Philips
If finding space in your freezer requires a headtorch and an ice-axe, the Delizia has got you covered. Freeze the small chilling disc overnight (instead of the usual bowl others use) and buy multiple discs for an endless stream of Arctic eats. Free recipe book included.
Price: £48.93

www.lakeland.co.uk

Magimix
Available in classic white or a stylish satin steel finish, the swish Gelato Chef 2200 has its own freezer so there’s no need to wait hours for your frosty fix, especially as it only takes 20 minutes from kitchen to table. Or 21 minutes from kitchen to stomach.
Price: £229.99
www.houseoffraser.co.uk

White Mountain
Based on the original American 1920s bucket and barrel machine, this retro maker features a traditional hand crafted tub made from Maine pine. It’s made to American electrical specifications, so you may need additional modifications or converters. Alternatively, a hand-crank version is available for a truly authentic experience.
Price: £209.89
www.overstock.com

Gaggia
Built by one of Italy’s most famous espresso machine makers, the Gelatiera has a built -in freezer, two removable bowls and only three buttons, so it’s simple to use, easy to clean and makes Italian-style gelato in a cool 30 minutes.
Price: £324
www.silvernutmeg. com

Musso
Named after the Italian for “small”, the Piccolo isn’t exactly true to its name. Designed for caterers but suitable for large families with even larger appetites, this silver beauty can churn out up to two litres of ice cream per hour.
Price: £747.50 (exc. VAT)
www.catering-machines.com

Kenwood
The IM250′s removable non-stick freezer bowl needs to chill for 24 hours before use, so save it a spot in the freezer if you’re a spontaneous ice cream chef. Quick and easy to use, this compact machine makes one litre of ready-to-eat soft serve in half an hour.
Price: £39.45
www.amazon.co.uk

Cuisinart
Calling all ice cream connoisseurs ? the stainless steel Ice Cream Professional is fully automatic and creates gourmet -quality treats. The open window means you can add fruit, chocolate chips, or anything else that takes your fancy during the 45-60 minute cycle.
Price: £280
www.cuisinart.co.uk

SAN BRUNO, Calif. — Last month, a YouTube  user, TomR35, uploaded a clip from the AMC series “Mad Men” in which Don Draper makes a heartfelt speech about the importance of nostalgia in advertising.

Viewers wouldn’t notice, but that clip also makes an important point about modern advertising — YouTube is an increasingly fruitful place for advertisers.

In the past, Lions Gate, which owns the rights to the “Mad Men” clip, might have requested that TomR35’s version be taken down. But it has decided to leave clips like this up, and in return, YouTube runs ads with the video and splits the revenue with Lions Gate.

Remarkably, more than one-third of the two billion views of YouTube videos with ads each week are like TomR35’s “Mad Men” clip — uploaded without the copyright owner’s permission but left up by the owner’s choice. They are automatically recognized by YouTube, using a system called Content ID that scans videos and compares them to material provided by copyright owners.

Those two billion views, a 50 percent increase over last year, according to the company, are just 14 percent of the videos viewed each week on the Google-owned site. But that’s enough to turn YouTube profitable this year, analysts say.

“YouTube is a big component of our display revenue, and display is our next big business,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in an interview.

In the last year, the video site has become a significant contributor to the family business at a time when Google, which makes more than 90 percent of its revenue from text search ads, is seeking a second act. Though Google does not report YouTube’s earnings, it has hinted that it is hovering near profitability. Analysts say YouTube will bring in around $450 million in revenue this year and earn a profit. Revenue at YouTube has more than doubled each year for the last three years, according to the company.

YouTube’s new profitable relationship with content creators was not always so easy. For a long time, YouTube executives spent their time across conference tables with lawyers worried about copyright violations, said Chris Maxcy, YouTube’s director of content partnerships.

“It was 90 percent lawyers in a meeting and the marketing people faded into the background,” he said. “Now the partners we are working with get checks that get bigger every month. And now when you walk into a meeting there’s almost no lawyers, or there’s a couple of lawyers but they are deal lawyers there to help you get your contract done.”

The shift is also an important development for Google, which bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. The video site at first played the role of Google’s profligate son, throwing money at building out bandwidth and storage to handle all the videos but making little money of its own.

Mr. Schmidt said that YouTube’s role began to change about a year and a half ago, when he asked the unit to start focusing on revenue.

The strategy had been to amass “an audience first, then figure out the tools that will create the revenue, then you go to the content partners and say, ‘Hey, look guys,’ ” Mr. Schmidt said. “And I think we’re at that point now.”

Salar Kamangar, YouTube’s co-head, who also co-founded Google’s AdWords search advertising program, started spending his time figuring out how to make money on the video business.

YouTube gives Google the chance to get a piece of the television ad market, Mr. Kamangar said, by bringing videos straight to the television over an Internet connection, or Internet protocol, as the industry calls it. “Ads can be a lot more effective when they’re delivered over I.P. instead of cable or broadcast, because they’re delivered personalized to you.”

YouTube now offers several types of ads, including display ads on its home page and on the video pages, ads that promote videos and ads that run in the video stream or pop up on the bottom of a video.

When someone uploaded a recording of the Eminem song “Not Afraid,” for instance, instead of taking down the recording, YouTube ran pop-up ads that let people buy the song or the ring tone and shared the revenue with the copyright owner.

“Google smartly realized that consumers consume different types of media throughout the day,” said Dave Marsey, senior vice president of media at Digitas, the online advertising agency. “Search is a huge component of that, but there are times when you want some entertainment or you want to solve a problem and going to YouTube makes sense.”

YouTube shares advertising revenue with content partners, who may be big entertainment companies like Lions Gate or amateur videographers who have developed a following. Hundreds of these partners make more than $100,000 a year. Some, like Sal Khan, a former hedge fund manager who now makes math and science education videos, have quit their day jobs.

YouTube’s next challenge is to attract more advertisers by offering more professional, long-form content to supplement the videos of cooing babies and surprised kittens. YouTube is testing a pay-per-view film rental service and broadcasting live events like concerts, and it just signed a deal to show on-demand Major League Baseball games in Japan.

Hulu, the site started by TV networks that streams movies and shows, makes considerably more revenue per stream than YouTube because it has more professionally produced content, said Jordan Rohan, an Internet and digital media research analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “YouTube is certainly the market leader in terms of streams. They’re certainly the market leader in terms of revenues,” Mr. Rohan said. But only a small percentage of its revenue streams would justify a high ad rate, he said.

YouTube must also follow its viewers as they increasingly watch videos away from their computers, on small mobile phone screens and big TV screens. YouTube now has 160 million mobile views a day, almost triple last year’s number. When Google introduces Google TV later this year, people will be able to watch YouTube videos on Internet-connected televisions.

Source: By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER in New York Times (Technology)

MAKE your password strong, with a unique jumble of letters, numbers and punctuation marks. But memorize it — never write it down. And, oh yes, change it every few months.

These instructions are supposed to protect us. But they don’t.

Some computer security experts are advancing the heretical thought that passwords might not need to be “strong,” or changed constantly. They say onerous requirements for passwords have given us a false sense of protection against potential attacks. In fact, they say, we aren’t paying enough attention to more potent threats.

Here’s one threat to keep you awake at night: Keylogging software, which is deposited on a PC by a virus, records all keystrokes — including the strongest passwords you can concoct — and then sends it surreptitiously to a remote location.

“Keeping a keylogger off your machine is about a trillion times more important than the strength of any one of your passwords,” says Cormac Herley, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research who specializes in security-related topics. He said antivirus software could detect and block many kinds of keyloggers, but “there’s no guarantee that it gets everything.”

After investigating password requirements in a variety of settings, Mr. Herley is critical not of users but of system administrators who aren’t paying enough attention to the inconvenience of making people comply with arcane rules. “It is not users who need to be better educated on the risks of various attacks, but the security community,” he said at a meeting of security professionals, the New Security Paradigms Workshop, at Queen’s College in Oxford, England. “Security advice simply offers a bad cost-benefit tradeoff to users.”

One might guess that heavily trafficked Web sites — especially those that provide access to users’ financial information — would have requirements for strong passwords. But it turns out that password policies of many such sites are among the most relaxed. These sites don’t publicly discuss security breaches, but Mr. Herley said it “isn’t plausible” that these sites would use such policies if their users weren’t adequately protected from attacks by those who do not know the password.

Mr. Herley, working with Dinei Florêncio, also at Microsoft Research, looked at the password policies of 75 Web sites. At the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, held in July in Redmond, Wash., they reported that the sites that allowed relatively weak passwords were busy commercial destinations, including PayPal, Amazon.com and Fidelity Investments. The sites that insisted on very complex passwords were mostly government and university sites. What accounts for the difference? They suggest that “when the voices that advocate for usability are absent or weak, security measures become needlessly restrictive.”

Donald A. Norman, a co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a design consulting firm in Fremont, Calif., makes a similar case. In “When Security Gets in the Way,” an essay published last year, he noted the password rules of Northwestern University, where he then taught. It was a daunting list of 15 requirements. He said unreasonable rules can end up rendering a system less secure: users end up writing down passwords and storing them in places that can be readily discovered.

“These requirements keep out the good guys without deterring the bad guys,” he said.

Northwestern has reduced its password requirements to eight, but they still constitute a challenging maze. For example, the password can’t have more than four sequential characters from the previous seven passwords, and a new password is required every 120 days.

By contrast, Amazon has only one requirement: that the password be at least six characters. That’s it. And hold on to it as long as you like.

A short password wouldn’t work well if an attacker could try every possible combination in quick succession. But as Mr. Herley and Mr. Florêncio note, commercial sites can block “brute-force attacks” by locking an account after a given number of failed log-in attempts. “If an account is locked for 24 hours after three unsuccessful attempts,” they write, “a six-digit PIN can withstand 100 years of sustained attack.”

Roger A. Safian, a senior data security analyst at Northwestern, says that unlike Amazon, the university is unfortunately vulnerable to brute-force attacks in that it doesn’t lock out accounts after failed log-ins. The reason, he says, is that anyone could use a lockout policy to try logging in to a victim’s account, “knowing that you won’t succeed, but also knowing that the victim won’t be able to use the account, either.” (Such thoughts may occur to a student facing an unwelcome exam, who could block a professor from preparations.)

VERY short passwords, taken directly from the dictionary, would be permitted in a password system that Mr. Herley and Stuart Schechter at Microsoft Research developed with Michael Mitzenmacher at Harvard.

At the Usenix Workshop on Hot Topics in Security conference, held last month in Washington, the three suggested that Web sites with tens or hundreds of millions of users, could let users choose any password they liked — as long as only a tiny percentage selected the same one. That would render a list of most often used passwords useless: by limiting a single password to, say, 100 users among 10 million, the odds of an attacker getting lucky on one attempt per account are astronomically long, Mr. Herley explained in a conversation last month.

Mr. Herley said the proposed system hadn’t been tested and that users might become frustrated in trying to select a password that was no longer available. But he said he believed an anything-is-permitted password system would be welcomed by users sick of being told, “Eat your broccoli; a strong password is good for security.”

Source: By RANDALL STROSS in New York Times. (Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.)

Groupe Danone is the world’s largest yogurt maker and one of the biggest companies in France, with some $21 billion in sales annually. Yet a tiny factory in Bangladesh from which Danone never expects to earn any money is giving the company a profitable lesson in manufacturing for the developing world — and even some tips for business in the West.

The factory, which sits in the northern city of Bogra and makes a nutrient-rich kids’ yogurt called Shakti Doi (“energy” in Bengali), got its start in 2005, when Danone CEO Franck Riboud met Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi microfinance pioneer and founder of Grameen Bank. Yunus has a habit of finding ways to use corporate infrastructure to reach ultra-poor consumers, as his worldwide following can tell you.

The result is Grameen Danone and a factory that produces one-hundredth of what a typical Danone plant does, churning out a low-cost yogurt fortified with four vitamins and minerals generally lacking in the diets of the area’s poorer children. Danone expects the enterprise — one of its “social businesses” — to eventually run at breakeven or better, but any profit will be reinvested in similar projects.

