But this study is sure to create an impact in the minds of more and more people, and ultimately drive Microsoft to their worst nightmare of Open Source taking over the corporate word (at least). But let’s talk about Government Initiative in the Open Source… Now there’s a catch!

WARNING: In the following section, I might sound Frankenstein running after NIC’s to rip it’s neck of it’s body.

IBPS Site may damage your PC

Does government actually support FOSS Initiatives ? I don’t know if you are looking at th small line at the bottom of most of the Government websites, where it says – “Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or “Best viewed on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or something analogous. Does it

SBI site is on ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages) meaning NOT FOSS, they are using Microsoft Technologies and are actually not leveraging the benefits of FOSS where they can be best achieved – WEB and SERVER Technologies. If you anytime in your life have applied for any of the Country’s bank exams be it PO, Managerial or Clerk, you have to visit the site of Institute of Banking Peronnel Selection (IBPS). You would notice that it won’t open on Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google Chrome – it’s is simply loyal to Microsoft Technology – Internet Explorer.

Let’s visualize a simple example, where a person who loves linux or cannot afford Microsoft Window Operating System and want’s to make every move chaste, without the pains of proprietary software involved – Is demoralize, demotivated, his faith shattered to dust with a website popping up saying I need INTERNET EXPLORER! That wasn’t the idea of Tim Berner’s lee when he proposed Internet.

Does Government really support FOSS?

If the government really want’s to take initiatives, it should have made all the websites on NON-Microsoft Technologies, it would have saved them Millions actually Billions. Today NIC has 90% of their websites being maintained on proprietary – age old technologies, that are in no way match for today’s glossy looking, superbly interactive, and Intelligent websites. Are they ? They don’t even look like Corporate/Identity websites for Company information. Even if NOW!, after going through the Prof. Rahul De reports they think of moving from proprietary to FOSS Tech’s – who the hell be accountable for the earlier un-informed baseless decisions ?

The only one of the few website I’ve seen is the NIC’s Indigov. Its’ one of the best website, and based around php. Now what new I see is a Quality certificate being attached to the website by SQTC. Does that make a difference? What is then W3C for? CDAC, NOIDA has been one of the biggest contributor and promoter of W3C in Indian Government sector. However, now NIC & SQTC comes out with their Certificate attached to the website, ignoring all the work done so far in the field by W3C and unnecessarily putting  their precious efforts into standards that have been pre-established. No doubt the website is accessible, but that accounts to just 0.1% of the websites NIC is hosting/developing/maintaining (I would rather say lingering on with). Most of the disabled people are ignored in the country (I know low floor buses just landed in Delhi, but that’s just Delhi -not India right!) and Information Technology is the last seen area where you could consider disabled people to be preferred – in INDIA.

The author is not Anti-Microsoft, he just want the web to be independent, free from the boundaries just like a free bird.  As Internet / Web was essentially created to be platform-independent so that we could; and today as we are able to browse websites over Mobile Phone, Browser’s across operating systems like – Windows, Mac and Linux. And they look same everywhere.

Playing games to surfing the internet on the Smart Phones is common now and the advertisers are finding ways and means to target your smart phones also. As the technology advances with GPRS ,GPS 3G and  4 G on their way to your phone advertisements do not seem to leave your lives soon!

The millions of people who use their cellphones daily to play games, download applications and browse the internet may not realise that they havean unseen companion: advertisers that can track their interests, their habits and even their location.

Smartphones, like the iPhone and BlackBerry Curve, are the latest and potentially most extensive way for advertisers to aim ads at certain consumers. Advertisers already tailor ads for small groups of consumers on the web based on personal information. But cellphones have a much higher potential for personalised advertising, especially when they use applications like Yelp or Urbanspoon with GPS to identify a person’s location, right down to the street corner where they are standing.
Advertisers will pay high rates for the ability to show, for example, ads for a nearby restaurant to someone leaving a Broadway show, especially when coupled with information about the gender, age, finances and interests of the consumer.

Eswar Priyadarshan, the chief technology officer of Quattro Wireless, which places advertising for clients like Sony on mobile sites, says he typically has 20 pieces of information about a customer who has visited a site or played with an application in his network. “The basic idea is, you go through all these channels, and you get as much data as possible,” he said.
The capability for collecting information has alarmed privacy advocates.

“It’s potentially a portable, personal spy,” said Jeff Chester, the executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, who will appear before Federal Trade Commission staff members this month to brief them on privacy and mobile marketing. He is particularly concerned about data breaches, advertisers’ access to sensitive health or financial information, and a lack of transparency about how advertisers are collecting data. “Users are going to be inclined to say, sure, what’s harmful about a click, not realising that they’ve consented to give up their information.”

