According to the company, the phone supports
upto 150 Mbps LTE network, making it the
fastest phone in terms of network connectivity.

The phone is slim at 8.4mm. The screen is
covered by a Gorilla Glass 2 layer and is
rounded at the edges. The display also allows
operation with gloves or nails unlike most
other phones with capacitive touch display.
The Ascend P2 features a 13 megapixel camera
with 1080p video recording with dedicated
hardware button. The phone can capture both
images and videos in HDR (High dynamic
range).
Ascend P2 also uses Huawei's proprietary
Quick Power Control (QPC) and Automated
Discontinuous Reception (ADRX) power-saving
technologies, which allegedly reduce power
consumption and charging time by more than
25% compared to other smartphones.
The Ascend P2 runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean,
but skinned with Huawei's Emotion UI v1.6.
Huawei Ascend P2 is expected to launch
globally in April May time frame with retail
price in Europe being about €400 (Rs 28,500)!!

Source- The Mobile Indian

When on Twitter, do what the rest of the fans
do. That was the buzz on the social media tool
where fans of Akshay Kumar got the hash tag
#Akshay2000crore to trend worldwide for
two days, suggesting that actor has earned Rs
2000 crores in his lifetime in Hindi cinema.
Whether there is any truth behind this is not
clear, but an emotional Akshay Kumar thanks
his fans, whom he fondly referred to as
'Akkians' for starting and sustaining the thread
for over 48 hours.
"Honestly blessed to have you all Akkians in
my life. Special thanks to my fan clubs who
support me so much selflessly time & again.
Thank you for the #Akshay2000crore tag only
possible coz of you all," he tweeted.
The trend started on February 16 and was
taken off only on February 18. It was one of
the top trends in India. Akshay is riding on
both the box office success and the critical
acclaim of his latest film Special 26 that also
starred Anupam Kher and Manoj Bajpayee.
The revered Rs 100 crore club - of actors
whose movies hit the 100 crore mark at the
box office - may soon be a thing of the past if
Akshay's news turns out to be true. Rs 2000
crore may just be the next achievable target
by Bollywood stars.

Source- Cnn Ibn
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Ranchi: A hero on the cricket field and Team India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni hasn`t shone quite as brilliantly in the field of academics, it has been revealed that the Ranchi-born lad who finished his schooling at DAV school, enrolled himself in a Bachelor of Business Management and Secretarial Practice course at the St Xavier`s College in Ranchi. But he`s repeatedly failed his exams and, having now been unsuccesful in 6 semesters` tests, his 5-registration will come to an end this year without him being scholastically rewarded. 

The college had, earlier, relaxed their rules for MSD given his busy cricketing schedule, but even that seems to not have been enough for the Indian captain as he failed in his endeavour to earn his Bachelors` degree.

A meteor that exploded in the skies above Russia’s Ural Mountains was the largest since the Tunguska blast in Siberia in 1908 and released about 33 times the energy of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

Before hitting the Earth’s atmosphere yesterday, the object was about 17 meters (55 feet) and had a mass of about 10,000 tons, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in a statement.

The meteor, which hit 16 hours before an asteroid half the length of a football field hurtled past Earth, has prompted calls to be more vigilant about the risks of strikes from space. Every day, 100 tons of dust and sand-size particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere, most of which burns up.

“We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average,” Paul Chodas of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office said in the statement about yesterday’s explosion. The Chelyabinsk meteor released 500 kilotons of energy when it disintegrated above the city of Chelyabinsk at about 9:20 a.m. local time, according to NASA.

Unrelated to asteroid 2012 DA14, which flew past by Earth safely, the Chelyabinsk meteor hit the atmosphere at a speed of 18 kilometers per second (40,000 miles per hour) and broke apart 15 kilometers to 25 kilometers above the Russian city, according to NASA.

Shock Wave

The shock wave from the meteor blew out in 3,700 buildings windows in and around Chelyabinsk, the regional government said in a statement. About 1,150 people sought medical attention, of whom more than 50 were hospitalized, the Health Ministry said.

Burning streaks lit up the sky in videos that were caught by drivers on dashboard cameras, broadcast on Russian television and posted on YouTube. The force destroyed a warehouse wall at the OAO Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant and disrupted service by Russia’s second-biggest mobile operator, OAO MegaFon.

A piece of the meteor probably hit a frozen lake about 80 kilometers (50 miles) west of Chelyabinsk, Vadim Kolesnik, an Interior Ministry official, said yesterday by phone. A hole 8 meters in diameter was found in the ice, national television channel Rossiya 24 reported. There are two other possible impact sites, he said.

Divers exploring the lake haven’t found any pieces of meteorite, Rossiya 24 reported today.

The Tunguska event, which was the most powerful natural explosion in the modern era, leveled about 800 square miles (2,100 square kilometers) of forest in Siberia, while leaving no crater, according to NASA. The asteroid that scientists say plowed into Earth about 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, may have been about 6 miles in diameter.

