Ricardo's Blog

CES is taking place in Las Vegas this week.  CES is the Consumer Electronics Show and one that has been gathering a lot of interest from the industry as well as from consumers every year.  Many companies do very exciting announcements at CES and the main keynotes are great to watch to listen to trends in the always exciting world of consumer electronics.  Go to the link below to see Paul S. Otellini's keynote in Las Vegas this year.  I hope you enjoy it.

Paul S. Otellini CES keynote link.

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The Brasilian Federal government started yesterday an electronic auction to decide on the vendor that will supply the 150,000 laptops for their "Un Computador por Aluno" project.  The project will provide schools with one notebook for each student and teacher. The bid was awarded today and the winner of the bid was Brasil's Grupo Positivo, a very prestiged company with extensive experience both in It as well as in Education.  Grupo Positivo is based in Curitiba, state of Parana. Grupo Positivo's offer was based on Intel-powered Classmate PCs.

According to Folha de Sao Paulo, the list of cities in which all the schools will receive notebooks for all kids and teachers are: Barra dos Coqueiros (SE), São João da Ponta (PA), Tiradentes (MG), Santa Cecília do Pavão (PR) e Terenos (MS).

Pictures of Kids in Pirai, state of Rio de Janeiro, one of the test sites for Un Computador por Aluno. Click on any picture for its Flickr page.

Related notes:

• Folha de São Paulo (portuguese)

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Last week I had the wonderful opportunity of touring Latin America with Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett.  As I wrote on this blog last week, I am posting dozens of photos from the visit to my flickr account.  Don´t miss the opportunity to see how a trip from Craig evolves.  Last week we had the opportunity to visit seven cities, five of them in Brasil and two in Colombia.  Of the more than 130 photos that I have published about the event so far, there is a group of photos that is getting a lot of attention.  This is the group of photos of the Amazon indians that participated in one of the activities in Parintins, in the middle of the Amazon.

Parintins has been close to our hearts for more than a year, as Intel invested with a group of IT&C industry partners to bring computes and connectivity to Parintins a year ago.  Two public schools, one community center and one hospital were connected to the Internet using WiMax technology donated by Embratel.  Now as we came back to Parintins we could see how much technology has become an important part of the lives of the people of Parintins.  However, there is still much to be done as most of the schools and hospitals still lack connectivity.

Here are some of the pictures of the Amazon indians who joined the Municipality as they celebrated the opening of an Internet community center within the public library in town.  Click on any picture for its flickr page.

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Intel Chariman Craig R. Barrett is touring Latin America this week. On this occasion, Craig is visiting 7 cities in Colombia and Brasil.  As it is tradition, Craig's tours are filled with exciting events and announcements on each of the communities that are reached.  You can go into a new flickr set I just created to see the latest photos in the tour.  Please be sure to visit the set often.

Here is the flickr set on Craig's 2007 Latin America tour.

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This week I was honored to launch the first program to finance PCs for Ecuadorian emigrants in Spain together with Ana Patrícia Botín, President and Chairwoman of Banesto.  Intel partnered with Spanish Bank Banesto and with Microsoft to deliver PCs to the families of Ecuadorian emigrants back home.  This is very relevant on two fronts, it helps the emigrants and their families to stay together and it provides a tool to Ecuadorian families to get access to better Education and better opportunities to improve their lives.  Ecuadorians are the single largest group of emigrants in Spain with about 2 Million people.

As a Mexican you constantly seeing evidence of the drama of the emigrants.  I personally was touched many times by people close to me who decided to leave their loved ones in pursue of a better life.

Take for instance Benito, the gatekeeper or “portero” of the first apartment building I lived in Mexico City.  Benito was a hard working person that make ends meet by doing a variety of jobs through the day.  On top of his main responsibilities he washed cars, did repair work and helped get all kinds of services to people in our building.  Unfortunately one day his father got sick and he decided to get him to the best private hospital he could afford.  His father was diagnosed with Cancer and the treatment was painfully and very costly.  The expenses destroyed Benito’s family finances and he was left with debt, a lot of debt. 

So Benito decided to go to the US and work hard to get his finances in shape again.  He left his wife and kids and took the journey to the US.  He got a job working on a restaurant and was able to provided back to his family in Mexico City.  We stayed very close to his family since his wife worked for us after Benito departed.

Every year since then, several times a year his wife’s strongest desire was to see Benito come back.  Years started to pass and his kids grew up and Benito was not able to come home.  His families finances improved, but not to the point that he needed them to.  Christmas time was especially acute as there was every year the hope that this would be the year he could come back home.  But every year the same thing happened, Benito could simply not make it back given all the risks involved.  The best contact they had was phone calls every now and then using some very expensive and low quality phone service Benito acquired through phone cards.  Finally, after more than five years Benito was able to come back home after being diagnosed and treated of a very strange disease in the US.

Millions of families live similar dramas today.  Their loved husbands and sons and daughters go very far to get a good job or better education.  Fortunately for them support in some countries to the migrants has improved.  Fortunately for them too you can now contact your family back through voice and video without any cost (Skype is particularly popular for emigrants).  Families can now stay together using technology to keep themselves united. Families can also use technology to get themselves a better education and have access to better paying jobs at home. 

This is way the launch of the Conecta Latinoamerica program with Banesto is so relevant.  The program is so simple and yet some of its details are incredibly hard to implement for traditional banks.  Under the program, an Ecuadorian emigrant can buy a financed PC in Spain with zero interest rate.  The Bank provides a loan and sends an order to a qualified local PC integrator in Ecuador who builds the PC, delivers and installs it on the house of the emigrant back home in Ecuador.   The details seem to be very simple, but they are very hard to achieve form many banks in the world.  I´d like to highlight the leadership of Ana Patricia Botin to make this wonderful program a reality.

There are two main benefits for the emigrant and his/her family.  First, they get a tool that allows them to communicate and stay close with their loved ones back home.  Secondly, the emigrant family gets a high end tool to access better education and have access to better job opportunities and some other life improving capabilities.

For Banesto, it is a program that allows them to address the emigrant market, a very dynamic segment of the population in Spain.  There are about two million Ecuadorians and more than 10 Million legal emigrants in Spain and the number continues to grow every day.  It is a program that is clearly showing leadership of the Bank to access new market segments where the social component is as relevant as the business component.

The next step is to make the program successful and export it all over Latin America and in other places in Africa and Eastern Europe as Ana Patricia Botín, the Banesto Chairwoman commented at the program launch.  There are millions of families like Benito’s that badly need it today.

If you are an Ecuadorian emigrant living in Spain, please contact your closest Banesto branch for more details.

