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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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I would narrate two personal experiences here to solidify my claim. National Savings is a big financial institution of Pakistan under the control of the federal government. The organization has millions of depositors and thousands of employees. If you happen to visit any National Savings center the first thing you would notice is a long queue of customers and a general sense of clutter and mayhem. This is because the organization has not yet computerized its procedures and still employs the age old system of keeping registers or ‘Khatas’ as they are known in Urdu. Now that is a very lengthy procedure of going through the piles of decades old registers and finding the details and takes a lot of time. These centers have got computers? Yes they have but they are not using them because there is no database of customers and they are placed to just give the place a techy look.Now let’s move to our very own district courts or Kutcheries. Everyone has to visit these places for a variety of reasons and they are still using centuries old system of ‘data warehousing’. The record offices often times catch fire and the precious data is lost.The plan for incorporating e-Govt modules in Pakistan was envisaged in 2002 and an Electronic Government Directorate (EGD) was established in October 2002. The directorate, working under the ministry of information technology, is carrying out some projects on a smaller scale. As mentioned earlier, computers have been provided to many government organizations but the employees either don’t know how to use them or can’t utilize them fully due to their limited scope in their jobs.Now instead of lambasting the government for the slow paced modernization, we can improve the situation. We have to start with those organizations where there is an ample IT infrastructure present but there is a dearth of procedures like National Savings. If these organizations involve the IT firms in creating databases and softwares then we can expect some positive changes.As far as digitizing the data of local governments and record offices is concerned, it’s a long and tedious project but we have to start it immediately.The only hindrance in this regard is the lack of availability of funds and more importantly, lack of will. The rampant corruption present in the traditional data keeping is also a major bottleneck as the folks will have to part with huge chunks of ‘extra income’. India is facing the similar issues but they are trying to combat it. We just need to follow suit.
7:34 pm
I think we need to understand that even if a department has a good semi-use of technology it doesn’t mean that its “top-level” management even understands what IT can do for them.
I have been involved in some private sector companies where all of their business information is in paper form, it was and still is a challenge to make them realize how efficient they can be when a correct IT solution is provided to them.
Efficiency is not about working long hours, its about working smartly for 8 hours
hopefully our e-government will realize this soooooon..
8:51 pm
E-Govt disappeared the same day the illiterates brought down pervez musharraf , it not about politics but what i know is it might have been possible in the Musharraf era and it was being done they even had plans to build a Tech City near Sheikhupura but i don’t see this tech revolution happening under this playboy’s management.
2:37 am
“The rampant corruption present in the traditional data keeping is also a major bottleneck as the folks will have to part with huge chunks of ‘extra income’”
I agree with you on that! they are worried about their extra income because if computerized it isn’t easy to modify things.
9:15 am
@Obaid
Yeah we can only hope for that they will realize the importance of IT pretty soon otherwise they’ll suffer losses as traditional way of doing business is almost a thing of the past now.
@Ehsan
Without sounding political, I do agree that present regime has yet to devise any IT policy.
@Saad
That’s one of the biggest reasons for this as the current system of data keeping is so easy to manipulate
6:16 pm
Yeah and this reminds me that when nadra’s wasnt computerized we got fake birth certificates of my brother made (infact 2-3 times), the guy used to charge 500 and used to come at home to deliver those
but since it has been computerized and we got the computerized bayform we have been told its impossible to modify anything now
2:18 pm
I think the issue is not of computerization but mainly of the funds and lack of interest of even EGD people. Since i have been in a few implementations of Egovt. porjects (District & Province level), but those project succeed where interest of funding agency(like UN or US AID program) is there. Local IT professionals dont even understand its importance by themselves, so they do not cooperate implementing it.
6:50 am
consolodation interest debt consolodation card debt