The broad influence of the One Laptop Per Child initiative continues to expand its sphere.
(Credit:
OLPC)
Not long ago it was unclear whether the PC--originally conceived as a $100 laptop for children in developing countries--would ever become a reality after a long series of delays. Now the XO laptop seems on the verge of becoming a hot item, and all the research that went into it is leading down divergent paths.
Case in point: Walter Bender, who just left the OLPC initiative to start up its open-source software spinoff, is reportedly in "informal discussions" to get its Linux operating system on low-cost laptops made by four manufacturers. The nonprofit spinoff, Sugar Laboratories, is having discussions with Pixel Qi and is interesting in pursuing a relationship with Intel, Bender told BetaNews. No other companies were named, though he mentioned Asus on Sugar Labs' Web site last week.
It's only the latest permutation in a long-running saga that has seen infighting, resignations, and other controversy since the project's inception. Last month OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte said the XO might switch from Linux to Windows XP, but that change remains to be seen. Stay tuned.
Former One Laptop Per Child President Walter Bender has formed a nonprofit called Sugar Labs, which will advance the Sugar graphical interface he originally created for the low-cost computing project.
Sugar Labs will partner with developers of Sugar-compatible applications and other hardware makers that want to use the user interface on their devices.
"By being independent of any specific hardware platform and by remaining dedicated to the principles of free and open-source software, Sugar Labs ensures that others can develop diverse interfaces and applications from which governments and schools can choose," Bender wrote on the Sugar Labs Web site.
One of the first of the "others" on the list is Asus' popular Eee PC.
Bender moved on from OLPC last month after it was revealed the project's founder was leaning toward abandoning the use of Sugar and Linux in favor of putting Windows XP on his $188 XO laptops.
Microsoft and OLPC made it official yesterday, though there will still be OLPCs offered with Linux. In an interview with CNET News.com, OLPC founder and Chairman Nicholas Negroponte said the company is aiming to port the XO's Sugar interface over to Windows and has been "in discussions" with third parties, which would appear to refer at least in part to Sugar Labs.
Is Nicholas Negroponte's capitulation to Windows last month due largely to a lack of open-source community involvement in the One Laptop Per Child project?
That's what Groklaw is suggesting--following a post by free software guru Richard Stallman.
According to Groklaw:
OLPC hoped for contribution from the community to its interface, Sugar, but this has not happened much. Partly that's because OLPC has not structured its development so as to reach out to the community for help--which means, when viewed in constructive terms, that OLPC can obtain more contribution by starting to do this.
Basically, Negroponte's decision to embrace Windows comes down to a belief that when community fails, default to whatever proprietary vendor makes the best interface. (If this is the case, Negroponte would have done well to choose the Mac's interface, but I digress...)
This is a weak-kneed, wrong-headed way for Negroponte--the founder and chairman of OLPC--to attempt to resolve the problem. It will only serve to perpetuate the very problem OLPC was designed to solve, as Groklaw writes:
... Read moreThe chairman and founder of the One Laptop Per Child initiative said in an interview Tuesday that the XO laptop may switch from using Linux to eventually running Windows XP, according to several reports.
Windows XP could soon be available on the XO.
(Credit: OLPC)In an interview with the Associated Press following the departure of the OLPC project's president, Nicholas Negroponte said the open-source Sugar software, developed expressly for the XO, could run on top of XP. Negroponte cited weaknesses in the XO's current open-source operating system (right now the XO can't support the latest versions of Flash animation) as well as the Linux community itself (for being too "fundamentalist") as the reasons for a possible future shift.
He said the laptop's open-source software had actually scared away potential adopters.
An XP-only version of the XO could come soon enough. In December Microsoft said it would begin running limited tests in January to see if the operating system would be a good fit for the low-cost device. At the time, Microsoft said it could have XP running on the XO by the second half of the year.
More low-cost laptops are headed to a retailer near you.
Intel plans on expanding the distribution of its inexpensive, school children-friendly Classmate PC to U.S. and European retail outlets, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday.
Intel's Classmate PC
(Credit: Intel)The Classmate will sell for $250 to $350, Lila Ibrahim, general manager of Intel's emerging market platform group, told Reuters. Apparently Intel has already been conducting pilot programs using the devices in classrooms in the U.S. and Australia.
Though the Classmate is already available on the retail markets of India, Mexico, and Indonesia, this will be the first time the device has been for sale to consumers in the developed world.
Intel designed the PC for use in schools in developing nations. Local manufacturers build them with customized software configurations for the needs of specific local markets.
The XO from the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which also builds low-cost notebooks for the same markets, has been available via retail in the U.S. for a while. OLPC had a promotion where consumers here paid $400, which bought one XO for them and one for a school kid in the developing world.
