Sri Rama Navami...

Ram Navami is a Hindu holiday. It falls on the ninth day of the Hindu lunar year (or Chaitra Masa Suklapaksha Navami), and is a celebration of the birthday of the Hindu god Rama.

The story behind Ram's birth goes as below: Dasarath, The King of Avadha Kingom had three wives, Kaushalya, Sumithra and Kaikeyi. Their greatest worry was that they had no children. At that time Maharshi Vasist suggests him to perform PuthraKamesti Yagna, through which he can have children. He also tells him to bring Maharshi RushyaShrunga to perform this Yagna for him. Immmediately King Dasharath gives his concent, and heads to Maharshi RushyaShrunga's ashram, to get him. Maharshi agrees and will accompany Dasharath to Ayodhya(Capital of Avadha) and performs the yagna. As the result of yagna, Yagneshwar appears and hands Dasarath a bowl of Payasam and asks him to give it to his wives. Dasharath gives one half of the payasam to his elder wife Kausalya, and another half to his younger wife Kaikeyi. They both give half of their portions to Sumithra. After few days all three Queens conceive. On the nineth day(Navami) of Chaithra Masa(First month in hindhu calender),at noon Kaushlya gives birth to Lord Sri Ram, Kaikeyi gives birth to Bharath, and Sumithra to twin boys, Lakshman and Shatrughan.

Lord Ram is seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu, who takes birth on earth when Adharma over rules Dharma. He protects all his devoties by vanishing the roots of Adharma. Lord Ram was born on earth to destroy the demon named Ravan.

Hindus normally perform Kalyanotsavam (marriage celebration) with small murtis of Rama and Sita in their houses, and at the end of the day the deity is taken to a procession on the streets. This day also marks the end of the nine-day utsavam called Chaitra Navaratri (Maharashtra) or Vasanthothsavam (Andhra Pradesh) (festival of Spring), which starts with Gudi Padwa (Maharashtra) or Ugadi (South India). According to recent astrological studies, his year of birth is considered to be January 10, 5114 B.C

Some highlights of this day:

Kalyanam (Ceremonial wedding performed by temple priests) at Bhadrachalam on the banks of the river Godavari in Khammam district.

Panakam, a sweet drink prepared on this day with jaggery and pepper.

Procession of idols in the evening that is accompanied with play of water and colours.

For the occasion, Hindus are supposed to fast (or restrict themselves to a specific diet). Temples are decorated and readings of the Ramayana take place. Along with Shri Ram, people also pray Sita (Ram's wife), Lakshman (his brother who went on exile with him) and Hanuman (monkey god, ardent devotee of Ram and Ram's chief of army).

Sri-Ramnavami is dedicated to the memory of Lord Rama. It occurs on the ninth day (navami). The festival commemorates the birth of Rama who is remembered for his prosperous and righteous reign.

Quiz

She, Ravana s sister lived in the forests of panchavati, wanted to marry Sri Ram

a)Sumitra b)Mandodari c)Suurpanaka d)Sita

Sita's father lived here, his capital city

a)Mithila b)Kishkindha c)Ayodhya d)Lanka

This sage was the chief sage (advisor) to king Dasharatha

a)Vishwamitra b)Agasthya c)Vashishta d)Ravana

This rakshasa lures Rama away from the ashrama by becoming the magical golden deer

a)Maricha b)Kabandha c)Taraka d)Sampatil

This bird fights with Ravana and gets killed by him when ravana was taking Sita to Lanka

a)Hanuman b)Jatayu c)Garuda d)Sampati

This rakshasa (he has no head or legs but only two arms) gets released by the curse when Ram kills him in the forests

a)Atisura b)Kabandha c)KumbhaKarna d)Bakasura

Rama belongs to this race or dynasty

a)Chandra b)Huna c)Chola d)Ikshvaku

Dasharatha does this yagna to pray to the gods and gets four sons

a)Ashwamedha b)RajaSuya c)Putrakameshti d)Whatever

Dasharatha was the king of this kingdom

a)Vijayanagar b)Koshala c)Mithila d)Indrasprastha

Ayodhya is on the banks of this river

a)Ganga b)Kaveri c)Saraswati d)Sarayu

click here to view Answers


with love,
Anil

Microsoft focuses on 3D camera company

Microsoft is reported to be buying 3D digital camera company 3DV Systems for $34m, giving it remote gesture recognition technology.
Israel-based 3DV Systems is a venture capital-backed startup that has raised about $38m from investors. The company was founded in 1996 by two Israeli defence industry scientists who had worked on electro-optics technology for missiles. They developed and patented technology that could work out the depth relationships of objects in a digital camera's field of view, in real time with high resolution. This was embodied in a chipset and in the ZCam 3D camera product range, now available in web-cam format.

The DeepC chipset hardware computes the camera's distance from objects it 'sees' using a time-of-flight principle and its technology is described thus: "The Depth information is captured by emitting pulses of infra-red light to all objects in the scene and sensing the reflected light from the surface of each object. All objects in the scene are then arranged in layers according to the distance information sensed by the D pixels in the camera, providing the Depth information in real time as standard black and white video where the grey-level correlates to relative distance. Colour data is provided using a normal colour imaging sensor."

Real time translates to 60 frames per second and the depth resolution is accurate to 1-2cm. The company thinks its technology is appropriate for "PC-based gaming and for background replacement in web-conferencing." One aspect of it is that there is little use made of the host system's CPU.
3DV states that the ZCam: "provides home users [with] revolutionary gesture recognition capabilities in addition to real-time background replacement, enabling them to control video games and personal space through intuitive body gestures and immerse themselves with virtual reality."
The attraction for Microsoft, with its Xbox 360 games console and Surface gesture recognition system, is immediately obvious. XBox360 game players could control the action by moving their hands in front of the device. This would give Microsoft some kind of answer to Nintendo's Wii.
Microsoft said it: "does not comment on rumors or speculation." No-one was available to answer inquiries at 3DV as the employees are away from the office at a company event until Sunday.

With love..
Anil

మహేష్ బాబు కో జై బోలో!

మీ అనిల్

Google plans fifth birthday present for Gmail users!!

Google will announce the next step in Gmail’s evolution, a new product with “a European multilingual angle,” on Monday.

At an event in Brussels to mark Gmail's fifth birthday, Google will look at the impact of cloud computing on how people manage their daily tasks, review Gmail’s evolution to date and announce the next step in its progression, the company wrote in an invitation.

“Google is celebrating with the launch of an exciting new product,” said the invitation.

Gmail, a free Web-based e-mail service with the then-unheard-of storage capacity of 1GB and Google’s trademark search capability, launched in 2004.

Google’s playful announcement of the service, dated April 1, proclaimed "Search is Number Two Online Activity -- Email is Number One; 'Heck, Yeah,' Say Google Founders."

It looked like an April Fool's Day joke at a time when Yahoo and Microsoft were offering Web mail accounts with under 10MB of storage, with Yahoo offering an upgrade to 100MB for $50 a year. It turned out to be true, prompting Yahoo and Microsoft to upgrade their offerings a few weeks later.

Five years after its launch, Gmail now offers more than 7GB of storage but is still labeled as a beta version.

Monday's announcement is not about the end of the beta trial, though: “It has more of a European multilingual angle to it,” a Google spokesman said.

Google already offers multilingual versions of the Gmail interface. Initially available only in English, it now comes in 52 language options available, including most European languages and many in non-Roman writing systems, such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

The company has long offered tools that will translate a Web page on the fly into a language specified by the user. It is also experimenting with a Translated Search service, still in beta, that allows surfers to make a search request in one language and receive results in another, then have those automatically translated into the first language. The tool is particularly useful for those searching for information that is not readily available in their native language, and for which they would have difficulty formulating an appropriate search query.

Most likely, the new product is a Gmail Labs feature that lets you translate messages written in a foreign language. This is the screenshot of the feature, which will probably be another great use of the Google Translate API.


Similar features that use Google Translate have been implemented in Google Reader, YouTube, Google Maps, Picasa Web Albums, but the future is a powerful client that translates pages on the fly.


On the first birthday of Google's online email service Gmail[on 1 April 2005], the Gmail team has rolled out some great new features. Every user's email account storage has been doubled to an astounding 2GB and users now have the ability to use some new snazzy rich text formatting features including fonts, bullets, colors, and highlighting.
Guessing what would be the surprise this time!


With love..
Anil

10+ Sites To Add Amazing Effects To Your Photos!

