Re: [GKD] Need URLs of Useful Free Software to Download

[Danny Pabellon]

Dear Frederick,

This is a great idea. We in the Philippines are also trying to put
together educational and training materials for adults (SMEs, farmers
cooperatives, parents and teachers associations, etc.) and kids out
there in the rural areas. One of our priority thrusts is the
establishment of telecenters in various parts of the country where both
adults and children could have free or subsidized access to the Internet
and its vast resouces. But due to the very thin lines connecting these
telecenters to the outside world, users often have difficulty accessing
useful information in the Internet.  Hence, the need to provide them
with ready and useful information either through video or CDs.

Could I request that the information/URLs you are able to gather
together through this initiative be shared with the rest in the list?

Thank you.

Danny Pabellon



Frederick Noronha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> My friends have fat pipes to the Internet. They have offered to download
> useful distributions / collections of Free Software. My own plan is to
> encourage the building up of 'CD Repositories' in Indian cities and
> towns, that can then help to efficiently share such CDs among those who
> don't have speedy connections to the Internet.
> 
> What I badly need from you is: a set of URLs from where my friends could
> download the distributions / software collections. Do send in a brief,
> one-paragraph description of what the site contains, why it is a good
> distribution, etc.
> 
> We are also looking out specifically for educational software, Free
> Software for kids, tools for professionals (e.g. doctors, scientists),
> Free Software for the Windows platform (to convince those more reluctant
> to shift over), and also user-friendly distributions.
> 
> Thank you very much in advance. Let's make Free Software into what it
> really should be -- an effective mechanism for the transfer of knowledge
> to the Third World! Your help is needed... FN




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[GKD] Writing Indian Languages on Mobile Devices

[Frederick Noronha]

Writing Hindi or Tamil on your mobile could be no big deal

By Frederick Noronha

Indian languages are too complex to make it to the computer keyboard or
make the most of the power of cellphones, right? Wrong! A Mumbai-based
team of scientists have worked out an innovative solution using a strong
dose of lateral thinking, that leverages the strengths of Indic scripts
and their phonetic basis.

Perhaps aptly, it's called Simpli.

Durgesh Rao, till recently a research scientist at what used to be the
National Centre for Software Technology in Juhu, Mumbai (this
institution has since become CDAC-Mumbai) worked on the 'intelligent
multi-layered input scheme for phonetic scripts' together with Shrinath
Shanbhag and R K Joshi.

Says he: "I conceived the idea in November 2001 at Bangalore, and later
discussed it with Prof. Joshi and Shrinath. It was implemented by
Shrinath in consultation with Prof. Joshi and me, and we wrote it up for
the conference in February 2002."

"There's still work to be done to make Simpli a product," Rao said.

This solution could be useful for a compact virtual keyboard. It could
also snuggly fit into any handheld devices such as the Simputer (a
sharable, low-cost computing device being worked on from Bangalore),
PDAs (personal digital assistants) and cellphones, using a stylus or
touch screen.

"It can also be an attractive alternate input option for Indic and other
phonetic scripts on personal computers, since it is very intuitive and
requires minimal training," its innovator Rao said in an interview.

Rao admitted that it would be "difficult to say" how expensive or
inexpensive this product would be. "This is not yet a product, but a
proof-of concept prototype. We want this concept to reach a very wide
audience in a product form, and are exploring the most effective ways
and means to do that," said Rao.

Their work basically offers a new scheme for the input of phonetic
scripts with a stylus, on a compact smart soft-keyboard. This means that
tiny mobile devices don't need huge keyboards to cater to the many
diverse alphabets that Indian languages, and other non-English languages
have.

Instead, by combining groups of related Indian-language alphabets
togher, a 'virtual' or 'soft-keyboard' is used to speedily input
non-English text into tiny computing or mobile devices.

It is widely recognised that computers cater more readily to English or
Roman-script based languages. This poses special challenges to languages
with diverse scripts, specially the seemingly-complex Indian language
scripts which have a greater variety of alphabets and different ways of
combining joint-alphabets.

In this innovative method, phonetically related characters are grouped
into 'layers' and become dynamically available when the 'group-leader'
character is accessed or touched.

"This scheme allows rapid input using taps and flicks. We have developed
a prototype for Devanagari which covers the complete script using just
21 virtual keys, and preliminary tests indicate that it is very easy to
use with little or no training," said the team.

Innovators say this scheme seems to be optimal for compact keyboarding
of phonetic scripts, such as Indic, on hand-held and mobile devices. It
can be extended to other phonetic scripts such as IPA.

"It can also be used equally well as an alternate, simpler soft keyboard
for conventional desktop systems," say its inventors.

Rao and team point out that mobile computing devices are now "a part of
life". But these devices largely communicate via text, meaning that all
such devices need "compact, quick and easy-to-use text input schemes".

Because of their small nature, keyboards are "not particularly amenable"
to mobile computing. So, stylus-based schemes exist for the Roman
alphabet. But no such is known to exist for Indic schemes.

(The stylus is a device used to select and tap alphabets on the mobile
device. It earlier referred to the small needle that picks up the sound
signals on a record player.)

"Localisation to Indic scripts is a non-trivial task due to significant
differences from Latin based scripts and writing systems," point out Rao
and team. In the past, efforts have been undertaken to build
standards-based architectures for Indic text representation and shaping.

But these architectures are primarily designed for desktop computing.
"They can be adapted to work on mobile devices with one exception -- the
text input mechanism. Here we propose a new compact soft keyboard based
on principles of phonetic encoding, that can fill this gap," said the
team.

In English, a conventional soft keyboard is a graphical representation
of a desktop keyboard on the screen, activated by tapping keys with a
stylus. In a soft "QWERTY" keyboard all alphabets are visible on the
screen. The shift key is merely a mechanism to change case.

But, as Rao and team note: "For an equivalent Indic keyboard, many
alphabets are hidden in the shift positions. The hidden alphabets are
hard to gues

Re: [GKD] RFI: Year of Freshwater

[Margaret Grieco]

Irene,

Here's a first base on youth and water management:
http://www.i-s-w.org/activites_jeunesse_en.htm

It might be worth organising a youth and development space on one of the
major donor sites where such links and activities can be archived. 
Perhaps the World Bank as a knowledge bank could provide some resources
for developing an interactive space which encourages the participation
of youth in development.

Cheers 
Margaret

-- 
Margaret Grieco, D.Phil.(Oxon.)MCIT
Professor of Transport and Society
Napier University
Edinburgh EH10 5BR
web site treats: http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/routine.html

http://www.geocities.com/transport_and_society/hopping.html

and

Research Affiliate
Centre for Social Policy Studies
University of Ghana Legon
Accra, Ghana




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Re: [GKD] RFI: Year of Freshwater

[Pamela McLean]

This may be of interest.

The Project
Mandate the Future (MtF) is Worldview's first online venture. The
project is designed to harness the power of Internet and the digital
medium to the advantage of youth across the globe. MtF is a forum
created and driven by youth. It gives them an opportunity to voice their
views and concerns on global issues. The project seeks to involve youth
in the policy making process and be in-charge of their future.
http://www.mandatethefuture.org/about.shtml



"Irene Stoeckl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I am not sure whether somebody could help on this. I would like to ask
> for some assistance.
>
> This year is the Year of Freshwater. I am searching for discussion
> platforms for the youth (age 18 to 25) on the internet. I would
> appreciate if people could send me information on that.




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