Hindustanis.Org

A British member of parliament had his Facebook account suspended this week after the popular social networking site decided he wasn’t real.

Steve Webb, of the Liberal Democrats, tried to logon on Monday but received a message saying his account had been disabled following complaints he didn’t exist.

The news was particularly disconcerting for the 42-year-old because not only has he been a member of parliament for 10 years but he is also a keen promoter of online networking.

“I sent them an email asking what the problem was and got a response a day later saying they had concluded that my profile was a fake, that I wasn’t really Steve Webb,” Webb told Reuters.

“I was essentially accused of impersonating a member of parliament.” Within a few hours friends set up a Facebook group called Steve Webb is real! which attracted more than 200 members, and he and others contacted people who worked at the site.

A few hours later he received an apology and his profile was reactivated. “I’m very sorry for the confusion here,” the apology from Facebook read. “We received a report that indicated that this was an imposter account, but after further investigation, it is obviously real.”

Still, the time spent in the Internet’s no man’s land left Webb questioning his existence. “You realise the power these organisations really have,” he said.

“If they’d been really determined, they could have deactivated me completely and then you kind of don’t know where you stand. “It’s actually hard for a genuine person to prove they exist.” Webb, who has been on Facebook for nearly a year, has around 2,500 friends on the site, a huge number.

This is largely because he invites members of his constituency in the west of England to sign up. Asked if he might have been suspended because he had a suspiciously high number of friends, particularly for a member of parliament, he laughed. “The thought did cross my mind,” he said.

Source - Ibnlive

Britney Spears‘ 16-year-old sister, who stars as a schoolgirl in Nickelodeon’s popular TV show “Zoey 101,” is pregnant.The cable channel confirmed a report in the forthcoming edition of celebrity gossip magazine OK! that Jamie Lynn Spears is expecting a child.

“We respect Jamie Lynn’s decision to take responsibility in this sensitive and personal situation. We know this is a very difficult time for her and her family, and our primary concern right now is for Jamie Lynn’s well being,” Nickelodeon said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

A high school student who lives in Louisiana, Jamie Lynn Spears reportedly met the father, Casey Aldridge, the son of a Tennessee papermill worker, at church. Jamie Lynn Spears’ personal publicist was not available for comment.

Her big sister, Britney Spears, may not be the best source of parenting advice. The 26-year-old pop star lost primary custody of her two sons, aged 2 and 1, to ex-husband Kevin Federline after their divorce last year and is engaged in a bitter custody battle that has shone a harsh spotlight on her maternal shortcomings.

“Zoey 101,” which wrapped production on its fourth and final season in September, revolves around a headstrong student at a co-ed boarding school in California. Fresh episodes will air through 2008, a spokeswoman for the Viacom Inc-owned network said.

When Alan Meckler, the CEO of IT and online imagery hub Jupitermedia (JUPM), was accepted to Columbia University in 1965, the dean’s office told him he had some of the lowest college boards of any student ever admitted. “I got a 405 or 410 in English,” he recalls. “In those days you got a 400 just for putting your name down! Yet I was on the dean’s list every year I was there, and I won a prize for having the best essay in American history my senior year.”

It wasn’t until years later, at age 58, that Meckler learned he was dyslexic. He struggles with walking and driving directions, and interpreting charts and graphs. He prefers to listen to someone explain a problem to him, rather than sit down and read 20 pages describing it. As a youth, Meckler discovered a unique strength—baseball—and cultivated it religiously to compensate for weakness in other areas.

Asset or Handicap?

All of these things, according to Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a professor of learning development at Yale University, are classic signs of dyslexia. Shaywitz has long argued that dyslexia should be evaluated as an asset, not just a handicap. She recently co-founded the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity, dedicated to studying the link between the two. “I want people to wish they were dyslexic,” she says. “There are many positive attributes that can’t be taught that people are generally not aware of. We always write about how we’re losing human capital—dyslexics are not able to achieve their potential because they’ve had to go around the system.”

It’s not clear whether dyslexics develop their special talents by learning to negotiate their disability or whether such skills are the genetic inheritance of being dyslexic. It’s a question Shaywitz plans to explore, along with trying to change the way dyslexia is viewed in the educational system and the business world. One project at the center will be an education series to train executives to recognize outside-the-box thinkers who don’t perform well on standardized tests.

