Barcamp Bangalore 9 is here!

Most popular community driven tech event in Bangalore and one of the popular barcamps worldwide Barcamp Bangalore is here. After a long break it is back for 9th edition. It’s going to be on 18th of this month at Intuit. If you are new to barcamp, take a look at this wikipedia entry.

Head over to BarcampBangalore.org and register yourself for the event.

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From August 1st, auto rickshaw fare in Bangalore has increased. And rickshaw drivers haven’t yet updated their meters with new fare system. Government has given them three months of time to update the meter with new fare. Until then we have to rely on whatever driver says or look into the chart which most of the drivers carry.

I wrote a simple web application which calculates new fare based on old. Since it is based on math, application returns accurate fare like Rs.27.29, use your brains to round it up

www.techbangalore.com/auto

I haven’t added any style or images to the pages to make it load quickly on mobile devices. But, if you like to have it in a form of application which can work offline, Sriki has built them. He had created one for Android and one for Java, get them here.

It is so hard to find and sell used products online. I know there are tons of websites which allow listing of such things. But, they ask you too many questions, you have to go through complex registration process & most importantly your phone number is exposed to public and spam bots. Roopit is different from those. I loved the way they put it on their FAQ:

How do I Login/Register?

You don’t. There is no Username or password. Nope. And, We don’t need your e-mail, your mother’s maiden name or your childhood favorite hero. But, we do need your mobile number. Roopit identifies you with your mobile. If you are selling, You post with your mobile number. If you are buying, You receive the contact details of the seller as an SMS on your mobile.

You can track a product via SMS which you are looking to buy. Simple! Just send what you are looking for to 9916766748. For ex: “Maruti 800″.

Visit Roopit and start buying/selling!!

David SR on Barcamp Bangalore mailing list sent out this very useful information which was collected by Srikanth. Thanks to his efforts on finding this valuable information. So next time if you face one of the following situations, just note down the vehicle number!

• Refusal to come to destination (Any destination!!!).
• Demanding excess fare.
• Using rough language.
• Cheat the public, for e.g. taking longer routes.
• Faulty Meter.

Once you have the vehicle number noted, you can either register a complaint by sending an email or by calling appropriate RTO (numbers given later in this post)

Note the vehicle number (KA-XX-YY-ZZZZ) and email the details to
transcom@kar.nic.in , Based on the prefix XX (for example KA-01), complaint
will be sent to one of the ten RTO offices in Bangalore and adjacent taluk
areas.

Based on the vehicle number, you can also call appropriate RTO & register complaint, Following are the phone numbers:

* KA-01 Koramangala 080-25533525
* KA-02 Rajajinagar 080-23324104
* KA-03 Indiranagar 080-25254310
* KA-04 Yeshwantpur 080-23376039
* KA-05 Jayanagar 080-26630989
* KA-41 Gyanabharthi 080-28602833
* KA-50 Yelahanka 080-28561366
* KA-51 Electronic City 080-25735522
* KA-52 NeelaMangala 08234-285598
* KA-53 KR Puram 080-25617951

Once the complaint is received at the corresponding office, a notice is
issued to the address of the vehicle’s registered owner, requiring him/her
to turn up at the RTO office within 7 working days. Every RTO has about 10
IMV’s (Inspector of Motor Vehicles) who seize the vehicles which don’t
report to the RTO.

The penalty levied from the auto-waalas is Rs.100 under section 200.

There is also a helpline number – 080-22353785 available Monday – Saturday from 10:00 am – 5:30 pm on which one can call to lodge complaints.

As Srikanth found out, the Koramangala RTO office received only 5 complaints a month!! I guess that’s purely because lack of awareness about this system. Let’s spread the word!

As mashable reported few days back, Facebook is testing an upgrade to “Photos” application by adding “Related Photos”. Based on the photo user is looking at Facebook populates other similar photo next to it. If you are a Lifeblob user, this isn’t new to you. Lifeblob had this feature from a quite a long time by now.

With this supposed innovation, facebook will now start showing other photos of people who are face-tagged in a photo next to it. The application feature addition is designed to drive users to explore additional photos that may be of interest based on the photo they’re currently viewing, thereby further personalizing the experience (and increasing page views).

Just to set the record straight, we have had this feature ( and a lot more ) at http://www.lifeblob.com for over a year now and facebook has blatantly copied it. Every time you upload a photo on lifeblob, a recommendation engine not only looks at the face tags, but also the other information associated with your photo to show you photos that are closely related around it.So when you upload your graduation day photos, we discover other photos of your graduation day and show it next to your photo. What facebook has done is picked up this idea and launched a simple version of it that only uses face tags. Bravo!!

