They say that the key to selling a product effectively is to market it well and that Marketing is all about understanding the importance of the 4 P’s, price, product, placement and promotion. So while Apple has been really smart to have been able to sell millions of iPhones for more than a year now using a marketing strategy which highlighted all of the new features of the iPhone while hiding all it’s flaws(there are number e-mails doing the rounds highlighting the some of simple features that the iPhone lacks), google on the other hand has developed it’s brand by providing excellent quality products that no one can resist from using (although most of their products never make it past beta). Also unlike most other brands google hardly spends any money on marketing and announces it’s products only a day or two before it’s launch, thereby creating great curiosity on the day of the launch.

So a couple of weeks back there wasn’t much known about Google’s plans to release a browser, but the next few days are all going to be about Chrome, Google’s New Open Source web browser. Google took the unusual step of announcing its new browser via an online comic, the first page of which is shown below.

Google chrome is built on the WebKit engine which is used by Safari, Adobe AIR, iPhone, and Android. It has a brand new look and feel with the tabs occupying the top of the window, which gives you a really different browser experience. Some of the cool features of chrome are given below while you can check out the rest here.

• Whenever you create a new tab in chrome, instead of bringing up a blank page or home page, it creates a “new tab” page that shows links and images to the most visited pages, recently closed tabs and search engine boxes for favorite sites such as Yelp, Wikipedia and Amazon. In Google Chrome, there is also an “incognito window” feature - which is much like the private browsing feature found in IE8.
• Google Chrome promises to be more stable than IE(which is now the worst browser in the world) and Firefox 3 as each browser tab will run in its own process so a buggy web page won’t take down the entire browser. This also means that if you 6 tabs open in a single window you can see 6 processes running in your Operating system’s process manager and not just one.
• One can very easily move the tabs around and reorder them.Also each tab will have its own controls and its own URL bar, which Google’s developers are calling the ‘Omnibox‘.
• Google Chrome has a private browsing mode - if you create what it calls an “iincognito window” then pages won’t be saved in your history and when you close the window, any related cookies will be deleted.
• Google Chrome will feature a new JavaScript virtual machine. Google says this will be more efficient at running JavaScript-heavy apps such as Gmail, and allow smoother drag-and-drops.

There is wide speculation the chrome is a very serious threat to IE and would soon go on to rule the browser market, however it doesn’t seem that Google wants to compete with Microsoft in anyway because Google’s products are mostly open-source and are far superior than any of Microsoft’s products. By giving away the code, Google is practically begging other browser makers (including the top two–Microsoft and Mozilla) to take pieces from their browser and incorporate them into their own.

Well we had a great time writing this post in chrome and quite frankly it is a really good browser. It’ll take a while for it penetrate the browser market and it would be interesting to see if the big organizations across the world would think of migrating their business and enterprise applications to be compatible with Chrome. Now all we need is a brand new Operating System from Google that would be pre-loaded with all of google’s products and if it works anywhere as good as their search engine or their applications then people won’t even mind paying decent money for it. If you wish to know more about the thinking behind chrome, then checkout the comic here or watch the video below.

Now if you can’t wait to try the chrome, then download it here.

Tags: google, chrome, IE, firefox, mozilla, internet, browser, experience, web, rocks, marketing

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A DelhiPlanet Health And Wellness Exclusive, In Association With Queen Yogini

Following up on the first part of this series(read here) we are back with the last part, where Kristin will share a really simple and effective method on how to practice meditation, which is one of the best ways to achieve a balanced mind.

Here is a how-to guide to meditation that I read recently in Positive Thinking magazine (a little-known but great publication!). I like to breathe in and out through my nose only when I meditate but do what works best for you.

