This is regarding your recent attempt to control content posted on the internet. You being one of the very few politicians I have respect and faith in, I am sure your actions were intended for good and comes from the right place. But any attempt to curtail information on the internet will be futile and it will not only cause a major uproar, but also it will cause a major disruption in the daily lives of millions who use the internet for genuine purposes.

Internet, as you might know has been a major boon for information sharing and communication in India over the past decade. It has changed the way we fundamentally live our lives today. The power of the Internet has been causing sea waves of change in every main stream area like education, business, entertainment, health, travel, tourism and every other segment one can imagine. As of November 2011, there are about 100 million active internet users in India, which is growing exponentially thanks to cheaper broadband and mobile internet access made possible by recent reforms.
Even a small medicine like Aspirin  has side effects. The Internet like any other is not without its cons. There are hundreds of negative things one can explore using the internet. There is widespread impersonation, identity theft, information on making homemade bombs and even unnatural sex.

But its benefits, like the little aspirin, far outweigh its disadvantages which include millions of jobs, innovations, aspiring entrepreneurs with amazing ideas on how internet can help India scale new heights and bridging the growing gap between the rich and the poor in terms of information and international exposure.

Youth of India today are better informed thanks to the vast powerhouses of knowledge like the Wikipedia and are able to better understand the issues that confront them, enable them to research from higher education to jobs and even for the right soul mate. The information online not only enables the youth to know about the latest developments in the country, but also gain views from both sides for any issue and take better informed decisions.
There are many instances where internet has helped victims get in touch with their family in times of emergency and breaking news is usually broken online. One can watch inspiring speeches of Steve Jobs at Harvard and pay my telephone bills and taxes from the comfort of my home.

The call for ban mainly comes from not knowing how these technologies work. For example, Google has been able to provide relevant information on every search you throw at it by using secret algorithms which require almost no human intervention. Facebook is a communication tool which allows millions air their personal views and Facebook does not curtail the type of information posted on its portal unless it is deliberately offensive to a group.

A slightly offensive yet apt example for content censoring would be this particular image -

Being “offensive” or “wrong” is a very relative term. One mans views might be wrong for another, isn’t it appropriate that an individual makes the choice  after reading both sides of the coin?

Many countries across the world have tried to beat the internet and have met with major uproar and the attempts have been largely futile. Even in China, which was taken as an example by Justice Kait in his recent comment at Delhi High Court regarding content censorship, it is possible to access information if you know where to look.

As the saying goes, if you cannot beat them, join them. The internet will certainly welcome more transparency in the government and a more accessible Member of Parliament or local representative will not hurt anyone. Many popular celebrities and politicians already use the Internet to their advantage. In technologically advanced countries like the United States, President Obama and his government has openly welcomed the advancements of social media and search engines which is obvious on a visit to the White House website – http://www.whitehouse.gov/

I sincerely request you to recheck your thoughts on a digital censorship and consult with technologists before any decision is taken. And trust me, any initiative to ban or censor the internet will result in a major PR disaster and then there is the fact that, its just not possible to contain free speech!

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts.
Regards,
Anand Subramanian,
Digital Entrepreneur
Kerala, India.
P.S: your official website at http://kapilsibalmp.com/ has coding bugs which does not allow me to send an email to you personally.

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Wrote an email to our Minister of Communications and Information Technology – Kapil Sibal. But in the end, found that his contact form on his official website was not working. So decided to blog it and hope the power of social media and search engines will allow this email to reach him!

“pre-screen” image from http://kapilsibalprescreens.tumblr.com/

Translation: In Hindi, “kundi” is a latch, in tamil and malayalam (in baby talk atleast) it can mean the bum. Source

A letter to Kapil Sibal
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

Ah, technology. It is a constant source of fun for me. But a lot of this stuff has real uses; here’s a look at some tech trends that are going to change the way lots of businesses operate.

Phone Conferences

Conference calls have been around forever, but businesses are definitely starting to use them more as a cost saving measure. This makes a lot of sense as it limits travel and lets me do my meetings from wherever I like. I do my teleconferencing with Powwownow which I can use on the go with their iPhone App. Look for more businesses to give up on travelling for meetings and start using teleconferencing instead.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is another technology that is on the ups with businesses. Once again it seems like nothing new to me, but big companies adopting it is an interesting development. Cloud computing lets users access applications and databases from anywhere, provided they have an internet connection – this is great for efficiency and lowers costs. Major corporations are starting to get into the act, a process which should only speed up as big players like Microsoft start releasing their own cloud computing systems.

