(Credit: New York Times)
Intel’s Approach to Laptops for Poor Children
Intel insists that its project to make low-cost laptops for school children in poorer nations began nearly three years ago, before it heard of Nicholas Negroponte’s initiative, One Laptop Per Child.
It scarcely matters much anymore, now that the jawing between the two camps has subsided, after Intel agreed to join the One Laptop Per Child Foundation last month.
The agreement has three main accords, according to L. Wilton Agatstein, general manager of Intel’s emerging markets group. The two camps agreed to work to develop a common software framework for educational programs on their machines; they may share some hardware technology; and both sides will publicly champion the cause of laptops for kids in developing nations, without sniping at each other.
“We won’t spend any time saying ours is better than theirs,” Mr. Agatstein said today.
Some of the competitive friction came from the fact that Mr. Negroponte’s machine runs on a chip made by AMD, Intel’s rival in the microprocessor business. The One Laptop machine runs the Linux operating system, while most of the Intel machines run Microsoft’s Windows (though they can run Linux).
Mr. Agatstein came by to demo the Classmate PC, a light, durable, wireless notebook with a seven-inch color screen that is being used in pilot projects this year in 25 countries. The keyboard is small, but so are childrens’ fingers, so they don’t mind, Mr. Agatstein said. Intel has donated more than 30,000 laptops and sold hundreds of thousands this year, he said. It plans to sell millions next year, to governments, schools and philanthropies (who then donate them to schools).
The Intel World Ahead Program may be a nose ahead of One Laptop Per Child, which is still testing its machine and plans to begin full-scale production later this year.
That scarcely matters either, at least to the kids in poorer nations who will get a well-designed computing experience because of the laptop programs. Whether Mr. Negroponte, the founding director of the MIT Media Lab, intentionally set out to spur competition in a truly underserved market, he has. That itself is a genuine accomplishment.
Despite the recent make-nice pact, there are still traces of rivalry. The Classmate PC sells for $225, heading toward $200 by the end of the year. The One Laptop machine was long promoted as a $100 laptop, though it will initially start higher, at $150 or so. Mr. Agatstein referred to the One Laptop machine as “the $175 laptop.”
(Credit: Engadget)
iPhones automatically updated with "Send to Web Gallery" feature
At some point during the Jobsters lenghty unveiling of multifarious technologies today, iPhones across the nation were silently rejiggered (presumably by magical Apple wood-sprites) to allow for use of the just announced "Send to Web Gallery" feature. Whether this was a timed event scheduled into the new 1.0.1 update or an over-the-air transmission from Apple remains to be seen, but it is definitely true that the "fully integrated" web gallery upload option which Mr. Jobs demonstrated at today's press conference is currently available for use on your iPhone. Right now. This second.
(Credit: Engadget)
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