What is DTS-Si?

After a long time I felt like writing this blog. There is this nice patent war going on between two big automobile companies in India viz, Bajaj Auto and TVS Motors and the issue is about DTS-i technology. Bajaj claims the technology is theirs and they have patented it and used in their new bikes, while TVS motors are planning to file a suit against Bajaj.

While all these are happening in the background, Bajaj is all set to release its new bike "Exceed" 125cc which comes with an improvement over DTS-i called as DTS-Si and TVS is planning their new bike on similar technology lines again and they named it as "Flame" which is expected to get released in November. Ok, now what is DTS-Si? What is so special in this?

DTS-Si is the next step over DTS-i. DTS-i stands for "Digital Twin Spark - Ignition" and DTS-Si is called "Digital Twin Spark - Swirl Induction". Both these technologies will have two spark plugs, while it was just one spark plug in old bikes like my Splendor. But the factor of "Swirl Induction" is something new Bajaj is betting on. By "Swirl Induction", the combustion inside the cylinder is further improved by generating high turbulence for the fuel-air mixture. This factor is supposed to improve the mileage of the bike very much and Bajaj is quoting 109kmpl for its new bike "Exceed/XCD".

While battle between the companies go on, Bajaj is trying to get/generate new ideas/technologies and want to take 1st position in the two-wheeler which is currently occupied by Hero Honda. But TVS is also fighting for position 2, with its new bike "Flame" and current bike "Apache", but its a long way for TVS to beat both Bajaj and Hero Honda.

India Information Portal

When was the last time one wondered what state or city could a PIN code "560040" would belong to? When was the last time one tried to search for something specific to medicine and failed to get good results.

Here is one good site called "innIndia.com", which aims at providing a comprehensive information about India. The site offers a search engine for searching for state/city/province using the postal code. The medical search engine is designed to provide a tailored search experience, built using Google's core search technology, which prioritizes or restricts search results based on websites and pages that has been scrutinized by an expert panel of medical professionals. The expert panel is said to comprise of medical, bio-medical, pharmaceutical and bio-technology professionals, who have proven expertise in their respective fields and would review/scrutinize all relevant sites, before adding those to the index list.

The site also plans to introduce new features like "Weather Alert", "Fog Alert", "Strom Warning", etc... Also, it plans to integrate India Maps into this site.

MojoPages - The evolution of the Yellow Pages

Everyone sometime or the other would have used YellowPages, now here is a new evolution called MojoPages. It combines the business directory with Web 2.0 technologies i.e YellowPages, MySpace, YouTube, etc... all into one.

MojoPages tries to connect people with one another in their local areas and digitizes word-of-mouth by combining online business listings with social networking. Users can retrieve directions, address, phone numbers, coupons, pictures, videos, hours of operation, etc. on 15 million businesses from across the United States. Consumers seeking guidance or advice in choosing a vendor can enlist the assistance of the community to help make the best decisions.

It also offer local reviews and favourites to keep in touch with your community.

New type of Mutual Fund - SIP Fund

All those people who are doing investment in mutual fund would be having a SIP(Systematic Investment Plan) in some funds to avoid the volatility of the markets. But the SIP comes with its own problems like writing a number of cheques/ payment instructions, accounting / recording multiple transactions, computation of tax liability in respect of each installment and maintaining minimum balance for auto debit clearance.

All these problems can go away with this new type of Fund called "SIP Fund". Tata has come up with a fund where the investor puts the money one time, which will be initially put in 100% debt funds, but slowly moved to Equity, which means by the end of the term(3 years) it will be 100% Equity. Also, the investor has the option of redeeming the units at the end of the term or switching to another fund called Tata Pure Equity Fund.

The advantages here being that the investor is benefited from the SIP mechanism and also he earns interest as per the debt scheme for the amount not in the Equity, not bad.

Looks like other AMCs are also planning to start funds of this style.

Cisco sues Apple for using iPhone

Apple's much awaited iPhone was released in Macworld 2007 at San Fransisco. But it has brought along with it a lawsuit against Apple, the reason Cisco Systems claim to have registered the name "iPhone" as a trademark for their VOIP related products.

Cisco is asking the court to forbid Apple from using the name as it was registered in 2000 itself. Cisco and Apple are said to have negotiated for this name for over two years now, but Cisco claim the negotiations failed and hence Apple is not supposed to use the name "iPhone".

Although, Cisco VOIP products and Apple's iPhone are completely different, the lawsuit looks "silly", but still it may hold good. Cisco also have plans to move into the consumer electronics market, which means they may also plan to come to the front-end market like converting their VOIP products as phones, in which case the products fall in same category as Apple's iPhone.

Yahoo! Go on Nokia phones

For all those Nokia Fans, here is another new feature. Nokia and Yahoo! have joined their hands to make Yahoo! Go For mobile 2.0 available on Nokia phones operating on series 40 platform.

People around the world can download and enjoy Yahoo! Go for mobile 2.0 on select Nokia platforms for now like 6103, 6131 and Xpress Music phones. In 2007, it is planned to make it available for wider range of phones and also load it by default onto series 40 phones. Not just Nokia, even Moto Razr phones also support Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0

The features of Yahoo! Go include search, local & interactive maps, directory service, e-mail, photos and others.

Apple iPhone on its way in 2007

After much hype around the introduction of Apple iPhone, the stage is finally set for the launch of Apple's iPhone at MacWorld 2007. Though the dates for launch are close by, no one yet clearly know the features of iPhone and its looks. Apple Fans around the world are trying to create their own imagination of the Apple phone (all the images there are not officially said by Apple). People around the world are still continuing generating the fake photos of the iPhone using Photoshop, thats not all some have gone to the extent of giving some new name called "iChat Portable".

All this is because Apple has kept the names and other details a bit secret, though some insider news say that it would be iPhone only as they have already tried to register that domain name.

To know what apple has in store for this new year at Macworld 2007, click here.

Dual Format DVD for Hi-Def Content

With the introduction of Blu-ray dics by Sony, the means to deliver high-definition content became more like a war. Some people support Blu-ray and others the HD DVD. Major studios like Warner Bros, Paramount and Universal studios along with others were caught in this war to find which one is the best.

Warner and Paramount are releasing movies in both the formats, while Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, and creator Sony are exclusively releasing DVDs in Blu-ray, while Universal Studios is distributing only in HD DVD format.

But Warner Bros are planning to release a dual format DVD which can play in both HD DVD player and Blu-ray player. This gives a wider choice for the customers for sure, but will it trigger some more competition or will it cool down the fight? We need to wait and watch for this.

Interesting seach tools on the web

Yesterday I wrote an article about New way to find answers on net, but my further search on the net found some interesting search tools on the web. Let me try to analyze a few here.

Clusty.com is one such interesting site, which crawls the web with keywords and also with directories (directory based search narrows the search to a particular field). So, when compared with Google's idea, this site ranks considering the directory they belong to, which helps in yielding a better search result. For bloggers and website owners it also provide something call Clusty Cloud, which looks like a text box, but it will be dynamically filled with a pre-defined search results. See the examples here for more info.

Snap.com is another interesting site, where users can see the preview of the search result, before evening clicking on the result link. Some time-saving activity for sure, but an interesting thing is it reduces your bandwidth of loading that entire unwanted page.
NOTE: This site is supported by Snap. So, move your mouse pointer on any external link and see the preview of that external site.

ChaCha.com is of its kind. Here you can do the search just like other search sites, but if you are not able to find proper results, then click on "Search with Guide" button. It immediately takes you to a search result page and an online chat box, where one of the guide from ChaCha.com will come online and help you if finding out the correct result you are looking for. You can chat with him about your query and he'll help you in finding it out. Also, the result will be dynamically updated with his search results, while you are chatting. Click here to see how the result page looks like with chat window.

Leave your comments on this post. :)

New way to find answers on the net.

There were days when to find any information we used to go to Google. But this required the user to know a bare minimum information about what he/she is searching for, something like keywords. At times, that information may not be present on the net, or it may be present in some Chinese web, which you may skip most of the times.

This was the one of reason for the birth of new range of websites to answer your questions. Here you can post your questions (of course after signing in) and then people around the world (registered there) may answer them. The interesting point here is, if a person answer any question then he gets some points (which can get converted into gifts/prizes). One such good site is Yahoo! Answers. Google was trying to come up something like this, but has failed till now, looks like these days instead of innovating something they are trying to acquire the existing stuff to put them under their brand.

Latest addition to these answers site is AskVille from Amazon. After Google decided to back out from this, Amazon decided to push its web and trying to provide a decent competition for Yahoo!.

Note these sites are not Forums, they are very different. A forum is per category, say for ex Java. In a forum you post questions on that category only, but here there is no category, just login and post your question. This is one of the difference along with lot others.

Nasdaq and DJIA index interchanged in ET

Economic times website shows the index of Sensex, Nifty, DJIA and Nasdaq along with the conversion rate of $ to Re. But this chart will most of the times show the numbers interchanged for DJIA and Nasdaq. I have been observing this quite a few times now.

First time when I saw this, I was shocked, how did the Nasdaq moved from 2k to 12k in one day, then I realised its a bug in Economic Times site.

Prepaid mobile recharge with bonus

Recently I tried to recharge my Airtel prepaid mobile using ICICI Bank online prepaid recharge facility. Its a bonus to do this recharge. I recharged for Rs 500 and got a talk time of Rs 650 (ofcourse mine is lifetime validity and hence should get full talktime on every recharge), but getting Rs 150 extra talk time is bonus.

So, I thought it was for some seasonal offer, but it is happening since last few months and not just me all my friends are trying this and are getting Rs 150 extra talk time.

If any of you want to recharge their prepaid, then try it via ICICI Bank and enjoy the extra talk time. Also, try recharging for other currency and let me what kind of variations happen, also let me know if it happens for other services like Hutch, Reliance and others. You can comment here or drop me an email.

Social Network For Self Improvement

After the social network site like orkut, yaari, hi5 and others here is one such social network site launched in this new year called ToolsToLife.com. This is the first of its kind targeted at the self improvement of an individual and also this is the main reason for the development of this site.

Its a beta version that was launched this new year and it takes a while before it can come out of beta. There are quite a few success stories already posted on this site. May one should read them before joining and also at the same time to have some fun.

Joining this network is completely free and requires no invitation.

Enhance firefox tab browsing with add ons

Firefox is one of the best browsers because of its features security and also the most important thing is the "add ons". One such add on is the "Tab Mix Plus" which has lot of features to enhance the tabs functionality and user power over these tabs. To name a few it has features like:
a. Restore the tabs from a crashed session
b. Re-open a closed tab
c. Close buttons on each tab
d. Change focus/gesture and all for each tab

There are a wide range of add ons for firefox, but this is a must for tab lover.

Misleading Note in ICICI Bank Form

ICICI Bank recently announced a 8.5% interest on Fixed deposit for 590 days. If you plan to do it online, then there is a form available on their site. In this form you need to fill in the details including year/month/days. But there is a not saying fill 590 in days option for getting 8.5% interest, but what should be filled in year and month option is not specified.

Many people who try to fill this form gets confused as to whether they should split 590 into X-years, Y-months and Z-days or it should be specified as 0-years, 0-months and 590 days? If you do it the first way, then 8.5% interest will still come and you will be opening the FD in that scheme only, then why is this "NOTE"?

The note actually there to make the life of the applicant easier, he need not convert 590 into X, Y and Z. But should they be filled with 0 or not is a question that prevails in every body's mind as those fields are marked as mandatory. This shows how important a context-tip and Notes are, but incomplete or misleading are more dangerous than not having them.

Started VJSpace

Guys this is the first post on VJ Space. Hope you'll enjoying reading/commenting this blog

VJ