OLPC News December 2006

A New Year's Resolution: Write for OLPC News

Posted on December 31, 2006 by Wayan Vota in About OLPC News, Commentary: OLPC News

Do you follow the One Laptop Per Child program daily? Did you review the Sugar UI or dream about Chidlren's Machine XO educational content? Better yet, might you be current on Nicholas Negroponte's talks or live in an implementation country?

And can you express your learned opinions and ideas blog-style? In on-topic posts of 200-400 words, complete with quotes, links, and photos. Delving into OLPC community use cases or financial donors with unique insight and first-person knowledge.

Is this you, writing for OLPC News?

Best of all, can you defend your conclusions in the comments sections of your posts and whole other websites without falling prey to comment trolls?

Then its time you made your New Year's Resolution: Add your voice to One Laptop Per Child News!

Everyone from the OLPC leadership to national news media reads OLPC News. Leading websites regularly republish our scoops. Controversial posts have altered the conversation around the OLPC program and ideas and memes from the site have entered the vocabulary of other OLPC followers.

In fact, the site is so insightful and so influential, that key players can't believe that it's just the humble work of Jon, David, and I.

And we are looking for new voices, new views, new optimism about the Children's Machine XO to join our successful enterprise. Writers who can add to the commentary and discussion of One Laptop Per Child with clear, concise posts that need not agree with OLPC, Jon, David, or me.

Better yet, don't agree with our love of the technology yet skepticism about the implemention. Have your own views, logic, emotion, and when needed, controversy. Bring diversity to OLPC News.

And bring your writing to the forefront of the international OLPC debate. Email a starter post and being the conversation.

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New Year's Eve OLPC Party-Time with Max Headroom

Posted on December 30, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Software: Third Party, Prototypes: XO

H-H-Hello children of the world!

While its New Year's Eve to us, moments away from 2007, for the OLPC Children's Machine XO its time to remember the 80's. Specifically, Max Headroom, the '80s icon, cyberpunk legend and advertising avatar. And what does Max say?

W-W-Welcome to Max Headroom on Gnash!

That's right, camera-quick Quinn has captured a photo of Max running on the One Laptop Per Child via Gnash, the GNU Flash movie player.

Now children in the developing world can watch the latest Flash movies, from JibJab comedies to Brain Pop edu-toons on the OLPC XO-1. Or as Walter Bender says in this week's Laptop News:

With a working Flash tool-chain, it will be very easy to script new applications and small games; and many early education tools designed to be cross-platform by working in flash will become available to us. Rob [Savoye] is taking on new staff and looking for interface developers; he wants to give Ming a GUI and to set up a cross-compiling environment for OLPC to help future work

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And the Internet-is-Evil Fear-Mongering Starts

Posted on December 29, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Implementation: Plan, Commentary: Press

While Nicholas Negroponte spends most of the recent "Poor rural Thai students to get 100-dollar laptop" Agence France-Presse article trying to put a positive spin on the bad news from Thailand, Nareerat Wiriyapong interjected a little bit of hysteria at the end.

Included in an otherwise bland "Where is OLPC today" article was this choice bit of fear-mongering about the big, bad boogieman of the Internet: child pornography.

Who we should all protect

The OLPC initiative has been welcomed by many, but some activists have expressed reservations. For instance, campaigners have raised the fear that children could fall prey to sexual exploitation through webcams and unsupervised Internet access. International children's watchdog ECPAT urged OLPC organisers to make people aware of the dangers.

"One Laptop per Child ... must incorporate curricula and training for teachers and children on measures for protection from exploitation via information communication technology," the group said in a report launched December 19.

While no one is suggesting that child exploitation isn't a real danger, let's keep it in perspective. Child exploitation isn't new, isn't unique, and isn't exclusive to the Internet or laptops.

The use of children in roles way beyond their years, in despicable acts from soldiers to sex slaves has happened throughout human history, regardless of country or technology. It will be reduced or eliminated through social changes, political will, and cultural forces way beyond the humble One Laptop Per Child program.

If anything, the OLPC XO may be a positive force, a way for children to report on what is happening to them for a wider audience. Imagine a sex abuse case, student-reported, appearing on the OLPC Nightly News. Or a global One Video Conference Per Child on child labour.

Still, ECPAT does have a point: One Laptop Per Child could do more to help foster their laptops as a positive force in local communities. They could develop a OLPC cultural integration plan where everyone, from parents to educators is taught to be aware of what students are doing on and offline with the Children's Machine XO.

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A Tardy Christmas Present: Squeak Etoys Tutorial

Posted on December 28, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Software: Applications, Content: Education

What do you think of Squeak Etoys? Better yet, what do you even know of Squeak? Or Etoys? Were you aware it was inspired by LOGO, PARC-Smalltalk, Hypercard, and starLOGO?

