US university acquires Indian author's works

US university acquires Indian author's works

HOUSTON: Renowned Indian-American author and philosopher Raja Rao's archive that includes a broad range of materials from unpublished works to manuscripts of his well-known novels has been acquired by the University of Texas for advancing the study of arts and humanities.

Rao's estate donated the archive to the Ransom Centre, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas in Austin.

According to Ransom centre, "It's a notable acquisition in part because Rao is widely considered to have been one of India's most noted authors, having received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature and other honours".

The Harry Ransom Centre is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the US and Europe for the purpose of advancing the study of the arts and humanities.

Raja Rao (1908-2006), considered one of India's earliest and most outstanding English-language novelists, was the author of numerous works of fiction, short stories, poetry, talks, essays and "The Great Indian Way: A Life of Mahatma Gandhi" (1998), about Mohandas Gandhi's time in South Africa.

Rao's archive includes a broad range of materials, from unpublished works to manuscripts of his well-known novels 'Kanthapura' (1938), 'The Serpent and the Rope'(1960) and 'The Chessmaster and his Moves' (1988).

"Departing boldly from the European tradition of the novel, Raja Rao has indigenized it in the process of assimilating material from the Indian literary tradition," said R Parthasarathy, professor emeritus of English at Skidmore College.

Educated at the Aligarh Muslim University and the University of Madras and other foreign universities, Rao was already an internationally known author when he was recruited by former UT President John Silber to teach Indian philosophy and Buddhism in Austin.

His archive contains materials in several of the languages that Rao spoke, including English, French, Sanskrit and his native Kannada.

Rao won the Indian National Academy of Letters' Sahitya Akademi Award for Literature in 1964 for the philosophical novel 'The Serpent and the Rope.' In 1969, he was the recipient of the Padma Bhushan Award, one of India's highest awards for literature, and in 2007 he was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan by the government of India.

Alongside the archives by Rao at the Ransom Centre are manuscript collections of prominent international writers including J M Coetzee, Anita Desai, Doris Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Amos Tutuola.

Source | http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/us-canada-news/US-university-acquires-Indian-authors-works/articleshow/52778830.cms

A library at home

A library at home

Setting up a library at home in India is not a new phenomenon. For millennia, the religious scribes of all faiths preserved scrolls, scriptures, and folios. Those custodians of faith were mostly men who chanted from selected passages of holy texts. On sacred days, they commented on selected verses to family members, and occasionally to invited guests as well. Even today, this religious custom continues. However, as early as the late 16th century, when the Portuguese Jesuits introduced the printing press to India, literacy grew in three critical ways.

First, the social structure of the private domain of readers and collectors crossed over from old canonical texts to modern critical literature. In the beginning, domestic scholars bought books to be read. Over generations, some of the educated households built formidable home libraries, which were stocked with folk classics and modern publications. Second, at the beginning of the 19th century, India crossed over from religious to secular guardianship of knowledge when many educated families loaned out books from their home libraries to their neighbors, on a strictly voluntary basis. However, unlike the persecution of intellectuals in the aftermath of the French Revolution, colonial India did not abandon its emerging indigenous intellectuals and artists. Instead, the new elites integrated tradition with modernity. 

Third, the printing press universalized the cultural capital of local knowledge in a significant way when Indian universities began to teach in foreign languages, especially English, French, German, and Greek. For example, Saibal Datta has recently referred to Nakur Chandra Biswas’s biography of one of Bengal’s earliest science educators and reformers, Akshay Kumar Datta.  Datta cites Biswas in documenting that under the tutorship of the Oriental Seminary, Akshay Kumar learnt ancient Greek in order to read Homer’s epic poems in the original. Also, the globalization of learning enriched vernacular knowledge and challenged the existing norms by other means. For example, in the western city of Pune, as early as the 1890s, local playwrights translated and staged Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, which advocated women’s equality. Not surprisingly, foreign-language books were translated into regional dialects. 

Literature holds the key to open the master lock of life and beyond. Literature has long been a powerful institutional force in liberalizing minds, attitudes, and mores. For thousands of years, India has believed that words and concepts allow individuals to reach truth through the complexity of symbols and meanings. By the middle of the nineteenth century, printed words were playing a decisive civic role in India. That the cultural patrons of home libraries did not idolize a particular theology or ideology ensured that books 

affirmed the inclusive language of knowledge.

If language is the essence of intellectual life, then we must ask how best to organize the books on our shelves at home in ways that represent our life experience. Generally speaking, philosophers cite two functional methods of organization -- empirical and rational.

The empirical method is elementary. For example, arranging and stacking books alphabetically or by height. In fact, Jean Piaget, the Swiss clinical psychologist, demonstrated that children between the ages of 7 and 12 invariably arrange books by height. John Locke, the British empirical philosopher, described the mind of a newborn as a blank slate (tabula rasa), on which thoughts and concepts are literally imprinted. 

The alternate method of arranging books is rational. The French philosopher René Descartes and his fellow rationalists believed that we have pre-programmed knowledge at birth. Unlike the empirical school, the rationalists view the human mind as inborn. Today, in laboratory settings, neuroscientists are testing Descartes’s line of conjecture that human brains are preordered. Instead of Locke’s blank blackboard, the rationalists declare that biology is destiny. The eminent psycholinguist Noam Chomsky follows this mode of reasoning by proposing that syntax, language, and grammar are prefigured in the human brain. Given this rational scheme, home libraries should be arranged according to our inborn disposition to order.

Nonetheless, home libraries go beyond cognition and predisposition. They represent the arts of human imagination, like brush strokes on a canvas. Both the empirical and the rational approach pay short shrift to the manner in which libraries, and their keepers, can organize and disseminate the beauty of words and knowledge. In today’s fetish for political correctness, we seem to be forgetting that human acts can create cultural systems of thought. Essentially, books on a shelf refine our moral thinking about the transcendental aesthetics of pure reason. Fyodor Dostoyevsky cautioned us that there is a limit to following functional (Lockean) or rational (Cartesian) systems because, in the long run, core reality can seldom be objectively demonstrated. Ludwig von Wittgenstein took Dostoyevsky’s argument one step further by noting that human reason can never be formalized because words are only the starting point in capturing human experience -- a bit like capturing one firefly on a summer night. In addressing an audience in Calcutta on the occasion of Sri Ramakrishna’s birth centenary in 1936, Rabindranath Tagore observed that the sage saw limits to human experience because it tends to be external and temporary. For Ramakrishna, temporal knowledge is insufficient unless it expresses the inner truth.

Our home libraries mirror our souls by evoking aesthetic and moral attitudes that are intimately linked to our feelings, emotions, and memories. Altogether, those libraries are personal collections of joy, creativity, and beauty. Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, in his Critique of Judgment, stated that ‘judgments of beauty are possible when they are incapable of proof [Locke’s logic] or any reduction to rules [Descartes’s innatism] and are intimately connected to the pleasure of the subject’.

By the last quarter of the 19th century, home libraries in India had become neighbourhood manifestos of sentiment and solidarity. Civic elders, educators, and other professionals became the guardians of knowledge in three critical ways. First, they installed a voluntary scheme of lending books from their own home collections, so that private collections reflected and supported civic trust and virtue. Second, neighbours were invited to public readings on a weekly basis, which over time significantly emboldened communities’ moral visions. Third, as readers and listeners grew in number, especially in the three Presidencies -- namely, Bengal, Bombay, and Madras -- local educators and leaders built public libraries for common use. With volunteer support, many of these libraries are still thriving today. 

The Bally Sadharani Sabha (‘Bally Common Association’) is one such example of a public library. At first, families in Bally organized a youth group, the Juvenile Club, which sponsored literary and other cultural activities. Then, starting around 1869, the club sponsored a monthly magazine, Subhakari. Toward the end of the 19th century, the Bally educators and reformers combined all the small libraries in the town into one unit, the Bally Public Library (‘Bally Sadharan Granthagar’). To this day, a framed picture of  Hariprasad Mukherjee, who served as the secretary of the library for 36 years, is keepint a “watch” over the present generation of karmis (‘volunteers.’)

India owes a great deal to the early keepers of truth, who shared their home libraries for the common good. In today’s rapacious material culture, let us always remember how these reformers enshrined the everyday life of books and words, which continue to convey feelings, thoughts, and sentiments. Libraries are the temples of our souls.

Source | http://www.thestatesman.com/news/opinion/a-library-at-home/148828.html

Union HRD Minister Smt Smriti Zubin Irani launches a new initiative ‘Vidyanjali’ to involve volunteers into co-scholastic activities of schools

Press Information Bureau

Government of India

Ministry of Human Resource Development

16-June-2016 20:35 IST

Union HRD Minister Smt Smriti Zubin Irani launches a new initiative ‘Vidyanjali’ to involve volunteers into co-scholastic activities of schools

Inspired from Honourable Prime Minister’s vision to inculcate reading habits among children and create a reading culture at school and community level, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani dedicated ‘Vidyanjali’- a school volunteer programme to the nation at New Delhi, today.

In her inaugural address Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani said that Vidyanjali is a step forward in creating an ecosystem, wherein education will be attached with imbibing knowledge and improving learning output. The Union Minister added that there is an ingrained sense of participation and willingness within the people of this country to contribute towards nation building. We are hoping to leverage the same through this programme. Numerous researches have reflected that community engagement with schools has led to improvement in the quality of learning and education. This programme will instil fresh enthusiasm in school children to take up reading and will re-energise the teaching-learning process at schools. She also emphasised upon the significance of providing timely remedial support to improve the learning outcomes of school children, thereby reducing the number of school drop outs

The programme is designed to involve volunteers from different walks of life to strengthen the co-scholastic activities in government schools. Vidyanjali, which is being implemented under the overall aegis of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, will enhance the community involvement in Government run elementary schools and effectively engage children in reading, creative writing, public speaking,  play acting, preparing story books etc..

The Indian Diaspora in Indonesia was also connected to the live proceedings through the Indian embassy at Jakarta and they shared their heartfelt appreciation for the initiative with the Hon’ble Minister, along with their views and suggestions.

Giving a nod to their ideas, Hon’ble Minister assured to widen the scope of Vidyanjali to include performing arts and life skills. She also urged the MyGov team to create a module under Vidyanjali wherein NRI community or others, who want to contribute by providing additional teaching-learning aids like books etc. and other resources, can do so in conjunction with state and district administration.

The volunteers can register for free by visiting the MyGov.in or though the mobile app, which has been developed by MyGov and were launched today.  The programme is unique in that it gives the freedom to the volunteers to design their activities in consultation with the school.

The programme will be open for participation by all Indian citizens including retired Professionals, retired government officials, working professionals and homemakers; and also persons from the Indian Diaspora.

The programme will be piloted across 21 States which committed to do so in the conference of State Ministers of Education held on 8th February, 2016.  These States are Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Telengana, Tripura, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

Many of the eminent personalities extended their support to the initiative and encourage people to participate in the programme. Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh; Smt. Vasundhara Raje, Chief Minister, Rajasthan, Shri Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister, Maharashtra; Shri Raman Singh, Chief Minister, Chhattisgarh; Shri Kedar Kashyap, Minister for Education, Chhattisgarh; Shri Kalikho Pul, Chief Minister, Arunachal Pradesh; Shri Kiren Rijiju, MoS, Ministry of Home Affairs; Col. Rajyavardhan Rathore, MoS, I&B; Smt. Mehbooba Mufti, CM, Jammu & Kashmir; Shri Babul Supriyo, MoS, MoUD; Dr. Kiran Bedi, Lieutenant Governor, Puducherry; Shri. R. Kamalakannan, Minister for Education, Puducherry; Smt. Twinkle Khanna, Shri Anil Kumble, Shri Ruskin Bond, Smt. Moloya Goswami, Actress, Shri Bhaichung Bhutia, Sports Person; General Dalbir Singh, Chief of Army Staff; Shri Ramesh Aravind, Film Personality, they all volunteered in schools in their respective states and conducted a live reading session, co-scholastic activities there by reaching out to school children and encouraging volunteers to participate.

Dignitaries present on the launch were Prof. (Dr.) Ram Shankar Katheria, Hon’ble Minister of State, Ministry of Human Resource Development; Dr. Subash Chandra Khuntia Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy; Ms. Henriette Ahrens, UNICEF Deputy representative for Programmes; Mr. Onno Ruhl Country Director, World Bank; Dr. Daljit Singh Cheema, Minister for Education, Punjab; Shri Naeem Akhtar, Minister for Education, J&K; and Smt. Rina Ray Additional Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy.

Source | www.pib.nic.in

The ethics of automation

The ethics of automation

We’d do far better to establish an ethical framework within which they must operate, than force driverless cars to comply with human laws 

All of a sudden, so many of our appliances—televisions, coffee machines, bathroom scales, light bulbs—have grown smart and integrated themselves into an enormous hive-mind that miraculously keeps us fit, our home temperatures controlled and our lives organised. It seems we are on the threshold of a new age, but even at this early stage, the enormous strains that this fundamental technological shift will place on the world, are already becoming visible. We are struggling to deal with the vast amounts of data that our personal devices collect and its impact on privacy. If you layer on top of that, artificial intelligence and machines that are empowered to make our choices for us, the real impact increases exponentially.

Nowhere is this autonomy more evident than in the automobile industry. Google Cars have been driving themselves around the Bay Area for years now and even though they have been generally incident-free, stray accidents have caused disproportionate anxiety. Wired magazine featured a story last year, in which two engineers remotely gained access to a Jeep driving on the highway and shut the engine down by hacking into its telemetry—a scary demonstration of the additional risks that a connected future could offer. But it wasn’t until Tesla released an over-the-air update that miraculously allowed its cars to automagically park themselves, that the reality of connected driverless cars really sank in.

Conventional wisdom says we should regulate autonomous cars by seeing to it that they are capable of complying with existing laws—ensuring that they are intelligent enough to abide by traffic regulations and can stick to the speed limit. This approach, in my opinion, is flawed. Our motor vehicles laws were designed to guard against human failure—essentially, to protect us from ourselves. Laws against drunk-driving, using cellphones and over-speeding exist solely to see to it that when we take control of a powerful metal capsule capable of travelling at insane speeds, we don’t end up killing ourselves. To regulate intelligent, networked cars that are perfectly aware of each other’s location, speed and direction under the same, essentially human framework is pointless.

Instead of making autonomous cars behave more like us, what we should really be concerned about is how these cars are programmed to make decisions. Whenever I think of tough choices, I am reminded of Phillipa Foot’s ethics conundrum: the Trolley Problem. It describes a situation in which a tramcar is rolling downhill towards five people, tied to the tracks, unable to move and staring at certain death. You can choose to switch the trolley to a siding but if you do so it will run over an innocent by-stander. What do you do?

One approach would be do what causes the least harm—switching the trolley to the siding would kill one person instead of five. But would your decision be any different if there was a child on the siding—and if so, how many adult lives is one child’s worth? Isn’t there a moral difference between allowing people to die by your inaction compared to wilfully switching tracks to cause the death of a human being?

Autonomous cars will be faced with decisions like these every day. And while a fallible human at the switching yard can assuage his guilt by convincing himself that he only had a split second to decide, autonomous cars will decide based on pre-meditated risk-balancing programs, consciously designed by their manufacturers. I wonder whether these moral choices should be left to corporate whim. If we don’t intervene, our cars may end up being programmed to protect their passengers at all costs—even at the cost of the lives of innocent bystanders.

It is here I believe legislators need to focus their efforts. Cars of the future will take smarter decisions and will be able to based them on inputs from millions of sensors—in their chassis, from the roads they drive on and the vehicles they interact with. They will have the benefit of machine-to-machine communication, AI and big data algorithms that will allow them to simulate millions of potential outcomes in the time they need to take appropriate action. But even with that kind of assistance, their choices will only be as sound as the programmatic basis on which they are taken.

Car manufacturers are already making these choices for us and will continue to build programming into their vehicles. We’d do far better to establish an ethical framework within which they must operate, than force autonomous cars to comply with human laws. 

If it were left to me, I’d take the responsibility of regulating autonomous cars away from the Motor Vehicles Authority and hand it off to the Ministry of Robotics.

Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 16 June 2016

How Social Media Is Changing The Way We Access News: Study

How Social Media Is Changing The Way We Access News: Study

Social media has emerged as a leading source of news among online users who increasingly access it on their smartphones, a think tank said yesterday, warning that the embrace of free news was becoming a challenge for publishers of quality news.

More than half of online users get their news from Facebook and other social media platforms, refusing to pay for news and using ad-blocking, which hurts publishers' revenue, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) said. But although free news distributed through social platforms creates an opportunity to reach more readers, it also makes it more difficult for publishers to get recognised and connect with their audience, the RISJ said in its annual Digital News Report. 

Download the Report Source | http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital-News-Report-2016.pdf

Online vs hybrid: The big divide in education start-ups

Online vs hybrid: The big divide in education start-ups
Experts believe that in India, some amount of offline presence may be crucial for real growth in the long run

Bengaluru: Some of the online education providers that have quickly scaled up operations through videos, online tests and chat forums are beginning to realize the benefits of mentoring and collaborative learning, usually associated with classroom learning.

US-based Udacity Inc., one of the best-known education start-ups which provided only online classes so far recently launched Udacity Connect, a program where learners could interact with each others as well as with teachers. In a blog post, the company claimed learners in such a model were three times as likely to complete their program.

Udacity is yet to introduce the program in India, which has both online-only education providers—the preferred solution since it is easier to scale up—and hybrid learning providers who offer a mix of online learning and offline sessions. The latter limits scale and is more difficult to implement.

In India, test preparation platform Toppr (owned by Haygot Education Pvt. Ltd) which has raised $10 million and professional certification-oriented Simplilearn Solutions Pvt. Ltd which has raised $28 million follow the online-only model. Others such as test preparation platform Byju’s (Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd) which has raised $75 million, and tutoring start-up Vidya Next (run by Pengala Learning Pvt. Ltd) offer hybrid education.

Udacity plans to launch a program similar to Udacity Connect in India—one of its key markets—to increase participation and completion rates.

“We don’t want to exactly replicate Connect in India, because the problems here are different. We are launching a pilot called co-learn which is like a support group where learners can come together. This is to boost social learning and to get more people enrolled in Udacity, while Connect is to accelerate course completion,” said Vardhan Koshal, country manager India, Udacity.

The co-learn pilot has been launched in Bengaluru already and will be launched in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai in the next four months, Koshal said.
No one disputes the benefits of online education, but the jury is out on whether that alone will suffice.

Start-ups such as UpGrad (U Education Management Pvt. Ltd) and Unacademy (Sorting Hat Technologies Pvt. Ltd) are trying to bridge the gap by bringing social-learning and gamification elements to their online courses, hoping this would urge more learners to complete the courses.

“I believe online learning will completely replace offline. Offline learning can bring motivation, but the same can be replicated online, with personalised recommendations and so on,” said Gaurav Munjal, chief executive officer, Unacademy.

This strategy, however, was earlier used by Udacity, which recognized the benefits of personal networks.

“There will always be exceptions where people can learn completely online, and it is possible where you have to learn superficially, to let’s say, pass a test. But when it comes to in-depth learning where you have to assimilate and apply concepts, you need external support. It’s when the courses are hard that people drop out, and it is in cases like this that learning support and mentorship really helps,” said Mohan Lakhamraju, chief executive officer, Great Learning, a hybrid education platform that offers MBA.

Experts believe that in India, some amount of offline presence may be crucial for real growth in the long run.

“What we are seeing, especially with Byju’s, is that digital consumption is increasingly sharply—people are paying money and consuming through their tablet or smartphones. But you may need to have some offline presence so that your brand credibility is also established, parallelly,” said Vinod Murali, managing director at InnoVen Capital India, which has given venture debt to education start-ups Toppr and Embibe.

“For scale, for consistency, for the predictability around the brand, it needs to be more online, but for a little bit of padding around the sides, offline will help, especially in the early stages,” added Murali.

Another important factor to consider the benefits of having an offline presence is the localisation it will bring.

“Everyone learns very differently, and online learning will bring a higher availability of choice to individuals for them to learn according to their own patterns. In India, when a lot of learning happens through communication in local languages, a blended approach is more likely to be applicable than a pure online approach,” said Anand Sudarshan, founder of Sylvant Advisors, an education advisory firm which currently incubates 19 education start-ups.

Source | Mint – The Wall Street Journal | 15 June 2016

How to Preserve Cultural Memory in the Digital Age

How to Preserve Cultural Memory in the Digital Age
Humans are a fortunate species. We are not the strongest or fastest. We don’t have the biggest brains or live the longest. Yet we are dominant over the planet. From cuneiform to computer chip, our memory technologies give us a unique survival advantage: knowledge. But that knowledge is not secure in the digital age.

We’re moving from an information economy of relative scarcity to one of abundance. And we have yet to build an infrastructure that can manage titanic masses of data at scale. The high cost of publishing books and making films forced us to ask what we can afford to save. But anyone with an internet connection can write blogs and post home movies to YouTube. Now we must decide what we can afford to lose.

Awash in so much data, it is hard to know which have long-term value and which we can ignore. Unfortunately, we must decide to save or lose in real time, because data are ephemeral — the average webpage lasts about 100 days. Five-thousand-year-old cuneiforms can still be read with the naked eye and a command of ancient Semitic languages. But the data on our smartphones? Only machines write code, and only machines read code. Instead of managing knowledge by managing physical objects, we need to master machines, code and power supplies.

Link for Full Access | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/abby-smith-rumsey/culture-memory-digital_b_10357622.html

DEVICE Desi tablet to popularise Mahatma’s books

DEVICE Desi tablet to popularise Mahatma’s books

To popularise books on Mahatma Gandhi and cater to the ever- changing reading habits, a city- based trust has decided to come up with their own tablet, lending people the facility to read Gujarati and Hindi e- books published by them on the Father of the Nation.

Kindle- like e- book tablet, which the Navjivan Trust is planning to bring, will have 170 books mostly on Mahatma Gandhi allowing people to read those in Hindi and Gujarati.

This announcement was made by the managing trustee of Navjivan Trust Vivek Desai here today while launching 10 different editions, including 4 e- book versions, of Hind Swaraj, a book written by Gandhiji in 1909.

Till now, the trust, established in 1919 by Gandhiji himself, has sold around 10,500 online versions of around 170 of their books, converted into ebooks, which according to Desai, is the key motivating factor for the trust to venture into the territory of an exclusive tablet parallel to online conglomerate Amazon’s “Kindle” e- book reader.

“During last two years, around 10,500 e- books of 170 different titles published by them, mostly on Gandhiji, have been sold in the online market. Our English version ebooks are sold on Amazon, while Gujarati e- books are sold through “e- Shabda” portal” said Desai.

