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:

Yes, that's Brewster Kahle rhapsodizing about the 200dpi dual mode XO screen and how it can render book scans beautifully, showing the actual design of the book. He estimates that any book can be an electronic book for about $10-20 - doesn't that make you want to donate $100 to digitize your favorite books?

And I have to agree with Brewster, OLPC has designed a convenient, mass produced, inexpensive, and open ebook platform. He is right to say that the XO laptop may be the best opportunity to get a digital Library of Alexandria to the world.

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Posted on October 01, 2007 by Guest Writer in Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Screen, Use Cases: Technology

This entry was first published on IT Redux. It's posted here with Ismael Ghalimi's permission.

olpc redux

I am Ismael Ghalimi and I am leading the effort to create Redux Model 1, an experimental device built for the Office 2.0 Conference.

When I first suggested the idea for the Redux Model 1, several people recommended that I start from an existing platform, instead of building the device from scratch.

Among the suggested candidates, the OLPC XO came highly praised, especially from my friend Darius Clarke. Unfortunately, it was not distributed to the general public, therefore could not be used as sacrificial starting point.

With the recent announcement of the Give 1 Get 1 program whereby you can buy two XO laptops for $399 and have one donated to a child, this situation has changed, and we are seriously considering using Negroponte's marvelous little machine for our Mini Tablet.

Unlike the Neo 1973 that we are also considering as a viable platform for our project, the OLPC XO has been designed has a scaled down laptop, not a beefed up phone. Nevertheless, so much attention has been given to power management that it would certainly match our requirements. The display is especially interesting. It uses a technology developed exclusively for the OLPC XO that allows it to be used either in reflective monochrome mode or transmissive color mode.

Using the former, power consumption drops from 0.2-1.0 Watt to a meager 0.1 Watt, and resolution goes up from 800 x 600 to 1200 x 900, which translates into a 200 dpi pixel density on this 7" display, higher than the first laser printer I used. Another interesting innovation is the ability to leave the display on while the CPU is off, reducing power consumption even more.

Using the OLPC XO as foundation would bring the following benefits over the Neo 1973:

  • Ultra low cost ($200 with large LCD display vs. $300 without)
  • High resolution display (1200 x 900)
  • Reflective display option (very low power consumption)
  • Mesh networking capabilities
  • 1GB NAND flash
  • Built-in camera (640 x 480 at 30 FPS)
  • Support for 3G cellular networks
  • Support for Adobe Flash
  • Enhanced software stack

Assuming that we could source 2,500 units, some work would be required to turn the XO laptop into a Mini Tablet, without having to make any significant modifications to the XO's logic board. Here is a first list of things that would need to be figured out:

olpc dual mode screen
The swank OLPC XO-1 screen

Touchscreen
First, we would need to turn the display into a touchscreen. This has been done by Axiotron for the ModBook, using a sacrificial MacBook and technology from WACOM, but it requires the use of a special pen, while we want a simpler finger-based interface, ideally supporting multi-touch gestures.

Two main technologies could be used: a resistive film or a capacitive glass panel. A resistive film is relatively cheap and very thin (1-3.5 mm), but offers only 75% to 85% clarity. A capacitive glass panel is more expansive and a lot thicker (3.5-4.5 mm), but offers close to perfect clarity. Technology for the touchscreen could be sourced from Touch International. This component should add less than $50 to the cost of the device.

Cellular Modem
Second, we need to add a cellular modem to the platform. We could either add a standard ExpressCard/34 slot into which users could slide their modem of choice, or use an embedded modem such as one of Novatel's Expedite Modules. This second option might be preferred, for it would allow us to reduce the device's dimensions and embed the modem's antenna into the tablet's case.

Novatel's modules are especially attractive because they all natively support the Linux operating system, and are available for both the North American (EU860D) and the European (EU870D) markets, supporting HSPDA, UMTS, GPRS, and EDGE networks. This component would add about $200 to the cost of the device.

