Posts Tagged ‘India’
Hindustan Times arrives on Amazon Kindle!!! December 4th, 2009
Despite the face that Amazon never reveal the sales figures for there eBook reader Kindle it remains the most popular eBook reader in the world.. Amazon recently launched an international edition of it, which can be used in any country….. Hindustan Times is the first and only Indian newspaper to announce that they have made available their newspaper on the Kindle platform…
Amazon Kindle users would have to subscribe to HT if they want to access it on their Kindle. Subscription costs around Rs. 460 monthly…
Tags: Amazon, India, Kindle
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Coming Soon : Domain Names in Indian Languages!!! December 1st, 2009
Domain Names are the unique identity to access the web, as we all know these are entered in the address bar of the browser to access a website. These provide a unique identity and on clicking on a given domain name, the webpage of the particular website opens up. Currently these are available only with Latin characters, but will be introduced in Indian languages in India by June 2010.
The Government of India confirmed that a user were able to have Domain Name in an Indian language, moreover, it would be possible to type and access the C-DAC site.
The project’s policy is in place, and now developers are looking to involve authorities including the Domain Name registrars, web portal developers and designers, language and educational experts and e-government representatives, among others, all of who will provide their feedback on the structure of the project.
Tags: Domain, India
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Big Companies keen to partner India’s Unique ID project!!! November 12th, 2009
It appears that IT giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco are keen to help power the technology for India’s Unique Identification project.
What is the Unique ID project?
A project in which every Indian citizen would have one unique identification number(similar to a U.S. social security number) that will identify him/her. It would not just help the government track down individuals as is highlighted by the media, but would make life far easier for citizens as they would not have to submit so many documents each time they want to avail a new service—private or government. The project is headed by Infosys co-chairman Nanden Nilekani.
This task is not small considering the population of India is around 1.2 billion. This would involve very powerful technology to assign these unique ID’s and then to organize/store these ID’s would require a large database. This is why i think Yahoo and Microsoft are keen to help out. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: India, Microsoft, Yahoo
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Indian Elections 2009!!!
May 18th, 2009
Every Indian should be proud to be a part of the biggest democratic drill in the world. There are 543 seats that were contested across the length and breadth of the country. There were 828,804 polling stations that were activated for the 714 million voters out of which about 57% cast their ballot. The total number of electronic voting machines stood at 1.4 million. This is equivalent to both America and Europe are going to polls together at the same time. That is the reason the Twitter tag “#indiavotes09″ was the number one topic on the trends list of Twitter search. I don’t subscribe to any political party, but I think this is a dream ballot for the tax paying public,stock exchange, corporates and the common man.
I have been watching all the election analysis programs in channels yesterday. Every opinion poll prediction was no where close to the actual result, the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the secular Congress Party won a clear victory, giving a crushing blow to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies. This time, presented with a free choice, Indian voters have rejected the politics of myopic communalist bigotry and chosen a political path which separates religious belief from political practice. As the complete results show, the Congress alone has won more seats than the BJP and its allies combined, marking a shift away from the recent trend of regional parties holding the national parties to ransom as they scrabbled to form governments.
Mayawati Kumari (the first Dalit regional premier and leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)) has been frustrated by seeing her ambition to hold power get shattered into pieces. Acting childish she said in her post result statement that both Congress and BJP tried to keep her out of the Lok Sabha. Now could someone tell me that isn’t this what all parties try and do?? The job of one party is to try and defeat the other party right?? Now imagine if Sachin Tendulkar gets bowled by Malinga would he say that “this is wrong, Malinga was trying to get me out, instead of letting me bat”. How can you imagine such a politician who instead of accepting defeat gracefully starts a kiddish fight to be the Prime Minister of this country. This is one instance to prove that Indian voters are tired of old political methods.
One more instance to prove this is the defeat of Mr Ramvilas Paswan (union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief) who had earned fame by registering his name in the Guinness book of world records for defeating his rival with a margine of 4 lakhs 77 thousand votes. This time Mr Paswan lost to former Bihar chief minister Ram Sundar Das by a margine of 37954 votes contesting election for Hajipur. For years Mr Paswan, Hajipur seat had proved to be lucky one for him as he had got elected from here for maximum number of six times from 1989 till 2004. In case Mr Paswan would have won the election he would have made his entry into the Lok Sabha for the seventh consecutive term this time. But this time it looks like the people of Hajipur are sick of him and wanted some change. 
These elections saw India standup and say no to old methods of politics. In Bihar all criminals from all parties including Nithish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU), lost election. Even if it is just a coincidence, it is an amazing one. I wish we get a similar outcome in the 2010 assembly elections too. Even a better part Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) did not win any seats in Mumbai. Now what will Raj Thackeray do?? 
Look at the Left now, who have got around 25 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha. Before results these people were acting like the government makers and bosses and now they got nowhere to go. At last now there is an end of the Left parties hold on national politics.
One more thing what this elections saw was the emergence of Rahul Gandhi as a leader in his own rights. Rahul campaigned almost-non stop, won his ancestral seat and decimated the opposition. I believe that he is the next Prime Minister of India, his views of getting young indians into politics is really motivating for youngsters like me… 
Overall, what does it mean? With Congress winning by such a large margin India would now have a stable government after a long time. Now the government can take decisive decisions without feeling insecure.
Cheers..
Tags: Election, India
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