Brahman Pimped My Site

An item in the November print issue of Wired drew my attention to the work of Dr. Smita Jain Narang, who has developed WebVastu, a system to design websites in balance and harmony with cosmic principles. According to the article (page 72 in the print edition), “Narang reports that on the 500 sites she’s redesigned, three-quarters received an imediate boost in traffic.” I took a look at Narang’s own site to learn more about this path-breaking technique:

We all know that the five elements that comprise the human and the world are called the “Paanchbhootas”. Similarly every website has its own “paanchbhootas” and a balance has to be maintained to achieve a desired result. Any disturbance in any of the element may result in negative consequences.

This is especially important for commercial sites, as you can imagine. Negative energies are never good for the bottom line:

For the websites to bring business the element in each quadrant must be honored and they should be kept in balance as this creates powerful and beneficial conditions, which draw business towards the owner. On the other hand, an imbalance of the elements can create negative energies, which may have an adverse effect on the websites.

Wired asked Narang, who is 30, to “diagnose one of our spiritual haunts, Slashdot.org,” and her assessment was mixed at best. It scored well for its address and graphics (good Water flow), but poorly on structure (too much Air), lead-off (inauspicious header), page length and footer, which should have been “brown, fawn or copper.”

Copperish colors must be extremely auspicious, as Narang’s own site involves white lettering bathed in a glowing, brown-yellow background that is nearly overwhelming to my bleary morning eyes. Then again, I haven’t been up since 3 AM performing austerities and contemplating the Divine. The site also lacks navigation; perhaps such tools only breed maya, and we must instead move about the site in an organic way. So should you, but if you don’t mind the spiritual shortcuts, here are a few highlights.

WebVastu takes its place in humanity’s long process of spiritual and material advancement:

Man has endeavoured to improve from time immemorial. Starting from the Stone Age to the 21st century, mankind has only improved and is keeping their step toward modernisation. But as we are becoming modern we are leaving our culture far behind and are overburdened by sorrows, unhappiness, mental tensions and what not. Thus all kinds of sufferings are taking place in the life and in order to get all the things back, we are trying to follow the path showed by our ancestors. In my book I have tried to formulate some principles for designing the websites on the fundamentals of Vastu science, so that the person can achieve the maximum benefit in totality.

I am only trying to smoothen the people business by making it more harmonious and thereby having gradual increase through websites. Destiny always prevails, but by implementing the Vastu concepts, one can enhance the business provided by websites. Therefore, it is advisable to follow Vastu to open the gates to a happy and prosperous life.

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Online Power

I’ve often talked about the power of online organizing for the desi community. There have been many sites (besides our much loved Sepia Mutiny) that have attempted to faciliate this for our community; The now defunct DesiOrgs.us, the weekly profiles from The Desi Connect, and the still beta networking site Desi Page. Last month, a new site hit the inter-desi-networks, the South Asian Forum.

The South Asian Forum aims to tell the story of South Asians through the lens of its organizations and organizing work. From one-one-one interviews with community Youth Solidarity Summerorganizations to an extensive history and framework of South Asians in the U.S., this Forum hopes to capture the deep and rich history of South Asian collective action in the U.S.

In addition, the Forum brings together a collection of various resources and tools, such as an online directory of organizations and a census fact sheet, to aid those working in or interested in the South Asian community.

Through the collection of data, sharing of resources, and storytelling we can identify current and emerging issues, barriers and gaps, and develop sustainable strategies for the future. [link]

This website has a lot of potential, and is a wealth of information for anything related to the South Asian American diaspora. The website is well divided into different sections- such as the history of South Asians and South Asian organizing in the U.S., to the voices of our community with interviews and surveys that have been done, all the way to Census resources. Most importantly, at least when it comes to building networks and coalitions, is the South Asians Organizations Directory — a database of various types of organization serving the brown community. This fabulous online resource was put together by a task force of leaders in our community. Continue reading

The Terrorists Have Won

…because now, you can’t read Blogspot or Typepad-hosted blogs in India. That means no Barmaid, no Abhi, no MD, no Brimful, no Badmash, no Maisnon. Erstwhile Mutineer Manish has more (natch) on Ultrabrown:

