OLPC News November 2007

Peace In Our Time Between OLPC and Intel?

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Countries: India, Sales Talk: Intel

Can't we all just get along?

ICT4Dev expert Cheri Voisine has just found an interesting paragraph in an Economic Times article about One Laptop Per Child's tumulus relationship with Intel Corporation:

Intel, which has its own low-cost laptops called Classmate PC, became an OLPC member in July this year. Consequently, a clear demarcation has been agreed upon by OLPC and Intel, according to which the XO laptop will cater to students in class I-VI while Intel’s Classmate PC will cater to students in the classes above that.

Could this be the way Nichols Negroponte plans to create peace with OLPC? Divide-up the educational laptop market in India with Intel.

If so, the general idea of technology transition does make sense. Young children in preschool to primary/elementary school would use XO laptops. Around middle school, they would transfer to Classmate PC, and by high school, they could be using a Asus Eee PC or even a "fully-featured" computer.

We need not to live by the "Tyranny of the Or". In fact, Intel vs. OLPC can be a beneficial laptop competition that produces better technology for everyone.

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OLPC Community Learning Club in Washington DC

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: G1G1, Commentary: OLPC News, Countries: USA, Use Cases: User Groups

Getting our XO-1 geek on in DC

While I love the idea of empowering education with technology, and the XO laptop is clock-stopping hot, I worry that the lack of local user groups - champions of OLPC and innovators of OLPC uses - could diminish the impact of One Laptop Per Child.

I call on us, the OLPC community of geeks, parents, believers, to pick up the Constructionist ideas where OLPC has left off - at the local implementation level. Personally, I find the idea of co-learning with others through the XO very compelling and want to make sure that learning together is central to effective educational uses for XO technology.

Here in Washington DC, I'd like to announce the OLPC Learning Club, a local group of XO laptop enthusiasts committed to co-learning, hacking, and expanding the One laptop Per Child computational experience.

OLPC LC/DC has three simple goals:

co-learning on the XO - be it with each other, our children, or other interested parties.
hacking the XO - add new activities, actions, and uses from software to case mods.
expanding the XO - both the concept of expanding its uses but also expanding its audience and users

If you too believe that the One Laptop Per Child laptop, the Children's Machine XO is a revolution in education and technology, then please join us:

Let us spread education, one laptop at a time, starting with our Holiday Meetup on December 18th (note the date change).

Just to be clear, OLPC Learning Club - Washington DC is independent from the One Laptop Per Child organization. It's a grassroots effort to make change happen without hubris.

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Is OLPC the Only Hope to Eliminate Poverty and Create Peace?

Posted on November 30, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, People: Negroponte, Commentary: Press

Wow! OLPC Foundation now has its own YouTube channel and Nicholas Negroponte has just gone off the deep end of hubris. In his flagship video on why governments should spend millions on the XO laptop when their population may be poor, starving, or even lack clean water, Negroponte has announced that:

[The XO laptop] is probably the only hope. I don’t want to place too much on OLPC, but if I really had to look at how to eliminate poverty, create peace, and work on the environment, I can't think of a better way to do it.

I love me some clock stopping hot XO technology, but an instant middle class? World peace? An end to global warming? Might that be a bit of a stretch for a little green computer? And a slight egotistical leap for a MIT professor?

I say we take this conversation to the comments section, where we can make OLPC News in the mold of Walter Bender's XO-enabled classroom:

We're giving them this environment where they can be expressive, they can be critics, they can engage in discourse and dialogue, and beat up on ideas, and that is where learning happens.

Especially since OLPC has turned off comments on the videos themselves - stifling the very debate they promote.

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OLPC Community Map

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Community, Sales Talk: G1G1, Countries: USA

Thanks to Joe we now have a OLPC Community Frapper map for the XO Donors to One Laptop Per Child's Give One Get One Program:

If you ♥ OLPC be sure to add yourself today!

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Good Luck to eBay's XO Laptop Resellers

Posted on November 29, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: G1G1, Sales Talk: Price, Countries: USA

Were you thinking of getting rich of One Laptop Per Child's G1G1 sales by selling your XO -1 laptop on eBay like SIGN Foundation and Sunny East Treasures did?

