Simple - and stupendous

Sqn Ldr B.G. Prakash

TALKING of a Global village is all very fine, but it calls for a low-cost, information-access device which people in rural areas can use to connect to the Internet. This is something developing economies really need.

Bangalore IT.com 1998 saw some movement towards such a trend with a paper being presented at the accompanying conference to develop a low-cost, mass-access device using the local language for information technology. The IT wave sweeping the world has largely been seen as an urban-centric phenomenon. In India, it is the English-speaking urban elite that has been influenced by the PC revolution.

To help the less knowledgeable, the concept of the Simputer was developed. Today, the Simputer is raring to take off in India, several companies have shown interest in developing it. But before we eventually use one, let's understand the fundamentals of a Simputer.

What's in a name?

First things first. Why the name Simputer? It is an acronym -- Simple, Inexpensive, Multilingual, People's compUTER. It also represents SIMPle compUTER.

The Simputer is not a PC. It can be a pocket computer. It is more powerful than a Palmtop or the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). It has a screen size of 320x240 pixels, monochrome LCD display, memory of 32 MB RAM supported by an operating system GNU/Linux.

It runs on an Intel strong-arm chip SA 1110, with low power consumption. Three AAA batteries power the Simputer, which makes it suitable in rural areas without commercial electricity supply. The strong-arm chip is a Reduced Instruction Set Computing, RISC processor. Linux is already ported to the strong-arm. The system software is Linux-based. Since the Simputer has fewer resources than a PC, Linux needs to be tapered down to the barest minimum to retain the required basic functionality. A comprehensive software development kit is being made available.

There are two options to enter the text. One is a soft keyboard that can be brought up on the touch screen and one character at a time can be entered with a finger tip touch on the required icon. Another option is by using character entry software called tap-a-tap; any one character needs three taps on a 3/3 matrix. It has multiple connectivity options. A universal serial bus, USB keyboard can be attached to enter large volumes of data. But the designers do not recommend that Simputer be used as a mass data entry device. Speakers to activate audio, a 33.6 Mbps modem and a microphone are built in.

Local flavour

The Simputer is Unicode-compliant, and has an innovative Text-to-Speech (TTS) system with a speech dictionary that is customisable for different Indian languages. Audio is used in the form of Text to Speech, TTS and as audio snippets. Kannada, Hindi and very recently Tamil are currently supported.

Innovative IML

Hyper Text ML (HTML) is the well-known language used on the Web/Internet. PCs need HTML. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is of more recent origin, developed for small, hand-held devices such as the cell-phone and pager with limited processing capacity and limited display size.

Information Markup Language (IML) has been created by the developers to suit the unique needs of the Simputer. IML is an XML-based application. It supports the tools in XML technology. At any point of time, the hardware in Simputer can be of any of the three categories -- high-end, mid-range and the low-end; IML caters to the midrange.

IML is designed to be positioned between HTML and XML. It helps in hand-helds (pocket computer) which need more processing power, better display resolution, more capacity than hand-held devices, using the Wireless Application Protocol, WAP, but with capacity less than that of a desktop PC.

A Simputer user only sees the IML browser, which is at the front end. A prototype Simputer has browser implementation in Perl/Tk and is called imli browser. Each system that uses IML transaction uses a daemon called imlid - iml daemon. The IML browser facilitates acceptance of requests from external sources to imlid, which in turn decides if the request is from an internal or from an external resource - local or remote.

Applications

Ease of use has to be an important guiding principle if this device is to gain popularity. A low-cost version may be targeted at the home user, whereas a slightly higher functionality version can be designed for use in ``Web kiosks'' where people can surf the Internet at their convenience.

The Simputer can also leverage telephone lines and enable users to enjoy a new level of service from their Internet Service Provider. This could be in areas as diverse as Web-enabled e-mail access, home banking, home shopping, educational services and new forms of entertainment.

The Simputer can also be used in schools to allow them to offer Internet access to their students at relatively low cost. Self-learning educational programmes using local language, laboratory experiments, precautions and procedures and information search engines can be developed on the Simputer. It is a tool that can be used in distance education.

A community of users can share a machine - especially ideal in the village panchayat.

Census bureau operations, sample surveys and other such community activities depend on an accurate data collection mechanism. Here too, the Simputer can help.

Agricultural information needs to percolate to the local level. Dissemination of information to farmers on crops, fertilisers, irrigation, finance, farm equipment, weather, etc are some essential routine activities that can become comprehensive with the use of such hand-held devices.

The annual planning and budgeting system for villages and towns can use the Simputer with Linux-based Geographic Information System and monitor the progress too.

Micro banking is another application. Small, village-level cooperative banks seek to tap rural clients. Small portable devices make this more effective.

Electronic commerce, online banking, multi-purpose citizen cards are possible with the Smart card application. The Simputer accommodates a Smartcard reader, unlike in the palmtop. The Smart card circuitry uses Philips TDA 8008. IML is compatible with Smartcard technology.

Disaster management is another area to be explored, where this can be used effectively.

The rural masses and school laboratories can effectively use the Simputer and help spread computer knowledge. Providing wireless Internet connectivity and a colour display in place of monochrome are the next challenges to the Simputer.

(The author is a Bangalore-based freelance writer.)