Google just got bigger! Its a bigger search this time.

Google's just got bigger!
Not that it wasn't a giant after all, but Google has recently increased the size of its search box that the company says "will make it easier for people to use".
Google's vice president for search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, said this teenie-weenie change to the Google hompage symbolizes Google's "Focus on Search". She says that these tiny adjustments to the search box's height and width would make it "even easier and more fun to use."
Google said in an e-mail message that the new search box is "roughly double the size of the (original) search box." The company also made its search buttons "more similar" for those viewing Google "on different operating systems and browsers." Even with a larger search box, the company's search still only allows for up to 2,048 characters in a single query.

Here's a side-by-side view of the two looks of Google: [Click on image to view larger]

Gmail Fails, Google Apologises

Reference: Techdare.com

Google's Electronic Mail service GMail recently crashed on Wednesday, the 2nd of September for an astonishing 100 minutes! The outage nearly killed the Tweety Twitter again!
But isn't just Google a vast spread network of its never-out-of-run servers. As everyone kept wondering whatever happened with Google and GMail, the service kept responding to the Sign-In requests with the erroneous (but quite friendly!) message:

[Credit: GearDiary.com]

Of course, why do we have to worry????

Better still, 'twas good seeing Google publicly apologizing for the unhappy incident.
Looks like they've got everything tangled, and this one was big!!! Real big!
Google engineering VP Ben Treynor explains on the Gmail Blog:

Here’s what happened: This morning (Pacific Time) we took a small fraction of Gmail’s servers offline to perform routine upgrades. This isn’t in itself a problem — we do this all the time, and Gmail’s web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.

However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers — servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system “stop sending us traffic, we’re too slow!”. This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn’t access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn’t be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don’t use the same routers.The Gmail engineering team was alerted to the failures within seconds (we take monitoring very seriously). After establishing that the core problem was insufficient available capacity, the team brought a LOT of additional request routers online (flexible capacity is one of the advantages of Google’s architecture), distributed the traffic across the request routers, and the Gmail web interface came back online.

That was a big Oops! Better still, GMail is online again.

Gmail, which recently passed AOL to become the third largest Web mail service in the U.S., is obviously having some growing pains. A few hours of downtime is not the end of the world, although it might seem like it at the time. It just better not make this a new habit.

Let's hope Google sticks to its commitment

Apple rolls out Snow Leopard; Win 7 still waiting!

Reference: CNET News

Seems Apple is in real hurry!

While Microsoft has released plans for its Windows 7 this week, Apple has rolled out its Mac OS X Snow Leopard, a little earlier than expected.

According to CNET, the new OS doesn't sport many new features, rather Apple is deep into refining the exisiting code of the Operating System. Apple reports to have worked on 90 percent of the Mac OS X code for the Snow Leopord release. It does have a good box cover too! [image:Left (Credit:Apple)]

Here's the CNET Teams review for the Snow Leaopard. The team gave it a review of Excellent in its Test:

"Interface enhancements like Expose in the Dock and better file and folde viewing in Stacks make finding apps and files much easier. A completely overhauled QuickTime X now sports a cleaner interface and recording tools. The much-anticipated Exchange support across Mail, the Address Book, and iCal is huge for thise who take their Macs to work.

CNET Reviews Team however notes that Snow Leopard will work only in Intel-powered Macs; PowerPC users are out of Luck!

Experts note that Snow Leopard could have more features on the Security side, which the OS is said to be lacking. About the Popular belief that people have more Mac, that it is much safer than the Windows counterpart, experts deny. The Mac is merely safer as malware writers do not prefer to target the Apple Platform than the Windows one, according to Charlie Miller and Dino Dai Zovi, co-authors of The Mac Hacker's Handbook, which came out this spring.

"Apple hasn't implemented all the security features that Vista has," Miller said. "They made some improvements in Leopard, but they are still behind."

Better gear up!

Salman Khan cancels US trip after SRK episode

Source: Rediff Movies

Learning lessons from Shah Rukh Khan [ Images ] episode, Bollywood star Salman Khan [ Images ] has cancelled his upcoming trip to New York to promote his latest movie Wanted, besides participating in the auction of his personal paintings to raise funds for his charity.

Organisers and promoters associated with the event cited Shah Rukh Khan's episode at Newark Airport early this month, where he was questioned by immigration officials and taken for a second screening, as a major reason for Salman to cancel his New York trip scheduled in early September.

The event was scheduled for September 3 in New York. The promoters were also in talks with local organisers in cities like Chicago, Houston and Dallas for his other events.

"However, after the Shah Rukh Khan event, Salman informed us that he would not like to take the risk of coming to the US at this point," an informed source involved with the planning and organising the September 3 event told PTI.

It is understood that Salman's decision was also propelled by what his aid alleged "the hard time" being given by the US Consulate in Mumbai [ Images ] in approving the visa of his close associates, including one of his family members, whom Salman wanted to bring along with on this promotional trip.

Managerial Decisions

Managerial Decision Making



A group of children were playing near two railway tracks, one still in use while the other disused. Only one child played on the disused track, the rest on the operational track.

The train is coming, and you are just beside the track interchange. You can make the train change its course to the disused track and save most of the kids. However, that would also mean the lone child playing by the disused track would be sacrificed. Or would you rather let the train go its way?

Let's take a pause to think what kind of decision we could make................

Most people might choose to divert the course of the train, and sacrifice only one child. You might think the same way, I guess. Exactly, I thought the same way initially because to save most of the children at the expense of only one child was rational decision most people would make, morally and emotionally. But, have you ever thought that the child choosing to play on the disused track had in fact made the right decision to play at a safe place?

Nevertheless, he had to be sacrificed because of his ignorant friends who chose to play where the danger was. This kind of dilemma happens around us everyday. In the office, community, in politics and especially in a democratic society, the minority is often sacrificed for the interest of the majority, no matter how foolish or ignorant the majority are, and how farsighted and knowledgeable the minority are.. The child who chose not to play with the rest on the operational track was sidelined. And in the case he was sacrificed, no one would shed a tear for him.

The great critic Leo Velski Julian who told the story said he would not try to change the course of the train because he believed that the kids playing on the operational track should have known very well that track was still in use, and that they should have run away if they heard the train's sirens. If the train was diverted, that lone child would definitely die because he never thought the train could come over to that track! Moreover, that track was not in use probably because it was not safe. If the train was diverted to the track, we could put the lives of all passengers on board at stake! And in your attempt to save a few kids by sacrificing one child, you might end up sacrificing hundreds of people to save these few kids.

While we are all aware that life is full of tough decisions that need to be made, we may not realize that hasty decisions may not always be the right one.

"Remember that what's right isn't always popular... and what's popular isn't always right."

Describe yourself in 50 words or ????

I got it Here

Satellites Unlock Secret to Northern India's Vanishing Water

Source: NASA News Service

Satellites Unlock Secret to Northern India's Vanishing Water

WASHINGTON -- Using NASA satellite data, scientists have found that groundwater levels in northern India have been declining by as much as one foot per year over the past decade. Researchers concluded the loss is almost entirely due to human activity.

More than 26 cubic miles of groundwater disappeared from aquifers in areas of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and the nation's capitol territory of Delhi, between 2002 and 2008. This is enough water to fill Lake Mead, the largest manmade reservoir in the United States, three times.

A team of hydrologists led by Matt Rodell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., found that northern India's underground water supply is being pumped and consumed by human activities, such as irrigating cropland, and is draining aquifers faster than natural processes can replenish them. The results of this research were published today in Nature.

The finding is based on data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a pair of satellites that sense changes in Earth's gravity field and associated mass distribution, including water masses stored above or below Earth's surface. As the twin satellites orbit 300 miles above Earth's surface, their positions change relative to each other in response to variations in the pull of gravity.

Changes in underground water masses affect gravity enough to provide a signal that can be measured by the GRACE spacecraft. After accounting for other mass variations, such changes in gravity are translated into an equivalent change in water.

"Using GRACE satellite observations, we can observe and monitor water storage changes in critical areas of the world, from one month to the next, without leaving our desks," said study co-author Isabella Velicogna of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine.

Groundwater comes from the natural percolation of precipitation and other surface waters down through Earth’s soil and rock, accumulating in cavities and layers of porous rock, gravel, sand or clay. Groundwater levels respond slowly to changes in weather and can take months or years to replenish once pumped for irrigation or other uses.

Data provided by India's Ministry of Water Resources to the NASA-funded researchers suggested groundwater use across India was exceeding natural replenishment, but the regional rate of depletion was unknown. Rodell and colleagues analyzed six years of monthly GRACE data for northern India to produce a time series of water storage changes beneath the land surface.

"We don't know the absolute volume of water in the northern Indian aquifers, but GRACE provides strong evidence that current rates of water extraction are not sustainable," said Rodell. "The region has become dependent on irrigation to maximize agricultural productivity. If measures are not taken to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, the consequences for the 114 million residents of the region may include a collapse of agricultural output and severe shortages of potable water."

Researchers examined data and models of soil moisture, lake and reservoir storage, vegetation and glaciers in the nearby Himalayas in order to confirm that the apparent groundwater trend was real. The loss is particularly alarming because it occurred when there were no unusual trends in rainfall. In fact, rainfall was slightly above normal for the period. The only influence they couldn't rule out was human.

"For the first time, we can observe water use on land with no additional ground-based data collection," said co-author James Famiglietti of the University of California, Irvine. "This is critical because in many developing countries, where hydrological data are both sparse and hard to access, space-based methods provide perhaps the only opportunity to assess changes in fresh water availability across large regions."

GRACE is a partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR. The University of Texas Center for Space Research in Austin has overall GRACE mission responsibility. GRACE was launched in 2002.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/india_water.html

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov