Published by matti.pohjonen March 31st, 2008
in Latest news, Sex, animals, art and mobiles.
So was going through the rounds and came across this article in the New York Times … The article reads:
MUMBAI — In this romantically corseted society, Ashish Chettri is as close as you get to a Don Juan.
He is an irrepressible flirt: a skirt chaser who claims to pursue three women at a time, a loquacious utterer of compliments, a ceaseless seeker of dates.
And that is just with his thumbs.
Like many Indians today, Mr. Chettri is a solely cellular Casanova: a suitor who flirts brazenly by text message, but rarely, if ever, in person.
Text messages have become an integral part of courtships in many countries. But the short messaging service, or SMS, is proving particularly revolutionary in India, where it is paving a way for the young to maneuver around deep-rooted barriers to premarital mingling.
I found this especially interesting as I have been developing two courses at SOAS, where I am stuck working for some cash(cows) for the time being. It combines the two themes that I have been developing for next year. The first being a course on “Emerging Digital Cultures in Asia and Africa”, the second being a course on “Sexuality, Gender and Desire in the Media” with my friend Akshay Khanna (not the actor!). So I shall call this synthesis of the two courses, lacking a better word, the emerging thumbfuck-cultures in Asia and Africa.
Published by Angad Chowdhry October 1st, 2007
in mobiles.
In the middle of these days, it is nice to know that someone, somewhere is … stupid enough to be buried in mustard.
I got an SMS today
“Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2nd Oct 1869. Sms YES or NO to 56789 & you could win FREE talktime worth Rs.2000. Rs3/SMS”
Published by Angad Chowdhry September 19th, 2007
in Apple, Hacks for Academics and mobiles.
Ok, ok, so you have the IPhone. Fine. I’m not jealous. I hear it’s launching in India in May, so there. But only on the Idea network. Whatever, I’m sure we’ll find a way around it.
So here is the big news, part 1. Some intrepid hackers are selling unlocked IPhones on ebay, for like, $600 dollars. Other’s are offering to unlock IPhones for $50 dollars. (Though, if you live in NYC, the brilliant Dan over at Uneasy Silence, is offering to do it for free.) Anyway, for all those who are not scared of messing around with stuff - i.e. all you non tenured academics out there - Uneasy Silence has published a DIY way to unlock your IPhone.
update . My friend Kushan Mitra just reminded me of something that I forgot to mention. The Iphone is available in Mumbai, unlocked, at Heera Panna.
Published by Angad Chowdhry July 26th, 2007
in Announcements, Hacks for Academics, History, India diary, Internet, Latest news, News, Panic time, Religion, Theory, art, censorship, design, mobiles, remix, technology, video and viral.
The Cellphabet 1.0 happens tomorrow.
What DJ Fadereu has accomplished is so ground breaking that I’m not sure how to talk about it. Check here for the event background and here for the wizardry that made it possible. Check here for a behind the scenes look.
Buckle your seatbelt Dorothy cause Kansas is goin’ bye bye.
Do you know that ’someone’ always knows where you are? Do you know that the mobile phone in your hand is always being watched by invisible eyes?
कà¥à¤¯à¤¾ आपॠजानते हैं कि हर वकà¥à¤¤ कà¥à¤› अदà¥à¤°à¤¶à¥à¤¯ नज़रें आपको देखती रहती हैं? आपके मोबाईल फ़ोन के ज़रिये..
Published by matti.pohjonen July 8th, 2007
in mobiles, remix and technology.
Our dear friend DJ Fadereu who has been occasionally contributing here is again to his (un)usual mischief. Now he is set to take on the mobile phone industry - and will probably do.
The story reads:
DJ FADEREU is reluctant to talk about his past perhaps because there is too much to recount. The Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) graduate, who has made heads turn and eyebrows rise at various times as a blogger, columnist and author is however excited about his latest occupation.
For the last three months, Fadereu has been working day and night to convert his mobile phone into a powerful machine that functions as a server, a social networking tool and games engine. Now, he looks proud as he explains its applications to me over tea at an Andheri restaurant. “It is the cheapest SMS gateway and server in the world,” he claims. “So far, only big corporates had access to such technology”
So what exactly is this technology he is talking about? What Fadereu has done is to modify the operating system called Symbian API in his Nokia N-70 model phone to make it capable of keeping track of other phones and launch SMS-based games that can be played by many people.
Friends, a new post from our guest writer, U.M. (Who has just emailed me to tell me about his new article on computers and mothers, over at remains of the desi…)
Metaphors for Love and Lust in the Hindi film Metro (Anurag Basu)
Unheimlich Maneuver
Having just seen the Hindi film Metro, my mind is freshly buzzing with the criticisms of the film that were murmured by fellow-movie goers as I was leaving the cinema. They tended to fall into the following categories; that the film was badly directed (not realistic enough), that the film was badly acted (not realistic enough), that the chicks were too ugly (too realistic), and that the themes in the film were too immoral (not realistic and also dangerous suggestions to young people who might be influenced by them). I think it is a shame that film critics should feel the need to “instruct†viewers to enjoy a film purely on the basis of whether or not it was credible, morally palatable, or whether or not the chicks were perfectly air-brushed and botoxed.
After a bit of lull time and perhaps a few too many YouTube videos, we are now starting a new interesting project here at SACREDMEDIACOW. As some of you may remember, I’ve been talking here sporadically before about the impact of the proliferation of mobile phones on the subcontinent and how we should understand these rapid changes. Our next ongoing project will tackle this issue head-on from a series of rather unique and interesting insider’s perspective into the new mobile revolution taking place in different countries around the region. We’ll begin with Afghanistan. I’ll let our friend and guest writer CHIRDEEP SINGH CHHABRA introduce this.
Danebarf – Snowflake
A couple of months ago I mentioned to Som that I had been involved in starting a company in Afghanistan. He jumped from his seat and asked me to write about it. I agreed but knew the right person to write about it was not me but the main man behind the venture – Eaton Dunkelberger. Eaton and I met in London Business School where I was doing an executive entrepreneurship program and he was doing an MBA.
Published by Angad Chowdhry March 25th, 2007
in News, guest writer and mobiles.
Don’t trust the Indian news media? Then stop buying the newspapers and 24X7 channels. Hire your own embedded journalist to do the job for you, a private eye.
If you pay for the trip and expenses as a collective donation, I will go out and report directly to you, on this website and your cellphone by SMS. You will also have control (within reason), via sms or comments, on what I should do next.
75% of what you pay will be spent on the job at hand, and the rest are my earnings.
State your choice of place and amount donated below in comments.
Your three choices this week:
1. Nandigram, West Bengal
2. Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
3. Choose a destination
DJ Fadereu is an award winning writer and blogger. He has done this sort of thing before.
Published by matti.pohjonen February 14th, 2007
in guest writer, mobiles and technology.
UPDATE! Apologies. We misspelled your name again. My bad … will be more careful in the future
One more from Chirdeep Chhabra, our guest writer doing the rounds in India. Eventually, once we figure out the quirks of the system, people will be able to post themselves. Until then, I present…
The mobile yogi
Sometimes one has to reach the peripheries, move out of the cities to comprehend “change” as we speak of it in India. On one hand are the people, unaffected by the economic boom, carrying on their daily toil, pretty much in similar fashion from their granddad’s time, and on the other, everything has changed.
On our drive from Bangalore to Pondicherry we passed by a very old temple town of Tiruvannamalai. It is a pilgrim town in Tamil Nadu and home to the famous Arunachaleswara Temple. It has long been associated with many yogis and siddhars (saints). Siddhars profess and practiced an unorthodox type of Sadhana, or spiritual practice, to attain liberation.
As we drove past this town, my interest in matters spiritual being scant at best, I saw a group of yogis sitting outside a small temple. One of them suddenly reached into his bag and pulled out a mobile phone. I slammed the brakes in my car and watched him as he had a leisurely chat on his gadget.
Published by matti.pohjonen February 9th, 2007
in astrology, mobiles and technology.
This reminds me of the discussion we were having here a few months back about the potential of mobile technology for rural India. Will be interesting to observe how this develops and what the findings are. This from India PR Wire (full story with link):
In a digital era, how do rural and poor communities share stories with one another? By a Nokia mobile phone, with adapted software, if academics in London and campaigners here get positive results from their project.
The project in south Karnataka plans to record stories digitally, and share them across the digital divide.
Using mobile phones with simplified icons, which villagers would find easier to deal with, this British-linked project seeks to zero in on what kind of information local users find useful.
For other similar projects, see also this.
Published by matti.pohjonen December 30th, 2006
in Latest news, astrology and mobiles.
Methinks this is a little what I was in mind when sniffing the stellar constellations one evening in Guwahati. 4G mobiles / WiMAX would perhaps allow us to eventually shout out a resounding fuck you to slow net cafes and heavy and over-priced laptops and take media (re-)distribution to the next level. See the following article from newswiretoday
WiMAX Connects Rural India to the Global Village
WiMAX is the new connector of rural India. This technology is making its place in the country, thanks to the features and possibilities it possesses. The future prospects of the technology are lucrative..
A new mobile technology revolution is on the verge of revolution with WiMAX ready to take India by storm. WiMAX is not only publicized as 30 times faster than 3G mobile technology and 100 times faster than wireless data rates but is also anticipated to cure the problems of rural connectivity …
But enough off this now. All this has been somewhat wetdreamish speculation about what could potentially be done given the resources and the disruptive technologies; a thought-experiment in rural media that I was interested in exploring. I’m off for new years now. Sacredmediacow wishes you all a happy new years and will be back in strenght once we all recover / return to action …
Published by matti.pohjonen December 30th, 2006
in astrology and mobiles.
While rummaging about the net researching mobile phones, and especially signs in the stars about the mobile-Internet convergence that I talked about earlier, I came across this article. A few selected quotes from the Mercury News:
Think India’s tech sector is just about software? Think again. A new tech boom is under way — one that could transform India into a hardware center with its own semiconductor industry.
…Driving that growth will be cell phones, which are more prevalent than PCs in India. That in turn is creating an ecosystem of opportunities.
…The mobile phone is becoming the society-changing force that the PC was in the United States. It’s far more affordable than a computer and provides instant and constant communication links for millions of Indians, many of whom do not own desktops or even have land-line phones.
Also found this talking about the already-existing mobile phone based services that work (or do not) in bridging mobile and net technologies. From iLeher:
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