Chilligavva

Have you wished Ang Suu Kyi on her 64th birthday? You can do so at http://www.64forsuu.org/. She is frequently called Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; Daw is not part of her name, but an honorific similar to madam for older, revered women, literally meaning "aunt".[7] Strictly speaking, her given name is equivalent to her full name, but it is acceptable to refer to her as "Ms. Suu Kyi" or Dr. Suu Kyi, since those syllables serve to distinguish her from her father, General Aung San, who is considered to be the father of modern-day Burma. Continue Reading

I have been a regular reader of http://www.deccanchronicle.com/ [DC in short], a hyderabad based english paper for the past 4 years now, as a weak connection to anything hyderabad.  The only reason I used to tolerate reading the online version and badly designed site was that it was the only english newspaper.  Yes we had Telugu papers, but the presentation and technology improved only in recent times. [earlier readers had to look at scanned images folks not the cool present day UTF fonts..] So sometime early Jan 2009, DC got a facelift.  It now emulates certain CMS based news sites, and a vast improvement from the old version. Me being me, I had to look under the hood! I saw the site was composed of a gazillion divs, instead of tables and cells. [Look up the source of timesofindia, and you can see a host of tables over there!] I was impressed.  [W3c standards? Atleast an attempt?  Yes yes yes! Hallelujah!]

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I always believed in the marriage of P2P and web 2.0. Most of the signs were already out there. One obvious use of this combination was of course illegal downloading of movies amongst private web 2.0 networks. But as a system, I believe that if you could pass the rewards, and stimulate participation, one could harness this trend for good as well.

Pundits have been yammering away for years about a "celestial jukebox" that will give everyone the ability to access all content ever created, from anywhere, at any time. This long-discussed concept is finally becoming a reality, at least as far as music goes.via Celestial Jukebox falls to earth 'Hey, making applications for the iPhone shouldn't be that hard'.... [I] thought how useful it would be to have a P2P client (first for me, then for the people) so I started learning and developing it myself." - WiredI therefore was pretty excited when I was reading Wired's article on Eric Castro's "iSlsk". Eric is a 19 year old student of Universidad Tecnologica Nacional (UTN) (System’s Engineering career) located in Buenos Aires, Argentina and quite a geek with ... Continue Reading

The underlying principal of a good business is always based on a sound product. [Otherwise what can you sell?] But when I was reading this article, the extent to which the phone companies have become "Mafia" is pretty apparent. It obviously took another Moghul like Steve Jobs, and a in your face "ha ha" product like the i-phone to put back the power to products. But as important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and ATT, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year US mobile phone industry. For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers' proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one ... Continue Reading

Truly, poverty of the heart is what afflicts most of us.  I have never felt that as strongly, until I saw this video. Watching this video has definitely humbled me, and made me take a good strong look at myself.  For those who truly want to help, they help, inspite of all hardships.  For the rest, its a daily littany of whines, goal statements and spelling out of human greed [not wants].  I definitely fall into the second category of greed, rants, and whines. Im thankful to my friend Shakti Shenoy, for this link!  (I always believed that you meet a person for a definite spiritual reason) The video is a program that identifies a Citizen Hero.  The protagonist is a person called Hajabba from a small village off Mangalore, (my home town), called Nyupadpu. Some would dismiss him as just another illiterate fruit seller, but, 47-year-old Hajabba's life is a lesson in inspiration. Hajabba, who built a school to educate over a 100 children in his village near Mangalore, was honoured by Karnataka Governor Rameshwar Thakur after he saw the fruit seller's story on CNN-IBN. Thakur awarded Hajabba ... Continue Reading

Looks like this week is all about animals. I have just completed a Jungle theme for Chilligavva, which you now see in action. For the curious, the animal icons are based on the Animal Dingbat series, called "Animalia Scissored" from Dafont.com, a font site. I have just come across the work of Jeremy Pettis, a student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design via Typographica Here is the exciting response about his work: The immediacy and creativity of Pettis'™ work has spread like wildfire through the design blogosphere. My favourites are: the letter C, I like the curviness of the cobra the letter L, I like the mane and tail the letter R , I like the ears Here is what Jeremy said about his inspiration in his interview with Stephen Coles I found these old design annuals called “Modern Publicity. They have some great work from all around the world. I found a few from 1967-78 on Amazon fairly cheap. Collecting old design books can be a very expensive addiction. I love seeing great work from the pre-digital era. It seems ... Continue Reading

Src: Screen Capture from thelinguists.com Did you know that half the languages in the world are dying? Two linguists have set about documenting the same in film, for the Sundance film festival. Being a linguist myself (MA in Applied Linguistics, Continue Reading