Information Society Watch

July 5, 2007, Choe Sang Hun, New York Times

In South Korea, the paradigm of the Internet search is being transformed from the Google model to a real-time question-and-answer platform featuring local language content. South Korea's leading search portal, Naver.com, fosters a sense of community and human interaction by relying on volunteers to generate content.

December 12, 2007, Michael Geist, BBC News

In this article Michael Geist looks at the potential impact of the next wave of Internet users, the kinds of usage models applicable to them and the way the Internet itself will have to adapt to cater to this 'next billion'.

May 15, 2007, Tectonic

A new project titled 'EduWiki' aims at having a wide range of information relevant to modern South African families especially focusing on their community needs. The creator of the project, Shaugn Vorster explains that modern South African families do not have the old community frameworks and this project aims to plug this gap by providing community level information.

May 2, 2007, UNESCO

The state government of Kerala through it's state wide ICT project Akshaya with support from UNESCO is going to create community portals in the local language (Malayalam). The portal will comprise vital information such as government schemes,information regarding agriculture, business ventures,products,local job vacancies, educational details,health information, legal rights and so on.

April 2005, Linda Leung, Ashgate Publishing

In this book, the author makes a pioneering exploration of ethnic minority presence in cyberspace. She finds that despite the apparent white, Western, male, middle class profile of cyberspace, there is significant ethnic minority activity.

October 20, 2006, Amy Yee, Financial Times

Yahoo! is joining the growing trend of localisation, i.e. programmes developed for regional languages, with the launch of its local language chat in India. The new program allows users to chat in Hindi and Tamil without any need for a language keyboard by typing phonetically on the English keyboard, which will automatically be converted to the vernacular scripts.

2004, Sana Gul, Information for Development

The author contends that language barriers are a large restriction to ICT access in the country, given the fact that only 20 percent of literate Pakistani citizens speak English, the lingua franca of the Internet.

July 2006, Gumisai Mutume, Africa Renewal

This article discusses the $300 million East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) expected to be completed in 2007. This system will, among other functions, support broadband Internet connections that transmit information at up to 40 times the speed of dial-up telephone links.

June 2005, Anousak Souphavanh and Theppitak Karoonboonyanan, Asian Pacific Development Information Programme

This primer provides a broad perspective on the localisation of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) for the benefit of policy- and decision-makers in developing countries.

2005, Sarmad Hussain, Nadir Durrani and Sana Gul, International Development Research Centre (IDRC)

This report is an effort to document the state of localisation in Asia. The survey looked at the extent to which twenty Asian languages and their scripts have been localised, reporting on the development of standards and basic and advanced localisation applications in these languages.