People power

Crowd-sourcing has reached tipping point with this event.

DJs, promoters, label reps and 'professional party people' from the Netherlands have persuaded Dutch airline KLM to add an extra flight to its roster. In a new twist on crowd-buying, the initiators of Fly2Miami made a bet with KLM on Twitter to organize a non-stop flight from Amsterdam to Miami.

More on this here:

http://www.springwise.com/tourism_travel/fly2miami/

The True Meaning of HDTV

http://www.businesspundit.com/the-true-meaning-of-hdtv/

Genetically engineered exterminations

I have wondered for long at times how to totally destroy some species like cockroaches or mosquitoes. At times and at some places, they are so enormous and they cost humans a lot (think about the dengue scare at the start of 2010 in Delhi).

One of the best strategies is to be implant a virus/disease in the species which spreads for a few months/years among the whole species across generations and then like a ticking time bomb goes off all on one very fine day. Entire affected species gone! Boom!

But unfortunately, the only problem is that all viruses/diseases harm/kill the victim after a cycle that starts when it enters the organism. So the universal "all in one boom" cant happen at a particular day as such.

Now, scientists have finally got half the solution of the perfect genocide.

Enter the GM mosquitoes!

Scientists have created infertile males which they will release in dengue affected areas. Females won’t produce offspring with these guys, even after mating with them. Studies have found that dengue-infected populations fell by 80%. The males are engineered to die off naturally, and females only mate within their species, so the GM traits are self-limiting.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/11/gm_mosquitoes_wipe_out_dengue.html

Taking this one step further, the ideal solution is to have sexually transmitted infertility. Then we obtain Success. As this species is not monogamous, the infertility will spread and make the whole species infertile with no heirs whatsoever!

Welcome to the new age of genetically engineered totalitarian obliteration!

On the same lines, I just hope AIDS is not some kind of extermination planned by some aliens/external forces...

25 Promising products for 2011

3D is coming big! In multiple forms....from tv to thin monitors to camcorders...

What else?
* A "sensational" device that will send vibrations through your body via the chest which will let you feel gunshot wounds and T-Rex footfalls while watching movies/playing games.
*Then there is the technologically advanced solar panels in wrappable & rollable form and almost as thick as a plastic sheet.

* The carbon nanomotor
* Mobile Fuel cells
* Genetically modified Mosquitoes
* And then a car :)
See the full list and descriptions at http://www.businesspundit.com/25-most-promising-products-for-2011/

Stop losing yourself

Here is what former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has written in one of his sharpest blog comments on his association with Mulayam Singh Yadav: “I used to think that the most painful thing in life is losing the one you value the most. But I have realised the most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of valuing someone who is so non-deserving. My love to all my erstwhile non-deserving friends for setting me free from their all kinds of burdens and responsibilities. May God give them sense”.

3d illusions

All this and many more 3D illusions here:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2010/09/mind-bending-optical-illusions.html

The omnipresence

Oh boy! Do I love that suprised question: "How do you know this? Where did you get this?" and they keep wondering and thinking... :P

Twice this week: one with a friend and another with my cousin.

Giving people information about their near and dear ones that they didnt know is indeed very amusing and interesting :)

Indian mobile handset market

Nokia, Blackberry, Apple, Motorala, Philips, Panasonic, Sony Erricsson, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, HTC, Palm, Micromax, G'Five, Spice, Karbonn, iNQ, Zen, Lava, Lemon, Alcatel, Fly mobile, Olive.....If competition is not enough now there is Dell, Victor, AKAI, Sansui and Sharp mobile handsets are also entering the heavily congested Indian mobile handset market. And there is still more to come....Jaipan, Kokatta based Supertonics, Weston and Microtek are going to be next entrants. With each newbie company projecting a market share of 5% in the intial year itself and being in top 10 players in a few years and the biggies projecting higher market shares in the coming years, I wonder who is being realistic. How long will this mania last? Is this growth external or for the next 10/15 years? Finally, has the mobile handset degraded from a white goods consumer electronic product to an FMCG (Fast Mover Consumer Goods) product like shampoo/toothpaste?

