Internet is the domain where something boggling is happening all the time. But the deal I am going to talk about has truly changed the face of blogging on the Blogosphere. It has given new hope and an entirely new direction to countless blogs that are there on the net.
Bankaholic has made it to the headlines, probably for the first time in its life by being sold for $15 million. Bankaholic blog has been sold to BankRate financial information website and service provider. Many people are questioning the Bankrate move by saying that Bankaholic was not even generating one-tenth of the revenue for which it has been sold.
But anayists say that Bankaholic indeed has a potential to give good business to BankRate financial information. If we recollect, five months back ArsTechnica, a site focussing on technology related news etc was sold for an estimated price of $25 million. And only three months back, the financial news blog PaidContent was taken over by Guardian. The deal was struck for more than $30 million. Unlike Bankaholic, the two sites were popular among networking site such as Digitt and Stumbleupon.

All said and done, this acquisition has given small fish the hope that they can also make a big deal if they have a faithful niche clientele. One just needs to imagine how can they offer a unique advantage to a potential buyer and work upon it with all the dedication and hardwork.

Via Profy

If you had been wondering from where all the heroin of the world comes, it must not be too difficult to guess. It’s from the most troubled nation on earth, Afghanistan. The country depends literally on the money that comes from the sale of homegrown opium and poppy and also the derivatives like heroin and morphine. These narcotics make way to Western Europe through the neighboring Tajikistan.

Just 13 hours ago, many afghan smugglers were killed in a shootout in Tajikistan when they were caught red handed smuggling heroin into Tajikistan’s borders. These drugs after reaching France, Germany and elsewhere, are sold at exorbitant prices. What I fear is that the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan has actually encouraged the Afghan opium farmers to grow more as lawlessness has increased many folds after the Americans have entered.

Only through proper negotiations with the U.N. and afghan government can the drug route and trade be blocked. I wonder how things will go in the near future. Though listening to the news of the smugglers being shot dead isn’t a very pleasant one, it may just have the right thing to do, for the Tajik forces, whose land is being used as a transit for drug delivery to Europe.

Via: AfghanConflictMonitor

Come August 22 and the Indian mobile phone market will never be the same again. The much-hyped Apple i-phone will finally arrive! We all were eagerly waiting for it. After all, it’s an Apple product. So much is the hype that other mobile phone companies are already running for cover. New mobiles are being launched by Nokia, HTC, Samsung et al with the pseudo-name ‘i-phone killer’. Meetings are being called, strategies are being discussed and even the smallest glitch in the I-phone is being magnified to humongous proportions.� �

Apple Inc. has a huge reputation in the consumer electronics market. Its products have aesthetic designs and are objects of desire to most of us. Apple added a new dimension to the portable media players with the launch of i-pod. It created a new industry for i-pod accessories. But are the products of Apple Inc. over-hyped? If you ask me, my answer would be a YES!�

Without going into the features of the phone, here are a bunch of reasons why we need to look over all the gaga for the i-phone. Firstly at 31,000 INR for 8GB model it is overpriced. Apple is known for post-launch price changes. When launched in US, the price was slashed by $200 just two months after the release. Secondly, downloads from Apple’s I-tunes music stores will not be available on the I-phone. Thirdly, as 3-G network is not available in India, many features of the phone will not work. Fourthly, it’s the iTunes monopoly. When I bought my i-pod 2 years back, I did not have a personal computer. Getting music/videos used to be a tedious task. And last but not the least, once you buy an i-phone, it needs to be activated. As a lot of sales are expected on the date of launch, I bet the i-Tunes servers would be overloaded. So you might have to wait for a day or two before you can actually start using the phone. �

So there is no need to make a beeline to the electronic stores for the i-phone on August 22nd unless you really need to flaunt it!
Via rediff

With the increasing debates over the reality of global warming among believers and non believers, car manufacturers atleast have realized that the phenomenon is taking an upward swing and that, their industry is pretty responsible for it (CO2 emissions by cars exhaust).
Thus we find every big car company announcing a fleet of green-cars for safeguarding our future. So has been Mazda’s intent. The company is about to premier its new, sporty, cross-over concept vehicle in the upcoming Moscow International Automobile Salon 2008. The Kazamai concept (as it is called) means “swirling crosswinds” in Japanese. It is based on Mazda’s futuristic-vision of developing apt technology that is greener, safer and sustainable. Kazamai aims to achieve a distinct balance between sporty driving thrill, excellent safety performance and superior environmental concerns.

The sexy car is thus given an aerodynamically compact design so that the car ‘flows’ on roads! Its four-wheel drive powertrain is projected to contain a next-generation direct injection engine and a newly developed transmission so as to lend the car optimum fuel efficiency.

� The company also promises to unveil information over Kazamai’s exciting driving dynamics, frugal fuel consumption and greatly reduced CO2 emissions in the automobile show. Now, it remains to be seen whether Mazda actually delivers what it says or is just creating those “green-car” hypes to sell its product. Let’s watch it in Moscow on 26th of coming month!

Via: inhabitat

The Indian mobile gaming scenario just got better with the recent announcement by
Zotac International to bring forth its latest graphic cards on Indian soil. Based on Nvidia’s GeForce 9800 graphics architecture, the nouveau arrivals include-Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ and GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP Edition.

Carsten Berger, marketing director, Zotac International said, “With the latest generation of ZOTAC GeForce 9-series graphics cards, the clock speed and performance of each individual processor core has become an important performance aspect”. It doesn’t come as a surprise then that, both the graphic cards can deliver you every 3D related task from gaming to HDV (high definition video) Playback! The Clock speed of Zotac GeForce 9800 GTX+ and ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GTX+ AMP Edition are 1836 MHz and 1890 MHz respectively. Oh Baby! That’s some ultra-fast clock speed for you.

Users can also pair the GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphic card (core738 MHz) with 512MB of super-fast 2200 MHz GDDR3 memory for some action-packed high-resolution gaming. GTX+ AMP Edition takes a step beyond this with a 750 MHz core and 2300 MHz memory clock speed.

Other Sexy Features are:
•� HybridPower compatible and Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+ architecture available
•� Nvidia PhysX ready as also, Nvidia PhysX and Nvidia CUDA ready
•� DirectX 10 with Shader Model 4.0 compatible
•� PCI Express 2.0 interface (Compatible with 1.1)
•� PureVideo HD technology
•� Dual dual-link DVI – up to 2560×1600
•� OpenGL 2.1 compatible
•� High-definition hardware decoding acceleration and 3-way SLI ready
•� XIII Century game bundle

Now, the most important detail which, I’m sure all your gaming fans and mobile freaks are waiting to know- THE PRICE ofcourse!
So grab Zotac 9800GTX+ for Rs. 14,300 and shell out Rs. 15,500 for Zotac 9800GTX+ AMP Edition and needless to mention, get the maximum out of your latest multimedia phone!

Source: techshout

Multitasking is the order of the day and burning bright on the Internet scene these days is “Cloud Computing”. Computing what? Well this is something we all do it these days without even being aware of it (however, the term will not surprise the techno-freaks.

Cloud computing is actually a computing paradigm wherein tasks are assigned to a combination of connections, software and services accessed over a network. It is this network of servers and connections, which is collectively called “the cloud”. And when we work with our Internet files, or other softwares outside our company on some access point like an iPhone, BlackBerry or laptop we cloud compute. Through this cloud we can access a vast ocean of resources as and when we need to. Some technophiles thus love to call cloud computing by the name of “on-demand computing” as well. For corporate sector the term is not new because of the frequent use of Blackberry phones in higher echelons of business world.

The latest piece of news regarding it is that the company which gave iPhone 3G to the world is now providing cloud computing as well. Yes, I’m referring to Apple, which has now announced its new MobileMe service (in a typically clumsy manner). The service available at $100 per year is an overhaul of Mac’s Internet features. MobileMe is a panacea for your organizational headaches! It is aimed at simplifying your cluttered life by keeping emails, calendars, address books, Web bookmarks etc. on all your Windows PC’s and laptops, Macs, iPod Touches and iPhones- well synchronized in real time. The beauty of MobileMe service is that it stores the master copy of all this cornucopia of information in ‘the cloud’ so that whenever you edit an address on your iPhone, MobileMe will update your Address Book (on your Mac) and Outlook (on your PC)! This service can be a boon for those families which are always on a run and hard-pressed for time to remember all the contacts, update the details and the likes. Apple’s tag line for MobileMe is “Exchange for the rest of us” (although, the company needs to clarify this to a target audience which probably is unaware about the Exchange as a matter of fact!)

The service takes a while to get started, as there are many instructions and stuff to be downloaded before you reap the fruits of MobileMe. But once set you can see the real-time magic in front of your eyes, once you set up your email program to recognize your new MobileMe e-mail address. The latter ends with a cute me.com! So, once you are done with the set up just change an appointment in iCal on your kitchen Mac and your traveling spouse will get to know it within seconds on his/her iPhone! What’s more? If you made a change simultaneously on two machines, you get to choose one version from both of them. And this is not all, at Me.com, Apple has built attractive, ad-free, online versions of your calendar, e-mail program, photo-organizing programs and your address book. You can enjoy a good deal of flexibility while using MobileMe on web but you need the latest version of Apple’s Safari Web browser / Firefox as you cannot exploit the complete range of features with IE. Besides synchronizing your vast amounts of info. MobileMe service also retains most of the features of the old .Mac service. So, upload pictures and movies, download your photo files at full resolution for printing and greet your visitors with stunning slide shows. All of it for $100 and with just one service at your end! Not a bad deal I must say especially when I know that with this MobileMe I can always backup my sync personalized information in an iDisk (hard drive) and forget about data theft. I’m sure this attractive nouveau service from Apple will quickly catch up despite a shabby start.

Via NYTimes