Barack Obama; Democratic Convention Speech

I know so many of you already head it, seen it and read it... however here it is again just for the record (post for historical reasons)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/28/barack-obama-democratic-c_n_122224.html

For those of you who did not check it out. This is inspiring and makes you wonder why we don't have people like Obama in nation(s) like ours.

Some of the key things which we should also think about from his speech (for me) are..

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land - enough! This moment - this election - is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

For me I'd change the numbers and names and apply for my vote in my country.

For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy - give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Well it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America.

You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage; whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma. We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President - when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of down $2,000 like it has under George Bush.

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off to look after a sick kid without losing her job - an economy that honors the dignity of work.

Those are the kind of words I long to hear from my leaders. However unfortunately I know we don't have such kind of people (or rather leaders). Sad but true.

To conclude I'd like to note this one which was in his speech that, "the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.". Interpret it which ever way you want; for me it's very simple. "Change" means "CHANGE", total change of ideas and faces.

Money, Politics

Politics and Money go along very well. This is true to all nations, ours is no exception. Skinned by nationalistic talks or 'Huhbul vatan' speeches; a lot of times there is a shades of green.

I wonder how much money will be dumped to buy votes this time. Some will switch sides to please the bosses, some will switch sides in hope that they will get some benefit by standing by a group, etc. This is a nice show to watch. 'Change' is the keyword today. Change for what? better or worse; I have no clue nor does many.

One thing I will be sure is no matter whom I vote for nothing much will change for the good. At least not in the next 10 years. I think we are in for a major crisis. It's already bad and it's not improving. They say 30 years back there was no electricity, 30 years back few people were educated. I say 30 years back their hair was not gray or white too. Some things are bound to happen; does not mean some people can take all the credit for those things. Furthermore it's not a favour that they have done on us; it's a must. It's the responsibility and job of the leadership. Who ever it maybe. The question should be how well that job was carried out? next question will be how well it will be maintained/sustained and improved?. Today we are at a point where there is so much social issues, like basic health care and housing issues, etc. How well were they addressed. Could we have done a better job; was this the best we could have had? These should be the questions that should be asked. Next question will be; will it get worse in the future. Will the so called "Change" that we seek make things better?. I sure hope so, but I want to know before I decide my vote. I want to see a clear roadmap, I don't want to gamble. If not I won't vote. I don't want to vote based on face or name. No matter who he/they are.

The sad thing I know is; even if I have those idea's it does not matter. Votes will be sold and bought. The people who will be willing to spend the most stand the higest chance. It's sad, but thats how it will be. I hope there will be a few who will at least think before they will vote. It's not a choice you make for your ownself. It's a choice you make for the future of a lot of people. We have to be responsible when this choice is made.

progress and prosperity

Tonight I took a walk and decided to rest and have a smoke near the 'Masvaringe park'. While I was sitting near a 'Dhoni' an old man approached. He sounded really polite and asked me if I worked for the Dhoni behind me. He wanted to know if he can sleep in it; since it was kinda of rainy. When I told him it had nothing to do with me and would be best if he asked the people who were sleeping in it. Then he requested if I would ask those guys for him; he was shy requesting that from me. I could tell that from his tone. I did all I can, but unfortunately poor man was not allowed on it. Finally he thanked me and told me he'd sleep on a bench and if it rained he'd find some way. I walked back home to my bed. Here I am blogging about it knowing I could not help and worst of all the rest of the country is happy about the progress we made in the last few decades.

I guess I should thank those people for that. The whole generation of people who are in their 40's /50's and 60's who made this happen. I won't blame one individual for all the bad things which is here and all the good things which could have happened to this nation. The responsibility should be taken collectively by the whole generation of 'bodu kaafu' people. Thank you once again. Good night.

Mobile social networking

Much like web based social networking, mobile social networking occurs in "Virtual communities". Basically this can be implemented in two ways. We all are very familiar with the existing web based social networks like facebook or twitter. The same portals are extended to the mobiles, via WAP, MMS, SMS and other means such as Java, BREW, etc. The advantage is you don't need to be always online near a PC to be connected to social networking portals. You can tweet about something while you are walking, post a video or a picture as it happens to facebook, all are examples of advantages on mobile social networking. Fortunately today we have this here with us, with some services you don't need to be depended on the operator for others you do. Example you can tweet via SMS with all operators in Maldives (until recently twitter decided to make tweeting one way... still you can send your tweets to twitters UK number via SMS). Other examples include take a picture/video and MMS to mobile@facebook.com which gets updated into your facebook account, or send notes to notes@facebook.com again via MMS.

