India launches $35 tablet computer

 India launched what it dubbed the world's cheapest tablet computer onWednesday, to be sold to students at the subsidised price of $35 and later in shops for about$60.

Most of India's 1.2 billion people are poor and products such as Apple Inc's iPad are beyond thereach even of many in the fast-growing middle class.

"The rich have access to the digital world, the poor and ordinary have been excluded. Aakashwill end that digital divide," Telecoms and Education Minister Kapil Sibal said.

The government is buying the first units of the lightweight touch-screen device, called Aakash,or "sky" in Hindi, for $50 each from a British company which is assembling the web-enableddevices in India.

A pilot run of 100,000 units will be given to students for free, with the first 500 handed out at thelaunch to a mixed response. It supports video conferencing, has two USB ports and a three-hourbattery life but some users said it was slow.

India has a reputation for creating affordable products that are easy to use and sturdy enoughto handle its rugged environment -- from Tata Motors' $2,000 Nano car to generic versions ofpharmaceuticals.

Two years in development, the paperback book-sized Aakash may help the government's goalof incorporating information technology in education, although critics were doubtful of its massappeal.

Despite being a leader in software and IT services, India trails fellow BRIC nations Brazil, Russiaand China in the drive to get the masses connected to the Internet and mobile phones, a reportby risk analysis firm Maplecroft said this year.

The number of Internet users grew 15-fold between 2000 and 2010 in India, according toanother recent report. Still, just 8 percent of Indians have access. That compares with nearly 40percent in China.

The Aakash is aimed at university students for digital learning via a government platform thatdistributes electronic books and courses.

Testing included running video for two hours in temperatures of 48 degrees Celsius (118degrees Fahrenheit) to mimic a northern Indian summer, said DataWind, the small London-based company that developed the tablet with the Indian Institute of Technology.

Rajat Agrawal, executive editor of gadget reviewers BGR India, said the 660 mhz processor fromUS company Conexant Systems was "decent" for the price, but warned the machine seemedslow and the touch screen not very agile.

"Because of the price there is a lot of excitement," he said. "People might use it initially but if it isnot user friendly they will give up within a week."  

After first giving them out for free, the government aims to sell them to students for $35 nextyear. A retail version will be sold in Indian shops for about $60.

The device uses resistive LCD displays rather than a full touch screen and connects via wirelessbroadband. DataWind CEO Suneet Singh said future versions would include a mobile phoneconnection, making it more useful in rural areas.

The launch last week of Amazon's Kindle Fire shook up the global tablet market, with its $199price tag and slick browser a serious threat to Apple's iPad.

Like the Kindle Fire, the Aakash uses the Google Android operating system.

Some of the mainly middle-class technology department students at the event said it neededrefinement but was a good option for the poor.  

"It could be better," said Nikant Vohra, an electrical engineering student. "If you see it from theprice only, it's okay, but we have laptops and have used iPads, so we know the difference."

Some 19 million people subscribe to mobile phones every month, making India the world'sfastest growing market, but most are from the wealthier segment of the population in towns.

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China sends French-made satellite into space

China's Long March-III2 rocket carrier sent a French-made telecomsatellite into orbit from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center Friday afternoon, marking the firsttime for China to provide launch service for a European satellite operator.

It was also the 148th launch for the Long March rocket family.

According to information and data received by the Xi'an Satellite Measuring and MonitoringCenter, the satellite and rocket carrier separated on schedule and the satellite is now in orbit.

The launch marked the first time for China to cooperate with a European satellite operatorsince the signing of a Sino-French satellite launch agreement in 2008.

The launch was carried out by the China Great Wall Industry Corporation and the ChinaInstitute of Rocket Carrier Technology, both under the China Aerospace Science andTechnology Corporation, as well as the China Satellite Launch and Tracking Control General(CLTC).

The W3C telecom satellite was built by Thales Alenia Space, a French satellite manufacturer,and is owned by Eutelsat, a leading provider of satellite communication services.

The W3C has a designed lifespan of 15 years and will provide television, radio, broadband,video and Internet service.

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Launch of Tiangong-1 a breakthrough for China

China's successful launch of its first space lab module is a breakthrough for Chinain the domains of science, economy and politics, a Russian expert said in a recent interview.

Andrey Ostrovsky, deputy director of the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy ofSciences, said the blastoff of Tiangong-1, or Heavenly Palace, paved the way for China tooperate a permanent space station around 2020 and become the world's third country to doso.

Only two countries have operated space stations before, namely the United States and theSoviet Union. "Now, China joins the group," the expert said.

Tiangong-1 blasted off at 9:16 pm Beijing Time (1316 GMT) Thursday in a northwestern desertarea as the nation envisions the coming of its space station era in about ten years.

