Simple Tech Life ..

Hackers of Bangalore unite for a Social Cause over Random Hacks of Kindness June 4,5 2011!!

2011-06-06T22:06:00.005+05:30

Day 1 :

The Random Hacks of Kindness took place at Jaaga a creative common space in Bangalore in 5th June 2011 where hackers from all over Bangalore came together to solve problems in Disaster Risk Mgt and climate change. The problems were pitched by the subject matter experts in these fields and the hackers formed teams to tackle them.

The day began with a Key note by Professor Srinvasan Member of IPCC that won the the noble peace prize . The Key note talked about the perils of Climate change and its reprcussions on the human race based on scientific data , he also touched on how technology could help in predicting disasters before they could happen by making the data available to the masses .

Professor Srinivasan IPCC keynoting the Audience on climate change.

This was followed by pitching of the problems and choosing of the problems by the hackers to work on. Thus the Hackers made 11 teams that started to hack 11 solutions . This continued into the evening until 6pm . The event also saw the presence of the Architect of the Txtweb platform coming to mentor the hackers.

Architect of txtweb demoing the platform to the hackers.

Hackers working at Jaaga During RHOK

Mr.I.Vijay Kumar the CTO of Wipro was invited to be the Chief guest and he stressed on the importance of Social action among the youth.

Day 2 :
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The Next day began with a keynote by the Director of Entrepreneur network at Yahoo Mr.Bala who focused on Social entrepreneurship and stressed that ideation is easy but adaption is hard.

Some of the problems that the hackers tried to solve are as follows :

Save your Souls : Feed twitter and severe weather forecasts to pre-registered subscribers in the affected location
Flood Rescue : Helps the Authorities view all the people who have requested help on a map dashboard during a flood.
Navigation of Emergency vehicles in India during high traffic density
Natural Calamities Simulation and creation of awareness
Facial Recognition for tracking people in disaster
Finding Emergency services near you
Helping Hand : Trying to bridge gap between NGO’s and common people who have excess food.
Compilation of Disaster recovery data from specific disaster situations , to serve as repository of recovery strategies in future events and a scientific bank for research .
SewerBOT : a robot that can be used in sewer lines to clear clogs thus avoiding human entrapment and save lives .
DejaVU : Distributed Facial recognition system

The hacking continued all the way on sunday till evening 4:30 pm when it was wrapped by for pitching where the top 3 hacks would be judged by the judging panel which consisted of the following people :

Professor Rajagopalan Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, a founding member of Technology Informatics Design Endeavour ( TIDE) a not for profit development society which focused on developing and disseminating technologies that are economically attractive.
I.Vijaya Kumar Chief Technology Officer of Wipro Technology.
Ranjan Jaganathan Associate program manager at Yahoo.
Omprakash Unique Identification Authority of India [UIDAI Govt of India].
KK Sharma Unique Identification Authority of India [UIDAI Govt of India]..
Sreekandh Entrepreneur ,open source evangelist ,Cyclist .

The hackers started pitching their hacks infront of the audience and the judges who studied them carefully for their applicability /adaptibility /practicality among other factors.

The hacker pitch concluded with the judges deciding the top 3 game changing hacks which were won by :

Navigation of Emergency vehicles in India during high traffic density
Dejavu : distributed facial recognition system
Save your Souls : Feed twitter and severe weather forecasts to pre-registered subscribers in the affected location

Winners with their trophies
The Hackathon ended on a high note where the hackers looked forward to the next random hacks of kindness in December 2011 and an opportunity to help the world through technology and social action.
Hackers at Random hacks of kindness.
Some Resources :

Images from RHOK day 1 : https://picasaweb.google.com/spraveenitpro/RHOKBangaloreDay1June2011#

Images from RHOK day 2: https://picasaweb.google.com/spraveenitpro/RHOKBangaloreDay2June20111#

Random Hacks of Kindness at Jaaga - Some pointers/Tips

2011-06-03T02:04:00.003+05:30

What an exciting weekend its going to be , with hackers from 19 cities from around the world volunteering their time and skills to attempting to solves problems defined in disaster risk management and climate change, as for Bangalore it is being held at Jaaga and 200 people have registered to participate for RHOK

Some pointers and tips for an ideal Hackathon are given below :

Random Hacks of Kindness @ Bangalore

Volunteers and Experts around the World Collaborate To Solve Disaster and Climate Problems Through Random Hacks of Kindness

2011-05-29T12:24:00.005+05:30

On June 4th and 5th, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA, HP and the World Bank, through their initiative Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), will bring together thousands of people in over 18 locations around the globe to create open solutions that can save lives and alleviate suffering. Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges.

