EDTECH News

 

EdTech News

As the global economy becomes increasingly reliant on electronic communications, more than four billion people world-wide remain untouched by the information and communications technology revolution. But with ingenuity, talented individuals, not based in Seattle or the Silicon Valley, are helping to narrow the digital divide with their inventions. One such device is the Simputer.

A simpler computer

In an effort to bring the Internet to the masses in India and other developing countries, several academics and engineers have used their spare time to design and build a handheld "appliance" for accessing the Internet that costs less than US$200. Called the Simputer, for SIMple comPUTER, the device has great potential for enabling India's poor and illiterate population to surf the Web and empower themselves with knowledge. The Simputer was created by professors and students at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) at Bangalore (www.csa.iisc.ernet.in) and engineers from the Bangalore-based design company, Encore Software Limited (www.ncoretech.com).

In order for the simple computer to be of use to those who it was designed to serve - India's and the world's substantial population that is unable to read or write - engineers developed a remarkable text-to-speech software called Information Markup Language (or Illiterate Markup Language). The software enables the Simputer to translate English text into a variety of Indian languages and then read the information aloud to the user.

The Simputer is built around Intel's StrongARM CPU and uses the open source (share-ware; free) Linux operating system. It has 32 MB of flash memory, a monochrome liquid-crystal display (LCD) with a touch panel overlay for pen-based computing, a local-language interface and web and e-mail software. It also has Infrared Data Association (IDA) and Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces and
is able to access the Internet via dialup modem or through other add-on means.

The designers expect the Simputer to be used not only as a personal Internet access device, but also by communities of users at kiosks and telecentres. Using a smart-card interface, it could also be used for specialty applications such as personal banking.

The intellectual property rights for the device has now been transferred without cost to the non-profit Simputer Trust and both the hardware and software have been offered as open source technology. In the open source model of development, users and developers work together without remuneration to improve and upgrade technology.

The Simputer is currently part of a wireless interactive data broadcasting trial in the Bastar district of central Chhattisgarh state in India. The initiative is sponsored by WorldSpace Foundation using WorldSpace's AsiaStar digital broadcasting satellite.

Credit-card-like smart-cards function as blackboards, notebooks and report cards in the Bastar education project. Each student's own smart-card enables him or her, as well as teachers and the course designer, to monitor the progress of lessons studied and facilitate students in non-formal education programmes to study at their own pace and according to their level of advancement.

Using the Simputer and wireless broadcasting, lessons and web pages can be delivered even to the most remote villages that have only the most basic services. If proven successful, WorldSpace Corporation plans to expand its reach to other regions of the developing world. WorldSpace satellites now cover all of Asia and Africa, and will include South/Central America and the Caribbean in the near future.

www.simputer.org 
www.WorldSpace.org  
www.WorldSpace.com 

DVD - zoned out

Digital versatile disc, or DVD, is the next generation of optical disc storage technology. It's a bigger, faster CD-ROM that can hold cinema-like video and better-than-CD audio as well as computer data. DVD aims to replace audio CD, videotape, laserdisc, CD-ROM and video game cartridges for both distribution and user storage/recording. It has widespread support from all major electronics companies, all major computer hardware companies and all major movie and music studios. With this unprecedented support, DVD has become the most successful consumer electronics product of all time in less than three years of its introduction. Advantages of DVD include:

• over two hours of high-quality digital video (a double-sided, dual-layer disc can hold eight hours of high-quality video or 30 hours of VHS-quality video);

• multi-tracking to accommodate different audio or subtitle languages, camera angles, video storylines, karaoke options, etc;

• searchable credits and other related information;

• instant access to any recorded data (no more rewinding and fast-forwarding tape);

• interactive features; and

• compact and durable.

There are, however, issues that have emerged concerning regional restrictions on distribution by the movie industry and also with the recent introduction of DVD recording devices for consumers.

DVD burners will, like CD burners, allow many to produce or illegally copy (and even illegally distribute) their own DVDs, once the price lowers on both blank DVD discs (currently around US$15) and hardware prices (currently around US$1000).

Motion picture studios also want to control the home release of movies in different countries because theatre releases are not always simultaneous (a movie may come out on video in the U.S. when it is just hitting screens in Europe). Also, studios sell rights to different foreign distributors and would like to guarantee an exclusive market. Therefore, they required that the DVD standard include codes that can be used to prevent playback of certain discs in certain geographical regions. Each player is given a code for the region or purpose in which it is sold. The player will refuse to play discs that are not coded for its region. This means that discs bought in one country may not play on players bought in another country. Some suggest that regional codes are an illegal restraint of trade, but this has not, as yet, been tested in courts.

Regional codes are, however, entirely optional for the maker of a disc and restrict access only to video recordings. Discs without such codes will play on any player in any country. But television formats still need to be considered. North American standard NTSC discs, with Dolby Digital audio, play on over 95% of DVD installations worldwide, but PAL system discs play on very few players outside of PAL countries.

USB 2.0

The first Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 devices are starting to appear in stores, although the new USB ports will not be common on personal computers until next year. USB 2.0 makes everything from printers and keyboards to digital cameras and MP3 players easier to install and run. The USB Implementers Forum, which includes Microsoft and Intel, created USB 2.0, which is 40 times faster than USB 1.1 and can move data as fast as 480 Mbps; USB 1.1 operates at 12 Mbps. Apple Computer has developed the rival IEEE 1394, which has become the standard on digital video camcorders. However, not many IEEE 1394 scanners, external hard drives and external CD drives attract large sales. USB 2.0 also has a marketing edge in that Intel makes the microprocessors for most Windows PCs and makes many of the subsidiary chips. The company is expected to build USB 2.0 into those subsidiary chips by next year.

The Baltimore Sun

Satellite telephones

This may be the time to begin considering the purchase of a satellite telephone more seriously. The US$5 billion investment in the Iridium company has just been sold by the liquidators to an investor for US$25 million or 0.5% of the asset value of the company (before its liquidation). The new owners, who don't have the very high overhead costs of the original owners are now looking to sell their telephone airtime at around US$2.00 per minute, a major reduction in price from Iridium's original US$12 per minute. Target customers are people and organisations in the marine, aviation, oil and mining industries. Areas of the world that are unlikely to receive any terrestrial telecommunications (e.g., by land lines and cellular telephones) in the foreseeable future may now consider this an affordable, workable technology for essential communication.

www.iridium.com 

The origin of the Internet

Did you know that the beginning of the Internet can be traced back to the year 1866?

The first transatlantic cable to transmit communications and information from one continent to the other was laid on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1858 but unfortunately it didn't work. It was only in 1866 that the first fully operational cable was successfully laid on the bottom of the sea. Today, there is over 300,000 Km of under-water cable connecting countries from all over the world and despite the modern deployment of numerous satellite systems, much of it is still in use.

Almost 100 years later, in 1969, in a computer laboratory at UCLA, Professor Leonard Kleinrock - widely considered the founder of the Internet - and his small group of graduates hoped to log onto another computer at Stanford University and send it a message. They would start by typing "login" and see if the letters would appear on the other computer screen situated only 450 km away. As they started the experiment and typed the first letters on the keyboard, they communicated with each other by phone to verify the progress. Professor Kleinrock described how the progress of the first e-mail ever sent on the Internet went:

"Do you see the L?"

"Yes, we see the L," came the response.

We typed the O, and we asked, "Do you see the O?"

"Yes, we see the O."

Then we typed the G, and the system crashed!

A revolution had begun...

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