If you have been my regular reader, you know my interests in using film for social change. I pointed out at Echoing Green yesterday, and now I like to drag your attention to Channel 19, a community production program (also available online) that produces ‘Video News Magazines” to drive social change. Channel 19 provides a voice for the common people, when mass media can’t/won’t. Currently, Channel 19 is operating from India through six Community Video Units (CVUS), but I see the concept just as good for any country or society that needs a social voice through media!

An obvious next question (that my wife asked when we first talked about it) is how does the videos reach the “mass”. This is indeed a challenge to not only meet the supply side of it, but also the demand side of community videos (who wants to watch community media in India, when the Zee, Sony and Sun TVs flooding the mass with “drooling” reality shows and Saas-Bahu c(rap)onspiracies?) While Ch19.org also hosts all the videos online, the primary distribution is through screening the videos on a regular basis in the slums and villages, creating awareness across the affected society. It may not reach the “mass” but it reaches the locals and perhaps, will reach the district and state next and eventually the mass media. The videos not only highlight a social issue but also present solutions to issues these communities want to or should take action on. It is a tall order to make a meaningful impact, but absolutely a start. So I wholeheartedly support them!

Another thing I am proud of Channel 19 is, it is a Video Volunteers product. And Video Volunteers is a NYU Stern 2007 business plan competition winner!

Boulder is a city that I really liked though I have only visited it twice during my almost a year of weekly commuting to Denver in 2003. It is also a city high in entrepreneurial spirit, thanks to a vibrant university and the loads of venture capitalists around, and of course, a community that cherishes life and nature (and snow!).

Techstars is a boulder’s way of embracing startups and venture capitalism around the area. Through Techstars, local entrepreneurs are joining together to promote entrepreneurial activity, one summer at a time.

The website claims 80% of last years participants have now received additional venture/angel funding and thats a good statistics proving their selection criteria (10 out of 300+ applicants!) was pretty good. Most of the companies appear to be online, social media types

Now, bootcamps are not new. They have been around for a long time around Silicon Valley. Techstars differentiates in some ways, the best of which I liked was that they don’t want to see your business plan (at least thats what their website says!). So they do want you to pitch your idea but just that is enough. I think this in itself would be a boost for a lot of people to take the plunge. While ideas are dozen a dime, good ideas are still running into millions! Of course, you got to have an idea and a way to create something, so fancy ones aren’t going to make the cut. You probably need an idea that can be built into something over a few boulder summer weeks, with nothing more than a laptop, food and a bunch of mentors and perhaps, lawyers! I guess, if you can program it, you are halfway in!

If you truly have an software-based idea, look to spend your next summer in Boulder. The mentors are mostly local (previously successful & experienced?) entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, so you ought to get something out of those few weeks!

The data from the recently published 2008 Quarter two report of venture capital investments has an interesting hightligh in the new venture space : 238 Internet-based companies got an funding of around $1.5 billion! Thats just in one quarter! This quarterly figure in fact represents the highest since 2001. Are we seeing a surge in the dot com business?

On a side note, US venture capitalists sent about $473 million in India’s way.

Heard life streaming? Then you are not as much wired yet.

[source : readwriteweb]

Its the myspacefacebooktwitter economy. Take that to next level, you are hit with life streaming. Do you want to spend your life recording your life? or living? you decide. But if you decide to record, you will be lifestreaming instead of living. So that explains it, isn’t it? Should you do it? Some folks try to convince you, so read it for yourself here.

Google believes lifestreaming in various forms is likely to going to be big…check OpenSocial. A good social app is TypeRacer. I type like crazy (with auto spelling correction ofcourse!) so I am addicted to it TypeRacer style apps.

A friend of mine asked me if I twitter. I don’t. I have come across a while ago but neither did I find any need to twitter nor a need to “follow” other twitters. I actually don’t know who else I know twitters. Even if they did, I am not sure if I care to “follow” them. An email or a phone call or even a stop at their blog once a in a while would be sufficient.