Shaywitz recently tested a well-known CEO (whom she declined to identify) for dyslexia. The man confessed that he’d hired an outside company to help identify future leaders within the organization by administering a reading test. “‘The irony is,’ I told him, ‘you’re eliminating and sifting out all the people like yourself who might actually be the ones to be creative and make a difference.’”

Coping Skills

That kind of rejection, along with a penchant for creativity, may help explain why so many dyslexics are inclined to become entrepreneurs. Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at Cass Business School in London, believes strongly in the connection.

In a study to be published in January, Logan found that 35% of entrepreneurs in the U.S. show signs of dyslexia, compared to 20% in Britain. Logan attributes the gap to a more flexible education system in the U.S., vs. rigid tracking in British schools, and better identification and remediation methods. “Most of the people in our study talked about the role of the mentor and how important that had been,” Logan says. “The difference seems to be somebody who believes in you in school.”

The broader implication, she says, is that many of the coping skills dyslexics learn in their formative years become best practices for the successful entrepreneur. A child who chronically fails standardized tests must become comfortable with failure. Being a slow reader forces you to extract only vital information, so that you’re constantly getting right to the point. Dyslexics are also forced to trust and rely on others to get things done—an essential skill for anyone working to build a business.

“People really struggle to delegate, and these people have learned to do that already,” she says. “If you’re bogged down in the details, you’re not out there looking at where your business needs to go.”

Lemonade from Lemons

Paul Orfalea, who founded the copy-and-graphics chain Kinko’s 37 years ago, has both dyslexia and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He proudly attributes much of his business success to an inability to do things most others can. “I would always hire people who didn’t have my skills,” he says. “My secret was to get out of their way and let them do their job.” He is also inured to failure. “You know what’s great about a C student? They have risk-reward pretty much well-wired,” he says. “A students are always putting in maximum effort, and C students say, ‘Well, is it really worth it?’”

Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers says dyslexia helps him step back and see the big picture. His third-grade teacher discovered his reading trouble; he says alternative teaching methods and supportive parents helped him learn to deal with it at an early age. “Dyslexia forces you to look at things in totality and not just as a single chess move. I play out the whole scenario in my mind and then work through it.… All of my life, I’ve built organizations with a broad perspective in mind.”

Meckler, who was one of the first to convert his IT trade publications into a sustainable, ad-supported business model for Web publishing, also strives for the big picture and has little patience for details. “In business meetings…I can hear a whole bunch of people talking about a lot of things, and I seem to be able to cut right to the chase,” he says. “I think my mind has been trained…to zero in on the salient point.”

Foundations for Successful Dyslexics

Those entrepreneurs who have embraced their dyslexia have also made it their personal mission to pave an easier way for the next generation. Discount brokerage pioneer Charles Schwab (SCHW) started the Charles & Helen Schwab Foundation, a resource center for kids and parents to overcome learning and attention disorders. Orfalea founded the Orfalea Family Foundation, to support and identify different learning styles and try to remove the stigma that comes with them.

Ben Foss, a researcher in assistive technologies in Intel’s (INTC) Digital Health Group, started a nonprofit and made a documentary film about the first man in America to win an employee discrimination case based on dyslexia. He’s now working to adapt technologies for the blind to also assist people with learning disabilities, too. Despite the titans of business disclosing their dyslexia to the world, Foss says it’s still daunting to climb the corporate ladder as a dyslexic. “If you’re John Chambers, Charles Schwab, or Richard Branson, sure. But if you’re a corporate VP in the mid-ranks, there’s a very large disincentive to saying you’re dyslexic, because you’re still being evaluated,” he says. “Ironically, talking about it on your terms is what allows you to become successful.”

Of course, being a misfit often lends itself to great entrepreneurship. Health-care entrepreneur and real estate magnate James LeVoy Sorenson has more than 40 medical patents to his name and is responsible for inventing the first computerized heart monitor, the first disposable paper surgical masks, and the first blood-recycling system for trauma and surgical procedures. He also dropped out of community college at 18, and was told by grade-school teachers he was either “slow-witted or developmentally disabled.”

