Ishmeet Singh the Voice of India winner Dies By Drowning

The Winner of the famous singing competition "Star Voice of India" Died on Tuesday apparently by drowning.
His uncle Charankamal Singh confirmed the report.His father, Gurpinder Singh was shocked and said he knew nothing while his mother was too shocked by the sudden demise of their beloved son who had turned a celebrity at the tender age of 19, that she didn't even shed a tear.

Ishmeet singh was drowned on tuesday in a swimming pool while he went to it just for frolicking. Mystery surrounds this incident as apparently he went in the kids section and was drowned in the more deeper adult section. The company Big Events' CEO said his friends advised him not to go till the deeper end.


It has been confirmed by his family that he didn't know how to swim, at least he never swam before them.
Indeed a sad end to a promising career in a suspicious manner.
We certainly hope that an investigation is conducted to ascertain if any foul play was not involved.

FCC Approves New PlayStation 3 Console

A new PlayStation 3 console was approved by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission last week, according to the agency's online filings database.No information on the new model, number CECHL01, is available at present from the filing because Sony was granted short-term confidentiality on the papers but it is likely the 80G-byte version announced earlier this month during the E3 games show in Los Angeles. The console is due on sale in the next couple of months and will replace the current 40G-byte model.

Sony's filing to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was made because the FCC is the radio regulator in the U.S. and as such all new products that use radio must be submitted to the organization for approval before they can be sold.

The PlayStation 3 includes both 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Four Patches Released By Real Network For Critical Bugs in Multimedia Player

RealNetworks has issued four critical patches for several versions of its RealPlayer running on Windows, Linux and Apple's Mac OS X.The flaws could allow a hacker to run malicious code on a PC or cause the computer to reveal information, according to an advisory from Secunia, a security vendor based in Denmark.

RealPlayer is an application that plays audio and video streamed over the Internet.

RealNetworks has published a table detailing which vulnerabilities affect certain player versions on the different platforms. Some users will need to download an entire new version of the application, while others may be able to just download patches.

One of the problems involves the handling of frames in SWF (Shockwave Flash) files due to a design error, which can cause a heap-based buffer overflow, Secunia said.

Another problem causes a stack-based buffer overflow when a media file is imported using an ActiveX control, Microsoft's technology that adds extra functionality to Web pages.

A third flaw is described by RealPlayer as allowing local resources to be accessed. The fourth also involves ActiveX, where a timing issue with "Controls", "Console", or "WindowName" properties can be maliciously manipulated to corrupt RealPlayer's memory, Secunia said.

Secunia ranked the flaws as "highly critical," the vendor's second-highest ranking of risk. The flaws were found by Peter Vreugdenhil, Elazar Broad, Dyon Balding of Secunia and another anonymous researcher, Secunia said.

Ex Googleers Evolve New Search Engine

Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own systemShe believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages.

Cuil won't divulge the formula it has developed to cover a wider swath of the Web with far fewer computers than Google. And Google isn't ceding the point: Spokeswoman Katie Watson said her company still believes its index is the largest.

After getting inquiries about Cuil, Google asserted on its blog Friday that it regularly scans through 1 trillion unique Web links. But Google said it doesn't index them all because they either point to similar content or would diminish the quality of its search results in some other way. The posting didn't quantify the size of Google's index.

A search index's scope is important because information, pictures and content can't be found unless they're stored in a database. But Cuil believes it will outshine Google in several other ways, including its method for identifying and displaying pertinent results.

Rather than trying to mimic Google's method of ranking the quantity and quality of links to Web sites, Patterson says Cuil's technology drills into the actual content of a page. And Cuil's results will be presented in a more magazine-like format instead of just a vertical stack of Web links. Cuil's results are displayed with more photos spread horizontally across the page and include sidebars that can be clicked on to learn more about topics related to the original search request.

Finally, Cuil is hoping to attract traffic by promising not to retain information about its users' search histories or surfing patterns — something that Google does, much to the consternation of privacy watchdogs.

Cuil is just the latest in a long line of Google challengers.

The list includes swaggering startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. this month.

Even after investing hundreds of millions of dollars on search, both Microsoft and Yahoo Inc. have been losing ground to Google. Through May, Google held a 62 percent share of the U.S. search market followed by Yahoo at 21 percent and Microsoft at 8.5 percent, according to comScore Inc.

Google has become so synonymous with Internet search that it may no longer matter how good Cuil or any other challenger is, said Gartner Inc. analyst Allen Weiner.

"Search has become as much about branding as anything else," Weiner said. "I doubt (Cuil) will be keeping anyone at Google awake at night."

Google welcomed Cuil to the fray with its usual mantra about its rivals. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space," Watson said. "It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."

But this will be the first time that Google has battled a general-purpose search engine created by its own alumni. It probably won't be the last time, given that Google now has nearly 20,000 employees.

Patterson joined Google in 2004 after she built and sold Recall, a search index that probed old Web sites for the Internet Archive. She and Power worked on the same team at Google.

Although he also worked for Google for a short time, Monier is best known as the former chief technology officer of AltaVista, which was considered the best search engine before Google came along in 1998. Monier also helped build the search engine on eBay's online auction site.

The trio of former Googlers are teaming up with Patterson's husband, Costello, who built a once-promising search engine called Xift in the late 1990s. He later joined IBM Corp., where he worked on an "analytic engine" called WebFountain.

Costello's Irish heritage inspired Cuil's odd name. It was derived from a character named Finn McCuill in Celtic folklore.

Patterson enjoyed her time at Google, but became disenchanted with the company's approach to search. "Google has looked pretty much the same for 10 years now," she said, "and I can guarantee it will look the same a year from now."

Mountaneers Rescued From Nanaga Parbat By Pak Army Helicopters

An army helicopter saved two Italian climbers from the Nanga Parbat Mountain, a Pakistani official said. Walter Nones and Simon Kehrer had been struggling to descend from Nanga Parbat since July 16, when fellow climber Karl Unterkircher fell to his death. Tourism official Shaukat Zaman said the helicopter rescued the two climbers Thursday and they were being transported to the region's main town of Gilgit. The military-run helicopter rescue service, Askari Aviation, confirmed the operation on its website.

zCover Comes Up With iSAglove 3G cases for iPhone

zCover on Friday announced that it is shipping its iSAglove 3G cover for the iPhone. It costs $29.99 and joins zCover's line of iPhone accessories.

The iSAglove is a silicone cover for the iPhone that comes in black, grey and ice clear. It features reinforced corners to support a natural hand position in horizontal mode along with a reinforced layer of silicone that works as a "crash cushion" if the iPhone is dropped or falls.

A flip cover protects the dock connector from getting contaminated with sand, dust and dirt, and the case has been enhanced with the 3G revision, with an easier to press sleep/wake button, tooling for the new iPhone 3G's sensors, volume button and ring/silent switch protection and more.

The "Classic Pack" includes to cover, screen protect film and a disposable screen polishing cloth.

Rescuers Spot italian Climbers On Nanga Parbat

A rescue helicopter has spotted two Italian mountaineers stranded on one of the world's deadliest peaks in northern Pakistan, the Italian embassy said on Saturday.

The two climbers -- Simon Kehrer and Walter Nones -- had been stranded on Nanga Parbat, also known as Killer Mountain, since early this week when their colleague, Karl Unterkircher, fell into a crevasse and died.

"They have been spotted. They have also been reached with some equipment, food and other things. We dropped them a bag with some equipment," Italian embassy spokesman Oddo Sergio told Reuters.

However, he said bad weather and the sharp incline were hampering efforts to rescue them.

"Weather conditions are quite bad over there, quite uncomfortable. So helicopters are not able to get close to them," he said. "They are on a wall of the mountain. It's a spot where helicopter is not able to get them. It's too high and too vertical," he added.

Nanga Parbat is the world's ninth-highest peak. Its name in the Urdu language means Naked Mountain.

The 26,660 feet (8,126 meters) high peak at the western end of the Himalayas was first conquered by German Buhl, of Germany, in 1953 after 31 people died attempting it.

Since then more have died on its slopes and fewer people try to climb it because it is regarded as technically one of the most difficult mountains to climb.

Microsoft cuts Xbox 360 model price

Microsoft said on Sunday it is cutting the price of its 20-gigabyte Xbox 360 video game consoles and rolling out a model with three times the memory space to take its place.

The US technology giant's announcement comes two days before the official start of a major Electronic Entertainment Expo at which videogame console makers will be striving to portray their hardware as superior.

Microsoft said it will trim 50 dollars (US) from Xbox 360 models with 20 gigabytes in the United States or Canada, cutting prices to 299 dollars.

An upgraded Xbox 360 Pro model with 60 gigabytes of memory will hit markets in those same two countries in August with 349-dollar price tags, according to the Redmond, Washington-based firm.

The reasoning for the boost in memory capacity is people's interest in storing digital photos, video, music and other data on gaming consoles which are essentially entertainment computers connected to television sets.

"We know consumers need more and more space to store the amazing digital content Xbox 360 offers, and we're giving it to them at no extra charge,' said Albert Penello, Xbox director of product management Albert Penello.

Sony maintains it has no intention of cutting prices on PlayStation 3 models, which sell in the United States for 400 0r 500 dollars depending on memory capacity.

Nintendo will be defending Wii's crown as the world's most popular videogame console, which is priced at 250 dollars and is snatched from shelves as soon as it arrives in stores.

The big three console makers along with videogame software makers large and small will be showing off their newest creations at the Expo in Los Angeles during the coming wee

Apple's iPhone 3G hits shelves; Extras Store also Opened

Apple's international launch of iPhone 3G began in New Zealand and Japan on Friday, as a freshly-opened ‘App Store’ tempted fans with independently created mini-programs for the coveted devices.

New Zealanders were the first to be able to buy the much-hyped iPhone 3G when three stores opened just after midnight, and Tokyo followed shortly afterward.

Sales of iPhone 3G models begin later in the day in 21 other countries.

On the eve of the iPhone 3G launch, Apple opened an App Store stocked with hip, fun or functional programs crafted by third-party developers.

The shop, accessible through Apple's online iTunes store, opened with more than 500 mini-programs, many of them free.

Mini-applications include games, photo-sharing and mobile versions of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and eBay.

"Facebook is even cooler on the iPhone 3G, with the ability to discover friends nearby, or to effortlessly take pictures and upload them instantly to Facebook," said the social-networking website's founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Game makers are capitalising on touch-screen and motion-sensing technology in iPhones.

"The touch and tilt controls are natural and easy to learn, making gaming even more inviting, creative and rewarding," said Sega product development vice president David Cobb.

A version of the Japanese company's "Super Monkey Ball" tailored for iPhones is in the App Store.

"Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch open up the world of games to an entirely new audience," Cobb said.

Applications crafted for iPhones will also work on iPod Touch models, which are basically iPhones without the telephone capabilities.

Brian Greenstone, president of computer game maker Pangea Software, called the iPhone platform "truly ground-breaking."

Software creators are allowed to set their own prices, as long as figures end with 99 cents. Apple keeps 30 percent of sales prices to pay for operating the store.

Apple senior vice president of world-wide product marketing Philip Schiller said the iPhone "represents a new software platform for developers, combining the most advanced mobile operating system, sophisticated developer tools and a breakthrough way for developers to wirelessly sell and distribute their applications."

Apple released an iPhone kit to outside developers in March in an effort to make the hot devices even more popular and wrest market share from smart phone market powerhouse Blackberry.

The kit lets programmers customize programs for the touch-screen mobile devices combining telephone, video, music, and Internet connectivity.

Apple vets software creations before making them available exclusively at the App Store.

Apple will sell iPhone 3G models in the United States for 199 dollars and 299 dollars, depending on memory capacity. The original eight-gigabyte iPhone was priced at 600 dollars when it debuted in June last year.

IPhone 3G prices in some countries will be as low as one euro (1.57 dollars) provided customers purchase multi-year service plans that translate into lucrative long-term revenue streams for carriers.

Apple is continuing its strategy of locking iPhones exclusively to one telecom carrier per country.

Apple and numerous technology websites have posted online tips on how to navigate Friday's anticipated buying frenzy.

Auckland student Jonny Gladwell, 22, had been first in line outside the Auckland store since Tuesday after being dared by friends who promised to pay for his phone if he lasted the distance in the queue.

"I'm going to go home, put this on charge, have a play with it and have a nice big sleep," Gladwell told Television New Zealand after securing one of the first iPhones sold in the world