The 8.5-tonne module, with a length of 10.4 meters and a maximum diameter of 3.35 meters,will test space-docking with the unmanned Shenzhou-8 spacecraft later this year.

Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 would follow to dock with the lab module in the next two years.

Ostrovsky said the manned space program showed that China's economy is capable ofperforming such a large-scale space project.

"The thing is that after that launch, Tiangong-2 and Tiangong-3 would follow. So this is not aone-off achievement but a deeply planned and financed program," he said.

"The country has found 'brains' and 'hands' to make the task feasible," the expert said, addingthat "China fulfills its program of space explorations at a breathtaking pace."

Ostrovsky said the launch of Tiangong-1 would create a new reality, as there will be twopermanent manned stations in the orbit in the future.

China's project would allow the international scientific and engineering community to conductmore and bolder experiments, as research on geography, astronomy and bio-technology in alow-gravity environment, such as that of a space station, will bring greater achievements thanthose conducted on the surface of the Earth, he said.

"China's project gives more choices to the international community in space explorations,"Ostrovsky said.

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China successfully launches ‘Heavenly Palace’ space craft

China successfully launched an experimental craft paving the way for its first space station on Thursday amid a blaze of national pride, bringing the growing Asian power closer to matching the United States and Russia with a long-term manned outpost in space.

The Tiangong 1, or “Heavenly Palace”, blasted off from a remote site in the Gobi Desert at 9:16 pm, adding a high-tech sheen to China’s National Day celebrations on Oct. 1.

Premier Wen Jiabao watched as the small, unmanned “space lab” and the Long March rocket that heaved it skyward from a pad at Jiuquan in northwest Gansu province, lifted off under clear skies, in images shown live on state television.

It is the latest show of China’s growing prowess in space, and comes while budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back U.S. manned space launches.

The big test comes weeks after its launch, when the eight tonne craft attempts to join up with an unmanned Shenzhou 8 spacecraft that China plans to launch.

Space docking tests conducted with the Tiangong 1 will provide experience for the building of a permanent manned space station around 2020, mission spokeswoman Wu Ping said.

China’s government will hope to set a successful Tiangong mission alongside other trophies of its growing technological prowess, including the launch of a trial aircraft carrier.

And the launch, just before China’s National Day holiday, was accompanied by an outpouring of proud support for the country’s technological achievements.

“I feel great pride in being Chinese today. This is another great step forward for China in space,” wrote Shi Zhongshan on the popular Twitter-like microblogging site Sina Weibo.

Engineers had been watching launch preparations nervously, after another Long March rocket malfunctioned and failed to send an experimental satellite into orbit last month.

Beijing is still far from catching up with space superpowers. The Tiangong launch is a trial step in Beijing’s plans to eventually establish its own space station.

Russia, the United States and other countries jointly operate the International Space Station, to which China does not belong.

But the United States will not test a new rocket to take people into space until 2017, and Russia has said manned missions are no longer a priority for its space program, which has struggled with delays and glitches.

Earlier this month, NASA unveiled plans for a deep-space rocket to carry astronauts to the moon and Mars. President Barack Obama has called for a human expedition to an asteroid by 2025 and a journey to Mars in the 2030s.

China launched its second moon orbiter last year after it became only the third country to send its astronauts walking in space outside their orbiting craft in 2008.

It plans an unmanned moon landing and deployment of a moon rover in 2012, and the retrieval of lunar soil and stone samples around 2017. Scientists have talked about the possibility of sending a man to the moon after 2020.

China is also jostling with neighbours Japan and India for a bigger presence in space, but its plans have faced international wariness. Beijing says its aims are peaceful, and military involvement natural given the enormity of the undertaking.

“The military enjoys unique advantages in organizing and coordinating such large-scale activities, and its involvement in aerospace missions is an international practice,” Defence Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said this week.

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Angry Birds maker to unveil stadium-sized game

Angry Birds will migrate from cellphone screens to the Formula One racetrack this weekend in Singapore, as the firm behind the mobile gaming sensation rolls out a crowd game to be played by live audiences.

Gaming firm Rovio has teamed up with Singapore Telecommunications for the Singapore launch, having created the crowd game with Finnish startup Uplause Ltd, the creators of the world’s first live event gaming platform.

“We think this new form of gaming will give fans a great opportunity to form a strong emotional connection with the characters,” Rovio’s marketing chief Peter Vesterbacka said in a statement.

Unlike most mobile-game crazes, Angry Birds – in which players use a slingshot to attack the pigs who stole the birds’ eggs – has stayed at the top of the charts.

In the crowd game, viewers control the slingshot on jumboscreens with their voices.

