{"id":3398,"date":"2013-09-18T11:35:07","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T15:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/?p=3398"},"modified":"2013-09-18T11:35:07","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T15:35:07","slug":"tablet-for-the-masses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/tablet-for-the-masses\/","title":{"rendered":"Tablet for the Masses"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"aakash\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A tablet, touted as the world\u2019s cheapest<\/a>, designed and developed by a Canadian-run company with operations in Montreal?\u00a0 Who knew?\u00a0 Now priced at around $40, the product is called the Aakash and it\u2019s heading into version 3.0.\u00a0\u00a0 Datawind, the company that produces it, has ambitions to bring the price down even further to around $25.\u00a0 Their company slogan is: \u201cBridging the digital divide\u201d and now that they have the largest market share of tablets in India, the world\u2019s second most populous nation, they may just be living up to it.\u00a0 In order to bring low-cost internet to developing markets, Datawind has patented a process<\/a> that uses a proxy server between a portable device and an internet service provider\u2019s server to reduce the volume of data that get transmitted over the web.\u00a0 This process shortens the time users wait to view a webpage, which is especially useful in developing countries where internet access is often slow and expensive.<\/p>\n

I had a chance to speak with Derek Kopke, a McGill alumni (B. Ed. 1992) who is Datawind\u2019s Executive Vice President of International Business Development.\u00a0 He explained that the Aakash\u2019s popularity took off from the time the company won an Indian government bid in 2010 against 17 competitors to produce a tablet for use in India\u2019 schools that would be subsidized for students.\u00a0 Ever since the Aakash received endorsement by the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee<\/a>, it\u2019s been a challenge to keep up with demand.<\/p>\n

Datawind now has its headquarters in London, England and offices in India but maintains a Research and Development office and a touch screen lab here in Montreal.\u00a0 In an interview given to the Montreal Gazette<\/a>, Datawind\u2019s Chief Technical Officer Raja Tuli states that the company finds Montreal to be a great location because it possesses \u201cengineering graduates with impressive skills and he\u2019s not sure he would be able to find the same level of expertise in another city.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was curious to know what kind of skills his company looks for in new employees.\u00a0 Kopke said that they hire for very specific needs, but he suggests that new engineering graduates gain a basic understanding of how to work with open source software.\u00a0\u00a0 He sees future growth to be in low-cost and free applications and hardware.\u00a0\u00a0 For those of you in Computer Science, you may be interested in taking COMP 529: Software Architecture.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s syllabus<\/a> describes the final project where students learn how to reverse engineer a large open source system.\u00a0 The course will be offered again this winter.<\/p>\n

I asked Derek if we can expect to see the Aakash on McGill campus anytime soon. \u00a0He said Datawind is planning to market their product in North America within the next couple of months.\u00a0 And with that, Derek had to get back to work bringing his tablet to the masses.<\/p>\n

Image from Smart Planet<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A tablet, touted as the world\u2019s cheapest, designed and developed by a Canadian-run company with operations in Montreal?\u00a0 Who knew?\u00a0 Now priced at around $40, the product is called the Aakash and it\u2019s heading into version 3.0.\u00a0\u00a0 Datawind, the company … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,202,173],"class_list":["post-3398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-gadgets","tag-tablets","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3400,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3398\/revisions\/3400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.mcgill.ca\/schulich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}