National Library Day / National Library Week (14-20 November 2017)

Ayyanki Venkata Ramanaiah, Secretary, Andhra Pradesh Library Association organised an All India Library Meeting on 12th November, 1912 in Madras.  This meeting lead to the formation of Indian Library Association (ILA). Later, ILA gave prominence to the 12th November meeting and declared 14th November as National Library Day.  This was also the Birth day of our former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Since 1968, 14th-20th November are celebrated as National Library Week all over India.

फैशन डिजाइनिंग के लिए NIFT में करें अप्लाई

नैशनल इंस्टीट्यूट ऑफ फैशन टेक्लनॉलजी (NIFT) ने ऐडमिशन - 2018 के लिए ऑनलाइन रजिस्ट्रेशन शुरू कर दिया है। यदि आप फैशन के क्षेत्र में करियर बनाना चाहते हैं, तो आपको NIFT आपको इसकी पढ़ाई के साथ-साथ इस क्षेत्र में अच्छा एक्सपोजर भी देता है।
आप बैचलर्स और मास्टर्स के लिए विभिन्न कोर्स के लिए आवेदन कर सकते हैं। इनमें अक्सेसरी डिजाइन, फैशन कम्यूनिकेशन, फैशन डिजाइन, निटवेअर डिजाइन, लेदर डिजाइन, टेक्सटाइल डिजाइन, फैशन टेक्लॉलजी, आदि कोर्स शामिल हैं।
बेंगलुरू, भोपाल, भुबनेश्वर, चेन्नै, गांधीनगर, हैदराबाद, जोधपुर, कांगड़ा, कन्नूर, कोलकाता, मुंबई, नई दिल्ली, पटना, रायबरेली, शिलांग, श्रीनगर में NIFT की ब्रांच हैं। आवेदन करने के लिए NIFT की वेबसाइट पर जाएं। आवेदन की अंतिम तारीख 29 दिसंबर है और प्रवेश परीक्षा 21 जनवरी को है। 

CBSE: कंपार्टमेंट एग्जाम के लिए आवेदन करें

नई दिल्ली
सेंट्रल बोर्ड ऑफ सेकंड्री एजुकेशन (सीबीएसई) ने 12वीं के उन कैंडिडेट्स से आवेदन आमंत्रित किए हैं जो कंपार्टमेंट या इंप्रूवमेंट एग्जाम्स में बैठना चाहते हैं। जो छात्र फेल हो गए हैं, वे इंप्रूवमेंट ऑफ परफॉर्मेंस के लिए योग्य नहीं हैं। ऐसे छात्र सीबीएसई बोर्ड एग्जाम्स में प्राइवेट कैंडिडेट्स के तौर पर बैठ सकते हैं जिसका आयोजन मार्च 2018 में किया जाएगा।
बोर्ड ने 10वीं क्लास की परीक्षाओं के लिए भी प्राइवेट कैंडिडेट्स से आवेदन आमंत्रित किए हैं। इसमें 10वीं क्लास के पाठ्यक्रम को 100 फीसदी कवर किया जाएगा।
कैंडिडेट्स को 27 नवंबर, 2017 से पहले पांच विषयों के लिए 900 रुपये का भुगतान करना होगा। प्राइवेट कैंडिडेट्स को अतिरिक्त विषय के लिए 180 रुपये प्रति विषय का भुगतान करना होगा और कंपार्टमेंट या इंप्रूवमेंट कैंडिडेट्स को 200 रुपये प्रति विषय देना होगा। प्रैक्टिकल्स और प्रॉजेक्ट्स के लिए शुल्क 80 रुपये है।
कैंडिडेट्स इस बात पर ध्यान दें कि 2018 बोर्ड एग्जाम्स में बैठने वाले कैंडिडेट्स को नया रोल नंबर अलॉट किया जाएगा और पिछले साल वाले रोल नंबर इस्तेमाल करने की अनुमति नहीं होगी। दिल्ली रीजन के बाहर के छात्र जनवरी/फरवरी 2018 में ऐडमिट कार्ड्स के लिए इंटिमेशन लेटर डाउनलोड कर सकते हैं और दिल्ली के छात्रों के लिए ऐडमिट कार्ड्स फरवरी 2018 से उपलब्ध होंगे। 

IP: 45 कोर्स के लिए टेस्ट 21 अप्रैल से शुरू

गुरु गोबिंद सिंह इंद्रप्रस्थ यूनिवर्सिटी(आईपी) ने ऐकडेमिक सेशन 2018-19 के लिए हर प्रोग्राम के लिए अपना शेड्यूल जारी कर दिया है। यूनिवर्सिटी में ऐडमिशन के लिए एंट्रेंस एग्जाम 21 अप्रैल से शुरू होंगे। सभी कोर्स के रिजल्ट 3 मई से आने शुरू होंगे। 
आईपी यूनिवर्सिटी के एग्जाम डिविजन के कॉमन एंट्रेंस टेस्ट (CET) सेल ने अगले सेशन के लिए एंट्रेंस एग्जाम का शेड्यूल जारी कर दिया है। आईपी के एक अधिकारी ने बताया, 2018 में 21 अप्रैल से एंट्रेंस एग्जाम शुरू होंगे। 58 कोर्स के लिए शेड्यूल जारी किया गया है, जिसमें अप्लाई करने की लास्ट डेट, एंट्रेंस एग्जाम की डेट और टाइम और रिजल्ट की डेट बताई गई है। ऑनलाइन ऐडमिशन प्रोसेस शुरू होने की तारीख का ऐलान बाद में किया जाएगा। 30 प्रोग्राम के लिए बीकॉम ऑनर्स, एलएलएम, एमएड, बीजेएमसी, एमए मास कम्यूनिकेशन, एमटेक कोर्सेज के लिए एंट्रेंस एग्जाम 22 अप्रैल शाम 4 बजे तक अप्लाई किया जा सकता है। इन कोर्सेज के लिए कॉमन एंट्रेंस टेस्ट 21, 22, 28 अप्रैल और 5 और 6 मई को होंगे। 

जेईई अडवांस 2018 के लिए सिलेबस जारी

इंडियन इंस्टीट्यूट ऑफ टेक्नॉलजी (आईआईटी) कानपुर ने जेईई अडवांस, 2018 परीक्षा के लिए सिलेबस जारी कर दिया है। जो लोग इस परीक्षा में बैठने जा रहे हैं, वे सिलेबस को जेईई अडवांस की आधिकारिक वेबसाइट पर देख सकते हैं। यह परीक्षा 20 मई, 2018 को होनी है। इस बार यह परीक्षा आईआईटी कानपुर आयोजित करा रहा है। बता दें कि इस बार जेईई अडवांस के लिए अपियर होने वाले छात्रों की संख्या बढ़ाई गई हैं। पिछले साल जहां जेईई मेन्स के टॉप 2 लाख 20 हजार छात्रों को जेईई अडवांस देने का मौका मिला था, वहीं इस बार 2 लाख 24 हजार छात्रों को मौका मिलेगा। आईआईटी ने इसके लिए रजिस्ट्रेशन फीस को भी बढ़ाया है।

