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Simputer team wins first Dewang Mehta award

Communications and IT Minister Pramod Mahajan on Friday announced the recipient of the first Dewang Mehta award for innovation in information technology.

The award instituted by the department of information technology in the ministry of communications and IT has been conferred to the project conceived by the Simputer team.

Simputer is a low cost, hand-held device with multiple connectivity option, based on free software open source initiative.

Its primary input is a touch-sensitive LCD display panel. It is based on GNU/Linux software technology that is open and modular. It enables the use of smart card reader/writer. Simputer is targetted as a shared computing device for a local community of users like village panchayats, village school, a kiosk, or a shopkeeper.

Simputer also has text-to-speech capability in a variety of Indian languages, and can have a wide range of applications some of which are - microbanking, data collection, Internet access, agricultural information, the school laboratory, general purpose citizen's ID card, driving license, land records, income tax records, passport, bank passbook and digital cash.

This award was constituted after the demise of Dewang Mehta, on April 12, 2001, and has been instituted as a mark of respect to his memory and to commemorate his contribution to the IT industry.

The simputer project was conceived by seven trustees drawn from the faculty of computer science and automation at the Indian Institute of Science and Encore Software Limited (formerly Encore Technologies). The recipient of the award shall receive Rs 500,000.

The Simputer team recognised by this award consists of three members of Encore -- Vinay L Deshpande, managing trustee, co-founder, chairman and CEO, Shashank Garg and Mark R Mathias, and Swami Manohar, V Vinay, Vijay Chandru and Ramesh Hariharan from IISc.

UNI

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