Well I hate to kill your sure-fire money maker, but eBay has pulled all the XO laptop ads. Is eBay, a co-sponsor of OLPC, somehow trying to protect the spirit of Give One Get One by purposely de-listing XO-1 ads?

I've heard the reason the sellers couldn't eBay OLPC is because they violated eBay's Pre-Sale Policy

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Are You a Cool "First Day" G1G1 Donor Too?

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: G1G1, Countries: USA, Laptops: XO-1

I want my XO laptop!

Are you G1G1 cool? Did you just get a "first day" donor email from One Laptop per Child that says:

Thanks to your early action, your XO laptop is scheduled to be delivered between December 14 and December 24. Our "first day" donors are our highest priority and we are making every effort to deliver your XO laptop(s) as soon as possible. We will send you an update upon shipment.

If you did, give a shout out in the comments below with your order date. Let's see who is going to be the first kids on their block to get an OLPC XO laptop.

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A Mom's Worries on Children + OLPC + Internet = Bad Things

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Internet: Access, Use Cases: Community, Countries: USA

Whatcha doing there, Gabe?

Over on the OLPC Developers listserv, there is an interesting discussion around a very simple worry: Will using the XO laptop harm my child? Betty Dingus's friend says:

"My biggest concern about the XO is protecting my children:
from predators, etc. on the Internet or who get into the "mesh",
from accidentally or purposefully getting inappropriate emails and ads and
from accidentally or purposefully accessing inappropriate web sites.
I wonder if it's possible, when I'm not around to supervise, for me to remove access to email and the Internet

Now Betty's friend has read about OLPC's porn problem, but she's not focused on that or even the child molester boogeyman that's always trotted out with people think kids + Internet.

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OLPC is About Collaboration, Not Cheating

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Edward Cherlin in Commentary: Academia, Content: Education, Use Cases: Education

Ed Cherlin in OLPC action

I am Edward Cherlin and I think the OLPC program is astonishing in its goals, even if some doubt its ability to perform. It proposes to educate up to a billion children with the latest in technology and information, and to some degree their families as well.

OLPC aims to add several percent to annual economic growth in the developing countries, with spillovers to the developed countries that will have the opportunity to supply technology and we don't even know what else. (This is not officially stated, but I infer it from the goal of ending poverty. If anybody wants, I can run the numbers in a future article.)

The XO will provide more access to health information than we could dream of a few years ago. Of course, we don't yet know who will make that information available in local languages, nor who will access what parts of it and put it to use. The XO will let the children and their communities talk together all over the world, if they want to, and who knows what that might lead to?

XO Collaboration

But today, I am voting for a different aspect of the program as potentially the most astonishing. The XO laptop software is set up for collaboration. Several children can sign on to the same instance of a Sugar activity, including paint, music, write, browse, and program. In some cases, many children--entire classrooms or entire schools. And there are games, of course.

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Laptop Mag's OLPC XO vs Asus Eee PC Bake Off

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Intel, Commentary: Press, Laptops: XO-1

Do you remember Nicholas Negroponte's arrogant resistance to competition in the WSJ OLPC smackdown?

At a meeting this month in Cambridge, Mass., with representatives of Macedonia's government, Mr. Negroponte balked at authorizing a pilot project there after learning that officials also were considering testing the Classmate. He told them he didn't want to participate in a "bake-off."

Low cost computing bake off

Despite Negroponte's aversion to pilot testing the kids over at Laptop Mag took matters into their own hands with a OLPC XO vs. Asus Eee PC 701 bake off of their very own. Here's the crib sheet results:

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Nigerian Patent Infringement Lawsuit: Scam or Shame?

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Christoph Derndorfer in Hardware: Keyboard, Countries: Nigeria, Laptops: XO-1

Original XO or infringed IP?

Now I'm not quite sure what to make of this at the moment but a United States-based Nigerian-owned company has sued OLPC for an alleged patent infringement about multilingual keyboard technology. As MarketWire.com puts it:

The patent infringement lawsuit was filed on November 22nd, 2007 as a result of OLPC's willful infringement of LANCOR's Nigeria Registered Design Patent # RD8489 and illegal reverse engineering of its keyboard driver source codes for use in the XO Laptops.

More specifically LANCOR claims that:

...OLPC purchased two KONYIN Multilingual Keyboard models (KONYIN Nigeria Multilingual Keyboard and KONYIN United States Multilingual Keyboard) with the express purpose of illegally reverse engineering the source codes for use in OLPC's XO Laptops.

After reading that story I went to look for the Nigerian Patent Office's website,

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All Education and Educational Decisions are Local, Not Federal

Posted on November 27, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Education, Countries: India, Countries: Nigeria, Countries: Peru, Commentary: Press

Yesterday's Boston Globe had an telling juxtaposition of Iqbal Quadir of the wildly successful GrameenPhone and Nicholas Negroponte of the wildly publicized One Laptop Per Child. Like last week's WSJ article, Negroponte again came off looking the fool. Why? Because he ignored local user groups in favor of dealing with governments - federal governments. Now let's have Iqbal Quadir give the money quote on why GrameenPhone is a success and OLPC isn't:

"I have learned from history that actually, the countries that are developed, where governments behave and serve the public, are those where the citizens have empowered themselves through technologies and business,"

So let us take a tour of XO laptop users where citizens have empowered themselves through technologies, through education, to form more holistic communities. First up, a news report on OLPC Peru's Una computadora por niño program in Institución Educativa Santiago Apostol de Arahuay

.

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Want $100 XO Laptop? Sell Your T-Mobile HotSpot Subscription

Posted on November 26, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Internet: Access, Use Cases: Business, Sales Talk: G1G1, Countries: USA

In the midst of the OLPC tax deduction discussion commentary, Aaron Peterson altered me to an interesting way to make the One Laptop Per Child Give One Get One drop the price of the XO laptop to $100: sell your HotSpot access.

Let's do $100 laptop math:

Buy an XO laptop via G1G1 for $400
Sell your T-Mobile HotSpot access code for $300
Your XO laptop final price: $100

Better yet, you can follow the lead of others, and eBay your XO for $600, pocketing a sweet $500 per laptop.

Repeat a few hundred times and you've made your bank for Christmas shopping and helped spread technology to children worldwide.

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OLPC Education Project Should Take an Opportunity to Learn

Posted on November 26, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Education, People: Leadership, Implementation: Plan, Commentary: Press

This email from Mike C. Fletcher was original published on the OLPC Developers listserv and is republished here with Mike's permission

XO laptop hardware focus

Obviously conflict sells stories best, so I won't attack the [Wall Street Journal] author for playing it up. That said, there were issues brought up that we should discuss rather than simply dismissing because the person bringing it up (in this case) had to sell a few papers.

The best friend you have in a design project is the harshest critic available. As long as their critique is fair, we should listen carefully to it.

Much of the stuff I'm discussing below has already been started, or is under-way. I'm just suggesting that we keep it in mind a few things that the article points out...

It's not About the Hardware:

The XO hardware is wonderful, but in the end, it's not the key thing. While it may be able to go into areas that another machine can't go, there are lots of areas that any machine can go into. We are an educational project, and while the screen makes a superlatively good textbook reader, the case is reasonably weather-resistant, and the battery life is good (but not yet so good that it's a killer feature), it is not true that every ministry of education will choose to go with "our" hardware.

Our hardware may have advantages, but it is just a (fairly generic) vehicle for accessing software, content and people, and if countries want to choose another project's hardware, more power to them.[As Nicholas has explicitly stated on a number of occasions.]

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Internet Archive Loves the XO Laptop eBook Reader

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Software: Applications, Content: Reference, Hardware: Screen, Content: eBooks

Recently, Steve Cisler, went to the headquarters of the Internet Archive, an Internet library with permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

The Internet Archive is a great resource for exploring the digital past, and was a fellow Tech Award Laureate in 2007.