JEE Advanced 2018: पात्रता शर्तें जारी, चेक करें

प्रयासों की संख्या: एक कैंडिडेट लगातार सालों में ज्यादा से ज्यादा दो बार जेईई (अडवांस्ड) की परीक्षा दे सकता है। अगर बोर्ड ने ऐकडेमिक इयर 2015-16 के लिए जून 2016 के बाद रिजल्ट जारी किया है तो कैंडिडेट जेईई 2018 में बैठ सकता है।
प्रतिशतता:  कैंडिडेट को 12वीं क्लास के बोर्ड एग्जाम्स में कुल 75 फीसदी मार्क्स होना जरूरी है। एससी, एसटी और पीडब्ल्यूडी कैंडिडेट्स को मार्क्स में पांच फीसदी की छूट है। भौतिक, रसायन शास्त्र, गणित, कोई भाषा एवं अन्य किसी विषय के अंकों को कुल अंक की गणना करते समय शामिल किया जाएगा। 

DRDO कर रहा निबंध प्रतियोगिता का आयोजन

रक्षा अनुसंधान एवं विकास संगठन (डीआरडीओ), रक्षा मंत्रालय 2018 में अपनी डायमंड जुबली मनाएगा। डायमंड जुबली के मौके पर डीआरडओ एक राष्ट्रीय स्तर की निबंध लेखन प्रतियोगिता का आयोजन कर रहा है। निबंध का शीर्षक 'डीआरडीओ: उपलब्धियां और भविष्य' होगा। हिंदी या अंग्रेजी किसी भी भाषा में निबंध लिखा जा सकता है। इच्छुक छात्र 5 दिसंबर, 2017 को या उससे पहले अपनी एंट्री जमा करा सकते हैं। इससे संबंधित विस्तृत जानकारी drdo.gov.in पर उपलब्ध है।
प्रतियोगिता का मकसद छात्रों को रक्षा प्रौद्योगिकी के मैदान में आने के लिए प्रेरित करना है। सैन्य प्रौद्योगिकी के विभिन्न क्षेत्रों में बीते 60 सालों में राष्ट्र निर्माण के लिए डीआरडीओ द्वारा किए गए काम और उसकी उपलब्धियों को लेकर जागरूकता फैलाना भी एक मकसद है। प्रतियोगिता का आयोजन दो श्रेणियों में किया जाएगा। 9-12 कक्षा के छात्र पहली श्रेणी में होंगे और ग्रैजुएशन एवं पोस्ट ग्रैजुएशन कर रहे छात्र दूसरी कैटिगरी में होंगे। दूसरी कैटिगरी वाले छात्रों के लिए अधिकतम शब्द सीमा 2000 शब्द है जबकि पहली कैटिगरी के लिए यह सीमा 1000 शब्द है। 60 निबंध को चुना जाएगा और प्रत्येक विजेता को 2000 रुपये नकद और एक सर्टिफिकेट दिया जाएगा। विजेताओं का नाम डीआरडीओ की वेबसाइट पर प्रकाशित किया जाएगा। 

10 years of Kindle: Physical books get a makeover to combat competition from ebooks

The Kindle was launched in the US on November 19, 2007, spearheading a new revolution in digital reading. In 2012, Amazon first made the device available in India. Over the years, publishers of physical books have tried different ways to combat competition from ebooks and to attract new readers - better-looking book covers, special editions, movie tie-in covers, anniversary editions and more  .But finally what is critical for a book to make an impact, all respondents to this story agreed, is not the book cover but what is between them.
Source | http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/10-years-of-kindle-physical-books-get-a-makeover-to-combat-competition-from-ebooks/story-gatHu0Oevh2Qa1f0llpEtK.html

Why digital reading is here to say

Dear reader, you might be reading this on your phone. And that’s not all. At some point today you will also most likely be shopping, gossiping, checking on the nanny, playing your music, finding your way in a new city, ranting about politics, sending pics of your dinner to your mom, watching cricket – all on your phone. Study after study shows, India’s use of data, smartphones and internet is growing at a pace second only to China.

A few years ago, I said to myself, if people are going to live on the phone and read on the phone (news, Facebook tirades, WhatsApp forwards, magazine articles), then they will sooner or later move to reading books on the phone. That’s when we started our publishing company Juggernaut Books – a company that produces books as you know, and also has its own app where it creates stories of varying lengths at low prices and also allows amateur authors to upload their own work.
Now this doesn’t mean the physical book is dead or dying. We have an extremely successful physical books business which we will be growing in the next few years. In fact, you could argue the opposite.
No way are people going to read a book on the phone because 1. A book is too long 2. No one will do serious reading on the phone 3. People love the smell of paper and are romantic about the book 4. International data on ebooks shows that sales have plateaued or are falling in the West (West in this case is shorthand for Englishspeaking countries in Europe and North America).

In India ebook sales haven’t grown much at all and we use an anecdotal figure for Amazon ebook sales in the country – about two per cent of physical sales. Amazon doesn’t release its numbers so this is an unverified number but it should give you a sense of how small the market is currently.

So why are we so bullish about phone reading?

The first is our original premise. We don’t believe books will be the only exception to the way the world is moving, especially with a generation of young people who have grown up on the phone. But that’s just our gut. We can also easily out-argue points 1-3. So can most of you.

So let’s get to number 4. Last year Quartz published a fascinating article on how online self-published writers were making more income than they ever had done before.The article showed through a report released by the site Author Earnings that even as publishers in the USA reported that their ebook sales had plateaued or slightly fallen, ebook sales of self-published writers in America had risen.

The problem that faces publishers is that the price of the ebook challenges their current business model. This battle for the price of a book is the heart of the tensions between publishers and Amazon. Amazon is arguably the world’s most customer-centred company driven to give people products easily, quickly and at the least cost possible.

This often pits them against producers of the goods who have a different view about the value of what they are producing. In the case of the ebook market, which it almost singlehandedly created, Amazon initially sold its ebooks at a lower price than what they paid the publisher so they could help create a new market.

Now in their current agreement with publishers, Amazon can no longer control the pricing on ebooks. And what the article suggests is that the online reader, has, as a result, simply moved from traditional publishers to self-published ones.

To create a new market, you usually have to create a new pricing. The digital content consumer is also used to lower or no prices – a fact that all online content companies are struggling with. In India for example, a popular music app like Wynk, Hotstar the country’s top OTT app (which has a freemium model), and almost every major newspaper serves their material for free.

Self-published writers are usually flexible about pricing, giving large chunks for free to hook a reader, often even offering a prequel or appendix material gratis. It’s no bad thing that publishers have stood firm on pricing. But it’s also meant that they’ve created a wall around themselves.

To develop a new habit, you also have to experiment with the form – which you can best do by owning your platform and talking and selling directly to your readers. Look at Netflix, or Amazon – and you see how the world of content and distribution are merging.

There are now a few extraordinary successful online reading platforms which are creating stories in a completely new way and which have massive readerships, proving that a digital reader for fiction exists.

Wattpad – a space for amateur writers to upload their writing and get comments – has over 60 million users each month according to its website. Then there’s our hero, China Publishing, owned by Tencent, which has over 170 million active readers who read long, serialised books over many chapters which they pay for in small amounts.

Yet it’s interesting that none of the big five publishers have decided to play in this arena. They’ve occasionally dipped their toes, it hasn’t worked and they’ve retreated. When our CEO joined us a few months ago, she made a call to the China office of a big publisher and found them completely indifferent to the China Publishing phenomenon despite their staggering numbers. Our own view is that as long as publishers feel Amazon defines the e-reading space, the major publishers won’t really, truly experiment with it. Owning a platform would also mean publishing exclusive content on it, which leads to potential conflict with retailers, of which Amazon is the most important one.

Thus almost every digital experiment we see among most publishers is a half-hearted one. To summarise – publishers have ceded digital reading to ‘non traditional’ players because of their complex relationship with Amazon.

This may go into explaining why ebook numbers have fallen for publishers in the West. But that still doesn’t wholly explain our optimism. Juggernaut made far more revenue on its physical list than its digital list. So why are we still in the game? One is growth. This year our monthly active base has grown a 100 per cent – we launched in April 2016, and we’re not taking our first six month figures which would make that jump even larger. And we’ve seen this growth and our numbers on a minuscule marketing budget.

The second is India’s limited retail. Our digital marketing agency identified that we have a sizable number of readers in the north-east – an English-speaking audience that isn’t served by bookshops. It proved one of our hypotheses before we launched – that there is a young audience who would be open to snacky, lower-priced stories on their phone in a country where book retail is broken. A consumer survey that we commissioned has also said that the younger reader who moves to digital never returns to physical.

But most importantly it’s because of the possibilities of how we can reach out to our readers and the ways in which we can sell a story to them and talk to them. We know for example that Juggernaut readers read fairly late into the night leading us to create a special insomnia carousel on our home page.

We can publish a small biography of Yogi Adityanath two days after he became chief minister. And we now have a growing base of registered users which will touch half a million by the next six months.

In a country where no one reads book reviews, where books are barely discussed on TV or radio, where there isn’t a single genuinely impactful book prize, this can give us enormous power.

We’ve become better publishers because we’ve gone digital. We hope others will join us.

Source | Hindustan Times | 19th November 2017

What is Academic Inflation?

This refers to the increase in minimum educational or academic qualifications required to apply for jobs and other formal roles in a society. Academic inflation is the result of more people entering college, which decreases the value of a basic degree. Consequently, people increasingly opt to pursue higher degrees to boost their educational credentials and their earning power, which in turn results in more years being spent by young people in academic institutions. The increasing demand among employers for academic credentials, rather than practical skills, could also contribute to the inflation in academic degrees.

Source | http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/in-sociology-what-is-academic-inflation/article20492692.ece

Transforming internet usage with 5G

Fifth-generation, or 5G, technology is on its way to not only changing the way we communicate, but also paving the way for new consumer-technology interactions

The government has already set things rolling by creating a panel to ready a blueprint for the rollout of 5G mobile networks in India by 2020.

Here is how 5G will revolutionize the Indian telecom industry:

·         Speedy and reliable network
·         Innovative services for IoT
·         The monetary aspect
·         Abundance of data
·         A smarter India

So, what will happen to 4G and older network technology in India?

Link | http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/cBeiTctst9qGxfQ4ISYMHN/Transforming-internet-usage-with-5G.html

60 minutes of exercise may soon be must for school kids

School students might have to undertake mandatory physical activities for an hour every day if the Union human resource development ministry accepts the recommendation of a group comprising government officials and activists.

Inclusion of 60-minute mandatory physical activities and value education in schools were among the recommendations put forth during a workshop organised by the HRD ministry on November 6-7.

The two-day ‘Chintan Shivir’ witnessed separate groups comprising civil society activists and officials of the state governments and Centre hold deliberations on themes of digital education, life skill education, experimental learning, physical education and value education.

Creation of a network of model schools that could impart value education was also proposed during the workshop. “Physical education should be an integral part of overall education and it has been proposed that it should be viewed as a core part of school education just like academics,” said a senior ministry official.

The ministry is reviewing the recommendations and will decide the road map for their implementation, the ministry official added.

The group that held the discussions on physical education was headed by Kendriya Vidyalaya commissioner Santosh Kumar Mall. It also recommended that students’ fitness levels should be assessed and a national physical education development fund under the HRD ministry should be established.

Source | Hindustan Times | 16th November 2017

Transforming Information Into Knowledge In The Big Data Era Contributed Commentary by Peter Derycz

