Political Challenges stalk $100 Laptop

A lack of "big thinking" by politicians has stifled a scheme to distribute laptops to children in the developing world, says Walter Bender of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project.

Bender has said that politicians are unwilling to commit because "change equals risk". But, he said, there needed to be a "dramatic change" because education in many countries was "failing" children.

Speaking to BBC News, Professor Bender said: "We think that change has to be dramatic."

"You've got to be big, you've got to be bold. And what has happened is that there has been an effort to say 'don't take any risks - just do something small, something incremental'."

"It feels safe but by definition what you are ensuring is that nothing happens."

Just ordered my XO

I have just completed my purchase of an XO laptop from the OLPC project as part of the Give One Get One program. For $403 (including shipping) I have ordered a laptop for a child in the developing world and a laptop for the kid in my life... ok, me. Here's a review.

Europeans choosing Internet over TV

Almost six out of 10 West Europeans now regularly access the Internet and, for the first time, young people are more likely to go online for most days of the week than turn on the television, according to a new survey.

Still, the web is less and less the turf of the young: the past year saw a 12 percent jump in so-called 'silver surfers' — Europeans 55-and-older — using the Internet and an 8 percent rise in Internet use by women, said the survey by the European Interactive Advertising Association, a trade group of sellers of interactive media, released this week.

It said 16-to-24-year olds now prefer going online to watching the tube: 82 percent use the Internet between 5 and 7 days each week "while only 77 percent watch TV as regularly," a drop of 5 percent from 2006, the survey found.

It said 42 percent of users communicate via social networking sites at least once a month.

A New Era Begins: $100 Laptop begin production.

Mass production of the OLPC $100 laptop has begun, five years after the concept was first proposed.

Computer manufacturer Quanta has started building the low-cost laptops at a factory in Changshu, China and officials from the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) group said that children in developing countries would begin receiving machines this month.

Last month, OLPC received its first official order for 100,000 machines from the government of Uruguay.

"Today represents an important milestone in the evolution of the One Laptop per Child project," said Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC.

The green and white XO machines pack a number of innovations which make them suitable for use in remote and environmentally hostile areas.

The machine has no moving parts and can be easily maintained. It has a sunlight-readable display that allows children to use it outside and, importantly for areas with little access to electricity, it is ultra low power and can be charged by a variety of devices including solar panels.

Although OLPC eventually plan to sell the machines for $100 or less, the current price is $188. The XO is expected to have far reaching impacts on the computer industry.

Yahoo! sends user to Chinese Jail.

Two top Yahoo Inc. officials on Tuesday defended their company's role in the jailing of a Chinese journalist but ran into withering criticism from lawmakers who accused them of complicity with an oppressive communist regime.

"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said angrily after hearing from the two Yahoo executives.

He angrily urged Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang and General Counsel Michael Callahan to apologize to journalist Shi Tao's mother, who was sitting directly behind them.

Shi Tao was sent to jail for 10 years for engaging in pro-democracy efforts deemed subversive after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities requested by Chinese authorities.

OLPC Adoption and Production Delays

The One Laptop per Child foundation has received the first official order for the "$100 laptop". The order has been placed by the government of Uruguay.

The South American country has bought 100,000 of the machines for schoolchildren aged six to 12. A further 300,000 may be purchased to provide a machine for every child in the country by 2009.

The order will be a boost for the OLPC organisation behind the project which has admitted difficulties getting concrete orders.

Last week OLPC said that a production delay will cause a shortage of computers available in the United States and Canada as part of a holiday-giving program. The group expected to produce 100,000 laptops this year.

Apple Sends 3rd Grader Cease And Desist Letter

Apple Sends 3rd Grader Cease And Desist Letter. >>Oops.<<

Microsoft buys into Facebook - 1.6% for $240M

That's a whole lotta gifts.

The 1.6% stake in Facebook values the hugely popular social networking site at $15bn.

Facebook spurned an offer from Microsoft's rival Google, which was also keen to invest the site. Microsoft will also sell internet ads for Facebook outside the United States as part of the deal that took several weeks of negotiating.

Microsoft already provides banner advertising and links on the US site.

Mark Zuckerberg started the online social networking site in his Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.

Mitch Joel on the Web and Online Communities

This is an interesting video from Yahoo! about online communities and the future of the web.

Radiohead gives "pay what you want" option to fans.

The times, they are a changin'

Many readers of this blog will of course be aware that indie band Radiohead have offered their new album 'In Rainbows' on pay-what-you want terms for download.

Are they creating a new music industry business model?

As a one-time big-spending retail customer who is now buying from iTunes and direct from the musicians, I'm in favour of this new model. My "active" music collection is already in mp3 format and to be quite honest I find very few albums -- like Radiohead's "OK Computer"i, Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" -- for which I need high quality sound. So why do I need to pay retail for a product format that doesn't add any value?

