TechLahore

Lahore's almost-complete Software Park tower

After many delays and much hemming and hawing the much awaited Lahore Technology Park is almost complete. The building has now been topped off and work on the facade and interior has been moving forward full steam for a few months now. The parking lot structure, which will also contain some additional commercial space, is also pretty much done. Much remains to be done in the immediate vicinity though… vendors running small shops and stalls need to be moved, the power line distribution infrastructure needs to be re-worked, specially on the Ferozepur Road side, and the park grounds need to be beautified. But, in due time, that too will happen. For now, it’s nice to see the completed structure of a much delayed building! [Read the rest of this entry...]

The Pakistan Technology Forum: startups, technology, hacking, DIY and much more...

After 3 years of being a blog, TechLahore is making the leap to being a little bit more than that… we’re launching the Pakistan Technology Forum today which we hope will serve as the favourite haunt for local techies, hackers, startup studs and tech business belles. The forum launches today at the following URL:

www.techlahore.com/forum

Head on over, make yourself a free account and let’s start the dialogue! At launch, the following forums have been created, though more will probably added along the way.

Jawwad Farid’s Avicena, a Karachi-based e-education company, has recently launched a new Corporate Finance portal. This is an online resource for those interested in learning more about Corporate Finance – an incredibly important subject as the business environment in Pakistan matures and is layered with complexity and sophistication. I asked Jawwad about his targeted audience, and here is what he had to say:

“The suggested audience is really anyone who is looking for a quick refresher or ready reference in Finance without opening that storage box to locate their Corporate Finance text book.”

Jawwad also explained how the portal came to be: [Read the rest of this entry...]

Sanjannagar Institute's Beena Raza presents at TEDx Lahore (Image credit: TEDx Lahore FB page)

For those who are presently hurtling away from the solar system at light speed in an attempt to validate Einstein’s Twins Paradox, this might be news. But for the rest of us here on earth, it should not be. TED – that wonderful platform for insightful talks – has come to Pakistan. Now, strictly speaking, TEDx is what has come to Pakistan… and the “x” denotes the fact that while the organizers involved have independently planned and organized the event, TED does bless the group and even helps promote their work on the TED.com website.

The first TEDx event was held in Karachi just recently, and now TEDx has debuted in Lahore. The first set of talks were held at the Ali Institute off Ferozepur road, and included subjects as diverse as musicology and philosophy, the psychology of terror, map making and more. The Express Tribune did a good job covering the event. Here’s the link: [Read the rest of this entry...]

Indian politicians holding a supposed $35 tablet

Here comes another announcement heralding the arrival of an inexpensive computer made in India. Is it the Sakshit? No. Is it the Simputer? No. This time it’s a new red herring… an as-yet unnamed tablet unveiled by an Indian politician, Kapil Sibal, who is currently the head honcho at the Indian Human Resources Ministry. It would seem that what is really behind these proclamations are not technological advances, but in fact bureaucrats and politicians who are desperately trying to best each other with impossible to believe price points. The fact that these prices turn out to be, well, impossible, is apparently a minor detail that we are not supposed to pay attention to.

For the historically inclined, we’ve covered this cheap computer fetish in the past. Here’s coverage from when the Indian press was going wild about the launch of a $10 computer, the Sakshat, which turned out to be a complete lemon. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Pakistan's Thar Desert holds beneath it trillions of dollars of proven - and untapped - coal reserves (Image credit: Travelpod)

Pakistan is an incredibly rich country when it comes to mineral wealth. There are numerous estimates of how significant our reserves of oil, gas, coal, metals, gold, marble and salt might be but one has to keep in mind that all such estimates are the result of limited surveys. Just the Thar coal reserves are known to pack more energy than the combined oil reserves of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Our Khewra salt mines are the world’s second largest, next to Canada’s gigantic Goderich mines. The amount of marble and onyx that is recovered from the mines in our northern areas is absolutely staggering. If only we had finer cutting and polishing industries our marble exports alone could generate a significantly higher level of foreign exchange.

