A Palm V was the first touch device that I was the proud owner of. With a black and white screen, it was an organiser, a calendar and phonebook. I caught many envious glances as people saw me tapping the touch-sensitive screen with a stylus. This was in the mid-1990s and Palm had made quite a name for itself, so much so that the brand had become a generic expression for personal digital assistants, or PDAs.

Palm V

Eventually my cell phone replaced the PDA. It had a phone book, a calendar, and various other applications that I used the Palm for, and moreover, you did not have to look up a number and then dial it. That was taken care of here, something the Palm itself realised when it launched Treo and other phones that tied in the redoubtable Palm software and ease of use, with a cell phone. However, by then the world had moved on, other systems were cheaper and more interesting, and you could migrate your Palm data easily to another platform. Many did that and so did I, successfully. The Palm V joins my Hall of Fame of “Great gadgets that I can’t use, or give up”, one that includes a couple of Nikon film cameras and the good ol’e Mac SE.

I use a virtual keyboard for my cell phone but a real one for my laptop, and I am typing this column on an HP TX 1000 which has a touch screen that operates with a stylus. Ah, the stylus. It is interesting that Apple, the very company that first introduced the stylus in 1993 is also responsible for it being phased out. The “Multi-Touch” experience became a reality for millions of users with the introduction of the i-phone in 2007. The touch screen became much more than what it was. It changed rules of the game, since the consumer’s expectations were sky high now. You could zoom photos with a pinch of the finger or use the flick of your thumb to spin through your music collection. In short, just use various intuitive gestures to get your phone to respond, no more stylus; you could handle the phone with only one hand.

Now everyone is looking for touch, be it in phones, desktop computers, laptops, or even television screens. Touch is attractive. It is also useful, and surprisingly easy to migrate to. In fact, touch screens are especially useful for control and automation systems, because they help to save workspace and simplify operations and save time. Thus operators simply touch the screen to monitor processes, or to give commands. Many people have difficulty in using keyboards and other input devices, and for them touch screens are a boon.

It is almost impossible to buy a latest gadget or use one which is not touch screen based—jukeboxes, gaming devices, kiosks, you have them everywhere. Even somebody like BlackBerry, an avowed advocate of the keypad, is now offering touch screen phones.

Both Dell and HP have introduced their latest computers with touch screens. Dell’s latest in the Inspiron family, is a touch-enabled Inspiron One all-in-one desktop featuring a full HD 23-inch WLED-backlit LCD display with built-in Wi-Fi, Webcam, DVD drive, and HDMI interface for connecting to television tuners, cable and satellite set-top boxes and videogame consoles.

For HP has been in the touch screen game since 2007 when Bill Gates introduced the HP TouchSmart, the first mass market touch screen desktop PC. The latest in its range include TouchSmart 310, and 600 desktop PCs, which have been well received.

For a long time, a computer’s memory dominated the mindscape of users. Random Access Memory or RAM was expensive and thus computers were compared on the basis of how much RAM they had, and later, on what speed it was rated at.

Hard Disk Drives were expensive and I still have my Macintosh SE which has the then state of the art HDD, a 40 MB Small Computer System Interface, or SCSI drive. Today we use 500 GB drives, and no decent computer has less than 2GB RAM. Now that we have taken the processing speed out of the loop, the next frontier is the touch screen and its integration with computer operating systems. Here the hardware and the software come together to give the requisite user experience.

Yes, computers are all about user experiences, not just hardware or software. That experience is what a multi-touch screen enhances, and this is where the future is. We have it in our hands with various small devices, now it will dominate our desks and our laptops too.

The article by Roopinder Singh was published in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on September 28, 2010.

India for a Billion Reasons

Ed. Amit Dasgupta.
Wisdom Tree.
Pages 222. Rs 3,495.

BRILLIANT colours and images attract you the moment you look at the book. Then you flip through it, and find more, and more, reflecting the many facets of Indian life, rituals, traditions, modernity, democratic processes, including elections, people and their festivals-all find representation in this volume.