For now, advertisers are using a wide lens to survey people’s behaviour on phones, aiming at people by city rather than by specific neighbourhood or street.

And while they collect specifics about how someone behaves on the mobile website — for instance, that someone bought a “Hot N Cold” ring tone after seeing an ad for it, then watched a Miley Cyrus video on TMZ.com — they use that information to categorise that person as a pop-culture fan, and then show a movie ad.

Advertisers are eager to use the information for much more specific targeting, however. An advertising system could know, for instance, that someone is 27 years old, male, a New England Patriots fan (which NFL.com can track), plays Blackjack, travels frequently between Boston and New York on weekdays (which applications using GPS can track) and uses a 3G iPhone. That would make him attractive to a host of advertisers, like the Delta Shuttle or a Las Vegas hotel, whose ads would appear while the consumer was browsing on his phone.

“Everyone’s in an arms race to find out more and more about their users,” said Eric Bader, the managing partner of the mobile advertising firm Brand in Hand. Even application developers are handing over information about their customers to marketers. Dockers San Francisco, a brand of Levi Strauss, for instance, is beginning a campaign this week that will run on applications like iBasketball and iGolf. It will show a model wearing khakis, and the iPhone customer can shake the phone to see the model dance.

Dockers will start by tracking how long people shake the ad, and then “if it does make sense to do follow-up with these consumers, we’ll do that,” said Jonathan Haber, the United States director of Ignition Factory at OMD, the media agency directing the campaign. “We dig in, specifically, with these application developers and owners to get information about usage behaviour.”

It’s not just behaviour, but also data on income, or even whether you have children, that advertisers consider. A company called Acuity Mobile, whose clients include the MGM Mirage and Harrah’s Entertainment, lets clients use consumer data, including, potentially, income, to determine what kind of offers clients should see.

Way to go Advertisers!!!

• Google with its new service allows users to keep track of their friends using Google Maps.
• SMS, IM or give a phone call to them.
• Give you a complete privacy control.

Now that’s something really and closely integrated set of services. I mean they are utilizing every bit their services.

• Google Maps service – The Core for the platform,
• Google SMS Channels (launched specifically for India, I believe they are!) or GMail SMS launched for U.S.
• Google Talk for calling your friends
• iGoogle Gadget (which is used when you are on your laptop/desktop)
• Orkut – Now that’s my intuition! I believe Orkut is soon going to be part of this service set: Google Friends Map, may be who knows!

Mobile, with its wide user base is sure to be the next monetization platform. How about this, You are walking towards a mall, and you get a message – “Your friend Rohit is just 5 Kms away from you, moving towards Delhi Cantt” (Of course with an ad below it). Now that could really be interesting.

Hope to see something more innovative and monetizing coming out of the Google Labs! Let’s see what’s the next step the giant takes.

6,500 Consumers surveyed from 13 countries -

• Finland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA, Nigeria, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil

If each of the three billion people globally owning mobiles brought back just one unused device we could save 240,000 tonnes of raw materials and reduce greenhouse gases to the same effect as taking 4 million cars off the road. By working together, small individual actions could add up to make a big difference.

– Markus Terho, Director of Environmental Affairs, Markets, at Nokia

% of People aware of Mobile phone recycling

One of the statics that highlighted the survey was awareness of people in India about recycling which scored lowest in the Global Ranking. The most interesting fact the survey brought out to the world was about what people do with their old handsets, highlights -

• Only 3% of the users globally recycled their handset,
• 4% of them were thrown
• (Majority) 44% of them were kept at home, coming to no use at all.
• While rest of the 16% of them being sold in emerging markets.

% of What people do with their handsets

Nokia in response to this, has launched Take-Back Campaigns in India. Nokia has been running such campaigns from late 1990′s in other parts of the world. Nokia has formed alliances with Environmental protection & preservation agencies like WWF & StEP. With the launch of Take-Back Campaigns in India, Nokia aims at improving awareness about recycling. Moreover Nokia in a statement mentioned -

..company will be planting a tree for every handset dropped into these recycling bins and giving out a surprise gift as well,

Well, I think it would be really interesting to watch Nokia plant trees, but the scenario I’m looking into is Where? and planting is good ..but the question who is going to maintain it? Well, I personally have affinity for the organizations that are into social development and humanizing things rather than monetizing every damn thing! I love the concept Nokia has come up, and I believe it to be the first co. marketing the human effort.

Nokia’s Take-Back Campaign is NOT LIMITED to Nokia handsets only, its available to all the mobile phones. So if you have a mobile phone kept in your junk yard or drawer, please.. please take it out go to your nearest Nokia Care Center and give it for recycle.

CONTRiBUTE TO ENViRONMENT