It will be interesting to see how businesses respond to this in terms of work habits. Cloud computing allows people to work efficiently from home. So is this the end of the traditional office? Probably not, but it will be interesting to see how this affects people’s work patterns.

Phones

I read recently that Maxim Integrated Products, a computer chip maker, replaced phone lines with Skype accounts and headsets for every employee; they reported a yearly savings of over $90,000! I expect that lots of companies will follow suit and begin replacing regular phones with Skype, or Skype-esque VoIP systems. They’ll do so without losing any functionality as new systems will be able to incorporate existing features like conference calling, call waiting and voice messages. Change might be a bit slow as many companies are tied to their phones, but with big savings to be had I’m sure it will happen eventually.

So what do you think? What’s the next best thing in business technology?

Tech Trends In Business
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

I can now use my laptop to navigate around places and even track my location on my screen. It also provides some other nice goodies like speed, elevation and the like.

To activate GPS on your pcie card, use a hyper terminal software like this one and use activate it using the AT_OGPS=2 which will activate and track your position continuously.

Commands:

First you type in “ATE” which will show you what you are typing.

Then you check the current position of your GPS module with AT_OGPS? which in my case shows 0 all the time. Then I use AT_OGPS=2 to activate the GPS.

Just to confirm that its active, I check again with AT_OGPS? and it shows the status as 2 which means its active.

Then I click open my hyper terminal which runs as a second instance and connect to the COM port of my GPS. The GPS initially fills up the screen with dummy GPS values while it tries to find the high flying satellites.

I use Visual GPS which will show me better data for the output given out by the GPS module.

Then, it works out the output of the module and shows you the satellite signal quality in grey and once you get a fix on your position, it shows the bars in blue as shown. It takes around 2-3 minutes for this to happen and it works only if I am outside. In the mean time, the values in the screen become noticeably longer.

Once I get a lock on the satellites with my Option card, I fire up this applications which is named aptly – Google Maps with GPS tracker. Get it here. It is free to use and a bit of an annoyware which opens up its download page everytime you start the program. When you click start, you are show your position on the map with awesome accuracy and even lets you track your position on the move.

This is my route from office to my home in Trivandrum. (Don’t Stalk me! )

This is really useful for me as I keep travelling into unknown cities time to time and though there won’t be much of a use on the express ways, this will come in handy when I want to go to places in the new city I am in without having to stop and ask at every turn. And its fun!

If anyone has any questions about a PCI-e card with 3G, GPS from option, Sierra Wireless, Dell or anyone else, do share them in the comments and I can help with my limited geek experience!

If you own one of these cards, I would be glad to know the applications I can use with this, like Google Latitude, Foursquare or anything else!

Google Maps on Laptop with GPS on Option GTM378
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

Features of my Option GTM378 card

• PCI Express MiniCard module with HSDPA 3.6 / 7.2 support
• Easy to integrate
• High speed: up to 7.2 Mbps
• Multimode HSDPA, UMTS, EDGE, GPRS and GSM
• Extended Feature set: GPS and Voice

So, basically, this little guy lets me plug in a BSNL SIM Card into the slot under the battery of my Dell laptop and use 3G on the move! I can pretty much use 3G where supported and seamlessly move into EDGE or GPRS where it is not available.

Currently BSNL charges you around Rs. 1 per MB which in itself is cheap, but when the best value for 3G I have discovered today is the Rs. 606 plan which gives you free usage of 1GB in the day and 5GB in the night which makes it super cheap at Rs. 100/GB!

If you own a laptop which has a SIM card slot in the bottom and you need net on the move, get yourself one of these PCI-e 3G cards and never have one of those ugly external USB internet devices on your laptop again!

Option GTM378 keeps me online on the move!
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

And when I tried to restore my ipod back into the previous, I got a error 14. Stumped and worried with all the bricking stories, I spent more than two days searching for a solution. And at some point of tinkering with it, it showed up as an iphone! (sigh..wish it was true!)

And ultimately, a forum response helped.

