Open source is key to reaching 500 million Indian children

An interesting article by Mark Rais on role of open source in making education available to the large youth population of india. And a greta initiative by CII-Shiksha.

To support more than 650,000 villages and one half billion youths who need education, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) created a nonprofit organization called Shiksha India in 2001. One of Shiksha’s primary initiatives was the creation of a collaborative online Web portal, which the president of India launched in a formal ceremony last month. The new e-learning and collaboration portal uses open source technology such as Moodle, Drupal, and MediaWiki.

In my opinion the reason behind its success can be attributed to mainly: its free of cost availabilty which is big issue in regard to country like India, where population(half billion) which need attention is much higher and money involved if proprietary softwares are being used. And other important aspect which article mentions is in the ability to customize and provide products in local languages (including Hindi and Tamil) along with chosing most suited among vast available resources.
Another important issue which can be solved with open source is large scale piracy, currently software piracy laws are not so strict in india but still piracy is a getting a major issue.

“The bad side is that with so much available, a newcomer to OSS is bound to get confused about what to use.” He says this is often exacerbated due to some projects being fixated on proving that their product is best.

Other than that at present, their are linux distributons like Ubuntu, which is quite user friendly and its available in many flavours. Also earlier there has also been efforts in shifting towards linux and other open source mediums like :
LIC opts for Linux
Taking Free Software to the Farmers and Fields of India
Kerala logs Microsoft out

Linux.com : Open source is key to reaching 500 million Indian children
Program Details for Shiksha India

February 26, 2007 | Filed Under india, linux | Leave a Comment 

OpenID ??

today i read this article which explains what openid is ??

Lately OpenID has been hitting the front page of digg, del.icio.us, and many other large websites.

Read More>>
OpenID - What is it, and why everyone is talking about it
you can also go through..
Authenticated Distributed Search (OpenSearch, OpenID)
Add OpenSearch to your site in five minutes

Additional link(offtopic and old article but i came across this well written article and couldn’t resist posting it.. ):
What Every Webmaster and Web Developer MUST Know About Ruby on Rails and AJAX It’s not a tutorial, it’s not a “how-to” but he explains very well just what the heck all this.

February 25, 2007 | Filed Under programming, web, webdev | Leave a Comment 

Web Development Tools

Great listing of web developers powertools by Brennan Stehling.
I’ll starts with extension for firefox that comes very handy while web devlopment.

The list Web Development Tools for the Power Developer contains :

Validators

Javascript

Websites

Read More>> (also containing ASP.NET, Proxy tools)
And w3schools, a great place for finding tutorials realted to web development.

Updated(29 April 2007) : Tools for web-designers.

Related Post :

February 24, 2007 | Filed Under firefox, programming, webdev | Leave a Comment 

Improving interactivity with Javascript

HTML controls other than conventional Push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, select boxes, and text inputs, can power up forms, webdev using javascript to increase interactivity and easy (for users). List of such controls includes : slider, Date picker, Smart text boxes, Advanced tooltips, Auto validation etc.

Read more friendly bit >> Improving interactivity with Javascript
In addition, I find image maps also very handy when it comes to intereactivity when used properly with tooltips…as i used them in Paint Chat.

Bonus link[ :) ] DailyBlogTips > Web 2.0 Webdesign Tutorials
Related post :

February 22, 2007 | Filed Under programming, tips, web, web2.0, webdev | 3 Comments 

Top 10 Web Tools For College Students

“I have been in college almost three years now and have been using many different Web tools that saved me time, helped me learn more and, most importantly, did not cost a penny. Here are 10 tools that I recommend for every college student…”

Great list of websites by NextPath to help you in college life…site has also linked to review of these wesites by famous websites such as PC magazine, Techcrunch, Lifehack…
List includes Wikipedia , Del.icio.us, Google Docs, Tada List

read more

February 16, 2007 | Filed Under listing, web | Leave a Comment 

GPRS on Mobile

Yesterday I activated GPRS on my mobile (nokia 6030) …its quite cheap( 10paise/10kb)
So I tried different pages which works for mobile

Some more websites which works on mobile can be found here : Mobile Compatibe Wesites

So I thougth i should have a mobile webpage too.. so i searched for it and found this great tutorial on w3schools: WAP/WML tutorial. It has also got a demo page which works with explorer only but it contains simple and good examples explaining basic features of wml along with preview on how it looks on mobile.

The WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) protocol is the leading standard for information services on wireless terminals like digital mobile phones. WML stands for Wireless Markup Language. It is a mark-up language inherited from HTML, but WML is based on XML, so it is much stricter than HTML.

Tutorial was pretty easy..so i create my own pae which works on mobile. You can access it at:
http://www.aburad.com/m.wml, though it contain my pic, blog address and some content only(I will add some more content). WML supports wbmp(which is black & white) image format,( you can convert image to wbmp using http://www.online-utility.org/. It als o supports jpg format. One more thing while designing your pages for mobile, you can opera to see how it looks as it supports wml files. Or check it at online wap emulator: WapTiger
Some more links : Wap Tutorials(haven’t tried yet).

Related Post :Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

February 15, 2007 | Filed Under tech, tips | 2 Comments 

Happy Valentine’s Day

I found this on xkcd.com

Mathematical operators for Love . useless..
Valentine - Karnaugh a Karnaugh map for love :)
Valentine Heart

February 14, 2007 | Filed Under offbeat | Leave a Comment 

The Dilbert Principle

Did you know about Dilbert Principle..

The Dilbert Principle refers to a 1990s satirical observation stating that companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage that they’re capable of doing.

Now i understand it all :) ..

The Dilbert Principle is a takeoff on the Peter Principle. The Peter Principle addresses the practice of hierarchical organizations (such as corporations and government agencies) to use promotions as a way to reward employees who demonstrate competence in their current position.

what do you think ??
Related links :
Dilbert, IITs & Linux

February 14, 2007 | Filed Under humor, offbeat | Leave a Comment 

Firebug : web development evolved

I found firebug very useful while developing my Paint Chat (which is not a big code as such but still), so here it goes in admiration of firebug:

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Firebug is firefox addon that helps you in webdevelopment with
its powerful feature such as javascript debugger, Inspect and edit HTML, Tweak CSS to perfection, Monitor network activity, Explore the DOM and many more. Feature I like most is its quickly diagnosing problem, it allows you set break points and checking intermediate values of variable for javascript thus making a great javascript debugger. Many times you are stuck at where did the code went wrong so in way its a lot useful in saving time.

I also like is its inspecting html and modifying html and css on fly and see the results with helpful tooltips. It also help in positioning of divs, images with its nice feature of visuallizing css metrics with ruler and box model coloring(HTML inspecting).

It other great feature is its interface which is comes with browser window split in two halves one for your website and one is extension interface (though it also can be detached from it). I am also a fan of Web developer toolbar extension but what it lacks is a java debugger and this great interface but both are a must of a web developer.

Related Post :

Firebug - Web Development Evolved

February 12, 2007 | Filed Under programming, tips, web2.0, webdev | 1 Comment 

9 Things The Non-Tech Savvy Do That Annoy Geeks

Earlier also i made a similar post :I’m A Programmer, Not A Computer Guy, Now its the time again

When you ’re a tech nerd working or living with the not so tech savvy, there are a few things they tend to do that make you bite your tongue, and resist the urge to take over what they’re doing and get it done yourself. They may be trivial, but they are all oh so wrong.

Read More on Digg>>

Some of them are so true.

NO, I DON’T want to fix your cousin’s brother’s uncle’s 10 year old computer.
If you’re a tech-savvy person, especially if it’s what you do as a job, people seem to think that you enjoy, and are happy to fix their computer.

Some more on list :

Read more on digg for interseting comments
Original URL : http://www.spiraloz.com/?p=143 but i think sit is down for time being..(digg effect !!)
Related Post: I’m A Programmer, Not A Computer Guy

February 12, 2007 | Filed Under computers, listing, offbeat, web | Leave a Comment 

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