Shenoy takes the bugs out of Web sites of flea markets

Inspiration comes from strange places.

In Kat Shenoy’s case, it came from a flea market in Solebury, Bucks County.

Shenoy, the president and CEO of Blue Bell software developer E-SoftSys Ltd., had always thought flea markets were small-time affairs with maybe two dozen vendors, tops. As a result, it had never occurred to him to develop software for the people who run them.

Both things changed in early 2001 when he visited Rice’s Market, which says on its Web site that it hosts as many as 700 vendors and 15,000 shoppers.

The manager, Chuck Kane, is a friend of Shenoy’s. And he told Shenoy that there were no good software packages for running markets like Rice’s and that there were plenty of markets like Rice’s around the country.

That was all Shenoy needed to hear. He had E-SoftSys, which he had founded the previous year, develop software for running flea markets. The company sold it to Rice’s and then sent representatives to the National Flea Market Association’s next annual convention where they landed some other big markets as customers.

“Based on the success of this, I started looking for other, smaller industries where people rent space,” Shenoy said.

He found two — the trade-show industry and the self-storage industry — and had E-SoftSys send people to conventions for both. As Shenoy suspected, both industries had software requirements that were similar to each other and to the flea-market industry. So he had E-SoftSys come up with software for both of them.

“What we focused on was the technology and the customer support,” he said. “My philosophy is, you provide the best customer support possible and the product will sell itself based on referrals from other customers.”

That philosophy appears to be working. E-SoftSys has grown to 100 employees and, although it still gets half its revenue from custom software development, the other half comes from its flea-market, trade-show and self-storage management software.

E-SoftSys recently landed a big customer in the last industry when Stor-All Management Ltd. of Deerfield Beach, Fla., which has more than 29,000 units in 44 locations, implemented its Self Storage Manager software.

“It’s not often you get a company with 44 sites switching their applications,” Shenoy said.

Jeff Anderson, Stor-All’s CEO, said his company evaluated all the leading self-storage management systems available.

“With the exception of Self Storage Manager, none came close to meeting our key requirements,” he said.

Among other things, Stor-All needed to be able to smoothly import the information about its tenants from its old software and to keep its management operations up and running after a hurricane or other natural disaster.

Shenoy attributes Self Storage Manager’s popularity in part to its architecture, which features both a centralized database and databases at each site. That gives self-storage companies the ability to centrally control prices and programs, as well as generate reports, while allowing individual sites to be able to keep operating when the Internet connection to their headquarters is down.

“Individual sites can do all the operations they need to do,” he said.

E-SoftSys’ background is also a plus. Because it started out as a custom software developer and still does custom software projects, it’s willing to customize its products for flea-market, trade-show and self-storage customers in ways its competitors often aren’t, Shenoy said.

It also does search-engine optimization and Web-site development for its customers, including the National Flea Market Association and Rice’s, which it developed Web sites for.

“Our clients like the fact that we are a one-stop shop for all [information-technology] services,” Shenoy said.

Indians For McCain holds Independence Day barbeque

Washington: 'Indians For McCain' (IFM), a group of Indo-Indians that campaigns for American presidential candidate John McCain, held a barbeque for its supporters in honor of India's 61st Independence Day. The event was hosted by IFM co-founder Sudhakar Shenoy at his home in Great Falls, VA. "Most of our community is still undecided and we have a great opportunity to win votes and affect the outcome of this election," Shenoy said.

Fiscal-conservative leader Grover Norquist was a special guest of the event. Norquist urged IFM to spread its message and reach nationwide. "Indian voters, largely entrepreneurial in spirit, will respond to this message of fiscal restraint, small business promotion, and lower taxes," he said.

Special Indians For McCain bumper stickers were distributed at the event and sent to IFM's chapters nationwide in advance of Independence Day. Those wishing to obtain a bumper sticker should contact IFM National Director Kishan Putta.

The attendees were also treated to viewing a special video message from John McCain to the Indian-American community on the occasion of Independence Day.

