Plane crashes in India, 160 people feared dead

Plane crashes in India, 160 people feared dead
NEW DELHI – As many as 160 people were feared dead after an Air India plane arriving from Dubai crashed and burst into flames at dawn Saturday as it overshot a hilltop runway in southern India while trying to land in the rain.

Television images showed dense black smoke billowing from the Boeing 737-800 aircraft surrounded by flames just outside the Mangalore city airport in a hilly area with thick grass and trees.

Firefighters sprayed water on the plane as rescue workers struggled to find survivors. One firefighter ran up a hill with an injured child in his arms.

Air India official Jitender Bhargava the plane carried 160 passengers and six crew members. Officials in the state of Karnataka said only six or seven might have survived.

"This is a major calamity," Karnataka Home Minister V.S. Acharya told CNN-IBN TV.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed condolences for the crash and promised compensation for the families of the victims.

As the plane tried to land about 6 a.m. Saturday, it overshot the runway and crashed, Bhargava told The Associated Press.

The crash could be the deadliest in India since the November 1996 midair collision between a Saudi airliner and a Kazakh cargo plane near New Delhi that killed 349 people.

Scores of villagers scrambled over the hilly terrain to reach the wreckage, and began aiding in the rescue operation.

Pre-monsoon rains over the past two days caused low visibility in the area, officials said.

The airport's location, on a plateau surrounded by hills, made it difficult for the firefighters to reach the scene Saturday, officials said. Aviation experts said Bajpe airport's "tabletop" runway, which ends in a valley, makes a bad crash inevitable if a plane overshoots it.

Mangalore airport is about 19 miles (30 kilometers) outside of Mangalore city.

GOOGLE TV- The revolution we’re about to go through is the biggest single change in television since it went color.”

GOOGLE TV- The revolution we’re about to go through is the biggest single change in television since it went color.”

What about Google TV?
Can you imagine the white hat and black hat SEO battles that will take place as video content providers try to get to the top of the TV Search Listings on Google TV ? Like Google said, there are 4 billion TVs and growing and the US TV Ad market is $70 BILLION. There is a lot at stake if Google TV takes off. How Google does its PageRank for this product will have a bigger impact on the success of the product in the TV market than anything else it does.
If you search for “House” on your Google TV and it returns a Youtube Video of some kid doing a parody of the Fox tv show House, you can bet the shit is going to hit the fan. Not that Fox or any big media company will sue Google. I don’t think they will. What will happen is that they will “turn off” the Google TV Chrome Browser, just as they did to Boxee. They will fight and possibly sue over what meta data is used to determine search results. It will be a mess. That would kill the product because if it doesn’t work with the TV shows you want to watch, why buy it ?
Intel (INTC) CEO Paul Otellini said that last week, hinting at the announcement Google (GOOG) made just moments ago: A new software platform for set-top boxes and televisions that promises to marry broadcast TV with the Internet. Its name: Google TV. Its tagline: “TV meets Web. Web Meets TV.
Announced at this morning’s Google I/O event, Google TV’s purpose is, in the words of Senior Product Manager Rishi Chandra, “to bring the entire Web to the television set…to take the best of what TV offers these days and the best of what the Web offers and combine them.”
Anyone remember WebTV?
With Google TV, the aim is to rethink the navigation of TV and make it more like the Web. “The Web has a very simple and elegant model for finding information: A search box,” Chandra said. “We want to give you that same experience with television.”
To do that, Google (GOOG) has extended the breadth of its search to TV programming. The platform’s “quick search box” returns results from the Web, as well as TV listings. These include programs available for purchase on sites like Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix (NFLX)–both partners in this effort, apparently.
Says Chandra: “To a user it doesn’t really matter where I get my favorite content, whether it be live TV, DVR or the Web. We just want easy access….Google TV makes the Web a natural extension of the TV itself….It’s just as easy to go to any site on the Web as it is to go to any channel on your television.”
And to Web-based advertising as well, of course. Remember there are some four billion TV users worldwide.
“Many times I see and interesting ad, but I can’t do anything with it,” says Chandra. “But advertisers have Web sites and with picture-in-picture functionality, I can now click on an ad and see them….Now every ad on TV has the potential to become interactive.”
And presumably, there’s potential here for Google to make a small profit from each of them.
So how will all of this work? Google TV’s software is built on Android 2.1 and uses Google Chrome as its browser. Because of this, Android smartphones can be used as remotes and Android applications can actually be used on televisions running the platform–something some observers have been encouraging Apple to do with Apple TV for years. Google’s Android Marketplace will be accessible via Google TV.
On the hardware side, there will be Google TV set-top boxes, TV sets, and Blu-ray players. Sony (SNE) is developing a full line of integrated TVs and a Blu-Ray player as well. Logitech (LOGI) is producing a set-top box. And Intel (INTC) is providing Atom chips for all of them. We should begin seeing Google TV devices at Best Buy (BBY) this fall.
“We’re coming to market soon and we’re coming in a big way,” says Chandra.”…Our goal is to have the same impact on the TV experience that the smartphone had on the phone experience.”