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I have actually noticed that kids who are not at all happy to eat vegetable will often happily eat a baked dish loaded with vegetables. Kids who will spit out the ‘pallak’ that comes with the ‘paneer’ will often relish a spinach and corn baked. Well, at least mine do (small sample size, I know). To test the theory I once toyed with the idea of starting a fast-food restaurant for kids that served only ‘junk food’. Well, that is what it would be ‘marketed’ as to the kids, but actually the food would be healthy and balanced. I even thought up part of the menu, branding, packaging… Unfortunately you cannot always cook everything you can think up, and the idea stayed untested…

That is one reason why I was really excited to see this campaign that packages carrots as junk food and sells it in vending machines in schools in the US. I wish them well and hope that they succeeded…

Gurgaon Ki Awaaz broadcasts 24 hours a day a wide range of programs that include programs on careers, entrepreneurship, migration, women’s empowerment and health, folk culture especially music, health, sports, and community reportage by school-going children. The station’s first trial broadcasts went on air on November 19, 2009 following several months of training for its team of raw village recruits, most of whom had never even opened a computer before. Many have not finished school. Today, the same reporters confidently and independently handle field assignments, studio recordings, editing and research. Within their communities, they enjoy new-found respect as carriers of the community’s songs, views, problems and concerns.

TRF”s community radio initiative is an attempt to intervene in the community’s struggle with inadequate power, gaps in education infrastructure, and lack of knowledge about opportunities in education, livelihood and income generation. This, despite the fact, that a large number of Gurgaon’s villagers either have substantial land holdings, or have substantial cash reserves from selling off this land. Also at the receiving end are the lakhs of migrant workers who live and work in Gurgaon, and yet have no say in the shaping of their environment.

The bulk of programming on Gurgaon Ki Awaaz Samudayik Radio Station, broadcasting on 107.8 MHz FM, is created on-site in government schools in villages such as Garhi Harsaru, Sikanderpur, Sarai Alawardi and Dhankot. The radio is a wonderful medium to reach the community — because by its very sound and music, it is very evidently “their” station. The station records and airs folk music and folk ballads performed by local music groups and performers, children’s music (much of it recorded by the children in our government schools), and debates and discussions very much like Chaupals, that bring together diverse, but local, voices.

And what do you say to parents who take their 10-year-olds, 3-year-olds and even 9-month-olds to adult cinema? Not so long ago I left a late-night movie half-way because I found it disturbing/horrific… perhaps a little scary. But mothers with babies stuck to their bosoms stayed on…

Nobody seems to care that our daily newspapers are full of adult content. And kids’ programming on TV is interspersed with promos of late-night movies with loads of sex and violence.

I don’t have a problem with adult content per se, as long as media takes reasonable measures to keep it away from kids. The media is being completely irresponsible, but the day the government puts in a legislation mandating that they seek censor certificates for all their content, they will be the first ones to complain about government high-handedness.

TV has proven its worth as a baby-sitter, across cultures! Social networking has effectively come to represent what we do using a browser and not what we do in our living rooms or parks and sports fields… This is a logical next step. Right?

The only loud objection one can hear is coming from the Author’s Guild of America. They don’t have a problem with the product… actually they suspect it may be very good. What they want is that the authors be sufficiently compensated for the audio rights being bundled into the Kindle 2.

Read the op-ed at the New York Times: The Kindle Swindle?
IHT says “The Kindle: Good before, better now”
Read about the open standards debate at wired

Read the Telegraph article

Read the Time article “Content, Once King, Becomes A Pauper”

Raising questions about the effectiveness of advertising on large portals and social networking sites, the report found that “26% of users never pay attention to the advertising on these sites and a further 36% rarely claim to pay attention to it.”

Media Week article

Read the New York Times article… 

Google already has a mobile version of Google Book Search…
Is the future of ‘books’ likely to be in our palms?

Google and Amazon to put more books on cellphones

2 book publishers announce mobile phone plans

Amazon in Big Push for New Kindle Model