Panic attacks Causes and symptoms

A common condition, usually confused with heart attacks, which can be controlled by yoga and meditation.

Your heart starts pounding heavily and suddenly you feel short of breath. Feeling of dizziness and “something” in your stomach overpowers you. Anxiety and restlessness surges to its peak. You wonder if you are going “crazy” or even worse, dying. You may be having a panic attack

What is a panic attack?

Panic or anxiety disorder is a condition where intense anxiety or fear grips the person suddenly, often without warning and no good reason. It can strike just out of the blue, come uninvited anywhere, anytime even during sleep.

It differs from the normal feeling of dread and nervousness, which occur in response to stressful events in our lives.

Most triggered panic attacks reach their peak within 10 minutes. These attacks usually last for 20 to 30 minutes.

Causes of panic attacks

Several environmental and biological factors can contribute in pressing the panic button.

• Panic disorder is known to be hereditary. It runs in families.
• Substance abuse such as drugs, alcohol, or caffeine.
• A major event in one’s life like graduating, getting married, or having a baby.
• A stressful lifestyle or even a traumatic happening such as death of a loved one.
• Sudden withdrawal from a long term medication.
• Certain medical conditions such as mitral valve prolapse, hypoglycaemia, and hyperthyroidism can lead to this.

Symptoms while having a panic attack

Symptoms can range from but are not limited to,

• Difficulty in breathing
• Pain or tightness in chest
• Palpitation or a pounding heart
• Feeling of smothering or choking
• Dizziness or fainting
• Severe shaking or trembling
• Sweating, nausea or stomach ache
• Tingling or numbness in hands and feet
• Hot or cold flashes
• A fear of losing control or going crazy
• Intense feeling of dread and doom

How to handle a panic attack

Proper medical attention is indeed needed to treat this condition but apart from that, there are things you can do to handle and deal with it all by yourself.

• Learn about it. Seeking knowledge about the condition will help you take control over it.
• Learn to control your breathing as it will help you to calm yourself during the attack.
• Practicing relaxation techniques such as yoga and meditation helps in a big way.
• Exercise stress management techniques to reduce anxiety.
• Quit smoking and limit alcohol as they are the major triggers.

Panic attack can be confused with a heart attack

Symptoms of heart attack and panic attack are strikingly similar and can be confused with each other. It is recommended to rule out all the possible medical causes of chest pain, palpitations, and difficulty breathing at the earliest.

How to Choose a Mutual Fund

What is Mutual Fund (s)?
If you are not able to invest directly into “shares”, you can invest through an expert on shares which is called mutual fund. The money that we give will be invested by a fund manager in shares and this investment will give returns based on the share markets ups and downs.

Why Mutual Fund?
Not everyone is a master in fund and investments. Like how we go to doctors to take care of our health, here to get returns on our investment we get the help of mutual fund manager.

During the last 10 to 20 years, the economy is functioning along with business sector and service sectors. Due to this, even a small change in the global economy will have its impact in the share market that a common man cannot be aware of or naturally one cannot be updated on these every time. For persons like this mutual fund is the opportunity.

Next big advantage of mutual fund is “wide” investment option. Instead of dumping your investments in just one share, you can avoid big loses by investing in multiple shares like large, midcap etc.

How to choose a mutual fund?
Everyone will have their own desires and aims, financially. Make your child a doctor or go for an overseas vacation etc. the dream would change as the time goes. First decide your life’s goal and estimate how much you would require attaining that destination.

Next, think about the motive behind your investment. Are you investing to save on tax or for a regular income or for more income or for a long-term plan? Whatever it is but, know the reason for your investment thoroughly.

There are three types of investors – one those wants to take a minimal risk, second type are who can go for a moderate risk and the third kind are who can take high risks but to see profits. If you are in the first category of minimum risk it is advisable to invest in debt funds.

Debt funds are to invest in government debt funds. Those who can go for moderate risks can invest in index fund, balanced fund and asset allocation funds. If you are for high risk for profit then you can choose to invest in equity and midcap funds.

Performance and Management
Before investing in a fund you cannot just decide its future performance by just going through its past performances. The particular fund that you have decided to invest has to compared with other funds of similar types. For example: If you investing in midcap funds, it has to compared with other midcap funds of similar types.

Also, the performance of the fund management, efficiency of the fund manager and his performances and such information has to be seen.

When you are investing in equity diversified funds, the funds collected through this will be invested in sensex funds. So, see how much sensex has profited you. If equity diversified funds give you more profit than sensex it is obvious and advisable to go for equity diversified funds for investment. If it is vice versa, so the quality of funds will be too.

Fund Level
It is better and safe to choose a fund that holds moderate asset value as at times even a fund that hold high asset value can go down and vice versa. Going for a fund with moderate asset value is safe.

Must have Follow-Ups
There are people who invest in funds and will completely forget it further. They won’t look further for the funds’ performance and how is it going? Whether is it positive? etc. Other set of people who look for fund’s NAV daily and get worried about the downs even if it is at the minimal level than the previous day. Both these two approaches are not good for a investor. At least once in three months our portfolio has to be checked to make sure how our fund performs and whichever is not performing well, it is better for us to quit from it.

If one understands these basic features and steps of mutual funds – anyone can perform excellent in mutual fund market.

Winners of the Sony World Photography Awards

From waterdrops to a one-man band. Here are the stunning winners of the Sony World Photography Awards.A wide range of incredible imagery was recognised at the Sony World Photographic Awards, which took place on Thursday night. The competition saw more than 112,000 entries from 171 countries across the globe, the largest number since its inception in 2007.

Overall winning photograph was a stop motion waterdrop image taken by Tobias Brauning. Called 'Dancing Queen' it resembles a flower rising out of the ground. Brauning said that Inspiration for his image came from pictures of simple water drops on a German DSLR internet forum.

Cute but haunting: A monkey in Wroclaw Zoo, Poland, taken by Jacek Kusz.

Donald Weber won the Current Affairs category for this portrait of persisting tsunami damage in Japan. He said: "Odaka lies on the north-eastern coast of Japan. It was once home to 13,000 people, but today it is almost a ghost town. When the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March (2011) triggered blasts at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a 20km radius exclusion zone was imposed by the Japanese government.".

Travel winner Luis Henry Agudelo Cano took this eerie shot in New York to signify those lost in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "Ten years after the 11 September attacks on New York City, its people and streets are fragments of a melancholy memory while the action of reconstruction continues."

The Fashion category winner by Peter Franck.

This unique time jump composite was created by Irina Werning, scooping the Architecture category. "I love old photos," she said. "Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to re-enact them today. I decided to actually do this. So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future."

The last supper - British photographer Helen Thompson won the Still Life category with mocked-up pictures of death row inmates' final meals. "The project was a collaboration with graphic designer Matt Prosser, who used the images to illustrate a mock-up book on the subject. The crime committed by each prisoner was printed on one side of the book, the image on the other, juxtaposing text with image," said Thompson.

"Working in a modelling agency, I have contacts with young girls for whom I am the first link on the road to the fashion industry," said Kasia Bieska, Contemporary Issues category winner with this image.

Manuel Geerinck's Conceptual category winning image. "In creating photographic images, I am building upon an environment based on the behaviour of assemblages in motion," he said. "These photographs represent an extension of research that originally was born in more static painting."

An incredible stormy image claimed the Landscape category, snapped by American Mitch Dobrowner. Dobrowner won the L’Iris d’Or photographer of the year award for his series of images titled 'Storms'.

"Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a full-contact combat sport and one of the fastest growing sports today," say PALMER PAWEL, winners of the Sport category for this bloody shot.

Huge clouds engulf the earth in another of Mitch Dobowner's winning photographs.

The Campaign category winner by Peter Franck, Germany.

Looking a bit out of place? British photographer Simon Norfolk won the People category with this image taken in Afghanistan. "The Irish war photographer John Burke, of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), documents a most extraordinary record - and yet he is virtually unknown," said Norfolk. "In 2011 I went back to Afghanistan to follow in John Burke's footsteps. Loosely re-photographic, the new work is more of an Improvisation On A Theme By John Burke."

'The Last Hero' depicts a Russian war veteran climbing steps to meet current troops. It was taken by the overall Youth Winner, Sergey Kolyaskin of Russia.

Dutch snapper Rob Hornstra won the Arts and Culture category with this quirky shot of a rather lonely looking singer on stage. "It's common for restaurants in the Russian tourist resort of Sochi to feature singers who, night after night, rely on a fixed repertoire of Russian chansons," said Hornstra.

How Facebook became a doller 100 billion company

February 2004: Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook. A social network exclusively for Harvard University




September 2004: Facebook launches the Wall, one of its most exciting and popular features, which allows users to post happenings on their profile pages.




September 2006: Facebook opens to the public and begins letting anyone older than 13 join. Earlier it was restricted to colleges, schools and companies. Also introduces News Feed, which collects all the feeds of user postings in one place. This is around the period when new user adoption explodes.




