Great Indians

Majority of Indians favour smoke-free workplaces

A near unanimous majority of Indians - 99 percent - favour a prohibition of smoking in public places, including workplaces, restaurants and bars, and demand stringent enforcement of rules to check smoking in offices, a survey has found.

According to the survey released by Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) Tuesday, majority of people agree that "all workers in India should be protected from exposure to second-hand smoke in workplaces".

A randomly selected sample of 1,026 respondents in four metros of the country - Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata - were interviewed in December last year.

"Majority of Indians support prohibition of smoking inside public places, including workplaces, restaurants and bars and an overwhelming 99 percent of Indians strongly favour enforcement of smoke-free rules in work places in order to provide comprehensive protection from second-hand exposure to tobacco smoke," the survey found.

Further, as many as 92 percent of respondents stated that exposure to second-hand smoke constitutes a serious health hazard for non-smokers.

In India, smoking in all public places, including workplaces, restaurants and educational institutions, is prohibited according to a regulation by the ministry of health which came into effect Oct 2, 2008.

Commenting on the results of the survey, Bhavna B. Mukhopadhyay, senior director of VHAI, said: "These concerns translate to the very strong belief among Indians that it is the right of customers and employees to breathe smoke-free air in workplaces and public places."

S.S. Shastri, head, department of preventive oncology, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, said: "India has always been faced with the rampant use of tobacco across all sections of society. The general consensus achieved by the survey is a very positive indicator of the sentiments of the public."

"It is very heartening to know that Indians recognise the fact that second-hand smoke is a major health hazard, and feel that the ban on smoking in public places should be more strictly enforced," said Shastri.

Source: Indo-Asian News Service

Fastest Browser

Microsoft's IE 8 browser - The Fastest

Internet Explorer 8 is the fastest browser.

According to the bloggers and a bench mark test conducted recently, Microsoft's IE 8

was declared the fastest browser with 12 sites.

A white paper published recently, by Microsoft based on benchmark testing conducted in a Microsoft lab, states that in a ‘real world’ test on browser speeds, Microsoft's team compared the performance of IE 8 (currently available as Release Candidate 1), Google Chrome 1.0 and Mozilla Firefox 3.05.

Microsoft has made available a video on the study as well as a whitepaper, "Measuring Browser Performance: Understanding Issues in Benchmarking and Performance Analysis".

Microsoft used 25 popular Web sites, based on a comScore ranking, for benchmark.

The results clearly showed that IE 8 was the fastest browser at 12 sites, followed by Chrome (nine sites) and Firefox (four sites).

Microsoft also added that in addition to the exceptional page load performance, Internet Explorer 8 is also optimised to speed up the things that many users do day in and day out such as mapping an address, emailing links to friends, checking the weather, monitoring eBay auctions, etc.

Internet Explorer 8 can perform these tasks using anywhere from 10-50% fewer steps than other browsers.

Samsung releases 12 MP Camera

Samsung might take the megapixel war in camera phones to a new level at the upcoming Mobile World Congress with the announcement of a 12 megapixel camera phone.

According to fresh reports, we have just two weeks till the Korean giant fires its next salvo. Samsung already has the 8 megapixel Innov8 in its arsenal, which competes with the C905 CyberShot from Sony Ericsson. In 2006, the company had also showcased a 10 megapixel camera phone (which was then thought to be an insane attempt), the SCH-B600; it, however, was limited to the Korean market.

Post the unveiling, production is set to commence by the end of February. As of now, we have no details about the interface, the platform, or the looks. It was earlier rumored that Samsung might also introduce a camera phone with 4X optical zoom. Will it see the light of day with its new 12 megapixel sibling? We'll' get to know soon!

Source: Techtree.com

Triple SIM Phone

Introducing, a very rare Triple SIM handset! Ok we're not sure if this is the first one but this one's got to be rare! The unnamed handset from UAE based manufacturer QiiQ can devour three SIMs at one go. Thats correct, this one can hold three separate SIM cards if you found dual slots insufficient. Well, while some might think this is more if an overkill, there seems to be a sizable amount of people who would love to have three numbers instead of having to lug around three different phones.

The catch is that at a time, only two lines will be active. As for the spec sheet, this might not sound impressive. The phone is enabled with (900/1800/1900) and dual (900/1800) GSM connectivity, a 2 megapixel camera, 2.4 QVGA display (2.6 touch panel) and a rather huge 2000 mAh battery