Censorship of blogs in India

As per this news item the reason for blocking of blogs in India was political after all. The government of India blocked websites where were critical of the Congress party or had anti-terrorist rhetoric because of the Mumbai Bomb Blasts. All this while Hizbollah's website was being hosted by VSNL. Atanu Dey has more.

Live local brings driving directions to India

Microsoft has done the impossible ( sic ), developed a mapping solution that gives driving directions for Indian cities. Always thought that this was impossible , since lot of roads don't have proper naming and one basically drives around in India asking direction from the nearest tea-stall. But Windows Local Live changes all that by providing driving directions between most of the Indian cities. Querying for driving directions from Mumbai to Delhi, brings up pretty accurate route with the distance in Kms. The estimated time is way off target with the actual time taken, nevertheless its a good start. Lack of data however cause it to break when querying for direction between smaller cities or villages. It ends up showing direction like

Turn LEFT (North) onto Local road(s) (0.5 km)

which is very confusing.
It breaks miserably when querying for direction from Calcutta to Guwhati, which shows a route through Bangladesh ? Otherwise a good start to solve a difficult problem.

Tags: Live Local, India