Google Maps to stop illegal mining in Goa

Google Maps could be used to fight illegal mining in Goa. The news came at the concluding session of environmental seminar in Panaji. Noted environmentalist Madhav Gadgil, a Padma Bhushan awardee, supported the use of the Google service to stop illegal as well as excessive mining around various site in Goa which consumes 18 percent of Goa’s annual output.

It’s interesting to note that there exist over 100 open cast iron ore mines in Goa and more than 130 waiting for clearance. Most of the operational mines are either taking out more ores than what assigned to them, or facing illegal activities under the shadow of influential people. Several Goa ministers are supposedly involved in illegal mining activities, as per the opposition’s argument.

The use of Google Maps can certainly have some impact if not larger. It’s being presumed that Goa government is all set to stack this idea in the state’s futuristic Regional Plan 2021 to protect illegal mining, and save Rs. 6000 crores of Goa’s annual income. Use of Google Maps can also be extended to pin-point locate the naxalites in Chattisgarh, West Bengal and other parts of the country. A blend of technology in a democratic nation like India could do wonders to the country’s cause.

Read more about using Google Maps to Get Location

Top 10 Companies gone bankrupt with time

The global economic recession that we recently experienced knocked several great economic titans off balance. Here’s a list of the top 10 companies gone bankrupt with time.

1) Lehman Brothers

This global banking giant couldn’t bear the weight of the debts of over $613 billion on its accounts. Lehman brothers filed their chapter 11 and declared bankruptcy in late 2008. This move came as a global shock and marked the beginning of the recent economic depression.

2) Washington Mutual

This used to be the second largest banking firm in the US. Suffering from the general blow to the finance and banking sector, this banking firm went under soon after Lehman Brothers.

3) WorldCom

This perpetrator of the biggest accounting fraud in world history went bankrupt in 2002 when its cover was blown. It comes third on the list of top 10 companies gone bankrupt with time.

4) General Motors

Coming as a global shock to the automotive industry, this seemingly invincible powerhouse that manufactured renowned brands like Chevrolet and Vauxhall went bankrupt in 2009. Though with funds infusion and restructuring, it is back in the black today, but it did give the automobile sector a big shock by going broke.

5) Enron

Another of the big names makes it to number five on our list of top 10 bankrupt companies. This global brand took down with itself a lot of stock holders and is remembered with grim notoriety despite its worth of $65.5 billion at the time of bankruptcy

6) Conseco

Insurance giant Conseco went bankrupt in 2002 leaving a giant void in the insurance sector which its competition wasn’t in a financial position to fill. At number six it is the biggest bankruptcy in the insurance sector.

7) Chrysler

Just before the industry would witness the falling of a legend in the form of GM, one of its founding pillars Chrysler went bankrupt at a value of $39.3 billion and file for their chapter 11 reorganization. This automotive behemoth is considered by some to have greatly weakened the automobile sector as a whole paving way for the falling of General Motors within the next two months.

8) Thornburg Mortgage

Another lending firm joined the league of financial organizations going bankrupt, when Thornburg Mortgage bottomed out under extreme lending pressure. Even after filing for chapter 11 within 24 hours of Chrysler filing its own papers, Thornburg no longer exists as a going concern.

9) Pacific Gas and Electric Company

At number 9 on the list of top 10 bankrupt companies of all time comes Pacific Gas and Electric Company. This was once the largest electricity provider in the Americas and went under in the year 2001 but has since then recovered to its original splendor.

10) Texaco

This company was from one of the core sectors; oil and petroleum. Though it went bankrupt way back in 1987, the gravity of its situation can be estimated by the fact that it still makes it to the list of top 10 companies gone bankrupt with time.

Add comment to your website with DISQUS

Have a new website or a blog where you’d like to start interacting with your readers? If you’re not too sure regarding how to go about it, fret not. Welcome DISQUS, a novel and ingenious free website comments tool. You can let users comment to your website with DISQUS taking the interactivity to a new level. Here’s a sneak peek at some of its best features.

Realtime Comment system

This feature from DISQUS practically eliminated the need of separately adding a discussion forum platform. Comments appear almost as if they are a live discussion and users can interact with you as well as other users in realtime.

Media Sharing

Comments to your website with DISQUS needn’t always be plaintext. This module allows you to embed content like videos and images in line with your comments. DISQUS currently supports all leading services like YouTube, Flickr etc.

