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It’s easy to take education for granted, especially when you consider that every child in the UK has access to a computer, whether it’s at home or at school. But what most people forget is that 1 billion children in the developing world have little access to education, and no access to computers, which is where a burgeoning non-profit organisation called One Laptop per Child (OLPC) comes in.

Nigerian school children get their hands on the XO and immediately start learning how to use it.

The organisation hit the headlines in 2007 when it developed a low cost laptop called the XO, which was designed to be bought cheaply by governments of developing countries and distributed among school children. The XO was originally dubbed the $100 laptop, and although three years on it still hasn’t achieved its target price, it has been purchased by 21 developing countries and distributed to 1,284,500 children across the world. However, while the organisation has helped so many children around the world, it has courted controversy, created rifts with the world’s biggest technology companies, and spearheaded the biggest consumer technology trend in the last decade.

One Laptop per Child was the realisation of an altruistic dream by a MIT director and professor Nicholas Negroponte. In 2005 he unveiled his plan to see a laptop given to every child in the developing world, to aid their education, and offer them the similar advantages in the digital age as children in the developed world. The idea was based on the creation of something completely unique: A laptop which was durable enough to withstand the stresses and strains of life in a developing world, cope with the challenges of intermittent power and internet availability, and cost just $100.

The design of the XO PC was outstanding, and should be regarded as a feat of computer engineering. Against the back drop of the prices of technology in 2005, before low cost and low power components were prevalent, Negroponte designed a laptop with a 433MHz processor, 256MB RAM, a 7.5” LCD display and wireless networking. This may not sound impressive, but its base cost of £199 was unheard of at the time, it had enough power to drive its bespoke Linux operating system dubbed Sugar, it could function as a laptop, ebook reader, had a screen which was clearly visible outside in direct sunlight, had 12 hours of battery life and was completely shock-proof, waterproof and dust-proof.

While the XO preceded the market in terms of design, its biggest challenges were to overcome the rigours of a life in the hands of children in developing countries. Availability and reliance on power was a problem for Negroponte, and the XO could not succeed if it was too power hungry. They also had to iron out the biggest failing point on consumer laptops: Hard disc crashes. The XO introduced flash drives, which eliminated the mechanical wear and tear of traditional spinning disc drives. What’s more, the XO featured a revolutionary new screen, which used a dynamic LED backlight, which reduced operating wattage down to 3W under normal conditions. This put battery life at 12 hours, far beyond that of normal consumer laptops, and made the XO a force to be reckoned with.

A new kind of PC

The XO laptop caused such a stir, that it’s credited with spearheading the resulting netbook craze, which is still the only PC sub-market which is growing. Once OLPC had mastered the low power components, screen and size, it started selling them in the US. They retailed the laptop as part of the Give One Get One campaign, where a US consumer would purchas a laptop for $400, and donate one to a child in a developing country at the same time. It’s this that Wayan Vota, editor of OLPC News, an independent community of OLPC supporters, believes caught the eye of companies such as Asus and Acer.

The XO PC is waterproof and dustproof, making it ideal for children in the developing world.

“The real threat of OLPC introducing a “$100 laptop” was enough to spur technology companies into action. And they had to act fast. OLPC sold 160,000 XO laptops at $400 for two- and you didn’t even get both. That had Asus rightly excited when they launched the EeePC line to amazing success,” he said.

Once ASUS made a commercial success of their EeePC, the whole market had to catch up, and within six months, every laptop manufacturer was shipping its own netbook version. In 2009 there were 33.3 million netbooks sold globally, and the sector achieved a 72% growth in sales, compared to a 13% decline in amount of notebooks sold. If its supporters are correct, One Laptop per Child caused one of the biggest technology sensations of the decade.

“The creation of the netbook market is largely, and appropriately credited to OLPC,” says Ed McNierney, Chief Technical Officer of OLPC. “We wouldn’t have $300 netbooks in the consumer market if that push from OLPC hadn’t happened.
Consumer product companies in the technology world are not known, in general, for their risk-taking behaviour,” he told PC Plus.