Mirchi launches campaign for World Environment Day

Radio Mirchi announces its 'Going Green' campaign to mark the World Environment Day on June 5, 2008

The initiative is aimed at spreading awareness about the effects of global warming and encouraging people to realize the importance of Going Green. Radio Mirchi RJ's will urge the listeners to express their gratitude to Mother Nature and will give them a unique opportunity to get started in its own simple yet significant Mirchi style. Listeners can avail a chance to win bottled plants for their homes and offices by calling up the Radio Mirchi station. Additionally, Radio Mirchi will salute and acknowledge all the corporates who have taken a step forward to make a difference to the environment and have set precedence for others to follow.

Radio Mirchi cluster head Srinivasa Shenoy says, "Radio Mirchi being a responsible Radio station has always been a step forward in associating itself in finding solutions to problems prevalent in the Delhi. With 'Going Green', we want to make our planet healthy, clean and a pollution free place to live in. We are confident that the responsible citizens of our country will appreciate our effort and will extend their support to make it a successful initiative."

Monkey Thinks Robot into Action

In a dramatic display of the potential of prosthetic arms, a monkey at the University of Pittsburgh was able to use his brain to directly control a robotic arm and feed himself a marshmallow. The research, published today in the journal Nature, is the first to show that an interface that converts brain signals directly into action is sophisticated enough to perform a practical function: eating. Researchers who led the work have just begun human tests of a related technology.

"It's the first time a monkey--or a human--is directly, with their brain, controlling a real prosthetic arm," says Krishna Shenoy, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who was not involved in the research.

People who suffer from strokes or spinal cord injury, or from some neurodegenerative diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), are often left paralyzed. But their cerebral cortices--the parts of the brain that control movement, planning, and other functions--may remain largely intact. Scientists hope to capitalize on that with the development of brain machine interfaces--devices that convert brain activity into action, such as movement of a cursor on a computer screen.

People who are completely paralyzed can now use brain machine interfaces that noninvasively measure signals recorded from the surface of the scalp, but the devices are slow and require sustained concentration to operate. To create a prosthesis that works like a real arm--the user thinks about moving his arm, and it moves--will most likely require that electrical activity be recorded directly from the brain.

That has become possible in recent years, thanks to advances in the tiny arrays of electrodes used to record neural signals. In previous research, John Donoghue and his colleagues at Brown University showed that electrodes implanted into the brain of a paralyzed man could be used to move a cursor on a computer screen and even make a simple movement with a robotic arm. But that and other research have been limited to one- or two-dimensional movements, and, other than a few cases using a mechanical arm or gripper, were performed virtually, on a screen.

In the latest research, headed by neuroscientist Andrew Schwartz at the University of Pittsburgh, the monkey was able to perform a more complicated task. "Andy has taken this one step further, to a practical device that could be of use in the real world," says John Kalaska, a neuroscientist at the University of Montreal, in Canada, who wrote a commentary accompanying the publication. "The animal can simply, through a kind of mental practice, get the robot to move toward where the [food] is, close the hand, and bring it back to the mouth and let him eat it."

To achieve the feat, two monkeys had a grid of microelectrodes implanted into the motor cortex, part of the brain that controls motor planning and execution. The animals had previously been trained to move an anthropomorphic robotic arm, with moveable joints at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist, using a joystick. To learn to control the prosthesis with their minds, the monkeys had their arms temporarily restrained as they watched a computer move the arm through the required motions--to extend the arm to the piece of food, grip it, bring it to the mouth, and release it. "They imagine themselves doing the task, like athletes do for sports," says Schwartz. "The neurons are active as they observe the movement, and then we can capture the [neural signals] and use them for our own control."

Wockhardt meets growth requirements

Left : Suresh Shenoy

For a pharmaceutical major having extensive operations across different locations in the world besides India, the implementation of SAP ECC 5.00 has made all the difference. SAP ECC 5.00 has not only met its growth requirements but has also helped it achieve added productivity across its operations be it at different branch offices or the company’s manufacturing plants (The company has manufacturing plants in India, USA, UK, Ireland and France and more than 65% of its revenue comes from the US and European markets.)

Shortcomings in the legacy system

Wockhardt, which was running an ERP system from Avalon, was facing a number of issues with it. Suresh Shenoy, Senior Vice President –IT, Wockhardt Limited explains, “Avalon was not meeting our added growth requirements and had lived out its life. It was not meeting the reporting requirement and also required a lot of customization. Added growth meant exposure to multiple currencies, locations and languages and Avalon just could not handle the change. Moreover consolidation of data across locations was difficult and there was also duplication of work and reconciliation would happen at every stage. There was also the lack of a structured information system which led to delayed decision making, and consequently was having a negative impact on the business.”

Changes were not being carried out effectively and the legacy system could not adhere to the regulations related to the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover there was no integration across business processes. Account closures after every quarter were delayed as many things had to be compiled on Excel sheets and there were inaccuracies in accounting as there was a lot of manual work involved. The company looked for integration across business functions, faster information availability, and better control of operations, which were not been met by Avalon.

Zeroing in on SAP

The company decided to carry out a thorough evaluation before closing in on SAP ECC 5.00. Packages from Oracle, Microsoft and JD Edwards were evaluated besides SAP. A careful study of the product demonstrations by the SAP team and a thorough evaluation of the SAP implementation project at Lupin (another pharmaceutical major) led to Wockhardt finalizing on SAP. Shenoy, said, “With Wockhardt going global, the need of the hour was a robust IT infrastructure and an efficient information system in place and we found that SAP was suitable not only to meet our requirements with regard to the pharmaceutical industry but would also be helpful in consolidating our operations across multiple countries and currencies. We also found that the package would cater to global business requirements, while handling country-specific requirements and introduce best practices of the Life Science industry at all locations.” Wockhardt also found that the SAP ECC 5.00 package would offer a single technology platform and business data analysis capability and provide a high level of security with role and authorization control.

The implementation

The SAP implementation was completed in a matter of eight months from May 2005 to January 2006 when all the modules went live. IBM India was chosen as the implementation partner for the project as it had the requisite experience in the pharmaceutical domain. The major challenge was to gather a lot of functional people during the implementation and these were from different departments like the finance, production and planning department. During the implementation there was a strong in-house team comprising of 50 plus people and the IBM team, which was close to 22 people. Modules such as Materials Management, Production Planning, Quality Management, Plant Maintenance, Sales & Distribution, Customer Service, Human Resources Financials & Controlling and Product Life Cycle Management were implemented with a big bang approach and all of them went live together in January 2006 across locations. Now the solution has also been extended across foreign locations such as the US, UK and Ireland. Now the SAP extension work is going on in France and expected to be completed by January 2009.

Making a difference

Prior to the SAP implementation Wockhardt’s business processes were not integrated and data lacked consistency and accuracy, which led to ineffective decision-making, lack of flexibility and inefficient use of resources. This resulted in higher incidence of data entry errors, higher costs of error processing and paperwork. Moreover there was late closure of accounts after every quarter. The legacy system was unable to meet the growth requirements. However, the SAP implementation has brought in a unified data platform and standardized business processes have eliminated data entry errors and saved valuable administrative time. Since the SAP system works in real time the staff at Wockhardt can update, retrieve and manage data in real-time, which enables them to execute their tasks more efficiently. While enhancing overall efficiency across the organization, the centralized system ensures that information across the business is available to the management, not just as raw data, but also in the form of detailed reports. Reports can be quickly produced and without logistical headaches. Moreover, access to accurate information enables the company to evaluate options and make well-informed decisions, on a timely basis.

A Russian rendezvous in Hyderabad

A heady interplay of comedy, fantasy and wisdom makes Dramanon's production, 'Fools', a contemporary theatrical classic.

The story is set in the Ukraine when it was still part of Russia in the 1890's, in a town called Kulyenchikov when it was put under a curse, rendering its inhabitants stupid.

A young schoolteacher Leon is sent to this town on a mission to break the curse on the village. On his way, Leon meets many of the inhabitants, such as "Something Something Snetsky," and Yenchna, the vendor who tries to sell flowers claiming they are fish! Directed By R.K Shenoy, the play was a hit among the growing fraternity of young theatre enthusiasts in the city.

Potomac Valley Hospital purchases new equipment

KEYSER, W.Va., U.S.A - Potomac Valley Hospital, 167 S. Mineral St., recently acquired a new and improved endoscopy system.

The Evis Exera II has been in use for more than two months and the staff and Dr. Suratkal Shenoy are pleased with the product.

High-definition television and narrow band imaging have provided new levels of imaging quality. The combination of HDTV and NBI allow Shenoy to see the most minute details and variations of the lining of the patient's stomach and intestine. This will allow subtle changes to be discovered earlier than with previous systems.

The scopes themselves are designed with the patient in mind. They are equipped with a tensioning device that allows them to pass through the loops of the intestines easier, providing the patient with a greater reduction in discomfort during the procedure.

Intel to drive channel services across APAC

Chip giant unveils extended services opportunities for resellers at the Intel Solutions Summit (ISS) in Bangkok.

Speaking at an ISS press briefing today, Steve Dallman, general manager of the Reseller Channel Organisation at Intel, said: “The channel has always done well as it has the one-to-one relationships with customers. We are coaching the channel to help them get into the services business. Being able to provide these services will mean the channel can make more money and the customers will benefit too.

“You can integrate a system, sell it to a customer and you feed your family once. With services you get a monthly fee and are able to feed your family everyday.”

Intel believes there are two main varieties of opportunity on the services side: Platform Extension Services and Hosted Tools.

“Platform Extension Services are around providing an upgrade service,” said Dallman. “We are also being to engage with partners out there who offer hosted services and then match make them to our channel partners.”

Navin Shenoy, general manager of Asia Pacific sales and marketing at Intel, said: “The channel needs to evolve and take advantage of new technology. The channel can drive services and the channel guys who just push boxes will not do well. The ones that do services on top will be the ones that do well.”

Shenoy said to gain traction in the SMB market centres around providing these firms with remote management, as many SMBs do not have sufficient internal IT resources.

“A channel partner who services those SMB customers can get in there and fix a problem before the bigger guys can even answer the phone. Channel partners are nimble enough,” added Shenoy.

Tom Rampone, general manager of the Channel Platforms Group at Intel, said the services opportunities will not be restricted to Intel’s larger channel partners.

“We are making our platforms more manageable and encouraging our customers to build services on the products. We are making the investment so smaller partners can get into the services side too,” he said.

U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Awards Contract for Cognitive Airborne Network Protocol to Spectracom

Spectracom and its academic partner Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have been awarded a contract by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory of Rome, New York, to continue research on a wireless network routing protocol supporting war fighter communications.

This research will provide insight into the future of military airborne networks. The contract is worth nearly $300,000 and builds upon other USAF-sponsored work from 2006.

The contract is also noted as being a next step in Spectracom’s mission “to serve the Aerospace and Defense market with high reliability network solutions for synchronizing critical operations with an expanding technology portfolio.”

John Fischer, Spectracom’s chief technology officer said, “this award complements our ongoing research and development for next-generation networks.” He continued, “We understand the need for secure and reliable network communications and are committed to providing innovative solutions to the military through the application of leading-edge work of academic partners such as RIT.”

Spectracom is an ISO 9001:2000 registered company that designs, develops, and manufactures Legally Traceable Time and frequency products for Synchronizing Critical Operations affecting a range of communications, broadcasts, andIP networks in Public Safety, Aerospace and Defense, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Broadcast markets.

Dr. Nirmala Shenoy is the director of RIT’s Lab for Wireless Networking and Security and the inventor of the Multi-Mesh Tree (MMT) routing protocol. She served as part of the team whose work is now a foundation for the new Air Force contract.

Shenoy said, “MMT offers a high degree of network efficiency through its scalability and use of information across traditional network protocol layers in a compact manner. We will enhance the MMT functions and its performance to meet the goals of the Air Force by introducing cognitive self-learning behavior in the protocol.”

The new contract is part of the Department of Defense’s initiative to deploy an IP-based network that interconnects mobile airborne platforms. Eventually these platforms will also connect to the military’sGlobal Information Grid.

John Matyjas from the Air Force Research Lab commented, “Our goal is to achieve fast, efficient, and secure routing that performs under highly dynamic and hostile conditions of the battlespace.” He went on to say, “We are interested in approaches to apply cognitive techniques to further improve the performance of routing protocols.”

The rising value of gold leads to a seller's rush

Texas, U.S.A :As the economy falters, gold glistens.

Fears of a recession, the credit and housing crunch, slumping retail sales, higher energy prices and unemployment have propelled the precious metal's value to new heights.

Gold reached a milestone Thursday, hitting an all-time high of $1,001.50 an ounce in trading before closing at $993.80.