What Danone didn’t expect is that selling yogurt to the bottom of the pyramid would teach so much, in realms from product development to factory design. “Two years ago, I was pushing to have people from the Western world interested in what we’re doing,” says Philippe Pages, Danone’s director of nutrition for emerging markets. “Now I’m bombarded with requests.”

Consider what Danone has done with food fortification. In Bangladesh the company set out to put enough vitamin A, iron, zinc and iodine into a 60 g or 80 g cup of yogurt to meet 30% of a child’s daily needs. That proportion was beyond anything Danone had ever attempted. It took a year and dozens of tries to figure out how to do it without the nutrients reacting to one another and souring the yogurt.

Part of the answer lay in a new, less reactive iron that Danone had learned about from an NGO — not the sort of partner a global corporation tends to come across in its normal line of business. Now Danone is using that iron in products for the developed world, where the company sells fortified yogurt targeting things like bone strength in older women (the Densia brand) and better digestion (Activia).

The Bogra operation has also proved a template for how Danone might push deeper into the developing world. The company already makes about 40% of its sales in emerging markets, but almost all of that is to the richest 5% to 10% of consumers in those areas. One lesson Danone picked up in Bangladesh: how to help farmers keep the milk they bring to market fresh by using enzymes, since refrigeration isn’t always possible. Someday that could help Danone expand in Africa.

Danone is also figuring out how to produce yogurt less expensively. To make Shakti Doi affordable, the company built a far simpler, lower-cost, 600-sq-m factory, even using one less tank thanks to an innovation in the fermentation process. The plant can’t make complicated recipes, and it relies on cheap labor (at local wages). But it has given Danone new insights about economies of scale. “The day we engineered that factory, a mental barrier was broken,” says Danone co-COO Emmanuel Faber. What the factory lacks in size, it makes up for in ease of use; workers simply don’t have to be as skilled.

On the other side of the coin, the experience has underscored the fact that there’s no point in reinventing the wheel. Danone originally thought that marketing in Bogra would be completely different, just as manufacturing was. There are indeed novel elements; you don’t often find nurses traveling to small U.S. towns to explain the nutritional benefits of yogurt. Yet Danone has discovered that one of the best ways to sell its wares in Bangladesh is on television, where it runs a traditional advertising campaign — featuring Muhammad Yunus. A mass-media celebrity endorsement, it seems, has value no matter where you are in the world.

Source: ODE

The health benefits of eating extra fruits and vegetables are well established: for years, children have been told that an apple a day will keep the doctor away.

But now, scientists have identified a diet promoting a much wider range of foods, including fish, poultry and nuts, that they say is much more effective at cutting the risk of heart attacks.

The Dash (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) dieting plan reduces the chances of suffering from heart disease by 18 per cent over 10 years, compared with an average American diet. People who simply up their consumption of fruits and vegetables see an 11 per cent decreased risk, a study shows.

The plan, also recommended by the American Heart Association, emphasises consumption of low-fat dairy products, whole grains, poultry, fish and nuts as well as fruits and vegetables. It also calls for a reduction in fats, red meat, sweets, and sugary drinks.

Dr Marilyn Glenville, a nutritionist, explained that the high intake of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, poultry, fish and nuts, combined with relatively low-fat dairy products and less sugar and red meats, would help to decrease the levels of cholesterol in the body. In turn, that would reduce the chances of heart disease, she said.

“Cholesterol causes a problem when it oxidises in the body and the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables prevent that from happening,” she said. “People should try to eat as many different colours as possible: they need to eat a rainbow.” She said that eating low-fat dairy products would “limit the damage” caused by cholesterol.

Dr Glenville also explained that the whole grains recommended would provide fibre, “which mixes with cholesterol in the intestine, helping to push it out of the body”. She added that the relatively slow breakdown of whole grains “maximise their cholesterol- and blood glucose-reducing effects”.

She added: “Poultry, fish and nuts do not have as much saturated fat as red meats do, they also contain more Omega-3, which controls inflammation of the arteries and, in some cases, of the heart itself. That inflammation, along with cholesterol, is often the cause of heart disease. Sugary drinks and sweets have the opposite effect.”

Nisa Maruthur, who co-authored the study, said: “The research would seem to suggest that eating a more balanced diet is important to reducing the risk of heart disease, but don’t underestimate the value of fruits and vegetables.”

