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Aadhaar is an emerging opportunity for Indian developer.  

• Web Tools for Learning and Teaching is an expanding resource for teachers and students 

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Understanding Aadhaar-2: Provides Unique Identity to each Indian

Mr. Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the UIDAI notes,

• "The name Aadhaar communicates the fundamental role of the number issued by the UIDAI the number as a universal identity infrastructure, a foundation over which public and private agencies can build services and applications that benefit residents across India."
• Aadhaar's guarantee of uniqueness and centralised, online identity verification would be the basis for building these multiple services and applications, and facilitating greater connectivity to markets
• Aadhaar would also give any resident the ability to access these services and resources, anytime, anywhere in the country
• Aadhaar can for example, provide the identity infrastructure for ensuring financial inclusion across the country – banks can link the unique number to a bank account for every resident, and use the online identity authentication to allow residents to access the account from anywhere in the country
• Aadhaar would also be a foundation for the effective enforcement of individual rights. A clear registration and recognition of the individual's identity with the state is necessary to implement their rights –to employment, education, food, etc. The number, by ensuring such registration and recognition of individuals, would help the state deliver these rights.

Source: UIDAI

Understanding Aadhaar-1: The UID brand name and logo

Understanding the concept and functioning of Aadhaar is a must for every Indian resident. In the series, "Understanding Aadhaar" we will be explaining Aadhaar from very possible perspective.  Here is an excerpt from UIDAI 

The brand name of the Unique Identification number (UID) will be Aadhaar. The name and logo for the unique numbers to be issued by the UIDAI have been developed keeping in mind the transformational potential of the program. Together, they communicate the essence and spirit of the UIDAI's mandate to people across the country.

The UIDAI's mandate is to issue every resident a unique identification number linked to the resident's demographic and biometric information, which they can use to identify themselves anywhere in India, and to access a host of benefits and services. The number (referred to until now as the 'UID') has been named Aadhaar, which translates into 'foundation', or 'support'. This word is present across most Indian languages and can therefore be used in branding and communication of the UIDAI program across the country. ( Understanding Aadhaar -2)

Aadhaar is getting traction: AP Government makes it a MUST

In a major policy decision, the state government has decided to release all welfare benefits only through the Aadhaar card. Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Wednesday instructed the officials of the civil supplies department that they, Here is the rest of story from Times of India

BSTStudent”, a cloud based platform, for Engineering Students

Cloud Computing Platform for Engineering Students

We are company based out of Pune and we have released our product “BSTStudent”, a cloud based platform, for Engineering Students. BSTStudent aims to bridge the gap between Industry and Academia by bringing students, industry and mentors  on the same platform. Industry can post their project on the platform for Students and Students can apply for these projects. These projects can be remotely executed by students under the guidance of mentors.  Below are some of the video links to give you an idea about the problem we are trying to address For more details visit here

Aadhar authentication service by year-end

Aadhaar is an ambitious project by the Indian government to put every resident on an online database. It is the biggest of its kind project in the world. It is not only done in a country that is one of the most populous but also built on the state-of-the art technology. One of the service expected to offered by Aadhaar project is online authentication and verification of the residents. Towards this end, the Aadhaar authentication service expected to be open by year-end. The additional details are here

Unique ID spinoffs for banks, IT

The immediate opportunity here is for the IT companies, most of whom have already started gearing up to the huge demand in the country itself. With a population nearing 1.2 billion, the country would need a massive infrastructure to support CSMS. Not only the banking industry but also the post offices (which in rural India are a substitute for banks) need to gear up to meet operation requirement.
This is good news for hardware and software companies.
There are a few Indian companies like Vakrangee Software who are actually the feet-on-the-ground, best positioned to take advantage of this mapping opportunity. Among the bigger companies, TCS has taken bold steps in penetrating the Indian market.

Source: Unique ID spinoffs for banks, IT

Aadhaar Database: Nandan Nilekani explains its intended use

So far, despite all the skepticism about a centralized database with the entire country’s biometrics, Nandan Nilekani’s obvious expertise ensured he had a smooth sail. He answered all critics head on and argued that the Aadhar biometric database he was creating could not be abused because it couldn’t be queried—so, for instance, it wouldn’t have any information on the caste or income of person X, but would just be able to say if a fingerprint belonged to X; it was only a means to establish identity, nothing else.

Source:FE Editorial: Hope floats

Basic Aadhar Authentication API To Be Available For Free

Aashar API's represents one of most potential resource for Indian developer. These APi's are offered free. Here is some details. 

India’s ambitious UID project named Aadhar intends to create an ecosystem of applications and services that center around the idea of authenticating users through their UID. Nandan Nilakeni, Chairman, UIDAI plans to do this by opening up the Aadhar API to third party developers.

An API or application programming interface is a set of rules that software programs follow to communicate with each other. So the opening up of the Aadhar API means is that based on your UID number the software will be able to verify your identity. Through the API an individual’s Aadhar number is sent to the authentication server and it returns a yes or no depending on whether the identity is true or not. In addition to this, services like banks and payment gateways that require a higher level of security can also pass in biometric informationalong with the Aadhar number to ensure accurate identity. The whole communication process would be encrypted and if encryption standards aren’t matched the API pops up an error.

The yes/no API (basic API) is being provided for free by the UIDAI to encourage the growth of the ecosystem. However, the UIDAI also offers address verification and biometric verification APIs which would be chargeable. For example: opening bank accounts would require address verification and issuing a credit card may require biometric verification. The UID is rolling out gradually with villages being the main target in the initial phase. The documentation talks about how the API could be used in rural ares to give payments to people enrolled in theNational Employment guarantee scheme. Nandan Nilakeni also pointed out that the UID could also be used to verify people’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The documents on the Aadhar site also talk about privacy and how the government would protect an individuals right to privacy by using the information only to authenticate users. With hackers increasingly becoming anti- government, we hope the Aadhar database servers have robust security measures in place to avoid any sort of data theft.

Source: 

India’s Unique ID Authority ‘Aadhaar’ Releases Authentication API; Biometric Block?

While India is conducting what is probably the largest census in history, the country’s unique identification authority Aadhaar/UIDAI is working on making that data usable. It has released version one of its Aadhaar Authentication Application Programming Interface (API), which contain API data format, protocol and security specifications. The way it will work is: a user’s Aadhar number, alongwith other data (including biometric information) will be submitted to the Central Identities Data Repository for verification: authentication will only be in the form of a ‘yes’ or no response, and no personal identity will be released.

The first Aadhar numbers would be issued between August 2010 and February 2011, and over five years, the UIDAI intends to issue 600 million UIDs.  Source:

Update: Cloud Computing Projects for Engineering Students

This is an updated version of a blog that I posted about an year and a half back. At that time, only few students were interested in cloud computing projects and now their numbers are increasing. Hence this update. The new project done since my earlier article are

Socioseacher - a project that links major web services - Facebook, Linkedin 

Placement and Training Cell- By Harsha, PES . This project is built using Google resources

IEEE paper based projects

• A New Wireless Web Access Mode Based on Cloud Computing: Yunpeng 
•  Load-Balanced Multicast for Data-Intensive Applications on Cloud
• Multi-Tenant SOA Middleware for Cloud Computing

Following my presentation on Cloud Applications at Cloud Computing and Virtualization workshop at NIT, K Surathkal during July 2010, a good number of students from a couple of colleges have approached me requesting to suggest an academic cloud-based project for their degree and diploma courses (thanks to faculty who attended the workshop and carried the message to their students inspired them to consider such projects). Cloud-computing paradigm is catching up business world like a wild-fire and it is natural for students and faculty to thinking in this direction. Here in my college, we started exploring in  this direction about a year ago and our students have successfully completed about three projects. Hence, here I wish share some points with those interested which provide them a starting point towards identifying and carrying out a cloud-based project that go towards partial fulfillment of degree and diploma courses.

Understanding Cloud application:

First step towards this goal is to understanding the nature of a cloud-based project or application. Simply put, a cloud-application is like any traditional computer-application except that it is built using cloud-based resources and hosted on a cloud-platform. 

For example,  a cloud-based ERP application is accessed by a user via web interface and is hosted on service provider’s remote servers. Another cloud-application is Gmail.  To know more about nature and types of cloud application kindly go through this presentation Cloud-applications. It includes information about what is a cloud application, examples and resources to build them. There is no limit for kinds of projects that can be made cloud-based and virtually every existing business application can be transformed into cloud-based one. For instance here is an example of cloud-based learning management system. Imagination is the limit and  scratch your head or conduct a brainstorm session with other to find a project idea to develop using cloud-based resources.

Cloud-based projects for students

The above examples of cloud-based ERP and Gmail represent industry-strength applications. However a student project need not be that sophisticated. It could be as simple as AlumniMaps, which mashes-up two resources namely  users data  from facebook on Google maps to produce a very useful and insightful maps that shows current locations of alumni of any given institution. Other examples include X-social and Cloud-based teaching system. (needs adobe flash player to view it )  Projects can also be considered from cloud-security and Virtualization perspective.

Cloud-based resources for student projects: 

Unlike traditional application, Cloud-based projects are built using cloud-based resources. Fortunately for all of us, there are number of resources that can be used in our project development. More importantly most of these resources are FREE and some times need a simple one-time registration process.  Here I list of some such resources used by my students in earlier projects

• API: Application Programming Interface ( API) provide a royal route to use resource created by Internet giants such as Google and Facebook. For instance one can use Google search API to access its search index and customize it to meet her project needs or piggyback on Facebook resources. Kindly go through small presentation on API to get clear picture.
• GAE: Google Application Engine: a platform that allows user to host his application for general access. Application can be developed off-line and can be uploaded. You may go through this presentation on GAE  to know more about it

In addition there are programming /scripting languages that can be used to varying degrees at different stages of project development. They include PHP, Python, and many more. In addition there are many resources that help you master them and use them in your project work.

Finally you may visit my blog  Cloudcomplete which is created to share information with students interested in cloud-based aspects. You may also consider joining  the cloud computing group

Hopefully I have shared enough information to inspire you to take up a cloud-based projects.  You may also consider enhance the following projects further

For any more information, please post a comment on this blog, I will try find it out for you