Posted by Vibhas Kumar

Student feedback for a course plays a very vital role in shaping the overall course structure and teaching modalities for the course. In our institute, students give their feedback at the end of the course on paper-based forms. However it is only befitting for an IT centric institute to make this process of taking feedback online. Keeping this in mind, we have developed a web application, Online course Feedback system (OCFS). The application is built using the .Net framework. It has been designed in such a way that it requires minimal of human intervention and the anonymity of the responders is preserved.  The Application has been deployed on the IIIT-D server and has performed without any glitches in the test phase. This application will be used in the coming semesters to take the feedback from the students.

We had a wonderful experience. It enriched us in many ways. Prior to this, our projects were typical student projects with involving of very less testing and deployment issues. However this project exposed us to facets of application development which we were previously unaware of. Our experiences led us to dealing with issues related to synchronisation between group members, concerns about testing and final deployment. This was the first time our work was being used in a real world scenario. Apart from giving immense pride, it also put extra responsibility on our shoulders to have everything in perfect working order in a given time period We also learnt about the immense significance of proper documentation and rigorous testing .

Posted by Apoorv Saini

Windows Mobile 6 and 6.5 couldn’t make any impact on the world of mobile OS. Microsoft then decided to go for big re-entry in mobile world by launching Windows Phone 7 OS. It surely thrilled everyone but there was something different this time that MS had to offer. The main focus this time was to sweep in the developers from around the world to develop applications for Windows Phone 7 platform.

The developer community at IIIT-Delhi was untouched by this. Microsoft being Academic Partner of IIIT-Delhi itself proposed a workshop to help newbies develop applications for its newly launched WP7 along with IIITD-ACM student chapter.

The workshop was a success as many students came to attend the workshop which was almost 3-4 hours long. Students already being involved in several other projects and end-semester preparation showed enthusiasm towards the newly born Windows Phone 7 platform.

The workshop surely gave thrust to the development for the WP7 as many students later engaged in application development for the same and made the event successful and kept IIITD-ACM student chapter rolling.

Posted by Sneha Shukla

The Sicurezza Team (ACM SIG on Security) organized an Extempore on security related issues on 30th September, 2010. The endeavor was to create awareness among individuals regarding various aspects of security which might be different from cyber security but are extremely important aspects of human life. (Yeah, yeah yeah I just wanted to see everyone blabber out and go into a verbal wrestling show )

Anyhow, the participants were given a random topic related to security issues on the spot and they were to speak on the same for 120 seconds. The event witnessed healthy participation, with 30 contestants (*cough wrestlers *cough* ) taking part. The judges of the event were Dr. Shishir Nagaraja, Dr. Saket Srivastava and Dr. Debjyoti Bera (faculty here at IIIT-Delhi). The competition was stiff and we witnessed some real good points and “extemporic” talent lurking behind the “geeky” laptop minds!

The crowd was into the competition and at one point of time, the audience was standing and applauding at one of the participants who huge public appreciation and eventually won the war! (It’s all about impressing the people, isn’t it?)

The winners of the competition were Pratyush Tripathi (B.Tech-2008), Komal Sachdeva (M.Tech -2010) and Hemank Lamba (B.Tech-2008).

Niharika, Manasi and Anshu and Sneha (MTech 2010) contributed to successful organization of the event. Not to forget, the participants made it a success in their own right as well, so kudos to them!

Posted by Varun Gandhi

Open Challenge X was organized on the 21st and 22nd of September 2010, for the entire Student body and was also open for the Faculty. It was an algorithmically intensive programming with no restrictions on programming language and no bar on using online resources for reference. The even saw phenomenal response with over hundred participants in freshman and expert level rounds.

The Freshman Level as the name suggests was only for students in their first semester taking up first introductory course in programming. Our aim to have this aspect in the event was to expose them to the fun part of programming that is different from the regular course assignments. The expert level was rigorous in context to algorithm and optimization requiring strong algorithm design. OCX gave students exposure of international events like google code jam where the correctness and efficiency of the implementation both count.

OCX has now been included in the academic calender of IIIT-D with the purpose of preparing teams that represent our university for the ACM IBM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC).

See you again next year for more coding challenges!

Posted by Utkarsha Bharadwaj

When it comes to activities at IIIT-D can the IIITD-ACM chapter and its members ever be behind. This time it was the Science and Technology Quiz organized by us for all students and faculty of IIIT-D.

So why a Science and Technology Quiz?

As our Quizmaster and Organizer Anush Sankaran beautifully quoted Sir Isaac Newton “To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.”

