Category Archives: Tech Articles

WorldSpace: Not only music

Posted on by
Reply

This satellite radio service is also involved in disaster warning, weather alerts and in connecting up remote communities

After a longish hiatius, Worldspace is reinventing its strategy with it’s satellite based radio offerings. What is not so well known are the other community oriented services that it offers in Asia and Africa. Worldspace leverages the global reach of satellite transmission to reach its services to where terrestrial infrastructure does not exist, or where it has been destroyed or rendered inoperable.

Against the next tsunami

Regular terrestrial radio, and communications infrastructure can be knocked out during national calamities, but not so satellite radio. It doesn’t have to rely on ground stations for transmission and does so via an overhead satellite. It can be deployed during national calamities, give key traffic information to commuters and weather-related information round-the-clock.

And that is one of the things that Worldspace has focused on after the last tsunami took place.

Says Managing Director Deepak Verma, “Post the tsunami, we have been working very closely with departments like the Department of Science & Technology, the Department of Disaster Management- State of Tamil Nadu and the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) to set up a national disaster warning and management network.”

Traffic and weather alerts, 24/7

Worldspace is already giving weather information services for the India Meteorological Department (IMD). In the US, satellite radio is popular for traffic reports and weather alerts. XM and Sirius radio together have dozens of dedicated channels for this. XM also gives weather data to pilots and weather spotters. XM NavTraffic integrates with a car’s GPS system so a driver can also know the traffic flow on his map. Right now this is only available on the Acura RL, other carmakers are on to it. Of course these services became popular only after XM and Sirius convinced people to use in-car receivers. Currently WorldSpace does not have car radio sets in India.

Connecting communities

First Voice International, a division of Worldspace, works with governments, communities and NGOs to deliver key information on “pressing issues” in the poorest of regions. Says President Kirk Talbott on the official website, “First Voice can deliver to people who are living and working even in the most isolated areas of Africa and Asia the information that can improve and, in many cases, save lives.” The Asia Development channel addresses social issues in Bangladesh and the African Learning Channel spreads education and awareness in the continent.

Red Cross Radio!

No, the International Red Cross hasn’t suddenly got into the radio service, but this is an after-effect of Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans in America.

XM Satellite Radio distributed 200 receivers to Red Cross workers. That helped relief workers get instant information related to relief work, shelter locations and assistance programs. These radios were also hooked up with public address system and put in information rooms that survivors could access. XM, incidentally, had an emergency alert channel even before the Red Cross channel was launched. So while the Bush administration was slow to react to the aftermath of the devastating killer storm, XM could put their channel in place because they did not have to rely on any infrastructure on the ground. Moreover when cities and towns and ravaged by disasters, information flow to and from the disaster area is very important and that is exactly what satellite radio ensures. So that’s why Worldspace and other satellite radios aren’t just about music.

(This article appeared in Living Digital magazine in October 2005)

Will you buy pizza from your TV?

Posted on by
Reply

While business on the Internet hasn’t taken off as much as predicted, the key could well be your mobile and the TV

When the Internet came, everyone talked of it replacing brick and mortar business altogether. But the dotcom crash happened. The second dotcom boom (for the key Internet companies anyway) looks like it’s here to stay. Also, business related to financial services, travel services and the casino are booming on the Internet.

So how close are we to having the Internet become the preferred choice for business? The truth is that a lot of companies still don’t use the Internet because they still don’t understand it. The Internet can do things for a business which no other medium can. For example, the Internet is so targeted, that it will not let you waste your time. Since it’s focused, Internet marketing is steadily gaining in popularity. And the future could well belong to contextual marketing. A case in point is Google AdSense. The revenue generated is on a per-click basis and advertisers feel that they get value-for-money.

Beam me up Scotty!

Says Fintan Orourke, CEO of Natural Search, “The Internet itself is going to change. In five years, we will be communicating with the Internet through the TV screen. The business of e-commerce will be through voice interaction. Imagine asking for a pizza directly from the TV screen.”

