Microsoft parts ways with Windows head

Microsoft on Monday abruptly parted ways with Windows head Steven Sinofsky, barely two weeks after the long-time software executive oversaw the launch of the company’s most important new software product in nearly two decades.

Mr Sinofsky was behind the radical overhaul of Windows that has seen Microsoft combine a personal computer and a touchscreen tablet operating system in a single product as it attempts to catch up with market leader Apple. The controversial decision to pursue a hybrid approach has drawn criticism from some reviewers, as well as scorn from Apple boss Tim Cook.

Microsoft said last month that the Windows 8 launch was more successful than its predecessor’s, with 4m customers buying software to upgrade their computers in the first four days. However, analysts say that it will be months before it becomes clear whether the business customers who determine the success of each new Windows release will take to the software.

Mr Sinofsky’s star had risen rapidly at Microsoft after he was brought in to head its core operating system division following the debacle surrounding Windows Vista. He went on to oversee the well-received Windows 7, positioning him for a while as the most likely heirapparent to Steve Ballmer, chief executive.

A Microsoft veteran of 23 years, Mr Sinofsky won a reputation for his rigorous management of large and complex software projects, delivering important products on schedule and avoiding the sort of delays that plagued Vista. However, he was known as an ambitious and abrasive manager inside the company, causing tensions with some of his peers.

While delivering Windows 8 on schedule, he failed to draw enough outside developers to create apps for the new software, a lapse that is widely seen as one of the greatest immediate drawbacks in Microsoft’s effort to break into the tablet market.

Microsoft gave no reason for Mr Sinofsky’s immediate departure and Mr Ballmer gave only cursory recognition of his work, saying: “I am grateful for the many years of work that Steven has contributed to the company.”

However, announcing that Julie Larson-Green, another Windows executive, would take over Mr Sinofsky’s engineering responsibilities, he paid tribute to her “proven ability to effectively collaborate and drive a cross-company agenda”.

Mr Sinofsky also took much of the blame publicly for Microsoft’s failure for a number of months this year to stick to the terms of a settlement reached with European regulators, a lapse that is expected to lead to a significant fine from Brussels.

Nurturing Creativity: An ideal Ideology

An idea is for LIFE.
Making those ideas work is Creativity.
To find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t.” – Robert Sutton
With the competition reaching the skies, it is almost inevitable that by the time we realize that our minds are designed to work in
“DIFFERENTLY special ways”, we are already leading the RAT Race.
Salesforce.com, Amazon.com, Apple, Google, Proctor & Gamble, Ogilvy & Mather, Nintendo, Toyota & Toshiba are some of the companies topping the
Forbes charts for Innovation & Creativity.
Any organization in this competitive era has to have continuous Innovation and should encourage & reward brilliant ideas.
Nurturing of an Idea does not happen in isolation. Infact, “Organization, Community & Leadership” are three factors which have direct correlation with its
nurturing.
Organization is a place where creative people work collectively.
Community is the environment necessary to foster and grow any idea.
Leadership is to implement the idea such that its benefits can be reaped for years and years to come, by not only the bearer but also by the society as a
whole.
Having entered the era of budding Entrepreneurs (and Intrapreneurs) we should understand that no economy can be successful without them. Ironically,
instead of nurturing it we tend to discourage those who are different in their own unique ways.
What is Entrepreneurship? – “Today’s BUZZ word” or “The most popular mode of employment” - one may say!
But, Entrepreneurship actually is the ability to foster a new idea and the courage to make it rise higher than the highest tide!
With these words I’d like to propose that “Creativity be stressed upon and encouraged in all schools across the globe”. Creativity does not come in a day.
Infact, most times it takes like ‘forever’ for a world changing idea to pop-up, but I guess – Archimedes would have been ecstatic while shouting ‘Eureka’
because he knew that the idea was worth the wait!
In the words of Sir Ken Robinson (A Creativity expert) – “ creativity is as important as literacy in education and that we should treat it with the same status.
The fostering of creativity demands an environment that permits mistakes, he said, but our schools don’t provide it.”
“We are educating people out of their creative capacities”
Schools should encourage children to make mistakes because “If you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original” !!

Fundamental restructuring, of our education system, is required!

Creativity can be emphasized by the generation and expression of ideas in a non-evaluative framework and by concentrating on both divergent and convergent thinking. Adults can also try to ensure that children have the opportunity and confidence to take risks, challenge assumptions, and see things in a new way.

At this juncture, I’d like to give a couple of examples of Creative thinking as written under -

# A young boy was asked why are brakes provided in a car?
He replied – “To be able to drive Faster”!!
She replied – “From my dreams”!!

# A 5 year old girl making “a piece of art” from a heap of clay, was asked where did your ideas come from?

I propose not only emphasizing to young children to give “Out of Box” answers but to also reward them for it. Not to discourage, detain or punish them if they make a mistake, as mistakes are just another way of looking at the same thing differently.

We should at a very fundamental level breed this creative thinking because it is always these world changing ideas that make the difference!

The Onus lies on the child, his/her family, and the teacher “To get out of the line every time they find themselves in ONE!” because no matter how brilliant the shop owner’s child is, he still chose to become the next “kirana-wala”!

Let us get together to promote Creativity & nurture talent as they want to grow and not as we want them to!

Four reasons to refinance by the end of the year

Are you hoping to cut costs in 2013? Then you might want to refinance your mortgage with one of the record low interest rates that have been a feature of 2012.

"With rates at historic lows, it's the perfect time to refinance if it makes sense for you," says Jim Duffy, a mortgage banker with Cole Taylor Mortgage. He adds that rates will probably not go significantly lower.

Duffy says that The Federal Reserve Board, the main governing body of the Federal Reserve System, which oversees national monetary policy and the banks, has been keeping interest rates low through some financial controls they wield that influence rates.

