|
Simputer
The Simputer is a self-contained, open hardware Linux-based handheld computer that was first released in 2002, developed in, and primarily distributed within India. The product was envisioned as a low-cost alternative to personal computers. The Simputer project had the initial goal of selling 50,000 units, but only sold 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 progra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Open-source Hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifact (software development), 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#Society, open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as free and open-source hardware (FOSH), meaning that the design is easily available ("open") and that it can be used, modified and shared freely ("free"). The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker culture, maker movement. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, circuit diagram, schematics, bills of material, printed circuit board, PCB layout data, hardware description language, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that device driver, drives the hardware, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 patent infringement. 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks that consists of Private network, private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, Wireless network, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and Web application, applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), email, electronic mail, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing. The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources, the development of packet switching in the 1960s and the design of computer networks for data communication. The set of rules (communication protocols) to enable i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 calendar date, 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 solar calendar, sun or the lunar calendar, 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 " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software
Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital computers in the mid-20th century. Early programs were written in the machine language specific to the hardware. The introduction of high-level programming languages in 1958 allowed for more human-readable instructions, making software development easier and more portable across different computer architectures. Software in a programming language is run through a compiler or Interpreter (computing), interpreter to execution (computing), execute on the architecture's hardware. Over time, software has become complex, owing to developments in Computer network, networking, operating systems, and databases. Software can generally be categorized into two main types: # operating systems, which manage hardware resources and provide services for applicat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 (1 MB), $299 for the PalmPilot Personal (512 KB), 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 P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kernel (operating System)
A kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system that always has complete control over everything in the system. The kernel is also responsible for preventing and mitigating conflicts between different processes. 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 use of common resources, such as CPU, cache, 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 usua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Infrared Data Association
IrDA is a wireless standard designed for exchanging data using infrared (IR). Infrared ports for this purpose have been implemented in portable electronic devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. The main characteristics of this kind of wireless optical communication are physically secure bidirectional data transfer, line-of-sight and very low bit error rate, using point-and-shoot principles. IrDA has been made dormant by newer improved technologies like Bluetooth. History and usage The protocols and specifications of the standard were developed by the Infrared Data Association (abbreviated IrDA, giving the name to the standard itself), an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1994 by around 50 companies. IrDA was popular on PDAs, laptops and some desktops from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. However, it has been displaced by other wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, favored because they don't ne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