I am a big fan of social software and there are ways to channel its power. But honestly, I think twitter is a noise in the social software arena. Apparently, its creating so much noise (causing scalability issues with its recursive messaging infrastructure!) that its founder says “We will continue hiring systems engineers, operators, and architects, as well as consultants, scientists, and other professionals to help us realize our vision”. Twitter is simply a glorified broadcast instant messaging. Or to put it in a more crude way, its a formalized version of virus that people voluntarily subscribe to! And to even suggest that people should pay $5 as service fee to use twitter makes me laugh. OK, I know I am overly critical. I know many smart investors and hardworking programmers are behind twitter (sorry dudes!). All I am saying is it has no inherent value beyond exponentially magnifying the always-connected networked zombies!

I have heard the term “bleeding-edge” being used occasionally to refer to something thats far better than “cutting-edge” which sounds better than “high-tech”. When I started working for L-Cube, programming image processing software in C++, there was a good friend and colleague of mine who was exploring a new programming language called ‘Java’. He kept insisting that it was cutting-edge technology to ‘write once, run anywhere’. Rest turned out to be history.

If there is something that is getting a lot of buzz in the internet tech industry today, its ‘Web 2.0′. I need to say nothing nor link to anything (a.k.a google it yourself!). If you work in anything related to internet tech industry and haven’t heard of “web 2.0″ (and know something!) then consider yourself as staying a little bit behind the edge But if you want to take a clear, deeper look over the edge, look no further (and save one hit at Google) than this article by Tim O’Reilly “What is Web 2.0″. A lengthy article, but you better skim it now, before some techie tosses those buzzwords on your face only to see you blink.

Oh, as for that friend who was always over the edge back in L-Cube, he quickly got a pet name, indeed, as “Java”. We still call him ‘Java’ and I still have his phone number stored in my cell phone as ‘Java’ and almost all of us forgot how his original name sounds!

A title that I recently came across.

Though it sounds surcastic, it is indeed an optimistic approach to what a software developer in America can do about it. Interestingly, the author has worked in India to set up an offshore center. I am guessing he must have used his perspectives from that experience to come up with few (at least) good tips in the book. I niether read it nor asking anyone to read/buy it. Since I have a vested interest in the subject of the title, I thought it was intriguing.

I will be in manhattan to listen to Grady Booch (his blog) speak on ‘Evolution and Innovation in IT’. The IBM sales guy I knew gave a chance to get in there and I grabbed it without a second thought. I have never met anyone of his caliber before and I hope the very least to shake hands with him if not more.

The concepts of design and architecture were terms exclusively used by the construction engineers until Grady introduced them to world of software development. Most of what I studied in college and in my early years as a software engineer is all what he had written. So it pays to go and see someone who in a way is largely responsible for how the software industry has turned out to be today. He continues to be a visionary thought leader at IBM and one of his jobs is simply go around the world and talk!

If nothing else, I will get to see what it takes to be a visionary. My guess is it might not be that much!

If you are technology savvy check the wiki updates from the recent Emerging Technology Conference. As close as you can get to ‘HOT’ technology.

Emails as we know it today may be gone sooner than we all can imagine. According to three respected people in the information technology industry, Email has grown way over its intended purpose and its killing itself out of existence into an eternal death!

Ray Ozzie, who originally kick started the email revolution with Lotus Notes believes “Workspaces” (Groove, Sharepoint) is the new collabaration technology. Ray bases his thoughts on Gelernter’s fantastic article on why email is a curse (read this in full if you can) and what Hornik predicts as “death of eMail”.

Their predictions are old though ( from 2003 ) but it kind of reverberates with my thoughts lately around how clumsy email has become, especially at work. Day starts with Email, ends with Email and there is efficiency, structure and organization around what,how, when and where things get done. Perhaps, its time for next workplace collabaration technology. Not surprising that Ray Ozzie is the founder of Groove.

Long ago, I met Sodaplay and was instantly fascinated. I still yawn for spending a day to create my own soda. The creators of Sodaplay have already gone far ahead and invented yet another new gizmo, Moovl.

If you want to take a drive into the creative frontiers of your mind, take a look at Moovl and if you havent, check out Sodaplay.

Some of the best sodaplays are here and my best is below.

[Click on the image, it will open the sodaplayer. Be sure to play with the g, f, k levels on the left bottom. Use your mouse to move them up and down and watch the effects]