Information Technology Aided Malpractice

Cheating in Exams is not something new for Indian exam invigilators. What is new, though is the onslaught they are facing from the products of Information Technology innovation which are abetting this social crime. To what extent these information dispersion devices could be used in aiding copying in examinations, was amply demonstrated during the All India Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examinations conducted by AIIMS ( All India Institute of Medical Sciences ) recently. The doctors from Delhi, who took the tech-savvy route to pass the exams in flying colors would put to shame any IT gadget geek. They made use of Docu-Pens and Bluetooth & Multimedia messaging enabled mobile phones in their dubious attempt. Docu-Pens are small sized hand-held scanners that can scan entire A4 sized pages in less than 5-6 seconds. They scanned question papers this way and transferred the scanned contents to their Mobile phones via Bluetooth technology, that enables two devices to talk to each other wirelessly within short distances. The mobile phones then beamed these questions via Multimedia messaging to their accomplices sitting in Pondicherry and Madurai ( half way across the country ). These people immediately sent back the answers via SMS (Short Messaging Service ). What do you say to this now !!! Even as I condemn their vile act, I am stumped at the genius in them that was at work. If only they had used this genius to work hard for their exams. Now cooling their heels in police custody are a total of 28 such doctors and the police suspect that there might have been more. Information Technology is surely having its impact on the country in more than few ways. News Times Of India

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Bar Camping Phenomenon in India

Bar Camping is a phenomenon that has taken the geek world by storm outside India and has made its entry just last year in India when Delhi hosted the first Bar Camp in the country. For the novice, a bar camp is a spin off on the original tech conferences that are routinely held in the tech-world. Tech-conferences generally are loathed by a majority of geekdom ( that includes me ) as they charge a hefty fee ranging between Rs. 3500 to Rs 10000 for attending the conference. Moreover participation is limited to the invitees only. Not everybody interested or has something to contribute can participate. Lastly, there is always a 90% chance that the speakers invited at these conferences will bore you to death with their monologue speeches that stretch unto the end of time. So out of Poison comes Ambrosia....as narrate our epics. Bar camps were born as a result of the repulsion generated by these tech-conferences. Bar Camp is an ad-hoc "un-conference" born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. The chief unwritten rule of bar camps require that you come prepared to share something with the other attendees. Attendance is open to anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn. Everybody is a participant and an active one at that. Everybody is expected to give a presentation or at least help give one. What's more ....The presentations are also placed on the web for the benefit of those who could not attend. All Bar Camps have dedicated ‘Wikis’ - websites that allow users to add or modify content, giving information about the event, with blogs being used to woo techies. Delhi hosted the first ‘desi Bar Camp’, with 75 participants at the Adobe office. Staying true to the US concept, it was open to all and free of cost. “There were no big-ticket speakers, so anyone could sign up and make presentations,” said organiser Amit Ranjan. The success of the Delhi Bar Camp made news in the blogosphere, and soon, city-specific groups started their own camps. Now Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore have joined the fray. The next immediate Bar Camp is on April 8th & 9th 2006 at Chennai, India at Ramanujam Computing Centre, Anna University, Chennai. There is a simulataneous one being held on April 8th at Hyderabad too at IIIT, Hyderabad. That one will be followed by one in Bangalore on the 22nd of April at Yahoo! Software Development India Pvt. Ltd.,4th floor, "Esquire Center",#9, M.G. Road, Bangalore - 560 001. For all you guys who want to savour the occasion, get registered at http://barcamp.org/BarCampChennai http://barcamp.org/BarCampHyderabad http://barcamp.org/BarCampBangalore All Bar Camp venues and dates are let known at http://barcamp.org/ News sites DNA India Economic Times

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India Centric Innovations - Part II

