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General
When a 19th century romantic French writer by the name of Victor Hugo said “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come” he obviously could not envision Pakistani bureaucracy. Not only can it reduce an idea to nothing more than its meager skeletal remains squirming in its own vile, it too often does.
Come 2004, the IT bubble is about to burst in a military run, democratic, American influenced politically independent subcontinent country by the name of Pakistan. It is here in our story that along comes an idea. It is a simple idea yet revolutionary in every way, the idea to prepare this country for the…
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Events General
The past whole week I was really excited about going to the exhibition on 5th and 6th at expo center Lahore since the theme read “home expo and super car expo”. I was counting on seeing some innovative home solutions, fancy cars and a lot of appliances for both. As I entered the arena, an ear piercing heavy bike engine race greeted me. Oh wow nice, we have bikes here too… and lots of them, but let’s see if we have the actual products that are expected.
First cars!! Honda Launched its new City Aspire at the event. This attracted a lot of young crowd who wanted to check it…
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General
NOTE: This is a sponsored post
Football. The most popular sport in the world. That may be hard to believe, we being a die-hard cricket nation, but there are many amongst us who get their blood pumping whenever our favorite team kicks some balls (pun intended). There’s excitement in the air, and the airwaves for that matter, when Spanish rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona are about to have a face-off on the field. Manchester United or Chelsea? The answer could incite either jeers or cheers, depending on who you’re surrounded by. It feels like you belong to an exclusive club really, not to mention how convenient it is to…
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Coffee Session General
There are two main things that are currently causing out growth in ICT to stall. One is the lack of original ideas, so most of the entrepreneurs either copy what is already around internationally or locally (same ideas of online shopping, online bidding) we still have not hit the jackpot with someone creating some thing like instagram or drawsomething and being acquired by one of the big names.
The second issue always lamented by entrepreneurs is lack of any funding sources in Pakistan. Over the years we have seen efforts being made to create funds which would help but what ended happening that most of these funds either did…
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Coffee Session General
We all know about the 7 layers of the OSI model. This is the framework by which computer networks are defined. Starting with the physical layer, going through the transport layer and finally culminating in the application layer where end user applications reside. I believe that this should be redefined to include and additional layer – the Social Layer. From the current vantage point, the Social Layer lies right above the Application layer – hence it is served by the Application layer.
The 90s witnessed a boom in what is now referred to as web 1.0. This consisted of static applications hosted over the web. Static applications meant that…
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General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
Pakistani IT industry has been progressing rapidly over the last few years. It is heartening to see that the industry players are innovating and working in different areas to establish their expertise.
Recently, TenPearls, one of the leading IT companies of Pakistan, launched “Carumba!”, a 3D car racing game for iPhone and iPad. Carumba! has been designed and developed by TenPearls’ innovation labs. Launched as a free game, Carumba! allows users to earn coins during the race, and redeem them to unlock other cars and tracks or to get additional nitro boosts. It has also been integrated with Apple’s Game Center.
The game has received very good response from…
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Events General
‘Rethinking Pakistan’ [and my expression goes LOL and I will explain why] was the theme of the conference which took place at margalla hills Islamabad on March 31st 2011 organized by TEDx, lets just summarize here what TEDx is; before we further dig into the “theme” and happenings of this conference.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) and ’x’ denotes the independently organized events under the TED umbrella, mission is “Ideas worth spreading” and this events basically brings together individuals, communities and organizations with the opportunity to excite dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level (geographically). The programs combine live presenters, performers and pre-recorded talks from some of the most brilliant…
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Announcements Events General
ICT R&D Fund aims to provide graduating students a chance to really make their final projects counts. I have always felt that students in their final year some times product excellent products which due to lack of any infrastructure and proper guidance plus funding just go in the Universities Libraries.
Seems ICT R & D fund is giving these students a chance to take their projects to the next level by acquiring funding, if you are a final year student doing a project all you need is to get this form filled and submitted through your head of department .
Last date for submission for forms is 31st…
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Coffee Session General
I wanted to discuss the Thiel Fellowship and sort of run the idea among our readership to figure out if it was justified or not. Bay Area hedge fund manager Peter Thiel started a Fellowship program in his name about a year ago trying to capitalize not on start ups, but the smart kids who may actually come up with the next billion dollar idea.
Let there be no mistake. Innovation solves problems. Bankers, lawyers and hot shot executives are good for only one thing: managing an existing infrastructure. It is the innovators who turn existing ideas on to their heads and enable breakthroughs. Considering the point above, it…
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You can add roads, regions, landmarks or other points of interest on the map. 
1:44 am
damn it!.. i was about to launch (within next 2 months) a geo wiki for pakistan where the idea was to let the community tag and map geo locations using google maps api..
oh well.. i better make it worth it now
6:55 am
http://www.wikimapia.org/
9:59 am
Good! I am jumping right in.
3:01 pm
if ob is making one, i hope to see the latest of the images. The kind of images that google is currently having are old one..
5:43 pm
Ok in today’s allotted to my own self time to waste, I was able to put tons of details to only Islamabad! And it made me even wonder if I am the only guy adding information regarding to Islamabad?
Don’t we have any more geeks around?
6:20 pm
kamran, my solution runs ontop of google maps. So you might end up getting the same imagery.
6:36 pm
Good start, no need for custom solutions anymore. We will see great stuff from fellow Pakistanis soon.
Person I knew was going to create customized cartography application, then came Google Maps, then this. Good luck everyone.
12:12 pm
Here are few quick tips for everyone (if Greenwhite allows I can write in an article on it).
1. Use polygons for the buildings and larger structures.
2. Use points for only smaller structures or objects.
3. Make all business locations fall under “Business” instead of Establishment or something else…
4. And keep in mind though you are helping map Pakistan, you will most of the time will be helped by our Indian brothers and sisters! Sometimes I even wonder why are they hovering over Pakistani cities all the time? (no pun intended)
And about doing a custom solution, why reinvent a wheel?
2:49 pm
Im not a big fan of Google Map Maker. The idea behind it is that only Google can use your contributions as opposed to OSM where no one really owns the actual data. Google, however, owns all your hard work. This is just a way for them to save the money they’d otherwise pay to the map data companies.
Check out the OSM press release about Map maker
http://svn.openstreetmap.org/misc/pr_material/releases/osm_release_25062008.pdf
2:55 pm
On another note, i have mapped almost all of Islamabad with some friends in OSM and that data is open for use to everyone. We are looking for more people to join us in mapping other parts of Pakistan. However, i strongly recommend that you read up on mapping before you start as we have put in a lot of time and effort in this. If you start mapping without understanding mapping conventions, there is a good chance you will ruin someone else’s hard work.
5:10 pm
Ujmi – Please do send me a post at osama@greenwhite.org and we’ll share it with the rest of us here…
9:04 am
Osama, thanks will be shortly in touch.