Hi all,
    Early today, The Australian Cricket Team, led by Ricky Pointing, picked up the most coveted ICC Cricket World Cup for the 3rd consecutive time.

    They claimed their victory over Sri Lanka, although rain played spoilsport by delaying the match, and shortening it to a 38-38 over match.

    I say no more here, since you can gather much much much more from other fan websites, that you can ever hope to gain from here.

    Cheers

Hi all,
    Today, the first message which highlighted my email inbox displayed “Facebook becomes NETLOG”!

    Yes… The very famous and popular social networking site, Facebook, decided to close their accounts and be acquired by Netlog.

    They have introduced new features like Music sharing (as in ILike) and something they call “Friendslog”, which is, as far as I could figure out, an idea similar to that of viewing all threads Digged by your friends in the social bookmarking, and user driven content site, Digg.com .

    Netlog also seems to have an array of languages, will a cool theme. Though I dont appreciate the volume of ads they have.

    Why was Facebook, a web 2.0 startup which was doing so well, acquired by Netlog, something which most of us havent heard of? We’ll wait and see…

Technorati Tags: facebook, netlog

Hi all,
    The Union Cabinet (of India) has given approval for setting up of an Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST) soon. It also approved an initial investment of Rs 2700 million and an annual recurring cost of Rs 400 million.

    The Daily India reported this news.

“The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO)
has been experiencing severe shortage of highly talented graduate and
post-graduate scientists and engineers during the last few years to
take up the challenges of research and development in the areas of
space science and technology,” a Cabinet release said.

The IIST
being set up on the lines of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs),
will provide high quality undergraduate and postgraduate education and
research programmes in space science and technology.

It will
also offer integrated Masters in space science with customised
curriculum to meet the high technology requirements of the ISRO.

The
courses are proposed to commence from the academic year 2007-08, at an
alternate campus in Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram.

The campus and other infrastructure facilities will be put in place within 24 months, the release said.

The
institute will offer 150-200 seats annually. The entire expenses of the
course will be supported by ISRO in the form of scholarships and
assistantships, and the brighter lot would be directly absorbed by the
ISRO.

    I deem that this is a positive step towards developing the space technology in India. India had been in the space research fast track during 2006 and 2007. The ISRO had made indigenous space launching vehicles, and satellites. Earlier, Dr G Madhavan Nair, the Chairman of ISRO, had announced in a public event the concept of the IIST. It seems that ISRO had been planning the IIST for a long time now.

Technorati Tags: indian, space, research, iist, isro

Hey all,
    Sri Lanka and Australia are the two teams who will face off in the ICC Cricket World Cup Finals, to be held in the Barbados, West Indies…

    Who will win? My bet goes to Australia, who, though not at their top form, are still better than all other teams (and, obviously, better than Sri Lanka).

    My friend, Rick, had opinioned earlier that it might be 2 southern hemisphere teams battling the finals, when he insinuated that the finals might be between New Zealand, and Australia. But Sri Lanka had a dazzling win over New Zealand, which heaved them into the finals.

    Dudes and dudettes, join me in watching the finals, which is to be seen by more than 3 billion, worldwide!

Technorati Tags: sri lanka, australia, cricket, ICC cricket world cup, finals

Hi all,
    While Digging today, I found a member who had pointed the readers’ attention to the new AOL main page.

    And now that he mentions it, the AOL main page looks like a complete rip off of the Yahoo! main page. Except for the colour, and the Search Enhanced By Google.

    The links, the ads, the logo placement, the search placement, the tabs, the news items… All these object designs are exactly similar to those on Yahoo!. Hmmmm… Even the Page Ranks for Yahoo! and AOL are same(9/10)!

     Whats happening? The AOL designers ran out of ideas? And will Yahoo! sue AOL? Lets wait and see…

Technorati Tags: aol, new main page, yahoo, ripoff