OLPC:News: Difference between revisions

From OLPC
Jump to navigation Jump to search
No edit summary
Line 4: Line 4:


=LAPTOP NEWS=
=LAPTOP NEWS=
1. Real Networks has funded a program at the Oregon State University's Open
1. Urugwiro Village: Rwanda committed to the one laptop per child
Source Lab to be used for development of open-source multimedia capture,
initiative this week. "In recognition of children being Rwanda’s most
editing, encoding and playback software integrated with the OLPC platform.
precious natural resource, the government of Rwanda has committed to
provide one laptop per child to all primary school children within five
years."--H.E. President Paul Kagame


2. Michail Bletsas reports that the XO was a major attraction in both the
2. Mountain View: Chris Blizzard at spent time with Vladimir Vukicevic from
AMD and Marvell booths at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At the show
Mozilla Corporation, who has done much of the Cairo (Linux graphics
Marvell officially released its wireless firmware with full mesh
library) integration work with Gecko (Mozilla rendering engine). They
functionality. Many improvements will follow, however OLPC's mesh is the
talked about particular OLPC needs: support for 200DPI, arbitrary zooming
first implementation of the emerging 802.11s standard.
of content, better performance and smaller size. Vladimir's claim was
“you're about a year too early.” Support for arbitrary zooming is now just
landing on the Mozilla trunk and will be stabilizing with the Gecko 1.9
branch and Firefox 3. The trunk already has better memory characteristics
and performance improvements. Over time the engine will get a lot better,
probably really landing some time in mid to late 2007, somewhat late for
us. There's already support for flushing memory caches and it is just a
question of finding the right knobs in the engine to turn when we encounter
low-memory conditions.


3. This week has been a busy week finishing up work on the build for the B2
3. Richard Smith, John Palmeri, Mitch Bradley, Chris Ball collaborated to
Test. John Palmieri coordinated more than a dozen new releases (219-231).
build a new stable image (Build 212) to correct a serious battery
Build 231 is the new stable release. The firmware version for B2 is going
overcharging problem using updated EC firmware from Quanta's team, and an
to be Q2B20, barring surprises. That version supports the new CAFE and
image (Build 213) produced for testing BTest-2 itself. We are asking
DCON chips, and has been tested with network booting for manufacturing
everyone to upgrade to Build 212 (See
diagnostics. Please refer to
http://olpc.download.redhat.com/olpc/streams/development/build212/).
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Autoreinstallation_image for instructions on
reimaging the machine.


4. Mitch Bradley, using a tight Forth loop doing raw reads from the new
4. UI: This week we saw a lot of activity on the UI and in the builds. Some
of the more relevant UI fixes from this week include: (1) the Power Button
CAFE NAND, was able to achieve our target of 20 Mbytes/second transfers.
is now the way to shut the machine now—no more confusing power icon in the
This is roughly 3 times the best performance we were able to get out of the
frame; (2) mousing over launch icons in the frame now gives visual feedback
FPGA version.
that they are buttons; (3) some activity startup blocking problems have
been fixed that make activity startup feel faster; and (4) some startup
feedback for activities—when you click on an icon, something happens
instead of a long pause that was causing people to repeatedly click,
launching multiple instances of an activity.


5. Geode multimedia extensions: Marco Gritti and Dan Williams discovered
5. Quanta got one of the pre-B2 boards working Friday night. (Ted Juan used
that Cairo, the X Window System, and Mozilla were all failing to properly
the word “booting” but didn't specify exactly what he meant.) Mitch has
detect MMX support in the Geode. Chris Ball enabled MMX support in those
showed Quanta how to boot over the net, and got their USB Ethernet dongle
libraries and are seeing some speedups as a result—graphics are faster (up
working from the firmware.
to 30% in some cases) and incur less CPU overhead.


6. X Window System: Adam Jackson and Jordan Crouse pushed out a few fixes
6. Power management work is starting to pick up. Several people, including
for the X server. These include fixes in Xv (video support) RANDR
Lillian Walter, Jordan Crouse, Matthew Garrett, Marcelo Tosatti, and Jim
(rotation support) and a couple of minor crash fixes. We will be
Gettys are looking into various aspects of it. Lilian has begun compiling a
associating rotation with a button on the bezel so that it can be enabled
list of devices for which to provide power-management code: codec, CAFE,
from “ebook” mode.
SD, camera, NAND flash, keyboard, and touchpad.