Other method include social networks limited within the operators. These are limited to the operator you are using and the methods vary. Maybe over SMS/MMS, WAP or simply via Java based applications, etc. It's been exciting to watch such communities grow and watching people adopt these technologies in Maldives.

Digg and Politics

Recently www.digg.com the popular source of news for geeks has been taken over by John McCain and Barack Obama. Its understood as many of the diggers are from the states and the presidential election is of high concern.

This election is different in many ways compaired to the rest; in a sense that the internet has played a major role in influensing hot tops. www.digg.com is no excuse. For the rest of us I guess it's important too. As 'who wins' does matter and will influense our lives too. Maybe this is one reason why the topic is hot and so many follow these news.

Talking of election our own local election is due soon too. It's not so compatitive as I assumed it would be which is/was a bit of a disappointment. My only request to who ever wins is "don't f*ck us up"! It's short but that's all I have to say on the topic.

Mobile Banking

The World Bank has approved a US$7.7 million credit to Government of Maldives designed to improve access to financial services by allowing users to access any bank account using their mobile phone.

I sometimes wonder if this is worth it. However I am sure people who know better have approved these funding and project has started off.

My personal view is when it comes to mobile banking , I see two parts in it

1. Mobile Network Operator(s)
2. Bank(s)

Those are the ingredients needed. The investment can be made by the two (MNO and the Bank) on agreeable terms and it can be easily implemented. Bringing in a middle party does not serve a practical purpose (looking at present trends).

BML has successfully launched internet banking and present mobile operators have other infrastructures (or invest a bit on it) which easily should be able to implement a mobile banking platform. Its true maybe trying to involve ALL the banks needs a regulator or a clearing house; but question is how practical is it. We don't pay using SBI , BOC and Habeeb Bank Cards, etc to Point of Sales terminals at shops and other EFT points. However we are dreaming of getting that done with mobiles, its good (in a way). Maybe its being fair (on all Banks) but is the US$7.7 million justifiable?. Maybe it is, or I am missing somethings here. However this is my view on it. I still feel it would be more practical if BML and the local mobile operators got along to implement mobile banking / mobile commerce.

Mobile 2.0

We all have been living through the web 2.0 for a while (even though different people define web 2.0 in different ways). Now the focus is on the mobiles. Web 2.0 for me has brought about a major change; which for me is the ability to develop applications to the web very much like the conventional applications. Its not just one technology which have enabled the change; but a convergence of many.

At a time when the dot com boom has ended and still many companies seek to become the next youtube and google; the focus is slowly changing. For every internet connection in the world; there is ten or more mobile phones. Obviously there are more mobile users and we are already starting to realize this and trying to bring the same technology on the web to the mobile. Mobile 2.0 is more then accessing internet with broadband speeds and better browsers. For me mobile 2.0 is much more then that.

Furthermore at a time when operators are looking into more ways of increasing the ARPU and mobile value added service providers are coming up with more services there is an increasing competition in this arena. Obviously the charges on basic voice is dropping and might even become totally free; the focus is on data. with the introduction of services like HSDPA access to high speed data will soon become a reality to a lot people world wide.

Past year or so I have been very much involved in mobile VAS arena, and I have met a lot of service providers and from what I can tell; there is going to be a lot of new exciting things which is on the way. Soon we are about to experience a convergence and offering multimedia specialties on the mobile in a way which we never would have thought of. The introduction of devices such as apple iPhones is strong indication to the road ahead.

Vote for Nobody

I found this pic while browsing through reddit and thought its a good one....

Steve has taken the stage

I never expected this, but my guess is the iPhone hype did not end.. it just started. As I blog I am listening to the live audio feed of WWDC.

Seems Apple iPhone just become the next best thing. So far I did not want to own one. But now I do. Its come a long way "Starting with enterprise. Exchange support out of the box -- push email / contacts / calendars, auto-discovery, global address book, remote wipe."; thats just a few I guess... "Core Services includes everything from a complete database layer to core location, for easily building location-based functionality into applications. Also a very fast implementation of OpenGL." .. those are few comments from live bloggers.

Seems Apple is providing with a damn good STK for developers of iPhone, enabling or facilitating easy and great application development platform. This will result in loads of cools app's. Which will really matter with such a cool device like iPhone.

So guys I say the iPhone mania just started.

Update

1) 3G network support 2) Enterprise support 3) Third party application support 4) More countries (joking about unlocked iPhones in countries not officially supported) 5) More affordable 6) GPS

Now now the best part...

Started at $599 for an 8GB iPhone, now $399. The iPhone 3G 8GB will sell for... $199.

Naviyani

I remember the comments 'Bulhaa vakiahlhaa fa' (ބުޅާ ވަކިއަޅާފަ) when referring to my hand writing in dhivehi/thaana. Back then I just thought well what the hack, I just can't improve on it and I never even tried.

Well; what the hack. The script we see today is not original anyway. It was a form of script which has been adopted by us to become more 'Abaric' like. I don't know for what reason. Thaana as we all know came after Gabulhi Thaana and before that we had Dhives Akuru. Dhives Akuru looked something very close to Sinhala or Indic letters. Or maybe the origins were Tamil.

Anyway Thaana was another one of the moves; where we the Maldivians wanted to become more holy and related to Arabia. Well, that's just my view. So I wonder if the transformation is complete now?.

The missing links are being forgotten and no one dares to find out or take alternative thinking. Scared to become outcasts of this society maybe. The truth about who we are and where we come from is lost like the letter 'Naviyani'.

Ok, Soadhube (ސޯދުބެ) now you can shoot me! :)

tweets

We had had geocities, hotmail, yahoo, google , blogger, flickr and facebook. These are some of the outstanding stuff which came along on the internet. Now its twitter!

Some of us are already on it; and if you are not... its highly recommended to check it out and join in. Its a simple concept and its amazing and addictive.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via the Twitter website, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. - from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

Amazing Muslims

Firstly this does not apply to all Muslims, however the growing number of this group amazes me. I am not a religious person and I have to confess to that but I guess I can always comment on what I see and hear.

The story goes like this; One fine morning a guy wakes up and finds himself enlightened by the light of God; and he follows his brothers in Islam and grows his beard. Then his dress code changes to some Pakistani "Kuruthaa" kind of style, when asked why his answer is simple and straightforward. "Mohamed (PBOH) use to dress this way"; for me that becomes news and information, and I question my Islam teachers from School, cos all these years I was told that Mohamed (PBOH) was born and raised in Arabia NOT Pakistan; as far as I know the Arab dress code was not some odd "Kuruthaa". Anyway that's not a major issue; I can't comment on peoples fashion plus they have the freedom to choose the dress codes. However the whole thing gives /creates some interesting questions for me.

Then he moves on to the next stage; disconnects from his friends and chooses to be with his brothers in Islam and considers the rest of the people "Musriks". Amazing again. Slowly he learns the real meaning of life and decides to go on Gods way. Now this is the most amazing part, whats the choice; "To go JIHAAD in the name of God", simply what this means is to go kill in the name of God. I don't know from where or who creates these ideas. When there is so much suffering in the world; instead of going and helping the poor and sick; this guy chooses to go "kill in the name of god". That was his first choice; he leaves the helping part to his fellow Christian enemies (let them make the red cross, etc and go help the poor and the suffering; why should he do that. He is a worrier; his destiny is to go kill and be killed?). Amazing I say. I am sure the poor guy is missing a lot of chapters. His religion started and ended in only the "Badr" war. Maybe he did not look before that event or after.

I simply do not believe religion should be chosen due to the "fear factor" for god. Rather it should be the other way around. You can flood me with thousands of Arabic verses against my theory; but I'd stick to what I feel is logical.

Adobe opens up Flash on mobiles

For those who read tech news will know that Adobe has open up Flash on mobiles. So what does this mean?. For me this means more content for mobiles. Best way to visualize this to imagine something like youtube on your mobile. Already there are some mobile TV and streaming applications; but this sure does bring a major improvement. Presently RealPlayer is the most commonly used player on most mobiles.

Even right now the technology is their but now the difference is that Adobe has opened up the technology and will stop charging for the license for using the player on mobiles; this will result in more mobiles with built in flash players. This should be a good news to content providers and media companies alike.

Dream

Should I say more?

Check out some more inspirations @ usersetup.com

Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

Anyone who says M$ Vista is good, must be kidding. It was one of the most anticipated OS's recently, however it did not make it. Still most people prefer to use XP over Vista, for what ever reasons.

Apple did a good job with leopard, even the M$ Vista was very much influenced by it; no matter how much M$ tries to deny that. Thats on the desktop end. As for the servers, *nix and others are rapidly gaining over this market too. Most of the very high end markets are still dominated by *nix like the HP Superdome servers. This is one area where M$ has been struggling and will continue to loose.

The case with desktops is changing as well, where better and stable OS's have come into play. Most importantly at a time when corporate and enterprise applications are moving to web based solutions, dependency on a specific OS for desktop is slowly fading away. Adding to that with the recent developments into the desktops on *nix based OS's like Linux has given it a good exposure and acceptance into the home users as well. With benefits like having a more secure, stable and customizable platform.

With applications contributions by the open source community, no longer one is limited to one OS anymore. There is FREE applications today that can cater to almost all areas. In the recent 2 years or so the acceptance of OS's like the Mac OS X and Linux has had a good uptake even in Maldives and I assume will continue to do so more. I like to believe this is a new start of an end of one dominant OS ruling over our desktops and the future is good. Still a lot of people don't understand what FREE software means , it does not mean its only FREE but it means FREEDOM too. Furthermore I guess this same concept is started to spread all around the world, and slowly we might see a huge decline of Windows users in a near future. This is very possible.

Friend and Foe

First there is trouble, no one is happy. Looks bad on Mutt; obviously then comes Jeff to the rescue. Jeff always saves the day. No, Jeff will save the day?; when the time comes (which is soon, very soon).

Mutt could have done the same that Jeff did. No big deal, but why not? That you have to figure out.

So my understanding is the poor Mutt is left to be hated and Jeff to be loved. There is a lot of advantages to this, if one would give it deep thoughts.

A for Apple (part 2)

The very first Apple's logo.

Now don't get me wrong, this whole process of trying to get things going and keeping myself busy I have come to a funny point. A point where I am visualizing myself to really take a break, its not being overloaded or that I am not happy. Its about just simply taking a break. So I made a list of things I can do

1. Music, maybe try and learn how to play piano
2. Cooking; yeah I love that, but been long since I've really cooked anything
3. Meditation , never ever tried this but so many of my friends have suggested I should try.
4. Dancing - Wow now i would really like to imagine me doing that. Jeez!
5. Art - Paint a wall or something; well anyone can do it ey?
6. Travel ; I have been planning that for long.
7. Reading , guess i do that often even now, but no books. I need to start with a book and finish it.
8. Redoing this blog. hmmm, maybe not
9. Volunteering; for what? maybe I'd think more on it.

I am not sure if any of the above is possible, but making a list is no harm.

Mobile BroadBand to replce xDSL and Cables?

It's already started to happen in most developed and developing nations. The concept of mobile office has been adopted and in use. No longer fixed, but more freedom is provided to the users by these technologies. Not only freedom but it makes the internet more personnel.

Just plug-in your USB Broadband modem and you are online, anywhere. No question about this, this is the future. Some of the operators provide speeds ranging from 3.6 Mbps, 7.2 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps on these terminals.

facebook on mobiles

No question, facebook is the most popular social networking portal for most Maldivians. Most of us do have facebook accounts; all most all of us carry a mobile. This is where a relationship can be started. A good one.

Already facebook provides a WAP portal; but just browsing facebook via WAP might not give the full mobile user experience. Example; what if you can sign up and identify yourself via your mobile number instead of your email address, send a MMS and change your profile picture, or even change your status via a SMS and even poke directly to the mobile.

One of the advantages of facebook is its open API's. You can build applications using the the facebook developer platforms, so developers can take advantage of these functions. There is a lot of possibilities using these advantages. We all know the number of applications that stormed us during the last few months on facebook, very creative stuff indeed. Imagine if you can bring it all to the mobile as well. Then you don't need to go to your computer every time to interact with these applications, etc.

Already there are applications you can install on your handset and do some of the above, but not everyone likes installing additional applications on the handsets. The best approach I feel will be good old SMS,MMS and WAP with some kind of connectivity with the local MNO's. That sure will make a difference on the user experience.

"Flickr Turns 4"

"Nice Shot", "Wonderful colors", "Amazing", I would have to admit too. Inspiring ...

Congrats guys and keep on posting those pictures.