Assisted GPS
Now that we've been dreaming about some cool location-aware applications, the GPS appears to be a must-have feature. For this purpose, a module based on SiRF's SiRFstarIII GSC3LT seems to be the way to go. It would provide excellent performance, very low power consumption (50 mW for continuous tracking at 1 Hz), power regulation, and multimode A-GPS. It is even WAAS capable, making it extremely useful for pilots. This component should add less than $50 to the cost of the device.

olpc dual mode screen
Pick your XO-1 PC power pack

Battery
The OLPC XO can use either LiFePO4 or NIMH batteries. In order to increase battery life, the Redux Model 1 should use Li-ion batteries though. Based on publicly-available information, it is not clear whether the XO's power controller is located on the main logic board, or on a separate board connecting to the keyboard.

The later would make it easier for us to design a custom board that would include a power controller supporting multiple batteries used in parallel (the magnetic keyboard adds one or two), the cellular modem, and the GPS.

Encasing
Once again, the most challenging task in this project will be the development of an encasing for the device. One of the major drawbacks of using the OLPC XO as base platform is the fact that it's main logic board is very thick. While its outside dimensions should not make it a problem to fit within the half letter footprint we have selected (8.5" x 5.5"), keeping the tablet's thickness under half an inch should be close to impossible.

Based on publicly available information, the OLPC XO display module is less than 6.5" wide, leaving one inch on both sides to fit the cellular modem and GPS modules, but adding the battery, touchscreen and touchscreen controller will most likely drive the tablet's thickness to about 3/4".

All in all, the OLPC XO looks like a perfect candidate platform for our device. We could most likely use its logic board as is, and develop a Mini Tablet that would offer great performance and very long battery life. Benefiting from a large developer community building software for millions of users would also be a plus. At this point, the only thing that might prevent us to go down that path is the impossibility of sourcing 2,500 units, even if we were to offer as many off-the-shelf XO laptops to children.

Any help on this front would be much appreciated…

This entry was first published on IT Redux. It's posted here with Ismael Ghalimi's permission.

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Posted on September 19, 2007 by Martin Woodhouse in Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Screen, Content: eBooks

martin woodhouse
Martin a few years ago

In the company of my young assistant Callum -- aged thirteen, writes PC games in his spare time, holds that the Help button is used only by wimps, and has already emailed Winchester College (which he is about to attend) to make sure that they have a computer-controlled milling machine he can use -- I have taken the battery out of my elderly Toshiba Satellite.

It is 70mm x 18mm x 170mm, weighs 630gms, and has a capacity of 2.8 ampere-hours at 12v, or 33.6 Watt-hours. It is thus something of a brute, lasts about 2 hours in the Satellite, and has an eco-impact -- when we include its disposal -- which I hardly care to think about.

Power consumption in computers is notoriously hard to measure and varies greatly according to what the machine is actually doing from minute to minute. My best guess is that the average laptop consumes between 90 and 120 watts (though a current magazine review of a 'multimedia' laptop quotes a battery life of only 67 minutes!)

Suppose we want to lower power requirement by an order of magnitude? We do this by, among other things: removing all the rotating bits (fans and disk drives); using a low-consumption screen such as Mary Lou Jepson's nice dual mode screen -- 0.1 Watts in standby, up to 1 Watt if fully backlit -- and in particular by specifying software which will allow the processor and other bits to drop back automatically into full 'resting' low-power mode when they're not actually doing anything.

This results -- hey ! -- in the OLPC XO. Which, so far as I can see from various articles here, has a target power consumption of 2 Watts (mean) but has so far reached 9 to 11 Watts. So it has indeed dropped by ten times compared with the average laptop. (Let us not forget, therefore, that, current political and commercial hoo-hah notwithstanding, the XO is a damn good little machine, excellently designed.)

The trouble is that it still needs quite a lot of infrastructure in order to keep its battery charged, small though the power required to do that may be. Hence the often gloomy estimates for its overall costs as part of an actual educational package.

Very well. But now let's suppose we were to reduce the power requirement for a hand-held machine by another order of magnitude, thus targeting a minimum of say 0.2 Watts, a mean over time of perhaps 0.5 Watts and a maximum of 1 Watt or so when running at full chat?

Ten times less than the X0, then, and one hundred times less than the 'standard' laptop? If we can do this, we've entered a whole new country. Because we can now power the machine directly from its own built in solar panel.

This means: no external electrical infrastructure. We still need a small battery, to smooth out the power supplied by the solar cell and to give us a short reserve in case we want to use the device after dark; but this can be very small indeed -- let's say a couple of AAA NiMH cells. Low initial cost, then, and a far smaller ecological imprint.

We can build such a machine, as I think I've shown. Its limitation will be that the 'computing' tasks it can perform will themselves be limited. We can forget the Internet, and forget Windows. The processing overhead -- the 'bloat' -- for these kinds of function will take its power requirement well over the sort of level we're talking about.

What we can make it do, and easily, is read books. That is to say, to perform the relatively simple task of taking pages out of static, low-powered memory, putting them, in colour and with pictures, onto a screen like Mary Lou Jepson's, and arranging -- as the XO does -- to drop the (cheap, slow, low-powered) CPU to 'go to sleep' while it isn't doing this or one of a few other simply tasks like reading a button or searching for a page to display.

To do this, our machine -- it will be a $50 I-Book Reader, and nothing else -- needs its own operating system, its own (very simple) interface, and a supply of illustrated books in colour, in a format tailored for use by that operating system and interface.

It will be, in fact, something like the Illumination E-Book Reader, or "I-Reader".

The books it reads will be Illumination books, in their own format, and occupying around a megabyte or less per book, for a 400-page textbook or a fully-pictorial comic book. So we can fit a thousand or so of these Illumination books, as a library, onto a nice little one-gigabyte card, which we can slot into the side of the I-Reader itself.

Of course, all it will do is read picture books from that library, and we can discuss for a long time whether this is enough to educate a poor and illiterate child, living without shoes or electricity on the edge of the jungle or a desert, or whether these modern times demand that we teach him to access the Internet or perform other 'computing' tasks.

I say that reading is enough. It's exactly what's needed. Far more importantly, its territory is the one Professor Negroponte intended when he set up the OLPC project, but whose children the revamped, all-singing, all-dancing XO will no longer reach.
You can see for yourself the kind of thing it will do for those children.

And, yes, when they have become literate -- with all which that implies in terms of raising their own living standards -- then of course it will be time for them to become computer-skilled as well, using OLPC's laptop.

The I-Reader is not intended to supplant the XO, but to lead up to it.

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

cooking olpc xo computer
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.

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Posted on July 27, 2007 by Martin Woodhouse in Sales Talk: Competition, Use Cases: Education, Hardware: Screen, Content: eBooks

martin woodhouse
Martin Woodhouse's youth
Around two months ago I proposed, in these pages, a $50 e-book reader for distribution to OLPC's (and Nicholas Negroponte's) original target population, the poor of the World who have neither shoes no electricity and for whom 'school' is a scarce and sporadic luxury.

You can go back to my original article to see why I, and now others (including many of you, perhaps) feel that OLPC has lost its way in a street-market of fairly nice, fairly cheap laptops for nice, tidy Asian classrooms. It's enough to note that such is the case.

After my first proposal back then, though, I have been concerned in case it might appear that -- as we say in sunny England -- I am 'all mouth and no trousers'. So, if you will allow me, may I here present an update on where the Illumination Book Reader has got to?

In the past two months, then, I have designed both its interior and exterior, several pictures of which are shown here. It is, as you see, very simple in concept and appearance, with Mary Lou Jepsen's screen on its front, along with four buttons placed so that they are neatly accessible by your thumbs when you are holding the Reader exactly as you would hold a paperback book.

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Posted on July 12, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Business, Hardware: Peripherals, Sales Talk: Price, Sales Talk: Products, Hardware: Screen

Looking at the One Laptop Per Child product roadmap slide that Digitimes captured at Mary Lou Jepsen's keynote presentation at the International Display Manufacturing Conference (IDMC) on July 4th, I was struck by a vision on independence. Just look at the slide - do you see the same vision that I do? A vision of OLPC financial independence!

Do you see what I see? Do you see the One Laptop Per Child Foundation shifting the $30 Billion dollar cost burden from participating countries, all of them financially challenged beyond the capacity to buy one computer per child? Do you see all those commercial products?

