RadioVerve – Independent Internet Radio

Speaker: Shreyas. - RadioVeRVe

Started by 3 guys who liked the local college rock songs.  THey collected mp3’s from all the bands around the country.  But this dint click… So they went on to create infinity radio and then turned into radioverve which is 24×7 and broadcasts indian music.  They recorded shows, scanned them and streamed them on the net.

Point A of the session: They were not web 2.0.

Point B of the session: The intention is to give musicians a platform to express themselves through their music.

They have about 10000 customers per month.  There are many rock bands which now play hindi coz they dont have the visible audience to listen to their songs.  Radioverve helps them by giving their music over the net and thus reaching a larger audience.

The point is to build a community around independent indian music.  They have plans to publish a channel which plays folk music that is not publicly popularised.  This is going online and would perhaps make the lives of the musicians their much needed limelight and fame.  This would be done through recordings already done and get it from sourcers who have taken the trouble of recording the music.

Mapunity – Handling Bangalore Traffic

Speaker: Mr. Pradeep – www.mapunity.org

No vector maps for India unlike the US and UK.  Google API has been hacked and their own tiles has been used over the Google Map.  They have their own road maps with places also.  The data in the database is from the Government.  They use AJAX + JSON.

Location finding happens using AJAX.  Google suggest is used in the location finder.  Uses PGDjikstra Weighted shortest path algorithm to do route finder.

Sorry…. Lost track coz of the discussions… I got in my mind though…. and they got their site!!!

KOMRAD – Compact Open Mobile Reference Architecture and Design

Speaker: Mr. Rajiv Poddar, Tantra Tele.

What is KOMRAD?

• Blueprint for mobile phones
• Reference Design for Mobile Pones
• Software and Hardware
• Derived completely out of Open Source Software and Open Hardware
• Commercial Off the Shelf Solutions – To fill in the gaps in the Opensource hardware and software

Open Source Hardware:The files required for the hardware – design and stuff is available under GPL on the net.

Why is it needed?

• 80% of the worlds population are covered by a wireless network
• But, only 25% have a mobile phone
• Multiple barriers to entry exist here
  • Cost of the handset
  • Total cost of Ownership

The providers of a network camp on ARPU – Avg. Revenue Per Unit.  But in the rural areas where the talk values are less, the cost of ownership is high.

The GSM association has noticed that the major markets is Asia, and Africa.  And India falls on the top of the list of booming markets.  So, the GSM Association is talking to operators to reduce the ARPU.  This would drive penetration into the rural markets.

The expectation in India is for a user to spend Rs. 450 per month.  Which is the lowest in the world and the GSM association is trying to get the ARPU values still lower.

How does KOMRAD help?

• It focuses on the technical barrier to entry into handset market
• Makes mobile phone as easy to assemble as a computer
• Enables communities to build their own solution
• Disrupts the value chain of the mobile phone market

Their target is to get the mobile (Chips, LCD, Keypad, Plastics, RF components, software) is around 30$.  The mobile phone may not look like the Nokia’s and Sony Ericsson’s we have, it might be designed as a community result to best suit the needs of a community…  For eg, the phones designed for a rural area could be designed with bigger keypads and no lcd’s!.

The fundamental open source initiative would help disrupt the actual distribution and business channels of the big guns…

Goals of KOMRAD

• Cheap
• Easily available components
• Open Architecture
• No closed or proprietary drivers

The next slide spoke of the architecture.  The micro kernel on the architecture is called L4.  The peripherals will be connected on an l4 based device driver family.  The protocol stack is a certified GSM stack.  There is a cross compiler which will convert any code written in C into L4 compatible code….

Features

• Kernel is ~ 100kb (L4 Pistachio Embedded)
• NCurses based MMI framework
• GSM protocol stack
• GNU Radio Baseband + RF
• Blackfin applications processor

Status

• Basic Architecture completed
• MMI Framework
• Kernel
• GNU Radio
• Team of 3 volunteers

TODO

• Code, code and code – I like this part!!!
• Release Alpha
• Combine two boards into a single board
• Replace FPGA with GSM baseband and RF
• Add more volunteers to the project – Mee like this part too

YBangalore – Aashish Solanki

Designer for www.yulop.com and www.ybangalore.com 

The concept is to get community networking to make your life simpler.  The site helps you find people who have information to help those who dont.  It helps you in looking at things and take help for things like how to pay your taxes, find houses, how to get issues resolved when you dont know where to go and whom to approach…

It’s a platform for all bangaloreans where you can voice your thoughts and opinions.

The speaker stresses on two things:

1. Members gallery, Upload anything anytime.  The site also has classifieds, post things.  THey dont take money for it.  The guys want to make sure that ppl of the city are aware of what is happening in THEIR OWN CITY….

The site is up for the last one month, they’re open to suggestions on things as to what they can improve.  They also have plans of raising money through Associate Branding and Ad chains where the owners try to ensure that the user is at no point annoyed because of the ads.

They have a secret concept called see2get which is coming down in the pipe…

They also have plans to introduce Live Radio Broadcasting and things liks that… Blogs and Wiki and Podcasting are also in the pipe….

The speaker stressed that the site will remain a non-profit oriented entity.

How Important is a USER in WEB 2.0?

Unless the user likes the content and the presentation, he wouldnt come back.

What are the factors affecting the user:

• Agility and attention
• Usability and Interaction
• Freshness and Quality
• Ads or nuisance?

Web 2.0 is not just social networking, socializing and things like this… It has more dimensions to this.  Their groups concept of medical cards is based on the other vivid dimensions in the technology where they intend to take medicards over the internet. The motto being webize everything.

The perspectives of WEB 2.0:

• The GUI perspective
• The Functionality Perspective
• The Response perspective
• The Developer perspective

All 4 above points are interrelated with more or less the same and distinct priorities, and it would mandate that the sites are successful in the web2.0 scenario, it would usually have a succesful mix of all 4.

Day 2- Barcamp Bangalore 2.0: 5 minute pulao for Bachelors

 Speaker: Sowmya Karmalli

1. Soak rice for 5 mins (Soak it well)
2. Pull out the vegetables and cut them up… If u get the cut ones gud 4 u!!!
3. Get a hug pan and put oil and fry till “U” feel it’s OK.  Dont leave the stove running… Just wait till a ‘lil bit of smoke’ comes out…
4. Once the veggies are done, put in the pulao!!! err…. rice… AFTER DRAINING OUT THE WATER… AND YOU MAY TO CHOOSE TO CALL PIZZA HUT AFTER THIS!!!!
5. One portion of rice to two portions of water… Hope u have an electric cooker… or else, pull off 2 whistles off a pressure cooker…

And yeah… Pulao is done….

Tip: Soak the rice in warm water if u want pulao done 4 breakfast!! B-)

Phew… The kind of talks @ Barcamp!!!