India: $36 Tablet PC

The Indian Government has unveiled a prototype of a touchscreen, tablet computer, the Aakash Tablet PC will go on sale for $36. As more data is migrated to the cloud simple web-enabled platforms such as tablet-pc’s will replace the bloated desktop and laptop hardware architectures of today, the future is apparently mobile.

That other behemoth, India,  has launched what it’s dubbed as the world’s cheapest tablet computer, to be sold to students at the subsidised price of $36 and later in shops for about $61. Most of India’s 1.2 billion people are poor and products such as Apple iPad are beyond the reach even of many in the fast-growing middle class. The government is buying the first units of the lightweight touch-screen device, called Aakash, or “sky” in Hindi, for $51 each from a British company which is assembling the web-enabled devices in India. Read the full article »»»»

Kodak Playfull: Almost Extreme HD 720p Video Camera

Remember Kodak? Yep, the guys that  popularized photography. Apparently they still have a basement filled with boffins, not celluloid boffins but gadget creators. Kodak has been looking for an angle for a while now, looks like they’ve found it! The KODAK PLAYFULL Waterproof Video Camera!  gives you full 720p HD video in a small, affordable package. Read the full article »»»»

Zuckerbergs Cookie Monster

Social media behemoth Facebook is in damage control after a deluge of criticism that it is invading the privacy of members by tracking their internet activity.  Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg described the sites new features as creating ‘frictionless sharing‘ Oops

Facebook admits it went too far. The social network is quietly retracting a cookie that continued to report your Facebook user ID even after you “logged out” of the site. But it’s not sorry about five other cookies that persist after you sign off. What, you didn’t think Facebook would ever let you actually for real seriously 100 percent sign out, did you? Read the full article »»»»

Dirty Pictures Pretty Please

WE Want Your Trashy Pix . . .

Nokia N9 MeeGo Smartphone

That fighting Finnish mobile maker, Nokia has unveiled its N9 buttonless smartphone, the company’s first, indeed it’s only foray into the Linux-based MeeGo platform. Nokia Australia said in a statement that the phone, which has no keypad or home buttons, would be available “later this year”, with pricing still to be announced.

Nokia ditched plans to use MeeGo in its future smartphones when it teamed up with Microsoft’s Windows Phone earlier this year. The N9, Nokia’s first and last MeeGo, comes with a large curved – 3.9-inch AMOLED - touch screen and is available in black, cyan and magenta.oh, there’s much hipe about the Swipe, checkout the Swipe here http://swipe.nokia.com/

As a company, Nokia is on the ropes. While punters have been calling for a shift to Android, and most had written up Nokia’s obituaries, Nokia’s worked away in it usual silence on what has turned out to be quite a secret project. Before seeing the N9, we wondered what was to be unveiled, placing our bets on a new Symbian handset. Instead, Nokia reveals its first MeeGo device, a phone that definitely looks and feels fresh and new, quite a stunning new number.

Nokia’s head of design, Marko Ahtisaari, said “With the Nokia N9, we re-evaluated the way we thought a smartphone should act. It should be simple and it should blend software, hardware, services and content into a unique user experience.”

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The MeeGo platform – a newcomer in a market swamped by Google and Apple – was born in February 2010, when Nokia and Intel unveiled a merger of Nokia’s Linux Maemo software platform with Intel’s Moblin, which is also based on Linux open-source software. Since Nokia pulled out of the project four months ago other vendors have become more interested in the technology as Nokia’s dominant role in the project had held many back from utilizing the platform. Nokia sells more mobiles than any other manufacturer but it has had a real struggle keeping up in the high-end smartphone market against Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platforms.

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Quicknotes on N9!

Similar to Android devices, MeeGo aggregates all account management into one place, letting you sign in to a service and have its services present in all apps that use that information.

The N9 isn’t just for snooty photographers; it’s also for snooty music lovers, too! The N9 has Dolby Mobile software baked in, and has this loud external speaker on the base. For those with serious music collections, the N9 will come in 16GB or 64GB storage options.

Nokia packs free maps with free turn-by-turn navigation into MeeGo and the N9.

Nokia has been toying around with NFC capabilities for just short of a decade, but it is banking on the N9 through the headset that really helps raise awareness of what NFC can achieve. We saw a demonstration of the N9 pairing with this Bluetooth headset just by tapping them together, but it can also be used to create multiplayer gaming sessions between two phones, or to share details like contact info or photos.

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Nokia N9 MeeGo Stats Below

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