The solution for windows: Press Start, right-click on My Computer, select Manage.. then goto device manager, select Universal Serial Bus controllers and uninstall Apple Mobile Device USB Driver and reconnect your ipod touch. It should probably reinstall the driver itself and restore works!

weird errors and weird solutions! Hope this post helps those searching frantically with a broken ipod touch

Error 14 – iPod Touch Sync/Restore Error
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

But this post is not about the iPad, but about the ambitious Indian startup called Notion Ink and its product Adam. The touted iPad killer impressed me a lot personally and it definitely seems to be one of those devices I would be looking at if I was to ditch my laptop and embrace touch.

Watch the video and read the link to see what I am talking about:

MWC 2010: Why is Notion Ink’s Adam an iPad Killer?

What do you think about this nifty device? Yay or Nay?

Will the iPad be ‘StillBorn’?
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

Friend: Hey dude , I see the red sign which means you are busy, but can you help?
Friend: BUZZ!!
You: Yea mate, tell me. (frustrated with the sudden interruption)
Friend: Check up this site hxxp://abc.com , does it load for you?
You: Yea, it loads….
Friend: Thanks a ton man!
You: yea sure ….. (painfully figuring out where you were with your work…..)

If this has not happened to you, you do not have much techie friends on your chat list. The more you have, the more you are familiar with the situation. A website not loading can mean a lot of problems both on the server side and on your client side. Sometimes a ISP issue or a DNS issue can prevent the site not load on your website, but work perfectly on another.

This is where a site like http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/comes into use. As the name suggests it helps you find out if your website is down for everyone or just you. There you go, now stop pestering your friends about it!

Do you use any other site for this purpose? I look forward to see it in my comments section.

How To Tell If a Website Is Down?
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

Mozilla Prism is an easy and perhaps the easiest way to convert a web application into a desktop appliation. If you are a regular user, you will have a few web appliations open on your browser all the time. I, for instance, I have our custom project management tool, Google Calendar, Google Reader and my email open in tabs pretty much all the time.

Mozilla Prism lets you convert a website into a standalone application easily. By easily, I mean in a single click! See the following video and you will see.

Click here to start using the Prism.

Convert Web Applications into Desktop Applications
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

What is Domain Parking?

Our good friend, Mr. Wikipedia defines Domain Parking as a practice to register good domain names and not using them as a website. There are two types of domain name parking. One like my own Shymz, which has been registered with a plan for future development and is unmonetized. The other is one which is monetized with text links and looks very much like a normal website with a bunch of links and almost nil content.

Monetized Domain Parking

There are many companies which pay you to park your domains including Google as per the number of clicks your site will generate. I am against this type of monetization as it not only reduces the quality of Internet as a whole, but also leads to genuine sites being developed on such good domain names.

Where is the Traffic coming from?

Root of every online monetization strategies is traffic. Without traffic, your site is as good as being dead. So, how do you bring traffic to a bunch of sites? The best part is, you do not even have to try! There are tons of newbies to the internet for whom opening Internet Explorer and typing in “topic.com” is the final authority in the topic they are looking for!

I know a few friends who make money just by registering domains like this or those domains which are typos of popular sites. But it needs to be done in huge numbers to make any serious money and as I said, it will kill the internet. But on the other hand, it makes perfect sense to advertisers to advertise in these sites to get cheap and quick exposure in front of their audience.

Why are Domains Parked?
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.

Do not visit pages which send these kind of tweets on your timeline.

Update #1: Twitter accounts are safe as per experts. It seems to happen all the time with Orkut and other sites all the time.

Update #2: To get out of the Mikeyy hack, reset your twitter settings. Delete your cache.

Update#3: Twitter has said that they have been able to contain the spread of this virus, but just to be safe, consider using a twitter client like tweetdeck since these viruses spread only when you visit the webpage.

Updatel #4:  Now there are tweets that say “Mikeyy is done” and “Twitter should really fix this.”. So, I am guessing, its still on the loose.

Update #5: Still on the loose with the following messages:

• This worm is getting out of hand Twitter. – Mikeyy
• This is all Twitters fault! Don’t blame Mikeyy!!
• Twitter, your community is going to be mad at you… – Mikeyy
• Twitter, freaking fix this already. >:[ – Mikeyy

And a tweet that says protect yourself from mikeyy, click this. DO NOT CLICK ON ANY LINK on Twitter!

Update #6:

Looks like its sending out the message:

• Twitter, hire Mikeyy! (718) 312-8131

But the frequency in the public timeline is getting reduced. Guess Twitter is back in control.

Mikeyy Virus on the Loose on Twitter
Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing Consultant based in India.