What Happens to the Old iPhone's

With people snapping up iPhone 4 like there is no tomorrow, I have always wondered what happens to all the old phones that are out there in the market. Do people just junk them, Store them in the closet just in case they need them or is there a resale market.

Well there definitely is a resale market and companies like Gazelle and Nextworth are making brisk business.

Google Goes to Kansas

If you are a regular Google user like me, yesterday (April 1st) Google on its website had "Topeka" listed instead of the omnipresent words "Google".



Turns out Google was making fools out of us (Aprils fools day) as well as recognizing the town of Topeka, Kansas for changing the town name to Google.

The irony is that I had to use Google to find where Topeka is. Oh I am sorry, I had to use Topeka to find where Google is.

HDDG for HDTV

With our humble farmer, son of the soil HD Devegowda endorsing the HDTV, all you TV lovers, its time to get rid of your old idiot box and get set to buy a new one. Look at the upside, you can see HDDG snoozing with crystal clear picture now. Who would want to miss on that.



Link obtained from Son of Bosey

Random Musings of Today

I dont know about you, but thats a lot of snacks for five people. With all the sugar intake, these people must be working 24/7 I would think...

With digital memory becoming so prevalent and cheap, who needs the brain

Is it enough if you become a naturalized citizen of the United States to qualify as an American in the eyes of the few. You can ask Meb Keflezighi, the first American to win the NY Marathon since 1982.

This essay for Outlook India magazine by author and activist Arundhati Roy, asks one simple question: "What is the price of progress and development?"

Suppandi and Shikari Shambu will soon be on TV

Remember Suppandi, the village simpleton, and Shikari Shambu, the lazy, bungling hunter.

For people of my generation, both these characters were an essential part of growing up in India. Now they are all set to go live on the idiot box. If an Indian entreprenueur, Samir Patil, has his way, these characters will be on Indian television starting early next year.

Woes of the Indian IT Industry

Global recession has hit the Indian IT industry hard. An article in the Outlook Magazine captures the worsening woes of the Indian IT industry. Things have become so bad according to some anecdotal accounts, if you are an eligible bachelor working for an IT company, your chances of finding a groom are lets say abysmal. The paragraphs below capture the contrast between the heady days of 2005 and 2006, when an IT job was a sure shot ticket to wealth, and the woes of today.

Multiple job offers and generous pay hikes were nothing unusual in the IT industry. Talent was hard to come by. Companies had to pay plenty in cash, bonuses, perks and stock options to retain existing employees, and attract new hires by the thousands. New contracts from US clients were flowing in easily and IT companies had a simple formula for success: they could grow as much as they could hire. They often behaved like sharks in a feeding frenzy. They hired indiscriminately.

The city’s IT wealth was once the envy of the rest of the nation. The software professional was once the dream job of millions of students. There were over 10,000 individual dollar millionaires (with an investible surplus of Rs 4.5 crore) and 60,000 super-rich people (investible surplus of Rs 50 lakh) in the city in 2006. Bangaloreans invested Rs 22,000 crore in mutual funds in March 2006, up from Rs 8,000 crore in June 2004, according to a study by American Express. But all the fame and wealth of the IT professional is slowly melting away.

Pubs in Bangalore are empty; one is even offering “recession discounts”. Real estate prices, both housing and commercial, are sliding. The Promoters and Builders Association of Pune has launched a scheme where the developer will pay three EMIs in case a customer loses a job. Senior officials in a private sector bank confirm employees in the IT sector are in the negative list of borrowers. Many jobless are putting their cars and houses up for sale. Parents don’t want to marry their daughters to IT professionals.

Read the complete article at Woes of the Indian IT Industry

India - Success Story for a Communication Revolution

Having spent my childhood in India in an era when government controlled almost all aspects of communications, right from what you watched on television to getting a telephone connection, the current state of affairs in the Indian communication industry is heartening to watch.