A United Nations team met in Vienna this week to come up with recommendations on how best to track, and someday deflect or destroy, orbiting space rocks.

Exam time is here! This is the time for your final exam and you might have started preparing for it. But have you prepared well? Well here are some tips to prepare for your exams!!

Tip 1: Start early
Preparation for exams should begin
earlier than the day before the
test. You can’t cram an entire unit
of information into an all-nighter.
Get started at least a week before
the exam.

Tip 2: Organize
Begin by making yourself a
calendar outlining a daily schedule
of topics for review. Cover a small
amount of material for each class
each day. Every time you complete
a topic, give yourself a mini
review.

Tip 3: Outline
Once you have decided what you
need to study and how much time
you need to spend studying, it is
time to actually study. One of the
best ways is to make succinct
outlines. As you read over your
textbook and class notes, write a
brief summary for each topic.
Highlight the areas in your outline
that were most troublesome. When
you have finished with all the
material, you will have an outline
you can review.

Tip 4: Make flashcards
Similar to outlining, making
flashcards is a really helpful
technique for studying. By writing
down the information from your
outline, you are already doing half
the studying. Once the flashcards
are complete, you will have a
portable study packet to look over.

Tip 5: Get help
If you are having trouble
memorizing something or a
particular concept is just not
sinking in, get help before it’s too
late. Ask your teacher to go over a
glitch you might be having. Or if
memorizing 200 vocabulary words
seems like too much to do, recruit
your family members to quiz you
with index cards.

Tip 6: Sleep
(very important :-P)
You need at least seven hours of
sleep a night to function. Tests are
designed to make you think. If you
are sleep-deprived, you won’t be
able to remember any of the
information you worked so hard to
cram into your brain.

Tip 7:Stay calm
Do not panic at the exam! Even if
at first glance the test is
overwhelming, remember to
breathe. If a question seems too
hard, answer all the questions you
know, then return to the ones you
left blank. Remind yourself that
you are prepared.

Tip 8: Don’t rush
You have spent at least two weeks
studying, so what’s another couple
of minutes? Work through the
exam slowly and read all the
questions before answering them.
If you are done before the time is
up, look over your answers.

Tip 9: Relax post-exam
Don’t let panic overwhelm you.
Even if you think you bombed the
exam, worrying will not change
your score. It may, however, affect
your mindset for your next final.
Zone out the last test and stay
focused on the next one. Odds are,
you didn’t do as badly as you think.

Hope you got your answers! & all best for your exams! May you come put with flying colors!!

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Source- Next
Step Magazine

Anyone thought of the history of Valentine's day? Ever thought why February 14 is called the Valentine's day? Then this is for you!
The history of Valentine's Day--and
the story of its patron saint--is
shrouded in mystery. We do know
that February has long been
celebrated as a month of romance,
and that St. Valentine's Day, as we
know it today, contains vestiges of
both Christian and ancient Roman
tradition. But who was Saint
Valentine, and how did he become
associated with this ancient rite?
The Catholic Church recognizes at
least three different saints named
Valentine or Valentinus, all of
whom were martyred. One legend
contends that Valentine was a
priest who served during the third
century in Rome. When Emperor
Claudius II decided that single men
made better soldiers than those
with wives and families, he
outlawed marriage for young men.
Valentine, realizing the injustice of
the decree, defied Claudius and
continued to perform marriages
for young lovers in secret. When
Valentine's actions were
discovered, Claudius ordered that
he be put to death.

Other stories suggest that Valentine
may have been killed for
attempting to help Christians
escape harsh Roman prisons, where
they were often beaten and
tortured. According to one legend,
an imprisoned Valentine actually
sent the first "valentine" greeting
himself after he fell in love with a
young girl--possibly his jailor's
daughter--who visited him during
his confinement. Before his death,
it is alleged that he wrote her a
letter signed "From your
Valentine," an expression that is
still in use today!! & many people didn't knew the reason!

Usually we use the term Valentines' day ; but the truth is its Valentine's day & not valentines' day!

Hope you got some good information!

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London: Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo has ruled out playing for Manchester City in future, claiming his heart is still with former club Manchester United. 

When asked during an interview whether he could ever play for the reigning English champions, Ronaldo replied he is not going to say it would be impossible, because in football the impossible doesn’t exist. 

However, Ronaldo added he can say that it would be “very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very difficult to play at Man City” because of his undying love for United. 

When further pressed whether it is difficult, but not impossible to play for City in future, Ronaldo clarified he is not going to play with City ever because his heart is in United. 

Ronaldo would face his former team United at Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday in the first leg of their much-awaited Champions League pre-quarterfinal clash. 