We can always start with a commercial version of the OLPC itself, as many of us already have, in our dreams. An XO stepped up to adult computing needs, but sill not the bloatware of a Wintel set-up, priced per the slide at $1,000, but built using the XO cost methods. Right there, OLPC could rack up per-computer profits to buy a whole country's worth of Children's Machines.

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Posted on June 29, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Sales Talk: Competition, Hardware: Keyboard, Prototypes: OLPC, Hardware: Screen, Laptops: XO-1

Today the new Apple iPhone will make its North American debut and techno-lust has gripped the USA. Lines have formed outside Apple stores and cell-phone scalping will certainly ensue. But is all the hype really warranted? Is the iPhone all that, when compared to the OLPC XO? And how long would the lines be for a retail XO laptop?

While I enjoy my Nokia N95 and watch iPhone lines in wonder, Maison Bisson has developed a comparison of the iPhone to several techno-marvels, including the OLPC XO. Before you read the chart, remember that none of these devices are general purpose computers, they are very targeted computing applications, what Maison Bisson calls "information age devices" which allow for networking without the need for a conventional, bulky laptop.

Continue reading "OLPC XO vs. Apple iPhone"

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Posted on May 14, 2007 by Guest Writer in Content: Education, Hardware: Keyboard, Implementation: Plan, Hardware: Screen

olpc games
Look! Its an OLPC XO!
Editor's Note: I originally published this article attributing it to Carlo Emmanoel Oliveira Ph.D. when it was the work of Edward Tse. The error is mine and I apologize to both Edward & Carlo. Thankfully, Edward sees the value in the commentary and humor in my mistake..

During the past Human Factors in Computer Systems conference in San Jose, California there was a lot of attention on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project (see a video). The project goal is: "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves." In the mission statement the website claims that OLPC has been "extensively field-tested and validated among some of the poorest and most remote populations on earth". While this could be used in conjunction with current teaching, part of the goal is to support self-exploration without the aid of formal teaching.

I personally feel that technology has a large role to play in the future of education (this is already seen with the exploding growth of companies like Smart Technologies that focus on the education market) but there is a need to understand how the technology fits within the ecology of education in developing nations.

This article, first published on The Future of Digital Interaction is not meant to condemn the OLPC project as its aims are focused on goal that would benefit society as a whole. Rather it asks: how can OLPC be improved? Is this the right approach? What other approaches could be used? Before massively deploying such a technology, it is crucial that we have this debate.

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Posted on April 12, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Commentary: OLPC News, Hardware: Screen

Back when I first reported on the One Laptop Per Child dual mode display details, I quoted Mary Lou Jepsen saying:
What I came up with: a dual-mode display. Mode 1 is 800x600 (or higher—even 1024x768 looks surprisingly good!) color backlit with 1W MAX power consumption. Mode 2 is high resolution 1200x900 black and white reflective sunlight readable with 0.2W MAX power consumption. Mode 2 is also room light readable with the backlight off at again 0.2W power consumption.
While that's informative, it didn't really convey the OLPC visual difference difference:

But looking through my OLPC XO Flickr photo pool, I've found a great example for the full effect of the OLPC screen resolution; way more website landscape.

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Posted on March 30, 2007 by Christoph Derndorfer in Hardware: Keyboard, Hardware: Screen, Prototypes: XO

Ever since I saw the first design-studies and later photos of the One Laptop Per Child machines now called X0 I wanted to see one in person. Fortunately I finally had a chance to do that during the CeBIT tradeshow in Hannover last week.

The Children's Machine X0 was being presented at the Red Hat booth and Jan Wildeboer from Red Hat Germany also held a short presentation during the "open day" at the Heise stage.

The very first impression I had was that the laptop was a bit smaller than I had expected it to be. While I knew that the display is 7.5" I had still expected it to be larger. But it only took a second or so for those thoughts to be gone because I was busy drooling over the X0's display.

Now again, I had seen the videos, I had seen the photos, I had read the specifications and I knew that everyone who had seen the dual mode display found it to be amazing. So one might say that I had high expectations. But the X0 easily managed to top them, the screen really is that spectacular.

