Now that you are used to “The year that was (2007, 2008, 2009)” posts, I will get into the post with out introduction.

1. Sabbatical – spent most of my time at Janaagraha thanks to Infosys. My sabbatical will end on Jan 15. Wait for a detailed post.

2. My sister got married.

3. Did a month long motorcycle ride across India to celebrate my 30th birthday. Initial plan was to do 3000kms. At last I ended up doing 5000+kms. It was a life changing ride. I haven’t written much about the ride. But I promise, I will. Check all posts tagged #3kfor30.
Surprisingly you can make new friends at 30. I guess I never met so many interesting people in one year, of course 1998 was a different story.

4. Restarted YAPodcast as 1by2coffee with Veetrag. Now we have nearly 2000 downloads. Its been fun. We are planning to do at least 25 episodes in 2011 against 12 this year.

5. Planning to raise $500 to setup a computer center at Kodagalli with UbuntuAtWork. Thanks to friends we are already at $325. The rest should be done in another 15 days. I will write a detailed note how we used this money.

6. I have been blogging for seven years now. Thanks for all the support.

I wish you all a very successful and peaceful twenty eleven.

Probably the longest episode of 1by2coffee where myself and Veetrag speak about everything.

1. Privacy tools for everybody – TorProject (Android app), Eraser, TrueCrypt

2.  Time Man of the year – Mark and Facebook

3.  Calibri ebook management software

4. Veetragś open letter to Yahoo CEO about Delicious

Cup12 – 1by2Coffee First year end edition

“The choropleth map provides an easy way to visualize how a measurement varies across a geographic area or it shows the level of variability within a region.” – Wikipedia

Its an easy, colorful, effective and simple data visualization. At Janaagraha we use them visualize ward level data of Bangalore. A week back I thought it would be useful for others too and hence wrote a small script that could be used by anybody to create choropleth maps for Bangalore.

I wrote the initial script and then Anand helped me by adding more features. Its no where near completion. You can help us to resolve issues or by suggesting features.

Check some choropleth images created using the script.

BBMP Bangalore Election Results 2010 – Party wise breakup
Legends: Saffron for BJP, green for INC, yellow JDS, white for independents, purple for others.

BBMP Bangalore 2010 Elections – Gender ratio
Legends: Blue for male candidates, light pink for female candidates, dark pink for female candidates (reserved).

As you know I have been working with UbuntuAtWork for an year now. We help women micro entrepreneurs enhance their capabilities, pursue their entrepreneurial aspirations, and escape poverty. According to me computers and internet can help them in big way.

This holiday season I want to raise $500 to setup a computer center at Kodagalli near SriRangapatna. I am personally going there during the holidays to setup the workspace.

These computers will help them to be in touch with the world, to make best natural, sustainable products and sell the same at online bazaar.

Please consider giving to my Holiday Wish, and together we can make the world a better place. If you can’t afford to donate, I’d really appreciate if you’d share this page with your friends.

Update:
Dec/15: Friends have been really generous and we have been able to raise $140 with in two days.

Dec/16: We reached $255 today morning. The wishes URL doesn’t show the latest info. They say its a bug and it will be fixed.

Dec/26: $275 as of today.

Dec/30: $325.

Nokia N8 – Phone, Camera, HD Videocam
I have been a user of Nokia phone for longest of times. I still have couple of Nokia phones. Nokia sent me N8 to try out during the ride. Its an amazing piece of hardware, survived couple of drops. Camera is superb, it shoots really well. It was my primary and only camera that I carried during the ride. It also shoots the video very well. Check a few videos that I have uploaded.

It has great battery life and display is clear in the sunlight. Of course the sound clarity and network switching is extraordinary.

It still runs Symbian.

Nexus One – Email client, Wifi hotspot, Maps and Twitter client
This has been my primary phone since a year now. It comes with very well integrated Gmail Application which is very much necessary on the go. Also it has all those applications required to be in touch with my dev machines.

I used Google maps extensively. I didn’t carry any other mapping device or map book. I trusted Google to the core. Even though Google didn’t fail but there were cases where I got lost due to GMaps. So its absolutely necessary to *ask* in India. Tracking each other is a big problem when you are riding. There is always a chance one of you get lost or miss other. But If all your co-riders use Google Latitude then that is the best way to track your fellow riders. Latitude is also good way to let your near and dear ones know where you are.

I also used Gplaces but its not as good as foursquare. Foursquare rocks but then there were server problems too. But then suggestions by Foursquare were far better than any other service.

I have an open N1. I can tether on wireless. So it worked as on the go wifi for my N8, netbook etc. Its an awesome to share your internet with your buddies.
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