“We are seeing a paradigm shift in people’s reading habits, as a small tablet allows people to carry hundreds of books in it. Thus, we have decided to come up with our own tablet, like Amazon’s Kindle, so that more people can read Navjivan publications, mostly on Gandhiji, through our tablet,” said Desai.

Source | Business Line | 15 June 2016

Indian teens addicted to laptops, Facebook and Whatsapp: report

Indian teens addicted to laptops, Facebook and Whatsapp: report
A recent survey by TCS has pointed out that teens in India still prefer laptops and PCs over smartphones.

India is riding on the digital wave of innovation and teenagers top the list when it comes to social networks and gadgets, according to a recent report.

In the past, there have been numerous reports which indicate that teens have a much higher social presence than among all other age groups.

A recent survey by TCS has pointed out that teens in India still prefer laptops and PCs over smartphones for browsing, despite the rising popularity of mobile devices. The survey was mainly targeted students from 8th to 12th standard.

”Technology has transformed young India. The gadgets considered as luxuries earlier have swiftly become necessities making an impact on both their student and personal lives. The survey was undertaken to get a pulse of the digital habits of school students from class 8-12,” the Survey said.

The GenZ Survey revealed that desktops, home PCs and laptops are the most popular methods of accessing the internet (44 per cent), which is just one per cent more than the smartphone count.

Moving on, approximately 26 per cent respondents said they spend at least an hour everyday online, while 27 per cent said they respond to notifications within 5 minutes of receiving them.

Social media frenzy

Facebook leads the forefront in terms of usage (86 percent) followed by Google+ (65 percent). The survey found that boys are more active online and on social networking sites as compared to the girls. Another 49 percent said their online activities are monitored by parents and 48 percent respondents said their parents have access to their online accounts.
The teenagers are also moving away from organised learning environment, towards the online learning space indicating the popularity that do-it-yourself (DIY) and collaborative learning is gaining. About 21 per cent respondents said they used video chat to learn a new hobby, followed by school assignments (20.5 per cent) and educational tutorials (15 per cent).

Not surprisingly, WhatsApp was rated as the most popular instant messaging platform (71 per cent), distantly followed by SMS (12 per cent).

However, face to face communication is still the most preferred way of communication with friends (40 per cent) as compared to phone calls and social media, the survey pointed.
A majority of the teenagers (87 per cent) said they shop online with electronic gadgets (57 per cent) being the most popular buy, followed by books (50 per cent) and clothes (37 per cent).

For their dose of news, Gen Z prefers TV and newspapers (79 per cent) followed by links from friends/family on Facebook (38 per cent) and online sources (34 per cent).

Source | http://www.deccanchronicle.com/

How To Restore Deleted Files On Any Device

How To Restore Deleted Files On Any Device

Few tech disasters can send your stomach into free fall quite like realizing you've deleted something important from your laptop or phone, with no obvious way to bring it back. Luckily, if you find yourself scrambling to restore your deleted files, there's still hope. Free tools and apps are widely available to help you recover your deleted data no matter what platform you're using. Here's what you need to know.

On most modern forms of storage, deleting a file doesn't actually delete it-it usually just tells the operating system in charge that the space the file is using is free for other data. If you can get in quickly enough, it's possible to bring your file back from its digital grave before something else has rushed in to take its place, so speed is of the essence.

Full Article Access | http://www.gizmodo.in/software/How-To-Restore-Deleted-Files-On-Any-Device/articleshow/52735880.cms

Digital library: This Paris store prints books on demand in 5 min

Digital library: This Paris store prints books on demand in 5 min

authier Charrier, a student, stepped inside one of Paris's newest bookstores and wondered, “Where are all the books?“ “I saw this empty , open space -just a couple of stools -and I wondered, `Did someone mess up?'“ Charrier said.

None messed up.

The pronounced stock shortage inside the Librairie des Puf, run by the publisher University Press of France, or Les Puf for short, is not the result of an ordering mistake, but the heart of the shop's business model. There are books, but they are not delivered in advance from wholesalers. They are printed on request, before the customer's very eyes, on an Espresso Book Machine. On Demand Books, the company that manufactures the machine, chose the name as a nod to an activity you can complete in the five minutes it takes to print a book: Have a quick coffee.

Labelled, not so modestly , the “Gutenberg press of the 21st century“ by its creators, the machine sits in a back corner of the shop, humming as it turns PDFs into paperbacks. Customers use tablets to select the titles for print -adding, if they want to, their own handwritten inscriptions -while sipping coffee in the light and airy storefront in the Latin Quarter of Paris. “The customers are all surprised,“ said the shop's director, Alexandre Gaudefroy . “At first, they're a little uncomfortable with the tablets. After all, you come to a bookshop to look at books. But thanks to the machine and the tablets, the customer holds a digital library in their hands.“

Gaudefroy said, “I don't have to worry about space for the stock and I can offer readers as many titles as I want.“ And that is a lot of titles. All 5,000 books published by Les Puf are available, as well as an additional three million books compiled by On Demand Books, including titles from 10 large American publishers and the public domain.

Les Puf 's prestige in the industry has helped it secure even more titles. “What's really exciting is that, thanks to the on-demand model, we can revive old titles, which we previously hadn't bothered with because they'd only sell five or 10 copies in a year,“ Mr. Gaudefroy said.“On-demand, it's a new economy for us.“

Source | Times of India | 14 June 2016

Choosing your backup hardware

Choosing your backup hardware
Over the years, we’ve repeatedly exhorted you to back up your precious files, photos, videos and music. We’ve talked about built-in operating-system-level backup sol¬utions, about third-party software, and also other tips and tricks on making backup for a hassle-free experience. But the one thing we’ve hardly touched upon is backup hard¬ware.

So, let’s get down to it: where should you back up your data? Are CDs and DVDs passé? Should you have a cloud backup?

CDs/DVDs

Time was when optical disks were all the rage. But they don’t excite us so much anymore. The¬re are many reasons for this. First, these days not all computers have a built-in optical drive anyway. Second, CDs and DVDs don’t provide a huge amount of space. A CD-R/RW holds 700 MB of data, which is ridiculously low by today’s standards. Of course, an RW (rewritable) CD/DVD can be reused. A single-layer DVD-R/RW has 4.7 GB of space, while a dual layer has 8.5 GB. Double-sided DVDs can store 9.4 GB and 17 GB respectively.

Finally, optical disks can be notoriously unreliable. While under ‘ideal conditions’ data on disks are supposed to last up to 10 years, this means keeping it away from heat, humidity and dust/dirt. Contact with oxygen deteriorates the material on which the material is recorded, while dust and dirt result in scratches. Also, cheap, low-quality optical disks will have shorter life spans.

However, CDs and DVDs are still accessible and cheap, and a reasonable solution for anyone who has a clean, dry, cool space to store them in.

External hard disks

When it comes to the sheer amount of space it offers, you can’t top an external hard disk (HD). You can get them in sizes of 120 GB upwards, though these days 1 TB is a good size to start with given the amount of data we are hoarding. External HDs with capacities as high as 6 TB are also available. A 1 TB drive could cost Rs 4,000 upwards. External disks can be wired or wireless—though the latter cost more, of course. The drawback to external HDs is that they are susceptible to shocks and physical damage. If you accidently drop it, get ready to say bye-bye to your data. Hard drives do also crash occasionally and since they are made of mechanical moving parts, they will wear out eventually, say in about three to five years.

Pen drives and memory cards

Pen drives and memory cards are more reliable than hard drives in the sense they use flash storage that doesn’t contain moving parts which means they can be knocked about to some extent. They are also highly portable. However, having a limited number of write/erase cycles (usually 3,000 to 5,000) can make them restrictive for long-term backup. Flash storage also comes in a variety of capacities, up to 256 GB. Bear in mind that they are much more expensive per-GB than external HDs—a 128 GB flash drive can cost almost as much as a 1 TB external HD.

