OLPC CTO quits nonprofit effort
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The One Laptop Per Child project suffered a blow this week, with Chief Technology Officer Mary Lou Jepsen quitting the nonprofit to start a for-profit company to commercialize technology she invented with OLPC.Jepsen, who joined OLPC as its first employee in 2005 after Nicholas Negroponte started the effort, will pursue an opportunity to chase after &quot;her next miracle in display technology,&quot; OLPC said in an e-mail sent on Sunday.Jepsen was responsible for hardware and display development for the rugged and power-saving&#160;XO laptop, designed for use by children in developing countries. Though the laptop has struggled to find buyers, it has been praised for its innovative hardware features and environmentally friendly design.Her last day with the organization is Dec. 31, though she will continue consulting with OLPC, according to the e-mail. Dec. 31 is also the end of OLPC&#39;s Give One Get One program, in which two XO laptops can be purchased for about $400, with a user getting one laptop and the other being donated.Satisfied that XO laptops were shipping in volume, Jepsen noted in an e-mail that she was starting a for-profit company to commercialize some of the technologies she invented at OLPC.&quot;I will continue to give OLPC product at cost, while providing commercial entities products they would like at a profit,&quot; Jepsen wrote in an e-mail.&quot;I believe that the work I led in the design of the XO laptop is just the first step in changing computing,&quot; she wrote.Powered by solar power, foot pedal or pull-string, the laptop doesn&#39;t rely on an electrical outlet to run, making it useful for situations where power is unreliable or unavailable. The laptop&#39;s specially designed lithium-ferro phosphate battery consumes between 2 watts to 8 watts depending on usage, compared to 40 watts on commercial laptops depending on usage.The laptop&#39;s battery lasts up to 21 hours because of custom-designed, efficient power-saving features implemented at the hardware and software level. Batteries in commercial laptops may explode at high temperatures, while XO&#39;s batteries can run and recharge in temperatures around 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), Jepsen said in earlier interview.OLPC is also designing a cow-powered generator that works by hooking cattle up to a system of belts and pulleys.For connectivity, the laptop has mesh-networking features for Internet access.
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Patty Stonesifer, who helped start and develop the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is stepping down, marking a major turning point for the philanthropic foundation.
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Circuit City Stores Inc.  said on Friday that Michael Foss, its chief financial officer, would leave the consumer electronics retailer in April for a similar post at a private equity-owned retail firm.
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OLPC chairman says laptop project could not promote openness if it was closed to Microsoft.
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Bruce Jaffe, who spearheaded the software giant's acquisitions activity, will leave the company in February.
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PeopleSoft Inc. founder David A. Duffield, who returned as chief executive during the company's bruising takeover battle with Oracle Corp., has quit the business software maker, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday.
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After just a six-month stint as the head of the company's technology arm, Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem will leave the company June 8. The announcement was revealed in a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Intel has dropped out of the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and OLPC's CEO says that he's disappointed in the chipmaker's contributions.
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Charles Giancarlo, who was seen as a likely candidate to head Cisco Systems, has resigned from the networking giant after 14 years to "pursue new professional opportunities," Cisco announced Thursday.
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Louis Gutierrez, the Massachusetts CIO who has been involved in efforts to move state agency toward open-source software, has resigned because of concerns over a lack of funding for state IT projects.
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Integrated circuits maker Linear Technology Corp., of Milpitas, says Bob Swanson will give up the title of chief executive officer after 23 years, shifting to a new role as executive chairman.
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Computer chip giant Intel said Friday it has severed its alliance with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative aimed at getting computers into the hands of children in developing countries.
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The executive who leads Microsoft&#39;s government sales effort is leaving to become CEO of a telecommunications company, the software maker said on Tuesday.
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Jonathan M. Tisch is giving up his post as chairman of NYC & Company, New Yorkâs tourism marketing organization.
