My Scribble...

Who is a model?

2012-02-08T13:28:00.000-08:00

It is time to introspect and reckon.

A typical thought which is often conveyed to a child is -- be disciplined, work harder, study well, grow older, and eventually take up a high paid job. One who attains this (pseudo) dream is considered well-settled, and is given as an example or role model to further generations. Well.. is it settlement? - settling in an urban and unknown land?.. Is this a dream -- moving away from the parents and all your near and dear and living an aloof isolated nuclear family? Eventually, the pressure gets accumulated and builds up on the next generation -- to achieve more than their parents. This means, moving out of the country for study and job. This again serves as an example or role model to further generations. Now, where do you go from here?, When will this running around going to end? When will be a settlement (for body and mind) after all.

Here is another scenario. A child who is not hardworking, doesn't study well, but cares about values and more importantly relationships. He/she doesn't move out of the village/town, but settles in the native place either being salaried or being a entrepreneur -- thus providing employment to a couple of people in the locality. Stays with the parents and the family in the place where he/she grew. I would consider this situation is a highly valuable from the perspective of settlement, family and a peaceful way of leading a life. Such people also likely to inherit the legacy, heritage and knowledge (of know-how) of a particular locality. The younger generations are also burden free, as long as self-sustainability is prevailing. If I reckon, I would consider this child as a far superior role model to imitate and pass on to new generations!

Given this thought process, I would consider my cousin Naga Shayana as a far superior role model, who is now a managing director of a business entity earning quite a handsome (much more than a salaried IT employee in a metro) and at the same time employs about a dozen people. He does lead a busy schedule, but still have his lunch and dinner cooked by his mother everyday, and still plays cricket with his childhood friends on sundays.

IIIT-H conducts a training workshop on screen reading software in Indian accented English and Telugu.

2011-06-12T01:19:00.001-07:00

IIIT-Hyderabad, India, is conducting a training workshop for visually challenged individuals. The objective of this workshop is to train individuals on using computers through an open source screen reading software "NVDA" in both Indian accented English and in Telugu language. The Telugu text-to-speech system used in this workshop is being developed at IIIT-Hyderabad as a part of MCIT sponsored consortium project.

The duration of this workshop is for three weeks. Individuals selected for this workshop will be given free accommodation and food for these three weeks. There is no prerequisite for this workshop. However, due to constraints of space and accommodation, we plan to hold this workshop for only 20 individuals at this point of time.

Starting date: 18 June, 2011

Please contact Mr. Buchibabu for participating in this workshop. Mr. Buchibabu's phone number is: 9701059615

and email-id is: buchibabuy@gmail.com

What drives India? - Part II

2011-03-03T08:18:00.001-08:00

Part I: http://kishoresp.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-drives-india-part-i.html

What drives India? I had put this question to a couple of colleagues travelling with me in Japan. Some of the immediate answers were -- food (people in India and abroad like Indian food), hospitality (well..., after seeing Japan I tend to disagree) . Nothing was a satisfying answer.

To understand what drives India, I had to connect my trips to Varanasi in 2002 & 2008. In 2002, I had a bitter experience by seeing carcasses (human and animal) floating in Ganga. It was hard to swallow, and live with, given that I had gone to Varanasi to take a holy dip in Ganga (I didn't and haven't yet. I am due to take one, but may be in upstreams near Himalayas).

In 2008, I was a part of digital library team. We were with colleagues from CMU and other universities. We did see fire puja to Ganga, where hundreds of people (both Indian and foreigners) gather to see the evening puja on the Ganga ghat.

In these two visits, I had always asked -- how there can be carcasses left floating in a holy river? How there can be hundreds and thousands doing/watching puja to the river dumped with carcasses?. Why Varanasi attracts (and attracted) people from India and abroad?

Given these unforgettable experiences, I was now asking whether religion drives India. Whatever drives a nation or people, it should be towards upliftment or development. It was clear to me that religion is not a driver. Then what else?

Is it spirituality? - Indians are believers in God, humanity and in Karma. Self-realization and attainment of peace are goals of every Indian. Is it spirituality that foreigners see when they see India or Indians? Is it for which folks from all over the world fly here and find themselves in short & narrow streets of Varanasi and next to Ghats?