Micromax has launched its much awaited Micromax A116 Canvas HD smartphone in the Indian market. The smartphone will be available through the company's official website starting February 14, 2013 for Rs. 13,990. The company is claiming that it will take about 5-7 working days to ship this smartphone.Just to recap, the Micromax A116 Canvas HD is powered by MediaTek's MT6589 quad-core processor that clocks 1.2GHz. It will run on Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) out of the box. It packs in a 2000mAh battery. Micromax A116 Canvas HD come with 5-inch HD IPS screen that sports 1280x720 resolution and a colour depth of 16.7 million.
For camera, there is an 8-megapixel rear shooter with LED flash and 4X zoom and a VGA front camera. Other features of the smartphone include 1GB RAM and 4GB of internal storage, which can be expanded to up to 32GB via microSD card. It is a dual-SIM smartphone, which supports GSM frequency on both the SIMs.
This smartphone will be competing head-on with the recently launched Karbonn S1 Titanium smartphone that is available for Rs. 10,990. This smartphone too has 4.5-inch qHD (960X540) multi-touch capacitive touch display and runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box. It comes with a 5-megapixel autofocus rear camera with LED flash and a VGA front camera.

Internally, Karbonn S1 Titanium is powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor with 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage (expandable to up to 32GB via microSD). It is also a dual-SIM smartphone, which comes with 1,600mAh battery.
Micromax A116 Canvas HD specifications

• 5-inch (1280 x 720 pixels) HD IPS display
• 1.2 GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6589 processor
• 1GB RAM
• 4GB internal memory, expandable up to 32GB
• 8-megapixel rear camera
• VGA front camera
• Dual-SIM (GSM+GSM)
• 2000 mAh battery
• Android 4.1

Salman Khan will take the stage on February 16 at the Yash Raj Studios to host the event

Superstar Salman Khan will host the 8th edition of Renault Star Guild Awards in perhaps his first stint at hosting an award ceremony.

The 47-year-old will take the stage on February 16 at the Yash Raj Studios to host the event, which commemorates extraordinary achievements in cinema and television.

Some of the famous names from showbiz are expected to attend the event.

It is a joint initiative by the Film and Television Producers Guild and the Wizcraft International Entertainment.

It will be aired on Star Plus

He has done action, comedy and
thriller and now actor-producer Akshay Kumar
is interested in exploring roles with shades of
grey, something that he has done in the past.
"I will keep on doing scripts that I like. When
I did 'Khakee', it was earlier given to Paresh
Rawal. When Rajkumar Santoshi approached
me, I really liked the role. I really liked the
character. So if I like the role, I would like to
do it. I admire villain roles. I would love to
play a villain," Akshay told reporters here
Tuesday. He was celebrating the success of his
recent release 'Special 26', which sees him as
a conman.
When asked whether negative roles would
affect his image, he said: "It's just a film and I
have played villain three times earlier." The
actor had played a negative role in 'Ajnabee'
and even got nominated for Filmfare in the
negative role.
The 45-year-old is one of the blockbuster
stars who is churning out big hits like 'Rowdy
Rathore' and 'Housefull 2'. Another thing on
his wish list is regional cinema. "Regional
films are doing well and I am producing a
Marathi and a Punjabi film as well. If I get
some good subject, then I will work in it as
well," said Akshay who produces films under
Hari Om Productions as well as Grazing Goat
Productions, which he co-owns with Ashvini
Yardi.
He also said that the he is interested in remaking special 26 in regional cinema after the success of special 26 at the box office! Special 26 has collected nearly 33 crores at the box office!!

Pope Benedict XVI announced on Monday that he would resign on February 28 because he was simply too infirm to carry on - the first pontiff to do so in nearly 600 years. The decision sets the stage for a conclave to elect a new pope before the end of March. The 85- year-old pope announced his decision in Latin during a meeting of Vatican cardinals on Monday morning.

He emphasised that carrying out the duties of being pope - the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide - requires "both strength of mind and body". "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my
strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine
ministry," he told the cardinals. "I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only by words and deeds but no less with prayer and suffering.

Deep fried chunks of paneer simmered in a milk based gravy with loads of khada masalas. Serve with dum aloo, mooli ki chutney and steamed rice.

Recipe Cook Time: 20 minutes


Ingredients

1/2 Tbsp oil

3 cloves

1 bay leaf

1 cinnamon stick

1 tsp cumin seeds

3 green cardamom

1 Tbsp sund powder (Dry ginger powder)

1 Tbsp saunf powder

1 glass milk

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

1/4 th glass water

300 gm paneer, cut into large chunks and deep fried

Coriander leaves, chopped, to garnish


Method

In a wok add oil, bay leaf, cloves, green cardamom, cinnamon stick and cumin seeds. Let it splutter.

Add the saunf and sund powder. Saute vigorously. Do not let it burn.

Immediately add the milk and water. Let it come to a boil and add salt and pepper.

Add the deep fried paneer chunks. Let it simmer for 5 minutes.

Garnish with coriander leaves.

Serve with dum aloo, mooli ki chutney and steamed rice.

