Rohan Swamy

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 23rd July 2014

Delhi's First Internet De-Addiction Centre Helps Treat Child Addicts

It might sound like something from the future, but Internet addiction is fast becoming a reality in times where smartphones and tablets are being available at very low-costs, and a data infrastructure has become sufficiently widespread. So much so, that Delhi now boasts of its first ever Internet de-addiction centre. Started by the Uday Foundation , an NGO, the centre operates from the ground floor of a three-storey building in South Delhi's Sarvodaya Enclave. Internet de-addiction centres are

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 25th July 2014

Google Baseline Study Seeks to Define a Healthy Human

Google's research division, Google X , is sailing into uncharted waters with its latest project - the Baseline Study. The study will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people initially, which will then expand to thousands more with a single purpose - creating the most comprehensive database of information on what a healthy human being should be like. According to a news report by the Wall Street Journal the initial phase of the project is being run by Dr. Andrew Conrad

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 30th July 2014

A Ten-Year-Old Patent Could Be the Key to Reducing Road Accidents

Last week in Telangana, a school bus carrying nearly 40 children was hit by a train, and 17 children died while 21 others were injured. The driver, who was also killed, was allegedly on his phone and did not check to see if the road was clear while passing an unmanned railway crossing. This whole tragedy could have been averted if a ten-year-old patent to keep people from talking while driving had found wider use. Four Delhi-based IT engineers, Yash Singh, Anirudh Singh, Manu Singh and Lakinder

30th November 2014

Atletico de Kolkata coach Antonio Lopez: "Happy with result, not happy with performance"

In match no 44 of the Indian Super League (ISL) there were many 'if's' and 'but's' that were played out on the field. For Kolkata it was more of a point gained as it was two points lost for Pune. And yet there was a sense of incompleteness in both the camps as they came in to address the media during the post match conference. While Kolkata took the stage first, head coach Antonio Lopez with a tired smile mentioned that while he was happy with the result, he wasn't happy with the performance. “

3rd December 2014

ISL: FC Pune City take maximum points in the Maharashtra derby

Over a dozen missed chances, a missed penalty, a disallowed goal and lots more. This is how match number 48 of the Indian Super League (ISL) panned out between FC Pune City and Mumbai City FC. The last time the two teams from Maharashtra met in the state derby it led to a debacle of sorts for Pune. They were left to answer some very hard questions about their passing as well as defence. But this time around there was no repeat of Mumbai's previous heroics. Missing their star players Nicolas Ane

20th December 2014

Sensational last minute goal gives Atletico de Kolkata 1-0 victory and maiden ISL title

In many ways, when Kerala Blasters sit to review the final of the Indian Super League (ISL) they will perhaps grudgingly acknowledge the fact that Kolkata did absorb the pressure better and pulled off a stunner in the dying minutes of the game to clinch the title. There has been a lot of debate in the recent past about the success of the ISL and what it means for Indian football. Editorials, blogs, articles and a whole lot more has been dedicated to discuss the pros and cons of the same. But ev

Campus.ie • 10th November 2016

A NEW SHADE OF RED, BLUE AND WHITE

Early in the morning, or late into the night, depending on which part of the world people were in, everyone was awakened to the very realistic (and grim) possibility of the fact that Donald J. Trump was going to be elected as the 45th President of the USA. Seated in front of multiple monitors, my living room had been transformed into a virtual news production room of sorts. Two screens were monitoring data coming in live from the USA, a third monitored the reactions that were coming in live from

Campus.ie • 5th December 2016

UNDERSTANDING THE ALT-RIGHT: FROM IDEOLOGY TO MOVEMENT TO REBRANDING.

On November 19, at the annual conference of the National Policy Institute (NPI) held at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington D.C., Richard B. Spencer in his speech made spine chilling mentions that reeked of Nazi sympathies. Amongst others, he spoke about making America, ‘a new society, an ethno-state that would be a gathering point for all Europeans,’ and called for ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’. Not shy to hold back his anti-semetic views, Spencer also described the mainstream media as the

Campus.ie • 12th December 2016

IVANKA TRUMP AND THE ART OF SELLING LEMONADE

I must confess this is one book I regret not reading when it came out in 2009. In the year 2009, I was reporting, as a journalist, from some of the poorest districts in India and did not even have access to a decent Internet connection, let alone have a smartphone. Also, the Trump family weren’t as well known back then. Only Donald Trump was well known to most young Indians as the guy who came on WWE and shaved off Vince McMahon’s hair and was on the receiving end of a Stone Cold Steve Austin st

Campus.ie • 23rd February 2017

NORTH KOREA'S MISSILE ACTIVITY

North Korea on Sunday, February 12th successfully launched the Pukguksong 2 - a missile showcasing new defensive/offensive capabilities. The launch coincided with a meeting between the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Donald Trump in the United States. It was also the first test that Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader of North Korea, has supervised since Donald Trump became the 45th president of the USA. Pentagon experts have claimed it is a land variant of a similar missile (the P

