Arjun Venkatraman is the tech whiz behind much of the voice-based technology of Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary's CGNet Swara, and he was instrumental in launching the same technology in Indonesia for Knight Fellow Harry Surjadi.

Not easily satisfied, though, Venkatraman is looking for new ways to improve and expand the technology. One idea? Find a way for the Swara interface to answer not just Who, What, and When but also Where. Here he details the path to success.

When Shubhranshu Choudhary began working as a Knight International Journalism Fellow in India in 2009, he realized that even the most remote villages of the Chhattisgarh region where he was based had access to cell phones. Those phones offered an opportunity for him to build a cellular news network that allows the villagers to communicate with each other as well as with activists, government officials and mainstream media.

A simple phone call can bring needed assistance to people who live in the remote regions of India, says a report by the Public Health Global Network. Reporter Augustine Veliath wrote about villagers who called CGnet Swara, the cellular network created by Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary.

Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary delivered a TEDx lecture in Bangalore on how citizen journalism projects, like his CGnet Swara, are democratizing media in India.

India's Asian News International reports on a "revolutionary" initiative by Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary that allows tribals in a remote region of the country to communicate with each other and with mainstream media and activists outside of their region. In this video report, a citizen journalist trained by Choudhary says the service has allowed villagers to report significant problems that might have gone unreported in the past.

"India Real Time" blog in the Wall Street Journal writes about the cellular news service created by Knight International Journalism Fellow Shubhranshu Choudhary for citizens in remote provinces. Trained citizen journalists, for the first time, are providing news in the local language—and often beating mainstream media to the story.