Aakash- Is it really worth it?
The Government of India launched Aakash tablet to bring every student closer to technology. It has been developed, designed and manufactured by ‘DATAWIND’ a British company in collaboration with IIT Rajasthan under the HRD Ministry’s National Mission on Education through Information & Communication Technology (NME-ICT). This tablet will be provided at subsidized rates (Rs. 1500/-) to the students.
The features of this ‘budget tablet’ are pretty intriguing too. Aakash runs on a 366 MHZ processor with 256 MB ram on the Android 2.2, better known as froyo amongst all as mobile devices with the same operating system has become a rage amongst all youngsters. It also has a 2 GB flash memory and micro SD card slot which can take upto 32 GB of capacity. That’s not all; it has two USB ports, Wi-Fi, and supports video conferencing. But the battery life seems to be a disappointment which is only 3 hours on average use.
The tablet seems to be really promising with the features and the price and possibilities with this device can be endless. Students can view and edit files with ease, access to the internet, play videos and mp3 files. Also the government threw www.nptel.iitm.ac.in plans to give the students free access to web-enabled course content and all the video lectures, animations, simulations, notes, and tests.
But still, there are bigger concerns, which need to be sorted out. The device is only capable of connecting to the internet threw wifi. Now the problem here is that only the big cities in India have this technology and also only few hotspots exist which provide this facility free of cost to the people. Outside these cities, this service vanishes! The service providers who charge for such a service are quite costly too with the bills reaching upto Rs. 1000/ per month. Not every student can afford that especially if you are on a tight budget.
Also we all know by now that the device needs to recharge. Still in India many rural villages receive power only for only two to three hours a day. Even our capital, Delhi still receives power cuts each day. So any lay man can guess in a place where one receives power only for three hours, how one can will be able to charge it.
Going on to the specifications, and considering the fact that it will run on android 2.2 os, the overall performance of the device could be slow and sluggish, until and unless it is specifically designed for Aakash tablet itself. Android 2.2 os is primarily
better known to run on mobile devices. Whereas, a standard android tablet runs on 3.0 (Honeycomb), which is designed to run on tablet pc’s.
Honestly, this is not the first attempt to build the cheapest tablet pc. The internet already is selling a seven-inch tablet running Android 2.2 with an 800 MHZ processor, 256 MB RAM and 2GB hard drive, built-in camera, which cost $39.71 or Rs. 1959*.
And also it is not the first attempt of our government either to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor threw technology. In May 2005, a Rs 10,000 mobile computer, called Mobilis, was launched with similar buzz. Kapil Sibal who was incharge of the science and technology department then thought it would take India into the future of PC technology. Today, nobody knows about Mobilis. Also, in 2002, a handheld computer called Simputer was launched to give the villagers access to the power of the computer. That too met a similar fate.
In order to make things work, India needs some much needed infrastructure changes which are required inorder to make things work. The government has to worry about investment in many other sectors such as rural electrification, Wi-Fi connectivity, and training to the teachers and students to use the device as efficiently as possible. They should look into examples from top universities such as MIT, Harvard, Cardiff and Stanford which use internet technology to perfection.
Will Aakash meet a similar fate or is it really worth it?? Only time will tell…
*link where I found the tablet: http://www.dhgate.com/christmas-7-quot-epad-apad-android-2-2-os/p-ff80808131d78c450131fa3a46eb4a5d.html
Waves of Cold War
Since its development, radio has been a wonderful tool to communicate wirelessly all over the world. Whether it’s your daily dose of news updates, latest music tracks or various regional programmes, radio is a great tool to reach out to the masses and pass on valuable information to all.
Many people realised this, and so did the leaders of the world at the time of the cold war. Radio, soon became the battleground for the two allies USA and USSR to spread their propaganda far and wide.
The cold war was fought over sea, land, air, space and equally on radio too.
During the cold war, Radio Free Europe (RFL) and Radio Liberty (RL) US government Munich based sponsored international radio channels used to broadcast uncensored information and news all across the soviet bloc in order to weaken communism internally.
Conceived by George F. Kennan of the US Department of State and Frank G. Wisner head of CIA, the programs were produced in Munich and used to be broadcasted threw shortwave transmitters operating on multiple frequencies. After its first broadcast on 4th July 1950, RFE and RL became more aggressive towards communism and the various programmes emphasised the need for liberalization and system changes. In order to become more effective, both the stations began airing news and information which included politics, economic issues, cultures and traditions which were usually suppressed by the communist.
The Soviets, realising this as an obvious threat, devoted major resources to tackle these broadcasts. Soviet Leader Josef Stalin himself ordered establishment of local and long distance radio jammers in order to counter western broadcasts. But despite that the high powered devices which were used to broadcast by the US managed to overcome such disruptions.
Radio broadcasting in USSR began much earlier as compared to its US counterpart, way back in November 1924 when the first All-Union Radio Station, under ministry of posts and telegraph began its operations.
Referred to as ‘newspaper without paper’ Lenin often used the radio to convey messages even before the newspapers were delivered to the people’s homes.
As per CIA reports, the USSR radio propaganda contained two elements:-
• Identifying US as one of its main enemy, and
• Soviet Championship of peace (1)
Also, USSR began jamming other foreign signals, such as BBC.
Special stations were made near suspected transmitters. Despite tremendous efforts to refrain people from listing to these stations; USSR made a last ditch effort and began broadcasting centralized news bulletins. Most of the broadcasts focussed on the US and USSR relations.
Eventually, when USSR began to fall apart, its radio organization also shut down. After dissolution, the service relaunched and renamed itself to Voice of Russia.
To conclude, during the cold war years, radio emerged as an ‘instant’ medium and generated great response amongst all. The leaders of the two superpowers of that time used this tool extensively to spread their beliefs and propaganda all over the world. This reminds us, that radio, still remains one of the most powerful and effective medium of all time.
BIBLOGRAPHY
• 1 Line and reference Taken from CIA Evidence of USSR military intentions in soviet propaganda broadcasts (Online) http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000258370/DOC_0000258370.pdf[Accessed on 2011-08-31]
• Pleikys, Rimantas. Radio Jamming In the Soviet Union, Poland, and Other East European Countries (Online) http://radiojamming.puslapiai.lt/article_en.htm [Accessed on 2011-08-31]
• Mendelsohn, Harold and Cahnman Werner, Communist Broadcasts to Italy (Online) http://www.jstor.org/pss/2746127 [Accessed on 2011-08-31]
• Cold War Broadcasting Impact, A report http://media.hoover.org/sites/default/files/documents/broadcast_conf_rpt.pdf [Accessed on 2011-08-31]
• Cummings, Richard (2009). Cold War Radio. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
• Tucker, Dr Spencer. (2008) Cold War, a Student Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO, Inc.
• Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, Chelsea House Publishers, New York
All images credit: Google Images
Last Bench Legends
I have often heard people say….”Life is a race, stand up and compete or you will perish”, “If you don’t have 95% in today’s time, you are not anywhere!!” Even this time around, the cut-offs reached as high as 100% of the best of four subjects.
Everybody naturally starts worrying, “Yar ab mera future ka kya hoga????”
APJ Abdul Kalam, our former president once said, “The greatest minds of a nation may be found on the last benches of the classroom “Even in such times of the 21st century, some people still exist who defy the whole world, who stood up when it mattered the most, who where often known as the LAST BENCHERS of their schools….
Billionaire Bill Gates, who is credited with bringing all of us closer, founded the very well known company “Microsoft” and developed and gave to the world a new meaning of the word WINDOWS: An operating system on which I am currently writing my article now, is actually a Harvard first year dropout!
Albert Einstein, who had an extremely poor record as a student in school and suffered from early speech difficulties, went on developing the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics and won the Nobel prize “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”.
Sir Richard Barson, actually left school at the age of 16, an age where we all start selecting our fields went on to create the virgin group, which has a turnover of $18 million, and is venturing in more than 15 fields today including space tourism.
Coming to our own country, Late Shri Dhirubhai Ambani, Founding chairman of Reliance group – India’s largest business house has only passed his 10th standard!
In a true rag to riches story, he started his own business in spices. And today Reliance group in all is more than a $100 billion and has expanded to sectors like telecom, oil and gas, petrochemical, retail and insurance.
The legend, the hero, the superman from India, Sachin Tendulkar who holds maximum number of records in all three forms of the game and scares speedster Brett Lee in his dreams actually “FAILED” in his 10th class a board…That’s right!! But today people worship him as the GOD OF CRICKET and are regarded as one of the true LEGENDS who will ever play the game.
Friends, I am not trying to inspire you to become a back bencher or drop out of college to do something big. A common thing in all the above cases is these people went on to do what they loved the most. They talk, eat, and breathe about what they do. These people find a passion, a sense of satisfaction when they get the job done, whether it is cracking a business deal or leading their sides to victory and making the country proud!
So friends, find that real “passion” which lies within you. And just like once an idiot told me “Kamyab nahi bachha Kabil bano ,Kamyabi Jhak marke piche aayengi !!!
Back!!
Sorry guys have been busy with college!
now will be regular with my posts!! hopefully will generate a few readers soon!!
Don 2… trailer !!!
The DON is coming back….this Christmas!!!
Enjoy the seek peak of the movie here!!
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What is IAFA?
IAFA – Iceplex Ad Film Awards (The world’s first online Ad Film Making Contest) is a platform where students of age group 11-21 years categorized into 3 groups 11-13, 14-16, 17-21 years can express their ideas, taught, views in a very special way by making an Ad film of 60 secs and send it to Iceplex in a video format (avi, mpg, mov, vob…etc).
Every year the award function is conducted and the renowned Jury of IAFA comprising of eminent personality will be judging your Ad film and declaring the winners with the support of
the data collected from online voting (www.iceplex.tv).
By conducting the Ad film contest we at Iceplex provide the young talents who are interested in filming to showcase his/her ideas at the young age. Children will have lot to say to the society. He/She can give a message through a Public Service Ad (PSA). Another student may want to say something about Futuristic product. He/She can give the idea through a Futuristic Ad (FA). One of you might have a celebrity as your role model in life. You can tell about the celebrity as what he means to you and society through Celebrity Promotional Ad (CPA). If you want to express your ideas on multiple products, you can make a Multiple Product Ad. The Categories to participate are decided on a yearly basis
You can follow us on facebook(www.facebook.com/iceplexiafa) for more updates
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IAFA is here…..
Its here….what we all had been waiting for….finally iafa 2010 will be held on 3rd august 2011 at the St.Andrew’s auditorium Mumbai… and guess what??? i happen to be the jury member this year…
indeed its a great privilege and honor to be amongst the league of such extraordinary people!!!! check out my jury member profile here…..
http://myschool.in.com/iceplex.tv/iafa/iafa2010/iafajury.php
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Hello world!
Hello World!!
well just getting started with blogging!!
hope it turns out well!!
www.adityadhunna.wordpress.com
