They have now released a product which they bill as a “simple and affordable technology for schools that allows several students to work a single computer at the same time – each with their own screen, mouse and keyboard”.

If you’re in Joburg you can see this new technology, which is currently on display at the African School Technology Innovation Centre (STIC) in Newtown, Johannesburg.

Called Windows MultiPoint Server 2010, it aims to give more teachers and students access to technology at low cost.

Check out these videos for more info:
mms://msvcatalog-5.wmod.llnwd.net/a2249/e1/ft/share3/be21/0/70e11e70-326a-403a-b719-f329f803c12b.wmv

mms://msnvidweb.wmod.msecnd.net/a10026/e1/ft/share15/e1ed/0/5bbc002c-a4c7-41e6-92ac-cd15f2e0ee0d.wmv

The phone, which will run on the Google Android 2.1 OS , will be called the Samsung Beam. Aside from its built in DLP Pico projector, it will feature, um, well, everything, ever. I will list it for you. Try not to drool. It will come equipped with Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 user interface, a 3.7 inch WVGA Super AMOLED display, an 8 mega pixel camera, an FM radio, Bluetooth 2.1, USB 2.0, GPS, and, of course 11 b/g/n wifi. It also comes bundled with a 2GB card, and can take up to 32Gs.

This is the kind of phone that will herald a new era of telecommunication. On its global release, the heavens will open up, and the Lord will descend unto earth, to witness the glory of the Samsung Beam. On its release here, the South African constitution may have to be altered so that union between man/woman and phone is made legal. No, but really, it probably won’t be as cool as an iPhone. But it has a projector, and you have to admit that’s pretty neat.

You can keep your rock stars and your famous sportsmen and your literary icons. While normal people are busy worshiping these characters, true geeks, particularly programmers and developers, have different heroes. A developer who has written an impressive and game changing system, platform or app will be spoken about in hushed tones and hailed as a hero. And no developer is held up on a higher platform than open source programmer Dries Buytaert, who is the original creator of the Drupal CMS.

For those not up to speed with Drupal, it is a great open source CMS. It can be used to create anything from small personal blogs to important and powerful corporate and government websites. While WordPress is the blogging CMS for the common blogger, Drupal is the developer’s choice. It has also been described as “the Linux of the internet”, and if Drupal is Linux than Word Press would be equivalent to Windows. It also boasts an extremely active and engaged community, which sets it apart from other, similar platforms.

Buytaert is from Belgium, and his claims to fame other than creating Drupal include founding Acquia, which seeks to be to Drupal what Red Hat is to Linux, and launching Mollom, a state-of-the-art spam-busting service. “Mollom’s purpose is to dramatically reduce the effort of keeping your site clean and the quality of your content high. Currently, Mollom is a spam-killing one-two punch combination of a state-of-the-art spam filter and CAPTCHA server.” Over 4,000 websites are protected by the Mollom service. More than 100,000 messages are being analyzed every day.”

He has a PHD in Computer Science and Engineering from Belgium’s University of Ghent and has won numerous awards, including being voted one of the Top 5 most influential people in open source by MindTouch in 2009. His allegiance to open source has gotten him called “the anti-Bill Gates”, but he himself rejected the tag, blogging that he isn’t comfortable with being branded anti-Microsoft.

For one of the most highly rated programmers in the World, he is surprisingly humble, and has a sense of humour. His website’s somewhat self-depricating bio admits that “sometimes people laugh at his hair, but he is cool with that”. The man is a true geek icon.

As a post on Slashdot puts it:
“The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has performed their first controlled fusion experiments using all 192 lasers. While still not ramped up to full power, the first experiments proved very fruitful. The lasers create a lot of plasma in the target container and researchers worried that the plasma would interfere with the ability of the target to absorb enough energy to ignite. These experiments show that not only does enough energy make it through, the plasma can be manipulated to increase the uniformity of compression. Ramping up of power is due to start in May.”

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.”

Fair enough. What those who have come out strongly against the move have pointed out, though, is that those parents who have complained are not aware of, or simply aren’t using, the parental controls available to them that would restrict their kids from access to these apps.

