Question-Box

I read about this ingenious project called the Question Box in the Indian Express this Sunday.  It is a great example how simple technology can help people around the world (especially the 3rd World).

It relies on a simple cell phone put inside a durable metal box and provided with two buttons - green and red.  When you want to ask a question just press the green button and the cellphone connects you to one of volunteers, he or she then looks up the question on the internet or a database to answer the query.

I think this device is a great way of putting information in the common mans reach, where most people in rural India/Africa can't even read and write, let alone use a computer.

The people at OpenMind have even developed an open source software which can used to start your own Question-Box project.

Buying a domain and more..

I was fooling around with the settings of my blogger account and impulsively ended up buying a domain of my own ! It wasn't hard to choose the domain name though, it had to be "Greaky".  For the better part of my online life I have always loved using the word greaky for various things, be it a nickname for my Quake III matches or just a userid for various websites I used to sign up for.  When people asked me what did it stand for - I used to say it is a mixture of Geek & Freak which incidentally now appears in the urban dictionary as a word !! I even have a gmail account by that name the days when gmail was by invitation only.

More about the domain : Well since this blog is hosted on www.blogger.com, when you buy the domain you get a google apps account linked with it where you can go and create your own email address like mail AT greaky.com, contact AT greaky.com or whatever you like.  You can create upto 50 such accounts with 7GB (and growing) of mail quota each.  All this for just $10 (Rs. 450).  I guess very soon I will be thinking about changing my email address to mail AT greaky dot com and stick with it for the rest of my life..