The Inter School TCS Quiz has been delayed and it will take place on 5,6th May. Prelims will be conducted on 5th and final will be held in the AVH on 6th.
No rules have been changed

Online search-engine leader Google has unveiled a new feature enabling users to zoom in on homes and businesses using satellite images, an advance that may raise privacy concerns as well as intensify the competitive pressures on its rivals.

This marks the first time since the deal closed that Google has offered free access to Keyhole’s high-tech maps through its search engine. Users previously had to pay $29.95 to download a version of Keyhole’s basic software package.

A more traditional map will continue to be the first choice served up by Google’s search engine.

Users will have the option of retrieving a satellite picture by clicking on a button.

According to Keyhole’s general manager, John Hanke, there is little reason for people to be paranoid about the satellite maps because the images generally are six to 12 months old. “And it’s not like you are going to be able to read a license plate on a car or see what an individual was doing when a particular image was taken,” he also added. Google’s free satellite maps initially will be limited to North America, with images covering roughly half the United States.

Not everyone will be happy about their homes being viewable on the Web, even if they do look tiny and fuzzy. Some privacy advocates are urging Google to offer an online “opt-out” feature that would let people type in their addresses to have their homes blurred or blanked out from Google’s public-image database.

Explore the universe

An Inter School Quiz (Exun Quiz Wiz) will be organised on 28, 29th April 2005 for the Inauguration of the TCS Lab. We will hold only quiz as event. NO other event like programming, software display etc..will be held. All the school will be participating in this 2 Day event. First day, we will conduct Prelims, in which 6 teams will be selected for the finals. Second day , we will held Quiz Final on the stage in AVH.

Visit: http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/04/wo/wo_040405web.asp

Google announces its foray into the beverage market with Google Gulp BETA.

An excerpt –
At Google our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it useful and accessible to our users. But any piece of information’s usefulness derives, to a depressing degree, from the cognitive ability of the user who’s using it. That’s why we’re pleased to announce Google Gulp (BETA)with Auto-Drink(LIMITED RELEASE), a line of “smart drinks” designed to maximize your surfing efficiency by making you more intelligent, and less thirsty.

Think fruity. Think refreshing.
Think a DNA scanner embedded in the lip of your bottle reading all 3 gigabytes of your base pair genetic data in a fraction of a second, fine-tuning your individual hormonal cocktail in real time using our patented Auto-Drink technology, and slamming a truckload of electrolytic neurotransmitter smart-drug stimulants past the blood-brain barrier to achieve maximum optimization of your soon-to-be-grateful cerebral cortex. Plus, it’s low in carbs! And with flavors ranging from Beta Carroty to Glutamate Grape, you’ll never run out of ways to quench your thirst for knowledge.

For more info, click here
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Apple and PalmOne team up on the ultimate hybrid phone but skimp a bit on the form factor.

Labelled the iTreoPod, this most brilliant combination has set the world on its ear, and, unlike any other Apple announcement, news of its existence wasn’t leaked months before the actual arrival date.

The iTreoPod combines the best of the insanely popular Apple iPod with the raw genius of the much-lauded Treo 650. This device can make calls, shoot pictures, surf the Web, and play iTunes music. It also fits nicely in a trouser pocket if, say, you buy your pants at Big & Tall.

Click here for more information.

Gmail celebrates it’s first birthday.
So, what does it have for us on this day. Well, they announced plans to expand storage to 2GB, Wow! Also, Google will add a yet-to-be-determined amount of extra storage daily, with no plans to stop. At this moment, Gmail has 1158.250863 megabytes of storage for every user. The on keeps on increasing every second. No wonder everyone loves Google!

So, nothing for April Fool’s Day? Of course it has something lined up for us. The infinity+1 plan.

Click here to read an article by CNET on this.

UPDATE: storage has crossed 2GB!

The fastest supercomputer BLUE GENE/L has broken its own record and has clocked 138 Teraflops. Earlier Blue gene had 32 racks (1 rack has 1024 Processors), and they have added now 35 racks more.

One of the questions in most of the quizzes we find is on the Supercomputers
Here is a list I found in Chip Magazine, this is as of February 2004

1. BlueGene/ L DD2 Beta-system (IBM)- 70.7 TFLOPS
2. Columbia (NASA) – 51.9 TFLOPS
3. Earth Simulator (NEC, Japan) – 40 TFLOPS
4. MareNostrum(Barcelona Supercomputer Center) – approximately 40 TFLOPS too
5. Thunder(Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) – 19.9 TFLOPS
6. ASCI Q (Los Alamos National Laboratory) – 13.9 TFLOPS
7. System X (Virginia Tech)- 12.25 TFLOPS
8. BlueGene/L DD1 Prototype (IBM) – 11.7 TFLOPS
9. eServer pSeries 655 cluster (Naval Oceanographic Office) – 10.3 TFLOPS
10. Tungsten (NCSA) – 9.8 TFLOPS

FLOPS- floating-point operations per second
For more information on these, Check out Chip Magazine Feb 2005, i know its a bit late

G

Dear Exun Members (Batch of 2004-2005),
Kindly submit profile of yours to be posted on the exunclan.com ASAP at exunclan@gmail.com
Mukesh