I have been featured in the Peer-to-Peer section of the current edition of the Oracle Magazine (May/June 2007). Do have a look.
1) Photo On The Table Of Contents Page
2) My Interview On The Peer To Peer Page
An article about how and why city administration should use new age mediums like the internet to communicate with citizens and manage the city.
Also a quick look at the recent PMC scheme about including citizen suggested projects in the city budget for 2007-08.
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The PMC recently invited development project proposals from the public. These projects were to be considered for inclusion in the PMC budget for the year 07-08. I checked the PMC website egovpmc.com for the necessary form, but the site was a disappointment. I later attended a meet on the topic organized by the Grahak Panchayat. The team of enthusiastic oldies volunteering work for the Panchayat provided more information and the requisite form.
Article about improper use of parking spaces and builders tricking the city administration by just converting public parking into private parking spaces.
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As per construction rules in cities, all buildings need a certain parking capacity to be approved by the corporation. Even these standards seem inadequate to handle the traffic mess in cities like Pune. However builders have found a way to make it appear as if they are conforming to the law without doing anything of that sort. They just convert public parking into private parking and supposedly comply with parking capacity rules.
“Article about freedom on the Internet published in my bi-weekly column for the Maharashtra Herald daily newspaper.”
Orkut.com has been getting the Internet a lot of bad publicity of late. Orkut is a site where you can find old friends and make new ones. It has 1000s of communities and millions of active members. But this popularity has also made Orkut the favourite punching bag for the media today. It may be an obscure Orkut community that defames a national icon or some anti-Indian post on an Orkut forum, but it all becomes sensational news very quickly.
The reasons why we keep seeing these news are -
1) It’s very easy to find improper things on Orkut. If you spend 15 min on Orkut you will find somebody somewhere talking nonsense about some great man or saying things that might be offensive to someone.
2) Orkut’s popularity ensures that any Orkut news gets a lot of attention.
3) Orkut will always provide a steady stream of controversial news, as moderating Orkut is close to impossible.
So if a 24 hr news channel is short of news it can always pick something from Orkut or an offensive video from YouTube and blow the story out of proportion.
