BLuDBLoG veterans stuff, gaming and other mad ravings…

India’s $35 tablet–how low can it go?

India on Thursday unveiled a prototype tablet computer that would sell for a mere 1,500 rupees, or $35, with the price possibly dropping even further as R&D efforts continue.

Kapil Sibal, the country's Minister for Human Resource Development, showed off the super-cheap touch-screen device in New Delhi as part of a push to provide high-quality education to students across the country. The tablet also comes with a solar-power option that could make it more feasible for rural areas.

The Linux-based computer at first glance resembles an Apple iPad and features basic functions you'd expect to see in a tablet--a Web browser, multimedia player, PDF reader, Wi-Fi, and video conferencing ability. It has 2GB of RAM (but no hard disk, instead using a memory card) and USB ports and could be available to kids from primary school up to the university level as early as next year.

Students from several branches of the Indian Institute of Technology co-designed motherboards for the computer, which the ministry would like to see dropping to $20 and possibly getting as low as $10.

Sibal called the as-yet-unnamed device India's answer to MIT's famed OLPC laptop aimed at children in developing nations, which started off five years ago with a projected cost of $100, but ended up going for $200. In May, Marvell Technologies announced that it would partner with the OLPC foundation to create the hardware for a proposed OLPC tablet, currently named the XO-3, that would go for around $100.

But while the extremely low price of India's newly unveiled tablet is generating much hoopla, the gadget still faces hurdles before it lands in the public's hands.

"This is just a prototype," education expert Zubin Malhotra told Newsxlive. "We need to find people who will be able to manufacture these devices at these price points and continue to develop them going forward."

The tablet is part of a larger initiative aimed at improving India's educational system through technology. Nearly 8,500 colleges in the country have already gotten broadband connectivity, according to the Ministry for Human Resource Development, and some 500 Web-based and video courses are available for upload on YouTube and other online portals, with more in the works.

Chicken-and-Egg Mystery Finally Cracked

British scientists believe they have found the answer to an ages-old question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Scientists cracked the puzzle after discovering that the formation of eggs is possible only thanks to a protein found in chicken's ovaries. That means eggs have to be formed in chickens first.

The protein -- called ovocledidin-17 (OC-17) -- speeds up the development of the shell. Researchers from Sheffield and Warwick universities in England laid out their findings in the paper "Structural Control of Crystal Nuclei by an Eggshell Protein."

They used a supercomputer to zoom in on the formation of an egg and realized the protein is vital in kick-starting the crystallization process. It works by converting calcium carbonate into the calcite crystals that make up the egg shell.

Dr Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, said "it had long been suspected that the egg came first -- but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first."

"The protein had been identified before and it was linked to egg formation, but by examining it closely we have been able to see how it controls the process," Freeman said.

"It's very interesting to find that different types of avian species seem to have a variation of the protein that does the same job."

It is hoped the discovery leads to the invention of new materials.

Avatars as Lifelike Representations and Effective Marketing Tools

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2010) — It is predicted that 80% of active Internet consumers and Fortune 500 companies will have an avatar or presence in a virtual community, including social networks, by the end of 2011.

A new article in the journal Psychology & Marketing investigates the role avatars play in the virtual and consumer environment, how well avatars reflect the personality of their creators, the psychology behind self-representation, and how these virtually made identities are perceived by other members of the virtual community. According to the study, avatars can portray a very lifelike and accurate depiction of a person's true personality, within the virtual world.

Dr. H. Onur Bodur of Concordia University and his colleagues used the sophisticated avatar-based community Second Life as their model for the study, which has its own economy and facilitates real-money transactions. The membership of Second Life has increased more than 20 fold between 2006 and 2009 to reach 15 million, and many real-world companies (e.g., Adidas, American Apparel, Dell, Nike, and Toyota) have appeared in Second Life.

Members of the community use particular avatar traits or visual cues, such as attractiveness, gender, stylish hair, or expression ("babyfaceness" is associated with cooperation), to form impressions or opinions about the human behind the avatar. The researchers argue that well-known psychological principles such as Social Response Theory (SRT) and anthropomorphism come into play at this stage of discovery and discernment. Bodur's study finds that these impressions, based solely on fairly limited or superficial traits of the avatar, may accurately match the true personality of the real person behind the avatar.

Dr. Bodur says, "This research, which aligns with other research that says that accurate impressions can be formed through access to very limited information, such as images of someone's dorm room, work space, or website. This and future research can show whether online presentations of consumers (e.g., avatars) can be used to identify and segment consumers."

This article is part of the relatively new field of research surrounding the use of this new graphic media, and plays a major role in analyzing its impact on social psychology and marketing practices.

Illegal Alien Child Molester Receives $4M In Lawsuit

The Obama Administration's failure to lock-down the southern border is now costing Americans more than just their lives, it's costing them money-a lot of money.  The Examiner has more on the shocking story:

On April 17, 2009, the Orange County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay $3.75 million, plus an additional $900,000 in medical expenses to an illegal alien who was severely beaten by other inmates in the Orange County Central Jail. The Mexican national filed a lawsuit shortly after the incident.

Fernando Ramirez, 24, was in jail after being charged with molesting a 6-year-old girl at a local park. He eventually pled guilty to the lesser charge of battery against a child.

According to his attorney, Ramirez suffered brain damage and now needs help walking. Attorney Mark Eisenberg also claims that his client has been left with an intellect of a 4-year-old child.

Despite the dire financial crisis facing Orange County, Ramirez received the largest settlement ever awarded by the county for an in-custody incident. The Board of Supervisors made their decision in a closed-door session and have refused any comment on the matter.

This story has yet to be covered by the main stream media.