While we fortunate Indians are still grouchy about the poor 3G facilities in India, we need to remember that a large population of India can't even afford phones. Vodafone has now launched possibly the cheapest phone in the world with their Vodafone 150.
“The cost of mobile handsets can be one of the most significant barriers for people in accessing and benefiting from the growing number of socially valuable mobile services. The lives of people who use these phones - the Vodafone 150 and Vodafone 250 – will be changed and improved as they become part of the mobile society. I am proud of the work we have done and will continue to do in this critical area of customer empowerment.”Patrick Chomet, Vodafone's Group Director of Terminals
Priced at a mere $15, or Rs. 700, this phone is a boon for people in developing countries such as India, where mobile phone usage is booming. No longer will people have to rely on unbranded Chinese mobiles without warranty, or dodgy vendors selling second hand mobile phones of unknown legal status. Vodafone aims to reach 60% of India, by reaching deep into rural segments.
Besides voice calls and SMS, the phone will also support mobile payment services which are becoming popular in developing countries such as ours. By their estimate over 11 million Vodafone customers use mobile banking services
The Vodafone 250, a next model with a larger color screen and FM Radio will cost a -- still very cheap -- $20 or Rs. 900. As evident in the video below, the phone is quite similar to the feature phones of 5 years ago. However having a supported product such as this available today, and especially in the rural market where such a product stands to have a great impact is a pleasant thought indeed.
Phone specifications (Vodafone 150):
Black candy bar device with 5-way navigation key; 1.0” monochrome graphic display 96x64 pixels; voice and SMS; GSM 900/1800; polyphonic ringtones; vibration; alarm clock; calculator; currency converter; 2 embedded games; memory for up to100 entries in phonebook plus SMS storage; torch; battery: 500mAh (standby up to 400h, talk time up to 5h); mini USB connector.
As part of their plan to bring GSM services to all of India within this financial year, Virgin Mobile has expanded their GSM services to Maharashtra.
Virgin offers incredibly low calling rates, with a mere 20 paise per minute for local and STD calls to other Virgin Mobile numbers, and a 40 paise per minute for local calls to numbers other than Virgin Mobile. STD calls to non-Virgin Mobile numbers will be at a low rate of 50 paise per minute. The operator will only be offering prepaid plans for subscribers.
Targeting the urban youth, Virgin Mobile also offers cheap SMS packs. A Rs. 33 SMS pack, valid for a month will give you 2000 free SMS messages local or national, while the Rs. 69 SMS pack entitles you to a whopping 15000 SMS messages in a month, with 500 free messages a day. Enough to message a dictionary in about a month!
While Virgin offers services over TATA's infrastructure, which has its own Docomo GSM service, it claims that their service is more targeted towards youth, and as such features call rates, and services (such as social networking) which match their needs. Over the coming six months, Virgin Mobile will be spending as much as Rs. 500 crore in promotions activities.
While Google might have dashed to the front lines with its Chrome browser-based OS, it is Firefox which is more suitable as a base for an operating system: With its near unlimited extensibility thanks to add-ons, plugins and themes, you can make your Firefox supremely powerful and uniquely you. When one looks at the array of applications built on the same powerful framework as Firefox, one realizes how much more appropriate it is as the basis for a cloud operating system; compared to Google Chrome, that is.
xPUDis build around Firefox, and sports a custom minimalistic interface for all your basic needs. Its user interface called "plate" is web-based and runs on Firefox. This makes the OS interface quite hackable by the end user. xPUD comes with very few application installed by default. That said, it does not sacrifice your ability to install additional applications, and in fact has its own system called opt-get for delivering applications. The opt-get system is designed to be very simple to use, and applications can be downloaded and installed straight from the internet using the bundled application. Applications can be downloaded as the packaged .opt files, and need only be dropped into the /opt folder to be automatically loaded during bootup!
The OS packs the latest Mozilla Firefox 3.5 browser and gnome-mplayer for all your multimedia playback needs. It also includes a file manager for browsing your file system and a terminal so you can go about mucking within the OS if you want.