May 2007: The second big initiative that propels Facebook into the big league; it launches Platform, which allows programmers to build apps. Facebook explodes with a thousands and thousands of small apps that include games, quizzes and music. Platform ensures that Facebook does not to have to do all the heavy-lifting on its own but provide other companies the means to do it.




October 2007: Microsoft comes calling with a $240 million investment for a 1.6 per cent stake valuing Facebook at an astonishing $15 billion




November 2007: Facebook falters for the first time when it introduces its advertising program Beacon, a feature that broadcast user activities from external websites on Facebook. It lead to a huge backlash forcing Facebook to withdraw the initiative immediately.




March 2008: Facebook hires Sheryl Sandberg as chief operating officer from rival company Google. In hindsight this is one of the best decisions that Zuckerberg made helping his company scale from hot tech startup to serious corporate heavyweight.




February 2009: Facebook introduces its Like feature. One of the most used features on the social network, it brings user preferences into everything that they consume on the site.




June 2009: Facebook beats MySpace to become the king of the social networking world.




September 2011: Always innovating even when there is user resistance, Facebook introduces the Timeline, which is a new version of the user profile page.




February 2012: Facebook ends months of speculation by filing for an initial public offering (IPO)




April 2012: Facebook snaps up photo app company Instagram for $1 billion.

Maruti to launch Cervo this Diwali

Maruti (in fact, media) has been tantalizing us for quite a while with the prospect of launching the ultra small car Cervo. Now, credible media reports have it that the Cervo is all set to be launched this Diwali, replacing the iconic Maruti 800. According to a report by Economic Times, Cervo will be launched this Diwali, priced between 2-2.5 lakh. Although a senior official from Maruti Suzuki has confirmed that “the work on the car is going on and the company is planning to launch it before Diwali,” there is no guarantee that the new car is going to be in the same shape that you see in these pictures. However, we can assure you that there is something brewing in the Maruti plant and the cat will be out of the bag during the upcoming festive season.

The Cervo looks like a smaller Chevrolet Beat with cues from Honda Jazz's design. The phenomenal fuel efficiency is one of the USPs of this car. Powered by Suzuki's 660cc engine — as against Nano's 623cc — the Cervo could be priced a little higher than Nano.

According to a report by Economic Times, Cervo will be launched this Diwali, priced between 2-2.5 lakh. 

Inside, the dashboard of the Cervo looks almost like the Swift, with the rectangular air vents in the centre and the circular ones on the sides.

Power windows and airbags are available in the international markets but chances are that Indians will have to compromise on that.

Although a senior official from Maruti Suzuki has confirmed that “the work on the car is going on and the company is planning to launch it before Diwali,” there is no guarantee that the new car is going to be in the same shape that you see in these pictures.

However, we can assure you that there is something brewing in the Maruti plant and the cat will be out of the bag during the upcoming festive season.

"The work on the car is going on and the company is planning to launch it before Diwali. The car will be priced below Alto and above that of the Maruti 800. This will be a big booster for the company. At present,¬ the company is working on the pricing of the diesel variant,” a senior official from Maruti Suzuki India Ltd told one of our sources on the condition of anonymity.

However, the company refused to comment on the upcoming car officially and said they do not comment on their future models.

The parent Suzuki Motor Company already markets a mini- compact car in Japan with an engine capacity of less than 800 cc.

Maruti Cervo

Indian Americans in Forbes Midas List

Washington, May 4 (IANS) Nine Indian origin entrepreneurs feature in this year's Forbes Midas List of technology's best investors for fuelling a bull market for hot young companies.

Heading the Indian-American list is Greylock Partners' Aneel Bhusri at number 25 (15 in 2011). Bhusri is co-CEO of Workday, the cloud-based financials and human resources software company.

Four-time consecutive Midas member Rob Chandra of Bessemer Venture Partners comes next at number 28 (26 in 2011). Chandra, who had a string of IPOs on India public markets, has two late-stage companies in India-based Bharat Matrimony and Summit Microelectronics.

Sameer Gandhi of Accel Partners is ranked 33rd (81 in 2011). His 2008 Series A investment in file-sharing company Dropbox is doing quite nicely going by the rumoured $4 billion valuation on the 2011, forbes noted. His current investments include growth investments in an India online shopping site called Flipkart.

Khosla Ventures' Vinod Khosla follows at number 34 (71 in 2011). An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumunus, Khosla is known for off-the-beaten-path clean-tech investments.