He also talks highly of handheld devices, saying, “It will be something like Star Trek. The way Captain Kirk said “Beam me up Scotty,” we’ll talk to our mobile and say “Find me a flight to Goa” or some such thing. Over time, TV and mobiles will be the most popular access devices for the Internet. The iPod and all will converge into the mobile phone.”

The mobile and the TV are among the most familiar and comfortable devices the world over. People trust the mobile and TV and they may be more open to doing business on the Internet through these two.

Where the world is headed to

Internet TV or peer-to-peer (P2P) TV could be the next big thing. In the long run, it will bring down operational costs and also help in accessing all kinds of content from the TV. The BBC and CCTV of China are already experimenting with P2P TV. BBC is working on Dirac, which is an algorithm encoding and decoding video and sound.

Another person who is backing Internet TV is Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. During the keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show this year, he said, “The set-top boxes that have been connected up to cable can take a new generation of hardware and software and be far better. There’s a generation that can go even further as we get more video on-demand capability and literally anybody can watch any show at any time, even the ads can be targeted to you.”

Gates also added that Internet TV was where the world was going and that video, data and voice would finally come together.

Going mobile and how

While P2P TV looks like a revolution waiting to happen, the mobile convergence one is already happening. Mobiles are getting more and more sophisticated, screens are getting bigger and clearer. And when the 3G era finally arrives, then surfing on your mobile will not be such a painful process. Mobile ecommerce could be the next big thing. Wherever the size of the screen is not a limiting factor, the mobile will be the preferred device for accessing the Net. With mobiles getting cheaper, access is on the rise and sales are expected to top $1 billion by 2009.

The Internet is still evolving on handheld devices. Norway-based FastSearch and Transfer (FAST) has launched mSearch, which helps mobile users search for content on the Net. Starting with just ringtones, games and images, FAST believes that mobile search will be a big business in the long run. Yahoo has also tied up with Nokia and now the search giant’s data communications and entertainment services will be available with Nokia’s Series 60 mobiles. Google isn’t far behind and is also doing research on mobile search too.

(This article appeared in Living Digital magazine in October 2005)

Hollywood’s toys for boys

Posted on by
2

Movie stars have been using a variety of tech marvels in action-packed blockbusters. But how realistic are the weapons they use?

A reality check

Clone a phone
SIM copier
Bourne Supremacy
There’s a cool scene where Matt Damon knocks down a US agent and takes his mobile in a flash. He then puts the SIM card into a GSM plugin SIM Adapter which is connected to a chip drive. The SIM configuration is downloaded into Damon’s mobile and he starts receiving calls without the US agent knowing.
Reality Meter: 5/5
These devices are in India and they may not be as fast as Damon, but your mobile card can be cloned in minutes! That means someone else can make umpteen calls and you’ll still get billed for it.

Stop a car
ESD
2 Fast 2 Furious
What’s the best way to catch a car with a daredevil driver? No you don’t have to overtake him. Just fire the Electrical System Disabler (ESD) and short circuit the car. In 2F2F, cops fire a 3-legged device from a small cannon gun which gets lodged in the body of the car, bringing the voltage down to zero and thereby stopping the car.
Reality Meter: 3/5
An electrical system gives power to, among other things, the ignition system through the car’s wiring. So theoretically it is possible to have such a device.

The impossible weapon
Light Saber
Star Wars series
The light saber is the ultimate weapon. Not only for a Jedi, but it’s the coolest weapon around. It can slice men and robots into two. It can cut through secure doors. The very sight strikes fear in the hearts of all. And it can fit neatly into your pocket.
Reality Meter: 0/5
By today’s technology, such a device would be near-impossible to make. For one, it would be very difficult to contain the length of a laser and secondly, one laser beam won’t stop another laser as they show in the fights. At best you could make a plasma saber, but to contain it in a magnetic field, it would take tonnes of energy.

A virtual me
Hologram projector
Star Wars series
Which Star Wars fan can forget R2D2′s hologram of Princess Leia in the original trilogy? In the seventies it was cool that you could save a moving image of someone and transport it elsewhere. Since then the hologram has been used in many movies.
Reality Meter: 5/5
The Mirage 3D Hologram Maker can make a hologram right in your in your home. It costs £20, check it out at www.optigone.com. Then there’s tele-immersion or live teleconferencing in the form of a hologram.

