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One Laptop Per Child Project deploys for Palestinian children
The One Laptop Per Child Project delivered 2,100 laptops to a United Nations project in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the largest deployment so far in a program that aims to give half a million Palestinian children access to the computers over the next three years. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East teaches 500,000 children in the West Bank and Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. OLPC has already delivered 1,500 of its XO laptops to schools in Ramallah on the West Bank. The computers run the open-source Sugar software suite, marking a return to OLPC’s roots after a flirtation with running Windows XP on its emblematic green-and-white XO laptops.
Microsoft rushes to patch exposed Sharepoint bug
Microsoft is scrambling to fix a bug in its SharePoint 2007 groupware after a Swiss firm abruptly released code that could be used in an attack. The proof-of-concept code was released Wednesday, just over two weeks after security consultancy High-Tech Bridge says it disclosed the issue to Microsoft on April 12. Although Microsoft hasn’t said much about the seriousness of the bug, security experts worry that hackers could exploit the flaw in order to steal sensitive corporate information used by SharePoint customers, who use the software for building Web portals and collaborating on internal projects.
Greenpeace ranks Cisco as top climate-change fighting vendor
Cisco Systems earned the top spot on the new Greenpeace “Cool IT” leadership list, while some of Japan’s biggest electronics vendors — Toshiba, Sharp, Sony and Panasonic — finished last. The list ranks 15 of the biggest technology vendors on their efforts to fight climate change. Cisco dislodged IBM from the top spot, thanks to the networking vendor’s smart-grid technologies and products for managing energy efficiency in offices. Greenpeace also praised Cisco’s commitment to slash its own emissions 25 percent by 2012, and for CEO John Chambers’ advocacy work.
HP and Palm union faces tough road
A merged Hewlett-Packard and Palm will have a long way to go before it can challenge the likes of Nokia, Apple, Research In Motion (RIM) and HTC in the European market, according to analysts. Lack of brand awareness for Palm in the European market will be one of the biggest challenges, according to Roberta Cozza, principal analyst with Gartner Research. That’s a result of Palm’s decision to spend most of its limited resources in the U.S., and the vendor is now not known outside of tech circles, according to Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight.
