Follow the elections with Google

Now that is one revolutionary effort on behalf of Google for the upcoming Indian Elections.
http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/landing/loksabha2009/

A small step for Google and a giant leap for India in the direction of e-Elections.

Google emits CO2 !!!

Dont know how much of this is true, but it seemed an interesting piece of information:

According to researchers from the United States, performing two searches on number one search engine, Google, can produce the same mount of CO2 as boiling a kettle. They found that one search generates around 7 grams of CarbonDioxide, while boiling a kettle produces about 15 grams.

When a search is made, several Google servers that can be located miles apart, compete to return the search results in the quickest time. "Their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy," says Alex Wissner-Gross, a physicist from Harvard University, adding that the accuracy and the speed of Google are those that produce a large amount of CO2 due to the energy and electricity used to bring the results.

The California-based company owns around 450,000 servers worldwide, these processing the demand of over 200 million daily search inquiries. The infrastructure of Google transmits information from the server that produces the search result quicker.

Alex Wissner-Gross made a research on Google's influence on the environment. "Google operates huge data centers around the world that consume a great deal of power," he says. According to the physicist, the data centers are very efficient; however, their main goal is to perform quick searches, which leads to the use of a lot of energy. According to Google officials, the company tries to take effective steps towards lowering the emission of carbon dioxide. Nonetheless Google has never presented any information on energy it spends or CO2 the company emits. "We are among the most efficient of all internet search providers," said a spokesman for the company.

Another analysis was carried out by John Buckley, working on the website called carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental site. It states that the emissions of carbon dioxide produced by one search ranges between 1g and 10g. It is the first time that scientists show the impact of computers and Internet use on the environment. The data presented by Garnet, a US research company, the use of IT worldwide today causes around 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The emissions of CO2, produced by computer use today, outrun that of aviation industry. It is worth mentioning that last year the profits of number one search engine rose to about $6 billion, making Google one of the most popular brands in the world.

Evolving e-Governance in India

The power of the net and its hold over the youth of today has made every political party sit-up, take notice, and refresh their websites!! There are facebook groups, orkut communities, fan followings etc all over the place. Has india reached a stage where it is ready to finally acknowledge that the internet has become an integral part of our lives? The government certainly seems to have realised it. Now with the election process coming to a fever pitch my inbox is getting flooded with all sorts of emails about political parties and their candidates and about groups that have now woken up at this last moment to create awareness and fight against certain issues prevalent in politics today.

The present government seems to have taken pains in creating a number of websites. But they have hardly bothered to give them any publicity or advertisment. So they remain less known and hardly used. I hope they are not classifed Top Secret!!

Here just three very small ones:
http://pgportal.gov.in/ (Online Greivance Portal)
http://smartweb.keralamvd.gov.in/kmvdnew/services/registration/Dereg_details.php (Kerala RTO)
http://125.17.140.50/BPSFineDetails/BPSFineDetails.aspx (Bangalore RTO)

The Kerala government has a very good and comprehensive website http://www.kerala.gov.in/ they even have a section called 'Mail to Minister" :-P hmmppff... if u threaten to drop dead in front of them they wouldn't listen to your pleas against an issue; so the very thought that pains would be taken to redress an issue after reading emails seems extremely funny.

Thrissur district has 2 official websites!! One maintained by the Kerala Government and one by the Central Government!! and both seem to be equally futile :-P anyway they are not used much by anyone.. so then whats the big deal ... right??

http://www.tsr.kerala.gov.in/ & http://thrissur.nic.in/

Will there ever be a time when we will never even have to step out of our homes to get government stuff done??

My personal Favorite website is http://www.irctc.co.in/ It has really truly revolutionized our ticket booking process. Hoping other websites will have achieve almost same or even wider reach than it.

PS: Praying that Jaagore reaches their target of a billion votes!! :-)

Sock and Awe

George Bush got aimed at with a shoe only 2 days back and theres a computer game of the same doing its rounds in the web :-) Now you dont have to be Muntadar al-Zaidi to aim a shoe at Bush and the best part is the game helps you to take a better aim at him than the Iraqi Journalist. You just cant miss :-)
Her's what yahoo has to say about the game not the incident!!http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/-quot-sock-and-awe-quot-pits-players-against-president/1274922
You can download the Excel version of Sock and Awe which i got as a fwd from the below link :
http://www.4shared.com/file/76664810/f99c5f45/Shoe_Game.html

Acess the web through notepad!!v

A neat little trick that i came across while google-ing: for all thsoe with IE's blocked at school or at work and cannot open up the IE window.
1) When you open the windows calculator, calc.exe, you can go to help and then click help topics.
Note: This can be done through any of the basic Windows applications, such as calculator and
notepad.
2) Right click on the title bar and go to 'Jump to URL'
3) Type your URL (starting with http:// eg: http://www.google.com/ )
There you have it. Now you can search around the internet using your own private little browser which is easily hiddeneven when soemone walks by your system.
I tested this at office and it worked like a dream!!! :-)

God's own e-State

That should be kerala governments next e-aim i guess, but for now its funded and run by UNESCO.
http://kannur.entegramam.gov.in/
They have managed to get onto the web every possible detail of even small consequence of a typical kerala village. like even the coconut climbers contact number!!!! how to get house help. jobs available in houses in the village etc. its all there for all to access.
For a start its a very good effort. As about 10 'gramams' of Kannur has been put on the web thru this initiative.
If turns out to be a success then we can hope to see more of such sites coming up soon... :-)