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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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Sohail Abid of IdeasHut.com has posted some interesting questions about developing a local Location Based Services (LBS) platform in Pakistan. This is in the wake of recent announcements by Yahoo (FireEagle) and Google (see below) to make it easy for developers to use LBS. His thinking is that this local platform will be based on an existing solution such as Google and will be an open API which other developers can use to come up with their own apps. He wonders if the carriers will be receptive to this idea and how will such apps be received. I am posting an excerpt from the TGP thread below. My advice is to forget about the mobile carriers – there will be lots of ways to make it useful for individuals and businesses.
2:26 am
First of all, I think Google Maps for mobiles has a location feature without GPS. They also claim not to use any triangulation.
Secondly, I think carriers should be able to get their heads out of their royal arses and provide this information in a well compiled manner.
9:58 am
Adnan,
I strongly doubt if Google can do it without triangulation. Because that way +/- proximity from the location can be actually over a pretty big circle.
9:13 pm
No need to worry — google’s solution is already proven in Pakistan. I wrote about it a while ago and many people verified it.
http://telecompk.net/2008/05/15/mobile-google-maps-find-me-pakistan/
The idea here is to collect location information from users and make it available to application developers.
Sohail – you need to join this discussion
11:40 pm
Will Google Gears not do this task? I mean what Sohail is asking, Isn’t Gears’ new APIs capable to do this task? I better forward the thread discussion of Telecom Grid to one of the developer of Google Gears API
11:49 pm
FYI,
Clickety
12:04 am
Two further link. J2ME API seems to provide Cell ID of particular device which can then be mapped later to find location:
http://realtimeblog.free.fr/
http://www.opencellid.org/ (for future)
12:17 am
Hi Guys, let me clear some things here:
1) Google says it collects tower-id/location via those users of google-maps mobile app who have GPS and who approve it to share their geolocation. And so I think google does not have record of most cell tower in pakistan (as we dont have many people with gps-equipped mobile)
2) Google is NOT sharing this info with mobile-application developers. It is only sharing with web-sites (read the point below)
3) Google Gears is a browser-extension. So only websites can take advantage of user’s location (AND only if user’s mobile’s browser supports Gears – only some high-end Win-Mob handsets do this at the moment).
12:20 am
Sohail,
Would you like to share what have you tried so far by using J2ME technology? Following article might be helpful for you:
http://developers.sun.com/mobility/apis/articles/location/
12:36 am
I mentioned Google Gears Geolocation API in detail because that’s what made me think: “What if an API like this is available for mobile-app developers of Pakistan!!”
Most mobile phones used by Pakistani users support programming (either native or J2ME). If the developers have access to an API they can get the location of the user and make use of that. Then many useful applications can be developed and used without carrier-dependency.
Today, If i want to make a small application that can show nearby hospitals/clinics, I cant because I dont have a way to translate cellID into location. But once an Open-API is created and made available for all developers. We might start seeing business of local mobile-applications.
So what I am proposing is:
We make a Task Force that prepares the ground work for the API. That is: record of most/all cell-towers. We can talk to telecom companies or we can start a volunteer campaign where users submit reports about cell towers.
This can be automated with development of a light application that lets you send your present cell-tower-id along with location. Volunteers install this app and we gather data. The collected data can then be used for the API.
12:41 am
@ Adnan Ali: Yeah, carriers should show some support for this not-for-profit purpose.
@ Adnan Siddiqi: Thanks for the links. Checking…
12:57 am
What we are talking here will be invisible to the people, for example: An application will tell you nearby Petrol Pumps, Restaurants, ATMs etc where ever you go.
This will happen underneeth:
1) The application will get the cell ID and ask the API to tell the location. API will send a response with multiple attributes like lat/long, province, city, sector/mohalla
2) The application will make use of the API response to provide the service to the users.
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Once we have the API, possibilities are endless!
1:02 am
Sohail, if you have Long/Lat as J2ME is giving(mentioned in Article) against Cell ID then I think it could help you out?
1:04 am
umm if J2ME’s Location API returns long/lat, you can use Google Map to find out lat/long of near buy places and store in DB and later retrieve them?
1:10 am
No, J2ME cannot return lat/long, it will need to have another API or service translating the cellID into lat/long.
1:29 am
Check this out:
http://placelab.org/toolkit/doc/
5:43 pm
guys, do also consider the fact that the Location API for J2ME is available only on a limited # of handsets.
it’s available on Nokia Symbian S60, 3rd edition phones, some new phones by sony ericsson, and couple of motorola phones… and that’s it.
i’m guessing that only 10% (or even less) of the Java-enabled phones currently used in pakistan support the api
9:36 pm
JK I don’t believe that only 10% of Pakistani mobile market using old phones. What I see that everyone around me is using new phones these days. S60 third edition is not a new thing at all.
9:33 pm
s60 3rd edition is not a new thing, agreed. but those phones are expensive. the cheapest one is the business series E50 i guess and even that costs more than 13K. and this series is just one of many nokia platforms. the most widely sold are the series 40 phones.
so, out of all the phones in the world that cost at least 13K, only the ones made by Nokia AND running the S60 3rd edition OS are the ones that support location api.
only 3-4 sony ericsson phones support it (the new JP-8 phones)
the 10% figure was an over estimate. let’s cut it down to 5%.
11:58 pm
I agree with Adnan here…
8:53 pm
thats for sure, bro
9:34 pm
i love pak………
11:53 pm
At the beginning, Google Geolocation API has determined the location for only Americans, for the other it has returned “unknown”. Later this service was advanced, but it often does not show results even for developed countries as yet. For such cases, there is a simple javascript extension to the Google API, which gives back the country of user.
http://www.wipmania.com/en/blog/google-geolocation-api/
1:34 am
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
3:13 pm
Guys help me how can i get Cell id Db for karachi.does PTA or cell phone companies will coperate or is it too confidencial for them, also is there some other way of getting towers cell id.