Stung by criticism on their hostility to privacy, major search engines are now shortening the time span in which they will retain user data relating to searches. Microsoft said the other day that it will retain search information only for 18 months. This follows Google’s announcement a few weeks ago that it would restrict data retention to 24 months at the most. Another popular search engine, Ask.com, went a step further and has said that it would give users the option to erase data soon after a search. Yahoo is also expected to announce its policy to restrict data only for 13 months soon. The flurry of announcements have come in the wake of sharp attacks on Google by privacy advocates who said it could build up psychological profiles of users with all the data retained in its various applications.
Africa is still a dark continent as far as Internet connectivity is concerned. Latest reports point out that less than four percent of the continent’s population is connected to the Web and majority of them are in South Africa. Even the meagre infrastructure in many countries of Africa had been destroyed in civil conflicts and this has hampered connectivity. As of now, even an email message from an African country has to be routed through United States or Britain, jacking up costs heavily. About 75 per cent of Africa’s Internet traffic is carried out with the help of others.
Microsoft is tentatively planning to release the next version of its Windows operating system in 2010. The present version, Windows Vista, was released five years after Windows XP hit the market. Its production and release was marked by many delays and MS had promised that this would not occur again. It has revamped its Windows team to avoid such delays. the new version is codenamed Windows 7 for the time being.
The first low-cost laptops produced under the One Laptop per Child Project will reach kids in developing countries by October 2007. OLPC was conceived by tech guru Nicholas Negroponte in 2002 and he has faced both bouquets and brickbats for the idea. The XO laptop he designed is a rugged green coloured machine which can survive the heat and dust of a third world existence. It is priced at $100, has a flash memory of 1 GB and a pared down operating system which will fit the needs of school kids. Most importantly, it is energy efficient and can be charged with solar power or even a foot pump. This innovative design did not earn the praise of corporates. Intel, for instance, called it a gadget and Microsoft said its screen was way too small. Negroponte, however, pointed out sagely that it was just an educational tool for poor kids.
Intel and HCL will introduce Classmate PCs for students in India from August. The PC will be priced at Rs 18,000 initially. The cost may go down further. The chipmaker is already holding talks with education departments of various states to market at least 10,000 Classmates in the coming year. It will offer monthly instalment schemes for schools and provide teachers’ training and customised software as add-ons. The PCs, with a child-friendly and colourful interface, will be powered by Intel processor 900 MHZ. Intel has already carried out pilot projects with Classmate PCs at schools in Delhi and Bangalore. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project of Nicholos Negroponte will soon market its low cost PC in third world countries. Microsoft has also announced plans to launch its cheap IQ PC for students in India.
A 75-year-old woman living at Karlstard in Sweden has the fastest residential internet connection in the world at 40 gigabytes per second. Sigbritt Lothberg had only recently started browsing the Internet and did not know anything about computers a few years ago. She had never used computer in her entire life. Her connection was tweaked and speeded up by her son Peter along with Hafsteinn Jonsson, head of the Karlstad city network, with the help of a new modulation technique. It became so fast that Sigbritt can now download a full length movie in two seconds flat. But she is only using the connection to read online newspapers. Now, she is extremely happy by using Internet.
Microsoft’s profits rose by seven per cent to touch $3.4 billion in the first quarter of 2007, thanks mainly to the success of its new operating system Vista. However, Microsoft mandarins were not grinning from ear to ear as the company had lost money on the much-hyped Xbox game console, which turned out to have many hardware flaws. It had extended the warrantee for the console to three years as part of its damage control exercise and would have to spend an extra $750 million for this. The console imbroglio is reported to have reduced profits by about $1.06 million. However, Vista and MS Office 2007 together bolstered earnings this quarter. Microsoft is hoping to do better next year when it will release new server software and the much-anticipated Halo 3 video game.
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