To create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. —OLPC Mission Statement,

Intel joined Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child, OLPC, as one of the board of directors. Their mission was to educate and empower children belonging to the developing world by providing them with cheap laptops. But after a few months, Intel decided to part its ways from the non-profit organization. The plan to contribute both technology and educational content amongst the two organizations was washed away in its entirety.

The One Laptop Per Child, OLPC, is not just any organization. It consisted of such corporate giants in its board of directors as AMD, Brightstar, Chi Lin, eBay, Google, Marvell, Quanta Computer, and others set out with one mission, which was to provide low-cost, rugged laptops to children living in the world’s most remote and poorest countries. With these remarkable brands already building their strong ties with the OLPC organization, Intel proved to be a late comer. From competing with OLPC with its “learning-assistant” Classmate PC, then joining with a full-fledged membership of the OLPC board, and then again leaving the membership in order to compete, is somewhat very confusing and at the same time a remarkable story.  If you wish to learn how so may jumps in their collaboration came about then let me unfold this story for you.

Before joining, Intel’s chairman, Craig Barrett, publicly disparaged Negroponte’s OLPC program when it was first announced, saying that Negroponte should call his program’s XO laptop a “$100 gadget,” and not a computer. On the other hand, Negroponte lashed back at Intel in a 60 Minutes interview, saying that the company should be ashamed of itself and was undermining the initiative’s progress by using philanthropy as a shameless and divisive PR tool.

Intel had already started their own program. In this, they were providing classmate PC which is a small, mobile learning assistant and educational solution that Intel specially developed for students in emerging markets. It’s a rugged learning device designed to provide affordable, collaborative learning environments. This classmate PC is directly in competition with the idea of One Laptop Per Child.

What started as an objectionable rivalry cannot be possibly termed as a collaborative effort at any point.  Because the base of their disturbance with each other, continued even after they had decided to join in and collaborate. Intel continued to develop its Classmate PC program.

Due to which a hopeful collaborative effort was never materialized, instead their relationship became worse and worse each passing day. Intel, instead of collaborating, violated the written agreements on various occasions.

On one occasion, Intel deliberately ridiculed XO Laptop in nations which had already decided to become a member and a buyer of XO laptop. These countries included Uruguay, Peru, Brazil, Nigeria and Mongolia. A couple of them were in the midst of choosing and were contemplating whether to collaborate with OLPC or not. Intel acted in such a manner, that it could have resulted in loss of customers and partners. Being a member of board of directors, Intel acted in a very unprofessional and uncalled for manner proving the fact that its collaboration was completely forceful.

Its unwillingness for collaboration came right in the forefront one more time when it showed its unwillingness to cooperate with OLPC on software development. Even after being a part of OLPCs empowering efforts, Intel made no attempt to help. Instead, Intel never contributed in any way to our engineering efforts and failed to provide even a single line of code to the XO software efforts – even though Intel marketed its products as being able to run the XO software. The best Intel could offer in regards to an “Intel inside” XO laptop was one that would be more expensive and consume more power – exactly the opposite direction of OLPC’s stated mandate and vision.

OLPC claimed that they viewed children as a mission. While Intel viewed them as a market. Thus it was best that they parted their ways. OLPC made every attempt to collaborate but Intel even on its departure, did not bother informing OLPC. This news reached OLPC through media, while they were planning to work on joint efforts with Intel.

The main reason Intel was becoming nervous about Negroponte’s ambitions, and was threatened by its success. He proved that a relatively inexpensive laptop could be produced, selling for $188 overseas. OLPCs plan included the distribution of 150 million cheap laptops. These laptops were using Advanced Microchip. Intel was threatened and believed that this could eventually lead towards demand of these chips in the developing world.

Not surprisingly in view of the low price, Intel doesn’t make a large profit on its Classmate laptops, but it uses them to protect market share. Negroponte had asked and requested Intel not to market Classmate in the developing countries as it proved to be of great competition for OLPC. But Intel was not able to back out since it had already sold has already sold tens of thousands of its Classmates oversees and discontinuing this program would disrupt relations with overseas manufacturers and supplies. On the other hand, OLPC had tried to cover its own inadequacies in market by selling the laptop in American market, which again posed a great threat to Intel’s market in America.

Thus the ongoing tug of war between the two organizations has left the organizations competing with each other in the name of non-profit collaborative efforts. Thus, charity asks for leaving all the competitions behind, but at the same time business asks for competition in the market. Because in business it is only then that success can be achieved. Nicholas Negroponte succeeded because of the constant pressure of competition, and it was Intel which helped him reach this far.

Shedding all its heavy applications, now Facebook is ready to reach in every part of the world as Facebook Lite. Now it looks more like twitter in its appearance and function. It aims to reach the developing nations where internet connections are slow and people are therefore unable to access such social networking websites. The HTML has been optimized, so there is lesser code for browsers to download.

It is available not only in India and America, but is various parts of Asia as well. It is ideal for smart phone users and netbook users. It faster and simpler way of keeping in touch with your friends and family, all the time, wherever you are.  It is also targets those who are still in search of new and easy tools of social networking, in the deep sea of World Wide Web. Have a look at the regular and the lite versions of facebook,

Regular Version

Facebook Lite

What makes the two versions different from each other,

• Facebook Lite loads much faster than the regular Facebook version. It seems empty and incomplete at the first look.
• There are no status updates anymore. “What’s on your mind?” bar removed
• It lacks the chatting window sessions, where people spend hours conversing with their friends.
• You will miss out the applications people are crazy about the games, the quizzes, the personality tests etc.
• No way of creating or visiting groups. Now lack of Fanship might affect the online marketing and business strategies.
• Events and birthday feeds appear in a single line on the home page.
• The size and amount of ads has also decreased.
• Some features are not ready yet.

Users are still trying to figure out how can they share their videos on Facebook Lite.

With so many things removed and deleted, people still prefer the lite version. Well the main reason is that everyone is busy and everyone prefers simple versions of everything available. People also argue that Myspace and the regular Facebook are a strain for the eyes. It is also believed by many that Facebook Lite may bring a revolution and change the way websites are designed. The heavy loaded websites with so many categories might not be seen in the near future OR it counld even be the other way round.

No matter what business you do, no matter which organization you work for, no matter which company you own. If you don’t have a website you are nothing. Because these days’ people search for information online, apply for a job online and build their business online.

So with a dynamic new look USAID Pakistan has launched its new website. Their website provides an overview of USAID/Pakistan’s development activities in a user-friendly manner.

“Sharing information is a key factor in strengthening the partnership between the American government and the people of Pakistan. Our on-going programs represent an enduring commitment,” expressed Mr. Robert J. Wilson, the Mission Director of USAID in Pakistan. “Our newly-designed website is a dynamic means of documenting the evolution of our rapidly-expanding programs.”

The site itself is a symbol of a strong and developing relationship between Pakistan and America. It provides its viewer and readers with latest updates and tells the story of the people who have been greatly affected by the presence of this organization in the country. Especially women and children belonging to the rural areas providing them a reason to survive and live a healthy and happy life.

The very presence of the website shows that Pakistan is developing and is in affiliation with the rest of the world.