November 13, 2017 | If the data scientists are right, more than 40 Zettabytes (or 40 trillion gigabytes) of digital data will have been generated by 2020. In addition to spurning a new field of study and analysis, this overwhelming amount of information, or the “Data Deluge” as it's called by some experts, is impacting the way life science researchers work.
Despite the overwhelming volume and complexity of scientific literature, and the myriad ways of accessing and managing it, the success of an entire research organization may depend on quick, efficient, cost-effective, and unfettered access to the information contained in reference publications. Simplifying access to the right information across the organization has become the mantra for the successful, research-driven enterprise — but it is only the first step in an enterprise-wide knowledge management strategy.
So, how do biomedical and drug discovery researchers effectively transform information into useful knowledge in the Big Data era?
The answers lie in how the magnitude of available information is being harnessed and exploited. With at least 50 million scholarly journal articles already filling information pipelines, and more than 2.5 million more added each year, the ways content is discovered and utilized by scientists and technologists working at millions of companies, must evolve.
Accessing Information Across The Scientific Literature Lifecycle
While a casual observer might assume that access to more data would make the researcher’s job easier, the opposite is true more often than not. The race to acquire information, and the urgency to publish, patent, deliver, and protect that information, is, in fact, putting new pressures on researchers to rethink their approaches to content creation and dissemination. Subsequently, the focus is on the scientific literature life cycle—that sometimes-daunting process of discovering, accessing, storing, publishing, and reusing scholarly content—and emerging technologies that facilitate easy access to information at each step along the way.
In a recent Science News article, author Tom Siegfried says that Big Data often conflicts with the scientific research workflow and subsequently published literature.  “In medical research, for example, many factors can influence whether, say, a drug cures a disease,” Siegfried wrote. “Traditional medical experimentation has been able to study only a few of those factors at a time. The empirical scientific approach—observation, description and inference—can’t reliably handle more than a few such factors. Now that Big Data makes it possible to actually collect vast amounts of the relevant information, the traditional empirical approach is no longer up to the job. To use Big Data effectively, science might just have to learn to subordinate experiment to theory.”
Siegfried’s point is well-taken and hints at the challenge of making Big Data useful and visible in the course of scientific research workflow. The new paradigm will be to leverage large amounts of data augmented to scientific reference materials while improving scientific literature access across the organization at the same time.
The good news is that the constraints of science have the potential to make Big Data more reliable and useful, and having Big Data in the hands of responsible stewards like those handling peer review and scientific publication has the potential to address the problems Siegfried hints at. Kent Anderson, CEO of publishing analytics firm RedLink, describes the potential blending of skills in this way: “Scholarly publishing has often been associated with terms such as ‘old school’ or ‘traditional’. However, without the proper use of data, adapting to the trends of scholarly publishing isn’t possible. Becoming data-oriented is necessary for success. Where scholarly and scientific publishing can contribute specifically is in placing guardrails and confirming trust in the system. Trust is vital for the coming data environment. It means operating with integrity and good faith. Scholarly publishers are accustomed to forming bilateral trust relationships—with authors, institutions, and others. They can do the same around Big Data.”
The Breakthrough: Personalized Research Workflows
Beyond digital platforms and computing power, technologies that facilitate highly-personalized research environments that take the individual researcher into account for the first time will soon become mainstream. These customizable workflows will combine data insights integrated with reference-specific search engines, analytics and visualization tools. Far more valuable than simply presenting information, personalized access tools will help the researcher make the best of available reference data by pinpointing what’s important for their particular research project.
Looking to the near future, there will be a continuous shift toward workflows and working environments that comprise systems of related activities specific to the type of research being conducted. Access to scholarly articles and the extraction of key information at each step of the literature life cycle will become easier and less costly.
The scientific research community is more than ready for a new way of thinking when it comes to transforming the data locked within the increasingly large body of scientific literature into useful knowledge.  Speaking from a researcher’s point of view, the revolution can’t begin soon enough.
Peter Derycz founded Reprints Desk and parent company Research Solutions in 2006 and has served as its Chief Executive Officer and President since its inception. He can be reached atpderycz@reprintsdesk.com

Reimagining education: Technology can reduce tensions between learning in school and learning for life

This wonderful story is very relevant to school education because learning, teaching, curriculum, and pedagogy are the same words but mean very different things than they did 50 years ago.
Schools need to reinvent themselves for four reasons:
·         Early Education Matters
·         Our understanding of the brain has progressed in the last two decades,
·         The world that future generations enter will be very different from ours,
·         Teaching practices are changing to support these developments.

Source | Times of India | 31st October 2017

The Needle's Eye - Need to Focus on Teaching Our Teachers to Revamp Education System

In June, NCTE launched a fram ework plan, dubbed TeachR, setting out these new norms. It said by April 2018 all TEIs would have to be accredited; it also plans a ranking of the top 100 TEIs. This set off a firestorm of protest: as of last week, a total of 238 cases have been filed by TEIs against the NCTE in 13 high courts and the Supreme Court.
Source | Times of India | 27th October 2017

CBEC Guide: All about GST on Education Services

“Education” is not defined in the CGST Act but as per Apex Court decision in “Loka Shikshana Trust v/s CIT”, education is process of training and developing knowledge, skill and character of students by normal schooling.

Taxing the Education Sector has always been a sensitive issue, as education is seen more as a social activity than a business one.
The government has a constitutional obligation to provide free and compulsory elementary education to every child. Thus, to promote education, it would be beneficial if educational services are exempted from tax. However, commercialisation of education is also a reality. The distinction between core and ancillary education is blurring and education is now an organised industry with huge revenues. The GST Act tries to maintain a fine balance where by core educational services provided and received by educational institutions are exempt and other services are sought to be taxed at the standard rate of 18%.

Link | http://www.cbec.gov.in/resources//htdocs-cbec/gst/GST%20on%20Education%20Services_Web.pdf;jsessionid=B42DB4A127323A55FB35E5AE8A316A1E

OCLC and the Internet Archive Enhance Book Discovery Syncing Catalogs with thousands of Libraries in 120 Countries through OCLC

We are pleased to announce that the Internet Archive and OCLC have agreed to synchronize the metadata describing our digital books with OCLC’s WorldCat. WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of thousands of libraries in more than 120 countries that participate in the OCLC global cooperative.

What does this mean for readers?

When the synchronization work is complete, library patrons will be able to discover the Internet Archive’s collection of 2.5 million digitized monographs through the libraries around the world that use OCLC’s bibliographic services. Readers searching for a particular volume will know that a digital version of the book exists in our collection. With just one click, readers will be taken to archive.org to examine and possibly borrow the digital version of that book. In turn, readers who find a digital book at archive.org will be able, with one click, to discover the nearest library where they can borrow the hard copy.

There are additional benefits: in the process of the synchronization, OCLC databases will be enriched with records describing books that may not yet be represented in WorldCat.

“This work strengthens the Archive’s connection to the library community around the world. It advances our goal of universal access by making our collections much more widely discoverable. It will benefit library users around the globe by giving them the opportunity to borrow digital books that might not otherwise be available to them,” said Brewster Kahle, Founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. “We’re glad to partner with OCLC to make this possible and look forward to other opportunities this synchronization will present.”

“OCLC is always looking for opportunities to work with partners who share goals and objectives that can benefit libraries and library users,” said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. “We’re excited to be working with Internet Archive, and to make this valuable content discoverable through WorldCat. This partnership will add value to WorldCat, expand the collections of member libraries, and extend the reach of Internet Archive content to library users everywhere.”

We believe this partnership will be a win-win-win for libraries and for learners around the globe.
Better discovery, richer metadata, more books borrowed and read.

OCLC Press Release | https://www.oclc.org/en/news/releases/2017/201727dublin.html

Source | http://blog.archive.org/2017/10/12/syncing-catalogs-with-thousands-of-libraries-in-120-countries-through-oclc/

Digital Knowledge Manager: 5 Skills You Need to Succeed at the Newest Marketing Role DKMs use all the data a company has to determine what data it needs to solve problems and drive strategy.

The advent of today’s new intelligent services (Google Assistant/Home, Cortana, Siri and others) has created an accelerated curve. Google, Bing, Apple, Yahoo, Amazon and other increasingly intelligent services are driving a good deal of change, with more expected in the future.

This evolution needn't be scary for search-engine optimization (SEO) managers, brand managers, social media managers or chief marketing officers. It’s actually an exciting opportunity that creates career options for those willing to take on new responsibilities.

In fact, today’s world of structured data needs professionals to provide context for maps, info cards and specific answers. Customers and companies alike increasingly demand the most accurate data from the most authoritative sources. After all, how can an intelligent service be intelligent if it’s wrong?