6. Power budget: Richard Smith started to look at the power budget and
7. Walter Bender has cleaned up all of the keyboard maps, along with
began to work out a plan for setting up a tinderbox that will be able to
building a new keyboard map for Urdu. The “language key”—a feature unique
measure all of the power rails on the new B2 boards in order to have an
to the OLPC keyboard—is now enabled.
automated test for power regressions. Lilian Walter worked on the exact
sequences required for controlling power on SD, camera, and several other
peripherals, and measured their power consumption.


7. Power management: Jordon Crouse using got the machine to successfully
8. Chris Ball made improvements to two of the upstream
suspend and turn off the VCORE_CPU rail. He also got it to wake up by
performance-measuring tools we use—Sysprof and Systemtap—and worked on
pressing the power button, which is more impressive then it sounds because
integrating Systemtap directly into the Tinderbox. Now that we have a wide
it means that the embedded controller (EC) is not getting confused by the
set of baseline measurements for performance, Chris will concentrate on
power state either.
finding improvements.


9. Erik Blankinship, with help from the Red Hat team, has got the camera
8. Erik Blankinship and Bakhtiar Mikhak of MediaMods have nearly completed
the main camera activity for the OLPC system. It is being integrated into
activity taking pictures much, much faster now (<1sec). Redesign of the
the B2 software build. Dan and John have been assisting. In developing the
activity is just about complete and the new version will be part of the
application Erik has uncovered a color-map problem that probably resides in
upcoming B2 build.
gstreamer. Jordan is adding RGB-source support to the X Video extension,
which may make the camera activity “happier”, but the gstreamer problem
needs to be fixed.


9. Keyboard LED: Andres completed the keyboard LED driver; after additional
10. Ivan Krstić has set up Planet OLPC (See http://planet.laptop.org/).
cleanups, Andres merged the driver into our kernels. We have working
The Atom feed is http://planet.laptop.org/atom.xml and Ivan will be
keyboard LEDs in the latest builds.
upgrading our MediaWiki installations in order to provide us with per-page

RSS feeds on the wiki. He'll then create a protected page called “Community
10. Analog in: Andres has started testing the analog-input patches.
News,” and repost all community-news that to that page, whose RSS feed will

be syndicated on planet.
11. Sugar Activities: Thanks to everyone in the community who has been
contributing to the B2 build: new versions of TamTam, AbiWord, Etoys,
PenguinTV, are in B2 Test, along with a new camera activity.

12. James Cameron has continued rural (outback Australia) wireless testing
with impressive results. As expected, the Laptop's antenna design makes a
significant difference in range (> 50%); Cameron has had two laptops
streaming audio in ad-hoc mode over a distance of 1.3km (See
http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-January/003616.html).

13. Journal: Ivan Krstić spent the week chasing out bugs in journal
compression and sparse storage and dealing with performance issues. One
challenge is that we want to store semi-structured information, but there
is no fast semi-structured database, let alone a free one. And while you
can generally wing it on fast servers by implementing a semi-structured
store backed by a standard relational database, the performance would kill
us on the laptops. Ivan's approach is to use a probabilistic filter that
continuously looks at what metadata the user is commonly using for all
files on the system. A nice thing about this approach is that it is
self-maintaining; the potential down side is that it could sometimes
misfire, so we have to be careful about choosing coefficients. The really
nice thing about this is that it enables us to do a resource description
framework (RDF) export of much of the journal.


Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News].
Laptop News is archived at [http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptopnews.nsf/latest/news Laptop News].

Revision as of 02:12, 14 January 2007

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.


LAPTOP NEWS

1. Real Networks has funded a program at the Oregon State University's Open Source Lab to be used for development of open-source multimedia capture, editing, encoding and playback software integrated with the OLPC platform.

2. Michail Bletsas reports that the XO was a major attraction in both the AMD and Marvell booths at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At the show Marvell officially released its wireless firmware with full mesh functionality. Many improvements will follow, however OLPC's mesh is the first implementation of the emerging 802.11s standard.

3. This week has been a busy week finishing up work on the build for the B2 Test. John Palmieri coordinated more than a dozen new releases (219-231). Build 231 is the new stable release. The firmware version for B2 is going to be Q2B20, barring surprises. That version supports the new CAFE and DCON chips, and has been tested with network booting for manufacturing diagnostics. Please refer to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Autoreinstallation_image for instructions on reimaging the machine.

