It was just about an year ago that we heard about the $35 Android Tablet from India which would revolutionize the education in developing countries. Mr. Kapil Sibal promoted it with utmost fervor until it was found that the BoM itself of the tablet was more than $50 and none of the guys claimed to have “invented” it even knew about its existence until a few days before the announcement. Ultimately, it was discovered that the tablet was just a rebranded chinese import which the government wanted to bring down to $35 price point by subsidizing the cost and not by somehow inventing cheaper parts. What more proof can we get about it’s non existence that it hasn’t materialized after so much of time and even the company that was supposed to be making it according to the government (HCL) has said that it has nothing to do with it.

Now, this is mind blowing. I’ve just talked to a pretty reliable source within the Android ranks of Google that Google is going to distance itself legally from Android and spin it off in a separate company. The source said that the move can happen very soon and may be announced at Google I/O conference in May. Although details are sketchy and only very few high profile folks know about it within Google, my source says that the probable reason is increasing worries about legal aspects of Android with respect to Patents and IP law suits. Google also doesn’t want to be held responsible by any of the OEMs using Android when they are targeted by these law suits. So, they arrived at this decision to create a win-win situation where the new company will still be handed over instructions from MountainView through back channels but liabilities of the company are going to be very limited because they will show zero or no earnings at all.

This post describes my first attempt at making Kinect work with a PS3. Microsoft’s new XBOX 360 accessory, kinect has made a powerful entry into the market, becoming the fastest selling gadget of all time. Looks like their “You are the controller” tagline is working. Of course, Sony’s “similar” accessory Move is selling well too but is far behind kinect adoption probably because nothing beats the lure of making something work with just “The Force” ;).

I’ve been playing around with linux uinput infrastructure for one of my ideas (Details coming soon ;) ). “uinput” is basically a mechanism in linux that allows user space applications to inject input events (mouse/keyboard or anything else) into the system. But the problem I faced was that my programs were compiling and running without any errors but I just couldn’t see the effect happening, i.e., the events weren’t getting injected into the system. I am using Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (10.10) and when I searched on the net, I saw various other folks are facing the same issue. I finally got it working and here is how.

**Update: **I did some more digging and the email and the links actually seem to be legitimate. Good news for many, but bad for those who actually got this email.

BEWARE!! In wake of the recent announcement of a potential Playstation Network ban wave by Sony for the people who are hacking it’s gaming console PS3, some nefarious elements seem to be using this as an opportunity to pry on your PSN passwords. Many folks are receiving emails like below: