Is Bangalore bigger than Silicon Valley?
The high-tech Indian city may be on the verge of becoming the biggest IT employment region in the world on the back of the rise in offshore outsourcing

Loss of Google sends users scrambling
After years of losing business to Google, search rivals got some of that traffic back as Internet surfers sought alternatives to the Web's most popular search engine

Saddam's day
The former Iraqi leader spends his time in solitary confinement writing poetry, gardening, reading the Qur'an and snacking on American muffins and cookies. One of his poems is about his arch enemy George Bush

Rivalry replaces romance in offices
An Internet survey of 966 respondents conducted by VaultReports.com showed that 59 percent of the respondents had had a workplace romance at some point in their careers. Another 17 percent said they had never dated a co-worker, but would like to

World Wide Words
Michael Quinion writes about international English from a British viewpoint

Net services help crush Web rumors
Metro Detroit companies invest in Internet monitoring accounts to curb costly crises

Type A personalities
A CNET News.com staffer noticed that the first typewriter was patented 175 years ago, which sparked these responses from some fellow former ink-stained wretches in the newsroom

‘He was one of us. Now he flies in planes, we are in jail’
Shibu Soren has quit but he’s still untraced. Meet his co-accused in 30-year-old murder case who weren’t so lucky

bin Laden virus hits Web
'Images' of Osama's suicide pop up

The longer view
The making of the Los Angeles Times frontpage

RIP New York Sports Express
Editor Spike Vrusho was in the middle of putting out what would have been the last issue when he got the news. 'Damn, that's terrible,' he said, and went back to work — deadline was just hours away.
'Um, no, you don't understand,' they said. 'We mean even this issue is canceled. Sorry'

You can steal and win
An author and retired civil servant takes up cudgels with do-it-yourself guru Shiv Khera. Accuses him of blatant plagiarism, settles for lakhs

Cover story


TimeOut 2004 versus Village Voice 2001

Bush playing cards
For $12, you can get a set of the George W Bush cards.
[Via J-Walk Blog. Or visit the cards site]

Don't blink, just Blinkx
Kathy Rittweger takes on Google. No need to search for Blinkx. Just download Blinkx here!

Where there's a Wills, there's no way
Cigarette brand to be sold as Navy Cut

Google to unveil range for IPO price soon
The Internet search engine company is getting ready to tell the world how much it is worth. Google Inc will unveil a proposed per-share price range for its initial public offering as soon as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal 
 

SciFi lied about M Night Shyamalan
My sixth sense did not see signs that documentary was hoax meant to plug The Village
 

Marvel sues Disney
Marvel Enterprises sued Walt Disney for about $55 million, accusing Disney's ABC Family group of channels of shortchanging Marvel on payments for cartoon series of Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk and X-Men
 

The Olympics network: Faster, stronger and redundant

More than 3,000 people worked for nearly three years to build the data backbone that promises not to fail

Brothers in arms

Dwarfed by their rifles, Palestinian boys as young as 10 train at a camp in Gaza. The camp, at an undisclosed location, has been set up to drill children in the ways of war against Israel
(skynews)

Battle over Ground Zero
Architect Daniel Libeskind has sued Larry Silverstein, saying that the developer wants to ruin his design and that he is owed at least $843,750 for his work on the project

Author writes first SMS novel
Qian Fuchang has wrought his latest masterpiece Outside the Fortress Besieged into 60 chapters of 70 characters each

Sick on war front: Is the Indian Army fit?
Imagine a war scenario where every second counts. And the general is not feeling up to it. Impossible, did you say? Not so, given the ground reality of the Indian military today

8,000 bloggers born every day
Of these, a reported 36 percent irritate friends or family with their twittering, while a staggering 12 percent attract the attention of lawyers with their biting commentary

From India to Indiana
Two letters and 12,000 miles to find a husband to make mom happy

Headliners
Mulayam cornered Left, right, centre
The Uttar Pradesh chief minister could not have asked for more. As if the Congress has not given him enough trouble already, he has come under criticism from the RLD, his coalition partner, and even the Left parties
(indianexpress.com)

Slots may fail in Congress
Two lawmakers stop short of saying they will derail gambling referendum
(www.washingtonpost.com)

Annan names new UN envoy to Iraq
Veteran diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi has represented Pakistan in India, China, Russia, East Germany and Syria

Earlier report

Journalists fight after press conference
The two journalists got into a scuffle following a news conference on homeland security by Senators Tom Daschle, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton in Washington, DC

Aid workers retrain man raised as chicken
Sunjit Kumar was locked in a chicken coop for several years as a young boy, after his parents died and he was handed over to his grandfather

ABBA video was faked


Filmmakers have shocked fans with the admission on the reunion video

Close-up advertisement?