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It is that time of the year again.  On a very unusual season and still without a defined F1 champion this weekend we will have the Brasil Grand Prix at the Interlagos race track in the south of Sao Paulo.  The city is already very crowded as hotels and restaurants are full with the massive amounts of people that visit the city for the Grand Prix (some people estimate the event's attendance at 1.5 Million people over three days of competition.

I will have the opportunity to go again to Interlagos and capture the race and all the ambiance around it.  Don't miss the action in the track and outside of it.  To start to get us into the GP Brasil environment here is a link to a flickr set I built for last year's event: GP Brasil 2006.

Here you have also some of the pictures that are in that set. Click on any of them for its flickr page. 

One of the main attractions before the race, the Formula Una ladies.  On this pciture, Katie Larmour smiles in the paddock before the race begins.

A close up look at the wheel and the cockpit of team BMW Sauber.

And the race starts!  Pilots go around the circuit in a platform.

See you at Interlagos! 

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I am at an Education event in Guatemala and I just saw for the first time the EEE PC from Asustek.  The EEE PC is a low cost notebook that has raised a lot of attention since it was launched by Asus and Intel at the latest Computex Taiwan.  Here you have some shots of the EEE PC and some side by side shots with the Classmate PC and and Ultra Mobile PC from founder.  This can give you a good idea of the size of the notebook with is smaller than what I'd have expected (see it next to the Classmate).  It's design is really slick and it looks great.

As always, you can click on any of the photos to get its flickr page.

A shot with the monitor turned on and from the front.  As you can see the screen looks great and the overall clear design looks very nice. 

On this shot, the EEE PC was pictures from above looking down.

On this picture you can see the Classmate PC side by side with the EEE PC.  As you can see the Intel powered Classmate PC is bigger due to the ruggedized case designed to take the heat from little kids at school. 

Here is how the EEE PC looks next to a smaller computer, on this case an Ultra Mobile PC from Founder.

Finally, this is how the EEE PC looks in the hands of an adult.  Much smaller than a normal size notebook, but bigger than an Ultra Mobile PC as you saw.

Any comments? Other shots you'd like to see here.  Sorry for publishing the photos without post-production, but I wanted to give you a good idea at how the EEE PC looked like.

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I spent the week in the US, primarily in Portland, Oregon and San Jose, California.  In Portland I attended a leadership training which tought me some very interesting lessons that I will share with you all.  In San Jose, I attended the Hispanic Leadership Conference of Intel.  This one was a very strong eye opener in many fronts for me.  The attendants were mostly US based Latinos and a few people from Latin America.  It was great to see the passion of the Hispanic leaders in the US.  I have many interesting stories to write about that conference. 

I also decided to buy a new camera, the much praised Canon EOS-1D Mark III.  Stay tuned for photos from that beautiful machine to be posted here and in my flickr stream from now on.  For now, I'd have a cold beer and relax over the weekend.  Happy holiday for my friends in the US.  I am coming back to California after the three day holiday.

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Intel´s new exciting interactive campaign in Brasil.  You can shape the story of this internet movie and get some nice rewards in the process.

Click here to access the website (portuguese). 

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We are holding the Intel Editor's Day in Brazil over the weekend, a yearly event to share our strategies and plans with the main editorialist and journalists of the country.  This year we did it at the beautiful Blue Tree Resort in Mogi das Cruzes, a city within the greater São Paulo area.  Beyond the work sessions we also had a celebration for the 20 Years of presence of Intel in Brasil.  And well, since 20 years ago we were in the middle of the 80~s the celebrtation was themed after that.

 Here are a few of the shots I took at the party, click on any of them to get its flickr page.  One of the attending journalists and blogger, Rafael Rigues, did a much more comprehensive coverage of most of the activities and created a flickr set.  You can find Rigues´set here.

The pervasive disco Ball that ruled part of the 70's and a good chunk of the 80's.  I shot this under low speed to be able to capture the light rays bouncing on it. 

 After this photo, I started to experiment shooting the group without flash and under low speed.  The results are richer colors and some bluriness of the people that adds movement to the image.

The guy on the yellow hat looks pretty cool against that blue bleached wall. 

People in hats at the tables.

And people in hats at the dance floor. 

How did you liked the experiment of shootingh with low light? 

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There is one area of activity that Intel has consistently executed on the Corporate Social Responsibility front: Education.  Through many different programs Intel has gone beyond being a mere supplier of technology for Education.  Intel has assumed the a leadership role in training teachers worldwide on how to use the computers that are being deployed in schools to improve educational processes.  Intel invests $100 Million US dollars a year in philanthropic funds to support this effort.

Several of you asked me if I can provide a link to the CNN en Espanol interview by Gabriela Frías.  Here is a link where CNN en Español videos are usually posted.  i don´t know how much time they will be live, so I will try to see if I can find a permanent link.  But it should work fine for this week.  Please let me know if you have any issues accessing.

The video is called Internet para todos en todas partes.

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One of the most impactful announcements at Computek this week is coming from Asustek and Intel.  Asustek and Intel are launching the Eee PC Notebook, with the triple E sanding for Easy to Learn, Easy to Play, Easy to Work.  The notebook is expected to cost about $199 dollars FOB China.  The PC has fairly similar Specs to Intels Classmate PC reference design with the difference that it is not target at K12 children but can be used by youngsters and adults.  

Here are some of the Specs of the EeePC 710 notebook:

• 7 inch display  (similar to the classmate)
• 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet and a modem for connectivity,
• Embedded webcam, a la Macbook, 
• 512MB of RAM,
• 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive for storage (in the place of a HD),
• Ability to run Windows or Linux

The design is actually very nie and clean in white.  The design and the name have drawn some suspicion about Asustek following Nintendo's lead, which seems to be an exaggeration to me.  For more details check the Engadget article here.

What do you think about this new generation of affordable notebooks?

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Today Intel is launching what is quite possible the first corporate blog from a major Technology Company in Latin America (please correct me if I am wrong).  Latin Insights is being launched today as a space for IT professionals from around the region to establish a direct and interactive dialogue with the company.  Latin Insights is being launched in Spanish (Portuguese version coming up later on).  I will be one of several bloggers blogging there.  I hope to see you there so we can comment on the latest technology trends. 

We are Intel are quite a open minded crowd, so please feel free to bring your feedback, whatever that might be.  We cultivate a spirit in the company which we call constructive confrontation.  Its basic principle is that all of us are equal when we enter a debate (forget about the organizational position) and we can all debate in a constructive way to help improve things.  This spirit is central to our constant dissatisfaction with the status quo and allows us to advance technology constantly.

Link: http://blogs.intel.com/latininsights/ .