Meditation 101

1. Find a quiet place where you won’t be interrupted. Wear loose-fitting clothing and sit cross-legged on a chair or cushion, or on the floor. If you have time constraints, set an alarm to ring softly.
2. Keep your back, neck and head straight. Leave your eyes unfocused and half open (I like to close mine completely). Get comfortable and relaxed and minimize movement.
3. Breathe from your belly, not your chest. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Try to become aware of your breathing, fixing your attention on the inhalation and exhalation, how the air feels entering and exiting your body.
4. The goal of meditation is to become fully aware of the present moment. As you breathe, watch your thoughts come and go. Don’t fixate on any idea, thought or memory. Simply take note of them and let them fade. If you get distracted, retrain your focus on your breathing.
5. Keep breathing and refocusing for as long as you need. Gradually open your eyes, look around you and slowly stand up — refreshed!

I’ve learned that I don’t have to get up at 5 a.m. to mediate; I can meditate any time, any place and it’s truly making a difference in my life. I hope you give it a try.

Tags: mind, control, meditation, art, health, wellness, yoga, fitness, kids, body, kristin

Note: The above has been published by DelhiPlanet in association with and with explicit permission from Kristin Mcgee and originally published by Kristin on findyourdetour.com. Any reproduction without proper approval and acknowledgment is prohibited.

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On the night of August 28^th, 2008, the 45^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s I have a dream speech, Illinois Senator Barrack Obama formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the November, 2008 US Presidential elections. “Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story — of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren’t well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to. It is that promise that has always set this country apart.“, Obama said before a raptouros crowd of more than 84,000 at Denver’s Invesco Field.

Just when you thought that the 2008 US Elections would turn out to be similar to the previous contests after New York Senator, Hillary Clinton dropped out. Thereby ending a probablity of the United States having a female President, Arizona Senator and Republican presidential candidate John McCain today made a decision that would ensure that this year’s election would have a result that would make history.

This happened when Republican John McCain made a surprise choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, adding a political unknown to the presidential ticket who could help him appeal to women voters. Palin, 44, a self-described “hockey mom,” is a conservative first-term governor of Alaska with strong anti-abortion views, a record of reform and fiscal conservatism and an outsider’s perspective on Washington. “She’s exactly who I need. She’s exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second,” McCain told a roaring crowd of 15,000 supporters in Dayton, Ohio (Source).

The thinking behind this move is that picking Palin as McCain’s running mate would attract female voters and Hillary Clinton supporters. While it seems to be a good strategic move, there is doubt over whether it would actually work since the only thing common between her and Hillary Clinton is that they are female. Both of them share very different views and it is unlikely that Hiliary Clinton supporters would be swayed just because the republicans have a female candidate for Vice President. This year’s election now, promises to be a very closely fought race that is going to be keenly followed by people all over the world, given the amount of publicity and promotion that it has attracted.

Both the presidential candidates have made good use of the web and social media with each having their own channels on youtube and their own social networks. Barack Obama has my.barackobama.com and John McCain has McCainSpace, which just relaunched with a new design from KickApps after failing massively on its own. The new McCainSpace design itself is functional enough, giving McCain supporters a central place to discuss election issues via blogs, forums, videos, and photos.

So whether the republicans win or the democrats, one thing is for certain that this election will make history. The US would soon either have it’s first ever Black President or it’s first ever female Vice President who could even become the President, given the fact that McCain is much older than the past three generations of American Presidents.

Tags: obama, mcain, sarah, palin, united, states, elections, 2008, president, potus, flotus, barack, john

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DP Money Watch is back after a long break, this time with new and improved stock tips and investment advice. We start of with a review of Genus Power Infrastructures.

Genus Power Infrastructures (Genus) is a ISO 9001:2000 certified Power Infrastructure company which manufactures electronic meters, power inverters, closed loop metering solutions and Hybrid microcircuits. Its an MNC in the making with offices in USA, Singapore, China, India and manufacturing facilities in Africa ,Brazil and India.

The Company’s Financial performance shows a robust growth of more than 80 % YOY in Net profits. Q1 in FY09 showed a 20% growth in the top and bottom lines as compared to FY08. (Check the table for figures )

Results reproduced from BseIndia

The Company has orders worth Rs. 450 crores and another Rs. 500 crore worth of bids are in the pipeline.

Buy is recommended at CMP of Rs.310. Now is a great time to buy this stock as a long term investment as it has fallen to 30% of its all time High price of Rs. 1050.

This report has been prepared solely for information purposes and the information contained herein may not be deemed to be an investment advice. Such information is impersonal and not tailored to the investment needs of any specific person. The information contained herein is not a complete analysis of every material fact representing any company, industry or security. The views expressed may change. While the information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, no responsibility (or liability) is accepted for the accuracy of its contents. Investors are advised to satisfy themselves before making any investments and should consult with and rely upon their own advisors whether and how to use such information in making any investment decision.

Tags: genus, power, long, term, accumulate, dividend, profit, stocks, equity, buy

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Imagine if you had 3,870 euros(USD $5,720 or Rs 2,47,883) to spare and spend, what would you do with it ? Take a vacation to Antarctica, invest the money, pay off your bills, learn something new, start a small business etc etc. There’s a lot of stuff that one can do with $5,000 (Cnn Money lists some responses from people on what they would do with $5k here) and it would take sometime to figure out as to what to do with it.

But no matter how well you may plan something, there is always a chance of something going wrong, like it happened for a Spanish couple going around Norway.

A Spanish couple’s language difficulties cost them several thousand dollars after they mispronounced their destination giving instructions to a Norwegian taxi driver. The couple, who were touring Norway’s fjords, wanted to travel to Olden on the country’s west coast. Instead their taxi took them to Halden, hundreds of kilometres away, a trip that cost them 3870 euro.

The pair in their 50s were on a cruise of the fjords when they had to spend a short time in hospital while on a stopover in Stavanger, the Verdens Gang (VG) newspaper reported. Once out of hospital the two decided to rejoin the ship in Olden. But their taxi driver misunderstood and took them to Halden, 560 kilometres east of Stavanger. Oblivious to the mistake, the happy holidaymakers paid the 1875 euro fare ($3205) and added a generous tip to boot. But after spending the night in a hotel, they discovered there was no cruiseship in the Halden port. So the couple had to take another taxi to Olden which was 610 kilometers away and they ended up paying another 15,300 kroner in the process (Source).

So while the couple probably had more than USD $5,000 to spare they just spent the money in two taxi rides. Talk about planning what to do with your money.

Tags: taxi, norway, holiday, spanish, couple, cruise, costly, money, olden

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A DelhiPlanet Health And Wellness Exclusive, In Association With Queen Yogini Kristin McGee

“I Don’t need to meditate, I have a good life.“, “Nah, Meditation is for losers. I like to pump it up“. Try talking to a teenager or a young adult in his 20’s about the benefits of meditation and it’s wondrous effects and you’ll probably end up hearing a response like that. Well, the whole purpose of doing meditation is to become more aware and alert, so that one can always live in the moment. Kids and teenagers are already like that and so they see no reason to learn this art. However as we progress in life, it becomes increasingly difficult to stay focused and that’s where the power of meditation comes into the picture.

Let’s hear more about the the Power of Meditation from Queen Yogini Kristin McGee who has mastered this art over many years.

Every night I go to bed with the thought that I’ll walk up at the crack of dawn and meditate for 30 minutes to start off my day. Why haven’t I made this a reality yet? Well, for one thing, I’m already up at 5:30 most mornings. But I really, really, really want to have a consistent meditation practice.

There are so many benefits to having a meditation practice. Especially now in our over-stimulated society, where crackberries and instant messaging is the norm, it is even more important to rein in the senses and quiet the mind. The physical asana practice of yoga is only one step in getting to a state of real genuine internal peace and happiness. Physical asana practice actually falls right before meditation in Patanjali’s eightfold path to enlightenment, making meditation even more important than the physical postures. Physical yoga as we know it is really just a way to open the body enough so we can sit still comfortably and focus on the breath and bring ourselves into a state of meditative awareness.

Meditation isn’t about zoning out or getting rid of all of our thoughts, it is actually being completely awake and aware to the present moment. We sit and witness our thoughts, then let them go and come back to our breath, which is happening in the here and now. It is what happens when you are completely involved in something and you lose track of time. Most children are moving meditations, i.e., they do what they feel like in the immediate moment. As adults we are constantly monitoring ourselves and thinking about the past or the future. Meditation teaches us to be still and be in the present, which is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

No wonder meditation is said to help people perform better on tests of alertness and reaction time or lower blood pressure and increase life span. Who doesn’t want to live longer when they are truly enjoying each moment of their life!

Next week, we’ll be back with Part 2 of this series where Kristin will share her knowledge on how one should practice meditation. So stay tuned to this space.

Tags: mind, control, meditation, art, health, wellness, yoga, fitness, kids, body, kristin

Note: The above has been published by DelhiPlanet in association with and with explicit permission from Kristin Mcgee and originally published by Kristin on findyourdetour.com. Any reproduction without proper approval and acknowledgment is prohibited.

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In the DC Comics Aquaman, is the “Lord Of The Sea” or the “Superman Of The Oceans“. Aquaman has the ability to extract oxygen from water, allowing him to ‘breathe‘ while being submerged. He can swim at very high speeds and he also has the telepathic ability to communicate with/command oceanic life.

While Aquaman is ficiton and a creation of the human imagination, Michael Phelps is a real human who can easily be a contender for the title of ‘Aquaman‘, if there ever were such a competition to be held. After his record haul of 8 golds in the ongoing Beijing Olympics he is being hailed as the greatest Olympian of all time. Although most experts would strongly dismiss any suggestions of Phelps being the greatest (the honor being credited to Carl Lewis) he has certainly triggered a worldwide hysteria with his amazing achievement making this year’s Olympics an event that would be remembered for a long time.

Just like Aquaman, Michael Phelps is a man built to swim. It is believed that he has a crazy addiction of always needing to be close to water. From the year 1997 to 2004, Phelps spent only 5 days without being in the water atleast once. At 6 feet 4 inches, 195 pounds, size 14 feet, broad shoulders and slim hips he possesses a classic swimmer’s physique or as his coach Bob Bowman would say ‘an aquatic body‘ . He has also been gifted with another unique physical ability, he has a wingspan of 6 feet 7 inches, that is 3 inches more than his height (quite evident from the picture above).

Michael Phelps also has some other natural gifts, like the ability to train 5 hours a day, 6 days a week and digest a daily 12,000 calorie diet without putting on an ounce of fat. Details about his diet have spread all over the media and it’s just unbelievable to see that he can consume such a diet and still compete in the way he does. If you haven’t read about the ‘Phelps Diet‘, so far then you might want to have a look at it now:

Breakfast: three fried egg sandwiches, with cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, fried onions and mayonnaise, followed by three chocolate-chip pancakes; a five-egg omelette; three sugar-coated slices of French toast and a bowl of grits (a maize-based porridge), washed down with two cups of coffee.

Lunch: half a kilogram (one pound) of enriched pasta; two large ham and cheese sandwiches on white bread smothered with mayonnaise, washed down by energy drinks.

Dinner: Another half-kilogram of pasta, perhaps with a carbonara sauce, followed by a large pizza and more energy drinks.

Now that’s a diet that only a swimmer can consume given the fact the swimming definitely works up the appetite. This year’s Olympics saw Phelps and his team win all the swimming events by comfortable margins except for the men’s 100m butterfly event where he snatched victory by one-hundredth of a second over Milorad Cavic of Serbia (catch the video below).

It took 32 years and 8 olympics for a Phelps to beat Mark Spitz’s record and it is likely that it would take atleast another 8 olympics for anyone else to match phelp’s record. Congratulations Michael on this great achievement, your feat will certainly inspire a lot of kids to take to swimming as a sport.

Tags: phelps, swimming, beijing, olympics, diet, records, comics, aquaman, superman, aquatic, water

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Remember the 1994 Arnold Schwarzenegger & Danny DeVito starrer Junior which revolved around the world’s first human male pregnancy. In the film Alex Hesse(Arnold) and Larry Arbogast(Devito) are working on a new drug which will reduce the chances of a woman’s body rejecting an embryo and thus causing a miscarriage. When their research funding is withdrawn, and human experimentation is denied to them, they decide to test the drug by breifly impregnating Hesse. Hesse however becomes attached to “his” unborn baby and decides to go through with the entire pregnancy.

