Help find Steve Fossett

Steve Fossett, millionaire adventurer, went missing on September 3, 2007 while flying over the Nevada desert. Rescue missions have been unsuccessful in finding him, but with the aid of new age technology, we can now join the search .

Leading the way is The Amazon Mechanical Turk. Volunteers on the service scan satellite imagery for clues to the crash site. The project is located here.

Fans of Google Earth can use the KML file here, to search on Ge. Load the KML, then copy paste 38.679428,-118.913956 in the "Fly To" box found at the top left corner of the application. (For a similar viewing experience in Google Earth to the above image, navigate to an altitude of roughly 1,500 feet ) .

Where were you?

Today is the 6th 9/11 anniversary. The blogosphere must be jammed with posts about it . I do not intend to join the debates around the incident. See this and this and here for some columns on the anniversary.

What we will be discussing is this - do you remember where exactly you were when you heard about 9/11? I certainly do. I've heard that most Americans remember where they were when they heard about JFK's assassination, and Indians remember the day Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. 9/11 was a much greater event than these two, changing the way the U.S.A lived, and directly affecting countless people around the globe.

I was in my hostel room. My friend was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I was with him the whole day. At around 7 p.m, I think, another friend and I got to our hostel to get dinner. We were sitting in my room when we heard the noise outside.

"Someone's firing missiles at the U.S !! "

"They are bombing New York !"

"America is destroyed..."

"This is the end"

There were around 100 students in my hostel , with most of them crammed into our tiny TV room . We didn't have cable , and the news report was quite vague.

I remember 'Bamms' Jijesh yelling "Jai Bharat Matha Ki ! ". I have no idea what he meant.

Later, we went out in search of an internet cafe, and I think we managed to open up one that was closing down for the night.

9/11 for me, surprisingly, is one of the more vivid memories from college.

So, where exactly where you on September 11, 2001 ?

The Shortlisted and the Short shrifted

The MAN Booker Prize Shortlist for 2007 was announced yesterday . The six titles shortlisted are:

* Darkmans by Nicola Barker
* The Gathering by Anne Enright
* The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
* Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
* On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
* Animal’s People by Indra Sinha

Reactions have been mixed, mostly negative. Ian McEwan is the only established author from the list , and has been the bookies favourite all along.

The Long list itself was rather controversial, what with well known authors like Sebastian Faulks and J.M. Coetzee being left out and virtual unknowns entering the race.

The Telegraph reports that :

" While McEwan's novella, On Chesil Beach, has been a runaway commercial success, selling more than 100,000 copies, one of his rivals for the prize, Animal's People, loosely based on the Bhopal chemical plant explosion, by the Indian author Indra Sinha, had sold just 231 copies in this country by mid-August, 10 days after its sales were supposedly given a major boost by being longlisted.

Nicola Barker's Darkmans had sold only 499 copies. Anne Enright's The Gathering had fared a little better with sales of 834 sales, Mister Pip had sales of 880 and of McEwan's rivals, only Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist broke the four-figure barrier, with 1,519 readers buying it. "

I claim thee..

Have added ( 'claimed') the blog to Technorati.
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3 days later, traffic still hasn't exploded.. I wonder why??

Technorati Profile

Facebook's public search

In what might be its most controversial move yet, Facebook has announced that user profiles will be available for public search, ie you dont have to register or login to be able to search the Facebook database; you can just do a google search.

Now, is this going to catapult Facebook ahead of rivals by making it truly open and accessible; or will it scare away the privacy conscious??

Steve O'Hear at ZDnet has an interesting take on this:

"Within this context, does Facebook’s “public search listing” make the situation worse? I’m going to say no. Let me explain why.

Facebook results will inevitably end up pretty high in Google’s index, so a search for my name through Google — were I to opt in — would probably bring up my Facebook profile before many of my other social web presences, let alone what others have written about me. Presuming this works out to be the case, the end result is that I now have more control over what “digital litter” you see first, because I can edit my profile any time I like, and the search engine will re-index the results. In other words, I now at least have a chance to influence how I’m represented on Google and online in general."

If this does turn out to be true, then it could be the start of something big. I can imagine several applications based on google + facebook. But, privacy concerns are not to be treated lightly. There is a very real possibility that public search could be misused in really twisted ways.

And while we're still on social networking, check out

PatientsLikeMe .

( via ZDnet )

The Nokia way - If you cant beat 'em, copy 'em

The geniuses at Nokia have finally found a way to beat the iphone - just copy the iphone ....
Apparently, they are very proud of it. Says , Anssi Vanjoki (Nokia's Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia) - "If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride."
The device was unveiled at the GoPlay event on Aug 29 and is due next year.

That other handset cos would somehow come up with iphone clones was something I'd always expected to happen. The jolt that the iphone and the amazing hype around it has given to the industry will sooner or later result in ground breaking innovations. A few outright rip-offs are inevitable, and are probably part of the process.

Seems Samsung is not far behind . Take a look at the Croix.

btw, Picasso once said, "Bad artists copy. Great artists steal". Maybe the Nokia nerds really are brilliant.

( via Endgadget )

The Oath of the Knight

Today is Labor Day. On Sep 5, 1882 the New York City Central Labor Union held the first Labor Day parade. "The parade was repeated annually without interruption, but not always on a Monday, until several states and then the Congress in 1894, settled on the first Monday in September.

Those first parades were really protest rallies for the adoption of the 8-hour day, rather than the, often tame civic events they have involved into. Participants had to give up a day's pay in order to march. The New York CLU even levied a fine on non-participants!". ( source )

The part that interested us - the parade was actually organised by a then secret organisation - The Knights of Labor, also known as Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor . They had elaborate rituals , like other fraternal organisations . New Knights agreed to commit themselves to improve the conditions of all working people.

At the initiation ceremony, new knights took the following sacred oath:

"In the beginning, God ordained that man should labor, not as a curse, but as a blessing; not as a punishment, but as means of development, physically, mentally, morally, and has set thereunto his seal of approval in the rich increase and reward. By labor is brought forward the kindly fruits of the earth in rich abundance for our sustenance and comfort; by labor (not exhaustive) is promoted health of the body and strength of mind, labor garners the priceless stores of wisdom and knowledge. It is the “Philosopher’s Stone,” everything it touches turns to wealth. “Labor is noble and holy.” To glorify God in its exercise, to defend it from degradation, to divest it of the evils to body, mind, and estate, which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfish is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our race.

You have been selected from among your associates for that exalted purpose. Are you willing to accept the responsibility, and, trusting in the support of pledged true Knights, labor, with what ability you possess, for the triumph of these principles among men? "

The Kinghts of Labor ceased to be a force by the 1890's.

A hundred years on, shall we revive this mystic order?? Shall we go to the mattresses?


( via Consumerist, historymatters )