Today I will tell you the story of Paul Allen. He was the man behind the foundation of the greatest software company of the world, Microsoft. He co-founded MicroSoft with Bill Gates in New Mexico, in 1975. Initially they used to sell BASIC programming language interpreter. In 1980, Microsoft under the leadership of Paul bought an operating system called 86-DOS for $50,000. They had to supply OS to IBM. and due to IBM deadlines, they did not have enough time to develop an operating system from scratch so they therefore purchased the fully functional QDOS and reworked the code to fit IBM’s needs. After the successful delivery of DOS operating system, Microsoft won a contract to supply DOS to use as the operating system in IBM’s new PC. So the contribution of Paul Allen in the growth of Microsoft was very critical. In 1983, he became ill and doctors told him that he was suffering from cancer. Due to his illness he couldn’t take part in management of Microsoft. In Nov 2000, a big news came and Allen officially resigned from his position on the Microsoft board of directors and old most of his shares in Microsoft Now let’s come to the point, why Paul Allen left Microsoft ? what was the reason ? Had Bill Gates cheated him ? Let’s see.
After searching on Google for the reason of departure of Paul Allen from Microsoft, I found an article by Robert X. Cringely, who was one of the good friends of Paul Allen. During early days of Microsoft, Paul Allen was the big boss. Allen visited Albuquerque to demonstrate that first BASIC interpreter to the MITs people. Paul was also offered the job as head of software for MITs. Bill Gates was no where near to his popularity, talents and business skills.
During the same time, Microsoft got the contract of Operating Systems for the IBM new PCs. Both Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer took part in those first talks with IBM and they simply followed the instructions of Paul Allen. As development of new Operating System continued, Allen’s health began to deteriorate and doctors told him that he was suffering from cancer. Now even IBM team was worried that Allen might not survive. But Allen was not thinking about his disease, rather he was trying hard to complete the project. Suddenly tragic incident happened with Paul. During one of those last long nights working to deliver DOS, Paul Allen heard Gates and Ballmer discussing his health and talking about how to get his Microsoft shares back if Allen were to die. As a result of this betrayal, he lost his trust over his friends and his illness became more serious and doctors suggested him complete bed rest and no further work.
Many people believe that Paul was forced to leave Microsoft due to his illness. But this is not right, he left Microsoft due to betrayal of Bill and Steve. In 2000 when he returned to MicroSoft, he had around (138+168) million shares so noone could force him to leave the company. But he left the world’s greatest company because for him trust, faith and friendship is more important than money.
After the great success of first part of Popular Indian actresses series, I have now come with the second part of the series. Today I will discuss Indian actresses during the period of 1960-1970. The period saw the birth of 70 MM color screens, first Hindi film superstar Rajesh Khanna and arrival of violence. Many great films were made with various themes were made during the period, which appealed the masses as well as the classes. During the late seventies, the action packed scenes became integral part of hindi movies. Now films became more violent with the arrival of Actors like Dharmendra, Amitabh etc. At the same time off beat cinema started growing. Many great actresses showed their talent and beauty in this era like Sharmila Tagore, Saira Bano, Asha Parekh, Sadhna etc. Let’s discuss them one by one.
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Everybody knows DLF. It is Delhi based Indian real estate giant. It was founded in 1946 for doing real estate business. Later, it developed residential colonies in Delhi like Krishna Nagar. During 70s, it started developing its DLF City project to transform Gurgaon from a farming village to a commercial and real estate hub which completely changed its destiny. At present K P Singh is the chairman of DLF. Last year, in the month of July, DLF created history by releasing US$ 2 billion IPO which is the India’s biggest IPO till date.
K P Singh has become 8th richest man on the earth with property worth $ 30 billion. He hold about 87.43% shares of DLF. One of the greatest innovations of Independent India, highly busy, commercial, around ten miles wide township called DLF City in Gurgaon is situated south of Delhi. This DLF city is the dream of K P Singh which has come true and as a result he has become one of the richest persons of the world. You can find everything in DLF city, right from office and residential towers, malls, restaurants, hospitals, schools, hotels to golf course, cricket stadiums etc. Even it is sponsoring IPL cricket, so you can now think about the importance of this company in India Inc.
So friends, you will love to know more about DLF, the story of DLF. How it became one the biggest real estate companies of the world ? How a barren land of Gurgaon transformed into one of the biggest centers of trade and commerce in India ? Today I will tell you the real story of DLF.
How did he discovered Gurgaon? According to the Mr. Singh, right from the Mughal times, Delhi has expanded towards the south: From Chandni Chowk to Daryaganj, Connaught Place, Lutyen’s Delhi, Greater Kailash and so on. So, he thought Gurgaon was the next logical extension. He invited GE’s CEO Jack Welch. Welch was given a warm welcome at the traditional home of the Maharaja of Jaipur by colorfully dressed riders on elephants and a huge GE logo was made of fresh flowers dominated the front lawn. That visit set the stage for GE’s move six years later into DLF city in Gurgaon. The deal made the American company DLF’s most prominent tenant, helping K P Singh to further expand the operations of DLF in Gurgaon.
This is how a small farming village called Gurgaon became one of the biggest cities of India. DLF bought farms and lands owned by local people and started developing housing societies for upper-middle class residents of Delhi. The people of Delhi prefer greener and newly planned DLF City over the congested and heavily polluted Indian capital.
This year we have Olympic Games at Beijing, China and again Indians are looking at magic pair of Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupati to win medal for India in Doubles Tennis. Leander Paes is already a bronze medalist at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Recently Leander has shown his desire for patch up with Mahesh. On other side, Bhupathi who is recovering from some back surgery, has also expressed his interest in this reunion. Both are amongst the best doubles tennis players in the world with more than 10 grand slam titles to there name.
This pair is famous with the name “Indian Express”. 1999 was golden year for this pair. They won three doubles titles including Roland Garros and Wimbledon. Mahesh and Leander became the first doubles team to reach finals of all four Grand Slams. On April 26, 1999 they became the World no. 1 doubles team. The relationship between these two great tennis players has never been normal. In 2006 Asian games, just after winning the title both the players announced that they will never play again together. Now they are saying that they will not put personal preferences ahead of national interest, which could jeopardize India’s medal chances in 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Now they are again together.
The chances of their winning the medal in Olympics are very bright. Paes has said, “There is no other team in India that stands a chance against me and Mahesh”. Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi have led Indian tennis over the last decade and won some magnificent victories for India and themselves and so 110 crore Indians are again expecting some wonderful tennis. I also feel that they will play together and win medal for our country in Olympics.
A few weeks before, I published a list of top 12 technology CEOs of world. Now the time has come to browse the CEOs of India Inc. As far as Indian CEOs are concerned, Reliance Chairman and Managing Director, Mukesh Ambani is the highest paid Indian CEO with a package Rs 25 crore. His salary is almost 10 times as compared to his younger brother Anil Ambani. Anil Ambani has package of Rs 2.42 crore from his three companies – Reliance Energy, Reliance Communications and Reliance National Resources Ltd (RNRL). Sun TV CMD Kalanithi Maran and joint MD Kavery Kalanithi, annual salary is about Rs 23.26 crore. Airtel’s CMD Sunil Mittal is at 4th position annual compensation of Rs 15 crore. Sunil Mittal is followed by Dr Reddy’s chairman K Anji Reddy at the 5th rank with Rs 14.4 crore annual salary. Other highly paid CEOs of India are Brijmohan Lal Munjal & Pawan Munjal, Naveen Jindal, A M Naik and Azim Premji.
No wonder, India is on the verge of becoming a economic superpower. Economic liberalisation, globalization and the large Indian market have accelereated the growth of Indian economy. So there is no doubt that India will soon become the fastest growing economy in the world. After great Indian IT boom, we have large number of young Information sciences experts who are also fluent in English. As a result, India has become favorite destination for global companies for the outsourcing of their customer services and technical support. India is a major exporter of highly skilled professionals in software and financial services. But the road to success is not so smooth, India has a big problem of increasing population and economic and social inequality. Still 25% of India is below the poverty line. I will say, India is rising, glowing and happy but what about Hindustan or Bharat. In Hindustan no one knows English. How can we expect them to learn and use computers. The people of Bharat have not enough money to buy food for 2 times a day. India is enjoying cheese burgers, MacDonald’s Pizza, CCD, Barista but Bharat doesn’t have pure water to drink. I will soon write more on the differences between India and Hindustan (Bharat). Give your comments on this issue.
Last week, I got an email regarding some problem in my paypal account. It was asking me to click on the link and enter my paypal user name and password. The link was redirecting to a fake website whose look and feel was more or less like paypal. It was asking me to enter my user name and password. After some investigation on Google, I concluded that it was a fake email whose aim was to criminally and fraudulently acquire my user name and password details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity like PayPal in an electronic communication (e-mail). Also my name was missing in the email. PayPal never asks for personal information in an email and their emails will address you by name. Also a PayPal email will never contain attachments or software.