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Computex is a yearly tradeshow that reunites the largest technology manufacturers in Taipei.  As Taiwan has become one of the key engineering centers for electroinics, Computex has become increasingly important to everybody in the high tech industry.  Only a few years ago, the tradeshow was interesting mostly to companies building their own PC, as the show was heavily focused on motherboard manufacturing.  However, with the rise of mobile computers, Taiwan has become a center for design and manufacturing of notebooks and other portable computers.  And now Computex has become as influential as Taiwanese engineering is to portable computers.

Computex starts tomorrow, June 5th and ends on June 9th, 2007.  Stay tuned for the announcements coming out of the show.  You can find Computex website here. 

Posted by rcarreon at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All of us who work at Intel often poke fun at our own frugal style and work environment.  Those cubicle-filled office floors are probably hard to inspire anybody.  But when Late Late Show's Conan O'Brien goes to visit Intel, a hilarious video is bound to happen.

Watch here: Conan goes to Intel.

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I was travelling this week through Costa Rica and Mexico with Intel chairman Craig R. Barrett.  The pace of the week was hectic with days full of activities, visits to Presidents in both countries, government and social leaders and business persons.  However, even within the very hectic pace I found a small moment to relax watching the clouds when we took a chartered jet from Leon to Toluca in central Mexico.  The total flight was only 22 minutes and in the middle of it we had our descent right in the middle of sunset time.  We dipped into thick clouds that had a combination of blue (given the time of the day) and pink as the sunrays were hitting into some lighter clouds.

Here is the photo.  Click on it to see its flickr page.  It has already made Explore,  the section with the best photos of the day.

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To really understand what Intel-powered Classmate PCs are you have to hang around kids using them.  Once you see them many of the doubts about them simply vanish into thin air. 

I was fortunate to be able to visit with Craig R. Barret and the team an elementary school in Costa Rica in which the Classmate PCs have been in use for a few weeks.  In the school you can see both models of education, the traditional media lab with desktop PCs and the new 1:1 experience with Classmate PCs.  I have been to media labs many times before and that was not a surprise to me.  But going into a classroom full of kids and Classmate PCs was a completely different experience.  You simply see the kids engage using the laptops as if the device were given to them years ago.

The laptop of course looks great on the kids hands.  The smaller keyboard and screen are actually very adequate to K-12 students. The kids at the classroom we visited were using all sorts of applications on their Classmates, running software to build a presentation, educational software with Spanish and Natural sciences excercises, consulting websites via their built-in WiFi interface... hey you could also see several Google screens for the kids that were doing some research.  In this particular school kids were in grupos were they could work and learn together.  A group was inside the classroom and another way in the garden in a science class looking at insects through an electronic microscope.

But see for yourself.  Look at how engaged they are.  If you are interested in reproducing one or more of the pictures on your blog, simply give credit and link to this blog post, as per the Creative Commons license that applies to this blog.

Here are some pictures, but you can find the full collection here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carreon/sets/72157600032121331/ .

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Intel-powered Classmate PC, a very exciting laptop for kids in Emerging Markets was launched by Intel this week.  There are already a few thousand units being used in pilots in the main countries of Latin America (Mexico, Brasil and Chile among others).  These are production units and not prototypes, as the device is ready for deployment.

If you want more information on Classmate PC, there is a brand new website that was released by Intel this week.  The site is in spanish and english for now.  Please go to classmatepc.com . You can choose your language in the upper right of the page.

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This is a very cool site within YouTube that has all the videos about the Chilean Program "Un Computador por Niño".  The program strives to provide free and unlimited access to PCs to 1 million children before 2010.  The videos are in Spanish and can give you a pretty good idea of the project and Intel-powered Classmate PC involvement on it. 

This is very exciting as major Latin America have publicly stated their will to move into 1:1 computing for elementary schools.  Watch the videos in Spanish here.

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President Lula smiles as he holds a Classmate PC next to his Special Advisor Cesar Alvarez.  The Classmate PC is a PC for education designed for kids in elementary education (K-12).  The Classmate PC is a reference design by Intel that will be manufactured by many PC OEMs around the world.

Here is the story, straight from an Intel Press release issued today:

The equipment is a part of a lot of 30 units that were delivered to the Brasilian Ministry of Education (MEC), with the purpose of being evaluated by specialized technicians from the Government, SERPRO, Research Centers and Universities.

The first Craig R. Barrett tour of Latin America of 2007 is coming up soon.  He will visit Costa Rica and Mexico at the end of March.  He will visit Costa Rica on march 26-27 and Mexico on March 27-29.  As always, his agenda will be filled with interesting activities with Latin American social, governmental and enterprise leaders.  Stay tuned for details on his agenda as we approach the date. An I will have the privilege of touring with him and blog live from the tour.

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Sandra Carvalho of Info Exame magazine wrote an interesting blog article on Classmate PC.  Classmate PC, Intel's reference design for an affordable PC for kids has been consistently the number one article on this blog, so I assume the articule will be of interest.

The post is in portuguese and can be found here: Classmate PC esta lista para la briga.

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The World Economic Forum 2007 Meeting is about to end in Davos today with the Gala Event this year celebrating Malaysia.  It is worth checking the Forum blog, which is featuring many of the bloggers attending the event.  It was a nice surprise to see my friend Jim Fruchterman highlighted as well as Mexican journalist Carlos Mota and many more.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon will meet Craig R. Barrett today in Davos.  If there is something interesting to share, I will post it here soon.

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Sun Microsystems and Intel Corporation announced on Monday, January 22nd that they had reached an agreement to cooperate broadly in key enterprise computing technologies. Under the agreement, Intel will support broadly the Solaris Operating System, Java (tm) and Netbeans (tm).  By the same token, Sun will develop a new line of enterprise servers based on the Intel (R) Xeon (R) family of server processors.

The technologies listed above are very relevant to the enterprise server market.  Enterprise servers are the robust machines that feed information for large corporations, the government and in general terms, for the internet.  The Enterprise Server area has grown dramatically in the recent past thanks to the espectacular growth of rich types of content in the internet, such as video, pictures and blogs.

The announcement is as Jonathan Schwartz, the Sun CEO calls it in his blog a sign of how the "World has Just Changed".  Both companies competed heavily on the time of the dot com boom, as Sun promoted their SPARC architecture.  This change to support standard, widely deployed technologies is great news to the industry.  Standards are after all what has enabled the Internet to be the world-changing phenomenon that it is. Standards will enable the Internet to continue to evolve as new technologies are developed.

Beyond the industry benefits, this is also great news to restart the relationship with some friends at Sun.  I love to welcome our friends at Sun in Latin America and in the different countries to our join efforts.  Let's go ahead and work closely together to continue to grow the usage of technology in the region.

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Today there is an article on Engadget talking about the recently announced donation by Intel of Classmate PCs to the Brasilian Government.  In light of that article, I'd like to add further detail to the Classmate PC by publishing the specifications of the equipment.  Please note that the Classmate PC is a reference design by Intel.  Intel does not build PCs, but builds the chips that power them.  Reference designs like this are taken by OEMs around the world to build PCs under their own brands.