Companies are responding with a new role: Digital Knowledge Manager. Think of “manager” here as an action, not a title. Real-life examples include Sam Dresser, the Vice President of Knowledge Management and Engagement at School of Rock. Glenn May's position at T-Mobile is called Senior Category Manager - Local Marketing.  Other businesses actively are seeking to create similar positions. In a broad sense, these new roles focus on five skills: investigation, negotiation, communication, thought leadership and building.

Skill 1: Investigation.

A Digital Knowledge Manager, or DKM, is first and foremost someone who can track down all the authoritative sources of knowledge about your brand, people, products, events and locations from within your organization. This could be an easy job at a small company. But it could become a huge undertaking for large corporations. It likely would require conversations with departments such as Marketing, IT, Legal, Facilities, Store Operations and others. It's no small feat to identify and find all the public facts about your business that you want in customers' hands.

A good DKM doesn’t simply settle for data the organization says it has. Instead, the DKM investigates what consumers are demanding and then works to source the data within the organization. For instance, Google reports that 70 percent of hotel searches now include a specific type of amenity. A DKM digs into the specifics. What amenities -- or granular details -- do consumers seeking about your people, products, events and locations today? What will they be tomorrow? An investigative DKM is critically important in this stage.

Skill 2: Negotiation.

Because a DKM must work with many teams, he or she also needs to help arbitrate conflicts among data sources and people within the organization. Digital Knowledge Management is about boiling all of your data down to clear sources of truth. And to do that, conflicts must be resolved in ways that promote accuracy, stability, and efficiency.

Some clients come to us at Yext with multiple data sources across a wide variety of materials -- from their Content Management System (CMS) to basic spreadsheets. These clients all need someone to identify, vet and shepherd that data to best effect.

Let’s look at this in context. Think about the internal teams and even franchisees that own the data for McDonald’s: locations, menus, nutritional information and more. To deliver this structured data via today’s intelligent services, the DKM must negotiate the twists and turns of internal and franchise politics to ensure the consumer sees one brand, hears one voice and can rely on one accurate data set to answer their needs in the moments that matter.

Skill 3: Communication.

As technology evolves, so does a brand's responsibilities and opportunities related to digital knowledge.

For instance, the DKM should be the first in an organization to know about new intelligent-services features that will require a robust set of digital knowledge. Uber provides one example. At major air hubs such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco, Uber customers can select multiple, specific pick-up/drop-off points within the larger location. It’s the DKM’s role to spot the opportunity and communicate it to appropriate teams. This is how companies source information and fully leverage that data to provide customer value. Uber recognized an opportunity and capitalized on that gap.

Skill 4: Thought leadership.

A DKM always must keep one eye on the future to monitor how intelligent services are evolving. A true professional will spot what's new and develop a plan of action. He or she will ask questions: What does this mean for our company? Our customers? How does technology change our consumers' behaviors?

Believe it or not, one of Lego's partners has created a bot on the Alexa skills store. Brickbot will allow any Echo user to ask questions and get detailed answers about new and old Lego sets, themes and other products. With 20 percent of Google searches already run via voice command, it's smart to be thinking how to prepare all that digital knowledge to interface with voice search.

Skill 5: Building.

Ultimately, the Digital Knowledge Manager must structure the people, processes, and technologies that will ensure the accurate and timely creation, distribution and ongoing maintenance of a company’s digital knowledge base.

While platforms such as ours can help with technology, the people and processes pieces rest with individual clients. Done right, digital knowledge becomes a competitive brand differentiator. It can help attract more customers through an ever-increasing array of intelligent services.

Bringing all 5 skills together.

It doesn’t take superhero strength to be a DKM. In fact, the core skills look similar to those needed in many positions. But the DKM role is bigger. It has a broader impact on a company, works across more teams and focuses on goals beyond simply attracting searchers or social-media shares.

The DKM protects a company by making certain its digital knowledge is developed and deployed in the best ways possible -- both internally and externally -- to serve the business. Within an organization, the positioning of such a role may be more or less senior, with tasks, goals and responsibilities aligned as such. Here's a mocked-up job description that helps define the DKM's scope.

This substantial shift is really a change of focus, mindset and investment. Leaders who realize they're closer to this outcome than they'd believed have the potential to become DKMs and own their space in the market.

Source | https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299178

Research Study | Reading problems sign of impaired hearing?

Children with reading difficulties should be more thoroughly screened for hearing problems, a new report by Coventry University academics has said.

The study, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, found 25 per cent of its young participants who had reading difficulties showed mild or moderate hearing impairment, of which their parents and teachers were unaware.

The researchers believe that if there was more awareness of youngsters’ hearing problems – as well as an understanding of what particular aspects of literacy they struggled with - then the children might be able to receive more structured support that could help them improve their reading and writing skills.

The study by academics at the university’s Centre for Advances in Behavioural Science compared children with dyslexia to youngsters who had a history of repeated ear infections to see if they had a similar pattern of literacy difficulties.

A total of 195 children aged between eight and 10 – including 36 with dyslexia and 29 with a history of repeated ear infections – completed a series of tests to establish their reading and writing skills and how they used the structures of words based on their sounds and meanings, in speech and literacy.

Source | http://www.coventry.ac.uk/primary-news/screen-children-with-reading-difficulties-more-thoroughly-for-hearing-problems-says-new-report/

NDLI's online wing brings 1.26 cr books, journals for free

Kolkata: The National Digital Library of India (NDLI) commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource and developed by IIT Kharagpur is all set to democratize the face of education in India. This online digital treasure-trove has already been able to bring in as many as 1.26 crore books, journals, periodicals and research materials from nearly 100 leading institutions across the country and the world at one's fingertips.

The NDLI website was launched over a year back and has since gained over 20 lakh plus users from around the globe. IIT Kharagpur also released the mobile app in the month of April 2017 giving anyone who has a smartphone the opportunity to access the collection anytime and from anywhere in India.

NDLI is an open source platform which means that not only does it provide universal access to quality learning resources but also allows edupreneurs to build their own learning products/services using NDLI as a base platform. The website and apps contain resources from 145 premier sources from within the country (IITs, IIMs, NCERT etc.) as well as abroad (World e-Book Library, South Asia Archive, Librivox etc.) to ensure that not just students but learners of all ages and fields of study have access to relevant content in multiple languages and multiple formats.

The library has over 9,900 registered institutions with the total number of users currently being 2,195,986. The total number of downloads for the android app of NDL is 6768989.

"As a national knowledge asset, IIT-KGP's role has always been to enable the children of India to become citizens of tomorrow. This platform, available as a website as well as Android and iOs mobile app will help ensure that not just some, but all of India can learn, share and grow," said Partha Pratim Das, a senior faculty and coordinator for the NDLI project. NDLI also has a very active Facebook and Twitter community which highlights special showcases and engages with users on a 24X7 format. Learners can search for content using various parameters like subject matter, source, content type and more. Right now, the app is available in three languages — English, Hindi and Bengali.

