Author: Pradeep

  • Watching Social Network in India

    I have been watching and adopting various social media networks since
    2005, when I joined hi5! I immediately moved to Orkut and this is
    where I built my first social network. When Facebook opened to India
    in 2006, I moved there as well and did invite my school friends there.

    I have been watching social networks to try and leverage that to help
    my space plans. Although I watched social networks, I just didn’t get
    to the part about leveraging social networks but did build a cool
    space organisation. I just stuck to making my colleagues in the
    organisation friends, first on Orkut and then on Facebook.

    Till date, I feel more comfortable leaving a scrap on Orkut than
    posting a ‘hi…hello…how are you…fine…ok’ thread on Facebook.
    Events like fraandship requests and bad press pushed people out of
    Orkut and onto Facebook.

    My college friends stayed on Orkut initially and then moved to
    Facebook when peers told them being on Facebook was considered cooler
    and because many girls moved on to Facebook.

    The fraandship requests originates from settings where people have
    come on to a social network platform and didn’t really know what to do
    and just extended their Yahoo! Messenger experience onto the social
    network. I think Orkut really helped polish many of the people there
    who then carried the rules into Facebook.

    I still remember scraps on Orkut about: not posting a scrap in your
    own scrapbook, not trying to friend people you do not know and
    expecting introductions when you add a person as a friend. These were
    then also circulated among the offline channels – mainly through SMS.

    As it has grown, social networks in India have also transformed
    offline meetups because of a segregation in the kind of people who
    hung around in each of these spaces.

    The fraandship thing came as more of the rural and lower tier towns of
    India came onto Orkut and began trying to make friends in the city
    they planned on moving to. Urban and middle class Orkut users made fun
    of this and proliferated this across initially to humiliate people who
    didn’t use proper spelling or grammer in their introductions of
    friendship requests. Later this was used to reinforce the fact that
    only known people are welcome as friends.

    This also co-incided with the offline hang out culture. This shifted
    as the more well to do kids hung out at the Cafe Coffee Days and
    Baristas whereas the middle class and the lower income group kids hung
    around inside of college canteens and wada pav stalls. Slowly,
    Baristas and Cafe Coffee Days realised that more money could be made
    inviting the middle class in as well and they moved to lower prices.

    Funny enough, this coincided with the time that the bulk of Indians
    moved onto Facebook and this network reinforced the coffee shop,
    McDonalds and pizza culture more.

    We’re in an interesting time in social networks in India – at a time
    when the crowd in Orkut has started moving to Facebook. Mainly because
    brands have been using these to push prices down and also using the
    network to hold and provide access to events. The Orkut experience has
    made this crowd wiser and has moderated them. But, also a new
    generation is coming directly onto Facebook than through Orkut. Some
    of my friends have started seeing the ‘fraandship-like’ trend showing
    up on Facebook as well. I haven’t seen it either on Orkut or Facebook
    other than on other people’s scrap book.

    Facebook also slowly pushed us off the ‘introduce yourself’ habit of
    our Orkut days by not providing access to the wall without being a
    friend in the privacy settings. More people are now also not using the
    ‘add a message’ option that appears when you ask a person to become
    their friend.

    The real thing to see now is how such a closed network like Facebook
    will teach new comers on the unwritten network rules. I see this
    happening in the offline world and some people say Facebook is very
    complicated and Orkut has become complicated but is now resembling a
    ghost town.

    Today, I started scrapping on Orkut again. Watch this space as I post
    more of my social network watching here.

  • India going to study the Sun

    This blog post was recovered from the Way Back Machine and may have existed on many avatars of the previous blogs that I owned. Some links are broken.

    Immediately after the successful launch of Chandrayaan-I, then ISRO Chairman Madhavan Nair announced Aditya-1, a spacecraft to study our Sun. Updates coming over the last one month have updates on this ISRO mission as well as interest in Solar Physics.

    Aditya-1 is a 100 kg spacecraft under development by ISRO in association with Udaipur Solar Observatory, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Radio Astronomy Centre and National Centre for Radio Astrophysics. This Rs. 50 crores space based solar observatory will be in a 600 km low Earth orbit and is expected to fly in 2012 close to Solar Maxima.The spacecraft will

    Reports indicate that the Indian Institute of Astrophysics has completed the design of the solar coronagraph. ISRO is working on developing the detectors and thermal structure. First spacecraft prototype is expected in 2011. While the main idea is to study coronal mass ejections (CMEs), ISRO hopes to utilise the data to know how to better protect its satellite systems in orbit.

    The IIA is also involved in the development of a ground based solar observatory in the Himalayas with national and international mission. The fabrication of the telescope is expected to begin in 2010 with IIAp has already floated the tender.

