INDIC COMPUTING SOLUTIONS
There’s an active network of campaigners searching for Indic solutions to computing in Indian languages. Check it out. To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/indic-computing-users or, via e-mail, send a message with subject or body ‘help’ to indic-computing-users-request@lists.sourceforge.net

HINDI EDITOR
Christina Kamp from Germany was recently searching the Net for a Hindi editor. Delhi-based Ravikant, a keen observer of such possible solutions, suggests that apart from Baraha.com, there are quite a few phonetic transliterators available on the Web. For instance, one could use Yudit (www.yudit.org) if working on Linux. For Windows you could download a couple of things: Keyman, the latest version of which is available from tavultesoft.com; Unicode fonts from BBC (bbc.co.uk/hindi) or Raghu from the NCST site; and devromU (developed by Steve Smith and Bob Eaton, free for non-commercial use).

“The advantage with this patchwork is that you could type straightaway in your Word document or Yahoo composer. These are all .exe files and will install themselves on your machine. If you want proprietary stuff, you can either go for Mithi IndiaPage package or the one developed by aksharmala.com. There are certain other alternatives in the form of ITRANS and IWRITE32 and still more at the TDIL site, of the Government of India,” notes Ravikant.

RESOURCES FOR FARMERS
E-choupal.com is a private initiative to provide access to online business resources for rural farmers in India. Combining a broad set of online resources and a network of around 1000 kiosks, this private initiative of ITC claims to reach rural farmers in about 6,000 Indian villages.

E-choupal offers real-time agribusiness information, products and services to rural farmers seeking to become more competitive and to have better access to domestic and international market opportunities.

“Farmers can access the latest local and global information on weather, scientific farming practices as well as market prices at the village itself through this Web portal—all in Hindi. Choupal also facilitates supply of high quality farm inputs as well as purchase of commodities at their doorstep,” say its promoters.

COMPANY VALIDATED
C V Radhakrishnan <cvr@river-valley.org> informs that his company, Focal Image (India) has been validated by the world’s leading academic journal publisher viz., Elsevier Science, Amsterdam as one of their 13 suppliers around the world.

This Kerala-based firm is a text processing company entirely running on GNU/Linux and free software. Elsevier Science holds 40 percent of the market share of the $14 billion journal publishing industry.

“The validation process was a year long rigorous test of technologies, logistics and its competence to offer services at par with that of those using proprietary software. We won at the end of all the tests comfortably and with more kudos than our proprietary counterparts,” says he.

“Although it is a matter of immense pleasure for our team, more than that, I believe it is a success of free software to compete with proprietary software in global market,” argues CVR.

SMALL GRANTS
Sarai/CSDS, a Delhi-based research network that realises the potential of free/open-source software, is offering a limited number of small grants (in three categories of under Rs 10,000; Rs 10,000-30,000; and Rs 30,000-60,000) for those willing to write socially-useful software programs and put these out in the public domain.

Ownership of these programs will remain with their writer(s), under the GPL or similar suitable licence. But the coders will undertake to widely distribute and make available their work to those who desire to use it, in the interest of promoting the open-source movement in India.

E-mail in your plans and suggestions to application@-sarai.net. Use “FLOSS application” as the subject-line. The mail, should contain the following details:

• Outline of project.
• How this project would be relevant to society’s needs.
• Stage of the project.
• Time-frame required for completion.
• Whether work will be done singly, or if jointly, names of all individuals/groups to be involved.
• Estimated number of man-hours for completion of the project.
• Estimated cost with break-up.
• Any other information you feel relevant.

FREE SOFTWARE
Check out the following examples of Indian FSUGs (free software user groups): www.geocities.com/fsug_calicut; www.symonds.net/~fsug-kochi. A free font, donated to take Indian language computing forward is available at www.akruti.com/freedom/fonts/freefont.zip

KERALA HANDICRAFTS
KeralCraft.com is intended to foster development in the traditional industries of Kerala. Central to the project is the e-commerce portal KeralCraft.com, which aims to create a sustainable international market for products made by local artisans. Learn more by checking out the site. The project is promoted by the government of Kerala.

SOFTWARE FOR SCHOOLS
From Israel, Link Systems is offering SchooLink, a software package for school administration. The package (software, long-run support and enhancement) is being offered free to needy schools in developing countries.
Says Ariel Shafir of Link Systems, “All we need are some initial details on your school: The school address, e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers, name of the principal, two teachers’ names, two students’ names, two class names, two courses/subject names, year of study boundaries (start/end dates), terms names and boundaries (semesters, trimesters, quarters).”

Every SchooLink pack consists of two clients (schools): Client 100, which is the sample school (with sample records) and Client 900, which is the real-life school—where the initial details/records are incorporated by the Israeli company as a starting point.

The firm also prepares a CD-ROM with your SchooLink pack and it takes “two minutes to load it.” To prepare the whole database for the school is a matter of 4-6 weeks, according to the software donors from Israel. Link Systems is situated at 20/A Golomb St, Tivon 36022, Israel. The e-mail contact is ashafir@orl.co.il

India Computes! is presented by Frederick Noronha, a freelance journalist based in Goa. He is the co-founder of BytesForAll, a voluntary, unfunded venture focusing on how IT and the Internet can benefit the common man, particularly in South Asia. To join the BytesForAll mailing list sign up at: https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/bytesforall_readers