Here is a funny video displayed at CES 2008 celebrating Bill Gates’ last day at work and his work aftermath.

I must say it would be really interesting to see how the likes of Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs or, to stretch a little further, the Google boys - Larry and Sergin would follow that up

What do the popular TV show Heroes, the great Mauryan emperor Ashoka and the Power of Flight have in common ?

Enter the world of the Nine Unknown Men.

After much research, it turns out that some of the claims made by Don Voniken who first talked about this secret society in his 1960s book, “Chariots of Gods”, turned out to be unscientific. Seers from everywhere, including the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, have confirmed that excerpts from books like the ‘Vaimanika Sastra’, largely communicated orally from person to person, do not seem to be models from an engineering lab but are more like literary miracles conjured by some Indian equivalent of Jules Verne.

Ever wondered how to stitch a bunch of related videos from a plethora of video sharing websites together?

We did too and here is the solution.

We like what Jukebox is doing. Hope to see more of them on our site in ‘08.

Zachary Scheidt of the China Stock Blog wrote an interesting article on how evaluating virtual currencies with respect to real ones creates a few interesting problems to solve.

He takes the example of GA, a buzzing new Virtual world teeming with Chinese gamers, to make his point on whether evaluating virtual currencies is as simple as it looks.

I like what he says here ..

what happens when the currency is virtual, such as in a role playing game with “virtual” goods and services and no physical “real world” transactions taking place. Do the laws of supply and demand still apply?

I believe they still do - only as long as there is value in “saving” the virtual currency in its indigenous shape, however. In other words, if there is a bank out there that pays people interest, no matter how small, for saving their virtual dollars (yemen or sprutzi or bucks or whatever u want to call it), I think there will be a residual value associated with the currency.

The bank may, in turn, double as a marketplace for gamers to trade virtual goods and virtual currencies from one game to another for a ’small’ transaction fee. This will make it a viable revenue model for the bank to sustain on. Also, it can offer ‘virtual loans’ to gamers to be repaid over a fixed time span (real ofcourse ).

The Aha moment arrives, ofcourse, when a gamer walks to the closest food court of grocery store and swipes his thumb to pay for his food from his virtual bank account. Now, THAT would turn more than a few eyeballs.

Once in a while, we come across people whose work throws us out of our waters. Taggy introduced me to his room mate, Prasanna’s work today.

In short, I was blown.

I kept going through his work a good number of times to make sure I understood what all he wrote. And I am a decent sized geek-o-raman which makes it no small feat

Winning Top Coder contests is one thing. I made a few friends among Googlers that did it. But, leveraging cutting edge technology to solve problems for your School/University/Community is a whole new level. Not to mention, defining problems that others would be expected to solve to qualify themselves.

Prasanna, to me, is true next-gen Indian talent - amazing tech skills combined with problem definition/problem solving skills and a sharp social focus.

Now, THAT is an engineer’s dream. That is like living life beyond the edge.

Prasanna accepted a full time position at Google’s valley offices starting ‘08. I am sad that the likes of him would have to wait some time before they float their own cut-through-the-crap startups. The Valley could use a few more engineers like him right now - owning what they work on.

Taggy, our dear friend and Author (and Prasanna’s room mate), another unbelievable tech talent has also landed a nice job in a Valley startup. I am sure the Entrepreneur in him would not rest until he does something on his own.

WoW wishes both of them the very best in their careers. They are slated to complete college in 2008 and join their first jobs soon after.

Tar Zameen Par, the title song in Ameer Khan’s home production venture (’Tar Zameen Par’) is one of my favorite songs for 2007. I like it for its authenticity, simple style and the depth of its lyrics. Here are the lyrics for Tare Zameen Par, (not sure who penned them - Prasoon Joshi??).

Dekho inhein yeh hai onss ki boodein
Patto ki goodh mein aasmaan se khude
Angdai le phir karwat badal kar
Nazuk se moti hasde phishal kar
Kho na jayee yeh
Taare Zameen par […]

300 spartan apples went to war against heavy odds and a nonchalant senate. The rest is madness and heroism that oozes out of being the ruthless underdog..err..sorry…underapple.

MassnMurdProductions created this awesome stop motion epic saga using unbelievable creativity and countless hours of hardwork.