I clearly remember Oct 31st 1984, the day Indira Gandhi, the then Prime minister of India, was assassinated. The government run television channel Doordarshan carried her funeral live 3 days later on Nov 3rd 1984. Back then having a television was a luxury. Our family was fortunate enough to have a black and white television set and the entire neighbourhood turned up at our place to watch the funeral procession live. Contrast that with today where every household has a television set, and the list of channels that you can get is almost endless.

The other aspect of the communication revolution is happening the telecom sector. 25 years back, very few households had a land line telephone connection. And the wait to get a new connection was anywhere from 6 to 8 years. Contrast that with the current state of affairs. Mobile phones have totally transformed the telecom market in India. They have become so ubiquitous that even the humble milkman or the vegetable vendor now carries a mobile phone.

Shashi Tharoor paints this contrast in his book, The Elephant, The Tiger and The Cellphone. He writes:

Bureaucratic statism committed a long list of sins against the Indian people, but communication was high up on the list: tge woeful state of India's telephone right up to the 1990's, with only 8 million connections and a further 20 million on the waiting list, would have been a joke if it wasn't also a tragedy - and a man-made one at that. We had possibly the worst telephone penetration rates in the world. The government's indifferent attitude to the need to improve India's communication infrastructure was epitomized by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's communication minister, C.M. Stephen, who declared in parliment, in response to questions decrying the rampant telephone breakdowns in the country, that telephones were a luxury, not a right, and that any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone - since there was a eight year waiting list of people seeking this supposedly inadequate product.

A Manifesto Towards Backwardness

The entire world is pushing for better use of technology to improve the lives of people. In this tech savvy world, where information can be at your finger tips, the manifesto of the Samajwadi Party calls for lesser use of computers. The party's reasoning:

The use of computers in offices is creating unemployment problems. Our party feels that if work can be done by a person using hands there is no need to deploy machines. The party is also against compulsory use of English language in education, administration and judiciary and would favor the use of regional languages.

This is all well and good, but if you look at the parties website;yes the party against computers has a website, it provides options for reading the website in English and Hindi. I wonder why the party which is against the compulsory use of English language in education has its website in English. Also what purpose would a website serve if you do not know how to use a computer?

What will be next on the party's hitlist, a ban on emails because they are hurting the postal service, or a ban on cell phones because the use of land-line phones is declining and thus people manufacturing them are being laid off creating unemployment.

Read more at Manifesto Towards Backwardness

Sixth Sense to Merge the Digital and Real World

If you have the movie Minority Report and thought the technology that Tom Cruise uses to interact with the computers was cool and wish you had access to a similar technology, then your wait might be over soon.



If the technology which is a prototype, can do things that are featured in the video, the gap between the digital world and real world would be further narrowed. Just cool stuff.....

Link obtained from Churumuri

Whats in the Stimulus Package to Kick Start the US Economy

The American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act of 2009,aka economic stimulus package, was signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. Total size of the package is $787 Billions and includes a mixture of spending and tax cuts. Now the question is, are there enough provisions in the bill which will help jump-start the ailing US economy. Read the summary of the bill to find out.

SPENDING

AID TO POOR AND UNEMPLOYED

_ $40 billion to provide extended unemployment benefits through Dec. 31, and increase them by $25 a week; $20 billion to increase food stamp benefits by 14 percent; $4 billion for job training; $3 billion in temporary welfare payments.

DIRECT CASH PAYMENTS

_ $14.2 billion to give one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients, poor people on Supplemental Security Income, and veterans receiving disability and pensions.

INFRASTRUCTURE

_ $48 billion for transportation projects, including $27.5 billion for highway and bridge construction and repair; $8.4 billion for mass transit; $8 billion for construction of high-speed railways and $1.3 billion for Amtrak; $4.6 billion for the Army Corps of Engineers; $4 billion for public housing improvements; $6 billion for clean and drinking water projects; $7.2 billion to bring broadband Internet service to underserved areas; $4.2 billion to repair and modernize Defense Department facilities.

