afternoon tea in washington dc

afternoon tea is a national past time in England. For the Anglophiles living across the pond, its a charm to find a nice nook around the capitol where one can enjoy a cup with friends and family, just couple of weeks ago had tea with the in-laws at the peacock lounge in the Willard hotel, I have only good things to say for the ribbon sandwiches and the assortment of teas, not to say the ambiance was in any way less, for some one like me who loves not only the drink itself but the whole ritual surrounding it, its a gem of a place, on that note want to share this article by Ali Noller in Washington Post, this was published in 2003, but still is quite relevant. We haven't witnessed a tea renaissance in the Americas (yet).

Honda diesel for US market

Last year when i was in the market for a car, I thought something with a diesel engine would be more earth friendly then any other car (even a hybrid), so i looked around and all I could find was a VW Jetta, but then although I was willing to go for a clean(er) fuel car, but I was not willing to do that at a price of technology/available gadgets, Jetta was miserably lagging behind in that department (a noisy diesel, very basic navigation system, no integrated bluetooth etc.), the only other option was to wait for the Japanese to come out with there diesel for the US markets, there was a rumor for Honda working on a V6 diesel for there odyssey/mdx lineup, but then that was to happen in 2009, so I ended up buying a Toyota Prius, I cannot say how happy I am with the decision, the PZEV really puts a smile on your face when you are stuck in traffic, its a buzz for your eco-friendly conscience. The way gas prices started dropping recently made me wonder whether plans for a US diesel will ever leave the boardroom discussions but now the price for a barrel of light sweet crude oil is again on the rise and that gives me hope that our Japanese brethren will live up to the rumors. (Haven't seen anything pointing to the diesel development in the 2007 New York Auto show.

Earth day

April 22nd is Earth Day, this day has been celebrated in certain circles since the 70's, this year is special as the live green message has never been this strong probably since the last ice age, I would say the most obvious reasons for this change in our attitude towards global warming is thanks to citizen journalism, people from all around the world and from all walks of life are discounting the idea that environment is not an issue they care about by showing that they care, there has been a steady rise of blogs from all corner of the Earth addressing Environmental deterioration, main stream media follows the story and so the story has arrived. As they say Earth is fragile and we all share the burden of caring for it.

joost

Joost just came out with a new release of there client software (0.9.2 beta), judging by the channel lineup(they signed Viacom in February), application feature set and the technology under the hood (p2ptv) this may very well be what video.aol.com should have been in the first place.

for those of you not following the joost evolution (pronounced juiced), all bets are on for them to become the killer app for 2007, they are certainly generating a lot of buzz (viral marketing at its best), internet blogging community loves them, they have a great line up of original content providers and a great development team (Geir Magnusson, a household name amongst the open-source community recently left Intel for Joost, he has been at the forefront for the non-Sun Microsystem open-source Java platform initiative) spear headed by Niklas Zennstrøm and Janus Friis who have earlier delivered the likes of skype and kaaza.

India outsourcing moves to front office

somebody sent me this link to an article about the state of outsourcing in India, found it quite interesting, also to get an idea of where Pakistani software exports stand today go read the industry overview on Pakistan Software Export Board website.

when the princess carriage turns to pumpkin

well something quite similar is supposedly happening overtime with the fancy processors that are at the core of our computers, research at the Illyria University's Information Technology department reveals that processors loose speed over time. you can read more about this story here,though I would say read this with a grain of salt, as I wasn't able to figure out whether this university even exists or not. Also this was first reported on April 1st which makes me think of this as an elaborate prank, the only thing I found with the University name was a geocities website which was last updated in Jan 2004. I think we will hear more on this research in the coming weeks, nevertheless I will update this posting with the facts if and when I find them.