Video: India unveils world’s cheapest ‘laptop’
The $35 device is aimed at university students – and the price could yet fall further
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Video: India unveils world's cheapest 'laptop'
Sir Clive Sinclair: "I don’t use a computer at all"
The entrepreneur and innovator tells Simon Garfield about inspiration, determination and why he doesn't do email… Thirty years ago this month, Clive Sinclair launched a computer that he hoped would change the world. In the majority of cases it only changed the way people played primitive computer games, but it also turned a bespectacled, prematurely balding man into a hero for our times. In those dark days before Windows 7 and the iPad, the Sinclair ZX80 represented the pinnacle of affordable domestic computing. It was a flat box without a screen or proper keyboard, it had the memory of a hamster and at the back of it was something that looked like a radiator grille but was actually a strip of plastic designed to look like a radiator grille. It promised it could do "quite literally anything, from playing chess to running a power station", which was good value for something costing £79.95 in kit form and £99.95 assembled, about one fifth of the price of other home computers. Sir Clive, who was knighted for services to industry at the age of 43, will be 70 later this year. He lives in an apartment overlooking Trafalgar Square, and from his adjacent office he has a magnificent view of tourists and lions (recently he also had a view of people performing on Antony Gormley's fourth plinth, but that "got a bit boring really"). He was a household name before Sir Alan Sugar, and for a while was the unlikely future of modern electronics: a bright, hi-tech uncle rejuvenating British industry blighted by decay, unions and Thatcher. Sinclair helped transform Cambridge into the computing capital of the world, a homegrown version of Silicon Valley and Taipei, and for a couple of brilliant years he made the bestselling computers in the world
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Sir Clive Sinclair: "I don't use a computer at all"
Technophile: Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W1 digital camera reviewed
Fujifilm's FinePix 3D W1 delivers the novelty value of 3D images but the hefty price tag isn't so cute With the movie industry turning to 3D, Fujifilm may have hit on a good time to launch a 3D digital camera. But having used Nimslo 3D cameras before, I doubt it. The images still have that cardboard cutout look that makes them seem less real than plain old snapshots, though they do have a certain novelty value. Stereography is as old as photography itself: Professor Charles Wheatstone worked out in 1838 how images from two eyes create a sense of depth. But the Victorian craze for 3D didn't survive the arrival of affordable Kodak box camera prints that are much easier to view. The Fujifilm FinePix Real 3D W1 camera has the same problem. You can see your 3D pictures on the camera's screen, or using a special 8in Fujifilm digital photoframe, but not on your PC; and if you want prints these have to be produced by Fujifilm. The company is using a lenticular screen process so each eye sees a slightly different image. It's expensive. Nimslo also offered lenticular prints in the 1980s – they didn't catch on. All those vertical rules are a bit intrusive. The Real 3D W1 has two lenses 77mm apart and two CCDs to capture two images at once. If you don't want a 3D picture, you can capture one or two 2D pictures – a wide angle and a telephoto, for example, or a 2D and a 3D image. The two lenses can, in effect, be angled towards or away from one another, as you push a button to converge the two images to create one 3D image. This isn't easy in bright sunlight because it's hard to read the 2.8in LCD
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Technophile: Fujifilm FinePix REAL 3D W1 digital camera reviewed
Ask Jack: 30 July 2009
Paperless payments Claranet (clara.net) says it wants to help the environment by reducing the number of paper invoices and cheques. I am not comfortable with giving it my credit card details but have been told the only way to avoid the £10 charge is to do this. Is this legal? Liz Stevens JS: I am not a lawyer, but BT won a case against Dennis Andrews, a Nottinghamshire pensioner who disputed its similar £4.50 charge. It looks as though Claranet is simply following what a lot of companies are doing. Apparently, there was an item on the BBC's Watchdog programme, but this seems to have had more to do with whether the charges were reasonable, not their existence – and £10 does not sound reasonable to me.
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Ask Jack: 30 July 2009
Video: The inner workings of the Antikythera mechanism
An animation shows how the world's oldest computer helped the Ancient Greeks simulate planetary motions and predict lunar eclipses Click on the first symbol on the bottom right of the player to enlarge the video
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Video: The inner workings of the Antikythera mechanism
Antikythera computer may be even older than thought
New detective work suggests that the ancient mechanism for simulating planetary motions and predicting lunar eclipses was built in the 2nd century BC I thought my capacity for sheer jaw-dropping amazement at the Antikythera mechanism had been well and truly exhausted – until last night. The puzzling instrument is a clockwork computer from ancient Greece that used a fiendishly complex assembly of meshed cogs to simulate the movement of the planets, predict lunar eclipses and indicate the dates of major sporting events. The clockwork technology in the device was already known to be centuries ahead of its time, but new evidence suggests that the enigmatic machine is even older than scientists had realised. "It is the most important scientific artefact known from the ancient world," said Jo Marchant, who has written a compelling book on the find called Decoding the Heavens . "There's nothing else like it for a thousand years afterwards." First, a quick recap. The Antikythera mechanism was discovered by sponge divers in 1901 who chanced upon the wreck of a Roman vessel off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. The ship was filled with bronze statues, pottery and glassware – booty that had been plundered from across the ancient Greek world. At first no one noticed the corroded lump of cogs among the treasures, but the mechanism has since attracted the, at times, obsessive interest of a small group of scientists . What we now know about the mechanism and its purpose is a fascinating tale of scientific rivalry, low-down skulduggery and eventual glory. There is much still to learn about where the machine came from, who made it and what it was for, but the best guess seems to be that it was more must-have executive toy than useful gadget. It modelled the state-of-the-art astronomy of the time: a universe with the Earth at the centre with planets following circular orbits that included apparent wobbles called epicycles . The mechanism was probably not used for navigation but perhaps served more as a beautiful representation of an ordered, clockwork universe. "Something to elevate the spirit and get closer to God or the true meaning of things," as Marchant put it during her talk at the Royal Institution in London last night .
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Antikythera computer may be even older than thought
The forecast for UK technology companies? Wildly variable
Call it luck, chance or just a sign of the times – but the fate of British hi-tech companies at the moment seems to be up and down more often than West Bromwich Albion. For every ARM – boosted by iPhone sales , there's a host of companies struggling to make ends meet, and people losing their jobs. For a close-up view of the highs and lows, just take a look at the small electronic ink industry, where two British companies are currently looking at very disparate fortunes. Southampton's Polymer Vision, which had developed flexible e-ink screens that garnered a rave reception earlier this year, has gone into administration with the loss of 50 jobs . Meanwhile Plastic Logic, a company spun out from Cambridge University, has received a boost from a deal with US bookseller Barnes & Noble, which has announced plans to start selling a rival to Amazon's Kindle (with wireless connectivity to be provided by telecoms giant AT&T). Despite their similar offering, the two companies couldn't be further apart. Why? What is the difference? And – if anything - what can British entrepreneurs learn from those who have gone before them? Gadgets Ebooks Mergers, acquisitions and funding Research and development guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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The forecast for UK technology companies? Wildly variable
Do friends let friends install Linux?
A friend tells you he's considering putting Linux on his Windows machine.
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Do friends let friends install Linux?
Michael Cross on the digital challenges facing public services
Who would set up an organisation employing two groups of professionals managing the same set of customers with two distinct computer systems? You guessed it: the NHS.
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Michael Cross on the digital challenges facing public services
Richard Norton-Taylor on government plans to protect against cyber-attack
Richard Norton-Taylor, security editor, on British intelligence agencies' plans to protect against cyber-attack
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Richard Norton-Taylor on government plans to protect against cyber-attack