Internet

29.11.2007 Google’s new mobile technology is able to track a user’s location within 400 metres. The tracking system, however, does not infringe upon a person’s privacy by not collecting a user’s phone number or any other personal details.

29.11.2007 Universal Library project has now digitised more than 1.5 million published books in 20 different languages of the world and continues to scan thousands more daily. All these books in Chinese, English, Arabic, Telugu, etc. are now available on internet – free of cost.

21.11.2007 Named Kindle, Amazon’s electronic book device, can hold as many as 200 titles from the list of best-sellers. Not bigger than a paperback novel and lighter, the device is wireless, allowing the books to be downloaded without plugging the reader into a computer.

16.11.2007 The undersea broadband link would run from KwaZulu-Natal province’s far north coast to Mumbai in India, via Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya, and Tanzania. Once ready, the Seacom project will provide an enormous 1.28 Terrabytes per second of broadband capacity.

13.11.2007 Microsoft and Zurich based DAISY, the digital talking books consortium, will work together to develop a free, downloadable plug-in that would translate documents into a digital audio standard for the blind.

12.11.2007 Give One Get One (G1G1) campaign starting this week hopes to boost orders by providing an incentive to people in more prosperous countries. For every laptop donated for a child, the donor would get one in return. The campaign is backed by Google, Intel, eBay, News Corp and Advance Micro Devices.

12.11.2007 FreeRice, an innovative internet-based vocabulary game is helping mobilise millions of people in the fight against global hunger. For every correct answer, the site donates ten grains of rice to the World Food Programme. One billion grains of rice have been donated in the last one month – enough to feed more than 50,000 people for one day.

07.11.2007 Slow internet connections at cafes in Nairobi will shortly speed up, thanks to a deal soon between the Kenyan government and French/US engineering company Alcatel-Lucent, to lay a fibre-optic cable network in the country.

07.11.2007 Tamil Nadu State Government in India has made school text books available online. Readers can access the text books on the government website.

07.11.2007 The UN-backed online environmental database can now be accessed in more than 100 developing countries. The project called ‘Online Access to Research in the Environment’ goes a long way in bridging the North-South digital divide.

07.11.2007 The UN-backed online environmental database can now be accessed in more than 100 developing countries. The project called ‘Online Access to Research in the Environment’ goes a long way in bridging the North-South digital divide.

06.11.2007 A 500-miilion dollar deal has been signed today between Microsoft and Reliance Communications to launch India’s first Internet Protocol Television. It will be launched early next year in 30 Indian cities.

03.11.2007 After changing the lives of one billion of its customers, Microsoft will reach out to the five billion and more for whom the opportunity to connect, create and succeed has remained elusive. Microsoft's Unlimited Potential program, in partnership with governments, NGOs, partners and academics, will make technologies affordable and accessible for creating new avenues for social and economic empowerment.

02.11.2007 UNCTAD has recently launched a blog to stimulate debate on development issues. Heads of international organisations like UNDP, African Development Bank, WTO, WFP, etc. will actively be participating in the blog to share their ideas.

01.11.2007 Small can become even smaller until it can’t be made any smaller. Nanotechnology is precisely that science and engineering that plays around with things at the scale of atoms and molecules. Learn more about engineering at the tiniest scale.