Windows on the XO laptop

At a fund raiser last night for City on a Hill honoring Nicholas Negroponte, he said and the New York Times reports today that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project will put Windows XP on the XO laptop after becoming a Microsoft OEM. Adding Windows to the XO will add approximately $3 per unit for Microsoft’s licensing fee, and the extra hardware required to run dual-boot (running both Windows and Linux) systems will add another $15 to $17 or so to the cost of each machine. Limited runs will begin next month.

This is an important move by OLPC, one with serious consequences. “'I think our goals are dramatically enhanced with Microsoft's decision and this partnership because we will reach many more children,'' Negroponte told the Times. ''There are now many more countries prepared to look at the XO and collaborative learning and some of the things we stand for.''

The dual boot option will accommodate less-developed countries with needs for open source software and other OLPC functionality, and the need for business critical applications, like Office, supplied by Microsoft. This won’t mean that more adults will use XO; it will mean that children will have a longer run with XO and it won’t be relegated to lower school laptop use exclusively.

My love affair with the OLPC's XO laptop

I have to admit I’ve fallen in love. (Sorry ladies, it's not that kind of love: I’m as constant as the Northern Star with respect to Susana.) My love affair involves a laptop. It happens so infrequently because there have been so few great breakthroughs in personal computing technology since I hauled around the Compaq Luggable in 1987.

I'm not saying that because I’m a curmudgeon; I can fall in love with technology. To prove that point, let me admit that I’m a little bit giddy while writing this.

Here’s why: For the last week I've been using the “$100 laptop” by the folks at the One Laptop Per Child foundation (OLPC). OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte gave one to Susana and me. Nicholas invested in MessageMachines, and I greatly admired him as an entrepreneur and an IT intellectual before he gave me the XO.

The XO laptop -- it's called the XO because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child -- runs on Linux with a wide-ranging suite of open source applications for basic laptop users. The combination of an open source operating system and applications is the best means yet of lowering the total cost of ownership, which is open source software's (OSS) primary consumer benefit. Then there's the built-in wireless connectivity that helps bridge the digital divide by giving children worldwide access to a network-ready laptop. This fact alone makes Negroponte worthy of a Nobel Prize.

What's interesting is that this OSS-based laptop will absolutely lead to proprietary software and hardware sales. While the XO doesn't come preinstalled with Microsoft XP or Vista, children and their teachers will need more sophisticated software applications, networking and hardware capabilities over time, so they'll graduate to higher-end hardware. There’s no CD/DVD drive in the XO at all, for example, and no hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. As the children grow up, they'll naturally migrate to proprietary products, which are fine with me. To adapt a phrase from Richard Stallman, I believe “the future is hybrid,” as opposed to purely open.

More on the XO's openness: I discovered a button located on the keyboard that allows children to view the source code (what XO refers to as the “programming”) behind certain applications. The XO laptop’s highly accessible and flexible user-interface, called Sugar, also promotes sharing and learning. This makes the XO a true OSS machine, from its philosophical underpinnings all the way through its uncomplicated functional capabilities available with one touch of a keyboard button.

My favorite feature is The Neighborhood, which provides, to quote the documentation, a

View of all the connected XO laptops within a child’s community, and what activities they are sharing. Each child is represented by a different color. If there is a shared document or activity being collaborated on by a number of children, it will show up within this view.

The Neighborhood provides an easy-to-use view of the network meshwork in the neighborhood, but it also helps facilitate interactions with immediate “friends” and the building of a community. When combined with The Friends, The Home, The Activity views and Browse, XO provides all the elementary functionality of a desktop plus a means of stepping up to more advanced applications, such as SynthLab a mini-lab for acoustic- and electronic-circuit construction.

For an adult, it takes a short time to adjust to XO's looks. It has a shiny green-and-white plastic outer cover, a handle and two leaf-like antennas. It looks like DreamWorks went out to create Shrek’s personal laptop based on a Fisher-Price design.

The XO is spill-proof, rainproof, dustproof and ruggedized for impacts due to being dropped. There is no fan on this little wonder, it’s as silent as a Caribbean wind gust and it weighs just 3.2 pounds. It gets six hours of heavy activity or 24 hours of reading battery life from one charge. (The battery is made of innovative lithium ferro-phosphate, costing $10 to replace and is good for 2,000 charges, compared to 500 for a regular laptop battery.) It has a nifty built-in video camera and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration. It also has a microphone, memory card slot, gamepad controllers and graphics tablet. The XO is the complete personal computing laptop for children and adults.

There's just so much to love about the XO laptop. I look forward to seeing how it will give new hope to the children of the developing world. In 10, 20 or 30 years, I believe we'll witness a new generation of IT leaders who are getting their start even now on these small green-and-white machines.

I really hope the Nobel Foundation is paying attention.

Eight European countries beat U.S. in broadband penetration

Isn’t it time the United States developed a national broadband policy?

Eight European countries are now ahead of the United States in broadband penetration, according to figures released today [Wednesday]. "We have four countries that are world leaders -- Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland," said Viviane Reding, the European Union's (EU) telecommunications commissioner. "We have eight countries that have higher penetration rates than the U.S. and Japan. We are not doing badly at all."

Badly! Europe is kicking America's butt!

If my tech-savvy American readers still aren't depressed enough, the EU press release has more gory details:

Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden are world leaders in broadband deployment with penetration rates over 30% at the end of 2007, says the European Commission’s 13th Progress Report on the Single Telecoms Market issued on 19 March. These EU countries, together with the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, all had broadband penetration rates higher than the US (22.1%) in July 2007. 19 million broadband lines were added in the EU in 2007, the equivalent of more than 50,000 households every day. The broadband sector generated estimated revenues of € 62 billion and Europe’s overall penetration reached 20%. However, there is considerable scope for further consumer benefits from a reinforced single market, strengthened competition and reduced regulatory burden for market players.

