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After 17 years of long waiting Guns N’ roses fans are getting rewarded to listen their new album free on the web before its sell to the music store.

Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy will make its debut on the band’s MySpace page starting Thursday, according to a Reuters report Wednesday. Myspace users will be able to stream Guns N’ Roses’ long-awaited album for free before it goes on sale Sunday in an exclusive deal with Best Buy. However, listeners will not be able to download tracks from the site.

MySpace Music is a joint venture with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group. Giving fans an early crack at the albums could be a big win for MySpace, which launched a music joint venture with several record labels this year to challenge Apple Inc’s iTunes online music store.

“Chinese Democracy” has aroused interest because of its notoriety; it is the first album of new Guns N’ Roses material in more than 17 years, and has taken nearly as long to finish.

The band built its reputation on its hit debut “Appetite for Destruction” and “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II,” but tension among members led to all of the original members but Rose, 46, leaving.

Citigroup Inc., the US bank with the most employees, plans to layoff 53,000 employees and cut expenses by 20%. This is the biggest cut so far by a financial institution since the economic crisis began and the biggest layoffs in the US since the automobile industry laid off almost 80,000 workers in 1980.

CEO Vikram Pandit intends to reduce headcount by about 14% to 300,000 in the ‘‘near term’’, a presentation on the firm’s website said on Monday. Pandit has already cut 23,000 jobs, leaving the New York-based bank with 352,000 employees as of September 30.

About 100,000 jobs have already been lost at the largest banks and brokerages. In the last month, Goldman Sachs Group Inc began cutting 3,200 jobs, while Morgan Stanley said it would cut 10% of the jobs in the unit housing its investment banking operations.

Also Read:

1. Layoff in IT industry, Who is next?
2. Poll - Recent Layoff in IT
3. HP cutting 24,600 jobs
4. Jet Airways layoff 800 employees Kingfisher may follow

Today on the occassion of diwali NSE and BSE both are conducting muhurat trading, but mood of both invester and broker is sombre.

“No miracle is going to happen in the markets just because it is Diwali. We do not expect clients to conduct any big trades,” said Anita Gandhi, head-institutional business, Arihant Capital Markets.

BSE and NSE both fallen about more than 30% in the october only, largly driven by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) selling and hedge funds faced with redemption pressures back home. Brokers are expecting dull mahurat session.

Kotak Securities is offering incentives for people to trade on the muhurat trading day. In a special offer, Kotak Securities has announced the ‘double dhamaka’ contest, where investors can win prizes if they generate a certain volume through trading tomorrow.

Lakshmi Puja And Muhurat Trading on Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Lakshmi Puja : 4:00 PM Onwards

Muhurat Trading Session Details:

Session Start Time End Time Login 05 : 15 p.m. 06 : 15 p.m. Continuous Trading 06 : 15 p.m. 07 : 15 p.m. Closing 07 : 15 p.m. 07 : 25 p.m. Post Closing 07 : 25 p.m. 07 : 45 p.m.

Economic crisis seems to continue and its face is now becoming worse. The benchmark indices Nifty and BSE crashes below 10% today. The pressure in the market are coming in from the European funds. Some large Europe based funds are facing serious redemption pressure. The panic sell by the local funds are increasing the pressure in the market.

Bank, Oil, Metal, Realty slip over 10%. Among the frontliners, Suzlon Energy went down over 35%. Unitech lost 28% and Nalco crashed 24%.

Hindalco, ABB, Power Grid, PNB, Cairn India, Ranbaxy Labs, ONGC, Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Sterlite Industries, DLF, Maruti Suzuki, M&M, Reliance Industries, Reliance Infrastructure, SBI, Reliance Communication, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Tata Power plunged 10-20% on the Sensex. 458 shares have advanced while 2541 shares have declined. Nearly 191 shares are unchanged.

The Dow and Nasdaq Futures fell over 6% each. SGX Nifty tumbled over 12%. European markets are down 6-8%.

Current BSE Graph:

Source: NSE & BSE

Historic moment for the entire country, the PSLV-C11, carrying India’s first unmanned moon spacecraft Chandrayaan-1, was successfully put into initial orbit from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Wednesday at around 6.40 am. Watch

At the end of the 49-hour countdown, the 44.4 meter tall four-stage PSLV-C11 blasted off from the second launch pad lifted off from the second launch pad into a cloudy sky. Chandrayaan-1 is carrying 11 payloads, five entirely designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from US, which would explore the Moon over the next two years.

After a series of procedures over the next two weeks, the spacecraft would reach its desired Lunar orbit and placed at a height of 100 km from the Lunar surface, marking the operational phase of the mission which would put India in the elite lunar club.

Large crowds had gathered at Sriharikota since early Wednesday morning to witness this historic event. The crowds cheered at the PSLV, which soared majestically into the skies. However, the thick black clouds played spoil sport for those waiting to watch the PSLV launch into the skies. Watch

Also Read:
India’s First Mission to Moon - Chandrayaan

Economy crisis follows largest layoffs in Indian aviation sector, Jet Airways given pink slips to more than 800 cabin crew and customer care executives. Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines had announced a cost-cutting collaboration on Monday October 13. Meanwhile, sources say that Kingfisher airlines is also likely to lay off employees.