The research, published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, also shows that the Dash plan reduces LDL cholesterol – so-called “bad cholesterol” – by 8 per cent and reduces blood pressure, compared with the standard American diet.

Asked if the same results could be expected in the UK, Maruthur, who is the assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, confirmed she would expect to see a similar outcome in a country with a comparable diet.

The plan was found to be more effective among black people than among white, Maruthur said, adding: “This study provides further evidence that we can make a significant impact on the heart health of the general population by promoting the Dash eating plan.

“This is not a diet that is difficult to maintain. It includes all types of foods.”
How the diet works…
Fruits and vegetables

Antioxidants from fruit and vegetables are the diet’s most important components. Cholesterol becomes a problem when it oxidises, but this can be stemmed by antioxidants. The pigments in fruits carry different antioxidants.

Low-fat dairy foods

The diet maximises the positive effects of fruits and vegetables, and limits the damage caused by saturated fats in dairy foods by eating low-fat versions.

Whole grains

When the fibre from whole grains is stripped away from foods, they are digested more quickly, causing a rise in blood glucose and bad cholesterol.

Poultry, fish and nuts versus red meat and sugary foods
The former do not have as much saturated fat as the latter and contain Omega-3. Sugar enters the bloodstream quickly, causing high blood glucose and high cholesterol.

Source : By Kevin Rawlinson in independent (uk)

Rahman’s latest projects in India, the anthem for Common Wealth Games and music for Rajinikanth-Aishwarya Rai’s Robot, have failed to impress many.

While he was made to rework on the CWG anthem, the reviewers have already tagged ‘Robot’ (Endhiran) music as one that will appeal to international music lovers but fail to get an Indian take to tapping his foot.

It can be recalled that the music of his last project, ‘Raavan’ too wasn’t impactful. Once out of the theatres, ‘Raavan’ music has gone out of fashion.

All this leaves us with just one question. Is Rahman’s music losing its charm? A trade analyst is also of the opinion that lack of time and overload of assignments is to be blamed. On condition of anonymity, the trade analyst shares with us, “After the success of ‘Jai Ho’ Rahman has become busier than he ever was. Now he has international projects too to deliver along with assignments back home. He also keeps travelling a lot these days. All these takes up a lot of his time.”

Further talking about his latest musicals not faring too well, the trade pundit said, “However, audience’s tastes and preferences are changing constantly too. May be they are just expecting something new from Rahman. Once he tabs that, he will again top the chart of favourites.”

Well, we hope Rahman gets back at mesmerizing us soon and doesn’t ignore his fans back home in a bid to impressing the international audience. 

Montana Fishburne is aiming high. The Kendra Wilkinson  sex tape is currently dominating the market for such things, outselling rival Danielle Staub Raw by a reported margin of 4-to-1.

But it’s another sex tape queen-turned household name Laurence Fishburne’s 18-year-old daughter wants to channel as she basks in her porn debut:Kim Kardashian.

“I’m actually getting a lot of mainstream offers,” Montana Fishburne said. “They are acting roles. I’m open to scripted and reality. It just all depends on the project. If something truly interests me, I’ll get involved and want to make it happen.”

Montana declines to say how much she earned for the Chippy D sex tape, but unabashedly admits she released the romp by design, for her career.

Her inspiration? “Kim Kardashian’s sex tape was released, but she still got past that,” says Montana. “Even though she got all that negative attention for it, she still has all these other ventures going on now. That is what I want to emulate.”

A group art exhibition, featuring the works of Sanjib Saha, Mohammad Imam Hossain, Silvia Nazneen, Chandan Kumar Barman, Sonia Parvin, Shahida Parveen, Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed and Abu Bakar Siddique, is on at Zainul Gallery, Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA), University of Dhaka. The participating painters are students of the Drawing and Painting Department of FFA.

The exhibition was inaugurated by noted theatre personality Ramendu Majumdar on September 2. Noted art critic Moinuddin Khaled and cartoonist Shishir Bhattacharjee were present as special guests.