This was the inspiration behind a quiz that would test the awareness level of people at IIIT-D in Science and Technology. Of course there should be a reason for you to come to CR 4 the venue of the Quiz other than just the “love of quizzing”. It was there in the form of attractive prizes sponsored by ACM.  A 4GB Pen Drive each for being the Amol Verma of IIITD semester results and headphones for being to quizzing what Pakistan is to India in the Cricket World Cup.

The quiz had a 2 round format as most quizzes have: the Prelims followed by the Finals. The prelims were held on the 22nd of September during the LUNCH BREAK. Teams comprised of 2 members each. I  reached the venue with my partner Pranjal Thapar hoping that most people would not sacrifice their lunch to participate in a Quiz but to my surprise I saw a room choc-a-bloc with 70-80 people all as eager as us to win the prizes on offer. This just went on to show how enthusiastic people in IIITD are about any ACM event  Coming to the prelims paper. It was a brilliantly set paper with questions ranging from the field of science and technology to contemporary arts. And you would only be fooling yourself if you think the questions were drab or boring (this was often what I associated a Science Quiz with *gives a wry smile*). Some questions from the prelims have been put up for you. Based on the prelims 6 deserving teams qualified for the finals held on the 23rd of September.

All credits to Anush Sankaran for putting together a great final that kept the finalists guessing as to what was coming their way next and the audience glued on to the action as if it were  Spain facing off against Netherlands in the Football World Cup. The questions tested your observation skills and your ability to connect them with things you do every day which was wonderfully illustrated in a question on Road Rash that was cracked by Shashwat Goel(Guy must have played the game many times ) . The finals were a very close affair with the team of and Dr.Saket Srivastava (Faculty) and Tejas I.Dhamecha (PhD. 2010) ultimately coming out trumps over the team of Shashwat Goel and Varun Gandhi (Btech. 2009) who lost by 5 points.

In the end would just like to end off on a note of thanks to Anush Sir and all the participants for making this event a grand success.

NOTE: We have uploaded the Quiz Final for you people. Download it here.

Q1. Take a pen and try to move your laptop cursor by using the pen on the touchpad. The cursor does not move at all. Now use your hand on the touch-pad. The cursor moves. Why?

Q2. Why is “one=1; two=2; three=3…so on…” why are these numbers given these symbols?

Posted by Hemank Lamba

3 months of managing academics at IIIT-Delhi in the day and spending the nights reading articles, editing them, formatting them, placing them only to see them rejected the next day by the chief editor was what it took to get Kaleidoscope Volume 1, Version 2 meet the deadline.

I still remember Kuldeep Sir, then Founding Chairman of ACM addressing us, the Editorial Board and asking for what to do in the next edition given that the previous edition was just 4 pages long and did not have much content in it. We being an energetic lot, were full of ideas, Segmentation Fault, Covering research groups, Product Reviews, Covering all the activities, etc.

The major dilemna that was going through all that by this newsletter, were we covering ACM or the entire IIIT as this was the only newsletter. Another dilemna was what articles to approve and what not to approve as some surely had objectionable content in terms of lets say going against the higher intellect individuals in the institute.

Since we saw the popularity of the newsletter not that much as the number of articles we had received was very less, we decided to take the matter in our hand and the editorial board itself started writing articles.

After all that hard work spanning for 3 months, and the vision that was there in the first meeting of making newsletter popular to the time when it was actually released by Dr. Jalote in front of the frrst years, there was a smile on the faces of the editorial board that we really had produced a gem.

So, go ahead and give  read here.

Posted by Utkarsha Bharadwaj

The first session of the Sana summer workshop was about bringing together scholars, students, academicians and people from the health care industry who had one common interest i.e. dissemination of health care services through the mobile platform and defining Sana’s role in it. The talk and workshop was conducted by RJ Ryan, a grad student from MIT who has been a part of this project since its inception. He briefed the gathering about general aspects of the application and with the help of a presentation gave an overview of the entire process such as screening, diagnosis and proposition of remedial measures done with the help of the app.

The session was interactive where the potential of the project and its uses and the drawbacks were openly discussed. The gathering lauded the novelty of the concept and even gave suggestions to improve its reach. On the whole the initiation needed for the four day workshop was delivered conclusively. The second session was more of a technical introduction of Sana and all the jargon that was to be covered in the workshop and all the enhancements they intent to make in the future releases of Sana. The end product of these two sessions was that a novice like me who had no idea what the project was all about came to know that Sana aims at providing health care facilities in poor settings for some specific chronic diseases. It has been developed for Android OS cell phones and one of the research challenges being developing it for Symbian OS so that it can be effectively implemented in India. This is where the role of IIIT-D and ACM comes into play.

