$100 laptop hits $200
A computer developed for poor children around the world, dubbed 'the $100 laptop', has reached a milestone. A computer developed for poor children around the world, dubbed 'the $100 laptop', has reached a milestone.
Thinking Outside the In-box
Search the Internet, and you'll find hundreds of applications designed to help you collaborate with other people more effectively.
Why Facebook Wants Your E-Mail
On Monday morning in San Francisco, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled what may be the company's most ambitious technical project yet: An integration of Facebook's internal messaging system with its users' personal e-mail accounts.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Needed: Apps for Google TV
Posted by Della on 4:42 PM
he first few products featuring Google's TV software have received lukewarm reviews, and the first downloadable apps for the platform are months away. So Google is trying to persuade Web developers to create the first wave of interactive content for the platform by making web pages and in-browser "web apps" to ignite enthusiasm for the "TV meets Web" project.
Ambarish Kenghe, a Google TV product manager, says his team recently gave away 10,000 Google TV devices to Web developers in the United States to encourage them to develop for the platform.
Google TV is an operating system for TV devices that makes it possible to view both web content and regular broadcasts through one interface. The first products with it built in launched last month, including TV sets and Blu-Ray players from Sony, and a set-top box from Logitech. Those devices can run "native," or installable, apps that offer complex functionality because Google TV is a variant of the Android operating system for smartphones. But the Android app market won't come to the platform until spring or summer 2011, Kenghe says.
Until then only websites and web apps—applications that run in the browser—can bring extra video and music content, and even games, to compatible devices.
Why Facebook Wants Your E-Mail
Posted by Della on 4:38 PM
Facebook isn't pitching this as an alternative to Web-based e-mail like Yahoo Mail, MSN Hotmail, and Google's Gmail. "We don't expect anyone to wake up tomorrow and say I'm going to shut down my Yahoo account and switch exclusively to Facebook," Zuckerberg told the assembled audience in San Francisco. Instead, it's a way to add e-mail as yet another way for Facebook users to connect and converse with others, including those who aren't on Facebook.
Rather than trying to steal customers away from Yahoo, Facebook is trying to bring those customers' existing e-mail accounts into its ever-spreading reach. (Already, according to Nielsen, U.S. Facebook users spend 15 minutes per day on the site.) Should Google launch its rumored social network in the next few months, Facebook users will have less reason to switch to another network simply because it's integrated with Gmail.
Facebook's mail service isn't live yet, but Zuckerberg detailed some of its main features: It will work with desktop and cell-phone e-mail clients via the POP protocol.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Who Cares What Everyone Else Thinks?
Posted by Della on 8:21 PM
Few products today launch without a social media strategy—a way of creating online buzz around whatever's being sold. The widespread belief is that people influence other people to buy products. A new study from MIT researchers, to be published in PloS One, suggests that this influence has its limits.
"We don't know what we mean when we say 'social influence,' " says Coco Krumme, one of the researchers involved with the work. She suggests that it's important to get a more specific idea of what kinds of social cues actually affect others' behavior.
By studying a body of information about music-downloading behavior, Krumme and colleagues Galen Pickard and Manuel Cebrian found that social cues could influence people to listen to samples of songs, but not necessarily to download them. They also suggested that the influence of social factors on a song's popularity diminishes over time, meaning that songs that rise to the top of download lists do that because they're better than ones that don't.
The researchers worked with a body of data from the MusicLab, a study several years ago that examined how social cues influenced the popularity of songs. In the MusicLab study, about 14,000 people were presented with 48 songs. They could sample the tracks, and if they liked the music, they could take the additional step of downloading them. The original researchers divided the people into groups and experimented with different ways of giving people information about what others were doing with the same songs.
Thinking Outside the In-box
Posted by Della on 8:15 PM
You're not alone. A recent Forrester Research study found that 83 percent of business users typically send e-mail attachments to colleagues rather than using collaboration software. According to a recent survey by technology consulting company People-OnTheGo, the average information worker spends 3.3 hours a day dealing with e-mail, and 65 percent of such workers have their e-mail client open all the time.
Even Facebook, which once seemed like a likely replacement for e-mail, at least for the young and plugged-in, has acknowledged that e-mail isn't going anywhere. On Monday, the company announced a new messaging service that integrates external e-mail with its own internal messaging system—an admission of the staying power of e-mail, and an attempt to enhance its functionality.
Other software makers seem to have accepted that they'll never pull people's attention away from their e-mail in-boxes. Instead, they're looking to add new collaborative and social capabilities to e-mail.