Also controversial is the fact that Apple have retained two risqué, borderline soft-porn apps in the form of Sports Illustrated and FHM. Are these two allowed to remain because of the commercial clout of the companies they represent? And, if so, is Apples app purge aimed only at smaller developers, who need their products to remain in the App Store the most?

Schiller, when asked about Sports Illustrated, does not deny this: “the difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said. But, the idea that it’s fine to publish half-naked women as long as you’re famous is insulting.

And, many Apple-heads want their favourite brand to be cooler than the others. We want it to treat us like adults, and that is why the idea of the brand condoning a world in which we cannot choose which Apps we can and can’t to download is troublesome.

Are Apple in the right self-censoring their App Store at the expense of developers? Let me know below.

THE ALTAIR 8800 (1975)
If you were around in 1975, and happened to purchase this baby, all of your friends would be crowding around your desk, going ‘oooh’ and being jealous. While it may look a bit like your sound system’s amplifier, the Altair 8800 is considered by many to be the first mass produced personal computer, although it was known as a micro-computer at the time, since they were formerly about the size of an entire lounge. The device came as a kit which had to be assembled, a process that only technological wiz-kids would have attempted.

As oldcomputers.net explains:
“Since no keyboard or monitor was necessary, or cheaply available, users flipped switches on the front panel, writing their own programs in machine language, and watching the LEDs on the panel light up in response to their commands. Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an opportunity and wrote Altair BASIC, a true programming language, and the first commercial Microsoft computer product. Monte Davidoff contributed maths routines, including the floating-point routines for Altair 4K BASIC”.

The IMSAI 8080 (1975)
The IMSAI 8080, with its appealing blue and red switches, was one of the first consumer computers available. And, while there were earlier ones available, the IMSAI was the first to be available ready assembled, not to mention the sexiest and best looking micro-computer so far. The machine inspired interest in computers as well as the launch of Byte Magazine, in 1975, who’s first front cover declared “Computers: The worlds greatest toy!”. But the world didn’t agree, not yet anyway, and when much more user friendly computers became available just a couple years later, IMSAI filed for bankruptcy.


Let’s hear from oldcomputers.net again: 
“In its simplest configuration with only a CPU (Central Processing Unit) card, you enter your program using the front panel switches, while reading the results on the LED indicator lights. No keyboard or other display is necessary. This type of programming is very slow and tedious – any mistake could corrupt the system and you’d have to start over again. Only true hackers were successful at efficiently operating an IMSAI 8080”.

THE IBM (5100) (1975)
This, IBM’s first microcomputer (it had only produced mainframes before) is often called the first portable computer, although, weighing in at 55 pounds, it was hardly a laptop (unless you have an unusually large lap). It took the technology to the next level. It was a complete system with a built in monitor (on of the first examples of this), keyboard and data storage. It was designed for professional scientists, not businessmen or casual users.

The Apple 1 (1976)
Even PC users would have to concede that Apple have come a long way when it comes to making machines. Their first computer was made by Steve Wozniack becaause he couldn’t afford one and wanted one. Also, he wanted to impress his friends, which he did at the Homebrew Computer Club, where Steve Jobs loved it so much he decided to try and sell some. The first Apple was sold as a kit which had to be assembled, and only 200 were made. It was only with the Apple 2, the following year, that the brand came, so named because Jobs once worked in an Apple orchard, came into its own.

The Apple 2 (1977)
While containing the same processor and running at the same speed as the Apple 1, the Apple 2’s improvements, which mainly made it more accessible to the average computer user and more aesthetically pleasing, made it one of the most popular early computers. It featured major innovations including a color display, eight internal expansion slots, and, wait for it… a case with a keyboard. Yes, back in the 70s this was by no means a standard feature. It ran Basic, the ‘Windows’ of the time, and this programming language made it the most user-friendly machine yet. But what made it popular was VisiCalc, a spread-sheet programme that was the Xcel of its time and made it incredibly useful for accountants. It was released on Apple because of the Apple 2’s superior memory – it supported a whopping 48K or Ram.