The workshop which followed was informative and detailed. Each day we covered a functional component of the app. E.g. Mobile Client, MDS (Mobile Dispatch Server) and OpenMRS (an electronic medical record system). An introductory presentation followed by hands-on assignments was simple and effective way to give us working knowledge of the application and to motivate a few of us towards Mobile Computing.

However I feel strongly about what Ankur Puri a member of the operations team of Sana said about this project in Indian context “We need to think towards the required Architecture to do something like this at National Level”.

Posted by Surabhi Kabra

IIIT-D ACM Student Chapter created a platform for IIIT-D students to do community work and lend a helping hand towards the welfare of society. About 30 students from IIIT-D volunteered in C.R.Y., Child Rights and You, an Indian NGO that catalyzes change in the lives of under privileged children in Indiaby restoring their rights. They worked in groups in East Delhi and Dwarka zones(Delhi, India) during the summer session from May 2010-July 2010.
Volunteers’ role was to amplify the voice of locality children to reach large numbers of Children and enlist their support for their Rights. They did this by partnering NGOs at grassroots levels, mobilizing people to address the root causes that leads to violation of child rights and by building awareness on issues through media. They play the role of an advocacy that speaks, demands, negotiates as required with relevant state or citizen bodies for the rights of children.
The volunteers visited schools in Dwarka and conducted surveys, addressed the problems faced like admissions, conditions, facilities provided to EWS (Economic Weaker Section). They learned about the implementation of the RTE (Right to Education) and found out the lack of implementation and awareness. They also visited the slum regions and conducted mass admission campaign where they got the slum kids admitted to schools. A Postcard campaign was also carried out in which students and parents wrote their problems faced in their schools via these postcards to the High Court Judge. In the East Delhi region, students visited the Anganwadis in Seelampur, Zafrabad and Welcome,conducted surveys and learned about the problems faced by the people there regarding finance and other conditions. They made the people in slum areas aware about their rights and encouraged them to send their kids to school, formulated campaigns and also dealt these issues with WCD (Ministry of Women and Child Development) and then C.R.Y. to look further into it. Some of these volunteers are still continuing their work and reaching out to more people towards upliftment of society.

Posted by Rahul Bhatnagar

So I made a cool piece of software today. I mean we’re an IT institute, and we’re using paper to distribute results. Paper, can you believe it? It like watching geeks lighting a fire with splint and wood. It’s just… incompatible. So I decided to put my foot forward and put the fire-worshippers out of their’ misery. Python, the one-stop solution to all your needs, along with xlrd to read excel files. And from the makers of user-friendliness [If you want your software to be used, make it such that it conforms with society], I bring to you : Easy Mailer. It picks up data from your excel file, and sends only the correct recipient the mail. Bit spammish, really, sending automated mails, but hey, with great power comes great responsibility. And this little piece of code even generates the email id on it”s own, so you don’t need to. Lucky we have such mundane IDs, isn’t it?

Posted by Manasi Sachdeva

Ever wondered how “secure” you are in the cyber world? Most of you don’t even bother, right? Well, it is all in the cyber world; from your emails to your social networks, your friends, the chats and many more. Do you still think that you seldom use the internet?  What does all that have to do with “security”, isn’t it? Well, THINK AGAIN!  You are as vulnerable to theft on the internet as you might be with your house wide open with notice board on the outside inviting burglars in!

Blah, Blah, Blah is all what you are thinking up until now; right? Well it does sound like that but it is true! ( for the most part atleast ) No kidding! On a general case for a Tom Dick or Harry, the “ghastly” minds sitting behind the internet are like the big bad wolf!

Most people are very well familiar with physical security; you’d lock the door of your house before going away, you’d not give the keys to your house to anyone, you’d be vigilant if you find someone buzzing around your house, trying to monitor your day-by-day activities. In the modern day world where the internet is something you’d prefer over anything and depend upon more than your spouse, cyber security becomes an even more crucial aspect! Many of us unknowingly have so much personal information shared on the internet that in certain cases, anyone on the planet with access to the internet can track us down to our house, office or even our geographical co-ordinates!

When I heard this for the first time in my life, I was also like “It is all crap”! But when I started to take interest and read more into it, I was amazed to know that it all was actually true! Hence, my conscious arose ( yeah right ) and the group of ours decided to spread the word around and make the world a safer place to live in and no this is not my Miss World speech

Well the main aim of the group is that we would like to make some effort to make people aware at least about the basic security issues that concern them. We plan to hold various activities in the upcoming months both inside & outside IIIT D to arouse the interest of students and faculty in the domain of security.

A long blog post than the usual but I guess I needed to convey the point across! I hope the Sicurezza group is successful in it aims and spreads it wings and engulf all the innocent people inside and provide them with the shelter of security