Breakthrough technology
Raj Reddy, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, plans to unveil a new project. The PCtvt is a $250 wirelessly networked personal computer intended for the four billion people around the world who live on less than $2,000 a year. His low-cost computer doubles as a TV and a DVD player. Mr. Reddy believes that he will be able to use it as a vehicle to take computing and communications to populations that until now have been excluded from the digital world. The project will work in partnership with University of California researchers who are attempting to develop high-speed wireless digital networks for rural communities.

Voice and data

I PBX software for GNU/Linux [ www.asterisk.org]
Primarily developed on GNU/Linux for x/86, Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Mac OS X Jaguar, and provides all of the features one would expect from a PBX. Asterisk needs no additional hardware for Voice over IP. It supports a wide range of TDM protocols and US and European standard signaling types used in standard business phone systems. Mark can be contacted at Orkut.com where he moderates an Asterik community. [Posted by: Bala Pillai]

Software

I Compiere is free [ www.compiere.org/home whyfree.html]
The open source ERP and CRM software is freely available from Compiere partners and its users and developers rank Compiere among the top 10 active projects in SourceForge (since March 2002). An Oracle license is currently required to run compiere, but it can be provided as part of a support contract as per wish. [Posted by Bala Pillai]

II Weka 3: Data Mining Software in Java [ www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka]
Weka is a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks. The algorithms can either be applied directly to a dataset or called from your own Java code. Available for free from Sun, Weka contains tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualisation.

III Open Source Protege [protege.stanford.edu]
Protégé is ontology editor and knowledge acquisition system. It is also an open-source, Java tool that provides an extensible architecture for the creation of customized knowledge-based applications. Protégé’s OWL Plug-in now provides support for editing Semantic Web ontologies.

IV Kannada Opentype Fonts [brahmi.sourceforge.net]
The Indian Language Technology Solutions Project released two more Kannada Opentype Fonts named “Kedage” and “Mallige” due in September. Beta copies of the fonts will be available through e-mail requests.

Education

Low cost PCs in SA [ www.balancingact-africa.com/news/current1.html]
South African company, On Point Solutions, has invented a low-cost, four-in-one PC that could lower the cost of offering ICT in learning institutions. The PCs offer Internet, e-mail, phone, word processing and network facilities exclusively for educational purposes and concessions provided from Microsoft International allowed the machines to be sold at the low cost of 298 per system.

Agriculture

e-Mandi eyes multiple buyer, seller scenario
Citing India’s e-choupal scheme’s limitations as a single buyer system, Vipol Arora pointed to the ‘e-Mandi’ project as an alternative to establish an Online market of agricultural produce by neutral players. e-Mandi, a commodities exchange portal, can link the prices of agricultural produce to market considerations, liberating agriculture from the above constraints. Four futures exchanges have already been established and promoted by the Indian government in the past year.

However, these exchanges manage risk for banks, traders, stock market and commodity traders. Individual farmers have been excluded by design. In a manner that BSE and NSE provide a market for people all over India to trade in Stock of companies, e-Mandi will allow people from all over India to trade in agricultural produce. Vipol says he is developing this idea as a visiting fellow at Stanford.