Unusual keyboard Vodafone Webbox

The company Vodafone announced the release of the device Webbox, which allows you to access the Internet using any TV in the vicinity, simply by connecting a keyboard to it. The Internet Keyboard has been designed specifically for buyers from emerging markets (for example, Ghana or South Africa), where the technological and price barrier often prevents many people from enjoying affordable, ready access to the Web from home or in the workplace.

The Webbox is a 14 x 25 cm QWERTY keyboard that can be connected to a TV using standard RCA connectors (the popular "tulip"). The keyboard, which does not require plug and play, turns any TV into an Internet portal.

Vodafone considers Webbox a simple, but fairly innovative product that has great potential. It can help people from different countries who have limited access to the Internet due to various reasons, despite the fact that the level of television penetration is usually quite high. The simplicity of the product, according to the developers, is simply obliged to amaze everyone.

By connecting the set-top box to the TV, you instantly gain access to a variety of embedded services. You can access the global network using Opera Mini, access sending and receiving SMS and e-mail, Internet search and media services such as FM radio, a photo gallery and a music player.
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Opera Mini in the Webbox runs on 2.5G and EDGE mobile networks, compressing the transmitted data up to 90%, allows you to load pages much faster and save money by reducing traffic. The browser’s homepage will provide links to popular sites such as news and sports portals, social networks, as well as websites and web applications that are popular in the place where the device was distributed (for example, searching for work in the region, local news, etc.). . In addition to everything, a few simple games, a dictionary and a simple text editor will be available to the owner of the Internet console.

The Vodafone device is somewhat reminiscent of the OLPC project (One Laptop per Child), in which it was planned to produce laptops worth no more than $ 100 for children from developing countries. And it seems that the Webbox, taking into account the ubiquity of various cloud services, is an excellent and inexpensive solution to a complex problem.

Next week, Vodafone plans to start selling the Webbox next week. Plans to penetrate other emerging markets will be published later this year. The device will cost about $ 100 with a 2GB SD card installed with a SIM card and 100 MB of prepaid traffic.



via TechCrunch