weekly news

The Common Admission Test, the route to IIMs, has probably hit a rough patch. The unquestioned king of B-school entrance tests — used to gauge the popularity of business education in the country — has for the first time extended its registration deadline by a week, probably to convince more candidates into queuing up for the test.

The number of people applying to take CAT has been falling. When the IIMs conducted the paper-pencil test themselves, they looked at restricting the number of takers. But, now that it has been outsourced, the revenue from CAT is suddenly important. For years, the entrance test has been the IIM's golden goose; in 2007-'08, India's blue-chip B-schools raked in Rs 2.98 crore just by conducting CAT.

So the last day of registration, which was to end on September 30, has now been pushed to October 7. CAT convener Himanshu Rai said extension of the registration period had nothing to do with the falling registration numbers. "I don't have the data on how many students have registered for CAT-2010 but those wanting to take CAT would have done so by now. Also, if someone has decided not to take the test, they wouldn't."

Sivankutty MLA launched the Hyundai's Next Gen i10. The Next Gen i10 with a sporty and sleek look features a micro roof antenna, body colour door handle and the side indicator lights incorporated on the outside rear view mirror. The rear of Next Gen i10 boasts of sleek and elongated tail lamps, bold rear bumper with body coloured inserts as well as rear bumper reflectors and trendy full wheel cover.

The Next Gen i10 brings in a host of highly innovative design features like first-in-segment gear shift indicator display (M/T only), digital fuel indicator, steering mounted audio and bluetooth controls and multiple power outlets.

Also the revamped i10 gives the consumers the choice of two petrol engines – 1.1 iRDE2 and 1.2 Kappa2 VTVT. While the 1.1 litre iRDE2 engine delivers a maximum power of 69PS@5500 rpm and a maximum torque of 10.1 Kgm@4500 rpm, the1.2 litre Kappa2 VTVT engine delivers a maximum power of 80 PS@6000 rpm and a maximum torque of 11.4 Kgm@4000 rpm. Both the engines are BS IV compliant and designed to deliver improved engine efficiency, optimized fuel consumption, low emission and class leading performance.

The Next Gen i10 will be available to the buyers of Trivandrum for an on-road price range of Rs. 3.5 lakh to 6 lakh.

Twitter recently had a JavaScript related problem and we now have a similar mess on Orkut.

The service seems to have been hit by a worm named Bom Sabado.

It creates a major mess on user profiles as it scraps the text ‘Bom Sabado’ on profile pages.

You visit an infected profile page, you are likely to get affected as well.

Google has not yet made any official statement on this issue but we expect them to be working very hard on it.

Avoid using Orkut for now. And if you have been hit, change your Google Account password asap!

Undoubtedly, with the advancement in mobile technologies more and more people are heading towards accessing internet services from their mobile phones.

Of late, google turns out with the latest version of its Gmail App for the Android market enabling quick access of Gmail by reducing the wait time for the system to get updated.

Enhancements in message replies such as their location in the inbox depending on the priority of text are the latest sample of innovation.

The Gmail App is more or less a desktop view and your most important text is just a single touch away.

The latest version comes up with a label of “priority inbox” with the mail.

The new improved version of Gmail App is easily accessible through Android Market and available with new updates from Android 2.2 Frovo.

We were basking in the powerful glory of a gigantic beast with a 4200cc thumper, an Audi Q7 4.2 TDI quattro. The next one standing in queue to enter our test laboratory was the Suzuki GSX-R 1000, a machine which has a mean look etched all over.

Suddenly a wild thought crossed our mind. Why don’t we pit one of the most incredibly powered SUV against a super-sports bike which reaches the three figure mark on its speedometer within seconds and still goes easily to cross the double ton! Some might say this is lunacy, some might call it comparing apples to oranges, but all that we could see was two great machines set to tear apart each other.

Coming to the looks of this bike you can trace its genes back to the GixxerThousand. Though, there is a major change in its looks, mainly the menacing headlights which are further highlighted with massive air intakes. The frontal look of the GSX-R1000 not only adds oodles of character to the machine but also adds the dash of machismo one associates with superbikes.