Trying to make your photos more interesting? Thinking about learning Photoshop to add some creative effects to images? How about achieving similar results by nothing more than point and click?
Check out the following sites to add funny, interesting and artistic effects to your photos:

Photofunia

This is one of those websites that will really make you think that you really don’t need Photoshop for photo effects. Photofunia has over 100 effects to choose from with new ones being added constantly. There are effects that work with face recognition, that is they will search for “the face” in your photo and put it appropriately as required by the effect. Other effects use the complete photo.

Dumpr and FunPhotoBox

Dumpr is another website that lets you choose the effect, upload your photo and get instant results. Dumpr was mentioned previously on MakeUseOf. FunPhotoBox is also similar in concept. Together, all three sites give you plenty of effects and options to choose from and get the perfect effect you were looking for, according to your photo.

Mosaics and Collages

If you would like to create a photo mosaic or collage, check out pixisnap and photovisi. Photovisi is excellent for collages where as pixisnap can be used for creating photomosaics as well as collages. Also check out these cool photomosaic software.

TiltShiftMaker

TiltShiftMaker allows you to transform your real life photo scenes into miniature models. Just upload the photo, choose the area to focus on and presto you have your effect.
Looks great on photos of city scenes, mountains where the whole aspect of the scene has been captured in the image as opposed to a single object.

FotoCrib

A photo effect, editing and photo enhancing web application that allows you to create montages, convert images from one format to another, create rounded corners, add 3d effects, create photo puzzles and much more.

Genopal - pic2graphics

It is said that color represents the mood of the photo. Pic2graphics allows to take colors(and thus the mood) of a photo and apply it to some other photo.

befunky

BeFunky lets you give various artistic effects to your photos. Just choose an effect, upload the photo, tweak some settings and you have an instant professional sketch or cartoon or an ink drawing!

Picascii and Photo2Text

Simple and fun, upload an image and convert it into asciiart.
Do you know of or use some other site to apply interesting effects to your photos? Lets hear them in the comments!
Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it.
 
With love..
Anil

Facts about Ugadi and related info about yugas..

Ugadi (Telugu: ఉగాది; Kannada: ಯುಗಾದಿ, from yuga+aadi, yuga is era, aadi means start. The start of an era) is the new year's day for the people of the Deccan region of India. While the people of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh use the term Ugadi for this festival, the people of Maharashtra term the same festival, observed on the same day, Gudi Padwa. Sindhis, people from Sindh, celebrate the same day as their New Year day Cheti Chand.^[1]
It falls on a different day every year because the Hindu calendar is a lunisolar calendar. The Saka calendar begins with the month of Chaitra (March/April) and Ugadi marks the first day of the new year.


The years would have names in Sanskrit. The name of the one that starts on 27th March 2009 is Sri Virodhi.The one that ended is Sarvadhari.

    1. Prabhava
      2. Vibhava
      3. Shukla
      4. Pramoda
      5. Prajāpati
      6. Āngirasa
      7. Shrīmukha
      8. Bhāva
      9. Yuva
    10. Dhātri
    11. Īshvara
    12. Bahudhānya
    13. Pramādhi
    14. Vikrama
    15. Vrisha
    16. Chitrabhānu
    17. Svabhānu
    18. Tārana
    19. Pārthiva
    20. Vyaya (2006-2007 AD/CE)
    21. Sarvajeeth (2007-2008 AD/CE)
    22. Sarvadhāri
    23. Virodhi[2009]
    24. Vikrita
    25. Khara
    26. Nandana
    27. Vijaya
    28. Jaya
    29. Manmadha
    30. Durmukhi
    31. Hevilambi
    32. Vilambi
    33. Vikāri
    34. Shārvari
    35. Plava
    36. Shubhakruti
    37. Sobhakruthi
    38. Krodhi
    39. Vishvāvasu
    40. Parābhava
    41. Plavanga
    42. Kīlaka
    43. Saumya
    44. Sādhārana
    45. Virodhikruthi
    46. Paridhāvi
    47. Pramādicha
    48. Ānanda
    49. Rākshasa
    50. Anala
    51. Pingala
    52. Kālayukthi
    53. Siddhārthi
    54. Raudra
    55. Durmathi
    56. Dundubhi
    57. Rudhirodgāri
    58. Raktākshi
    59. Krodhana
    60. Akshaya 




With love..
Anil

శ్రీ విరోధినామ సంవత్సర ఉగాది శుభాకాంక్షలు!

