Defination of Love

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. ~Mother Teresa
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. ~Albert Einstein

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God's finger on man's shoulder. ~Charles Morgan

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip. ~Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog Museum"
Ah me! love can not be cured by herbs. ~Ovid
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. ~Eric Fromm
Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. ~Kahlil Gibran
Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway. ~Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. ~W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer's Notebook, 1949
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939, translated from French by Lewis Galantière
When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Let your love be like the misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river. ~Malagasy Proverb

Do I love you because you're beautiful,Or are you beautiful because I love you?~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella
For you see, each day I love you moreToday more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.~Rosemonde Gerard
Forget love - I'd rather fall in chocolate! ~Sandra J. Dykes
Love is much like a wild rose, beautiful and calm, but willing to draw blood in its defense. ~Mark Overby

Love is a sweet tyranny, because the lover endureth his torments willingly. ~Proverb
The lover is a monotheist who knows that other people worship different gods but cannot himself imagine that there could be other gods. ~Theodor Reik, Of Love and Lust, 1957

Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. ~Peter Ustinov
Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.~William Shakespeare, Mid-Summer Night's Dream, 1595

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Google's iPhone App Adds Notifications for Gmail and Google Calendar

I rarely use the native email clients from Android and iPhone. Gmail's mobile web app has a better interface and it's easier to use than those applications, but there are some limitations that force you to switch to the native apps: you can't attach files and there's no support for notifications. Until mobile browsers add support for these features and integrate with the operating system, native apps will continue to be more powerful.

The latest version of Google Mobile App for iPhone solves one of these issues by adding push notifications for Gmail and Google Calendar. You no longer have to use Google Sync to get notifications when you receive an email message or an event is about to occur.

"Now Google Mobile App can help with push notifications from your Google account to your iPhone -- an icon badge shows you’ve got new mail in Gmail, and Google Calendar event reminders appear right on your home screen."


After updating Google Mobile App 0.6, it seems that Google only shows a badge when you get a new message, just like the native mail client.

Update: Google's mobile blog says that "you will only receive pop-up messages and sound/vibration for calendar alerts - new email is shown using the unread count on the Google Mobile App icon and in the apps tab".

Orkut Communicate with Groups of Friends

Orkut, Google's social network that has a lot of users in Brazil and India, has received a major update. Groups of friends are more visible and you can send messages to the members of a group directly from Orkut's homepage. Orkut also updated search results pages and application pages, while testing a new platform for communities.


There are a lot of changes and it will be interesting to see if Google tests these features in Orkut before launching Google Me, a social network that will compete with Facebook.

One of the major changes in Orkut is the focus on groups. "You love your grandma and you're friends with your boss, but that doesn't mean you want them both seeing the conversation you're having with your friends the day after a party. With orkut, you can now build separate groups of your friends reflecting how you interact with them in real life." This is one of the ideas from "The Real Life Social Network", a presentation by Paul Adams, Senior User Experience Researcher at Google.



Google's Rahul Kulkarni mentioned last year that Orkut will change a lot. "The new Orkut adopts the latest Google Web Toolkit platform and includes features such as built-in simultaneous chat, photo tagging with automatic face detection and private sharing of photo albums including new safety features. This is the beginning of a new direction for Orkut, where users will be able to increasingly share and communicate with groups of friends from their lives."

Android Market and Piracy

Google has recently released a licensing service for Android applications that is supposed to make it more difficult to pirate paid apps. The service is not yet part of the operating system and it works by sending a query to Google's servers in order to determine if the user has bought an application.

Android Police found that it's quite easy to circumvent Google's verification, especially if the application's code is not obfuscated. "Because the License Verification Library is not part of the Android OS, an app developer needs to package it with the app that uses it, making it an easier patch target, without requiring root access. (...) The method is so simple, even a novice programmer could write a script to automatically patch most apps."

