Date:28/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/28/stories/2008122855731000.htm
Front Page Finally, in 2009, IT's your Internet Anand Parthasarathy - Photo : Special Arrangement Age no bar: Mohammedkutty Haji, 85, uses the Kerala government's e-krishi tool for videoconferencing to obtain a better price for his farm produce. Bangalore: When they write the history of the Internet Age, decades from now, chances are they'll look at the beginning of 2009 and say: That was the end of the beginning. That was when the Internet became free and open, for the first time. Not convinced? Consider these facts: The single biggest emerging product category in personal computing is what is called Net book or Mini Note: thin-n-light devices less than a kg in weight, with a 7 or 8-inch screen.These web browsers with a suite of office tools, a webcam and a basic picture editor can soon be expected for around Rs. 15,000. That is all we need to e-mpower ourselves with the Internet. With a pair of headphones and free software you can do a video web chat. Leap in consumer applications They're predicting that this will be 2009's biggest leap in consumer Internet applications. Mohammedkutty Haji did it even three years ago - and he was 85. He used the nearest Akshaya e-kendra in his native Malappuram, harnessing a Kerala government tool called e-krishi to discuss market rates for his farm produce before he harvested. Railway and bus bookings; local bill payments; job applications; registration of births and deaths; storing land records ... so much progress has been made in e-nabling these basic services that many families will for the first time see real value in a home PC. And if it becomes more affordable in 2009, the reason will be the increasing maturity of Open Source tools and applications. Today we have for free download robust desktop operating systems - like Ubuntu; a beefed up browser - Firefox or Chrome, Google's alternative; a full function productivity suite - OpenOffice; a cool imaging tool - GIMP ... the list grows daily. Going 'open' no longer means living dangerously. Unlimited storage The new shrunken PC alternatives run on power-efficient processors; they have little or no storage. But that does not matter. Web email applications offer virtually unlimited storage. Google Docs let you create and store documents online. Microsoft's sky drive gives you a 25 GB virtual hard drive. So all you really need is a fairly simple device to connect to the Net. The rest is out there. For, the Internet Protocol (IP) is the single biggest lever to lift ourselves into an increasingly connected tomorrow. When Vint Cerf, 'father of Internet', visited India a few years ago, he foresaw all this: He wore a T-shirt with the legend "IP on everything." The way he said it, stressing 'P' rather than 'I,' it meant something quite different (and naughty!). But those of us who heard him, can now, on the eve of 2009, look back and reflect, 'you said IT, man!' To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