India for a Billion Reasons

No, it is not yet another coffee table book on India. What helps India for a Billion Reasons carve out its own identity is a substantial body of text. The editor has wisely allowed many expert voices to reflect on slices of the Indian experience, yet the introduction by this diplomat writer, whose book Indian by Choice had been reviewed in these columns two years ago, serves its purpose by explaining the format of the book, and introducing the essays that together make the book. While many of them are young minds, some are young at heart, together they lure us to add substance to the attractive colour pages and draw us to the text.

Any picture book on India has to negotiate cliches, so does this, often quite successfully? Atri Bhattacharya contends that the “downside of the Indian experience is that it leaves us a little jaded for the rest of the world”. Anita Ratnam is seeped in the dance tradition, and it shows in her article. Anjum Katyal tackles the difficult subject of art from India, while Ritu Sethi writes on the unbroken tradition of the living crafts.

Powerful, colourful and beautiful pictures have their own story to tell, and the editor and publishers are to be commended for putting forth a fine, pertinent selection. Captions are generally informative, although those from pictures sourced from foreign agencies have captions that address foreign audiences, like the one that starts, “Indian heart-throb Shah Rukh Khan.”

Meenakshi Shedde’s take on Bollywood is personal and interesting. Pratik Kanjilal’s overview of contemporary Indian literature, incisive, with due emphasis on literature in the 50 languages that are written in India. The editor is the author of the article on food, enriched by both recipes and colourful pictures. Harpal Singh Bedi looks at Indian sports.

The black and white photograph of Milkha Singh winning the 400m race in Paris is lovely, and there is one of his son, Jeev, too. Rohan Mukherjee writes about Indian polity, Bibek Debroy on economics, Tarun Basu on the media, and L. K. Sharma explores the ascent to modernity.’The book has a rich fare for readers.

Quotes by people about what India means to them, illustrated with cartoon from Sudhir Talang are a good read. Visually, the book is rich, has diverse sources and some really stunning pictures. It will be widely gifted and displayed, and those who read it would gain a lot more than those who just flip through it.

This review of the book by  Roopinder Singh was published in the Spectrum magazine section of The Tribune on September 19, 2010,

Not all of us are proficient at the keyboard. Since my initiation into the world of computers was on a Mac and not a DoS machine, the most painful things about learning how to use the computer was to learn how to type. I had no formal training, and had to learn from Tarsem Singh, who was a trained steno-typist.

He could not find work similar to what he had done in India before he migrated to New York. He thus changed his job and was a building superintendent when I met him. It was under his tutelage that I practiced my ‘Quick Brown Fox…’, and to him I owe my ability to type at a reasonable speed.

I used an electric typewriter to practise, and like most users, learnt on the typical QWERTY keyboard, which was designed by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1873 for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter. Remington bought it the same year, and since then it has been the standard for all Remington typewriters. The keyboard is named after the first six characters in the far left of its top row of letters.

The main reason for designing this layout of keys was to prevent the typebars of various letters from clashing with each other as the typist typed them. We have all seen such typewriters, and can still see them outside courts and other such institutions.

Now, in the case of computers, the original reasoning did not hold good because of change of technology, but since this was the standard keyboard, most people continue with it, especially since the jury is still out on whether alternatives give very significant advantages.

There is, however, truth in the statement that since when the QWERTY keyboard was designed, the primary requirement was to prevent jams while typing fast. Thus, decisions on the layout of keys were taken to distance commonly used pairs of letter, and this, in effect, slowed down typing.

While the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard is considered technically superior and easier to learn, there are very few keyboards that use it. However, you can map it in many computers, using a special mode setting. The Dovark keyboard, however, has a small, devoted and vocal following. It is not too small, over a lakh at least, but not big enough to have any impact.

Laptop

The latest buzz these days is Google Instant, a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. It uses Google’s “black magic” algorithms to offer predictions based on what you type, and as you input more letters, the predictions become better. Google had gone to town on the time saved, which is measured in nanoseconds for many of us, and no matter what the hype is, I really don’t see how these nanoseconds add up to a discernable saving of time.

Now saving effort is another thing and that’s where Instant really scores! Since the predictive mode works reasonably well, we can scroll down the choices and our query to the search engine faster. For slow typists, such predictive help is a tangible gain.

All of us who use mobile phones have got used to the T9, named after the nine keys available for inputting data on a mobile phone. Nokia, LG, Samsung, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Sanyo, Sagem and many others use this system, which has rivals like Motorola’s iTap. BlackBerry’s SureType is a system that combines a traditional phone keypad with the computer-type QWERTY-based keyboard quite innovatively.

What about computers? In my expanding search for ways to avoid typing every word, I visited the site that often gives us answers - Google! Their ongoing efforts to improve their performance have resulted in various experiments, which have been performed in Google Labs. The Google Scribe feature is described by Google as ‘a text completion service’. Using information from what you have already typed in a document, Google Scribe provides related word or phrase completion suggestions. In addition to saving keystrokes, Google Scribe’s suggestions indicate ‘correct’ or ‘popular phrases to use’.

I typed out the preceding paragraph in Google scribe, and in spite of a reasonably fast Internet connection, I found that I was typing much faster than the Scribe, which was offering alternatives. Tarsem Singh had taught me too well!

When I slowed down, I realised that around 50 per cent of the options were the correct ones, just what I wanted. I also found it distracting. While I opted against it for the moment, there is no doubt in my mind that it will be refined more and at some time in the future, I would be using it.

I am sure that it will be of major help when used on mobile phones, even for those youngsters whose thumbs seem to have specially evolved for typing on those small keypads. As technologies evolve, so do we…of course, our demands increase, too, and that spurs additional effort to meet them. I love having a ringside seat in this fast-paced electronic evolution, don’t you?

This article by Roopinder Singh was printed in the Lifestyle section of The Tribune on September 14, 2010

Roopinder Singh

BLACKBERRY blinked first, and the government gave it a 60-day reprieve to find a way to meet India’s internal security concerns. It also lifted the impending ban on some BlackBerry services in India. Soon thereafter, the government announced that it would also ask other service providers to ensure that they comply with laws that require them to provide access to security agencies in India.

Blackberry phone

The genesis of the present showdown goes back to the horrific Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 26, 2008, in which cell phones, satellite phones and other electronic devices were used by the terrorists and their handlers. The government then decided to act in a decisive manner such that it would have access to all forms of electronic data that goes out of India.

Unlike other service providers like Google Inc, Nokia and Microsoft Corp, BlackBerry uses its own servers and security software, as well as centralised data centres for its customers. It thus became the primary target of security forces, even though none of the terrorists had actually used a BlackBerry device. Other service providers use encryption software made by specialised companies like Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc, more familiar to Indian users as the main providers of anti-virus software.

BlackBerry also provides its corporate customers a server called the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) which encrypts mail according to special software “key” that is set up by the customers. It is because of this feature that BlackBerry says that it can’t provide any “open-all” access key, because there is simply no such key.

On the other hand, the government maintains that it must have the ability to monitor the data sent across the servers because of national security concerns and to prevent criminals from using BlackBerry phones to transact business. One way out is that BlackBerry could install an “eavesdropping box” on each BSE, and give the agencies access to that box.

By far, India is not the only country that has issues regarding BlackBerry. France, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Kuwait are among the nations that had had security concerns regarding BlackBerry services.

The government has also asked other service providers to install servers in India. Nokia has announced that it will do so soon, and now the Gmail and Skype are also being specifically targeted. Once the servers are in India, their operators have to comply with Indian laws, and thus cooperation will become more proactive.

While the security concerns have been addressed, the larger question of providing privacy to the users remains. Indian citizens are well within their right to demand that a proper, transparent and effective system be set up to ensure that the security agencies do not misuse the access granted to them.

The Intelligence Bureau and the National Technical Research Organisation are the two organisations that will primarily deal with electronic surveillance. They will thus be empowered tremendously. With power comes responsibility. The government should have transparent and universal norms, proper procedures and oversight to prevent abuse of power that such access would give.

A system of adequate judicial supervision should be chalked out to ensure that only those specific phones or e-mail IDs are tapped which are justified and necessary. Sometime ago, illegal tapping of mobile phones was exposed by the media. It raised a storm, even in Parliament, but there is no information on what is being done to prevent such incidents in future. The government must ensure accountability among the security agencies.