The cloud

Keeping your files on the cloud means that someone else has to worry about the hardware. There are plenty of options, Dropbox, OneDrive and Mega to name a few. Free space can be limited (Dropbox gives 2 GB, OneDrive 5 GB and Mega a whopping 50 GB) and you will have to cough up to buy serious cloud space.

So what’s the solution?

There really isn’t any 100 per cent reliable way to keep data safe. The trick is to build redundancy into a backup plan. So, instead of relying on a single type of backup hardware, make sure you have backups of your backup, especially for important files.

Source | Financial Chronicle | 14 June 2016

Coming, IIT coaching right at your doorstep

Coming, IIT coaching right at your doorstep
Govt. plans to make lectures available via direct-to-home channel, study material will be put up on internet
The government is set to take coaching material and lectures for preparation for admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) straight to the aspirants’ doorstep as part of an initiative called ‘IIT Pal’.

The scheme is likely to be rolled out by October, and is aimed at offering a fair chance to students who cannot afford coaching to crack the IIT entrance test. The initiative will run round the year and is likely to benefit students planning to appear for the examination in 2017.

The material will be available free of cost. Lectures can be accessed on a free channel via direct-to-home (DTH) television and massive open online courses (MOOCs) will provide study material on internet without a charge.

“Our aim is to provide high-quality instruction at no cost using MOOCs and DTH. The material will be prepared by the best possible resource persons,” a senior official at the Ministry of Human Resource Development told The Hindu . The material will not just comprise subject-wise compendiums but also have exercises and mock tests.

One challenge before the Ministry is to roll out the initiative in as many languages as possible, though this would require multi-lingual lectures and study material. “We are working out the modalities and are aware that many students who do not take coaching for IITs have regional languages as medium of instruction,” the official said.

The mushrooming of coaching institutes has become a matter of concern. Coaching is seen as necessary for clearing the test, known for its tough competition. The government is of the view that this makes it difficult for students not undertaking coaching to have a fair chance and such aspirants need a helping hand.

Source | The Hindu | 13 June 2016

Green reading

Green reading
That chunk of paper you’re curling up with was once a part of a very happy tree in a very happy forest. Here are some alternatives.
There’s nothing better than curling up with a good book on a rainy day (if the monsoons will ever deign to arrive). However, that creature comfort comes at a cost. Not to us, but to the environment. That chunk of paper you’re curling up with was once a part of a very happy tree in a very happy forest. With so much of green cover disappearing, we have to perhaps think of taking our books into the digital age.

One may argue that there is something amazing about feeling the rich grain of paper under your fingers. Plus, there’s nothing like a good collection of books attached to all your fond memories; possibly some with notes in them, some gifted by relatives and friends. Not to mention, constantly staring at a screen with a backlight is not good for the eyes.

Our pitch

Now, what if we told you that there is way you can bake your cake and eat it too? Going digital does not mean you have to give up on books. Just get the books that matter to you. Rather than having the nth pulp fiction paperback lying around to attract moths, you can purchase those in digital.

Reading on smartphones and tablets, we agree, can be a bit tiring on the eyes. However, there are apps that offset that. If you own an Apple device, like an iPhone or iPad, you can turn on Night Shift mode, which engages a soothing yellow cast. And most e-readers have night modes that you can switch to, to conserve battery.

For those voracious readers who love the feel of paper, there are devices made on special Electronic Ink (e-Ink) displays, like the Kindle Paperwhite, which feels and reads a lot like paper. It’s perfect for devouring your books under any light and it gives you the feel of paper. Plus, no more turning pages, or finding the paragraph you left off at.

iPads, phones, and Android tablets with high-density coloured screens aren’t only useful for reading books.

You can also subscribe to all your magazines for much less than their news-stand prices. With that, you get never-aging digital copies, plus you can bookmark your favourite home makeover ideas, scrapbook them, save recipes to Evernote or your gallery, and sync them to your phone, so that while shopping you can have that information readily available. E-books are also weightless, which means you can carry an entire library without any extra baggage or storage space at home. You can read anywhere, annotate, save quotes, and actively scrapbook from all your favourite magazines.

Going digital also means getting your copy of an international book on launch day without waiting for delivery. The cherry on top of this digital cake is that e-books cost a fraction of the cover price. The biggest cost is the tablet, but considering good tablets start at about Rs. 6,000, including the low-end Kindle, it is a worthy buy. Or you can read it on your smartphone screen or listen to an audiobook.

Let us look at apps that help you go digital faster

Apple ecosystem

Everything is readily available on the Apple App store, the biggest collection of books on the iBooks store, major magazine publishers on Apple Newstand, and also latest Indian and international releases.

The Google ecosystem

Google also has its Play store, which has an equally massive collection of books, movies, magazines, apps, games and more. Buy once, and you can read on all the devices associated with your Google account. The prices are fantastic and you get several national and international releases.

Zinio and Magster

These are the biggest apps for magazine aficionados. You can subscribe from a massive selection with the biggest brands and access both Indian and international editions. Zinio is superior, with a better user interface and design. Its offline sync mode allows you to read even while you’re travelling in a low network area. Magster looks a bit dated, but has a larger collection of magazines. Both have the ability to share and save clippings.

Issuu

The app has a large collection of popular and independent magazines, including digital-only publications. Its interface is fantastic and is perfect if you want to publish your own magazine. And a lot of magazines are free.

Evernote

Though not a reading app, Evernote is the perfect tool if you want to save snippets from magazines and books and share and access them across devices. So you can just access your Evernote app rather than search through reams of paper for a piece.

Amazon Kindle App

The e-commerce giant’s heart has always been in books and now it has one of the largest book collections out there. It’s best experienced on Kindle devices, but you can download the app on your smartphone and enjoy one of the biggest book stores out there.

Audible

Audiobooks have come a long way, and Audible has the biggest collection. They are a bit more expensive and heavier (in file size terms) than e-books, but are read out by seasoned actors, who do an excellent job.

ComixOlogy, Marvel, DC

ComixOlogy is an Amazon comic store with a massive selection of comics and graphic novels. You can use Marvel’s or DC’s comic stores to read the latest issues. Reading comics on your phone may be a bit of a chore, which is why we recommend a nice large tablet — over seven inches — to be able to truly enjoy the art in each panel.

Other apps

You don’t need to be stuck to your platform’s ecosystem; you can be free to chose whatever apps you get the best prices and collection from. There’s Nook, Aldiko, Kobo Books, Marvin and Scribd with amazing user interfaces and cool reading features.

Also, in this new digital age, a lot of writers choose to give away their books for free, or sell them on their own sites, or on self-publishing and independent sites. If you get any of these formats, you can read them in apps like Moon+ Reader, NeoSoar, KyBook or Universal Book reader.

We urge you, though, to buy and support the artists and writers, and not pirate, so that they can eat and write more great books.

Happy reading, folks!
The author is a freelance writer

Source | The Hindu | 11 June 2016

Will it soon be a full stop for the full stop?

Will it soon be a full stop for the full stop?
Is punctuation in the Internet age (or the lack of it) killing the usage of the full stop?

In the texting age, the full stop can also mean ‘I have more to say’.

It was drilled into our heads in primary school that a full stop should be applied after each sentence. This was mainly done as a marker of differentiation between two sentences to avoid confusion and aid understanding. It made sense back then as we wrote flowing prose. But now, with text messaging, we’ve all become used to staccato writing (rather typing).

All you now need to do is hit enter

It’s obvious it’s a separate sentence, because it appears below the preceding one, not next to it.

