India off to the moon..

India's doing something new.. ISRO(Indian Space Research Organization) will launch an unmanned mission to the moon. The mission christened Chandrayaan-1(details) can be directly translated as "Space Craft to Moon".

The mission to be launched on 22nd October 2008 will carry nine payloads; five instruments entirely designed and developed in India, three instruments from ESA , one from Bulgaria and two from the United States. A modified PSLV would be used to boost this into space.

This mission would be followed by one in 2010 which will carry a lunar rover. Great job guys we are so proud of you!!

Stay tuned for live webcast on 22nd Oct 2008 0550 - 0650 Hrs (IST) (here)

Open Office 3 is here

The latest version of Open Office, version 3 is here.. Its free and its odf. I downloaded it today and its much better than 2.4 before. It includes whole gamut of MS Office repalcements

1. Writer word processor
2. Calc spreadsheet
3. Impress presentations program
4. Base database program
5. Math equation editor
6. Draw graphics program

The UI looks great and the documents load much quicker. You can save and edit your documents to MS Office XP/98 formats. It doesnt support the MS Office 07 versions though.. but neighter does older MS Office.. ( how many people use it any way?). Other useful features.. it enables direct export to pdf and also advanced features like mail merge. (Lets see if i can configure it with my thunderbird)

If you want to try it download from the site or the mirror.

Youtube reads back your comments

Well the guys at Google have done it again.. what am i talking about? well now you can actually have all your youtube comments read back to you before posting them.. a kind of stupidity check.. Coming on heels of of drunken test on gmail (details) which i thought was pretty lame.. this one really gets full marks in my books.. Its inspired by this xkcd cartoon. Just another example that googles the best when it comes to innovation..