No mouse, no keyboard
Holographic database
Minority Report
Imagine doing away with the key and mouse and computer screen and replacing it all with a virtual image! Anyone who’s seen the movie will remember Tom Cruise going through a virtual database with nothing but his hands.
Reality Meter: 1/5
While we are still a long way away from such a virtual screen, many computer makers are already working on such a concept.

You don’t remember this
Memory Eraser
Men in Black series
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones at the end of every alien encounter use a pen-sized gadget that erases the memory of those around. Wiping out memory and modifying it has also been the subject of other movies like Total Recall.
Reality Meter: 0/5
While just about anything is possible in the future, right now we are nowhere near wiping out anyone’s “temporary memory” with just a flash.

I can see your underwear
Blue X-Ray Glasses
The World Is Not Enough
So many movies in the past have fantasized about X-ray goggles that can look through clothes and even James Bond couldn’t resist the temptation in the nineties, when Pierce Brosnan uses them to check out the ladies in a casino.
Reality Meter: 3/5
While X-ray technology is getting more and more sophisticated and the latest ones can see outlines inside clothes, they are still nowhere as clear as reel-life would like us to believe. Though scientists are still trying and trying…

Infecting the aliens
Apple PowerBook
Independence Day
Jeff Goldblum used his laptop to infect the alien attack fleet with a virus thereby crippling it and saving Planet Earth. An Apple PowerBook? That’s all you need to ward of aliens with awesome firepower? Cool!
Reality Meter: Unknown
While the Apple PowerBook exists, nobody has seen an alien computer to say conclusively whether it is Mac-compatible or not.

Traffic jam in the sky
Flying cars
Back to the Future series
What’s the best way to avoid traffic jams on Earth? Go upwards! However this movie portrays traffic jams even in the sky, the car population is expected to rise that much! There are also flying cars in The Fifth Element, Judge Dredd, Minority Report etc.
Reality Meter: 2/5
The Moller M400 and SkyCar are two cars that can fly, though they look more like planes. The M200X looked more like a UFO. So the only thing left to work out for a flying car is the “form factor”.

(This article appeared in Living Digital magazine in October 2005)

In Hollywood, tech gets a Perfect Ten

Posted on by
1

Computer-generated special effects have set the Hollywood box office on fire. Nineteen of the top twenty grossers of all time are powered by software

If you looked at the Hollywood list of all time Top Ten grossers till say 1990, then you had comedies like Home Alone, romances like Pretty Woman and Westerns like Dances with Wolves. Sci-Fi gatecrashers were Star Wars and ET.

However the nineties came and changed the rules of the game. If you didn’t have special effects then you didn’t stand a chance at the box office. A look at the current Top 10 grossers and how they relied on 3D computer generated imagery (CGI).

1. Titanic (1997), $1.8 billion
Director James Cameron founded visual effects company Digital Domain, which powered the Titanic. While the actual sinking of the real-life Titanic was explained on the computer in the movie, even the reel-life Titanic was fully computer generated. The unit relied heavily on Linux (which since then has become the staple fare for Hollywood) and more than 500 high-powered CPUs with more than 5 terabytes of disk space.

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), $1.1 b
Weta Digital was involved in thousands of detailed shots that required years to complete. And it kept getting more and more intense with every film in the trilogy. For example while LOTR 2 used more than 750 shots, the number crossed 1500 in LOTR 3. While Middle Earth was computer generated, so were many other characters like Gollum and even the Eye of Sauron. Other scenes were taken from real video shoots which then went through a lot of post-production compositing.

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), $976 million
Flying brooms. Magical ceilings. Wizard’s chess. Wands and magic. Let’s face it; Harry Potter could never have been pulled off without heavy help from compositing software. The exciting game of Quidditch was mainly played in front of a blue screen and even the sound effects were computer generated. This was most difficult as such a game doesn’t exist and it had to be imagined entirely. The film also featured fabulous creatures like the giant three-headed dog Fluffy, a mountain troll, centaurs and unicorns. For the sorting hat both computer animation and a hat puppet were used.

4. Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace (1999), $926 m
George Lucas once said that he waited till technology became sufficiently advanced to make the prequels. Well the nineties provided him with the perfect platform and he made Episode 1, which is still the biggest Star Wars grosser of all time. In this movie, actors and acting took a backseat as it was all about Darth Maul with his two light sabers, the computer generated Jar Jar Binks (who proved to be a major irritant for fans), an underwater world and an epic war on Naboo which featured thousands of androids.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), $925 m
In LOTR 2, computer generated Gollum came into his own and there were great Middle Earth battle scenes. The production department had to double their compositing unit team. In some of the battle scenes only the main characters were shot while the entire scenes with all their elements were created on the computer.

6. Jurassic Park (1993), $920 m
This was the first special effects movie that almost touched the $1 billion mark. It was made by none other than Steven Spielberg, who had already come out with Inner Space and ET. Till now CGI was used sparingly in certain movies. In this one, it was used throughout. Industrial Light and Magic succeeded in creating realistic fearsome large moving dinosaurs which got better and meaner in the Lost World and Jurassic Park 3.

7. Shrek 2 (2004), $881 m
DreamWorks SKG’s Shrek was probably the first movie fully made on Linux. That HP chose to use this movie in one of its ads shows you how much IT and Hollywood have become integrated. And the team is getting into higher and higher resolution models. From 2D models with the pencil, animators have firmly switched to 3D models with the mouse. Shrek 2 has a scene which features 6000 citizens and the crowd is pretty dynamic. Light and shade have also been presented realistically.

8. LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), $870 m
LOTR 1 had more than 500 compositing shots and also won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. However both the number and quality of shots got better and better as each part of the trilogy was unleashed.

9. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), $866 m
In the second installment of Harry Potter, two of the key characters were computer generated. One was Dobby the house elf and the other was the basilisk, a fabulous giant snake featured in the climax of the movie. A flying car also added to the fun.

10. Finding Nemo (2003), $865 m
This goldmine of a movie was the tale of two fish, Marlin and his son Nemo, who get separated from each other in the Great Barrier Reef. Pixar admitted during release that this was the toughest movie that they had made till date. Upto 50 animators were used for which fish had to be studied in great detail. The range of expressions that finally went into all the underwater characters was simply amazing.

If you look beyond 10 too, then it’s still animation and effects all the way upto number 19. Forrest Gump (and even that had a few CGI scenes) breaks the tech-trend at a lowly 20th position. So is this the future? Will good acting and Hollywood superstars take totally a backseat and will the man on the computer rule film-making?

(This article appeared in Living Digital magazine in September 2005)

Revolution in cyberspace

Posted on by
Reply

Cyberactivism is a cheap and effective way of spreading a cause

When a small town in Japan was considering whether to have a nuclear facility or not, just 75 protest emails led the mayor to decide the issue through a public referendum. That’s an example of the power of cyberactivism. More and more people are realizing the benefits of using the Internet for activism. The benefits are many. It’s cheap. It’s immediate. It’s global. And it’s a way by which a small group of people can reach out to large numbers all across the globe. Called “digital organizing”, cyberactivism uses websites and emails to drive home a cause.

How it all began

The ELZN, or more popularly the Zapatista movement, was probably one of the first practitioners of cyberactivism. In 1994, ELZN declared that it was at war with the Mexican government over its dictatorial policies. After capturing some municipalities in a city with the use of violence, the movement switched to a battle in the virtual world. A mass of emails were sent out with details of the capture and the government found no way of suppressing information regarding the uprising thereafter. The Zapatista movement quit the use of violence and used the Internet medium to spread their cause. The hostilities lasted only for a few months. After that the ELZN created the Electronic Disturbance Theater, which remained very active on the Web.

