David Braben, British game developer and co-founder of Frontier Developments, has created an ultra-low cost computer the size of a USB stick called Raspberry Pi. The expected price would be a measly $25 for a fully-configured system. He says he’s developed the PC in order to encourage the pursuit of computer programming in children.
But what can you expect from a system that comes for less than the cost of a video game? The tiny PC sports an HDMI port at its head and a USB port at its tail, giving it the ability to be plugged into a TV, hooked up to a USB keyboard or combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The computer packs a 700MHz ARM11 processor with 128MB of SDRAM. As far as graphics go, it runs OpenGL ES 2.0 and has 1080p output.
At the stage the prototype is in now, developers seem to be favoring the Linux based Ubuntu OS for Raspberry Pi’s initial equipment; which means OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP for image editing etc., all ready for a user to play around with.
AUSTRALIAN researchers will use eye tracker technology to measure nurses' responses and understanding of electrocardiographs and how people interpret X-rays.
Central Queensland University has set up a world-class eye tracking facility to undertake the projects and other e-learning research.
The facility was developed at the university's Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre at Noosa, on the Sunshine Coast.
The Swedish-designed eye tracker is used largely for commercial market research, but it is also valuable for measuring the effectiveness of educational materials, according to researchers.
Research centre director Mike Horsley said the eye tracker could test anything that could be shown on a screen, so it would have numerous uses.
"We are also getting, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, special wristbands that collect data on skin conductivity and pulse so that we can also get a measure of anxiety when people are in an online environment," he said.
Read the full article here from the TheAustralian.com
Hewlett-Packard on Thursday enhanced its mobile printing service by adding support for Google's Cloud Print, which will enable smartphones and tablet users to print documents from applications such as Gmail and Google Docs.
Users will be able to remotely print documents from applications on select HP printers with the EPrint capability, in which an email with print instructions is sent directly to the printer. The mobile application needs to have Google's Cloud Print extensions.
Google has already integrated Cloud Print in its Gmail and Google Docs applications, and will add extensions to more software in the future. The Cloud Print service also works with laptops based on the Chrome OS, which is not yet available on commercial laptops.
Users have to add the email address of an HP EPrint-enabled Photosmart, Envy, Officejet or LaserJet printer to a unique Google account tied to a smartphone or tablet. Multiple printers can be tied to one Google account, and on pushing the print command, users will be able to select the printer of choice. If a printer is powered down, the command will be added to a print queue.
As tablet computers and e-readers become more commonplace, they may become as essential to classrooms as the blackboard, and textbook publishers are increasing their digital offerings accordingly and looking for partners to help out.
Next year, e-textbook sales are expected to more than double to $308 million from about $138 million this year, found social-learning company MBS Service Co.'s Xplana, which predicts that by 2014, the U.S. digital textbook market will surpass 18 percent of new textbook sales for the higher education and career education markets combined.
The e-textbook revolution in schools may create opportunities for entrepreneurs with ideas on how to make textbook material more interactive. One of the key obstacles that schools are confronting is that they’re isn’t enough interactive content out there, but another is that digitized versions of textbooks tend to be straight conversions that do not fully utilize the tablet’s interactive features, the Wall Street Journal reports today.
