At the 10th anniversary commemoration of IBM's India Research Lab, the company unveiled a new initiative to bring more features and functions to mobile devices.

The new IBM Research program will entail a number of efforts to bring simple, easy-to-use services to people who have bypassed using the personal computer as their primary method of accessing technology, and are instead using their mobile phone to access the web, conduct financial transactions, entertain themselves, shop and more.

The projects, which will be led out of India, but also are being incubated in IBM's eight global labs in six countries, include - The Spoken Web: Voice-enabled mobile commerce; Instant Translation: Real-time communication between multiple languages through mobile devices; SoulPad: Enabling any portable device to carry computing applications in your pocket; Social networking on-the-go and Good Samaritan: Mobile healthcare information made available in any emergency situation.

The "Spoken Web" project aims to transform how people create, build and interact with e-commerce sites on the World Wide Web using the spoken word instead of the written word. The Spoken Web is the World Wide Web in a telecom network, where people can host and browse "VoiceSites" traverse "VoiceLinks" even conduct business transactions, all just by talking over the existing telephone network.

IBM's researchers are developing new technology to facilitate speech between individuals who speak no common language with the goal of free-form dialogue facilitated by a PDA. IBM technology is already allowing travelers using PDAs to translate menus in Japanese and doctors to communicate with patients in Spanish. IBM real-time translation technologies will be embedded into mobile phones, handheld devices and cars.

The SoulPad software allows PC users to separate a computer's "soul" - the programs, settings and data it holds - from its body, the disks, keyboard, screen, processor and other hardware from which it is comprised. Once a computer's soul is stored on a storage device like a portable USB hard drive or iPod with SoulPad software, it can be carried around and used in any other computer simply by plugging in the storage device and starting the computer up.

IBM Research has brought together mobile phones and "presence" technology combined with health records to provide a potential "good samaritan" with information on how to aid people in critical medical situations.

"The world is entering the 'Era of the Mobile Web.' In many countries, the mobile phone has become an electronic wallet, the window to the World Wide Web, an education device and more, and globally, mobile devices outnumber PCs, credit cards, and TVs" said Dr. Daniel Dias, Director, IBM India Research laboratory. "Today, we are launching projects that will make a mobile device even easier to use than the PC, allowing you to do everything you can with a PC and much more."