4. UI: This week we saw a lot of activity on the UI and in the builds. Some of the more relevant UI fixes from this week include: (1) the Power Button is now the way to shut the machine now—no more confusing power icon in the frame; (2) mousing over launch icons in the frame now gives visual feedback that they are buttons; (3) some activity startup blocking problems have been fixed that make activity startup feel faster; and (4) some startup feedback for activities—when you click on an icon, something happens instead of a long pause that was causing people to repeatedly click, launching multiple instances of an activity.

5. Geode multimedia extensions: Marco Gritti and Dan Williams discovered that Cairo, the X Window System, and Mozilla were all failing to properly detect MMX support in the Geode. Chris Ball enabled MMX support in those libraries and are seeing some speedups as a result—graphics are faster (up to 30% in some cases) and incur less CPU overhead.

6. X Window System: Adam Jackson and Jordan Crouse pushed out a few fixes for the X server. These include fixes in Xv (video support) RANDR (rotation support) and a couple of minor crash fixes. We will be associating rotation with a button on the bezel so that it can be enabled from “ebook” mode.

6. Power budget: Richard Smith started to look at the power budget and began to work out a plan for setting up a tinderbox that will be able to measure all of the power rails on the new B2 boards in order to have an automated test for power regressions. Lilian Walter worked on the exact sequences required for controlling power on SD, camera, and several other peripherals, and measured their power consumption.

7. Power management: Jordon Crouse using got the machine to successfully suspend and turn off the VCORE_CPU rail. He also got it to wake up by pressing the power button, which is more impressive then it sounds because it means that the embedded controller (EC) is not getting confused by the power state either.

8. Erik Blankinship and Bakhtiar Mikhak of MediaMods have nearly completed the main camera activity for the OLPC system. It is being integrated into the B2 software build. Dan and John have been assisting. In developing the application Erik has uncovered a color-map problem that probably resides in gstreamer. Jordan is adding RGB-source support to the X Video extension, which may make the camera activity “happier”, but the gstreamer problem needs to be fixed.

9. Keyboard LED: Andres completed the keyboard LED driver; after additional cleanups, Andres merged the driver into our kernels. We have working keyboard LEDs in the latest builds.

10. Analog in: Andres has started testing the analog-input patches.

11. Sugar Activities: Thanks to everyone in the community who has been contributing to the B2 build: new versions of TamTam, AbiWord, Etoys, PenguinTV, are in B2 Test, along with a new camera activity.

12. James Cameron has continued rural (outback Australia) wireless testing with impressive results. As expected, the Laptop's antenna design makes a significant difference in range (> 50%); Cameron has had two laptops streaming audio in ad-hoc mode over a distance of 1.3km (See http://mailman.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-January/003616.html).

13. Journal: Ivan Krstić spent the week chasing out bugs in journal compression and sparse storage and dealing with performance issues. One challenge is that we want to store semi-structured information, but there is no fast semi-structured database, let alone a free one. And while you can generally wing it on fast servers by implementing a semi-structured store backed by a standard relational database, the performance would kill us on the laptops. Ivan's approach is to use a probabilistic filter that continuously looks at what metadata the user is commonly using for all files on the system. A nice thing about this approach is that it is self-maintaining; the potential down side is that it could sometimes misfire, so we have to be careful about choosing coefficients. The really nice thing about this is that it enables us to do a resource description framework (RDF) export of much of the journal.

Laptop News is archived at Laptop News.

You can subscribe to the OLPC community-news mailing list by visiting the laptop.org mailman site.

Press requests: please send email to press@laptop.org

MILESTONES

Jan. 2007 Rwanda announced its participation in the project.
Dec. 2006 Uruguay announced its participation in the project.
Nov. 2006 First B1 machines are built; IDB and OLPC formalize an agreement regarding Latin American and Caribbean education.
Oct. 2006 B-test boards become available; Libya announces plans for one laptop for every child
Sep. 2006 UI designs presented; integrated software build released; SES-Astra joins OLPC
Aug. 2006 Working prototype of the dual-mode display
Jun. 2006 500 developer boards are shipped worldwide; WiFi operational; Csound demonstrated over the mesh network
First video with working prototype [1]
May 2006 eBay joins OLPC; display specs set; A-test boards become available; $100 Server is announced
Apr. 2006 Pre-A test board boots; Squid and FreePlay present first human-power systems
Mar. 2006 Yves Behar and FuseProject are selected as industry designers
Feb. 2006 Marvell joins OLPC and continues to partner on network hardware
Jan. 2006 World Economic Forum, Switzerland
UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement
news release
Dec. 2005 Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop
(html)(pdf)
Nov. 2005 WSIS, Tunisia
Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; Nortel joins OLPC

