India

It appears that ISPs all across India have been ordered by the Indian government to block a number of key websites on the Internet.

ISPs are believed to have been asked to block sites like bloodspot.com, hinduhumanrights.org, hinduuni-ty.org and clickatell.com, besides frontline blogs like the Google-owned blogsp-ot.com. Deepak Maheshwari, secretary of ISP Association of India said: “We have received a letter from DoT, asking us to block around 18 URLs.”

Though the communication, dated July 13, by the telcom department to ISPs lists specific pages/ websites, several ISPs have blocked all blogs because they were not equipped to filter specific pages. This could be because all websites hosted on blogspot.com, for instance, have the same IP address.

Officials defended the decision saying, "We would like those people to come forward who access these (the 12) radical websites and please explain to us what are they missing from their lives in the absence of these sites."

Point topic recently released figures on world-wide DSL usage with India figuring prominently in the list for the first time. As of March 2006, India was estimated to have 1,088,935 subscribers, ranking 22nd overall.

Of the established nations, with more than one million DSL subscribers as at 31 March 2006, India topped the percentage growth ranking, increasing its subscriber base by more than 700% in twelve months. Significant subscriber increases were also made in Turkey (190% increase), Mexico (99%) and Australia (84.6%). Pakistan growth (484%) led the way in countries with less than one million DSL subscribers, with Morocco, Greece and Bulgaria all experiencing DSL growth of more than 200%.

Sources: Point Topic, DSL Forum [PDF].

Janabhaaratii, a localisation project initiated by C-DAC Mumbai in 2004, is looking for contributors.

The company announced that it would build the translators' familiarity with Indian language text-processing on the Free Software GNU/Linux platform, teach about different kinds of translations and issues involved, and offer tools to support translations.

Janabhaaratii is working to localise Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS). Its plans include contributing to the community efforts in developing a software suite based on GNU/Linux and made available in Indian languages.

Full story: Economic Times.

However much of a misnomer it might be, the Indian gaming scene has seen a lot of press off late including an article on Wired.

Tangible progress will be marked by the first Indian participation in the Electronic Sports World Cup, which kicks off June 30 in Paris. Earlier this month, 162 regional qualifiers from nine Indian cities came to New Delhi -- including 8-year-old Rohan Karir, a TrackMania prodigy -- to compete for 10 tickets to Paris and a shot at some of the $400,000 ESWC prize money. All told, more than 20,000 Indians competed, making it one the biggest national gaming tournaments ever.

Article link: Wired.

India's mobile music industry will apparently soon overtake its conventional counterpart, with projected sales for 2006 set at INR 7.2 billion.

Airtel has a subscriber base of 20m, out of which 6m use mobile music services. During the last financial year, the company registered about 50m downloads. This year, music downloads are slated to go up as the company adds more subscribers.

For instance almost all operators have launched an "Easy Music" service that allows subscribers to walk into a mobile phone outlet, choose their favorite music from a huge catalogue of music in as many as 20 languages and download onto their mobile phones -- or even other digital devices like iPod -- for as little as 15 cents each for a Hindi song or 30 cents for an international song.

The Google foundation has chosen to support PlanetRead, a non-profit organisation that promotes literacy in India and elsewhere through the use of SLS.

The SLS method leverages the reach of TV and a "national passion for songs" of Hindi cinema as well as folk and devotional music.

Existing TV song programmes are subtitled in the same language as the audio. As villagers read along the lyrics they hum - and without realising it themselves - their literacy skills are growing.

ET has an interesting article overviewing the impact of various technology initiatives in rural India including the following gem:

Started under the governement's Grameen Sanchar Sevak scheme, a postman totes mobile phone along with letters. Postmen carry WLL (wireless in local loop) phones while delivering mail. Residents can use the phone to make calls, both local and STD for certian charge. The service is targeted at people who do not own a telephone.