Studies in Media

There was a well-written article recently about how only 25% of India's adult population use the Internet, and how it is among the lowest in the world. The article, quoting Pew Research, was not only critical about Digital India, but also had a little negative tone in reporting. Well, let's look at it from a different angle. When 25% of India's population uses the Internet: The numbers are more than the entire population of US of A  It is almost 3 times that of South Korea! (The article compares our Internet usage with that of Korea) Even with 25% of India's population on the Internet, we have the largest number of Facebook users in the world. From 13% in 2013 to 25% in 2017, the number of Internet users in India has almost doubled So is the 'only' 25% a limitation? Let's look at it from a perspective of opportunity. Think of the numbers that are not yet on the Internet. India's population is getting younger. The census figures show that 45% ...

What does it take to be job-ready, to take on the media world? Most academic programmes in media in India, offer several courses in all forms of media. Most courses are good, following a standard syllabus, mostly as per the guidelines given by UNESCO. Many institutes, however, lack the basic infrastructure and equipment required to train students in the modern form of media content creation. I have many friends across the country who can vouch for that. It is always a struggle for institutes to keep adding the latest infrastructure and equipment, simply because whatever we buy is already redundant in this technology driven sector. However, the fact remains that equipment and curricula need to be revised as and when required, catering to industry needs, to make our students employable. It is sad that in many places, curricula are designed based on the capabilities of the faculty involved, rather than what is needed. Today, after taking a feedback from the industry, it is clear th...

Media planning and buying is the function of procurement of media real estate at an optimal placement and price. Media buyers have to conduct market research to find the likely places where their client's customers and consumers tend to use media. Based on this research, they find the best advertising rates, and the best media to place the advertisements of their clients. In short, they 'buy' the media, or the advertising space/time for their clients. Media planners have to be in touch with the media houses, their marketing executives and should be able to negotiate better rates for their clients. A good media buyer takes decisions on which media to buy and it requires both creative and business-driven decisions. Media Planners should be able to pick and choose an appropriate combination of media to help their clients reach their target audiences. The job can be pretty high profile as they with high level clients and top executives of organisations. The job is result ori...

Software A Windows PC 386, with 120 MB Hard disk and 4 MB RAM. Even my mobile phone is at least 3 times faster than the first PC I owned. What software could possibly run on that ancient PC? Well, you will be surprised to know, a lot many. I bought my first PC to start my own business in graphic designing. If I remember right, I used CorelDraw 3 and Pagemaker 4 for my designs. And I did not have a colour monitor. It was all done in black and white and we used to use a colour chart to specify the colours that had to be printed. I used to mostly deal with a lot of screen printers, so the designs required mostly spot colours. There was, of course no Internet, and we used to refer to design books for ideas and Pantone Colour charts for colour combos. Surprisingly, CorelDraw and Pagemaker, both used to run very smoothly on that PC with 4 MB RAM. Then came something called AGP card - Accelerated Graphics Port, which changed everything. It was a card which had to be inserted into the P...

Social Media When Facebook was launched in 2004, I had started teaching in the Department Communication and Journalism, at the University of Mumbai. I remember my first lecture. I was afraid that I would embarrass myself. I had never faced a bunch of 20 youngsters together in my life. But I suppose the lecture went off well, because the then Head of the Department, Dr. Sanjay Ranade, did ask me to continue! My students and I used to communicate with each other using Yahoo Groups, and Orkut. Remember Orkut? I am sure at least some of you do. It was fun, being on Orkut, creating groups, and interacting with so many friends. I know my students used to gossip a lot about the faculty. It was a lot of fun, and the first social media that we really used, apart from the Yahoo Groups, usually for exchange of notes and announcements. We were not used to blogging much. I did start a few blogs, but was never really consistent till I have started writing everyday on this blog for the last 2 ...