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Maria Estela received the scholarship at Tec de Monterrey, Guadalajara Campus. Photo courtesy of Tec de Monterrey.

I met Maria Estela Godinez in Cartagena, Colombia.  She was having some stage fright before joining the stage with Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett.  Maria is only 16 years old but she has already landed many awards for her talent.  Earlier this year Maria Estela received three awards for her electronics project Deyabu.  Her project allows people with speech problems to communicate with the world by moving her hands with a special glove that translates finger movements into text and then to speech. 

Maria managed to do great on stage with Craig R. Barrett.  She did so well that the Minister of Communications of Colombia cried on her seat as she was hearing Maria's wonderful story.  She was in total control of the audience.  She finished her speech to an enthusiastic cheering and then was the most sought-after person at the end of the show. 

Continue reading "Maria Estela Godinez gets a full scholarship for Tec de Monterrey" »

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Here are the pictures of the OLPC, 2B1 or XO device that Nicholas Negroponte and team presented to the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) event last week.  Here you can have a fairly good view at what the prototypes that Governments in several Emerging Markets will be receiving for testing on schools.

 As with my recent pictures of the Classmate PC, I am happy to share this. If anybody wants to use the pictures below, just provide a link and proper credit as per the Creative Commons license that applies to this blog.

Continue reading "OLPC, 2B1, XO Prototype Pictures" »

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Are you feeling like changing your PC? Maybe you would relate to people on these great videos. Thank you Heath for the link.

Which one do you like best?

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As promised, here is the first batch of pictures of the Classmate PC.  On this delivery I am trying to give you a good idea of the physical size of the notebook.  I am comparing it to my hands, a simple cell phone and one IBM Thinkpad T60.  Please note that the Classmate PC is much smaller than the regular notebook.

The Classmate PC is a fully featured PC for Children targeted at Emerging Markets.  It is a very interesting device for Children's Education.  The PC can run either on Windows or Linux and its storage is done on flash memory (several GB of memory, depending on the needs).  It is highly portable and designed to be easily carried by children at school or after school as they go home.  Any questions, just let me know.

In the next delivery I will go for screen shots and talk about my experience using the device.  If anybody wants to use the pictures below, just provide a link and proper credit as per the Creative Commons license that applies to this blog.

The classmate PC standing alone.

A closer look at the keyboard and the mouse of the Classmate PC.

My hands are too big for this notebook designed for Children.

Here is a simple Nokia phone standing next to the Classmate PC.

The Classmate PC next to an IBM Thinkpad T60.

The two notebooks side by side. Please note that the Classmate PC has a leather case and a handle when its folded.  This is for ease of transportation by the kids.

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As a part of Intel's partnership with BMW Sauber team we got to visit with our customers the BMW facilities at Interlagos.  It was a great tour in which we could see all the technology in the BMW Sauber cars and chat with pilots and the technical team.  This is a sample of what Intel employees and invited customers saw that day.

 BMW Sauber F1 Team engineers are busiy woking on one of the cars in preparatioon of the GP Brasil.

The BMW logo is proudly displayed in the front of the BMW Sauber F1 cars.

Team BMW Sauber Robert Kubica came and chatted with us for a while.  He was very friendly as we talked with him about the race a few hours before the race started, 

The car looks impressive this way aint it? 

Team BMW Sauber was at Box 17 at Interlagos. 

Team BMW Sauber was ready for the GP Brasil race. 

This is me with Robert Kubica after the chat we had with him.  

And the grand finale, the ultra modern cockpit of the BMW Sauber F1 cars.  An impressive display of technology to drive the world's most sophisticated racing cars. 

Related Posts:

- Brasil Grand Prix: Felipe Massa emerges a winner in a historic race

- Formula Una: Pictures of the Red Bull ladies at Formula 1

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It was a great day for F1 Racing in Sao Paulo. 

Felipe Massa emerged as the winner of the Brasil Grand Prix held this sunday at the Interlagos race track in Sao Paulo, Brasil.  Felipe's victory was received with great enthusiasm by Brasilian fans of Formula 1.  The last time a Brasilian had won over the Interlagos circuit was in 1993, when Brasilian legend Ayrton Senna won the race. Felipe did a brialliant end-to-end race and commanded a lead of more than 25 seconds over the second place for most of the race.

The race had a couple of very interesting features worth watching: it was the last race of Michael Schumacher and it was also the one to define this year's champion.  Michael did a fantastic job running one of the best races in his career,  He kept climbing for most of the race, but he suffered from a tire that blew out at the begining of the race.  Despite this he recovered enough ground to finish fourth.  It was simply a great closure to his remarkable pilot career (he was seven times champion of Formula 1).

Fernando Alonso also had a great day at Interlagos, finishing second, right after Massa.  With this result, the Spaniard became this year's champion.  He has been champion twice in a row.

The race for sure will be remembered for many years, maybe even decades by Formula 1 fans.  It was a race that kept us all watching every single move in the edge of our seats.  I will post more pictures soon, so stay tuned.

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The Brasil Formula 1 Grand Prix is about to start this friday.  It is one of the major sporting events of the year and a lot of fun to be there.  If you want to start to live the experience of the race, the Brasilian site of Intel has lots of great digital content.  You can go and play games, download pictures or interesting ringtones (do you want your phone to sound like a BMW Sauber F1 Team engine?).  It also has blogs and video blogs to help you experience the GP. Or if you are a real connoiseur, take the quiz and I am sure you will get some nice challenges there.

And I will be happy to attend the race and get a lot of pictures and publish them here.  The Intel - Team BMW Sauber website (portuguese, but easy to navigate) can be accesed here.

Posted by rcarreon at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I got a Classmate PC last week to help as an Ambassador of the technology.  The Classmate PC is a small, low cost PC for educational usage.  Paul Otellini and Craig R. Barrett have shown the model at recent forums.  The Classmate PC is a reference design that is testing a new concept for educational notebooks for kids.  The Classmate PC is fully featured and can run on either Windows or Linux. 

I will start by shooting some pictures of the Classmate PC and posting it here.  A question for you all: Any specific shots you might be interested on?  Speak now or hold...

After that I will write a review of the notebook and place it here.  I'd love to get ideas on which topics you would like to see cover on that review.

I have created a "Classmate PC" Tag that I would use to store all posts related to that.  You can search using that tag here or on Technorati. In the meantime here is a picture of a kid using a Classmate PC at the recent Craig R. Barrett tour of Latin America. This one here at the event celebrating the five years of Intel Education programs in Brasil. Craig is holding one of the PCs too, as they fold under a leather cover and are easy to carry out.

Posted by rcarreon at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The Inquirer is poking fun at Intel's General Manager of Southern Cone, Esteban Galuzzi. Esteban said in a presentation at Argentina's Expocomm, that the PC Power on button is hard to find.  The whole episode is hilarious.

Sometimes you end up saying things that you really didn't mean to say.  The problem is when that happens under the limelight.

Posted by rcarreon at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are more in depth pictures of the UMPC VW (UMPC stands for Ultra Mobile PC, which was also known as Origami as per the Microsoft code name prior to launch).  UMPCs are ultra light computing devices that you can carry with you and thanks to WiFi and WiMax connect to the Internet from just about anywhere.

The UMPC demo at Intel Developer Forum involved an UMPC that was connected to the Internet via WiMax and then connected to the VW car via WiFi.  WIth a set up like this you could send entertainment content to the car from your UMPC, such as movies or music.  Of course, there is nothing that prevents the car from connecting directly to the Internet.  In that case the UMPC can be simply included on board.

The UMPC car at the Technology showcase of IDF.

Additional to the dash display, there were two additional screens mounted behind the front seats for the viewing pleasure of the passengers on the back of the car.  Very useful for parents with little kids.

The dash screen. Simple, easy to use touch screen menus.

The dash monitor on the context of the complete dashboard.

Here is another way to mount the streetdeck unit on board, through a cup holder mount.

Subscribe to Ricardo's Blog for free and get all the articles, my best flickr photos and my del.icio.us links at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RicardosBlog .

Posted by rcarreon at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I know my friend Emme would love one of these.  Meet Voltaic, a backpack that has solar panels attached to it that can charge small devices, such as iPods, cellphones and other gadgets.  The device is very good looking too. 

If you can, go and give some encouraging words to Emme, she has been living a much simpler life to contribute her bit to sustainability of this planet for six months now. She has a recent post on this.

Posted by rcarreon at 08:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There has been a lot of interest on the Alan Wake pictures I published on Tuesday.  Here are a few more pictures I captured on IDF. Enjoy.

Alan Wake Video demonstration at IDF:

- El Mercurio online

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Dadi runs the Mobile group for Intel.  His speech was very interesting given his unique personality and a rather large number of achitectural innovations coming soon to Intel's mobile platforms.  Here is the pictorial story of his IDF keynote.

Posted by rcarreon at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Time for the General Manager of the Healthcare Group and Intel Vice President Louis Burns to hit the scene.  Louis speech was a very positive account of the progress Intel has made on this area.  Healthcare is one of Intel's Platform Groups and one that has a great potential. Healthcare is simply put, the largest industry in the planet and growing very fast.

Louis kicks off his speech.

Health care, the largest industry in the planet. An industry that is becoming larger as we live longer and diseases become more challenging to fight.

Health care is a very large portion of the GDP in mature countries, but it is also a becoming a growing part of the GDP in countries like Brasil.

What an inspiring woman, the UK Minister of Health.

Time for Monica and Monique to hit the stage, Monica a nurse coordinator and Monique a Social Scientist doing research of how to build platforms for healthcare professionals.

Monique introduces the challenges that nurses go by everyday.

Monica talks about her experience working with a specially designed tablet.  The tablet is work proof and can be washed and sanitized as any other hospital equipment.

Monica says: "We need you to listen to us. You want your nurse to be next to you at your bedside and not away at a desk typing on a computer." Very inspiring, indeed.

Wash and wear...

Intel partnered with Motion Computing to develop the specialized tablet.

Motion computing builds specialized tablets for specific markets. Health care is half of their business. Scott Eckert is the CEO, shown here when he was on stage with Louis.

Products from the Continua Allaince coming up in early 2008.

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A picture is worth a thousand words... here you have the keynote in 26 pictures...

If you are interested on reproducing some of the images, you can do it.  They have a Creative Commons license. Just give credit for them and provide a link to this entry.  For high resolution versions, please contact me at ricardo at ricardosblog dot com (sorry for the lack of link here, but I do want to avoid spam).

Keynote entrance

Paul kicking off the keynote.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing

Core 2 Duo is ramping....

Core 2 Extreme impressive performance

Paul Otellini to Markus Maki, "so overcloking is OK on this system"...

Markus Maki talikng to Paul about how their next generation gaming platform will be enabled by Quad Core.  Each processor Core can handle separate demand-heavy needs such as deploy life like scenery or catastrophes.

Remedy's next generation thriller has life-like graphics.

Landscapes and music are hollywood quality, thanks to quad core processors.

Intel ramping 65 nm processor shipments.  Who else? 45 nm coming soon...

15 Products already in development for 45 nm

Paul showing teraflop computer on a Chip.  The processing power that once was available on National Labs such as Sandia is now by the hundreds on this 300 mm wafer.

Quad Core coming in November for Servers and gaming enthusiasts, I guess this will be an awesome match for Remedy's upcoming psychological thriller.

Paul Otellini and Rackable CEO.  The computer cluster on this rack could easily make it to the World's top computers thanks to Quad Core.

Paul looks confident as the keynote approaches the final stretch.

Three cool gadgets:

- HD DVD Player in black.

- Classmate PC, an affordable notebook for emerging markets K-12 Education.

- The new set top box from DirecTV, that will allow to easily link a Viiv system to any TV set.  Coming soon from DirecTV.

New services coming to Viiv: AOL Video, Yahoo Sports - the must-have service for fantasy football fans, NBC content and ClickStar Hollywood movies on Internet download, two weeks after theatrical release.

The $1M Core 2 Duo challenge.

 WiMax enables Broadband to go.

The Ultra Mobile PC Car.  Paul Otellini and Anand Chandrasekher demonstrate a VW Car that will link to UMPC or the Internet via WiFi, WiMax.

Here is the Menu of the VW.  As you can see, you can access Audio and Video Content from a variety of sources.  This includes links to download from the UMPC and or directly from the Internet.

Music downloads available from the net directly to your car.

Paul Otellini holds the Classmate PC. This is an affordable notebook for Emerging Markets.

Classmate PC demonstrated with a proof of concept performed in Nigeria. A video was shown with the kids using the PC for educational purposes.

Related Posts:

- Paul Otellini IDF Keynote: $1M challenge, Quad Core, 45nm chips, Cool gadgets and UMPC VW Car

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Intel President and CEO, Paul Otellini announced the Core 2 Duo Challenge, an industry award to foster innovation in consumer PCs.  The contest will award up to 1 Million dollars to the smallest and most innovatively designed systems based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo chip and Intel’s home entertainment platform Viiv. Paul Otellini made the announcement in the kick off of Intel Developer Forum, Intel’s most important event for technology.

