23 January 2002 - The Secretariat is pleased to d to inform that the next International Conference on
Information Processing and Resources on the Internet ("Tamil Internet
2002")
- 5th in the series - will be held in the San Francisco Bay Area of
California, USA sometime during the month of August/Sept 2002.

Tamil Internet 2002 conference will be organized by the International
Forum for Information Technology in Tamil (INFITT) in close collaboration
with Center for South Asia Studies and the Chair in Tamil Studies of the
University of California, Berkeley, USA.

Mr. Mani Manivannan of Fremont, California <mmanivannan@earthlink.net>
has accepted the invitation from INFITT to be the Chair of the
International Organising Committee (IOC). The North-American Chapter
of INFITT (INFITT-NA) will play major role in the local organization
of the conference, including planning of associated events, etc.

A Conference Programme Committe (CPC) for TI2002 composed of
representatives of INFITT and UC Berkeley Center for South Asia
Studies is also being formed, with Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram of
Lausanne, Switzerland <kalyan@softhome.net> as the Chair.
The latter (CPC) will deal with paper submission and scheduling
of the conference content (invited lectures and submitted papers).
Further details on the conference content, exact dates and venue
will be announced in due course.

We take this opportunity to invite 'technical' papers for presentation
at TI-2002 on all topics relating Tamil with Computers and/or Internet,
on or before 15 May 2002.

To assist the CPC select papers for oral and poster presentations, please
send us one or two A4 size  outline/summary of your presentation by the
above date. Papers may be presented in English, Tamil or bilingual
(Tamil-English) format. As with the earlier Conferencs, all submissions must be in electronic form. For papers with content in Tamil or bilingual, please use either TSCII (version 1.7) or TAB encoding. The outline/summary of your presentation should also include your full name, designation, address and contact numbers.

There will be a peer review of the submitted papers before acceptance.In view of our committed goal is to raise the quality of the conference, a limited number of papers will be selected for oral presentation, possibly with a longer presentation time (30 mins or more).

Authors whose papers have been selected for presentation at the
conference will be informed by 31 May 2002. Electronic versions of the accepted
papers should reach the CPC on or before 30 June 2002 for them to appear in the
official conference book. We would appreciate it very much if you take
note of these deadlines and adhere to them.

The organisers of the conference assume that submission of a paper for
possible presentation at TI2002 implies attendance at the conference and
presentation in person by at least one author of the paper. This will be
irrespective of whether the organisers can provide any financial support
or not. As in the past, papers presented in the conference will be
archived
(in the form of pdf files) with free public access at the INFITT website.

The following is a short list of topics (by no means exhaustive) to be
covered at the Tamil Internet 2002 Conference:

i) Technology
    ( localisation / Tamil enabling )
   --Implementation in different platforms (Windows, Unix/Linux,
       Unicode, MacOS, mobile platforms (PalmOS), Java,...
   --  Search engines, text converters, translators and APIs
      for cross-platform data flow
   --  OCR, voice recognition, speech synthesis, natural language
    processing,.. Java, Perl-script based tools for online Spell
   checker, dictionary,.(interactive usage of Tamil online/on Internet)

  -- Dedicated software for word-processing, databases,...
  -- Tamil domain names (DNS)

ii) Digital/E-archives & Tamil databases
   --  Digital collections of Tamil literary works,
     educational materials (e-books, CDs, cassettes/ tapes,...)
   -- Online Tamil dictionaries, lexicon, thesaurus, ...
   -- Machine Aided Translation

iii) Open source technology for Tamil

iv) Efforts towards eradicating Digital Divide
    - efforts in Tamilnadu, Malaysia (camUka maiyam,..)
    - role of TVU, regional chapters, . ..

v) web- and multimedia-assited learning & Teaching of Tamil

vi) e-business and e-governance
    Tamil portal sites, Tamil DNS, e-commerce,..
 

Prof. M. Anandakrishnan       Mr. Arun Mahizhnan
Chair, INFITT                 Executive Director, INFITT

        The Executive Committee of INFITT has named the following to constitute the Technical Programme Committee (TPC) for the TI2001 conference:

Dr. K. Kalyanasundaram, Switzerland (Co-Chair, TPC-TI2001) 
Dr Chandran Elamvazuthi, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Co-Chair, TPC-TI2001)
Dr. M. Anandakrishnan, India (Chair, INFITT) 
Mr. Muthu Nedumaran, Malaysia (Chair-TI2001) 
Mr. Arun Mahizhnan, Singapore (Chair  TI2000) 
Mr. Mani Manivannan, USA (Chair-TI2002)
Mr. P. Chellappan, India

        Some additional members may be added to the TPC by the Executive Committee of INFITT.

        We take this opportunity to invite 'technical' papers for presentation at TI-2001 on all topics relating Tamil with Computers and/or Internet, on or before 30 APRIL 2001. 

        To assist the TPC select papers for oral and poster presentations, please send us one or two A4 size outline/summary of your presentation by the above date. Papers may be presented in English, Tamil or bilingual (Tamil-English) format. As with the last TI2000 Conference, all submissions must be in electronic form.

        The outline/summary of your presentation should also include your full name, designation, address and contact numbers.

        Authors whose papers have been selected for presentation at the conference will be informed by 31 May 2001. Electronic versions of the accepted papers should reach the TPC on or before 30 June 2001 for them to appear in the official conference book. We would appreciate it very much if you take note of these deadlines and adhere to them.

        The organisers of the conference assume that submission of a paper for possible presentation at TI2001 implies attendance at the conference and presentation in person by at least one author of the paper. This will be irrespective of whether the organisers can provide any financial support or not.

The following is a short list of topics (by no means exhaustive) to be covered at the 2001 Tamil Internet Conference:

1.      Technology

Tamil Implementation in different platforms : Windows-2000, Unix/Linux, Unicode, MacOS, PalmOS, Java,... 

Search engines, text converters, translators and APIs for cross-platform data flow

OCR, voice recognition, speech synthesis, natural language processing,.. 

Java, Perl-script based tools for online Spell checker, dictionary,.(interactive usage of Tamil online/on Internet)

Dedicated software for word-processing, databases,... 

• Multimedia-based Tamil educational tools (CDs, Audio-cassettes,....) for remote education
• Web-based online Tamil education sites and associated tools
• Computer-aided Teaching of Tamil, virtual classroom, ....
• Digital collections of Tamil literary works, educational materials (e-books, CDs, cassettes/ tapes,...)
• Online Tamil dictionaries, lexicon, thesaurus, ...
• Internet oriented Initiatives for Tamil: Tamil Virtual University, Project Madurai, ..

• WG01: glossary of technical terms for Tamil
• WG02: Unicode Tamil Segment
• WG04: a unified TAB, TSCII 8-bit encoding
• WG05: a transliteration (romanised) standard scheme for Tamil

• Portal sites for Tamil
• Domain Name (DNS) Registration in Tamil
• E-commerce directed towards Tamil Diaspora (online stores for books, musical instruments/CDs, educational materials,..)
• Software for Tamil businesses (billing, finance management, warehousing, dispatch, order tracking,..)

• INFITT organisation and activities
• National/Regional Tamil Internet/IT Steering Committees
• Tamil Internet Conferences

        We greatly look forward to your co-operation and active participation at the forthcoming TI2001 conference.