Source | http://www.millenniumpost.in/kolkata/ndlis-online-wing-brings-126-cr-books-journals-for-free-265583

Literacy in a digital world

Today is International Literacy Day and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) says it will be celebrated across the world on the theme, ‘Literacy in a digital world’. At UNESCO’s Paris headquarters, a two-day global event is being held to look at what kind of literacy skills people need to navigate increasingly digitally-mediated societies and to explore effective literacy policies and programmes that can leverage the opportunities the digital world provides. 

According to UNESCO at a record speed, digital technologies are fundamentally changing the way people live, work, learn and socialise. Digital technologies are giving new possibilities to people to improve various areas of their lives including access to information, knowledge management, networking, social services, industrial production and mode of work. However, those who lack access to digital technologies and the knowledge, skills and competencies required to navigate them, can end up marginalised in increasingly digitally-driven societies, UNESCO warns, saying literacy is one such essential skill. 

Just as knowledge, skills and competencies evolve in the digital world, so does what it means to be literate. To close the literacy skills gap and reduce inequalities, this year’s International Literacy Day will highlight the challenges and opportunities in promoting literacy in the digital world, a world where, despite progress, at least 750 million adults and 264 million out-of-school children still lack basic literacy skills, UNESCO says. 

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) says that of the 750 million adults who are illiterate, most are women. This is a stark reminder of the work ahead to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially, Target 4.6 to ensure that all youth and most adults achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030. 

In Sri Lanka also we need to see what we have to do to promote literacy in a digital world. a command of the English language is necessary to make maximum use of this, especially the search engines which are like smart text books for subjects ranging from mathematics to medicine. After 1956, when the English language was withdrawn as a medium of education, our standards today have dropped to low levels. The situation became worse with the introduction of television in 1978. It is widely accepted that the best way to improve our knowledge of English is by reading not only classics by Shakespeare but even detective fiction novels where the substance may not be deep but the language is powerful. Scholars say it is by reading that we improve our English knowledge in terms of spelling, grammar, syntax and other important aspects of writing skills. After 1956, surveys show that the reading habit began to drop and declined further when television came because most young people preferred to watch TV rather than read books in their spare time.


With the advent of the hi-tech era most young people have now switched from television to smart phones and tabs with high resolution pictures. As a result there are millions of young people who may be able to speak fairly good English and sometimes with an accent also. But they are unable to link the operative noun with the verb even in a simple sentence. Excessive use of American-made computer spell checkers has also led to the folly where many people use the word roll for role or site for sight or foul for fowl implying that we need to eat foul curry. 

The English medium of education has now been reintroduced but that may not be enough and Sri Lanka needs to find ways of promoting the reading habit especially among the young people. When they improve their knowledge of English it will pave the way for them to reach higher standards of literacy in this modern world and also grow in their knowledge and wisdom of what is evolving worldwide. To encourage children to get back to the habit of reading English books, whether they be printed or e-books the key role needs to be played by parents and teachers while the government could help by taking measures to reduce the prices of books. 

Source | http://www.dailymirror.lk/article/Literacy-in-a-digital-world-136181.html

Research shows @ importance of parents reading with children

 
Research has typically found that shared reading experiences are highly beneficial for young people.
Benefits of shared reading include facilitating enriched language exposure,

·        fostering the development of listening skills
·         spelling,
·         reading comprehension
·         vocabulary, and
·         establishing essential foundational literacy skills

They are also valued as a shared social opportunity between parents and their children to foster positive attitudes toward reading.

Link | http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/Wm6JKfkqU9FfTNhgRQ7z/full

Edu loan defaults may hurt students’ credit score: CIBIL

Pointing to high incidence of defaults in the low-ticket education loans, credit Information Company CIBIL on Thursday said such default history might adversely affect students’ credit score and their ability to take out other loans in the future.

The overall incidence of delinquency on education loans is around 5 per cent, going by dues of 90 days plus. The default rate for education loans with ticket sizes below ~4 lakh is significantly higher (at 8.1 per cent) compared with large-ticket size loans, CIBIL said in a statement. Comparative default rates for other categories are: ~4-5 lakh — 4.8 per cent; ~5-15 lakh — 2.1 per cent. For loan amounts above ~15 lakh, the long-term default rate is under 1 per cent.

The aggregate credit exposure of education loans in the Indian banking system is around ~77,000 crore. This is barely 1 per cent of total banking system exposure, and by itself may not present a systemic risk, CIBIL said.

However, the importance of such defaults can be seen in two aspects. First, these delinquency trends predict the risk profile of future borrowers who will join the mainstream credit market. Second, they may also be reflective of the potential job opportunities in the industry.

Source | Business Standard | 1 September 2017

SCHOOLS CAN DIRECTLY ORDER BOOKS FROM NCERT PORTAL

June 14, 2017
NEW DELHI: From this year, schools across the country will place textbook orders with the NCERT directly online to ensure they are available in time to students for next year.

This would save parents paying extra money to source books from private publishers, often on account of non-availability of the NCERT books.

The portal, where the schools can place orders, is in the works.

When in place, schools will also be able to track the movement of the books, right from placing an order to the delivery.

The portal, which is being created by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), will start taking orders for this year itself so that it is able to assess the total number of books it needs to publish.

Parents had complained to the human resource development ministry about schools forcing expensive books on them.

According to NCERT spokesperson Hemant Kumar, the portal is likely to be launched during the first week of August this year.

“This will enable approximately 19,000 CBSE-affiliated schools to upload their requirement of NCERT textbooks.

The schools will be given one month’s time to upload their requirement.

The data received will allow NCERT to assess the actual requirement of its textbooks,” he said.

According to officials, the NCERT portal will ensure that no complaint of unavailability of NCERT textbooks is received from across the country.

Officials further said that so far NCERT used to do the exercise on its own rather than asking schools to provide them the information.

There have been several complaints in the past about the non-availability of NCERT books and schools end up recommending books by private publishers.

Source | Hindustan Times | 12 June 2017

WORKPLACE REDESIGN FOR MILLENNIALS

Technology innovation at workplaces has always been guided by culture. This is even more pronounced in the case of collaboration technologies, because it closely mirrors the way we have learnt to communicate. Today’s technology changes are largely influenced by the millennial generation—a generation that has a completely different mindset from Gen Xers or the baby boomers.

As opposed to the earlier generations that modelled their way of working as per the tools and technologies that were available to them, this generation actually demands technology that can enable them to work the way they want. This generation was the key force behind the growth of consumerization of IT and bring your own device trends.