Note: Let this dish rest for about 20-30 minutes before serving so that the paneer can soak up the milk and becomes soft & flavorful.

Ahmedabad: The final placement process at the premier B-school Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) will begin from Sunday. A record 371 candidates (2011-13 batch) from its flagship Post Graduate Programme (PGP) are seeking placements in 2013.

The final placement-2013 process for PGP, PGP-Agri Business Management (ABM) and Fellow Programme in Management (FPM) of IIM-A would begin on February 10, an official statement said on Saturday.

The institute would follow "Cohort-based system" that was introduced in 2010 which takes longer time but helps in better match-making, ensuring a better fit between the students and the firms.

The institute would follow Cohort-based system to ensure a better fit between the students and the firms.

IIM-A had recently made it to top five B-schools in The Economist ranking in the Asia-Australian region. However, the weighted salary for its candidates in 2012 had dipped as compared to 2011, according to an international survey.

RATING

 (Dance)

Cast:Kay Kay Menon, Prabhu Deva, Salman Yusuf Khan, Lauren Gottlieb, Prince Gupta, Dharmesh Yelande and Mayuresh Wadkar
Director: Remo DSouza

Spoilers ahead


Is ABCD – Anybody Can Dance the Lagaan of dance? Not by a long chalk. Knowledge of the ABCD of choreography – of which there is no dearth at all in this film – certainly doesn't guarantee cinematic excellence and narrative grasp.

India's first-ever 3-D dance film is replete with robust routines that certainly vouch for director Remo D'Souza's undeniable proficiency as a choreographer. The film also has the likes of Prabhu Deva and Ganesh Acharya, besides a host of Dance India Dance participants (Dharmesh Yelande, Salman Yusuff Khan, et al), in the cast. They give it their all.

If only they also had the services of a functioning screenplay and not just been saddled with half-baked plot contrivances to hang their acts on, ABCD might have gone beyond just those first four letters of the alphabet.
There is no denying that the film has its share of infectious energy and that the newcomers in the cast do go about their roles with commendable enthusiasm. It is the sluggish pace of the story-telling that prevents ABCD from rising to any great heights as an entertainer.

It revolves around a television dance show called Dance Dil Se – what else could it have been? The contest has just been won through means fair and fail by a top dance company owned by the flamboyant Jehangir Khan (Kay Kay Menon). The dance master of the troupe, Chennai native Vishnu (Prabhudheva), does not approve of the owner's unsavoury methods. He puts his foot down, so he is thrown out and replaced by an American choreographer.

A slighted Vishnu joins forces with old pal Gopi (Ganesh Acharya). The duo takes a bunch of young slum boys and girls under their wings with the intention of turning them into a team of dance champions. That is what the film is essentially about: in what is projected as an unequal battle, a group of privileged kids who can afford the high fees of Jehangir's academy are pitted against a disadvantaged group of wastrels who have only their talent and Vishnu's tips to fall back upon.

Jehangir believes that "we dance to impress". Vishnu, who feels the rhythms around him, in the leaves on tree branches, in the sea waves and among the flying birds, exhorts his team to "dance to express".
The drama, interspersed with freestyle dance performances that draw moves from varied influences, plays out along predictable lines.

Thrown into the mix are all manner of cliches about puppy love, friendship, bitter rivalries, heartburns, the troubles of an drug addict, parental opposition, tragedies, subterfuge, betrayal and, finally, triumph.

Some of the dance routines, especially the one in which Vishnu's team adopts the guise of circus clowns, are brilliant. A solo performance by Prabhu Deva is, not surprisingly, one of the high points of the film.
He is also the lead actor of ABCD – a first for him in a Hindi film. His endearing accent enhances the authenticity of the character – he is a man who left Chennai 15 years ago to pursue his dreams in Mumbai.
On the acting front, ABCD is Kay Kay Menon's film. Neither the role nor the situations that he finds himself in are etched out with much clarity and purpose. Yet, riding on his magnetic screen presence, he repeatedly rises above the limitations of the script.

It is his character that probably puts it best. "Indians don't have brains," he admonishes his American hire when the latter makes a suggestion ahead of the dance show finale. "Talent doesn't matter here. It is all about packaging. Mediocrity rules."

Take your pick. There is a whole lot of dancing talent on show here. It is the packaging that lets down the performers -- and the viewers.

And why, pray, is this film in 3-D? It isn't about Pina Bausch and Remo D'Souza is no Wim Wenders.

New Delhi: India's differently-abled athletes returned with the largest haul of medals in the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games at Pyeong Chang, South Korea. The Indians won 46 medals - 13 gold, 17 silver and 16 bronze - from among 2,200 athletes from over 120 nations in the Games. India doubled its medal tally from the World Winter Games 2009.
The Games were competed in eight sports - alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, figure skating, short track speed skating, floor hockey and floorball.
The girls floor hockey team picked up the gold while the men's floor hockey team won the silver losing to Taipei 1-2. Bharat Bhatia picked up three gold medals in the Alpine Skiing Giant Slalom event along with a silver and a bronze.

The Alpine Skiing Super Giant Slalom saw 12-year-old Anishka Upadhyay from Lucknow picked up the gold. The team also picked up three silver and three bronze medals in the event.

The 14-year-old Bipasha Mukherji, a first time entrant into Speed Skating, won the gold in the 25 metres and silver in the 55 metres.

RATING

 (Action/Crime)
Thursday, February 07, 2013 

Cast:Akshay Kumar, Kajal Aggarwal, Manoj Bajpayee and Anupam Kher

Director: Neeraj Pandey

SPOILERS AHEAD

One absolutely failsafe way of figuring out the efficacy of a movie is to measure how heavy its runtime weighs on the audience.

Special 26 is actually quite a long film – it is a shade under two and a half hours. But it feels much shorter than it really is.

It glides by with such effortlessness that it leaves behind no unsightly footmarks.

Special 26 is an intelligently scripted, superbly acted, enthralling and believable heist film that is more than just that.

Writer-director Neeraj Pandey’s maiden film, A Wednesday, was a taut thriller that delivered a sharp comment on the nation’s frequent and bloody brushes with the spectre of terrorism.

This one turns the spotlight, if only tangentially, on India’s collective and seemingly never-ending struggle to rid itself of the scourge of rampant corruption.

Special 26, "inspired by true incidents", is set in the first few months of 1987, one of the final years of the long-entrenched licence-permit raj that allowed self-serving politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen to rob the people of the country at will and with impunity.

Without spelling it out in so many words, the film poses the question: a quarter century on, has anything really changed? Special 26 deals with an era that is long gone. Yet the central issue that it raises is still as relevant as ever.

At the heart of the film is an intriguing battle of wits between an honest-to-a-fault CBI officer Waseem Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) on the one hand and a cynical con artist Ajay Vardhan (Akshay Kumar) and his older associate P.K. Sharma (Anupam Kher) on the other.

While one is a committed custodian of a terribly flawed enforcement system, the other two think nothing of exploiting its many loopholes to serve their own get-rich-quick designs.

Waseem is a government functionary willing to slug it out in the field even as he waits patiently for a promised promotion and a better pay packet.

He asks his boss in mock-seriousness: "Can’t make ends meet. Should I start taking bribes?" That, of course, is the last thing on his mind.

Ajay, on the other hand, has a reason to be cut up with the way life has treated him. So he and his accomplices are out to make those who live off the fat of the land pay for their greed.

There is no hero or villain here – both Waseem and Ajay are common men simply going about their lives, each opting for his own methods.

None of the main characters, let alone the minor ones, has detailed back stories that could help the audience grasp exactly where they are coming from. Yet each of them is generally interesting enough to be integral to the jigsaw that the film is.

Neeraj Pandey is particularly adept at laying out his principal spaces and extracting dramatic value from them – the locations and settings play an important part in not only taking the story forward, but also in capturing the shifting moods of the different players.

The cavernous and haphazardly lit CBI office where Waseem works, the huge; red-carpeted hall in which the fake law enforcers conduct the interviews to recruit young intelligence officials for one final mission; the streets and interiors where the raids take place; and the various terraces on/from which the sleuths operate (the director obviously has a fixation for rooftops) are all vital (and not merely incidental) elements in the narrative.

Even the minor characters have clearly identified locations – Joginder (Rajesh Sharma) belongs to Old Delhi, Iqbal (Kishore Kadam) is a Jaipur man and film’s only romantic interest is a teacher whose Mumbai school makes an appearance a few times.

These details of space, even when they are only fleeting, serve the purpose of underlining the slants and motives of the characters.

If there is a weak link in Special 26, it is the somewhat laboured love story involving Ajay and his pretty Mumbai neighbour, Priya (Kajal Aggarwal). Ignore the inevitable love ditties and a big fat wedding number, and there is little else in the film that would appear out of place.

Especially well executed is the daring CBI raid that the film opens with – it is conducted on Republic Day 1987 in the bungalow of a corrupt and cowering minister.

The build-up is steady and the cat-and-mouse game that the real CBI men play with the fake ones assumes increasing urgency as the film hurtles towards the final flashpoint – an audacious sortie on a high-end jewellery store in Mumbai.

Besides the gripping climactic moments – the highlight of which is a surprise last-minute twist – the film has a superbly mounted chase scene in Delhi’s Connaught Place as Waseem and his men zero on a suspect.

Special 26 hinges on four pivotal performances, with Manoj Bajpayee’s star turn being the standout one. It is a classic demonstration of what a consummate actor can achieve when he is at complete ease with the material at his disposal.

The pre-climactic scene between Bajpayee the armed interrogator and Anupam Kher the cornered target is remarkable for both its intensity and wit. The encounter crackles with controlled energy.

