[LIS-Forum] Some good Websites and News Items

[Madhuresh]

IOSN (http://www.iosn.net/): The International Open Source Network
(IOSN) is a Center of Excellence for FOSS in the Asia-Pacific Region. It
shapes its activities around Free/Open Source Software (FOSS)
technologies and applications. Via a small secretariat, the IOSN is
tasked specifically to facilitate and network FOSS advocates and human
resources in the region. The vision is that developing countries in the
Asia-Pacific Region can achieve rapid and sustained economic and social
development by using affordable yet effective FOSS ICT solutions to
bridge the digital divide. IOSN is an initiative of the Asia-Pacific
Information Development Programme (APDIP), which has been supporting the
strategic and effective use of Information Communication Technology
(ICT) for poverty alleviation and sustainable human development in the
Asia-Pacific region since 1997. The site offers FOSS resources
categorized by the country, News items, Events, Organizations and other
articles. The site also gives the details of localization effort like
developing/developed s/w in various Indian languages, Training
Materials, Documentation, Tutorials, FOSS in Education, FOSS and
Government etc.

FreshPatents (http://www.freshpatents.com/): A good website for tracking
new patents and technologies. It gives the latest published US patent
applications each week BEFORE the USPTO decision to grant/deny. One can
register with it freely to monitor any keyword and when it finds any
match, it will send an email. One can also search and browse by Location
(currently it shows 355 applications from India); Industry; Inventors
(Inventors directory); and Agents (Patent Agents & Law Firms Directory)
and allows search in Title/Abstract.
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PCtvt to bridge the digital divide

R RAVICHANDRAN

Hyderabad, Jan 4: If all goes well, soon India will find the deployment
of the most-talked-about PCtvt, the low-cost one-in-all multi-function
information appliance with the potential to function as a TV, PC, video
phone, IP phone and multimedia, in villages across the country soon. 

Expected to bridge the digital divide and to educate the economically
and educationally weaker sections in the country - particularly those in
the villages - the PCtvt, being developed by the Carnegie Mellon
University in collaboration with International Institute of Information
Technology (IIIT) of Hyderabad and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) of
Bangalore, will provide an affordable technology to empower the rural
folk by giving more importance to voice, video communication than
reading and writing. 

Speaking to FE here, Praveen Garimella, director of the PCtvt project in
India and part of the Carnegie Mellon University team working on this
project said: "The PCtvt is a new device to bridge the digital divide
for those economically weaker classes with easy affordability to
communicate through audio and video." 

Eminent robotics expert Professor Raj Reddy of the Carnegie Mellon
University was instrumental in the project. Expected to carry a low
price tag of $250 when commercially launched across the globe, PCtvt has
been designed in a special way by equipping it with multi-lingual
applications, communication and entertainment, video/IP phone systems,
web camera and all entertainment applications like cable channels
viewing, personal video recorder, talking newspaper, etc to enable the
poor masses to enjoy and communicate with the rest of world, Mr
Garimella said further. 

"With functions like remote TV system, speech recognition, keyboard,
mouse, cell phone, web camera and all iconic interfaces, an illiterate
can learn and understand things fast with voice-mail and video help if
not through email and text-based help," the official said adding it has
a radically simple design with one minute training time, double-click
model and three modes of communication - video, audio and text in both
synchronous and asynchronous modes. 

Based on a study, it was found that for most people in a village,
entertainment and communication are of greater importance than PC
functionality. "Poverty and illiteracy are no longer a barrier in using
and benefiting from technology and the PCtvt is the simplified and easy
appliance to help bridge the digital divide," Mr Garimella pointed out. 

With the multi-lingual applications and software, a villager can
communicate and enjoy the entertainment in different languages of their
choice. 

"Currently, the appliance has been designed to use in four Indian
languages - Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi - and will add other
languages once the product is commercially launched," he said.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=78816
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SAARC to set up traditional knowledge digital library

New Delhi, Jan 3  The member-countries of the South Asian Association
for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) have decided to set up a traditional
knowledge digital library (TKDL) with a view to protect the region from
any possible acts of biopiracy and misappropriation of traditional
knowledge in the near future. 

A model legal framework has been drafted and circulated to
member-countries for framing notional legislation recognising TKDL. 

Speaking to FE, director of Saarc Documentation Centre (SDC) Dr VK Gupta
said, "The TKDL database will be provided to patent offices across the
globe under non-disclosure agreement. This will help them to examine the
case before granting patent rights on any subject pertaining to
traditional knowledge. Even if they, by mistake, grant patent rights
over any aspect of traditional knowledge which is already documented and
given to them, this can be challenged without payment of any fees and
the concerned patent office will be under obligations to revoke the
wrongly granted patent rights. Otherwise the cost of challenging a
single patent right in patent offices in the US and Europe equals to the
total investment required for setting up of a TKDL." 

India is the only country in the world to set up a TKDL and we are
urging all countries in the South Asia to set up a common TKDL for the
region, he said. 

Mr Gupta said India needs to enact appropriate legislation to protect
traditional knowledge from infringement. "So far we have Biological
Diversity Act to protect bio recourses. But there are other aspects of
traditional knowledge like traditional medicines, foods, farm practices,
architecture and construction, tribal knowledge and traditional
expressions like handicrafts, handloom, folk music, museum which need
similar protection through law," he said. 

The TKDL set up in India has already documented the public domain
knowledge on Ayurveda (36,000 slokas) in a digitised format and the
information is available in English, Spanish, German, French and
Japanese. It has a traditional knowledge resource classification system
based on the international patent classification. It provides
information classified under sections, classes, sub-classes, groups and
sub-groups and has expanded one IPC group related to medicinal plants to
about 5000 sub-groups. The cost involved in documenting Ayurveda slokas
was Rs 1.25 crore. 

The decision to set up a Saarc TKDL was taken at a two-day workshop
convened by jointly SDC, National Institute of Science Communication and
Information Resources (NISCAIR) last week in Delhi, said Dr Gupta. 

The Saarc TKDL will also have an innovative uniform structured
traditional knowledge resource classification (TKRC) for systematic
arrangement, dissemination and retrieval which may be TK independent of
region or country. 

The framework will encompass various aspects of traditional knowledge
including materials used for treatment like plants, animal products,
minerals, their generic or specific method of preparations or designs,
their dosage, mode and time of administration, therapeutic action or
indication or application of traditional knowledge. 

With respect to components of biodiversity digital library (CBDL), TKDL
will be created using the taxonomic hierarchical structure of
Whittaker's five kingdom classification, namely, Monera, Protoctista,
Fungi, Animalia and Plantae and modern phylogenetic classification
system.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=78706 



Madhuresh Singhal
Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited,
Electronic City, phase II, Hosur Road,
Bangalore 560100
Phone 28521314-16 Ext.- 422
Mobile 98861 82822
E-mail: madhureshsinghal at yahoo.com
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