Entrepreneurship is an attitude. It’s the passion of creation. It’s an outlook on solving problems. It’s the embodiment of human resilience. It’s the vision of crossing the chasm. Sound fantastic? So, why don’t more people start (or work at) startups? Statistics stack the odds against most startups with about one out of ten chances of succeeding, and an even smaller chance to make it really big. But most failed entrepreneurs will tell you that they don’t regret having tried. To understand why, I will present a series of articles covering various topics related to startups and would like readers who are actively engaged in startups or have opinions on related subjects to come forward and contribute or collaborate. As a part of this thread, I will be presenting a few articles covering the experiences of successful and budding entrepreneurs — what better place to find answers than the life stories of people who took the plunge. Read the rest of this entry »
Dynamic Language Tools is a bookmarklet application which I have developed, which helps users read and write Urdu easily on any web page without installing any software. This tool uses the Google Transliteration API to do the on-demand transliteration of the roman script to Urdu script. This tool also provides on the fly Hindi to Urdu transliteration on the web-pages making all the Hindi content (in the Devanagari script) readable to Urdu readers.
Learning by Sharing: A New Business Model for Pakistan
Is division, confinement, and hierarchy of knowledge the model to create and sustain an organization in the upcoming decades? No. Read the rest of this entry »
Building an ICT R&D Eco-System in Pakistan: A Conversation with Dr Qasim Sheikh (Part 2-of-2)
On Funding Projects from the Industry
STEP: Till now, mostly you were funding projects in the academia. Would you be looking at funding projects that are directly initiated by the industry?
QS: We are supposed to fund projects submitted by the industry. Our proposal can be initiated by even an individual. But, being an entity that funds public money, the longevity of the institution to which we are giving money is very important to us. An individual can take the money (from us), work for a little while, and then disappear. What do we do then? Universities don’t disappear. They can provide longevity and credibility to the project. And, it is not (just) longevity for the length of that project but even after that. Read the rest of this entry »
Building an ICT R&D Eco-System in Pakistan: A Conversation with Dr. Qasim Sheikh (Part 1-of-2)
On the History of the Fund
STEP Editors: Let’s start with the history of the Fund, if you can tell us a little bit about it. We understand that it was in a dormant state before it was revitalized.
Dr. Qasim Shaikh, CEO, National ICT R&D Fund:
Yes, it was in a dormant state but, as I tell my team, I don’t think that we are the opening batsmen of this team. Actually, the Fund was created when PTCL was the only telecom operator (in the country). I think, and somebody has to correct me, that the key person who pushed (that) some of the PCTL’s earnings should go into research and development in Pakistan, like Bell Labs at ATT, was Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman. Then the Deregulation Act was passed and in the Deregulation Act it was mandatory that every telecom operator will have to contribute 0.5% of their revenue to the Fund. That included internet service providers as well, not just the large service providers. Since there were more contributors to the Fund than just PTCL, it didn’t make sense for it to stay within PTCL. So, it was taken out of PTCL and created as National ICT R&D Fund.
Research Highlight: Wiring Urdu to the 21st century
The reign of the English language over modern technology and the Internet may soon be at an end. Increasingly, local language technologies are emerging to challenge the role of English as the language of the web. Representing Urdu and other Pakistani languages at the forefront of this battle is the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP). For Dr. Sarmad Hussain, founding director of CRULP, and his team, developing the capacity of local language processing is not merely an intellectual exercise in machine processing research but their contribution to the global struggle, which aims to provide every human access to information regardless of the language they speak. Like the translators of Al-Mamun, the eighth Abbasid caliph, who translated and protected many of the classics of Greek, Indian, Persian and Chinese scholarship from the ash-heap of history, the team at CRULP is working to bridge the disconnect that exists between the wealth of knowledge available on the Internet and the large non-English speaking segment of Pakistani society. While this team may not have royal patronage like the Abbasid translators, who were paid in gold equal to the weight of the books that they translated, the dissemination of knowledge and the legacy of scholarship team CRULP leaves behind will be invaluable. I recently visited the CRULP headquarters at National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES), Lahore, where project manager Kiran Khurshid showed me around the CRULP lab and talked about the various projects currently in progress.
The overarching goal of CRULP is to develop local language processing technologies to provide people easy access to information regardless of the local language they speak. The traditional approaches to introducing technology into rural areas have involved providing schools and colleges with computers and expecting the locals to learn and adapt to modern technology. Dr. Hussein sees a fundamental flaw in this approach, in that they either fail to address or underestimate the two major barriers people face in using modern technology: illiteracy and language. With 45% of the population illiterate and most people unable to interact in English, it is impractical to expect them to use computers to access information through current technology. The team at CRULP aims to break the illiteracy barrier by developing Urdu Speech Recognition systems and Text to Speech systems to allow users to operate technology vocally. The language barriers are being tackled through the development of software in Urdu, examples of which include the SeaMonkey internet suite that provides users Urdu-based tools to make websites, surf the internet, email etc.
Pakistani Rescue Robot Participates in Robocup
A Pakistani robot participated in RoboCup 2009 for the first time in the competition’s history. The robot, named Saviour, was developed by a team of students from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (GIKI). Saviour is a rescue robot designed to find survivors in a disaster situation.
Dr. Zahid Ayub is the President of Isotherm, Inc., which is a manufacturer of heat transfer equipment in Arlington, TX. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas-Arlington and is a Technology Editor for the International Journal of Enhanced Heat Transfer. Among the honors Dr. Ayub has received are the Michigan New Product Award, ASHRAE Distinguished Service Award and ASHRAE Research Service Award. Dr. Ayub is also a Fellow of ASME and ASHRAE.
Seafood export from Pakistan to European Union (EU) countries was banned in early April 2007, after an EU team visited the Karachi and Korangi fish harbors to investigate quality standards at the fisheries facilities. Earlier, during a February 2005 trip, the EU team warned the Pakistani authorities about sub-standard quality at the harbors. This ban on all fish imports from Pakistan to the EU has resulted in a multi-million dollars loss. As quality standards normalize across the globe, the standard of quality in Pakistan’s fisheries could potentially cost millions more in revenue in coming years.
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| Fish rotting under the sun at local fisheries |
Linking Universities and Industries: A Win-Win Prospect
Editors Note: Dr. Tauseef Aized is a professor at the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore and a research fellow at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of STEP.
With the advent of the industrial revolution, the traditional role of higher learning institutions has been transformed from simply educating young people to creating and disseminating knowledge to the whole society. Every higher education institution needs enormous financial resources that, in our system, are typically provided through public funding. The state demands a return on its investment beyond traditional manpower development. Read the rest of this entry »
Google Launches Urdu Transliteration Tool
The vast majority of Pakistanis using the web are familiar only with English keyboards. Creating content in Urdu script is a slow and frustrating experience, as it requires either learning the Urdu keyboard layout, which is forced onto a keyboard designed for writing English, or using on-screen keyboards, which are useful but limited by the speed at which one can click the mouse. As a result, producing online content in Urdu script has mostly been limited to a small number of bloggers and commercial websites. For most users, writing Urdu using Roman script (transliteration) has become the main way of writing Urdu on computers. Transliteration is a technique that is used to do phonetic mapping of words written in one script (e.g. Arabic) to another script (e.g. Roman). For example, شکریہ transliterates into shukriya. While using Roman transliteration may be adequate for a lot of purposes (chatting), it leaves a lot to be desired from the perspective of people who prefer to read and write the language in its original script.
