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Success
stories in Software changed perceptions of India across the
globe ,among the governments, institutions, media and business
, but ordinary man's perception of a nation are still influenced
more by branded products, physically visible and used by him.
As on now, there are too few products with `made in India'
label, exciting the buyers in the tough and competitive global
market. Many experts feel that in the era of consumerism ,only
branded consumer products can change the perceptions of India
for better. Will Simputer, the most talked about Indian innovation
will be the first big ticket event?
The
Simputer is positioned as Mobile computing and Info communication
platform. It is a low cost portable alternative to PCs, a
shared devices that permit truly simple and natural user interfaces
based on sight, touch and audio.The Simputer meets these demands
through a browser for the Information Markup Language (IML).
The projected cost of the Simputer is about Rs 9000 at large
volumes. The Smart Card feature that the Simputer provides
enables the Simputer to be shared by a community. A local
community such as the village panchayat, the village school,
a kiosk, a village postman, or even a shopkeeper should be
able to loan the device to individuals for some length of
time and then pass it on to others in the community. The Simputer,
through its Smart Card feature allows for personal
information management at the individual level for an unlimited
number of users.
The
Simputer Trust is the coming together of academics and technologists
from industry with a broad imperative of harnessing the potential
of the Simputer for the benefit of all sections of society.
The vision of this non-profit trust is to promote the Simputer,
not as an end product but as an evolving platform for social
change. The Trust comprises a unique combination of individuals
with a diverse skills from Computer Science and Automation
at the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore) and from Encore
Software Ltd (Bangalore). The Trustees are Vijay Chandru (IISc),
Vinay Deshpande (Managing Trustee, Encore), Shashank Garg
(Encore), Ramesh Hariharan (IISc), Swami Manohar (IISc), Mark
Mathias (Encore), and V Vinay (IISc). Rahul Matthan (Trilegal)
is the legal counsel for the Simputer Trust and has played
a key role in definining the Simputer General Purpose License.
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