For all the talk of IndiaÂ’s freedom and democracy, the Indian government has apparently just censored all of Blogspot and Typepad. For shame. Blogspot- and Typepad-hosted blogs are inaccessible from my Bombay ISP and many others and seem to be blocked at the Airtel Internet backbone in Delhi. Geocities is reportedly blocked as well.[link]

Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf pointed out the utter lameness of this action via the ASATA mailing list:

As I was saying all along, unenlightened Internet policies are not a Pakistani monopoly; the Indian establishment can be just as “efficient” in the matter. First it was only Pakistan blocking most blogs, now it seems the Indian establishment is getting into the act…

Apparently, terrorists are using blogs to communicate, but Ultrabrown notes that Dr Gulshan Rai, Director of the Computer Emergency Response Team—India (CERT-IN) feigned cluelessness when asked about this unwelcome development:

“Somebody must have blocked some sites. What is your problem?“…

Awesome.

I can’t improve on Manish’s response to that:

As the world’s back office, for India to blame overzealous techies would hardly be credible. It’s not yet clear which blogs the government was targeting, but the tactic of banning Blogspot is nothing less than outright repression — mimicking the tactics Pakistan used to shut down discussion of Danish cartoons critical of Islam. India is now in the august company of some of the world’s least free nations

…because I’m too busy freaking out over the possibility he raises at the end of his post:

These repeated incidents are also a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on Web apps centralized on a small handful of domains. WhatÂ’ll you do when your government blocks Gmail?

Shivam Vij has a detailed and worrisome post about his telephonic attempts to figure out what the hell is going on, here. He also has a grim sort of workaround, since not all platforms are censored equally:

Is there a moral of the story? Yes, there is. Shift to your own domain and your own hosting and most of all, to WordPress. [link]

…or, click your ruby slippers together thrice and chant, “There’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like free, there’s no speech like… Continue reading

But where is the virtual spitoon?

There is no sphere of life that is safe from the internet, not even in India. As proof, I bring you paan.com the website of Bombay’s most famous brick-and-mortar paanvala [via Amitava Kumar].

He’s probably the city’s most famous paanwala. It’s uncertain whether (as rumours suggest) he drives a Merc, but it’s clear for all the world to see that Prem Shankar Tiwari, the owner of Muchhad Paanwala paan shop on Warden Road, has his own website. It was built in 1998 by a devoted customer Vivek Bhargav. At paan.com, not only can you order paan online (a minimum order of 10 is required), you can also play a game that requires the participant to run from one end of the screen to the other to catch blobs of paan spit in a virtual bucket. [Link]

While you can order your paan online, there’s no word about whether you can spit it online once you’re done chawing it. [Whether ironically or not, right under the name of the store, the website exhorts the user to keep Bombay “clean and green”]

The website is quite amusing, and answered my burning question – why name a paan shop after facial hair?

His father Shyam Charan Tiwari established the shop thirty years ago. The shop was named Muchhad because his father Shyam Charan Tiwari had mustache so big and long that it touched his ears. And now it’s become a family tradition, all the four brothers have long mustache. [Link]

Click here to play the aforementioned game. It involves the player, holding a bucket at street level and trying to catch disgusting human head sized blobs of paan spit dropping from Bombay windows. Step aside Dante, I now know what hell looks like.

Related Posts: Tai-pan tries paan, Boing Boing discovers paan, Candy Cain

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Computers Without Words

I have numerous jobs in addition to my writing, one of which involves working with new technology. I know it’s a stereotype to say that Indians are good with computers, but I welcome it in my case, mostly because it’s hilariously untrue. I’ve avoided technology as much as possible–I didn’t have an email address until 1996, and it’s still a crapshoot if my cell phone is working–despite coming from a family of technophiles. What they actually do to these computers, I have no idea, but despite being voted Most Likely to Spill Coke On the Keyboard Again, I find myself reasonably skilled at this new IT-oriented gig. Nature or nurture? Or dumb luck? Discuss.

But what about those who are not just computer illiterate, but actually unable to read or write? Microsoft has a plan: make computers that don’t depend on words. This March 2006 USA Today article talks about how a new breed of computers can help often-illiterate domestic servants:

Working with a local advocacy group, Microsoft has developed a prototype of a system that would connect illiterate domestic workers in India with families seeking their services. The system uses pictures, video and voice commands to tell women what jobs are available, how much the jobs pay and where they are.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? For one thing:

they [the domestic workers] had trouble seeing why a computerized system for finding work was better than traditional word-of-mouth

Additionally, the computer’s images and pictures had to bridge language and cultural gaps, such as this one:

the women associated neighborhoods with landmarks rather than addresses, so an interactive map and verbal directions had to be tweaked to represent that.