But they can't keep it up for much longer, he says. "And once they stop, rates will surely go up."

Read on to learn more about why you should refinance before the year ends…

Reason #1: Rates are at Historic Lows

You've seen all the hyped-up headlines, right? "Mortgage Interest Rates at Ridiculously Low Lows!"

Well, here's the thing: it's not all hype. Just consider the October 2012 press release from Freddie Mac, an institution established by Congress in 1970 to provide liquidity, stability, and affordability to the nation's residential mortgage markets. Its headline read "Mortgage Rates Hit All-Time Record Lows For Second Consecutive Week."

It went on to list the average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage as 3.36 percent for the week ending October 4, 2012, significantly lower than the 3.94 percent interest rate from the same week in 2011.

In addition, the release reported that the average amount in points a borrower could expect to pay was a low 0.6 percent of the amount of the mortgage. Points are a one-time charge by the lender, and can reach up to 3 percent of the loan amount, according to a mortgage settlement guide published by the Federal Reserve Board.

It's important to understand, however, that certain closing costs, such as appraisal, application, home inspection, and private mortgage insurance (PMI) fees, may also apply, adds the Federal Reserve Board. So, you'll want to make sure that the savings outweigh the costs before you decide to refinance.

Still it doesn't get much clearer than "all-time low."

Reason #2: 2012 is an Election Year

You might ask, "What does a presidential election have to do with the interest rate you score when you refinance?" Possibly a lot, says Chris L. Boulter, president of Val-Chris Investments, Inc., a California company specializing in residential and commercial loans.

"If someone has the ability to refinance and it will save them money, they should take advantage of it now, because I would anticipate that after the election, and next year, we're going to see those rates start to climb," he says.

Boulter says this is due to the fact that markets and other financial forces that drive rates - like big business, the Federal Reserve Board, and consumer behavior - do not like uncertainty. And what is an election except the uncertainty of who will guide the country for the next four years? So, with the election ahead of us and a continued - if weak - economic recovery predicted in 2013, interest rates could creep higher, he says.

Reason #3: Lock in a Low Fixed-Rate Mortgage

Do you have an adjustable-rate mortgage that has a low interest rate…for now? Are you starting to worry about what would happen if interest rates increased?

Now might be the perfect time to lock-in a low interest rate that can't change for the life of your loan.

First, let's back up and make sure the difference between an adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) and a fixed-rate mortgage is clear. In a fixed-rate mortgage, the interest rate, and the monthly payment, remains the same for the life of the loan.

An ARM's interest rate, on the other hand, changes periodically depending on an agreed-upon market index, so it could go up or down, according to an ARM handbook published by the Federal Reserve Board. It adds that the initial rate of an ARM is usually lower than a fixed-rate loan, but that the low rate may only last from one month to five years or more.

Now, wouldn't you rather have a low rate that will last throughout your entire loan term, opposed to just one month or five years?

If so, make sure to lock in a fixed-rate mortgage now - before rates increase.

Reason #4: To Pay Less for Your House

How much did your house cost you? If you just repeated the listing price you agreed to pay before you took out your mortgage, you are way short. The fact is, you're house will cost you substantially more than its listing price, assuming you did take out a mortgage to pay for your home.

That, of course, is because the lender charges you interest on the loan. The higher the interest, the more you'll pay over time. But many people don't see how interest can increase the cost of their home over time, or more importantly, how refinancing to a lower interest rate can save them money.

The best way to illustrate this is to crunch the numbers in an example. Below, we'll assume you agreed to pay the seller $400,000, made a 20 percent down payment ($80,000), and got a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 5 percent interest rate. Check out the savings if you refinanced that loan to a 3.36 percent rate (the average rate as of October 4, 2012 according to the aforementioned Freddie Mac).*

	Your Current Loan	Your New Loan
Interest Rate	5 percent	3.36 percent
Loan Amount	$320,000	$320,000
Monthly Payment	$1,717.83	$1,412.05
Total of 360 Payments	$618,418.51	$508.338.80

As the example shows, that $400,000 house really costs much more. However, it costs $110,079.71 less if you refinanced using the above numbers.*

Now, an 'invisible' Toyota Prius

Using optical camouflage technology, researchers at Keio University showed off a ‘see-through Toyota Prius’ that renders the back seat invisible. This would allow the driver to see exactly what is behind the vehicle, rather than relying on the rear view camera that doesn’t really offer a full field-of-view. The technology basically captures footage from behind the object and projects the background onto the seat. It’s quite similar to the technology Mercedes-Benz used on its invisible F-Cell. Earlier this year, Mercedez Benz had figured out how to make an entire car disappear using the same technology.

Using the same optical camouflage, technology experts at Mercedez Benz had figured out how to make an entire car disappear earlier this year.
The researchers created the illusion that their new zero emissions F-Cell Mercedes Benz is not even there at all, the Daily Mail reported.
Taking the principal that to see through something you need to see what's behind it, they covered the driver's side of the car in mats of LEDs, and mounted a digital SLR camera on the opposite side of the vehicle.
The camera shoots video on the passenger side of the car and the video is displayed in real time on the driver side of the automobile.

This ingenious approach, originally pioneered by scientists at the University of Tokyo, works on the same principles of the blue screen used by TV weather forecasters and Hollywood filmmakers.
The idea also mimics the iPad 2 Halloween costume that seems to display a gaping hole in the human body.
In Mercedes' promotional video, stupefied Muggles stare and fall about in shock as the team put the car through its paces along the highways of Hamburg and the bridges of Bavaria.

Meanwhile online, while some pessimistic YouTube users were wary, anticipating that invisible cars would no doubt lead to brutal crashes, others fantasised about bring able to park anywhere at all, without getting a ticket.