Monday, November 10, 2008

OLPC

Finally, a post about neato tech stuff, and served with a side of philanthropy to boot! The One Latop Per Child foundation is offering another Get One Give One program starting next Monday, November 17th. This year's GOGO program is being coordinated through Amazon in an attempt to limit the shipping problems that plagued last year's public offering. More info on the program here: www.laptop.org and more info on ordering your very own here: www.amazon.com/xo

I missed my chance at one last year by about two weeks, this year, I'm first in line. It's an intriguing design and idea. The laptop itself (the XO-1) is setup with mesh networking and Wi-Fi capabilities. Basically that means it can see other XO-1s and devices with mesh capabilities (standard 802.11s) and communicate with them to create an ad-hoc network. If one of these devices has access to a wireless internet signal, it can use its Wi-Fi connection to provide internet access to the whole network. The idea is to bring internet access to rural children in developing nations. The operating system is a version of Fedora with the Sugar GUI and meant to be used by children of all languages, so it uses pictures and symbols to represent what is necessary. I'm still not clear on exactly how it works, but that'll change in a couple months once I have my hands on one.