Events are planned around the globe, including Hartford, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle and Silicon Valley in the United States and international events in Toronto, Canada, Aarhus, Denmark, Basel, Switzerland, Berlin, Germany, Bangalore, India, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Kampala, Uganda, Lusaka, Zambia, Melbourne, Australia, Nairobi, Kenya, Trento, Italy, and Santiago, Chile.

During past events the volunteers have worked on applications that are already making an impact. I’m OK, an SMS service that lets people inform their families of their status, was used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010. The World Bank is piloting CHASM, software for visualizing landslide risk, in the Caribbean. Other apps have received support and interest from governments, NGOs and international organizations around the world.

"Climate change adaptation and building resiliency to disasters are closely linked,” said Zoubida Allaoua, Director of Finance, Economics, & Urban Development at the World Bank. “This event is a unique opportunity for experts in climate and disaster resiliency to collaborate with volunteers in developing open technology that has an impact on the developing world. We are grateful to RHoK's corporate partners for driving this initiative as a contribution to their corporate responsibility programs."

“Microsoft was founded on the belief that software can change the world and Random Hacks of Kindness is a shining example of how we can all come together to make a difference,” said Mark Hindsbo, Vice President of Developer Evangelism at Microsoft. “We are very honored to be a part of this passionate community that codes to make a better world and are very happy to support it”

"Google is very excited to see Random Hacks of Kindness accelerating innovation, collaboration, and the development of open technologies to help make the world a better place,” said Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research, Google. “We look forward to the really great code that results when programmers from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World bank join forces with other members of the community to hack for humanity."

“HP is committed to applying our technology, expertise, and dedicated volunteers to support and contribute to the prosperity of people and communities around the world,” said Gabi Zedlmayer, Vice President, Office of Global Social Innovation, HP. “With this grant, we are proud to support Random Hacks of Kindness and help foster collective innovation.”

“A volunteer technical community like Random Hacks of Kindness is an incredible resource,” said Elizabeth Sabet from SecondMuse, RHoK’s operational lead. “Through RHoK, development experts can draw on a wealth of creativity and brainpower in responding to real world challenges, while hackers have a chance to put their considerable skills to work for the greater good.”

“As another example of How Good Grows at Yahoo!, we’re proud to support Random Hacks of Kindness because it’s an opportunity to give individuals the tools to change the world,” said Erin Carlson, Sr. Director, Yahoo! for Good.

"NASA encourages RHoK developers to utilize open data sets to create cutting edge applications that can help solve global challenges" said Linda Cureton, Chief Information Officer at NASA. "We are excited to support RHoK and explore new ways that NASA data can help the world."

For more details, see the Random Hacks of Kindness website at www.rhok.org.

Participants are required to Register at http://rhokbangalore.eventbrite.com/

Yogesh Londe
09893 627 684
yoga1103@gmail.com

Random Hacks of Kindness #3 At Bangalore is here and You are Invited

2011-05-29T12:11:00.004+05:30

Random Hacks of Kindness At Google Bangalore - What really happened.

2010-12-14T22:34:00.005+05:30

Pre Event

The Count down to the RHoK Bangalore was pretty exhilarating considering that this was the first such event in India. Google India offered to Host the Hackathon and were very gracious with their hospitality. We also partnered with a local organization that works on democracy at grass root level called Janagraha for the problem statements and getting their Subject Matter Experts's (SME's) on site . A press conference was arranged at the Bangalore press club 2 days prior to the event that in turn was picked up by the Bangalore Mirror thus helping with the publicity.

The Event

We had around 45 Hackers turning at the Google India Headquarters , Bangalore . Event was keynoted by Todd Khozein, Founder of SecondMuse, RHoK's operational lead, who inspired the Hackers on how they were part of the movement which was just beginning to bring together members from the hacker community to SME's from the Disaster Risk management field. He spoke about the difference between natural events and disasters and affirmed that natural events can be prevented from becoming disasters by increasing local capacity. The hackers immediately broke into various teams with different SME's pitching in their problems to attract hackers to join their teams. Various problem statements related to disaster risk management were displayed for hackers to choose and start working towards.

Todd Khozein Keynote on Disaster Risk Management at RHoK Bangalore.

Thejesh from Janagrahaa Pitching in Problems to the Techies.