మీ అనిల్

World's cheapest car set to roll out in India

via NewsX - Clarity in a Complex World on 3/22/09

ANIL:

Kudos to Ratan Tata for making his dream project come true despite several obstacles!

Tata Motors was set Monday to launch the world's cheapest car amid predictions the vehicle could transform how millions travel and fears it would bring more traffic jams on Indian roads.

Tycoon Ratan Tata was due to unveil the four-door jelly-bean-shaped car with tear-drop lights at a "revolutionary high-tech" audio-visual show in India's financial hub Mumbai, a spokesman said.

The car is slated to cost just 100,000 rupees ($2,000) for the no-frills version that has a two-cylinder 623 cc, rear-mounted engine with a top speed of 105 kilometres (65 miles) per hour.

Ratan Tata, an architect by training and head of the sprawling tea-to-steel Tata Group, dreamed up the car to get poor Indians off unsafe motorcycles and into safer cars.

"There's no safety in two-wheelers especially with the whole family," said New Delhi resident Ganesh Khand, 38, who now has a motorbike but wants a Nano to be able to transport his wife and two daughters safely.

But the affluent are eyeing the car too.

"This is a value-for-money car," said Hasmukh Kakadia, 39, a Mumbai investment analyst.

The basic model has a four-speed manual transmission, no air conditioning, electric windows or power steering, but deluxe versions will be available.

The launch comes at a tough time for India's top vehicle maker, hit by a slowing domestic economy, a credit crunch and a deepening world financial crisis that has hurt sales of British luxury marques Jaguar and Land Rover which it bought last year for 2.3 billion dollars.

But demand is expected to be hot for the Nano with just 30,000 to 50,000 of cars likely to be sold in the first year because of limited production capacity -- a fraction of the original target of 250,000, auto analysts said.

Dealers say they've been flooded with queries about the car whose debut was delayed by several months when violent protests over the acquisition of farmland for the project forced the Tatas to shift the Nano plant from West Bengal state to Gujarat, known as more business-friendly.

But the Gujarat plant won't be ready until late 2010, meaning production must come from existing factories, reducing output.

Earlier this month, Ratan Tata unveiled a European Nano sporting airbags and leather trim. That car will hit the market by 2011 but be costlier than in India due to extra features.

Tata has been likened by India's media to US automobile pioneer Henry Ford for conceiving the car.

"I observed families riding on two-wheelers, the father driving the scooter, his young kid standing in front of him, his wife seated behind him holding a little baby," Tata said when showing the prototype in 2008.

"It led me to wonder whether one could conceive of a safe, affordable, all-weather form of transport for such a family."

But environmentalists fear the Nano will clog India's already crowded roads and add to choking pollution.

"Every car that goes on the road is going to use road space. We're only adding to congestion" and increasing pollution, said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN's climate panel which won the 2007 Nobel Prize.

With love..
Anil

Prabhas "Billa" Songs released..Free Download

Prabhas' upcoming movie "Billa" songs now available for download!!

The new telugu movie "Billa" Songs released!! High expectations indeed, and Prabhas looks cool in the promos! Check out the free download here..


Cast : Prabhas , Anuska, Namitha
Direction : Meher Ramesh
Music : Manisharma
With love..
Anil

Google adds 'Undo Send' button to Gmail

"Undo Send" option in Google Mail!! Probably the first of its kind!

An 'Undo Send' button has been added to Gmail


Just came across an exciting new feature from gmail today! Gmail is already brimming with features and customization, and this is one of the very interesting ones!! Probably the first of its kind! Users now have five seconds to abort that embarrassing message

Google has given Gmail users the ability to recall messages they send via email. A new Undo Send button will hold messages for five seconds after the user clicks Send.

This is intended to give users a chance to retrieve messages in cases where they have addressed the email to the wrong person, sent the wrong subject heading or made an error in the email content.

"This feature can't pull back an email that's already gone; it just holds your message for five seconds so you have the chance to hit the panic button," said Michael Leggett, Gmail user experience designer, in the Gmail blog.

"And don't worry: if you close Gmail or your browser crashes in those few seconds, we'll still send your message."

To add the feature, users need to turn on the Undo Send option in Gmail under Settings. They will then see a new 'undo' link on every sent mail confirmation.

With love..
Anil