After Singapore, Rovio and Uplause plan to take the new gaming experience to the biggest live events in the world – to sports stadiums and rock concerts.

The gaming company is expanding the brand across traditional merchandising, to things such as toys and baby products, and is talking to film studios about taking the birds to the big screen.

Earlier this year, Rovio raised $42-million from venture capital firms in an investment co-led by Accel Partners, which has previously backed Facebook and Baidu, and Skype founder Niklas Zennstroem’s venture capital firm Atomico Ventures.

Rovio was founded in 2003 after three students including Niklas Hed – CEO Mikael Hed’s cousin and now Rovio’s COO – won a game-development competition sponsored by Nokia Oyj and Hewlett-Packard. It changed its name from Relude in 2005.

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Facebook’s photo-tagging tweaks rig the game against privacy

Big changes to Facebook make big headlines. But it’s the small changes we really need to worry about.

For instance, Facebook is currently rolling out an attention-getting new look for user profiles. But over the past few months, the company has also unrolled a tiny change, so small as to seem completely unworthy of note.

With a small interface tweak, Facebook has made it harder to untag yourself from a photo. Not impossible – just harder. It’s gone from a split-second one-click process to a three-dialogue box option-hunting hassle. It sounds innocuous enough, but “harder” is all it takes to sway the behaviour of millions in favour of Facebook’s interests – at the expense of their own.

Facebook users are familiar with the drill: When users upload photos to the site, they’re encouraged to identify the people in each picture, tagging each one. Facebook users can wake up the morning after a party to discover that their friends have uploaded and tagged dozens of photos of them. These photos automatically appear on their Facebook pages, without prior consent. This system has existed for years.

This is why many, if not most, Facebook users have become masters of untagging themselves, scrubbing their names from unflattering photos they didn’t want to be associated with. This was fine, because Facebook made it easy.

Here’s the rub: That system is no longer. After a small interface switchup, Facebook now only offers users a one-click way to hide the photo on their profile – but not to get rid of the tag itself. The photo will still be identified in the album of the person who posted it, should anyone see it there. The link will still go to your page. And most importantly, Facebook itself will still know that it’s you in that picture.

It’s still possible to fully untag yourself. But the process has been made artificially burdensome. You have to hunt down the page to find an option for reporting or untagging images. Clicking brings up a dialogue box with several options to review. Choosing the “untag” option brings up a second dialogue box. Choosing “untag” in that dialogue box brings up a third dialogue box that confirms the untagging. Instead of one click, that’s four clicks, three boxes and two sets of option selections. Now, imagine repeating that across dozens of photos that might get posted after a night out. The process quickly becomes onerous.

Facebook likes it when people tag photos. It’s good for business. The more internal links the site contains, the more people click, the more time people spend on the site, the more information is gathered about users, and the better advertising can be targeted, seen and sold. And let’s be honest, to the viewer, it’s useful when photos are tagged. It’s engaging to put names to those unknown characters who lurk in the background, and to explore their profiles in turn. Tagging is good for everyone, except perhaps the people in those photos.

By implementing a change so administrative it seems too arcane to dwell on, Facebook is pressing its 800 million-odd users, uploading about 250 million photos a day, to leave untold numbers of tags in the system that they might sooner have deleted, were it not such a hassle. The tiniest details of design have a huge effect on the way people use technology. Users follow the path of least resistance.

In fact, Facebook is so eager for more tags that in other countries it has implemented a facial-recognition system that recognizes your friends’ faces and does the work for you. Facebook says it’s not planning to implement the system in Canada; the Privacy Commissioner of Ontario is among those who have expressed grave concerns about its privacy implications.

By making tagging easier than ever while simultaneously making untagging a pain, Facebook has again tilted the playing field in its own corporate interest.

The disinterested might ask: If you can still hide unseemly photos on your profile, do the persistent tags really matter? Yes. For one thing, they can be used as a back door into your account. A colleague recently found strangers leaving comments on photos she was sure she’d made fully private, only to find, buried deep in an options box, a light grey disclaimer reading, “Anyone tagged and their friends can also see this post.” This was not an option that can be changed.

It should also be a concern that, from all the photos, events, tags, and comments, Facebook can piece together a remarkable picture of what you’ve done where, when and with whom. Don’t think that law enforcement isn’t profoundly interested in this stuff. If Facebook isn’t sharing this information with police today, it might tomorrow: Laws change, and governments these days aren’t much more interested in the idea of privacy than Facebook itself is. Among the new photo-reporting options, Facebook now allows you to flag photos containing “Illegal drug use.” How handy for everyone.

Facebook continually wagers – and so far correctly – that users will let it massage their expectations of privacy downwards, and accept the tradeoff. After all, what’s the option? Not to use Facebook, in this day and age?

Well, yes.

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