Bill Gates promises Finnish schools will get free use of new service platform

print this

Continuing his trip in the United States, the Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre) paid a visit to the headquarters of Microsoft Corporation in Seattle on Thursday and met with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
     
In the course of the meeting, Gates promised that Finland would get an opportunity to implement a program called Windows Live@edu free of charge at its secondary schools. According to CEO Ari Rahkonen from Microsoft Finland, the value of the program is several tens of millions euros.
      The software can be tailored to give individual students free e-mail and other services, while one of the goals will be to encourage cooperation between parents and schools.
      The Live@edu project is the first of its kind worldwide, and PM Vanhanen noted that it meets well the goals set for the Finnish information society.
     
Prior to the meeting with Bill Gates, Matti Vanhanen had an opportunity to take a look at the Microsoft home of the future, featuring a number of future consumer technology concepts. For example, there was a table top screen in the kitchen where one can have recipes displayed to help cooking.
      In addition, PM Vanhanen also became acquainted with some other computer wizards on the US West Coast. On Wednesday he met with Sergei Brin and Larry Page, the founders of the Google search engine company, as well as some other managers of the firm.
      In the course of the visit, even Finland’s Jokela shooting incident from last autumn came up. The case was also well known at Google, where the related news has been monitored closely.
      "I encouraged them [the Google management] to look for some methods to recognize suspicious messages on the Internet", said Vanhanen.
      According to Vanhanen, this issue has been discussed at Google, and "they already have certain ideas relating to the handling of the problem", Vanhanen concluded.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Prime Minister Vanhanen meets Governor Schwarzenegger in California (17.1.2008)
  Vanhanen meets with Dick Cheney in Washington (16.1.2008)

Links:
  Microsoft
  Finnish Government: Prime Minister Vanhanen´s visit to the United States

Helsingin Sanomat