Some of the world's brightest technologists hail from this south Indian city, burnishing Bangalore's reputation as the Silicon Valley of the East.
Yet for most Indians, whose average income is US$450 a year, a computer is a foreign word. Ownership is a distant dream.
PHOTO: AP
A group of seven Indian computer scientists think they can help.
They've built a simple, inexpensive handheld computer -- they call it the Simputer -- that in the words of co-developer Vinay Deshpande "could truly take the benefits of information technology to the underserved of the world."
Fewer than 1 percent of India's more than 1 billion people have personal computers.
More than 40 percent of the population is illiterate, and one in four Indians lives in abject poverty.
The idea for the Simputer, which is slated for launch by year's end, emerged from the India Institute of Science and Encore Software Ltd after both were asked by the government to devise ways to deliver information technology's benefits to rural India, where some 75 percent of the country's population lives.
Inspired by the transistor radio, which opened an information spigot to India's villages in the 1970s, the team designed a 7.5cm by 12.5cm telecommunications-ready machine.
They envision Indian farmers using it to get on the Internet via public telephones and check produce prices, government tax and land records.
Although it was designed with Indians in mind, the hope is that the Simputer will be attractive to governments, banks, relief agencies and schools in other developing countries.
"It is a big boost for Indian pride," said Deshpande, the chairman of Encore Software, one of two companies that hold the manufacturing license.
"It proves what we've been saying all along: That we can do it here. This is 100 percent India."
Swami Manohar, another of the developers and a computer science professor at IIS, said the Simputer's initial price would be around US$320. Eventually, they intend to sell it in volume at US$190.
That's still expensive for most Indians.
So the Simputer would accommodate smart cards, which each cost about US$4.25. That would enable farmers, villages or schools to share a single device, and use individual smart cards to store data.
The Simputer runs on a version of the Linux operating system, whose source code is free on the Internet. It has a 320-by-240-pixel monochrome display, is powered by a 200Mhz StrongArm processor and has a hard polymer shell.
The current prototype has 32MB of random access memory, runs on three AAA nickel metal hydride batteries, includes a built-in speaker, a microphone and a telephone jack, and USB and smart card connectors. Into the software bundle are a built-in Internet browser, e-mail program, MP3 player and a modem.
Because it runs on Linux, programmers working through the nonprofit Simputer Trust can improve on the machine's codes and capabilities. On their Web site, the developers say the trust aims to promote the Simputer "as an evolving platform for social change.''
Since many of its users would be illiterate, the Simputer has text-to-speech capability and voicemail.
It is designed to break down written words into basic sounds, then put them back together and speak out in English, Hindi, Tamil and Kannada.
Users can also enter text on a soft screen keyboard, one character at a time, or with a stylus using a handwriting recognition program the designers call "Tapatap"' -- (akin to Graffiti in the Palm OS).
The Simputer Trust does not intend to manufacture the device, only license its design. It plans to charge US$25,000 to commercial producers in developing countries and US$250,000 to manufacturers in developed nations.
"This is a world-class product, ahead of anything being done anywhere else in the world," said Kenneth Keniston, director of the India Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Simputer is not, however, the only cheap computer out there.
In Brazil, computer scientists at Federal University of Minas Gerais have developed a prototype of a PC for the people -- dubbed the Volkscomputer -- which they envision will sell for US$300.
But it's not portable, making it more difficult to share among communities.
The Simputer's developers scrounged for grants and credit the university for giving them lab space and research and development time.
And they don't pretend they don't hope to get rich off the Simputer one day.
The men who built the handheld put in much of their own time and money, and the four computer scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, considered the MIT of the East, earn some US640 monthly and have put most of their other research on hold.
"Not to mention that we haven't seen our families," said V. Vinay, one of the professors. "We're not looking at the retail market, but we're not going to ignore it either."
Deshpande, the software and marketing man of Simputer, agrees: "We hope to make money in the long run."
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
RSS