Entries from March 2008 ↓

Its been some weeks since I posted any thing related to technology and my tech readers have started complaining. This is just a starter, I have something else for you. But it needs some time and money. But Im on it.

Now about OovoO, Its a realtime video conferencing tool. Its almost like a yahoo messenger, but specifically built for video conferencing.

OovoO lets you do video conferencing with 6 people simultaneously. All the six will appear in an OoVoO window which gets smaller as you add more and more people.

The interface is really user friendly. Im sure that some good UI experts are behind this project. Even their website is really wonderful.

The video and audio quality is superb, even on a 256Kbps line. The video has no jerks in between and is very smooth compared to other platforms.

OovoO has got call recording capabilities even with the video conferencing. And this is giving me new ideas. Im planning to host expert talks on OovoO involving experts from different fields.

There is no Linux Port of this application and thats really bad. I have to switch to my friends laptop to use OooVoO. I hope they will release a linux version soon.

Download it here

BTW My OoVoO ID is -: kenneyjacob

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A student of MACFAST college committed suicide. The suicide note said, her college management asked her to buy a new laptop, cos her old laptop got stolen. Is that reason enough to end ones life ? I dont know maybe it is.

SFI attacked the college. Typical response from an irresponsible student organisation. College authorities taken to police station for questioning. Law takes its route. Newspaper publish the news as if they got a scoop. Anything against self financing colleges will sell in Kerala.

In 2004 another girl committed suicide. Rajani S Anand. She was a student of College of Engineering Adoor, an unfortunate Semi private, semi government college, of which I was also a student of. Our poor principle, who joined the college only months after Rajani left the college was crucified. He lived under police protection for weeks.

I was final year then, and I know what exactly had happened. But the irresponsible media reports blamed the college and the authorities. We as students were not allowed to speak the truth. We tried to do a press conference and we got threats over the phone, as it would be against the already spread propaganda.

The biggest media culprit - MalayalaManorama

Check out the news report in Hindu, another well respected newspaper.

Her father, Sivanandan, quietly sobs as he recounts his beloved daughter’s relentless efforts which helped her secure admission to the engineering college at Adoor. “She used to burn the midnight oil. Having cleared the Plus Two course with distinction, she had her sights set on the MBBS. She finally settled for engineering, as it would entail less financial burden on the family. Since we could not afford to send her to a coaching institute, she relied on used books procured from other students and cleared the entrance examination”.

There are factual mistakes in this report and If I were to point them out, I would be insulting a dead soul. Its a serious crime to insult the dead. But torturing the living is not at all a problem. Also see the tone of reporting. Its written to provoke emotion.

After a few days the hindu business line reports.

The media in Kerala displayed a dismal level of biased, emotive and unprofessional reporting in the way it handled the Rajani episode. Most reports - especially in the local dailies and television channels - were more of editorials that outright cast aspersions on all and sundry, beginning with leads that accused the criminal and pronounced the verdict in a trial, as it were, rather than sticking to the old and trusted, unprejudiced method of reporting who did what, where, when, how and why.

For instance, how many in the media followed up - or scooped in advance - the claim of Cherian Scaria, Principal of the College of Engineering, Adoor, that Rajani had never been asked to remit any tuition fee since her fee used to be remitted in time by the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes Welfare Department?

The principal said Rajani had not been attending classes since August 7, and the college had not received any application for her transfer certificate so far. Since the college did not have a hostel facility for girls, Rajani was reportedly staying at a private hostel in Adoor. Being a scheduled caste student, she received Rs 2,314 as stipend on June 9, 2003 and the stipend for the current academic year, Rs 2,410, was sanctioned on April 1, 2004. But nobody had turned up to receive the money, he added.

Are these claims true? If so, what is the role of the State and the college management in the tragic death of Rajani?

Did anyone try to find out the truth. The bitter truth, that would make all the protests, all the property destruction. all the emotional out cry look stupid. No one will ever will. Our poor college lost quite a lot of money repairing the damages done by the attackers. Our principles life got screwed settling the case against him.

Who gained ? The political vultures use her photograph in every occasion they can. Check out the trivandrum streets.

Coming back to the new suicide case. I have a very humble request to the media and student organisations. Please try to find out the truth before you act or publish. Please dont screw other people lives.

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Are we pushing our students a bit too far in the name of SSLC examinations ?

Image courtesy : - The Hindu

What is happening to our SSLC toppers ? Are they able to maintain their performance. Is our parameters for measuring performance wrong ? Is it soo necessary to put the children through so much of pressure. in the name of a silly examination ?

For my 10th, we were banned from all extra curricular activities. No games, no fun, no holidays. Everything revolved around the exam. And I got very good marks. But that mark list has been of no use to me. None cares how much I got for my SSLC. During campus placement a few companies asked for a consistent performance of 60%. I have 30% more, and for that the sacrifice was too much. I could have learned some life skills.

All that you get out of your SSLC is an admission to a +2 school. There are too many schools and with a distinction you can get into almost any school. Then why are we wasting golden years of the student, putting him through too much of pressure and restraining him from all the extra curricular activities.

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This cool video was shot by a few people from Technopark.

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We all are Idea machines and we generate a new idea every minute. How of us have felt that the best ideas of our lives are born while taking bath ? I myself have a document with 100s of my ideas. Its very interesting to read them once in a while….. so many of them. Thats why Ideas dont have any value, they are free.

Ideas are free, but they have a life time. If you dont implement it, someone else will. Ill give you an example. Back in 2002 I had this idea to create a virtual stock exchange, where we can play share trading game. Trading will be based on real values, but virtual money. The idea was to enable every person to try his trading skills with out burning cash. I discussed this among my friends, but we are college kids then and we didnt have the tech/business knowledge to implement it. Everyone forgot about it until recently we found these sites.

http://khelostocks.com/

http://markethero.in/

These sites have the same idea, hats off to those guys. Like these there were several ideas we discussed and threw away. Social bookmarking was one idea my friend Sanil had even before delicious and digg existed.

The point is, its not the idea that matters. Its the timely implementation that matters. Ideas are free, but implementation is not. So if you are sitting on an idea, talk to few and if the feedback is good, get started now. Otherwise someone else will do it.

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