A Voice from the Silent Majority

මෙවන් දර්ශන e-mail වල you-tube එකේ දැක ඇත්තෙමි, නමුත් සියැසින් දුටු මුල්ම අවස්ථාවයි. මෙම වාහනය මෙම රූපය ගන්නා මොහොතේදී අසල සිටි ත්‍රී රෝද රථ රියදුරන්ගේ හා parking ticket කඩන කාන්තාවගේ උපහාසයට ලක්වි තිබුණි (මෙමගින් අනිත් වාහන නැවැත්වීමට ඉඩ අඩු වන නිසා ඇයට මදක් තරහ ඇවිස්සීද තිබුණි). නමුත් වැඩි දුර සිතා බැලීමේදී මෙය හේතු දෙකක් නිසා සිදුවිය හැකි බව වැටහිණි.

හේතුව මින් කුමක් විය හැකිද?

ස්ථානය : ආසිරි රෝහල ඉදිරිපිට රථ ගාල

වේලාව: පෙ.ව 7.30ට පමණ

For years I considered time travel as one of the most farfetched fantasies in science-fiction. But a recent documentary I watched called "Discovery Science – The World's First Time Machine" altered my thinking forever. This documentary explained how time travel can be done theoretically, with the help of Einstein's Theory of Relativity (I had heard that this theory contained explanations about black holes, teleportation, time travel, but before this I never understood most of it). Also most amazingly work is going on even at this point to make time travel a reality. Here I have included the part of the documentary which I found in youtube, which explains the whole thing.

Most interestingly Einstein's theory never showed how to travel back in time, but the scientists have managed to come up with a way as to how to make this happen. Even other extreme things such as parallel universes, traveling at the speed of light are also explained.

If you want to watch the whole thing too, download it from here. (however it did take some time to download)

What's the damn point of owning a high end mobile phone if you only use it for calling, messaging and the occasional photograph. Although you certainly can live without the damn thing (that's how our ancestors got by till the 21^st century) some apps really make life more enjoyable and easy. Mind you all these apps are free as well.

No. 5: Fring

If you really want to keep in contact with your online friends this is a must have. This app allows you to connect to all social networks + most popular chat sites. Yup that's right chat on Facebook, yahoo, google, skype, msn using only one application. It gets even better you can take calls through Skype, GTalk & Yahoo. What's more the data transfers via GPRS is very small. You don't have to worry about the phone bill much (from my experience usually 7min call on skype for 700KB, chat transfers only a few KBs), and if your phone has Wi-Fi (sadly mine doesn't) the cost won't matter at all in a Wi-Fi enabled area.

Mobile platforms req: Works fine in any java based phone, Symbian S60 v3/v5, Symbian S40, Windows Mobile, Iphone

Get It @ : http://www.fring.com/default.asp

Similar Apps : Nimbuzz

No. 4: SMS Preview

Do you feel an itch until you read that message that you just received (no matter what you are doing, like taking notes down in a class)? Do you stop whatever you were doing and turn your attention to your mobile to read that message (only to find it's another one of those news alerts). Well this app may just suit you. The app can be adjusted to display a preview of that message was a specific amount of time, upon receiving a message. Therefore only a glance at your handset would suffice to decide whether the text message needs further consideration.

Mobile Platform req: Symbian devices only (yup that's the sad part)

Get It @: http://www.getjar.com/products/25386/SMSPreview

Similar Apps : Hmm couldn't find any other similar apps for this one

No. 3: Conversations

This app really allows you to organize your inbox. All messages received and sent are placed under the contact you communicated with. This makes it much more easy to find a text message within your inbox. Also deleting unwanted text messages is also much easier. Just select the person who sent you all the unwanted text messages and delete them all together. No more going through the inbox marking, and unmarking messages. (Some mobiles such as SE Xperia provide this with the handset itself).

Mobile Platform req: Again for Symbian s60 devices only

Get It @: http://betalabs.nokia.com/betas/view/conversation

Similar Apps : SMS Threader (Windows Mobile Only)

No 2: Google Maps Mobile

With this it's so easy to find a place, and also to find your position. (Even in Sri Lanka works great in Colombo district, however routing doesn't work). With the new 3.0 version you can even use My Maps on Google Maps, just mark a place in Google Maps and you can view it on your mobile. And what's amazing is that you don't need gps to find your position on the map (although availability of gps on your handset makes positioning accurate, yeah yeah gps works fine in SL and, NO the government hasn't banned it) Google Maps Mobile uses the signal towers to find your location (I mean how cool is that?).

