Chibu is 1 yr. old

I am so happy to see my little baby girl grow. She turned 1 this 24th.

Since my wife - Pragati is still bravely fighting a very rare form of cancer called Epithelioid Sarcoma, we didn't have a big party.

But our family and few close friends joined us at our home in celebrating her birthday. It was a really special day and we embraced this little happiness thrown our way after a long - long time with open arms.

She is really a blessing in our life, something which keeps both of us going in these tough times. We wish her all the happiness in life to come. 

In the picture on left you can see her opening gifts with a curoisity which only a child can posses. For more pics click here.

Mithun on TV

My younger brother, Mithun was on national TV for a small time recently. Included below is video from NDTV, top news channel of India. It basically reports how recent pirate attacks are not deterring new marine engineers from joining their duties on ships. My brother Mithun is one of them. For those who don't know him, his is the last interview by the correspondent in the video. 

Thumb Impression goes mobile

Just came across very interesting article in The Hindu Business Line which is a classic case of technology working at grassroot level.

This articles mentions how Micro Finance Institutions operating in rural areas of India are a using mobile application to authorise financial transactions for villagers.

This unique mobile application actually uses mobile camera for fingerprint recognition, really helpful for rural people who sometime lack basic ability to sign any kind of document and even if they can a finger print is always better then a signature as it can't be forged.

Nagpur among Best cities for IT-BPO growth

Rediff today carries a story about India's 15 best cities for IT-BPO growth. It mentions major cities like Mumbai, Pune, Chennai beside emerging cities like Nagpur, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Bhuvneshwar etc.

Rediff has this to say about Nagpur:

"Strategically located, Nagpur is the largest city in central India with excellent educational institutions that churn out a fine talent pool. The city's impressive infrastructure, new supporting governmental policies, an enabling and peaceful business environment, availability of a huge knowledge pool, etc have seen a number of IT firms setting up base here.

A proposed special economic zone that will house a major international cargo hub and also information technology companies will further boost the city's allure for IT firms.

At Rs 298,000, Nagpur is the 10th most prosperous city in terms of average annual household income in India."

I love my Nagpur.

Google Chrome: Not just another browser

Google released beta version of its open source web-browser last week. The browser is called Chrome and those interested in contributing to it or having a look at its code can head here.

First thing which I noticed in Chrome is that it is simple and straight-forward like most of other Google Products/Website. So there is no menu bar, no toolbar and tabs utilise conventional title bar area. All this leaves you with more browsing space, which I think is really innovative.

Chrome uses code from other browsers like Apple's Safari and Mozilla Firefox so you find many useful features from other browsers already present in Chrome. Chrome is loaded with many interesting and useful features like:

1. Floating tabs - You can drag and rearrenge tabs, convert tab into window and move tabs between multiple Chrome windows.
2. Tab does not crash Browser - Since tabs run in separate memory process of their own, if one tab crashes, it does not take the whole browser and other tabs down with it. What a relief :-)
3. Incognito Mode - If you don't want to leave trace of your browsing in history, cookies etc, you have the Incognito window to help you out.
4. Application Shortcuts - With the increasing use of many websites as applications, you can create their Shortcuts on your desktop so when you want to open them next time, you can just double-click on their icons and they will open like an application installed on your desktop. You need to try it to really understand how useful this feature is.

For a complete understanding of all the features please visit this link and to read Google's official reason on why they chose to do a browser, click here.