Thoughts

I was at Nanded recently as part of staff development program in the area of recent advances in the areas of signal, image and visual processing. It was nice to see some very attentive audience, not so young and not so old! I got to speak on two topics Mobile Vehicle Plate Recognition and Indexing of Multilingual News Broadcast videos. Some Pictures of the Gurudwara. Understand that this is second to the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

It does sound odd, but one of the geographies that urgently requires speech recognition based solutions for all sort of transactions is India. And Indian language resources that are required to build such applications are not too mature. This is a contradiction of sorts! With 22 officially recognized languages (leaving aside the several dialects and accents), penetration of internet not being so great (infra-structurally and economically) , text entry in Indian languages being not easy, majority of the population staying in villages, rural folks being English literate on one side and the proliferation of mobile phones into rural areas on another side. Voice channel penetrates everywhere in India. Making voice the expressway to reach people! Discusses several aspects of this.

Probably one of the reason the discussion about social media as a learning tool is important is because of the popularity of Social Media. The popularity is more in terms of participation of the number of people of all age groups and their active participation. It would be wonderful to have this platform used as a media for learning. Path for Social Media as a learning Tool. Platform for Communication Allows for active participation (in sense of user generated data; noisy data) Generally all are equal (peer communication) but Some emerge as leaders (may be based on their expertise, participation, creativity ....) SIG formed (Leaders moderate the group) Leads to some focused discussion (signs of learning - though not formal) since there is less noise "useful learning can happen" So structurally everything is in place to enable learning if no distinction is made between formal and informal learning! but with some constraints on the social media ... like a teacher the leader mod

Am on my way back after the panel discussion in Jaihind College near Churchgate Railway station in Mumbai. The title Can Social Media enable ICT Learning Tool which was an interesting topic. While one can debate on this topic both ways .. saying it can be used and it can not be used. The whole idea I think is if there is a necessity then (and only then) the social media platform will be used as a learning tool. And who knows for much different things that probably we do not have a need for today. Other panelist mentioned Twitter can be used as a tool for learning summarization Blog to improve you writing skills Yeah. Necessity is the mother of all inventions.

I know there has been a drive by a leading newspaper which is taking to task the autorickshaw drivers who refuse to ply passengers. While getting an autorickshaw in Mumbai can be pretty difficult especially if you have to travel short distances ... however once you get in then unless you are conversant with the fare conversion (the driver has a fare chart - which might not always be realiable!) you are not sure you are being overcharged! I find this http://rickfare.com/ very useful. Send in the meter details thatyou see and you will know what you actually need to pay for the ride. Aside: One of my collegaues and i got into a taxi teh other day and asked that we be taken to a certain destination (it was rather a long haul and so the taxi driver was ready to ferry us). We sat and wondered why he was taking time to switch on the meter when he announced that he would charge a fixed fare. Reason - his meter was not working .. he naturally asked for a fare that was 30% more than the actual

I remember when I first started driving in Mumbai. Several years ago, soon after returning from Brisbane suburbs where I had driven in the rather sane traffic I had a reality check. I saw a "60" in the red circle on the road (sign) and thought I was to drive at a maximum speed of 60 kmph. Well, a few kms on the road and I realized with honks and hard stares from the other vehicles that it was I who was breaking the law driving within the speech limit! Two weeks hence I was zooming at 80 kmps along with other vechiles and it was "Welcome to Mumbai" no more honks or stares. Unless an odd vehicle here are there that were zooming at over 100 kmph. It has been 6 years now and I have not seen a single vehicle in the 60 kmph zone being fined for driving 80-90-100-110-120-.... I have often wondered why have the road sign with a 60 sitting in it. May be as they used to say, especally of Indian trains, you need to have a reference time of train arrival so that you know by how