Browsing: Google

Leila Chirayath Janah, 29, recently bagged a whopping $ 1. 25 million in funding from Google for her company, Samasource. Add that in, and this small, non-profit has got close to $ 5 million from several major giant corporations including Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Ebay, Cisco, Facebook, LinkedIn and even the US State Department.

Why have so many blue chip organizations put their faith in this little-known non-profit?

The idea behind Samasource is audacious – that the poorest of the poor are equal to the larger world community and quite capable of doing good work when they are entrusted with it, rather than just being given handouts and pity. In fact, Sama means equal in Sanskrit and it is Leila’s way of bringing the poor into the hi-tech world.

For all those separated by artificial, manmade borders, here is a love story, a story of friendship which can make you cry – in a happy sort of way. And guess who made it happen? Google! Really, I think we are getting over-dependent on Google to help us in our search for knowledge, words, images, addresses, cat videos – and now even in our search for emotional well-being.

Never knew a Google commercial could make us cry, reach deep down to our better selves, to our aspirations for reunion and healing. The Big G seems to have become an indispensable part of our lives.

Great music lives on forever, and great artists are never lost. If you look at the Google doodle today, it’s a tribute to the legendary performer Freddie Mercury who died at the age of 45. The doodle opens out into a wonderful video which captures the essence of Freddie Mercury perfectly – check it out!

Mercury, who has been hailed as Britain’s first Asian Rock Star and one of the greatest singers of all time, would have been 65 today. This charismatic performer has a huge fan following all over the world.

A genome test—which would have cost over a billion dollars two decades ago—will soon cost less than $100. Advances in genome testing, it is postulated, may make it possible to create personalized drug formulations.

When the iPad was first announced I predicted that it would be a game changer. I really believed that this cool new device would solve the world’s technology problems and reduce the number of electronic gadgets I had to carry around.
It just doesn’t do its magic for me any longer. Here’s why…

Introducing a new blog by Vivek Wadhwa on technology, immigration and more…
Meet the new Indian techies. Meena believes that if she works hard enough, she can build her own “big business”—maybe a Google. Girls with the ambition and confidence to enter the tech world are rare even in Silicon Valley but Meena lives in a slum in New Delhi.
WATCH THE VIDEOS

If you went on the Google home page today, you’d have to rub your eyes and wonder whether you were still on Planet Earth. Google has been renamed Topeka! Then you realize – right, its April 1 and this is Google’s idea of an April Fools’ Day prank. As you must remember, some days back the city of Topeka in Kansas did Google the supreme honor of actually renaming itself Google and this has so touched this Jagannath of all internet activity that it decided to change its world-famous name to Topeka – for a day!

Gandhiji, with the passage of time, has become modern and totally relevant to our times. I think for the new generation he’s becoming cool, someone they can really look up to. No less an arbitrator of cool than Google had a tribute to Gandhiji today and millions and millions of Googlers saw that iconic, bespectacled face entwined with the Google name.