Is it the goals of self-realization and peace are so hardwired in our minds it drives our lives subconsciously and so the entire nation? Is it spiritualism -- which makes us tolerant of such unpredictable life in India at different levels (political, social, family-wise, career-wise)? Is it spiritual bent of our minds, which eventually lead us to say -- whatever happens is for our good.

What drives India? - Part I

2011-03-03T07:38:00.001-08:00

When I had to visit Japan in Sep 2010 for SSW7/Interspeech 2010, I was a bit wary. Nothing was in place -- visa, funding etc. However, in the last minute, funds came through in the last minute in the form of travel grant for young scientist by DST, GoI.

Once in Osaka (a city in Japan), I wondered why I had never been to Japan earlier. The people are extremely nice, and their best hospitality matches none in east (to my knowledge). From the minute, I came out of immigration counter, a particular aspect of Japan was striking. The whole country is extremely punctual to the second. Trains/buses run on time. Offices open on time, meetings happen on time.

Punctuality drives Japan. Since your train leaves on time, you leave home on time. You arrive in office on time (and thus everybody). Overall, things are consistent, as they happen on time. Hence, (good and predictable) planning is possible, which eventually is leading to development of the people and the entire nation. As we stayed in Japan for a week, we too eventually became quite punctual.

Given that punctuality drives Japan, a question that came to my mind was -- what drives USA (I had lived there for almost 3.5 years, and do watch a lot of HBO!). The answer (according to me) was easy to find -- work. The culture of work drives Americans, and they are passionate about it. Everything revolves around work and work culture.

Now the next question came -- what drives India?

Part II: http://kishoresp.blogspot.com/2011/03/what-drives-india-part-ii.html

Winter School, Dec 8-21, 2010 @IIIT-H

2010-12-09T23:19:00.000-08:00

Winter School, Dec 8-21, 2010

IIIT-Hyderabad, India & Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

Tracks: Speech Technology, Data mining, Information Retrieval

Faculty: Dr. Kishore Prahallad, Dr. Vasudeva Varma, Dr. Vikram Pudi, IIIT-H

Dr. Carolyn Rose, Dr. Bhiksha Raj, CMU.

The objective of this winter school, 2010 is to provide hands-on training to 3^rd/4^th year under-graduate and graduate students (of IIIT-H as well as other premier institutions in India such as IITs/NITs) in speech technology, data mining and information retrieval. This winter school is held jointly by IIIT-Hyderabad and Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

The winter school starts with introduction to these tracks and the projects being offered in these tracks on day 1. Students are asked to select the projects of their interest.

On day 2, teams are formed. Teams start working on their respective projects by interacting with their mentors/instructors. In order to provide a broad perspective of different research areas in computer science/electrical and communication, the winter school in interleaved with invited talks from expert faculty members at IIIT-H/CMU. These invited talks are held from Dec 10 – Dec 17, during the morning session.

On Dec 20, all the projects will be showcased and evaluated. On Dec 21, a closing ceremony is held. Participation certificates are distributed, and prizes are given to best projects.

Registration:

There is no registration fee for participation in this winter school. The students are selected based on merit, and students pay for their accommodation and food on their own.

Expected Outcome:

At the end of this winter school, the following are the expected outcomes:

The students obtain some basic understanding of issues and fundamentals in one of the three tracks (speech technology/data mining/information retrieval).
From the several invited talks, we hope the students get exposure to different research fields and the corresponding work done at IIIT-H.
It is hoped/expected that the students would be interested and curios to continue their project, and could join a research field either at IIIT-H or at CMU.

Halmeier Questionnaire

2010-07-06T10:35:00.000-07:00

Below is the list of questions referred to as "Halmeier questionnaire" by Dr. Raj Reddy. This is useful, if you plan to make a research proposal presentation or a business plan. Every time, I plan to make a presentation (now for my defense!) - I make sure that these questions are addressed in the presentation.

What are we trying to do, and what is the key make-a-difference capability we bring to the table?
How is it being done today, how are others approaching the problem, and what are the limitations of the current/proposed approaches?
What is fundamentally new in your approach and what is your plan for realizing the goal?
If you succeed, who will care?
What are the mid-term and final exams?


Additional  (4.1 for business):  How much will it cost and how long will it take?

PS: There is also a short story why this questionnaire is named after "Halmeier"!

Top 10 Words in different langiuages!

