It is not something new to hear that millions of people in the world find it extremely hard to find a slice of bread or drop of water to survive. Here are some statistics to emphasis the extent of the issue.
963 million people across the world are hungry. [ref]
Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. i.e one child every five seconds![ref]
Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. [ref]
In 2005, almost 1.4 billion people lived below the international poverty line, earning less than $1.25 per day. [ref]
Statistics can go on for pages. But, until you see something like what is shown below, you would never actually feel what it is like.
This is a short film which was directed by Ferdinand Dimadura, that won the Short film Competition of the 56th Berlin International Film Festival. Once you watch it, you'll realize if this could not win, what will.
Quoting a synopsis about short movie, "this film is about the hunger and poverty brought about by Globalization. There are 10,000 people dying everyday due to hunger and malnutrition. This short film shows a forgotten portion of the society. The people who live on the refuse of men to survive. What is inspiring is the hope and spirituality that never left this people."
I'd generally say "enjoy" when sharing a video with anyone. But, with this I'd say, "try not to end up with a tear in your eye". I'd rather not comment on any content in the video since you should see it for yourself. This is the most touching video production I saw in the recent past.
When you hear the word Google, it has probably become yet another WWW with its amazingly broad range of web based product stack. What started off as a highly versatile search engine has turned out to be a multi million dollar company. Google search was its first hit. Then it was continued by other initiative like GMail, Google Apps, Google Chrome etc. The next big thing from Google is just around the corner – GoogleWave!
What is Google Wave? Simply put it is the next generation real time communication and collaboration solution from Google. With everything moving to the web space, real time, high quality collaboration was increasing becoming a crucial requirement. There have been many initiatives which were focused on enabling collaboration for more focused aspects. However, with Google Wave, it seems to be a total solution which combines an amalgam of collaboration mechanisms spanning from email through IM, web chat, wiki, social networking to project management. This is a brainchild of the brothers Jens & Lars Rasmussen, the creators of another magical app - Google Maps. Their initial step for Google Wave was a project codenamed 'walkabout'which aimed at eliminating the boundaries between different types of communication methods.
The most interesting features of Google Wave include real-time operation, embeddability, playback functionality, extensibility and obviously being open source. Now you might be thinking what the word ‘wave’ means. Is it just a catchy word for marketing? Well, not really. A wave is the highest level of abstraction in this platform. Along with the term ‘wave’ there is a small jargon which contain some other terms as well. Let me put them very briefly as I understood. Starting with a ‘wave’, a wave is one threaded conversation which can be of any form like a multi-person chat, a collaborative whiteboard etc. A wave is made up of ‘wavelets’ which are also threaded conversations like waves, but they form a subset of a wave only. The next level of granularity is a ‘blip’, which is a single message. This would be like one line in a chat. Next comes the term ‘document’. This is what bundles in all the content of a blip. Next, there are ‘extensions’ which work within a wave, which are accessible for the participants operating in the wave. Extensions are twofold – ‘gadgets’ and ‘robots’. Gadgets are applications like Facebook apps, and robots are autonomous participants within a wave. Finally, although it may be obvious ‘Embed wave’ is the action of embedding a wave to your own web application.
This video taken from Google I/O explains what it is all about.
When it comes to Google, they have really played their cards well. Just think for a moment the work they did. First they conquered the web space. Then took the desktop apps to the web, through Google Docs, Google Calendar etc. Now that they have the communication channels as well as the tools that need to be collaborated, basically, it’s matter of consolidating them and enabling real time communication between them. However, with Google Wave, they have really taken it to the limit and all the stuff sounds really interesting. This is said to be opened for public access by the end of the year, and I am soooo looking forward to it. I’m pretty sure these ‘waves’ are going to make a tsunami in cyber space!!!
