod will speak the name and artist of the song when you push a button! Whether Steve Jobs is in the office or not, Apple continues to deliver its magic. That’s a great news for Apple fans and shareholders.

If you start a technology company (not the cinema portals, real tech company!) in India today, what are the odds of getting the funding from VCs? Sloka Telecom’s CEO Suraj Karampuri thinks that the chances are very slim. You need to manage to raise the funds from self, friends and family. Suraj gave an interesting interview in which he offers he views on tech start-up scenario in India and funding options for tech companies in India. VCs are more interested in investing in spammy sites like youmint. You can read more from Suraj’s interview here.

If you are an adventurous type person, you know how difficult it is to communicate to your family and friends if you are get caught in unexpected situation. Frequently, we hear news about people gone missing when they are hiking. People go into wild and never come back mainly because no one is there to rescue them. Spot Inc created Spot Satellite Messenger to help people that are lost in the jungle.

It would be really useful to hikers, campers, hunters and the like. I guess that you can even use it in theme parts to locate your kids. If you are living in an area where there are some sick people preying on children, you can get this for your kids to protect them. Unfortunately, there are lot of such areas in U.S.

SPOT works by getting your GPS location and send message via satellite network. It can also send alerts to emergency responder. If you pay the right price, SPOT guys can even send helicopter to your location.

Whether SPOT helps you or not, it gives the peace of mind to your family. At least for that, it is worth the price you pay.

Related Link: GPS to locate the kids

Swedish researchers have found memory impairment in rats exposed to cell phone radiation for two hours every week for more than a year.

Henrietta Nittby and her supervisor Leif Salford, of the neurosurgery division of Lund University, Sweden, believe that the findings may be related to the team’s earlier findings, that microwave radiation from cell phones can affect the so-called blood-brain barrier.

Salford and his associates have previously found that albumin, a protein that functions as a transport molecule in the blood, leaks into brain tissue when lab animals are exposed to mobile phone radiation.

The research team also found certain nerve damage in cerebral cortex and in the hippocampus, the memory centre of the brain.

“We now see that things happen to the brains of lab animals after cell phone radiation. The next step is to try to understand why this happens,” said Nittby.

Irrespective of why it happens, it’s time the young and restless give some break to cell phone usage!

wifinder.com helps you to find wifi spots all over the world. The website lists lot of wifi spots in many countries. That’s pretty impressive. It gives the location address, phone number, etc., One downside is that it doesn’t clearly tell you whether the spot is free or paid access. It just shows “Access: Free | Paid”, what can we make out of that?!

In a major breakthrough, Mumbai Police Monday claimed to have solved the mystery behind the terror emails sent by the Indian Mujahideen (IM) prior to the Ahmedabad and New Delhi serial blasts. Police Commissioner Hasan Gafoor said here the three techies who had sent the emails have been arrested, as also 17 others who were responsible for a string of terror bombings in different cities.

Preliminary interrogation of all the accused has brought out the chilling revelation that they planned to carry out bomb blasts here during the ongoing Navratri festival, Gafoor said at a press conference that was telecast live by a number of TV news channels.

The initial breakthrough came on September 23 when five alleged terrorists owing allegiance to IM were arrested in and around Mumbai. Over the past 12 days, 15 more IM activists, most of them highly educated, were arrested from different cities, pushing the number of those held to 20, Gafoor said.

The three techies were arrested Sunday. They have been identified as Mohammed Mansoor Asghar Peerbhoy, alias Munna (31), working as a principal software engineer in an MNC on a salary of Rs.1.9 million per annum; Salman Kadar Shaikh alias Mobin (24), working as a senior technical advisor in an IT firm and Asif Bashiruddin Shaikh (22), a mechanical engineer.

The emails were sent from three locations – Sanpada suburb of Navi Mumbai, Khalsa College, Matunga, and a private company in Chembur, both Mumbai suburbs, using the Wi-Fi. The crooks used Wi-Fi connection of the residential Internet of an American software professional Kenneth Haywood in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai.

Mumbai police and technical experts did a fantastic job in tracking the bad guys even though they used stolen Wi-Fi connection. It also shows that everyone should better make wi-fi connection secure. Don’t leave your default security settings wi-fi router as it is. Default id and password are “admin” and “password” for Netgear routers. It is “admin” and “admin” for many other routers. Wi-fi users should change that after installing the router. Many people don’t bother to do that. Crooks can easily penetrate in your network if they can see wi-fi unsecured networks.

Related Links:

4 steps to set up your home wireless network

Wi-Fi wireless network security

Love or hate Bill Gates, but you can’t deny the fact that he is a genius. He is not only a technical expert, but also a great visionary. Ok, only thing he missed is… the Internet.

Just like our member techie mentioned, it takes lot of guts to step down from Microsoft and focus on philanthropy. There is a couple of articles blogosphere mentioning that Steve Ballmer is the one that should go. Since Ballmer took the charge, Microsoft performed just ok. I won’t be surprised if Bill Gates comes back to Microsoft as CEO in few years, just like Steve Jobs came back in Apple.

Related Link: Bill Gates bids a teary farewell to Microsoft

India is launching a dedicated satellite for youth next year carrying scientific instruments developed by students from Indian and foreign universities, a top space agency official said yesterday.

“The mini-spacecraft will be launched in 2009 as a piggyback on board a polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), carrying a remote sensing satellite, from the Satish Dhawan space centre at Sriharikota” said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman G. Madhavan Nair.

The various instruments, developed by graduate and postgraduate students of universities from India, Russia and other countries, will study and share data on earth imaging, atmospheric applications, solar emission and galactic observations.

“The less than 100-kg spacecraft is being built at our satellite development centre in Bangalore. The dedicated youth satellite is the brain-child of former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who proposed such a mission during his visit to Russia two years ago,” Nair said on the sidelines of an international conference on Indian aerospace science and technology here.

Thank you Mr. Kalam! It shows that if you give the power to good and brilliant people, many wonderful things can happen.

Linkedin guys put up a nice slide about their architecture. Check it out…

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