Individual privacy should be inviolable, unless it is breached for specific legal reasons. Data integrity is crucial to all kinds of transactions, including business transactions which have made BlackBerry phones a preferred choice of the corporate world. The independent BEE servers provided a lifeline to the survivors of the 9/11 New York tragedy, and it became the only network that continued to work even in that trying time.

But then, as BlackBerry, Google and Skype must also realise, while at one level, the world is increasingly borderless, at another, it is not so -all have to conform to the law of the nations they operate in. They must demonstrate their commitment to the security concerns of these nations and work out ways in which they can continue to provide the best service possible to law-abiding users there.

This article was published on a special Oped page of The Tribune devoted to Cyber security on September 6,2010

I love teachers, I was born the son of a teacher, my wife is a teacher and I would have loved to be one. Why, some of my best friends are teachers!

Our teachers have tremendous influence in shaping our lives. I am grateful to all my teachers, for shaping me into what I am today.  One of the finest tributes to a teacher is a book called Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I wrote a review of the book, which I have presented to many of my friends. Please click there to read the review.

TWO words that are indelibly associated with the Oxford dictionaries in my mind don’t figure in them, in spite of the steady march of Indian expressions that have now been accepted as English! They are “unparh” and “jahil”-the Punjabi words for illiterate and uncouth.

How? Therein lies a story that has interesting elements. The place: Bhupindra Kothi, Patiala, one of the minor palaces in the city. Time: 6 pm. Dramatic personae: A man with a large turban and a youngster wearing an under-turban or a patka. Scene: The man fuming and fretting, and uttering the aforesaid words repeatedly.

I was wary, since I thought that the words were directed at me. It was to my immense relief that I realised that some unnamed others were the target. The gentleman had come home to meet my parents, and while they were out for a walk, I was trying to entertain him. His angry demeanour notwithstanding, there was something that attracted the 10-year-old me to him.

“How dare they say that the Sikh icon was cyclothymic,” he thundered. I ventured to ask him what cyclothymic meant. “Don’t you know? Get the dictionary!” I scurried away to the nearest bookrack. I thought the world was too big for the small ELBS dictionaries we used for school and thus picked up the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which despite its name, was quite hefty. I went to the right page to find out that the word meant “a mental state characterised by marked swings of mood between depression and elation.” In the meantime, the gentleman spoke about words, linguistics, philosophy and history, and I just sat listening, mesmerised.

By the time my parents came, he had inculcated in me a deep desire to know more about things in general and the beginning of a habit to consult the dictionary when in doubt. Nowadays, instead of thumbing through the pages, I tend to use my fingers to type out my query, just as, instead of writing in longhand, I input my articles straight on a computer. I thus tend to see the online editions of various dictionaries, although I must confess that I am not one of the many subscribers who pay around Rs 14,000 to access the digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the largest and most comprehensive of the dictionaries published by Oxford. It gets 20 lakh hits a month. The many free online dictionaries widely available on the Net serve my needs.

OED takes many years to compile. The latest print edition came out in 1989 and is in 20 volumes. It will take many years for OED’ s new edition, which is still being compiled, to be published, but even then, the news that when it is finally completed, it may only be online, disturbed me.

I still use a fountain pen to write, and consult print dictionaries, especially when offline. On the Net, you type the word and get its meaning. However, when you open a printed dictionary, you look for the page, and then the word nestled among others…there is something to be said for meandering that happens, which often takes you a pleasant detour.

With this memorable encounter, and many that followed, Sirdar Kapur Singh, ICS, ignited my mind. He put on the path of lexographic discoveries and set me off on a journey that I still enjoy, although a bit more while thumbing through the pages of the dictionary than by accessing it online.

The article by Roopinder Singh was published as a Middle in the Editorial page of The Tribune on September 3, 2010.

A file photo of when Sirdar Kapur Singh visited our home in Amritsar. I am in the extreme right hand corner, and he is standing next to me, second last from the corner:

From Giani Gurdit Singh