At 86, Sorenson says overcoming dyslexia trained him to be persistent and solve problems in new ways: “I like to add one word to the end of many sentences: ‘yet.’ Instead of saying, ‘I can’t do it,’ I say, ‘I can’t do it—yet.’”

Source - Business Week 

Brand Bangalore has not lost its sheen yet - that’s what the Information Technology Department has to say. While the state government has cleared the path for investments worth Rs 60,000 crore in August, September and October had over 40 projects worth over Rs 38,000 crore cleared.

The state IT secretary Vidyashankar says the numbers for November and December will be just as encouraging and proves that Bangalore has not suffered because of the state’s political instability.

“We are seeing, on the contrary, an increase in participation not only from IT but also from telecom, biotech and nano industries. Bangalore is acting more,” he says.

The reason? Brand Bangalore is still synonymous with outsourcing, making it easier to market to client overseas.

“Bangalore is a global entity and is top of the mind recall for it honchos all over the world. If the country is going to continue to grow, Bangalore will grow as well,” says Vidyashankar.

Other senior government officials tell CNN-IBN that the absence of an elected government may have made the state more business friendly. This is because the governor’s executive committee is not making decisions that are purely based on merit and there is very little room for vested interests.

The city’s infrastructure continues to be the bone of contention. But officials say changes are being made.

“The kind of initiatives we are putting in will take care of infrastructure for the next 20 years. Be it water, roads or metro, it’s all being taken care of,” says Vidyashankar.

While the city exported Rs 49,000 crore worth software in 2006-07, its nearest competitor Chennai managed just about Rs 21,000 crore. This year, the exports are estimated to touch a record Rs 70,000 crore.

The I-T secretary says the target of Rs 100,000 crore in exports for the year 2010-11 is more than achievable.

Source - Ibnlive

The economies of India and China are much smaller than previously thought, when measured by buying power in US dollars, according to data released on Monday, which could weaken their call for more clout at the IMF. The preliminary International Comparison Program report on purchasing power parity — or PPP — was coordinated by the World Bank and based on price data on goods and services in 146 countries, adjusted to reflect local cost and affordability, and converted to dollars.

The report has no bearing on the actual size of those economies, but rather looks at them with a different measuring tool — one that many emerging economies argue is a more accurate representation of their growing global influence since it takes their hefty buying power into account.

Many of those countries want the IMF to take PPP into consideration, when allocating voting rights, a contentious issue that is expected to be high on the agenda at the fund’s spring meetings in April 2008.

An IMF spokesman said there was “growing consensus” that PPP should play a role in determining voting quotas, which would raise the relative weight of developing countries.

“The impact on individual countries depends on the data for them and this new set of PPP data will ensure that any calculations done for PPP purposes will reflect the most up-to-date situation,” IMF’s William Murray said in an e-mailed response to questions.

PPP is designed to provide an apples-to-apples comparison for the buying power of countries around the world, and also gives insight into the cost of living, consumer spending and investment from country to country.

One of the best-known examples is the “Big Mac Index,” which compares the cost of the same McDonald’s sandwich in different countries.

The report takes data collected by the World Bank, Eurostat and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to calculate each country’s PPP for 2005. (http://www.worldbank.org/data/icp)

China’s share of the global economy in terms of PPP fell to 9.7 per cent from an estimated 14 per cent. This was the first time that China participated in the survey, so the prior figure was calculated last year by extrapolating from old data, using a model that has since proved to be faulty.

India’s share of the world economy based on PPP dropped to 4.3 per cent from a previous estimate of 6 per cent. This was the first time India had participated in the survey since 1985.

“These are changes in estimates, the previous ones having been based on very old and very limited data,” the ICP report noted. “The real outputs of their economies have not changed, only the way we measure them has.”

Political Ramifications

When measured by market exchange rates instead of PPP, China’s share of world GDP is just 5 per cent, and India’s is less than 2 per cent — about half of their size using PPP. That explains why the report may have political ramifications as fast-growing emerging markets fight for more say at the IMF.

Emerging markets argue that the big industrialized countries have too much influence over the fund, in part because voting rights do not take into account PPP — something they hope will change in the IMF’s revised quota system.

But because India and China are smaller than previously thought in PPP terms, they may have a harder time winning support for sizeable increases in their voting rights.

