Following suit with the Common Aptitude Test for management programs in the country, CBSE decides to make the All India Engineering Entrance Examination an online examination. Indeed a bold move considering the number of candidates appearing every year. I gave the Online CAT test this year, and was glad it all went smooth and glitch free.

I came across this article in The Hindu yesterday.

The tag line goes like this, “Given the digital divide, is it feasible or fair for an undergraduate entrance exam to go this way?”

There still exists digital divide among Indian youth, especially among those aiming to pursue an Engineering degree?

It isn’t like Indian students pursuing engineering degree today are exposed to computers only after they join college. Even if they don’t have the skill set to program and use linux, they should definitely be acquainted with using the keyboard, mouse and the monitor!

At least that alone is what you need to attend online exams. You should be able to use the mouse, point it at the buttons and click! Even though we claim it to be a no paper pen test, yet all the rough work is done on paper only!

From the article in Hindu:

However, a lot of thought and debate needs to go into any move to make it an entirely paperless exam, the lecturer added. She explains that in two of the three pre-university colleges that she has taught in, students are not computer-literate. Even if they are, it is only to the extent of browsing or checking the e-mail. “To be able to do an exam online, that too at a consistent speed and level of accuracy, requires a fair amount of familiarity with computers. A large section of society is really not there yet, and we must wait for the digital divide to collapse before any such thing is attempted.”

What?! They can browse the internet, socialize on facebook/orkut, and check and compose emails, but that is just not enough! They need to be more familiar with computers?! How much more familiar should they be?

You tell me? Is there a digital divide among Indian youth?

Technorati Tags: aieee, cat, computers, digital, entrance, india

Do you tweet? If yes, good. Skip the first paragraph. Read the rest. If you don’t tweet, very good. Read everything.

It’s all about twitter. The microblogging service, that has become a part and parcel of  everyone’s life. And many a thanks to latest technology, you can tweet from your mobile phone. Twitter asks you to answer this question. “What are you doing?”. And it expects you to answer in less than 141 words. You might think why it became hip among the online community. It’s all because it became a new novel way to find and share web content and connect with friends. This video should make things clearer. (Or you can read one of my older posts.)

So you do tweet. Well, let me ask. What do you tweet? I know people who because have unlimited internet access, who are lazy to leave their computer desktop and who can tweet from their mobiles because they can. They tweet from the point they wake to till they fall into slumber.

Something like a live commentary probably. So if you think you fall in that category, a piece of advice. Please don’t tweet every minute and second of your life. Tweet reasonably. If you don’t then mind your trouble is around the corner.

What trouble? Don’t follow if you don’t like!

I like to follow my friends, and it isn’t their live commentary about their own life that bothers me. The thing that bothers is that, your everyday tweets are enough to reconstruct your life. So what? You become predictable. You may think it’s cool. But people are crossing the line and into your privacy.

You might argue. “No, I am careful, not to tweet everything”. Unfortunately, tweeting is addictive like texting. It happens automatically. Look at your tweets and think how useful it will be to a stranger.

Well friends. It’s time to think twice before you tweet.

P.S. As an example. There was news that a tweeter’s house was robbed when he and his family were out on a holiday. Here is the link to the article published at Mashable.

Technorati Tags: Life, privacy, twitter

The Indian Lok Sabha Elections just got over, ya and also the counting. The results have been out and Congress is a sure winner. Just short of 10 seats to form the Government.

This year’s election left everyone shocked and flabbergasted. Congress didn’t expect such a victory. BJP didn’t expect such a loss. And the Marxsist didn’t think that they will lose in Kerala and West Bengal.

My mother is a election fanatic. She loves to argue and debate about anything related to politics (especially kerala politics). When most newspapers and channels predicted that it will be AIADMK which will be winning in Tamil Nadu, she begged to differ and she was correct!

So she followed the election thanks to the television. She is more interested in the Kerala election results and was glued to Asianet News Channel since morning. I too was pulled into the election results and I too found myself listening to my mama about what the election results will be this time.

I thought I will follow the elections in my way, the Internet way! And for that the best source is twitter. Of course some of the people I follow had already started tweeting the live counting results. I came to know that the official website of the election commission was a FAIL. Too bad, someone please help them. Well the counting went on as expected without any glitch. And the news channels were following the results closely.

So coming back to twitter. But twitter alone wasn’t a good way to see what’s going on. I searched for india, india votes and india election. I also searched for Congress, BJP and kerala. Of course I did the searches in twitter. For real time information blogs aren’t the way. Micro blogs like twitter is the answer for that.

But I wanted to see the search results being updated in real time and also all the results on a single page. Following the twitter revolution, I knew that there were so many websites and applications adding functionality to tweets and my intuition told me that there should be a website which would give me just what I wanted.

TWEET GRID

Check out tweetgrid by jazzychad. It creates a twitter search dashboard that updates in real time. I created a 3 x 3 dashboard and entered the search queries indiavotes09, india election, Congress, BJP, Kerala, NDTV. And the tweets started rolling in. Now it was me telling mama about the latest news in different constituencies. (It was pretty fun to follow the elections results in Ernakulum. That’s a story for another post!)

Tweet Grid is extremely useful when there is some live event you wish to follow. Say like the football matches, election etc.

Technorati Tags: elections, tweetgrid, twitter

If you have been to Kerala, then you might have noticed the words “Stick no bills” on the boundary walls of houses. It’s during elections that these walls are messed up with election posters.

Just saw in news that Shashi Tharoor was removing his own posters from the wall in Trivandram, from where he is constituting in elections.

Now that’s a good gesture. A good way of setting the right example. An attempt to keep the city clean of these posters. It’s true indeed, the posters aren’t need after the election is over. It’s like an outdated poster.

Hope the other candidates also emulate him and remove their respective posters, to bring back the cities to their clean state!

Technorati Tags: clean, elections, politics, posters, shashi tharoor

Are you game at coding and solving challenging math problems? Are you planning around to take part and make a mark in the world of coding. Are you aiming at the next Single Round Match at Top Coder? Do you think you want to try out in a smaller domain before venturing into the jungle. Are you in India? Then my dear brother, here’s CodeChef. For the desi coder, made attractive with attractive prizes.

This online event is open every month, for the first 15 days. Started in March ’09 this event has been a great success among Indians. So what are you waiting? Get yourself registered today at www.codechef.com and start solving problems the way you like it. Who knows you might be lucky enough for wining some awesome prizes!

Also there are other events during the second half of the month. So try them out and hone your skills before you go into top coder like websites, and compete with other coders from around the world!