With the Worldcup football fever entering to the next level of excitement in the pre quarter stage, the big football tournament in South Africa is dripping with stories like a thick layer of frosting on a 10-foot high cake. Will brilliant Brazilian goal-keeper Julio Cesar lead his team to the Cup title? Will Ghana’s Kevin-Prince Boateng, born of a German mother and Ghanaian father, find himself opposing his half-brother Jerome, who plays for Germany and is in the same grouping as Ghana?These stories and much more are instantly available for free on Nokia S60 5th Edition and widget-enabled S60 3rd Edition devices through ESPNsoccernet.

ESPNsoccernet is one in a large stable of sports widgets powered by Plusmo, now a part of AT&T interactive. The widget is a powerful tool that pulls in team and region news coverage, live game visualization, match commentary, team tracking, detailed fixtures, tables, and more. You get not only ESPN’s latest tournament coverage and stories, but also Premiere league and other soccer stories depending upon your choice of team settings.

I tried the app on my Nokia E63. The first step was setting the language, where I had my choice of English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German.

Then, I picked a region of interest from choices that included the five language countries, plus Scotland, the USA, Europe in general, and a global option. I chose England for demo purposes. If I had switched to Europe, I would have also had access to UEFA and Super Cup stories.

With England as a selection, I had a choice of Premiere League and FA Cup stories. I chose the FA Cup, and it then displayed the most recently played match.

Selection of a region determines which sets of stories will be chosen by the ESPN soccernet RSS news feed mechanism.

The icon list on the right-hand side includes my favorite teams (the star icon), schedules of selected teams (the calendar icon), articles about the teams (the newspage icon), and a change settings icon (the three dots). I clicked on the news page icon to see the list of stories, shown below.

Click on the newspage icon to have the RSS feed pull up the current stories about your team(s).

Clicking on any headline brings up the details of that story for perusing. S60 5th edition devices allow touch scrolling, while S60 3rd Edition devices use the rocker key for scrolling.

The full article can be viewed by scrolling, and related articles can be selected and accessed.

At any time, I could also switch my settings to another region or team just by clicking on the three-dot icon. I found that it was better to specify my teams very narrowly in order to sip from the fountain rather than the powerful firehose of all ESPNsoccernet coverage.

Change teams using the three-dot settings icon.

The ESPNsoccernet widget can be downloaded for free from Ovi Store. Take it with you as you enjoy coverage of the tournament this month.

Courtesy : Ovi Daily App Blog

It was time to bid farewell to skps… their eyes would have shed a few drops of tears… they might have struggled hard to find words to speak…. All that is quite natural because after all they are bidding farewell to SKPS - with lots of memories, they step out to face the world.

Here are a few snaps from the SKPS Farewell Day 2010.

SKPS Annual Day was again a fest to eyes. Conducted over two days the well organized function set the spirits of all skpsians high. Congrats to all those who worked behind this show. Cine Star Mithra Kurian added glamor  to the evening which was already decorated by a number of eminent personalities.

21st December 2009, Kottayam: Yesterday was the day of yet another BarCamp in Kerala. Kerala has grabbed the title for conducting the most number of barcamps in India in a year in the last 2 years. The event which sees the community of entrepreneurs, IT professionals, students and business mentors come together in a platform and share their views on their favorite topics was conducted yesterday at the auditorium of Kristu Jyothi College in Chengnasherry, Kottyam.

The remote location of the BarCamp did not deter the 100 odd attendees who came in through interesting ways like carpooling from Trivandrum, Cochin and Calicut and hitchhiking from nearby places. “I cannot believe that this is a event which is organized online totally and even the organizers meet only on the day of the event.” said the first time barcamper Jobi John who is a student in USA currently on his vacation in Kerala.

The sessions of the morning were:

1. BARCAMP KERALA : Kevin Babu – An introduction to BarCamps and its history in Kerala.
2. 2. 3D GRAPHICS PROGRAMMING : Praseed Pai – Introduction to graphics programming and the mathematic equations involved.

3. Building Complex Website the Drupal Way : Fredrik Jonsson – An enlightening session by this Swedish programmer who explained the usage of Drupal for building websites easily and customizing them.
4. Media and Freedom-Kenney Jacob – A debate and argument filled session on how the Old Media is threatened by the New Media and how dangerous is the media corporates with a hidden agenda.

This was followed by a lunch break and a Christmas cake sponsored by the digital marketing firm ayruz web holdings was distributed. This added a special touch to the event in this festive seasion.

Noon sessions

5. Recycling Old Computers using LTSP- By VU2SWX – A thought provoking session which helped attendees to find out new ways of using their old powerless computers as nodes and utilizing it effectively.

6. Innovation-”The UST Global Way”-Harikrishnan Nair -  A session on the importance of events like barcamps and how UST Global encourages innovation in their work culture.

7. Multi Monitor Machines by Binny V A – The advantages of using more than one monitor with your desktop and its disadvantages was shown by Binny VA who uses 3 monitors at his home in Linux.

8. Device management in modern Linux system by Unnikrishnan

The day was winded up with a wonderful discussion led by Mr. Kenney Jacob on the existing conditions for a new startup to bloom in Kerala. This discussion saw entrepreneurs share their troubles, their reason for “starting-up” and about funding and investment.

The Principal  of the MACFAST college  Fr. Abraham Mulamoottil gave a mindblowing talk on startups and his personal appreciation to all entrepreneurs and his open invitation to mentor new business ideas.

In all, the event was an experience all student startups appreciated, an experience for them to learn from those who have been successful and those who have failed.

The next Barcamp got scheduled at MACFAST.The session winded up at 6.15 pm.

The christmas exams begin on 14 December.Kindly pray for class IX, X, XII students for whom this is the final exam.

Department of computer science and engineering (ACES) of Sahrdaya College of Engineering and Technology are conducting a three day International Symposium called EMINENCE 2009 from 16th November to 18th November 2009.

Eminenet Speakers from various institutues from India and abroad like Mr. Joseph Sirosh, Vice President ,AMAZON.COM,Seattle,USA, Mr. Sunil Thankamushy, Former animation director of EA games, Currently CEO of Deep Blue Inc.,LA,USA, Mr. V Manikantan, CEO, SAP(WIPRO), Mr. Arafath Aboobacker, Team-Lead Technical, NIIT Technologies, Bangalore. are the main attraction of the symposium.

Each day has a distinct theme namely Technical (Day 1), Entrepreneurship (Day 2) and Soft Skills (Day 3).There is a conference on the second day on developing Entrepreneurship in which delegates from different companies likeWipro,Adobe,HP,Igate,UST global,TCS, Mind tree, Infosys, and more will participate. On the third day we have a talk on building leadership and soft skills by Mr. Edison Franz.

Ten Technical and non technical competitions are another attraction Eminence 09