Product Description
www.Raftaar.com is world’s first integrated search engine in Hindi. It allows users to query in Hindi and search across all Hindi sites. A simple user interface is designed to enable typing in Hindi by a wide spectrum of people comprising at one end who recognize the English alphabets on the keyboard and can relate to the sounds associated with them and at the other end are those who have no idea about English and thus can use on screen keyboard to type in Hindi.

Raftaar’s search algorithm ensures that one gets the most relevant results, which are categorized to enable easier search experience. To help the user further, the spell check and related word option help to refine the search with ease. The cache results ensure that one can see any site in a standard Unicode font. The Raftaar index presently has the largest set of searchable Hindi pages.

It has the largest set of indexed Hindi web Pages-standardized pages from all the sites so that you do not need to download new fonts. Besides, it has the capability to convert all the fonts available. The other features include the first integrated online spell checker in Hindi, the first integrated online Hindi thesaurus, on the hour crawling of latest news, tracking of Hindi blogs and first Hindi search bar that can easily be integrated with any site. It can also be scaled to work for all Brahmi based scripts.

Citation
Raftaar fills the gap, which was long over due, considering India’s vast population of software professionals and their widely reported acumen. The technology was not thrust on the user, but was used as an enabler keeping in mind the target group’s need and their disadvantages.

The Raftaar Team understood that the average user in Hindi will not be computer literate or for that matter even comfortable with English usage. Thus his/her needs are different from the tech-savvy English literate urban user. This insight was translated in deploying the first Hindi user interface that can enable even primary dropouts to access the Internet. It also paid attention to comprehend Indian language complexities such as Devanagari script, the issue of fonts and morphology. Raftaar opens doors for similar initiatives in other local languages.

Producer
Peeyush Bajpai
Raftaar Team
Organisation
Indicus Netlabs Pvt. Ltd.
Location
Delhi
Telephone
011 – 42512400
09810386143
Email
peeyush@raftaar.in
URL
www.raftaar.com
Technology/Medium
Web/Internet
Language
Hindi

Product Description
puzha.com is an interactive web site dedicated to the advancement of Malayalam literature, development of language tools and archiving and preservation of local (traditional and to some extent tribal) knowledge base and folklore of Kerala.

The web site is maintained by a voluntary team spread around the globe and a dedicated team based out of Kochi, Kerala. Malayalam books can be ordered from the online bookstore associated with this web site, to anywhere in the world. puzha.com encourages readers to contribute their works. To publish online, puzha.com provides tools that are easy to use. With a mix of high quality content reviewed by editors and the content self-published by readers, and features to discuss the content, puzha.com is an attractive site for Malayalam literature and Kerala culture aficionados.

Founded in 2000 by two graduates from IIT, Bombay and doctoral student from Cochin University of Science and Technology, puzha.com dedicates one channel for publishing local folklore and knowledge base, in association with the Naattarivu Patana Kendram in Thrissur, who gathers and archives such valuable information which would be lost otherwise due to the diminishing power of traditional methods to preserve such valuable treasures of human experience and creativity, which have been carried forward through centuries. It is one of the exclusive of Kerala related content available on the Internet and set an example for other regions in India to follow.

Citation
Puzha.com is more than a home away from home for the Malayalees living outside Kerala. The initiative not only entertains, but is aware of its responsibility of preserving all that is gold for the future generations to carry forward the human zeal for excellence.

Its Classics channel publishes ancient Malayalam classics and works of prominent writers of yore. Kerala has a thriving culture of little magazines. puzha.com helps publishers of those little magazines to go online by letting them having a dedicated channel for their magazine. The Kids channel is a great source of kids stories and poems for Malayalees around the world who want to read stories to their children in Malayalam.

Innovation pays. Puzha developed its own language tools to facilitate the web site production and some of those tools like Chowara text editor and a Malayalam font are freely downloadable, which are popular with Malayalees. The Malayalam font Chowara is the first Malayalam font that is compatible with typewriter keyboard and that made it very easy to be used in large scale Malayalam text processing.
ProducerSuviraj Padiyath
Organisation
eKA Internet Technologies
Location
Kerala
Telephone
0484 – 2629729
9847046266
Email
editor@puzha.com
editor.puzha@gmail.com
URL
www.puzha.com
Technology/Medium
Web/Internet
Language
Malayalam

Product Description
Lipi Toolkit is an open source toolkit for the creation of handwriting recognition (HWR) engines for local languages and scripts. It aims to facilitate development of handwriting recognition engines for new scripts, and creation of natural handwriting-based user interfaces in local languages for real-world applications in personal computing, e-governance and education.

The toolkit provides tools, algorithms, scripts and sample code necessary to support a gamut of activities ranging from handwriting data collection and annotation, training and evaluation of recognizers, packaging of engines and their integration into pen-based application. It aims to satisfy the requirements of a diverse set of users, such as HWR researchers, potential vendors with an interest in commercializing HWR technology, do-it-yourself enthusiasts and application developers. The first version of the toolkit focuses on isolated online handwritten shape and character recognition.

Citation
HWR is a core technology, which allows the creation of natural handwriting-based user interfaces in local languages for real-world applications in personal computing, e-governance and education-a vital component in reducing the digital divide and dispersing the benefits of information technology to a large population.

As no mature HWR technology exists for the Indic (and many other) languages and scripts, and the open source Lipi Toolkit attempts to bridge this gap by providing a set of generic tools and algorithms to bootstrap and catalyze the creation of HWR technology.

For researchers in handwriting recognition, the toolkit should serve as a research bed to experiment with new algorithms. For a certain class of do-it-yourself enthusiasts, it should allow the creation of engines for new shapes and scripts out of the box, without requiring much knowledge of the algorithms. For a potential vendor interested in building commercial HWR engines, it should support the building of robust engines for new scripts. Finally, for the application developer, it should allow easy integration of engines built using the toolkit into any pen-based application.
ProducerSriganesh Madhvanath
Organisation
HPLabs India
Location
Karnataka
Telephone
080 – 25042218
09845446744
Email
srig@hp.com
URL
www.hpl.hp.com/india/lipitk
Technology/Medium
Offline/Application/Hardware
Language
Supports Local Languages