reviresco
Just a quick one; using Google Maps is a great way to surf for OLPC XO info. If you check out the following link you’ll get a comprehensive overview of the effort to date and can easily delve deeper into each specific project from there.
Sam Churchill from dailywireless.org writes:
“The government of Venezuela has announced plans to order more than one million Classmate PC laptops from Portugal as part of a broad economic agreement between the two countries. The government of Venezuela aims to boost technical literacy by distributing the computers to schools. The Classmate PC units that will be distributed to schools in Venezuela and Portugal will ship preinstalled with a custom flavor of the Linux operating system.”(Source)
Can you say “massive”?! Now we will study the Venezuelan government’s method for distribution and integration. Their application is going to reveal important information for anyone else involved in the netbook industry wanting to do the same.
So due to some mixups and complications here in the bedroom studio I’ve ended up with two incomplete tracks, but I like enough to want to release them. Somehow I’ve lost the master file for the first track, and the settings for the second are entirely screwed up for no good reason. Both contain what is essentially my first “live jam” that’s been good enough to include in a song. Hence the jam jars! Enjoy their incompleteness and the boppy beats.
The very definition of Industrial music?
Elroy takes a look at the documentary “Tintin and I” and discovers the critical analysis allows him some affinity with a comic book series he previously hadn’t spent much time with. Watching it now is good timing – and I expect the release is in anticipation of Speilberg’s upcoming film-adaptation of the series (and for posterity too, of course). As a kid I read quite a few of the books and am quite interested in the documentary and whatever Speilberg’s efforts result in. Get up to speed yourself.
In Wisconsin computer savvy members of the public take time and care to discover if the XO holds potential for them…
“The calm breaks when the doorbell rings and six children ranging from 6 to 10 years old tumble into the apartment, which has been converted into the Southdale Kids Club Day Camp. The students are here for a weekly session of the pilot program designed by UW-Madison volunteers to introduce underrepresented minority children to the world of computers.
In addition to teaching the students, the UW-Madison volunteers are compiling research data on XO usability to determine whether the laptops are viable education tools for Wisconsin schools. Sandra Courter, a UW-Madison Engineering Professional Development (EPD) assistant professor and director of the Engineering Learning Center, and EPD faculty associate George Johnson document each class session while Bernardoni teaches…” (Source)
“The number of mobile phone subscriptions in the world will reach four billion by the end of the year driven by growth in developing economies, the International Telecommunications Union said Friday…The ITU stressed however that its estimate does not mean that four billion individuals each have their own mobile phone, as many people in developed countries have more than one…Continued progress in 2008 is chiefly due to the growth in major developing markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.” (Source)
Cafferty gives Palin the review she deserves:
Walter Bender, former head of software development at OLPC and now running his independent Sugar Labs, gives an in depth interview over at Groklaw. The discussion includes the latest on the OLPC XO/Windows situation, the current status of Sugar and FOSS in general. Well worth the read!
The blustery spring afternoon saw us down at Aranda oval, with kites. For the first time since the post here in 2003 we took to the skies. Unfortunately after running James‘ kite out the brittle wood spindle snapped, and his childhood memories were taken by the whim of the wind. Carried to the bottom of the oval, the line snagged in a tall tree but the kite remained airborne. For another hour at least! After a while we realised there was nothing we could do so we left. James returned later to find it still aloft, with onlookers below. Now the sun has set and everything has calmed down, I guess it’s now stuck in a tree somewhere. We investigate tomorrow. (NB. These images are large to ensure the glory of James’s new wide-angle lens)