Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Oct 23, 2006
ePaper
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Oct 23, 2006 ePaper |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home Page
-
Internet Info-Tech - Research & Development Industry & Economy - Rural Development Rural surfers find more uses for IT than agri-business Priyanka Vyas
USEFUL TOOL: A file photo of a rural Internet kiosk.
New Delhi , Oct. 22 The official perception is IT kiosks in the rural areas would be used for gathering price intelligence or land records and such mundane aspects of rural life. Now, a pilot survey of rural usage in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh using a new software tool developed by Microsoft shows how far off the mark this can be. In Maharashtra, for instance, agri-business usage accounts for a mere two per cent of the total usage. They use nearly a quarter of the total time (23 per cent) for reading newspapers online. While e-mail usage is the second highest at 19 per cent, checking examination results constitutes 15 per cent. Pornography is not far behind at 13 per cent. Sports (7 per cent), search engines (5 per cent), music (4 per cent) and job sites (3 per cent) followed in that order. Miscellaneous usage accounted for 9 per cent. Microsoft Research Labs carried out the 120-day tracking of 13 kiosks in the two States through a new software tool. The survey also revealed that Internet Explorer usage stood at 26 per cent in Maharashtra against 43 per cent in UP. Graphic packages such as Paints, Corel were being accessed by 28 per cent of users in Maharashtra against 19 per cent in UP. The usage of photographic tools and MS Office was reported at 9 and 15 per cent by the former and 21 and 17 per cent in the case of the latter. In many instances, kiosk operators were pursuing offline activities such as desktop publishing for printing wedding cards, photographs and dishing out printouts as a source of revenue. In a typical scenario, a student would probably run MS Office programmes for as long as an hour. In some cases, while the manual survey reports registered customer traffic of 20-30 people, the Microsoft's software tool logged only four. While Microsoft's tool could well have immense market potential, the survey reveals that so could the kiosks themselves. For instance, locally relevant job sites and retail information could make a lot of commercial sense. Microsoft's software computer-logging tool, `VibeLog' has been designed to check on the various kinds of usage rural kiosks are being put to. It can measure the number of persons accessing these kiosks and duration of use, Internet sites visited, e-mail clients in a day and the number of distinct e-mail ids logged on. To differentiate the users sessions, the software takes into consideration user time as well as idle sessions. And above all, it could be a mirror to the potential of information communication technology in the countryside.
Related Stories: More Stories on : Internet | Research & Development | Rural Development
Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page
|
Stories in this Section |
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | The Hindu ePaper | Business Line | Business Line ePaper | Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | The Hindu Images | Home |
Copyright © 2006, The
Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu Business Line
|
