A bunch of UK and Indian geeks gathered at Google office while Cameron was praising Sachin at Infosys campus. It was a kind of unconference made possible by CIS, with the UK Government’s Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement and Google. The discussions were around open data in India ( the lack of it) and UK, and possible ‘civic hacking’ of the data.

Started with general introductions of who they are, what they are working on and problems they have faced, in terms of getting data and pushing back into the main stream.
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I have been here for 7 years now. Thanks to all my readers without whom it wouldn’t have been possible. Initially there used to be separate blogs for my tech and non-tech posts. Then i migrated them to the same blog as they both were very much part of my life.

There are certain subjects that I always constrained myself from blogging. My views on Politics, Economics, History, People, Indian/Western culture, Love, Sex, Spirituality etc. I would like to explore more on them here in future. Of course my notes on tech, travel and life continues. Expect all your support and suggestions.

I was reading a few posts from the past. Even though I remain the same person over the years, I can see I have grown with this blog. Thanks to internet and people it introduces to your life. Hope to see you all for many more years here and hope to catch you in offline world. Coffee is on me.

Before it becomes a controversy let me rephrase it. TEDx is not just about talks. Sure, it is the place where you can hear best of the people. But TEDx is also about people who have ideas.  This way TEDx is not very different from TED.

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Crossposted from Janaagraha.

Three months back when I was introduced to iJanaagraha, by Jaagte Raho! Coordinator Jasmine Shah, I was struck by the amount of geographic and ward data that Bangalore based Not-for-profit Janaagraha wanted to publish. That was the time when Data.Gov was live and developers all around the world were going crazy. I was wondering at the potential of IJ as a developer platform and not just as a social network. It was time to stop wondering and start working towards it.

As you know the biggest inspiration for us was data.gov and data.gov.uk. where the government of US and UK share the raw government data for developers to use. Using data provided by the government, there has been mashups like flyOnTime, visualization of health records and many more interesting and helpful applications.

For example Janaagraha’s Ward Infrastructure and Assessment (WISA) project has ranking data for each of the wards. Think about an application which maps WISA data to land/rent costs in that area. I guess it will be of great help when you want to choose your neighborhood. So it makes much sense to expose the data.

We are still in the early phase of developing the data and map APIs. As much as I want all kind of APIs exposed, I will have to keep check due to available resources. We will start with exposing OpenSocial and limited WISA data. That will probably serve as a pilot. If we find that developers are using the data in a useful way we could get the rest of the data and maps.

Above all IJ is social network which gives information, tools and network to socialites. It provides OpenSocial platform for external developers to launch relevant tools on IJ. Hence in a way, we are providing both a platform and data for interested developers to add those additional functionalities that we haven’t even dreamnt of. Now I am just waiting for the launch.

– Thejesh G N –

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Thejesh is the Technology and Community Manager at Janaagraha. He can be contacted at thej@janaagraha.org

I never developed for mobile platform. I have tried a bit of J2ME but never got hang of it. When iPhone got in, I was so exited to develop for it. But then it had a lot of entry barriers. I never got a start there. Then came Android, but then I was never curious enough to try out SDK. Its only after using Nexus One that I want to develop applications for Android.

1. Android has matured
I have been using Nexus One for quite sometime now. Two days back my phone OS got upgraded to Froyo (Android 2.2). Its become so usable, friendly and stable now. I believe Android has matured enough for me to consider it as a serious development platform.

2. Android can grow in India
If I consider Indian smart phone market, Nokia (42%) leads followed by RIM(17%), Samsung(15%), SE(9%), HTC(7%), Motorola(3%). Except for Nokia and RIM, rest are betting heavily on Android. The number of android smart phones released this year shows how popular the OS is. According to my prediction by next year android for sure will be second largest OS in India. Symbian will of course will lead for few more years.

3. No new languages
I don’t have to learn a new language. I know Java. I am also very comfortable using Eclipse platform.

4. SDK is available for my platform i.e Linux (and for windows too)

5. Easy private distribution
Application distribution is decentralized. If I write an application for private (like inside an enterprise) use only then I don’t have to go through a third-party. My users just need to enable menu-> settings-> applications-> unknown sources. They can install any apk files.

6. I can sell on multiple markets or sell directly
I don’t have to go through Google Android Market. There are many other options available or I can sell it on my own website.

Of course there are many issues that I have faced as an Indian developer. But then future looks very bright. My “hello world” app is ready for testing…