INTERVIEWS and OPINIONS

22.04.2008 Kristine Pearson, chief executive of Freeplay Foundation, is the creator of the wind-up and solar-powered Lifeline radio, the first such initiative in the humanitarian sector. She emphasises the use of renewable and clean energy solutions to improve access to communication for the poor.

16.04.2008 Project Gutenberg (PG), an online source of books is a unique initiative to combine traditional printing with digital technology. Gregory Newby, the CEO, PG and Michael Hart, the founder-editor of the project highlight their new ventures and overall management of e-Books.

01.04.2008 From deployment of telegraph in 1854 to the age of Internet, Blackberries, iPods or Personal Digital Assistants, information and communication technology has traversed a long path. Thomas B. Riley, Executive Director, Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance, discusses the evolution of ICTs and assesses the wider changes in society due to their emergence.

25.03.2008 Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was in Mumbai, India to launch his new commercial venture ‘Wikia’. Here he shared his desire to increase local Indian language contributions on the site and the need to challenge spam content.

20.02.2008 Steve Buckley of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters was in India recently. Aware of the countless hurdles faced by community radio in the country, he said that the policy here was restrictive in nature.

25.10.2007 To capitalize on the inherent advantage of a hugely diverse society, organizations need to adopt a similar policy consciousness, says Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM. Innovation needs to be set free of pre-defined criteria of homogeneous processes and business models, and encourage inter-disciplinary interaction.

23.08.2007 ICT4D dgCommunity has taken an extensive interview of Barbara Fillip from the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and Mark Surman from Telecentre.org, on major telecenters' issues, the outputs of a recent publication untitled "Making the connection: Scaling Telecenters for development" .

14.08.2007 Vamshi Reddy and Shiva Bayyapunedi, Co-Founders and Directors of Apalya Technologies have been interviewed by egov magazine and discussed on the success and barriers of bringing informative entertainment into the hands of mobile users.

06.08.2007 The basis for the track on Digital Learning at eIndia 2007 was clearly pronounced by the keynote speakers when they spoke of increased outreach and inclusion; transformation of teachers into ‘senior’ learners and facilitators, and students into inquisitive explorers of the digital age; and gearing up of teaching-learning practices to the challenges of a society forty years from today.

03.08.2007 The Digital LEARNING magazine interviews Vikas Joshi, Chairman, and Managing Director of Harbinger Group who speaks about how his leadership at Harbinger has resulted in groundbreaking product innovations in the e-Learning industry.

27.07.2007 Director of Health and Human Services Industry, Microsoft Asia Pacific Gabe Rijpma tells the ehealth team about Microsoft's investments to NGOs and allocation for healthcare IT. The interview also explores Gabe's candid views about India's e-healthcare scenario.

27.07.2007 Citizen smart cards are a new revolution that provide a unique citizen number which is centralized in a national register of Indian citizens.It can bring the benefits of e-governance as the use of data warehousing and data mining could also help the government monitor its welfare schemes effectively.

24.07.2007 Egov magazine interviews Kuanishbek Esekeev, the Chairman of Agency for Informatisation and Communications, Republic of Kazakhstan on the development of IT-technologies and the vision of the National e-Government Programme of the country.

23.07.2007 Paul Horwitz who directs the Computer-Assisted Performance Assessment project, recommends coming up with new educational tools to help the students in more creative way.

12.07.2007 Sarbuland Khan, the executive coordinator of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID) in an interview to IPS, states that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers the best hope of empowering the poor and involving civil society in the development process. He hits out at governments that do not share information on water, health, food and sanitation.

09.07.2007 The Dubai e-Government initiative was launched in 2003 which put more than 2,600 government services online. Vikas Kanungo of m-GovWorld interviews the acting director of e-Services, Dubai e-Government department Ms. Rehab Lootah.

04.07.2007 Global IT Company Intel plans to take Africa to the next level in technology by introducing digital literacy in the continent. Dr Martina A. Roth, Director, Intel Education Group for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), speaks on the challenges in incorporating ICT in ways that support 21st-century skills.

04.07.2007 In Kenya e-learning activities are expanding the reach of university education, particularly among working professionals. Dr Speranza Ndege, Head of AVU Kenyatta University spoke on the need to remove taxation to make technology more affordable for the poor.

09.01.2007 With the Pakistan government considering the possibility of implementing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) policy with help from the United Arab Emirates a debate rages whether the UAE would like to buy laptops that may be more than its budget. Fouad Riaz Bajwa in Pakistan analyses the OLPC policy.

12.12.2006 Trade losses to software manufacturers due to piracy are as high as $125 billion. We need to interrogate why piracy of software, books, music etc exists as a market phenomenon. Could it be an organic market reaction to the exclusion of consumers by copyright industries? Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala take an indepth look into the prevailing market trends and consumer behaviour.