Über Desi » Technology

“Game On” – A Bollywood Themed Gamer’s Anthem

Santosh — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:52:08 +0000

The video, the latest in a series of funny promos by The Guild, features Codex played by Felicia Day and Zaboo by Sandeep Parikh, in lead roles. As the video plays out, Zaboo convinces Codex, Bollywood ishtyle, to join him in playing the game. [via Om]

Delhi police outsources traffic control to Facebook

Santosh — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:38:02 +0000

The Delhi police is putting Web 2.0 in Orwellianism. After coining phrases like “When in rooms do as Roman does“, the Delhi police has gone high tech to deal with it’s traffic issues. [NYT] (Joel via GTalk)

Now, the city’s overburdened traffic police officers have enlisted an unexpected weapon in the fight against dangerous driving: Facebook.
The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents became digital informants, posting photos of their fellow drivers violating traffic laws. As of Sunday more than 17,000 people had become fans of the page and posted almost 3,000 photographs and dozens of videos.

A cursory glance at the Facebook page reveals the current followers somewhere around 19,000. Judging by the enthusiasm of those reporting traffic offenses, this endeavor appears to be quite popular among Delhi’s netizens. Genuine tips appear to be interspersed with personal wish lists and incoherent ramblings but overall the process appears to work.

The pros – under staffed police recruits citizen volunteers to help enforce traffic laws – and cons – big brother using technology to get citizens to spy on fellow citizens – are predictable and supporters and detractors can reiterate these points times ad nauseum.

One point few have seldom mentioned is that the basic premise of this campaign – get photo evidence on the road – is flawed. Not only can photographic evidence be altered but some of those generating these evidence are driving while clicking photos with their mobile phones. I’m admittedly unfamiliar with the driving laws in Delhi. Obviously there are no “texting/clicking while driving laws” in Delhi and this poses as much of a risk as someone riding without a helmet and definitely more risky than faulty number plates or tinted windows.

So what do you think? Is this traffic campaign by the Delhi police
a. effective
b. invasion of privacy
c. all of the above

Bonus big brother story (Rueters): RIM, the makers of Blackberry, famed for its consumer/corporate email security was forced by the Indian government to open up its email services for scrutiny, under the guise of national security.

Facebook dances its way into Indian hearts

Santosh — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 17:50:09 +0000

Recent anecdotal evidence, namely the sudden arrival of friends and relatives living in India on Facebook, suggests that Facebook has suddenly mushroomed in India, slowly overtaking Orkut as the social network of choice. There are some hard statistical numbers to back that claim, WATBlog as early as 2009 had shed light on this trend. Meanwhile back here in the US, the homeland of Facebook and Orkut, people are grasping at straws to explain how Facebook has nearly half of India’s population. Maybe it’s related to the fact that a small percentage of Indians and Brazilians are now on Facebook?

So the question become how did upcoming Goliath Facebook conquer reigning Goliath Orkut (Google)? Was it the “Like” button? Was it Facebook’s clean UI compared to Orkut? Was it Facebook’s ability to integrate with Twitter and other platforms?

Earlier this year, Tunku Varadarajan authored an insightful article in the Daily Beast “Why India Loves Facebook”. Sree Srinivasan sums up the article with this hilarious (but true) quote:

“They take to it naturally and with great passion. It allows them to do two things they love: Tell everyone what they are doing; and stick their noses into other people’s business.”

Further investigation reveals that Facebook’s popularity in India is related to all of the above and then this: [Pluggd.in via @amreekandesi]

Indian movies, Bollywood movies in particular, are notorious for this creative solution to most issues in this world, song and dance. Naturally when Zuck (Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook) visited India this year he got to use this “formula” to symbolize a. Facebook’s triumph over Google (Orkut) and b. Facebook dancing its way into Indian Internet users’ hearts.

Providing a venue for gupshup, breaking out into impromptu dance, the Facebookwalas sure know how to get the attention of the Indians.

Sergey Brin, are you listening?

Shameless plug: since you like our work, pleej to be joining the Über Desi Facebook group or follow us on Twitter.

Bonus photo of Zuck in India. Zuck goes all out on the India angle with an elephant in the background and a street kid (get it? Slumdog Millionaire) on his side. (pic via DigitalBlog.India)

Sachin trending on Twitter (Update)

Santosh — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:44:44 +0000

Sachin Trends on twitter

Indian cricketing legend, Sachin Tendulkar, is trending on Twitter …….. in 3 different spots! Things related to India trending on twitter are starting to become fairly common. The other day a viral tag titled #awesomeindianthings (which loosely translates to …… uberdesi) was #1 for a while on Twitter. Sachin Tendulkar became the first batsman to score 200 in a one day international match against South Africa earning him 3 different spots on Twitter trends.

Update: Turns out being politically incorrect when referring to Sachin Tendulkar as batsman as opposed to batsperson saved me a redaction, so did my habit of using his profession (batsman) as opposed to using something more general (cricketer, human being, god, unicorn, tooth fairy, etc). This blog (Karthik via FB) informs us that Sachin Tendulkar is merely the second person to score a double hundred in an ODI, the first being by Belinda Clark of the Australian women’s cricket team back in 1997. Unfortunately for Belinda back then there were no Twitters, Facebooks or YouTubes, so she did not “trend of Twitter” or have a million views on YouTube. So there you go, Sachin Tendulkar was the second batsperson and first batsman to score a double hundred in an ODI.

www.ऊबरदेशी.com

Sidhu — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:20:07 +0000

This may soon be a reality!

Hebrew, Hindi, other scripts get Web address nod . Link

ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the regulating authority for domain names and accreditation authority for website registrars, announced support to non-latin characters (Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew and Hindi) in web addresses and they could be a reality by middle of next year.

ICANN has also called this the ‘biggest change’ since the inception of the internet in its crudest form 40 years ago.

More info from ICANN here:

Link

“The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago,” said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. “Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters – A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names.”

ICANN’s Fast Track Process launches on 16 November 2009. It will allow nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their name – and made up of characters from their national language. If the applications meet criteria that includes government and community support and a stability evaluation, the applicants will be approved to start accepting registrations.

Can’t help thinking how the translations of spellings and phonetics will cause confusion, for eg., is it ऊबरदेशी or ऊबरदेसी or something totally different.

What about e-mail addresses? If I can be sidhu@ऊबरदेसी .com , can an American reader send an e-mail to me, or will there be isolation of heavily regional traffic driven websites?

It is indeed a big challenge to adapt to and technical possibilities opening up, apparently the biggest hurdle was security and measures have been put in place by ICANN and related bodies.

P.S: Non-English characters for the post created at http://www.quillpad.in/