Finally–the big hurdle: implementation. This CNET article discusses the difficulties poorer areas of India have getting computer literate. Apart from the most obvious issue of languages, there is problem of power:

To save power, the PCs run on car and truck batteries. Unfortunately, the batteries regularly need recharging and the public electrical power system can’t always handle the demand.

and crime:

Three weeks ago, the village transformer blew because too many people tapped into it illegally, a chronic problem here. The government refused to rebuild the transformer until the villagers promised to punish anyone who stole power.

and bad freakin’ luck:

The day after it was rebuilt, the transformer blew again.

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The fanny state

Every time someone claims that there are no communists left in China, or that the Chinese economy will surpass India’s in the long term, I point out the latest example of China micro-managing its most entrepreneurial sectors. (In contrast, India tends to overregulate old sectors and jumps into new ones, which government babus comprehend dimly, only when the moral police perceive political advantage.)

The Chinese government has now inserted itself into multiplayer game design. Gamers who spend more than three hours online will be stripped of points. Gamers who spend more than five hours online will be kicked off entirely:

The government in Beijing is reported to be introducing the controls to deter people from playing for longer than three consecutive hours… The new system will impose penalties on players who spend more than three hours playing a game by reducing the abilities of their characters. Gamers who spend more than five hours will have the abilities of their in-game character severely limited. Players will be forced to take a five-hour break before they can return to a game. [Link]

… there’s the [South Korean] couple whose infant expired as they played games in an Internet cafe; there is the [South Korean] death that occurred from exhaustion; and there are even murders that have resulted from feuds begun online… [Link]

Even the U.S. may succumb, though more to tax than to nag:

In the near future, the IRS could require game developers to keep records of all the transactions that take place in virtual economies and tax players on their gains before any game currency is converted into dollars. [Link]

I actually see the wisdom in this. Maybe they can implement a one-hour cutoff on bad first dates, a two-hour cutoff on crappy TV, and a six-month term limit on despotic nanny regimes.

Personally I spend too much time in front of my PC. I look forward to the day when they send my ass a parking ticket. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’d have to park it on alternate sides of the apartment for seat-sweeping.

Related posts: The tortoise and the hare, The cost of progress, Why isn’t gold farming big in India?, BusinessHype, Fortune cookies, CIA has India surpassing Europe in 15 years, Indian companies hiring engineers in China

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Pimp my rath

rath.jpg A BJP leader is about to go on yet another campaign swing disguised as a yatra (Hindu pilgrimage). The tour features a rather pimped-out motorhome which the political party calls a rath (chariot). The party doesn’t even attempt to hide its appropriation of religion, but at least there’s a Batmobile factor:

The high tech rath has all sorts of conveniences for the leader of [the] opposition in Parliament, including a restroom, a toilet, wardrobe, satellite TV with LCD screen, wash basin, hydraulic lift for two persons [for campaigning from the roof], sofa set, bed, 10 floodlights, six speakers and a public address system…

… the vehicle [is] not bullet proof… [Link]

It has a hydraulic lift — imagine a politician rising up from the floor like some enraged gopher, theatrical deus ex machina or Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. Dramatic.

The rath can’t possibly look any odder than the Popemobile:

The popemobile is an informal name for the specially designed vehicle used by the pope during public appearances… Several models have been used…

… yet another is a modified Mercedes-Benz with a small windowed “room” in the back where the Pope stands. Since the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, the popemobile was fitted with bulletproof glass on four sides…

… it had bulletproof windows, bombproof parts and it was inspected by the Swiss guards… Past popemobiles were adapted Mercedes-Benz G-Class off-road vehicles, and current models are actually based on the ML-series of off-road vehicles sold in the United States. [Link]

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Sniff ’n scratch

A new breed of NYC subway card vending machines which can sniff trace amounts of explosives on customers’ hands is about to be tested in Baltimore.

