It was a mixed year

2014 was a mixed year. I lost my brother Dr. Vijaya Raghavan Krishnaswamy, a neuro-surgeon by profession. He left a void that cannot be filled.

I did not complete the book I was writing.

Regarding the blogs I did quite well with a record number of posts.
                                                 Year   Posts
Hodentek.blogspot.com           2013   94
                                                 2014   246

HodentekHelp.blogspot.com.  2013.  17
                                                 2014   56

HodentekMsss.blogspot.com   2013   34
                                                  2014  48
 
HoentekMobile.blogspot.com  2013   13
                                                  2014   56

I started a new blog in 2014- http://hodentekPlus.blogspot.com.

I also found that a certain person was pilfering (http://hodentek.blogspot.in/2014/12/domain-name-service-dns-and-dns-changer.html) entire content from blog, my hardwork of about 10 years. I complained to Google without any success. I suppose this is not on Google's priority. Google wants every post that is stolen with proof of content stolen. There were over 900 posts in my blog and you can imagine the work involved.
 

Learn business visiting places in India

This is a nice opportunity to know India if you are planning to do business with India.
Jagriti Yatris is business school on wheels where you visit the businesses visiting the various places where businesses are located which includes most of the important locations. This coming year is the seventh time for this event with participants from many countries(around 40%) with ages in the range of 20 to 25. This is a nice event to get to know the realities on the ground. 

This is not exactly a complete Indian initiative. It is sponsored by the likes of Google, Coca Cola, etc. with support from Indian Railways. It costs around $1000 (approximate) with about $100 paid by the candidates. Candidates are sponsored based on their annual income.

Read more here:
http://www.jagritiyatra.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagriti_Yatra

Get the Skype Qik video messaging and start chatting via video

Go to this site and get SKYPE Qik free app. It is an messenger app built around Skype which allows you to swap videos with groups of friends. All you need to do is a single touch that records those previous moments which you ccan immediately share. You shoot and send the video with your mobile. The groups are made of your phone contacts and these messages are private.

You can pre-record upto 12 short videos and you can drop the videos, Qik Flick as they called into your chat. Of course you can manage messages deleting and cleaning up and unlike other stuff on the Internet these disappear after two weeks, something very desirable. It can be used with Microsoft, Apple and Google phones.

Here is video that you may want to play and learn more of this interesting addition.

Hydrogen Fuel Cells powering cars and homes in Japan

Nuclear fusion was supposed to provide clean energy but it is perhaps decades away. It is a tough cookie. Now Japan's R&D has produced viable Hydrogen Fuel cells that can power homes and cars.Toyota motor has a model 'Mirai' on the market that is powered by Hydrogen and coming to US in the not so distant future. Now hydrogen fuel cells to provide energy for homes are being developed.

Hydrogen fuel cells for homes is something that is not on a drawing board, but already installed in many Japanese homes. I am sure this will get Japan back in the saddle and we will be having a better environment; less dependence on fossil fuels; less pollution; improved quality of life; fewer transmission, distribution losses as energy gets used where it is produced; and less of Fukushima scenarios.

Tokyo Gas and Panasonic Corporation have jointly developed the Fuel Cell which they call 'ENE-Farm' probably a diminutive for energy farm. In fact so far there have been couple of models starting Jan 2013 after debuting first time in May 2009. The price of the new model which came out in April 2013 was 1,995,000 Yen (April 2013 price) including tax but not installation. Right now it may seem prohibitive but the price is sure to go down.

Read more here:
http://news.panasonic.com/press/news/official.data/data.dir/2013/01/en130117-5/en130117-5.html
The following images are from the above site:

Summary of features copied from the above mentioned site:

"The "Ene-Farm" fuel cell co-generation systems generate electricity through a chemical reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere and hydrogen extracted from city gas. The heat generated as a byproduct of this process is also used for hot water supply*7. This system is extremely eco-friendly. Since the electricity is generated and used at the same place, there are no losses in transmission. Also, all heat produced during electricity generation can be used without waste. Compared to conventional method of using electricity from thermal power plant and hot water supply using city gas*8, the fuel cell system allows primary energy consumption to be reduced by approximately 37%*9 and CO2 emissions by approximately 49%. Users can cut around 60,000 yen from annual utility bills, and CO2 emissions by approximately 1.3 tons a year*10."

A number of companies in US are engaged in Hydrogen fuel cells and some are already providing viable products and if the adoption picks up this industry can do a lot of good to our environment and generate lot more jobs as well.

Aston Martin DB10

Well, this is not Aston Martin's Database 10 but it is the new car James Bond will be driving in his next movie to be released next year (2015).

Very sleek and I suppose it has lots of special gadgets.

Here is DB10 from the Aston Martin site here:
http://www.astonmartin.com/en/live/news/2014/12/04/built-for-bond-aston-martin-debuts-unique-car-for-spectre

 

Toyota's hydrogen powered car coming to California summer 2015

Do not buy gas! Toyota's hydrogen powered car coming to California summer 2015.

Not long ago some one from the all electrical vehicle technology quipped playing on the word 'fuel cell' that Toyota is pursuing a foolish path in its development of hydrogen powered car.

No one in the right mind would gamble with $165 million and that is what Toyota is using to triple its domestic production capacity for Mirai (appropriately named meaning 'the Future') Fuel cell vehicle. Both corporations and government are interested. Frankly who wouldn't be except Elon Musk.

Toyota will ramp up the production at its Aichi factory. I have visited them, they are bunch of serious guys, don't you carried away by their apparent lack of emotion. They are deadly serious.

Mirai is coming to a distributor near you by Dec 15 assuming you are localized in Japan. Right now the capacity is only 700 vehicles according to this Nikkei news and of course they cannot promise on delivery time.

It is coming to 'Califoooornia' in the summer of 2015. I love to see this 'sumo fight' between Hydrogen and Battery. It expects to sell 3000 in 2017.

Honda will not be left far behind followed by Hyundai, Kia and others.

Guys the storm is gathering!

Older posts:
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/07/battery-powered-car-is-history.html
http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/07/toyota-fchv-concept-vehicle.html

Here is the concept car:

Here is the car you can commute with starting summer of 2015:

 

Do not let business murder the Great Barrier Reef!

How do we balance business interests with ecological assets? They seem to be in great conflict in many parts of the world. This has repeated over and over again since the time 'fire' was discovered.

Sign this petition below from Avvaz.org to send your personal message to avert this ecological
damage.

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/india_great_barrier_reef_loc_v1ss/?bMPbpbb&v=49509

Internet of babies(things)- Connected Baby

We saw a lot of internet of things ()but this other thing, the Internet of Babies(things) is surely a bigger business as it will involve a lot more devices and tie up a lot more services.

 http://hodentek.blogspot.com/2014/11/sap-executive-bernd-leukerts-take-on-iot.html

Here is a video from New York Times here:
http://www.nytimes.com/video/technology/100000003268525/the-connected-baby.html?playlistId=1194811622283&region=video-grid&version=video-grid-thumbnail&contentCollection=Health&contentPlacement=0&module=recent-videos&action=click&pgType=Multimedia&eventName=video-grid-click

Here are some stills from the above video: