Social Networking – Share Responsibly

"Man is a social Animal" and sharing information is a passionate hobby. With the current advancement in mobile phones and social networking, sharing has become more than a hobby. It has become an everyday task to share views on a topic or personal photos. Some of us even share their day to day tasks and hourly updates in twitter and Facebook. In recent days adding the location to photos (Geotagging) has also become common. Tagging photos with an exact location on the Internet allows random people to track an individual's location and correlate it with other information.

For many of us, posting a photo of one's daily activities may seem like a pretty common thing to do in the world of Facebook and Flickr and in no way as a security risk. I felt the same until I read these two stories about Geotagging and their security Risks.

And the Scary One….

By looking at geotags and the text of posts, you can easily find out where people live, what kind of things they have in their house and also when they are going to be away. Such patterns make things easy for stalkers and may be for burglars.

What is Geotagging Anyway???

Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, video, websites and SMS messages. It’s like storing the place where photo was taken or from where a message is posted.

Geotags are automatically embedded in pictures taken with smart phones.  Many people are unaware of the fact that the photos they take with their smart phones and load to the Internet have been geotagged. Photos posted to photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa can also be tagged with location, but it is not an automatic function. Most modern digital cameras do not automatically add geolocation metadata to pictures, but that is not always true. Camera owners should study their camera’s manual and understand how to turn off GPS functions.

Location- based Social Networking Applications:

The other set of applications that can provide the location information is Locaton- based Social Networking Applications. Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla, SCVNGR are some of the examples. Most location-based social networking applications focus on “checking in” at various locations to earn points, badges, discounts and other geo-related awards.

For example foursquare users “check-in” at various places using a mobile website. They are then awarded points and sometimes “badges.” Users of foursquare use the service to share their location with friends, meet new people and get coupons. Users can also connect and publish their “check ins” to Facebook and Twitter. If someone is not a friend on foursquare they can still track your whereabouts through Facebook.

Location-based social networking is quickly growing in popularity. Foursquare has over 4 million users. The increased popularity of these applications is changing the way we as a digital culture view security and privacy on an individual level.

What’s the Risk??

Establishes patterns: Location-based social networking applications allow strangers to track your movements every day. If they watch someone long enough they will know exactly when and where to find that person on any given day.

Exposes places of duty and home: By tracking movements and aggregating information, strangers can determine where someone lives and works.

What you can do??

• Avoid geotags on photo sharing applications
• Turn off GPS function on phones
• Be careful when using Locaion-based Social Networking Applications
• Be conscious of what you tweet or share on facebook 

If you can't figure out how to disable the function, contact your smart phone provider, or the website www.icanstalku.com also has instructions for removing the geotag function on several different smart phones models. Check out the following link for the US Military Geotagging Awareness presentation, some of which applies to our social lives as well. http://dmna.state.ny.us/members/geotagging.pdf

Protecting your privacy is not just a matter of being aware and personally responsible since a friend may take a geotagged photo at your house and post it. You need to educate yourself and your friends but in the end, you really have no control.

PS: I don’t want to scare anyone by telling all this stuff, but just want to make sure our lives are safe & secure and warn about the potential security risks which can be avoided easily. So “share only what you want to share” and “share responsibly”.

International Women's Day – 100 th Anniversary

There is an adage in telugu "Yekkada sthreelu gauravimpa badataaro akkada devathalu poojalu andukuntaaru". (In Sanskrit - yatra naryastu poojyante tatra deva ramnataha) which means, “where women are honoured there the Gods rejoice”.

Indian tradition has generally respected womanhood and though we do find derogatory references to women, India has always given equal rights to women.

• We represent our country as our mother - Bharat Mata.
• Indian constitution gave the right for women to vote from the first elections itself unlike many of the now developed countries.
• Women were given an equal and important role during the struggle for Indian Independence.
• Indian women played a major role in Indian politics and economics.

This March 8^th marks the 100^th anniversary of the International Women's Day (IWD).
In these 100 years, a phenomenal change can be observed for this day, from an International Working Women's day to protest the inequalities in work to a day marking global celebration of women. Like every year many events are organised around the world to mark economic, political and social achievements of women.

Why dedicate a day as International Women’s Day???

To paraphrase what United Nations General Assembly says, the day’s significance is to recognize the equality and development of women and to acknowledge the contribution of women in strengthening the society.

For women this day signifies an occasion to review the progress achieved in their struggle to achieve equality and development and also an opportunity to unite, network and mobilize for a meaningful change. India has achieved a considerable success in attaining the equality status for women by providing special quotas for upliftment in Education, Employment and Political sectors. Indian woman has made their mark in every field whether its Art or Sport, you name it and you can find a woman on the top list. India has come a long way in eradicating girl child killing, the domestic violence but still a lot of issues are to be addressed.

The global theme for this year’s Women’s day is “Equal access to education, training and science and technology: Pathway to decent work for women”. Though there is a significant progress in Indian community in terms of woman education, economic and political empowerment, there still needs much to be done. The access to technology for Indian women has increased drastically but still the literacy percentage compared to men is less. There are many places where education is not viable for girls or the drop out rates is very high because of inadequate facilities in schools.

The other areas where significant improvement is required in developing countries like India is the healthcare and security. In the health care sector special care is needed towards maternal health and eradicating congenital diseases. In India, every year about 78,000 mothers die in childbirth and as per WHO, around 65% of deaths across the world are from 11 countries including India. To put the statistics in a different view one in 120 mothers of South Asia die during childbirth.

Just imagine one among 120 has to die just because she is a woman and this is happening in this age of Internet and great medical advances. It seems that preventing congenital heart diseases cost around 100 crores per annum and these are peanuts compared to our total budget and this can save around 1.5 lac children every year. The problem is not with the money but lack of vision and sensible policies.

Gandhiji once said “Our Nation will have achieved true independence and freedom when a woman can walk in the midnight all alone and feels safe”. 

This is not the case in current India and doesn’t seem to be achieved in near future considering the number of violent attacks that are happening against women. Though we have strict laws against these cruel acts, implementation of strict law becomes the problem. Media is playing an important role in exposing such events, but is more concentrating on TRP ratings than fighting till end to bring justice to the victims.

There is still discrimination, though diminishing now a days, among boy and girl child. It’s the duty of every one of us to honor every girl/woman and make sure they get an equal opportunity. I heartfully thank each and every woman in my life who has directly or indirectly inspired me and helped me.

PS: While writing this blog I realized many great things about Indian women, but to keep the post short, thought of writing about it in a separate post.

  

School Days - The Most Memorable Days- Are They Now a Days???

Every one of us might have thought (at least once in our life time) to go back to the childhood and enjoy those lovely school days. Those were the most memorable days with lots of fun and learning. Coming from a small town and an upcoming English medium school, I had the privilege of enjoying the school days at its best.

We used to have lot of fun in school, whether it’s inside or outside of the classroom. I will talk about the stuff that is outside the classroom, which we don't find current day schools and about the rest in future posts.

Every Kid has the "Right To Play"

I still remember those school campuses that had a big playground (may not be the property of school but considered as playground of the school) and a play period of 45 min for exercises, drills and games. I remember those playgrounds with lush green grass on which the whole school used to there in the evening. There used to be prayer Vandemataram in the morning & Jana gana mana in the evening followed by some activities like news reading etc. Though the games period was only 45 min we used to extract 2 hours of play time from lunch hour and small recess breaks.

I never went home mentally exhausted like the kids of current day. We used to have a lot of physical exercise in the form of games and all the stress due to study used to get vanished by the time we reached home.

The games were innovative and we played by our own rules involving both physical and mental strength unlike current day video games designed by someone else. I remember those days in rainy season when the school was closed in case of heavy rains and those paper boats of different sizes and styles. We used to display our creativity in making our own kites or the marvelous designs of decorative items made out of clay. Those creative games which we used to play, creating the rules on the spot and manipulating them as per the conditions. A foot ball game in case of rain used to become mud rugby and in case of heavy downpour a swimming pool. :-)

I can hardly find any such school now a days which has a good playground or giving any importance to Sports or any other extracurricular activities for that matter. All the time kids are taught only to mug up, mug up and then mug up again just for the sake of grades in exams.

I came to know recently that one of my nephews is attending a 10+2 college (about to write the IIT exam) and has to study 14 hours per day. They teach Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry for 5 days a week, one day for languages and exam for another half day leaving only half a day of rest time per week. And after all this, probably he will end up as a financial consultant in a multinational bank. My another nephew is attending a secondary school that teaches him 12 hrs per day. I am not sure what they teach and what their course curriculum is but he is being prepared for the IIT JEE in his 6th standard.

IIT from 6th standard !!!! 

Teaching specific subjects only during childhood might not be a good strategy. If a kid is told about only the subjects that are important for IIT from 6th standard, what happens to the languages, natural sciences or social studies? They play very much important role in the growth of a kid. Language is the means of expression, Natural sciences teach about functioning of nature and Social studies teach about the way of living. All these help in developing a healthy relationship with our environment and hence a better social life.

Pressure and Burden of School

At our time the choice of subject was done after our 10th standard when we have to decide between Engineering, Medicine, Social Studies or Commerce. Many of us, though less, had an option to choose History and Commerce as their subjects. Now a days there seems to be no option for a student to decide what his favorite subject is. Parents decide in advance for them during the primary school itself and join them in such a school.

We cannot blame parents for this, as this has become the way of education and they feel their children will be left behind if they don’t do so. The current day education system is concentrating more on the earning for living rather than on living itself.

We have to appreciate the kids that they don't complain about attending the school. They think going to school and studying is the only thing they need to do during childhood. The real problem with this kind of pressure is they consider only success matters and are unable to take failure. This might have very damaging effects on the future of the Kid.I read somewhere that Life is about taking a chance, making a choice and dealing with the results and now a days kids don't think of taking  chance, parents and teachers don't allow them  to make a choice and finally they are unable to deal with the results.

I am a real admirer of the competition and I don't think this kind of pressure can be called competition.Whatever might be the gains, they are not worth enough at this cost, at the cost of the most precious time of life, childhood. There is this heart touching song by a graduate student from the movie 3 IDIOTS about the lost childhood.

Give me some sunshine, Give me some rain.

Give me an other chance. I wanna grow up once again..

Saari Umar hum mar mar ke jee liye,

Ek pal tho ab hume jeene do..jeeneee do...

Let’s give Kids the chance to grow up during their first chance itself. Let‘s not create a condition that they will regret one day. Let’s not Balaatkaar their life in a hurry to make a chamatkar.

One day, and that day should never come, Kids might say that they don’t want their childhood back.

PS: Please leave your opinion on this subject and provide your suggestions in the comments section to break this viscous cycle and make the childhood of current day kids more memorable.

TED Talks - Ideas worth spreading

I was thinking of blogging from a long time and finally happy that I successfully started. The main reason behind this blog is to share my personal experiences and learning that might help someone, someday.

My major challenge in starting the blog was to choose the first topic from a range of blog Ideas I had. I am not sure if “The First Impression is the Best Impression”, but I strongly believe that it definitely leaves an impression. I am confident that most of my friends will visit the blog when I inform about the launch and thought the first post should definitely help whoever visits. 

Finally I found something that will definitely be helpful to everyone.  I am sure those who come to know for the first time about this will be amazed by the vast resource of knowledge and what I call “Creative Entertainment”.

It’s TED Talks – Ideas worth spreading. TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design. TED brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who give the talk of their lives in just 18 minutes.  

TED is a small nonprofit basically started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site and, the Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs.

As a Tech-Savvy I was searching some technical stuff and stumbled upon the mind blowing video of “SixthSense” Technology by Pranav Mistry Team. Then I watched the series on TEDIndia which hosted and demonstrated the diversity of India. From that day I never missed to watch at least two videos per week. The TED talks create such an enthusiasm among the audience that they just stay spellbound. 

There is a huge collection of videos now about 700+ covering a vast variety of themes to choose from. Everybody has got something to gain from the talk, whether it’s an Entrepreneur, Environmentalist, Activist, Technician or just a common man looking for some entertainment.

The technical or historical background, the research, the real life problems and the experiences of each topic are really thought provoking and the presentation style is simply entertaining. For Example the TEDTalk given by Shukhla Bose highlights the journey of transforming children in slums to world class students or the real life struggle by Sunitha Krishan in fighting sex slavery or ancient water harvesting techniques by Anupam Mishra, each of them is a Masterpiece.

"One apple can feed a man but an IDEA can feed the whole world"

And I strongly believe these are IDEAs worth spreading.

Some of my favorite TED Talks:
Shukla Bose: Teaching one child at a time
http://www.ted.com/talks/shukla_bose_teaching_one_child_at_a_time.html
Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery
http://www.ted.com/talks/sunitha_krishnan_tedindia.html
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html
Clifford Stoll: 18 minutes with an agile mind
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html
Nandan Nilekani's ideas for India's future:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/nandan_nilekani_s_ideas_for_india_s_future.html
Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting 
http://www.ted.com/talks/anupam_mishra_the_ancient_ingenuity_of_water_harvesting.html
TED India Videos:
http://www.ted.com/themes/a_taste_of_tedindia.html

PS: TEDTalks are available as PODCASTS also and can be downloaded in to any of the latest mobile phones and iPods. They are also available as audio, video & in HD versions and everyone are encouraged to share.