Contribute to UID project

Everyone has been hearing about the UID project. Now there is a opportunity for you to contribute to the most ambitious project of the Indian govt. The UID project is going to go into a collaborative mode. Those experienced in open source technologies can try their luck.

You can involve yourself on the client side software development of UID. Since the magnitude of the project is huge without the active support and involvement of people it will not be easy to accomplish. There is an invitation to community developers to contribute to this national mission and develop client software. Currently the authority is seeking client software developed in any operating system and any standard development language like C, C++, java etc. Developers can also develop some key modules like address normalization, transliteration modules etc. that can be integrated with the client software through well defined APIs. The APIs will be defined and a set of standards will be released soon.

Well not that you can just develop any software and give, there are set of rules that you will need to follow. The rules that are proposed at this stage and are not finalized yet. The finalization will happen based on the input from the development community.

Below are some of the rules proposed at this stage:

1. Any Company or an existing open source project and even individual developers (each of these categories will, henceforth, be described as Developer) may volunteer to undertake the development of the entire Client Software or a module of it.

2. When a Developer undertakes to develop the Client Software or a module of it, the Developer should inform the Authority. The Authority will give the Developer a registration number(Registered Developer). This will, however, be given only to those who, in the opinion of the Authority, demonstrate a potential for positive contribution to the achievement of the objective.

3. The Registered Developers may seek answers and participate in discussions among other registered developers and/or with UIDAI regarding the software specifications and requirements using the collaboration environment setup by the Authority during the course of software development cycle.

4. Authority is under no obligation to accept the ideas and codes developed. Acceptance and evaluation of the codes submitted is at the sole discretion of the Authority. Further, the Authority does not make any guarantees with respect to answering questions within a prescribed time.

5. When a Registered Developer feels that the software or a module is fit for trials by the Authority, the source-code may be submitted to the Authority along with the Manual and other documentation using the code submission tools and procedures setup by the Authority. If the Authority is of the view (in its sole discretion and assessment) that the code developed could be useful to the UID project, the Authority may ask for further help from the concerned Registered Developer in improving the functionality or any other aspect as deemed necessary. The Registered Developer may be invited by the Authority to give the final shape to the product.

6. If the Client Software or a module developed by any Developer is accepted by the Authority for implementation in the field for enrolment, the contribution of the Registered Developer will be recognized. However, the source code, documentation and IPR will belong to the Authority. Accordingly, the Registered Developer will be required to enter into appropriate agreements transferring all rights and intellectual property to the Authority for their product and contribution.

7. This effort for creation of the enrollment software is completely voluntary and the Authority is under no obligation to provide any financial incentive or consideration to the concerned Registered Developer for the product.

8. The use of design / drawings/ or any other material by the developer in writing the enrollment software shall be fully at the risk and liability of the developer. UIDAI shall not be liable for IPRviolation on this account and shall not be made a party to any court proceeding on this account.

9. The Authority reserves the right to open source any part or in full, any of these components and contributions in the future for the betterment of the community.

10. The Authority reserves the right to change/ cancel any specification, requirement, change tools, architecture, or any part of the system as required.

11. During the development of the software component, a Developer will have the discretion to share/ not share the source code with other developer. However, once the code is submitted and accepted by the Authority, the Authority can make the source code available to with a view to further enhancements/improvements or additions for any additional features.

All interested Developers may send their intentions to participate in this collaborative effort to enrolmentsw@uidai.gov.in. They should send the details of the developers who will work on this project and their brief resume and their proposal of work. They should also send their contact details (email and phone numbers etc. so that they may be contacted if required.

You can read more details from the official site here

You can climb walls like Spiderman

It may soon be possible to walk on walls like Spiderman with American researchers claiming to have invented a device that could lead to development of shoes or gloves which would stick and unstick to walls and also bear load.

Researchers at Cornell University have created a palm-sized device that uses water surface tension as an adhesive bond, journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported on Wednesday.

According to lead researcher Paul Steen, the device, using rapid adhesion mechanism, could lead to such development of the shoes or gloves that stick and unstick to walls, or postit-like notes that can bear loads.

The team took inspiration from a beetle native to Florida, which can adhere to a leaf with a force 100 times its own weight, yet also instantly unstick itself. The device consists of a flat plate patterned with holes, each on the order of a micron (one-millionth of a meter).

A bottom plate holds a liquid reservoir, and in the middle is another porous layer. An electric field applied by a common 9-volt battery pumps water through the device and causes droplets to squeeze through the top layer. The surface tension of the exposed droplets makes the device grip another surface — much the way two wet glass slides stick together [more...]

Will Matrix be a reality?

We can see next real MATRIX PART with real imagination, someone insert a wire into our brain and wooooosh we are off to another world where we can learn anything by just click of button, any art such as Kung-Fu or Fly a Helicopter. I am not joking but this is becoming reality.

An indian start up company has started working on that and soon we can see our brain information copied to computer.

An IT startup in Technopark, Kerala will be working on the Blue Brain Project, the world's first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain. The cost of the project is $3 billion and is expected to complete by 2018. It is an international project, propelled by Swiss Federal Institute, and involves several countries and ethics monitoring by UN bodies.

The whole idea for this project is that mental illness, memory and perception triggered by neurons and electric signals could be soon treated with a supercomputer that models all the 1,000,000 million synapses of brain.