Maruti Kizashi launched in the early 2010 (India)

Maruti is now planning to enter the D segment of cars with its newoffering Kizashi. Expected to be launched in the early 2010, the car is expected to compete with the likes of Honda Civic, Toyota Corrola, Skoda Octavia and the upcoming Volkswagen Jetta. The Kizashi concept car was showcased at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2007 and at the Auto Expo in New Delhi in 2008. Expected to be priced around Rs. 10 lakh, it will have many innovative features, and is likely to be powered by a 2 litre turbo diesel engine. Kizashi is also likely to have a sixspeed transmission and large 21 inch alloys. The car is likely to be produced at the company's Manesar facility in Haryana.

Maruti Kizashi is expected to be the first all-wheel drive sedan in the luxury D segment. The car will carry an advanced four-valve turbo-fired two-litre petrol, Euro V engine, which will also be premiered at the same time. Kizashi is also likely to boast the first six-speed transmission from the Suzuki stable. A crossover sports sedan, Kizashi, which depicts an athlete in motion, is likely to sport 21” wheels. Maruti Kizashi is expected to roll out from its Manesar plant. Kizashi will be positioned in the Rs 10 lakh-plus price band and will compete with the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Sonata, Skoda Octavia and Volkswagen Jetta besides other cars that will debut in the next three years

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE SAFETY
Airbag: 8
Parking SensorsYes:
Fog Lamp:Yes
Traction Control:Yes
EBD:Yes
ABS:Yes
ESP:Yes

COBOL is fifty years old today

The computer language that caused people to rack their brains and reach for their tranquilizers is 50 years old today
COBOL stands for Common Business Oriented Language and despite its reputation, wasn't designed by sadists to inflict pain on programmers. Ihe name was agreed, according to Micro Focus, during a meeting of the Short Range Committee on 18 September 1959.

Micro Focus said it surveyed a number of people earlier this year and found only 18 percent had ever heard of COBOL. Yet there are an estimated 200 billion lines of COBOL in existence and hundreds more are created every day.

According to Mike Gilpin, an analyst at Forrester Research, a staggering 32 percent of enterprises still use COBOL for development or maintenance. "COBOL is one of the few languages written in the last 50 years that's readable and understandable," he said. "Modern programming languages are ridiculously hard to understand."

Here's Hello World in COBOLese:

IDENTIFICATION DIVISION.
PROGRAM-ID. HELLO-WORLD.
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
DISPLAY 'Hello, world'.
STOP RUN.

I dont even know what COBOL is... heheheheh

Sony 32GB MicroVault Click

The Sony MicroVault Click USB Flash disk is now available in a 32GB of storage space. It doesn’t have a cap to lose and features trouble-free plug & play operation. Sony claims that the device can store more than the allocated space using the unique Virtual Expander data compression software pre-loaded onto each unit. The Sony 32GB MicroVault Click will come in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and 32GB capacities.

First rocky exoplanet is identified

The planet - discovered in February this year - has a mass five times that of Earth, with a radius almost double Earth's, giving it a similar density. Gliese 581 e, discovered arlier this year is believed to be icy, and most exoplanets are known to be gaseous giants like Jupiter.
"This is science at its thrilling and amazing best," said team leader Didier Queloz. "We did everything we could to learn what the object discovered by the Corot satellite looks like and we found a unique system."
The planet, dubbed Corot-7b, orbits a rather unremarkable star, now known as Corot-7. It's located towards the constellation of Monoceros (the Unicorn) at a distance of about 500 light-years. Slightly smaller and cooler than our sun, Corot-7 is also thought to be younger, with an age of about 1.5 billion years.
The size of the planet was easy to establish - but the initial set of measurements could not provide its mass. However, analysis of data from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph in Chile gave the answer.
But rocky though it may be, Corot-7b doesn't look like a nice place to visit.
"Corot-7b is so close [to its star] that the place may well look like Dante's Inferno, with a probable temperature on its 'day-face' above 2,000 degrees and minus 200 degrees on its night face. Theoretical models suggest that the planet may have lava or boiling oceans on its surface. With such extreme conditions this planet is definitively not a place for life to develop," says Queloz.

Seagate Readies 6Gbps XT Drive

Seagate is gearing up to release its new high-performance 2TB 3.5-inch drive for the mass market. Called the Barracuda XT, the drive offers a working speed of 7200RPM, a 6Gbps SATA interface, a 64MB of cache memory, four 500GB platters and delivers a maximum sustained data rate of 140MB/s. The Barracuda XT will start shipping soon for $299.

Hyundai Sonata wow

2.0-liter four-cylinder engine producing 165 horsepower and delivering 30 mpg. The North American model is powered by a 2.4-liter four-cylinder engine with direct injection that produces around 200 horsepower. There is also a 3.5-liter V6 model that produces around 250 horsepower. In addition to the two U.S. models mentioned above, Hyundai will also release the Sonata Hybrid that will use lithium polymer batteries. The regular models of Sonata should start production for the U.S at Hyundai’s Alabama factory in the summer of 2010, while the Sonata Hybrid will enter production stage sometime in 2011.

Bayer Contour USB Meter-Diabetes Care

Here is a useful device for those who suffer from diabetes. Bayer Diabetes Care today announced the Contour USB meter, which is the first and only blood glucose monitor that plugs directly into a computer providing users with instant access to information that can help optimize diabetes management. The device is integrated with Glucofacts DELUXE software for easy retrieval of data as well as longer-term tracking and analysis of blood glucose test results. The Bayer Contour USB meter can store up to 2,000 test results allowing patients to gain knowledge about trends and patterns in their blood glucose levels

First Mosque Designed by A Women [Istanbul, Turkey]

Last week the Sakirin Mosque opened in Istanbul, Turkey. Its the first mosque in the country to have an interior designed by a woman, Zeynep Fadillioglu. An interior designer known for jet setting ways, she nonetheless won a commission to redesign the religious structure in Istanbul. She even recruited women to help in the construction. Begun last year, the project was just recently completed. It's a fairly impressive building, subtly blending modern techniques and materials into what might be the world's most conservative design vernacular.