2007-11-25T17:37:00.000-08:00

Spanish: de, que, no, a, la, el, es, y, en, lo

French: de, la, le, et, les, des, en, un, du, une

German: der, die, und, in, den, von, zu, das, mit, sich

Italian: non, de, che, e, e', la, un, il, a, per

Dutch: de, en, het / 't, van, ik, te, dat, die, in, een

Algorithm for Writing Better.

2007-09-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

Below is the higher level step-by-step guide or an algorithm describing
how to write better in a thesis or paper.

Write, Correct and Repeat:
1. Write a first draft by organizing your thoughts.
2. Make static and dynamic level corrections.
3. Repeat the above two steps until the thesis/paper has a flow.
The flow should be as smooth as in Harry Potter's novel or a good movie!

Static (Sentence) Level Corrections:

Write simple sentences. 
By writing complex and long sentences often you might want to convey the
impression that you are nerdy and brainy. However, people hate to read such
complex sentences. So the important point to remember is "write simple and
small sentences".

Remedy: If a sentence is complex and long then break into 2-3 simple
sentences.

A simple sentence should also be meaningful. 
That means the reader should not be forced to refer to previous sentences
to understand the current sentence. A better example would be a sentence
with third persons "it, they, their's etc" where the reader has to go back and
understand what  "it / they " refers to. When you read a sentence in isolation
they should hold some meaning and provide some information independent
of other sentences.

Note that every sentence should be one of the following. 
- Logical argument
- Valid truth which could have been obtained from other researchers' results
- An observation or conclusion from your own experiments.

Delete is the greatest mantra for better writing: 
If a simple sentence doesn't hold any meaning in isolation or if it is not a
logical argument / valid truth / observation then delete it. Delete is the
greatest mantra for a better writing.

If a sentence has passed the litmus tests listed in steps 1-4, then perform
a routine English grammatical and spelling errors.

Grammar Errors:
In each sentence, grammatical errors have to be identified and corrected.
Friends and colleagues can help in this part.

Spell Errors:
Spell-Checking is most important. Often spelling errors in a thesis/paper
gives extremely bad impression about the author.

Dynamic Level Corrections:
Sentence Level:
There should be a continuity (reading flow) between two sentences
in a paragraph. The reader shouldn't get disconnected between
two sentences.

Paragraph Level: 
No two successive paragraphs should seem disconnected in a section.

Section Level: 
Every section is a larger logical block of your thesis/paper
and hence all sections should be logical organized and interleaved
(threaded) in a nice fashion.

Chapter level: 
There should also be some link between two chapters. Often these
links may be a little weak. However, the reader should logically expect
the next chapter by the time he/she reads the last section in the
current chapter.

Chapter and Section Title: 
The titles of section and chapters carry most important information.
By reading the titles of chapters and sections the reader should get
an idea of your main point in the thesis or paper. Vague titles such
as "Literature Review", "Introduction", "Application on Continuous
Speech" wouldn't convey much information to the readers.
Rather they should be specific such as "Literature Review on
Speech Recognition", "Introduction to Speech Synthesis" and
"Application of Pronunciation Modeling on  Continuous Speech".

How to Start:
1. Pen down your thoughts in terms of chapters and sections and
arrange them as table of contents (TOC) for your thesis or paper.
That where I ask for TOC as an overview for a thesis/paper.
TOC should be in detail at section and subsection level.,

2. Given TOC, write 3-5 lines in each section and subsection.
Identify and write the main points you want that section and
subsection to cover.

3. Having gone through section and subsections in all
chapters, now revisit the first chapter, section. Expand the main
points of each section into  20-40 simple sentences.

4. Now start "Write, Correct and Repeat" process.

Memory Alocation for 2D arrays in C++

2007-08-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

•

Type** twodname;

twodname = new Type*[dimension1];

for (int d1 = 0; d1 < dimension1; d1++) {

twodname[d1] = new Type[dimension2];
}

•Releasing array:

for (int d1 = 0; d1 < dimension1; d1++) {

delete [] twodname[d1];
}

delete [] twodname;

Why Object Oriented Approach?

2007-08-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Why Object Oriented approach?

