Apple unveils world's thinnest notebook computer

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple chief executive Steve Jobs on Tuesday unveiled an ultra-slim MacBook Air laptop computer that he billed as the world's leanest laptop.

In trademark theatrical style at the Macworld Expo opening in San Francisco, Jobs slid the laptop from a brown envelope typically used for inter-office mail.

A packed audience of notoriously cultish "Macintosh faithful" whistled, hooted and cheered.

"It's the world's thinnest notebook (computer)," Jobs said with a smile.

"We went out and looked at all the thin notebooks out there and tried to distil a best-of-breed."

MacBook Air is a lean wedge-shape, .16 inches thin at the front and .76 inches thick at the rear. Jobs compared it to some of the market's thinnest laptops measuring .8 inches at one end and 1.2 inches at the other.

World-leading computer chip maker Intel shrunk one of its fast dual-core processors by 60 per cent at Apple's urging to fit the power into MacBook Air, according to Jobs.

"When we started this project we didn't think it was possible," Intel chief executive Paul Otellini said, briefly joining Jobs on stage.

"There were times we sweated over it, but at the end of the day we innovated."

Macintosh computers sales have surged due to what analysts describe as a "halo effect" from the company's trendy iPod and iPhone models. Apple has been aggressively trying to capitalise on the company's cache.'

Apple has shipped more than five million copies of its new Leopard operating system for Macintosh computers since it launched in late October, according to Jobs.

"The MacBook Air could kick-start the ultra-portable laptop market," Bajarin said, noting that laptop models already constitute nearly half of Apple's flourishing Macintosh computer sales.

"The Air will be a big hit with the Mac faithful but also be something that attracts PC users."

Jobs pointed out that the lean laptops have easily recyclable aluminium casing and electronic components made from non-hazardous materials.

The segue was an effort to polish Apple's dim reputation among environmentalists who accuse the company of falling short when it comes to recycling used electronics and using Earth-friendly materials.

MacBook Air features innovations inspired by Apple's iPods and iPhone, according to Jobs.

For example, the compact hard drives in the laptops are the kind used in iPods, while touch pad controls in the computers mimic touch-screen "gesture" capabilities in iPhones.

"We learned from the iPhone and put it in our other computers," Jobs said.

MacBook Air notebooks weigh three pounds and have battery life of five hours. The ultra-lean laptops are priced at 1,799 US dollars and will begin shipping in two weeks, Jobs said. - AFP/ac
Ref: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/technologynews/print/322858/1/.html

YouTube makes its videos treasure trove mobile

SAN FRANCISCO - YouTube on Thursday began making all of its videos available on the latest-generation cellphones as people increasingly shift to accessing the Internet on the go.

YouTube for Mobile lets people view any of the popular website's videos, provided their cellphones can stream the data and are linked to a 3G network that incorporates high-speed Internet access.

Google-owned YouTube began making videos available to "smart phones" in 2006, but only a small portion of its huge trove of user-contributed material could be viewed on the devices.

"Creating the best possible mobile video experience for users involves allowing the community to engage with YouTube whenever they want, wherever they are," YouTube said in a written release.

"The latest enhancements to YouTube for Mobile will give users access to the largest repository of mobile video content available, on over 100 million devices worldwide, and more tools to personalise their experience."

YouTube said it works closely with mobile telephone makers including Motorola, LG, Helio, and Nokia.

YouTube for Mobile is available in 17 countries and nearly a dozen languages, according to the California firm. - AFP/fa
Ref: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/technologynews/view/324850/1/.html

Low-cost laptops for Third-World

Little, cheap and sturdy, laptops designed to bring technology to the children of developing countries are rolling out after years of promises. But don't expect them to do much for high-tech kids in the U.S.

This winter I handed one — Intel Corp.'s Classmate PC — to my 14-year-old son, a high school freshman who has been pestering us for a computer to use at school.

"It's cute," he said. "Kind of dinky. I'll do my work on this, but can I also play some games?"

Meanwhile, my sister and her husband in Seattle bought their kids an XO laptop from the One Laptop Per Child Foundation, telling their 10-year-old daughter Rebecca to "have fun, figure out how this works, and teach the rest of us."

Rebecca was thrilled, but then she usually is when you hand her anything challenging.

Within a few weeks, however, both computers were barely being used, benched, as it were, by lackluster performance and frustrating bugs. The problems were bad enough to turn off our kids.

Admittedly, it might be a different story if our children — like those in developing countries — were not already familiar with high-end laptops, ubiquitous Wi-Fi and YouTube. Still, it's hard to imagine how the problems we encountered would not eventually pose an obstacle regardless of locale or expectations.

The Classmate PC and the OLPC are, at this point, the leading players in the emerging market of rugged, low-cost laptops designed to bring a new educational opportunity to children without access to technology. Analysts at Gartner say more than 6 million of the ultra low-cost PCs will ship by 2012, although there are fewer than 100,000 circulating so far.

Neither the Classmate PC nor the OLPC are currently for sale in the U.S. For six months Intel and the OLPC Foundation were actually partners, but in early January Intel quit the OLPC board, citing disagreements.

And although there are some similarities — both are about half the size of a 17-inch laptop, and both aim to improve poor children's lives — there are some fundamental differences: The OLPC is a tutor unto itself, designed to educate a child who may not have access to a classroom or a teacher; the Classmate PC, on the other hand, comes with educational software and systems to be used in classrooms as a learning assistant.

