Katrina: To be a barbie??

Dress the Barbie contest attracted 75 entries from top designers in the country from which the 20 short listed creations were showcased on the ramp at the dazzling show.

And surprise-surprise, it was the winning dress by young designer Nishka Lulla that Bollywood’s glamourous actress Katrina Kaif modelled as the showstopper of the day. Katrina Kaif will be the Indian celebrity on whose likeness a Barbie doll will be created by Mattel Toys India Pvt Ltd. Designer Vikram Phadnis’s creation opened the show with a white tulle layered gown with a crystal bodice, followed by Wendell Rodricks who showed a gown with a silver bodysuit that could move effortlessly from Red Carpet to Disco.

More dazzling gowns floated down the ramp by designers Vivek Kumar, Neeta Lulla, Atit Bhatt, Anand Bhushan, Tanvi Kedia, Abdul Haldar, Ruchi Mehta, Niak, Jyoti Sharma (a stunning shell pleated will- power shaded mini) Sonam Mehta, Prashant/Sudha and Shantanu and Nikhil. The Shirt Company that markets the Barbie Clothing Line in India had tiny tot, Chanel Robinson (Marc Robinson’s pretty daughter) in a lovely red net gown.
Finally the beauteous Katrina Kaif radiantly glided down the ramp in Nishka Lulla’s award winning red shaded tiered mini with a brocade bodice clasped with a giant gold bow at the back.

Power demand drops 1,000mw during Earth Hour

A power of whopping 1,000 MW. That's the amount of power that dropped in the capital during `Earth Hour' on Saturday evening, when many city residents and establishments switched off their lights. Though state power department officials claim that pleasant weather conditions and breakdowns contributed significantly to the drop in demand, they said the campaign itself resulted in electricity savings of about 500-550 MW.

Power experts are calling the huge drop in electricity usage a landmark event. A majority of power guzzlers like hotels, monuments, industries and commercial units - many of them closed anyway during the hour, 8.30pm to 9.30pm, - had pledged to be part of the event. But experts said the major contributors were the residents of Delhi as up to 65% of the power load in the evenings comes from the domestic sector.

"It was basically the domestic sector that contributed to the massive reduction in load requirement on Saturday evening during Earth Hour," said an expert in the power sector.

The weather has been responsible for a considerable drop in electricity demand in Delhi for the past few days. With the drop in temperature, we have a surplus of approximately 700 MW.

Talk to the web: A new tech from IBM

IT major IBM recently developed a telecom web browsing technology that would allow users to talk to the web and create voice sites using mobile phones.

According to IBM Research's website, Telecom Web Browser would enable browsing the Web of voice applications through an ordinary phone while providing similar experience as is available on the World Wide Web.

With a purpose of interconnecting the web and voice, IBM has developed a new protocol - Hyperspeech Transfer Protocol (HSTP) - analogous to HTTP, that provides a mechanism to connect telephony voice applications with each other. The new protocol would enable voice-driven transactions that can span multiple cross-enterprise voice applications thus providing a seamless browsing experience to the telephony user, added IBM's research site.

People will talk to the web and the web will respond. The research technology is analogous to the Internet. Unlike personal computers it will work on mobile phones where people can simply create their voice sites. The spoken web is a network of voice sites or interconnected voice. The company got in some pilot projects in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat.

'Manasu': Helpline for transgenders

‘Manasu’, a phone helpline for the transgender, was launched today. This was an effort by the Tamil Nadu AIDS Initiative(TAI) administered by the Voluntary Health Services(VHS).

Dial 25 99 05 05 to get to the heartland of transgenders.

For those who want to understand the issues related to transgenders, this helpline will serve as a gateway of information and counselling. There are 50,000 transgenders in Tamil Nadu. This phone line also guides the general public on understanding transgenders, offers ways of helping them and breaks superstitions around the community. This is a good inititative to break the barriers and mainstream the transgenders. The government is willing to give support from their end.

SSD drives for india from Transcend

Transcend has released its all-new 2.5-inch 192GB high-speed Solid State Drive (SSD) in India. The SSD is made of NAND flash memory which has no moving parts. The drive is free from mechanical failure resulting from vibration, shock, or heat are eliminated. It provides a sustained read/write speeds of up to 150MB/90MB per second regardless of file size.

It also features integrated ECC (Error Correction Code) to ensure accurate data transfer, as well as built-in wear leveling technology, which guarantees an ultra-long storage lifespan and long-term reliability. With a latency of about 0.2ms, the overall improvement is produced system responsiveness.

This 192GB SSD incorporates an industry-standard SATA II interface 2.5-inch form factor that allows easy installation in most notebook computers and mainstream PCs.