United States Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry shares a laugh with vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards at a concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, July 8

The gay community has other thoughts

A tipoff from the owner

When The New York Post tore up its front page on Monday night to trumpet an apparent exclusive that Representative Richard A Gephardt would be Senator John Kerry's running mate, the newspaper based its decision on a very high-ranking source: Rupert Murdoch, the man who controls the company that owns The Post, an employee said
-- The New York Times

Moral of the story for journalists: Never take a news tipoff from your organization’s owner

Yeh hai Mombai!

Indian court jails 11 for life bomb attacks
An Indian court sentenced has 11 people to life imprisonment in connection with bomb attacks on the country's financial hub, Mombai, six years ago. The 11 accused were charged with murder and damaging railway property in a series of explosions in local trains and rail platforms that killed four people and injured 30 in 1998. Last year, Mombai was again hit by a wave of bomb blasts that killed 66 people and injured 288.

-- Deutsche Welle

Noticed something funny?

Anil Dash's single post wins Google contest
The victor was a popular blogger who got his readers to do his work for him

Bloggers suffer burnout
Several noted that their readers seem to look at their regular, consistent posting patterns as somewhat akin to a sign of physical health. Any break in that pattern is sometimes seen as a cause for alarm

Welcome to Webjay
A media-sharing tool has quickly become an underground
hit. The site/tools makes it easy to build, share and watch playlists of audio and video links culled from around the Internet

Bug me not
Don't waste your time and register at hundreds of sites to read any news item. There are logins and passwords ready for you!

Shoveling coal for Satan
All journalists are cowards

Olsen twins spill milk


Milk mustache ads scrubbed, with Mary-Kate reportedly suffering eating disorder

Hindutva, chamcha, badmash
The Oxford dictionary has a new range of Indian words, including Hindutva, chamcha and badmash.
Hindutva: very strong sense of Hindu identity, seeking the creation of a Hindu state
Swadeshi: goods made in India from Indian-produced materials
Chamcha: obsequious person (The word originated from the Bengali and Hindi chamra and cham for skin or hide)
Desi (also deshi): local, indigenous, derogatorily rustic or unsophisticated and unadulterated or pure.
Badmash: dishonest or unprincipled man

-- sify.com

Bombay Awakes!
Immigration, global capitalism, and new media technologies are opening Western markets to Indian movies and music

Strange matter
Learn all about crazy stuff from ordinary things. Play games, watch videos or conduct experiments to learn more about science
(Courtesy: Kim Komando show)

A peek inside Guantanamo
A two-day tour of Guantanamo Bay afforded The Associated Press the most extensive access ever allowed to independent journalists, giving them views of some 50 detainees, including some in a new maximum-security prison. One detainee said he, too, was a reporter

Everybody loved this spy... until he vanished
RAW fears sacked officer may be used by handlers to poach colleagues

Home Cinema: The 20 Best First Films Ever Made
One cineaste’s list, anyway, sure to start some arguments

Mumbai hotel discovers it's a treasure trove of Indian art
Paintings by three of India's best known 20th century artists, Vasudeo Gaitonde, Jamini Roy and M F Husain, wound up with 250 other paintings in racks in a fourth floor guest room that had been converted into a storeroom

Arranged marriage produces power couple
Nina and Gurmant Grewal are Canada's first husband-and-wife team in Parliament

Salman Haider may be UN special representative to Iraq
India's foreign secretary is likely to accept the appointment as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Representative to Iraq, diplomatic sources told Xinhuanet. Haider, a former ambassador to China and Britain, is on a five-person list for the top UN envoy to Iraq which has been suggested months ago by Annan's secretariat, a diplomat told Xinhua.

Have you seen what's on TV-Shirt today?
Americans falling short of the daily average of three hours spent watching television have a new opportunity to catch up. A San Francisco marketer is sending models out in public in T-shirts with built-in television sets

Hip-swaying dancing doll ridicules Saddam
Iraqis used to dance to his tune, but in Baghdad toy shops a chubby, gun-toting doll now wiggles his hips to the Hippy Hippy Shake.