Was inspired by an old newpaper article (ht cafe Aug 8, 2009) on the status of public websites on mumbai. It basically concluded none of them are user friendly but the information exists!

My take on that – forget user friendly, inaccessible is what I would say. I am sure there are lot companies / young college studies who will do a great job on a voluntary basis. Anyway, given the fact that only 50 million indians access internet once a month and possibly 1 million daily, I guess thats not their priority …

Listing the sites

• http://maharashtra.gov.in/ (doesn’t work!) Then tried http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/ Eureka. Guess what has no search box. Seems list a good assortment of websites that are useful.
• http://www.mmrdamumbai.org/ – Pretty informative about the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority. Surprisingly you think you would find some maps and pics of construction project but its just information.
• http://bestundertaking.com/ – good site. Got to know I could hire a BEST bus! pretty affordable rates. Also about Advertisements on Buses and Electricity. Right to Information Act also given.
• http://www.trafficpolicemumbai.org/ – No search here again! The display of data sucks. I check about my area Colaba and the rules. I am immediately given a word document with lots of tables and some 170 traffic regalation with no reference to maps! I think people have kind of lost it. Lots of animated gifs and my eyes are going left, right and center I thought traffic was all about focus and direction! Good look at the traffic offences and fines.
• Momentarily I shifted direction and went to the convential ‘wikipedia’, great information – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai . Makes you wonder why the government cannot make sense by some concerned people are able to bring information together in a simple + effective way.
• Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM)’s website – http://www.mcgm.gov.in/ – again no search but the display is pretty neat and good. Lot to improve
• http://mumbaipolice.org/ – unhappy to say the search doesn’t work. You think phone number and you get lost looking at the list which one to call! Says its designed by http://www.bcwebwise.com/ – very surprised at the crappy work these people are so proud to do. There needs to be a public entity that looks in the quality of these websites if they are outsourced

Anyway, enough of cribbing. Somehow what I noticed was all the websites are caught in the old way of ‘html’ way of designing web content. No one seems to using content management systems like drupal or wordpress. No search boxes. Wish things become better soon!

My sister sent a lovely story as a forward and then it made me think about the Seventh Mass Media. This made me think a good way to help people visualize evolution of media is using a family tree analogy. Let me know how you like it. My family tree is different than what the story entails but I hope this make sense.

Grand Pa (Cinema – 1900) married Grand Ma (Radio – 1910) outcame daughter (TV – 1950) with strain of Richness+Mass
Grand Pa (Print – 1400) married Grand Ma (Recording – 1800) outcame son (Internet – 1980) with Curiosity+Interactivity
Pa (Internet – 1980) married Ma (TV – 1950) outcame (Mobile – 2000)!

I would say its a bit too soon to deciding its gender and its characteristics. Lets just wait and watch

The story my sister sent The Stranger

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger…he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn’t seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home… Not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn’t permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular
Basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished.
He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked… And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents’ den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?…. .. .

We just call him ‘TV.’

(Note: This should be required reading for every household in America !)

He has a wife now….We call her ‘Computer.’

Their first child is “Cell Phone“.

The Seven Mass Media

1. Print (books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, etc) from the late 1400s
2. Recordings (records, tapes, cassettes, cartridges, CDs, DVDs) from the late 1800s
3. Cinema from about 1900
4. Radio from about 1910
5. Television from about 1950
6. Internet from about 1990
7. Mobile phones from about 2000

Some awesome use of Social Media by Skittles. Will be writing something here with these things (will make a good blog pos) – no time nowadays! uff!

Where does twitter go from here?

Skittles’ twitermania!

Twitter as a search engine?

Home Page

GobbledyGook

Twitter Chatter

Integrating Facebook

If you are born in 2002

TwitPoll

I was about to comment at Vijay’s post with the following:

So result: welcome to www.pagalguy.com !

But I decided to make it a post. After all blogs are all about conversations? Anyway, I think Vijay’s statement in his post Beacon Unplugged is slightly flawed (do read his post).

There is this basic ideology. The paradox of the masses. Whenever at any given network the number of members become too huge, the system starts to break down.

the aove statement is not totally true. I think, Networks are like fractals … the system actually starts to cluster internally especially when people are involved Any system that allows that i.e tools for fractalization built in with scale is the future.

Two things that are important for a striving community (niche social networks) to thrive are:

• Entry Barrier / Criterion for all stakeholders
• Passion
• Need
• Validity of both of them
• Sustainability Mechanics for all of them
• Moderation
• New things (tools + content)
• Guidelines

Certain basic need to start such communities are one of the 4Cs :

• Content
• Connectivity
• Community
• Commerce

All of this can be user generated (its better even if its slow) as it will be step in the right direction. This is validated according to me in real and virtual worlds in all aspects of the matrix.

Anyway thanks to Vijay, Rain in Mumbai to make me start writing again. Have a gut feeling … lots of posts will be coming.

I loved the points (thought, question and metaphor!!_ Mark Sigal (Network Garden) raises in the post: Social Map is All about Me

I bring Google into this equation for two reasons. One, to cite a tangible example of how the market goes about defining propriety and property rights in the information age. Two, because I believe that Google, as a benefactor of these rights, will need to share with consumers more of its social map of user clickstreams, engagement metrics and their correlates if it is to maintain the public trust. Akin to a credit report, I think consumers have a right to this data.

Therefore, what I envision is a consumer-friendly dashboard and analytics application that allows me to visualize the bigger picture by seeing the same contextual relationships that Google sees. Think zeitgeist-type reports that provide answers to the Top 10 questions relevant to MY universe (e.g., who read, commented, shared, how many) packaged in such a way that I can ask what-if questions to my heart’s content. To me, the social map is all about enabling applications that allow consumers to take back control of their data, help them to connect the dots between their various interests, orchestrate their brand and systematically engage their audience. This is the promise of the information age.

