The greenest laptops for 2009
Greenpeace International have recently published their Green Electronics computing survey for 2009. Featuring their review of desktops, notebooks, mobile phones, televisions and monitors.
In the survey this year the Toshiba Portege R600 just beat the Hewlett Packard Elitebook 2530p into first place. The Toshiba unit is ahead of the field for a notebook that avoids toxic chemicals in the manufacturing process, whilst the close contender for first place , the Elitebook, is more energy efficient.
Let Greenpeace help you make the greener choice in electronics.
Image – cover of the Greenpeace Electronics Survey report - you can see the original article here.
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The bus and ICT provision
Filed under: Conversation, Green computing, Web services
Google India have recently launched the Google Bus – an internet enabled, mobile web access point, designed to take the web into communities across India.In the UK there was a time, in the early nineties, when mobile internet classrooms and mobile community internet access was all the rage. Winning funding to deliver internet access and training from a wheeled vehicle.
Times have changed and the ubiquity of the laptop means that getting access to ‘undeveloped’ web communities has become easier.
However, has the time come for a resurgence of interest and thinking in the mobile service for communities? Not only for specialist training and education for particular groups, but also a more general community web access provision, given the much wider range of services, shopping and information available on the net.
A quick search online found a traditional ‘mobile’ solution still active around York – at Mathemagic – an adult numeracy service. As well as a best practice example of how complex teaching and training can still be delivered from North East Surrey College of Technology.
Is there a case for a resurgence in mobile services, particularly in rural areas that combines access to a general and traditional printed information resource, web access of the broadest kind – and an entry point to community focused services for jobs, employments, benefits etc. E-government access, but with a wider, friendlier face?
What do you think…?
You can read more about the Google India web bus and how far it has traveled so far here.
Pictures from Google India.
Find the home page of Third Sector Web here.
Lovely Charts – free charting online
Filed under: Conversation, New Web Creations, Web services
Based in Brussels, Belgium the free online charting application Lovely Charts allows users from any computer to craft flowcharts, organisation charts and network designs.
Web developers can also create sitemaps and wireframes for projects.
The free version allows users to save only one editable version, but you can export and print as many designs as you wish.
There is a ‘pro’ version available, at less than 3 Euros a month, which adds collaboration, commenting and version saving to the service.
Lovely Charts is built using Adobe Flex, with a Php/MySql back-end.
The interface is very easy on the eye, with a reasonable library of symbols for the user to drag n’ drop – we particularly liked the ‘people’ symbols, a great way to make organisation charts friendly and human.
Sign up is quick and painless and our verification code arrived by email promptly. Lovely Charts – one to watch.
Image by nkzs
You can find the Third Sector Web home page here.
The world’s cheapest laptop?
We’ve been reading this week about the forthcoming launch of the 20 dollar laptop in India.
There has been some commentary in the rest of the world as to whether it is possible to produce such a machine, given – according to Nicholas Negroponte of OLPC – that the display alone will cost more than this.
Does this miss the point? The general thrust of the project seems to be to get learners and the population in general to access sites such as the Sakshat Portal – India’s gateway to learning resources. (Its tag line is The One Stop Education Portal for All)
If the Indian government are subsidising the creation of a cloud computing infrastructure across the sub-continent, then there must surely be a paradigm shift in the strategies needed to get ‘access point’ terminals into as many hands as possible. The National Mission on Education through ICT seems to be just this.
This is not a business proposition. It is a learning proposition.
The target of the Indian government is to get a 5% increase in tertiary education starters in 5 years. When your target sample is the largest democracy in the world…that needs to be a lot of takers.
The golden egg in the proposition is a vastly more connected society in the next generation, with more intellectual and social capital to deploy in the service of a perhaps vastly different world GDP mix and meta-economic model.
Cloud services and no-cost terminals must be the way to go. We watch the future product launch with interest. Go India!
These thoughts were drawn from an article by Mohammed Siddique at http://www.rediff.com/money/2009/feb/03india-unveils-10-dollar-laptop.htm
What do you think?
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