Hackers Brainstorming Solutions

Hackathon Begins

Group Photo

The Facilities hosted by Google Inc were simply excellent and all the hackers were focussed on their hacks. The event which was originally planned as a one day event was changed to a 2 day event due to popular demand and Glomantra Inc offered to host the space for the second of the hacking. thus began the second day which ended at 2pm 5th Dec 2010 when the Hackers started to present their hacks to a judging panel of 5 members . The Hacks were judged on the various criteria s of :

creativity / innovative / unique
utility, can it be used in the field?
applicable, does it solve a problem?
impact, local or global

Prashanth Presenting His Hack to the Hackers

Presentation Time

Post Event

The RHoK event in Bangalore has opened the doors many more avenues of collaborations and already we have identified quite a few local partners for the next RHoK. There were interviews given by Todd Khozein to Times of India which is one of the largest circulated English Dailies in India , also to other magazines : The Alternative and The Sunday Herald.

Hacks Worked on

Get It Right Away! (GIRA)

It is tough to get the information about hospitals in panic situations. We might not have internet connectivity in these situation to look for information on Google, especially in places like India where internet penetration is not that great yet. GIRA is a mobile application which resides inside the phone with a local database containing hospital phone numbers. Since it's in local database, the app doesn't require you to connect to internet. In panic situations user can just launch this app & enter 'Area' OR 'Area Code (Pin)' OR 'Name of the Hospital' to get phone numbers of nearby hospitals. No need to Google, No need to call someone, No need to remember SMS shortcodes!!!

GIRA on IM

IM version of Get It Right Away app. Just add JIRA@bot.im on your Google Talk & start using it. Send 'Area' OR 'Area Code (Pin)' OR 'Name of the Hospital' & you will get a list of nearby hospitals with phone numbers in response. Ex Queries: Rajaji Nagar, 560020, Fortis. (Note: This bot is just a proof of concept with no real data)

I am not OK

An easy to use Android app that will allow a user to send out an emergency broadcast message across multiple mediums to indicate they are not OK and need help. Security has now been brought under one umbrella with Interaction serving as security for most NGOs. More and more NGO workers on the ground have smartphones. Building a proof of concept application which can help individuals easily communicate their location and status is extremely important.In a disaster zone, one's connectivity might be limited.Start with SMS with GPS location one Might want to SMS central server and have that send out Tweets / Facebook message o Make sense to Ack receipt of SOS message somehow (how if phone is off?)

Helpout

Revolutionizing social-networking for social causes.Help Out is an approach to form a bridge between the people who wants to help and the people who need help. Help Out will have a dedicated website where users can register themselves as a helping hand and also search for a helping hand. We will integrate this with Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter , Google Buzz and Location based services like Foursquare.

People Finder 2.0

Ravi Shankar and Bhavani won the 1st Prize for the People Finder app they demoed which in situations of disasters ,matches the pictures of people uploaded by the relatives/friends to pictures uploaded by volunteers through facial recognition and tries to connect/rescue people during times of tragedy like earthquake/tsunami/floods etc through facial recognition.

RHoK Bangalore Organizing Team

Some Links/Resources :

Random Hacks of Kindness Site http://www.Rhok.org

Photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/56639621@N05/

Rhok Bangalore Wiki http://wiki.rhok.org/RHoK_2.0_-_Bangalore

Hack presentations http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rhok-bangalore-random-hacks-of-kindness

RHOK Bangalore flier http://www.simpletechlife.in/2010/11/rhok-2-flier-all-are-invited.html

Times of India Coverage of Random Hacks of Kindness At Google Bangalore Dec 4,5 2010

2010-12-14T21:57:00.005+05:30

Full Article from Times of India Here

Why Progressive Innovation is just not Good.

2010-11-30T11:17:00.003+05:30

This is clearly an argument for Disruptive /Exponential innovation , this is what happens when Innovation gets linearly progressive :

RHoK #2 Flier ....All are invited.

2010-11-29T03:05:00.004+05:30

Presenting the better way .....

2010-11-24T21:32:00.003+05:30

As a Toastmaster I can say that delivering a good Presentation often comes after lots of practice , especially one in which the presenter inspires/informs/entertains or to provoke action. The Following presentation has some interesting tips on delivering an optimal presentation.

Optimal Presentation

Why the Web needs HTML5

2010-11-24T00:52:00.003+05:30

Oreilly Breaks Down

Interesting presentation on HTML 5 http://slides.html5rocks.com

Data Visualization Basics

2010-11-24T00:37:00.004+05:30

from http://blog.ffctn.com/

RHoK #2 Spread Da Word....

2010-11-09T23:07:00.004+05:30

So the RHoK Bangalore edition is hardly a month away and things are falling in place , you can register at http://www.rhok.org/events/rhok-2/bangalore-india/ , the below video is pretty cool .

RHoK post-it movie : Aarhus, Denmark from Tobias Sonne on Vimeo.

What is RHoK [Random Hacks of Kindness ] ??

2010-11-01T00:33:00.002+05:30

Rhok Intro Presentation

Breaking :: Random Hacks of Kindness #2 – “Hacking for Humanity” Worldwide

2010-11-01T00:22:00.006+05:30

Random Hacks of Kindness is gearing up for RHoK #2—its second global hack day —on December 4th and 5th, 2010.

RHoK engages the best and the brightest volunteer software engineers, developers, independent hackers and students from around the world in a marathon hacking weekend to develop software solutions for global challenges posed by experts in disaster risk management. RHoK is platform agnostic and encourages the development of open source software solutions.

The very first RHoK event, RHoK #0, in Mountain View, Californiain 2009, produced software solutions that were used on the groundduring the devastating 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. The incredible team of partners behind the initiative then took the effortglobal and collaborated with organizations around the world inhosting RHoK #1, RHoK’s first global hack day, with simultaneous locations in Washington D.C., Nairobi, Sydney, Jakarta, Sao Paulo,Santiago and Porto Alegre, Brazil. These global hacking teamsproduced incredible software solutions, some of which have already been picked up and are being piloted or put to use by governmentsand organizations working with crisis management in the field.

RHoK #2 will involve simultaneous hack days in Chicago, Bangalore,Nairobi, Sao Paulo, Aarhus, New York City, Toronto, Mexico City,Lusaka and Berlin, and that’s just the beginning.

Participation in RHoK #2 is open to everyone so bring your laptopand get ready for an incredible experience. Meals, cooperative workspace and plenty of prizes and RHoK swag will be provided. Bring your friends or come to make new ones. Registration is openand free so sign up today and take part in an exciting collaborationthat has the power to save lives and make a difference in the world.

We can’t wait to see you there!

For more details or to register for any of the global events, please visit http://www.rhok.org/events/rhok-2/.

Welcome to the Creative Internet .....

2010-10-22T21:43:00.004+05:30

The Internet is spawning a new age of collaboration and creativity , its amazing how the projects highlighted in the below presentation are bringing the world together through the Love of Art.

A Day in the Life of The Internet

2010-10-20T19:41:00.003+05:30

Ever thought what happens in one Day of the Internet ...here it is :

Created by Online Education

History of the Internet

2010-08-19T21:33:00.002+05:30

Pretty sleek info graphic explaining how it all began....

Praveen.

Effective Brainstorming with Whitey Board !!

2010-08-15T01:34:00.003+05:30

I 've been in search of an effective brainstorming tool for quite some time now and haven't found any as effective as a plain simple white board, but obviously the White Board has its drawbacks as it is bulky and large, This is when I came across the WhiteyBoard . So in Plain English what is the WhiteyBoard , Check this out :

So basically they are stick-on white boards that are highly portable , reusable , convenient and does its job. of course there are infinite number of uses and I am planning to use it for recording ideas and tracking milestones, The best part of the deal is that they even ship overseas !!, so what are you planning to use WhiteyBoard for ?

Praveen

The How of Habit Tracking on the Internet

2010-07-30T20:04:00.009+05:30

All of us have Goals and Habits , don't you think it would be useful to know where we stand with respect to a goal or whether we are going strong on our Habit that we wish to build ? We can of course track this in the good old analogue way which is "Paper" , But I do prefer doing this via some powerful web apps such as :

Joes Goals :

I personally use Joes Goals to track various Habits that I am trying to build and find it easy to use and Simple.

Basically All your habits that you are trying to track get plotted as a grid against the current week allowing you to place a Check on whether that habit was completed or not . You can add multiple habits and each carries points . You can even add bad habits that you like to avoid for which you can place a red check mark. I find this very convenient and simplistic. At the end of the week it gives you an over all picture on how you fared throughout that week. pretty neat.

Memiary :

Memiary is another fantastic tool with an extremely minimal interface that just gets to the point. It basically allows you to enter 5 things that you did in a day

The App allows you to enter up to 5 things that you did in your day and allows you to view all your actions for the last week/month/year etc through a simple report, I find this very convenient to use . So what are you waiting for ? set some goals , Track em /Review em and let me know how this helped..