Google's Tim Bray responded by saying that "the first release shipped with the simplest, most transparent imaginable sample implementation," which didn't focus on security. He recommends developers to obfuscate the code and to use other implementations. Tim Bray also says that "the best attack on pirates is to make their work more difficult and expensive, while simultaneously making the legal path to products straightforward, easy, and fast. Piracy is a bad business to be in when the user has a choice between easily purchasing the app and visiting an untrustworthy, black-market site."

Tim Bray's answer is ironic, if you think about it. Google's Android Market lets you install paid applications only if you are in one of the 13 supported countries. The "legal path" is neither "straightforward, easy, or fast" if you don't live in one of the 13 countries that are supported. Maybe instead of focusing on developing anti-piracy services, Google should add more locations to the paid Android Market.

Make Free Phone Calls from Gmail

Gmail added a long-awaited feature: making phone calls. If you install the voice and video chat plug-in, you can call phones in the US and Canada for free. You can also call in other countries, but you'll have to pay. Fortunately, Google's rates are really low and the service is cheaper than Skype.

"Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates. We worked hard to make these rates really cheap with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan — and many more countries — for as little as $0.02 per minute," informs Google.



If you have a Google Voice phone number (anyone in the US can get one), you can also receive phone calls in Gmail. Now that Google Voice integrates with Gmail, a lot more people will use it.

To try the new feature, make sure that your Gmail interface language is set to English (US) and that the voice and video chat plug-in is installed. You get an initial calling credit ($0.10), but unfortunately you can only add credit if you're in the US.

Google Chrome

Many Google Chrome features aren't enabled by default because they're not ready for primetime or they're too advanced. Unfortunately, you can't enable them from the interface and you have use command-line flags.

A recent Chromium build added a new internal page that lets you enable some advanced features: about:labs.

"Tabpose is currently the only lab on Mac, tabs-on-left the only lab on Windows. about:labs should not be visible on the stable channel. Labs that were enabled on the dev channel should not be enabled on the stable channel."



Tabs-on-the-left is especially useful on widescreen monitors, while tabposé is a Mac-only feature that adds Exposé for tabs.

Both features can also be enabled by adding command-line flags to a Chrome shortcut: --enable-vertical-tabs for side tabs and --enable-expose-for-tabs for tabposé. After enabling vertical tabs using the command-line flag, right-click on a tab and select "use side tabs".

Gmail Priority Inbox

Last year, I posted about a new Gmail feature that will prioritize important messages. This feature will be available soon and it's called Priority Inbox.

"Priority Inbox is a new view of your inbox that automatically helps you focus on your most important messages. Gmail has always kept spam messages out of your inbox, and now we've improved Gmail's filter to help you see the emails that matter faster without requiring you to set up complex rules. Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: Important and unread, Starred, and Everything else. Messages are automatically categorized as they arrive in your inbox. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over)."



Gmail also adds two buttons that let you classify messages as important or unimportant, just like the "Mark as spam" and "Not spam" buttons. Unlike spam filtering, finding important messages is more difficult because you can't use information from other accounts to classify messages.

Google has to build a personalized classifier for each Gmail user and it needs a lot of messages. "Email importance ranking works best for people who receive a lot of email," explains Google. Google takes into account implicit signals like: the messages from people you frequently email are important, if a message includes words frequently used in other messages you usually read then it's probably important, the messages you star are probably more important than the messages you archive without opening. There are also explicit signals: click on the important/unimportant buttons, create filters to mark messages as important.

Priority Inbox will be available in Gmail and Google Apps over the next week, but you'll only see it in Google Apps if the administrator has enabled "pre-release features".



Tidbit: Gmail uses the "important" label to classify messages, so that's the reason why you can't create a label named "important".

Google Buys SocialDeck

Google acquired yet another social gaming company: SocialDeck. The start-up had an interesting idea: creating a platform for playing games on any device. "SocialDeck was founded in 2008 with the vision of enabling 'anywhere, anytime, anyone' gaming. The company has launched several titles for the iPhone, Facebook, and BlackBerry using its social gaming platform technology, which enables simultaneous game play across multiple mobile devices and social networks," explains SocialDeck's site.

