[Education] Final Year Projects for Sale!!!

these are amazing ads i see these days in chennai streets.
wow.

for those who feel 'what on earth?'....these are small IT companies who download journal/conference technical papers, implement the algorithms and sell to final year bachelor degree students.

six months ago...
i was in an interview panel. we were asking this guy what kind of work he had been doing. he confidently replies with a serious head that he will be given an IEEE standard paper and he has to understand and implement the algorithm within 3 days.
yeah.. he got selected.

more than a year back...
i was visiting my friend's place.
she introduced her sister as a final year computer science student in a reputed institution.
i asked her what her final year project was about.
'no clue' she smiled.
my puzzled face.
'actually i am buying it'
my puzzled face.
'i have ordered my final year project. it costs Rs. 7500 to 10000. its cool'

things change pretty fast.
i am expecting banners in chennai for m.phil & phd thesis from Rs. 50000 onwards.
may be the government should fund these agencies.

[research] concept based searching in Tamil

this is pretty young to tamil research.
you google for மும்பை தங்கும் வசதி and you get 780 useless documents.
google expects you to be more intelligent than just knowing how to type in tamil.
who tells a search engine that மும்பை, பம்பாய், பாம்பே, மும்பே all refers to the city of mumbai.
how can a search engine understand that தங்கும் வசதி refers to motel.
concept based search aims at 'understanding' the web.

i am working with a small team here.
we are trying our best to make a search engine 'understand' tourism documents in tamil.
hoping to extend it to other domains.

go to powerset.com
type 'who directed roja?'
explore to get a feel of concept based search.

a long way to go....

[project] mellinam education

bachelors. first year lab.
i was programming c with a bunch of mates.
i wanted my programs to have a professional feel.
so i created this company named it mellinam.
all my programs, including 'hello world' ones start with 'mellinam presents'
mellinam was growing along with my programming skills.
c++, prolog, vb, perl, java.... and suddenly stopped when i was done with my bachelors.

a decade rolled by.
suddenly this girl, nandini, who i was madly in love with ten years ago, was sitting next to me in 'our' car.

she asks randomly, 'what do we name our pre school project'?
the first seven lines above scrolled before my eyes.
'mellinam' , i said.
she loved it.

mellinam is four months old today.