The Government of India today unveiled the much talked about 10 Dollar Tablet PC for students. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal unveiled the tablet which is initially priced at 1,500 Indian Rupees (US $30), but is expected distributed for 500 Rupees ($10) once manufacturing is streamlined. The device is named Sakshat (meaning "personification" in Sanskrit), and boasts of performance-grade hardware for a device of its class. It has a 10.5-inch multi-touch colour screen, ARM processor, 2 GB of memory, cloud storage, WiFi b/g and 10/100 Ethernet for connectivity with school networks, a highly-customised OS based on the Linux kernel, supporting Adobe Flash for online videos and interactive educational content, and a digital camera.

School curriculum will be distributed to students in an interactive format, as well as drive "e-classrooms" for live-streaming classes from eminent teachers to students from across the country. The device supports OpenOffice.org and open document formats, as well as Adobe PDF, and various multimedia formats. Sakshat was developed by students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from various IIT institutes across the country. As part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, Sakshat will be backed by a network connecting 18,000 educational institutions and 400 universities.

Here's a mouse that takes macro-bound multi-button design to a whole new level. The OOMouse from WarMouse crams over 18 buttons. The last time someone got this generous with buttons, was Razer, with its Naga MMO mouse that offers up to 12 macro buttons. The OOMouse on the other hand, isn't intended to be a gaming mouse, quite the opposite, it carries the OpenOffice.org branding, and offers that many buttons to improve productivity, after of course getting used to bending your neck to look for the right button, compared to simply moving the pointer to macro buttons on screen, or using keyboard shortcuts.

"The WarMouse team have worked closely with experts from the OpenOffice.org user experience project to deliver the full benefits of the world's leading open-source office software to the fingertips of users," says John McCreesh, marketing project lead at OpenOffice.org. Using its 18 programmable mouse buttons, clickable scroll wheel, three different button modes (key, keypress, and macro), and up to 16 macros on a joystick, on the left-side of it, the OOMouse can perform 52 different actions with the touch of a button. Unintentionally, it can also help MMO gamers thanks to its 1600 dpi optical sensor. The resolution of this sensor can be adjusted between 400 and 1600 dpi.

All fans of OpenOffice will be pleased to know that the latest OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta version for Linux/Solaris/Windows/MacOSX is now out.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 integrates ODF 1.2 support, Microsoft Office 2007 Import Filters, charting enhancements, improved note capabilities in Writer, new icons, enhanced pdf export, multi-monitor support for impress, and a start center. For Mac OS X users, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will now run without the need for X11 to be installed. In addition, there are several bug-fixes and other minor features that make up this beta release.

A more detailed guide to the features can be found here.

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The OpenOffice.org Community has released version 2.4 of its leading open source office productivity suite OpenOffice. OpenOffice.org 2.4 is available for immediate download and the new features are described in the release notes. OpenOffice 2.4 is compatible with all Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS and Unix/Linux distributions.

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Edinburgh, UK (PRWEB) March 29, 2007 -- The OpenOffice.org Community announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.2, the latest version of the leading open-source office suite. With upgrades to its word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, and database software, the free software package provides a real alternative to Microsoft's recently-released Office 2007 product - and an easier upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users. OpenOffice.org 2.2 also protects users from newly discovered vulnerabilities, where users' PCs could be open to attack if they opened documents from, or accessed web sites set up by, malicious individuals.