It should be obvious that Google doesn't buy companies like SocialDeck to develop games. Most likely, Google wants to create a platform for social gaming that will enable users to play the same game on an Android device, on an iPhone, on a computer, on a Chrome OS tablet, in Google Me or any other social network that uses Google's platform.

Chrome Extension for Google OS Blog

Jay Wang developed a Google Chrome extension for this blog. The extension lets you read all the posts, it keeps track of the posts you've read and it notifies you when there's a new post. The search feature lets you find posts from this blog and from Google's official blogs.


Jay Wang's extension is a great combination between Firefox's live bookmarks and Google Reader, so it might eventually be used to subscribe to any site.

Google Tests a New Navigation Bar

Google tests a tweaked user interface for the navigation bar. The experiment removes link underlining, changes the background color when you mouse over a link from the navigation bar and adds an icon for the settings menu.

What's New in Google Chrome 6?

Google released the first stable build for Chrome 6. The new version has a simplified user interface: there's a single menu, the "go" button has been removed, the browser no longer shows "http://" in the address bar, the bookmark button has been moved to the right and the toolbar has a new color scheme.



Chrome 6 adds support for form autofill and you can now synchronize autofill data, extensions and all their settings. Extension sync is probably the coolest new feature in Chrome 6 because you can take your extensions with you, not matter what computer your are using.

Another new feature is the support for WebM videos. "WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web," which is already supported by software like Opera, VLC, Winamp and by YouTube. Watch this video in Chrome 6 or switch to YouTube's HTML5 player.

There's also a feature that's disabled by default (probably because it's buggy): the built-in PDF viewer. You can enable it by typing chrome://plugins/ in the address bar and clicking "Enable" next to "Chrome PDF Viewer".

Some other changes:

* Chrome has a new shortcut for toggling the bookmarks bar (Ctrl+Shift+B);

* if you mouse over a link to a page that has a long URL, Chrome will show the entire address in the status bar after about 3 seconds;

* Chrome's extension manager (chrome://extensions/) links to the extension gallery pages.

Google automatically updates the browser to the new version, but you can manually check for updates by selecting "About Google Chrome" from the unified menu. If that doesn't work, download Chrome 6 from google.com/chrome.

Better Google Snippets for Movie Sites

Better Google Snippets for Movie Sites

Google's snippets for sites like IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes include more information: movie directors and featured cast members. Google links to the corresponding page for each director and actor, so you can quickly find information about Alfred Hitchcock even if you only remember that he directed The Birds.



Google already shows rich snippets for reviews, events, recipes, people profiles, but web developers need to add structured HTML content using microformats, HTML5 microdata or RDFa. Even if IMDb doesn't use any of the three formats, Google still manages to extract useful information.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

What's New in Google Chrome 6?

Google Tests a New Navigation Bar

Google tests a tweaked user interface for the navigation bar. The experiment removes link underlining, changes the background color when you mouse over a link from the navigation bar and adds an icon for the settings menu.

Chrome Extension for Google OS Blog

Jay Wang developed a Google Chrome extension for this blog. The extension lets you read all the posts, it keeps track of the posts you've read and it notifies you when there's a new post. The search feature lets you find posts from this blog and from Google's official blogs.


Jay Wang's extension is a great combination between Firefox's live bookmarks and Google Reader, so it might eventually be used to subscribe to any site.

Subscribe to Feeds in Google Reader Mobile

Subscribe to Feeds in Google Reader Mobile

MG Siegler reports that the iPhone version of Google Reader has an option to add subscriptions. "Recently the 'Feeds' area welcomed the 'Add subscription' button that you'll recognize from the regular version of the site. Clicking on this button from the iPhone takes you to a 'Discover and search' page where you can search for a new feed or quickly add any of their pre-packaged bundles."

Not everyone has an iPhone and I'm sure this would be a welcome feature in the mobile Google Reader. Fortunately, the feature already exists, even if not in Google Reader, but in the mobile Google Search. To go from Google Reader to Google's homepage, click on "More Google Products" and select Search from the list. If you search the web using Google and click on a search result from a site that has feeds, the feeds are listed at the top. Clicking on a feed, you'll be able to preview it in Google Reader and also subscribe to it.