One Laptop Per Child is a nonprofit organization founded in 2005 by Nicholas Negroponte, former Media Lab director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original concept was to offer a "$100 laptop," but prices have crept up on the green-and-white low-power "XO" computer, now selling for closer to $200. My sister and her husband actually bought theirs for $400, but it was part of a deal offered during a six-week window last year that allowed them to keep one and donate a second to a child in a developing country.

"People spend more than that on an expensive toy for their kids, and from the reviews we read this was a real computer that actually worked well," said my sister, Karen Snyder.

The OLPC runs on the Linux operating system and a chip made by Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The software was complicated and buggy. For weeks neither my brilliant niece, nor her well educated parents, could figure out how to get it to connect online.

They eventually had to reconfigure and upgrade the operating system, a complex process certainly not doable by a computer rookie. Pity the child in a remote Cambodian village trying to figure out this instruction from the OLPC Web site: "At your root prompt, type: olpc-update (build-no) where (build-no) is the name of the build you would like."

Even worse, in order to save trees, the OLPC arrived with very few printed instructions. Instead the users were directed to a Web site for help, which would have been an insurmountable challenge if this was their only computer.

Once upgraded, the OLPC has been remarkably slow, often requiring repeated attempts to log in and balking at the notion of opening more than a few programs at a time.

"I am not sure how useful this is when there are other computers available in our home. But in a Third-World setting, where it is not being used to hook up to the Internet but to other XO computers, it might be more useful," said my brother-in-law, Bob Sokol.

My niece Rebecca is defensive about her "cute" computer: "It has really fun games and it's easy to carry around and its fun to figure things out on it," she says.

This week she is trying to write a Personal Immigration Story on it for a class assignment, and she says she is especially pleased with the "small keyboard with really squishy keys that are fun to type on." The battery, she notes, lasts all day, but she's having trouble printing the paper.

While Rebecca was gaining some affinity for her OLPC, my son Raymond was getting to know the Classmate PC, which run $230 to $300. The rugged blue cover proved to be tough enough for the daily bike commute to school. The magnetic snap, which I thought looked flimsy and therefore doomed, showed no sign of wear despite weeks of constant opening and closing.

The computer he tested operates at a moderate pace using a stripped-down version of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. Raymond could stream short videos or play simple games as long as he didn't have too many windows open.

But there were challenges. The small keyboard, which has a somewhat unusual configuration, was particularly hard to type on. He got halfway through a Coming Of Age essay before switching to a larger computer, frustrated by his higher-than-usual number of typos.

He tried writing a history paper comparing two articles about ancient Rome, but found the computer couldn't power up several Web sites and a word processor at the same time. For physics, he downloaded bridge-building software and was stymied by the undersized monitor. Geometry "is better done with a pencil and paper," he said.

At school the Classmate PC was deemed "OK" for taking notes in class, but it took so long booting up that he either had to carry it open between classes or miss the first few minutes of a lecture. As for the cool factor, the Classmate PC was deemed "cute" by his friends but "terrible looking" by the kids on the school IT Team. Then again, he says, "those are the computer snobs."

Raymond's biggest problem with his Classmate PC was the power adapter, which slipped out very easily. But the battery lasted through a full day of school.

Raymond said he supported the idea of bringing computers to needy kids, but said a school might be better off with a dozen really good computers in a computer lab rather than mediocre computers for every child.

And at the end of the day, "it's still better to have a really good teacher," he said. "They're a lot more important than computers."

 

 

Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_hi_te/tech_test_classmate_pc&printer=1;_ylt=AgvQd_WbXGrZFH0nDnptD09k24cA

Growing Online, BBC Is to Join With MySpace

The commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation is expected to announce a partnership with MySpace on Thursday to make some of its content available on MySpace, the popular social networking Web site.

MySpace, part of the News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, said Wednesday that the relationship was its first global agreement with a major broadcaster. The companies will share advertising revenue.

The BBC has already found some success syndicating content on the Google Web site YouTube, where its videos have garnered more than three million views since last February. MySpaceTV is the second most popular video Web site, behind YouTube.

For the BBC, the latest deal offers an opportunity to widen the release of its content, trying to reach younger consumers where they socialize.

"This partnership continues our strategy of putting BBC content right at the heart of where audiences spend their time and watch video online," Simon Danker, the director of digital media at BBC Worldwide, said in a statement.

The partnership is significant for the 13 local-language versions of MySpaceTV around the world, because MySpace's previous collaborations with television networks have been restricted to certain markets. The BBC content will be available anywhere in the world on MySpace's 23 regional sites.

"Our users are consuming an enormous amount of video," said Jeff Berman, the general manager of MySpaceTV. With the deal, Mr. Berman is expected to be promoted to executive vice president for marketing and content. The former marketing chief left in November.

While MySpaceTV offers full-length episodes of NBC and Fox television shows, short-form video has proved to be a more popular format.

The new BBC site promises clips from "the best of British TV," grouped into channels for comedy, drama, sci-fi, documentary and other content. On YouTube, which will continue to carry BBC videos, the most popular BBC products have featured the automotive action series "Top Gear," and on MySpace, the show will have its own channel.

Like many British programs before it, "Top Gear" has elicited American interest; NBC ordered an American pilot episode this month.

Users will be able to embed the videos on their MySpace profile pages and discuss them content on a BBC forum.