Given that India will become the youngest country by 2021, with 64% of its population in the age group of 20-35, according to the Economic Survey 2013-14, Indian businesses need to shape their strategies to remain relevant to this section. It is fair to say that it is mandatory to morph our workplaces to accommodate the millennial generation. If we do not, we will not be able to acquire and retain top talent, which will stunt our ability to innovate.

In my view, organizations should keep the following factors in mind while redesigning workplaces for millennials:

Deploying relevant infrastructure: The millennial workforce understands the importance of teamwork and knowledgesharing with their global counterparts and collaboration with their customers. They will either break rules or leave workplaces that do not satisfy their needs. According to Digital, Disparate,and Disengaged, a June 2016 study by Forrester Consulting commissioned by Prysm, 71% of the information workers who responded to the survey have said they are more likely to remain at their company if investments were made in a modern, digital collaboration solution. Further, according to 83% of information workers, the right technology tools can help them be productive regardless of location. Similarly, three-quarters or more of IT and facilities respondents reported that a modern, digital workspace could help their organizations make strides in product development, grow revenue and speed time-to-market.

Supporting innovation: The way we act as a team is changing—from traditional, “passive” meetings to meetings where we innovate in groups. A case in point is the R&D departments in multinational companies. There are several companies whose R&D teams have been pooling resources globally to drive innovations for different markets. Consider the example of one of the IT leaders, IBM India—its scientists work in close association across the company’s world-renowned research labs. IBM Research India has also emerged as a premier research lab in the region and is working to solve unique challenges in emerging markets. Tech solutions that are deployed should be conducive for employees to be able to work together and innovate. Sharing highly visual information in real time: The advent of mobile technology has enabled our workforce to be geographically distributed. This has also created a need for technology that allows us to share highly visual information in realtime among disparate team members. Enabling multidimensional experiences: The optimal goal is to choose tools/solutions that allow for multidimensional experiences that mirror the way we naturally think and interact. And this is not just limited to the way we talk, but also the way we work.

Building a culture of collaboration: Tools are only as effective as the culture we build in our organizations. Enterprises should start with this as their goal, to build a culture of collaboration that is most relevant for them and result in the highest productivity for their employees. They should then envisage ways to drive adoption and train their employees for maximum impact.

Workplaces of the future are going to be transformed into visual workplaces, which will bring together content, data, live applications, video conferencing, live sources and the Web into a touch-interactive visual workspace where teams can simultaneously create, edit, share and store content to maximize productivity, regardless of device or geographical location. To attract and retain millennials, businesses should look at embracing tools that make this possible. Varadha Raju is country head (India) and vice-president of sales and operations at Prysm Inc.

Source | Mint | 11 April 2017

Innovations in Education

Innovations in Education

With Innovations touching almost every aspect of our life, education is not far behind.  Education is seeing innovations not only owing to technology but also through its teaching methods, teaching tools and some creative ideas to simplify concepts to its students.  Here’s sharing some wonderful innovations in education that has helped in the upgrading of the teaching methodology.

·         Creative Tools
·         Technology Tools
·         Practical Learning
·         Group Discussions
·         Natural Surroundings
·         Storyboard & Dramatics

You’ve got mail! Now here’s how to manage it better

For most communication, instant messenger apps have become the default mode of communication. However, in the traditional workspace, email remains as critical as ever. At times managing email could take more of your productivity time than you may ever have imagined. This is where smart email apps, designed to reduce the clutter, come in handy.

NEWTON MAIL

$49.99 per year (around Rs3,410) Android, Android Wear, iOS, Apple Watch, Mac OS X Earlier known as Cloudmagic, Newton Mail is a subscription based service that works with all Gmail, Exchange, Yahoo!, Outlook and Office 365, iCloud as well as IMAP accounts. Since the rebranding, even basic features like notifications for new mails are offered only to paid subscribers. Apart from that, this remains a robust email app. It has added the OAuth 2.0 to enhance mail account security. It integrates cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and iCloud storage.

NOTION INTELLIGENT EMAIL

Free Android, iOS, Amazon Alexa This truly is a one-of-its kind email app. The problem is, a lot of us get many emails every day that are not relevant but clutter the inbox so much that we tend to miss the important mails. The Notion Intelligent Email app for smartphones learns constantly from user behaviour and ensures that important mails are not lost in the clutter. This app does not need to replace the email app you may be using, but you can choose to turn off notifications in the older app, and let Notion send notifications for mails that may be important. You can also snooze mails and deal with them later. Notion.ai has added support for Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant as well, and you can ask Alexa to inform you about the new mails.

AIRMAIL

Rs300 iOS, Mac OS X This email app is what you need if you want to set custom actions (archive, snooze mail, etc.) and this reminds us of the now discontinued Mailbox app of Dropbox. Airmail also has integration with third-party apps, such as Apple’s Calendar and Reminder app, Todoist, Evernote, Dropbox, Google Drive and iA Writer, among others—this makes it easier to manage reminders, lists, share tasks, access cloud storage, save and edit documents. It supports Gmail and Exchange accounts, and integrates with iCloud for syncing with a Mac computing device.

ALTO MAIL

Free iOS, Android, Web The app, available for both iOS and Android devices, supports multiple email services, including Gmail and Outlook, as well as Yahoo!, AOL and iCloud. You can create mail stacks, essentially bunching up certain types of email.

Source | Hindustan Times | 18 April 2017

Bridging the gap between employers, employees @ Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Last year, the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs’ report had predicted that artificial intelligence and robotics will take over more than 5 million jobs by 2020.
Last year, the World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs’ report had predicted that artificial intelligence and robotics will take over more than 5 million jobs by 2020. The report noted that “some jobs will be wiped out, others will be in high demand, but all in all, around 5 million jobs will be lost.”

In addition to robots taking over, the increasingly competitive job market is making the lives of employees no easier. The dynamics have changed considerably—just a college degree no longer guarantees a job. This is because the rapidly advancing technology has transformed many jobs and the sought-after skills for professional success.

To cope with the current workforce’s needs and culture, employers are seeking employees who are skilled in artificial intelligence, robotics and Big Data. This is a skill-set that most Indian colleges and universities do not include in their curriculum.

And it’s not just artificial intelligence and engineering skills that are in-demand these days. With businesses going global and dealings with international clients becoming a norm, soft skills are more important than ever for potential employees.

According to the findings of the SEED Report 2016 (Student Enrichment and Employment Development), the employment scenario in India has changed for the better, but the curriculum continues to lag behind. Although a lot has changed in terms of market trends and technology, the education system needs updating. Most college curricula in India are still not equipped enough to teach in-demand, job-ready skills. Aspiring Minds, the country’s leading employability solutions company, recently conducted a survey and the numbers reveal that India has almost 8 lakh engineering diploma holders who enter the job market every year and only about 20% of them are employable. A report by Assocham presents that of the lakhs of business graduates produced every year from over 5,500 business schools in India, only 7% are employable. This ascertains the fact that there is a major gap between learners, potential employees and employers.

