Multilingual India

One thing that drives me nuts in India is the country's multilingual culture. Indian constitution recognizes 22 languages as National languages. Plus, 114 languages are spoken by more than 10,000 native speakers!!

So, to give you an idea of this, can you tell me which language is used in each picture below - Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, or Tamil?

Happy Onam

Onam (ഓണം), a harvest festival, is celebrated in Kerala, a state in India. It generally falls in the months of August-September. Onam is a celebration to mark the annual return of the spirit of the mythical King Mahabali to his kingdom, and a commemoration of his benevolent rule and his sacrifice. The festivities are intended to assure the King that his people are happy and to wish him well. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onam)

Actually, this is also being celebrated in Karnataka, another southern state in India where I'm currently living. Arrangements like the one in the poor picture below (sorry, it was taken with my mobile) are spread along some places downtown Bangalore.

First time in India

I arrived in India at the end of July in a traumatic fashion: Bombay can be very frightening if you are not ready for it; especially if you arrive at a rainy night and some security freak tells you that there is a bomb threat in the domestic airport.

I discovered later, after spending a $100 in a hotel nearby, that everything was part of a scam that seems to be pretty common in Bombay and Delhi. In another type of scam, some indian may tell you that the hotel you are heading to is closed or has been destroyed for some reason. Don’t believe it, my friend! In fact, here are some tips for your first arrival in India:

• First, you should try to arrive in India during the day. That can be hard because most flights come to India during the late night but it is extremely recommended.
• If you are not going to Bombay, avoid its airport at all costs! Otherwise you will need to switch between the international and the domestic airport. Believe me, that’s a 10km ride you don’t want to take just to switch airports.
• Do not believe anyone you don’t know near any airport. Just ignore the people and do what you gotta do.
• Try to get a pre-paid taxi. Usually there are offices of the government authorized taxis inside the airport.
• Do not let anybody you don’t know or trust discover that it is your first time in India. Doing that is like feeding the sharks: they will hunt you…
• Do not accept help from anyone. They will try to carry your things, they will try to get a taxi for you, and they will do anything to get some money from you. So, don’t let anybody (ANYBODY) help you; even if she is the most beautiful woman (or, in case you are a woman, the most handsome guy) and have the greatest and whitest smile. Yell if you have to!
• Finally, when you reach the taxi, pay attention to the traffic signs. All big towns I know have signs giving directions of the common places and roads. Beware of the direction you are heading.

I’m not trying to scare you as it may look… Really, India is a great place and I love it now. But you don’t want to have a bad impression of the country on your arrival here as I had…

The Productivity Paradox Revised

The Productivity Paradox, a concept to refer to the lack of return in productivity as investments in Information Technology grew, started to appear in many studies during the 80s. Managers begun to question their investments in technology as there were no evidence of return. This led researchers towards attempts to understand this relationship between productivity and information technology, what produced results confirming, to some extent, the managers’ view.

According to more recent firm-level and country-level researches, this misconception of lack of return in IT investments is becoming outdated (if not already). When taking into account a broader view including intangible aspects of investments and cross-country data from the past through more recent years, researchers have shown that investments in IT, mostly when aligned with business processes and strategies improvements, do result in gain of productivity.

You can read more about the Productivity Paradox at Wikipedia. For a deeper review on the topic, take a look at the paper I wrote (PDF format), after reading some authors working on it. Update: Sorry, I removed this link for personal reasons.

Walking on the grass is good for eyesight

That is something I didn't know: walking on the grass is (supposedly) good for your eyesight. An indian friend just told me this.

I, of course, immediately went to Google to try to find evidence of this. In a quick glimpse, the two links I found are related, I think, to popular belief. They are not from a trustworthy or scientific source. One is a Yahoo Answers reply and another, which is quoted below (my emphasis), comes from the site tips4me.com.

So what do you think? Is this something already known around and I was the only one who didn't? Being true or not, this can be a good excuse for walking on the grass where you are not allowed to...

WALKING BAREFOOT IS GOOD THERAPY
Shoes trap energy around the feet, and that could be one of the reasons for feeling tired at the end of a long day. So take them off whenever you can and give them as much air as possible. Barefoot walks help tone the muscles of your feet, keeping them young and strong. An early morning barefoot walk on cool, dewy grass is refreshing and invigorating for the entire system, not just your feet. It is also believed to have a very good effect in improving eyesight. Do walk barefoot as much as possible to help the bone structure of your feet function according to its natural shape.

Wiki Scanner

I got this today while listening to This Week in Tech episode 110: WikiScanner is a web site created by Virgil, who is currently working at Indiana University.

The idea of WikiScanner is to list edits done by organizations on Wikipedia based on their IP range. For instance, you can see how many edits within Wal-Mart's IP range were meant to make the company look nicer on Wikipedia. Wal-Mart, I have only one word for you: Busted!

Now, funny thing, when Virgil was asked why he created such a tool, his answers were:

• To improve virgil.gr 's Google pagerank for the query 'virgil'
• To create a cornucopia of minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike.
• To see what "interesting organizations" (which I am neutral toward), are up to.
• Every time I hear about a new security vulnerability, I look to see if it can be done on a massive scale and indexed.

Why Blogger?

Why did I choose Blogger for this blog? First, you may want to read some comparisons done across the web. Just Google for it but I liked this, this, and this reviews (in chronological order).

I mainly compared Blogger to the Wordpress hosting service at wordpress.com because I'm already familiar with those. So below are my reasons for choosing Blogger. I of course took into account the fact that I'm already hosting a WordPress blog in portuguese.

Reason 1 - WordPress can be too complex
Although the WordPress software (note the distinction between WordPress software and the hosting service) I'm using is great in many aspects, I didn't want to go through all the setup involved to put online a new WordPress blog. Especially because my actual domain name doesn't make sense in English.

Besides, although there is a great plugin called Gengo for administering multi-lingual blogs, I didn't want my English blog to have the same content and translations of the portuguese one. It is true that I might do that one day but it is not what I had in mind for now.

With WordPress software out of the way, I had to choose between online tools. Since TypePad was excluded without a thought because it's not a free service and I didn't know it, I ended up with two options - Blogger or WordPress Hosting Service.

Reason 2 - With Blogger I can host my files on my own server
Another important reason for choosing Blogger is that it allows me to host my files and content wherever I want to. Since I have enough space on where my other blog is located, this sounded like opera to me! I simply hate to leave my content in places where I can't access the source and that, for me, was a big flaw of WordPress hosting service.

Reason 3 - Blogger allows templates customization
WordPress hosting service doesn't. Customization is a big deal for me and WP had its limitations: I can't change templates and I can't add plugins. I know Blogger doesn't have plugins and, even worse, categories but at least that are some hacks that can be done.

Reason 4 - Blogger seems cleaner and faster
I read in one of the reviews above that Blogger has issues with FTP connections when your blog gets too big. Right now, though, it is working flawlessly; it's fast and clean, just as needed for Small Bits of thought.

Conclusion
The conclusion I make is that if you want power in your hands, go for your own server and setup WordPress software in it. If you are like me, looking for simplicity with a little power in your hands, and you don't mind doing some hacks to have a category system, than go for Blogger. Right now I'm happy with it.

Hello World

Ok, so this an start... I always wanted to have a blog in English but didn't know what to write. It turns out that I think the best option is to write small bits of text, fractions of the everyday life of this Brazilian living in Bangalore, India.

Let's see how it goes...