Notifications

DISQUS sends a notification to people when they get response to their comments or when someone addresses them in their comments. These notifications are sent via email and what’s more, people can continue the discussion right from their email accounts.

Mobility Unleashed

Comments to your website with DISQUS can also be posted from handheld devices and your cell phones. The module loads up fairly quickly and makes sure your following can stay connected even on the move.

What is Foursquare

Foursquare is a hand held device based platform that is dynamic with its locations. This keeps your online social network informed of your whereabouts and also makes exploring new cities and places more fun. Users can check in with their Smartphones or net enabled hand held devices to let their friends know where they are. A reward system allows them to collect foursquare badges and points.

Why Foursquare?

The ability of Foursquare to translate the offline real-world scenarios and travels of its users into an online directory has made it very useful. It allows its users to bookmark their venues and save information about the places they visit. Then using this user developed database, it suggests other users about possible interests in the nearby venues. This way, it is a user generated online travelling guide to which you can add your experiences. It also gives small business owners a chance to encourage and pull in prospective through their profiles and Foursquare badges.

History

Originally founded way back in 2007, this platform has only recently started to gain popularity among both businesses and individual users. Co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai started this initiative from Dennis’ kitchen at his home in New York. Its first version was made live by Southwest Interactive a company based at Austin in Texas. This was in March 2009 and since then its popularity has grown manifold giving it an almost cult status today.

Foursquare API

The initiative also has a platform called the Foursquare API which much like Twitter provides a means for users to develop their ideas. Several among its rapidly growing crowd of patrons have already used this API platform to develop numerous Foursquare apps and functionality. The check in option was in fact a development through this very platform.

Compatibility

This service is available on almost all sorts of hand held devices. Foursquare mobile, Foursquare Android and Foursquare Blackberry are all customizations to help accommodate these devices and increase the brad fan base that the service has already developed.

Business Solutions

Foursquare also provides several software solutions for businesses and ecommerce ventures. They help businesses develop and share tools which can help them connect to their clientele and people on the payroll too.

In under a year’s time period Fourquare has already amassed a huge fan following of 275,000 people. Though it does not generate a huge amount of revenue for its owners yet, Foursquare in all senses has the makings of the next big thing on the internet.

Hide your IP with Tor and surf web anonymously

If anonymity suits your internet browsing style best, Tor is something you must have heard of. So before you decide to hide your IP with Tor and surf web anonymously, let’s look in a little deeper into this tool’s portfolio.

What is Tor?

Originally conceived as an onion routing project for the US Navy, Tor is today open source software that conceals your IP address and lets you browse the internet anonymously.

How does it work?

Tor basically is structured around an extensive network of servers and links spread on the internet. A software client installed into your machine (freely downloadable at their official website) contacts available nodes in this online network and picks a random path through the available options to the destination server. The links are encrypted between you and the penultimate node which directly communicates with the server. This allows access to servers which block encrypted links, but at the same time does not allow your IP to be tracked back through the Tor network.

Why do I need it?

Browsing the internet exposes you and your system to a number of threats and attempts at hijacking software or information from your system by the means of your online identity, your IP address. Unconcealed IP addresses can often be easily followed up by potential hackers on the lookout for soft targets. Using its software client you can hide your IP with Tor and surf web anonymously.

What’s so special about Oracle Database

What is a database? It’s a very easy-to-understand concept. In real life, we are all used to storing records folders and files for future reference and use. Databases play the same role in the virtual world except that the data and information are not stored in a tangible form but stored in a “soft” form (like softwares). Data stored in databases is much more efficient as the chances of losing data through natural or man-made means or chances of data falling into wrong hands is quite reduced. Also, retrieval, renewal and writing of data is much easier in efficient in databases.

                                      

Microsoft Access is quite a common term for computer veterans and amateurs. Oracle is not far behind either. Both are database management systems (DBMS) unique in their own way. However, since Oracle is a lot heard-about, it’s only rational to know what’s so special about Oracle Database.

The Oracle Database (commonly called Oracle RDBMS or simply as Oracle) is an object-relational database management system created by Oracle Corporation. An Oracle database system is identified by an alphanumeric system identifier which comprises minimum one instance of the application, along with data storage. An instance is identified by an activation ID and it comprises a set of operating-system processes and memory-structures that interact with the storage. The main usefulness of this database lies in the fact that it is a multi-platform database i.e. it can be run on many operating systems.

