Business Tech

The XO laptop.

(Credit: OLPC)

The One Laptop Per Child project announced Wednesday that it is slashing its workforce by 50 percent, reducing salaries for the remaining staff, and restructuring its operations.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the group that aims to provide low-cost laptops to children in developing countries, announced the cuts in a company blog post:

Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people. While we are saddened by this development, we remain firmly committed to our mission of getting laptops to children in developing countries. We thank team members who are departing for their contributions to this important mission.

Restructuring brings with it pain for some of our friends and colleagues who are being let go. These are people who have dedicated themselves to the advancement of a noble cause, and to say that we are exceeding grateful for the time, the ideas, the energy and the commitment they have given OLPC does not -- cannot -- adequately express our admiration or our gratitude. The fact that there are 500,000 children around the world who have laptops is testament to their extraordinary work and is already a key part of OLPC's legacy.

Negroponte wrote that the company will focus on development of its second-generation device, but will hand-off development of the Sugar operating system to the open source community.

The project recently revived its two-for-one deal on its low-cost laptop. Amazon.com was tapped to handle its Give One, Get One program, launched initially in 2007. Through the program, anyone can pay for two XO laptops; one is shipped to the buyer, and the other is sent to a school kid in a developing nation.

The device comes loaded with both Windows XP and the Linux-based Sugar operating system created for the XO. The inclusion of XP stemmed from concerns that developing nations that wouldn't buy the laptops for its classrooms without the world's dominant OS on it.

However, the Cambridge, Mass.-based group has faced its share of challenges in the three years since it was formed. Its XO laptops initially cost $188 each instead of the anticipated $100, some countries are scaling back their deployment plans. Intel, which was briefly part of the project, quit in January 2008, claiming OLPC was pressuring it not to compete with its own laptops.

Microsoft is hitting the books, creating a new czar to oversee its education initiatives.

The software giant announced on Tuesday that it has appointed Michael Golden to the post of corporate vice president of Microsoft's Education Products group.

In this role, Golden will be responsible for the Redmond giant's education business and product development, overseeing its strategy and marketing efforts. The executive will report to Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group and Education Product Group, overseeing technology policy and strategy.

Microsoft clearly has its eye on the education market. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced plans to invest another $235.5 million over the next five years into its Partners in Learning program, which provides software and training to students, teachers, and schools. The program had reached 90 million people in 100 countries during its first five years.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Golden served as senior vice president of marketing and strategic planning at the Pearson School, which is involved in education publishing.

Dell made a move to expand its charitable giving overseas on Tuesday, launching its YouthConnect Initiative.

Dell YouthConnect plans to focus on education and digital inclusion in emerging technology countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

In addition, the computer maker plans to increase its overall charitable donations to 1 percent of its pre-tax profits by the beginning of February 2010. The contributions will come in the form of corporate cash, in-kind giving, and employee directed giving.

Microsoft announced on Monday plans to track Australian delegates attending its annual Tech.Ed conference in Sydney using RFID tags embedded in conference badges.

Until now in Australia, human-targeted deployments of RFID tags have largely been limited to state prison systems. ACT Corrective Services said earlier this year that it had commissioned U.S. RFID provider Alanco and NEC Australia to install a Wi-Fi-compatible inmate-tracking system within its walls.

Microsoft's experiment will take place over the five days of next week's conference, although it could involve a relatively large sample size. The conference typically attracts no fewer than 1,000 delegates.

The software giant will allow delegates to opt out of the tracking experiment, but they will be enticed to participate with the offer of greater access to conference information. Delegates who opt out will have standard barcodes printed on their badges instead.

The benefits promoted to delegates to partake in the RFID tag experiment include access to real-time information on when sessions are filling up, the ability to see what sessions others are interested in, and tracking where Microsoft so-called most valuable players and regional directors are located.

Microsoft will also track sessions that each delegate attends and will use that information to customize sessions, the company said in a statement. It will also send delegates an instant record of what sessions they have attended.

The RFID tracking system took just three weeks to build and deploy, according to Microsoft.

Research firm IDC has predicted that use of RFID tags by business will rise by 122 percent in 2009. The track and trace chips were used in 8 percent of companies last year, while 18 percent of them expect to use them in 2009.

Microsoft was not immediately available to comment.

The move comes months after 50 academics, researchers and students at the University of Washington began an unrelated social-networking experiment, in which participants voluntarily tag themselves. The system records the location of tags every five seconds and publishes movements to a Web page.

Liam Tung of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney.

SAN FRANCISCO--In a speech here Tuesday, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett complained about a lack of R&D investment incentives in the U.S. while showing how low-cost computers and a little innovation can make a difference in the classroom.

Intel chairman Craig Barrett (right) watches as Carnegie Mellon University's Johnny Chung Lee demos a Nintendo-based low-cost whiteboard

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)

Barrett lamented that the U.S. is not doing enough to spur R&D compared to the rest of the world. "You've got to have the right environment to invite investment in innovation, to invite investment in development," he said in his keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum. "This is my political statement of the day...There's really only one country where I don't see (this) attitude--this one (the U.S.)."

"We don't focus as hard as we should at incentivizing investment and innovation...the lapse of the R&D tax credit is enough of a political statement today. Where the government refuses to acknowledge that investing in R&D is important to the future competitiveness of the U.S., everyone else (in the world) is recognizing that."

But not all innovation requires great sums of money. Barrett brought out Carnegie Mellon University's Johnny Chung Lee, who showed how to create a "low-cost multipoint interactive" whiteboard using the Nintendo Wiimote.

"Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR LED in the tip. By pointing a Wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track up to four points, up to four pens can be used. It also works great with rear-projected displays," Chung says in a description on his Web site.

Chung concluded his demonstration by saying that cheap, off-the-shelf technology used creatively can do a lot more than just raw computing power. (Not exactly an Intel mantra.) "To be interesting today, technology has to be the fastest, the best, the brightest, the lightest, but here you can see if you sacrifice a little bit of capability and performance for dramatic savings in cost, you can have a pretty dramatic impact."

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.