What if diseases like measles, dysentery and tuberculosis could speak to us? What would they say? According to this Amnesty ad, they have a lot to complain about. After all, we humans aren’t helping them much are we? We have a whole bunch of vaccines that don’t allow them to get a grip on us anymore. And worse still, we humans have taken over their job by killing each other in bomb blasts and terror attacks. Gone are the days when we ran screaming from measles.
As measles says, we humans have “gone all hoity-toity on them,” we “don’t want to die organically, but want to be shot in the head.” In 2010 more people are going to be killed by armed conflict than by diseases. This, as measles rightly puts it, “is just not on!” To control diseases we have vaccines, doctors and hospitals. To control the arms trade? Nothing. “Double bloody standards, that’s what it is”.
The message of the ad, as told to us by good ol’ TB is ‘control small arms and light weapons’. This ad uses wit and irony to get across its message, and it does so brilliantly well. A great way to talk about the arms trade without having to show anything to do with the arms trade.
Also have a look at the other Amnesty ad, ‘Audition’, a plea against domestic violence. It is an audition for the ‘poster boy of painful abuse’. The most shocking fact is on an average, you can beat a woman 35 times before she calls the police. If you don’t believe me, wait till you see Mr. Fistface in the ad.
These ads keep you interested till the end, and also give a unique perspective on a much discussed issue. There are so many ads on such social issues, that we have become pretty much ‘immune’ to them. You see hundreds of no-smoking ads, but maybe only a couple of them actually gets any kind of reaction from you, only one will probably make you at least stop to think about smoking, even for a moment. The challenge in any kind of ‘social communication’ is how do you know your message has got across, how can you be certain that your piece of communication is having any kind of impact? It shouldn’t end up being just a good looking ad on a wall. It should be able to change the way some people think. Ideally, it should be able to change human behavior for the better.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 Rendered image of Jugnu Jugnu (English: Firefly) is a nano-satellite (3 kg) to be launched by student team at the IIT Kanpur. Of course, several faculty members and experts from ISRO are guiding these students. Apparently, an MoU is already signed between IIT Kanpur and ISRO. Jugnu will be launched in the polar orbit from Sriharikota, by the end of this year.
Aptly named as Jugnu, it is 34 cms long and 10 cm wide. With approximate budget of 2.5 crores, it seems like one of the costliest fireflies around. The function of the satellite is to gather information regarding flood, drought and disasters. Jugnu will take 14 to 15 rounds of earth to gather information. An indigenously designed hi-tech camera for near remote sensing and GPS receiver are fitted in the satellite. Jugnu will send photographs regarding agriculture, weather, river courses and soil to the base station. The project is in the final stage. It will be handed over to ISRO in November for further testing and launch.
It would be for the first time in the history where a student team will be credited for designing, fabricating, testing and flying a satellite that is mostly made of aluminum alloy at an altitude of about 800 km above the Earth's surface. Although it sounds ambitious, it appears that the project is under control. Sanjay Govind Dhande, the Director of IITK, said: "Though the MoU between ISRO and IIT-K for the project was signed in February, regular review sessions are being carried out by ISRO to check the progress."
Jugnu's design will have to overcome many challenges as it will have to survive high vibrations and high doses of radiation that can affect the system memory. Due to the limited power availability, there are many constraints in adding many functions.
Jugnu is in a race to beat other projects under development, such as Pratham (IIT Bombay's satellite), VITSAT and StudSat (built by about 8 different colleges). All four are first generation of Indian nanosatellites. It remains to be seen if Jugnu becomes the first Indian nanosatellite to be launched into space.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 M-Pesa affiliate A banking transaction usually involves filling out forms, waiting in queue, and going from one counter to another. That’s if you are lucky and live in a city. If you are in village, you may live hours, or days away from your nearest bank. M-Pesa is a mobile phone based service that is changing all that by allowing users to perform basic banking transactions without visiting the bank branch.
The facility is offered by Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom, an affiliate of Vodafone. The system works through a network of agents, who operate bank accounts through their handsets. For example, to deposit money in your account, you go to an agent who will use his agent handset to deposit e-money in your account in exchange for cash that you give him. You can send or transfer money to any other mobile phone user, even if they are not a Safaricom subscriber. You can withdraw money with the agent, irrespective of whether you are an M-Pesa registered customer or not. You can withdraw money from any M-PESA agent outlet or participating ATM network. You can also buy Safaricom airtime, and pay bills. Other basic facilities such as checking your balance, changing your PIN or secret word, or selecting a different language are also possible. All these operations are explained here, and its easy to see how simple these operations are to perform, even in remote areas.