The remarkable thing about xPUD is its rather small 64MB download size! While the OS doesn't come with much, this is still quite remarkable. The repository of applications available for the OS is quite small, however it covers all the essentials, such as, extra drivers, Windows codecs for video playback, Dropbox for syncing your files to the cloud, Skype, OpenOffice.org, and "Extra utilities" which include the bittorrent client Transmission, a text editor, an image viewer and a PDF viewer, amongst other applications.
With all of these installed, there is little ground left to cover for simple netbook needs. While the same cannot be said about the applications, the user interface of the OS itself is suitable for use with a touch-screen. For those not comfortable using an online office suite, OpenOffice.org is available in the opt-get repository. With the media player included you need not be limited to playing only online videos, and with the codec pack installed, you'll be able to play back all kinds of content including proprietary formats. With Dropbox, you can have all your data synced to the web easily, and with Skype you can have internet telephony.
Additionally, since the browser is Firefox, you have access to the wide variety of powerful plugins which come for it. You can use a plugin like FoxyTunes to convert your browser into a full featured music player, or use FireFTP to browse FTP files with ease.
The operating system is very light as well, it has very low minimum system requirements, and needs only 256MB to operate. It performed admirably when started in a virtual machine with only this minimum amount of RAM configured. The interface was smooth and responsive and while the browser expectedly took quite some time to load, the whole experience wasn't that bad. With this OS you can easily convert your old aged desktop into a nettop computer instead of discarding it.
xPUD also comes with single-site-browsers for Facebook, Google Calender, Meebo and YouTube, however there doesn't seem to be a simple way to add your own. These open the websites in a separate browser instance thereby isolating them from crashing each other. Similar to the Chrome browser approach of running each tab in its own process.
You can try out xPUD in many different ways. You can download and test it on your system using a LiveCD, or on a VM. It can be installed on a USB drive using unetbootin, and xPUD even comes with an .exe installer for Windows which can install xPUD in conjunction to Windows on your harddrive without messing with partitions. It is also possible to install in conjunction with an existing install of Linux. However, it does not come with any kind of tool to allow installing it on a hard disk partition.
Despite all its brilliance, there are many points about xPUD which make it annoying to use at times. For one, the OS doesn't yet have a way to add your own site to the web-apps list, which for an operating system designed for the cloud is kind of sad.
The window management in xPUD also leaves much to be desired. Due to its minimalistic interface, it features no proper task management interface. The application menu does indicate if an application is running, and clicking on the icon of an already running application will switch to it, however handling of multiple windows is quite poor. The OS also runs as a superuser, which means you have unlimited destructive power in your hands, and a malware Firefox plugin / extension has the ability to wreck complete havoc.
The applications included in the OS and the ones available in the repository are also not customized to blend in with the interface, unlike Jolicloud or Moblin.
While right now the xPUD OS is not complete, but merely usable, the good thing is that the developer of xPUD is aware of these issues, and is working on fixing them. Which means that by the time we see a final release, this might be one winning OS. The developers also have plans for adding many more application to the repository after testing them on the OS.
xPUD eventually plans to be a completely modular OS, where you can mix and match the modules you want to create the OS you want, and in this it is unique among the tested distributions.
Overall, xPUD provides a good balance of minimalism and extendability, and allows for a user to give his OS only as much juice as necessary. While for now we would only recommend you to install this OS in a virtualized environment, it seems to be headed in an interesting direction, and is a strong competitor is the field of cloud OSs.
As an OS with 'cloud' baked into the name,Joliclouddoes quite well as an internet centric system. Unlike xPUD and Chrome OS, it does not enforce a browser choice on you (although xPUD will allow you to install Google Chrome in the future). You can use the already-installed Firefox, or install Google Chrome or even Opera.
Jolicloud is essentially an Ubuntu 9.04-based OS which is redesigned in looks and features to work better with netbook, net-tops and other internet-centric computers. It aims for a more even mixture of internet and native applications, and has one of the simplest application installation procedures amongst its peers.
The Jolicloud UI is netbook-oriented, and as such, takes up a minimal amount of hard disk space and memory, leaving most for your applications. A thin bar at the top displays your running applications, system tray icons, and the date and time. It focuses on one task at a time, and as such all applications running in the background are collapsed to icons. A major portion of the panel at the top is taken up showing the active application. Here again, space is saved by displaying the application title-bar in the panel at top. A home button at the leftmost area of the panel takes you back to the home interface where you can launch applications. This interface might save space for netbooks, but it also means that this operating system would perhaps not be quite so suitable for tablet computers.
A walkthrough of Jolicloud
To take benefit of Jolicloud, you need to create a free online account and register your computer. The Jolicloud service connects with Twitter and Facebook, and while this aspect hasn't been utilized much, it is something to look out for in future versions. Right now, you can follow other Jolicloud users which will let you get notifications of the software they install.
Jolicloud might have a minimalistic UI, however it is by no means a minimalistic OS. The OS is around 600MB, the size you'd expect any other distro, and comes with enough juice to justify that size; the OS comes with Firefox for browsing, F-Spot for managing your photo albums, Pidgin for instant messaging, Transmission for downloading torrents, Facebook, a dictionary app, a media player, a text editor, and a lot more. It's safe to say, you will find even the default install covers a lot.
While web apps are an important part of Jolicloud, it does not limit the use of native applications, and its repository is filled with such applications. The Firefox version bundled with Jolicloud comes with an extension which hides the menu-bar, making it available via an alternate interface, this is a boon for small-screen devices.
The inclusion of Adobe AIR in the Jolicloud repository means that you have access to a growing number of Adobe AIR based applications such as the popular social networks client TweetDeck. The Jolicloud application directory also includes Wine, a software which allows running of Windows applications on Linux. A large number of Windows applications will be able to run on Jolicloud if you install Wine.
In Jolicloud there is no distinction between a web and a native application, and both are installed in pretty much the same manner using the same procedure. Installed applications also face no discrimination and they appear in their relevant categories. Jolicloud transparently installs your web apps using Mozilla Prism, a Mozilla Labs project which is useful for creating single-site applications.
The advantage of this approach is that it makes your browsing experience more stable as each web application runs in a separate process, meaning that a crash in your GMail instance won't effect the work you have going on in Google Docs, Zoho Writer, and your Last.Fm will keep playing songs.
What stands out in Jolicloud is its dashboard, which is a central place from which you can manage your Jolicloud account, browse the App directory, install / remove applications, and interact with other Jolicloud users.
The interface for discovering and installing application is quite simple, and web based. An App directory lists all installable applications, native or otherwise and a lets you install them with a single click. Since web application are installed using Prism, which is already present on the system, they install in just a few seconds. New applications are continually added to the App directory and you will be pleased to find that nearly all categories of applications are covered.
Installing applications in Jolicloud
From this very directory you can easily see what applications have updates available, and you can sort applications to see the latest additions. Unfortunately, this dashboard is missing a section where you can get a list of all the applications you have installed. This means that you need to browse through the increasingly long list of applications to get to that rare native or web app you installed to update or remove it. The dashboard also seems to be optimized for a netbook resolution, and doesn't take up the screen space when used on a larger screen device. This is a little sad, since for some people it can work as a good desktop OS as well.
Installing Jolicloud itself is a breeze, and is one of the easiest Linux distros to install. The default Jolicloud installer is actually a Windows EXE file which will allow you to install Jolicloud straight from Windows! It will install Jolicloud on you hard disk without disturbing any of your Windows partitions, and will add an entry to your Windows boot manager. For those running Windows, this makes it incredibly safe and easy to try out this OS.
For those already running Linux or wanting to install this on a pen-drive, the Jolicloud website has an alternate installer in the form of an ISO which can written onto a disk or pen-drive and then used to install the OS anywhere. Jolicloud itself comes with a tool for copying it on a pen-drive, so you can share it with your friends if you have a copy installed.
Jolicloud is a strong contender as a cloud OS, and its native applications support might appease even those who don't want a cloud OS, as it doesn't abandon native applications. Jolicloud is in active development, and the version available right now is just a pre-beta version of the OS, and might be unruly at times. In its current state, it takes under 25 seconds to reach the login screen, which is quite fast for a complete Linux distro.
Another good thing is that unlike Chrome OS and xPUD, it does not significantly change the interaction patterns you are used to. So ALT+tabbing works as expected, and for Linux users it comes with two virtual desktops as well.
In the end Jolicloud manages to keep a good mixture of native and web applications, and abstracts the differences between them so you can just focus on doing your work. This is one OS to look for when it releases.
Unintentionally, Google has created a major buzz about its new social networking service, ironically named Buzz. By automatically turning people’s Gmail email accounts into social networking ones, Google may have broken the trust the account holders have about their privacy. Google certainly seemed to have an idea that they might be invading personal space, making several serious modifications to the Buzz service soon after its launch. But the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) believed that this was not enough, and filed a formal complaint [PDF] with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, requesting more changes to the service.
What exactly did Google do wrong? How did they manage to get these regulatory bodies riled up? In a statement by EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg, the fault seems to lie in not providing a choice to consumers, about if they wanted to join Buzz or not. "E-mail is for private messages. You sign up for social networking to communicate publicly with people, Google tried to turn e-mail into social networking, and that's where they ran into trouble." The EPIC believes that Google indulged in unfair or deceptive trade practices that violate the Federal Trade Commission Act. To begin with, Google never asked people if they wanted to join Buzz. When users logged into their accounts, many might have been irritated/underwhelmed by the ‘offer’ to “Check out Buzz”, and simply continued on to their inbox, by clicking the “Nah, go to my inbox” button. Little did these users know, regardless of whether they did check out Buzz or not, the service was activated.
While this at first might seem deceptive but in the end, relatively harmless, the ensuing breach of privacy when users began to use their Buzz service certainly is not. Buzz users first public (automatic) posting was a list of their most frequent e-mail contacts. According to the EPIC complaint, this is “deeply personal information”, and Buzz made it public. Who you choose email is decidedly your own prerogative, and making the list public can cause potential embarrassments, and reveal skeletons in what was till now your own very private, secure, closet. Those who emailed prospective employers about new jobs for example, would now have those contacts displayed as “followers” on their Buzz page, letting anyone see them, even your current employer. Lovers, doctors, attorneys, anybody you emailed frequently, would now be visible to all. "Users were not explicitly warned that their lists would be automatically visible to the public... Anyone looking at a newly activated Buzz user’s following list would know that the list indicated which people that user communicated with most often."
Apart from just causing potential embarrassment, the EPIC says that Google has broken the law by disclosing these e-mail contacts – “Improper disclosure of even a limited amount of subscriber information by an e-mail service provider can be a violation of both state and federal law,". "An attempt by an e-mail service provider...to convert the personal information of all of its customers into a separate service raises far-reaching concerns." Even after modifications, Google has not addressed the issue satisfactorily according to the EPIC, and frequent email partners will become “followers”, unless the user prevents that. By emplacing frequent email contacts by default, Google may have paved the way for unintended disclosure of personal information by users themselves.
The entire issue rests on the fact that things are done automatically, by default. Rosenberg states that Gmail users should have been given a choice to sign in to Buzz before it is activated, instead of enabling them to opt out of the service after.
Rosenberg claims that Google in its headlong rush to compete with social networking giants such as Facebook and Twitter, blithely ignored privacy policies, and “tried to take advantage of its market position" by making all Gmail users (all several millions of them) into Buzz users in one unfair move, playing catch-up by cheating. Users can be assured (at least those who have not yet suffered in the hands of Buzz) however by the statement Google made to msnbc.com, stating that it was working hard to make the necessary adjustments to Buzz, keeping "user transparency and control top of mind”.
Some of the actions that the EPIC wants the Federal Trade Commission to enforce on Google include making Buzz a completely voluntary service, stop using private email contacts as the base to compile lists of “followers”, allow Buzz users total control over what information they are displaying, and to explicitly provide notice and request consent from users before making further changes to their privacy policy.
This blunder by Google could not have come at a worse time, with users still reeling from Facebook’s privacy scare a few months ago and ready to revolt against further infringements of their personal space.
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