We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your Paypal account, and multiple password failures were present before the logons. We now need you to re-confirm your account information to us. If this is not completed by March 25, 2008, we will be forced to suspend your account indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. We thank you for your cooperation in this manner. To confirm your Online Banking records click on the following link:
>>> Click here <<< (I have removed the link)
Thank you for your patience in this matter. Paypal Customer Service. Please do not reply to this e-mail as this is only a notification. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. 1999-2008 PayPal. All rights reserved.
If you receive such emails then don’t forget to forward them to spoof@paypal.com before deleting the mail. Always use FireFox as web browser. When you click such email links in Firefox browser then a FireFox window pop up will come and say “Suspected Web Forgery”. For accessing paypal, it is always safer to open a new browser and then open www.paypal.com from there. Use secure and licensed software and keep it up to date and always make sure that you install all security patches for the softwares installed in your PC. Regularly run anti virus software to check your PC for viruses and never forget to update virus definitions. If possible then set up a firewall like Zone Alarm to prevent intruders from getting into your network or computer. For your PayPal account choose a strong password, for this you can mix upper, lowercase letters and symbol characters. Check your paypal account frequently for all credit card activities and incoming and outgoing balances. In case of any doubt or problem, contact PayPal immediately.
Internet has become indispensable part of our day-today life. The modern lifestyle is becoming more and more dependent on internet. But Internet is not always useful for us. Sometimes we have to face its demerits. Today I am going to point out one of the biggest disadvantages of internet. Yeah, it is wastage of time. There are many websites on internet which are like a vicious circle and once you logged in to the site the you will always come out after wasting many precious hours. Lets start the list.
1. YouTube.com
In my opinion, YouTube is like some addiction. Once you get addicted to YouTube, it is very difficult for you to look on other websites. As a result, it has become world’s no. 3 website in terms of user traffic. You can find almost every video on YouTube. It is king of piracy. Almost 80% of the videos on YouTube are pirated. Even you can watch complete movies on YouTube on the same day of its release. Its bandwidth costs are estimated at approximately $1 million a day. It has millions of videos featuring latest albums, cricket and other matches, news channel videos, cartoons, scandals etc. A few days before, I read somewhere that people in US are prefer to use YouTube on Television.
2. MySpace.com
Everyday 230,000 new registrations take place on MySpace. It is haven for gossips, photos, blogs and malicious comments. It is banned in almost every schools, businesses, offices and libraries. But people make use of web proxies and fake browsers in order to log in to the site. If you count the number of blogs on MySpace.com then believe me it has more number of blogs as compared to blogs on blogger, wordpress and others taken together. It is also spoiling young generation by allowing them to create obscene profiles. For several hours, people browse through MySpace profiles just to see photos. So MySpace is the biggest time killers on internet. I would like to add Orkut and FaceBook to this list also. But they are more or less just like MySpace, so I am not giving separate description for them.
3. Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe program which maps the earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. I remember the day when I found Google Earth first time on internet and I started searching my home in google earth. After this I visited almost every place through Google Earth which I knew at that time. You will feel great pleasure while identifying known places on Google Earth. You will think some magic is going on and you are in heavens.
4. Digg.com
Digg is the most popular social bookmarking website. It allows its registered users to share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting stories up and down is the site’s cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Thousand of stories get submitted every day, but only the most digged ones appear on the front page of Digg. Almost every blogger has a dream, that is to make his or her article on the front page of Digg. But it is very difficult. Still webmasters and bloggers try their level best to do so. They spend many hours on Digg to analyse the nature of articles which are most digged and commented. There are many Digg type websites on Internet like del.icio.us, reddit, stumbleupon, mixx, yahoo buzz. But noone is as addictive as Digg.
5. Flickr.com
Flickr is the most popular image and video hosting website. Here users can share their personal photographs. Flickr is used by widely by webmasters and bloggers as a photo repository. This is a big warehouse of photos. Here you will find millions of photos from wide variety of cultures, nations, traditions. People from all over the world have photos uploaded there. Even professional photographers love to share their photos on Flickr. No doubt, it is the most addictive photo website of the world.
