Isn’t this cute? It’s the next incarnation of the ultra-thin-client technology that powers Ndiyo networks. Plug a screen, keyboard, mouse and Ethernet cable into one of these and — Bingo! — you have a working computer terminal. See the Ndiyo Blog for more information.
Andrew Donoughue’s piece about Ndiyo and the digital divide is now on the Web. The nice thing about it is that it sets our work in the wider context.
An alternative to both the refurbished PCs and the OLPC approach has been developed by two UK academics. Ndiyo, the Swahili word for “yes”, is a project that aims to allow multiple users access to the same PC. Rather than trying to push more bespoke devices on countries with meagre IT budgets, Ndiyo allows one PC to be shared by five to 10 individuals by turning it into a mini-server networked to a series of thin clients.
The brain-child of Quentin Stafford-Fraser, a former research scientist at AT&T Laboratories Cambridge, Ndiyo is based around the untapped ability of the Linux operating system (Ubuntu) to support numerous simultaneous users. Together with his partner, technical author and Open University professor John Naughton, Stafford-Fraser decided that the traditional idea of one machine per user was a model that just didn’t make economic or functional sense for the developing world. Instead, in the Ndiyo model, a Linux PC becomes a server to a series of “ultra-thin-clients” — called Nivos — which allow an extra display, keyboard and mouse to be connected to the computer via a standard network cable.
ZDNet UK caught up with Stafford-Fraser and Naughton recently to find out how their technology works and why it makes more sense than the strategies being developed by heavyweights such as Intel and OLPC…
Part I of a nice essay by James Surowiecki which likens Nicholas Negroponte’s laptop project to Andrew Carnegie’s library benefactions.
Carnegie is usually talked about today as a precursor to people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, multibillionaires who have dedicated most of their wealth to philanthropic endeavors. But when you look at the way Carnegie built libraries–seeding institutions around the country and encouraging local involvement in the hope of convincing people of the virtues of free access to knowledge–what it calls to mind most is not Gates’s prodigious effort to fund the fight against infectious diseases but, rather, an endeavor called One Laptop per Child (OLPC)–or, as it’s colloquially known, the $100 laptop…
From the Economist‘s current Technology Quarterly survey…
WHAT is the best way to make the benefits of technology more widely available to people in poor countries? Mobile phones are spreading fast even in the poorest parts of the world, thanks to the combination of microcredit loans and pre-paid billing plans, but they cannot do everything that PCs can. For their part, PCs are far more powerful than phones, but they are also much more expensive and complicated. If only there was a way to split the difference between the two: a device as capable as a PC, but as affordable and accessible as a mobile phone. Several initiatives to bridge this gap are under way. The hope is that the right combination of technologies and business models could dramatically broaden access to computers and the internet.
Perhaps the best-known project is the one dreamt up by a bunch of academics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge. The scheme, called “One Laptop Per Child”, aims to use a variety of novel technologies to reduce the cost of a laptop to $100 and to distribute millions of the machines to children in poor countries, paid for by governments. Nicholas Negroponte, the project’s co-founder, says he is in talks to deliver 1m units apiece to the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria and Thailand. But across the Atlantic in Cambridge, England, another band of brainy types has cooked up a different approach. They have devised a device that allows one PC to be used by many people at once.
The organisation is called Ndiyo (the Swahili word for “yes”), and was founded by Quentin Stafford-Fraser, a former researcher at AT&T. “We don’t want to have cut-down computers for poor people,” he says. “We want them to have what we have — so we need to find a better way to do it.” The system exploits a little-used feature in operating systems that permits multiple simultaneous users. Ndiyo’s small, cheap interface boxes allow multiple screens, keyboards and mice to be linked to a single PC cheaply via standard network cables.
This allows a standard PC running Linux, the open-source operating system, to be shared by between five and ten people. Computers today are many times more powerful than those of just a few years ago, but are idle much of the time. Ndiyo is returning computing to its roots, to a time when they were shared devices rather than personal ones. “We can make computing more affordable by sharing it,” says Dr Stafford-Fraser, as he hunches over a ganglion of wires sprouting from machines in Ndiyo’s office. In much of the world, he says, a PC costs more than a house. Internet cafés based on Ndiyo’s technology have already been set up in Bangladesh and South Africa. Mobile phones are used to link the shared PCs to the internet…
Big developments at Ndiyo — Hubster – a new Ndiyo model. It’s interesting how useful USB can be.
Hot on the heels of the news that the Indian government has rejected the ‘One Laptop per Child’ idea comes an Engadget story that Microsoft, stung by the OLPC team’s decision to adopt Linux rather than Windows CE, is going to release a ‘foneplus’ — i.e. a mobile phone with port for connecting a TV screen and a keyboard. No pics, and maybe it’s just a rumour, but…
From ZDNet.com…
Nicholas Negroponte showed off the latest prototypes of the fabled $100 PC. It’s not longer a $100 PC, however. The ruggedized, two pound Linux desktop (Fedora) system, with mesh networking will sell for about $130 to $140 (san shipping) to governments starting in April 2007. Negroponte expects to reach the $100 price point by the end of 2008. The colorful system can turn into a tablet, and Negroponte said that it “will run like a bat out of hell.” Pricing depends on how much RAM, but key is the display, he added. “It has to be sunlight readable.
That won’t be done until August/September.” Then there will be a beauty contest among three systems and go into manufacturing for shipping, he said. Current seven countries are evaluating the system. The most enthusiastic are Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand and Argentina. In addition, China, India and Egypt have shown interest, as well as Russia, Mexico and Indonesia. Negroponte said that manufacturing has to reach 5 to 6 million to get scale pricing…
Here they are!
Thanks to Seb for the link.
Amusing report of Microsoft’s new initiative aimed at poor people. It’s announced an approach to selling computer hardware and software to emerging markets.
Dubbed Microsoft FlexGo, the initiative lets people buy a PC at retail for about half its usual cost, then pay off the balance via hourly usage fees. Designed to spread the penetration of PCs in emerging markets, FlexGo lower the barrier to PC ownership by allowing individuals to take home a machine with a minimal upfront investment and then pay off the balance via pre-paid cards. Buy enough time and you’ll eventually own the machine outright; run your pre-paid time out and the machine will stop working until more time is purchased.
It’s an interesting approach to emerging markets because it accounts for unreliable incomes. If money is tight during a particular month, the machine simply shuts down until more minutes are purchased. There’s no default. No one shows up at your door with a repossession order.
“One of the learnings that we’ve had is that it’s not just that families in emerging markets have modest budgets,” Mike Wickstrand, director of product management in the market expansion group at Microsoft told News.com. “It’s the irregularity and unpredictability of their income.”
Of course, as Good Morning Silicon Valley observes, “Microsoft’s motives here are not entirely altruistic. If it’s successful, FlexGo will undoubtedly curb software piracy a bit. And then there’s the money. Some estimates put the number of people worldwide who earn enough to buy PCs under the initiative, but not enough to buy one on their own at more than 1 billion.”
This is Microsoft’s ‘answer’ to the One Laptop Per Child initiative, about which Bill Gates has made derisive remarks, motivated no doubt by Nicholas Negroponte’s decision that the laptop will run Linux. The idea that poor people will be happy to pay $600 for a Windows-powered PC, even if they don’t have to pay the entire sum upfront, is barmy.
Q: Hey, Melinda, what do you call a crank on a computer?
A: Nicholas Negroponte.
From a sharp observation by John Paczkowski.