The Abilities Mela

The Abilities Mela starts today at Institute of Engineers, Khairatabad in Hyderabad. This mela is a story about the grit and determination of specially abled people and their fight to move on and become independent. It includes exhibition and sale of products made by specially abled people, seminars, workshops, career guidance and cultural programs. The event is being organized from April 25th, 2008 to April 27th, 2008 (10.00 am - 6.00 pm).

This mela is just a starting point for those looking for inspiration and one can go a long way if they believe in themselves and their abilities. People like Stephen Hawking (http://www.hawking.org.uk/) are icons for the differently abled and they need to look up to them to see what can be achieved.

Increasingly, people are becoming aware of how they can tap the potential of differently abled persons and are employing them. There are a number of BPOs and KPOs that are employing such persons and providing them with learning and earning opportunities.

It is an observed fact that such people are a good bet for your organization due to low/zero attrition rate and higher productivity. The initial costs of training these people may be a bit on the higher side but the long term benefits are there to be seen when talking business.

When you make your next purchase, spare a thought for those under privileged and buy things made by them or from brands that contribute to their cause.

Hello Hyderabad Says Reliance Digital

Reliance digital opened its store at Road No.12, Banjara Hills boasting of widest assortment in Electronics, Appliances, Gaming, Telecom & IT. Spread over 25,000 sq. ft with best products from across the world offering over 3500 products, it is sure to catch the eye of the tech savvy customers of Hyderabad.

Some of the key features include: friendly, experienced tech-savvy counsellers, home installation by resQ engineers, easy and quick finance options from Reliance finance, free home delivery, etc.

There are a number of offers including prices below MRP and freebies with some goods.

The store is open 7 days a week from 11.00 am to 10.00 pm and you can get more information by mailing them at reliancedigital at ril dot com. Happy shopping!

Yellow Pages - Information service - Just Dial

The yellow pages service that was being offered by our good old Telecom service providers in bulky pages is becoming passe now. Nowadays, people dont have the patience to look through the pages or just cannot find what they want in them. Also, if you are moving and want to know about a particular business in some locality, the good old bulky yellow pages book cannot be carried everywhere.

So, talking yellow pages is the new mantra for the youth and those on the move in particular. Just like the 411 service in US and other numbers in other countries, Hyderabad has got its own directory and information services offerings like Just-Dial Services: (Yellow Pages) +91-040-24444444 and 197 service.

Just dial service is a big hit for those constantly on the net and is widely being used already. Check out the article
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mp/2002/05/30/stories/2002053000780300.htm

On March 31, 2008, Google has launched its own information service on a toll free number in Hyderabad. The facility is avialable from 8 a.m. to midnight 24x7 according to reports. The toll free number is 1800-41-999-999 (1800-GOOG-411 offering in US).

There have been initial hiccups already as experienced by users testing this service as quoted in this article http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/06/stories/2008040657390100.htm.

Now, only time will tell how efficient the Google service will be and how the service will fare against an established player like JustDial.com.

Goldstone offers IPTV technology for NRIs

Goldstone technologies with two branches in Hyderabad has started offering IPTV services in association with SPL Innotech of Singapore. Now, most of our NRI friends can tune in to local Indian channels like ETV, Gemini TV and a host of other channels using IPTV services with the help of a set-top box and IP connectivity. The service is slated to be offered in 11 countries and several south Indian languages including Telugu and others.

Again, the wiki page for IPTV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV gives an excellent overview of the technology itself and related history, etc.

You could browse through http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/04/11/stories/2006041101590400.htm,
http://www.iptv-watch.co.uk/12032008-goldstone-technologies-plans-new-iptv-services.html and other articles which provide more information.

Dhruva - Supercomputing in Hyderabad

Supercomputer Dhruva was unveiled in the city in March, 2008 to help in defence research and perform functions faster than the existing computers in the country. The computer is 20 times faster than the Param series and will be able to perform the most complicated functions, including guiding aircraft.

The computer, which is the product of research by Advanced Numerical Research and Analysis Group (ANURAG) was placed at the Centre for High Performance Computing and Research (CHITRA) at DRDO, Hyderabad.

(http://insidehpc.com/2008/03/31/new-indian-supercomputer/)

According to Wikipedia definition, a supercomputer is a computer that is considered, or was considered at the time of its introduction, to be at the frontline in terms of processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. The term "Super Computing" was first used by New York World newspaper in 1929 to refer to large custom-built tabulators IBM made for Columbia University.

The Wiki page for Supercomputer is a good source of information on what a supercomputer is and history of supercomputing in brief http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercomputer

The top 500 list of supercomputers can be found at http://www.top500.org/

http://www.supercomputingonline.com/ - This site boasts as the homepage for the world's high-performance supercomputing, networking and storage.

These sites contain good amount of information for whoever wants to know/work on supercomputing.

I was fortunate to work at a place they had housed a Beowolf super cluster (http://www.beowulf.org/) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (http://www.hpc.unm.edu/ - formerly AHPCC).

The supercomputing clusters are normally made up of dual-core linux/unix running PCs stacked together to share processing capacity and resources. The speeds can be very high going up to teraFLOPS (one trillion or 1×1012 FLOPS) where FLOP is a Floating Point Operations per Second. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS).

Kids and young adults interested in working on supercomputing could visit http://www.drdo.org/ if visits are organized by their respective schools (with permission from the concerned authorities?).

If you cannot do so, you can aspire to work on supercomputers at any of the number of universities in USA by applying to the appropriate department. (At UNM - http://www.unm.edu/, supercomputing is used in Molecular Biology department, Computer Science department, EECE and others). You could search for the appropriate department and course on the net and apply accordingly to either undergrad or graduate courses.

Traffic - Telecommute - Hyderabad

Are you stuck in traffic again? Dont know where to hide or where to run. Well, welcome to Hyderabad. Traffic is a night-mare here as it is in some of the bigger cities across the world. Increase in traffic is being attributed to inflow of population thanks to the booming industries in and around Hyderabad, increase in purchasing capacity of the consumers or should we be saying prosumers - who buy that new brand of car or bike the first day its unveiled. There are several other factors like poor town planning (Chandigarh is supposed to be the most well planned city in India - thanks to an architect named Le Corbusier), foolish traffic rules (one-way rules) and others. We cannot ever imagine a shoulder (or emergency lane) on the highways or on the umpteem number of flyovers coming up. In some cases, the main thorough fares are as big as the emergency lanes in other countries. All these point to a booming economy and the FM (our beloved Finance Minister) would be very happy with the "pace" at which things are happening.

But this definitely is an alarming trend leading to a number of health problems including lifestyle diseases, stress, road rage and accidents to note a few. This trend should be cut down by the corporates by taking a few good initiatives.

One thing I noticed was the "Free the Left Lane" campaign being carried out by one of the major corporates near the Hi-tech city. Also, there were these bunch of volunteers from a corporate offering flowers to traffic offenders which is a very heart-warming way of telling people to get their act right. All big deeds start small and the identification of the problem by the corporates and MNCs itself is an encouraging sign. Although a lot needs to be done and many more hands need to come together.

Using colloborative technologies like VOIP, videoconferencing, Skype, Google chat, etc to get the work done is a novel way thanks to the numerous technology innovations coming out. Corporates and MNCs should encourage "work from home" or "telecommuting" for their employees atleast a few days in a month. This will help in increasing the productivity of the employees and also work positively on their psyche. Also, the employees should feel accountable and hence pave the way for more measures being taken up from the hierarchical higher ups.

There are a number of web sites for telecommuting jobs including http://www.tjobs.com/, http://www.telecommute-jobs.com/, etc. If you want to find telecommute jobs in India, you could go to http://www.bharathcontractjobs.com/ or other similar websites.

If you want to know more about traffic in Hyderabad, you can lookup the blog http://trafficinhyderabad.blogspot.com/. Also http://www.htis.in/live.htm for live traffic conditions.

A number of FM radio stations who are cashing in on the use of the idle traffic stuck listeners are also helping the poor ones stuck in traffic by providing updates on conditions, diversions introduced and also alternate routes to take. This a good social initiative by these stations and is commendable.

Car pooling, good rapid transport systems (MMTS?) and a good spread of population is essential. There are very few owned cars on the roads in Singapore (according to a friend) as the Government there taxes heavily those opting for personal transportation in lieu of excellent transportation facilities provided by the system.

We could also take a cue from Malaysian town Putrajaya where most of the Government offices have shifted base due to overcrowding and congestion in its main capital - Kuala Lumpur. Instead of shifting base overnight (like the airport shifted from Begumpet to Shamshabad http://www.hyderabad.aero/), the change should be phased and should not cause more incovenience to the people. What I mean here is shifting offices is fine but the common man should not be affected in the sense that he should not run from one city to another just to submit a small application form. After all, most Hyderabadis are still hapless and poor as compared to their privileged counterparts.