–Pranav Bhasin, Founder, Lifeblob

You can check the detailed post about this feature by clicking the above link. This is not the first time Facebook copied something, it copied ideas from Friendfeed (later acquired) & Twitter few months back. Do spread the word by sharing this & also by joining this Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Facebook-STOP-copying-from-Indian-Startups/128733897152335 which Pranav has created (Yep! an FB Page!)

BSNL Bangalore is offering a scheme for celebrating Christmas & New year called ‘Gift a Broadband…’. You can just walk in to any BSNL customer service center & purchase a Greeting Card enclosed with gift voucher to avail a new broadband connection. This greeting card costs you just Rs.100.  Following are the benefits user who applies for new broadband gets using this scheme:

• Free Broadband Starter Plan (Rs.250) for a month
• No rental on modem for a month (Rs.80)
• No installation charges (Rs.250)

So total value is Rs.580 & you are paying only Rs.100. This scheme is valid only till 31st Jan 2010 & user has to apply for broadband within that date.

Nokia is doing an interesting consumer initiative in Bangalore wherein they are inviting consumers to their store. They will have some of the app developers giving a demo on apps like Newshunt , Touch games and they will also host a few fun quizzes/games. Anyone attending will win a Nokia Music voucher and there will be exciting prizes announced through a lucky dip at the store.

http://twtvite.com/jdwdfy
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?invites&eid=196879729307

Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) 2009 is happening in Bangalore from 22nd to 24th of this month. ESC 2009 is India’s largest conference & expo on embedded systems. Following is the excerpt from the event official website:

This year with – New Sessions, New Tracks, New Opportunities, you have a choice between full and half-day tutorials, as well as 75-minute sessions in Programmable logic, Datacom/Telecom, Real-Time Kernels, Developing for ARM, Linux and Open-Source Software, Multi-core and Multi-threaded Processing and more.

Attendees will hear and get theirs queries answered from embedded engineering Veterans such as R.C. Cofer, Ben Harding, Rob O’Shana, Niall Cooling, Serge Plangol, Praveen Goyal, Jagdish Bisawa, and many more at technical classes.

There are different packages available for registration, you can choose one. Or you can also go for an All Access package if you are more serious about the event. ESC is also giving away 250 Engineers Survival Kit for 250 pre registered visitors who turn up at the event. With Engineers Survival Kit you can get free access to following:

• Access to Industry sponsored Technical sessions

• Access to Keynote addresses

• Platform to explore new ideas

• Peer-to-peer networking

• Opportunity to get your queries resolved by experts

• Meet the Design Team

• Access to Exhibition floor from July 22 -24   (Wednesday – Friday)

So, hurry up to register for the event & avail early bird offer for conference or get a Engineer Survival Kit to have access to expo. More details about the event on ESC Official Website

BSNL Bangalore announced discounts on monthly charges for EVDO & NIC cards for existing Broadband users paying more than Rs.499 every month. Monthly charge for EVDO connection for normal customers is Rs.550, but it is just Rs.300 under this offer. Similarly monthly charges for NIC card connection is Rs.250 & discounted price is Rs.150. These discounts are applicable for one year & after that period you will have to pay the normal charges. You need to also keep your existing broadband connection & should be paying atleast Rs.499 to be eligible for this offer. In case if you discontinue your Broadband connection in between, you have to pay the normal charges. So, basically these are addon plans for BSNL Broadband users to enable mobility.

BSNL EVDO connection seem to be pretty good with city wide coverage & providing speeds upto 2.4 Mbps. As per the experienced users you can get 2mbps speed when you are close to the tower & around 1mbps when bit far away from tower. The big plus of EVDO plan from BSNL is, it’s unlimited!

For more details about these discounted plans check these docs from BSNL Bangalore website: EVDO Plan, NIC Card Plan. For more details on EVDO cards, coverage & help queries you can check out my friend GigaCore’s blog & forum bsnlevdoclub.com.

Though I started photo blogging long back, not shared it with anyone. www.bangalorepix.com is the photo blog I started long back. Photos posted at Bangalore Pix are live pictures. I posts them from phone itself once I take them. I am using Flickr’s post to blog feature which creates unique email ID to post pictures. Sending pictures to that ID will not only posts it to Flickr, but also specified blog. I am also using twitterfeed to post tweets about the new photo entry to Twitter.

The Big Idea:

The big idea behind this photo blog will come into picture in long run. There are drastic changes happening in Bangalore due to Bangalore Metro & few road widening projects. As I keep posting pictures of different streets, popular places of Bangalore, in few years you can see how the place was looking before & now. And that’s keep continuing! I have taken this as my lifetime project & keep posting till my end! It will be a great experience to look back at old pictures taken years ago.

Right now I am using Nokia E66 to post the pictures, but picture quality is not so good since it has 3.2 MP camera. It will be great if somebody sponsors a good camera phone (Nokia? Sony Erricson? Samsung?)