K9 agent

Automatically scanning all subway riders is definitely the way to go, but IMO this is the wrong technical approach:

Two companies have teamed up to develop a machine that can detect whether the straphanger who just touched the start button or screen has recently handled explosives. Alerts – including a digital image of the person at the machine and the type of substance detected – can be quickly transmitted to law enforcement officials, company officials said. The device can be programmed to lock turnstiles at the station… A pilot project to test its effectiveness in a mass transit system is expected to be launched in Baltimore in the coming weeks. [Link]

The companies involved may be going this way because there are fewer card vending machines than subway turnstiles, and there’s more space inside each one to cram in sniffers. But this method so indirect, it’s like looking for a lost quarter under a streetlight instead of where you actually dropped it.

First, a terrorist smart enough to build a bomb is probably smart enough to buy a subway card from any newsstand or convenience store. Second, trace sniffing seems like it could be easily circumvented by using gloves and changing clothes (pure conjecture, this is not my field). Third, there’s a risk of false alarms from people who work with explosives-like substances, such as gardeners who use fertilizer, and those who work with explosives as part of their jobs, such as the mole-men currently digging new water tunnels in NYC.

NYC’s bag check security theater seem to have faded away after the post-7/7 hysteria, but subway cities still need to scan for actual bombs, not indirect conjectures of WMD-related program activities. Entrances and turnstiles are the right places to put these scanners, not easily-bypassed vending machines. And profiling is just as useless — based on actual empirical evidence in NYC, we’d be targeting white male software developers and Latino ex-cops:

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Bill Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars

New Internet censorship in Pakistan aimed at the Danish cartoons of Muhammed has inflicted more collateral damage than a wayward JDAM. All Google-hosted blogs have now been banned (thanks, SloganMurugan):

Pakistan telecom authorities have blocked several websites inviting people to draw cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad… Bloggers in Pakistan became first became aware of the ban on 28 February when they were unable to access a popular blog hosting site, Blogspot. One of the blocked sites is hosted on [Google] Blogspot, which led to the blocking of all web journals hosted on the site… They say they have still been able to edit and update their blogs, but not able to read them… [Link]

… the govt. must have ordered local ISP’s to block certain websites. All the major ISP’s in Pakistan are blocking weblogs hosted at blogspot.com. [Link]

Blogger, the editing half, was spared the axe. There’s been no official announcement, although last week Pakistan’s highest court started ordering ISPs to block sites carrying the cartoons:

The Supreme Court on Thursday directed the government to block internet sites displaying sacrilegious cartoons and called explanation from authorities concerned as to why these sites had not been blocked earlier… Two petitions were filed… seeking complete blockage of sites showing blasphemous depictions and… seeking registration of cases under blasphemy. [Link]

Any secular democracy’s least-favorite phrase: ‘injures religious sentiments.’ Disheartened Pakistani bloggers are blaming bureaucratic ineptness and going around the problem via proxies. With respect to freedom of speech, Pakistan is not China:

Pakistani bloggers agree the blocking of Blogspot cannot be intentional… [Link]
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How to befriend a vegetarian

This anecdote about Google cofounder Sergey Brin is part of a startup PR launch, but it’s interesting. I wonder what the dare was. ‘I cook, you eat’ doesn’t sound like a very interesting bet:

The victim

[Anand] Rajaraman and Harinarayan were co-founders of Junglee, an early Web database company… In 1994, Rajaraman proudly told Brin he’d acquired a new computer with the latest version of Microsoft Windows. Brin… went over to Rajaraman’s apartment and installed Linux… on his computer…

Brin even took on Rajaraman’s practice of eating vegetarian, a family tradition. One evening, Brin went over to Rajaraman’s apartment, baked a fish in his oven, and served it to him with some lemon. Rajaraman ate it. [Link]

Tamarind once served me the lamb version of the paneer dish I ordered, two large, flat white squares. I downed the whole thing thinking it was the worst paneer I’d ever had and didn’t catch on until I saw the bill. Gross.

By the way, your bagels contain an extract from human hair and chicken feathers, your milk contains cattle hormones and pus, your beer was clarified with fish extract, your miso soup may contain fish broth and your Kiwi Strawberry Snapple is colored with a dye from ground beetles. Perfect recycling. I see some aren’t taking this meatitude lying down. Bon appetit!

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