The Da Vinci Code
by Dan Brown
I just got the chance to get to read this book recently.
Plot:
While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci…clues visible for all to see…and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others. The Louvre curator has sacrificed his life to protect the Priory’s most sacred trust: the location of a vastly important religious relic, hidden for centuries.
In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to work for Opus Dei—a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic sect believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory’s secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory’s secret—and a stunning historical truth—will be lost forever.
In an exhilarating blend of relentless adventure, scholarly intrigue, and cutting wit, symbologist Robert Langdon (first introduced in Dan Brown’s bestselling Angels & Demons) is the most original character to appear in years. THE DA VINCI CODE heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightening-paced, intelligent thriller…surprising at every twist, absorbing at every turn, and in the end, utterly unpredictable…right up to its astonishing conclusion.
Google Maps
Google Maps is a Google service offering powerful, user-friendly mapping technology–including business locations, contact information, and driving directions–to anyone searching for results in the United States, Canada, and the UK (more locations coming soon). With Google Maps, you’ll enjoy the following unique features:
- Draggable maps – Click and drag maps to view adjacent sections immediately (no long waits for new areas to download).
- Satellite imagery – View an aerial image of your desired location that you can zoom and pan.
- Integrated search results – Find business locations and contact information all in one location. For example, if you search for [pizza in San Jose], locations of relevant listings appear on your map, and their phone numbers appear alongside.
- Detailed directions – Enter an address and let Google Maps plot the location and/or driving directions for you. Click any part of the driving directions to see a magnified map or satellite image of that part of the route.
- Keyboard shortcuts – Pan left, right, up and down with the arrow keys. Pan wider with the Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keys. Zoom in and out with the plus (+) key and minus (-) keys.
Google Web Accelerator
Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google’s global computer network to make web pages load faster. Google Web Accelerator is easy to use; all you have to do is download and install it, and from then on many web pages will automatically load faster than before.
Google Web Accelerator uses various strategies to make your web pages load faster, including:
- Sending your page requests through Google machines dedicated to handling Google Web Accelerator traffic.
- Storing copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
- Downloading only the updates if a web page has changed slightly since you last viewed it.
- Prefetching certain pages onto your computer in advance.
- Managing your Internet connection to reduce delays.
- Compressing data before sending it to your computer.
To use Google Web Accelerator, your computer must have a Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP 3+ operating system. Google Web Accelerator works for the Internet Explorer 5.5+ or Firefox 1.0+ browsers.
Interesting facts about India and Indians
- There are 3.22 Million Indians in America
- 38% of Doctors in America are Indians.
- 12% of Scientists in America are Indians.
- 36% of NASA employees are Indians.
- 34% of MICROSOFT employees are Indians
- 28% of IBM employees are Indians
- 17% of INTEL employees are Indians
- 13% of XEROX employees are Indians


