OLPC News August 2007

Quanta to Sell XO Laptops Outside of OLPC Organization

Posted on August 31, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Countries, Hardware: Production, Countries: USA

Qaunta's OLPC Production Line

Why did Quanta Computer start production of One Laptop Per Child's "$100 laptop", the XO-1, when Nicholas Negroponte's promised 10 million units dropped to 1 million units, with only 250,000 confimed sold?

I assumed that Michael Wang, Quanta's outgoing President, was looking at developing commercial versions of our favorite low-cost laptop, based on his previous comments around OLPC XO USA sales. But with his departure, I wondered if that idea would hold.

EMS Now is reporting that the idea is not only holding through Wang's departure, Quanta may even be looking to sell XO laptop variants outside of the One Laptop Per Child organization:

Components suppliers for Quanta's XOs said that that Quanta appears to be exploring new markets independently by promoting the models to schools in developed countries. [...]

In addition to Quanta itself, its clients also are highly interested in introducing the XOs into schools and are about to contract Quanta for assembling the models. Nevertheless, they have to wait till next year, when Quanta will have started delivering such models, due to a contract clause forbidding Quanta to supply the models to others.

Do they need OLPC to use XO?

If Quanta does sell XO laptops independent of OLPC, would that satisfy the original mission of the "$100 laptop" designers: spreading Constructionism through XO's?

Could Nicholas Negroponte feel his idea a success if children in America or Europe were "learning learning" instead of students in the developing world? Will Mary Lou Jepsen feel well-deserved pride if her dual mode screen is in commercial low-cost computers?

Regardless of who Quanta sells to, IDG News says Quanta is on target to produce around one million OLPC X0's in 2007 even with supply shortages in the computer manufacturing value chain.

Not even an earthquake can stop the Children's Machine positive impact on Taiwanese component suppliers - the first One Laptop Per Child beneficiaries.

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Google gPhone: A One Laptop Per Child Competitor?!

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Business, Sales Talk: Competition, Commentary: Press

Much is being made of Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins' comments that his "Deep Throat" connection on the Google gPhone says:

the thought process behind [gPhone's] functionality is less about beating the iPhone and more about beating the $100 Laptop, which provides a huge clue behind what will be the pricing structure on this.

There are those, like Om Malik, who are going on about how that comment must mean that Google is going to compete with One Laptop Per Child, a program it sponsors:

By tightly integrating the Google Apps, Google Phone could become a viable rival to the much ballyhooed $100 PC being promoted by everyone from Nicholas Negroponte and Microsoft (MSFT), and will also over come the connectivity problem facing most of the $100 PC schemes.

Its only too bad that Todd, one of Gigaom's commenters, has to point out what Om missed but dedicated OLPC News readers already know:

Anyone who claims they have the next OLPC killer because they have some sub $100 piece of HW that runs some productivity applications has clearly not personally worked with the XO.

I have had the privileged, and like others who have also, the first thing you notice is that it is a collaboration tool presently optimized for education. It does not do the greatest job with PIM/desktop tasks because it was not designed for techno-gadget craving, white-collar workers.

Have an educator do a review on the g-phone and then I might listen.

Or you can go back to the follow up on Mark's original post for clarification that his source wasn't talking about a gPhone vs. OLPC XO rivalry, but that a gPhone would be like the OLPC, a low cost, but not low functionality, computing device:

Can gPhone better an OLPC ebook?

He clarified that it's more of a long term possibility (based on functionality) of this device rather than an original design strategy. Development on this began, as I understand it, before both the $100 Laptop and the iPhone hit the market.

Regardless, as Google's primary source of revenue continues to be advertising, I can still easily see them subsidizing purchase of the phone and attempting to recoup investment off ad revenue.

And if you think about the developing world, this makes total sense. Currently, cellular phones are high-cost purchases of limited technology devices.

In most countries, you can talk, text 120 characters, and maybe send a ring tone, but photos, email, or high-speed web surfing are all either non-existent or too expensive for widespread adoption.

But if Google could monetize those eyeballs, there would be a great opportunity for mobile phone operators to expand service offerings and reduce prices. Yet, I doubt any country, community, family, would want their children's eyes monetized in the classroom.

Nor would a cell phone come close to the functionality and educational empowerment of a Children's' Machine XO laptop. So for all the hoopla, everyone can chill out. The gPhone isn't going to be a "$100 laptop" replacement anytime soon.

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OLPC News One Year Anniversary

Posted on August 29, 2007 by Wayan Vota in About OLPC News

Wayan Vota of OLPC News

Can you believe that your favorite independent source for news, information, commentary, and discussion of One Laptop Per Child "$100 laptop" is one year old this week?

