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. ************************************************************************ ******************************************** 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 ************************************************************************ ******************************************* 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@yahoo.com http://nettalk2.tripod.com/