And as LOGO seems to be one of the base inspirations for One laptop Per Child, what Seymour Papert used in his initial "learn learning" programs with children, might you want a tutorial of how it's used on the OLPC XO?

If so, you are in luck with this tardy Christmas present. A Squeak Etoys tutorial for OLPC on YouTube:

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The OLPC Children's Machine XO as a Party Favor

Posted on December 27, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Community

With the One Laptop Per Child prototypes spreading far and wide, geeks are starting to get their game on with them. First we had Doom on the OLPC XO and just recently, Super Mario 3.

And now we have a whole other game for the Children's Machine XO: the laptop party favor. Colin Charles had a Christmas Party invite that bragged:

"If anyone’s reading blogs on Christmas Eve (go out, already!) the annual Open House at my place will happen on Christmas Day, from 12-4pm. Do come by for great food, cookies & cakes, and I hear there shall be a demo of an OLPC as well!"

While that's pretty innocent, you know there were and will be others not so subtle. Times and places where the laptop will be the focus of attention and desire, the lure geeks will use to attract those they wish to impress.

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A OLPC News Christmas Present: One Laptop Per Child Talks

Posted on December 25, 2006 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, People: Negroponte, Commentary: OLPC News

Do you wonder what Nicholas Negroponte really thinks about the goals of One Laptop Per Child? Would you want to read what he says about the role of teachers in education? Or maybe what Walter Bender might say (or not) about the real cost of a Children's Machine XO?

And maybe you, like I, are more a visual than auditory learner, with type transferring more understanding than voice. Then may I have the honor to present to you, via the micro-jobbers at Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and a few weeks of code and upload, a special Christmas present: One Laptop Per Child Talks.

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An Early Christmas Present: Super Mario Brothers 3 on OLPC

Posted on December 23, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Content: Games, Software: Third Party

Merry Christmas old school gamers! We now have a second 1990's flashback game on the OLPC: Super Mario Brothers 3 from the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

It's only too bad that like the One Laptop Per Child developers who ported DOOM on the OLPC XO, Brad Morgan seems to have forgotten his gaming roots. While the game skill is not impressive, their technical skills are.

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A Holiday Wish: One Laptop Per Nepali Child

Posted on December 22, 2006 by Guest Writer in Countries: Nepal

I am Shankar Pokharel, President, One Laptop Per Child Nepal. I present to you why I am working towards one laptop per child:

The Goal

Nepal has committed to achieve universal primary education by 2015. At the current rate we're moving, we're not going to make it. The key challenges are to get educators and educational materials out to remote areas. We can't truck in books because there are no roads. We can't convince enough teachers to go live in these harsh places.

It would be much easier and cheaper to send a hundred laptops than a thousand books. A hundred laptops don't replace math teachers but they are better than no math education at all.

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Tags: OLPC | One Laptop Per Child | One Laptop Per Child Nepal | Shankar Pokharel |

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An ImportantGift or Clever OLPC Children's Machine XO Scam?

Posted on December 21, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Donors, People: Negroponte, Sales Talk: Price

Since the beginning, One Laptop Per Child has actively discouraged both individual donations and individual sponsorship of OLPC Children's Machine XO laptops. From the OLPC Wiki where they say that only governments can buy laptops, and only then in units of 1 million, to Nicholas Negroponte's dismissal of Mike Liveright PledgeBank 2 for 1 pledge:

"This site had nothing to do with OLPC, was set up without our knowledge and was not a good idea. Well meaning people can create backfires."

In fact, while Negroponte promised eBay sales there still isn't a way to directly link any payment with a specific OLPC XO delivery.

That is unless you believe Changing The Present, a website run by ImportantGifts, Inc, which professes to be an organization that allows you to donate to multiple charities through their online catalog of charitable gift ideas. Of unique interest is their Equip Children: One Laptop Per Child page.

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One to One Video Conferencing Per Child

Posted on December 21, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Community, Hardware: Peripherals, Software: Third Party

While Christopher Blizzard points to the initial trick by Robert McQueen, it will take a Geek-to-English dictionary to sort out how Robert got video conferencing on the OLPC XO via Telepathy VOIP/IM:

Using telepathy-gabble's (our XMPP backend) Jingle implementation, and telepathy-stream-engine with the Farsight GStreamer RTP library, we got a bidirectional voice/video call going pretty quickly

Now that was a decent hack in itself - video conferencing on a 400Mhz AMD Geode processor - but it wasn't until a week later that Robert went from OLPC to standard laptop video conferencing, to full fledged OLPC XO-1 to OLPC XO-1 simultaneous audio and video transfer.