In the words of Intel Corporation’s press release: “On innovation, Otellini challenged the computing and consumer electronics industry to do more, to take advantage of the energy-efficient performance capabilities of Core 2 Duo processors. To do this, Otellini announced the Intel® Core™  Processor Challenge, a contest that will award up to $1 million in prizes to the PC designer or manufacturer that builds the smallest and most stylish PCs powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor coupled with Intel® Viiv™ technology, Intel’s premium brand for in-home, media-optimized PCs.”

Additionally to the Core 2 Duo challenge, Paul Otellini showed on stage an impressive array of technologies coming up soon from Intel.  Among the technologies that captured most of the attention from the audience were:

·        Intel^® Core^™2 Extreme quad-core processor.  Quad core for gaming enthusiasts coming up on November this year.

·        Intel® Core™2 Quad processor. Quad Core for mainstream market coming up in first quarter 2007.

·        Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series brand for dual processor servers will be shipped this year, and a new low-power 50-watt Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor L5310 for blade servers that will be shipped in the first quarter of 2007.

·        Cinema-like gaming experience demonstrated with RemedyTM.

·        45 nm technology on track for 2H 2007 production.  Three large fabs ready or under construction with 1M sq ft of clean room facilities for a total investment of $9B USD.

·        Paul Otellini demonstrated the world’s first teraflop on a chip wafer.

·        Paul talked about Broadband to Go with WiMax enabling high-speed connections anywhere.

·        Paul demonstrated an Ultra Mobile PC connected wirelessly to deliver video and location-based services.

·        Paul demonstrated a VW car that is capable of interacting via WiFi with a UMPC to download video, music and content off the Internet.

·        Paul demonstrated a Classmate PC, an affordable notebook PC for children on Emerging Markets.

A picture story of the keynote coming up soon here.  In the mean time, what do you think about the $1M award?  Will it bring exciting designs to the marketplace (or most importantly, to the living room)?

Posted by rcarreon at 02:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At 8:45 Pacific Time Paul S. Otellini will kick off Intel Developer Forum at Moscone Center.  Paul is expected to do a series of important product announcements. The expectation from most members of the International press was that Paul’s keynote will provide details on the highly anticipated quad core processors.

The event started yesterday for the international press with a Research briefing for the International Press gathered here.  The briefing attended by hundreds of journalists provided details of where Intel research is focusing its innovation in the future.  Discussions included tera-scale networking or how to continue to grow the numbers in a processor to a large number in each CPU (let’s say just for the sake of example, a few hundred core on each chip).  In tera-scale computers new challenges emerge such as the challenge to communicate the cores between themselves, Intel is researching several different communications architectures to accomplish that.  Networking and mobility also occupied an important place on the discussions and the demos, with demos about how to improve wireless networks using technologies such as Virtual MIMO or Mesh.

A very interesting development was the discussion and showcase of essential computing.  Essential computing is the usage of computing to support critical life functions.  With essential computing you can, for example monitor activities of a person doing physical exercise or an elderly person living alone and act before any major health threat takes place.  This can be achieved by using sophisticated sensors that can detect what a person is eating or which medicines the person is taking and comparing them versus the daily needs.  This can be achieved with technologies such as body sensors and RFID tag on the medicines, foods and even food utensils.  The sensors were showcased and demonstrated at the IDF press briefing.

But looking farther into the future we had glimpse of Physical 3D rendering by manipulating tiny scale robots remotely.  With technologies like this you can dream about doing a car prototype demo between two labs remotely located and both can see a physical copy of the car at their tables, modified each time anybody wises to do so.  The colors, shape and many other physical characteristics can be modified on the spot.  This is of course, still far into the future, but Intel researches jointly with Carnegie Mellon University researches are working on it now.

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Craig R. Barrett just finished his 2006 Latin America tour and I traveled with him throughout the week.  It is the eight Barrett tour to Latin America in which I have had the pleasure to spend time with him and participate in the multiple activities through the week.  In this post, I’d like to give you an idea about what does a Barrett tour looks like, first from a narrative perspective and finally by sharing with you interesting facts about this last tour.

Craig is one of the most energetic business leaders I have had the chance to work with.  A typical tour with him starts on a Sunday and runs all the way through Friday night. In that six day period multiple cities are countries are touched, usually at an accelerated rhythm of around two cities per day (I have done three cities with him in three different countries in 2005).   A typical day starts at around 6:30 and goes all the way until midnight.  Craig is usually completely motivated and energized through the whole ordeal.

In a given day, we usually start with preparation activities to make sure every meeting and activity is well prepared and every day results in fruitful results.  Preparation is not trivial as a typical day involves meeting business leaders, delivering one or several keynotes, participation at conferences, meeting government officials (usually Presidents or Ministers) and meeting with social sector leaders. Craig has a passion for activities that have a profound impact on societies, such as his passion for education.  Craig, a former Stanford University professor, has an outstanding passion for education.  Education is perhaps the most relevant activity that Governments, individuals and organizations have to engage on for a true transformation of society. 

After the early morning briefings take place, and then is time to execute a precisely developed agenda. Every minute of the day is accounted for and Craig and the team go through the day going from one high impact activity to the next.  The people that participate on those activities are fascinating, true leaders in a multiple array of fields.  They can be as diverse as 16 year old Maria Estela Godinez or President Michelle Bachelet in Chile. They can be as spontaneous as a homeless child in Lima or as polished as the Minister of Communications in any country in South America.  Craig meets with all of them, listens to what they have to say and in many different ways offers help to solve their problems.  People can easily approach him as there are no artificial barriers around him. 

At the end of the week, we are left with an impressive number of accomplishments.  Most of them focused on helping improve people’s lives.  A good deal of them focused on the four pillars of the Intel World Ahead Program (a program to embrace the next billon Internet users in Emerging Countries): Access to Technology, Connectivity, Education and Content.  We could build many PowerPoint slides and hours about this, but the reality is that what is in the minds of tour participants on Friday night are simply faces.  The faces of the kids, Presidents, Ministers and social leaders.  The face of the Parintins major crying. The face of the ISEF winners in Brasil. The face of the kids in Parintins building content out of the Internet for the first time.  The face of the Chilean entrepreneur woman that started poor and with two kids to sustain and now owns a successful small business.  Those are the faces that we will have on our minds when we remember the 2006 tour. 

And here is the data so you can get a good idea out of the trip:

• Countries: Four
• Cities: Eight. Cartagena, Bogotá, Lima, Parintins, Manaus, Sao Paulo, Campinas and Santiago.
  
