Free Stuff

The Met Department has got a dressing down from the Central Information Commission (CIC) for being too possessive about the weather data it keeps.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) charges a fee for providing detailed data claiming that it earns revenue from selling such information. Even the mighty RTI Act proved futile in the face of such a policy .

Can a government department, which runs as a noncommercial entity, deny free information to the public?

The CIC does not think so.

That's why it has now asked the IMD to open the doors to its info and review its policies. "Within one month, the IMD must submit in writing what arrangements it can make to provide such data free of cost," the order states.

The antics of the weather gods are a big money spinner for the Met department. If someone wants to know about the annual rainfall of Delhi in the last five years, he may have to shell out between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 depending on who he is, as the rates are different for government scientists, researchers, engineers, scholars and others.

The reason behind charging a fee is that the IMD officials "have to work hard" to files and get the data.

"The Met department is short-staffed and does not have all the data in digital format, so someone will have to be deployed to dig out the said data and prepare the product," said Dr Sailesh Nayak, secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, which controls the IMD. So the policy is that the harder you make the officer work, the more you pay. "What's the harm in charging a fee? If someone really needs it, he will not mind paying for it," he said.

That's not all. The weatherman also treats the data as its copyrighted property. "I was asked to sign an undertaking that the data they give me will strictly be for personal use and cannot be posted at any website or made public. But public resources have already been spent in generating the data, then why should people pay a fee?" asked Himanshu Thakkar, who dragged the IMD to the CIC.

"In principle I agree with the argument, but since the IMD has been keeping data for the past 134 years, it would take us a few more years to convert its entire databank digital," Dr Nayak said.

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Interested in comparing Content Management Systems (CMS)? Have a look at CMS Matrix. Org which lets you compare over 210 CMSs against each other.

The site is a community potral for everyone interested in looking for a means to manage web site content. Visit for discusssion, ratings, and comparison of the various Contant Management Systems (CMS) available in the market today.

OpensourceCMS.com offers a very valuable service by letting you easily access the "admin" screen of some very popular Content Management Systems.

For those interested in Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS), OpenSourceCMS.com is a wonderful site. It lets you install many different software packages on THEIR server, and you can get a look at the Admin screens. They feature some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world.

• The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything.

Editor's Note: I have 5 invitations available at this moment. If you want an invitation to set up a free GMAIL account, send me an email at qbtpl1 AT gmail.com.

A number of ingenious uses for Google's capacious free email service Gmail have surfaced since the service?s launch. Gmail was created by the web search company Google in April 2004 amid much excitement as every user is promised an unprecedented gigabyte of storage space for messages. Part of the buzz surrounding Gmail has been generated by the fact that an access to the service is by invitation only. When the site was first launched only a restricted number people outside the company were extended an invitation to sign up. After a few weeks these users were given a handful of invites to send to friends who were also able to invite more people a week later. "I know of some people who use their Gmail as storage," Maurice Flanagan told New Scientist. "A gigabyte of space can store quite a few MP3s and some have signed up for multiple accounts and expanded their storage to several gigabytes." Google encourages users to keep all their old messages and automatically searches these to determine what kind of web advertisements might interest users.

But Gmail's copious storage space has inspired a number of programmers to come up with completely novel ways of using the service.

• These include a "weblog" or online message board that uses Gmail to store postings and a desktop file system that plugs straight into the Gmail system. Jonathan Hernandez, a Mexican programmer, took advantage of one such "library", built for the scripting language PHP, to turn his Gmail account into a fully functional online diary or "blog". Sending an email to his account automatically posts a message to the blog, called Gallina. "I was wondering if Gmail could serve as a database for a blog, so a couple hours after I was testing Gallina," he told New Scientist. "I just added support for web comments and attachments to Gallina but I don't know if I'll be adding more features."
• Another coder, Richard Jones, based in Maryland, US, went a stage further, turning his Gmail account into an extra folder for his computer's operating system. Using another programming language called Python, Jones he created an extra file system on the Linux operating system by plugging into Gmail over the internet. "The Gmail File System GmailFS supports most file operations," Jones writes on the project home page. "This means that you can use all your favourite UNIX command line tools to operate on files stored on Gmail."
• Scores of lesser tweaks for Gmail have also surfaced online in recent months, including tools for automatically checking Gmail Gmail Notifier from the desktop or for importing messages from other email accounts. Libgmailer

The really really good free internet phone - Skype.

Editor's Update: September 10, 2004. Skype releases Pocket PC software: Skype has released its first application for personal digital assistants, making good on an earlier promise to expand the range of devices that can use the company's technology. The software lets users of Microsoft Pocket PC 2003 handhelds make free unlimited Skype calls over Wi-Fi networks, which are typically available in homes, offices, parks, transportation hubs, hotels, shops and restaurants. While only about a third of all Pocket PCs have Wi-Fi connections, Skype's popularity could spur more sales of the pricy handhelds. A test version of the PDA software debuted in April. Until that point, Skype's free software had been available only for personal computers.

Skype, (www.skype.com) a made-up term that rhymes with "tripe," is the most popular and sexiest application of VoIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol. Essentially, it is a way of allowing a computer with a broadband internet connection to serve as a telephone. This new form of conveying voice messages has so many advantages over traditional systems that the whole telecommunications industry is scrambling to see how fast it can shift traffic onto the Internet. AT&T, for example, is no longer recruiting new home customers, but it is offering many new VoIP services. Dozens of other companies - new ones like Vonage and established ones like Verizon - are selling VoIP services, too.

Skype's distinction is that, for now at least, it is the easiest, fastest and cheapest way for individual customers to begin using VoIP. It works this way: First, you download free software from skype.com. While running, Skype sits in a little window, like an instant-messenger program, and lets you to talk with other users in two ways. If the other person has Skype installed, you can talk as long as you want, free, and with sound quality that is startlingly better than that of a normal phone connection. Skype also allows file transfers and instant text messages during these computer-to-computer sessions.

You can also reach people who don't use Skype, through a new service called SkypeOut. This allows you to dial nearly any cellular or land-line telephone number in any country and talk. Though it isn't free, it's really cheap. They average two or three American cents a minute, at any time of day. With a credit card, you buy calling time in units of 10 euros (around Rs 500 or USD $ 12), which are deducted automatically as you talk. I started with 10 euros. After my wife talked to her sister in Italy for a half-hour and I made one quick call to the Philippines and five more within the United States, we still had 9.10 euros left.

Skype says it has about 10 million users in 212 countries, with an average of more than 600,000 logged on at any given time. The company will also sustain its push to sign up new users. Skype's own economics, including its promise that it will never impose a charge for Skype-to-Skype connections, depend on maintaining its rock-bottom cost structure and slowly adding revenue, through services like SkypeOut and future voice-mail and video-call services.

How big a deal will Skype turn out to be? I have no idea whether the company itself, which was founded one year ago, will someday come to epitomize and dominate a particular booming business, the way Google, eBay and Amazon now do. But I feel confident that the service it provides will be attractive to most people who give it a serious look.