$100 laptop hits $200
Posted by Della on 7:41 PM
A computer developed for poor children around the world, dubbed 'the $100 laptop', has reached a milestone. Its price tag is now $200.
The One Laptop per Child Foundation, founded by Professor Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has started offering the lime-green and white machines in lots of 10,000 for U$200 apiece on its website.
Two weeks ago, a foundation executive confirmed recent estimates that the computer would cost US$188, which was already higher than the US$150 price tag in February and US$176 in April.
The laptops are scheduled to go into production next month at a factory in China, far behind their original schedule and in quantities that are a fraction of Negroponte's earlier projections.
It is unclear when the machines will be ready for customers, as the website says version 1.0 of the software that runs the machine will not be ready until 7 December.
A foundation spokesperson declined to comment on the pricing or release schedule.
When Negroponte said he could produce the laptops for US$100, industry analysts said it had the potential to shake up the PC industry, ushering in an era of low-cost computing.
He hoped to keep the price down by achieving unprecedented economies of scale for a start-up manufacturer, and in April, he sais he expected to have orders for 2.5 million laptops by May, with production targeted to begin in September.
But that has not panned out. So far the foundation has disclosed orders to three countries: Uruguay, Peru and Mongolia. It has not said how many machines they have ordered.
Wayan Vota, an expert on using technology to promote economic development who publishes olpcnews.com, a blog that monitors the group's activities, estimates orders at no more than 200,000 laptops.
"US$100 was never a realistic price. By starting with an unrealistic price, he reduced his credibility selling the laptop," Vota says.
Worldwide attention
Negroponte, a charismatic technologist who counts News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim among his friends, has attracted a lot of attention for the foundation.
He has met with leaders around the globe and promoted the introduction of computers into classrooms in the most impoverished regions of the world.
As he has done that, big technology companies have boosted spending on similar efforts.
The laptop features a keyboard that switches languages, a video camera, wireless connectivity and Linux software.
Microsoft Corp is trying to tailor Windows XP to work on the machine and recently said it is a few months away from knowing for sure whether it can accomplish that task.
The display switches from colour to black-and-white for viewing in direct sunlight, an advance the foundation is patenting and may license next year for commercial use.
The laptop needs just 2 watts of power compared with a typical laptop's 30-40 watts and does away with hard drives. It uses flash memory and four USB ports to add memory and other devices.
The One Laptop per Child Foundation, founded by Professor Nicholas Negroponte of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has started offering the lime-green and white machines in lots of 10,000 for U$200 apiece on its website.
Two weeks ago, a foundation executive confirmed recent estimates that the computer would cost US$188, which was already higher than the US$150 price tag in February and US$176 in April.
The laptops are scheduled to go into production next month at a factory in China, far behind their original schedule and in quantities that are a fraction of Negroponte's earlier projections.
It is unclear when the machines will be ready for customers, as the website says version 1.0 of the software that runs the machine will not be ready until 7 December.
A foundation spokesperson declined to comment on the pricing or release schedule.
When Negroponte said he could produce the laptops for US$100, industry analysts said it had the potential to shake up the PC industry, ushering in an era of low-cost computing.
He hoped to keep the price down by achieving unprecedented economies of scale for a start-up manufacturer, and in April, he sais he expected to have orders for 2.5 million laptops by May, with production targeted to begin in September.
But that has not panned out. So far the foundation has disclosed orders to three countries: Uruguay, Peru and Mongolia. It has not said how many machines they have ordered.
Wayan Vota, an expert on using technology to promote economic development who publishes olpcnews.com, a blog that monitors the group's activities, estimates orders at no more than 200,000 laptops.
"US$100 was never a realistic price. By starting with an unrealistic price, he reduced his credibility selling the laptop," Vota says.
Worldwide attention
Negroponte, a charismatic technologist who counts News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim among his friends, has attracted a lot of attention for the foundation.
He has met with leaders around the globe and promoted the introduction of computers into classrooms in the most impoverished regions of the world.
As he has done that, big technology companies have boosted spending on similar efforts.
The laptop features a keyboard that switches languages, a video camera, wireless connectivity and Linux software.
Microsoft Corp is trying to tailor Windows XP to work on the machine and recently said it is a few months away from knowing for sure whether it can accomplish that task.
The display switches from colour to black-and-white for viewing in direct sunlight, an advance the foundation is patenting and may license next year for commercial use.
The laptop needs just 2 watts of power compared with a typical laptop's 30-40 watts and does away with hard drives. It uses flash memory and four USB ports to add memory and other devices.