Some industrialized countries worry that China and other emerging markets will surpass them in voting power if PPP is taken into consideration. In PPP, China is the world’s second- biggest economy, behind only the United States. By market exchange rates, it trails countries such as Japan and Germany.

The report shows that 12 countries account for more than two-thirds of the world’s output, including five emerging economies: China, India, Russia, Brazil and Mexico.

Overall, the results show that the size of the world economy measured in PPP terms is smaller than previously estimated. Asia’s economies are one-third smaller than previously thought, largely because of the downgrades to India and China, while Africa’s are one-fourth smaller.

Source - Express India 

Using jackhammers, rock saws and chisels at a punishing 14,000 feet, paleontologists working atop a frozen Antarctic mountain have extracted a rock and ice fossil popsicle encasing the remains of a massive, previously unknown dinosaur.The dino, which represents a new genus and species, lived 190 million years ago during the Early Jurassic at what is now Mt. Kirkpatrick, near the Beardmore Glacier. The species adds to a growing number of dinosaurs known to have roamed the now-polar continent.

Named Glacialisaurus hammeri, after noted Antarctica fossil hunter William Hammer, the new dino was identified by a femur leg bone and an incomplete ankle and foot.

“Scaling the material up to similar-sized relatives would suggest that it was around 25 feet long and weighed perhaps 4-6 tons,” said Nathan Smith, a graduate student at Chicago’s Field Museum and a member of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology.

Smith, along with paleontologist Diego Pol of Argentina’s Museo Paleontologico Egidio Feruglio, describe the anatomy of the new sauropodomorph dinosaur in this month’s Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

Sauropodomorphs, with their incredibly long necks, tails and classic dino shape, were the largest animals ever known.

“Throughout the evolution of sauropodomorphs, there appears to be a general trend of increasing body size, and Glacialisaurus would likely fit somewhere in the middle of this evolutionary trend,” Smith said.

He explained to Discovery News that this group is generally considered to be plant consumers, although some earlier members — perhaps even the new dino — may have eaten almost anything in sight, with plants providing the bulk.

Bones of another Antarctic dinosaur, still under preparation, suggest G. hammeri coexisted for a time with true sauropods, a related but distinct group of dinos.

Smith said this “tells us that animals that probably had overlapping ecological roles were present in the same environment. Either these groups were directly competing with each other for resources, or they somehow occupied slightly different niches within the environment.”

That environment, and climate, was very different than it is today, said Thomas Wagner, program director of Antarctic Earth Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supported the research.

Then warmer, Antarctica’s Early Jurassic climate likely supported ultra-tall trees that sauropodomorphs, like giraffes on steroids, were adept at eating.

Positioned further north, the continent was also then connected to other landmasses.

Wagner described Antarctica as a Jurassic “freeway,” since “it was the route by which dinosaurs and mammals moved from places like Africa to Australia. Then, once it broke away, it may have been a refuge, albeit a cold one.”

Even back in G. hammeri’s day, Wagner said Antarctica would have forced the dinosaur and its relatives to endure “a long, cold, dark winter, yet similar animals lived in places like China.”

“How did they do that?” he wondered.

Both Wagner and Smith hope lengthier fieldwork in Antarctica might solve this question, as well as other dinosaur mysteries concerning the planet’s southernmost continent.

Source - Discovery News 

For the first time ever, Google has included India in its 2007 end-of-year Zeitgeist annual report.

Zeitgeist pulls together interesting search trends and patterns, and gives search statistics automatically generated based on the billions of searches conducted on Google.

The list is a cumulative snapshot of interesting queries asked by users over time, within country domains, and some on Google.com.

This year’s Zeitgeist also includes an aggregation of search queries on Google’s Indian domain. It reflects both — the most popular, and the fastest-rising global search terms that people have typed on to Google.

The top gaining queries in India for the month of November include: Bank of Maharashtra, easymovies, Income tax department, Pan Card, Lord Hanuman, Maruti True value, Sony Cybershot, Harry Potter, Goa hotels, Hindu astrology, Indigo, Tata Mutual Funds, Financial Express, Logitech, and Miss India.

