Malacca is a powerful technology that promises to make computers and handheld devices simple, multi-lingual and shareable. With its many features and success on the Simputer platform, Malacca is poised to become an easy-to-use standard on many platfoms like Pocket PC, Windows CE and Windows PCs
1. Unique Natural Computing
Programs based on Malacca help the user interact with computers/handhelds in an easy, familiar manner:
- Display in nearly all the world's languages: currently available for Indian languages such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil and Kannada
- Its text-to-speech feature allows output to be "spoken" in any language. For example, a Malacca-based program will "read out" in Kannada, the latest farming techniques to a farmer
- With intuitive and uniform interfaces, Malacca-based programs allow the user to progress (eg. A child learning a lesson, a salesman collecting field data) without worrying about the intricacies of how software works
2. Seamless Shareability
Malacca allows a handheld device to function like a Community Digital Assistant, rather than as a Personal Digital Assistant:
- Malacca's revolutionary Scribble-pad feature allows users to write / draw pictures (and otherwise annotate ) pages. Since these annotations can be saved, this represents a new paradigm in collaborative work. Think of it like many people scribbling in the margins of a library book, or sticking Post-It Notes
- It allows inexpensive SmartCards to be used as say, ATM cards, credit cards or voter identity cards
3. Easy to use, Fast to develop
Malacca's power and simplicity extend to the programmer too. It allows programmers to create applications very fast. For you and your company, it reduces cost of deployment and time-to-market.
4. Malacca will be made available on other platforms too
Currently, Malacca is available only for the Simputer. However, PicoPeta is developing versions for platforms like the Pocket PC, Windows CE and Windows PCs. Once Malacca becomes available on those devices, not only will they become as simple-to-use as the Simputer, but interfaces once written can be ported to any device.
In sum, Malacca makes the Simputer perhaps the most attractive platform for handheld and mobile applications..
SEE ALSO
Download and Test Drive Malacca
Malacca: Technical Overview
Malacca Documentation
Malacca: User Guide
Malacca: Code Samples
Things you can do with Malacca
