$100 Laptop To Be The $75 Laptop

The laptopmag blog reports that OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, has unveiled its design for the XO-2. The updated laptop will be strikingly different in its design employing two touch screen displays with a form that looks similar to a standard book. The overall plan of the new machine is to create an e-reader style machine.

As you can see from the picture (taken from the laptopmag site), the bottom display will be used as a keyboard when required. Another point about the new design is that it will be smaller than the original XO, although it appears that the lurid green colour is still going to be prominent in the design.

OLPC is aiming to release the new laptop in 2010, and have also announced that they intend to re-open the Give One Get One program again later this year (August or September). In this program, when you buy a $100 laptop for a child in the developing world you are also able to buy a cheap laptop for yourself.

The new laptop looks like it is in keeping with the ethos of providing children of the developing world with access to information and a broader education. The laptop itself will also be scalable, in the respect that a simple keyboard touch screen layout will be offered to younger children and a more complex one to more developed children.

Does The Modular Mobile (Modu) Represent The Future Of Mobile Communications?

The mobile communications industry is constantly evolving and transforming. The modular mobile phone is one possible direction for the industry, and in the Modu we have a potential trend setter. Slightly bigger than a domino, the Modu is a mobile phone stripped down to only the most essential components.

The screen is small but does its job, and there are no discernible numerical keys. It will send and receive data in the form of voice and text packages and it will store up to 16GB of data including software, images, and contacts. However, the ingenious idea behind the Modu is in its modular lego style application. Read more

Chris Evans Blows Over £5m On A Ferrari

Chris Evans has never been one to shy away from blowing his cash on something he wants. But he’s outdone himself this time, spending just over £5 million to buy a Ferrari once owned by The Great Escape actor James Coburn at a prestigious Ferrari auction. The price unsurprisingly represents the highest value a car has ever sold at auction.

The typical price one can expect to pay for this model Ferrari is around $5 million, or just under £2.5 million. However, a combination of a vicious bidding war and the history of this particular car itself saw prices rocket to an almost unbelievable level.

We recently showed you some pictures of the next model of Ferrari California and bearing in mind the impressive line up of cars the BBC Radio DJ already has in his personal collection, we’re willing to wager that this won’t be the last California he buys by the end of the year. Expect a blog entry some time in October to say he’s been to Paris for a few days and bought a new toy.

While it will undoubtedly cost a few pounds, and people are sure to criticise (personally I don’t see the problem with him spending the money however he wants), the next addition is unlikely to cost quite the same amount.

Ferrari California Pictures Unveiled

While the Ferrari California won’t be officially unveiled until the Paris Motor Show on 1st October, the official website has some glorious images and incredible sounds of the new convertible Grand Tourer. It might just be me but while the pictures look incredible, the greatest thing has to be the sound.

You can hear and see the awesome power of the next Ferrari masterpiece and I strongly urge you to check it out. As if the roar isn’t enough, there’s a downloadable PDF giving you the run down and figures so you can salivate for the next 5 months until it becomes available and you can stop dreaming (because like the vast majority of the world’s population you’ll never see one, let alone own one).

The 7-speed gearbox and mid-front mounted (a Ferrari first) 4.3l V8 engine delivering an astonishing 460hp at 7,500rpm. I can’t stress enough just how throatily beautiful that V8 sounds and it ensures that you can get up to a speed of 62mph in less than 4 seconds. Read more

Yahoo Shareholder Taking Action Against Microsoft Bid Refusal

Carl Icahn, an investor of some serious substance in Yahoo, is attempting to stage the boardroom equivalent of a military coup. To put it mildly he’s a little upset that Yahoo opted to turn down Microsoft’s substantial offer, equivalent to 72% more than the share price, without even consulting the shareholders.

As a result of the billionaire’s action, shareholders will now be required to make a choice between the old board and Mr Icahn’s board at the shareholder’s annual meeting on July 3rd. When you consider that Mr Icahn reputedly holds around $1bn worth of shares, it’s understandable that he’s a little mystified by the irrational decision, as he put it. He is, after all, missing out on more than $700,000.

Already carrying a lot of clout from his 3.6% share in the company, My Icahn intends to try and purchase a further $2.5bn worth of shares so that he holds an even greater share and even more weight in the board wrangling.

The BBC website also reports that despite rumours to the contrary, Microsoft has now firmly pulled away from any kind of deal and has no intention of staging another buyout attempt later in the year. If Mr Icahn’s attempts to overthrow the board were successful then it’s possible that their stance would change.

So, Microhoo (or Yasoft) could still be on the cards after all. Although, there are a lot of factors that need to be fulfilled in the next few months.

CBS To Buy CNET For $1.75bn

A major buyout of the CNET group of websites by television company CBS has been announced. A total sale price of $1.75bn has been agreed, which is equivalent to $11.50 a share, or 45% higher than Wednesday’s closing share price. The culmination of the two companies will enlarge even CNET’s already prestigious online presence and improve advertising opportunities between the two.

The CNET website itself is one dedicated to a topic close to all of hearts – technology and gadgets. As well as providing reviews and news, it has introduced video reviews, major online communities and much more. However, the CNET website is only a portion of the company’s web portfolio. Other technology related sites owned by CNET include ZDNet, Gamespot, and News.com as well as many others.

The purchase will make CBS one of the ten largest online entities in the world. The total visitor figures may still be dwarfed by some of the Internet behemoths like Google, it is still an audacious move that puts CBS even further on the media map. According to the Reuters website, CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves has stated the intention behind the purchase is that CBS’s “goal is to have our content in as many platforms as possible.”

The deal has yet to be finalised and needs to be agreed by regulators before the final paperwork is completed, but it is expected to go through in the third quarter of this year so is relatively imminent.

Samsung i780 - Just Another Blackberry Clone?

The Samsung i780 is, at first glance, another Blackberry clone – in fact, no matter how often you glance, that’s pretty much what it remains. It does throw in some pretty impressive additional features including the rather useful mini touchpad tracker pad navigational thing and HSDPA support for lightning fast download and upload speeds. But, like many clones it looks the part and tries to impress, but it has some imperfections compared to the original.

The 2.5 inch display is touch-screen – much like the Blackberry line. The QWERTY keyboard could easily have been physically removed from a Blackberry. Yet, it doesn’t seem to manage these things quite as well as a Blackberry – it just hasn’t had the same amount of practice is probably the problem. Read more

Console Wars Update - XBox360 Reaches 10m US Units

Yet another update to the next gen console wars – a couple of updates, in fact, and one of them is a sort of cross last-gen/next-gen hybrid internal war. First up is news that the Xbox360 is the first next generation console to sell a huge 10 million units in the US. Obviously Microsoft are making a big deal out of it, and it is big news, but the PS3 has been hot on their tails in worldwide figures and the Wii is still the stand out leader (although conveniently not always considered to be a part of the current console war).

The other news is that the PS2 out-sold its younger and better looking sibling, the PS3, for the year 2007. While the PS3 sold just over 9 million units for the year, the PS2 sold a staggering 13.7 million units.

The console war lives on, as ever, with each of the three seemingly reporting the best results. While the Wii is sometimes overlooked in this round, it has to be the stand out winner. The cheapest, most innovative, most popular, and with the widest appeal of the lot it has easily outsold each of its competitors by a significant margin and continues to impress.

Worldwide Telescope From Microsoft In Beta

Microsoft is never one to be outdone, and following news that they won’t be purchasing Yahoo to take on Google in the search engine industry, they have attempted to go one step further than the Google Earth (with the celestial add-on) application. Worldwide Telescope (how long before a full Google Galaxy is released?) is a downloadable piece of software that enables users to view images from land and space telescopes.

The Windows only software (who’d have guessed) then enables users to pan around the planets, zoom in and out, and locate an area relative to the rest of the sky. Not only does the software work according to current coordinates but can also be used to see how the sky looked in the past.

Aimed to bring out the astronomer in all of us, and provide some use to the professionals too, Worldwide Telescope has taken images from some major resources to create what looks an incredible bit of software. NASA has contributed substantial material and images are also provided by the Chandra X-Ray telescope.

Currently in Beta, the Worldwide Telescope which also includes tours around the galaxy by professional astronomers, has some hefty system requirements even by today’s standards. A 2GHz Processor and 2GB of RAM as well as up to 10GB of empty hard drive are required. Besides this you also need a graphics card with 128MB of dedicated memory so it’s not for the faint hearted but it does look incredible.

MacRobert Finalists Announced

The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced its four finalists for the annual MacRobert Engineering Award, which is to be presented at their annual dinner on 9^th June. The prestigious award recognises excellence in the field of engineering and comes complete with a solid gold medal, £50,000 first prize, and the prestige of joining a veritable who’s who of Engineering from the past four decades. This year’s finalists are:

• Polar – the Polar system is used to effectively monitor and maintain thousands of biological samples that are stored in temperatures as low as -80C. It is already used in the UK Biobank facility with excellent results.
• FAIMS – a spin-off of Cambridge University Engineering Department has created a chemical chip that uses a newly patented system called FAIMS (Field Asymmetric Ion Mass Spectroscopy) to detect trace amounts of chemicals. It could be used to detect explosive residue or to find disease.
• Bionic Hand – the trendily named iLimb is a prosthetic hand that first began development forty years ago. The hand works as a normal hand would and provides patients with the use of fingers as well as a whole hand. Over 200 patients have already been successfully fitted with an iLimb (as far as we know, it’s nothing to do with Apple).
• Diesel Catalytic Converter – the diesel soot filter is created by Johnson Matthey, who have previously won the award on two occasions and systems that have already been shipped are expected to prevent millions of kilograms of soot from entering the atmosphere.

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