Contact Introduction: for S/W tools for Sans Works and other Research

[Guest guest]

Dear Narasimha, Goravani, Ranjan, Mu-Min,

 

In the course of my professional work (investing in unlisted cos), I met Mr

D B (Sunil) Modak. Sunil, 1984 IIM-Ahmedabad, runs his own outfit,

Spectrum Business Support Ltd in Bombay. For his e-address, see above cc.

 

In my many businsess discussions with him, I suddenty realised that what he

does in commercial areas in s/w could be useful to s/w developers in

astrology (computational s/w) as well as in voluminous Sanskrit works incl

in astrology, where the text is usually not organised and much

reorganisation is required for research & interpretation. Basically,

reasonable-cost products have been developed by him in areas of text -

search, pattern recognition and other data/knowledge - base oriented tools.

He has been a pioneer in a few things in India and his products/businesses

could be categorised into the following 3 areas:

 

a) Information-Retrieval in multi-format (text/ patterns, etc), multi-media

(audio/ video, etc) & multi-lingual (incl most Indian languages), incl

images OCRd into text & indexed with hi reliability.

b) Data Fixing: scrubbing, de-duplixing, used prior to data-warehousing &

mining stages in organisations.

c) Knowledge Management: simple data-base indexing/ orgn with applications

in data-mining, querying, profiling, etc in multi-format/ media etc

formats.

Solutions for these are usually v expensive, coming from large multi-nats

such as SAS, NCR Terradata, etc etc, & none available for devanagiri &

other Indian scripts.

 

Actually the conversation on THIS topic started when he was showing me a

demo of his just-released Mahabharat CD in devanagari, out of general

interest, though it is a decimal part of his business. In the CD, u can

search for "bramha-stotra" in the devanagari text & hear it in CORRECT

pronunciation, also get any images tagged to it, if any, etc etc.

Incidentally, this CD has been bot by many indological research institues

incl in the US. And I remarked to him, that there's this 47 vols of Dhruva

Nadi in an Indian script in a S Indian libraray, which is unreadable as the

data (text & astro- charts) in the book is disorganised and voluminous. And

I wished there was some way to search & organise text & chart patterns in

the Work in a manner that a researcher desired, to make something

meaningful out of this work. And no intelligible way to link the logic

underlying the various charts/ text. Same for most Nadis. He said all this

was eminently feasible, technically. Including accessing & grouping all

chart patterns in the text which have some configs that u r looking for.

 

Now, having got him interested in such work, I had no clue whether it would

make any "business" rationale for him to try out/ collaborate with

products/ research into all this. Esp as much of such stuff is useful only

for non-profit/ low-budget organisations & academia. He replied that IF an

idea is good, it makes money EVENTUALLY in some form or the other which u

cant conceive at the original stage of experimentation. And he was willing

to experiment / collaborate, as long as there was no one hassling him, i.e.

at a mutually comfortable pace. With someone who also was KEEN, honest,

could do the heuristics (i.e. functional skills in Sans/ astrology or

whatever) and for whom, it was not bread n' butter, ie not urgent (i.e.

would not impinge on his main BUSINESS priorities). Aside, for Mu: he also

has NID-trained Web-designers, etc. Which reminds me, to Mu again: he

didn't feel ecstatic about your business rationale - talk to him. I

haven't replied on that one of yours, as I didnt have a positive feedback

etc for you, which he confirmed today. (Note: I didn't talk to him about

you personally, just your idea). Anyway, talk to him on that angle also.

 

As I know v little of Sanskrit or s/w or astrology, after this mail, if any

of you have any thoughts, please talk to him directly. My only purpose in

this Note was to let all concerned know that I have always felt the NEED

for data - mining / search / consolidation (esp in devanagari script &

chart-pattern recognition & re-organisation, etc) for voluminous &

not-well-organised Sanskrit works. And I have just discovered that

technically it is POSSIBLE and at reasonable cost/efforts. That by

Serendipity, I think I have met the pioneer in India in part of just all

this. Unfortunately, he has NO understanding / interest in astrology. But

that's for you guys to work out. Incidientally, even Computational

astro-s/w and astro-databases could use his s/w techniques of pattern

identification etc at costs at fractions of multi-national hi-funda s/w cos

in data-mining/ warehousing.

 

OK. Now that I have put a message in a bottle, i hope it will in time,

reach the right fisherman. Pl feel free to fwd this to genuinely

interested & capable collaborators or whatever.

 

Nandan. PS : He has 2 websites: www.grandjurix.com, www.sbsworld.com