HP Labs India

Infoworld.nl
March 08, 2006

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s HP Labs India is working on technology to integrate satellite TV with the Web, according to an executive at the lab.

The company will soon be testing with broadcasters a technology that allows a user to click on hyperlinks embedded in TV content, which will take the user to a Web site.

"We want to drive Internet traffic through television," said Ajay Gupta, director of the lab, speaking Thursday.

The opportunity for HP and the providers of these services is to monetize the clicks on the TV content, Gupta said. The return channel for the TV viewer could be a satellite uplink, a broadband connection, or a dial-up telephone line, he added.

HP Labs India is also doing field trials with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in Bangalore and the local Karnataka state government on technology that will enable satellite TV viewers to print out documents from their TV screen at the press of a button on the remote control of the TV.

"We can weave data into the audio and video signal, so that when people are watching the program, if they want to keep some data, they can print it out," Gupta said. The technology will enable government and other organizations to use the TV medium to disseminate important documents, he added.

A key criteria before taking up new development at the lab is to ensure that the technology can be deployed globally in some form, Gupta said. The lab has decided, for example, that TV is one of the best mediums to reach out to the masses in emerging economies, he added.

As part of its research in the area of pen-based interfaces, HP Labs India has developed a stylus sensitive touch-pad that enables users to enter text in the Devnagri script used in many Indian languages.

The Indian government and other local agencies have been promoting the use of local languages in computing, but the development of an input device for Indian languages has proven to be difficult. The Devnagri script, one of many scripts used in India, has over 40 basic characters, and some 12 modifiers to the characters that are represented above or below the basic characters. Most of the currently available input devices for Devnagri script consist of a complex overlay on top of a standard Roman script keyboard with a QWERTY layout, and it is difficult for users to operate, Gupta said.

The touchpad, which HP Labs India calls the "gesture keyboard", uses a combination of tapping and gestures. The touchpad has the basic characters and numbers of the Devnagri script on it. The character with the required modifier can be input into the computer by specific user gestures when tapping the basic character with a pen-based input device.

"The gesture keyboard is based on the way people would normally write the script, so people can learn to use it very quickly," Gupta said. The technology has already been tested in computer kiosks in Maharashtra state in western India.

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