The Internet I remember, in 1996, in a meeting, a client showed me the Internet. We browsed through Yahoo, one of the most popular websites and search engines at that time. I was amazed that I could just search for any subject and get so much information. I immediately wanted get it on my computer at home, but the only service provider at that time was VSNL - Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited and the cost was Rs.15000 for 100 hours! But very soon, on demand, the rates were brought down to an affordable Rs.1500 per 100 hours of browsing. There was, of course, a catch here. First, you needed to buy an external modem (about Rs.4000/-) and connect it to the phone line to connect to the Internet. There were no schemes or data packages other than the one mentioned. So if you did 100 hours of browsing, it translated to 200 phone calls, which in turn meant a whopping telephone bill. And I did get a bill of about Rs.4000/- which is like getting a bill of about Rs.30000/- now! (Image src:http...

I used to do a lot of graphic designing and make films for various corporates. One day, I went to show the first cut of a film that I had made for an organization. I went with the film to the concerned brand manager, and when he asked me for a CD, and I said I didn't have one, he thought I was joking. I put my hand in the pocket and brought out my brand new pen-drive and said, that his film was in it. Most people in the office thought I had gone crazy, or I had probably hit my head on something. I made him pull out his computer and put the pen-drive in the USB port, and viola! We had the film copied on to his PC in a few minutes! They did not even know the USB port. Of course it was entirely new to everyone including me at that time. But more about pen-drives later. When we speak of storage devices, the first thing we think of is the hard disk drive or the HDD. As I said in my first post in this series, my first PC had a hard disk of a whopping 120 MB and the second one 1.2 GB. ...

From Consumers to Producers - The Indian Story - Part 2 I wrote about computers in my last post in this series. Let's look at another technology that evolved along with computers and changed the way we communicate. Still Cameras I remember, when I was in school, we had a box camera, with which we could take black and white photographs. I used it for a long time, at least till 1983. I still have some of those pictures. From 1979 to mid-1980's the price of silver shot up more than 10 times, making silver nitrate, an important ingredient in photographic film and processing very expensive. This in turn, shot up the price of film rolls and photography as a hobby, simply went out of reach of many people. The next camera (Rs.5000) I bought was for my wife the day my son, Tejas was born. December 01, 1994. This one also was a film based camera and by this time, we had colour film commonly available. The first photograph from this camera was of my son, taken by my wife, with me...

When I leave my College after 6.30 p.m., I usually catch Market Mantra on the All India Radio while driving home. Apart from the happenings in the stock market, experts are called to discuss economy and developmental issues of the country. In one of the broadcasts a few days back, there was an interesting discussion on infrastructure development and the importance of power generation. Though I did not catch the name of the expert, he made some important points. He spoke about how the present government was quite on track in the development of infrastructure, but was quite critical about the issue of power generation. He said that one of the industries that the government was trying to get to invest in India was the electronic industry, more specifically, the companies manufacturing Integrated Circuits, which  are the heart of all electronic goods. To manufacture electronic chips, the plants require uninterrupted power supply. Even a second of interruption can severely affect the...

Source: http://m.techrepublic.com/blog/tablets/microsoft-may-still-win-the-tablet-war/2709?tag=nl.e101&s_cid=e101 Microsoft may still win the tablet war By Patrick Gray | January 9, 2013, 10:34 AM PSTAfter spending time with Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet, I was left with more questions than answers. The further I considered Microsoft’s tablet strategy, the more I wondered if it were genius or madness driving its recent moves. Depending on what we see in the next few months, it just might be the former. Leaving the home court Surface was most perplexing in that Microsoft aced the hardware of the device — an area most pundits, myself included, expected it to miss completely. The device was sleek and well-assembled, and it brought unique and noteworthy features to the table rather than simply trying to copy market leaders. If only the software were on par with the hardware, I’d gladly slip the Surface into my bag and leave the laptop at home for the majorit...

This is in continuation with my earlier post on new and emerging media technologies. New and emerging technologies have changed the way we consume and produce content. The technology has become advanced, cheaper and accesible to us, the common public. This has to be looked at from several angles.   I bought my first computer in 1992 for Rs.35000/-. Many will be surprised by the configuration. It was a 40386 processor, meaning it had a processing power of 386 MHz, much lesser than many mobile phones available today. The computer had a whopping 120MB (Yes, no typo here. Its MB and not GB) and 4 MB of RAM! On that computer I could easily use CorelDraw and PageMaker for my DTP work. It was the best PC in the neighbourhood.   I also remember making my first video using a PC with a 533 MHz processor and 512 MB RAM. I can vouch for the fact that the video can hold its own against any video I have made recently. The only real difference is that it took very long to render the video...

An interesting development. Click --->  Microsoft puts Office 365 in the cloud, confronts Google Recently Nokia chose Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS over Google's Android. Though I personally feel that they are a bit late, because Google is not going to sit idle till the new Windows powered Nokia phones come out (In 2012!). And now this development is going to generate a lot a heat. Let's enjoy the war, because whatever the outcome I am sure the consumers/users will benefit. Probably at a little extra cost, though.

Till now we had to book domain names with generic Top Level Domain names. Which means we had to choose between .com, .net. .info, .in etc. Now the rules have changed at least for those who can afford it. Do read this article: http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report_not-only-coms-as-internet-body-throws-open-domain-names_1557050

Source: www.indiatimes.com (Pl. click on blog title for the original article) Indian government backed ambitious low-cost tablet project is finally set to take off.  And the tablet comes with fantastic specifications especially when you look at the price tag of just Rs.2200/-. It is a   7-inch touchscreen tablet with inbuilt keyboard, video conferencing facility, multimedia content, Wi-Fi, USB Port, 32GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. The tablet will support Open Office, SciLab and Internet browsing.  I have been waiting for Indian companies start competing with the international firms in the market for a long time now. If this tablet lives up to expectations, we could be having a price war, benefitting the consumer. So let's keep our fingers crossed and wish the very best for this tablet.

Making websites is one thing, making them work is another and then keeping those visitors on your site is one more art. Now here's an article that tell us what annoys the visitors. Click on the text below: 10 things that will annoy the hell out of your Web site visitors

This was a comment I made on Buzz, Facebook and Twitter. And I stand by it. The future is here and we are still living in the past. For the past 3 months, because I wanted my son to concentrate on his studies for his 10th standard examinations, my TataSky set top box was bundled back into its carton and kept out of his reach. Some of my friends and colleagues thought I was being cruel and authoritarian, but I am sure all the fathers will agree, that sometimes one has to be. I only hope that his brain has not already got fuddled by the crap that is dished out on the idiot box. I am sure that he is sensible enough and will not restart his day long vigil in front of the television once his exams are over on Wednesday. Coming back to my statement, we are living in the past. No one can deny the power of television and its vivid, real-time imagery. The images evoke emotions, bring laughter and enjoyment to our households. They keep us engrossed for hours. But the power is quickly fadin...

Only the fittest will survive. So said Charles Darwin. And how true it is in today's world! With the world going digital, it is important for every professional to learn multiple skills and be able to produce content for multiple media, be it for the print, television, radio, computers or mobile phones. If you work in a corporate house, you should be able to put together a good presentation and also be able to work on a spread sheet. If you are in advertising, you need to understand Photoshop, CorelDraw and Powerpoint to present your work to your clients. As a journalist, you should be able to produce content for all the media. In short, one has to be a multi-skilled individual to survive. I have been fortunate to have worked with all the media in one capacity or the other. I got introduced to computers in 1991 and immediately got addicted to them. The past 18 years has been an exciting roller-coaster ride for me and my computer(with several upgrades) and I do call myself a multi-t...

In 1947, the first transistor was invented by William Shockley and in 1958, Jack Kilby invented the first IC or Integrated Circuit. These are arguably two of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century. These two inventions kickstarted the electronic industry and the result is for all to see. Today there is electronics in almost every facet of our life. From the time you are woken up by the electronic beep of your alarm clock to the time you crash out in the bed with the remote in your hand, electronics rules your life.  In his book 'The Medium is the Massage', Marchall McLuhan argues that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. Meaning the medium itself becomes the message. He also writes about how modern media are extensions of human senses. It is very important that a student of electronic media should learn the medium itself as well as the message that can be broad...