A major factor in the invention of Object-Oriented approach is to remove some of the flaws encountered with the procedural approach. In OOP, data is treated as a critical element and does not allow it to flow freely. It bounds data closely to the functions that operate on it and protects it from accidental modification from outside functions. OOP allows decomposition of a problem into a number of entities called objects and then builds data and functions around these objects. A major advantage of OOP is code reusability.

Some important features of Object Oriented programming are as follows:

Emphasis on data rather than procedure
Programs are divided into Objects
Data is hidden and cannot be accessed by external functions
Objects can communicate with each other through functions
New data and functions can be easily added whenever necessary
Follows bottom-up approach

Concepts of OOP:

Objects
Classes
Data Abstraction and Encapsulation
Inheritance
Polymorphism

Briefly on Concepts:

Objects

Objects are the basic run-time entities in an object-oriented system. Programming problem is analyzed in terms of objects and nature of communication between them. When a program is executed, objects interact with each other by sending messages. Different objects can also interact with each other without knowing the details of their data or code.

Classes

A class is a collection of objects of similar type. Once a class is defined, any number of objects can be created which belong to that class.

Data Abstraction and Encapsulation

Abstraction refers to the act of representing essential features without including the background details or explanations. Classes use the concept of abstraction and are defined as a list of abstract attributes.

Storing data and functions in a single unit (class) is encapsulation. Data cannot be accessible to the outside world and only those functions which are stored in the class can access it.

Inheritance

Inheritance is the process by which objects can acquire the properties of objects of other class. In OOP, inheritance provides reusability, like, adding additional features to an existing class without modifying it. This is achieved by deriving a new class from the existing one. The new class will have combined features of both the classes.

Polymorphism

Polymorphism means the ability to take more than one form. An operation may exhibit different behaviors in different instances. The behavior depends on the data types used in the operation. Polymorphism is extensively used in implementing Inheritance.

Advantages of OOP

Object-Oriented Programming has the following advantages over conventional approaches:

OOP provides a clear modular structure for programs which makes it good for defining abstract datatypes where implementation details are hidden and the unit has a clearly defined interface.
OOP makes it easy to maintain and modify existing code as new objects can be created with small differences to existing ones.
OOP provides a good framework for code libraries where supplied software components can be easily adapted and modified by the programmer. This is particularly useful for developing graphical user interfaces.

Resources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming
http://www.startvbdotnet.com/oop/default.aspx

What are the prospects of speech and language?

2007-08-11T12:42:00.001-07:00

What are the future and prospects of speech and language?

Real-time Speech translation (which includes speech recognition, machine translation and text-to-speech systems) is considered to be done of the 5 innovations that will have major impact and changes lives in next 5 years.

Here is the IBM views on top 5 innovation impacting the near future:
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/ideasfromibm/us/five_in_five/010807/index.shtml

Real-time speech translation -- once a vision only in sci-fi -- will become the norm: The movement towards globalisation needs to take into account basic human elements, such as differences in language.

For example, IBM speech innovations are already allowing media companies to monitor Chinese and Arabic news broadcasts over the Web in English, travellers using PDAs to translate menus in Japanese, and doctors to communicate with patients in Spanish.

Real-time translation technologies and services will be embedded into mobile phones, hand-held devices and cars. These services will pervade every part of business and society, eliminating the language barrier in the global economy and social interaction.

What is Speech and Language?

2007-08-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

What is speech and language processing?

Arthur C. Clarke one of well know fiction authors predicted an artificial agent called HAL. The HAL 9000 computer in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most recognizable characters in twentieth-century cinema. HAL is an artificial agent capable of such advanced language-processing behavior as speaking and understanding English, and at a crucial moment in the plot, even reading lips.

What would it take to create at least the language-related parts of HAL? Minimally, such an agent would have to be capable of interacting with humans via language, which includes understanding humans via speech recognition and natural language understanding (and, of course, lip-reading), and of communicating with humans via natural language generation and speech synthesis.

HAL would also need to be able to do information retrieval (finding out where needed textual resources reside), information extraction (extracting pertinent facts from those textual resources), and inference (drawing conclusions based on known facts). Although these problems are far from completely solved, much of the language-related technology that HAL needs is currently being developed, with some of it already available commercially.

Solving these problems, and others like them, is the main concern of the fields collectively known as Speech and Language Processing.

Ref: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/%7Emartin/SLP/slp-ch1.pdf

Questions to be asked by researchers and Enterpreneurs

2007-05-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Following the wise words in http://seanwise.typepad.com/ the key questions for an entrepreneur include:

Why does anyone (end-user/customer) need this?
Why you? Why do you have a competitve advantage in brining this product to market?
Why can't others just copy you?
Why is it novel, different, better, than anything else?
How much cash do you want? What are you going to do with it? And what will the results be?
What's it worth? And why is it worth that much?

Prof. Raj Reddy's Questionnaire for a research proposal/problem is:

What are we trying to do?
What is the key make-a-difference capability we bring to the table?
How is it being done today?, How are others approaching the problem?
What are the limitations of current/proposed approaches?
What is new in the approach?
What is the plan for realizing the goal?
if you succeed who will care? What is the impact?
How much will it cost and how long will it take?
What are the mid-term and final exams?

The use of "why" type of questions for entrepreneurs and use of "what" and "how" type of questions for researchers is interesting. And also the final questions for a researcher seems to be the beginning questions for an entrepreneur.

Google further into visualization

2007-03-17T18:56:00.000-07:00

Since Google acquired visual statistics software Trendalyzer,

Check the interesting demo at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677

Ah! Local Languages in UTF-8 format

2007-03-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! and MSN have started the news contents in Indian languages, while Google is summarizing it for Hindi (all of them in UTF-8!!)

I cann't explain the joy of reading MSN Telugu, it is so good to read news in your native language specifically international and information technology news items which are rarely covered by local papers.

The other big advantage is this data can be used to build language models which turn to help to build better speech synthesis and speech recognition, machine translation systems for Indian languages.

MSN:

www.msn.co.in/hindi
www.msn.co.in/tamil
www.msn.co.in/telugu
www.msn.co.in/kannada
www.msn.co.in/malayalam

Google:

http://news.google.com/news?ned=hi_in

Yahoo!

http://in.telugu.yahoo.com/
http://in.hindi.yahoo.com/
http://in.gujarati.yahoo.com/
http://in.punjabi.yahoo.com/
http://in.kannada.yahoo.com/
http://in.malayalam.yahoo.com/
http://in.tamil.yahoo.com/

BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/hindi/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/tamil/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bengali/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/

Will IITs remain centers for excellence?

2007-03-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

Bhamy V Shenoy an alumnus of IIT Madras has an interesting view point conveying the effect of coaching centers on IITs being the center for excellence. Read more at http://in.news.yahoo.com/070311/43/6d55o.html

The problem of education: Prof. Raj Reddy

2007-03-09T14:02:00.001-08:00

Worksheet for Researchers

2007-03-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

Below is the worksheet suggested by Prof. Raj Reddy for many of his graduate students and researchers to formulate their ideas and work. This worksheet acts as excellent guidelines to write course/technical reports, papers, presentations, project proposals and thesis!

Introduction with Unique attributes

What are we trying to do?
What is the key make-a-difference capability we bring to the table?

Current Context

How is it being done today?, How are others approaching the problem?
What are the limitations of current/proposed approaches?

The Vision

What is new in the approach?

The Plan

What is the plan for realizing the goal?

Impact

If you succeed who will care? What is the impact?

Financials

How much will it cost and how long will it take?

Evaluation

What are the mid-term and final exams?

Online reader DOESN'T read BUT scans

2007-02-26T13:31:00.000-08:00

The source: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html has useful information conveying that online readers do not read the pages word by word rather they scan the pages.... Well, we know it!, we don't need a user-study to mention it :-)

Thus online text should have the following properties to let the content into the HEAD of the READER.

1. Highlighted keywords
2. Appropriate sub-headings
3. One idea per paragraph
4. Conclusion first, and then the details
5. Text should contain half the word count (than the print text)!

Given that 79% of the online readers *scan the text*, doesn't it give some insight

1. Why IT workshop students wouldn't find the relevant answers/hints in the voluminous pages of documents of MS office.

2. Why Just-in-Time (JIT) lessons in the form of PPT with more highlighting and animation are liked by students thus they seem to understand concepts through these kinds of JITs rather than voluminous reading material!

We would be better off to have all our courses provide highly rich audio-video-content starting from orientation, problem description and JIT's!!

Index of Online Video Industry

2007-02-25T19:04:00.000-08:00

Click Here.

