Forget about catching me, warns Federer

When asked what advice Roger Federer [Images] the coach would offer any player facing him in a match, the imperious Swiss joked: "Don't even try, pal!"

But after watching the world number one capture his fourth title in five years at the season-ending Masters Cup on Sunday, none of his rivals will be laughing.

Federer produced a vintage display to beat Spain's David Ferrer 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 in a one-sided final in Shanghai -- and then warned he will only get better.

• Images: Federer defends Masters crown

"It's been a fantastic year," said Federer, having made a mockery of suggestions he was in crisis following his shock loss to Chile's Fernando Gonzalez in his opening Red Group match.

"It's been in some ways a breakthrough year for me. Not losing a set during the Australian Open, beating [Rafael] Nadal for the first time on clay.

"I still would like to play a little more offensive, you know, come to the net a little bit. I'm in a great position for next year as well."

When Federer was ambushed by Gonzalez in his round-robin opener it was his ninth defeat since January, the Swiss having lost only nine times in total throughout 2005 and 2006.

It also marked back-to-back losses for Federer -- the first time that had happened for more than four years -- and triggered some fanciful headlines.

The only person not panicking was Federer.

Another three Grand Slam titles in 2007 and finalist at the French Open, Federer smiled: "Some might think that's a disaster. I don't."

Unruffled, he beat Russia's [Images] Nikolay Davydenko before destroying American Andy Roddick [Images] 6-4, 6-2 and nemesis Nadal 6-4, 6-1, his most emphatic win over the Spaniard to date.

"I didn't read the press that closely or listen to what people said," smiled Federer. "Once I get on a roll it's hard to stop me. It's always been like this."

Federer may transcend his sport, in the way Tiger Woods [Images] does golf, or Michael Jordan did basketball, but his hunger remains as fierce as ever.

"When I prove myself again and again now, it's not as big a surprise because this is why I work my tail off basically," said the 12-times Grand Slam champion.

"The red carpet stuff is interesting but I'm trying to cut it down as much as I can because in the end my big focus is tennis."

Federer's off-season preparation will now be geared towards breaking Pete Sampras's record of 14 Grand Slam singles titles in 2008.

"I surprise myself at times," said the 26-year-old Federer, who plays Sampras in a series of exhibition matches in Asia this week. "I hope I can keep it going for many more years."

Federer, who finished the year as number one for the fourth season in a row, wants to play until he is 35 -- disastrous news for Nadal.

"Maybe I am the best world number two in history," said the French Open champion with a wry smile. "When Roger plays well it is impossible to stop him."

Karnataka CM moves trust vote

Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on Monday moved the vote of confidence in the legislative assembly.

The special legislative session of the state assembly commenced at 1500 hours.

The BJP-led government in Karnataka received a major jolt earlier in the day when its coalition partner -- Janata Dal Secular -- issued a whip to its legislators to vote against Yeddyurappa.

The BJP, however, has not given up. Mediators worked over-time to bring about a consensus. Several BJP men rushed to Deve Gowda's house to convince him to change his mind. However till reports last came in, Gowda seemed adamant and was in no mood to change his mind.

Sources said both Yeddyurappa and Gowda's son Kumaraswamy held a meeting at a private hotel to sort out their differences. Even as all these developments took place, the Congress was playing its cards too.

Sources indicated that the JD-S is ready to give outside support to the Congress to form the government.

How she enriched Google's idea factory

A headhunter persuaded Marissa Mayer to join Google, Inc in 1999 as a programmer -- Google's twentieth employee. Now, Marissa Mayer is charged with making sure that the tech giant continues to crank out brilliant ideas, even as clever competitors are hatching their own.

Champion of Innovation

In late 1998, when Marissa Mayer first heard about a small outfit called Google, she hardly batted an eye. The Stanford University graduate student was encouraged by her advisor to check out the research of two guys on the computer science building's fourth floor who were developing ways to analyze the World Wide Web.

But Internet start-ups were as common as hay fever in Silicon Valley. Mayer, then 23, was leaning in another direction. She was considering taking a teaching gig at Carnegie Mellon University. And the thought of joining up with some of the university's techies wasn't exactly appealing. "I knew about the Stanford PhD types," she muses. "They love to Rollerblade. They eat pizza for breakfast. They don't shower much. And they don't say 'Sorry' when they bump into you in the hallway."

