$100 laptops to be made available to Public

The One Laptop Per Child project backers will make the $100 laptop available to the general public, on one condition. They have to Buy two, one for themselves and another to go to the developing world.

Five million of the laptops will be delivered to developing nations this summer, in one of the most ambitious educational exercises ever undertaken.

Michalis Bletsas, chief connectivity officer for the project, said they were working with eBay to sell the machine.

The first countries to sign up to buying the machine, which is officially dubbed XO, include Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Thailand. The Laptop was made to be low cost, durable and easy to use.

Nikon & Crumpler Unite

Popular bag manufacturer Crumpler has teamed up with Nikon to create the humorously named “This” and “That” camera bags, suitable for housing your digital SLR, two lenses, a Speedlight and sundry accessories.

Nikon and iconic bag manufacturer Crumpler have joined forces to develop two camera bags specifically designed for owners of SLR cameras. The first fruits of the partnership are the ultra cool Nikon-Crumpler the ‘This’ & the ‘That’ bags. Both bags can fit one compact SLR body, two lenses such as the AF-S DX 18-55 or the AF-S DX 55-200 and an external speedlight. The bags can also carry a host of other essential accessories such as battery, charger and manuals, making both the ‘This’ and the ‘That’ bags an absolute must for all Nikon lovers. The Nikon-Crumpler the ‘This’ & the ‘That’ bags are made of custom-dyed original ‘1000d Chicken Tex Supreme’ hyper performance accessory fabric.

Buffalo launch iPod shaped Mouse

Buffalo have launched a USB Mouse, which resembles the iPod. 8mm thin and includes a iPod style scrollwheel in place of your wheel. The scrollwheel rotates to control a window’s vertical scroll bar, but pressing the left or right edges scrolls horizontally in that direction and includes a retractable USB cable.

$100 Laptops for Children

The first $100 laptops are to reach children in the developing world in the next few days, the consortium developing them has said.

The One Laptop Per Child laptops, produced by a group of designers and engineers led by Nicholas Negroponte – co-founder of the Media Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology – would begin arriving “within the next week,” the project’s chief technical officer, Mary Lou Jepsen, explained.
The design for the $100 Laptop is very innovative, centering on a CPU, or processor, that saves power by knowing when to turn itself off.

The reason the CPU is usually on on a laptop is simply to refresh the screen, so in the timing controller chip for the display we put some memory – so when nothing’s changing on the screen, it goes into self-refresh mode to save power,”the project’s chief technical officer, Mary Lou Jepsen told BBC news.

Possible Mac Virus

The federal US computer security watchdog has issued a warning about a bug in Apple’s OS X operating system.

The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US Cert) issued the alert after security researchers produced code that could exploit the DMG bug.

The flaw involves the way OS X handles disk images and could be used to crash or take over a vulnerable machine.

So far the DMG bug has only been shown to work under laboratory conditions and has not been seen in the wild.

The DMG bug came to light during a month-long project run by the Info-Pull research group that aimed to find one “kernel” bug a day. The kernel is the heart of an operating system.

The bug has only been proved to work under laboratory conditions. No cases of it being exploited in the wild are known and no users are thought to be at risk. The availability of the exploit code might tempt some malicious hackers to craft webpages that take advantage of it.

Users of Apple Mac computers are far less likely to suffer security problems because the vast majority of viruses are written to exploit Microsoft’s Windows operating system. There are also differences in the way that OS X works which help to prevent malicious code taking hold.

Nvidia to supply chip in the new iPod video

Nvidia has beat Broadcom to the contract to supply multimedia chips for the next iPod video which is expected next year. “Based on our analysis, we believe Nvidia is designed into the next-generation vPod socket at the expense of Broadcom,” said American Technology Research analyst Satya Chillara. “We believe the Nvidia chip adds 3D graphics functionality in addition to all of the existing features (such as H.264) that Broadcom supported with the existing vPod.” Apple’s current fifth-generation (video) iPod uses an audio chip from PortalPlayer and a multimedia chip from Broadcom. Apple’s “true” video iPod is rumored to be delayed until the first half of 2007.

Pacific Rim release black Cube Travel Speakers

Pacific Rim Technologies has today announced a new version of its Cube Travel Speakers. The new portable speakers now come in black and not just white, they have independent volume control, and ship with with an iPod nano docking adapter. The Cube Travel Speakers are regularly priced at £25, but will be on sale for £20 until August 1st, 2006.

keep iPod accessories safe with the iSnug

While cases and clips for iPod s may be a dime a dozen, bags designed to hold the plethora of accessories that many carry with their iPod s have been a bit thin on the ground – not so, any longer.

The iSnug accessory case is a small, convenient and cushioned bag made by Handstands to keep cables, the iPod power brick and any of the host of other accessories that iPod users tend to lug around.

Padded with EVA foam and featuring pockets and holders that will fit most accessories, the iSnug will appeal to many travelling iPod cognoscenti.

Jade Hansen, Handstands iPod product manager said: “The best part of the iSnug Accessory Case is the simplicity and durability.

“iPod users will also like the fact that they can store their ipod accessories separately, and only take them when they need them…This [iSnug Accessory Case] is perfect for just tossing into a suitcase or back pack, and allows users to not be concerned with damaging their iPod accessories.”

Retailing at about £16, the iSnug is available online.

Founded in 1983, as one of the first companies to manufacture and sell mouse pads, Handstands has now developed into a company makes and sells a range of products, from computer accessories to sporting and automotive accessories.

Music Phones go head to head with the iPod

Business week is reporting that some users are starting to leave their iPods at home in favour of their MP3 phone. It comments that with the rise in storage on phones that people are choosing to leave the iPod at home and take their phone. I feel this could be a small threat to Apple’s iPod but not for a while as the storage on phones is around 100 songs at the moment. Coupled with fact that users upgrade their phone every year they do not do this with their iPod.

Alien Ant farm to perform at Apple store in US

Apple have decided that following the success of live music in its UK stores they would follow up in the US with a similar idea. Alien Ant Farm will be performing at the Apple retail store in Santa Monica on July 20th. Also Indie band The 88 will be live at Apples Grove store in LA on july 21st. There is a chance that this will be available to download to iPod via itunes.