WWTW: the world wide telecom web (original) (raw)

WWTW

Proceedings of the 2007 workshop on Networked systems for developing regions - NSDR '07, 2007

Spoken Web: A Parallel WWW in Developing Regions

The Spoken Web is a voice-based equivalent of the World Wide Web (WWW), developed by IBM Research Laboratory, India, primarily designed for rural and semi-urban people to provide information of value to them through their mobile or landline phones. It will also help the government / industry / micro-business to reach out to rural population with their offerings and help the people at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The vision is to create an information ecosystem that helps provide Internet-like information services through phones.

Swar-Suchak: Open source voice enabled information retrieval system

2011

The constant improvement of both hardware and software related to mobile computing is enhancing the capabilities of mobile devices. The present day mobile phones can run rich stand alone applications as well as distributed client-server applications that access information via a web gateway. This changed environment brings new opportunities as well as constraints for mobile application developers. A move towards open source software offers several advantages for application developers and operating system vendors. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how voice enabled mobile applications can be deployed economically using only open source software to access information from the Web. Swar-Suchak is a voice enabled mobile application for information retrieval in multiple languages. We describe two applications running on Swar-Suchak using the open source Android platform. By linking a mobile phone to a voice gateway, built with open source software, we are able to develop voice enabled web applications which are accessible ubiquitously by anyone, anytime.

VOIce-based Community-cEntric mobile Services for social development Grant Agreement Number 269954

2011

There is widespread agreement that ICT services have the potential to play a major role in furthering social development in developing economies such as those in Africa. However, while there is a great deal of potential and opportunity, the amount and scope of actual mobile ICT services currently in existence in African countries is very limited. The Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap, recently published as a result of the FP7 Digital World Forum project, makes it clear that realizing the potential of mobile ICT services requires addressing two major types of challenges:1. The leveraging of content that is locally relevant; and2. The removal of a range of access barriers, notably limitations related to access channels, literacy, and languages. VOICES intends to take a major step forward in realizing the potential of mobile ICT services particularly in the African context and resolve key challenges outlined in the Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap. To this end, the obj...

Voice Interfaces for Underserved Communities

Introduction to Development Engineering

Internet technologies – like social media platforms and discussion forums – have transformed how people communicate with each other. In addition to improving access to information, news, and entertainment, they have impacted governance, politics, civil society movements, crisis response, marketplaces, and healthcare, among other parts of our lives. Although concerns regarding data misuse, privacy breaches, and overuse have grown recently, these technologies are continuing to soar, mostly among literate, urban, and connected communities, all across the world. However, despite their promises (and pitfalls), these technologies currently exclude billions of people worldwide who are too remote to access the Internet, too low-literate to navigate the mostly text-driven Internet, or too poor to afford Internet-enabled devices. This chapter presents the innovation, implementation, and adaptation of voice forums that have evolved over the last two decades, discusses challenges that plagued t...