Here's my next question -- do we need to have "albums" at all any more? Is the "mp3 and media on request" model going to get us to a small 1-4 high quality track release from artists? Even my favourite artists don't often fill the entire album with gold.

Skeletor wins in Web 2.0

From Penny Arcade... I probably find this too funny.

Firefox Coming To Your Phone

Get ready to throw out that WAP browser on your mobile phone (if you haven’t already).

The iPhone, with its fully-functioning Safari browser, showed us that mobile browsing need not be a compromise. Now, the folks at Mozilla are working on a mobile version of Firefox.

Sputnik launched 50 years ago today.

The Sputnik program was a series of unmanned space missions launched by the Soviet Union in late 1957 to demonstrate the viability of artificial satellites for exploring the upper atmosphere as part of the International Geophysical Year. It included Sputnik 1, the first man-made object to orbit earth.

The surprise launch of Sputnik 1 shocked the United States, which responded with a number of early satellite launches, including Explorer I, Project SCORE, and Courier 1B. The Sputnik crisis also led to the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA and NASA, and to major increases in U.S. government spending on scientific research and education.

Sputnik did much to change what was then science fiction into science reality. Wernher von Braun used Arthur C. Clarke's 1952 book, The Exploration of Space, to convince President Kennedy that it was possible to go to the Moon.

Sept. 26, 1983: The Man Who Saved the World

On Sept. 26, 1983, a Soviet ballistics officer drew the right conclusion -- that a satellite report indicating incoming U.S. nuclear missiles is, in fact, a false alarm -- thereby averting a potential nuclear holocaust.

Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free

The One Laptop Per Child Project, Nicholas Negroponte's project to bring computing to the developing world’s children via a $100 laptop, has announced that North Americans can now buy the units.

Years of work by engineers and scientists have paid off in a pioneering low-cost machine that is light, rugged and surprisingly versatile. The early reviews have been glowing, and mass production is set to start next month.

Behind that President Again

My site/blog has now fallen to 6th place for the phrase "Ben Harrison". Curses! It is very hard to stay ahead of a dead president.

Face it: Facebook here to stay.

Facebook is the Web's Hottest Platform - a backgrounder for those who think that this Facebook fad is going nowhere.

$1Million let on Facebook -- too bad no one got in with a foreign currency lending platform!

VoIP going strong in Europe

Voice over Internet Protocol is a fast-growing business in the United States, but it’s growing even faster in Europe, and its traction in the old world is only going to increase.

With competitive broadband service providers offering flat-rate voice plans over their high-speed pipes and wireless carriers embracing triple-play offerings, Europe is poised to emerge as one of the regions where VoIP has a major impact.

According to market research firm Telegeography, consumer VoIP subscribers in Europe will reach 40 percent market penetration by 2011. That’s compared with the U.S., where total VoIP market penetration is forecast to top just 20 percent by the same year.

Rivals of Office step up pressure

Yesterday IBM threw its weight behind the Open Office project, a move that will give the open source productivity suite some much needed support in enterprises. And if that wasn’t enough, Google has upped the ante on Microsoft Office by teaming up with consulting company, Cap Gemini.

Large enterprises are getting increasingly comfortable with using software as a service. The success of Salesforce.com and other such offerings are indicative of these changing attitudes.

Facebook enables public search.

Tonight, Facebook launches a “public listing search” which allows anyone to search for a specific person. The company says that the information being revealed through these listings is minimal and much less than the information available to someone logged into the Facebook network.

"A public search listing provides, at most, the name and profile picture of any Facebook member that has their search privacy settings set to “Everyone.” It will show less information about a person than results of a search performed by someone logged in to Facebook. We wanted to give people who had never come to Facebook, or who are not currently registered, the opportunity to discover their friends who are on Facebook."

What does this mean? It means you had better modify your privacy setting for "Everyone" asap! Don't think that what happens in facebook might stay in facebook!

Municipal Wireless is stalled.

The dream of wireless networks bathing cities in free and pervasive internet access has come to an end, at least for now. As the number of failed or stalled municipal wireless projects continues to rise, the focus has shifted from closing the so-called digital divide to why plans for such networks, in only a year's time, seem to be dissolving almost daily.

Last week, San Francisco, Chicago and St. Louis all announced significant and perhaps fatal roadblocks in their municipal Wi-Fi projects.

I don't know if it's a sign of similar problems, but my attempts to sign up for the Toronto Wifi network have all failed... I can never seem to get through the enrollment process.

I'm excited by the possibility of municipal wireless as I see it as a strong stimulus for technology innovation. It may also put some pressure on the large phone and cable to actually improve both their technology and service.

Google Phone in the Works

Rumours around the fabled Google Phone is picking up, suggesting that Google is making a real push to launch something early next year and and is no longer to keep everyone quiet.

Google’s effort is different than the iPhone. They look to be focused mostly on the OS and layering Google applications like Maps and Gmail on top of that, while simultaneously talking to device manufacturers about a number of devices. Apple, instead, took a much more holistic approach in creating the iPhone.