Hi friends, today is World Telecommunications Day. For last few years India has become hot spot for telecommunication activities like mobiles, internet, satellite and cable networks. Efforts have been made from both governmental and non-governmental organizations to boost the telecom revolution in India. As a result, modern telecommunication technologies have penetrated into India’s socio-culturally diverse society. Now even lower middle class Indians are using mobiles, internet and cable television. See this snap, a rickshaw puller is using mobile phone.
The telecom revolution started with launch of BSNL by Indian Government in late 90s. Now it has become the 7th largest telecom company in world in terms of number of subscribers. Due to increasing demand of mobile phones and services, Government revised the telecommunication policy and private operators were allowed to provide the telecom services and companies such as Reliance, AirTel, AirCel, Tata Indicom, Vodafone (Hutch), MTNL, Spice Telecom and BPL entered the telecom market of India. Now you can find mobile network and internet even in remote villages of India. At the end of January 2008 there were 281.62 million telephones in India and number of Internet users in India reached 50 million.
Are you surprised to reader the title of this post ? Then I would like to tell you, it is truth. Shahrukh is really licking Aamir Khan’s feet. But you will now ask me, How I came to know this secret news. Actually I read about this incident on Aamir Khan’s blog. Shahrukh is the name of Aamir’s pet dog. Now Indian film stars are using their blogs to comment on their rivals in Bollywood. A week before, Amitabh Bachchan wrote some hot comments on Shahrukh Khan and Shatrughan Sinha in his blog and now Aamir Khan is trying to make fun of India’s no. 1 film star. In this way, Bollywood actors (bloggers) are producing perfect recipes for media and blogger like me to munch upon. This paragraph is taken from Aamir’s blog in which he is discussing about his pet dog Shahrukh.
I’m sitting under a tree, on the edge of a valley, approximately 5000 feet above sea level. The river Krishna flows far below us snaking its way among the Sahyadri mountains. A cool breeze is blowing, jannat ki hawa (breeze from the heavens), as my mother calls it. Ammi, Ira and Junaid are by my side and we are in the middle of one of our favourite board games ‘Settlers Of Catan’. Shahrukh is licking my feet and I am feeding him biscuits every now and then. What more can I ask for?
Now, before you jump to any conclusions let me add that Shahrukh is the name of our dog. And before you jump to any further conclusions let me add that I had nothing to do with naming him. In fact Shahrukh is the dog of the caretakers of our house. When I bought this house it came with the caretakers and their dog! Apparently Shahrukh (the actor) was shooting for a commercial in this house a few years ago, and that very day the caretakers bought a pup…, and named him Shahrukh. What are the chances of me buying a house which comes with a dog called Shahrukh!!! Some of my friends claim that I bought the house because of the dog. I would have to be a serious fan of Shah Rukh’s to want to do that. All I can say is that I’m waiting for him to come over,”
Before completing the article Aamir say “Well Shah Rukh is once again begging for my attention, so let me get back to him. He is smelling too much, I think he needs a bath. “Heel boy, heel.”
Today Shah Rukh said “I have never bothered about it because I also say a lot of things in fun and I think I am also may be stressing somebody else out. I don’t get stressed when friends pass comments like this. Actually I enjoyed it,” I think these are some of the perfect comments from Shahrukh. But there is no doubt that this will create a cold war between the two most popular Bollywood actors.
So dear readers what do you feel about this type of blogging. What is your opinion about Aamir ? Post your comments.
The present Chairman of the Tata Group, Ratan Tata is now in the list of 73 biggest brains in business for his innovation of 1 lakh rupee Nano car. A US business magazine Conde Nast Portfolio, has published the list of 73 biggest brains of business. Other important business tycoons in this list are Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffet, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. According to the magazine Ratan Tata believes that the future of the auto industry lies in the hands of people who don’t yet drive. Through this innovation and new idea Tata Motors has inspired other Auto companies. For example, Nissan-Renault is going to launch $ 3k car with the help of India’s Bajaj Auto.
“Brilliance comes in many forms, whether it is founding a startup that kicks sand in Microsoft’s face or creating an affordable car for the developing world. A small number of innovators influence the rest of the influencers in business,” Conde Nast Portfolio.
Ratan Tata became a global business leader when Tata acquired Corus Group and as a result of this merger, Tata Steel became the fifth largest steel producing company in the world.
Launching a 1 lakh rupee car was his old dream which he realized in January, 2008 when three models of the Tata Nano were announced. Ratan Tata delivered on his commitment to developing a car costing only 1 lakh rupee. He always says “a promise is a promise,” and he has done what he promised to those people of India who have never driven a car. Kudos to him for being one of the biggest brains of World business.