In the 2007 Google Zeitgeist list, the 10 fastest rising terms globally include iPhone, badoo, facebook, dailymotion, webkinz, youtube, ebuddy, second life, hi5, and club penguin; while the 10 fastest falling terms globally include world cup, Mozart, fifa, rebelde, kazaa, xanga, webdetente, sudoku, shakira, and mp3.

In a separate development, speculation is rife that Google might soon come up with an Indian version of its cross-language information retrieval (CLIR) facility that searches queries in English, while giving results in native languages.

However, there is no confirmation on which languages will be deployed. Meanwhile, the CLIR service can accessed at www.translate.google.com

For private equity (PE) players, mid-sized, family-owned companies in India still retain their charm. Leading PE firms are learnt to have evinced interest in a major fund-raising programme by Trichy-based Cethar Vessels, a Rs 1,100-crore boiler manufacturer, which has lined up an ambitious expansion programme to meet the growing demand for power generation.

Private equity players such as Chryscapital, CVC and UTI Ventures are some of the names that the closely-held Cethar is learnt to be talking to for offloading part of the promoter stake. The funds infusion could be in the range of $50-100 million, according to people close to the development.

The funds would be used up for Cethar’s expansion programme. The boiler maker had earlier said it would need about Rs 900 crore to build facilities for boiler auxiliaries and pressure parts. It also plans to raise Rs 500 crore from private equity funds and tie up with banks and institutions for the remaining amount.

When contacted, K Subburaj, chairman, Cethar Vessels, told ET: “We have mandated SSKI to find a private equity investor. We are meeting with Chryscapital. But it is one of the many meetings that SSKI is arranging for us. It will be at least a month before an investor is finalised.” Cethar is also likely to soon appoint an audit firm to do financial auditing and get another investment bank to help arrive at a valuation.

The company has been talking to a number of audit firms, including KPMG, for the purpose.Sources said Cethar intends to raise private equity money before March 2008 as it will help the company chip in with additional promoter’s equity for raising funds from banks and FIs. The company, which reported a revenue of Rs 1,100 crore last fiscal and has set its sights on about Rs 1,750 crore in the current year, has plans to go public before 2009.

Source - Economic Times 

As if the Federal Reserve didn’t have enough headaches these days, inflation appears to be on the march after a long period of relative quiet. Case in point: The release of the U.S. consumer price index for November on Dec. 14. The headline CPI surged 0.8% on the month, while the core rate, which excludes food and fuel, rose 0.3%. Markets expected tamer rates of 0.6% and 0.2%, respectively, according to S&P MarketScope.

Boosting the rate, not surprisingly, was energy, up a huge 5.7% after a 1.4% push in October. Gasoline prices climbed 9.3% and are up 37.1% year-over-year. Transportation costs were up 2.9%. Housing costs rose 0.4%, with a 0.3% increase in owners’ equivalent rents and a 1.5% gain in fuels and utilities.

Rounding out the ugly picture, apparel prices were up 0.8%, food rose 0.3%, and education increased 0.1%.

On a year-over-year basis, the headline rate accelerated to 4.3% from a 3.5% rate in October. The core rate was up 2.3% from 2.2%, and above the Fed’s implicit 2% ceiling for inflation. The stronger than expected data will be a major concern for Treasuries and restrict the Fed’s willingness to loosen, notes S&P Economics.

Action Economics expects the year-over-year headline CPI index to remain at 4.0% or above through at least February if energy prices remain at current levels. The figures proved as troublesome as the 3.2% surge in the November producer price index (BusinessWeek, Dec. 13) reported Dec. 13, accompanied by a firm 0.4% gain in the core PPI, and the jumbo November trade price gains released on Dec. 12.

Action assumes the same 0.8% headline gain for the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) chain price index in November with a 0.3% core gain. Huge gains in headline inflation will keep Federal Reserve policymakers on their heels regarding inflation risks, even if the market remains more interested in recession risks.

As could be expected, bond investors didn’t appreciate another round of hot inflation data after a big pop in the November producer price index on Dec. 13. The November CPI release drove Treasury yields sharply higher in early trading Dec. 14, though some of the news was discounted in advance of the CPI figures. The dollar firmed following the hotter than forecast CPI data, while stocks appeared headed for a negative start.

Source - BusinessWeek