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Intel&#39;s resignation from the One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s board of directors will have &quot;no impact&quot; on the group&#39;s operations, since the chip maker contributed little to the project since joining last year, OLPC President Walter Bender said in an interview.&quot;We never really got much going with Intel to have an impact,&quot; Bender said.Intel joined OLPC&#39;s board of directors&#160;in July as part of an agreement that seemed to bury the hatchet between OLPC and&#160;Intel&#39;s competing Classmate PC&#160;project. In addition to ending a war of words between Intel and OLPC, the two sides agreed to cooperate on technology development. Work also began on the development of a version of&#160;OLPC&#39;s XO laptop&#160;using an Intel processor instead of the AMD chip found in the current version.But the partnership agreement ultimately yielded little, and Intel made a &quot;seemingly half-hearted effort&quot; to build a version of the XO based on one of its microprocessors, Bender said.The development of&#160;an XO laptop based on an Intel processor&#160;was widely believed to rely on a version of Intel&#39;s upcoming Silverthorne processor, due out early this year. But the use of Silverthorne, billed by Intel as an inexpensive and power-efficient processor, was never confirmed by either Intel or OLPC, although Intel employees privately hinted at its use.Regardless of which chip was actually used in Intel&#39;s development efforts, the prototype laptop didn&#39;t live up to OLPC&#39;s expectations. &quot;They developed something that, as far as I know, is more expensive and more power-hungry than our current offering, so I&#39;m not quite sure what the point is,&quot; Bender said.Bender&#39;s comments underscore the mutual nature of Intel&#39;s decision to quit OLPC, but he also hinted at missed opportunities.&quot;My expectation was that there&#39;s lots of room for cooperation, particularly on software ... [but] I couldn&#39;t get Intel interested in helping me with any of those problems,&quot; Bender said, adding Intel executives seemed most interested in using the agreement with OLPC for marketing purposes and public relations.&quot;The only thing they were interested in was ... helping them make marketing statements about how Intel&#39;s approach to learning was different from OLPC&#39;s approach to learning,&quot; Bender said. &quot;They weren&#39;t interested in how we can learn together and make something better for kids.&quot;For Intel&#39;s part, a source familiar with the company&#39;s decision to resign from the OLPC board said repeated requests to abandon the Classmate PC in favor of support for the OLPC&#39;s XO played a major role. Intel has invested heavily in Classmate PC, which is currently being tested in several countries, and the company did not want to walk away from those efforts, the source said.During the six months that Intel belonged to OLPC, the chip maker contributed around $6 million to the project, the source said, estimating that Intel spent around $100 million on education-related projects last year.Bender declined to comment on Intel&#39;s financial contributions to the project.&#160;
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Doug Burgum, Microsoft Business Solutions group senior vice president, is stepping aside, turning over his duties to corporate vice president Satya Nadella.
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(InfoWorld) - In a surprise move, the leader of Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) Doug Burgum said Tuesday he plans to leave Microsoft Corp. at the end of June 2007. Satya Nadella replaces Burgum as senior vice president of MBS effective immediately, though Burgum will remain on in his current role for the next nine months to ensure Nadella's transition is a smooth one. Nadella is currently the head of research and development for MBS and its Dynamics suite of business applications. In November 2005, Burgum and Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, announced they were looking for a successor for Burgum, who joined the company when Microsoft acquired Great Plains Software Inc. in April 2001 and has been instrumental in reshaping the company's ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) applications business. However, at the time Burgum said his intention would be to remain at the company as chairman of MBS. On a conference call Tuesday, Burgum said he decided last Friday after talking with Raikes to leave the company instead, in part because he makes his home in Fargo, North Dakota, and has no plans to move to Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington. "I have personal constraints relative to geography," Burgum said. "I always felt this was a job that needs to be done full time in Redmond and not by someone who is commuting." Burgum said he has given "little or no thought" to what he will do once he leaves Microsoft, and that for now his focus is on "driving the MBS business moving forward." While Microsoft originally said the search for Burgum's successor would be an external one, Raikes said the company ultimately choose Nadella after reviewing external candidates because he is "the best person for the job." Nadella has been with Microsoft since 1992, and he joined the MBS unit in 2001. Prior to his current position, he led the global development team for Microsoft's Dynamics, which is located in Copenhagen, Denmark; Hyderabad, India; Fargo; and Redmond. Before joining MBS, Nadella held several marketing, product development and general management roles, which include launching and leading the Microsoft bCentral small business online service and acting as general manager for the Commerce Platforms Group. In the latter position, Nadella led the development efforts for Microsoft Commerce Server and Microsoft BizTalk Server. In fiscal 2006, which ended June 30, MBS revenue grew 17 percent, and achieved profitability ahead of analyst expectations, Raikes said Tuesday. He attributed the business' strength to Burgum's influence. "The MBS business is in great shape because of the role Doug played in getting us there," Raikes said. Both Raikes and Nadella said they are bullish about sustaining MBS profitability and achieving more growth in fiscal 2007.