A TED India link worth sharing

In less than 36 hours, an international clique of 40 boffins, raconteurs, artists, and technocrats will assemble at the Infosys campus in Mysore to give an 18 minute talk which for many, will be the speech of their life.

The format tries its best to be some kind of a band-aid for a generation of Twitter-addled fragmented minds, and has it’s own Ten Commandments, asking of its speakers not to trot out the usual marketing schtick -- no sales pitches or selling from the stage, but to dream a great dream, and dazzle the audience with something never seen or shared before.

The event, known as TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) was popular around in the Silicon Valley circles for two over decades, but it wasn’t until 2006, when it offered talks of the speakers online, free for download with a Creative Commons license, that the brand went viral.

TED’s popularity owes much to the zest and energy of its videos – a combination of rhetorical discourse, laptop-powered techno-wizardry, slides and visualisations, all told with wit and clarity of mind.

TED’s online videos have been streamed over 100 million times, and India, country-wise, polls the second most number of viewers, says the event’s co-founder, Chris Anderson. “The speakers are compelled to think about the most important thing they could say. The format translates well over the Internet, which is far more fragmented in its attention span.”

The most popular videos hosted by the site include the Sixth Sense augumented reality demo by MIT whiz-kid Pranab Mistry, Steven Pinker’s lecture on the myth of violence which argues that we are living in the most peaceful time of our species’ existence, and Hans Rosling’s lecture, told in the style of a TV weatherman that narrates how the whole of humanity, third world included, is getting more educated, rising out of poverty, and seeing greater life expectancy.

This does not imply that TED looks only at the bright side of life. TED Talks have had a few fairly animated speakers who have criticised the suburban sprawl (the speaker calls it the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world), the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (how seas of drifting plastic eventually form small islands the Pacific ocean), and industrialised food (in which the speaker examines the nexus between government subsidies to the agro industry and the resulting drop crop diversity in Western diets.)

The event will also showcase the work of 103 TED Fellows, visionaries born or working in South Asia. TEDIndia Fellows are, according to Web site, “A diverse group of men and women... Engineers, environmental scientists and pollution experts, human-rights activists, musicians, athletes and filmmakers.”

Still with me? Here’s the link worth sharing then.

You can see speakers live from TED India event at http://ted.indiatimes.com/
You will be able to see opening and closing sessions, of TED India, to be held at the Infosys campus in Mysore on November 5'th and 7'th.

Jalaneti irrigation

The winter brings allergies and asthma attacks to those in cities, I live in one where I can see hills being detonated into gravel everyday, with huge clouds of dust emanating from them.

I tried out Jalaneti with a neti pot and some warm salt water, it's a very pleasurable feeling, and helped me get rid of this prickly sensation on the inside of my nose.

I highly recommend it.

Link: http://www.healthandyoga.com/html/clean/nasal.html

Synergy: Cause one keyboard and mouse oughta be enough for anyone

Share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware.

This software has been around since 2005, it's a tragedy that I have known of it only now, but in case you haven't, have a go at it, by all means.

Synergy 2 is truly the best of things. It's free, open source, and is operating system agnostic. Which is to say that you can switch your keyboard and mouse across a Mac and a PC, or use your MAC's keyboard and mouse to type on your PC, and then flip back to the MAC in a quick flash.

Netbooks, laptops, desktop PCs,. Sometimes, people have one of each. It's best when all of these are working in sync, if you've got them all on your workdesk. If you ever wanted a wireless keyboard and had a laptop, this thing saves you the trouble of getting one.

In my case, I have a 12" netbook with an amazing keyboard, and when I want to do something on my desktop PC, like change the song on the playlist, or write this blog post while eased out and reclined on my couch, I can do that, thanks to Synergy.

Download link: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

For an untangled web, you need Mozilla Weave

The Firefox awesome bar is one of the most coolest features on the browser, you don't have to remember or bother bookmarking everything zealously anymore, Firefox remembers.

Mozilla Weave takes this a step further across multiple PCs, remembering what you browsed on your desktop PC on your netbook or laptop. This really simplifies and unifies your browsing experience.

From the web site:
It currently supports continuous synchronization of your bookmarks, browsing history, saved passwords and tabs, as well as form-field history and preferences. For example:

• Get the same results on the Smart Location Bar on each of your Firefox browsers, so you can get to your favorite sites with just a few keystrokes
• Continue what you were doing: have the ability to open any tab you have open on any of your Firefox browsers
• Keep the same list of bookmarks on all of your Firefox browsers
• If you use Personas, your currently selected Persona can be synchronized across your Firefox browsers
• Easily sign in to all your favorite sites using your saved passwords (this is especially handy on mobile phones, where it’s hard to type in complex passwords)
• Do it all securely: Weave Sync encrypts user data before uploading it to Mozilla’s servers, so that only you can access your data

Please do not spit here

While travelling on Mumbai's local train metro network is a pretty depressing experience overall, it's decrepit stations just add an extra dimension of horror to it. Of the three railway lines, I recommend the tourist/urban explorer a ride through the Harbour line, which connects New Bombay to Mumbai City for an authentic Salaam Bombay/Slumdog experience. It offers an olfactory experience that includes gutters, feces, burnt plastic and garbage. 

Of all the stations, Kurla station, which connects Mumbai's suburban commuters stands out as one of the most darkest, depressing, blacked out spots in the Mumbai Map. TOI's got a story in the morning paper that cites:

unmanageably massive crowds, 

crowded market areas

hawkers and beggars

dirty and foul smelling toilets

limited ticket windows

This may be news to some, but it's been that way for more than the ten years that I've been travelling through it. When doing a job in Andheri, getting down at Kurla station and taking a bus to Saki-Naka was like going through a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Like all other Mumbai stations it disregards commuter health and dignity entirely, covered in asbestos roofs, and years of calcified pan and gutkha spittle. 

Wikipedia says:

Asbestos can be toxic. The inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause serious illnesses, including malignant lung cancer, mesothelioma (a type of malignant neoplasm dependent mostly from exposure to asbestos),^{[citation needed]} and asbestosis (a type of pneumoconiosis). Since the mid 1980s, the European Union and most developed countries have banned asbestos.^{[citation needed]}. Since January 1 2005 the European Union has banned all types of utilization of asbestos Directive 1999/77/EC and extraction, manufacture and processing of asbestos products Directive 2003/18/

New Bombay's stations were quite nice when they started out, but they're slowly being spat and shat on. 

I think nothing signaled malign intent better than a toilet sign, which is at a height of around 12-15 feet, hung from the ceiling in Vashi. The board says Toilet, in Helvetica, yellow and black. Some asswipe actually spat on this board, leaving a nice thick blotch in the middle of it. 

The elevator that connects Vashi station to the Infotech Park is lined with red gutkha stains on all corners, I saw half a dozen mosquitoes hitching a ride, the oil greating the overhead fan had leaked and sprayed all the walls with a sticky black oil that had embalmed several of them. 

I was wondering why public property had been abused to this extent, when a friend remarked that the Income Tax collection office was on a certain floor of the Infotech park!

Related:

I saw a toll booth on the way to Lonavala with a sign that said "Please do not spit here." 

I felt both sympathy and mirth for an employee who leaves a note sticking out of his booth like that, who asks in all humility and modesty, that he not be spat at.

Somebody had streaked a bulls-eye of red spittle on that sign too.

Droid could be the iPhone killer

The Motorola droid looks amazing, the marketing campaign is full of geek bombast, boasting of open source software support and replaceable batteries. It's an Android 2.0 with a large capacitive touch screen keyboard AND a slide-out keyboard. No pricing details yet, but even if it's priced at the same level as the iPhone, it could make a serious dent.

I hate Apple in general for making products that are expensive, incompatible, and full of proprietary software and connectivity fuckups. iPods won't work without iTunes, which cannot buy tunes in India anyways.

Expounded by Charlier Booker for maximum comedy here, here, and here are reasons why I don't quite buy into Apple.

An excerpt: This one's really hilarious.
I'd call the new KITT an iPhone with an exhaust pipe, except if it really was like an iPhone then instead of fighting crime, its owner would spend the entire duration of each episode endlessly droning on and on about how brilliant KITT was, and how he can't believe you haven't bought one yourself yet, and every time he passed another KITT driver, they'd feel compelled to pull over and sit there Twittering each other about the latest astounding downloadable KITT "apps", like the one that makes a shoe appear on the screen, then you tilt it and the shoe rocks around a bit and plays the Star Wars theme, and it's amazing really, the things it can do. Actually, you know what I'd watch? A series about a maniac who drives around singling out iPhone owners, slapping their stupid toys out of their hands and stamping on them. That's the first three minutes of each episode; the remaining 57 consist of an unflinching close-up of said iPhone owner's sorrowful face as they scoop all the bits of shattered iPhone off the pavement, clutch it to their bosom, and stagger down the pavement.

Anyways, coming back to Apple and it's failure to make any kind of an impact in India. This article by Businessweek says it best - THREE IPHONES EQUAL ONE CAR.

If only Motorola made a techno-gandhian ad campaign that said:
One iPhone could teach provide education support for 8 poor children for over a year.

Apple's pricing strategy in India has been typical of its disdain for third world sensibilities. I don't quite get it why the iPod Touch costs Rs 25,000 in India and Rs 13,000 on Amazon.com US.

If only Android phones did what the PC did to the MAC in the 80s. I want a customisable touch screen pocket phone/computer surfs wirelessly and on telco networks, plays music and movies, a variety of free user generated open source apps, and I want it for 200 dollars or Rs 10,000 INR.

A device that weights around 100 grams should not cost $600. A premium netbook costs that much, some flab needs to be cut around here.

I think it will take another three years at least before we get to that.

So far all the Android phones have been in the $600 range, which totally sucks. I don't expect Motorola to shake things up, but expect more cooler phones on the Android platform. Enjoy the AD.

Terrible Pricing Disparity!

Why is it that the Apple iTouch 32 gigs costs 25 grand in India, while it costs almost half, at 13 grand on amazon.com?

IMHO: It's an amazing deal at 13k and an atrocity at 25.

Keep in mind that you could get a decent netbook for 25k, and a fairly crappy Samsung Corby for Rs 10,000 in India.