EXPANDING TECH VISTAS

Censorship caught up with Indian net-users in July when the DoT was ham-handed enough to block popular domains like Blogspot.com and WordPress.com to stop people from reading the memoirs of a bored 16-year-old virgin Princess Kimberly. Nope 8212; the GoI isn8217;t obliged to tell you what it8217;s blocking, or why and at whose request. But it has been kind enough to assure us that the censorship will be less intrusive once they8217;ve put better blocking technology in place

del.icio.us What sites do you bookmark and tag? Would you like to see what other people bookmark and tag? That8217;s about the best descriptor one can make about the del.icio.us USP. Check it out, but of course, you already have!

Energy. Unknown Irish electronic security company called Steorn takes out a full-page ad in The Economist challenging scientists to prove that it hasn8217;t invented a way to create 8220;free, clean and constant energy8221;. The hullabaloo is followed by thousands of Phd-sign-ups 8212; and then nothing, as the test phase starts

Flash Memory is the new photofilm. Everybody owns a digital camera and everybody wants more space to store their pix

G probably still stands for Google but the tech analysts are talking about a company called Gilead Sciences, which may develop a breakthrough anti-HIV drug. And socio-watchers are talking about the philosophy of Ghetto Latte 8212; making a cut-price Latte out of a cheap Americano plus free milk and condiments

Hezbollah have to be candidates but you could also consider the phenomenon of Hikikumori or 8220;absolute social withdrawal8221; 8212; it8217;s being recognised as a disease among teenagers and young adults

ibloodyPod, you8217;d say, with its 39 million sales and 246 million Google references? Until you think of Ibloody-raq with its 187 million references and its toll on all sides

Jihad 038; Al Jazeera would be top of the mind for most. Al Jazeera broke a lot of new ground with its English channel

Kylie Minogue, back from her battle with the big C. There are more searches for the pint-sized Aussie wriggler than for Ricky Ponting

Lifehacking, as a philosophy, encompasses any clever and non-standard solution to a given problem. Sometimes very zen and very techie 8211; sometimes just ghetto latte

Myspace, the social networking site with its weird and wonderful population of students, musicians, kinks and pornstars. It8217;s inspired one macabre series of serial murders and even led to spinoffs like Mydeadspace where dead Myspacers are listed

Naukri, the first Indian Internet portal to go public on the Indian stock exchanges. The way the qualified institutional buyers and foreign institutional investors lapped it up, it didn8217;t hurt to have a plebian name and downmarket branding

Orkut, the social networking site has provoked a state of war between GenY and its parents. Half of Brazil and most of teenage India has signed up. There8217;s an iconic picture of the Turkish founder relieving himself against a tree. Orkut contains many good forums and communities 8212; and there8217;s also the Telugu incest group, a strictly-moderated community of 2,700-very odd members

P is for the PS3 or the PSP depending on your Budget . The PSP is being touted as the best mini DVD-quality movie screen. The PS3 is being touted as this unbelievable piece of hardware, which comes with an equally unbelievable price-tag. The games more expensive than the hardware

Query is at the heart of Google but there8217;s also Accoona, Yahoo, Technorati and Dogpile

R-streaming radio-aka Pandora and all its clones. Broadband, headphones and a multitude of multimedia devices means that streaming radio has become the norm

S for satellite TV, most metro-dwelling Indians will claim but it stands for SecondLife, a virtual world with nearly three million residents, a brilliantly constructed free economy and currency that8217;s convertible to real money

T has to be for the Tunisian Prison Map 8212; an interactive mashup map of Tunisian detention centres built on the backbone of Google Earth maps and Amnesty International reports. The New York Times did one of murder locations in NY; several people did the Ipswich UK serial killings. It8217;s a new artform

UMD 8212; the universal media disk from Sony is the latest attempt to prevent digital piracy. Sony hasn8217;t released burners or blank disks of the 1.8Gb format. But the format8217;s already been cracked 8212; so sorry!

Vista, the new Windows OS is not vapourware. Various beta versions have been released and indy anti-virus makers have screamed blue murder about the protection measures which lock them out of the OS8217; kernel

Web 2.0 has to be the winner here. This is a collection of new technologies, which improves the Web experience. Of course, Indian media-watchers will yearn for a 8220;nast-algic8221; mention of the Warfornews and other Indian media blogs 8212; mediamamu, mediamalice, etc. These set new standards in nasty navel-watching but most seem to be dying natural deaths. Wii isn8217;t officially here yet or else, it would deserve more than a passing mention

X-Box 360 8212; Everybody is talking about the PS3 but they8217;ve already mainlined on the X360. Despite reservations and the unstylish styling, X works, on the P038;L account at least

Y is for YouTube 8212; the first net-video site that cracked the numbers paradigm and ended up being bought for a huge number. YouTube is a crazy concept, it consumes enormous bandwidth, every second post has copyright issues, every signup is doing Ghetto Latte because it8217;s all for free. How will Google monetise this?

Zombie networks or Zidane? My vote goes to Zizou 8212; his Liverpool kiss is still the most-watched piece of footage on Youtube