What's surprising is that each newbie plans to enter the market with 10 handsets by the end of the year. All of them outsource all the manufacturing to China and have similar business models, similar features, similar distribution (here or there) and similar price ranges. I dont think any of these newbies have any real vision or to be in the handset market for the next 2 or 3 decades.

Blog tips

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caroline-hagood/ten-tips-to-feed-your-ali_b_781585.html

Printing a blog
http://www.pcworld.com/article/210170/how_to_print_a_blog_page.html

The relationship between beauty and employment

Are good-looking people more likely to get jobs? That depends whether you’re talking about men or women, according to a new working paper. From the abstract:

"Job applicants in Europe and in Israel increasingly imbed a headshot of themselves in the top corner of their CVs. We sent 5,312 CVs in pairs to 2,656 advertised job openings. In each pair, one CV was without a picture while the second, otherwise almost identical CV contained a picture of either an attractive male/female or a plain-looking male/female.Employer callbacks to attractive men are significantly higher than to men with no picture and to plain-looking men, nearly doubling the latter group. Strikingly, attractive women do not enjoy the same beauty premium. In fact, women with no picture have a significantly higher rate of callbacks than attractive or plain-looking women. We explore a number of explanations and provide evidence that female jealousy of attractive women in the workplace is a primary reason for the punishment of attractive women."

Previous research, however, has found that good-looking female workers receive higher raises than their plain or ugly counterparts.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/are-attractive-people-more-employable/?ref=business

Ear fitting Earphones

I have constantly got a little iritated by the ill-fitting APPLE white round earphones. The  circumference of these kinds of earphones are much bigger than most ear holes of people I know. Over the last few years a few comfortable (somewhat!) earphones have been developed. Like this rubber ended earphones that will flex itself to the shape of the earhole (My suggestion: this should be more conical for fitting perfectly to any ear).

Here are a few innovative/fashionable/stylish earphones I found on the net:

Some more of such earphones can be found here:

http://oddyfunny.blogspot.com/2010/09/weirdest-headphones-for-arduous.html

But what I want is some odd shaped earphones that will fit my earhole perfectly and not just pop out if I move my head:

More like this:

Time to make earphones a genuine accessory - a display of your personality.... Opportunity still there for some big phone company focusing on music phones to stand out and attract huge customers. 

I guess some fashion designer, marketing guy, creative guys and some engineers (engineers with focus on functionality and ergonomics, not the sound engineers) are needed in the companies making the simple and revolutionary earphones.
Also, the earphones should get smaller and be embedded in some sort of a earplug type of thing to get the perfect  fit for the ear.

Digital Name hijackers

There is only a very limited number of common names and english words in this world. And the first movers (that is our generation) is lucky to get a name for ourselves so easily. Say an email account of your precise name you want or the blog site or the website with the right words to describe your blog. Some in our generation aren't all that lucky also. I also am a victim of Digital name hijacking. After quite some time of thinking when I started my blog, I wanted my blog site to be named "thinkdifferent.blogspot.com", as I felt it was appropriate at that point of time. But that name was already occupied. Being occupied is not hijacking, but the creator of that blog just had one or two blogposts in all for years together. And thats what I call Name Hijacking. No use for anybody and still permanently occupied not allowing anyone else to use it either.
The same has been used as a great business model to make money by several people. Domain name sitters/hijackers get all the probable names of upcoming companies/organisations  or organisations that don't have an online presence till now registered and then demand a ransom to let go of these names to the companies. There is good amount of money to be made in this business and knowledge of SEO(search engine optimisation) can only help this business model further. All this business model needs is some students with idle time and some pocket money with some imagination. Well, I guess this post is a rant starting somewhere and ending somewhere else(probably due to the background songs and simultaneous chatting).

Multi-functional Belts

Emergency Toolkit Belt

A bottle/beer opener belt

The first is available for $40 http://www.besportier.com/archives/snow-toolbelt-686-will-keep-you-stylish-and-prepared.html#more

The second belt is available for $30 http://www.besportier.com/archives/ride-opener-belt-buckle.html