Khosla's passion for social entrepreneurship led to an investment in SKS, the Indian microfinance lender he funded in 2006 that went public in 2010, Forbes said.

Other Indian-Americans on the Midas list include Battery Ventures' Neeraj Agrawal at 36 (51 in 2011), Mayfield Fund's Navin Chaddha (46), Bain Capital Ventures' Ajay Agarwal (95), Greylock Partners' Asheem Chandna (96) and Accel India's Subrata Mitra (99).

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)

Energy drinks can cause irreversible damage to teeth

Washington, May 2 (ANI): Consumption of sports and energy drinks, which is increasing especially among adolescents, is causing irreversible damage to teeth-specifically, the high acidity levels in the drinks erode tooth enamel, the glossy outer layer of the tooth- say researchers including one of an Indian origin.

And energy drinks are twice as likely to destroy enamel than sports drinks.

"Young adults consume these drinks assuming that they will improve their sports performance and energy levels and that they are 'better' for them than soda," said Poonam Jain, BDS, MS, MPH, lead author of the study.

"Most of these patients are shocked to learn that these drinks are essentially bathing their teeth with acid," she noted.

Researchers examined the acidity levels in 13 sports drinks and nine energy drinks. They found that the acidity levels could vary between brands of beverages and flavours of the same brand.

To test the effect of the acidity levels, the researchers immersed samples of human tooth enamel in each beverage for 15 minutes, followed by immersion in artificial saliva for two hours. This cycle was repeated four times a day for five days, and the samples were stored in fresh artificial saliva at all other times.

"This type of testing simulates the same exposure that a large proportion of American teens and young adults are subjecting their teeth to on a regular basis when they drink one of these beverages every few hours," said Dr. Jain.

The researchers found that damage to enamel was evident after only five days of exposure to sports or energy drinks, although energy drinks showed a significantly greater potential to damage teeth than sports drinks. In fact, the researchers found that energy drinks caused twice as much damage to teeth as sports drinks.

Damage caused to tooth enamel is irreversible, and without the protection of enamel, teeth become overly sensitive, prone to cavities, and more likely to decay.

"Teens regularly come into my office with these types of symptoms, but they don't know why," says AGD spokesperson Jennifer Bone, DDS, MAGD. "We review their diet and snacking habits and then we discuss their consumption of these beverages. They don't realize that something as seemingly harmless as a sports or energy drink can do a lot of damage to their teeth."

Dr. Bone recommends that her patients minimize their intake of sports and energy drinks. She also advises them to chew sugar-free gum or rinse the mouth with water following consumption of the drinks.

"Both tactics increase saliva flow, which naturally helps to return the acidity levels in the mouth to normal," she stated.

Also, patients should wait at least an hour to brush their teeth after consuming sports and energy drinks. Otherwise, said Dr. Bone, they will be spreading acid onto the tooth surfaces, increasing the erosive action.

The study was published in the May/June 2012 issue of General Dentistry, the peer-reviewed clinical journal of the Academy of General Dentistry. (ANI)

LinkedIn Buys SlideShare in Professional Services Combination

LinkedIn, which saw both profits and revenue essentially double versus a year ago, said Thursday that it has acquired SlideShare, a service for sharing presentations across the Web, for $118.75 million.

The deal combines a pair of professional services firms. LinkedIn is usually considered to be the social network for professionals, while SlideShare's strenght is in sharing presentations, usually crafted by those same professionals.

"Presentations are one of the main ways in which professionals capture and share their experiences and knowledge, which in turn helps shape their professional identity," said LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner, in a statement. "These presentations also enable professionals to discover new connections and gain the insights they need to become more productive and successful in their careers, aligning perfectly with LinkedIn's mission and helping us deliver even more value for our members. We're very excited to welcome the SlideShare team to LinkedIn."

LinkedIn also returned a sparkling quarter, marked by $5.0 million in net profit, versus $2.1 million compared to a year ago. LinkedIn also reported $188.5 million in revenue, a 101 percent increase over last year. As of March 31, LinkedIn members totaled 161 million members in over 200 countries and territories, with 61 percent located outside the United States.

"LinkedIn's solid performance in the first quarter built on the company's momentum in 2011," Weiner said. "We saw strength across all key metrics from member signups and engagement to significant revenue growth across our three product lines."

LinkedIn breaks out its business into three categories: hiring solutions, marketing solutions, and its premium subscriptions business. All three demonstrated growth of at least 70 percent, with hiring solutions, or LinkedIn for employers, generating $102.6 million in revenue, and an increase of 121 percent.

Nokia 808 PureView to launch first in India and Russia, this May

Nokia has announced it will begin rolling out the Nokia 808 PureView cameraphone in select markets in May. The Finnish mobile giant also announced that India, and Russia, will be the first two markets to get the PureView on retail shelves.

The Symbian Belle-based Nokia 808 PureView, or PureView 808 as it was first known, stole the show when it was unveiled at MWC 2012, receiving the Best Mobile Device award at the prestigious event.

Even in our own ThinkDigit Weekly Poll, which asked readers “Which top-end smartphone unveiled at MWC do you most fancy?” the Nokia 808 PureView won out, displacing the quad-core processor powered flagships – the LG Optimus 4X HD, HTC One X (read our review), and Huawei Ascend D Quad – at least in terms of reader interest.

In the meanwhile, the Nokia 808 PureView has also won the award for Best Imaging Innovation for 2012 from the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA). Jo Harlow, Head of Smart Devices at Nokia, spoke about the importance of the device in the entire smartphone industry, saying:

“PureView has completely raised the bar on imaging performance for the whole smartphone industry - and Nokia is not stopping here. We’re going to carry on developing PureView for our future smartphones in ways that will again revolutionize the imaging experience.”

The Nokia 808 PureView features an extra-large 41MP sensor, along with high-performance Carl Zeiss optics and new pixel oversampling technology. Offering a maximum image resolution of 38MP, the Nokia 808 PureView’s camera sensor condenses 7 adjacent pixels into one, downsizing it to an extra-sharp and light-sensitive 5MP or 8MP image. Max image quality at 4:3 aspect is 38 MP, while at 16:9 aspect is 34 MP.

The Nokia 808 PureView also features a built-in Xenon flash, alongside a LED light for video. It can handle 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps, with stereo sound, and 4x zoom. Nokia has also included the Nokia Rich Recording feature, which enables audio recording at CD-like levels of quality, previously only possible with external microphones. It also comes with Dolby Headphone technology, transforming stereo content into a personal surround sound experience over any headphones and Dolby Digital Plus for 5.1 channel surround sound playback.

While all this probably makes the Nokia 808 PureView the greatest cameraphone to date, Nokia has decided not to put too much juice into the rest of the phone’s specifications – it features a relatively low-resolution 640x360 pixel Gorilla Glass AMOLED display, albeit with a 16:9 display.

Other specifications include a single-core 1.3GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, 16GB built-in storage, USB-on-the-Go, Bluetooth 3.0, HSDPA 14.4Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps, Wi-Fi N with DLNA, GPS and A-GPS, stereo FM radio, and even NFC connectivity.

Facebook CEO set to become richer than Microsoft CEO

Facebook Inc (FB)'s $11.8 billion initial public offering will cement the status of 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg as one of the world's richest men and put his social network among the highest-valued companies in the US. 

Facebook is offering about 337.4 million shares for $28 to $35 each, according to a regulatory filing yesterday. At the upper end of that range, the co-founder's stake would be $17.6 billion, making him richer than Microsoft Corp's Steve Ballmer and Russian steel billionaire Vladimir Lisin, who are both twice his age, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

Zuckerberg, who began the service for Harvard classmates as a 19-year-old in his dorm room, built Facebook into the most popular social-networking site in the world, topping 900 million users last quarter. Now he has to prove he has the leadership skills to deliver enough growth to justify the company's valuation, said Paul Saffo, managing director at Discern Analytics in San Francisco. 

"The whole story about the Silicon Valley is hard-working, entrepreneurial tech geeks getting big payoffs," said Saffo, whose firm provides analytics to institutional investors. "The challenge he has is: Can Mark grow as quickly as his company has grown? And can Mark grow faster than his company has grown? Because, of course, that's what a leader must do." 

Passing MySpace 

Zuckerberg, who has developed a reputation for introducing new products quickly, helped the company supplant MySpace as the most popular social service while also navigating competitive threats from Google Inc, Twitter Inc and other social-media sites. The company has expanded its appeal by enabling developers to build applications on top of the platform, offering users music, movies, e-commerce options and other extras. 

"They stayed nimble, like a startup of a smaller size," said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Altimeter Group. "The culture encouraged them to experiment and innovate on a regular basis, even when they had the lead." 

