Random Access

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday June 2, 2008

Simon Tsang

The $80 laptop?

The famous "$100 laptop" created for students in Third World countries as part of the One Laptop Per Child project may cost closer to $200 but the second-generation model has set its sights on a price tag of $US75. That's about $78 - hooray for a healthy exchange rate. Dubbed the XO-2 (above) and slated for release in 2010, it replaces the keyboard with a touch-sensitive screen. This also allows the device to be held vertically like a book or shared between two users.

Google's free web wiki

Google has now made its point-and-click web-page-creation service, known as Google Sites, available to any registered Google user (which means folks with a Gmail or Gtalk account, customised iGoogle page and so on). Anyone can set up their own home page using Sites but Google is promoting the service for shared school and university projects, clubs and community groups and even family updates, as each site can be edited by any number of users in the same manner as Wikipedia. Each online site receives a web name such as sites.google.com/mx5owners. For more information and an informative online tutorial, see sites.google.com.

Look, up in the sky ...

The GPS navigation system is getting ready for a massive upgrade. The last two satellites in the current network will be launched this month, with eight new satellites being designed to join the network in 2014, by which time it's predicted there will be more than 560 million GPS-enabled devices in the world. The new birds will have 500 times the power of the current satellites, dramatically boosting signal strength and also providing a more accurate location fix to within five metres.

Intel goes Atomic

Back in the realm of little laptops, this week sees the launch of Intel's new Atom processor and Atom Centrino technology. The super-small chips have been created from scratch to deliver PC-class grunt plus all-day battery life to low-cost notebooks, such as ASUS Eee PC, as well as a new range of "mobile internet devices" (below) the size of a Filofax but with a wireless connection to the web. Expect the first wave of these gadgets to appear next month.