The followers of this blog must be aware about the features and advantages of Amazon's Kindle.  (You may visit the previous posts of this blog, in case you want to know what is Kindle).  This little device is entering the Indian markets and promises to transform the reading habits of people of this part of the globe. Here is the news:

Croma brings in Amazon's Kindle to India Published: Wednesday, Aug 22, 2012, 21:11 IST Place: Mumbai | Agency: PTI

The durables retailer from the Tatas, Croma, on Wednesday roped in the world's largest online retailer Amazon to bring in the latter's Kindle to the domestic market. The partnership involves Amazon expanding its Kindle Store, under which, Croma will hawk the Kindle hardware. The store will be featuring over a million books, including 70 of 100 Nielsen Bestsellers and allow consumers to purchase e-books by paying rupees. Along with the Nielsen Bestsellers, Amazon will also offer works of local authors like Chetan Bhagat, Ashwin Sanghi, Ravinder Singh and Amish Tripathi, among others. Croma will make the Kindle e-readers available to consumers across the country through its stores as well as through its online platform cromaretail.com. "We are excited to be the first retailer here to offer the latest generation Kindle to our customers. This product will be launched exclusively in all Croma stores at an introductory price of Rs6,999," managing director and chief executive of Infiniti Retail that owns Croma Ajit Joshi said in Mumbai. Amazon also launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for independent authors and publishers here. "We are excited to work with Croma to make Kindle available at retail outlets across the country," Amazon vice-president for Kindle Content Russ Grandinetti said.

Aakash 2 to be launched soon!

Dear all,

At last it seems there is some light at the end of the tunnel!  The HRD Minister claims the Aakash 2 tablet will be made available to all the stakeholders of higher education soon whith some upgraded features... Here is the news:

Hyderabad: An upgraded version of Aakash — the low cost tablet billed as the cheapest computer in the world for students and the teaching community, is set to be launched “very soon”, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said today.
The improved version is fitted with a faster processor and enhanced battery life among other features.

“Now, Aakash 2 has been rolled out with battery life of three hours, 800MHz processor, providing internet access everywhere and it has a capacitive screen. The process to distribute this device has begun and it would be formally launched very soon,” Sibal said here.

Sibal had announced in June that 100,000 upgraded Akash-2 tablets will be given to engineering colleges, for which deliveries were expected to begin in July.

Soon after its launch in October 2011, Aakash faced many a hiccup. Following this, IIT-Bombay was handed over the responsibility of the first phase of the project.

Kanchi