With all of these factors at play in India’s education and professional landscape, the massive open online courses (MOOCs) offer a solution for employees and employers. MOOCs help in bridging the gap between what employers want and what are the skills job-seekers possess. Job-seekers in India do not need to be dependent on their traditional curriculum alone, but can take an unbundled approach to education and pick and choose online courses and programmes they need to advance their skills and expertise.
An example of this is the MicroMasters Programs, developed by MIT and adopted by various universities. MicroMasters Programs meet the needs of top corporations and provide learners with valuable knowledge and a career-applicable credential for highly competitive in-demand fields, while also providing a new path to a Master’s degree. Adding MicroMasters to a resume/CV or LinkedIn can help one advance his or her career. MOOCs make it easy to learn from any top university across the world from home, and since courses are online, they are easily updatable to stay in sync with the latest job trends and workforce needs.

Many use online learning to upskill or reskill to get a new job or to do better in their current careers. Digital learning helps job-seekers stay updated with the latest trends and technologies, and not become obsolete. India has a large youth population and MOOCs can be a perfect answer to job woes, considering online learning’s impact and cost-effectiveness. MOOCs are one of the latest progressions in the education sector and have the potential to go a long way in India. By embracing flexible, online learning programmes that expand access to higher level and continuous education, India can pave the way for democratisation of quality education for all.

Source | http://www.financialexpress.com/jobs/bridging-the-gap-between-employers-employees/630195/

What if we could upload books to our brains?

Human brain might interface directly with non-biological forms of intelligence
What if humans could upload all the great classics of literature to their brains, without having to go through the arduous process of reading? Wonderful and levelling as that may seem, it’s a prospect that I’m not sure we should readily embrace.

A while ago, I listened to an interview with futurist Ray Kurzweil on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s radio show StarTalk. Kurzweil described how our brains might someday interface directly with non-biological forms of intelligence, possibly with the help of nano-bots that travel through our capillaries.

Given how much faster this interface would be than regular reading, he went on, we’d be able to consume novels like The Brothers Karamazov in moments, rather than the current rather clumsy form of ingestion known as reading, which, he said, “could take months”.

At this point Tyson interjected: Are you saying we could just upload War and Peace? Yes, Kurzweil answered: “We will connect to neocortical hierarchies in cloud with pre-loaded knowledge.”

This snippet of conversation has baffled and fascinated me ever since. I confess that I do not know a lick about neuroscience. But just knowing something about reading makes the above story implausible, if not alarming.

From my perspective, the learning that we do when we read a book has little to do with knowledge — what would a pre-loaded version of The Brothers Karamazov constitute? — and everything to do with responding emotionally and morally to the story. As I’ve become older, I forgive hypocrisies more quickly, and I identify with decay more readily. I understand spiritual conflict but I’m not alarmed by it. Thus the book itself is different each time it’s read by a different version of me.

I’m not sure what Kurzweil thinks when he says our computer minds won’t need to bother to read the book, and I want to give him and his other futurist computer-brain friends some credit. They surely mean more than having the text of the book itself available to us, or even memorised. That wouldn’t represent knowledge. It must be something deeper, a representation of the book possibly as a narrative, or maybe a movie. But again, if we have access only to that movie, it doesn’t represent the same learning that would come through reading and experiencing the book.

There are only two more possibilities left, at least in my limited biological brain. First, that the “true meaning” of the book is codified once and for all by a computer, and is inserted into our long-term memories. This would inevitably be unsatisfying, because it would mean that if I “read it again” I’d actually experience the same exact thing. Also, whose experience gets codified?

Finally, there’s the possibility that the book’s true meaning would change depending on the state of my brain — that the interface would look into my mind, see and understand my patience with hypocrisy and spiritual conflict, and then transform the story accordingly. In which case, every time I uploaded that book or any other, I’d experience a different story. I doubt this is possible, and in any case I would find the lack of active participation creepy. That said, I’d definitely pay a monthly subscription to try it out.

Source | Business Standard | 17 April 2017

Digital clutter is a phenomenon that increasingly plagues modern digital devices.

Digital clutter is a phenomenon that increasingly plagues modern digital devices. A recent research by IT security firm Kaspersky Lab reveals that user attitude towards app care and maintenance on their devices is making sensitive data on computers and tablets particularly vulnerable to security threats.

The study reveals that keeping control of the content on their devices is a task that users tend to avoid. Just 50% of users revise the content on their computers and tablets on a regular basis but as many as two in three (63%) people do this on their smartphones. This is because smartphones have less memory than computers and tablets. In fact, 35% of users have deleted apps on their smartphones due to lack of storage, whereas only 13% of users on computers have done the same.

According to the Kaspersky Lab research, a quarter of users don’t remember when they last uninstalled an application from their computers, while this figure goes down to 12% for smartphones. This has led to a situation where a third of applications on user computers are completely redundant— they are never used, but stay on the hard disk taking up space and potentially running in the background, putting sensitive information at risk.

All of our devices store sensitive data, and they should therefore be maintained in the same way. However, the research shows us that users do not treat their devices equally. The survey found that 65% of users update apps on their smartphones as soon as they are released, providing them with the latest security patches and updates. By contrast, users are less likely to update apps on tablets and computers, with just 42% and 48%, respectively, updating apps as soon as possible.

As a result of this behaviour, users are risking a range of problems associated with a buildup of digital clutter on their devices—particularly on their computers. Kaspersky Lab statistics show us that users face malware on their computers more than other devices (28% compared to 17% on smartphones). Worryingly, the study has found a contradiction in user attitudes towards their devices and the threats they face on those devices. According to the survey, despite users’ risky attitudes to managing clutter on computers and the greater threat of malware infections on these devices, most respondents still consider computers to be the safest place for their data.

“The digital devices we use every day store precious data that users don’t want to fall into the wrong hands or lose due to a device crashing or malware infection,” says Andrei Mochola, head of consumer business at Kaspersky Lab. “Combating digital clutter requires users to take action managing, cleaning and updating apps across all devices in their household. Care and maintenance should be a priority in your digital life as in the physical world, in order to keep the hackers at bay.”
In order to keep digital devices safe, users are advised to take the following steps:

Update apps: Update apps as soon as new versions are released because they might include security patches that prevent or reduce vulnerabilities in the app,

Clean apps: Improperly managed smartphone apps also represent a security threat because they often transmit data even when they’re not being used,

Change app settings: These enable the user to manage how the app interacts with the device. For example, apps can get access to user sensitive information, track user locations and share user data with third party servers. Failure to manage these settings can result in unused apps gaining access to information on the device without the user being aware,

Use specialist software: Install specialist software that can help to distinguish apps behaving suspiciously and those that are not used, as well as those which need to be updated.

Source | Financial Express | 13 April 2017

केवी के 162 विद्यार्थी गणतंत्र दिवस परेड में लेंगे हिस्सा

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