With those prices, it shouldn't be a surprise that across the Houston area, stores that deal in gold are doing brisk business with customers wanting to sell their jewelry and those looking to buy.

At U.S. Coins & Jewelry in the Spring Branch area, a man walked in Thursday with a few pieces of jewelry he had lying around the house.

" 'The only reason I came in is that I saw that story on the news,' "' store sales manager Nick Koutsodontis said the man told him.

At the Houston Gold Exchange, owner Brad Schweiss said there were "housewives cleaning out their jewelry box, getting rid of some things they haven't worn in the last 20 years. A lot of people are selling off their yellow gold because it's no longer in style," he said. "We're getting a little bit of everything.

"The awareness level is definitely increased, and it has sparked additional activity," Schweiss said.

The last time he saw a rush this big was in the early 1980s, when gold hit $850 an ounce.

Other Houston-area residents are buying gold, viewing it as a safe investment.

Richard Plance, the manager of a wellhead company in Humble, has been purchasing U.S. gold coins and bullion from U.S. Coins & Jewelry for years.

"I'd like to buy more if I could," Plance said. "My 401(k) has nose-dived."

He had been waiting for gold to hit the "magic number" of $1,000.

"I expect it to go up even higher," Plance said, "just like oil did when it hit $100 — especially the way the economy is right now."

Too expensive for some

Though gold's increasingly steep price is prompting some people to either cash in or stock up, others in the market for gold jewelry are being priced out.

On Hillcroft, where jewelers have catered to the city's South Asian community for years, shop owners say customers are being hit with sticker shock.

Gold sales have slowed about 50 percent since February at Kirti Jewelers, owner Suresh Shenoy said. He orders new inventory monthly instead of weekly now, and he's been encouraging shoppers to buy more diamonds.

"People are just waiting to see if it will go down," Shenoy said. "Now people are just buying it when it's absolutely necessary for a wedding or something."

Atom-based notebooks to cost between $250 and $300

More than 25 low-cost notebooks based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor are in the works, including models from multinational PC vendors, according to the chip maker's top executive in Asia.

These Atom-based notebooks will be available in the middle of this year for about $250 to $300, said Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's Asia-Pacific operations, in an interview. "We'll see some slightly richer configurations that get up to $350," he said

The Atom processor, formerly called Diamondville, is a small, low-power chip designed for inexpensive notebooks, a class of device that Intel and others refer to as "netbooks." These machines are intended for first-time computer buyers in emerging markets as well as users in mature markets willing to trade performance for a low-cost notebook that complements their existing computers -- a market that until now has been largely dominated by Asustek's Eee PC.

Atom will offer lower performance than Intel's Core 2 Duo processors for mainstream notebooks, but the Atom's performance will be good enough for browsing the Internet and sending e-mails, Shenoy said.

Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner was more specific about the processor's capabilities last month, telling reporters that a related chip, called Silverthorne, offers performance similar to Banias, the first version of Intel's Pentium M processor released in 2003. Silverthorne is designed for small, handheld computers that Intel calls Mobile Internet Devices, and will be available as part of the Centrino Atom chip package set for release during the second quarter.

The introduction of the Atom and the rush of vendors to build the chip into low-cost notebooks could mark the emergence of a new type of device, expanding on the early success of Asustek's Eee PC. But not everyone is convinced there is much demand for low-cost notebooks, either as a secondary computing device or a substitute for a more capable, and more expensive, notebook PC.

Bryan Ma, the director of personal systems research at IDC Asia-Pacific, is a self-described skeptic and doubts that low-cost notebooks will have more than a limited impact on the market for portable computing devices so long as performance and features are traded for lower prices. "I was never convinced that price was the best way to sell these products," he said.

But the marketing clout of Intel and top-tier PC vendors could alter this equation by creating additional demand among customers in both emerging markets and developing countries. "Intel, pushing this, gives it more legs," Ma said.

"There's going to be some experimentation," Shenoy said.

Most Atom-based notebooks will have screens ranging in size from 7 to 10 inches, Shenoy said, adding that some models will be equipped with screens that can swivel and lay flat against the keyboard, turning the device into a tablet computer. Devices will ship with either hard disks or solid-state drives that use flash memory and offer battery life ranging from three to five hours, he said.

"Some will be really sleek and thin, some will be a bit more ruggedized," Shenoy said, adding that Wi-Fi will likely be a common feature.

On the software side, Atom-based notebooks will ship with either Windows XP or some version of Linux. "I don't think you'll see a lot of Vista in this space for cost reasons," he said.

The availability of Windows XP on low-cost notebooks set to arrive during the middle of the year is noteworthy because Microsoft has stated previously that Windows XP licenses will not be sold after June 30. Microsoft officials in Singapore reaffirmed the June 30 deadline in a statement released through the company's public-relations agency. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Windows XP will completely disappear after June 30.

"There are probably going to be certain exceptions here and there," IDC's Ma said.

Mobile WiMAX service expected in RP toward yearend

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) services are expected to hit the Philippines late 2008, an Intel executive told INQUIRER.net.

WiMAX is a telecommunications technology that offers wireless data services over long distances. It is one of more recent technologies that hope to provide an alternative “last mile” wireless broadband service. The last mile is the proverbial point of access from the Internet backbone to the end-user.

Navin Shenoy, vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific of Intel Semiconductor Ltd., said Intel has already seen commercial WiMAX services launched in the United States and Japan early this year.

Shenoy said that Intel is now working with operators to bring in “mobile WiMAX service in the country.

The Intel executive, however, declined to give further details.

According to the WiMAX Forum, an international organization recognized for certifying WiMAX products and publishing technical specifications, there are over 520 member companies who have joined the organization.

The WiMAX Forum website indicated that there are now 260 commercial WiMAX deployments around the world.

Mohandas Shenoy Kundapur TP Chief

Senior BJP member Mohandas Shenoy and Nagaraj Kanchan were unanimously elected as president and vice-president of Kundapura Town Panchayat.

As per the reservation notice issued by the State government for the election of president and vice-president, a general candidate was fielded for the presidents post, while for the post of vice-president, a candidate from Backward Class A category was in the fray.

Kundapur sub-division officer K N Ramesh was the election officer.

Out of 23 Town Panchayat seats, BJP had won a clear majority of 15 seats.

Former minister and MLC Dr V S Acharya lit the lamp and inaugurated the Town Panchayat presidents office.

First time in power

With the two senior leaders holding the reins in the panchayat, the BJP has for the first time come to power in Kundapur TP.

Bharathiya Janatha Party had been playing the role of an opposition with six members and now has won 15 seats.

Abu Dhabi: Puttur Panduranga Nayak present a musical evening

Abu Dhabi Jan 22: Karnataka Sangha, Abu Dhabi organized a musical evening performed by Sri. Puttur Panduranga Nayak on Sunday January 20, 2008.

Sri. Nayak was accompanied by Sri. M. Vishwanath Shenoy (Uppinangady) on Harmonium and Sri. Faisal on Tabla. Sri. Nayak rendered a good number of Daasakeertane like "Govindaa Namo", "Bhaagyada Lakshmi" etc., Basava Vachana and Bhavageete like "Ede Tumbi" and "Sri Gandha Naanaagi".

First Photo : Sri.Sarvothama Shetty, President of Karnataka Sangha, Abu Dhabi, felicitating Sri.Puttur Panduranga Nayak. Seen from L to R : Ramesh Pai, Yogish Prabhu, Faisal, Puttur Panduranga Nayak, M. Vishwanath Shenoy and Sarvothama Shetty.

Shenoy lead gold haul

Padmashree Taranath Shenoy was the star performer as Maharashtra had a field day with as many as 11 record-breaking efforts - seven in men and four in women- on the second and final day of the Senate Royale National Masters Swimming Championships, held at Andheri Sports Complex here on Sunday.

Taranath Shenoy, who is visually impaired swimmer was awarded Padmashree in 1990 and has also earned a spate of honours in his long swimming career. The manner in which he won the men’s 400m freestyle event in the 45-49 age groups in a record-breaking time of 6:03.36 seconds, showed his fitness and class in abundance. On Saturday, too, he had broken the 200m freestyle record of Services’ Balram Singh’s 2006 (2:50.76) with a timing of 2:46.15 secs.

Sharing the day’s glory with Taranath, was another Maharashtra swimmer, Sukjit Kaur. Apart from winning the freestyle 100m, 200m, 50m in record-breaking timing, she ended in all with six golds, which included two in medley and freestyle relays. What’s more interesting is that like Taranath, she too has been a long distance swimmer. And to top it all, she played for Bombay University in water-polo and volleyball and represented Maharashtra in triathlon.

Winners: WOMEN: (30-34) 50m backstroke: Sukhjit Kaur (Maha) - 00:42.00 (00:56.38). 100m (35-39) Breast stroke: Sayali Thosar (Maha) -01:47.83 (01:48.85). 50m Butterfly: Nandita Kapoor (Karnataka) - 00:49.00 (00:54.91). 400m Freestyle: Nandita Kapoor - 08:34.00 (09:14.08). (40-44): 50m Backstroke: Rani Anisa Appukutan (TN) -00:45.62 (00:51.01). 100m Breast stroke: Shiney Varghese (YN) -01:58.88 (02:07.63). 50m.

5 from high school earn spot on TV game show

What started out as just a chat between friends evolved into a quest by a quintet of Colts Neck High School students to earn a spot on television game show.

And it worked.

Five of the school's brightest — township residents Jessica Atlas, Rachel and Zara Feingold, Nikita Shenoy and Tyler Berman — represented Colts Neck on an episode of the cable quiz show "The Challenge," which airs on News 12 Saturday and Sunday nights.

"The Challenge" is an academic quiz show featuring teams of high school students from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

The program was taped at the Cablevision studios in New York City in November.

The origination of the idea to attempt to gain a spot on the program started in the summer, when twin sisters Rachel and Zara Feingold talked with a mutual friend, Cathy Liu, a student at Howell High School. Liu organized a team of contestants at Howell and filed the appropriate paperwork to executives involved with the game show.

The Feingolds did likewise. The only difference is the Colts Neck team was selected to compete, while Howell wasn't.

"It's disappointing that Howell wasn't picked because that's how we got the idea," Rachel Feingold said.

Participants for the quiz show are picked randomly, according to Trent Anderson, Cablevision's vice president of education.

"Literally, all 32 teams are picked out of a hat," he said.

Anderson said there were 90 schools from New Jersey that applied to appear in this year's programs.

Only 32 schools from each of five regions — New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, Bronx/Brooklyn and Westchester/Hudson Valley — are picked to appear each year. The winners of each section plus the highest scoring regional finalist qualify for the finals, which will take place in May and June.

"We were notified in October that we had been accepted," said Zara Feingold. "So we had over a month to prepare and study."

Atlas, Shenoy and both Feingolds, all seniors, competed. Berman, the only junior of the group, was the team's alternate. Shenoy was picked as the captain.

The program will feature Colts Neck competing against a team from Vernon Township High School in a first-round matchup.

"One of the best parts was the school chartered a bus and we were able to bring members of the Cougar Den to cheer on the team," said Jamie Krieger-Lundquist, the team's academic adviser.

The Cougar Den featured about 35 fellow students who showed up at the studio equipped with signs, wigs, painted faces and tons of enthusiasm.

"It was a great feeling to have all that support," Atlas said. "It made us believe in ourselves."

Berman has already been designated as next year's captain, should the school be selected again to appear on the show.

"I learned a lot by watching and taking notes for next year," said Berman. "There is a lot of skill and some strategy involved."

BROADCAST SCHEDULE

WHAT: "The Challenge" academic quiz show

WHO: Colts Neck High School vs. Vernon Township High School

WHERE: News 12 New Jersey, U.S.A

WHEN: 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Educating consumers is need of the hour

Educating consumers is the need of the hour, New Delhi-based National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission member P D Shenoy has stressed.

He was addressing executives of the Corporation Bank on Consumer Protection campaign in India, here recently. Since the enactment of Consumer Act in 1986, consumer redressal machinery had disposed off nearly 25 lakh cases across the country, he added.

�There are 35 state commissions, 604 district forums and a national commission in the country,�� he informed. Elaborating various measures initiated by the Commission, Shenoy said consumer online resource and empowerment centre [CORE] had been set up at the initiative of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs.

�The centre provides online consumer grievance redressal system, providing information relating to consumer rights, assisting in understanding legal procedure, taking up complaint to default parties and also providing a network among voluntary organisations,�� he said adding; �For all consumer-related information and guidance, a toll free National Consumer Helpline is available. Speed, brevity and equity is hallmark of Consumer Protection.��

Earlier, Corporation Bank Chairman and Managing Director B Sambamurthy said; �The Corporation Bank is one of the top three public sector banks in the country in terms of investment in technology. The focus of the Bank is on client acquisition.��

Within a year, the Bank had added one million customers. The Bank had also made significant progress under financial inclusion, having surveyed over 1,200 villages across the country and nearly a lakh savings accounts opened in those villages, he claimed.

�The Bank is now poised to cross the milestone of Rs 1 lakh crore in business by 2008,�� he added. Bank General Manager B R Bhat was also present.

Sonia Shenoy, the new-actress-on-the-Bollywood-block

Sonia Shenoy, the new-actress-on-the-Bollywood-block

Next Intel Classmate PC Based on Silverthorne - Shenoy

Intel is working on an updated version of its Classmate PC designed for schoolchildren in developing countries, part of a wider effort to spur demand for low-cost laptops.

Based on the company's upcoming Silverthorne processor, the new Classmate PC will likely be sleeker and have longer battery life than the current version, according to Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's Asia-Pacific operations.

"It's fair to say that there is a Silverthorne-based Classmate design in the works that would likely come out coincidentally with the microprocessor," Shenoy said, adding that Intel has not determined pricing for the new laptop design.

Silverthorne, which is billed as being easy on both power and the pocketbook, is part of Intel's Menlow platform that also includes the upcoming Poulsbo chipset. The dual-core chip is scheduled for release during the middle of this year and is central to Intel's plans for small, handheld computers that Intel calls MIDs, or Mobile Internet Devices, and low-cost laptops, like the Classmate and Asustek's Eee PC.

The current Classmate PC is a big-boned, 1.4 kilogram machine with a 900MHz Celeron M processor and a 7-inch screen. The laptop runs Windows XP and comes with Wi-Fi, 256M bytes of RAM and 2G bytes of flash memory in lieu of a hard disk. These specifications won't send a gamer's heart racing, but they are enough to get the intended job done.

Priced at around US$285, the Classmate PC is roughly $100 more expensive than the One Laptop Per Child Project's XO laptop, the Classmate's main competitor. Intel has said volume production would bring down the Classmate's cost to about $200, but the low-cost laptops have so far grabbed more headlines than sales.

Even so, Intel's Classmate PC development efforts have had a wide impact, largely thanks to the Eee PC, which uses many of the same components but has a thinner, more stylish design.

Consumer enthusiasm for the Eee PC largely caught Intel off guard. When the low-cost laptop, which also uses a 900MHz Celeron M processor, was announced at the Computex trade show last year, Intel expected Asustek to announce a $199 laptop for education customers. But the Taiwanese computer maker had other ideas and declared -- to the surprise of Intel executives -- that the Eee PC would instead be marketed to consumers in markets around the world.

While the Eee PC's price tag climbed substantially from the original announced price, at $400 or so the small laptops remain a relative bargain and users have been snapping them up as fast as Asustek can make them.

As other computer makers show interest in following Asustek's lead, Intel has embraced the low-cost laptop as an important product segment for the consumer market, as well as the education market.

"We think that there's going to be a wide variety of multinationals and local OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) who decide to go after this segment," Shenoy said.

Ire-Tex to set up foam unit

Ire-Tex India Pvt. Ltd., a 50:50 joint venture between Ire-Tex Corporation Berhad, part of the $250 million Penang headquartered conglomerate, and Premier Tissues India Ltd., will invest Rs. 15 crore in phases to set up an eight tonne a day foam extrusion plant for packaging material at Sriperumbudur.

G. G. Shenoy, General Manager of the joint venture, which makes the Premier brand of paper tissues and other products in India, said that “We have already started making packaging material for computers, including laptops, peripherals and mobile phones in a facility at Ambatur Industrial Estate in Chennai. Because of the Malaysian company’s expertise in serving global computer manufacturers, we already have customers here such as Dell and aim to grow our market share to Rs. 25 crore of the total market of Rs. 100 crore in India. Many computer manufacturers want to switch over to recyclable foam packaging which we make”. The plant near Chennai was likely to be operational by April 2008.