The U.S. has been against national planning because we do not want to take on the appearance of a centralized economy. We think it's undemocratic and un-American. The common response to calls for central planning or even national strategies is “let the markets decide.”

The problem is that the markets are not addressing the broadband problem fast enough, and as a result the U.S. is losing its competitive edge. I testified in front of the Senate on this issue (read the blog post here).

Yes, I know there are some other very serious problems that need national attention: the economy, the environment, human rights (check out Tibet) and so on. But we can't let IT slip off the radar screen either.

I hope that America's anemic broadband network begins to become an issue in the presidential campaign. In the past, IT issues did not seep into the national political discussion, probably because they were perceived as too techie. But if ever there was a bona fide “pocketbook” issue this year, making sure we have the infrastructure in place to keep millions of IT jobs in America must surely be it.

The good news is that there are changes are afoot. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch identified Barack Obama and John McCain as the two candidates with the most progressive, thoughtful and “right” positions on IT. So no matter what happens on the Democratic side between now and the party convention, we're guaranteed to have at least one IT-aware candidate on the ballot in November.

Let's just hope the politicians do something about the broadband problem -- and soon. Otherwise our economy could soon be facing a giant blue screen of death.

Open Source Software in Spain

Attending the OSiM conference in Madrid gave me the opportunity to find out more about the open source community that has developed in Spain.

Turns out that there is small open source community in Spain. One person I talked to ascribed it to lock-hold that Microsoft, especially Windows, has over the market. Another person said that, in general, Spanish developers and IT personnel are not early adopters. Spain is a country populated by a people and culture in the late majority (in Geoffrey Moore – Crossing the Chasm terminology).

The way open source is leaching into Spain is through municipalities who are adopting Linux in their data centers. They then branch out into other open source applications, projects and solutions such as jBoss, Apache and others projects. It is not yet a large market for open source vendors like MySQL, SugarCRM and other commercial solutions according to several people although they have certainly found some early adopters. Bit is the leading Spanish company and open source vendor offering a stack which has found customers in both Spain and the US.

Turns out that in most schools (both primary and secondary) in many regions (such as Extremadura, Andalucia, Valencia and Galicia) teach computing using exclusively Linux-based platforms. According to Paul Brown, editor Linux Magazine Spain, “this will lead in the near future to a generation of users, developers and administrators who will be very familiar with open source solutions which will impact the market to some degree.”

In addition to Paul, several people I talked to believe that open source will “take off” as soon as the systems integrators and developers who symbiotically are tied to the municipalities learn more about OSS and adopt it in solutions. They have strong relationships with medium and large sized corporate clients.

At OSiM, I learned that several telecommunications and mobile companies have open source solutions including Telefonica – the Spanish phone company.

Today’s Le Défi Américain

On the plane back from Russia to Boston I got to thinking about Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, the French journalist who wrote Le Défi Américain (The American Challenge) in 1967. Incredibly for a European intellectual, he argued persuasively that the U.S. and Europe were engaged in a furtive economic battle in which Europe was completely outclassed by American on all fronts -- management techniques, technologies, and R&D capacity -- and on the verge of being set back permanently and for a sustained period of time.

Forty years later, in 2007, there is a new American challenge: Loss of geopolitical and economic leadership due to war in Iraq, loss of moral high ground, the impact of the dollar-trade-deficit syndrome, and other economic policies. Also, resisting some of the economic and productivity benefits described by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat is retarding America's ability to remain competitive. Open Source is a very good example. As an extension, ODF (the Open Document Format) is another.

But the emergence of BRIC, and especially China, goes beyond the factors discussed in The World is Flat. It has something to do with America’s loss of power and capabilities. The competition has managed to learn from the teacher, and the student is now more capable and getting stronger with each passing day.

How does this affect American business' competitive position? How does this affect non-U.S. multinationals?

The beginning chapter of the economic and geopolitical history of the 21^st century is being written right before our eyes. No one knows how the book will end, but fewer people around the world are hoping American will be the main character.

How IBM Leads Leaders

Yesterday the IBM Business Leadership Forum concluded in St. Petersburg. Business leaders from 75 countries discussed innovation and the challenges facing those driving sustained innovation in their organizations.

IBM’s power and resources were in full view: With 355,000 employees in 170 countries, 700,000 business partners, and their impact on business, industry, government, and academia around the globe is immense.

I admired many aspects of the forum. Two speakers in particular stood out:

• Sam Palmisano was accessible, energetic, and engaging. I watched him while an uncomfortable business partner tried to educate him about his business. Sam kept his eyes locked on him and projected genuine interest.
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger was intense and Spock-like because of his logical mind and analytical capabilities. He was a very good panel moderator.

During the forum IBM asked attendees to complete a survey. Half filled it out, and the results were illuminating:

• When asked which kinds of innovation they were considering, a majority said business model innovation.
• A majority said expertise is the major factor that brings about improvements to their organization's workflow.
• Two-thirds said the main reason behind business model innovation was creating a sustained advantage in a commodity market. (Last year's answer was creating a competitive advantage.)
• Ninety percent said that access to key skills affected their ability to innovate.

As with every other conference I've attended, there were a few unconvincing notes. The subject of globalization got a little tiresome because of the generalities, but there were two retail case studies that were interesting. And more social networking and community (vertical) exercises would have been helpful. Services innovation also did not get enough attention.

All in all, though, I came away from the forum with much food for thought.