More to the point, the Internet Archive ♥ One Laptop Per Child's wondrous eBook technology. Just check out Steve's video about his trip:

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WSJ: OLPC XO Laptop Threatened by Intel & Microsoft

Posted on November 24, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: Countries, Sales Talk: Intel, People: Negroponte, Countries: Nigeria, Commentary: Press, Software: Windows

Today's Wall Street Journal front page has long article on One Laptop Per Child: A Little Laptop With Big Ambitions. In it, Steve Stecklow takes the position that a computer for the poor was stomped by tech giants:

I'd like to take the position that if OLPC is getting stomped (and I don't think its being "stomped" at all), its due to its own foolishness and arrogance, as much or more than any underhanded competition from Intel or Microsoft.

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Real Geek Accessories: OLPC T-Shirts & XO Laptop Bags

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Countries: Austria, Use Cases: Business, Sales Talk: Products, Countries: USA

Official OLPC T-shirt, modeled

In the midst of your Black Friday shopping spree, don't go spending your entire Christmas budget buying XO laptops on eBay. Do hold back a buck or two for the other geek must-have this shopping season: OLPC T-shirts and laptop bags.

First up, Todd Kelsey put together a CafePress shop with OLPC logo t-shirts. Nice but they'll never make you look geek chic hot.

That can only be achieved if your attire is distinctive like a Tuquito t-shirt that I've wanted for a few months now, or OLPC Austria's black is the new black XO logo understatement.

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A Black Friday for OLPC's G1G1 XO Laptop Pricing

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Sales Talk: G1G1, Countries: USA

Now that's a laptop deal!

The Black Friday retail therapy celebration is upon America today. A mass orgy of conspicuous consumption every Friday after Thanksgiving that makes MasterCard proud. One Laptop Per Child should be proud too.

The Give One Get One XO laptop sale has been a roaring success. By our calculations, OLPC has sold 100,000 XO computers in the past 10 days. OLPC even extended G1G1 through December 31 and gone global. But will OLPC sell any XO's today?

First off we have the great Black Friday Doorbuster deals, like $299 Compaq Presario or $399 Toshiba Satellite 15.4" Widescreen Laptops.

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Exciting Updates About Give 1, Get 1 Going to December 31

Posted on November 22, 2007 by Christoph Derndorfer in Sales Talk: Donors, Sales Talk: G1G1, Laptops: XO-1

Earlier this morning Wayan mentioned that G1G1 was going global, if you can provide them with a shipping address within the US or Canada that is.

Additionally this morning OLPC issued a press-release that says that Give 1, Get 1 has been extended until December, 31st!

Now everyone can have one!

One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing every child in the world access to new channels of learning, sharing and self-expression, is extending its recently launched Give One Get One program beyond the initial two-week limited time offer through December 31, 2007, in the USA and Canada.

The extended period gives people more time to participate in this unique giving program and support the mission of One Laptop per Child.

But that press-release also contained another piece of very interesting information:

To date, donations to the Give One Get One program have averaged US$2 million per day.

Breaking down that figure reveals that about 5000 donations were made per day, which translates into 5000 "given" machines and 5000 "gotten" machines for a total of ~100.000 X0s purchased so far in the past 10 days. If you extrapolate those number until the end of the year we could see up to around 500.000 X0 sales just via G1G1.

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Giving Thanks for Give One Get One XO Laptops Going Global!!

Posted on November 22, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Countries, Sales Talk: G1G1, Countries: USA, Laptops: XO-1

Today is the American holiday of Thanksgiving - a day we give thanks for the bounty in our lives. And today I give thanks to One Laptop Per Child for opening up Give One Get One XO laptop sales to the world.

Now you can G1G1 in Europe, Asia, Africa & Americas with a major F.A.Q. change

:

If I live outside of the US or Canada, may I participate in Give One Get One?

Yes, but only if you provide a shipping address within the US or Canada. To participate, please call 1-949-608-2865. International calling charges will apply.

Geeks worldwide, you read that right, G1G1 is now global! Now everyone can participate in the geek dream of 2007: One Laptop Per Child XO-1 computer ownership regardless of country or currency.

And why did this change happen? OLPC might have their story already set, but I say G1G1 changed because Gabriel Morales's desire to have One Laptop Per Child XO-1 laptop for all children became a global issue that demanded attention.

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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.