If you already know the address of a feed, you can use this URL to subscribe to it:
http://google.com/reader/m/view/feed/
(replace with the actual URL)

Make about:blank Your Homepage

Make about:blank Your Homepage

Many sites try to convince you to set them as your homepage: for example, every time you visit google.com using Internet Explorer, the site prompts you to make Google your homepage (Firefox's default homepage is already a skinned google.com).

Other sites are created just to become your homepage: from classic portals like Yahoo.com to personalized homepages like My Yahoo, iGoogle or Netvibes. But none of the sites is better than about:blank.

According to Wikipedia, "about: is an internal URI scheme (also known as a URL scheme or, erroneously, protocol) in various web browsers to display certain built-in functions and Easter eggs. It is not an officially registered scheme, and has no standard syntax." One of the most common addresses is about:blank, whose only purpose is to display a blank HTML document. It's supported by most browsers and it has a lot of advantages:

* your browser loads much faster
* it works even if you don't have an Internet connection
* it's not distracting so you can continue your work
* you are free to decide where to go, without letting others decide for you
* if you open a new window, some browsers (for example, Internet Explorer) load the homepage
* it's the most minimalist homepage in the world



Fortunately, most browsers have an option to set the blank page as a homepage, but you can always type about:blank to replace the default homepage. And next time when you install a toolbar or any other popular software, keep an eye on settings like "Make Yahoo.com your homepage". By default, most software from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft has the mission to change your homepage and the default search provider.

Tips for Google Mobile Search

Tips for Google Mobile Search

Google's mobile search engine (google.com/m) has a lot of features that aren't available in the regular desktop interface. Its latest interface was launched in March last year in the US and yesterday in the UK, France, Germany and Canada. The main change in Google's mobile interface is the integration between the web results, images, news and local results, which are displayed on a single pages, based on their relevance to the query. Here are some features specific to Google Mobile Search:

1. Information about sports: European football, NBA, NHL and more.


2. Optimized calculator that shows the results in a search box so you can use them for other calculations.


3. Weather conditions for airports


4. Since Google shows the transcoded version of search results, it can improve the way you access the web pages. If the results are very big, Google splits them in several pages and it can send you directly to the section that is the most relevant to your query.

5. The phonebook listings let you call people directly from search results, the same as Google's local search results:


6. Google promotes the site specifically designed for mobile phones and you can recognize them by looking for a small phone icon next to the snippet.

7. You can hide the images from search results by clicking on "Hide Images" at the bottom of the page. Google only shows thumbnails, which load faster and are more appropiate for small screens.

8. If you enter your location on the homepage, you won't have to add it to your queries. Since Google knows you're in Boston, you should only enter "weather", "movies", "book stores" etc. Google also saves your recent locations and they're accessible from a drop-down next to each group of local search results.

9. Google reformats the links to point to the transcoded versions so you can use Google Mobile Search as a bridge between your mobile browser and the web. You won't be able to access through Google Mobile Search secure web pages and some web pages lose their functionality as Google removes embedded objects, JavaScript code, tables etc. There's also a simple interface

10. If you have a mobile browser that is able to display web pages, you can disable Google's transcoder by going to Settings and deactivating "Format web pages for your phone". You can also go to the standard Google interface by selecting "View Google in... classic" at the bottom of Google's homepage. for Google's transcoder that lets you enter a URL.

The Number of Google Subscribers

Google Reader Subscribers Count is a discreet Greasemonkey script that shows the number of Google subscribers to a site's feeds. The number is overlayed at the bottom of each page that has feeds and it's one of the ways you can measure the popularity of a site. If you click on the number, you can subscribe to the feed.

As usually, the script requires Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension, although it could also work in other browsers. A related script is Google Reader Subscribe Button, which shows if you've subscribed to a feed and lets you subscribe to it in Google Reader. It would be interesting to combine the two scripts.