‘Pesa’ is Swahili for cash, and M stands for mobile, which explains this service pretty well. It is doing away with the need for a customer to have a bank account, and cross great distances to perform basic transactions. Instead, it is using the medium of the mobile phone, the use of which is widespread and growing rapidly in many developing nations, to move money quickly and securely. The big hurdle of living miles from the bank branch is removed, as agents can operate in every village if needed.
M-Pesa has won global awards for its service. Over 5 million customers now subscribe to M-PESA in Kenya. It has been launched in Tanzania and Afghanistan, with plans to expand into India, Egypt and South Africa. The M-Pesa money transfer system marries technology, network, and culture to provide an essential service to millions of people.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 Ory Okolloh's idea: Ushahidi When there is a crisis, such as an earthquake or riots, a major part of the problem is the lack of valid up-to-date news on the situation. Ushahidi, which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili, is a platform all of us can use, to send information during a crisis. Ushahidi is a free and open source project with developers hailing from Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, Netherlands and the USA working on it.
Ushahidi uses the simple technique of ‘crowdsourcing’, which allows large amounts of information sent by SMS, email, or the web to get aggregated and shown on a site, as a map or a timeline. Anyone can download the Ushahidi engine and run it on their own servers. This can be effectively used at times of riots, and would be particularly useful in India too, where accurate information is not available when people need it the most. You can see projects that Ushahidi has enabled here.
A Kenyan blogger Ory Okolloh, started Ushahidi as a citizen journalist effort during deadly post-election rioting in Kenya. Since its inception the software has been used in several parts of Africa such as the Congo, South Africa, Malawi, and has been recently used to track the swine flu outbreak and the recent Indian elections as seen on the website. Ushahidi helps get the immediate relief to zones of trouble, especially needed when news agencies are not in the area. A similar open-source software Sahana was used after the Sri Lanka tsunami in December 2004, the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the 2006 mudslide in the Philippines, and earthquakes in Peru and China.
Ushahidi uses a free software called Frontline SMS that turns a mobile or laptop into a text broadcasting hub. Once an sms is sent, the message goes to the web administrator’s inbox, who can then reply to verify the message, or send a mass message out to large numbers of people, or post the information onto a Web page with location information from Google Maps (or do all three) as explained here.
Ushahidi, as well as Ory’s own site Mzalendo, which helps increase transparency of the Kenyan Parliament, are essential to the spread of awareness and awakening of the Kenyan people. Such movements have far reaching impact, and can help many developing nations where technology can be effectively used to give power to the people. Technology can be used to propagate hatred and unrest, or provide much needed information and awakening, which is what these web platforms are enabling. Ushahidi, being an open source engine, can grow and adapt to the web, and to newer technologies and websites.
The founder Ory Okolloh is a native of Kenya with a Havard law degree. From a poor family, she knew what it was not to have enough money. Her parents struggled to put her in a good school, and she missed getting her place in her dream high school due to corruption. Her family didn’t have enough money, or the right last name, or contacts. Her father died of AIDS in 1999, but never told anyone about the disease because of the social ostracism that would come with it.
Today, she feels, Africans need to get better at telling their stories and images of Africa in the press focus on just the negative things. As she says, it’s not enough for us to criticize; we all need to think about what actions we’re willing to take: “My dream is for my daughter to find her future in Africa.”
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
The Mac vs PC debate may actually be coming to an end. Now you can have the best of both, or the best of all three, including the Linux operating system. Freedom PC, a UK based company has created a computer system compatible with Mac OS X, Linux or Windows.
When you buy the computer, you can choose which operating system to install, or you can install two or all three of them. As of now there are four desktops available, laptops will be coming soon. To start with there is the Freedom Basic PC, which is ideal for basic computing needs. The more advanced models are the Freedom PC 5200, and Freedom PC 7300, also available is the Freedom Media Centre.
As mentioned on their site, it’s all about giving you a choice. The user can switch between different operating systems as per her need. There is no more of ‘this platform does not support this application’. This is quite a path-breaking innovation in the world of the personal computer, and the Freedom PC may be the thing that changes the way the world works.
As they say on their website, they are people passionate about open source, and they believe it is the way of the future, which it probably is. Imagine the day when Freedom PC is widely available, it’s going to challenge the present big players in the computer world to re-think their product line and approach. If you had the choice to switch between Windows, OS X, and Linux, why would you buy a machine that limits your use?
Open Source is the new democracy of the technological world. Ultimately, users design the system.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 writesomething.net Epics are generally massive pieces of literature, usually covering the entire gamut of human emotions, written by one inspired soul. There is an online epic in the making, though some may call it senseless, it does talk about thousands of human emotions, as thousands, or millions of people have written it. Writesomething.net is where the action is.
Some may call it crazy, and it is definitely tedious to read after a while, because nothing makes sense except the tagline of ‘endless senseless collaborative book’. Its beauty lies in its randomness, just pop in on any of the 3035 pages (which keep increasing), and you are reading someone’s thoughts, from god knows where on earth. It’s the ultimate open source writing exercise going on.
Such initiatives have happened in the past as well. There is Our Own Book, a venture started by two IIM students in India. Here a brief storyline is provided, and contributors have to help develop the story, and ultimately a book gets published with the most number of authors. You can contribute to their story here, and know more about the terms of use here.
There is also The Age of Conversation, another collaborative book, which is the idea of Gaurav Mishra. The first Age of Conversation (the second one is in progress), reached #36 in business and investing books on Amazon.
Writesomething.net does not seem to have an aim to publish it into a book, not now at least. It’s the lack of a storyline, the lack of any restriction or aim, its spontaneous nature, the sheer senselessness of it that makes it fascinating. Its extremely easy to use, just type and hit ‘publish’ and contribute to the epic in progress. Its encouraging human expression, an invitation to just pen your thoughts anonymously for the world to read. In some strange way it connects the entire human population. You may read some random line that surprisingly echoes the thoughts in your own head. And someone else may be reading your mind too.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 © guardian.co.uk One of the most interesting design blogs in blogosphere is the ‘Classics of everyday Design’ section of the Art & Design Blog at the Guardian.co.uk. So far it has documented some 60 classics of design, mostly from the USA and UK. It’s fascinating to read about the creators, history and reasons behind some of the most everyday objects and experiences, which we take for granted.
The blog is written by John Glancey who is the Guardian's architecture critic. Each entry is rich in information, and fun to read. It covers a wide range of objects from the humble paper clip at no 3, to Queen Elizabeth II. There are some objects, which even we, halfway across the world can identify with such as the Slinky, at no. 36, and the humble highlighter pen at no. 30. One of our favourites is no. 31, none other than Bubble Wrap. We never really stop to think of this as a ‘design classic’, but it deserves that title. Bubble Wrap was apparently invented by accident, around 50 years ago by two American engineers, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes when they were trying to invent plastic wallpaper.
Each of the entries on the blog tell us the whole story behind that design, and also make you realize what life was without it. The impact of design on human life has rarely been documented, and this seeks to help us understand that impact. Some of the other interesting ones are Times New Roman at no. 56, which we agree is a beautiful, yet underestimated typeface. The London Underground logo at No. 54, another example of a visual culture that people take for granted, much like the PCO or Xerox logo we see in here in India. Such documenting of the design culture around us, and its impact is essential, and in fact sorely lacking.
A classic is defined as something judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind. The design classics quietly fit into our lives so well, that most of the time we don’t even realize they are there.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 Aldo Bakker's vinegar flask Aldo Bakker, a product designer from the Netherlands, exhibited his tableware series in Milan. His philosophy would raise many questions on the very definition of design. According to him, design that is well thought out would turn out to be clear and sober. He believes that such an approach fails to show the character of things.
“To me, creation should be about beauty,” he says. Bakker believes that design, which is too rooted in concept does not produce the best shapes. He is one of the torchbearers of Dutch design. Also Kroog has, in a way, changed how we define contemporary Dutch design. Dutch designers are masters at elevating banal objects to preciousness. One of the products of Kroog that we really like is Milk Bottle Chandelier by Tejo Remi.
Autonomous design, a revolution in design, spearheaded by Kroog is contentious. Bakker aligns himself to the philosophy of autonomous design. No one has been able to define autonomous design in its entirety. Some define it as straight-forward, down-to-earth and witty design, while other see it as art. Some of the contemporary Dutch designs are now walking a thin line that separates art and design.
Bakker's tableware collection reaffirms the walk. "I treasure this phenomenon of autonomous design," Bakker says. "It is crucial to reach new and original things." And when asked whether or not design can be art, he says, "My thinking and my products are somewhere in between. I like to stretch the limits of function to the point where one starts questioning and perhaps even developing new functions." His tries to place feelings in a creation. This way he is placing his designs alongside humanity and not alongside time.
The tableware collection includes a salt cellar, oil and vinegar flasks, oil platter, milk jug and water carafe. It is exquisitely produced by master craftsperson Frans Ottink. They are lyrical and when a human interacts with them, you may hear music too. “I wanted to make one object that had no additional pieces, like a lid,” he says. “But at the same time it had to be able to take care of the oil.”
Bakker's work summarizes autonomous design: following instincts and giving basic feelings a place inside things.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 © VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images A picture is worth a thousand words (or more). The Big Picture at Boston.com reaffirms this fact every day, by showcasing series of photographs from around the world, on a simple, no-fuss, page. Each series of pictures tells an entire story from some part of the globe.
Started on June 1st, 2008, The Big Picture was instantly popular, and in its first 20 days of existence, it reached almost 1.5 million page views and over 1,500 comments for just 20 entries. This is no surprise considering the amazing quality of the images, and the ease of use. This is one of the very few webpages where visual content is king. The quality of the photographs is amazing, breath-taking in fact, and they are of a generously large format, for a change.
In most news, visual content is secondary, and simply supports the article. But in The Big Picture, the roles are reversed, and this is a refreshing change. The photographs tell the story, and captions below tell you exactly what’s going on. This is a unique example where visual content may encourage people to read more about the topic. The pictures are thought provoking, evoking a strong emotional response, making you want to see more and more. There is a quality to the pictures here that makes you feel as if you are there, in that moment. There are stories of Iran, North Korea, Holi, floods, drug wars, spring, pirates, recession and more. One of the most amazing is the series for Earth Hour, from March 2009. This is an interactive feature, and you can ‘switch off’ and ‘on’ the lights in major cities of the world by a simple mouse click. It’s a happy marriage of technology and visual storytelling.
The Big Picture is the brainchild of Alan Taylor, who works as a developer for the Boston Globe's website called Boston.com. His technical know-how enabled him to script several mock-ups before deciding on the best one which would give complete justice to the visuals. He was frustrated by similar existing sites, which had complex interfaces, too many ads, and small pictures. He pitched the idea to Boston Globe, and after the legalities were ironed out, the Big Picture was up and running.
The photographs are from different photographers from around the world, and Boston.com only showcases them, copyright still remains with the original owner, sometimes the Associated Press or Getty Images, among other large media agencies. Building the story is part of the challenge for Alan, sometimes he browses the web hunting for images on a particular theme, other times he stocks up on interesting subjects, which can be used at any time. You can read more about how he does it, in his interview here, or follow his blog.
It’s a happy surprise that a web developer at a newspaper got a chance to run his own column, and the result is definitely amazing. The highly visual nature of the blog is engaging and addictive. Life without The Big Picture would be really boring. The Big Picture is best summarized by one of the comments, “I LOVE THE WORLD MORE BECAUSE OF THESE PHOTOS :)”
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
 British firefighters sporting newly designed suits Firefighters battle all kinds of circumstances, from extreme fire and flood to rescuing kittens from the drain. Since they are meant to protect civilians during disasters, how can they safeguard their own lives? The only savior is their uniform. The firefighters in Britain can be soon seen sporting a brand new uniform, which is much more efficient than the old one.
Firebuy Limited was established in 2006 to deliver English Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) procurement at a national level. It is a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) and after the thorough evaluation of bids submitted by companies world-wide, Bristol Uniforms Ltd was selected as the service provider.
Although the design brief was clear, the design had to have a fine balance in function. These points influenced the design:
Protection (from heat and flame)
Lightweight (for carrying someone)
Supple (to move away from falling debris)
Trust (for the public to accept)
The end result had to find a fine balance between advanced technology and common sense. Two biggest challenges were to make the uniform efficient, and to make the firefighters more easily identifiable by the public. Another challenge was to coordinate the suit with the clothing worn beneath it.
For the first time women firefighters get to wear suits that are custom designed for them. As of now the suits come in 28 different sizes. Many a time, women firefighters were encouraged to discontinue from the service since the smallest of the gloves or footwear were too big and reduced their efficiency at work. Although women in service only account to just more than 3% of the total firefighters in Britain, the fact that a suit has been designed for pregnant firefighters, it is a major step in encouraging women to join the service.
Minority groups are also to benefit from the new design. Extras such as turbans and hijabs have been designed. In an official press release, Fire minister Sadiq Khan said: “The uniform now available shows that cultural beliefs are being recognized, as we seek to increase the representation of ethnic minorities within service.”
The challenge was also to bring in consistency of style. At present, firefighter uniforms vary across Britain. This adds to the confusion. The new design would create a national uniform of red and gray station clothing, and muted gold fire suits.
It is believed that firefighters spend only 10% of their time dealing with emergencies. The other 90% of the time they are gaining public trust. The new suit surely does help when dealing with emergencies, and with time it may also become a national identity that the public would be proud of.
The design, we feel, is the step towards addressing issues such as equality and diversity in work environments.
By Armeen Kapadia and Sanjay Basavaraju
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