Homing pigeons faster than DSL in South Africa?

A South African company has found an innovative way to protest a national ISP’s poor broadband speeds by organizing a semi-facetious race between the ISP’s network and a homing pigeon. Unsurprisingly the pigeon won.

The experiment used a 4 GB Flash data card strapped to a single pigeon. The beginning and end points are 60 miles apart. When the pigeon reached its destination in around 2 hours, only 4 percent of the same data has been transferred via traditional DSL.

“Kill IE6” effort gains momentum

A growing online movement calling itself IE6 No More  has emerged online to convince web developers to inform users that much better alternatives exist. IE6, which is now 8 years old, barely supports modern web standards and is holding designers back. Since its broken implementation of even older standards often results in badly formed pages, forcing developers to use arcane workarounds. However IE6 still being used by a significant number of people.

To encourage users to switch, websites that agree with the movement have started displaying banners encouraging users to switch. Some of the most popular websites which already display banners whether or not they are part of the campaign include Facebook, Orkut, Posterous, and Reddit.

Youth of India survey reveals activities around the country

A survey of nearly 14,000 students carried out by Tata Consultancy Services has revealed a lot of new information about the online habits of 12-18 years old in the country. Twelve cities were covered including metros and mini-metros, with the student mainly from English-medium schools.

Google is clearly the leader when it comes to finding information, with 41 percent of respondents preferring it over newspapers, TV, libraries and even Wikipedia. Cybercafés are the most popular places to get online from in mini-metros, while 75 percent surf at home in Chennai. Mobile internet access was most common in Kolkata with 24 percent.

Finland makes 1 Mbps broadband a fundamental human right

The government of Finland has announced that 1 Mbps broadband access will be a fundamental right, starting July 2010. The move comes as a precursor to a larger plan to ensure that all citizens have access to at least a 100 Mbps connection by 2015. It is the first country to have done so. The government now considers broadband fundamental enough that it can not be provided as a commercial profit-making venture alone.

Evolution of the Blogosphere

1967

• The Internet is born. It has been commercially available since 1988.

1979

• A decentralized system of discussion boards called the USENET (User Network) is created.

1994

• The online travelogue travel-library.com is launched as a community on USENET.

1996

• cyber24.com is launched by photographer Rick Smolan to promote collaborative photo blogging under a project named ‘24 hours in Cyberspace’.

1997

• John Barger, an American blogger, publishes short posts in reverse chronology calling them the ‘Robot Wisdom Weblog’ . Soon similar web pages came to be commonly known as weblogs.

1998

• Blog hosting-cum-online journal service called ‘LiveJournal’ is launched.

• ‘OpenDiary’, another online journaling tool is launched.

1999

• As a web joke, blogger Peter Merholz broke the term weblog as ‘we blog‘ in the sidebar of his blog ‘peterme.com’. The term later gave way for the new generic term Blog.

• The blog host ‘Blogger’ is launched by the Pyra Labs. It will be taken over by Google Inc. in 2003.
• A journal hosting tool for beginners called ‘DiaryLand’ is launched.

2001

• The advent of political blogging begins with ‘Instapundit’.
• One of the first audio blogs ‘Buzzgrinder’ is launched to enable members to upload mp3 files in to their blogs.
• The bloggies awards are initiated. The winners will be chosen by the public and blogs will be nominated in around 30 categories.

2002

• The photo blogging service ‘Picasa’ is launched by Idealab. It will be taken over by Google Inc. in 2004.
• One of the first blog search engines ‘Technorati’ is launched.

2003

• A travel blog called ‘BootsnAll’ is launched.
• One of the first vblogs ‘Metacafe’ is launched.

• The blog hosting-cum-social networking website ‘MySpace’ is launched.
• The photo blogging websites ‘Photobucket’ is launched. It will be taken over by Fox Interactive Media in 2007.
• One of the first open source blog hosting websites/ blog tools ‘WordPress’ is launched.

• The Weblog awards are initiated.  The winners are chosen by public votes.

2004

• The blog search engine BlogPulse is launched by ‘IntelliSeek’. It will be taken over by the Nielsen Company.
• A health based blog hosting service called ‘HealthDiaries’ is launched.

• The photo blog hosting service ‘Flickr’ is launched. It will be taken over by Yahoo! in 2005.
• The BOBs – Best of the Blogs awards are initiated. The winners are selected by an international jury of independent journalists, media experts and blog experts.

2005

• ‘Blogher’ – A women oriented blog hosting service is launched.
• One of the largest and video blogging site ‘DailyMotion’ is launched.
• Google introduces a blog search engine called ‘Google Blog Search’.
• Yahoo launches a blog hosting service – Yahoo! 360°

• One of the most popular video blogs ‘YouTube’ is launched. It will be taken over by Google Inc. in 2004.

2006

• One of the first micro-blogging website ‘Twitter’ is launched.
• Another micro-blogging service called ‘Jaiku’ is launched. It will be taken over by Google Inc. in 2009.

2008

• Another micro-blogging service called ‘Plurk’ is launched.

Windows 7 all set for October 22

Windows 7, the long-anticipated successor to Windows Vista, will be officially launched on October 22 this year. Microsoft has announced that the OS has reached its RTM (Release To Manufacturing) milestone.

The final build, numbered 7600.16385, will be available to MSDN subscribers as early as the second week of August.

Curtsy : CHIP

Fake “Sex Orkut” steals passwords

Surfers are warned to stay away from websites claiming to be adult versions of Orkut, where adult hookups take place. Your Google username and password will be harvested to collect personal information.

Curtsy: CHIP

Indian Govt. websites hacked

At least two top Indian government websites have recently been compromised, according to security firm Finjan. The Union Public Services Commission (UPSC), upsc.gov.in, was modified with an iframe that redirected users to downloadable malicious content hosted on a Polish server. Later, India’s Institute of Remote Sensing website, iirs-nrsa.gov.in, was similarly attacked. After being alerted, CERT, which maintains the Indian government departments’ websites, has taken the necessary actions.

Curtsy : CHIP

Helpline for the ragged students—AT LAST !

India yesterday launched a national, toll free helpline for victims of ragging, assuring them assistance at all hours within 15 minutes of a distress call in a move. Students entering India’s higher education system, scarred by deaths and grievous injuries from violent ragging, will no longer have to fear indignity.

The number 5522 has been chosen for the helpline, which will need to be dialed as 1800-180-5522 to use the toll free mode. Students can also email complaints to helpline@antiragging.net.

BSNL is the telecommunication provider for the service and the helpline will be handled at all hours from a call centre in west Delhi’s Kirti Nagar. The helpline will be guided by the University Grant Commission’s(UGC) new regulations against ragging that have now come into effect.

A student will receive a unique identification number on calling the helpline, which will be used in all subsequent official work on the case to guard his or her identity. The distress call will be forwarded to the head of the caller’s institution and the warden of his/her hostel as well as district authorities and, if necessary, police.

The institution is to alert an anti-ragging squad that must compulsorily be set up under the new regulations. The squad is required to rush to the spot where the student has alleged ragging within 15 minutes of the original distress call.

Some cool facts about the 15th Lok Sabha

Loaded House

The 15th Lok Sabha is the richest, with 300 crorepati (1 crore= 10 million) MPs. That’s almost double the 154 MPs in the 14th house. The combined asset of Indian Mps is more than 3000 crore. Nama Nageswara Rao of the TDP in Andhra Pradesh is the richest with asset worth Rs 173.75 crore followed by Congress MP Naveen Jindal from Haryana worth Rs 131 crore. The Congress has 138 crorepati MPs, while the BJP has 58. The top five states with crorepati MPs are :

1. Uttar Pradesh (52)
2. Maharashtra (37)
3. Andhra Pradesh (31)
4. Karnataka (25)
5. Tamil Nadu (17)

Interestingly, there are about 300 MPs with liabilities, mainly loans, 24 with liabilities over Rs 1 crore. The man with the maximum liability, too, from Andhra Pradesh—L. Rajagopal of the Congress–at Rs 8 crore !

Lawbreaking Lawmakers

The word candidate is derived from ‘candidatus’ in Latin, which means one who is dressed in white. Most Indian politicians do dress in white but many of their thoughts are black. About 150 newly elected Mps have criminal cases pending against them, 73 of them serious charges. That’s a 17.2 per cent increase from the 14th Lok Sabha, which had 128 MPs with criminal charges, 55 of them of serious nature.

Number of MPs with criminal charges is almost equal among the main national parties: the BJP—42; 17 serious offence and the Congress–41; 12 serious offence.

The top five states with the most number of MPs with criminal charges are:

1. Uttar Pradesh (30)
2. Maharashtra (23)
3. Bihar (17)
4. Gujarat (11)
5. Andhra Pradesh (11)

More youth ? Not really

There has been talk about the surge of the youth power in Indian politics. But statistics don’t agree. Though there are 79 MPs under the age of 40, the 15th Lok Sabha is the second ‘oldest’ in Indian history, considering the average age of MPs–53.03.

Youngest MP –Muhammad Hamidullah Sayeed (26) from Congress.

Oldest MP– Ram Sundar Das (88) from JD(U).

Good sex scene

For the first time in Indian history, female representation in the Lok Sabha crossed 10 per cent. 59 of the 556 women candidates have been elected. 23 of them belong to the Congress and 13 to the BJP. The top three states with the maximum number of women MPs are:

1. Uttar Pradesh (13)
2. West Bengal (7)
3. Madhya Pradesh (6)

source: The week