By Dan Lee
Mercury News

In Laos, a boy pedals a stationary bicycle to charge batteries powering a computer that links rural villages with e-mail access and medical information.

In India, a driver of a custom-designed Honda off-road motorcycle carrying a solar-powered laptop computer makes the rounds through remote countryside. The mission is to spread literacy and bring basic information to villagers.

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By Michael Miller
The Stanford Daily

Reuters Digital Vision fellows at Stanford’s Center for the Study of Language and Information are working to extend the bounty of Silicon Valley to the developing world.

“For economic development of the third world, we have to create enablers to allow the entrepreneurial talent that is there to come out,” said Sanjay Bhargava, a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at the Center for the Study of Language and Information. “The technological models of Ebay and PayPal have not been extended to the third world.”

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From newindpress.com (New Indian Express online).

BANGALORE: They may not have proper roads and access to telephones or newspapers. But from Nov, nearly 7,800 villagers — from seven villages in and around Mehabubnagar, Andhra Pradesh — will plug in to the latest updates on agriculture, health and education, courtesy COW and the woman behind it, Rajeshwari Raj Pingali.

Pingali is the president of Computer On Wheels (COW), a project that aims to pass on crucial information to villagers by vaulting over basic hurdles such as illiteracy, lack of infrastructure and zero investment.

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