Light Within

Government of Punjab (PITB), Google Pakistan and P@sha are doing series of sessions about how to make sure that your online data stay safe while moving around in cyber space. Badar Khushnoon is a man in the real know of the matter and talked about hardware and software security, web security and much more. I thought ‘I know it all’ but to my surprise, there is so much more than normal computer users like me think is enough. Thanks Badar for this very interactive and useful session.

Best thing is that governments are now realizing, though a bit late, the importance of IT and the power of blogging and social media. Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister Punjab (who is personally at Facebook now) was there and he also let us in on his IT vision including how he responds to people on facebook in the wee hours of the morning. Shahbaz Sharif also announced that the Government of Punjab is establishing a world-class IT University in Punjab in partnership with top universities in the world, including Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA and Middle-east Technical University (METU), Turkey. The university will be initially housed in the newly built Lahore Technology Park and will later move to a purpose-built campus in knowledge city in the heart of Lahore. This will usher in a new era of IT education, research and development and entrepreneurship in Pakistan.

Shahbaz Sharif also told the audience about his vision of laptop his government is offering to students. That reminded me of two initiatives (one laptop per child and $100 Laptop). What happened to those projects? Some geeks questions about the criteria for giving laptops but I personally strongly recommend laptop schemes. Go ahead Mr. CM, this will help in the long as well as short run.

At the end, Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif also presented shields to Pakistan Blog Award 2011 winners.

Blast from the past

Blast from the past - Feb 2, 2009

Men at Their Best from 55 PMA Long Course are very social people. They go a long way to meet each other and relive their memories spread over more than three decades. I am proud to be from 55 and try to find a chance to meet my course mates whenever I can. This time I had a chance to meet Tariq Fazal at Hamsafar on the G T Road.

No matter whether the team of any country is participating in the FIFA World Cup 2006 or not, it has not discouraged the football fans across the world from joining the general mood online.

As the passion for football is sweeping every one in the world, fans are logging on to the Internet to find all sorts of information about the championship, why Edmilson of Brazil will miss the World Cup, who is opposing participation of Iran or multimedia content such as an extensive gallery of brief video clips of stars and highlights from games from earlier championships.

Many Internet sites have sprung up which are reporting during the matches about every goal, foul, booking or other event out on the stadiums. "The hype this time is of an entirely different order," says Abid Jamal, a student in Business and Information Technology, University of the Punjab.

The best joint for online reporters and geeky fans is an apartment in Berlin Wilmersdorf that will be the meeting point for bloggers, vloggers and podcasters from all over Europe, meeting to cover the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The weblog weallspeakfootball.com is described as "a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of football fans around the big upcoming event."

"We have a 220 square meter flat with an awesome patio on the rooftop in the center of Berlin," according to the team's announcement. "Our blogger team will blog live for 30 days from the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. We will have the time of our life and the best is: anybody who's interested is invited!"

Another interesting place for Football fans is The FIFA World Cup Fan Park in Dubai where game lovers will be able to watch the thrilling FIFA World Cup football with oscillating emotions in the only venue of its kind away from actual stadiums in twelve cities of Germany.

"The FIFA World Cup Fan Park gives spectators a true stadium experience with a giant 140 m screen, grandstand seating, stadium food and football-themed games and activities for the whole family. Each of the 64 matches will be broadcast live at the venue, which occupies much of Shaikh Rashid Hall at the Dubai World Trade Centre. The Fan Park will reverberate with cheers and chanting from up to 3,000 people, including 1,500 in stadium seats, 500 in the VIP balcony and 1,000 on the indoor football pitch that will double as a seating area during matches," reads a report that came across my desktop.

What is more, Football fans have been searching for information about England striker Wayne Rooney more than any other player, ahead of this summer's World Cup finals, according to new research. The news about the state of Wayne Rooney's fitness ahead of the 2006 FIFA World Cup led to a huge surge in users on Yahoo!

Besides more than 60,000 fans will pack the Olympiastadion in Berlin on June 7, nearly 5,000 dancers will boogie to Oscar and Emmy winner Doug Jack's choreographed routine; Il Divo will sing the "A Time of Our Lives" theme song, with some help from R&B singer Toni Braxton in an Olympic scale ceremony, fans all around will be glued to all media channels for the moment to moment updates on mega event. According to Initiative, a London company that buys media space for advertisers, the Cup's 64 matches will attract a cumulative live TV audience of more than five billion.

What a great idea for connecting with other citizen journalists, and working together to cover a big sporting event. Wouldn't it be fun to hang out with those bloggers and vloggers?

Right now though, Germany is at the forefront of our minds, and as a simulation of that tournament is every bit as welcome (and as unexpected) as a Rooney recovery.

Pakistan is in rare position, both geographically and figuratively. Travel attractions – historic, heritage, natural, adventurous, ecological — are richly distributed on this land from Astola in the Arabian Sea to Khunjrab on Pak China boarder up in the north. Travellers, site seers, explorers, trekkers, and mountaineers have been coming here from all over since the time when there was no Internet to forecast weather, show maps and pictures, make reservations and for reading about people and places online before planning a trip.Travel is a function of prosperity; mostly.


Apart from business, people travel for so many different reasons: to explore, to feel, to learn, to get away from humdrum of the fast lane life, and to lose themselves or find themselves. George Santayana, a Philosopher, has been quoted as describing, “We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

Spanking new Krakoram Express (42 Down) running between Lahore and Karachi is already old and no more a rarity in Pakistan. When i traveled, all the original fittings like coat hooks, locks, handles and seat covers were in place. No more.

Six passengers have a compartment to themselves. No streams of persistent vendors. No one can have the pleasure of hanging from an open train door as they are locked stop to stop. Like Lahore-Islamabad motorway the train is for many a symbol of modernity and progress.

We are living in the age when we can see mass media turning into media of masses. Printing press, back in fifteenth century, started a publishing boom and an information revolution. Along the way, market forces established the rights and rules of the game for the privileged few who could afford to buy printing presses and grind forests into paper. Result: handful few own the industry and control information - they decide what the masses will learn. These few disseminate information on a need-to-know basis mostly. You know them. That's the world of mass media.

Blast from the past: Summery of issues discussed on one of the Monetize Social Media Space workshops during Network!: Pakistan’s First International Social Media Summit. They are still the same if not worst. 

Social space has combined some major human activities - communicating, sharing, social networking and ecommerce. Use of newly found social media space where as anyone can shoot out, is a creative activity and fun. Most online users enjoy their online presence. That is why people blog tweet or network in the first place. Along the way, a time comes when online users start thinking to monetize their social space. And then everything starts changing.

S A J Shirazi

Contact at: sajshirazi@gmail.com