Mobile platforms req: Works fine in any java based phone, Symbian S60 v3/v5, Symbian S40, Windows Mobile, Iphone

Get It @ : http://www.google.com/mobile/products/maps.html#p=default

Similar Apps : Nothing even comes close to this. But Nokia Maps 2.0, Ovi Maps can be classified as similar apps. But they don't have complete SL maps.

No 1: ShazamID

You are on the street and hear a catchy tune, want to know the name of the song? ShazamID makes this a reality for FREE (Or you can use Dialog Song catcher that is if you have money to waste) . It records a small part of the track and compares the recording with it's global database. Within seconds you not only know the name of the song, but the artist, album and release date as well. Comparison is done using GPRS and never takes more than 5KBs.

Mobile Platform req: works on all symbian devices and most SE devices

Get It @: this is the tricky part. This app is for UK Citizens only. However a Google search displays many alternate download sources in forums J. A listing in www.4shared.com worked just fine for me

Similar Apps : TrackID (for Sony Ericsson, all the features)

Honorable Mentions: Opera Mini, Nokia Photo Browser, Gmail Mobile, Nokia Search (lets you search through all content in your phone, even through text messages http://dailymobile.se/2007/10/30/nokia-search-40-available-for-download/)

If anyone knows better apps I'd like to know too.

Note : apps were numbered from 1 to 5 depending on the frequency that I use them. (1 being most used while 5 being least used)

Has anybody watched Spellbinders – The Land of The Dragon Lord? There in that series I can remember the existence of an oracle which governed the way of life of those people. It was the oracle that chose what crops to be farmed, the places to live in and most importantly the professions that each person should pursue. That way every person was guaranteed a job and there was no unemployment, people may not have been happy for what was chosen for them but however they had some job. I think we Sri Lankans also need an oracle, coz time and again we have proven that we are unable to make decisions about our lives.

Today I saw a news story of some unfortunate people. A temporary shelter housing unemployed graduates, in Aesthetic studies who were protesting for teaching positions was removed from in front of the Fort Railway station in compliance to a court order. Those poor souls portrayed a sorry sight. Some females had attended that protest with their small kids (Although I'm no child psychologist I don't think that this is a place where a child should be brought to.) These days such protests by unemployed graduates have become a common site, and most people don't give a shit to such protests as well. These guys are not the first set of protestors and most certainly won't be the last as well. These things get shown on several channels, and the convener (කැඳවුම්කරු) gets to address the public (probably the highest point in his entire life) and everybody just forgets about it. These are the best minds in the country who have got through the local A/Ls, the universities and now should be working on the development of the country.

But how did these people get there in the first place, do we ever worry about that? When it comes to choosing a profession or a career path there are two basic things to consider (in my opinion). Firstly whether you like doing it and secondly (sometimes most importantly) whether there are employment opportunities in that field of study (for example I highly doubt whether anybody would be able to earn a decent living these days if they majored in Pali considering the fact that Pali is a dead language). This certainly is not child's play you need to find out how current professionals in that field are doing, new developments in that field, and the overall direction of that field (With the boom in communication technology, World Wide Web, if you can't find that information then it's a shame). This is a decision you have to make for yourself. Ultimately it's you who have to find employment.

But being Sri Lankans we assume that we can study anything we want since it's the government duty to find us employment. I mean come on, the government does more than enough for us, we get free education from the primary until passing out as a graduate, clothing materials, free textbooks, free health care, so what more can we ask for? ( I personally think Sri Lankans are living example of the Pepsi slogan "Ask For More" coz that seems to be the only thing we are capable of doing).

However it must be also said that no professional guidance has been received by the students on this matter. Unfortunately most kids have never even heard of Career Guidance (this in no wonder when some schools don't even have teachers of regular subject, therefore those kids getting results to even enter universities should be really praised)

The government's responsibility lies here. Currently all students who wish to apply for local university courses must obtain a handbook/manual (or whatever you may prefer to call it) from the University Grants Commission. This book contains information about various courses. However no details of current employment statistics, improvements in the field are mentioned. I guess including that information in that manual would be beneficial (this book is not given away free so it won't hurt to add some extra details in to it, especially if it helps students.). Also addition of some knowledge about the future of areas of study in to the school curriculum would also help a lot.

To most children obtaining entrance to university is something that they have worked for in their entire life. They assume everything is going to be just fine after that. Therefore it's really sorry to see some graduates losing their way after reaching that dream.