• Number of Miles traveled:  15,850 miles, roughly equivalent to 25,500 km.
• Presidents met: 2. Peru’s Alan García and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet.
• Minister’s met:  Ministers of Communications and Education met in all countries, with the exception of Brasil, in which we only met with Minister of Education and Chile in which we only met with the Communications Minister.
• Number of keynotes: Five
• Major Education announcements:
• Intel Teach announced in Perú.
• Digital City in Parintins offers internet broadband access to two schools and one community center, all hooked up with WiMax.
• Five years of Intel Education Programs are celebrated in Brasil.
• Intel announces donation of 9,000 PCs for Education Programs, including 7,500 for the Universidade Aberta project.
• Chile’s first public school linked with WiMax is unveiled on the municipality of Peñalolén. 
• Major WiMax Announcements
• WiMax announcement with Orbitel in Colombia
• The Most Remote Digital City in the World is unveiled in Parintins
• First public school connected with WiMax in Chile
• Memorable events:
• The gathering of around 100 people for the Digital Leaders Forum
• The closing event of the Digital Leaders Forum with a 180 people dance group to close it out.
• Passing through the Peruvian Andes.
• Getting late to our appointment with President Alan Garcia, due to time waiting in customs.  President Garcia was kind enough to modify his agenda to meet us and was very engaged in all the topics discussed with him.
• Everything that had to do with Parintins: form the amazing trip by plane between Manaus to Parintins to the time we left the island.  Parintins is truly a magical place to visit.
• The Five year celebration of our Educational Programs in Brasil.
• The Chilean Keynote with the mayor of Peñalolén and the many different education and business leaders.
• Having lunch with Educational leaders in the heart of the Cousiño Macul winery and vineyard, right in the city of Santiago.
• Meeting with President Bachelet, who was kind enough to meet us despite the fact that she had just arrived to Santiago from the UN Summit hours before our meeting.
• The wine tasting at the end of the week that Craig missed due to his flight back to the United States.
• Other fun facts:
• Listening to Vallenatos in a private reception by the Santos Family in Cartagena, Colombia.
• Wearing a Guayabera in Cartagena (Craig and all of us).
• Avoiding wearing anything red or blue in Parintins. Red and Blue are the colors of the two local teams that compete every year at the Boi Bum-Bá festival. It will be politically incorrect to wear anything of just one of the colors. Even Coca Cola knows this, just see the picture below.
• Drinking water like crazy in Parintins and Manaus. Weather was very hot and humid in the area.
• Listening to One Night in Rio. Jim introduced this song to the team. It is a great song by Louie Austen that we played again and again and again… Here is a link to Louie’s myspace page.  Just click on the “One Night in Rio” link at the MP3 Player in the upper right. I bet you'll like it from the first time you hear it.

Coca-Cola car in Parintins.  The rivalry between the red and blue teams runs deep, so companies avoid using just one color to avoid being insensitive.  Here is perhaps the only blue and red Coke logo in the world.

Related Posts:

- Digital Leaders Forum kicked off by Government and Interamerican Development Bank Officials

- A new leader has emerged: Maria Estela Godinez

- Parintins, Brasil: Most Remote Digital City in the World

Posted by rcarreon at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Even before reaching Parintins I was very excited about coming to this place.  Parintins is perhaps one of the most isolated medium-sized cities in the world.  This week, thanks to a major effort by Intel and many other organizations, the city received an investment that is going to change its life forever.  The investment is the kind of effort that shows very effectively how technology can be used to improve people’s lives in emerging markets.

Parintins is a city of more than a hundred and fourteen thousand inhabitants.  It is an island in the middle of the Amazon, the world’s largest reserve of sweet water.  There is no highway or bridge into Parintins, the only way to reach the island is by taking a 15 hour boat from Manaus or by taking a plane into the city’s airport.  Despite its size, there is only one small community hospital in the island and furthermore, there are only 32 doctors to serve its people ---  a ratio of one doctor for more than 3,500 people.   There are 190 schools in the island and more than 2/3rds of them don’t have electricity.  Only one of them was hooked to the Internet.

Despite its infrastructure challenges, Parintins has won national fame in Brasil by hosting a local festival called Boi Bum-Bá (a fantasy derived by the mixture of Indian and European cultures that revolves around a bull). The festival lasts for three days at the end of June and the beginning of July.  The festival is a competition between two teams for the best fantasy, which includes music, singing, customs, fireworks and of course, dancing.  Think of it as some sort of a smaller version of the Carnaval of Rio. But don’t think that small means low quality; the Boi Bum-Bá festival is a world class cultural event that attracts more people from around the world every year. The whole city is engaged in the festival, half of the city in the red team and the other on the blue team.  They live their passion as much as the Brasilian soccer fans do for their national team.

On this place, Intel worked to establish a Digital City with an impressive array of partners.  The idea was to establish a proof of concept, an implementation in a city that was so challenging that if the concept could work here, it could work in any village around the world. Intel was joined by the following organizations for this project: Cisco, CPqD, Embratel, Proxim, the Bradesco Foundation, the State and Federal Universities of the Amazon state and the University of Sao Paulo.

The set up in Parintins includes a WiMax tower that hooks the island to the world as well as five sites that are linked to that tower.  The five sites are two public schools, one community center, one community clinic and one site of the state University.  The two schools and the community center now have Internet rooms hooked with brand new computers using WiMax wireless broadband access.  The clinic has a world class telemedicine set up where people can access specialists on Manaus or even São Paulo via high resolution cameras connected to the Internet.  The Parintins site is connected to the state University of the Amazon and the State University of Sao Paulo, both well advanced on telemedicine.

After we arrived today, the people on town performed a small version of their Boi Bum-Bá festival with kids to celebrate the occasion.  You could see it, not only in the eyes of the kids that they were grateful to receive this infrastructure.  The whole town was very excited about it.  So excited, that the mayor of the town cried when he delivered the speech to publicly recognize Intel for its contribution.  Kids that prior to this week had no experience with a PC were skillfully building power point presentations with pictures, animation and hyperlinks to Wikipedia.  The education in the town has been changed forever.

The whole set up in Parintins took six week to be implemented.  About 10 people from the Intel Latin America team engaged with a larger number of people from ecosystem partners and government officials that graciously dedicated time and effort to set this up over six weeks.  The challenges were many to do this; for starters, some of the sites to receive the investment lacked electricity, a service that was donated by the municipality. If we take into account that we were literally starting from scratch, then we can see how massive an achievement was to deliver the Digital City of Parintins.

Parintins is now a reality and we have learned what it takes to deliver a Digital City in a very challenging set up.  The model is ready to be exported. The plan is now to go and replicate this around emerging regions in the world, including Latin America.  All of this is a part of the Intel World Ahead Initiative, an Intel initiative to embrace the next billion users of technology, the large majority of them from emerging markets.  Just by looking at the people in Parintins, is easy to see that the emerging world is ready to adopt technology to improve their lives and aspire to a better future.

Photos (pass the mouse over picture to see description):

Links to word wide press articles:

-         San Francisco Chronicle: Helping Amazon’s Wireless Net

-         cNet: Intel builds Internet City on Amazon Island

-         Parintins.com: Parintins para o mundo,  via Intel (em português)

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Meet Maria Estela Godinez.  She is 16 years old and like many girls her age she still has that shyness that is reflected in her smile and the look of her eyes.  She smiles candidly and lowers the gaze as she says that she is nervous about what is about to happen in Cartagena, Colombia.  Maybe she does have a reason to be shy, as she is about to address a group of the brightest leaders that influence IT&C policy in the Americas.

She has been invited here to participate in Craig R. Barrett’s keynote at the Digital Leaders Forum.  Craig will urge the audience to “Expand what is Possible” and her story has a lot to do with this.

Maria Estela’s story began long before this week.  She is currently studying high school in her hometown San Francisco del Rincón, México.  San Francisco del Rincón is a small shoemaker town that is very close to the city of León in the state of Guanajuato, deep in the central area called El Bajío.  She comes from a family of six and her mother is a single parent that takes care of the whole family.  Maria Estela’s passion is electronics.  She built a project about a year ago that later got transformed into something more meaningful over time.

Maria Estela built a glove that allows speech-challenged people to move their fingers in a similar fashion to Braille language and have those signals recognized by software that converts them into speech.  She did it all by herself  (hardware and software) with the help of teachers and mentors.  She did such a great job that she went on to win three awards this spring at ISEF, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair that Intel sponsors every year. Maria Estela won two awards for Computer Science (one in the individual category and another one in the overall category beating the winner in the group category) and won the IEEE award as well.

Maria Estela recalls how when they announced the winner in the first category, the announcer couldn’t quite pronounce the name of her town well.  The person presenting the award said “San Francisco…” and hesitated to say “del Rincón”.  In the mean time the San Francisco, California team began to scream and celebrate… only to hear her name as the winner. 

She went on stage when Craig invited her up.  The only truly familiar face in the crowd was her mother.  She went on stage confidently and started to tell her story.  She told Craig about her project and demonstrated how the electronic glove works.  As she made every move everybody was fascinated with her story.  Colombia’s Minister of Communications began to cry in her front row seat; deeply touched, as most of us were.  We were all listening to every word she said.  When she was done, we all cheered her with a warm ovation.  She smiled candidly and went back to her chair, smiling with a different smile than before the keynote.

At the end of her presentation a new leader had emerged, the youngest of the leaders at the forum.  She and Craig were very busy posing for pictures with the other leaders at their request.  She had clearly stolen everybody’s hearts.  In the end--- and it is not that difficult to understand why--- she showed everybody that expanding what’s possible is actually not just a cliché.  It is quite simply what we all can aspire to when we are empowered by the right education, passion, and a strong determination to succeed.

Pictures:

Maria Estela before the presentation. 

Maria Estela on stage explaining her project.

Maria Estela, her mom and Craig R. Barrett.

Maria Estela interviewed after the keynote explains her technology to a group of very interested journalists and conference participants.

Posted by rcarreon at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

The Digital Leaders Latin American Forum on ICT competitiveness was kicked off by key Government officials in Cartagena, Colombia today.  The Forum, known for short as DLF gathers leaders from all sectors of the economy in the Americas.  A hundred Government Officials, Company Executives, Multilateral Organizations and NGOs from 19 countries in the Americas will discuss how to effectively promote Government policy to foster Digital Inclusion and increase competitiveness to the Latin American Region.

The Digital Leaders Forum is an initiative by Intel, which is being joined by Latin American Governments and muiltinational organizations such as the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), the United Nations and World Bank.

The forum proceedings were formally opened this morning by Kevin Casas, Vice President of Costa Rica; Dra. Maria Guerra, Minister of Communications of Colombia; Dra. Cecilia Maria Velez, Minister of Education of Colombia and Dr. Luis Guillermo Echeverri, Executive Director of IDB.

Here are some pictures of the Opening Ceremony (pass the mouse over the picture for the name of the speaker).

And to close, I'd like to recall Kevin Casas' closing comments. He talked about how Cartagena played a key role on the times of the Spanish colony. Cartagena was one of the key ports to ship gold and silver to Spain.  He said that today the ideas out of DLF will change the world in a far more dramatic way that gold and silver did in past. And we cannot agree more with Kevin.

Stories coming soon:

- Craig Barrett's keynote speech

- The youngest Digital leader at the Digital Leaders Forum

Posted by rcarreon at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

 Everything is ready for the most relevant event to discuss Digital Inclusion and how to use technology to promote competitiveness and growth in Latin America.  Tomorrow, Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett will kick off the Digital Leaders Forum with the presence of leaders from 17 countries in the Americas.  The group of leaders comes from many different organizations, including Government, Academy, Private Enterprise and NGOs.

The website of the event is accesible here.  Ricardo's Blog will report the major developments on the forum live starting tomorrow.

Related Posts:

- Live coverage for Craig R. Barrett Latin America tour and Intel Developer forum in the next two weeks here

Posted by rcarreon at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the next two weeks, Ricardo’s Blog will have continuous live coverage of two major technology events.  Starting next week, we will have coverage of Craig R. Barrett’s annual Latin America tour. The Intel Chairman will have a busy week next week with major events in Colombia, Peru, Brasil and Chile. And two weeks from now, Ricardo’s Blog will be live and on the scene for one of the main technology events in the planet: Intel Developer Forum.  

Craig R. Barrett was earlier this year named Chairman of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development.  This trip is the first he does outside of the US as Chairman of UN GAID.  He will kick start the week meeting with more than 100 technology leaders from 13 countries in Latin America in Cartagena Colombia.  This event, called the Digital Leaders Forum, will be focused on the Digital Divide and how to raise the level of competitiveness in Latin American by addressing this issue.  Craig will also host a major activity of Intel’s World Ahead Program in the City of Parintins.  Parintins is a city inside of an island in the middle of the Amazonian river. Intel joined by many Industry partners will announce a major project to link the city’s schools, governmental offices and health care centers to the internet using WiMax technology. Craig will also celebrate the 5^th anniversary of Intel Teach program in Brasil and meet with major Governmental and Educational Authorities.

At Intel Developer Forum, Intel presents major product launches and strategic product direction for the years to come.  This year’s conference will be held on the City of San Francisco and Ricardo’s Blog will be there to cover the event live.  Please stay tuned to postings of major announcements, key notes and other relevant information coming out of IDF.

To make it easier to browse the site, I am adding the following tags to this blog: Intel, Intel Developer Forum, IDF, Craig R. Barrett, CRB.  Please look for them here or in Technorati as you search for related news.

Any interest on syndication of content, please let me know.  You can find my e-mail on mybloglog profile.

Posted by rcarreon at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)