Friday - Jul 23, 2010
At a projected cost of 1,500 rupees–around $35 US–the laptop prototype unveiled by India’s Human Resources Development Ministry will be the world’s least expensive. It eclipses the $100 laptop developed at MIT for the non-profit organization, One Laptop per Child.
India has been struggling to modernize its educational infrastructure. One way to do that is by by making electronic content available to students. But for many Indians in the nation of over one billion people, even $100 puts a laptop out of reach. With the help of Indian engineering students, just off the drawing board is a prototype for the affordable electronic learning tool that should be available next year. Once it goes into mass production, the cost may fall to $10.
How good can a $10 laptop be, you may wonder? This one uses a Linux operating system, has 2 GB of RAM and WiFi connectivity. Since India faces chronic power outages, the device can run on solar power. With all kinds of free software apps available online, like Microsoft Office and Google Docs, and vast amounts of educational content, what more could Indian students want? Well maybe a speedy broadband connection. The government has plans for a massive broadband roll-out by 2012.
Wednesday - May 26, 2010
A recent study from Edison Research found that Twitter awareness among Americans has soared in the last year, from 26% to 87%. This doesn’t mean that all of them are tweeting. In fact just 7%–22 million–actively use the micro-blogging service.The story in India is somewhat similar, but for a provocative reason.
Last year few Indians had a clue about Twitter. Today, an estimated 2.3 million Indians are tweeting away. What explains this great tweet forward? A cricket scandal.
Indians take cricket very seriously. It is by far the most popular sport on the subcontinent. Earlier this year, a controversy arose when Lalit Modi, who founded the Indian Premier League (IPL) was accused of cronyism in awarding TV rights and team franchises. His accuser was Shashi Tharnoor, a former top United Nations diplomat, a member of the Indian parliament and a junior Foreign Minister. Tharnoor embraced Twitter as a tool to reach younger voters, garnering over three-quarters of a million followers, the most in India. His popularity may have been fueled by his colorful tweets.
According to the Bangkok Post, “In one tweet about ministers being forced to travel economy, Tharoor upset conservative Hindus by saying that he was travelling “cattle class in solidarity with all our holy cows”.”
Over the course of the last few months, charges and counter-charges have been played out via Twitter. Tharnoor himself was accused of wrongdoing and was ultimately forced to resign last month. Here’s his final tweet: “Thanks for all the support & good wishes. U folks are the new India. We will “be the change” we wish to see in our country. But not w’out pain!”
Wednesday - Apr 7, 2010
China has been in the news a lot lately, particularly regarding Google’s decision to pull its popular search service from the Chinese market. China’s Internet population, which topped 338 million last year, makes it the world’s largest. And with 1.3 billion people, China is also the world’s most populous country. Not far behind, is India, with a population of almost 1.2 billion, yet the number of Indian Internet users is miniscule compared to its Asian neighbor. There’s a certain irony to the world’s largest democracy having so few of its citizens online versus the world’s largest Communist state having so many.
A study released earlier this week by the Internet & Mobile Association of India reveals that 71 million Indians went online last year. With nearly comparable populations, China has five times as many cybernauts. Other major differences include these:
*In China, 5% access the Net from work; in India, 68% do
*94% of Chinese have broadband access (although at slower speeds than in more developed countries). Connections in India are primarily dial-up; only 8 million have broadband.
What explains the huge disparity between these Asian giants? One obvious reason being infrastructure. The usefulness of the Internet increases exponentially with bandwidth. With a dial-up connection, the World Wide Web becomes the World Wide Wait.
Another reason may be language. Although there are many dialects in China, there is one written language, pinyin, negating the need to translate content. India has two official languages, Hindi and English, but 22 languages are officially recognized. To reach India’s burgeoning population, especially in rural areas, content has to be localized.
A third reason may be the perennial power outages that can bring Web surfing to a halt for hours at a time. Battery power only goes so far.
What do you think? I’m sure there are other explanations, so share your thoughts by posting your comments.
