http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/blog/asiatech/archives/2006/07/india_says_no_t.html

July 28, 2006

India says no thanks to the $100 laptop

Bruce Einhorn

Just a few days after the announced departure of the Intel exec overseeing the company’s efforts to launch low-cost PCs for the developing world (see this Asiatech blog post), another project has suffered what may turn out to be a much bigger setback. MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte’s ambitious plan to create a $100 laptop has won lots of attention; his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) non-profit, working with Taiwanese PC maker Quanta Computer, is working to come out with its first models by the end of the year. (See this story I did a while back in BusinessWeek, for instance.) But according to a wire story picked up in the Indian newspaper The Hindu , the Indian government – one of the largest would-be customers for the machine – has decided that it’s not interested in buying them. Worse for Negoponte, the Indian official who announced the news didn’t hesitate to criticize the whole idea of the $100 laptop. Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee’s view: “We do not think that the idea of Prof Negroponte is mature enough to be taken seriously at this stage and no major country is presently following this. Even inside America, there is no much enthusiasm about this.” Ouch.

The criticism from India is certainly not the end of the project. And it’s important to remember that there’s a history of bad blood between the Indian government and MIT. Years ago, the two tried to set up an Indian version of MIT’s Media Lab, but the project flop, embarrassing New Delhi and creating bad feelings among many in India’s elite toward Negroponte. ZDNet UK points out that the setback is just the latest problem that MIT’s Media Lab has had in India. Negroponte, according to ZDNet, is "persona non grata" in India because of the bad feelings that came from the aborted attempt to set up a Media Lab in the country. That, says ZDNet, puts MIT at a big disadvantage: “There are plenty of large technology organisations that are making an impact in the developing world with, frankly, much better track records of operating with governments, NGOs and individuals in the field.”

That said, I think it’s too early to write the obituary for the OLPC project – or for plans by Intel and others. There is certainly a need to provide low-cost computing for children and their parents in developing countries. But clearly selling the idea to decision makers in those places is going to take a lot more work.

Writely - The Web Word Processor

I had heard about the processor thing by Google. I did try to find out more on it but didn't really put any effort. But today when I was browsing though Google News I found out that Google has acquired the complete concept from Writely and they have already launched the service. When I visited the website I was sorry to find that I had to stand in a queue untill I get my hands on this new service from Google. All I could do was to leave my e-mail ID for them to invite me when my turn comes. I will wait for this.... eagerly!

Then I took the tour to find out more about its features and workings. It is basically a word processor but its uniqueness is its functionality on the internet. The files we create, upoad or work on, are all stored online i.e., of course on Google's server. I suppose this is going to be very convenient for people who use many computers and are required to carry their digital documents with them. As everything is online, the files are available on any system with an internet connection.

Even HTML editing is supported along with the blogging features. It supports documents from MS-Word, RTF, PDF and zip too. Another thing worth noticing is the sharing that can be done with other people on the internet. Currently a single document by a registered user can be shared with 50 people. It is, I wonder, similar to blogging as commenting is also featured. The user can also allow others to edit the documents and the control over sharing is comprehensive.

This is just the Beta version and the space provided to each user is limitless with the only restriction of a maximum of 500kb per file. An image in a file can be upto 2mb.

Obviously e-mailing is supported within the service itself and I guess it is directly conneted to Blogger. A lot of commitment has been given to its security and the name Google can itself be trusted.

Then finally... how can we forget our old friend, Microsoft? This guy Bill Gates has been monopolizing the markets and Google is really after it. He must surely be a little worried about the future of Microsoft. The pre-installation of Google softwares on new PCs from Dell with all the defaults in favor of Google too must be worring Mr. Gates. It won't be long before we find a complete operating system from Google on our PCs.

At present Writely is free of any cost except for corporate organisations. In the days to come some of its features like working with PDF files may be charged with a premium.

Links:
Writely - The Web Word Processor
Writely Blog

GMail Drive

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium. GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer. GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your...

This is what a website on the internet say about GMail Drive but I prefer having my own definitions.

The software I downloaded was very simple and small and hardly took any time for installation. But I found something different while that was happening - it was making some changes to some files in 'windows' directory. Atleast this is what it was showing to me.

After the installation I saw a new drive in 'My Computer'. I double clicked it to find this ...


















After I gave my ID and password of my Gmail account, I was taken to a new window which appeared much similar to the ones we see when we normally open any folders on our system.

I was easily able to drag and drop any file into it and the upload took place which was of course much dependent on my internet connection's speed.

The bandwidth is definitely going to play a very important role in the success of this idea. To start with it's a wonderful thing to use to save data online. All the files dropped here are directly sent to our Gmail account and saved there as an e-mail.

This particular software is not from Google themselves but from some other guy who was initially blasted by many users for errors and bugs. This lastest one is working perfectly fine but always has a threat of being blocked by Google as they have done this already to the previous versions. I hope Google themselves come out with a software of their own which can be more reliable and has extra features.

All this can just be a begining of a new era where we can start having our data stored on the servers of remote hosts and can access it from anywhere. We may also expect personal computer systems without hard drives of their own! Bandwidth will be a major blocade for this to arrive.

Download this software (click here)

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

It was supposed to be released in summer and the Beta version is out. As the name says 'Beta', this is not the final and it may have bugs in it. It is in the testing stages still and the testing burden has been transferred to the users!

I just thought of doing some work for myself and study things which may matter to me. I am not au fait with the technicalities, I am just concerned with they way its going to effect me.

I am presently using two browsers and I may compare them too. The two are IE 7 and Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.1.

The look is attractive with aweosme appeals with the 3D buttons and tabs. It seems as though the page has grown a bit bigger with the Classic Menu Bar shrunk and placed along with the tabs. The introduction of tabs is definitely new to IE, it was already in use with other browsers like Mozilla and Opera.

Working with tabs has been really made a cool experience. crt+t launches a new tab in the foreground and the center botton of the mouse when clicked on the tab button closes it. There are several other short cuts available too.





The appearance of the history and favourites part has been made more interesting with feeds also coming into the browser. The icons of the respective websites are being shown in the address bar and everywhere else with the site's address.


Looking further at the tab browsing, a sort cascading of the tab windows was interesting to use. There is a small button on the left side if the tabs that makes all the windows appear into a single one from where any one can be selected.



There is also a search box provided on the address bar which is set to MSN search by default (this can be taken as an attempt by Microsoft to monopolise the search engine market , but it can easily be changed to any other engine like google).

The biggest feature about IE 7 Beta 2 is the security. Apart from a pop-up blocker, it also supplies a tool for checking phishing by any websites. Everytime a site is opened, it is checked for possible breaches of security or attempts by the site to launch anything malicious into the user's computer. This option can be turned off pretty easily if it is found to slow down the loading of any pages.

As for me, there is one disadvantage in using IE 7 Beta 2. When I open Google pages for editing my website, there is no editing bar on the left side of the screen. This was really irritating. I hope they do something about this in the final version.




The addition of any new tool bars is as easy as in the previous version. Any new 3rd party softwares can be integrated into it and of course the MSN messenger is already there connected to the browser.

IE 7 Beta 2 can only be installed on licensed Windows XP with SP 2.