Photos: (Image 1) (Image 2) (Image 3)
Webcast: (Arabic) (English) (French) (original)
Webcast provided by the ITU and UN Webcast Services with the support of RealNetworks Ltd. RealPlayer is required to view the webcast (available at no cost).

Aug. 2005 Design Continuum starts design of first laptop
Jul. 2005 Formal signing of original members of OLPC
Mar. 2005 Brightstar and Red Hat come on board
Jan. 2005 Laptop initiative officially announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; AMD, News Corp. and Google agree to join OLPC

PRESS

3 Jan. 2007 networkworld.com| OLPC Aims for Mass Production in Third Quarter
3 Jan. 2007 IDG.net| One Laptop per Child Sweetens Hardware with 'Sugar' UI
3 Jan. 2007 YAHOO! Finance| OLPC Announces First-of-Its Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer
2 Jan. 2007 Bicyclemark's Communique (podcast)| One Laptop Per Child (@23C3)
22 Dec. 2006 Financial Times | Clever Kit to Benefit Developing Countries
27 Nov. 2006 Pagina/12| La manera más económica para mejorar la educación
21 Nov. 2006 Official Release|First 1,000 XO-Laptops Roll off the Assembly Line in Shanghai
19 Nov. 2006 Jamaica Gleaner| Technology - a tool for transformation
19 Nov. 2006 International Herald Tribune| One Laptop per Child: Computer designed for those who can least afford them
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part III
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part II
Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review| Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop Part I
8 Nov. 2006 Popular Science| Best of What's New 2006: One Laptop per Child XO- Better Screen, Better World
6 Nov. 2006 ZDNet.co.uk | Why Every Child Deserves a Laptop- Matthew Szulik, CEO, Red Hat
27 Oct. 2006 LinuxWorld | Children's Laptop Inspires Open Source Projects
24 Oct. 2006 LA Times | Upward Mobility in a Laptop
24 Oct. 2006 Fortune | This PC wants to save the world
12 Oct. 2006 Bostonist | One Laptop per Child for Libya
11 Oct. 2006 New York Times | U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren
3 Oct. 2006 GulfNews.com | College gets look at $100 Children's Laptop Computer
25 Sep. 2006 vnunet.com | OLPC offered free satellite connections
14 Sep. 2006 Vanguard | Keyboard In Three Nigerian Languages Ready-Obasanjo
08 Sep. 2006 Technology Review | Hack: The Hundred Dollar Laptop
06 Sep. 2006 nacion.com | Computadoras de $100 estarán listas en el 2007
 Aug. 2006 Wired | The Laptop Crusade
28 Aug. 2006 PCINpact.com | L'OLPC a 100 $ est finalise: un engin hors du commun
21 Aug. 2006 EWeek.com | Knocking Down Barriers to the $100 Laptop
31 Jul. 2006 NPR | Affordable Laptop Computer Project Moves Forward
07 Jul. 2006 San Diego Union-Tribune | U.S. and international educators show great interest in prototype
Jul. 2006 SPIE Professional | $100 laptop nears launch
21 Jun. 2006 BusinessWeek online | For Brazil's Poor, a Digital Deliverance?
24 May 2006 CNET News.com | $100 laptop gets working prototype
07 Apr. 2006 rediff.com | Our $100 laptops will run on human power
02 Apr. 2006 O Estado de S.Paulo | Fazer a diferença
28 Mar. 2006 FT.com | Waking up to a laptop revolution
24 Mar. 2006 Diário do Comércio | Um Laptop por Crianca
22 Mar. 2006 Times Online | Getting the world's poor logged on
09 Mar. 2006 Correio Popular | País disputa fabricação de laptop de US$ 100
  Folha de S. Paulo | Governo quer comprar 1 milhão de laptops
  Info Exame On Line | Governo quer um milhão de laptops de US$ 100
08 Mar. 2006 IDG Now | Faculdade abre programa de inclusão digital para alunos
  Folha de S. Paulo | Governo negocia fabricação do laptop de US$ 100 no Brasil