Personalizing Search Results Using Social Information

Personalizing Search Results Using Social Information

VentureBeat has an interview with Google's VP Marissa Mayer about social search. Marissa's definitions for social search is "any search aided by a social interaction or a social connection... Social search happens every day. When you ask a friend what movies are good to go see? or where should we go to dinner?, you are doing a verbal social search. You're trying to leverage that social connection to try and get a piece of information that would be better than what you'd come up with on your own."

She explains that Google tried to add a social layer by allowing its users to annotate search results in Google Co-op, but that didn't work very well. "There have been a few topical areas that have had a lot of traction, but overall the annotation model needs to evolve."


Marissa Mayer suggests that Google could show you the results labeled by the people you trust, for example your Facebook friends. Google could also personalize your search results by promoting web pages bookmarked by your friends. "PageRank itself relies on the link structure of the web to try to find the most authoritative pages. For example, it's clear that people would attribute more authority to the pages that their friends have visited."

Asked about the future of search, Marissa predicted that in ten years search engines will answer to queries like "what movies are good to see?", "where's the nearest sushi restaurant that's good?" by using information from the user's social context. Basically, the social data is just another way to personalize search results, along with your search history or your location.

Once your social data becomes portable (and OpenSocial could play an important role here), Google could use aggregate information from your friends to modify the weights in a personalized PageRank model

Google's threat to China is an opportunity for India

Google's threat to withdraw from China over ethical concerns on doing business there comes on the heels of the Delhi High Court's decision that no one in India, not even its peers on the Supreme Court are exempt from the needs for transparency. The two might not seem automatically connected, yet if the Indian government was smart it would make the link. Because the two stories most sharply highlight the essential differences between China and India.

Google's decision will almost definitely be downplayed or abused by the Chinese government, who will allege everything from this being the latest manifestation of Western imperialism - private sector this time - to the sour grapes of a company that could not compete with home grown competitors like Baidu.com. Google has certainly been having difficulties in China, but for a company this large, that is hardly the reason for it to quit. It is, for example, also trailing Naver.com in South Korea, but no one is talking about Google quitting that country.

As almost anyone other than the usual Chinese lackeys will admit, Google's threat is primarily driven by its frustration with doing business with a country whose very ethos so fundamentally conflicts with Google's own. The company's 'Don't Be Evil' slogan has been much mocked as being untenably naïve for any large company, and perhaps it is, but that doesn't mean the company does not try, in however makeshift a way, to live up to it.

Google's top executives have agonised about the increasing extent they have had to given in to the Chinese government's demands for control of information, and evidently some breaking point has now been reached. The company strongly suspects that the cyber attacks it has faced in China have been inspired by the government, for whom even the unprecedented concessions Google has made for China are not enough. This then is the breaking point: no matter the huge potential of China, Google feels that it can only compromise so far.

It is an Emperor's New Clothes moment, made all the stronger by the fact that the company doing the calling out is no small one, but one of the largest and most influential in the world. The immediate impact within China will probably be negligible, exactly because of the censorship that the Chinese government maintains, but the cumulative impact will not be small. At the very least it throws an uncomfortable spotlight on all the other companies, particularly those involved in the information and knowledge industries, who are acquiescing with Chinese control; Mr.Rupert Murdoch, for one, can expect some tough questioning.

China is now also under attack from quarters that have often left it alone. The Green movement is now a potent force, and has squarely blamed China for undermining Copenhagen. China's exploitation of African resources, and its conniving with dictators for this, are also drawing uncomfortable attention. And even Asian countries which have long been very circumspect where China is concerned, are raising questions about how its economic performance is undermining their own, and about China's investment in infrastructure projects which are looking increasingly like means to acquire resources and create employment for its own labour, who are nearly always used rather than creating local employment.

For the Indian government, which was happy to play China's sidekick in Copenhagen, there are urgent lessons to draw from this. We must certainly not antagonise such a large and powerful neighbour - yet we must equally surely make subtle attempts to emphasise our difference from it. The Delhi High Court's verdict is a fine example, showing our genuinely independent judiciary emphasising the need for transparency for all. It is a verdict that needs to be upheld by the Supreme Court as admirable in principle - and the fact that nothing like it would ever come out from China is a minor plus, but one well worth highlighting.

