News That Matter

• C-DAC [The institution that launched India into Supercomputing age] launched Pragati a Hindi web browser, which is based on Firefox. This is important, since there is much to be done in Indian languages computing, before Indian masses can interact with PC's and web in their local languages [via Quick Online Tips].

• Economic Times reports that India may offer free broad band services to her people at 2 mbps, within next 2 years. The cost will be a fraction of Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF). USOF is created out of annual deposit of 5 % of revenues of each cellular operator in India. It was supposed to be used for bridging the telecom devide that exists between urban and rural India. Incidentally, currently USOF burgeons at 9194.12 crore.

• AOL has launched its Indian version - AOL.in, which currently looks quite a basic portal.