[UgaBYTES] Fw: Spoken web from IBM India Research Lab

[ednah karamagi]

FYI
 

--- On Mon, 11/17/08, Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com>
Subject: Spoken web from IBM India Research Lab
To: chairman at mssrf.res.in, senthil at mssrf.res.in, v.balaji at cgiar.org
Date: Monday, November 17, 2008, 7:50 AM


Dear Professor:
Here is yet anotther development that is bringing the mobile phone to the centrestage of development. The next time you are in Delhi, you might wish to talk to Dr Guruduth Banavar, director of the IBM India research Laboratory. The MSSRF VillageKnowledge Centres in different states can test the new technology. 


Regards.

Arun
[Subbiah Arunachalam]


>From SciDev.Net

'Spoken web' aims to beat India's digital poverty trap


Source: New Scientist


13 November 2008 |
EN
| 

中文





The 'spoken web' is targeted at people who cannot read or afford a computer but have access to a cellphone.

A New Delhi-based research team is attempting to bring the power of the web to rural villagers ― without computers. 
The team from the IBM India Research Laboratory (IRL) is
testing a spoken version of the Internet targeted at people who cannot
read or afford a computer but have access to a cellphone. In India 300
million people use cellphones, up from zero a decade ago.
Guruduth Banavar, director of the IBM IRL, says this system
will help local communities by, for example, allowing farmers to sell
their own produce directly without going through a middleman, or
enabling an electrician who cannot afford a storefront to attract
customers, or allowing villagers to access health information.


The spoken web is a network of VoiceSites ― voice-based
websites that people create by calling the number for software named
VoiGen.
VoiGen ― developed by the IBM team ― guides the caller through
the process of setting up a VoiceSite, recording relevant information
such as contact details, and assigns a telephone number to each site.  
Callers to a VoiceSite number can switch from one site to
another by pressing a key or saying a word via a new protocol developed
by IBM called hyperspeech transfer protocol.
Tapan Parikh from the University of California, Berkeley, who
is working with the IBM team on the project, says this is a chance to
make "an entirely new kind of web".
Link to full article in New Scientist


References
New Scientist 2,679, 22 (2008)