HEALTH CARE

_ $24.7 billion to provide a 65 percent subsidy of health care insurance premiums for the unemployed under the COBRA program; $86.6 billion to help states with Medicaid; $19 billion to modernize health information technology systems; $10 billion for health research and construction of National Institutes of Health facilities; $1 billion for prevention and wellness programs.

STATE BLOCK GRANTS

_ $8.8 billion in aid to states to defray budget cuts.

ENERGY

_ About $50 billion for energy programs, focused chiefly on efficiency and renewable energy, including $5 billion to weatherize modest-income homes; $6.4 billion to clean up nuclear weapons production sites; $11 billion toward a so-called "smart electricity grid" to reduce waste; $6 billion to subsidize loans for renewable energy projects; $6.3 billion in state energy efficiency and clean energy grants; and $4.5 billion make federal buildings more energy efficient; $2 billion in grants for advanced batteries for electric vehicles.

EDUCATION

_ $44.5 billion in aid to local school districts to prevent layoffs and cutbacks, with flexibility to use the funds for school modernization and repair; $25.2 billion to school districts to fund special education and the No Child Left Behind law for students in K-12; $15.6 billion to boost the maximum Pell Grant by $500 to $5,350; $2 billion for Head Start.

HOUSING

_$4 billion to repair and make more energy efficient public housing projects; $2 billion for the redevelopment of foreclosed and abandoned homes; $1.5 billion for homeless shelters; $2 billion to pay off a looming shortfall in public housing accounts.

SCIENCE

_ $3 billion for the National Science Foundation for basic science and engineering research; $1 billion for NASA; $1.6 billion for research in areas such as climate science, biofuels, high-energy physics and nuclear physics.

HOMELAND SECURITY

_ $2.8 billion for homeland security programs, including $1 billion for airport screening equipment.

LAW ENFORCEMENT

_ $4 billion in grants to state and local law enforcement to hire officers and purchase equipment.

___

TAXES

NEW TAX CREDIT

_ About $116 billion for a $400 per-worker, $800 per-couple tax credits in 2009 and 2010. For the last half of 2009, workers could expect to see about $13 a week less withheld from their paychecks starting around June. Millions of Americans who don't make enough money to pay federal income taxes could file returns next year and receive checks. Individuals making more than $75,000 and couples making more than $150,000 would receive reduced amounts.

ALTERNATIVE MINIMUM TAX

_ About $70 billion to spare about 24 million taxpayers from being hit with the alternative minimum tax in 2009. The change would save a family of four an average of $2,300. The tax was designed to make sure wealthy taxpayers can't use credits and deductions to avoid paying any taxes. But it was never indexed to inflation, so families making as little as $45,000 could get significant increases without the change. Congress addresses it each year, usually in the fall.

EXPANDED COLLEGE CREDIT

_ About $14 billion to provide a $2,500 expanded tax credit for college tuition and related expenses for 2009 and 2010. The credit is phased out for couples making more than $160,000.

CHILD TAX CREDIT

_ About $15 billion to provide the $1,000 child tax credit to more families that don't make enough money to pay income taxes.

EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT

_ $4.7 billion to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income families with three or more children.

HOMEBUYER CREDIT

_ $6.6 billion to repeal a requirement that a $8,000 first-time home buyer tax credit be paid back over time for homes purchased from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, unless the home is sold within three years.

AUTO SALES

_ $1.7 billion to makes sales taxes on paid on new cars, light trucks, recreational vehicles and motorcycles tax deductible through the end of the year.

RENEWABLE ENERGY INCENTIVES

_ About 20 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency over 10 years, including extending tax credits for energy produced from wind, geothermal, hydropower and landfill gas; grants to build renewable energy facilities; tax credits for purchases of energy-efficient furnaces, windows and doors, or insulation; tax credit for families that purchase plug-in hybrid vehicles.

BONUS DEPRECIATION

_ $5 billion to extend a provision allowing businesses buying equipment such as computers to speed up its depreciation through 2009.

REPEAL BANK CREDIT

_ Repeal a Treasury provision that allowed firms that buy money-losing banks to use more of the losses as tax credits to offset the profits of the merged banks for tax purposes. The change would increase taxes on the merged banks by $7 billion over 10 years

When he signed the bill , the President said that the bill will help save or create 3.5 million jobs going forward. A quick glance at the above summary and you should realize that the bill is top heavy with tax cuts and aid for low income Americans. The only provisions with any seeming potential of creating jobs are spending on Infrastructure, Health Care, Alternative Energy and Home Land Security. Now, whether these provisions will help in creating or saving 3.5 million jobs and kick start the economy is the Trillion Dollar question.

Where Does Your Old Computer End Up After it is Used?

Where does your old computer, cell phone, iPod, or for that matter any electronic product that you have ever used, end up after you have discarded it. Chances are it may be in one of the e-waste dumps in China, India or Africa.

As this slide show points out, despite its health hazard, dismantling and recycling e-waste is big business in some parts of the world.

Is there is anything we as individuals can do to minimize the e-waste? Sure we can. Making sure that we take all the recyclable e-waste to one of the e-stewards would be a start.

Challenges for the New Administration

With the hoopla surrounding the inauguration of Barack Obama a thing of the past, it is time to focus on the challenges that the Obama Administration faces. Just thinking about them gives you a sobering feeling.

First there is the economy. The last year has seen the world economy nose dive. Wall Street as we knew of this time last year no more exists, with the sale of Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. What started as a sub-prime mortgage crisis in some parts of the United States has spread across the world. With jobs been lost and homes foreclosures increasing on a daily basis, the current economic environment calls for bold, swift and proper action.

Second, there are wars that are being fought on two fronts. First there is Iraq, which was a war of choice and then there is Afghanistan, which is a war of necessity. The new administrations challenge would be peacefully end the war of choice and focus its efforts on the war of necessity. Also on the foreign policy front, the Middle East presents a formidable challenge to the new administration. With the three week Israeli offensive on Gaza drawing down, the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding is just unacceptable. The unconditional support of the previous US administration to Israel’s actions has further stoked the sentiment of anti American sentiment in this region of the world. The current conflict offers the new administration a fresh starting point to bring the relevant players to the table and start over the peace process again.

Third, there is the question of energy and how American consumption of fossil fuels is propping petro dictators and warming up the planet. The new administration can take the first step by investing in green technologies like solar, wind and other environmentally friendly technologies. This will not only help in creating new better paying jobs but also will reduce American dependence of fossil fuel, which right now comes from the most unstable region of the world.

And finally, there are a whole host of domestic challenges that need to be addressed. For starters there is health care. For a country that spends the most of any developed world on health care, but has very little to show for it in terms of better patient outcomes, the rising cost of health care needs to be addressed. Also there is the question of basic education, where recent reports have indicated Asia outperforming US in Math and Science education.

None of these challenges are going to be easy, but they are not insurmountable either. As President Obama himself admitted in his inaugural speech and I quote “Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.” That is a reason to Hope.

Is WikiPedia the New Encyclopedia?

During my flight from Columbus to New York, in the Delta Sky magazine, I read an interesting article on the discussion about whether Wikipedia is the new Encyclopedia

Below is Andrew Keen's point of view:
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I wouldn’t call Wikipedia an encyclopedia. And that’s not a criticism. “Encyclopedia” is something where you have centralized editors who make calls on whether something is more important than something else. So they’ll decide that, you know, Henry VIII deserves a larger entry than Henry III or Henry II or Henry the Nothing. Wikipedia is, in my view—and again, this isn’t necessarily a criticism—Wikipedia is an editorless information resource in which anyone is free to enter what they consider to be important information, and other people are free to edit that information.
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Calendar for Life

If you are looking for a calendar for 2009 and beyond then you can find it at Free Calendar. All you have to do is change the year, year after year and you can use it up to the year 9999. If only I could live until the year 9999.....

Also get other cool Microsoft Excel tips at Pointy Haired Dilbert

IT Destination of India?

For a state that claims to be a destination for anyting IT, the sorry state of affairs of some the Karnataka government websites is rather ironic. According to a recent report in the Times of India , some of the government run websites have not been updated for the last two to three years.

I did a little bit of digging myself on what actually is on some of these government websites. Below is an image of some Karnataka government websites which was are listed in the government e-strategy document.



If you are like me trying to find some of these webistes, good luck with that. Also the website www.bangaloreit.com (marked in red in the image) is a not a government run website. Such is the state of affairs in the IT destination of India.

Citizen Journalism

In today's world of 24/7 news, a new trend is emerging in how breaking news is covered and by whom. Whether its the Asian Tsunami of Dec 2004 or the brutal crackdown of the Burmese Monks by the Junta, the iconic images of these news stories were brought to the world by ordinary Joe's who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

With the proliferation of the World Wide Web, improvement in technology to the point that almost any electronic device now comes with a camera and outlets like Blogs and iReport providing avenues for reporting breaking news stories, it has become increasingly easier for ordinary Joe's to break news stories that mainstream news media may have missed.

A recent Listening Post on Al Jazeera TV covers this growing trend of citizen journalism.

How Fast Can Humans Run?

Is there a limit to how fast human's can run? Researchs have been using the world record 100meters times and trying to fit a curve so that they can predict the progression of the 100 meters times. The data seemed to fit a simple exponential curve until Usain Bolt came along.

Read more at Blot is Freaky

Vampire Energy

Vampire Energy is the energy consumed by electronic appliances which are plugged in when not in use. According to this video, about 1% of all electricity consumption in the US is due to Vampire Energy.



Video obtained from By The Numbers

Web Security Words Ditigizing Libraries

When you try to buy anything on the website or open an email from one of the free email services you will be asked to enter random words into a text box. This is just to verify that the person entering information or opening the email account is a human and not a spammer computer.

According to Luis von Ahn, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, "Approximately 200 million of these are typed every day by people around the world. Each time you type one of these, essentially you waste about 10 seconds of your time," he says. "If you multiply that by 200 million, you get that humanity as a whole is wasting around 500,000 hours every day, typing these annoying squiggly characters."

So in order to harness all this man-hours von Ahn came up with a very innovative idea. He knew that lots of libraries have huge efforts under way to digitize their collections. These projects first scan books or newspapers by basically taking a picture of each page. Then a computer takes the image of each word and converts it into text, using optical character-recognition software.

But computers often come across printed words they just can't recognize. "Especially for older documents, things that were written before 1900, where the ink has faded and the pages have yellowed out, the computer makes a lot of mistakes," says von Ahn.

A human being has to look at those words and decipher them. It occurred to von Ahn that he could link this kind of activity to security devices used on the Internet. Instead of asking people to prove they're human by copying random sequences of distorted letters and numbers, he could ask them to decipher mystery words from scanned books and newspapers.

So he got together with The New York Times, which is digitizing newspapers going back to 1851, and a nonprofit called the Internet Archive, which is digitizing thousands of books.

And now, if you go to someplace like Ticketmaster to buy, say, Jimmy Buffett tickets, you'll be shown images of not one but two distorted words.

One of these is the real security word: Type this one correctly and you're in. The other image is something that has mystified the digitizing software.

If people recognize that word, they type it in. This image will actually be shown to several people. If they all agree on what the word is, it will be considered accurately transcribed. And von Ahn says it will be incorporated into the digitized copy of the book or the newspaper that it came from.

Read the complete article on NPR

Flush with Energy

Tom Friedman,in his latest op-ed for the NY Times, writes about how Denmark has become almost independent of the middle eastern oil. They did not do it by more off-shore drilling, but by investing in cleaner and renewable energies like wind power.