~ Happiness ~

One state that everyone wants to be, happiness :) Just be in the moment & be Happy. The original song from Pharrell Williams has struck chord with people across the world & here is a collection of videos from various cities expressing Happiness.

~ Original ~

~ Bangalore ~

~ Paris ~

~ London ~

~ Dubai ~

~ Berlin ~

~ Budapest ~

~ Lyon ~

~ Sydney~

~ Tokyo ~

~ Kochi ~

~ Slovakia ~

~ Seville ~

~ Tahiti ~

~ Rome ~

~ Vienna ~

~ Torino ~

~ Dublin ~

~ Myanmar ~

~ Napoli ~

~ Buenos Aires ~

~ Marrakech ~

~ Dakar ~

~ Afrika Edition ~

~ Namibia ~

~ Croatia ~

~ Bosnia ~

~ Kenya ~

~ Siena, Tuscany. Interesting to see Bharata Natyam in the video ;)  ~ 

~ Moscow ~

I spent the last one hour watching people across the world dancing to the song Happy. Music does bring people closer :) 

~ Our own doing ~

This week we saw nature's fury at Kedarnath, Uttarakhand. According to the CAG report tabled in April, the state lacks an effective disaster management system to tackle such disasters.

~ Kedarnath Temple 1953 ~

~ Kedarnath Temple 19 June 2013 ~

I feel this highlights how we Indians approach life & live. Most of us, live by reactions than pro-actions. Instead of addressing problem in an holistic manner, we tend to wake &  fire-fight only when we have disasters on our hands. 

Samarth Mungali, CEO of TadpoleStore, has a very thoughtful post on the disaster.

"…People driven by greed and not need, started plundering their own land. A land which was their existence. 

All this while nature coped, but there’s a limit to tolerance. It’s natural. What was done had to be restored. And thus in a frame of minutes nature took the matter in it’s own hands and cleaned the slate that we had made dirty with our scribbling.

What has happened is a message from nature to stop, to amend. We have been wrong and it is we who are to correct. 

I sincerely hope that in the pretext of redevelopment of the devastated, the same mistakes are not done again. Where the structures have been erased, none should come again. It might sound uncommercial but then…"

Anand Sankar has an interesting post as well.

The devastation caused by Monsoon 2013 in Uttarakhand and to a lesser extent in Himachal Pradesh has been predictably covered by television studios based out of New Delhi. This flood has literally flowed into the lap of the television news media, who can feed their half-baked drivel to people across the country who are anxiously tuning in to get some titbits of information about loved ones trapped in the mountains. While there has been a lot of clamour for a speedy rescue effort, it sorely misses the point when it comes to ground reality. This is another incident which will go down in the history of disasters in India, as one that could have been prevented. 

Do read the 5 points which Anand makes.

As the Media & Desktop-activist, would now go on dissecting at length as to what went wrong; who could be held accountable for this; how it could have been avoided; Atheists asking the very presence of God; et al.  It is very much our own doing.

Instead of developing State units for handling any emergency events, we seem to be always banking on our Armed Forces. My salutations to the men & women of Armed Forces who have always ready for any contingency at any part of the country.

Photographs source: TadpoleStore blog.

~ Offline Paul ~

Also known as Paul Miller. Mr Paul embarked on a year long journey to be disconnected from the digital world. It would be hard for a person like him to go offline for 12 months without internet.

I'd used the internet constantly since I was twelve, and as my livelihood since I was fourteen. I'd gone from paperboy, to web designer, to technology writer in under a decade.

In Information age, it is quite hard & takes a lot of effort to stay in-sync with rest of the world without Internet. At least to those of us who are constantly consuming endless data from various streams. My parents on the other hand  contradict me, they don't use or need internet for any of their daily chores. However, I do require it for my profession. Outside of work it is more or less for social communication, reading, consuming news, occasional shopping, watching videos & nothing beyond.

Here are some of the thoughts which I liked from Paul's first post after coming online - I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet

"Internet is reprogramming our relationships, our emotions, and our sensitivity," said one of the rabbis at the rally. It destroys our patience. It turns kids into "click vegetables."

As my head uncluttered, my attention span expanded.

By pulling away from the echo chamber of internet culture, I found my ideas branching out in new directions.

It turns out paper books are really great. I don't comparison shop to buy plane tickets, I just call Delta and take what they offer.

In fact, most things I was learning could be realized with or without an internet connection — you don't need to go on a yearlong internet fast to realize your sister has feelings.

The moral choices aren't very different without the internet.

There's a lot of "reality" in the virtual, and a lot of "virtual" in our reality - Nathan Jurgenson

What I do know is that I can't blame the internet, or any circumstance, for my problems.

The longest I have remained offline in the last 3 years, the farthest my memory can be stretched, is about 3 days ;) How long have you remained offline?

Here is an interesting poster which I came across recently.

~ News is entertainment ~

Post the Doordarshan era when the Govt of India allowed private players to broadcast, we initially had a bouquet of sports & entertainment channels. As far as the News channels were concerned, back in late 90s we had - DD, Zee News & Aaj Tak. The alternative source of news were magazines - The Outlook, The Week, India Today & regional cousins - and traditional Newspapers.

