Pope Francis says education, jobs best way to prevent youth from being radicalized

Pope Francis waves to local residents as he drives to St. Joseph The Worker Catholic Church in the Kangemi slum of Nairobi, Kenya Friday, Nov. 27, 2015. Pope Francis is in Kenya on his first-ever trip to Africa, a six-day pilgrimage that will also take him to Uganda and the Central African Republic. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) 

Pope Francis says the way to prevent young people from being radicalized and going off to fight with extremist groups is to give them an education and a job.

Francis was asked Friday during his last public event in Kenya what young people can do to prevent their friends and family members from being seduced by radical ideologies that make them want to leave their loved ones behind to go join extremist groups.

Kenyans make up the largest contingent of foreign fighters in the Somali based al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab, which has staged a series of attacks in Kenya.

Francis said the first thing to do is to ensure that young people have an education and a job. He said: "If a young person has no work, what kind of a future does he or she have? That's where the idea of being recruited comes from."

Type these words into Google to awaken the Force

The nerds have taken over the Internet, even more than usual, with a new Google Easter Egg to add to all the "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" hype.

Simply type "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away" into a Google search (on desktop or mobile) and watch your screen turn to a darkened starscape as John Williams' classic theme music plays and your results scroll by in that familiar opening crawl seen at the opening of each episode from the franchise.

It's another nod to the upcoming premiere of Episode VII following the release of a Star Wars theme for Google apps and an upcoming new Google Cardboard virtual-reality Star Wars experience.

I'm all for fun Easter Eggs, but if there are more to come, I'd like to see something a little more compelling than that crawl, which, let's face it, is one of the most irritating moments in each of the movies. Who wants to learn about intergalactic trade troubles in a format that may be the most difficult way to read anything?

Perhaps, as I mentioned in this week's CraveCast, I'm just burned out on Star Wars hype. I just hope there are no Jar Jar Binks Easter eggs in the works.

Bringing the Internet to more Indians – starting with 10 million rail passengers a day in INDIA

When I was a student, I relished the day-long railway journey I would make from Chennai Central station (then known as Madras Central) to IIT Kharagpur. I vividly remember the frenetic energy at the various stations along the way and marveled at the incredible scale and scope of Indian Railways.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Googleplex today

I’m very proud to announce that it’s the train stations of India that are going to help get millions of people online. In the past year, 100 million people in India started using the Internet for the first time. This means there are now more Internet users in India than in every country in the world aside from China. But what's really astounding is the fact that there are still nearly one billion people in India who aren’t online.

We’d like to help get these next billion Indians online—so they can access the entire web, and all of its information and opportunity. And not just with any old connection—with fast broadband so they can experience the best of the web. That’s why, today, on the occasion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to our U.S. headquarters, and in line with his Digital India initiative, we announced a new project to provide high-speed public Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across India.

Working with Indian Railways, which operates one of the world's largest railway networks, and RailTel, which provides Internet services as RailWire via its extensive fiber network along many of these railway lines, our Access & Energy team plans to bring the first stations online in the coming months. The network will expand quickly to cover 100 of the busiest stations in India before the end of 2016, with the remaining stations following in quick succession.

Even with just the first 100 stations online, this project will make Wi-Fi available for the more than 10 million people who pass through every day. This will rank it as the largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users. It will also be fast—many times faster than what most people in India have access to today, allowing travelers to stream a high definition video while they’re waiting, research their destination, or download some videos, a book or a new game for the journey ahead. Best of all, the service will be free to start, with the long-term goal of making it self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and other places, with RailTel and more partners, in the future.

This map shows the first 100 stations that will have high-speed Wi-Fi by the end of 2016

We think this is an important part of making the Internet both accessible and useful for the more than 300 million Indians already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not.

But it’s not the only piece. To help more Indians get access to affordable, high-quality smartphones, which is the primary way most people there access the Internet, we launched Android One last year. To help address the challenges of limited bandwidth, we recently launched a feature that makes mobile webpages load faster and with less data, and we’ve made YouTube available offline with offline Maps coming soon. 

To help make web content more useful for Indians, many of whom don’t speak English, we launched the Indian Language Internet Alliance last year to foster more local language content, and have built greater local language support into our products—including Hindi Voice Search, an improved Hindi keyboard and support for seven Indian languages with the latest versions of Android. And finally, to help all Indians reap the benefits of connectivity, we’ve been ramping up efforts to help women, who make up just a third of Internet users in India today, get the most from the web.

Just like I did years ago, thousands of young Indians walk through Chennai Central every day, eager to learn, to explore and to seek opportunity. It’s my hope that this Wi-Fi project will make all these things a little easier. 

(Posted by Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google)

Google launches affordable XOLO Chromebook in India, Nexian Air priced at Rs 12,999; available on Snapdeal and Amazon

Google on Friday launched three new budget Chromebooks in India focussing on education –  XOLO Chromebook is to be made available on Snapdeal priced at Rs 12,999, Nexian Air Chromebook with same price tag will be available on Amazon – in the coming months latest units from ASUS including the Chromebook Flip and C201 and Samsung will also be available from local retailers.

Google also launched a Chromebox for businesses. The Chromebox, which is a video meeting utility, will be priced at Rs 90,000 and will be manufactured by Asus for India. “HP and Acer are making the Chromeboxes that are being sold in Europe,” Smita Hashim, Global Product Manager, Chrome OS, said. “Chromebox for meetings brings together Hangouts, Google Apps and easy­ to­ manage chromebox, making it simple and affordable for any company to have high­ definition video meetings,” a release from the company claimed.

The Google Chromebook runs on a much lighter OS and thus boots up easily.

The budget Chromebooks are targeting educational institutions and during the launch, Google showed off its new capabilities and new apps that are now available in the web store. “We are trying to get a lot of Android apps on the Chrome OS as both the OS complement each other. We can send regular updates to the OS after intervals of six weeks,” Hashim said implying quicker and faster development to the new OS from the stable of Google.The budget Chormebooks will come with with Google Apps for Education enabling the user to work in an already well-defined environment.

All the new devices will come with a management control console through which the educational institution or business can manage the devices. Each device use will be charged — a revenue model that Google has long been using with its email services.With the Chromebook management console, administrators can set up and manage up to thousands of Chromebooks from a computer or phone. “Plus, regular updates from Google mean that Chromebooks actually get better over time, reducing school’s maintenance and software costs,” Hashim said.

The Chromebook runs on a much lighter OS and thus boots up easily. The tech giant claimed that it has prepared the device for more offline activity than its earlier releases. “When we introduced Chromebooks four years ago, we
wanted to build a laptop for the way people use computers today­ always fast, easy to  use,  and  secure  by  default.Since launching Chromebooks in India, we’ve been working to ensure that Chromebooks work in an environment  where  connectivity  can  be  spotty,  and  many  people’s  first experiences with technology are through a phone rather than a laptop,” Hashim added.

According to IDC’s latest report on tablets and laptops in K­12 education, Chromebooks were the best­selling device in the US last year. While the devices released on Friday will run on the RK3288 Rockchip processor, the ones to come in the market will use Intel chips at its base.