Most of the painters in the group are regarded as social conscious artists. They are known as thinking artists whose works invite us to engage cerebrally with the images they create. At the exhibition, technique, in some cases, seems to be more significant than subject or theme. The themes are closely related to our varied social-cultural and economical issues. The group of painters, particularly, Mohammad Imran Hossain, Sanjib Saha, Shahida Parveen, Sonia Parvin demonstrate our political instability, superstitions, inhumanity, cruelty, criminal activities, communalism and fanaticism. Distorted visages, deformed figures, twisted limbs are recurring features in this group of painters.

Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed and Sanjib Saha have a tendency to experiment with themes, forms and objects. However, nature and picturesque beauty and rural landscape are completely lacking in their works. Most of the works are conceptual based and the painters use different mediums like oil, acrylic and mixed media.

Sanjib Saha’s “Effect of Technology” denotes our technique -based music and its great influence on our society. Underlying the work is the loss of our identity and the increasing distance from our traditional and classical music. As a painter, Saha feels that he has a great responsibility to focus on the current situation in our music industry. He records time and history of our music scenario.

Sona Parvin’s “Distortion-1” portrays an aged man’s shouting face and a number of figures behind the face. Blue, green and white are predominant aspects in the works. As a painter, she captures underprivileged peoples’ pains and agonies. Her language is distinctive as she uses the canvas to protest cruelty, inequality, political chaos, poverty and violence in our everyday life.

Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed’s human forms and themes are simple and immersed in straight lines. Her paintings are noticeable for their light quality. Blue, yellow are dominant aspect in her works.

The exhibition ends on September 10.

Looks like another love story is brewing in Tinsel Town! A source tells us that ‘I Am She’ finalist; model and former Miss Kolkata 2007 Sheena Chohan is in love and with none other than Mumbai based fashion designer and stylist Umair Zafar.

Sheena Chohan had recently participated in the ‘I Am She’ Ms India Universe pageant conducted by Sushmita Sen’s company Tantra. She was one of the finalists and though she didn’t make it to the top three, she is a popular face on Mumbai social circuit. Designer Umair Zafar has been designing clothes for the last 5 years and is known for clothing German model and ‘Bigg Boss’ participant Claudia Ciesla in some ethnic Indian outfits.

A party animal tells us that Sheena and Umair have been seen together at several events in and around the city. Sheena has been quoted in Mumbai tabloid Mid-day praising Umair Zafar’s outfits and designs. She is normally seen at parties wearing an Umair Zafar creation which she openly talks about to the press. The duo has been clicked by press photographers openly expressing their admiration for each other at many social events. They have been spotted together at about 8 events in the last one month itself says our source. The couple was seen at the Ode to Bismillah Khan Saab as well as at an event at The Ultimate Club at Lokhandwala in Mumbai within a span of two days.

Both Umair Zafar and Sheena were unavailable for comment. We tried calling Umair Zafar several times but he didn’t take our calls. Sheena of course doesn’t speak to lesser mortals like us.

Umair Zafar has designed and styled many Bollywood celebrities like Celina Jaitley, Yukta Mookhey, Padmani Kolhapuri, Geeta Basra, Aditi Sharma, Divya Dwivedi and others.

Hollywood hottie Jessica Alba  is obsessed with her ‘MAChete’ co-star Michelle Rodriguez’s body. Alba confessed to Michelle Rodriguez that the e time she watched her move she was drooling over her fantastic physique (figuratively off course).

The movie ‘MAChete’ stars Robert De Niro and Steven Seagal among other super hot celebrities. Talking to MTV about the movie Jessica said that when the poster for the movie came out she was amazed at the well sculpted body of Michelle Rodriguez. When asked about her cellulite free, perfect 10 figure, Michelle said that she underwent two weeks of intensive training and diet to get in that shape.

Alba says that Rodriguez looks insanely beautiful in the movie and her body does not seem to have one ounce of fat on it. When Alba was asked about her nude scenes in the upcoming movie, that it was not really her skin that was shown onscreen and the effects were given by the post production crew. The hot-bodied Alba said that she looks better covered up and exclaimed that she is not really comfortable acting without clothes. ‘MAChete’ was released in the U.S. on Friday September 3. The movie revolves around an ex-federal agent who seeks revenge against the boss who betrayed him.