The Atari 400 and 800 (1979)
While most people remember Atari for their gaming consoles, the 70s saw them attempt to produce home computers as well. The Atari 400 was meant to be kiddy-friendly, and the 800 was its ‘big sister’. The machine would boot up into ‘notepad’, the only installed application. Everything else, including Basic, would run from a cartridge. As one would expect, the machine had an emphasis on gaming, and one could insert cartridges and play a range of arcade copies (Pacman and Donkey Kong included) and original games. Apparently, the machines were purposefully designed to look like typewriters, as users found these more ‘friendly’ than computers at the time.

Stay tuned for Part Two: Still Big, Slightly Better and Also Obsolete: Computers of the Eighties.

Just to put into perspective exactly how much of these babies have been downloaded since the launch in Jan, Nokia’s Executive Vice President, Anssi Vanjoki tells us that “we’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day,” That’s a lot, he said, stating the obvious.

Good news for those too silly to work out how to download something is that next month all new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost.

Ovi Maps is pretty comprehensive, covering more than 180 countries with car and pedestrian navigation for 74 countries, in 46 languages, and traffic information for more than 10 countries. There are more than 6000 3D landmarks for 200 cities around the world.  Lonely Planet and Michelin guides have information on more than 1,000 destinations globally.

All of this means that I, a Nokia user, may never get lost again. Unless I lose my phone, in which case I will have to sit on the pavement drooling on myself until someone with Ovi Maps (or, although less likely, a sense of direction) tells me where to go.

Check out the full press release here.

There is more to life than the iPad.

This clip takes you on an impressive and comprehensive tour of our known universe. It uses the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas, which is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world’s most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History.

The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Most importantly, it offers a reminder that there are things that are bigger than us, and more important than us, and certainly bigger and more important than the iPad. Enjoy.

The Poken is a little device that has ambitions to replace the business card. And, seeing as we need to decrease our carbon footprint and stop cutting down the trees, this isn’t a bad idea. Basically, the Poken comes in the form of a little device, like a memory stick but better looking, which has a hand on it. In the middle of the hand is a little pad. The idea is that when you meet someone else with a Poken you ‘high five them’, basically touch their device with yours, and the pads on each Poken will light up to let you know that it has worked. Then, when you get home, you plug it in like a normal USB and download the details of the people you have ‘poked’. These people are arranged into some kind of buddy-style social network.

Apart from the obviously dodgy connotations of walking around all night ‘poking’ random strangers, the Poken will, in all likelihood, suffer due to the fact that it does not provide a function that is particularly needed. Business cards have become less prevalent as it is, since most cellular phones are equipped so that people can very easily store each others details. Have you ever sat around thinking about how much your life would improve if you had a little gadget to automatically save people’s contact details through some kind of high-fiving ritual? No? Well exactly. It’s not about to replace the iPad as this week’s most talked about piece of technology.

In its defence, at R200, its affordable, and has definite novelty value. The device’s greatest challenge, though, its that it can only work if everyone has one. If it ever gets to the stage that everyone is poking away everywhere I go chances are I will feel left out and get one. But, if you go to a bar and only 3 other people have them (and, so far, even that amount seems unlikely), your poken is not going to get a whole lot of use. And, most probably, people in the near vicinity will look at you funny if you ever do get the opportunity to use it.

Pokens are cute though, and as bunnies and babies the world over would hope, that has to count for something.

You an pick up a Poken at ilovepoken, buycool or Digital Planet. For more info, go here.

Now that it’s out, the question is, is it all that? We have crazed fans in one corner declaring it a work of unmitigated genius, and haters in the other pointing out that, as far as they can see, it’s like an iPhone, only bigger. What do I think? The truth is probably somewhere between these two opinions.

The main thing to remember is that the iPad is still a baby. When the developers start working with it and for it, real innovations will start taking place. For now, even those who want a Wi-fi model will have to wait until March, and those after the 3G version will have to wait until April. And it won’t stay at $500 forever. For now it is, in my humble opinion, a beautiful and innovative machine that not a hell of a lot of people will have a use for. Yet.

Oh, and we’re South Africans, remember. So all we can do for now is speculate and dream. The dang thing ain’t even available here yet, and who knows when it will be.

Anyway, here are some pros and cons, which I’ve have based on extensive internet research: