Author: srungta

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Microsoft and Yahoo! reach search agreement

Microsoft and Yahoo! are today expected to announce plans of a new search and advertising partnership aimed at helping the two companies to better compete with Google. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, is expected to power all Yahoo! searches, while Yahoo! assumes responsibility for handling advertising sales. The two companies are likely to leverage Microsoft’s ad-serving technology to deliver relevant, contextualised advertising alongside search results.

Read the article: Microsoft and Yahoo! ‘to confirm search deal’

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Business China Education Finance India Life Science Social Technology

Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the U.S.

A long wait for a green card, coupled with the soft U.S. economy, is prompting an exodus of some of the best and brightest — Lured by the prospect of climbing to the top of his field, New Delhi native Swaroop Ganguly came to the U.S. 10 years ago and earned a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. He became an expert in an emerging technology called spintronics, used to power semiconductors, and worked at several chip companies, including Freescale Semiconductor. But Ganguly, now 32, is moving back to India this summer. Although he has been doing postdoctoral work at the University of Texas, he figures his prospects for research and professional development are probably better in his home country. “I feel quite excited about going back,” he says.

Read the article: Skilled Immigrants on Why They’re Leaving the U.S. – BusinessWeek

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Art Business Education Finance Life Social

If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened

If you wish to be rich, however, you must grow a carapace. A mental armour. Not so thick as to blind you to well-constructed criticism and advice, especially from those you trust. Nor so thick as to cut you off from friends and family. But thick enough to shrug off the inevitable sniggering and malicious mockery that will follow your inevitable failures. Not to mention the poorly hidden envy that will accompany your eventual success.

Read the article: If you want to be rich, first stop being so frightened

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Business Education History Innovation Productivity Technology

Proprietary software vs. Open-source software vs. Cloud + SaaS

Open-source software has won the argument. Now a new threat to openness looms with the advent of “Cloud computing” — the delivery of software as a service (SaaS). Moving from one service provider to another could be even more difficult than switching between software packages in the old days. For a foretaste of this problem, try moving your Orkut profile to Facebook without manually retyping everything. The obvious answer is to establish agreed standards for moving data between clouds.

Read the article: Unlocking the cloud

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Business Innovation Science Technology

Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc

A disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric. The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players. More here.

Read the article: Optical disc offers 500GB storage

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Business Education Innovation Life Productivity Science Technology

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine

It’s not elegant and it’s not sexy — it looks like a large photocopier — but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell’s Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

The Espresso Book Machine — which actually is a self-contained 150 pages-per-minute printing and binding machine — can produce a full book in five minutes from a catalog of 400,000 references. It only takes one button. High-speed all-in-one printing-and-binding machines are not new, but this idea is. Using the Espresso Book Machine, any customer can walk in, pick any book from a touchscreen (or bring its own in CD or USB stick,) and walk away with a “real book” in five minutes. The price? Around $43 for a 300-page out-of-copyright book.  Some photos here.

Read the article: Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London

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Art Education Finance Life Science Social

How to be clever

Poor people have I.Q.’s significantly lower than those of rich people, and the awkward conventional wisdom has been that this is in large part a function of genetics. If intelligence were deeply encoded in our genes, that would lead to the depressing conclusion that neither schooling nor antipoverty programs can accomplish much. Yet while this view of I.Q. as overwhelmingly inherited has been widely held, the evidence is growing that it is, at a practical level, profoundly wrong.

New research strongly advocates intensive early childhood education because of its proven ability to raise I.Q. and improve long-term outcomes.

Read the article: How to Raise Our I.Q.

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Business Education History Innovation Social Technology

Precision hacking ‘The 2009 TIME 100 Poll’

A fascinating description of how the current 2009 Time 100 poll of “the world’s most influential people in government, science, technology and the arts” has been precision hacked to include a message from the folks, and to vote 4chan.org founder moot at the top!

Please note that this article assumes computer knowledge!

Read the article: Inside the precision hack

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Innovation Productivity Technology

Browsing sites more conveniently with Firefox add-on Autopager

The AutoPager Firefox extension automatically loads the next page of a site inline when you reach the end of the current page for infinite scrolling of content. By default, AutoPager works with a ton of sites including Google, Digg, Reddit, Hacker News, Lifehacker, New York Times etc. AutoPager is free, works wherever Firefox does.

Read the article: AutoPager Automatically Loads the Next Web Page Inline

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Business Education Health Innovation Nature Science Technology

MIT designs viruses to grow “greener” batteries

Researchers constructed a lithium-ion battery, similar to those used in millions of devices, but one which uses genetically engineered viruses to create the negatively charged anode and positively charged cathode. The virus is a so-called common bacteriophage which infects bacteria and is harmless to humans. “The advantage of using genetics is that things can be made better and better”…

Read the article: Virus battery could ‘power cars’