Larry King Live - Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow, Deepak Chopra, Robert Spitzer

Larry King Live, CNN, 9-10-2010

"The Grand Design", by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

The book discusses how science can explain the existence of Universe and every thing and how every thing MAY have come from nothing thus denying the existence of GOD. Deepak and Robert argues that transcendence, intelligence, emotions, beauty, art and other forms of expressions and developments are beyond scientific reasoning at the moment and therefore we can not deny the existence of almighty with our limited mental and scientific capacities.

An interesting and must watch for all those curious like me.

federer vs djokovic US Open 2010 semi final - Highlights

Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic engages in epic semi-final of US Open 2010. Roger gets so close to winning the match but Novak eventually plays some aggressive tennis and saves two match points. In this part novak breaks roger's serve but roger fails to win the breakpoint to take it into tie breakers. Djokovic wins as he thoroughly was the better of the two and meets nadal in the final of US Open 2010. Overall awesome play by both champs. Enjoy the nail biting finish.

federer vs djokovic US Open 2010 semi final - djokovic wins

Roger Federer vs Novak Djokovic US Open 2010 semi final won by djokovic. Intense play especially in the final set. Djokovic saved two match points, broke Federrer serve, and then won his serve to meet Nadal in the US Open 2010 final

5 Things Google Still Needs to Fix in Android

Any day now, the Evo 4G is going to get an over-the-air update to Android 2.2 (aka Froyo), complete with marquee features such as the ability to play Flash video and share contact details over Bluetooth. But after spending every day with a Motorola Droid, now running Android 2.1, we can think of plenty of smaller things we wish Google would work on instead.

High on our list, for instance: Make spellcheck work consistently across the platform and sync with business-grade Google Apps calendars. If Flash support won’t even allow you to watch Hulu videos on your phone (Hulu cruelly blocks mobile access), what else can Google do to make Android a more polished, user-friendly platform?

Push for More Consistency

It’s the small things that add up. For us, one of the most annoying things is the fact that if you make a spelling mistake while searching for an app in Android Market, Android doesn’t correct you.

For Andy Castonguay, Director of Mobile Device Research for the Yankee Group, it’s the fact that on certain devices, the accelerometer only works if you tilt the phone to the left. What makes it worse, he says, is that the Android experience is even inconsistent across manufacturers, as each phone maker layers their own interface on top (think HTC Sense and Motorola’s Motoblur) as a way of making their Android phones stand out. And these extra layers, of course, make it especially hard to update a phone to the latest version of Android, creating an even larger disparity between what Android phones can and can’t do.

“The great thing for the manufacturers is they can create that brand affinity with the consumer on the back of Android, instead of having Android be front and center,” Castonguay said. “That results in idiosyncracies and discrepancies.”

Google can’t wean itself off these skins entirely, lest it alienate the very OEMs that have made Android so ubiquitous. But Google can, and will have to, work harder to develop more and better widgets, so that it’s not up to the likes of HTC and Motorola to decide what information you can see at glance, and what you can’t.

“HTC and Motorola have adapted to reflect consumer needs in a very positive way. Android as a platform will need to adopt some of those characteristics,” said Castonguay.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/5-android-fixes/#ixzz0vx9wvXLz

Effective powerpoint presentation via projector

Giving presentation to few people is different from giving presentation to large audience. In the former case you can use your laptop, the bigger the better, while for the latter case you have to use projector. Using projector effectively is also important. Here i tell you some tips for projecting your presentation in different ways. You can switch between different modes using the Fn + some functional key. Usually there would be an icon on key to help you. In my Sony Vaio NW laptop there are three modes but i would discuss the two important ones.

Many laptops have different modes for presentation. More  common is 'Duplicate Mode' where your laptop content is displayed as is on projector. Many people just use that. There is a disadvantage of this mode. First when you are already connected to projector your desktop shows up to people before you start your presentation. It could be quite messy with icons, or perhaps have a desktop background that you don't want others to see. Also for those who are not natural speakers and cant remember every bit of their presentation tends to clutter their presentation with too much text. Now when you have to go back or forward to a different slide you have to scroll through all slides in between. This does not look professional.

The better way is to use 'Extended Mode' in this case your desktop area is extended twice to your original resolution. You only see your desktop and the extended display area is hidden from you. Your graphics card/laptop should have support for this mode (my sony vaio does). Now when you setup your presentation in powerpoint you can simply tell powerpoint to use the extended display. This option has to be done manually in 'setup slideshow' otherwise it would use your desktop for projection. Once done you can now run slide show.

What you see now is a three pane view on you laptop. Your current slide, your notes for that slide, and the thumbnail of slides. There are navigation buttons as well and a timer. Now when you look at the projected display, its only your current slide, wow! You now have the luxury to keep minimum things on slides and additional relevant points as notes. You can directly jump to particular slide by clicking its thumbnail in the bottom panel. Also when you minimize your slide show, to search for some thing or begin a new slideshow, it would show your desktop background only with no icon, gadget or taskbar. You can have your presentation title on it for a professional look. I hope this would help you in your future presentations.

Hardware detection tool

Today, I wanted to know my graphics card dedicated memory. I looked around windows 7 but could not find it. In fact my graphics card control center (ATI catalyst control center) does not have this information. So I decided to google for a hardware detection tool and found HWInfo32. This is a must have for geeks who want to know about their system, its performance, cpu heat, and little bit benchmarking. I forgot to tell you that its freeware, so just go get it.

I ran the program and it failed as it required elevated rights. So I ran it again with administrator permission (right click -> Run as administrator). You will see a dialog window with most sought information there. In its main window there is summary tab which gives detail information about hardware components. The next tab lets you export your report to many different formats (xml, html, csv, etc). Then there is a nifty little benchmark and sensor monitor that can be quite handy.

Here is the feature list taken from its website:


Comprehensive hardware information
System health monitoring (Thermal, Voltage, Fan, Power)
Basic benchmarks
Text, CSV, XML, HTML, MHTML report formats
Periodical updates
OS: Windows 9x/2000/XP/Vista/Server 2003/2008/Windows 7
Platform: 32-bit (IA-32), 64-bit (x64, IA-64)

Spectacular images of lightning on Burj Khalifa (Burj Dubai)

WHY WE NEED LIGHTNING ARRESTER? KINDLY LOOK AT THE PICTURES AND SEE HOW THE LIGHTNING ARRESTER SAVES THE TOWER.

It's all happening in Dubai...spectacular photos of last night's storm. When lightning hit the world's tallest tower! For as long as half hour lightning hit the tower and the thunder sounded all over the neighboring areas. An unforgettable night!

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