Oracle Corporation has teamed up with HP and, together, the database solutions that they offer has many unique advantages which, perhaps makes this database solution a bit under-rated. The whole “uniqueness” can be easily summarized. Besides being easy and cost-effective to manage, it upholds the typical feature that should be available in a good DBMS – it ensures that information is available whenever required. It also provides efficient performance, scalability and capacity and it provides extra protection for sensitive and classified information. For businesses, Oracle Database provides integrating options to integrate business information from external sources which include third-party databases and file systems. It reduces the time required for a business association to make a good business decision by analyzing data faster, thanks to parallel database processing and functionality. This allows associations to develop and deploy their business solutions quickly and efficiently. All these aspects together make Oracle Database really special.

Why is XML so popular

Familiar with websites? If you are, you must have heard of HTML and XML. Both are used to design and develop webpages which, when integrated together make a website. HTML is the abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language while XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Although they might appear similar (since both are markup languages) or XML might appear as a replacement for the age-old HTML, there are stark differences.

First of all, XML is used to store and transfer data while HTML is used to display data. So, XML is more interested in what data is and HTML is more concerned with what data looks like. Unlike HTML tags, XML tags are not predefined. The tags need to be designed by the developer. This allows the developer to create his own tags which is impossible in HTML. This makes XML completely self-descriptive. All of these make XML so popular among website developers.

Besides the above reasons, there are many other factors which make XML so popular. Firstly, XML offers a lot of functionality which come for a pretty reasonable cost. So, companies just need to invest a negligible amount from their vast treasury for the language and, since XML is flexible enough to allow developers to introduce their own tags and escape-sequences, it increases the scope of its use, thus making up for its cost. Secondly, as XML is used by a major section of the developers, it becomes popular as people always want to go for stuff that is used by all. For examples, sporting brands like Nike and Adidas are used by majority of athletes. So, when an every-day man requires to buy sporting goods, he simply will opt for either of the two as the brands are already so popular. Simply put, XML is so popular because it’s popular.

Another reason for XML to be so popular is its simplicity. Although XML might be dear in processing power or network bandwidth, it’s a lot cheaper, simpler and easier to use and implement as compared to other more efficient approaches like ASN.1. The ASN.1 compilers cost in six-figure sums whereas the XML parsers come for free. Given the fact that XML syntax is human-readable but ASN.1 isn’t, it makes debugging incorrect messages in XML a lot easier than in ASN.1. In fact, a standard webpage could take weeks to debug if created in ASN.1.

Salaries of I.T. professionals in India

The information technology industry has become one of the most robust industries in the world. I.T. more than any other industry or economic facet has an increased productivity, especially in the developed world. Therefore it is a key driver of the global economic growth. Economies of scale and insatiable demand from consumers and enterprises the rapidly growing sector. Both software development and hardware, involved in the I.T. industry include everything from computer systems, to the design, implementation, study and development of I.T. and management systems. The I.T. industry can serve as a medium of e-governance as it assures easy accessibility to the information. The use of information technology in the service sector improves operational efficiency and adds to the transparency of the company. It also works as a medium of skilled information.

 The salary range of I.T. professionals in India is mostly based on the core skills or technologies that they specialise in. also there are a few other parameters like qualification, extra certification from international certifying bodies, domain knowledge etc. But in general for software professionals in M/s Java etc. the compensation is evaluated by multiplying their years of experience with 0.9 to 1 lac per annum. But this is not exactly a perfect calculator. The multiplier for Low Level Systems Programming Engineers the package offered in India is from 1.5 to 2 lacs per annum. Project based companies pay packages are lesser than product based companies due to domain expertise in product based.

I.T. professionals in India are the highest paid than any other professions. The kind of salary one gets by being an I.T. professional if he or she is single then they can live life king size with that kind of salary. The only factor here would their choice of city, cause cost of living should be moderate. According to the released Dataquest 2007 Salary Survey, a typical Indian software professional got an average salary increase of 18.7% in 2007. This was revealed by a nationwide survey carried out by IDC India for Cybermedia group’s flagship publication Dataquest, covering 2806 I.T. professionals. This number indeed is one of the highest in the world. 

The Indian I.T. and ITES industry continues to grow at a blistering rate. The availability of an abundant, high-quality and cost effective pool of skilled knowledge workers is India’s main advantage in global I.T. and ITES BPO industry.