Praveen.

Its Back !!

2010-07-30T19:29:00.006+05:30

Yep , As you can see the Blog was in a mini Hibernation for almost 6 months now,I guess things can sometimes take their course to only come back stronger, These 6 months have been indeed hectic, Have been travelling far and wide. Life has changed in a way, The Internet has changed in a way and thus the world is changing as we speak. I am trying to overcome my creative block and get backinto the business of blogging by setting up a rhythm. Henceforth I would publish articles every Friday and that would help to set the pace initially. Thanks again for visiting.

Praveen

What Matters Now : Download Free E-Book by Seth Godin Now

2009-12-16T11:47:00.007+05:30

From Seth's Blog

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I've organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you'll find it worth the effort. (Download here).Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year.

From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O'Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

Download "What Matters Now"

Free Power , Any where , Any Time...for Any Phone !!

2009-12-15T13:55:00.005+05:30

The Rebirth of the Personal Computer...

2009-12-11T12:18:00.007+05:30

We are truly living during phenomenal times , Everything around us is made new , made intelligent and made empowering. I am referring to the creation of the devices that mimic human senses which are slowly taking over our lives in subtle ways. take for instance the IPhone or the Android Platform , these devices perform the following:

Intelligent Talking & Listening :

As the devices are becoming more and more intelligent around us , the first ability that we could talk about is the ability of the devices to guide us, to help us in our daily affairs through voice , this includes services such as GPS or Search . The Ability to take the Human voice as an input brings with it an infinitude of applications such as the one below where the Car Driver gives the input of the input of the location search with his voice to get appropriate directions. Thus Hands free computing is truly the next paradigm of the Human computer interfaces

Sensitive Feeling :

Devices are getting newer , cooler and more innovative ways of getting inputs from the user by feeling the touch , Multi touch is simply cool because we really interact in the real world with Multi Touch hence the trend points to the evolution of the way we interact with the cyber objects to resemble more like how we interact with the real world around us.

But the key question is how good is Multi Touch when it comes to handling text? well even in the real world text is handled with the single stroke of hand and not like an object handled by multi touch thus the "Swype" way to handle text is easier and at least looks pretty awesome. The Below Video offers a glimpse of Swyping.

Cognizant Seeing :

With the Built in cameras in the smartphones packing in more and more MegaPixels every 18 months , the number of applications are pretty huge. Applications that go beyond taking Pictures and videos to processing the pictures and videos are materializing as we speak. Augmented Reality clearly has come of age and has the ability to change the way we see the world with applications seen only in the science fiction . The ability to augment the real world with data and information from the Web can have exponential applications in areas such as Real estate, Travel , Shopping etc , the below video demonstrates this :

The Ability to process the real world data via a visual search is at a very nascent stage but nevertheless it is maturing and it has a name : Google Goggles , well this Android app allows you to snap a picture of any real world object like a Book, contact card, Landmark and have it searched by Google for further information :

Thus to conclude we can say that phones have stopped being phones anymore and have traversed to a point where they not just are smart but have started to mimic the human sensory perception and thus augmenting human ability and intelligence , they have truly become the personal computer of our age.

Whats up Bangalore this weekend ?

2009-05-27T17:19:00.002+05:30

Learning , Sharing and Connecting at The Great Indian Developer Summit 09 Bangalore

2009-04-23T17:16:00.003+05:30

So Here I am at the Great Indian Developer Summit happening at the Indian Institute of Science , Bangalore which is a premium Developer Conference happening yearly with several tracks including Web , .net and java each happening on separate days. The Final day of the conference on saturday is purely reserved for workshops on hardcore coding allowing delegates to learn technologies of choice.

Today is the day of the .Web track that I am attending and its been a wild experience. To Summarize the experience till now in 3 words ,its been a 100% Learning , Sharing and Connecting .

Learning About Cutting Edge Technologies such as as Rich Internet Applications,Cloud Computing on Hadoop and Agile web development with Grails have been such a mind opening experience . One Particular session that got me really thinking was the session on "Re architecting the Web with Html" by Jonas Jacobi who talked about rethinking and rebuilding the way the Web functions.

GIDS has always been a great platform for sharing knowledge , the booths clearly provide a platform to know and interact with industry professionals working on cutting edge products. The Final aspect has to be about the connections formed here at the GIDS , the opportunity to connect with people to learn and share is brilliant and the networking is just great. Its been a tiring day here with lots of learning but its been a wonderful experience .