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Posted on March 22, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Use Cases: Education, Hardware: Screen, Countries: Thailand, Hardware: Wireless

olpc wireless mesh view
OLPC wireless mesh view
While 10 OLPC BTest-1 Children's Machine XO's arrived in January, and 30 BTest-2 laptops arrived in February, the One Laptop Per Child Thailand group has just recently updated the wiki. Though I can't read Thai, I can see they're having a damn good time with the OLPC XO!

First off, it seems they have installed the stable 303 Build of the Sugar user interface and are experimenting with its very interesting wireless mesh view. With little XO's showing different laptop nodes and the peaks denoting Internet connections, the mesh view is a handy graphical representation of users and connections.

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Posted on March 07, 2007 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Screen

OLPC screen in sunlight
Mid-day outdoor OLPC reading
Reading A comparison of OLPC's XO laptop and Intel's Classmate PC on Ars Technica, you might miss the importance of the OLPC dual mode display. There is only one short sentence about it:
The XO laptop's unique 7-1/2 inch dual-mode LCD supports a resolution of 1200x900 in monochrome mode and 800x600 in color mode.
In all the commentary around the Children's Machine XO, everyone agrees that the screen is an amazing leap in display technology. The screen is twice the resolution of a regular liquid crystal display and yet it's fully readable in both bright daylight and in gray-scale reflective mode. It's simply clock-stopping hot.

So hot that when I first saw the display live, I almost forgot to take photos. While I am not the only one drooling over the display, I may be one of the few people who have seen it up close enough to be in awe of its technology.

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Posted on February 06, 2007 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, Hardware: Screen

Did you read the excellent IEEE Spectrum article on Mary Lou Jepsen? Were you in awe of her job hunting luck:
If you’re an engineer and a job interview turns into a brainstorming session, that’s probably a good sign. It certainly was for Jepsen, who spent 2 hours of her “interview” kicking around ideas for the laptop with Nicholas Negroponte, the Media Lab’s cofounder.
Or better yet her amazing globe trotting lifestyle where she survives 13 hour flights with apparent ease - she doesn't even suffer from jet lag!

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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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Posted on November 10, 2006 by Wayan Vota in People: Leadership, Software: Operating System, Hardware: Power Supply, Hardware: Screen, Hardware: Wireless

You will love Mark J. Foster's presentation at Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium.

At the beginning of October, as the Vice President, Engineering and Chief Architect of One Laptop Per Child and a leading computer portables expert, Mr. Foster spoke in detail about the technology behind the laptop.

His speech is the most articulate and comprehensive explanation of the One Laptop Per Child program yet given. He makes complicated technology like reflective monochrome and transmissive color dual-mode displays easy to grasp for non-techies, yet intriguing for techno-geeks too.

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Posted on November 09, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Hardware: Screen, Prototypes: XO

Yesterday I attempted to do what so many other's have tried to do, render in pixels the full eye-catching hot properties of the One Laptop Per Child dual-mode laptop screen developed by Mary Lou Jepsen. And I tried to do it with a lowly Nokia 6682 no less.

To the right is my attempt, as bad as or worse than others. Maybe worse because watching Walter Bender switch the screen from full color backlit to flat black and white was so stunning that at first I forgot to photograph it.

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Posted on November 08, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Commentary: Press, Hardware: Screen, Prototypes: XO

Congratulations One Laptop Per Child! You've been chosen by the editors of Popular Science magazine as one of 100 breakthroughs of 2006 that merit the magazine's highest honor: a "Best of What's New" Grand Award for aOLPC XO Better Screen, Better World.

While you didn't win the coveted overall outstanding "Innovation of the Year," award, that went to the Hurriquake Nail, and you didn't win the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's "People's Design Award", that went to the Katrina Cottage, the "Best of What's New" award is surely just the first of many awards you'll receive.

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Posted on October 13, 2006 by Wayan Vota in Prototypes: 2B1, Hardware: Screen

Watch out New York City: The One Laptop Per Child prototype screen is loose on the streets! Last seen by Christopher Blizzard at 23rd and Broadway, in the shadow of the its test box hardened stainless steel shell glistened in the sunlight while the amazing dual mode display shone through the mid-day glare.

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