In the past, there has been a great hesitance on the part of Pakistani governments to truly explore the country’s vast and untapped reserve of natural resources. Lately, however, I have been hearing at least the right sort of noises. For example, several power plants based on Thar coal extraction are about to come on line in the next couple of years. The investments in these facilities is in the $3.7B neighbourhood. They will tap a minutely small percentage of what the Thar reserves are capable of producing. [Read the rest of this entry...]

The brand new Islamabad Stock Exchange building (Photo credit: NNI)

The KSE’s experienced some ups and downs lately. Perhaps not as extreme as the Dow rollercoaster, but ups and downs nonetheless. It’s good to see there’s some positive movement now and there’s been a consistent recovery from the dip we saw a couple of months ago. The run-up has allowed the index to comfortably cross the 10,000 mark. The index stands at 10,187 pts on July 14th, 2010. The last time we covered the index was at this level was back in April when the market had breached the 10,500 pt barrier.

So where does the index go from here? This is a tough one to call because there’s just way too many variables in play these days. My personal opinion is that the index will remain rangebound in the 9,600-10,800 point range for a while. There will need to be some exceptionally good news to move it beyond this level. There has been a flurry of good economic news recently, for example, the export targets being met, the forex remittances hitting an all-time high, reserves hitting an all-time high and power generation projects coming on line. There’s no doubt that an alleviation of the power crisis will definitely spur industry and there’s a very good chance that these effects will become visible in the next 9-18 months given the maturation of projects currently in play. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Throw in an inexpensive 4-port SATA RAID controller to boost PC performance

If you want to give your PC a quick and inexpensive upgrade, you might consider doing what I just did: upgrade the storage subsystem. With 6.0Gbps SATA III cards now under $30, and RAID cards for SATA drives available on the cheap, there’s no reason to live in the old days and run your OS off a slow drive! Typically, a modern PC is most constrained in two departments; graphics performance, and disk I/O. If you can afford an upgrade of both, you’re sure to give your PC a nice life extension while giving yourself an enjoyable, smooth computing experience.

One of my secondary machines in my home office was starting to feel quite slow. I’m sure it was the usual Windows registry bloat coupled with the fact that it never had a blazing fast disk to begin with. A 5400RPM SATA drive was all. And that was hosting both the OS and some data. The processor on the machine is a dual core Pentium running at 3.0Ghz and the graphics card is an Nvidia 9400GT with 512MB RAM. Not otherworldly, but no slouches either. The poorest performer was certainly that old HDD. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Cisco's Home Energy Controller is a much-needed product. Let's see how it does in the days to come.

One of the most significant challenges facing mankind at a global level is the environmental catastrophe that will surely materialize if we fail to transition towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly energy infrastructure. The statistics are staggering. With increasing per capita energy consumption in the developing world, a gargantuan overall energy footprint in the developed world and a propensity by all to use dirty sources of energy, we’re certainly heading for trouble.

There are two parts to the equation; cutting consumption – and that especially applies to the developed world – and building clean, renewable sources of power. Cisco’s new product addresses the first problem, and I’m super-excited about it!

The somewhat unimaginatively named “Home Energy Controller” is a follow-on to the recently announced Cisco Cius Android tablet. The new device will also run Android, provide a touch interface, access to an app-store, multimedia playback and now ubiquitous web browsing capabilities. However, in addition to the more usual fare, the HEC device will also interface with smart meters, thermostats, switches and power panels using both 802.11n and the low power Zigbee wireless standard. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Reevolo: An online life coaching startup from Pakistan

This is a guest post from Shahzaib Khan, co-founder of Reevolo. His company was selected for the Echelon 2010 event in Singapore. Reevolo helps people formulate life goals and determine what they want to be. Think of it as a digital life coach! Without further ado, here’s Shahzaib:

How Reevolo came to be

By the time I turned eighteen, I had made a career choice and decision. I wanted to be an investment banker. This decision was based purely on the fact that I had family who had made it big in this career/profession and the thought of having fancy cars, taking exotic holidays and working on multi million dollar deals like them, seemed an obvious career choice. [Read the rest of this entry...]