Greenpeace: Taking it to the next level

However, it was Greenpeace which took this form of activism to higher and higher levels and they have many successful campaigns under their belt. That includes one out of India too. While the Bhopal gas disaster happened in 1984, the after-effects in the form the closed Union Carbide factory decaying and contaminating the groundwater stay on even today. In 1999, Greenpeace helped set up a cybercafe right in front of the factory and thousands of Bhopal citizens came and sent protest emails to both the erring company and various governments. Previously most of them had no way of addressing their grievances. Dow Chemicals (which is Union Carbide today) decided to skirt the issue and started screening out such emails. However, the issue subsequently got great media attention and soon everyone came to know about the whole issue. Later cyberactivism campaigns were much more successful and in one of them, the World Bank decided to stop funding polluting factories in Gujarat. Greenpeace has tasted much greater success in Europe and have successfully fought many campaigns on the Web.

Post 9/11 concerns

However, cyberactivism is a form of civil disobedience and is totally frowned upon by most authorities. Especially after 9/11 when security in cyberspace came under the scanner and any form of hacking or online activism was not considered the right thing. For some, the line between cyberactivism and cyber-terrorism blurred a bit. However most cyberactivists point out that there is no violence done by this movement and most of the activities fall in the ambit of cyber laws.

While right now computer penetration, especially in places like India, is limited, the future could see cyberactivism as the preferred choice for most groups across the world.

Cyber Activities

Cyberterrorism: Terrorism spread through computer networks and the Internet.
Hactivism: Hacking for a political cause.
Crypto-anarchism: Belief that all computer and Internet users should be anonymous. Will be achieved through the use of strong public key cryptography that will give a high degree of privacy to everyone.
Internet Activism: Associated with citizen movements while cyberactivism is used with civil disobedience.

(This article appeared in Living Digital magazine in August 2005)

Google me again

Posted on by
Reply

Do you know the difference between Googling and autoGoogling? Internet search has led to a brand new terminology

Ever since Internet search engines have come into our lives, they have changed the way we think, talk and research. When you want to know something you just “Google” it. It has become a library, teacher, directory and reference guide all rolled into one. It has also introduced a few new terms into the English language. Googling, egosurfing and counter-googling are some samples.

Beware, you’re being Googled!

In the movie Maid in Manhattan, when the heroine’s son asks her a question, she asks him to “Google it”. Google has already entered the English language as a verb that means to perform an Internet search. It’s also sometimes used synonymously with “research”. Googling has also appeared in cartoon strips and TV serials including the highly popular Friends. A search for “googling” on Google gets more than 700,000 results. That shows how widespread the usage has already become.

A very popular thing to do is google people before you meet them. Businessmen do it before they meet clients. Neighbors and old schoolmates are googled and in America, boys and girls google the person they’re about to date.

The exact search is simply got by putting one’s name in quotes. Then there’s the misplaced notion that the more searches a person has on Google, the more important he or she is. But a thing to remember is that not all the information on the Net is authentic. That’s because it’s very easy to put up information in cyberspace without any checks and crosschecks. You’ve to be cautious because many people take it at face value.

Take that ego trip right now

Instead of googling others what if you googled yourself? That would be called autogoogling, or more popularly egosurfing. Some people get a kick out of seeing how many times their name comes up in cyberspace. Popular among top businessmen, famous personalities, writers and journalists. And what do some people do when they are down? Just egosearch to boost their morale!

But what if you’ve zero name searches to your name? Well, that’s quite easy to rectify. Start writing a regular blog and mail the URL to everyone in your mailing list in a bid to popularize it. Leave your comments on every article you read on Websites and participate in all the discussion forums you can. You can even upload your resume on certain career sites that have an Internet search option. That means if anyone searches your name, they can read your resume. Remember, getting published in cyberspace is much easier than getting published in real life. Sometimes you might also get a kick out of knowing how many people share your name and what your namesakes are up to.

Point and counterpoint

The Bel Air hotel in Los Angeles googles first time customers to know about their preferences and give them more personalized services. Both names and addresses are put to the search. Trendwatching.com called this “counter-googling”. (If googling refers to customers checking out a company, then counter-googling refers to the act of companies checking out their customers). With the amount of blogs on the rise, it’s very easy to get hold of a million-strong database of potential customers.

So looks like the Google Global village where everyone in the world can know about everyone else is just around the corner.

(This article appeared in Living Digital magazine in August 2005)