David Crystal – who has written more than 100 books on language and is a former master of original pronunciation at Shakespeare’s Globe theater in London – sees a clear downfall in the usage of the period/full stop/point. “We are at a momentous moment in the history of the full stop,” said professor Crystal, an honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales. “In an instant message, it is pretty obvious a sentence has come to an end and none will have a full stop,” he added “So why use it?”

n its own way, though, the full stop may be facing an upgrade. From just being a humble stop to a sentence, now it’s come to indicate a range of emotions and intentions – irony, syntactic snark, insincerity, even aggression.

A 2015 study way you punctuate your text messages reveals how sincere you are in communication. The researchers recruited 126 undergraduates, who read a series of exchanges that appeared either as text messages or as handwritten notes. In the 16 experimental exchanges, the sender’s message contained a statement followed by an invitation phrased as a question ( for example, Dave gave me his extra tickets. Wanna come?). The receiver’s response was an affirmative one-word response (Okay, Sure, Yeah, Yup). There were two versions of each experimental exchange: one in which the receiver’s response ended with a period and one in which it did not end with any punctuation. Based on the participants’ responses, text messages that ended with a period were rated as less sincere than text messages that did not end with a period.

Source | Indian Express | 13 June 2016

Reinventing the Web

Reinventing the Web

Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web as a way for scientists to find information. It has since become the world’s most powerful medium for knowledge, communications and commerce. “It’s been great,” he said, “but spying, blocking sites, repurposing people’s content, taking you to the wrong websites: that completely undermines the spirit of helping people create.”

On Tuesday, Berners-Lee and other top computer scientists — including Brewster Kahle, head of the Internet Archive and internet activist — gathered to discuss a new phase for the web.

The World Wide Web is often subject to control by governments and corporations. What might happen, the scientists posited, if they could harness newer technologies — like the software used for digital currencies, or the technology of peer-to-peer music sharing — to create a more decentralised web with more privacy, less government and corporate control, and a level of permanence and reliability?

The discussions, and the calibre of the people involved, underscored how the World Wide Web’s direction in recent years has stirred a deep anxiety among some technologists.

Berners-Lee, Kahle and others brainstormed at the event, called the Decentralised Web Summit, over new ways that web pages could be distributed, as well as ways of storing scientific data without having to pay storage fees to companies, and creating greater amounts of privacy and accountability.

“Edward Snowden showed we’ve inadvertently built the world’s largest surveillance network with the web,” said Kahle, whose group organized the conference. “Just a few big service providers are the de facto organisers of your experience. We have the ability to change all that.”

The scientists talked about how new technologies could increase individual control over money. For example, if people adapted the so-called ledger system by which digital currencies are used, a musician might potentially be able to sell records without intermediaries like Apple’s iTunes; news sites might be able to have a system of micropayments for reading a single article, instead of counting on web ads for money.

Berners-Lee said. “People assume today’s consumer has to make a deal with a marketing machine to get stuff for ‘free,’ even if they’re horrified by what happens with their data. Imagine a world where paying for things was easy on both sides.”

The movement to change how the web is built has an almost religious dimension.Still, not all the major players agree on whether the web needs decentralising.

“The web is already decentralised,” Berners-Lee said. “The problem is the dominance of one search engine, one big social network, one Twitter for microblogging. We don’t have a technology problem, we have a social problem.” — NYT

Source | The Hindu | 9 June 2016

What we need is digital disruption

What we need is digital disruption
The IoT will improve efficiencies, but it will also throw up organisational and leadership challenges in business

New waves of technologies are transforming the industrial, business and governance landscape. Sample how the Delhi government is engaging with citizens through its e-governance app. Everything from reporting on dirty streets to water meter readings is getting digitised.

On another vector, YES Bank recently invested significant marketing monies to have a presence at a Nasscom conference, where its key audience was the IT industry and CIOs: they are building a business to enable digital and mobile commerce and seeking to drive more, and deeper, relationships with technology houses to drive growth.

Even as companies embrace digital technologies, commonly referred to as SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud), leveraging them for business gains of various hues, the next generation of technologies is getting ready to roll. IDC has identified six key new technologies. Unlike SMAC, these six technologies, or innovation accelerators, are going to impact businesses’ operating processes and paradigms, driving deeper transformation.

New internet, virtual reality

Internet of Things (IOT) is the label given to a connected world where inanimate objects ‘talk’ to each other, exchanging information without human intervention, and triggering business processes.

For instance, a trucking company in Delhi has used IoT to track its vehicles while monitoring essential indicators such as speed, fuel consumption and the general health of the vehicle, using an integrated system of sensors which feed data into a mobile-network-connected device. This kind of application can save the company anywhere between 10-15 per cent of operating costs through reduced pilferage, prevention of unauthorised stops and preventive maintenance.

By 2020, we expect more than 30 billion devices to be connected on to one single “new” internet.

Augmented and virtual reality, the next accelerator, has already invaded the gaming ecosystem. However, if you are a healthcare provider, you’ll soon be using visors to virtually train key frontline medical staff. Or, if you happen to be the Army, virtual battlefields will enable safe and effective training of soldiers.

We also see applications in R&D, product development and in industries as disparate as interior design, retail and chemical manufacturing. For us consumers, expect it to completely transform the ecommerce experience soon as you buy from a virtual supermarket while wearing your visor and pay at the virtual self-service checkout. Technology vendors such as Samsung, Facebook and many others are racing to develop next generation devices which enrich our experiences.

3D printing, robots

This can feel gimmicky, with hobbyists “printing” out things made of plastic materials in their garages. However, this accelerator is already being used to produce artificial body parts where organ replacements are required. A leading brand is launching a custom-fit, 3D-printed shoe which is ‘manufactured’ in the store. 3D-printed prototypes are replacing clay models whilst enabling far more detail and accuracy in product development labs: and did I mention time savings to the tune of 60-70 per cent?

3D printing can, and will, revolutionise supply chains, inventory management practices, product development and R&D methods and healthcare. Watch out for the rise of hyper-local, micro-factories which democratise manufacturing, changing it forever.

Next generation robots come in two flavours: real and virtual. Physical robots can now execute tasks that are extremely intricate. Swiss firm ABB recently showcased a robot folding a paper aeroplane and launching it into the air, demonstrating the next level of robotic dexterity, programmatic sophistication and versatility.

Robots will replace humans in all kinds of repetitive or dangerous tasks: from factory shopfloors to uranium mines. The day is not far when hotel housekeeping and even engineering functions see robots playing a bigger role.

Security, thought systems

The final two innovation accelerators are not just important in themselves but also have a pervasive impact on the four above, and on a much wider ecosystem.

The tragedy of the digital age is the increasing incidences of cyber-crime — from individuals suffering phishing attacks and stolen passwords to large organisations losing confidential customer data. We are in a perpetual battle with cyber-criminals, rogue countries and malevolent employees seeking to hack, steal and sell.

Next-generation security will blend the physical and digital. CCTV cameras with face recognition technology built in ensure that if a bad actor enters the premises, the cameras can instantly trigger alarms and activate relevant business processes.

On another front, projects are on to make passwords redundant. Using a combination of biometrics and behaviour tracking, new age security systems will identify you with more certainty. The paradigm of security is also being extended to protect new age robots, IoT networks and virtual reality systems. Success is an imperative: failure will halt the onset of the digital age in its tracks.

No doubt, cognitive systems will be the most pervasive accelerator going forward. The fundamental notion is that machines can self-learn, improve and deliver superior outcomes over a period of time. This is possible due to breakthrough technologies manifested in machine learning systems, artificial intelligence platforms and big data systems. The possibilities in smart traffic management in cities are also phenomenal with cognitive systems which learn from historical traffic patterns and can, for example, automatically change the rhythm of traffic lights, or indeed dynamically set parking charges.

As a CEO, it is imperative that you understand implications of these emerging technologies: figuring out how they work could be left to someone else, but understanding what they can do is of critical importance to you.

Given the breakneck speed of evolution, coupled with the worsening skills shortages, it is not an easy or predictable ride. The promise of transformation can only be realised with visible, sustained leadership from the top, a culture that pardons innovation failures, the ability to stretch your business model and a discrete innovation investment fund.

Source | Business Line | 9 June 2016

Supreme Court's search engine: A 22-strong force of men and women in grey

Supreme Court's search engine: A 22-strong force of men and women in grey
They use speed and expert knowledge to provide legal references to judges amid the bustle of the court
On Mondays and Fridays, amidst the bustle and whirl of the Supreme Court’s narrow corridors, a row of men and women in grey safari suits and saris weave their way efficiently through the crowds, carrying piles of heavy tomes.

Like light-footed spirits, they delicately negotiate the swirling mass of lawyers, litigants, security personnel, clerks and reporters. As they pass through the winding corridors of the court, the single file of grey breaks up and reassembles, as one of them ducks into a courtroom. The courtrooms are often packed and claustrophobic, but this does not deter these men and women who expertly push their way to the front where the judges’ staff wait anxiously for the knowledge they bring.

Once the court staff get hold of the heavy volumes containing cases or judicial precedents — delivered by the Supreme Court for over 60 years — they hand them over to the judges in perfect timing, as lawyers refer to a precedent, which may mean life or death for the litigant. On Mondays and Fridays, when fresh cases come up for hearing in the highest court, this group of 22 is called upon to perform its extraordinary task in one of Asia’s largest law libraries — the Judges’ Library — situated in the recesses of the Supreme Court building.

Of the 22, five are professional librarians from the legislative arm of the library, recruited by the Supreme Court. The other 17 include clerks, attendants and peons, handpicked for their vast experience gained through years of serving in courtrooms and in the judges’ residential libraries. Their specialised services, accuracy and knowledge of every book and its location in the library, which boasts of over 3,50,000 law books and law reports, is vital to the smooth working of the process. These men and women are fondly called the “dancing librarians” of the Supreme Court.

Former Chief Justice of India and current National Human Rights Commission Chairperson, Justice H.L. Dattu, after his retirement in December 2015, told The Hindu about the dedication and accuracy of the staff in the judges’ library.

The dancing librarians are “extraordinary,” he says, in the cause of justice delivery.

Making the judges’ library state-of-art was one of my pet projects. [When] I talked to the staff, some of them complained of feeling stagnant in their jobs. I sent some staff to the best libraries in India, gave promotions, incentives. On the day I was retiring, the first place I went to say goodbye was the library. I thanked them for their dedication, for being quick on their feet. They thanked me for giving them a free hand,” Justice Dattu recalled.

On their toes

“For three to four hours on Mondays and Fridays, they are on their toes as telephonic requests for law books and citations of cases are passed on from courtrooms,” a Supreme Court source said.

Speed is of the essence and as soon as a request is received from a courtroom, the librarians dive into the corners of the three-tiered library. The requested volume is located in seconds and what follows is a relay as it is thrown from one pair of waiting hands to the next; the relevant pages are flagged, marked and the reference then starts its journey from the library, through the corridors, to the court.

A recent Doordarshan documentary on the Supreme Court titled Truth Alone I Uphold , records for posterity the contributions of the Judges’ Library staff. It depicts the library as the backbone of the justice delivery system in the apex court, which is based on the ‘Doctrine of Precedent’.

“At least 800 to 900 books are issued daily.” The computerised library also caters to the judges’ residential libraries and hosts 22 legal databases. Parliamentary debates, foreign journals and every written law of the land — Acts, Manuals, Rules, by-laws, notifications, Gazettes of Centre, States and Union Territories — are in the library of India’s highest judiciary.

Source | The Hindu | 9 June 2016

The Changing face of the Indian Slum

The Changing face of the Indian Slum
Gyan Azhar’s diligent pupils
Girl students who cannot afford books take refuge in this library to pursue studies
This report is the tenth of a 12-part series on the changing face of the Indian slum, chronicling stories of new social and economic trends in our impoverished neighbourhoods.
Inside a library in a modest building, Shabnam, 16, sits engrossed in a mathematics book. Every time she pays a visit, the library, only for girls, fills her with hope for a future as a teacher.

Three years ago, Shabnam quit studies as her father fell ill and the family could not afford school. She turned to the Gyan Azhar Library for help, as many girls in the Tiljala slum do, to pursue studies. Now Shabnam is back in school and is planning to take her exams next year to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher.

As names go, the locality has many meaningful ones. If the slum takes its name after sesame, grown and cultivated here many years ago, Gyan Azhar means “expression of knowledge”.

The library had a modest beginning in 2008 with just two members. “Now we have more than 660 members and close to 1,000 textbooks,” says Mohammed Shafkat Alam, joint secretary of Tiljala Shed, the non-governmental organisation which founded the library.

“I had lost all hopes of becoming a teacher after my father died of acute diabetes. It was not possible for my mother to bear the cost of my education with her meagre income from making wallets,” Shabnam says.

Before resuming studies, she had nothing to do but sit at home and help her mother with household work. Lacking the know-how of making wallets, she was of no help to her mother in her job.

“I just wasted my time sitting at home,” she says.

The library but spelt hope, where she stepped inside first in December 2015 and keeps coming back.

On the Net

The six computers with Internet connection and CDs of documentaries are an added attraction. The Italian Association for Women in Development, a women’s rights organisation, has sponsored the library. Corporate entities, individuals and shops donate books.

“Most of the textbooks are in Bengali, Hindi and Urdu as the slum has a large number of Hindi and Urdu speakers,” Mr. Alam says. The slum is home to more than 30,000 families, a majority of whom are Muslims, living in shanties.

“It is impossible to study at home with the entire family in one room and the television on at a high volume most of the time,” Madhu Shau, 15, says. After failing twice in the secondary examination, her father, a hawker, told her to quit school. But he relented after she told him that he would not have to pay for books as she would borrow them from the library.

Now that odds are not stacked against her, Madhu is looking forward to realising her dream of becoming a nurse. “My father died because we had no money for good treatment,” she says before getting back to her history books. The girls spend five to six hours in the library and do much of their studies there considering the condition at home.

The slum has three primary schools and one high school. “Hindi- and Urdu-speaking students here face considerable problems as there are no Hindi- and Urdu-medium high schools in the locality,” Mohammed Alamgir, activist and founder of Tiljala Shed, says.

Most of the residents are domestic workers, vegetable vendors and workers at leather factories. With low-income jobs that fetch as little as Rs. 200 a day, it is difficult for them to bear the cost of their children’s education. People say that because of the library, children are returning to schools. “After the library was set up, enrolment of girls in schools has increased significantly in the area,” Mr. Alamgir says.

Plan for school

The Tiljala Shed officials are planning to turn the library into a full-fledged school with academic and extra-curricular facilities, but funds are a constraint.

The railway line leading to the nearby Park Circus railway station and bisecting the slum is a looming threat. It is the main pathway for pedestrians, and accidents causing swift deaths are a frequent occurrence.

In the shanties that shake when trains rumble through, the library offers a semblance of stability and hope.

Source | Business Line | 8 June 2016

Digital Learning: The future of education

Digital Learning: The future of education

The future education seems destined for digital revolutionary methods of imparting a great deal of knowledge to the learners. The course of education will be enshrined digitally. The sense of digital learning pervades globally and reaches the pinnacle of success in the time to come. No country or an educational institution can keep away itself from the benefits bestowed by digital learning. Digital Learning is everything in future. It includes e-Learning,

Blended Learning, Online Learning, etc. It also includes “offline digital learning” for example a software, screening audio visual files, scanners, digital cameras etc. used locally i.e. on campus or off the campus.

