We will get a National ID Card Again!!

The move to invite the Infosys Co-Chairman Mr. Nandan Nilekani to take charge as Chairperson of the Unique Identification Authority of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister is indeed a very promising move and augurs well for the future of this nation.

Now, this is certainly not the first time that we have set out on the task of issuing a National Identity Card, but its certainly the first time that we seem to be involving the right people to get the task done.

This is certainly a huge challenge and making it a reality will certainly require a lot of conviction and drive.

The possibilities, once this is a success are innumerable, from improved security, better controlling and tracking of financial transactions, control over black money, better and more effective rollout of subsidies by reducing overhead and leakage to name a few. In general it will give the government the ability to link actions to consequences. This is a necessity in a huge country like ours that can otherwise go berserk.

But there are several issues like authentication, validation, duplication and roll out to such a huge population.

Today there are several solutions that technology offers to solve some of these problems. The use of biometrics - fingerprints, retina scans etc can ensure that we avoid some of these issues.

The other issue is Bureaucracy. To get anything in our country from a Ration card to a passport or anything that is a necessity, will mean having to deal with all the babu's enroute. We have to find an alternate route to this until a basic level of integrity gets ingrained within our social sensibilities. We should consider having a public-private partnership, where in the private partner would be responsible for the actual rollout, biometrics etc. The database itself can be maintained by the government for obvious security reasons. The idea is to somehow solve this problem, however that may be.

The other issue is the type of rollout. We seem to have been obsessed, previously, with issuing physical cards with chips that hold all the information. The problem I have with this is with the cost of implementation this will entail and the risk to security.

a) Supplying physical cards with chips are costly.

b) People tend to lose things. And every loss will mean replacing the card, which will translate to additional costs and overheads.

c) Handing over cards with chips provides a window for a security breach.

We do not need cards. People just need to know the number that will identify them. They can chose to memorize it, write it down or use any method they may deem fit.

Challenges are plenty, but under Mr Nandan Nilekani's leadership, this is a success story thats waiting to be scripted.

Jai ho!

Nandan@TED

Some very valid points brought out in Nandan's speech at TED.com. Click here to watch this speech.

HTC Magic is here

But it looks like its not going to bother Apple... iPhone 3G S it seems will hold its ground after all...
See the review for the HTC Magic here.

June 7th was Friedman Day

As you probably guess this day is named after Milton Friedman. But what exactly does this day signify? Trust me the answer is just as interesting as the question...

Friedman Day is the day in the year when Americans have earned enough money to pay the full costs of Government. This is calculated by the American Institute of Economic Research and will vary each year.
This year the Friedman Day was on the 7th of July.

This is not the Tax Foundation's Tax Freedom Day, when Americans' aggregate income collectively finances all municipal, state, and national taxes. And this is where the significance lies. Friedman Day includes not just the income from taxes but also other sources of Goverment income. It also includes the money government borrows to pay for spending that isn't covered by tax revenue. So Friedman day will be a few days after the Tax Freedom Day.
Both these could be on the same day when there is no deficit.
The larger the deficit the larger will be the gap between these 2 days. Interesting eh...

With over 1.8 trillion dollars in deficit.. expectedly the gap this year could be wider...

Here's an interesting link on Friedman: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard43.html

iPhone3GS is on its way!! Go sign up Now!!!

And Apple seems to have sealed every hole in the iPhone with the Apple 3GS.

Its got everything you always wanted:

1. Cut, Copy and Paste

2. Video Recording

3. 3 Megapixel Camera with Autofocus.

4. A search feature to search through everything on your phone: Apps, Contacts, Msgs and mails...

And its touted to be atleast 2.5 times faster. Get to you apple store before the queues get too long..

The Palm Pre is out

I wanted this phone to come out so badly, simply because the iPhone was locked to AT&T.
Thats not the case anymore, the iphone is available unlocked. But now the question is, is it good enough? Certainly Not!! is what the Palm pre would retort to that.

Palm has finally cracked open what has been Apple's exclusive domain for the last 2 years.
And they seem to have figured a way to do it all better, setting a whole new standard for touch phones.

Let me summarize the key pros and cons and leave you with cnn's detailed review of the product:

Pro's:
1) Multitasking : You can run more than one app simultaneously.
2) Physical full QWERTY Keyboard that slides out
3) Cut, Copy and Paste. It is rumoured that an Apple release this year will bring this feature to the iphone as well. But for now its something iphone users can only hope for.
4) Multi touch screen - You can pinch to zoom in and out just like the iphone. Its really amazing how its taken so long for others to catch with Apple. But they seem to have finally. It almost seemed like an impossible task at one point. :)
5) Search : For applications or contacts or mails. Thats a cool feature i wish the iphone also had.
6) Integrated GPS
7) You can use the phone as a usb device. This can be painful on the iphone.
to list a few...

Con's:
1) Battery life isn't the greatest
2) No Onscreen keyboard yet.
3) Application catalog is still in beta. Not comparable to iTunes.
4) No video recording. Not yet available on the iphone either.
5) No Support for flash yet.
6) Only 8Gb of storage at present.

Apple likes to place themselves way ahead of competition. So it will be interesting to see what they turn up with. For us its great news!! :)