Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest ones. In emerging market education, there has been so much energy and discussion spent on attempts to make computers affordable enough so that every kid can get their own computer. But for 99% of students in the...

                  China isn’t the only country during these troubled times that is looking for creative solutions for how to prepare its workforce for modern, technology-enabled jobs. At the US National Governor...

I spent the last week in China learning more about Internet Cafés (or iCafés) , which are becoming a key area of focus for the Unlimited Potential Group. This is part of our “shared access”strategy, where we are developing solutions for computers that...

Gladys Kenfack is a pretty remarkable person. She works on the UPG team where she owns our strategy for web and digital marketing. She owns more than just the strategy because she does the actual work as well. She grew up in Cameroon, went to college...

Last month I had the opportunity to attend NextLab 2008: Designing Mobile Technologies for the Next Billion Users . It was a one-day conference at the MIT Media Lab involving projects from an interdisciplinary class there focused on how to apply cell...

Paul Polak is a hero of mine. He created a nonprofit organization called International Development Enterprises (IDE) and spent 25 years there developing creative ways to make poor people in Asia and Africa less poor. His specialty is developing sustainable...

It’s time again for Microsoft’s Innovative Teacher’s Forum (ITF), an annual event where we celebrate the 100 or so coolest teachers from around the world, all who are doing great things in terms of integrating technology into their classrooms. This year...

Last week we loaned an OLPC XO laptop running Windows to Ina Fried at CNET, and today she posted an article, short video, and some photos about her experience with the computer. You should definitely check it out. I have to say, at Microsoft we are pretty...

  The Ecosystem Impact of Affordable Computing This is a post I've been meaning to write for a while. This past spring Microsoft hired Vital Wave Consulting to create a five year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) model to help us and our customers better...

I had the opportunity to participate in a signing ceremony today between Microsoft and the Aga Khan Development Network , a group of agencies administering a broad set of programs in education, health, and social development. Shown here is a photo of...

ICT4D, or "Information and Communication Technologies for Development" is the name for the multidisciplinary academic approach involving the application of high tech to address international development problems. Kentaro Toyama - who leads Microsoft...

I haven't seen much about this in the press yet, but yesterday Intel and Carlos Slim in Mexico announced a deal to deploy 50,000 Intel Classmate Netbook computers to poor students in Mexico. These machines will be running Windows and Office. The agreement...

Channel 9 is running an interview with with Tara Prakriya, a solutions architect here in the Unlimited Potential Group, as their featured video right now. Tara focuses on designing education solutions for poor schools and has some interesting ideas on...

I was out of the office over the last 5 weeks, and during that time we had a lot going on in the Unlimited Potential Group, especially around some of our efforts involving rural computing. For starters, we have posted a video and have engaged in a public...

A group of people from Microsoft's Unlimited Potential team are heading out to Western China next week to raise awareness on a firsthand basis around issues involving the digital divide for rural communities in emerging market countries. You can learn...

Tara Prakriya is one of the technical leaders on the UPG team. In addition to driving a really interesting incubation focused on vocational skills training and assessment in India, she is an overall nice person who asked me to post a blurb about a non...

Today Microsoft and the OLPC are announcing support for Windows on the OLPC XO computer. The two organizations will work together on several pilot programs in emerging market countries starting next month, and the offering will RTM in August or September...

Bill Gates gave a great speech at Davos this week around the concept of Creative Capitalism , an approach where governments, businesses, and non-profits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain...

  A team of Microsoft people flew out to Cambridge, Mass. to meet with engineers from the OLPC Foundation yesterday. Here is a photo of my coworkers Bohdan Raciborski (demoing) and John Gunabal (smiling) as we showed some software to Walter Bender...

Well, I will be flying out to Cambridge next week for my first meeting with some of the people at the OLPC , and I have to say I am looking forward to it. Some of my UPG co-workers from Microsoft have been meeting with the OLPC team for about a year now...

Well, it seems like the OLPC organization is in the news a lot lately, even more so than usual. Stories that caught my eye over the last  week included a CNN report , a BBC story from Monday, and of course the Wall Street Journal page A1 story that...

Yesterday I attended AMD's 50x15 partner summit in Sunnyvale, California. 50x15 is AMD's equivalent to Microsoft's Unlimited Potential, with the idea that 50% of the world's population can achieve access to the Internet and computers by the year 2015...

Will Poole and I did a video blog interview with Chris Pirillo last week, and Chris just posted the interview onto YouTube today. It's a fairly long interview, but as you can see from the screen shot, it had over 1,000 views so far today. Chris is the...

It has been over a week since I returned from my trip to Helsinki , which makes it three out of the last five weeks that I have been on the road outside of the US. While I was in Finland, some of my colleagues in the Unlimited Potential Group were scattered...

Academic Program Managers (APMs) are the people at Microsoft responsible for implementing the Partners in Learning program I wrote about yesterday . We have about a hundred APMs around the world, working with local schools and education ministries on...