During the day I keep visiting multiple planets to get a general overview of things that people are talking about.
To start off (with some drumroll) there is a new planet exclusively for Indian women in the FOSS world: planet.linuxchix.org.in. Its still in a beta stage and Barkha is working to fine tune it. More feeds welcome and do drop in a mail to planet-admin at linuxchix dawt org dawt in to get on-board.
This morning I read Atul‘s listing of the FOSS events happening in the next few days all over India. This list along with Puthali‘s mail to the LinuxChix-India mailing list helped me redraw up the “Upcoming Event list” on the LinuxChix-India main page. There had been some complaints about the wiki main page looking cluttered. So as an attempt to correct it, the “Events” and “Upcoming FOSS Events” sections have been merged into Upcoming Events of Interest. A big list for February and March is in place already. Under each event, the participating members could add their talks/sessions etc. However, this format can always be changed if its not looking pretty. Also, there are new pages now for the CityMeets and Past participation by LinuxChix India members at various events.
(Also, my talk+BoF (one session) for GNUnify 08 got accepted. Its on the second day of the event i.e. 9th February at 3:30 PM in the afternoon.)
Ankita has done some work on the Task List page to segregate the tasks according to their status.
The other post that intrigued me was by Kart_ referring to the article about the EEE laptop and PC launched by ASUS. The opening lines from the article claim that the the EEE PC is aimed at “pupils, housewives, old persons, and teenagers“. Are’nt “target users” of gadgets to be judged by the “use they put it into” and or “volume of usage”, rather than their status/age.
What kind of “pupils or teenagers” are being talked about here?
What age (or perhaps baldness level) defines “Old persons”?
“Housewives”…ahem…I consider myself a “married working professional who also looks after the house she lives in” – does that count?
Through Myopic Eyes 
demographics
Companies ask for info about what consumers want. People are broken down into categories. Now, everyone can have their own opinion of what a teenager is, but marketers have their own idea and this is what business use to make new products. In the US, males 18-35 are the most sought after demographic, so that is who they make most things for.So my guess is that ‘pupils, housewives and teenagers’, at least of today, are probably people who have grown up with computer and may want something small, lightweight, portable, wifi-enabled and easy-to-use. That to me is what the Eee pc is. So I guess they are expecting these folks to overlook the fact that it uses Linux and that they will just assume its a slimed-down version to Windows that is easy-to-use and buy these new consumer devices. And indeed, somebody is!
Re: demographics
The rant was more against the opening lines of the ill-written article. It never clarifies what constitutes the target audience and what special hardware features and applications are present that can be mapped for each category. “Experienced and Inexperienced users” can fall into a variety of demographic categories. 🙂
Hey!
Runaji,
I finally came by, something I should’ve done earlier,
just to say,
I love your work!
Best,
Raheema
Re: Hey!
Hello Raheemaji, Thanks for stopping by 🙂
old persons..
hehehhe.. Tats kind of interesting.. its like how we perceive may be, depends on hair fall/tooth fall? 😛
-Archu
Re: old persons..
hehe.. yup. thats how they made it sound.
btw.. i saw the EEE PC the other day but did not get much time to check it out.