Travelistic - Virtual Tour of World!

2007-02-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

http://travelistic.com is an amazing site provides a virtual of the whole world by providing videos of different countries, cities, tourist spots etc. These videos are provided by travellers like you and me!

A deeper view of the web

2007-02-25T17:59:00.000-08:00

A compilation of 119 resources, search engines beyond Google providing a little more deeper search: Click Here. Can you believe that the invisible or deeper web is 500 times bigger than what can be searched (Googled) today!!

The Real DaVinci Code

2007-02-25T11:15:00.001-08:00

Discovery news has an article on the Real DaVinci Code. (click it several times as the portal is already flooded).

Six Mega Trends That could define India's Future.

2007-02-21T12:58:00.000-08:00

The six mega-trends article by T N Ninan at Rediff.com seems to be interesting. The six mega-trends that were quoted are:
1. Growing of Indian companies, and customer base
2. Spread of Internet connectivity
3. Growth of middle class
4. Problems (environment etc) with growing growth
5. Increasing India Openness to the world
6. Dominance of youth in India

Google Maps for MSIT/Gurukulam Monitoring

2007-02-21T12:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.cammap.net/ provides a geographical view of webcams located in US using Google maps. It allows you to zoom-in, select a particular web-cam and allows you to peep-into the real-world through the web-cam.

It would be nice to see a monitoring system for MSIT and Gurukulam labs spread throughout AP, and to see what's happening in any of these labs by just clicking on Google-Maps.

10 Stupid? business ideas that earned miilions!

2007-02-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

10 Stupid? online business ideas that made some one rich to the order of millions! Click here!

Google's Work on Audio Processing!!

2007-02-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

Click here to read more..

Overview of Car Industry

2007-02-20T07:48:00.000-08:00

A quick overview of Car industry from BBC news:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457029/html/default.stm

Google Research

2006-12-24T03:10:00.000-08:00

Google research seems to have picked a set of videos on a wide range of research and technical issues seemingly relevant to most of us. Pls find them at Google's Research Videos

If you are further interested you can also look at Google's Research Publications.

CMU-Portugal Research Exchange PhD Program

2006-12-23T08:19:00.000-08:00

CMU and Portugal universities have started a research exchange PhD program in Language Technologies (www.lti.cs.cmu.edu) - Click Here for more details.

"The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) offers a dual degree Ph.D. Program in Language and Information Technologies in cooperation with Portuguese Universities. ...."

"Each Ph.D. student will receive a dual degree from LTI and the selected Portuguese University, being co-supervised by one advisor from each institute, and spending approximately half of the 5-year doctoral program at each institute. Most of the academic part willtake place at LTI, during the first 2 years, where most of the required 8 courses will be taken, with a proper balance of focus areas (Linguistic, Computer Science, Statistical/Learning, Task Orientation). The remaining 3 years of the doctoral program will be dedicated to research, mostly spent at the Portuguese institute, with one or two visits to CMU per year."

In this context, it has to be mentioned that since 2003, there exists research exchange program between MSIT-CMU, IIIT-CMU and other institutions such as Upenn through which many research scholars at IIIT and mentors at MSIT have visited CMU.

MSIT-Curriculum

2006-12-22T02:58:00.000-08:00

This is a proposal to integrate Search-Engine story into MSIT curriculum.

In the II-Mini students are posed with the problem to build THIS (The Hindu Information System) and thus learn and implement algorithms and data-structures.

From the III Mini, students learn several aspects such as UI, DB etc, which can applied to THI - thus THIS could act as linking story across the several minis.

Following are a few points top-off my head weaving THIS over several minis.

We can have the courses with the toy-problems specific to each course, but THIS could be the actual-project where they are supposed to implement many of these concepts during the last 1-2 days of each week.

II Mini:

Algos. and DS for THIS

III Mini:

User Interface (application to THIS)

Computer Graphics (?)

IVMini:

Databases for THIS (inverted index files in THIS could be stored/retrieved using databases)
Advance Programming (perl/phyton for text processing andnatural language query in THIS)

V Mini:

Data Mining (Text categorization, Query expansion in THIS)

Computer Networks (Client - Server Implementation for THIS)

VI Min:

Practicum

II Year, I Mini:

SE Foundation (Design aspects for THIS)