  Agência Globo | Governo estuda possibilidade de produção de computador de US$ 100 no país
  Teletime News | DVB detalha contrapartidas oferecidas ao Brasil
05 Mar. 2006 ACM/CIE | Interview with Nicholas Negroponte on the $100 laptop
16 Feb. 2006 MITIR | Podcast of Walter Bender's MURJ lecture on One Laptop per Child
15 Feb. 2006 CNET | PCs for the poor: Which design will win?
10 Feb. 2006 CNET | Perspective: Will the $100 PC fly?
09 Feb. 2006 NYTimes | A Plug for the Unplugged $100 Laptop Computer for Developing Nations
  UPI | One Laptop Project reaches critical stages
31 Jan. 2006 Slashdot | Microsoft OS Smart Phone for Developing Nations
  USA Today | Gates sees cellphones as way to help Third World
  Macworld | Red Hat officially commits to MIT's $100 laptop
20 Dec. 2005 BusinessWeek online | Quanta faces challenges in making "millions and millions" of $100 laptops.
19 Dec. 2005 Forbes.com | China to decide by March whether to join OneLaptopPerChild project.
14 Dec. 2005 UPI | Nortel to take part in OneLaptopPerChild endeavor.
13 Dec. 2005 Red Herring | Quanta to manufacture laptops; expects deliveries in 2006 4th quarter.
11 Dec. 2005 NYTimes | NY Times: 5th Annual Year in Ideas $100 Laptop
01 Dec. 2005 RFDESIGN | $100 Laptops Feature Novel Peer-to-Peer Wireless Connectivity
30 Nov. 2005 FT.com | Five companies in Asia making bids to manufacture $100 laptop.
28 Nov. 2005 Fortune Magazine | THE DIGITAL DIVIDE: I'd Like to Teach the World to Type
25 Nov. 2005 People's Daily Online | Nigerian president says government has budgeted for a million $100 laptops.
17 Nov. 2005 BBC News | UN Debut for $100 Laptop for Poor
  Seattle Times | $100 Laptops Aim to Bring Children the World
  TechWhack | MIT Unveils their USD 100 Laptop
  ZDNet | '$100 Laptops' Here by Next Year
  ABC | $100 Laptop Bridges Digital Divide
  Financial Express | Laptop @$100!
16 Nov. 2005 MIT News Office | Annan to Present Prototype $100 Laptop at World Summit on Information Society
  CNET | $100 Laptop Takes World Stage
  CNET | $100 Laptop Expected in Late 2006
  Christian Science Monitor | A Low-Cost Laptop for Every Child
14 Nov. 2005 WSJ | The $100 Laptop Moves Closer to Reality
13 Nov. 2005 The Inquirer | Hubris over $100 Laptop idea
New York Times | Google Earmarks $265million for Charity and Social Causes
13 Oct. 2005 Technology Review | The Hundred Dollar Man: Technology Review's editor in chief, Jason Pontin, talk with Nicholas Negroponte about the Hundred Dollar Computer.
29 Sep. 2005 I4U News | Sub-$100 Laptop design unveiled
28 Sep. 2005 Boston Globe | Prototypes of $100 laptop with hand crank planned by early next year.
  MIT World | NN at Technology Review
27 Sep. 2005 Datamation | Low cost PCs for the Enterprise
06 Jun. 2005 estadao.com.br | Cada criança na escola com um laptop a tiracolo

PRESS RELEASES

Jan. 2007 OLPC Announces First-of-Its-Kind User Interface for XO Laptop Computer.
Jan. 2007 Rwanda Commits to One Laptop per Child Initiative.
Dec. 2006 Low Cost Laptop Could Tranform Learning.

Video

(Misc. videos of the laptop can be found.)

http://video.globo.com/Videos/Player/Noticias/0,,GIM607884-7823-CRIANCAS+TESTAM+COMPUTADOR+PORTATIL,00.html | Crianças testam computador portátil/ Students test the laptop, GLOBO- BRASIL

http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/061004-ee380-300.asx | Mark Foster delivers presentation to Standford University

http://www.technologyreview.com/ | Technology Review Mini-Documentary

http://www.radiofarda.com/Article/2007/01/04/f2_Interview-laptop.html | A Brief Demo

Retrieved from "http://wiki.laptop.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=OLPC:News&oldid=21012"