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Opera on the XO

Posted on December 20, 2006 by Jon Camfield in Software: Applications, Software: Third Party

Håkon Wium Lie of Opera got special package this week and the folks at Opera have been entranced by the Green Machine and by getting the Opera Browser - a non-open source browser, running on it.

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Your OLPC XO-Included e-Book Wish List

Posted on December 20, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Content: Reference, Content: eBooks

The previously dormant OLPC Library newsgroup, a forum to discuss "content collections for OLPCs, both software and booklike" came alive recently with emails by past and present librarians, looking for the content organization of the OLPC XO.

The first email was from Jim Pace, a former librarian, who shared his hope, one we can all ascribe to:

Years ago I thought E-books would take off and revolutionize the dissemination of information, especially with the development of E-paper at Zerox PARC. But I was wrong. Perhaps this laptop project will do what E-Books did not: Bring the world's collected knowledge to a significant portion of the world's population. A public library in every citizen's pocket.

And such a noble goal is also in the minds of One Laptop Per Child.

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Open Source OLPC Software and Hardware

Posted on December 19, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Business, Hardware: Production, Software: Third Party

Congratulations to Realtek Semiconductor! It's the sole clock generator IC supplier for One Laptop Per Child, and due to Quanta Computer's 10 million unit production goals, Digitimes reports:

Realtek Semiconductor is expected to see its clock generator shipments grow by 40% on year to 40 million units in 2007

.While this is an amazing windfall for Realtek, it makes you wonder about the other side of the equation, the local suppliers OLPC will destroy.

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The Children's Machine XO: Not The Only Low Cost Computer

Posted on December 18, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Prototypes: OLPC

While we debate the merits of the OLPC XO and how it might compare to the Classmate PC or the Mobilis in Brazil, do note that there are multiple low cost computing devices for the developing world.

Thankfully, the World Bank's infoDev group has developed a Quick guide to low-cost computing devices and initiatives for the developing world. To quote from their list:

These projects run the gamut from small research projects at universities to field-based experiments run by NGOs to commercial products from small start-ups and large multinationals.

Products are in various stages of development; while most are still in the prototyping and/or beta-testing stages, some are already in the market (and some, it should be noted, have been discontinued).

They come in many form factors: Some look like conventional PCs or laptops, others look more like PDAs or phones, and some are somewhere in between.

As you wander through the list, be sure to check out some of the more interesting and competitive ideas to One Laptop Per Child.

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Uruguay: We Wanna Beat Argentina and Brazil to OLPC!

Posted on December 17, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Countries, Countries: Uruguay

Rumors first whispered by David de Ugarte are now confirmed: Uruguay will be joining Brazil and Argentina in implementing One Laptop Per Child nationwide. Implementing OLPC XO's for many reasons, primarily you might assume being children's education.

That is unless you read the official announcement by Tabaré Vázquez, President of Uruguay. There you'll note one reason he mentions and stresses isn't education per sea, but beating Argentina and Brazil in implementation:

But we wanted to show to them how Uruguay, just as Brazil and Argentina, is in the stage of initial launching of this project. So that Uruguay counts on certain privileges to advance in this project with respect to other countries, even countries of the region.

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Potenco's String Power Generators: For You, Me, and OLPC

Posted on December 15, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Power Supply

Do you remember when Nicholas Negroponte revealed the string generator mock-ups at the "AMD Global Vision Conference" in September?

The images of Squid Labs' devices were tantalizing as One Laptop Per Child claims in a Technology Review article that:

Users will be able to operate the generator in a variety of ways, including holding the device (the size of two hockey pucks) in one hand and pulling the string with the other, or clamping the generator to a desk, attaching the string to one foot, and using leg power.

To reach the project's goal of one minute of power generation for every ten minutes of laptop use, the generator would need to produce 20 watts (the laptop will require less than two watts in a primary application as an electronic textbook replacement).

While we still don't know the technical specifications of the OLPC power supply, Squid Labs has realized its commercial potential. Say hello to Potenco, the Squid Labs offshoot that promised a financial windfall as it energizes the developing world.

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One Laptop Per T.C. Williams High School Student

Posted on December 14, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Education, Commentary: Press, Countries: USA

I wonder that Nicholas Negroponte thinks of Tara Bahrampour's "For Some, Laptops Don't Compute" article in the Washington Post? From the title, he can expect it to be a slightly negative take on laptops in education, and the beginning does not bode well.

But before Negroponte dismisses Bahrampour's description of T.C. Williams High School's leap into the future of education, he should note the reasons why it seems a negative take on the one laptop per child idea: the lack of initial teacher training and a misguided reliance of technology as a cure all.

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Implementation Cost Follow-Up to NewsForge & Slashdot

Posted on December 12, 2006 by Jon Camfield in Implementation: Plan, Commentary: Press, Sales Talk: Price

Now that esteemed websites like NewsForge are assessing the true cost of One Laptop Per Child and the debate has expanded on the related websiteSlashdot , I'd like to expand on my comments in the article and others' comments on Slashdot.

First off, like the rest of OLPC News, I actually embrace the OLPC's goal, love the technology, and hope it succeeds. But as an avid F/OSS evangelist and Ubuntu user my main concern is that this is untested technology and methodology with unrealistic cost estimates.

If all goes well, One Laptop Per Child will revolutionize education worldwide. If it doesn't go well, poor nations may go irrecoverably into debt and will turn away from information technology projects, especially F/OSS projects, for decades to come.

This leads to my main point, and the argument I will continue to make - OLPC should enable and encourage manageable pilot projects within each country, and let countries make informed decisions on further implementation. Unfortunately, to date Nicholas Negroponte has said OLPC Children's Machine XO pilots are ridiculous.

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OLPC Nightly News: Crowd Sourced CNN

Posted on December 11, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: China, Use Cases: Community

Skipping over the OLPC implementation plan realities for a moment, imagine a world where many students have a Children's Machine XO. A world described by The NewsCloud Blog.

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OLPC XO BTest-1 Hardware and Software Release Notes

Posted on December 09, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Keyboard, Hardware: Screen, Hardware: Wireless, Prototypes: XO

Even though the OLPC XO is real, and we have solid Sugar UI reviews, do note that the current crop of laptops are a beta test of fully functional Children's Machine XO hardware and the software is alpha test. What might that mean? To quote the BTest-1 release Notes:

Most of our effort to date has been consumed by basic device support as well as putting together the basic user interface framework for children, which has known performance problems. Major components are as yet not complete: power management and the wiki editing system to name two large components. Enough is now present to begin to sketch the outline of where we believe the children's software should go: enabling the construction of software in which children and teachers can easily collaborate is central to our vision. Children should not be passive receivers of "content" but creators as well.

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Solemn Prayers for Seymour Papert

Posted on December 07, 2006 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership

Maybe unbeknownst to you, as much as I dismiss Nicholas Negroponte's expansive ego or Seymour Papert's "Constructionist" ideals, I do respect the men for their respective accomplishments. And when I note on Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth that Papert was hit by a motorcycle in Hanoi and is now in a coma after undergoing emergency neurosurgery at French Hospital, I do feel great sadness.

May he soon regain his faculties and return to the One Laptop Per Child program. The OLPC implementation miracle needs him, now, more than ever.

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Now its a Three Way Race in Brazil: OLPC + Intel + Mobilis

Posted on December 07, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Brazil

When you read about the Brazilian implementation plan challenge: OLPC XO vs. Classmate PC, did you wonder what third platform Alan Clendenning (AP) referenced when he said:

The government plans to test the Intel laptop along side the One Laptop Per Child model and a third computer being offered by an Indian company, said Jose Aquino, a special assistant to Silva.

What was your first guess as to the Dark Horse candidate? Maybe India's $10 dollar computer vaporware? Or did you think of the Simputer? If so, you'd be close.

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Nicholas Negroponte on OLPC XO vs. Classmate PC

Posted on December 07, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Intel, People: Negroponte, Implementation: Plan

Last week when Nicholas Negroponte announced that there would be OLPC XO's in Argentina, 50 now, 500 in December, he had an interesting interview with Dominio Digital TV.

At 4:50 in the implementation plans of the OLPC XO and Intel Classmate PC.

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Implementation Plan Challenge: OLPC XO vs. Classmate PC

Posted on December 07, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Brazil, Sales Talk: Intel, Implementation: Plan, Prototypes: XO

Back in October we reported that there would be a OLPC Children's Machine XO vs. Intel Classmate PC battle in Brazil. Now that Intel has upped the ante and donated 700+ Classmates, folks are starting to compare the two laptop's feature set.

But don't be mislead by megabytes or operating systems. If you just look at the technology, the OLPC is far superior; it is truly a revolution in laptop design, not Intel's small evolution. Better yet, don't even focus on the technology at all. Take Nicholas Negroponte's advice - think about the two systems as education projects, not laptop projects.

Then you'll really note the starkly different implementation approaches between Intel and One Laptop Per Child.

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Your independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop" computer, the OLPC Children's Machine XO, developed by MIT Media Lab co-founder Nicholas Negroponte.