Victoria inventor envisions laptops and Internet access for the world
Victoria, BC inventor Gerry Morgan wants everyone in the world to be able to have an affordable laptop and Internet access. Thanks to the technology he developed, an Oshawa, Ontario based company called General Discovery wants to make that happen.
Morgan has invented a laptop that costs between $165 to $250 and stores information on memory card sticks that cost about $6 and can store many gigabytes of information. Children in third world countries who own the laptops can leave them at school and just carry the memory card stick so the computers aren’t lost or stolen.
“The most important anti-poverty device is access to information,” Morgan is quoted as saying in an article on NewsDurhamRegion.com. “Everything that’s ever happened in computers happens for only 20 per cent of us. That leaves 80 per cent of people on the outside looking in. If we could get a computer into the hands of the four/fifths on the outside, that would change the world.”
Computer pioneer and Vancouver Island resident passes away
Physicist Andrew Donald Booth, 91, whose research led him to build the first electronic computers in the U.K., died in hospital on Nov. 29th. He and his wife had been living on a rural property in Sooke for the last 31 years after they chose it as their retirement home. Booth, who was born in England and grew up in London, invented the magnetic storage device for computers and a complex algorithm called the “Booth multiplier.”
In his retirement Booth started a computer software consulting company on Vancouver Island, and provided his expertise to Royal Roads University, the Department of National Defence, the Institute of Oceanic Sciences, and others.
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Blog Post of the Week from Seth Godin
“Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they’ve heard of. It turns out that this is an overlooked benefit of banner ads. Banner ads are fairly worthless in terms of generating clickthroughs… you have to trick too much and manipulate too much to get clicks worth much of anything. But, if you build ads with no intent of clicks, no hope for clicks… then you can focus on ads that drill your name or picture or phrase into my head. 100 impressions and you’re almost famous. A household name. Not for everyone, but for people who matter.” ~ Seth’s Blog
Garth Von Buchholz is the President and digital media producer at DigitalPractices Media Inc. in Victoria. Email: Garth@DigitalPractices.com