The Indian government must also keep its impulses towards authoritarianism under control. We can (reluctantly) accept that in a country as diverse and contentious as ours, there may be occasional needs to control information. But it must be very much a last choice, not the default option. Not just from any abstract commitment to free speech, but for the very practical reason that this is what makes companies like Google eager to business with us. We have the large consumer base, the young population, the technical skills and cheap manufacturing ability of China - and we are not (hopefully) breathing down your neck on everything you do.

In the past the Chinese-Indian comparison game has been played mostly to our demerit by China. It has told multinationals that India might have democracy, but that also means unions, infrastructure delays, political problems, public scrutiny... We have helped China by being unforgivably inefficient too often, and proving their case. We now have the opportunity to show that we can be efficient - maybe not as much as a ruthless authoritarian government can be - but efficient enough, and yet open and humane about how we do it.

The best example of this is also one of our most visible new landmarks - Mumbai's new Sea Link. Its initial design was changed, at huge expense, because of a political decision driven by the interests of local fishermen. The cable-stayed portion, which is its most distinctive feature, is simply to allow their boats to pass below. In China one can only imagine what would have been the fate of those protesting fishermen, but here their interests were accommodated - in an unforgivably delayed and clumsy way, its true, yet it was done.

Google may not realise it, but its threat to China is a tacitly an endorsement of processes like these. We must work at reducing delays, companies must accommodate the occasional compromises this requires, but in the end we can arrive at solutions that are acceptable both to Indian and international standards, if never Chinese ones - and are all the better for that.

Don’t let that chip get soggy

I notice that the Americans hiking H1-B visa costs to Indian companies to pay for border security with Mexico is hitting headlines in India. I also notice that the Indian IT industry, led by Nasscom, is sounding all indignant about it. What’s to be excited? This was just waiting to happen. Mr Obama has never made any bones about his attitude to India (and China) in every jobs statement; so everyone in the know should have seen this coming. US lawmakers aren’t like flashfloods. What’s the point in making statements to the already-converted Indian media when the damage has already been done?

The danger signals have been around from 2007. So expect more of these measures, in more elaborate and less obvious ways, from every European market in future. The Americans may be a wee bit crass, but in the western world today, the linkage between Indian IT company workers and border security — whether with Mexico or Timbuctoo — is pretty obvious to the aam aadmi. I’ll explain in a bit.

It’s considered political incorrect to be rude about the iconic Indian IT industry , but I’ve always said I think its global image management mostly stinks. All overseas Indians have to live with the deliberately-bad PR that Indian IT manages to generate for its overseas staff.

What the US move has proved is that the strategy that used to work 10 years ago — keep quiet, lobby with influential customers and stay below the radar as long as the contracts come in — doesn’t work any more. The world has changed. In a situation of high local unemployment, and political unrest about illegal immigration, new urban myths are being created: in Europe, US, UK, wherever. In the minds of the public, Indian IT workers on work permits, transfers or H1-Bs equate to jobs stolen from locals — and community and national resources in the host countries that these people use.

Nobody, but nobody, knows that social security payments — with a few countries as exceptions — are net contributions to the host country. The hosts are now short of jobs and resources. So what should be fairer than if rich, perceived as unnecessary, immigrants pay to police the poor ones? In their minds, it’s like progressive taxation.

These days, the British media is full of stories about how many thousands of foreign workers are streaming into the country, how intra-company transfers are being misused for illegal immigration, singling out Indian IT companies, and so on. I haven’t seen a single denial, or anything, not from any industry body or their spin doctors. Whenever I’ve asked, I’m repeatedly told that IT companies themselves don’t want to make a scene — forget about in the media, not even in behind-the-scenes lobbying and government circles.

The image strategy that Indian IT adopted, way back when the first flush of Bangalored sentiments hit headlines, was to go underground. They lobbied and worked with highly-influential customers to influence policy.

They didn’t want to tick off customers, who didn’t want anyone knowing they were employing Indians, or even the sizes of contracts doled out, and as long as the work kept coming in, well. They even went about hiring lots of locals and buying local companies, constantly insisting that ‘we don’t really bring that many people over from India’ . (If true, that would play merry hell with most financial models.)

Besides, as employers, if you pretend your overseas staff doesn’t exist, then how do you expect his neighbours to know that they’re any different from illegal immigrants, who also go live in those five-to-a-flat ghetto-type setups?

That’s exactly what the global banks thought, and look where it got them. Wall Street felt it could get away with anything because ‘their customers loved them, they were making great profits, economists knew they were contributing’ . What everyone forgets is that eventually, it’s the voting public who pulls the strings in any democracy, and the voting public needs to understand — or at least know — what you contribute to their society at large. At the least, they should not be deliberately misinformed by other vested interests. Otherwise, elected reps have to take political, not economic, decisions.

Take an example. We all know that, well, some chunks of the UK government’s IT contracts are with Indian companies, though it’s always been intensely hush-hush , just in case the customer faced voter anger. Hey, the UK government is making massive budget cuts, those contracts are already in danger. And sooner or later, it will hit every British media headline in a splash of scandal — chances of keeping things like that quiet in a hyper-charged , high-unemployment economy is less than that of a snowflake in hell — and then everyone can kiss goodbye to those contracts. It’s high time both Nasscom and its members realise that they really do need to tell Joe Public why they’re good for him — and what all those people he thinks are stealing jobs actually do.

Will the Real India Please Stand Up

I often hear myself say to a foreigner visiting Mumbai, Delhi or a big city, "Well, this is not the real India, to experience that you need to go to the villages." Admit that this has happened to you too.

We have grown up believing that the 'real India' resides only in its villages and rightly so since 70% of Indians live there. Perhaps even more because it represents what India has come to mean for us and the world: a complete lack of infrastructure, power, water, transport, communication, decent education facilities and healthcare. It is also the place where our traditions are more alive and visible; folklore, superstition and unsavoury customs are practised even though they may be deemed illegal.

Strangely, our cities do not actually present a very different picture.

Here too there is a shocking lack of infrastructure, poor public transport and sanitation, ever growing slums in the shadow of multi million dollar apartments in spanking new sky scrapers, poor quality and erratic supply of water forcing people to buy water tankers almost daily, power outages, voltage fluctuations, flooded streets…and if that were not all….frequent epidemics of typhoid, cholera, dengue or malaria. Cities have the same disparity of incomes as in villages, as well as similar levels of prejudice and superstition.

With rapid urbanisation the distinctions between our cities and villages will blur even further.

A McKinsey study predicts a sharp growth in the urban population to reach 40% of the total by 2030 and more importantly contributing over 70% to the GDP. This continued migration from the villages will add 250mn, more so to the bottom of the pyramid. Even now almost 75% of people in cities live at $1.80 per day; this will only get worse. We will have 68 cities with over a million population; some mega cities will have GDPs more than those of countries. Given the absolute lack of urban planning, all of this will happen in the classic "Chalta Hai" model. This could lead to a huge shortage of almost 80% in terms of affordable housing, 50% less water than needed, 70% of the sewage being untreated as well as significant shortages in public transport, and such like.

It would just mean that the villages will have moved to our cities and we, in the cities, will be able to say this is the real India.

Guru Jambheshwar University (GJU), Hisar, Haryana

Hisar
Haryana
India

Pin Code: 125001

Telephone: +91-1662-276192, 263101, 276025, 263104

Fax: +91-1662-276240, 276025

Official Website / Institution home page: gju.ernet.in

About Guru Jambheshwar University

Establishment: 1995

Institution Type: State University

Membership: The University is a member of The Association of Indian Universities (AIU)

UGC Recognition: Yes

Other Information

General Details: Reservations 30 seats in MBA and 10 seats each in MBA (IB), MBA (F) and MBA (M) are reserved for NRIs/foreign nationals, Industry sponsored candidates.