When asked for a comment, an ASUS spokesman told PC Plus that the XO had no bearing or effect on the creation of the EeePC 701 which launched in 2008, and that the company would have come to market with a similar product even if the XO hadn’t been invented.

Competition

It’s not often that a non-profit organisation courts competition and controversy, but the technology industry can be an unpredictable world, and it wasn’t long before OLPC found itself embroiled in a war of words with Intel. The world’s biggest chip maker had seen the market potential of the developing world and built its own low cost laptop, the Classmate PC, soon after the announcement of the OLPC XO- a move which incensed Negroponte. He called Intel ‘predatory’ in a lecture at MIT, accused the company of “hurting the [OLPC] mission” on the CBS news show 60 minutes, back in 2007. If this wasn’t enough, Negroponte then accused Intel of selling its Classmate PC to the same governments he was trying to persuade to take up orders of the XO, but “dumping” them at a loss making sum, scuppering his project.

Children in Nigeria recieve a traditional lesson from their teacher, but use the OLPC XO laptop to support their learning.

In the face of widespread criticism, Intel joined forces with OLPC in December 2007, in an uneasy alliance, which caused public disconcertion from AMD, who was a founding partner of the OLPC project. While the Intel – OLPC partnership promised a new beginning, the reality was very different. Less than six months later Negroponte dropped Intel representatives from OLPC’s board of directors, demanding that Intel dumped its Classmate project if the two companies continued to work together. With the money Intel has invested in its own project it was never going to can the Classmate PC project, and the relationship ended.

Since 2007, both laptops have seen their share of success and failure, with Intel shipping 1 million Classmate PCs to Venezuela and 150,000 to Libya. OLPC has saturated Uruguay and Peru with approximately 1 million XO laptops, as well as completing smaller orders from Colombia, Rwanda and Mexico. Whether Intel’s Classmate PC project hurt the OLPC effort is still the subject of debate, but Wayan Vota, editor of OLPC News, an independent community of OLPC supporters, doesn’t think so. He believes that the enthusiasm created by the XO and Classmate PC made Negroponte’s dream a reality: “I’ve heard from Intel insiders that the XO laptop moved the netbook revolution forward by a few years. Intel would’ve come out with a Classmate-like device, but not as soon as they had to with OLPC’s pressure. For this, both organizations should be thankful because netbooks are the only bright spot in the laptop business,” he told PC Plus.

However, the bright spot of technology might not look so good for OLPC. It’s not been able to get its cost down to the desired $100, and orders have been far from overwhelming. What’s more, the consumer market has caught up, and it’s possible to buy standard netbooks at cost as cheaply as an XO. While they’re not built as ruggedly with the developing world in mind, they do feature fully functional operating systems, such as Windows, which some say would better prepare children for a connected future.

An ‘irresponsible strategy”

Despite its rocky road to success, OLPC still has a long way to go before it can claim any kind of success. Its intention to deliver PCs into the hands of the world’s poorest children is admirable, but experts have called its methods in question, warning that the charity risks wasting the hard work and achievements by equipping communities with laptops and then leaving them to work out how to use them for themselves- a criticism which Walter de Brouwer, European CEO of One Laptop per Child flatly rejects. “The charge is false,” he told PC Plus in an exclusive interview. “Typically, teachers and schools receive a two-week introduction not only to the machine and its technical features and operation, but more critically on how to integrate it into the learning experiences,” he said. De Brouwer continued: “OLPC works with the country to develop a team that works with the schools. The team supports the schools, technically and pedagogically. This team also works to develop capacity at the schools and locally in the communities.”

In the UK schools require entire departments to keep their networks and PCs in running order, and the use of IT in classrooms as a key part of teacher’s training. Wayan Vota, an outspoken supporter of the OLPC project, has questioned the level of support provided by OLPC called their deployment strategy “irresponsible.”

“OLPC has always maintained distance from actual implementation, claiming it was the country’s responsibility to integrate XO laptop into their educational system. That might work for Uruguay, a stable, advanced country. But it’s irresponsible in lesser developed countries. OLPC has the responsibility to educate countries on what they are buying – an XO laptop should be one small part of a whole educational system change,” he said. “Just handing off the XO laptop, like it’s a self-installing app, leads to Ethiopian teachers banning them from classrooms as a plague on education.”

Last year, teachers and parents in Ethiopia criticised the deployment of the XO, claiming that it was a distracting toy for the children, and could not be a worthwhile tool in their education system built around memorising from a blackBoard and then passing the national test. Without teacher training to implement the laptops, the XO couldn’t fulfil its function. While self-learning is an important part of the XO’s purpose, it’s clear that there’s a serious risk that the laptops will either not be used effectively, or fall into disrepair.

One has to admire what Negroponte and OLPC has achieved in the last three years, battling adversity which would have overcome many other organisations. OLPC claims that attendance in schools improves with the introduction of the XO. OLPC is currently working on a new version of its laptop, the XO-1.5, which it hopes to start deploying later this year, and has released concepts of a $75 tablet PC which it aims to make a reality by 2012. No-one can argue that getting an internet connected laptop into the hands of children in the developing world is essential for those countries to grow and prosper. However, unless OLPC ask difficult questions of the XO’s recipients, it risks wasting an opportunity to really make a difference.

Concept of success

No-one can accuse Negroponte of not being ambitious and if his mission to put an internet connected PC into the hands of every child in the developing world wasn’t challenging enough, he wants to build a paper thin touchscreen tablet PC which will retail at under $100. This concept design is the OLPC XO-3 (pictured) and is the latest dream of OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte. It’s to be based on the XO 1.75 spec, which will feature an ARM mobile processor, which will provide twice the speed of the XO-1 and operate at 25% of the power. However, the main difference is the form. Negroponte wants to move away from a standard laptop form, and go for a purely touchscreen device.

A vision of the future: Negroponte wants to launch a handheld tablet similar to this concept, costing less than $100, in 2012.

Whether or not the XO-3 can actually be achieved is another matter. Producing something similar to the iPad in form, in just two years and dropping the cost to under $100 seems ludicrous, and whether such a device could power an OS capable of supporting a child’s education is another matter. What’s more, whether this form factor is suited to education is another matter. It seems that Negroponte has learned a few things about the nature of the technology industry, in the last three years promoting the XO. While the threat of releasing a sub-$100 netbook spurred the rest of the industry to react is a seismic way, he’s hoping that the design of a low-cost tablet could have the same effect. He told Forbes: “We don’t necessarily need to build it, we just need to threaten to build it.”

If OLPC can use the industry to its advantage this time, rather than do all the leg work while the consumer market reaps the benefits, then the dream of getting tablet PCs into developing countries could become a reality.

Twitter has been the social-networking world’s flavour of the moment for quite some time, however it’s not without its issues.

Could anything be more dangerous to the modern celebrity than Twitter? The media has always been ready to pounce on famous personalities’ smallest mistakes, but Twitter lends its high-profile users a foghorn. If Jonathan Ross (@Wossy) wasn’t already in enough trouble for leaving lewd messages on Andrew Sachs’ answering machine, his antics on Twitter made him an even juicier tabloid target. “Utterly unwepentant” sniffed The Daily Mail after Ross wrote an update stating “Suspension is fun” on the micro-blogging service during the period that his shows were off-air. Another Mail headline branded the 49 year-old presenter “shameless” after he tweeted, “I am very polite in person. I’m just not great with answering machines.”

And Ross isn’t the only famous Twitter user to find themselves in hot water following a carelessly worded tweet. The BBC’s technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) was asked via Twitter why he chose to omit Wordscraper from a piece on Facebook’s word game applications. “’Cos i couldn’t be bothered!” came the reply. Cellan-Jones’s response was promptly republished on a blog along with the withering comment, “Years from now, when British journalism has finally breathed its last, this phrase will be engraved on its tombstone.”