Given that, if information is the electricity of this era and information ABOUT information is the richest energy source of all (just ask Google), then shouldn’t we have universal access to this type of data? Heck, if Google wants my heart and soul vis-à-vis their AppEngine initiative, they need to give me a unified way to call upon and interact with all of the global data functions that they have cataloged (web pages, blogs, images, news, video, email, maps, calendars, etc.).

Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft: Couldn’t you disrupt the disrupter by doing the same? Is there any reason that you wouldn’t — or shouldn’t?

Jeff talks about distributed university, I am not happy that he titled the post Google U. He writes on the topic of collaborative education – the new category: openguru I have opened in my blog. This post very clearly elucidates my thoughts (still abstract) on this topic:

Once you put all this together, students can self-organize with teachers and fellow students to learn what they want how and where they want. My hope is that this could finally lead to the lifelong education we keep nattering about but do little to actually support. And why don’t we? Because it doesn’t fit into the degree structure. And because self-organizing classes and education could cut academic institutions out of the their exclusive role in education.The real problem with this for society is that it cuts out the core business of the university, which also produces research and scholarship.The problem here is that the internet is unforgiving of needs to preserve old models and methods. It disaggregates ruthlessly.

So I think that education has a rude shocking coming unless it gets ahead of this change and figures out how to become less of an institution and more of a platform.

To top this, put it in context of India. 2 years down the lane – mobile is where most of the Indian population will be accessing online content, 3G hopefully will be up and running (regulation is throttling it). The desire to learn is very much there in the Indian culture. Name the city (rural or urban): education is valued irrespective of the social strata. And finally  demographically, a young population which needs & wants to learn and will learn how to use the tools pretty damn fast irrespective of cost.

The only barrier according to me is TIME.

I have been wanting to write this post for a long time but delayed it beyond 9 to 10 months! I finally have internet and computer to write from close a year after. As I am usually ‘do in the flow’ kind of person, my blogging i.e the core dump (put in geek terms) had reduced considerably Feel like a free bird. I feel like blogging in the morning before reading the paper / having the cuppa of milk or late in the night when everyone in my house has slept off

Coming back to the post – I am opening a new category in my blog today. Guess thats an indication of new area of interest .. ha ha. I am calling ‘openguru’. Quickly and abstractly the following tags explain the category well:

open, learning, collaborative, technology, internet, mobile, media

I get a huge sense of enjoyment when I am learning and I don’t this desire will ever go away (fortunately I have been good at getting things fast!). And I want to just point you to certain cool websites were you can learn. However point to be noted – they structed content for you to assimilate. Nothin collaborative about it!

• Video lessons lectures notes
• National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning – (IITs & IISc)!
• OpenCourseWare (MIT)
  • MIT World » Distributed Intelligence
• World Lecture Hall – (UT Austin)
• WGBH Forum Network | Free Online Lectures
• Entrepreneurs (HBS)
  • HBS Working Knowledge
• Knowledge@Wharton

I have used Knowledge@Wharton and am a regular reader, got the hang of it when I was invovled with their team to launch their mobile India website during their Indian Launch!

 

However yet to explore any other site. Do you have any links to throw? 

I got this from Harshad today on Facebook. Interesting

Hey friends!

I’m just quickly emailing you from my facebook account before I delete it. I’m still available on orkut, just that I can’t stand facebook anymore.

I’m leaving facebook because
- I don’t use it much
- I don’t like the complicated user interface
- I don’t like giving applications access to my personal information just to view one message from a friend.
- My friends have emails, and its easier for me to contact them that way.
- Facebook doesn’t allow me to simply delete my account – I SUSPECT FOUL INTENTIONS. FACEBOOK IS NOT TRANSPARENT.
- Copyright grab issue… as a person creating content, I cannot stand this.
- Gut feeling – I never wanted to join, but friends forced me to… and now I’m realizing I was right… need to quit ASAP.

Hope you understand, kindly email me whenever you feel like talking.

Cheers!
Harshad.

I am flat out impressed with the design of the Saarang Website (IITM’s Cultural Festvial). Am I not proud of being an alma matter!

Saarang 2008 – Pro-Shows

Saarang 2008

Someone in the BCB thread asked for people’s recommendation for domain and hosting solutions. Folks in the group responded with list of urls to contact and all they had to qualify was its good. From my experience, I bought a domain for myself six months back and I am playing around in it in kind of stealth mode.

Domain from http://www.net4domains.com/ and hosting at http://dreamhost.com/ (got a free url for a year there). Touch wood my experience has been good in terms of there has been no downtime and everything works. Things I have played around with this online are:

• Got google for office account to work
• Get command prompt access to install drupal, wordpress etc.
• Try Facebook apps
• Try hacking general code whenever I get time

Basically a space to hack around when i get time and interest in the internet world!! rapid protyping you see

But I think there are somethings to think about before going to a specific vendor and buying domain& hosting solution. To name a few:

• Support from the Vendor
• What purpose you want to use the hosting for
• Uptime through customer
• Cost (this is not much of a differentiator)
• Payment Options … ;P (matters if you are in India!)

The list of Urls provided in the mail thread from people were:

http://www.icdhost.com/
http://www.godaddy.com/
http://jodohost.com/
http://manashosting.com/
http://www.hostingsmart.in/
http://symonds.net/
http://www.bluehost.com/
http://www.hostgator.com/
http://www.slicehost.com/

What are your thoughts? I would like more options here …