INDIA : India has the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world. But the phone is not only used for communication, it is also for spiritual connection as well.

According to a study by an American research firm, there will be 737 million cellphone users in India by 2012. This rapid growth is due to a proliferating rural market, lower handset costs, and low tariff rates.

And mobile content providers in India are expanding their services. Besides providing telephony and games, songs and videos, they are now catering to the spiritual needs of users.

The recently introduced “devotional packages” have become very popular. They include wallpapers of revered saints and devotional hymns as ringtones.

“I think it is a basic human need of some people to have a connection with their devotional side. You can’t visit a temple everyday. But at least you can do it over the phone,” said Manoj Dawane, CEO of Mauj Mobile.

Temples and mosques are aplenty in Mumbai - the commercial capital of India - but there is hardly any parking space available. … And they are crowded.

So for those who cannot visit the places of worship, they can log on to the websites via a mobile phone and download the daily prayers from the temple.

One can even make offerings to the deity by sending a text message via the mobile phone to the offices of the temple concerned. The priest performs the ceremony once he has the caller’s astrological details which include the zodiac sign, family name and lineage.

For those who live life in the fast lane, this is spiritualism on the fast track.

Parag Naik, a doctor, said: “If I am feeling low and am thinking of the Almighty, I can just send an SMS and receive his photograph. It has a very calming effect.”

In a unique offering, the temple also allows devotees to perform the Aarti ritual on your mobile phone. You just need to push one button and the lamp is lighted for the prayer.

Push the second button and you can sit back and listen to the hymn chants. In less than five minutes, the Aarti is complete and your prayer has reached God’s electronic message box.

Offering prayers is an important tradition in India. Sending an SMS or blogging to God and temples or mosques may seem slightly strange but nobody is complaining, not even the priests who say that spiritualism has to move with the times. - CNA /ls

Channel News Asia

SINGAPORE: Meeting Thomas Ong was like a silly adolescent dream come true. Except, it came about 15 years too late.

In the ’90s, the actor - tall, suave and broody (read: “Oh my god, he’s so cool!”) - was many a teenage girl’s Prince Charming.

Now that he is 39 - believe it - the actor still hasn’t lost his boyish charms. Cutting a lanky figure in a sporty jacket, his shades still on, as Thomas walked towards this reporter from the opposite end of the Courtyard lobby caf
 at The Fullerton with a nonchalant swagger, he turned a few heads in the process.

What’s his secret to what seems like eternal youth? “I like to live without pressure,” he said.

Since Thomas joined MediaCorp (then known as TCS) in the early ’90s, he has come and gone and come back to our TV screens, trying his hand at other careers in between - like being a tour guide and an entrepreneur. “I live my life to gain more experience,” he explained. Not that he had to explain himself, of course. Ask him a question he doesn’t want to answer and he’ll say: “Ask, lor. I’ll keep quiet.”

For now, the man’s just happy to be a part-time actor and full-time free spirit. When he’s not working, the owner of corporate gift shop Link Station (located at Lucky Chinatown) is busy catching up with friends and satiating his wanderlust.

“Travelling is my biggest interest. It’ll be good if I have a job that allows me to travel a lot - maybe a travel photographer,” said Thomas, who had just returned from Thailand the night before our interview. He was there for a photoshoot as the face of local menswear label Crocodile.

And as you’re reading this, he is somewhere in the boondocks of China in the name of charity. He visits schools in the poverty-stricken mountainous areas there regularly with donations - in cash and in kind.

“I love children,” he said. However, starting a family is not on the cards for the “social butterfly” (he doesn’t take to that term very well: “Wah lao, it sounds awful!”) who told us he has “no time for one person”. He said: “She’ll feel very neglected.”

Thomas is nothing like the typical Prince Charming character he is so sick and tired of playing. “The producers always give me the same old goody-goody roles. Why can’t I play a pervert?” he said, as he attacked another fried chicken wing with his bare hands.

In person, this Prince is real as it gets, telling it like it is. He’s frivolous (his phone has a Super Mario ringtone) and chuckles an awful lot - mostly at his own jokes (”My bum’s not for sale, or that would be the easiest way to make a quick buck! Ha ha!”).

And he is terribly trusting, leaving his wallet and phone on the table as he scoots off to the washroom. “You mean I can’t trust you?” Of course you can, Thomas. Of course you can.

So, without further ado, here’s Thomas, in his own words:

Channel News Asia

SINGAPORE: Flailing arms piqued my interest as I passed by the CommunicAsia booth for the Institute for Infocomm Research from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star).

It turned out to be a demonstration for a technology that tracks your hand gestures in real time. It is similar to how you would throw a bowling ball by swinging the remote on the Nintendo Wii, but this homegrown technology does not require any physical controllers.

“It took us about a year to develop this technology,” said Dr Corey Manders, the project’s chief developer and a senior research fellow at A*Star.

Apart from a notebook and specially-coded software, the technology uses two off-the-shelf cameras to track movements in 3D space. This enables the system to track the changes in the distance that your arm makes.

For instance, it can track how far you swing a bat in a baseball game or lob a grenade in a virtual war setting so that the game can react realistically to your movements.

At its booth, the research team showcased a virtual DJ game that lets you control a virtual turntable with a flick of your hands.

“We’re also developing a virtual dance game, with the system set up to track body movements,” said Dr Manders.

One day, this technology might even allow you to control your avatar in virtual worlds such as Second Life with regular body movements. No more tacky cyber suits!

Dr Manders added that there has been some commercial interest in the technology for outdoor advertising applications, where users can control interactive displays.

It might also fill a need in telemedicine, where a computer could help a patient rehabilitate by tracking the movement of his limbs.

Another innovation showcased at the A*Star booth was a video indexing technology that allows you to skip to the relevant parts using keywords.

It works by mining keywords from the audio portion of the video and analysing voices to annotate keywords.

So, the next time you’re watching a video clip or a DVD, you would be able to skip to the part where Phua Chu Kang says “kiasu” or when the sports commentator shouts “Goal!”.

A*Star also demonstrated a system dubbed AutoDJ that gives the talentless a fuss-free way to create personalised ringtones.

Sure, some mobile phones have ringtone-creating applications but these churn out tunes that sound far too gratingly similar to Crazy Frog or the Axel F theme.

Here, you simply record your voice or use pre-recorded audio, select a backing track and let the software process the audio bits. AutoDJ analyses your speech, rearranging and truncating it to make you sound like an MC over an ensemble of beats and vinyl scratches.

It might not sound like much, but the results are pleasantly catchy. -

Channel News Asia