Facebook's IPO would value the company at as much as $96 billion. It is offering 180 million of the shares, while existing owners such as Accel Partners and Digital Sky Technologies are offering 157.4 million shares, according to the filing. Zuckerberg is offering 30.2 million of his 533.8 million shares. The majority of his net proceeds will be used to pay taxes associated with exercising a stock option. 

Majority control 

He may control about 57 per cent of the voting power of Facebook's outstanding capital stock after the offering, according to the filing. 

Zuckerberg has shown patience in bringing Facebook to the brink of an IPO. After starting the company in 2004, he rolled it out to other college campuses, reaching 1 million users by the end of the year. Zuckerberg also received a key investment from Peter Thiel, who made much of his wealth as a co-founder of online-payments service PayPal, later sold to EBay Inc. 

It wasn't until 2006 that Zuckerberg opened up the service so anyone could join. Facebook accumulated 12 million users by the end of 2006. 

Zuckerberg was able to woo other investors along the way to handle the growing user base. That included software company Microsoft, Accel and Russian investor Digital Sky. 

Facebook, while preparing for the IPO, has remained active on other fronts. After being sued by Yahoo Inc in March for patent infringement, the company has been looking to buy intellectual property from other owners of it. Facebook plans to spend $550 million on some of the patents Microsoft had earlier said it would purchase from AOL Inc. 

Microsoft CEO Ballmer's net worth was $15.4 billion as of yesterday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

MSatyam, TechM to introduce plans to retain employees

IT services firm Mahindra Satyam that will soon be one with its parent Tech Mahindra is implementing a host of employee engagement opportunities to ensure greater employee retention after the merger. 

Employees will be allowed to switch verticals and services to improve their bandwidth of offering a smorgasbord of services that Tech Mahindra and Mahindra Satyam offer to clients. A senior official of Mahindra Satyam who was involved in this proposal said, "After spending at least 18 months in a particular domain or vertical, employees will be allowed move to another service offering of their choice. For this they will have to undergo training for a period of three to six months to gain proficiency." 

Currently employees from either organisation swap jobs only when a need arises. For example, a Mahindra Satyam employee learns the coding ability to offer enterprise mobility services offered to telecom clients only if Satyam bags a large account in telecom. By enabling such an option, the merged entity will not only help employees in honing their skill set, but also succeed in minimising attrition levels. 

In addition to this, employees will also be allowed to choose to work from a location of their choice after finding a replacement for their position in the current location. The Mahindra Satyam official quoted above said, "Tech Mahindra has most of its offices in North and Western India. Since close to 50% of Satyam's hiring is from colleges and companies in Delhi, NCR region and Pune, employees who have had to relocate to South India will now be allowed to take a transfer after filling in the vacancy." 

Come December, a majority of 75,000 employees of both the firms will work jointly from the same facility in centres where Tech Mahindra and Satyam have offices. Close to Rs 500 crore will be spent globally to set up infrastructure and support services for their clients in the next three years.

Samsung announces Galaxy S III with S Voice and a bunch of other iOS features

Samsung announced the Galaxy S III today at the Unpacked event in London. Apple’s biggest competitor in the smartphone space, and the only other manufacture making any significant profit, showed off the upgraded 4.8-inch 720P SuperAMOLED display device that now weighs 133 grams among other minor spec improvements.

A few of the features shown off were S-Voice, which is like Siri (on-stage presenter asked for the news and got the weather), Scan and Match for Music (iTunes Match), and Airplay-like “AllShare Cast” for streaming content to your HDTV through the AppleTV-like AllShare Cast Dongle.  Samsung also named its iPod nano-like music player ”Pebble,” which bears a resemblance to the iOS Kickstarter watch that goes by the same name.

One cool new thing is a face recognition photo app. It lets you instantly send pictures to your friends that it recognizes in your pictures. The S III also has a pop-up player, which is sort of an app version of picture-in-picture that allows you to watch a movie while you switch around to other applications.

Initial reviews seem a little luke-warm on the device. Most call it an incremental update from the S II with new features that also brought some new flaws.

Oh, and Phil Schiller will not like this news: Flipboard for Android is debuting on the S III.

10 most important cities in the world

1. London

London ranks number one in most aspects; be it quality of life, knowledge and influence or economic activity. London, however, lags behind Washington DC when it comes to political power play.

2. New-York

America's financial hub was named the second most important city after London. In a recent survey New York also lost its crown as city with the most expensive office rents

Can you guess the rest? Read on to find out

3. Hong Kong

4. Paris

5. Singapore

6. Miami

7. Geneva

8. Shanghai

9. Beijing

10. Berlin