However, Cellan-Jones seemed to be intrigued rather than embarrassed by the matter, using it as inspiration for a blog on the tricky business of working out what is and isn’t appropriate to say on social-networking sites. “My throwaway remark has been turned into the basis for an indictment of the whole of British journalism,” he commented. “[It’s] a useful reminder that Twitter – like so many other online forums – is a public place, and what you say there may be used in evidence against you.”

To tweet, to whom?

Most of the time, people don’t see danger coming. “Because it’s more immediate, people are perhaps thinking even less about what they do,” says Iain Connor, a partner at technology specialist law firm Pinsent Masons. Tweets might have a short shelf life, he argues, “but that’s not to say that sufficient damage can’t be done in a short period of time”.

One person who knows this better than most is basketball team owner Mark Cuban (@mcuban). Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks and, after a game in March, he used Twitter to complain that an opposing player wasn’t whistled for a foul. “How do they not call a tech on JR Smith for coming off the bench to taunt our player on the ground?” he fumed. A few days later the NBA smacked him with a $25,000 fine. Still, the billionaire managed to see the funny side of his punishment, adding “Can’t say no one makes money from Twitter now,” as he paid up.

You may not be a celebrity, but the wrong words could find you out of a job, in hot water with friends or facing charges.

Mark Borkowski is a PR expert who has represented Michael Jackson, Eddie Izzard and Van Morrison. He says that Twitter is “dangerous for anybody”, but that it poses particular risks for stars. “You’re live all the time – no editing,” he says. “[What someone] thinks about in the nanosecond that they’re tweeting could become an enormous issue, and it’s global.” No stars seem to have been permanently damaged by mis-tweeting yet, but it’s possible, says Borkowski. “It depends what you say. If you make a racist or outrageous comment then it’s very difficult to come back from.”

Today’s headlines

Twitter isn’t all self-immolation on the part of celebrities, either. With the ability of tweets to spread like wildfire – first across Twitter itself and then across news websites worldwide – a hacked account spells disaster. “Britney has passed today,” said a tweet on Britney Spears’ account (@britneyspears) after it was hacked in June. Spears had more than two million followers at the time, meaning that the ‘news’ travelled fast. But this isn’t the first – or last – time that Spears’ account has been hacked. Mid-November saw her account spammed with updates telling the world that the singer had started worshipping Satan, and back in January followers were surprised to see this message from the star: “Hi y’all! Brit Brit here, just wanted to update you all on the size of my vagina. It’s about four feet wide with razor sharp teeth.” Perhaps Spears and her team need to take password security a little more seriously in future.

Twitter attempts to limit the potential damage done by celebrity impersonators by using Verified accounts. “That means we’ve been in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verified that it is approved,” says the site. But what about the impersonators that Twitter knows exist, yet continue to post in the celebrity’s name?

Verified accounts were Twitter’s first push towards professional services. Commercial accounts are on the way.

“Twitter’s pretty poor at actually taking off fakes,” says Borkowski, but the amount of damage done by hackers is usually limited. Big social-networking sites are “incredibly reasonable” when it comes to removing objectionable content, according to lawyer Iain Connor. “They need to keep their credibility [and] they need to keep their trusted brand,” he says.

Verified accounts don’t mean safety for the celebrity, however: they simply confirm that it was probably the star who wrote the message. Without the usual filter of PR managers, talent agents or editors to prevent the publication of anything potentially damaging, such accounts are a dream for the media. Twitter is “a newswire direct from the celebrity” that newspapers turn into stories, confirms Borkowski.

Business as usual

But even if individual stars are at risk from Twitter, corporations should be safe, shouldn’t they? After all, “just about every organisation has a PR department now,” according to Managing Director of Racepoint PR, Blaise Hammond. Racepoint PR manages public relations for social media sites such as Digg, eHarmony and BlogHer.

The illusion that all companies tread carefully with new services such as Twitter was shattered in June, however, when furniture retailer Habitat (@habitatuk) attempted to cash in on the site. The store tweeted about deals it was offering, then attempted to give its tweets greater visibility by attaching unrelated hashtags (a hash symbol followed by a keyword that enables Twitter users to search for and follow a popular ‘trending topic’). “#Mousavi Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” read one tweet, disastrously mixing the Iranian presidential candidate with a drive to sign people to its mailing list. “#iPhone Our totally desirable Spring collection now has 20% off!” read another.

Habitat acted swiftly to remove the offending tweets, but the damage was done. The story was picked up by mainstream news organisations such as Sky and the BBC, provoking outrage that the company was abusing the hashtag system and essentially spamming users. Habitat was quick to acknowledge its blunder and offered contrition. “We are treating this very seriously,” said the company. “We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy.”

Adding irrelevant hashtags to marketing tweets was “incredibly stupid”, according to Hammond. “It was very easy to find out, and they got found out straight away.” He says companies need to think carefully about how they tweet. “Thoughtlessness coupled with stupidity equals big impact,” he says. “Common sense is missing in so many cases.” Even when a company has a specific Twitter strategy, “more often than not it’s not as good as it could be because they just don’t think about it enough”.

Gun, foot, aim, fire

While Twitter clearly poses problems for high-profile Twitterers, it can be a threat to individuals as well. Few know this better than Connor Riley (@theconnor), a student at the University of California in Berkeley who was offered a summer internship last year by networking giant Cisco.

“Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work” she tweeted to her followers. But she soon regretted it. “Who is the hiring manager? I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web” tweeted Tim Levad, a services consultant at Cisco, in response. Before long, the story had hit MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times and hundreds of blogs worldwide. Riley now calls her misguided tweet “a stupid mistake”, and says that it was the result of treating Twitter like Facebook, where only your close friends are able to see what you say.

Mark Borkowski advises celebrities on how to manage their ‘brand’ through social media sites.

However, Iain Connor notes that “it’s perfectly legal” for companies to monitor what their employees are up to on social-networking sites. “As an employee you have a duty of good faith to your employer,” he says. “That duty of good faith extends not just to your nine to five.”

So what’s a Twitterer to do? “Don’t drink and tweet,” advises Borkowski. More importantly, don’t take it too seriously. Borkowski says social media refusniks are dying out. “Take it with a pinch of salt and it’s fun, it’s interesting, and you learn more,” he recommends. Just remember to think twice before you say anything that you wouldn’t want your mother – or your employer – to read.

Delray Beach, FL (PRWEB) April 29, 2008 — PCSecurityShield, an Internet security company once again partnered with a top-technology provider to bring its customers the best in Internet security products. This time that product is an advanced content recognition application designed to keep kids safe on the Web.

According to a recent poll by the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, many parents feel that the Internet poses more of a threat to children than school violence, STDs, abuse and neglect do. With Internet-facilitated kidnappings making headlines, parents are more worried than ever. PCSecurityShield has partnered with PureSight to do something about that.

Powered by PureSight’s technology, PCSecurityShield’s new Parent Control 5.0 is an active content recognition application. When running on a child’s PC the software filters out specific websites based on tagged categories, a blacklist of websites and a network static list.

“We are delighted that PCSecurityShield has become one of our OEM partners,” said Nick Outteridge, VP of Business Development for PureSight. “This has provided an opportunity to for PCSS to expand its portfolio of Internet security products into the child protection market, an area that we both recognize as vitally important if today’s children are to grow up ‘on line’ and ‘safe.’”

“As part of our commitment to providing the highest quality security software, we have partnered with one of the top companies in the content recognition field”,say Arthur Frischman, President of PCSecurityShield, “Puresight brings the top parental control software technology to our valued customers.”

Because PCSecurityShield is dedicated to providing comprehensive Internet security products to its customers, it was only natural that a parental control application be added to its software lineup. Now, in addition to keeping their computers and files safe, customers can use PCSecurityShield’s software to keep their children safe as well.