Akshay Kumar, shorn of all his superhero trappings, is a revelation. He stands up to the challenge with effort to spare. And Jimmy Shergill, whose invariably steady work often flies under our collective radars, is splendid as the man in uniform who has a score to settle with the conmen.

Just one grouse: wish Rajesh Sharma and Kishore Kadam were given a better deal. They are too good to be wasted in walk-on parts.

Verdict: Special 26 truly special. Not be missed. 

Mumbai: Customers have received unreasonably large mobile bills in the past, but none can be compared to the sheer exorbitance of Vishwanath Shetty's January mobile bill. Kandivli-based businessman Shetty got the shock of his life yesterday when he received a text message from his service provider asking him to pay Rs 13,18,47,813.

Shetty is a subscriber of MTNL's Dolphin mobile network and has been using their postpaid service since the last 10 years. On an average he receives a bill for Rs 1,000 every month. "I am an old customer and enjoy their network. I received a bill for Rs 1,318 last month and I made the payment at MTNL's Kandivli office on Wednesday," said Shetty.

"Yesterday, while returning home from Fort in the train, I received a text message saying I had to pay my January bill. I was just shocked to see the amount. It said bill is due for Rs 13,18,47,813. Make payment immediately to avoid disconnection. Please ignore if already paid, " said Shetty.

Horrified with the over-the-top bill, Shetty proceeded straight to the service provider's Kandivli office. "When I went to the office they said that nothing can be done and the messages are sent from the head office, which is located at Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC). I then approached the senior manager at Kandivli, but he was unable to help," said Shetty.

He added that one of the staffers told him that the bill amount was more than the monthly commission the network earned. Shetty then decided to return home, and contemplated visiting the BKC office. However, after two hours he received another message from the service provider saying: 'Dear customer please ignore previous message. Current amount is 1,318. Inconvenience is regretted, if paid please ignore.'

"I was relieved. But when I narrated the incident to my neighbour later, he said a faint-hearted person might have suffered a mild attack after seeing such a huge bill.'"

The other side

An official spokesperson from MTNL Dolphin said, "The incident took place due to a system error. Similar message were sent to several subscribers. However, when we realised the blunder, we sent another message saying that the previous one should be ignores and inconvenience is regretted. We are probing the technical glitch."

Tokyo: Sony Corp plans to release its new PlayStation 4 home console this year for around $430, giving the successor to the popular PS3 a touch panel control and easy access to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, Japan's Asahi newspaper reported.
Sony's game chief, Andrew House, will reveal the new features at a PlayStation meeting in New York on February 20, the paper said, without saying where it obtained the information.
Sony declined to comment on the report. The gathering in New York is the first major PlayStation meeting in two years. The last time Sony held such an event it revealed the prototype for its handheld Vita. The meeting before that in 2005 came two months after it revealed its concept for the PS3, which sold 70 million units.
It has been more than six years since Sony launched the PS3, a longer gap than between the PS3 and its PS2 predecessor. The gaming market has since been transformed by the rise of tablet PCs and smartphones that are wooing away casual gamers with free or cheap games.
The shift to mobile devices has forced console makers such as Sony, Nintendo Co Ltd and Microsoft Corp to try to find new ways to win back consumers to consoles.
In a sign of the competitive pressure they face, Nintendo last month cut its sales target for the Wii U, successor to its 100 million-selling Wii, to 4 million machines by the end of March from its launch in November, compared with an earlier forecast for 5.5 million.
Shares in Sony, which is due to release its third-quarter results later in the day, last traded up 4.0 per cent at 1,540 yen, in a broader market down nearly 1.0 per cent.

New Delhi: In an attempt to get a foothold in the smartphone market which is already dominated by Google's Android, Canonical Ltd is soon going to release its Ubuntu OS for smartphones. According to a Wall Street Journal report, smartphones running Ubuntu OS are on their way and will be available to customers in October this year.
Mark Shuttleworth, the founder and CEO of Canonical, said that app developers will get access to the OS later this month. Though the comapny has not made it clear that which all smartphones will be seen running the Ubuntu OS, but it has been made clear that application developers will get to play with the operating system on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus.
Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system for computing. CNET reports, the Ubuntu OS, which is being ready for small screens, will use the same drivers as Android smartphones; it will also be able to run on entry-level smartphones.
"Ubuntu for phones will use native apps, which means that developers can create a single app for both the desktop and the PC. This will let users easily move between devices. The OS also favors swiping gestures to reveal navigation strips and overview pages," reports CNET.
According to the Wall Street Journal report, carriers are interested in the smartphone, but it's still not clear that who all are planning to partner with Canonical for the Ubuntu OS.

With a large chin, a prominent slightly arched nose and delicate lips, the "face" of England's King Richard III was unveiled on Tuesday, a day after researchers confirmed his remains had finally been found after 500 years.

A team of university archaeologists and scientists announced on Monday that a skeleton discovered last September underneath a council parking lot in Leicester was indeed that of Richard, the last English king to die in battle, in 1485.

Devotees of Richard, who have long campaigned to restore his reputation, proudly revealed a 3D reconstruction of the long-lost monarch's head on Tuesday, introducing him to reporters as "His Grace Richard Plantagenet, King of England and France, Lord of Ireland".

They said the face appeared sympathetic and noble - not that of a man cast by William Shakespeare as a villainous, deformed monster who murdered his nephews, the "Princes in the Tower".

"I hope you can see in this face what I see in this face and that's a man who is three-dimensional in every sense," said Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society, who led the four-year hunt to find the king's remains.

"It doesn't look like the face of a tyrant. If ... you look into his eyes, it really is like he can start speaking to you," Langley told reporters.

A 3D computer image of the face was first created based on a scan taken of Richard's skeleton after it was found in a shallow grave in the remains of a friary church, now located under Leicester City Council's social services department car park in central England. The image was then made into a plastic model.

"NO SLANTY EYES, MEAN MOUTHS"

The reconstruction is faithful to an anatomical assessment of the skull, and about 70 percent of the face's surface should have less than 2 mm (0.08 inches) of error, according to the professor of craniofacial identification who created it.

No portraits of Richard were used for the main facial reconstruction, although the clothing, wig, and some features such as eyebrows, eye colour and skin colour were based on paintings of the dead king.

The final outcome does bear a strong resemblance to some portraits of Richard - but without some of the less flattering traits that appeared during the reign of Henry VII, his conqueror at the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field, and the Tudor dynasty that followed.

Langley said it was a face without the Tudor caricatures: "No slanty eyes, no mean mouths, no clawed fingers beneath it."

Wearing a black felt hat, with hair down to his shoulders, one of which was slightly higher than the other - in keeping with the discovery his skeleton had a dramatic spinal curvature - the reconstruction depicted Richard, 32 at his death, with delicate, almost feminine features.

His body is due to be re-interred at Leicester Cathedral next year while the bust reconstruction will take pride of place at a visitors' centre to be opened close to the site where the body lay in a small, irregular grave for more than five centuries.

"It was seeing this face which was actually the most important moment for me, the most extraordinary moment," Langley said, explaining the project had two aims: to find the remains to ensure a dignified burial and to reveal the "real Richard".

"For me when this was revealed and I was looking at his face ... that was the biggest moment. Suddenly the aim of seeing the real Richard III, it came true, a miraculous dream really coming true."

The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization and a website created in 2006 by American  educator Salman Khan, a graduate of MIT and Harvard Business School. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of more than 3,900 micro lecturesvia video tutorials stored on YouTube teaching mathematics, history, healthcare, medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, and organic chemistry, American civics, art history, macroeconomics, microeconomics, and computer science.[5] Khan Academy launched a computer science module in September 2012. Khan Academy has delivered over 227 million lessons.
Contents
1 History
2 Technical format
3 Services and vision
4 Educational Impact
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

The founder of the organization, Salman Khan, was born to a Bangladeshi father and Indian mother from Kolkata living in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. His father is from Barisal, Bangladesh. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School. In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. Their popularity there and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management in 2009, and focus on the tutorials (then released under the moniker "Khan Academy") full-time. Bill Gates once said that "I'd say we've moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-many-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day his wife let him quit his job".
The project is funded by donations. Khan Academy can be a 501(c) not-for-profit organization, now with significant backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google. Several people have made US$10,000 contributions; Ann and John Doerr gave $100,000; total revenue is about $150,000 in donations. Additionally, it earned $2,000 per month from ads on the website in 2010 until Khan Academy ceased to accept advertising. In 2010, Google announced it would give the Khan Academy $2 million for creating more courses and for translating the core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages, as part of their Project 10100. In 2013, Carlos Slim made a donation to Khan Academy to expand its Spanish library of videos.

Khan Academy has eclipsed MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) in terms of videos viewed. Its YouTube channel has more than 202 million total views, compared to MIT's 43 million. It also has twice as many subscribers, at more than 429,000.
Khan Academy currently provides various levels of mathematic courses, and Salman Khan has stated that (with the help of volunteers soon they will begin to have topics beyond just math. Such as physics, chemistry, finance, computer science, logic, and grammar.

Khan Academy also had a language release in mid-2012. It was supported by volunteers from Amara and included Indonesian, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Swahili, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Xhosa, Greek, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Bengali, Hindi, Chinese (translated by Eric Hayes).


he Khan Academy started with Khan remotely tutoring one of his cousins interactively using Yahoo Doodle images. Based on feedback from his cousin, additional cousins began to take advantage of the interactive, remote tutoring. In order to make better use of his and their time, Khan transitioned to making YouTube video tutorials. Drawings are now made with a Wacom tablet and the free natural drawing application SmoothDraw 3, and recorded with screen capture software from Camtasia Studio.[23]
All videos (hosted via YouTube) are available through Khan Academy's own website, which also contains many other features such as progress tracking, practice exercises, and a variety of tools for teachers in public schools. Logging into the site can be done via a Google or a Facebook account for those who do not want to create a separate Khan Academy account.
Khan chose to avoid the standard format of a person standing by a whiteboard, deciding instead to present the learning concepts as if "popping out of a darkened universe and into one's mind with a voice out of nowhere" in a way akin to sitting next to someone and working out a problem on a sheet of paper: "If you're watching a guy do a problem [while] thinking out loud, I think people find that more valuable and not as daunting".Offline versions of the videos have been distributed by not-for-profit groups to rural areas in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While the current content is mainly concerned with pre-college mathematics and physics, Khan's long-term goal is to provide "tens of thousands of videos in pretty much every subject" and to create "the world's first free, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything".
Khan Academy also provides a web-based exercise system that generates problems for students based on skill level and performance. The exercise software is available as open source under the MIT license.Khan believes his academy points an opportunity to overhaul the traditional classroom by using software to create tests, grade assignments, highlight the challenges of certain students, and encourage those doing well to help struggling classmates. The tutorials are touted as helpful because, among other factors, they can be paused by students, while a classroom lecture cannot be.
The success of his low-tech, conversational tutorials—Khan's face never appears, and viewers see only his unadorned step-by-step doodles and diagrams on an electronic blackboard—suggests an educational transformation that de-emphasizes lecture-based classroom interactions.
Services and vision

The major components of Khan Academy include:
a video library with over 3800 videos in various topic areas and over 200 million lessons delivered. These videos are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
automated exercises with continuous assessment; as of December 2012, there are 381 practice exercises, mainly in math.
peer-to-peer tutoring based on objective data collected by the system, a process that will be projected in the future.
Not-for-profit partner organizations are making the content available outside YouTube. The Lewis Center for Educational Research, which is affiliated with NASA, is bringing the content into community colleges and charter schools around the United States. World Possible is creating offline snapshots of the content to distribute in rural, developing regions with limited or no access to the Internet.
Khan has stated a vision of turning the academy into a charter school:
This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20 percent of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.
A November 2011 grant of $5 million from Ireland-based The O'Sullivan Foundation, founded by Avego MD and cloud computing pioneer Sean O'Sullivan, will be directed to three initiatives:
Expanding the teaching faculty
Extending content through crowd-sourced contributions following a Wikipedia-style model
Developing curricula to help users blend the content with physical teaching through STEM learning
Recent teaching appointees as a result of the grant include Dr. Steven Zucker, formerly of Pratt Institute, and Dr. Beth Harris, from the SmARThistory project at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to produce art and history content. YouTube video creators Vi Hart and Brit Cruise have also joined the teaching faculty.
A series of summer school camps are planned to start in Northern California from June 2012 to test curricula for real-world schools

Salman Khan has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle,on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), National Public Radio, CNN, and CNN Money.
In 2009, the Khan Academy received the Microsoft Tech Award for education.
In 2010 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill Gates endorsed the learning resource, calling it "unbelievable" and saying "I've been using [Khan Academy] with my kids".
In 2010, Google's Project 10100 provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, to allow for translation of the Khan Academy's content, and to allow for the hiring of additional staff.
In 2011, Salman Khan delivered a TED talk.
On 4 May 2011, Salman Khan appeared on Charlie Rose.
Salman Khan appeared on The Colbert Report on 2 June 2011.
An article featuring Khan Academy and Salman Khan appeared in the August 2011 issue of Wired Magazine.
Salman Khan was featured as a "Big Thinker" on Edutopia discussing flip teaching.
In November 2011, the Khan Academy received a $5 million grant from the O'Sullivan Foundation.
In March 2012, Khan Academy was featured on CBS 60 Minutes
In April 2012, Salman Khan was listed among the Time 100 Most Influential People for 2012
The Khan Academy app features in many 'best educational apps' lists including this one from BBC Active: BBC Active's list of the best educational apps
Educational Impact

There are both critics and proponents of Khan Academy, disagreeing on the actual effectiveness and potential that it has. Some critics have stated that the Khan videos are insubstantial, "repetitive," and "leave kids staring at screens" rather than promoting interaction and active engagement.Although Salman Khan himself has addressed the fact that there is no "consistent, comprehensive plan" for revamping school courses, critics are unsure of the reliability and wide-spread application of Khan Academy.
There are many however, that support Khan Academy for its technological ingenuity and its ability to introduce different educational dynamics. The Khan Academy's ability to freely distribute lessons has demonstrated technology's ability to eliminate economic barriers that prevent effective education. Since Benjamin Bloom's 1984 study on the effectiveness of "one-on-one tutoring," close student-teacher interaction has been aggressively sought after. However, both the cost and the realistic implementation of this ideal has been an issue. Critics promote that the Khan Academy has addressed these issues, through both cost-free nature of the site and its wide accessibility via the internet.