Application Procedure Prospectus and application form can be obtained from the Guru Jambheshwar University/Management Institutes in the State on cash payment of Rs 50 or by post by sending bank draft for Rs 65 in favour of Registrar, Guru Jambheshwar University, Hissar. Completed application with entrance test fee of Rs 400 should reach the Department by the notified date.

Selection Common written test at Chandigarh, Delhi and Hisar. Shortlisted candidates are, called for group discussion and interview at Hissar.

Specialisation: MBA Business Administration, MBA International Business (IB), MBA Finance (F), MBA Marketing (M).

Guru Jambheshwar University - Department of Business Management

Hisar 125001 Haryana
Established: 1995
Ph: 01662-31225/37608 Fax: 01662-31240 Registrar: Shri V Umashankar
Chairman: Dr H L Verma

Guru Jambeshwar University

Guru Jambeshwar University (GJU Hisar) Distance Education Correspondence Courses Admission 2010

Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology Hisar Haryana
(‘A’ Grade NAAC Accredited)

Directorate of Distance Education Admission Notice 2010-11

Applications are invited for admission to the following Distance Education Programmes for the Session 2010-11

Computer Courses

1. PGDCA/MCA 1st year

2. M.Sc (Computer Science)/MCA 2nd year (lateral entry)

3. MCA 3rd year (lateral entry)

4. MCA (5 years Integrated course after 10+2)

Management and Related Courses

5. Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA)

6. Master of Business Administration (MBA)

7. Master in Insurance Business (MIB)

8. Master of Commerce (M.Com)

9. PG Diploma in Taxation (PGDT)

10. PG Diploma in Industrial Safety Management (PGDISM)

Mass Communication and Related Courses

11. B.A. (Mass Communication)

12. M.A. (Mass Communication); M.A. Mass Communication 2nd year (lateral entry)

13. PG Diploma in Advertising and Public Relations

Other courses

14. PG Diploma in Environmental Management

15. PG Diploma in Bakery Science and Tech (PGDBST)

16. PG Diploma in Counseling and Behaviour Modification

17. M.Sc (Mathematics)

Entrance test for MBA/MCA (3 years)/MCA (5 years Integrated) will be held on 22.08.2010 (Sunday) from 2.00 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. at the study centres offering these programmes

However, if needed, two more tests may be conducted on 19.09.2010 and 24.10.2010 respectively

The candidates are advised to register for the test (without any test fee) with their nearest University approved study centres, of which the list is given in prospectus, by filling registration form given in the prospectus at Annexure (vi)

The students desirous to take direct admission may appear in the test at the centres convenient to them

Admission schedule

For Sr no 1-3, 6 and 17 without late fee: 31.08.2010; with late fee of Rs 500/-: 30.09.2010; with late fee of Rs 1000/-: 31.10.2010

For Sr no 4-5, 7-16 without late fee: 31.10.2010; with late fee of Rs 500/-: 30.11.2010; with late fee of Rs 1000/-: 31.12.2010

New programmes proposed to be started after DEC approval

1. Master of Environmental Health and Safety Programme

2. PG Diploma in Creative Writing-Hindi/English

3. PG Diploma in Fashion Communication

4. PG Diploma in Environmental laws

5. PG Diploma in Export-Import Management

6. PG Diploma in Retail Management

7. PG Diploma in Hospital Management

8. PG Diploma in Tourism and Hospitality Management

9. Bachelor of Library and Information Science

10. B.Com (Hons)

The prospectus can be obtained from the Directorate of Distance Education, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar or from any study centre approved by this university on cash payment of Rs 400/- (Rs 100/- for SC/BC of Haryana) on counter from 26.07.2010 or by post on sending demand draft of Rs 450/- (Rs 150/- for SC/BC of Haryana) favouring Registrar, GJUS&T, Hisar

The prospectus/admission form can also be downloaded from the university website www.gjust.ac.in

The students can submit their admission form either directly to the Directorate of Distance Education or through the study centres, the list of which is available on university website

With downloaded form demand draft for cost of prospectus must be attached

For more information, contact 01662-276735, 263571 or visit university websit