Digital Learning was at conception stage and obscure a decade ago. The idea of digital learning may seem unacceptable to conventional thinkers, but is highly expedient either to replace or complement the conventional classroom education due to its far reaching benefits.

With the spread of internet and its download speed, today, some way or the other online training is prevalent in schools and colleges.

Full Text Available | http://www.caclubindia.com/articles/digital-learning-the-future-of-education-27032.asp?utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=article&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_hg2_24_2016

Which browser is right for you!!!

Which browser is right for you!!!

With so many free browsers, the choice is difficult. What makes Chrome better than Firefox? Which one will best protect your privacy? What's this new "browser for power users" that everyone is talking about? Mihir Patkar takes a look at the gateways to the internet to help you figure out...

GOOGLE CHROME

According to Browser Stats, which tracks browser usage worldwide, Chrome is now used on over 50% of computers. And there's good reason for that.

In almost every test for browser speed, Chrome comes out on top. It has the fastest Javascript and HTML5 performance, which are two of the most common web languages. Chrome also has a vast array of extensions available. Plus, Google regularly updates the browser with security patches and new features.

On the down side, Chrome hasn't yet gained the trust of enterprises in India. So you might find that your office's IT department does not allow you to use it.

From a regular user's perspective, Chrome's biggest flaw is how resourcehungry it is. The browser hogs processing power and RAM, often slowing the whole system down to a crawl. On laptops, it also guzzles battery faster than other browsers.Available for | Windows, Mac, Linux Best for | Those who want speed, the convenience that comes from add-ons, and support for the latest web apps and extensions.

IE & EDGE

With the launch of Win dows 10, Microsoft introduced a new browser called Edge. Microsoft says Internet Explorer (IE) is the legacy browser of the past, while Edge is built for the next 20 years.

Several Indian corporate and government web sites support only IE, and it also enjoys the trust of system administrators.However, it has almost no extensions and uses outdated tech like ActiveX which has major vulnerabilities.

There is really no reason to use IE now, apart from browsing those exclusive sites.Thankfully , Windows 10 lets you shift to Edge, which is faster at loading JavaScript or HTML5 pages.

Unfortunately , Edge also has limited extension support--only about 10 so far.Even then, it is a better browser than IE.

Since you don't have to install either, just let them stay on the Windows system and use them when you need to.Available for | Windows Best for | Those who don't want to install anything new and are happy to browse the internet without any frills or fuss.

MOZILLA FIREFOX

Firefox is known for its deep customizability.

When coupled with its large extension gallery , you can change every single aspect of the browser.From the look of its address bar to launching sites in a sidebar, it's your call. A big bonus is that Firefox is the only browser to allow multi-line tabs. No more compressing

Going Mobile

Chrome, Firefox and Opera also have mobile browsers for Android and iOS.

And you can create accounts to sync your desktop and mobile browsers, especially for data like passwords and bookmarks.

Edge is available on Windows Phone 10, but no other mobile platform. Again, you can use your Microsoft Outlook account to sync the two.

Vivaldi and Epic Browser are only for PCs at the moment. Unfortunately, there is no “power user's browser“ for mobiles yet.

But if privacy and tracking is your concern, then try the Orbot browser for Android or the VPN Browser by Art Fusion for iOS.

Firefox is the only mobile web browser to have extensions. browser tabs into tiny little icons at the top of the window! Despite all these great features, there is one big security flaw in Firefox. It is the only major modern browser without a sandbox mechanism. Sandboxing isolates the browser from the operating system, thus stopping online malware from reaching your files. It's an important security measure, and while Firefox has said it's working on it, it's not available at the moment. So, unless you know your way around the internet and have the proper security extensions and programs installed, it might be advisable to avoid Firefox till it adopts sandboxing.Available for | Windows, Mac, Linux Best for | Those who want to tweak their browser to behave exactly the way they want it to.

OPERA

Opera has been around for a long time, but its recent changes and addi tions are brilliant. It's the most ready-to-go browser among all, as it comes with several built-in features that are important for the modern Web user.

For starters, Opera comes with its own ad-blocking system, so you won't see annoying ads popping up on pages. There is a neat “popout video player“, which turns any YouTube or other video into a floating tab. Turbo Mode compresses pages and load them faster. Plus, it's built on Chromium, the same open-source technology as Chrome, so you get similar speed and security.

The beta version, a.k.a Opera Developer, has added a free and unlimited virtual

Secure Your Browsing

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) isn't inherently safe and can lead to dangers like phishing attacks. That's why the internet has a more secure version of the protocol called HTTPS.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to digital privacy of users, built an extension called HTTPS Everywhere. It forces the websites you visit to use an
HTTPS connection instead of the simple HTTP. The extension is completely free, and available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

The EFF does not have an HTTPS Everywhere extension for Internet Explorer or Edge, but a third party named ZScaler has built one based on EFF's norms.
http:www.eff.orghttps-everywhere private network (VPN) to access regionblocked videos and protect your identity online. A built-in “Power Saver“ mode saves battery when you're unplugged.

Opera's official extension store isn't as well-populated as Chrome's or Firefox's.But don't worry , you can easily install most Chrome extensions in Opera. So don't let extensions be the reason for skipping it.Available for | Windows, Mac, Linux Best for | Those who want important features like ad-blocking and VPNs built into the browser, or are looking for a good Chrome alternative.

EPIC BROWSER

Made in India, Epic's priority is protecting your privacy and data from internet companies.

Epic is vigilant against all the usual methods ¬ cookies, IP address, fingerprinting, etc ¬ that companies use to track you online. For example, did you know Google tracks any innocent search and links it to your profile? Epic stops this by routing all search engine traffic through a proxy, so they can't see your IP address. Similarly , it shows a universally-accepted “Do Not Track“ message to websites like Facebook so they don't try to follow which portals you are visiting. Epic also comes with builtin ad blocking, one-click IP masking, and auto-deletion of your session's data once you close the browser.

The cost of these protections is that Epic can often seem inconvenient. It won't store your passwords, so you need to enter them each time. It won't remember your preferences or how you like certain exten sions to behave, so you'll have to set that up every time. There's no computer-tophone sync for seamless transitions between your browsers.
In short, Epic is robust and prepared to protect you. If privacy is important, it's the best. But you'll forego ease of use.Available for | Windows, Mac Best for | Those who want privacy and security to be paramount, and everything else comes second.

VIVALDI

Vivaldi is a new browser that's aimed squarely at power users who want more than what Chrome or Firefox offer. For example, it employs a left panel of tools, where you can organize and access bookmarks, write quick notes, or check your downloads. The Tab Stacking and Tab Tiling features can group similar tabs or compare them in a split view. Keyboard-friendly “Quick Commands“ search through open tabs, launch your favourite sites, quickly access cloud files, and more.

Much like Opera, Vivaldi is built on Chromium, so you can use Chrome extensions. However, unlike Opera, Vivaldi is also resource hungry and takes up more RAM and CPU power than Chrome. Users who want this power browser need to have a powerful machine as well.Available for | Windows, Mac, Linux Best for | Those who want a browser that matches their “power user“ needs of using keyboard shortcuts, writing notes, managing plenty of open tabs, and more.

Disable Auto-Playing Adobe Flash Player

Adobe's Flash is an integral part of the Web experience for many years. But its plug-in has several vulnerabilities. Couple this with the fact that most browsers will auto-play Flash files, and you have a security issue on your hand. So it's good practice to disable auto-playing Flash files.

You can find instructions on how to do this for Windows, Mac, or any browser on Adobe's help page at helpx.adobe.com flash-player.html Just remember that while Flash has its problems, it is still dominant in some web elements. For example, if you are streaming high-resolution videos or playing games in your browser, chances are that Flash will be required to play it. So disable it, but don't uninstall it just yet.

Source | Times of India | 4 June 2016