International Investors keen to support India's $35 Tablet

If you have been skeptic about the Indian $35 proposed laptop plan, its time to know some real fact, which could surely change your view on this Indian government project. Very recently the Union Minister for human Resource Development, Shri Kapil Sibal unveiled a low cost computing-cum-access device currently priced at $35 with wi-fi, full video capability, a nifty e-book reader and 2 GB RAM.

The minister himself displays the product at Gadget guru on NDTV and Gadgetguru (NDTV) did a hands on review of the product. Infact after this review of the product international investors are now keep to support this project.

OLPC’s founder Nicholas Negroponte has written an open letter to the Indian Government where he has provided them with plenty of choices and offered them full access to their technology for ‘free’!

Nicholas has invited the Indian Government to send a team to MIT and OLPC at the earliest so that they can share their thoughts with the Indian Government. Along with free technological resources, OLPC also has plenty of advices to offer for the Indian Government.

Check out this hands on review on the product by Gadgetguru (NDTV)


So what would one get in this $35 tablet
- Linux operating system, Open Office, 5″-9″ touch screen and browsers.
- A touch screen and a built-in keyboard along with a 2 GB RAM memory, wi-fi connectivity, USB port and powered by a 2-watt system to suit poor power-supply areas
- Video-conferencing facility, a Pdf reader and an unzip tool

HCL Technologies has won a contract to manufacture 100,000 of the Indian governments $35 tablets, to be rolled out before the 10th of January 2011. The Indian government is allocating Rs. 30 crore (around $6.4 million) for the project.

A quick brief update on Apple's iPad

Three years after launching 'iPhone' Apple, the computing giant recently launched a new product. It's known as the 'iPad'.

iPad basically is a tablet computer, magazine sized touch screen that can do various tasks like surfing the web, watching movies, emailing, etc.. its like a bigger version of iPhone with more capabilities.

The Device ?
The device weighs just 1.5 pounds, compared with a few pounds for the typical laptop. At a mere half-inch thick, the iPad is also thinner than most laptops, including Apple's super-thin Macbook Air. With a maximum of 64GB of storage, the iPad can hold as many photos, movies and songs as most laptops.
The Pricing ?
The most basic iPad, with 16GB of flash memory, will be priced at $499. A 32GB version will cost $599 and a 64GB version will cost $699. The WiFi-only versions of the iPad will be available in the United States in March at Apple retail stores, the Apple web site and selected dealers. So other contries have to wait...

This sleek gadget aims to revolutionise the publishing business the same way as Apple iPod transformed the music industry and iPhone transformed the telecom industry.

Here is a brief official video of the iPad from Apple.


Friends, what do you thing of this new product? Share your views on the comments below..

Burj Khalifai - the tallest building in the world

The Burj Khalifa was opened to public on January 4, 2010. The 160-plus storey structure is now considered the world’s tallest building. The Burj Khalifa represents the technological advances man has made in the 21st century.

Burj Khalifa formerly know as Burj Dubai became the tallest building in the world in just 1,276 days, with the help of more than 5,000 consultants and skilled construction workers pooled in from around the world.

Here is a animated comparison of the Burj Khalifa against some other tall buildings around the world.
Click here (Ad supported) or Click here (SWF format)

This mammoth man-made structure will be mostly residential, but will also be home to the worlds highest observation deck at a vertigo inducing 517m high, as well as the worlds first 6 star rated Armarni Hotel. The tower was constructed by a South Korean company, Samsung Engineering & Construction, which also did work on the Petronas Twin Towers and Taipei 101.

Here is an animated overview of the Burj Khalifa and the place around..



Sources: tubespider.blogspot.com


Some Record Facts of Burj Khalifais

Burj Khalifais the tallest skyscraper to top of spire: 828 m (2,717 ft) (previously being Taipei 101 – 509.2 m (1,671 ft))

Burj Khalifa is the building with most floors: 160 (previously Willis Tower – 108)

Burj Khalifa has the world's highest swimming pool (at the 76th floor)

Burj Khalifa has the world's fastest elevators at speed of 64 km/h (40 mph) or 18 m/s (59 ft/s)[26] (previously Taipei 101 – 16.83 m/s)

Solar powered mobile handset coming soon

Known to be the world's first solar-powered touchscreen handset the 'Blue Earth' from the Samsung's stable is soon to be released in the markets.

The device even takes energy saving a bit further with a built-in "eco-mode" system. It sets low screen backlight brightness and duration with a single click. It also switches the Bluetooth module into a special "low consumption" mode.

There's also a built-in pedometer and some associated software that translates the distance you've walked into equivalent CO2 savings versus making the journey in a vehicle--it even presents the data in the number of trees you've saved.

It's got a giant solar panel on the back that'll apparently charge it enough to make a phone call anytime the sun's peaking out. The body of the phone is made of a material called "PCM," a plastic made from recovered water bottles

Samsung has yet to announce pricing or availability, something to watch out at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. However do share your views on the concept ?? very eco-friendly ?

Communicate with your Facebook friends without accessing internet

In todays times staying in touch with friends is very simple, either via various social networking websites or via any internet messenger. However the prerequisite is, you and your friend both need access to internet to be online and communicate via services provided on internet. Well, not exactly..anymore.. the later part "require access to internet" is gonna be a thing of the past.

A newly released application does the trick. Its called the Peersonalizer. With this application along with a downloadable software called WiPeer, you can detect Facebook friends and their friends in the vicinity if they have also installed the application. Researchers at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology have come up with this application that makes it possible to chat with friends without accessing internet.

WiPeer and Peersonalizer not only allows friends to chat but also share files and directories and play collaborative games. WiPeer can make direct wireless (WiFi) connection between computers within a range of roughly 300 meters without using any intermediary device like a router. However the limitation is that WiPeer currently works with Windows XP only.

