Simputer
The Simputer was a self-contained, open hardware Linux-based handheld computer, first released in 2002. Developed in, and primarily distributed within India, the product was envisioned as a low-cost alternative to personal computers. With initial goals of selling 50,000 simputers, the project had sold only about 4,000 units by 2005, and has been called a failure by news sources. Design and Hardware The device was designed by the Simputer Trust, a non-profit organization formed in November 1999 by seven Indian scientists and engineers led by Dr. Swami Manohar. The word "Simputer" is an acronym for "simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer", and is a trademark of the Simputer Trust. The device includes text-to-speech software and runs the Linux operating system. Similar in appearance to the PalmPilot class of handheld computers, the touch sensitive screen is operated on with a stylus; simple handwriting recognition software is provided by the program Tapatap. The Si ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Simputer
The Simputer was a self-contained, open hardware Linux-based handheld computer, first released in 2002. Developed in, and primarily distributed within India, the product was envisioned as a low-cost alternative to personal computers. With initial goals of selling 50,000 simputers, the project had sold only about 4,000 units by 2005, and has been called a failure by news sources. Design and Hardware The device was designed by the Simputer Trust, a non-profit organization formed in November 1999 by seven Indian scientists and engineers led by Dr. Swami Manohar. The word "Simputer" is an acronym for "simple, inexpensive and multilingual people's computer", and is a trademark of the Simputer Trust. The device includes text-to-speech software and runs the Linux operating system. Similar in appearance to the PalmPilot class of handheld computers, the touch sensitive screen is operated on with a stylus; simple handwriting recognition software is provided by the program Tapatap. The Si ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swami Manohar
Swami Manohar, otherwise known as Manohar Swaminathan, is a co-founder and the CEO of PicoPeta Simputers Pvt. Ltd. He completed his undergraduate program in Electronics and Communication Engineering in Government College of Technology, Coimbatore during which he was a part of a campus team that designed an Electronic Voting machine in the year 1981, which was actually the first designed in India. After obtaining his PhD in Computer Science from Brown University he was a faculty at the University of North Carolina for two years and then was at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, between 1990 and 2005. He was on the faculty of the department of Computer Science and Automation (CSA) and the Supercomputer Education and Research Center (SERC) at the Institute. He has been a visiting faculty at Columbia University, University of Missouri and the University of Texas. While at IISc, he co-invented the Simputer, was awarded the Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Open-source Hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH (free and open-source hardware). The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community. It is n ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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StrongARM
The StrongARM is a family of computer microprocessors developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and manufactured in the late 1990s which implemented the ARM v4 instruction set architecture. It was later acquired by Intel in 1997 from DEC's own Digital Semiconductor division as part of a settlement of a lawsuit between the two companies over plagiarism. Intel then continued to manufacture it before replacing it with the StrongARM-derived ARM-based follow-up architecture called XScale in the early 2000s. History According to Allen Baum, the StrongARM traces its history to attempts to make a low-power version of the DEC Alpha, which DEC's engineers quickly concluded was not possible. They then became interested in designs dedicated to low-power applications which led them to the ARM family. One of the only major users of the ARM for performance-related products at that time was Apple, whose Newton device was based on the ARM platform. DEC approached Apple wondering if they migh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing. The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers. The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s to enable resource shari ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells. The term ''spreadsheet'' may also refer to one such electronic document. Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values. This makes the spreadsheet useful for "what-if" analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets and can display data either as text and numerals or in graphical form. Besides performing basic arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for common financial a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physical record (often paper) of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents, such as a calendar of wills. Periods in a calendar (such as years and months) are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of pre-modern calendar was the lunisolar calendar, a lunar calendar that occasionally adds one intercalary month to remain synchronized with the solar year over the long term. Etymology The term ''calendar'' is taken from , the term for the first day of the month in the Roman calendar, related to the verb 'to call out', referring to the "calling" of the new moon when it was first se ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists of machine language instructions supported by an individual processor—typically a central processing unit (CPU) or a graphics processing unit (GPU). Machine language consists of groups of binary values signifying processor instructions that change the state of the computer from its preceding state. For example, an instruction may change the value stored in a particular storage location in the computer—an effect that is not directly observable to the user. An instruction may also invoke one of many input or output operations, for example displaying some text on a computer screen; causing state changes which should be visible to the user. The processor executes the instructions in the order they are provided, unless it is instructed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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PalmPilot
The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc (then a subsidiary of U.S. Robotics, later 3Com). These devices were launched on March 10, 1997. Accessories and pricing Palm also sold the 10201U modem at 14.4 kbit/s, introduced at a price of $129 (this modem is also compatible with the Palm III and Palm IIIx devices). An upgrade kit was also available, which allowed users of the earlier Pilot 1000/5000 devices to upgrade the OS, ROM, and RAM to match the PalmPilot Professional. Initially suggested retail prices upon launch were $399 for the PalmPilot Professional (1MB), $299 for the PalmPilot Personal (512KB), and $199 for the Upgrade Kit. Upgrade kits were also available to existing registered Pilot users for $99 for a limited time after the launch. These kits included IR capability, a new plastic memory door to accommodate the IR diodes, a memory card with 1 MB, the new ROM for Palm OS 2.0, and a CD-RO ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Web Browsing
Web navigation refers to the process of navigating a Computer network, network of web resource, information resources in the International World Wide Web Conference, World Wide Web, which is organized as hypertext or hypermedia. The user interface that is used to do so is called a web browser. A central theme in web design is the development of a web navigation interface that maximizes usability. A website overall navigational scheme includes several navigational pieces such as global, local, supplemental, and contextual navigation; all of these are vital aspects of the broad topic of web navigation. Hierarchical navigation systems are vital as well since it is the primary navigation system. It allows for the user to navigate within the site using levels alone, which is often seen as restricting and requires additional navigation systems to better structure the website. The global navigation of a website, as another segment of web navigation, serves as the outline and template i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kernel (operating System)
The kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system. It is the portion of the operating system code that is always resident in memory and facilitates interactions between hardware and software components. A full kernel controls all hardware resources (e.g. I/O, memory, cryptography) via device drivers, arbitrates conflicts between processes concerning such resources, and optimizes the utilization of common resources e.g. CPU & cache usage, file systems, and network sockets. On most systems, the kernel is one of the first programs loaded on startup (after the bootloader). It handles the rest of startup as well as memory, peripherals, and input/output (I/O) requests from software, translating them into data-processing instructions for the central processing unit. The critical code of the kernel is usually loaded into a separate area of memory, which is protected from access by application ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Infrared Data Association
The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) is an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1994 by around 50 companies. IrDA provides specifications for a complete set of protocols for wireless infrared communications, and the name "IrDA" also refers to that set of protocols. The main reason for using the IrDA protocols had been wireless data transfer over the "last one meter" using point-and-shoot principles. Thus, it has been implemented in portable devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. The main characteristics of this kind of wireless optical communication are physically secure data transfer, line-of-sight (LOS) and very low bit error rate (BER) that makes it very efficient. Specifications IrPHY The mandatory IrPHY (Infrared Physical Layer Specification) is the physical layer of the IrDA specifications. It comprises optical link definitions, modulation, coding, cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and the framer. Different data r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |