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i.witness TECHNOLOGY: TRENDS AND GIZMOSThe New Sunday Express I March 20, 2011

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s Japan was ravaged bya tsunami last week,the third most popular

Twitter trend wasGodzilla. It was trend-

ing because people, despite the trag-edy, were making jokes about Godz-illa coming out of the Fukushimanuclear plant if there were a nucle-ar disaster. For a topic to trend onTwitter, millions of its users haveto use that hash-tag. In this particu-lar instance, they were dividedbetween a majority making fun ofthe disaster and a minority whowere condemning the jokes.

Since its inception in 2006, themicro-blogging site has achievedquite a lot. For one, it single-hand-edly killed blogging as we knew it.People are no longer writing longpassages about their opinions butare posting their thoughts in 140characters. It grew into a globalphenomenon after Facebook and atlast count has 190 million users,half of them American, and aboutone per cent Indian. It is creditedwith toppling dictators, findingjobs, crowdsourcing, writing books,and at times like this, making youlose faith in humanity.

A 2009-survey by a market-research firm found that 40 per centof the traffic on Twitter is point-less babble. While I doubt thiswould have decreased since thestudy, Twitter has become morepopular and is certainly spewingout more junk than ever before.

Charlie Sheen is a case in point.The highest paid TV star in Ameri-

ca is obviously mentally ill and inneed of psychiatric help. He is anaddict who has lost his million-dol-lar job due to his public antics. Butwithin weeks of joining Twitter, hehas amassed a following of two-and-a-half million users who were clear-ly laughing at his tiger bloodtweets. A man who should havebeen sympathised with and whoshould have been sent to rehab anda psychiatrist was enjoying enor-mous fame and was thinking all wasgood because of his followers who

had no empathy for him and wereonly laughing at him.

What old timers call lowering of

standards, around the world in edu-cation and ethics, combined with avery bad celebrity culture, is lead-ing this Twitter revolution withtrending topics like tiger bloodand Godzilla. What is more alarm-ing is what New York Times editorBill Keller calls the the AmericanIdol-isation of news. When theeditor of one of the most respectedpapers on earth says, once-seriousnews outlets give pride of place notto stories they think impor-tant but to stories that aretrending on Twitter, itis time to take note. Thisis much more evidentand like everything else,much more chaotic witha dash of rabble-rousingin India.

Five years after its conception,the government and most of thepolitical parties do not understandTwitter. And if you take some timeout to check various Indian Twitteraccounts randomly, you will realiseone thing. Most of them are peoplewho have never tweeted but are justfollowing celebrities from AmitabhBachchan to Barkha Dutt, people(called trolls) who use Twitter tospew venom about a particularcaste, religion, person or region andwho use it to abuse so-called celebri-ties. Twitter would have gottenBinayak Sen out of jail in Egypt.

adarsharp@gmail.com

In recent years no, make that severalyears we have been told the PC isdead. I am writing this piece on one.For a much shorter period of time, wehave been told the e-mail is dead. I had

to e-mail this article to my editor when Iwas done. Similarly, the browser died withthe advent of apps and in recent weeks, weare told the blog is dead. But, believe it ornot, I still get paid to write a thrice-weeklypan-Asian news blog run by a British entre-preneur. The point is : technology gurus, notto mention their acolytes, love to pose asvisionaries, no matter how many times theyare wrong, and forever seek epiphanies.

In that spirit, it tickles me to suggest one:the death of search. Or let me moderatethat. After all, Google is not going to gobelly up anytime soon. Search, as we knowit, is fundamentally changing and in somecases in a fun way. Look at Zite, the newiPad app that creates a personalised maga-zine (not my term) on the fly. (Take that,Rupert Murdoch, creator of the $30 millioniPad journal, The Daily.) It then throws allthe content into an elegant template thatexploits the rich features of the touch-basedtablet computer. This, by and large, hasended my searches for most types of read-ing news or otherwise.

Zite in urban lingo, apparently a web-site that sucks is actually a variant of theGerman Zeitgest, or spirit of the times. Theapp is not the first of its kind but might bethe most intelligent yet. In the early days ofthe Internet, PointCast pushed news onto your desktop. It died a quick death. Inrecent years, we have iGoogle and GoogleReader for personalised reading. EvenGoogle Desktop can deliver news that canbe somewhat tailored by the user. But Ziteis a true genie.

Unlike Flipboard, an iPad app with whichit has been frequently compared, Zitedoesnt ask users to choose the contentsources. This is a big plus to men who,pathologically perhaps, are always morecurious about whats on in the other chan-

nels. So, this allows a user to discover con-tent that would otherwise remain below hisradar. And Zites grasp is all-encompassing all of half a million websites includingsome eclectic blogs and Faking News.

At the outset, when you open the app thefirst time, Zite seeks your preferred inter-ests, interprets your Twitter feeds and han-dles, and Google Reader data. You can alsoadd unlisted subjects (for example, cricketand Bollywood). Zite then compiles themagazine you can flip through and read (or

watch in the case of video). Users canchange their settings at any time and theZite engine quietly keeps analysing whatyou are reading to tailor further changes.

For users of F lipboard, Zites design isonly comparable, not matching. But I expectZite to quickly spruce up. What Zite deliv-ers, of course, is far from perfect. It is a lotdifferent from my morning newspaper orGoogles automated news page. But then, itis only a few days old and is still trying toread my mind, in a manner of spea king. Ifthere are some annoyances, it is in throwingup similar news articles (I really dont careto read two agency copies on the same sub-ject). What I like, and look forward to eachnight when I spend an hour reading on myiPad, is the anticipation of what Zite wouldbring up that I miss ed through the day.

bmkrishna@expressbuzz.com

Sony Ericsson has unveiledthe worlds first Playstationcertified smartphone. TheXPERIA Play might look likea gaming console but oncloser inspection, it is anAndroid smartphone withdedicated game controls. Forstarters, it runs on Android2.3 Gingerbread powered bya 1GHz CPU and packs a5-megapixel camera and a4-inch touchscreen display.

The slider reveals thegaming controls, which youmight not have seen in aphone so far. The embeddedgraphics engine promises todeliver 3D mobile gaming at60fps. And when you are notgaming, you can surely tuckthe slider in and use it like anormal touchscreen phone.The handset is expected to

launch in India in April at anestimated price of `30,000.

Cheap one!Though Apple has sold 100million iPhones till date, thecost of the device hasremained expensive despitestiff competition from theAndroid smartphones. Whilemost of iPhones sales comefrom customer contracts, thecompany might be workingon a prepaid offering as hint-ed by Apple COO Tim Cookrecently. Cook suggestedthat the company did not

want itsproducts tobe just for therich and is workingon addressing the pre-paid market. So ourdream of a cheaper iPhonemight finally come true soon.

Limited 3G?While the 3G auction win-ners were announced lastyear, Indian consumers hadnot fully benefited from thehigh speed internet servicesas operators had initiallydelayed their roll out. BSNLand MTNL have been offer-ing 3G services for quitesome time but its only nowthat private operators arestarting to market their 3Gofferings. Tata Docomo wasthe first to launch 3G servic-es last year followed byReliance. Airtel has launchedits services in few cities now.Aircels Pocket Internet ser-vice has been quite a hitamong the youth and it haslaunched 3G services last

week. Vodafone has done asoft launch of its services insome cities. Though consum-ers have choices when itcomes to picking an opera-tor, the common complaintis that the tariffs are notvery affordable and thatthere are no unlimited plans.BSNL has replaced itsUnlimited 3G plans with lim-ited plans. Airtel haslaunched a FlexiShield Planwhich prevents your data billfrom going above `2,000.Operators have voiced outtheir opinion that there willbe no price war in 3G servic-es. So its clear at least forthe time being that 3G tar-iffs are not going to decline.

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ZITE AND THE QUEST FOR

A SEARCH-FREE WORLDThis genie of an app creates a personalised

magazine on the fly, without asking users to pickcontent sources, says Bala Murali Krishna

Unlike Flipboard, Zitedoesnt ask users tochoose the contentsources. This is a bigplus to men who,pathologically perhaps,are always more curious

about whats on in theother channel

The drift of TwitterThough a 2009 survey found most of what was on Twitter pointless babble, Adarsh Mathan finds that themicro-blogging site is still spewing similar venom and junk, and is more popular than ever

If you take some timeout to check variousIndian Twitteraccounts randomly,you will realise onething. Most of themare people who havenever tweeted butare just followingcelebrities

Samsung Galaxy PopIts one of Samsungs entry level Android phones. If you ever

wanted to try Android on a small budget, there are lots ofchoices compared to a few months ago and the Samsung Galaxy

Pop will give you a nice taste of what Android has to offer.

Whats Good: Android 2.2, 3G, WiFiWhats Bad: Low resolution screen, poor camera.

Price: `8,999 MRP

Nokia 5233The 5233 is one of the cheapest smartphones availablein the market. It runs on Symbian S60 fifth editionand packs a decent amount of features for the entrylevel category.Whats Good: Value for money, Symbian, TouchscreenWhats Bad: Feels cheap, poor cameraPrice: `6,299 MRP

Blackberry TorchThis is the first Blackberry to feature both a touchscreen and

a full slide-out keypad and run a all-new Operating Systemthat is bound to make BB fans happy.

Whats Good: Design, New OS, Blackberry goodness, Multimedia.Whats Bad: Slow Processor, Price.

Price: `35,000 MRP

Varun Krishnan is Chief Blogger at FoneArena.com and has

been blogging about mobile phones since 2005. FoneArena is

one of the most popular mobile blogs and has readers from

around the world. Varun enjoys travelling and exploring

the latest mobile phones. varun@fonearena.net

Dell Venue ProIf you want to give a shot atWindows Phone 7, the Dell Venue Prois your best bet. The handset offersboth a touch screen and a portraitslide out keyboard.Whats Good: Unique design, New OSWhats Bad: The price, WindowsPhone 7 is still not perfect.Price: `34,990 MRP