But they're not the only ones jumping into this fray. Asus launched its low-cost, stripped-down Linux-based Eee PC last fall specifically for the U.S., Japanese, and European retail markets, and caused quite the stir. It sold 350,000 units in the first quarter it was available here, and is making some of the biggest names in computing a wee bit nervous. It's giving pause to worldwide PC leader Hewlett-Packard, and second-largest notebook manufacturer Acer, both of whom are said to be readying their own low-cost, small form-factor laptops for sometime this year.
The Eee PC certainly is bringing cachet to the tiny, Linux-based laptop segment, but will that translate to the cheaper Classmate PC? The Classmate is a bit clunkier looking, and has a silly-looking (though great for kids) handle on the spine, whereas the Eee comes in a variety of colors and looks like a laptop an adult wouldn't mind being seen with at his or her local coffeehouse.
SAN DIEGO, Calif.--The citizens of Serrana, Brazil, are not waiting around for Intel or Nicholas Negroponte to deliver low-cost PCs to their school children. Instead, they're taking the matter into their own hands.
A Brazilian student tries the Serrana digital desk
(Credit: Victor Mammana)Starting at the end of this month, the Serrana Digital Desk project will get underway when 200 surface PCs that transform into desktop PCs will be placed in classrooms in the city of 45,000. It's a trial run of a new, very local program that is intended to give kids computers in the classroom while involving as many community members as possible in the implementation of the project. See a video of one of the desks here (Note: it's a Brazilian news feature in Portuguese).
CNET News.com sat down with Victor Mammana, who heads up the display branch of the Brazilian government's Ministry of Science and Technology, here at the U.S. Flat Panel Display conference.
Mammana's interest in the project is two-fold: he's a physicist by training and co-invented the low-cost tablet display that will be used in the Serrana digital desks, but he's also involved evaluating the impact and utility of low-cost PC programs for education for Brazil.
He's worked closely with Nicholas Negroponte, who heads up the One Laptop Per Child initiative, as well as Intel, which has its own version, the Classmate PC. Both Intel and OLPC are currently bidding for the contract to provide their low-cost laptops to Brazil's federal government.
The Serrana project is intentionally local to the core. It wasn't Mammana's idea; instead he was approached by the mayor of Serrana, Valerio Galante, a man who Mammana describes as "passionate" about education. The mid-size urban city that's 3 hours outside Sao Paolo wanted to institute a local solution to bringing technology to their 7,000 school kids by taking the school desks already in classroom and refurbishing them with tablet PCs built into them. The key is that the desks will be refurbished in Serrana, and the technology is Brazilian made.
Victor Mammana, head of the Information Display Division for Brazil's Ministry of Science and Technology
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News.com)"The idea is not to make a business out of that, but more like a social franchise," said Mammana. "It's interesting, this idea of providing a local solution for a local problem."
When Galante approached Mammana, the mayor already had a site picked out to refurbish the desks. By employing local workers to do that, as well as maintain the new computers, the city of Serrana wants to demonstrate that education is not just taking place in the classroom, but also when young students see their older family members and community pitching in to find a local solution, said Mammana.
The tablet PCs, which feature 15-inch LCD with multi-point technology (not a touch screen, but the surface can pick up more than one stylus at a time), will cost less than $30 each to build, and incorporating them into the desks will cost roughly $550. Though that's significantly more than the idea of a $100 to $200 laptop, that's fine with them.
"The tabletop seems more expensive than a single (laptop) device, but by investing in the whole economy, it's OK if it's slightly more costly," Mammana said.
The tabletop PCs will have WiFi connectivity, Intel Celeron processors, small solid-state drives (no local hard drive) and will run a version of Linux. Each classroom will have its own server where all the data will be kept, and each teacher will have access to a content management system where they can input their lesson plans. Digital chalkboards at the front of the classrooms and will connect up with the desks.
The Serrana project is significantly different from the cutesy laptops being pitched to the federal government in other ways too. The biggest difference is that the digital desk isn't a mobile product, but Mammana, who's spent two and a half years exploring this segment of computing, says he's unconvinced portability is necessary in this case.
"I'm not sure how important mobility is for 8- to 12-year-old kids," he said. It's not as if they're checking e-mail on their way to the airport, he noted. Plus, keeping the PCs in the classroom allows for more structure in how they're used and cuts down on misuse of the government-funded devices, like illegal activity, pornography, or the devices being sold off piecemeal, or in whole, on the black or gray market.
They also like the surface idea because the bigger displays encourage more comfortable posture, and better legibility of the screens. But the digital desk shouldn't be considered a competitor to OLPC. Mammana is under no illusion that this scenario could work in just any city.
"There has to be the right conditions," Mammana said. "This wouldn't work in Sao Paolo." In other words, it's a more manageable issue to tackle in a city of 45,000 versus a metropolis of 17 million.
"I don't believe it's going to be viable for all cities. Brazil has 10,000 cities," he added. "If 50 can reproduce this social franchise, that's already a great achievement."
Ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, landslides, wildfires, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis are just some of the forces of nature that can wreak havoc on the lives of untold thousands in a period of seconds, minutes, days, or months. As global temperatures rise and as a growing human population expands into more and more areas less and less suited for either habitation or rescue, the average person in the world (one of 6+ billion) faces an increasing likelyhood that he or she will face a real disaster that seriously disrupts possible response.
Consider the plight of Sri Lanka, which was devastated by a tsunami in 2004. According to a BBC eyewitness reporter:
There are no kind of emergency services here, there are no helicopters thumping through the sky to come to save people. It is a do-it-yourself rescue.
The final tally reported more than 40,000 dead and a staggering 2.5 million displaced. And from the report's summary: "Waves as high as six meters had crashed into coastal villages, sweeping away people, cars, and even a train with 1,700 passengers." Whatever infrastructure may have existed prior to the tsunami, it was completely overwhelmed by both the magnitude of human need and the destructive power of the disaster. Within hours, open-source software developers created the Sahana project, and within days, their home-grown solution was doing more to help the Sri Lankan people than first-world conventional software packages did in far less extreme circumstances. And now it is doing even more, with the One Laptop Per Child hardware platform.
... Read moreOur family took a roadtrip from North Carolina to South Carolina in the past month. We all agreed that my daughter could not ask "Are we there yet?" more than five times, and we decided to bring along one of our XO laptops to give her a fighting chance. (We've never had an in-car video system.) After her first "Are we there yet?" question, we suggested she might want to boot up the XO, and she did.
... Read moreI missed this little bit of news at the time, but it's worth passing along here, if only for completeness.
In a brief interview published on New Year's Eve by Laptop magazine, One Laptop Per Child founder Nicholas Negroponte said total XO-1 laptop shipments during the organization's "Give One, Get One" promotion were expected to be between 150,000 and 170,000 units.
The XO laptop from the OLPC Foundation
(Credit: OLPC Foundation)A few days later, The New York Times reported that OLPC announced a more precise figure: 167,000 laptops. (Unfortunately, I can't locate the OLPC announcement itself; it isn't on the official OLPC site site.)
Either way, the organization also received additional orders during the promotion from Birmingham, Ala. (15,000 laptops) and others. Wikipedia's OLPC entry includes a table accounting for 602,000 units.
These aren't bad numbers for a new machine that isn't even really finished. The XO-1's software isn't yet considered stable or feature-complete. Battery life doesn't yet measure up to OLPC's early promises, as I verified with my own G1G1 machine. There's very little support available for the machine, and the 30-day warranty is good only for immediately obvious problems.
So although the approximately 83,500 orders received during the G1G1 program wouldn't be considered a great success in a commercial context, I think it reflects a pretty reasonable start to what needs to be a long-term effort.
LAS VEGAS--Nicholas Negroponte declined to speak about the rift between his organization, One Laptop Per Child, and Intel during a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place this week.
Two of the individuals with OLPC sat directly behind me, and they talked extensively about the disagreement and their interaction with Intel before the speech. (To recap, Intel joined OLPC after a long public argument, but then recently pulled out.) I checked their badges to make sure they were with OLPC. Here are some of the highlights.
"They are so arrogant."
"Did you meet Swope (Intel exec Will Swope)? He was unimpressive."
"Working with Microsoft is a joy by comparison."
To be fair, there's probably not a lot of love lost on Intel's side. Chairman Craig Barrett, before the brief alliance with OLPC, often criticized the device. A number of companies are also chilly toward Negroponte. One Taipei executive told me that people in the last year have started to blame declines in Quanta Computer's stock on its association with OLPC. Contract manufacturer Quanta makes the OLPC and even built an entire manufacturing line for it.
Another Taiwanese exec asserted that Negroponte doesn't understand how the hardware business works. I can't verify what the Taiwanese are saying (but I have met Swope and he's kind of amusing). The Taiwanese business community also thrives on rumor. If someone said that Bill Gates was building a fusion reactor, there's a good chance it would end up on paper. Still, it gives you an idea of the feelings.
As for the speech, it wasn't bad. Negroponte clearly cares about kids and education. Back in 1999, he and his son gave laptops to first graders in Cambodia. Next year, first-grade enrollment went up by 100 percent.
"The kids in the program told the other kids in the village how cool school was," he said.
However, he seems to take a dimmer view of adults and often speaks of them in a disappointed, schoolmarmish tone. The criticism about the small keyboard is misplaced, he claimed. "When they criticize it, they are criticizing it from the point of a fat-fingered adult," he said. Everyone advised him to do OLPC as a profit institution, a route many charities have taken. Remaining a nonprofit "was the single best decision OLPC ever made."
One of the best moments of the speech came at the beginning when Gary Shapiro, the official emcee of CES, introduced him. Shapiro touted his achievements.
"Thank you for the (slight pause) long introduction," Negroponte said.
And thank you too, Nick!
