Recently I came across this article by Shaffi Mather

As informed by Shaffi, every year people pay around 3 trillion USD in the form of bribes – which is, believe it or not equivalent to Indian’s GDP.

In India corruption is prevalent and common people abide by it as they want their work done. It is observed mostly in all the organizations and departments where one has to avail common services for example city municipal corporation, passport office, electricity department, telecommunication department, income tax, admission in schools and colleges, post office et all. Well, I have been through this numerous occasions and I know that even if me and my family didn’t want to pay bribe but corrupt officers didn’t leave any option. Eventually we have paid bribes under the table to get the work done.

A very good example of corruption in India was exemplified in this movie – Well Done Abba

In this movie Shyam Benegal has shown how much bribe a common man pays to construct one Well in his farm. It has been shown very subtly how he has to pay bribe to everyone in the ladder to get his Well constructed and that’s what actually happens in many departments in India.

As Shaffi pointed out there are number of ways that we can fight this corruption and I have jotted down few which can help to back foot corrupt officers -

1) Use Right to Information act wherever you feel someone is not providing enough information and asking for bribe.
2) Video tape or take a picture of the officer and warn him/her that if he/she does not perform his/her duty you will go public with this information.
3) Use Audio Recording which will serve as a hard evidence of the conversation where corrupt officer is shamelessly asking for bribe.
4) Use peer pressure against corrupt officer.

I am thinking that following can also be done to further this cause -
A web based application should be created where users can enter all the details about the case ( incidence of officer asking bribe to provide a service which is either free or on top of the prescribed fee) This will be categorized on the basis of country, city and department. This will enable to obtain the statistics of a particular country, city and department where all the corrupt officers have asked for the bribe for providing the service.

This can be later used to complain against the person and department to the higher authority. Also this can be used to get justice to the people, bring the identities of corrupt officers in public and eventually help to eradicate corruption. For this to work higher authorities should work on impartial basis and again if they don’t then post data about them as well. Further above four methods can be used to provide evidence of corruption in this web application. With the latest UID project in the offing this kind of system will be very useful to fight corruption at the grass root level.  This kind of application will help us to fight corruption and it will be a genuine effort on our part to make our country prosper in the coming decades.

I know it won’t be a very easy task but it will be one in the right direction which will help to make this world a better place to live.

The partnership of Google and DFL IPL is a first major step to broadcast this big event live on the world stage. This will help propagate cricket to different parts of the world (specially non – cricket playing countries) and increase its popularity.

Youtube will broadcast all the 60 games live.  It will broadcast these games with 5 minutes delay but honestly this hardly matters and no one cares.

Last year’s IPL champions – Deccan Chargers ( a team representing Hyderabad ) will try to defend the title. It will be amazing contest between 8 teams contending for the championship.

Cricket lovers mark you calender with the fixtures and tomorrow’s inaugural match is between Charges and Knight Riders.

I am supporting Mumbai Indians this season and my wife is with Royal Challengers.

Go Mumbai Indians!!

[Update]: This streaming is not available for US viewers. What a bummer!!!

I had few spare power adapters which I tried but it didn’t help starting my router (output of each adapter is different and it was not trigger the current flow in the device).

Then I started looking around for the new router for connecting all my wireless devices.
I tried the following routers
1) Linksys WRT54GS2 Wireless-G Broadband Router ==> Connection was intermittently breaking.

2) D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router ==> Range was less and I wasn’t getting full strength of signals on my iphone from 15 feets.

3) Linksys WRT160N Wireless-N Router ==> Connection keeps breaking and signal strength is not very storng.

4) NETGEAR WNDR3300 RangeMax Dual Band Wireless-N Router ==> LED light is very annoying but connection and signal strength is very good. I found this one good till now.

Few things to note:

• Most of my old wireless devices are on 802 b/g so that must be the reason why some of the wireless N router not performing as per their specifications.
• It could be internet service provider issue (comcast) but this variable is constant here and my previous router (wireless g router) was performing very well.
• My cable modem is Dlink and for maximum performance some companies recommend router to be of the same company.

I would strongly recommend to upgrade the firmware after installing wireless router.  Most of the times outdated and old version does not work that well. There are some expensive routers which I have not tried as there are others which serve the need for home network and does their work well.

I have seen no difference in performance between refurbished/re-certified/reconditioned and new one.  I would suggest not to be very picky about new one.

I have installed this build and have used it’s file sharing service to share a file (opera unite installation file). Check it out here

Opera Unite - File Sharing Service

Xsights is one of the best solution I have came across recently. They provide solution to the degenerating printed media by transforming paper into internet. How? Using XSights publishers can use the convergence platform (convergence of mobile and print media) to provide a new life to newspaper. Their solution provides not only convergence of printed media with online world but at the same time enables the convergence of advertising sales force allowing cross media advertising campaign.

Publishers will use Xsight’s technology by providing hyperlinks in their printed content and readers will use their camera on their cell phone to view the interactive content. Check out the demo here

Using Xsights printed media companies will be able deliver readers interactive experience by showing contextual content. Now a days companies are targeting their audience to sell their product and services by creating new videos on youtube and many other sites, same experience can be provided to newspaper/magazine readers through their mobile. Xsight provides interactive, dynamic, multimedia content on the go (view as you read)

Xsigths do have the potential to be savior for newspaper industry as it can intact the readers and might attract new audiences. This technology has loads of potential – View As You Go concept can be used for product information, selling product, playing games, watching movie trailers and son.

Thumbs Up to Xsights.