The downturn in the world economy has severely impacted the world aviation industry. The rapid increases in and the volatility in the crude oil prices and that of aviation turbine fuel and the slowdown in economic activity has resulted in a decline in air travel both on international and domestic segments of the air travel market.

Source: MC

Update; TOI reports 1000+ layoff

Also Read

• Poll - Recent Layoff in IT
• Layoff in IT industry, Who is next?
• HP cutting 24,600 jobs

In honor of our 10th birthday, we’ve brought back our oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001.

Lets go with google to the year 2001. It is the year when Google has first complete archived index. Search some of the interesting term of the history.

Google, tells in its FAQ section that index is not actually a perfect reproduction of the real 2001 index; it says that it is a pretty good approximation. Some index entries have been removed for various reasons over time. Google’s FAQ also adds that this special search engine won’t be live forever, but just for one month.

Largest mobile manufacturer Nokia launches its first touch screen phone Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. The XpressMusic looks like an iPhone, and having similar features. XpressMusic got a less sophisticated, single-touch screen, albeit one with more pixels. It got some of the features which some people wish the iPhone had, including a fancier camera that has a flash and can record video, voice dialing, and even an FM radio. This phone comes with Nokia’s Music service, which aims to challenge Apple dominance of the digital music market and iTunes.

This quad band phone has 3.5mm headphone socket, up to 24GB of storage from 8GB of on-board memory and support for 16GB microSD cards, a 3.2-megapixel camera featuring Carl Zeiss Tessar optics and dual LED flash lights, stereo Bluetooth 2.0, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi, and HSDPA data access. You’ll get a microSD card, giving you an initial capacity of 16GB for music. And this is no bad thing considering the 5800 will be one of the first phones to incorporate Nokia’s new Comes With Music service. You’ll be able to play MP3, WMA (protected and unprotected) and unprotected AAC files.

The XpressMusic is currently available only in UK at $400. It will be available in india in the end of the year. So this will be the iphone killer? Take the poll here

Full Specification

• Physical Specs - Size: 111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm, Weight: 109 g, Volume: 83 cc, Touch user interface optimised for one-hand use with tactile feedback
• Display and 3D - Main display Size: 3.2″, Resolution: 640 x 360 pixels (nHD) Up to 16 million colours, automatic orientation sensor (Accelerometer) for display rotation, 3D image engine
• Keys and input method - Stylus, plectrum and finger touch, Dedicated Media Bar touch key for access to music, gallery, Voice commands, Physical keys for application launch key (menu key), send & end, power, camera, lock, volume up & down
• Colors and covers - Red, Blue, Black
• Connectors - Micro-USB connector, USB 2.0 High Speed, 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector, MicroSD card slot, small DC jack, Micro USB cable interface to PC (CA-101), TV out interface (CA-75U)
• Power - BL-5J 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery, Talk time(max): GSM 8.8h, WCDMA 5h Standby time (max): GSM 406.2h WCDMA 400h
• Memory - MicroSD memory card slot, hot swappable, max. 16 GB, 81 MB internal memory, 8GB microSD memory card in-box, expandable up to 16GB
• Operating frequency - WCDMA 900/2100 , GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA 850/1900 (Latin America and Brazil variant only), Automatic switching between GSM bands, Flight mode
• Data network - CSD, HSCSD, GPRS/EDGE class B, multislot class 32, maximum speed 296/177 kbps (DL/UL), WCDMA 2100/900 with simultanous voice and packet data, maximum speed PS 384/384 kbps (UL/DL), CS maximum speed 64 kbps, HSDPA cat 6, maximum speed 3.6 Mbps (DL), WLAN IEEE 802.11 b/g (3G version only), TCP/IP support
• Local connectivity and synchronisation - Bluetooth version 2.0, MTP (Mobile Transfer Protocol) support, TV out with Nokia Video Connectivity Cable (CA-75U, in-box), Support for PC synchronisation with Nokia OVI Suite.

• GPS and navigation - Integrated GPS for pedestrian and car navigation, Nokia Maps 2.0 Touch application

• Photography - 3.2 megapixel camera (2048 x 1536 pixels), Carl Zeiss optics, 3x digital zoom, Dual LED flash

• Video - Video recording at up to 640 x 480 pixels and up to 30 fps

• Music and audio playback - Nokia Nseries digital music player, Music playback file formats: .mp3, SpMidi, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, Integrated stereo speakers with surround sound (crystal clear hi-fi sound quality with dedicated audio chip)

• Voice and audio recording - Voice commands, Speaker-independent name dialling (SIND), Voice recorder, Digital stereo microphone

• Software platform and user interface -S60 5th edition, Symbian OS version 9.4

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic will be the iphone killer. Take the poll

Update: Nokia has decided to launch its first touchscreen in India in the third week of November. The handset likely to price it at Rs 20,000. Source: ET