Was it really just a year ago that we jumped onto the OLPC stage with the news of The Children's Machine 1 name change? Could we have grown from a handful of itinerant readers and three writers to over 1,500 decided daily viewers and a whole crew of contributors?

I am still in shock that OLPC News has propelled me into the blogging big leagues with this humble effort. Did I actually get on Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon or 60 Minutes with Leslie Stall?

And can I count the following well-regarded personalities and experts as the newest wave of OLPC News participants? I am honored to say that I can and do, and I introduce them with great respect and reverence:

Leon Aaron Kaplan studies math and computer sciences in Vienna, Austria. He is from the generation when network access was still extremely expensive in Vienna before the big internet boom.

He is Unix user and programmer since 4.3BSD-Lite / ~ FreeBSD 1.x. He has been working for major telecoms, IBM, ESA, banks and the oil industry mostly doing Unix consulting/programming since 1997. Aaron is also one of the founders of the FunkFeuer, the first fully meshed, wireless community network in Austria.

Currently Aaron is working on the OLSR-NG project in order to enhance the possibilities and scalability of the OLSR (RFC 3626) mesh routing protocol. He also recently founded the local Austrian OLPC grassroots group in order to push the OLPC vision further towards reality. OLPC still has a long way to go, and Aaron hopes to give people the opportunity to help in speeding up this process.
Martin Woodhouse is 75 this month and has what used, in his youth, to be called "a butterfly mind." He has degrees in medicine, surgery and Applied Psychology from Cambridge (UK), has written eleven novels, and many film and television scripts including 'The Avengers.'

He regards himself essentially as a lightweight in the IT field, though he built his first computer in 1957 at the Medical Research Council and, while drafted into the RAF, designed the guidance system for the Bloodhound missile. He has also been at various time a milkman, a cab driver, a neuro-anatomist, a night-club owner, a furniture remover and a collector of bats for a group of Canadian zoologists in Grenada, West Indies.
Dr. Robert Kozma is an independent consultant and an Emeritus Director and Principal Scientist at the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. Previously, he was a professor and a research scientist at the University of Michigan. He started his career as a primary school teacher in Detroit.

He is a recognized expert on the use of technology to improve educational systems and connect to development goals. His expertise includes ICT policy that links education reform to economic and social development, international educational technology research, the evaluation of large-scale technology-based education reform programs, the use of technology to improve learning.

Most recently, he provided pro-bono consulting to rural villages in Africa on the role that ICT can play in supporting poverty reduction and development.
Robert Arrowsmith is from Australia and thinks techno-education will save the World. He just completed a very successful five year technical production contract with a fiber-optic broadband systems manufacturer.

Previously he spent ten years in project development for a security systems manufacturer and managed an R&D company for five years developing concept-to-prototype technologies for clients. Currently he is a partner in a web hosting company, manages a home based computer repair business, and has been writing technical documentation and the odd sci-fi story every now and then.

Receiving a good education and having a love for books and writing at an early age helped him develop, while his parents nurtured an interest in electronics and engineering. With no formal education he taught himself computers, which makes him realize that a mind altering project like the OLPC has the potential of techno-education to millions of children around the World.
Alec McLure, a native of Venezuela who now lives in Rhode Island, currently works in Health Informatics as a product manager. He does translation and interpretation work on the side and, through that, serendipitously stumbled onto OLPCNews and the OLPC project.

Although he has worked as an English & Spanish language instructor and served a long stint as a software trainer for adult learners he has no current direct involvement in education. He is fascinated by the OLPC concept and the bridging of the technology gap - knowing that his own early experience many years ago with a Radio Shack TRS-80 was pivotal.
Duke Crawford thinks communications technologies are cool; maybe they can help us connect, work together better and get smarter; maybe kids growing up learning each others' languages might grow up not wanting to kill each other.

Duke works at ReaD.fm, to connect people with opportunities in language learning and invites the world to help make, own, promote, use and improve tools for language learners; starting with technologies like wixi.

If ReaD.fm can make some money, it will invest an increasing share of profits in literacy programs, encouraging more readers and a more educated populace.

Now that you're as in awe of the OLPC News contributors as I am, its time for you to write for OLPC News too.

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OLPC Oceania's Participatory Development Implementation Plan

Posted on August 28, 2007 by Guest Writer in Use Cases: Community, Countries: Oceania, Implementation: Plan

A typical OLPC Oceania school bus

I am David Leeming, Project Manager, Distance Learning Centres Project (DLCP), and Technical Advisor, People First Network (PFnet). I've been asked to repost comments that I made in reply to the OLPC Oceania post, and am doing so also to clarify some slight inaccuracies. Firstly, our pilot is not yet underway. However, I can outline our thinking and I hope that this contribution to the debate is helpful. I have to first describe some background to the initiative. The OLPC Oceania group is developing a regional plan linked to the Pacific Islands Forum's Digital and Youth Strategies, with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) taking a lead role. We're not the only group working on OLPC in the region - we hope we can combine our various strengths and experiences.

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One INDEX Award Per XO Laptop Design Team

Posted on August 27, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, Commentary: Press, Laptops: XO-1

Congratulations to the One Laptop Per Child developers for winning the prestigious INDEX: AWARD, the self-described "biggest design award in the world" and a purse of €100,000.

INDEX honored OLPC for the XO laptop, believing it will increase the number of children who interact with computers, because:

Without a computer-literate population, developing countries will continue to struggle to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy.

Interestingly, the INDEX international jury chose to honor a number of OLPC participants as winners, not just the usual OLPC leadership. Check out their long list of contributors:

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OLPC Oceania: Solomon Islands XO-1 Laptop Pilot

Posted on August 23, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Oceania, Implementation: Plan, Laptops: XO-1

OLPC Oceania in action

Congratulations OLPC Oceania! What was once just a South Pacific publicity tour with BTest-2 "$100 laptops" has now grown into a full-fledged pilot deployment of 20 XO computers to test constructionist learning on the Solomon Islands.

OLPC Oceania, with Pipol Fastaem, hopes that Children's Machines will improve education, literacy and life long learning of students beyond current satellite receiving stations, and if pilot testing of One Laptop Per Child is successful, they would expand one-to-one computing across the Solomon Island education system.

But unlike Nicholas Negroponte's grand hope for a "Big Bang" rollout - all computers to all children all at once - OLPC Oceania's locally-designed distribution model is taking a much more logical, pragmatic, and measured approach

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One DC Power Input Connector Per XO-1 Laptop

Posted on August 22, 2007 by Guest Writer in Hardware: Peripherals, Hardware: Power Supply

OLPC DC power input port

Much has been written here on OLPC News concerning any and all technical aspects of the XO computer. I am Benjamin Nead, an itinerant tinkerer in the broadcasting industry, and I tend to think that just about anybody that takes a critical look at this remarkable machine from afar typically walks away quite impressed with what has been accomplished by the OLPC consortium.

That it has been developed "behind open doors" makes the entire engineering aspect project all the more impressive. Indeed, one can visit the official OLPC web site and study all the details of the XO that one could possibly ask for . . . except, curiously enough, for a rather important one: the size and polarity of the DC power input plug.

For the record, the official OLPC Hardware Specifications web page has basic electronic criteria, but there's almost nothing in regards to the mechanical aspect of the connector itself

"Power: 2-pin DC -input, 10 to 20 V usable, -50 to 39 V safe, one- time fuse for excessive input"

If one were to visit a typical electronic supply store (which may or may not be conveniently located in one of the various third world countries where the XO will be showing up) and ask for a "2-pin DC -input" connector - or any DC connector, for that matter - the first words from the salesperson behind the counter will be "Which one?", as there is a rather large variety to choose from.

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A Missing OLPC Product: One Printer Per School

Posted on August 21, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Peripherals, Sales Talk: Products, Content: eBooks

OLPC XO: printed

As I was printing out Steve Cisler's excellent ebook reader, and there could even be a Library of Alexandria's worth of electronic content, but nothing beats the printed word. Especially when you want to spread your ideas, dreams, or just classroom writings with those in the offline world, like parents, teachers, community members or secondary school admissions counselors. As Steve says in his evaluation:

In order for teachers to take the information they find online or on the CD-ROMs I recommend extra resources for printing black and white documents, diagrams, and maps that can be taken to the coordinating centers by the CCTs or directly to the schools by teachers. There must be ways of delivering information even where no ICT exists.

And yet there isn't a printer in the OLPC product mix.

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OLPC's Ivan Krstić: 2007 TR35 Award Winner

Posted on August 20, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, Software: Operating System, Commentary: Press

How would you secure this?

Congratulations to Ivan Krstić, Director of OLPC Security Architecture, he's been recognized by Technology Review as as one of the world's top innovators under the age of 35 for his innovative One Laptop Per Child Bitfrost security platform.

As the glowing TR35 profile says:

Instead of blocking specific viruses, the system sequesters every program on the computer in a separate virtual operating system, preventing any program from damaging the computer, stealing files, or spying on the user. Viruses are left isolated and impotent, unable to execute their code. "This defeats the entire purpose of writing a virus," says Krstic.

Some in the Linux community are so impressed with this novel approach to fighting malicious code that they have proposed making it part of the Linux standard.

Reading the Bitfrost Approach I can only wish that more computer security design professionals, be they specialists in Windows, Apple, or Linux, would follow Ivan Krstić's lead. His five security goals are radical, simple, and long overdue

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OLPC Nigeria's Shocking Electrical Power Costs

Posted on August 16, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Implementation: Maintenance, Countries: Nigeria, Hardware: Power Supply

Low OLPC XO transportation costs

Do you remember Jon's computation of One Laptop Per Child "$100 laptop" costs that concluded that XO's are really "$1,000 laptops"? Or the implementation cost follow-up where we debated the estimate in detail? Or José Antonio Meira da Rocha's OLPC Brazil laptop costs comparison study?

Jon's general point was that computer hardware is usually only one small component of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for technology implementations in the developing world. Training, maintenance, and Internet connectivity can drastically increase a project's scope and expense

Expenses in follow-on years are even more difficult to cover when the initial excitement of new shiny flashy things has past. Now that the initial fanfare around the One Laptop Per Child pilot testing in Galadima School, Abuja, Nigeria is waning, OLPC Nigeria is starting to learn this lesson with a cost we didn't include: electricity.

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One Commercial Opportunity Per Child

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Donors, Sales Talk: Products

OLPC XO Nasdaq Math?

What if you sat down with a marketing representative from Coca Cola or Adidas or any of the many multinational companies and offered them unprecedented exposure to children in the developing world? The next generation of consumers who are increasing their purchasing power and branded products consumption at exponential rates.

Do you think they would salivate at the opportunity to shape buying habits of tomorrow's affluents? That's the question Nat Torkington posed on O'Riley Radar with this conclusion:

We should see some things:
Companies sponsoring curriculum materials. ("Jenda has five delicious smoky Marlboro cigarettes ...")
Companies building applications such as casual games for the OLPC platform (e.g., by taking the OLPC programming tutorial at OSCON)
Companies stepping up to fund the distribution of these machines to kids, as a way of raising brand awareness.
But I haven't seen these things.

.

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Does Toshiba's Portégé R500 Display XO Dual Mode Screens?

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Production, Sales Talk: Products, Hardware: Screen

Do you remember Mary Lou Jepsen's OLPC product roadmap, where she hinted at XO technologies spreading out into commercial laptops in 2008? Well it looks like Toshiba might be a little ahead of One Laptop Per Child in commercializing the innovative dual mode screen if you read the Portégé R500 press release:

The Portégé R500 Series is the world’s first notebook computer to incorporate a widescreen 12.1-inch indoor/outdoor transreflective LED backlit display. This unique innovation is ideal for usage in virtually any type of lighting condition, including direct sunlight. Indoors, the LED backlit display produces an image, rich in color saturation and superb quality. Outdoors, the transreflective screen uses natural sunlight to bring the display’s colors and images to life.

Doesn't that 1,280 x 800 WXGA display sound suspiciously like the Jepsen-design screen that Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) has an exclusive manufacturing licensee to produce?

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Children's Reviews of OLPC XO Technology

Posted on August 13, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Implementation: Maintenance, Laptops: XO-1

Gabe, focused on XO activities

While we can endlessly debate One Laptop Per Child on OLPC News, what really matters will be the opinions and adoption of XO technology by children. And recently children have been expressing their views on the matter.

First up is Chris Schmidt's experience with giving an OLPC XO to a friend's young son:

I snapped a dozen pictures of Gabe (mercy_rain's son) and SJ Klein (OLPC Manager of Content) with the OLPC.

Note that Gabe had never seen one of these things before, and with practically no help from the adults, he had started painting, typing, and playing with the webcam, cackling quite evilly the whole time.

The photo set is damn cute, a visual statement to the XO's appeal.

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One Intel Inside Laptop Per Child

Posted on August 10, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Intel, Hardware: School Servers, Laptops: XO-2

No matter how you feel about Teemu Leinonen's suggestion that One Laptop Per Child should use Participatory Design in developing a XO-2, it looks like Intel Corporation is already pre-participating in the next generation of OLPC products. Just read their OLPC + Intel announcement closely:

Q: How will OLPC work with Intel technology?

A: Initially, OLPC is planning to add Intel Xeon processor based servers to their product offerings, taking advantage of world class performance, reliability and energy efficiency. In addition, Intel is developing a system board design for OLPC consideration in their next generation XO device.

We are also beginning to explore more wide ranging technology and product collaboration that will bring exciting new technology innovations to children around the world.