Peersonalizer uses technology that can also be applied to other social networking sites such as Orkut, MySpace, Friendster and LinkedIn.

To use this application, you need to download the WiPeer application,
available for free from here

More info on peersonalizer is available here

Welcome to the future - Grid Computing

Grid computing provides a way of sharing computer resources such as processing and storage capacity for solving massive computational problems. The resources may include a dedicated cluster in an organization's computer room, an unmanaged cluster of workstations in the next building, or potentially a home PC on the other side of the world.

Grid computing is the next evolution of enterprise technology architectures, and will furthermore revolutionize how businesses think about and manage their computing resources. More so than client/server or Internet computing, the technology will be more of a revolution in computing architectures and could spark a revival of the entire technology industry.

Perhaps a more accurate way to look at grid computing is to visualise all the systems in an enterprise working together to create a powerful virtual mainframe, giving an organisation unprecedented access and control over computing and data resources, not only within the network but also across the enterprise. The grid virtualises the underlying technology, so the user essentially sees one large computer.

Watch grid computing introduction video.

Imagine being able to cut the processing time of your physics experiments, or the calculation time of your mathematical simulations from days to just seconds.

Royal Dutch Shell created a grid infrastructure for its seismic interpretation applications that cuts the time needed to process seismic data while improving the quality of the data, thus allowing the company’s employees to focus upon key problems.

A short video describing the advantages that Grid computing can generate for businesses.

What problems can be solved using Grid Computing?

* clinical trial modelling
* nuclear engineering
* transport predictions
* financial hedging models
* climate prediction
* oil reservoir data analysis
* environmental modelling
* protein folding
* data mining of operational information
* and other complex simulations and analysis..

Grid computing is real, and it’s here today.

More resources on Grid Computing

Applications of Enterprise Grids
Grid computing helps make smarter business choices: An interview with Gregory Corgan, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Computer Associates (CA), to get an insight into CA's take on grid computing.

Google's killer API has been released

Google's killer API is here.. officially its launched. This API could go ahead to become the most in demand tool for thousands of third party websites. So whats so appealingly about this API ?

Well this API will enable trusted 3rd party sites to access your Google contact information without asking you to provide your login information. Have you ever been on a web-site that asked you for your Google username and password so that it can import your Gmail contact list? Did you think twice before giving out that information there.. hmm thats what millions of people online have thought to themselves "why is this new site I'm on asking me for my Gmail username and password? When will there be a secure API for me to pass those contacts along without giving up my password?" So here it is.

So next time Facebook, Plaxo, or another service wants to import your Gmail, Google Calendar, or Google Talk contacts you might not have to give up your email password. The API uses the Google Data protocol which is based on AtomPub (the same standard that Microsoft is now adopting). All contacts feeds are private and apps can use either the Google Client Authentication API or the Google Web Auth API for authenticating.

So now developers can now write an application that will allow you to synchronize your Outlook and Google contacts. The Contacts API allows developers to create, read, update, and delete contacts using the Google Data protocol, based on AtomPub

Source: Official Google Blog

Worlds smallest mobile handset to revolutionise mobile world

If you thought its the iPhone that has revolutionised the mobile market, well you might not be completely correct. With most of the mobile majors releasing newer models of mobile phone, there is this one company which is all set to change the rules of the game.

An Israel-based company called Modu Mobile recently announced the world’s tiniest handset called the Modu, which is the worlds smallest mobile handset (recently certified as such by the Guinness Book of World Records).

Modu give its users the freedom to create a new phone as often as they like based on their personal preferences and style. Think of it as a Swiss army knife device that can take on different forms and functions.

Mobile users get to choose from different Modu jackets, or phone enclosures, and Modu mates, which are Modu-enabled consumer electronics devices, to dress up their slimmed down standalone phones.

You can access below listed features from the tiny Modu device such as:
A large screen or keyboard
MP4 player
Ability to send/receive SMS
Speaker
Bluetooth
Minimum 1GB of storage
Can act as mass storage USB Flash Drive

The possibilities are endless for branding, as new modu jackets take almost no time to develop and each jacket can even have its own theme that's loaded, translator content, when you pop the modu in. Check out the below video for a live demo of Modu in action. Modu was displayed in the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona.

More info on Modu available here. Also do post in your views/comments below.

An underwater car now a reality ?

Its no more a friction from the James bond movies, its now a reality. Rinspeed, a Swiss motor company is planning to showcase its version on the submersible car at the Geneva Motor Show (March 6-16, 2008). Its called the “sQuba".

The £750,000 prototype, which can dive to a depth of 10 metres. It is the brainchild of concept car designer Frank Rinderknecht. Rinderknecht is apparently an acknowledged James Bond enthusiast and has been very facinated and inspired by concept of the underwater car that he saw in one of the bond movie.

The "sQuba" car is capable of speeds of up to 120 km/h on land, a more sedate 6.4 km/h cruising in "boat" mode and just 3.2 km/h beneath the surface. There are three electric motors are located in the rear, with one providing propulsion on land, driving the rear wheels, while the other two drive the screws for underwater motoring. However the occupants have to wear wetsuits to stay dry and breathe air from an integrated tank similar to that used by scuba divers.

The vehicle can stay underwater until it runs out of air or battery power, normally about two hours. The car has more Bond-like tricks up its sleeve, it is even capable of autonomous driving on land thanks to a sophisticated laser sensor system from the Hamburg company Ibeo - without any help from the driver or passenger.

You can find out more about sQuba here at the official site of Rinspeed. By the way also check out the video of the underwater care, the "sQuba"