LOCAL YOKELS
Leaving Mumbai, India today for points south, and of course can't leave without a reference to the presence of US internet companies in this tumultuous city of 13 million.
Yahoo! India is visible in many parts of the city via it's billboards advertising the many 
offerings of Yahoo! (Images via Flickr).
Google seems to have no bill boards (that I saw anyway), but is as prevalent in it's offerings as Yahoo!
In fact, Google maps of Mumbai were very helpful in planning some daily excursions, as were Google Earth depictions of Mumbai and it's surrounding areas (via Flickr).
These services are all the more impressive when you consider that there are no centralized, third-party providers of map data like Navteq as we have in the U.S.
The U.S. internet companies have to do more heavy lifting to provide some of these services.
And user-generated mash-ups of these maps are prevalent here as in the U.S. This useful example is a case in point.
Of course, the dominant form of access to any type of electronic messaging here is via mobiles (aka cell phones), with almost every person young and old seemingly engaged in endless SMSing on the mobiles everywhere.
Also interesting is that most personal computers sold here seem to go out with English operating systems and keyboards, unlike in places like China where computers and keyboards localized with the regional languages are far more prevalent.
In fact, I got blank stares from salespeople at a couple of computer stores in Mumbai when I asked to see a desktop or a laptop with the operating system (Windows or Mac) in Hindi, the national language. I was ultimately told that I could get one localized, but it would be a special-order item and take about a week. And of course cost a bit more for the "specialized" keyboard.
It speaks to the prevalence of English as the standard language for mainstream computing here in India, despite the presence of hundreds of mainstream millions of a billion plus population that don't yet speak English.
Dial-up internet access is still the most prevalent, with broadband access starting to make a minor dent, much like the late nineties in the U.S.
It's early days for internet services here, but exciting to see the local services emerge and find their place in the daily life of Mumbai.
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