Tata Buys Jaguar and Land Rover

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Written on 3:57 PM by Unknown

Car giant Ford has sold its luxury UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover to Indian company Tata. Tata, India's biggest vehicle maker, is paying $2.3bn (£1.15bn) for the British brands after months of negotiations over price and supply relationships.

The deal is another sign of the growing economic muscle of India and something of an economic role reversal, with two icons of British industrial might expanding the global reach of a premier conglomerate in the former British colony.

Ford nets about $1.7 billion, a far cry from what it paid for the properties -- $2.5 billion for Jaguar in 1989 and $2.7 billion for Land Rover in 2000. Counting losses and product development, analysts figure Ford spent more than $10 billion on the brands.

Those acquisitions, like General Motors' purchase of Saab and Chrysler's entanglement with Mitsubishi, came when cash was rolling in at the U.S. automakers as drivers snapped up cars and pricey pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.

Jaguar and Land Rover employ about 16,000 staff at UK plants in the West Midlands and Merseyside. Although Land Rover remains profitable, Ford has never managed to make money from its investment in Jaguar.

The Tata Group has been at the forefront of corporate India’s outbound acquisitions with the latest being Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford for 2.3 billion dollars.


A look at the significant acquisitions by the TATA Group

  • 2000- Tata Tea acquires the Tetley Group, UK. This is the first major acquisition of an international brand by an Indian business group worth 275 million pound.
  • 2004- Tata Motors buys the heavy vehicles unit of Daewoo Motors, South Korea for about 102 million dollars.
  • 2005- Tata Steel snapped up Singapore-based steel company NatSteel by subscribing to 100 per cent equity of its subsidiary, NatSteel Asia and spent 486 million dollars on the deal.
  • 2005- Tata through VSNL take overs Tyco Global Network for 130 million dollars, making it one of the world's largest providers of submarine cable bandwidth.
  • 2006- Tata Coffee acquires US-based Eight O'Clock Coffee for for 220 million dollars.
  • 2007- Tata Steel buys Corus for a whopping 12.2 billion dollars.
  • 2008-Tata makes Jaguar and Land Rover from Ford a part of its empire for 2.3 billion dollars.
Tata is India's oldest and largest conglomerate, with holdings in steel, information technology and auto. Tata Motors is the automobile arm of the company. It should have the cash to save Jaguar and Land Rover and develop new products to better compete with luxury automakers.

Hosting Recommended By Kaushal Sheth

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Written on 9:37 AM by Unknown

Renowned web designer Kaushal Sheth, who is especially famous for his wordpress themes, recently listed his favourite web hosting services on his blog. Having tried various web hosting companies to host my websites on, I quite agreed with the necessity of his post.

For newbies to website hosting, here's a small intro - Web hosting is a service that allows users to post Web pages to the Internet. A web host, or hosting service provider, is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for Web sites to be viewed on the Web.

How to choose good web host? A good, shared Web host must provide reliable and reasonable quality of service. Many times, a consumer will sign up with the least expensive provider only to experience many technical difficulties and the inevitable and frustrating experience of a change in web hosting.

To avoid this experience, it is best if the consumer chooses the right web hosting company. Ensuring that a shared Web hosting firm has the following characteristics will increase the probability of consumer satisfaction.

Final Harry Potter Movie Split in Two

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Written on 2:09 PM by Unknown

The 7th and final Harry Potter book will be adapted for the silver screen in two parts, Warner Bros has confirmed. The announcement comes after producer David Heyman admitted it was impossible to cram Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows into a single movie.

Fans of the series have been left disappointed in the past when key scenes, including Quidditch matches, were excised for the film adaptations. Because of the many adventures in "Deathly Hallows," Rowling, the movies' producers and Warner Bros. all agreed that two movies were necessary to truly tell the end story.

Part one of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will debut in late 2010 and be followed months later by part two.

"We feel that the best way to do the book, and its many fans, justice is to expand the screen adaptation of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' and release the film in two parts,"
Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, said in a statement. The Kill Bill strategy will also have the benefit of boosting profits at the film studio.

The first five Harry Potter movies have made $4.5 billion (£2.2 billion) worldwide - making it the biggest film franchise in box office history, surpassing both James Bond and Star Wars.

Filming for the sixth chapter in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, began in September last year.

It is being directed by David Yates, who will also helm the final two films.

"I consider it a great privilege to continue to bring Jo's extraordinary world to the screen, and to be the director to complete this epic and exhilarating journey,"
he said.

"Harry Potter" represents a $20 billion business, so an eighth film will likely only expand the enterprise.

Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry, and his co-stars Emma Watson (Hermione) and Rupert Grint (Ron) are now filming the sixth movie -- "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." All three have said they would appear in "Deathly Hallows."

iphone 2.0 to be revolutionized by SDK

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Written on 12:38 PM by Unknown

Apple will release a major update to its iPhone software this June, , including new features for businesses and broad support for third-party software.

Apple has revolutionized the capabilities of its iPhone, as it tries to appeal to gamers and businessmen alike, however users of the phone will have to wait until June before they can start benefiting.

Announcing the launch of its Software Developers Kit (SDK) at its town hall event in at its headquarters in California, the newly announced SDK will allow developers the chance to use the same APIs and tools that Apple says it uses in-house to develop iPhone applications.

The announcement is likely to cause an avalanche of new applications for users of the mobile phone. The company takes cues from both the business and consumer worlds, finally letting third-party developers in on the action to bring games, utilities, and other apps to the phone.

These impending changes promise to radically transform the daily experience for iPhone users.

The iPhone 2.0 update will include an iTunes App Store utility. Tap it, and you'll see a library of downloadable titles. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has indicated that, while the purpose of the App Store will be to sell software for the iPhone, many of these apps will most likely be free. Of course, that depends entirely on what developers decide to do.

The iPhone SDK will give developers access to most aspects of the device, from the touch screen to the camera to the accelerometer that is responsible for sensing when you tilt the device.

In fact, application developers have already announced grand plans. After studying Apple's newly released SDK docs for 24 hours, Sun decided it was feasible to develop a JVM, based on Java Micro Edition, for both the iPhone and the iTouch. Gameloft said it will develop more than 15 game titles for Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone in 2008.

Applications developed for the iPhone will be distributed through Apple's AppStore and loaded onto the iPhone through the company's iTunes software. Apple will charge developers $99 to publish applications and take a further 30% of the revenue, however Apple has said there will be no charge for applications that are offered for free to end users.

The iphone 2.0 will be available as a free software update to existing iphone users on its release in June.






iPhone 8GB

iPhone 8GB


iPhone is Apple's revolutionary new phone - a phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough internet device all in one.










Sources: Washington Post and Sky News

Be Invisible in Gmail Chat

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Written on 11:31 AM by Unknown

Gmail Chat added a new status option: invisible. Now you can be logged in to Gmail Chat and see if your contacts are online, but they won't be able to see you're online. I think its a long awaited feature!



If you simultaneously use Gmail Chat and any other flavor of Google Talk (the gadget or the desktop application), you won't be able to change your status to invisible because they don't support the new feature yet.

The feature was first added to Gmail Chat because it's the most used interface for Google Talk, but it's unpardonable to have three separate interfaces with different features.