  • NASA Space Policy conundrum and our Final Destination

    For months now, the fast moving US government (in comparison to the
    Indian government) has been debating about where NASA should take the
    US in the years to come. The expectation comes out of Obama’s
    comparison with John F Kennedy, who had given Nasa the mandate of
    putting a man on the Moon and returning him back safely.

    To think of a decadal or 4 year goal for Nasa is pretty stupid. Also,
    thinking in terms of Moon or Mars is VERY narrow and worse of all is
    wasting decades in setting a course.

    The Japanese example of their rise from World War II ruins and
    Columbus’ quest come to mind and in comparison colonising Moon and
    Mars look puny.

    To colonise the Solar System before this century is out… is more
    along the lines of NASA target I’m thinking of. Then set decadal goals
    and ensure Nasa reaches them.

    This post is applicable to my favourite space agency. (Hint: it’s not
    NASA) and I think that my fav agency is imperceptibly headed that way.

  • Foursquare Day #4sqday

    Foursquare day is called so because in the American calendaring
    system, the format used is mm-dd-yyyy. In this scheme of things, this
    date reads, 4.16 or four and its square – shortened by the twitter
    world to foursquare.

    The experience of getting to Candies (a sweets place, I thought!) was
    terrible. Getting down at Pad. Mohd Rafi Chowk, every time I asked
    directions, I was told the place was only 5 mins away. I asked this 4
    times and got the same reply. After the last ‘it’s just 5 mins away’
    remark, I had given up hope when I saw the nameplate (?). This wasn’t
    the end of things. I then had an equivalent of the ascent of Mount
    Everest climbing up stairs. Finally summited to a round of applause!

    We discussed important questions like what was foursquare, what  the
    people’s twitter handles, what to eat, what a corporate hack did,
    kisko mala pehnaya jaye etc. Enjoyed it totally.

    I took leave, took a strangers suggestion and got into a bus, got off
    at Bandra Stn, stood in the wrong bus stop for 15 mins, got into a
    cliff hanger bus, got into an auto at Sion where it had to stop
    because of a traffic jam and then returned home.

  • What makes you special?

    Read that on the cover of my new IBM notebook, which I plan to use starting September 26.

  • Getting off Twitter

    Since June I’ve been reviewing my usage of the Internet and it’s
    impact on my offline life. I’ve been collecting raw numbers. In the
    past week I crunched the data.

    I spend nearly Rs. 300 per week on accessing the Net. Most of this is
    used on Twitter and Gmail. I saw that I was spending 6 hrs/day despite
    reducing my usage on Twitter. Doing it less often is an option but I
    generally miss out on the fun. I specifically took a higher cost Net
    connection to force me to use it less.

    Even if I can absorb the cost I spend the time I spend here was coming
    from time alloted for reading, listening to songs, working on
    projects, thinking new project ideas etc.

    I’ll keep my friendfeed a/c up and update all the various services. I
    think I’ll be more useful that way.

  • Where does Mumbai get its water from?

    I’m in the middle of various changes in lifestyle which I’m trying to
    make consciously. Today, I thought I needed a good dock to start out
    from and could think of no better place than Mumbai. I’m now out
    asking the question: Where does Mumbai get its water from?

    Over the next few days when I get the time, I will re visit this topic
    here. I will try and document this journey as much as possible.

    I see this as possibly a first step in answering the question of
    rethinking the way mega cities and at the micro level consume water so
    that we can get water conservation measures out of the clean the
    beaches and close the tap mode.

  • Water in the City

    Amazing how little we know about how we get the water we use in our homes.

  • Loss of Water Supply

    Imagine you live in a traditional village which has shared water with
    neighbouring villages, towns and cities for a century. This year was
    nasty and the water board is still pumping out water because those
    freak in the cities don’t see or ignore the lakes falling water level.
    Five years pass and people in your village die because of water abuse
    of your lake by others. The only step then remaining is fortifying the
    water source and levying a larger charge for geting the water. This is
    a possible situation we could be headed towards.

    Unlike computers and electricity, mechanical pipes don’t lend
    themselves to a very high transport efficiency. Precious water is lost
    in every pipe bend, valve, leak and pumping losses. Transporting water
    over large distances is not efficient.

  • Getting Students Interested in LARS

    A key pre-requisite to starting a lunar simulation project is to have
    enough people interested in it. The Chandrayaan mission has piqued
    media interest in the Moon.

    However, people still look at it through mysterious eyes. People think
    Apollo 11 was a hoax. They don’t know that 12 people have gone to the
    Moon. Even the amateur astronomy community does not know of many lunar
    features on the Moon.

    Under such circumstances, it is useful to get students interested.
    Accordingly, we plan to unveil a series of events and mini projects to
    get things going. The announcements begin on October 4.