Fortunately for both Google Inc and Mayer, she had a change of heart. Since joining Google, Mayer has emerged as a powerful force inside the high-flying company. Her title, director of consumer Web products, belies her power and influence as a champion of innovation. Mayer has her hands on virtually everything the average Google user sees � from the look of its Web pages to new software for searching your hard drive. And she helps decide which new initiatives get the attention of the company's founders and which don't.

Mayer doesn't handle all this herself. One of the key reasons for Google's success is a belief that good ideas can, and should, come from anywhere. Page and Brin insist that all engineers in the company have one day a week to work on their own pet projects. An ideas mailing list is open to anyone at Google who wants to post a proposal. What Mayer does is help figure out how to make sure that good ideas bubble to the surface and get the attention they need. The task is becoming more complex as Google grows, with a workforce of 4,200 now and revenues on track to hit $3.7 billion this year.

In Wausau, Mayer was one of the top debaters on her high school team. Then the brainy teenager decided to try out for the pom-pom squad and made that team, too. To some who knew her, Mayer was making a point. "She wanted to smash the image of the airhead cheerleader," says Jim Briggs, Mayer's high school debate coach. Her debate team ended up winning the Wisconsin state championship; her pom-pom squad was the state runner-up.

A large part of Mayer's success at Google is due to her ability to travel easily between different worlds. When she first joined, the company had something of a high school cliquishness, albeit in reverse. At lunch, the coolest kids � in this forum, the smartest geeks -- sat together. On the periphery, sales and marketing folks gathered. Mayer could hold her own in either realm. "She's a geek, but her clothes match," says one former employee.

Part of Mayer's challenge is realizing when certain formulas are faltering. For years she ran the company's top 100 priorities list, which ranked projects by order of importance. But as Google's workforce grew, the list soared to more than 270 projects. Last year Google executives decided that the list had run its course and shut it down. "People don't get attached to the processes themselves at Google," says Bret Taylor, product manager for Google Maps. "It's very unusual. Even at small companies, people tend to say: 'This is the way we do X.'"

Open door policy

At 4 pm, Mayer's three-times-a-week office hours begin. It's a tradition that Mayer brought over from her days at Stanford, where she taught computer science to undergraduates. Over the years, such meetings have spawned some big ideas, including Google's social-networking site Orkut.

First to enter her office are a pair of techies -- a man and woman in their mid-twenties. Sitting across from Mayer, separated by a desk with a Dilbert coffee mug and a toy robot still in its box, they forgo the pleasantries and launch into hushed banter. The duo is stumped over which languages the Google Web site should be available in. Although it is already translated into more than 115 tongues, from Arabic to Zulu, they wonder whether they should proceed with more obscure choices. Before one minute elapses, Mayer interjects. Google shouldn't be the arbiter on languages. Just include anything considered legitimate by a third-party source, such as the CIA World Fact Book, she says. "We don't want to make a large geopolitical statement by accident."

Capturing Ideas from anyone, anywhere

Office hours are just one way in which Mayer connects with inventive engineers and managers. Another is Google's ideas mailing list, the e-mail thread where anyone can submit or comment on an idea. At times, the thread more resembles a from of techie Darwinism. Google newcomers who proffer an especially obvious suggestion ("Why don't we search blogs?") or something off-topic like how to arrange the cafeteria tables often suffer withering rebukes. "It's about 50 percent new ideas, 50 percent indoctrination of new employees," says Mayer.

It's all part of a culture that's not for the faint of heart. Google oozes with what one ex-employee calls "geek machismo." Intellectual sparring can get heated. In the cafeteria, "food gets thrown," says the former employee.

Fearless culture

What Mayer thinks will be essential for continued innovation is for Google to keep its sense of fearlessness. "I like to launch [products] early and often. That has become my mantra," she says. She mentions Apple Computer and Madonna. "Nobody remembers the Sex Book or the Newton. Consumers remember your average over time. That philosophy frees you from fear."

This is just one way that Mayer tries to maintain the search company's original culture. That's no easy task. Movie night, for instance, was a piece of cake when perhaps 100 employees descended on a local cinema. Today, organizing such an event is a full-time job. Yet Mayer handles several of these a year, from picking a movie with the right geek credibility (say, Star Wars: Episode III) to ordering thousands of tickets to writing the software that lets her track who has received them. "She still walks around with a laptop, handing out all the tickets beforehand," marvels Google's Silverstein.

It makes sense for Mayer to stay in such close touch with the swelling ranks of Googlers. She may need every one of their bright ideas to keep the search giant ahead of the competition. Here go the key factors of Google's success:

• Nurture great ideas from all levels of the company, not just the top.
• Be available to employees so that they have an opportunity to get their ideas heard.
• Demand creativity by giving employees "free thinking time" to develop pet projects, no matter how far from the company's central vision.
• Acquire good ideas. Although preferring to develop new technologies in house, Google is also willing to snap up small companies with interesting initiatives.

Dollar will be stronger: Bush

At a time when the US dollar is taking a major hammering in the global markets, including against the rupee, American President George W Bush has said that market forces would have to determine the value of the dollar against international currencies.

"We have a strong dollar policy, and it's important for the world to know that. We also believe it's important for the market to set the value of the dollar relative to other currencies," Bush said in an interview with Fox Business network.

"And if people would look at the strength of our economy, they'd realise why, you know, I believe that the dollar will be stronger. And it is low inflation, low interest, 15 months of uninterrupted job growth, 3.9 per cent GDP growth in the third quarter".

"...The underpinnings are strong. Now, we in the US government, my administration, believe the market ought to set the relation of the dollar to other currencies," he said.

The policy of the government is a strong dollar, and it believes that the marketplace is the best place to set the exchange rates, Bush added.

Asked if he was satisfied with the exchange rates as they are now, Bush said he was. "I am satisfied with the fact that we have a strong dollar policy and know that the market ought to be setting the exchange rate between the US dollar and other currencies," he said.

Militants kill corporator in Srinagar

Ghulam [Images] Nabi Wani, a municipal councilor from the National Conference, was shot dead by militants early on Wednesday morning at Khanyar in Srinagar [Images].

The police said that Wani, who represented the NC in the Srinagar municipal corporation, was shot while he was leaving a local mosque after the morning prayers. The unidentified militants came up to him and fired a volley of bullets from their automatic weapons, said the police.

"Wani was taken to the hospital in a critical condition, where doctors failed to revive him. He had a critical bullet injury in the head," a senior police officer said.

The shooting in broad daylight caused severe panic in the densely populated area. Security forces promptly cordoned off the locality and initiated a search operation.

Cell number will be portable

Consumers Can Change Service Provider, Yet Retain The Number

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi: Here’s good news for India’s 210 million mobile consumers. After sitting on the decision for over two years, the telecom ministry on Monday finally decided to introduce number portability for mobile services. This means if you are unhappy with your mobile phone service provider but have been unable to shift to another because it would mean changing your phone number, you will now be able to switch while retaining the exactly same number.
The move, long demanded by those who wanted a truly competitive telecom market, should see service providers going the extra mile to ensure their customers stay satisfied and hence loyal to them. According to telecom minister A. Raja, the facility will be launched in the four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai — to begin with. However, he did not specify exactly when this would happen.
Full number portability allows users to retain their telephone numbers not just when they change service providers. They can also retain the number when they are switching service types — say, from mobile to fixed line — or when changing locations — say, from Delhi to Mumbai or vice versa. The portability envisaged by Raja, however, will only allow wireless number portability. The lack of number portability between mobile providers in India has kept many consumers from changing services because of the inconvenience of changing their phone number on business cards and other documents, and informing all their contacts of the new number. Its introduction — that is, when it happens — will get rid of these hassles.
Not surprisingly, GSM operators are not happy about the development. T V Ramachandran of the Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) alleged that mobile number portability was being introduced to benefit a select operator who is seeking to enter the GSM segment — a thinly-disguised reference to Reliance.
Reliance Communications boss Anil Ambani said, “This is a forward-looking initiative. It is pro-competition, pro-consumer and above all pro-choice. For the first time, in the four metros GSM operators will face real competition”.
Expectedly, CDMA association Auspi, also welcomed the move. “It is an important and effective tool for ensuring effective competition and improved quality of service in the mobile telecom service sector which will ultimately benefit the subscribers at large,” said S.C. Khanna of Auspi.