My New Project - A Musical Revolution

I am currently enrolled in SM323 CORE at the School of management. As part of this course I am working on a new product project and am part of an 8-person team that is working on a guitar-learning device called The Guitar Guru… The Guitar Guru x100 Pro is a revolutionary visual guitar-learning accessory that makes learning a song as simple as playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Check out the product at and give us your feedback, we would sincerely appreciate it! -

Visit our Website: http://www.GetGuitarGuru.com

Blog: http://blog.GetGuitarGuru.com

Fan us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GetGuitarGuru

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/GetGuitarGuru

The Earth Institute - Researching our Way to Solutions

As the weather in Boston starts to warm up ever so slowly it signaled the start of Spring Break. Personally it resulted in a family visit to a cousins apartment at Columbia U in uptown Manhattan. The ideal inspiration for a quick post on an incredible organization.

Columbia University is home to the famous Earth Institute and its world renowned director and economist extrodinaire Jefferey Sachs. The institute manages a whole range of prjects all across the world to improve the livelihood of the planet. It works on a range of issues from Climate Change to Extreme Poverty.

While field work is definitely a large aspect of the Institutes work, it major role is carrying out cutting edge research across a range of these cross cutting issues to find solutions to what are some of the worlds most complex problems.

In essence they really are attempting to solve tomorrows problems today.

You can donate and find out more about this institute here: http://www.earth.columbia.edu

Is the iPhone Now Trying To Take Out Blackberry?

So, after an incredible launch and great sales numbers, Apple Inc. is finally answering the call of the public by announcing an event in New York City next week that is scheduled to release the 'SDK' release for the iPhone!

HUH!? SDK? Well, for those of you who have absolutely no clue what that is...the SDK is what alows programers to 'Officially' create programs for the iPhone. Now, as im sure most of you know these smart guys have been creating them for sometime now already...so what difference does it make to them? Well the excitement is basically based on the fact that they dont have to keep battling Apple, which releases new locks every time they update the iPhones software.

Bigger news however was Apple's hints of something to do with 'Enterprises'. Apple, which is notorious for keeping secrets, released their invitations to the news conference and mentioned a surprise for business people. What could it be? Should Blackberry be worried?

Well, i guess time will tell us soon. But I know that I am really excited to see what the extremely creative developers will do with the incredible untapped potential of the iPhone.

What kind of things would you want to see developers do with your iPhone?! Let me know...

PS - Steve, can we have that 3G iPhone already...we have been really patient :)

You Have Never Seen Anything Like This iPhone Killer - Nokia Morph

Move over iPhones, i WANT a Nokia Morph.

This jaw dropping piece of technology looks like something I would want to own and the iPhone really pales in comparison. Granted this is a prototype and it will take a while to hit the market but this is just very impressive.

So, according to Nokia, it will take between 6 to 7 years before we see the likes of this beast of a phone but just looking at the way these guys are going I am definitely going to second the notion (or in this case probably hunderedth) that nanotechnology is the future...be it Education, Business etc. This phone alone is a stellar example of the potential that nano-technology has.

The pictures here are courtesy of Nokia press release. I hope you enjoy them because they are incredible. But once you get over that WATCH THE VIDEO because only then do you understand the POTENTIAL that this phone and technology has. It is incredible to say the least.

LADIES: Make sure you watch the video right till the end, i think you just might fallin love with the last minute!

Do leave comments to let me know what you think about the phone. :)

I would also love to know what you think about nanotechnology in general. Where do you see this technology taking us in the months and years to come?

-
Anish

Should Teachers and Professors have Facebook Profiles?

And should students be able to access them?

Facebook as a social network (including others like Linkedin etc) has incredible potential as an educational tool. This is why i feel that teachers should be at the forefront of using social networking in education.

Social networking is truly the buzz word at the moment. However despite the phenomenal growth of Linkedin, Orkut, Facebook and Myspace...social networks remain largely untapped.

Over the past few month all of the major social networking websites have launched developer platforms or have joined an industry standard platform like 'Open Social'. This basically allows anyone and everyone with some developer knowledge to create applications that make use of these networks.


There is no doubt that most of the people reading this have experienced the very many highly annoying applications on Facebook (Superpoke etc.)Unfortunately at the moment these tend to be the most widely used apps. But as the development continues we will see a lot more practical applications appearing. In fact this has already started. There are a number of applications that are already permitting things like ecommerce, classroom scheduling, colaborative documents etc. on these social networks.

As these social networks evolve from this primary stage, that they are currently in, to a stable platform we will see business, education and the like migrate here.

As these websites develop further, increased privacy controls, stability and a wider array of education based applications will become the norm. I foresee the ability to have multiple 'profiles' that you can share on a single social network. This way a teacher can share very specific information from his/her account with students...different information with fellow colleagues and different information with family and friends.


I envision, in the next few years, social networks will allow you to:
1) Sign in
2) Check your class schedule
3) Attend an online discussion
4) Discuss the class with your classmates within a closed discussion groups.
5) Receive your grades
6) Collaborate on papers
7) Share notes.
8) Watch a lecture
9) Communicate with your professors
10) Do your shopping
and much more...all through a single website.

Keeping in mind that the primary goal for most teachers is to provide their students with a relevant education that is accessible. It is now, and will be in the future, essential that teachers embrace the incredible potential that these networks have to disseminate interactive information and educate.

Global Campaign for Education

"Millions of parents, teachers and children around the world are calling on their governments to provide free, good quality, basic education for all the world's children. They are part of the Global Campaign for Education; we add our voice to their call."

- Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel, April 2002.

Education is a basic human right and fundamental to the fight for human dignity and freedom. For 72 million children and 774 million adults, that right is violated everyday.

The Global Campaign for Education promotes education as a basic human right, and mobilizes public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfill their promises to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people; in particular for children, women and all disadvantaged, deprived sections of society.

Principles -
The campaign is driven by the conviction that quality education for all is achievable, and by the concern for the immense costs of failure.

The GCE believes that in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, exclusion from education will translate into growing poverty, inequality and deprivation.

The Global Campaign for Education commits itself to achieve its mission with objectivity, transparency and accountability and to follow democratic norms and processes in all its plans and actions.

Membership -
The Global Campaign for Education, founded in 1999, brings together Civil Society organizations, NGOs, teacher unions and child rights activists. Application to GCE's membership is open to civil society organizations and networks that subscribe to the GCE's principles and demands and agree to uphold their constitution.

Go to the GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR EDUCATION for more information

*All text owned and copyrighted by its respective owners.

United Nations Millennium Campaign

The UN Millennium Campaign is a citizens effort to urge people all over the world to urge their governments to remember the pledges that the made to citizens of the world to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Goals are a set of 8 goals that all the member nations of the UN signed onto and agreed to achieve by 2015. Yet, in 2008 majority of these countries are far from achieving these goals to end poverty, illiteracy, hunger etc.

The UN-MC works with coalitions like GCAP and its national campaigns (like The ONE Campaign) to do just this.

To become a part of these campaigns and learn some of the many things that YOU can do to make a difference visit End Poverty

Global Call to Action Against Poverty

Ive worked with or for the Global Call to Action Against Poverty for over three years now. This has been one of the most educational experiences of my life. Working on issues like poverty, AIDS, hunger etc. have taught me a lot, not just about the issues but also human lessons on not only how to care but also why to care.

GCAP is a coalition of thousands of countries in over 100 countries that have joined forces to achieve common goals and push for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

The purpose of the campaign is to educate and raise awareness on a range of issues amongst the people of the world. This massive grassroots movement then works to pressurize idle governments across the planet into taking action.

Become a part of the movement at www.whiteband.org

The ONLY way to never loose your phone!

The other day, while doing nothing in particular, i stumbled across GrandCentral. I assure you, this is no reference to the mammoth station on 42nd street!

Are you sick of all those times you have lost you cell phone? We all know how much of a hassle it can sometimes be to even get your own cellphone number back let alone the actual device. What about when you want to switch carriers, possibly to get an iPhone...and cant keep your old number? Well GrandCentral, the brainwave of Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, is a startup that provides a fascinating service that takes care of this problem. Grandcentral allows you to choose a number and OWN IT FOR LIFE!

Pretty interesting, eh? Thats what i thought. So how do they do this? The number you select is not linked to your sim card, service provider or cell phone. Using an online console, you can control the number you picked. You can then redirect calls that you receive at that number to whatever number you might be using at the time - virtually any number on the planet - all with the click of just a few buttons. Thus making it incredibly simple for you to switch numbers or carriers at any time without confusing the people that call you!

Now obviously the startup offers a whole range of excellent services, if not for which im sure Google wouldn't have been so keen to gobble it up. Check out some of these features:


* Check your messages by phone, email, or online
* Keep all your messages online for eternity
* Record and store your phone calls (just like voice mail)
* Quickly (and secretly) block an annoying caller
* Click-to-dial from your address book
* Surprise your callers with a custom voice mail greeting
* Forward, download, and add notes to your messages

There is a whole bunch of other stuff that makes it fascinating and with a little imagination this technology could be used in a whole range of different ways. A new company for instance could set a number for itself that it might use in marketing material, when it finally raises enough capital to expand into larger offices it doesn't need to rework marketing materials with new numbers. I merely has to log into its account on GrandCentral and redirect its GC number to its new office number. Nice.

Check it out at www.grandcentral.com and let me know how it works for you or what creative uses you can come up for it!

Google Docs

In a rapidly globalizing world the need for collaborative communications is increasingly becoming a standard. Mobile Telephony and Email now form he backbone of almost every industry.

Google is innovating in this field and has recently created a word processing software known as Google Docs (http://docs.google.com) that allows multiple users to simultaneously edit, collaborate and work on charts, documents and presentations from anywhere in the world.

It could cut down communication costs drastically. This has incredible implications for not only the business sector but also the education sector.