classmate

Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced on Tuesday expanded initiatives to spur entrepreneurship and education.

Speaking at the World Congress on IT in Amsterdam, Otellini said the annual Intel Challenge will spread beyond its previous arenas in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America to include France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The Intel Challenge is a competition that awards seed money to college students who create the most innovative and effective business plans. The criteria includes creating a positive effect on society and a positive return on investment by tapping into fields such as semiconductors, nanotechnology, mobile and wireless, and … Read more

Before the Netbook even existed, there was the Intel Classmate. A rugged, child-oriented notebook intended for worldwide educational use, the Classmate was and is Intel's global initiative paralleling what One Laptop Per Child and other programs have promised in terms of getting computers and the Internet into the hands of children.

The new Intel Convertible Classmate PC is a tablet Netbook with an Atom N450 processor, and it's also a touch-screen tablet, like its predecessor in 2009. Though the overall look is similar, the new Classmate adds a rubberized outer shell, spill-resistant keyboard and screen, a more impact-resistant body with shock-absorbing corners, and a shock-detecting hard drive.

Intel chose to introduce and demo the new Classmates at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, along with hardware peripherals and software from some of their multitude of partners (McGraw-Hill was just announced as yet another). Wisely, Intel has realized that the product itself is only half the story; good software for both students and school administrators is equally critical. We watched a few dozen children using them for math quizzes, to test weather conditions with an attached Pasco climate-detecting peripheral, and to take photos and sketch birds in the rain forest exhibit. Lego also has robot kits that work via USB, which looked like clever systems for teaching mechanical principles.

We received one of the new Convertible Classmate PCs from Intel to try for ourselves, in a plain white box with a simple instruction manual aimed at teachers and parents. We saw the Classmate used with various educational peripherals, but those weren't included. The Classmate is, however, preloaded with some useful software, at least on our test system. A label indicates it's made by Royaltek, but Intel is planning to manufacture these Classmates around the world with a variety of local OEMs.

The Convertible Classmate is, basically, a Netbook: an Atom N450 processor, 160GB hard drive, and a higher-res 1,366x768-pixel 10.1-inch screen are nothing new. Our Classmate also had VGA out, two USB ports, two headphone jacks, a microphone jack, and an SD card slot. An optional GPS input is blocked off in our unit.

Covered in gray silicone-type rubberized surfaces, the Classmate retains an institutional feel, but it's comfortable and easy to hold. A pull-out handle in the back is a welcoming touch. In tablet mode, the Classmate is comfortably grippable, too. The matte 10.1-inch screen uses a resistive touch interface that's meant to be used with the thick, penlike stylus tucked into the left side of the Classmate. We tried an included painting program and navigated Web pages, and found the touch to work pretty well. It's not gesture/multitouch enabled, but it works fine for basic functions. … Read more

Social-networking site, Classmates.com is once again accused of misleading consumers.

At a time when Classmates.com and parent company United Online are already mixed up in a congressional investigation, Classmates.com is attempting to settle a lawsuit that accuses the company of sending e-mails that duped users into believing the messages had come from old high school chums.

E-mail recipients only learned the truth after paying for upgrades to their membership, according to court documents. In a court filing, Classmates.com has agreed to pay $9.5 million to settle the suit but did not admit any wrongdoing. The … Read more

Today's BOL happened before a live studio audience at SXSW in Austin, TX. Cali Lewis and Nicole Lee joined us on stage to discuss the state of SXSW Interactive, the on-going Google/China kerfuffle, and pharmaceutical companies' struggles to fit the risks of drugs into a Twitter-friendly 140 characters. Also, Cali Lewis nearly loses a toe.... um, sorry?

Digg 2.0 unveiled at SXSW: “faster,” “instant” http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20000411-52.html

AT&T’s network up to SXSW iPhone … Read more

The nightmare of the mysterious debit card charges began this way for Caroline Butler:

She noticed that Privacy Matters 123, a membership program she had never heard of, was charging her $20 every month. She had no idea how to get her money back or even how to get the company to stop. All she knew was that they were draining the bank account used to help pay the medical bills for her 18-year-old daughter, a cancer patient.

Somehow, Butler, a freelance photographer from Paducah, Ky., unintentionally enrolled in the membership program during a visit to social-networking site, Classmates.com, … Read more

Update: Dec. 15, 2009 7:50 a.m.: To include US Airways in list of companies that have stopped using post-transaction companies.

Priceline, an online travel site accused by the government of selling customer credit card information to "scam" marketers, says it no longer has any relationship with those marketing firms.

Company spokesman Brian Ek said Priceline, perhaps best known as the "name your price" company, stopped using post-transaction firm Affinion sometime last month. The news was first reported by The Connecticut Post.

In May, the U.S. Senate launched a probe of the company, as … Read more

First, the good news for consumers: the U.S. government's investigation into how dozens of well-known online stores worked with controversial marketers to "deceive" customers out of $1.4 billion has prompted some retailers, including Continental Airlines, to sever ties with the marketers.

Now, the bad news: the marketers--Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty--are still in business and judging from the responses of many of the retailers involved, such as Priceline, Classmates.com, FTD, Shutterfly, and Orbitz, it will be business as usual. They see nothing wrong with the marketing practices that millions of angry online shoppers and members … Read more

Updated at 2:50 p.m. PST to include quotes from senators and names of retailers that do business with Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion.

Words like "scam," "fraud," and "arrest" filled the air during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that focused on the controversial marketing companies that allegedly dupe consumers into paying monthly fees to join online loyalty programs.

Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion generated more than $1.4 billion by "misleading" Web shoppers, said members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which called the hearing. Lawmakers saved … Read more

Intel has revealed the design for a tablet version of its Classmate PC, a low-powered Netbook designed for use in primary schools.

The tablet-format Classmate, which was unveiled Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will let manufacturers build Classmate PCs that can be used either as a standard clamshell laptop or--with a 180-degree swivel of the display--as a touch-screen tablet. As with most Netbooks, it will run on Intel's Atom processor.

"Education is one of the best ways to improve the future for individuals, villages or nations," Lila Ibrahim, the general manager of Intel's emerging-markets platform group, said in a statement Friday. "There are 1.3 billion school-age children around the world and of those only five percent have access to a PC or the internet. The IT industry has a huge opportunity to contribute to how technology can improve students' learning and students' lives."

Ibrahim's division developed the reference design for the convertible Classmate PC based on ethnographic research. Child-friendly features include a water-resistant keyboard and a sturdy frame. Another feature is dubbed "palm rejection"--in tablet mode, the user can rest their palm on the touchscreen while writing, without the screen registering the palm's pressure as input. … Read more