Campus.ie • 27th February 2017

THE MAKING OF A MOVEMENT

The Strike for Repeal campaign is fast gaining momentum. For the sake of the people of Ireland, it is important that it doesn’t lose steam. Now, the battle that women (and men) are fighting in Ireland to repeal the draconian Eighth Amendment is not unheard of. It has been written about in newspapers, spoken of on news shows, blogged, re-blogged, posted, tweeted and shared on Instagram on a regular basis. In fact, one would have to travel far and wide within the country to come across those livi

Campus.ie • 2nd March 2017

THE COMMUNITY MANIFESTO

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg’s post titled ‘Building Global Community’ went live on February 16 and has since been shared over ten thousand times, along with over ninety thousand likes. The post in a nutshell talks about the importance (and need) of people coming together in these changing times to join hands and walk together on the road to progress. The idea is multi-layered. It talks about integrating social communities with governments and people to create a safe, well-informed, civical

Campus.ie • 14th March 2017

THE PROBLEM WITH SELF-IMPROVEMENT

‘Self-Improvement is born out of inherent depression.’ This was life advice given to me by a homeless man during one of my long sojourns along the Grand Canal. While I cannot stress enough on the irony of a homeless man giving me advice on self-improvement, there was a lot of truth in what he said. To understand the complexities associated with self-improvement in the modern times, one needs to understand the knee-jerk reaction that leads to it. An interesting point to that opinion is this quot

Campus.ie • 21st March 2017

JOB STABILITY: THE FUTURE FOR STUDENTS

In research provided by the employers' group Ibec, it is estimated that students studying in the current education system would have held (on average) 10-12 jobs by the time they have turned 38. The same research also adds that up to 60 percent of students will work in jobs that currently do not exist. Third Level Workplace Watch, the campaign rights group, highlights the unstable nature of work in academia. It claims that around 80 percent of researchers in higher education jobs are on part ti

Campus.ie • 23rd March 2017

HOW STUDYING ABROAD CAN BE THE BEST WAY TO LEARN

In the latter half of your 20's, when you are a little older, and a lot wiser, the idea of going back to school is like taking a step back from a decently settled career. Going back to school in a foreign land entails even more in terms of logistics, finances, applications and of course bureaucracy. Nevertheless, if one makes a choice of jumping the barriers and taking the plunge, studying abroad opens up a portal to a world within the world we live in. And this is not just an opportunity to le

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 10th June 2017

How Google Glass Can Be the Next Big Thing for Agriculture

Imagine being able to look at a cotton crop, taking field notes and snapping pictures, sending videos of exactly what you're looking at to experts, or dictating notes, all hands-free. At a farm, especially larger ones, daily checks for problems like pests, rodents and fungal infestations is critical, and it is the job of a crop scout to check the fields and gather data after visual inspection to prevent damage before it gets out of hand. That's where Basecamp Networks comes into the picture. Th

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 10th June 2017

The First Social Network: Chewing the Rag With India's Ham Radio Operators

In an office in Qutub Institutional Area, Sandeep Baruah, Scientist-E with the Vigyan Prasar, a part of the Department of Science and Technology, sits down to listen for ham radio operators in a 7,000 mile radius around Delhi. His cabin, a small, cramped place, located in a corner of a second floor office is littered with books and radio equipment, an unfinished directional antenna, and a laptop connected to another receiver. As his system goes live, little coloured dots on the screen begin app

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 10th June 2017

Got Garbage? This Website is Happy to Help

Bangalore is facing a garbage collection crisis, and today, fleets of trucks and thousands of ragpickers are employed in the worst conditions possible to try and keep the city clean. Bangalore-based IT company Mindtree wants to make it easier for people to get their garbage removed, and to improve the conditions of the ragpickers at the same time. I Got Garbage, a project that Mindtree initiated, wants to apply business management practices to the ragpickers, so that they can maximise their eff

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 10th June 2017

Old is Gold - Refurbished Electronics Growing in Popularity

A 13-inch MacBook Pro featuring an Intel i7 chip retailing for Rs. 57,330 or a Nokia Lumia 920 for Rs. 14,000. Sounds unlikely? It's true. There is a catch though. These are devices which have been refurbished. At first glance there is no distinction between a brand new unit and a refurbished one. The devil, however, lies in the details. For instance the laptop features a maximum battery usage of 150 minutes, much less than what you would get on a new unit. This is the world of refurbished ele

NDTV Gadgets360.com • 10th June 2017

Inside the World of Online Dating in India

Indians might have a firm grasp on the idea of online matrimonial websites, but dating on the other hand is not something that a lot of people are comfortable doing, or even talking about, and the country doesn't really have many online dating sites. That's something that is changing and today you have a lot of different options. Varsha Agnihotri came up with the idea of starting Footloose No More four years ago, when she was at a Holi party. The idea of a website that would allow "modern, urba