People are just amazing!

Google has developed this mobile platform that everybody is going crazy about. Yes, I am talking about Android. And Google being Google (and not Apple) they released the source code also and kept releasing with every new version.

The Android platform is pretty awesome in itself. But then some people, probably young, school-going teenagers, got their hands on this OS code and tweaked the hell out of it. They tweaked stuff, they developed stuff, they fine-tuned and optimized, or whatever you want to call it, but they released something called a custom ROM. A custom ROM is an unofficial version of the Android OS and has even MORE features than the original.

This one guy called Cyanogen (his internet handle not his name), probably a 17-year old genius who goes to school in the day and juggles bits and bytes around at night, publishes this enhanced OS, developed by himself and the other collaborating developers from original Google source. The website is called www.cyanogen.com (what did you expect it to be called?).

I am amazed by how these guys, invidual developers, manage to improve upon the output of a huge corporation like Google! And from all I know, Goole is not the kind of company that stifles creativity in the first place.

Then look at YouTube. People post all kinds of stuff there. Other than the jokes and silly videos, there is a  plethora of useful information on YouTube in the form of tutorials and instructional videos. And most of it done by individuals!

Then look at all these bloggers, they create so much content every day that at a rough guess it's much more than the newspapers of the world. These days when I search for information, the type where I need a question answered, I get most helpful links from YouTube, blogs and forums like Yahoo Answers.

On polyphasic sleep my first source of information was purely blogs.

When making buying decisions, esp. about things like books and mobile devices, my most reliable source of information are personal reviews.

It just goes to show that in this information age, individual is as important, if not more, as the big corporations. And I have seen it happen in front of me during my own lifetime! It still amazes me!