The One Laptop Per Child organisation (OLPC) has been given a $5.6m (£3.5m) grant to develop a tablet version of its educational computer that will be mainly targeting developing nations.

The cash comes from chip maker Marvell which became a supporter and sponsor of OLPC in early 2009.
The OLPC organisation said the grant meant it had all the development cash it needed to produce its next machine. OLPC said it would show off the first development work on the new machine at the CES show in January 2011.
The cash handed over by Marvell will fund development of a tablet version of the XO - the rugged computer designed to boost education in developing nations.

The device is code-named XO-3 as it will be the third device the OLPC organisation has produced. It previously scrapped plans for the XO-2 which was to resemble an electronic book.

Early prototypes of the XO-3 will likely be based on the Moby machine that Marvell already makes. The finished XO-3 should be ready in 2012.

The OLPC organisation was created with the intention of making a laptop costing only $100 that would be bought in huge quantities by poorer nations keen to get children using computers.

The final machine produced by OLPC in 2007 ended up costing about $199 and did not sell in the huge quantities the group wanted. To date about 1.4 million XO laptops have been distributed.

From BCC NEWs

Christmas season has come early to Ugandans as calling has been made more affordable than ever before. The drastic reduction of call rates to 50% from the country's giant telecom companies that is MTN, UTL, Zain and Warid made it possible. This war in pricing was sparked off by Warid Telecom last week who slashed the calls to 50% across all networks, therefore a call per second is only 5shs.
On this remark, market leader MTN Uganda and Zain, the second-largest telecom company by subscriber numbers, announced separately yesterday that they would cut their prices to Shs3 per second for calls to other networks, in response to Warid’s rate of Shs5 per second announced last week.

According to Daily Monitor, the new prices represent significant savings for mobile phone customers across the country who have been paying an average of Shs10 per second on telephone calls across networks.

MTN Marketing Manager Isaac Nsereko told Daily Monitor yesterday that its customers will be charged Shs320 per minute to all networks for the first 10 minutes of calls each day. Thereafter, calls within the MTN network will be charged at Shs160 per minute while calls to other networks will revert to Shs320 per minute.

UTL Chief Marketing Officer Mohamadou Konkobo said: “Our tariffs have been revised to give our mobile phone users the opportunity to communicate at cheaper rates and for longer periods. At this time, any saving is welcome to our customers and we would like to be part of their saving.”

Zain official communication indicated that the price cut would be available to pre-paid and post-paid customers and would include three free on-network texts. The firm has also cut international call costs to India, China, USA and Canada to Shs299 per second.

Warid CEO Madhur Taneja, whose firm sparked off the price war last week, said he was pleased that other telecoms were responding to the price reduction. “Reducing call rates is the way to go and the consumers will get value for their money and I hope that every player in the market does so,” he said. Officials from the other mobile telephone companies; Orange, Smile and i-Telecom were not available for comment yesterday.

I must say thanks to Warid Telecom who stated the lowest call rate, now every ugandan can afford calling. No more beeping

Bharti Malawi unit has rolled out 3G network as its way of pushing its expansion and fast growing in Africa

Bharti now owns mobile operators in 15 African countries, following a $9 billion deal with Kuwait's Zain this year, and has ramped up spending across the continent to challenge dominant player MTN Group.

The Bharti unit, Zain Malawi, is the biggest mobile phone operator in the southern African nation. Bharti says it plans to spend $100 million in the next three years on network expansion in the country. It has also outlined plans for expansion in Uganda, Nigeria and other countries.

The 3G, or third-generation, mobile phone standard allows for high-speed Internet access and video transmission.

EBay has become the latest multinational online retailer to offer improved services to its visually impaired customers.

The American branch of the online auction site eBay announced on September 15 a partnership with the National Federation for the Blind. The partnership is designed to provide visually impaired Americans with the opportunity to buy and sell items on eBay and to build entrepreneurial businesses using the auction site.
In order to make the site more 'user friendly' for the visually impaired, eBay has developed enhanced search, browse, buy, bid and sell features which can be operated with the keyboard alone as well as assisting technologies like screen access software -- which can detect what is displayed on the screen and convert it into speech. One type of screen access software is the Thunder screen reader which can be downloaded at http://www.screenreader.net.

Online electronics and consumer goods retailer Amazon.com also provides access options for the visually impaired through Amazon access which was launched in 2001. Apple's music, video and apps store iTunes is also designed to be compatible for screen reader technology enabling it to be used by those with visual impairments. Other online retailers including a large number of supermarkets also offer services for the visually impaired.

“As a business you want to sell to an educated market one way or the other. Look at the way technology has transformed the world,” Mr Matunga said.

Microsoft Corporate and Social Responsibility East and South Africa Manager Mark Matunga said it was important for the company to create links with a wide array of customers to guarantee continued sales in the region.

One way Microsoft intends to create the links is getting involved in local education systems. It recently collaborated with Safaricom, Equity bank, the Kenya Literature Bureau, Kenya Institute of Education and the Teachers Service Commission to provide laptops loaded with the syllabus to about 240,000 teachers.

Mr Matunga said this was a major launch pad for the software developer to anchor itself in the technology transformation that has gripped the nation.

Microsoft is working together with the Kenya Institute of Education in developing digital content that is mapped into the current curriculum.

Mr Matunga said creating an educated market that is ready to embrace use of technology would be key to the company’s success.

“We look at how we can work all those in the education system to promote e-learning and the net effect is that two, three years down the line we will have an educated market that knows and appreciates technology,” he said.

He however believes that more partners ought to join in taking ICT to the education sector.

While initial efforts have been made between the government and the private sector, he said the lack of adequate funding is slowing down the speed at which technology is used in teaching.

“We don’t expect that Microsoft will be funding this all the way and have to call in more partners to chip in,” he said.

Mr Matunga said faster adoption of ICT in schools had the potential of leveling the education in rural and urban areas.

The comments were made during three days of interactive workshops, teacher exhibitions and judging by a renowned panel of African education experts, at the Pan-African Innovative Education Forum.

Microsoft Partners in Learning announced the regional winners of the 2010 Innovative Teacher Awards at the Forum, which took place at the Aga Khan Academy, in Mombasa.

From: CAPITAL BUSINESS