Cut to the present, and you have Mr. Thomas Beatie as the worlds first pregnant man. Mr Beatie, who was born a woman but is legally a man after undergoing partial sex change procedures ten years ago, fathered his child Susan Juliette with sperm from an anonymous donor. He was able to do so because he had kept his reproductive organs during the sex change procedure. Today his wife Nancy breastfeeds the baby girl, using hormones and a breast pump to stimulate lactation.

Mr Beatie thought of carrying the baby as his wife Nancy did not have the ability to conceive after a hysterectomy. The bearded Mr Beatie was born a girl and named Tracy Lagondino. She however got her sex changed and later as a man he married Nancy. To conceive, Mr Beatie stopped the bimonthly testosterone injections he was receiving as part of his sex change. The couple later on bought anonymous donor vials from a sperm bank and, struggling to find a doctor willing to help them, resorted to home insemination with a syringe bought from a vet that is typically used to feed birds. “I actually opted not to do anything to my reproductive organs because I wanted to have a child one day. I see pregnancy as a process and it doesn’t define who I am,” Mr Beatie told the TV talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in April. “I feel it’s not a male or female desire to have a child. It’s a human need. I’m a person and I have the right to have a biological child,” he said (Source).

Well, Mr Beatie and his wife have made in excess of $500,000 from the publicity that they have attracted and have decided to have more children in the future with Mr.Beatie as the carrier. Talk about reality imitating fiction, it definitely doesn’t get closer than this. Catch a video of the man himself below.

Tags: arnold, devito, pregnancy, thomas, beatie, publicity, money, oprah

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A DelhiPlanet Health And Wellness Exclusive, In Association With Queen Yogini Kristin McGee

Welcome to the first article of DP Health and Wellness. In today’s article Kristin will share her thoughts on why it is important to always sit with an erect spine and how rare it is to find people doing so in day to day life. Read on to find out why she believes that “Shrinking is Stinking“.

The other night on my walk home after teaching yoga class I was wondering at what point in our life do we start to shrink? I mean it’s so hard to sit up straight and tall. Even the teenagers I teach slump in class and complain about how difficult it is to sit up and lengthen through the spine. My friend and fellow Pilates instructor, Carey, always says, “Shrinking is Stinking,” and when I did reformer lessons with her she’d force me to lengthen through my waistline and spine.

Joseph Pilates famous quote is “you’re only as young as your spine is flexible.” And Marianne Williamson says in her famous speech, “There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” And yet I look around in class and on the subway and at restaurants and everyone sinks in to their lower backs and into themselves. In Chinese medicine, our kidney area in that lower back region is said to hold our chi, or vital life energy. No wonder we’re all tapped out and fatigued after squashing our battery packs all day long. So many of my private clients complain over and over about low-back pain and tight hips.

The most beautiful thing about the practice of yoga is it’s all about length, lift, growth and breathing. How can we take deep full breaths when were slouched forward and slumping in our seats? I tell my students if you learn nothing else but to sit up straight then my work is done, because it is so true in life “shrinking is stinking“. Who wants to shrivel up and be small? It is so rewarding to stand up straight and lengthen through the spine and feel yourself alive and long and constantly growing, not deteriorating. Look at babies sit in their cribs — they sit up perfectly straight without any effort, and they are happy, alive and growing. I think it’s so important to always keep a childlike viewpoint, open mind, long spine and to never stop reaching for the stars.

So Lengthen Up, Revitalize and Go After Your Dreams.

Tags: body, spine, health, wellness, yoga, fitness, kids, body, kristin

Note: The above has been published by DelhiPlanet in association with and with explicit permission from Kristin Mcgee and originally published by Kristin on findyourdetour.com. Any reproduction without proper approval and acknowledgment is prohibited.

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