Miscelleneous Sessions

Attended a few other sessions like Mobile Applications for Indian Population, Open Source Development, Build Your Own Brain(BYOB), OpenStreetmap, etc.

The mobile apps session was sort of a discussion about what kind of mobile applications can be developed specifically for the needs of Indian Population. Some of the ideas discussed were like apps for farmers to send updates about power cuts, daily updates about the cost of commodities, etc. Issues like what kind of UI would be required, affordability, etc were discussed. The other app was to have an Indian calendar and also something related to horoscope, etc. Then came an app for commodities trading. And then was the most interesting one…….apps for traffic updates. There were quite a few ideas about this. So, this was more about different ideas but not about how to actually implement them.

Open source development and BYOB sessions did not seem to be very interesting.

The OpenStreetmap one was slightly interesting. These people were taking the existing maps and then trying to make them accurate by ground verification and then updating them. They had already mapped a few places around chennai and were quite accurate when compared to google or mapmyindia maps. They were calling for the support of everyone to make use of their tools to update the maps. Basic concept was to have a community effort to update the maps.

Session on voice php

Was initially apprehensive about how this session is going to be. But it turned out to be a really interesting one.The guy who was presenting was from TringMe. He was talking about how to power your php apps with voice. This was something new for me and I really liked it. The best part about this was its just any normal php script with just a few more additional functions provided by them. We can have an IVRS based app, a media player or just any other voice app that we can think of using voicephp. We can access our app from anywhere like through web, phone, etc. For developers who would like to test this out, we can signup for free and every user gets a unique phone number as well. So, we can basically access our app by directly dialling that number or even from the web. Looks to be a really good stuff and easy to implement as well. I am definitely going to try this out. There are a number of sample apps put up by them at http://code.voicephp.com/.

The same guys had another session from 2-3 pm but that was more of selling TringMe. It was basically about setting up your own voice portal using the tools provided by them.This didn’t seem to be very interesting.

Sessions kick-off

Here starts the first session on personal branding by altius consulting and I see almost all the people just attending that one single session……these people have got a well prepared ppt and it looked to be more of altius people conducting a seminar and not like a discussion……

Moved to Track#3 and here is the discussion going on change we can believe in (using social networking sites to cleanse politics)……..this initally started with just 5 people and slowly people started gathering….but the presenter didn’t seem to be very interesting…. he says with the help of social networking sites, get people’s support and go ahead to start a party……he says language barriers can be eliminated using social networking……all the while the discussion was about advantages of social networking but at no point I heard anything from him talking about how to change politics using social networking platform…. this guy says lets first have sufficient online presence by forming a group and someday he dreams of this community transforming to an actualy party 😀 ……..I don’t think this session was worth at all……moving on to another one 🙂

Live from BCB8

Here I am at BCB8 @ Yahoo. Its been a long time since I got us so early on a saturday 🙂 . The event is in the Yahoo cafeteria. This time its one big open hall unlike the classrooms in IIM-B. Started the day with a nice cafe mocha at Barista here in the cafeteria.

Coming to the event, this time there are a lot of first timers and even the crowd was not huge. The number of sessions are very less and I didn’t hear anything much in the session intros about the sessions that were previously announced. My first impression about BCB8 is I am little bit disappointed as there aren’t any interesting sessions announced till now…..let me wait and watch if something interesting turns out……looks like the sessions are starting……keep checking for updates……..

Movie watching starts again

Finally, I watched a movie yesterday after a gap of 5 months 🙂 . I think this was the first time in the past few years that I haven’t watched a single movie for more than 5 months. Yeah, that’s a looooooooong gap for a guy who used to watch movies almost every week. Even if I was not going to a movie, I used to atleast check the pvr site to know about the currently running movies. And this time when I opened the site after 5 months I was surprised to see that the entire UI of pvr site has changed.

Coming to the movie that I watched, it was a telugu movie Konchem Ishtam Konchem Kashtam. As always, I haven’t read any reviews about the movie before booking. I just go to any movie when I feel like watching one. Not very particular about the story, the cast,e tc. Movie was the same routine love story and how the hero and heroine make it up at the end. It wasn’t that bad but not a great movie also. To me the first half was better than the second half. The comedy was also good enough. But towards the end I didn’t like all the sentimental stuff that the director tried to put in. And somehow in this movie, I didn’t like the dialogue delivery of the actors.On the whole, I think it can be watched once and you won’t feel bored at any point.

To me it was a nice break from my daily routine and a good start to get back to my old movie going habit.

Update: I started going to gym 😀 ………….will post about it sooooooon 🙂