Step into 21st Century, we have 120 News channels operating across India. Of these 120 channels, guess about 5 English channels are watched by most urban population, discounting the Regional news channels. 

Thanks to these channels, am disillusioned by how information is feed to us & at times they have constant supply of *Breaking News*. Thanks to FDI &  politicians / political parties who want a medium to reach out to the masses, we now have many of them who own or control some of these channels. Most of these channels are biased towards a specific party, religion or an issue. Very rarely do we see these channels take a neutral stance &  get the bottom of an issue. 

After the Radiagate exposè, I lost faith with some of the main stream media professionals {& their organizations} whose names have appeared in the deal making. I feel the role of media today has changed to that of a *Middleman* who brokers deals between different political parties, business men, corporations than their primary objective of delivery quality information to the people of the current affairs. My view holds good w.r.t Indian media only.

I have been watching Madhu Trehan's episodes today morning & agree with her points. Wonder how those anchoring the shows fail to miss the obvious. I wish those Media professionals watch Madhu's show & take it as feedback about their work & bring some change. Have been following the alternative media - bloggers or websites - which cover/offers another perspective to the main stream media. Some of them which I frequently visit are:

Open The Magazine

The Caravan

Kafila

Churmuri

Media Crooks

News Laundry

Faking News *Satire 

Move over bloggers or websites, we now have  realtime crowd-sourced news being covered by people across the globe powered by Twitter. Any major event {Political | Sporting | Festival | Product Launches} or Catastrophe being delivered instantaneously with videos & pictures. This breaks the hold of mainstream media on coverage of events. The below pictures were taken by Andrew Kitzenberg, in the night when Tsarnaev brothers had a show down with police.

Here it’s clear to see the brothers taking aim and firing on the officers. (Taken at 12:47:57AM)

This is a zoomed in view from the last image. The red circle highlights the pressure cooker bomb that was used just moments after this photo was taken. These are the only pictures which I have come across on the internet captured by Andrew. For first hand account of the event witnessed by Andrew visit here

However, the normal public do not have access to information when it comes to Govts or Corporations. That's where we bank on the these Media Corps to deliver news AS IS versus interpreting or transforming before reaching us.

We have hacktivist style of news reporting from YourAnonNews & WikiLeaks. Even though their means of obtaining information is not considered ethical by majority their intent isn't *always* wrong. From the recent Boston bombings, we have seen online vigilantism which caused a lot of rumour & chaos in the already stressed environment. This is one of the major drawbacks of digital world when data is available for everyone to piece together & offer their own versions.

One of the politicians I admire is Mr Obama. How I wish our PM Mr Manmohan Singh shared some wit or at least spoke, at times, when it mattered. Enjoy this talk, Obama taking digs at the entire media during his speech at the White House Correspondent’s dinner.

Additional reading: A week inside India's media boom {FT} | Inside the Anonymous Hacking File on the Steubenville 'Rape Crew' {The Atlantic} | THE LESSONS OF STEUBENVILLE {The NewYorker} | Breaking news is broken {Slate} | Hey Reddit, Enough Boston Bombing Vigilantism {The Atlantic} | Security alert: notes from the frontline of the war in cyberspace {The Guardian} | The trolls among us {NYT}

Update 13 May 2013

Anubha Bhonsle has a very good write up on how Twitter plays a role in how we consume news & also the responsibility of the journalists to get their basics right & provide meaningful context to the raw data. Do read 'News in the time of Twitter' on News Laundry. 

There is no denying that social media platforms can today spread information and misinformation far quicker than they would have spread a decade ago. The problem though isn’t with technology. The problem is many of us have all but abandoned standards of good reporting, the very basics. The need of the hour is a reporter who will shape a narrative in a cacophony of noise, conversation and abundant content around him/her or on the social web. A reporter who will dig, question, unearth and make the linkages.

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter has been quoted as saying, “We provide the information. That’s when we hand off the baton to journalists, to provide context.”

~ Zeitgeist 2012 ~

Google today revealed their annual Zeitgeist report for 2012. Year on year, as Internet become more accessible to the masses, we see a growth in the number of searches for various things. The numbers are mind boggling - 1.2 trillion searches across 146 languages. 

Considering the 3Q12 of IDC report, we see the burst of Android devices across the world, would have given Google Search more traffic.

Chart: Worldwide Smartphone OS Market Share, 2012Q3

However, the Google Zeitgeist report doesn't share the % of searches originating from various devices or Operating Systems. Am sure that people searching on their smart phones is increasing every passing day. One of the main motivation for Google to keep Android Open-Source, is to push their Search algorithm into mobile devices.

Here are few top 10 searches across people, places, movies in India. Looking at the type of searches made by people, no wonder that the entertainment business makes movies for the masses ;)

To see the worldwide zeitgeist go here. You can view the report as PDF here.

You can also read 'The crucible of Phone market'