Asian citizens on the Net

ITBusiness.ca reports that: "Asians have become the largest group of Internet users in the world, with an estimated 173 million people accessing the Internet, according to Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC). But surprisingly, this only makes up 4.5 per cent of the total Asian population. "

Also "The Pan Asia Networking (PAN) Local Language Project, an initiative of the IDRC, is designed to get more Asian users on the Net by developing a framework for local language computing. The IDRC, a public corporation created by Canadian Parliament to help communities in developing countries, is spending $1 million over three years on this project, in partnership with the National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences (NUCES) in Lahore, Pakistan. The Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing at NUCES was established in 2001 to conduct linguistic research, helping to develop computing standards and promote content development for the Pakistani language."