Beauty Gets New Beak

Beauty is her name. She is not a human being, but a bird. A majestic bald eagle. Look at her plight after a hunter shot and smashed her beautiful beak. Foxnews had a detailed report of this little eagle, which lost its beak three years ago in an illegal hunting. She was left with a vestigial lower part and tongue, using which, holding the prey and eating were difficult. She was in fact starving and couldn’t even drink water properly.

The eagle was found back in 2005 in a landfill in Alaska. With the stump of a beak, finding it difficult to drink a drop of water or even preen her plume, she was suffering. Her protector Jane Fink Cantwell soon took her to a bird recovery center in Anchorage. People hand-fed her for many days and waited for the broken beak to grow back. When it was in vain, one day Jane met Nate Calvin, an engineer. He, on seeing the plight of the little bird, decided to design an artificial beak for her.

Thus, spending 200 hours, Calvin came up with a curved part, which is now attached to the bird. A stronger part is still in design and will be attached to her soon. That will enable her function better.

We can only hope that no more animal shootings like this happen in the future. Why would we want to kill animals? Why would we want to harm them, while they don’t do any harm on us? They also have a right to live on this earth. We have already made ourselves the dominant species on planet. All other animals mostly remain in jungle without harming us in anyway. We have the whole world for ourselves. In such a case, why would human still engage in such activities? Just for fun?

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008

MS Strikes a Deal with HP

Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard, already in partnership, are expanding their businesses together. Microsoft, after tasting failure in Yahoo! acquisition and after the talks between Yahoo! and Google on a search advertisement partnership, is under strong pressure to get higher search market share. And this caused their striking up a deal with HP to install Live Search engine in HP PCs.

HP is the largest distributor of consumer PCs in the US and Canada, and shipped almost 4 million PCs in the first quarter of 2008 alone. So, having Windows Live Search in all HP PCs is a huge advantage for MS. It will well equip Microsoft to fight Google better. In 2006, Google had struck up a similar deal with Dell to install Google search in the Dell machines as default search toolbar. Microsoft’s move can be seen as an afterthought of that.

Though many advanced users may change the default search back to Google or Yahoo!, this may enable Microsoft to get a good share in the search realm. Currently, Google holds 62 % of the search market and Live Search is at a deplorable 9 %.

Now, Live Search is the default search engine for Windows Vista, but the new deal will make Live Search have more visitors. Also, HP can boost their business through this partnership. HP, at a small fee, can point users to their specific technology websites and get some more sales.

Genuinely, what these tactics bring back to Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard is something to wait and see.

Copyright © Gayatri Jayashankar 2008