Lets talk about 3 more indigenous innovations that have gone a long way in bringing the IT benefits to the masses in India Script Mail - Enabling Non-English Text Entry This is one innovation that has its birth in HP( Hewlett Packard ) Labs, India. Shekar Borgaonkar and his team have come up with Script Mail, a invention that enables text entry for non-English languages by the use of a small pad connected to a monitor. an electronic pen allows one to scribble on the pad, allowing text entry in a unique fashion. It also comes with a built in modem that enables whatever is scribbled to be e-mailed too. Absolutely no keyboard is required. Corrections are possible once the initial text entry is completed. Script Mail is a great boon for a country like India that comprises of 18 languages spoken by more than 1 million people and numerous other dialects. SIMputer - Simple Inexpensive Multilingual Hand held A SIMputer was the realization of low cost computer that could be reachable to people irrespective of the language they speak and which had an intuitive interface that could easily gather a large fan following. Launched in 2001, SIMputer than made headlines. However, it still has a long way to go realize its dream of turning into a ubiquitous hand held and realizing universal access. There are certain businesses though that have incorporated the SIMputer. Dempo Mining Corporation, Goa use these hand-helds to ensure that the iron ore reaches the right location. Miners on loading the Ore Truck punch in data to the truck driver's SIMputer and into a smart card attached to it. The truck on reaching their location, cross checks the data with another SIMputer to ensure that the ore has reached the right location. Another place where the SIMputer has found takers is the Bangalore Traffic Police Department, Karnataka. SIMputers used by traffic cops have the entire city's traffic violation database fed into their memories. When a person is caught breaking a traffic rule, his name or vehicle's license plate number is fed into the SIMputer. The SIMputer immediately coughs up a whole page of past violations recorded against the vehicle or person and he is accordingly fined. Useful Links India's Simple computer for the Poor WiFi Last Mile Connectivity In a vast country like India, achieving last mile connectivity is one of the toughest jobs. G. V. Ramaraju, has used WiFi technology to come up with an interesting innovation to overcome this problem. Aiding him is Media Labs Asia. Together, they have installed on an experimental basis, WiFi enabled kiosks in the Indian state of UttarPradesh. Remotely dispersed people have been given a doorway to the world. VOIP phones have been installed and the string of WiFi kiosks act as relay centers that transmit the signals back to civilization. Do let me know in case you come across any more of such Indian innovations and I would be glad to enlist them in my Blog

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Jaipur Cows Go Hi-Tech

Its official. Jaipur ( Rajasthan ) cows are going to be electronically tagged. Tired of stray cows left by their owners to roam about the city streets, the municipal councilors have sought the aid of technology. "Most owners after milking their cows leave them on the streets to forage for food. Such cows not only interrupt the traffic flow but also die after consuming plastic bags and poisonous substances," one official said. The idea is to allot a unique number to each cow in the city and electronically tag them with that number. This, the municipality aims to achieve by, placing a small chip behind each cow's ear. The tag will also have details of the bovine's owner. A cow caught wandering aimlessly on the streets would be detained and handed back to the owner after he coughs up a hefty fine. If the same owner defaults four times, the cows caught on the streets would not be returned to him/her. Quite a nice idea !!! The officials are hoping not only to procure a computerized list of the city's cows, but also decongest the city roads a fair bit by implementing this step. Hope the cows have enough to MOO about in the coming days.

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Mumbai's Dabbawallah Goes Online

Who does not know of the famous Mumbai Dabbawallah ? The famed social enterprise group that collects and delivers a record 1,75,000 lunch boxes to office gores in Mumbai, all within a span of 2-3 hours. The group that comprises of around 4,500 semi literate individuals who know which lunch box needs to go to what corner of Mumbai merely by looking at 3-4 painted characters on the lunch box. The group that has earned a Six Sigma that places it in the elite group comprising of MNCs like GE (General Electric) and Motorola. Just one mistake for every 80,00,000 ( 8 million) lunch boxes delivered requires Six Sigma to be redefined. The Dabbawallahs or officially the Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association ( MTBSA ), a 120 year old institution has now placed a foot in E-space. They have opened a new website where new customers can subscribe to their service online at http://mydabbawala.com. Though the website lacks the professional touch, it still would be a big step, if it serves its intended purpose. It also has a gallery where you could buy certain merchandise. The photo gallery is one sure stop you need to visit as it contains some rare photos of dabbawallah's encounters with world famous personalities. Quite a few interesting articles on the dabbawallahs make the visit worthwhile.

