Price down for HD DVD players

Hoohaa! HD DVD players now costs less than $300. What a future to come.

Look at this post for more information.

Tributes and hopes

The news shocked me today is the unfortunate death of James Kim, the senior editor of CNET. Read the CNET tribute.

NASA is ready for another Discovery launch. Indeed the name of Discovery fetches the sorrowing memories of Kalpana Chawla, who dead during their return in Columbia, 2003. See a CNN story about the remembrance of Kalpana Chawla.

India mourns space heroine

But the soul of Kalpana Chawla will be happy as another Indian women all set to fly to space. Sunita Pandya Williams is the new generation Indian women astronaut who is ready to take the step forward from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. See the Times of India story of this development.

Sunita set to take a spacewalk

LDF retains UDF strong hold

The result came. George M. Thomas, the ruling CPM candidate won the Thiruvambadi by-election by a nominal margin of 246 votes. He defeated V.M. Ummer Master of Indian Union Muslim League, a United Democratic Front (UDF) coalition partner.

The UDF camp was on very high when polling was completed on 4^th December with record 84.21 per cent voters casted their votes. They have all rights to believe that the upset happened approximately seven months back was only because of anti-incumbency factor against the then ruling UDF government and hoped for a complete victory this time. But when counting started today at West Hill Polytechnic, Calicut, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate took lead right from the start of counting of postal votes began. Then for a short time Ummer Master took the lead and after 2 rounds of counting completed George M. Thomas regained his lead and marched upto 2800 votes lead.

But the drama is yet to come. When 70 per cent of the counting completed, the lead of LDF candidate began to dip. He came down from 2800 to 124 lead and handed over a handsome lead of more than 600 votes to his opponent when the 95 per cent of votes counted. But the lead of Ummer Master also began to dip and after 98 per cent of votes counted George M. Thomas regained his lead once again.

The final 2 per cent of counting belongs to George M. Thomas. He gradually strengthened the lead and finally declared the winner with a majority of 246 votes as well. In all aspects this photo-finish resembles a one-day cricket international. The politicians, voters and viewers felt the pressure and tension.

It was the day many people of Kerala eagerly looked into their political life. The by-election in Thiruvambadi assembly constituency was declared after the death of sitting MLA Mathai Chacko. The late member was elected during the April 2006 election by toppling the UDF candidate M.C. Mayin Hajee for more than 5000 votes. Traditionally Thiruvambadi remained as a UDF strong hold. But two recent elections in 2006 proved very tough for them and the opposition LDF marched to victory.

Nokia 6235: Still worthy...

Dears,

I am very sorry for not coming alive in this blog for a long time. There was lots of events hold me back to my basics. Nowadays I am a little free to scribble something and here I am.

For these long days many things happened to me. The first among them was the change of my mobile handset. Previously I was using Sony Erricson T102 with a BSNL connection. Since February 2006 I said good bye to BSNL and also to the my old handset. Now I have a Reliance CDMA connection with a Nokia 6235.

The handset is sleek and have a stylish design. It has a VGA camera and a video recorder. My wife is always happy with the camera. But I am not, as I always switch to digital camera for taking photographs. The main feature I used to utilise frequently is its voice recording feature. As a journalist I have to record many voices on the go and I am making 100 per cent out this.

Another feature I am addicted with this model is its integrated FM Radio. When I was asked to choose a handset there was an mp3 phone in the stand. But I preferred for FM Radio rather than mp3 player. On these days many FM radio stations are coming and competing to satisfy users with live and latest musical stuff. Then why I have to choose an mp3 player? My thought is well paid now as I enjoy FM Radio programmes in its best.

For some more years, I can say that, I will not go for an another model. I'll stick on to my Nokia 6235 till then.

A bad day for Indian Cricket

Alas! Pakistan crashed India for 341 runs in the 3rd Test match in Karachi today. If you are cricket fan and an Indian supporter, it'll be a bad day. Because everyone knows that India had its own session in the first day of the test. The first session was greatly dominated by Indian fast bowlers, especially Irfan Pathan who became the second only Indian bowler to have hat-trick in Test cricket.

On 29th January, 2006 Indian captain Rahul Dravid won the toss and invited Pakistan who already suffered by the loss of Inzimam Ul Haq, their captain, to bat first. Irfan Pathan rattled the Pakistan top order in the first over itself. He granted dismissal cards to Salman Butt, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf in the 4th, 5th and 6th ball of his first over. Then India ride on this advantage and Pakistan fell in to the deep trouble by losing 6 wickets for a mere 39 runs.

Then a great innings came from Kamran Akmal, the wicket keeper. He scored a century and helped Pakistan to cross 200 runs. In the meantime, India grabbed all wickets and came to the center to bat on the first day itself. But they have to face a fiery spell from Shoaib Aktar and Mohammad Asif. The result: India folded to 74/4 at the stumps.

The second day onwards there was only Pakistan. They managed to all out Indians bye 238 and grabbed a non-important 7 runs lead in the first innings. But that was not over. Their second innings was stronger. All the top seven batsmen scored half centuries including a maiden century from Faisal Iqbal. Eventually they piled up a mammoth total on the board and invited India to go for a 606 runs in the second innings to win the Test and series.

That was a hard call. Indian batsmen failed to make an impression except Yuvraj Singh, who scored a magnificent 122. All other Indian batsmen handed over it to the Pakistan.

My pity Irfan. Hey man, your batsmen colleagues let down you. That’s the team spirit!

Welcome you all!

Hi dears,

It's a great pleasure to start a blog of my own. Let me introduce myself. I am Sidharthan, currently working as the editor of a Malayalam monthly called IT Lokam. Simply IT Lokam is an information technology magazine.

Now something about myself. I am 32 years now and lives with wife Anooja, a house wife. Basically I am a graduate in Malayalam and Sociology and then changed my attention to Journalism and grabbed an MCJ (Master of Communication and Journalism) degree.

I want to use this space to explore the small amount of my knowledge, experience and blunders with Internet especially World Wide Web. I am very frank to say that I didn't have an email id when I went to attend my MCJ class. During those days someone told me that a 'class' on email was going in the Central Library and I with him ran to attend to that 'golden' opportunity. That was my first experience with e-mail. Sorry Sabeer Bhatia!

But this is no way to say that I was an IT-illiterate then. I was well experienced with PCs, Microsoft Windows, Adobe PageMaker, CorelDraw, Microsoft Office, etc. Because I was a well experienced DTP operator. That helped me a lot to boost myself as a 'technocrat' among my co-students. Thanks to the unpopularity of the Computer applications and Internet in those days.

That’s about my IT knowledge some years back. Now I have a PC, a laptop and a 24-hour internet connection. So I am very sure that I can feed in something special that senses something to you. Wait for my blogs in the coming days. Also I request you to send your feedback and comments.

Good bye!