Reading that, I say bye-bye to the current XSX school server motherboard, a fanless Mini-ITX from VIA Technologies. I also see the next generation XO-2 dropping the XO-1's AMD Geode LX-700 processor for Intel’s 2008 Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform.

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An XO Oscilloscope to Measure Children's OLPC Learning

Posted on August 09, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Software: Applications, Content: Education, Hardware: Peripherals

OLPC XO's TamTam in action

When designing the XO computer, One Laptop Per Child designed the sound card to be able to measure DC voltages. Now why would the talented team behind the "$100 laptop" go to the trouble of hacking an audio jack microphone into a data port? Maybe they had the same revelation as Martin Visser did:

A colleague of mine who has quite a few OLPCs, mainly for testing the wireless stuff out, told of the absolutely clever analog input port the OLPC has. Not content with a regular AC microphone input, it can be configured in two other modes. One is a straight DC input that can measure between 0 and 3VDC. I immediately thought of kids in Africa being able to hack electronics together from old radios and the like and using the OLPC as a simple oscilloscope or voltmeter. The other analog input puts 2.5V and allows you to measure across this. This means a simple potentiometer can be read. Great for all sorts of science experiments, but also a good way of providing another interface to control the Tamtam musical instruments.

Taking this idea a step further in his comment on Building One Laptop Per Socialized Child, Nick explains how children could use cheap sensors to learn about electricity:

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Participation Design of OLPC XO-2: With And For People

Posted on August 08, 2007 by Guest Writer in Countries: Nigeria, Laptops: XO-2

Is Real Video player educational?

The greatest downsides of the OLPC project has been said to be the total lack of piloting with research on educational impact, as well as lack of curriculum integration and implementation plan. I am Teemu Leinonen and I think these two challenges are obviously interlinked.

The reason for this can be that One Laptop Per Child does not value very high the principles of human-centered design, neither educational planning. Without these pieces in place the claim of OLPC being educational project rather than a laptop project is not very convincing.

It's not a secret that OLPC is a project of technologists, more precisely engineers. It's also known that educators design education, (good) designers design solutions and engineers design technology. We may ask what OLPC laptop is? Is it education solution or technology?

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OLPC China: Laptop Competition in the Middle Kingdom

Posted on August 06, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: China, Sales Talk: Countries, Prototypes: OLPC

Tianhua GX-IC is OLPC competition?

While we salivate at the idea of Christmas OLPC XO sales, other countries might not have the same One Laptop Per (Adult) Child dreams as your standard American geek. For example, China, an early OLPC dream gone sour, may still be ambivalent about XO technology if Shanghiist is right.

Starting off with the obvious need for cheap laptop options in a nation of rich coastal province, yet poor hinterlands where two hundred million people earn less than a dollar a day, Mathew Seigal goes on to list a familiar reason behind OLPC resistance:

We're totally behind the charitable aims of Negroponte's project, but we're not sure you can turn children into geniuses just by throwing computer equipment at them. If that was the case then UK state-run schools would be teaming with little Einsteins. The UK spent billions on IT investment before they started to realise that they had to retrain teachers and reinvent learning methods.

He then goes on to list the many options that Chinese parents (and kids at heart) have in the affordable computing space.

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Joel Stanley's OLPC Job: Baking and Breaking Invincible XO-1

Posted on August 06, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Keyboard, Implementation: Maintenance, Hardware: Screen, Laptops: XO-1

Cooking clock-stopping hot XO's

Image yourself as 21-year-old Australian Joel Stanley, who not only snagged a coveted Google Summer of Code (GSoC) spot, he is spending his internship at One Laptop Per Child's Cambridge headquarters developing "gang charger" power systems for the XO-1 laptop.

While he's lucky to be designing one of the OLPC Products, the gang charger units will recharge multiple XO laptops at one time via grid, solar, or other power source, I don't think that's the coolest part of his day.

I say its baking OLPC's with Arjun Sarual in a food warming oven. Walter Bender reports that:

The oven is large enough to house eight fully opened XOs and allows us to examine the behavior of the laptops under temperatures ranging from a warm 40°C, up to a toasty 60°C and above. Some preliminary tests were conducted, examining the operation of the battery charging systems under the extreme heat that may be encountered by, say, a laptop sitting in full sunlight.

One motivation for this testing is that the NiMH batteries that are used in some of the XOs lose the ability to be charged above 55°C. (The newer LiFePO4 technology allows charging above these temperatures, for when the need arises.) We are pleased to report the XOs ran flawlessly in the extreme heat, even when the oven's unpredictable thermostat inadvertently allowed the temperature to reach 68°C.

Yet you might think that Joel has an even cooler job in XO computer maintenance.

Continue reading "

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.