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Now Laptops for Indian Kids

Kids in the developing world including India can look forward to a whole new computing experience. The non-profit organization 'One Laptop Per Child' (OLPC) hand in hand with MIT Media Labs, USA has come up with a revolutionary concept of a $ 100 crankable laptop to be distributed among children in the developing world. Sounds crazy !!! Don't jump the wire just yet. The laptop has a sturdy plastic casing and is powered by a hand cranked lever. The screen is a low cost LCD display that can switch between color and black & white modes to conserve power. The insides of the laptop hold a 500 MHz processor linked to a 128 MB DRAM ( Dynamic RAM ) and opens up to the outside world through 4 USB ports. Storage is through a 500 MB Flash memory. A one minute winding on the attached crank powers up the device for up to 10/40 minutes in color / B&W modes. Built in wireless cards ensure that all kids with these laptops in the local environs will automatically form a peer-to-peer sharing group the moment they switch on their laptops. In addition to all these the laptop can be conveniently folded and the power adapter doubles up as the handle for the case. Absolutely no moving parts in the kids' hands. Cheap, Innovative and Creative in cutting down on cost and making it kids-prank proof !!! Envisioned by Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Labs, OLPC has the backing of Information Technology giants like Google , AMD ( Advanced Micro Devices ), News Corporation, Nortel, Red Hat and Brightstar who also are the project's founding members. Mr Negroponte points out on his website , "Laptops are both a window and a tool: a window into the world and a tool with which to think. They are a wonderful way for all children to learn learning through independent interaction and exploration." He also reveals that 100 million laptop is what OLPC is aiming at manufacturing. The distribution is set to begin late 2006. Kids with these laptops - will sure a fine pair make where learning is concerned.

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India Centric Innovations - Part I

Technology Innovation is not something that you easily associate with India. However oases of innovation in a parched land for want of technology innovation have sprung up at various corners in the country. And innovating as they are, they are also ensuring that the concepts emerging are India-centric and aimed at pulling together all sections of the Indian society to forge ahead into a future where information is power. I list below a collection of such innovations that are stirring up a silent revolution in their own right across the land. Translating English to Indian languages Today, Internet is a storehouse of information that people from various walks yearn for. However the majority of information is in English, a language that a mere 1 billion people among the globe's 6 billion speak. Here arises the importance of a translator that re-moulds the information in a language native to the information seeker. It is in this direction that projects and tools like Shakti, AnglaBharti, AnuSaaraka, MaTra, Mantra and Anuvaadak are progressing. Brain childs of eminent educational bodies in India like IIT(Indian Institute of Technology), C-DAC(Centre for Development of Advanced Computing), University of Hyderabad, Jawaharlal Nehru University in collaboration with software companies like IBM and Super Infosoft, these projects are touted as the best Machine Translation Projects anywhere in the world. The basic foundation underlying the projects is the same. Anglabharti, for example, analyses English only once and creates an intermediate structure that is almost non-ambiguous. The intermediate structure is then converted to an Indian language through a process of text-generation. The effort in analyzing the English sentences is about 70% and the text-generation accounts for the rest of the 30%. Thus only with an additional 30% effort, a new English to Indian language translator can be built. Showcasing of these technologies has started in various selected villages across the country where villagers are encouraged to start using these translators. More Info : http://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/Translation-survey/survey.pdf http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/365989.cms Integrated Digital Center for Schools - K-yan Tutor Catch 'em Young is our President Abdul Kalam's mantra when it comes to nurturing the kids of the country who will be tomorrow's future. This innovation is one such that is sure to receive his accolades in its attempt to reach out to the millions of school going kids in India. Kirti Trivedi, a professor from IIT, Mumbai who was part of the team that conceptualized this computer based tutor calls it a "Compact Media Center", for schools without enough computer equipment. Packing together a 120 GB Hard Disk, a Pentium 4 processor, a modem, a hard disk, a DVD drive, four USB ports to connect external devices and a television tuner, it is a television and a personal computer rolled into one, but it does not have a monitor. Instead, the black box contains a projector with SVGA resolution that can beam a 300-inch-high image sharply on a wall. This is its USP ( Unique Selling Proposition) too. The immense projection capability of the K-yan can help introduce the power of computing to a large group of kids at one go. Kids can take turns to use the mouse and learn interactivity with the computer while other kids are not deprived of the chance to keep observing. K-yan can also be used for community learning 1. Adult and Primary Literacy 2. Vocational Education and Training 3. Enterprise Skill Development 4. Computer and Internet literacy 5. Communication medium 6. Entertainment – Television and Movies 7. Technology aided school education 8. Spread awareness about health issues like AIDS, Birth control, etc. 9. Women's empowerment programs 10. e-Governance Indeed a boon to rural India and a unique effort to bridge the digital divide between Rural and Urban India. Evident enough when other developing countries like Malaysia and Kazhakstan have evinced interest in the product. More Info : http://www.k-yan.com/

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