OLPC:Xoxo/Archive 1

xoxo #-5

14:00, 1 June 2007 (EDT), tags: 1CC, music

=== xoxo ===
this is v -5 of the daily xoxo textfile; to soon become a daily occurrence.  
please leave your own contributions on the talk page, or leave me a message

=== 1CC ===
There are many new faces in Cambridge, and now a pretty steady off-hours crew which includes Bernie
(who is addicted to videogame music remixes), Joshua Gay (FSF campaign manager, textbook activist, stet demon)
Bernie has recently come to Cambridge to work from the office, and has introduced video game music 
remixes to our jukebox queue.

=== free texts ===
Joel Thierstein from Connexions and Jessamyn West visited on Friday; good conversations were had 
around texts and modular materials.  CNX has some interesting new Physics modules - checking to
see if FHSST has time to integrate with their own work; they've gotten involved with 
Curriki, so the project is certainly alive.  Ben Crowell has an excellent set of
"light and matter" physics texts up as well, which mesh nicely 
with the wikieducator philosophy.

We are talking about a space to list status and qualities of existing free and collaborative
text projects - perhaps a rebirth of freetextbookproject itself.  Advocates needed for travel
in publishing and creative circles.

=== free culture ===
a Free Culture Cambridge is starting an open space for collaboration, creation, and contribution to open
content projects.  We're starting weekly gatherings Mondays, at a place to be determined soon; if you
are interested in joining, send a note to sj@laptop.  Early initiatives will include getting OurStories
off the ground, developing swag and materials about free culture spaces and OLPC, and launching searches
for suitable spaces in 6 countries.

xoxo #-4

16:52, 2 June 2007 (EDT), tags: day-to-day, lists, wiki

== Saturday ==
is extremely cloudy!  Ryan Trinkle is working on a reference implementation of message passing that 
could serve as support for a distributed filestore, or a way to exchange queues of requests and
responses (for searches for texts, posts to offline fora or wikis, or apps such as meshboard)

== todos ==
Starting a generic community todo list.  Please contribute community efforts that you do
each day, or would see done; or things that need doing (like welcoming new users, reviewing RC, blogging).
In the spirit of the OLPC planet, there are some blogs starting on this wiki.

== wiki and activities ==
Wiki gardening: Lauren has been adding metadata on the wiki about activities and 
other projects.  If you maintain a project or package, or are working on interface or other designs, 
please add a page about your work, and a small infobox with source and author information.  

Userpages: It is also good to set up a userpage describing who you are and what you do.  If you have 
an XO, you might take a photo with your camera and upload it.  Example wikipages: User:Xavi, 
User:Php5, User:Lauren

xoxo #-3

19:25, 4 June 2007 (EDT), tags: systems, games

=== Game Jam ===
Games : the Olin Game Jam is coming up.  A parallel Jam is planned for Brazil in a few months.

=== xo thoughts ===
Format: future editions encoded as outlines?  Hat tip to Tantek.

=== International ===
The Korean pages on the wiki continue to grow, many of need translation into other languages.
(see Special:Newpages for more.)  OLPC Nepal is still looking for summer volunteers...
XOs are being used by the youth delegation at the J8 Summit.

=== Library ===
People working on development projects working on works, activities, and media for the laptops - most people
with XOs and others - should register.  We're working on providing better community support
for these efforts.

=== notifications ===
Are there parts of the project you'd like to be notified about?  Specific applications or events you are 
following?  Suggest a topic to cover, and we will include regular notifications as updates come in.  Not
quite the same as automatic rss-feed alerts, but close.

=== summer blog ===
We're setting up a summer blog for the interns and other new faces around the office this summer; also
for others working on and with OLPC around the world.  keep your eyes peeled for an update soon.

xoxo #-2

16:19, 6 June 2007 (EDT), tags:

Commencement

Message passing, distributed filestore

=== wiki updates ===
MediaWiki updated; extensions - the wiki has been updated to MediaWiki 1.10.  Most modern extensions will
now work with just a little effort; leave extension requests on Talk:Wiki.  If you have an OLPC portal
or intro page on your site, or want to set one up, leave a link or note on [[

=== volunteer projects ===
Volunteers are wanted for OLPC-related projects in Cambridge, in Nepal (see OLPC Nepal), and elsewhere.
If you have tasks that need to be done for your OLPC-related project, are interested in mentoring someone
for such a project, or are interested in volunteering yourself, see the request board and add yourself
or the project or other offer.

=== wiki community links ===
Links to related wiki communities, and pages about OLPC there / linked to from here are welcome.
Please write in about links you want to see in our interwiki map.

xoxo #-1

18:22, 24 June 2007 (EDT), tags:

=== wiki ===
You can now upload .svg files.  And there's a new empty OLPC Art Gallery.  So you can share your icons
and other work.
Extensions: the Parser Functions have been enabled. Please, handle with care.

=== development tools ===
Display: 1200x900 isn't currently supported by non-cvs QEMU.  Emulating the XO/Help and tips has a recipe to
get it using Xephyr.
Wondering what your activity looks like under different lighting conditions?  There's a new python script
which takes screenshots and shows you, sort of.  But you usually don't need to worry about it.

=== art ===
Just a reminder: the Munsell page has a palette with colors of common luminance.  
But it's small, so we are looking for a better palette.

=== sugar ===
Things can now be saved to the journal.  And activities downloaded to the journal and run.  Try it out...
 
=== collage ===
There is a new Sophie activity to test out - a collage activity based on a sibling of Squeak.
This is a port of a long-standing project from the Institute of the Future of the Book - please explore 
and test; also the new EduKT activity, newly minted with rough edges.  A related thread touches on Etoys.

=== cartoon building ===
Avallain is halfway done with a cartoon builder, that lets you load a library of comic assets 
and put together a strip with balloon text.  The comic developer Teshkeel is donating some
character art to the project.

xoxo #0

18:22, 30 June 2007 (EDT), tags:

=== Ideas ===
{{Wikipedia ads}}-like wanted!

=== Recent Changes ===

This is an experimental report on the Special:Recentchanges. Suggestions are welcome.
Several Test Plans have been added to several activities.
Some highlights:
-- 300 minor edits (37 user space; 30 templates; 26 talk pages)
-- 83 new pages (11 user pages, 10 talk pages)
-- 37 new files in the wiki (31 images & 6 other files)
-- maintenance-wise, 3 pages were moved, 8 deleted, and 9 IPs were blocked

xoxo #1

12 July 2007, tags: wiki, maps, curriculum, rc

=== xoxo #1 ===
Welcome to the first edition of xoxo, a regular textfile of exciting things happening around the OLPC
projects, with summaries of the various community fora.  We are currently looking for editors and 
summarizers (specifically for mailing lists and blogs).  Anyone is welcome to contribute by posting
new items to these talk pages. 

=== bug tracking and fixing ===
Please note any bugs or enhancements or feature requests in trac: dev.laptop.org .   Anyone is welcome to 
make an account there and file bugs or ideas.
New wiki template {{ticket}} allowing a short way to reference tickets: #1.

=== game and curriculum jams  ===
mchua has been working on plans for game and other content jams 
this fall in a number of cities.  Current jams being planned based on where there are interested organizers 
(Manila, New York, Sao Paulo), feedback or new cities welcome.  

=== laptop map ===
name.com has been thinking about how to visualize OLPC data and machines, and how to help laptop communities.
they've made a google mashup, which can be installed on this wiki via a mediawiki extension : laptop.name.org

=== OBX proposals ===
After an IRC chat, some proposals were added. The idea is that each box categorizes on orthogonal 
axis, on one side users can tag themselves as Artists (a category) with a specialty (say Artists
icons — another category) and then on the 'consumer' side, activities (or whatever) could tag as
Needing/Wanting icon. The categories would have cross-links allowing us to better match things.
The idea is to expand to other domains.

=== Recent Changes ===

This is an experimental report on the Special:Recentchanges for the week ending July 8.
Suggestions (and scripting help) are welcome: contact Xavi.

Some highlights include:
Almost 2200 changes this week (1670 actual editions) 
-- 580 minor edits (37 user space; 30 templates; 26 talk pages)
-- 522 new pages the bulk being 
   -- 30 categories for language fluency, 
   -- 40+ Olpcboxes and Category:OBX templates, and
   -- 376 in the OLPC Korea branch.
-- 68 new files in the wiki (66 images and 2 other files)
-- 19 pages were moved, 37 IPs were blocked, and 3 pages were protected (due to vandalism)

xoxo #2

18:22, 13 July 2007 (EDT), tags: cbc, java, intel, col, SoCon, php

as the code freeze deadline draws near (it's now a few hours away),
developers break into spontaneous fits of poetry on #olpc-content (read the original poem first)
   The night is calling me to sleep,
   but gtk, it made me weep.
   I've files to code before I sleep.
   And tubes to code before they're neat.

there are opportunities to help clean up the wiki!  beefing up the style guide,
improving special:recentchanges and other system messages (eg MediaWiki:Noarticletext),
revisiting categorization, and integrating sister wikis (olpcaustria, wikieducator).
come by #olpc-content and talk with mitchellncharity, mchua, xavi, and sj. 
advice, and comments in general, are welcome.

wiki blocking: you can block IP ranges with, e.g., 
  200.83.4.6/28 (to mask the last 32-28 = 4 bits, so you block 16 addresses) or 
  203.162.27.90/30 (to mask 32-30=2 bits, blocking 2 addresses)
please be very careful blocking ranges or IPs for that matter, particularly given 
nature of dynamic IPs; don't block ranges for nearly as long as you would a single user,
and try to avoid any blocks of longer than a week.  [That said, blocked users can see
the email of the blocking admin, so you may get email from people unfairly blocked]
See Wikipedia's approach to understand the possible results of blocking.

Content jams : user:mackiwg & the commonwealth of learning agreed to co-run a pilot 
Summer of Content 2007 season with OLPC.  final comments welcome on the proposed process

Cambridge Brewing Company : groups from OLPC regularly close them out; festivities followed by 
wine & dancing earlier this wek.  who knew there were so many dancers in the office?  
Bernie managed to demo screencaps while dancing.

A first round of templating and clarifying content sources for regular content 
releases produced a page of notes on content packages.  this will be 
revisited next week.

the startpage on the XO browser now has a spanish interface and 
loads a main page that can search Google and links directly to the Activity Grid for 
downloading new activities.

There is a new Stopwatch activity.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to tubify it before T-2 freeze.
If anyone needs (poorly working) drag-around-able pygtk widgets, it has one.  Help welcome. :)

xoxo #3

21 July 2007, tags:

=== Curation and bundling ===
Connexions and Curriki are both preparing regular content bundles, autogenerated from their existing
platforms.  The World Digital Library is producing bundles by hand from a selection by a set of
topical curators.  Please note on talk:content bundles and talk:activity bundles how you are 
handling bundle generation.  

=== grids ===
There are now an Activity Grid and a library grid for code and content bundles available to  
download.  The mime-type scripting for the xo browser that tells it what to do with .xol 
bundles still needs to be written

=== Mailing lists ===
The number of mailing lists, and of quiet lists, has been growing.  We are making an effort to unify
lists, and to summarize them.  If you are interested in summarizing a list, contact sj.

=== Summer of Content ===
A proper Summer of Content 2007 project was put up last week, and is accepting new project ideas
and mentor orgs.  Please read more about it there and pass it on.

=== Special:Recentchanges more stats ===
Extracting useful data or numbers from Special:Recentchanges besides being expensive in time and effort,
and not particularly insightful of what is actually going on in the wiki. So we're starting a new approach,
basically snapshoting some Special:Specialpages between two dates and extracting info.

The analysis for week #29 was performed based on two snapshots:  2007-07-12 and 2007-07-21
Please take this results as a-work-in-progress, meaning that it's still a proof-of-concept. Meaning
that the format is not very nice but it still shows the most viewed, most edited and most added.

xoxo #4

7 August 2007, tags: mania, summer, textbooks

Wikimania came this week, with collabs on Jamendo and more; and some MediaWiki discussions
about how to improve tools used here.  Please keep adding requests and suggestions there.

Wikislices and a related project on en:wp are being formed.  
See the project page there for more. 
These and other content bundles are being uploaded to the library grid.

xoxo #5

September 27, 11:45 UTC, tags: statistics

Back after a brief hiatus.  

Bentham and data tracking : we want to make data tracking a white-box activity, with transparency 
about what is tracked.  Data that partner projects are interested in:
Concord projects

the Boston Public Libraries are working out ways to curate digital libraries for schools
and at the same time for OLPC.  They just launched a digitization project, courtesy
of the Internet Archive.

Games: Game labs at MIT and Carnegie Mellon are starting term projects with 
XOs.  This Friday there will be XO gaming at GAMBIT (in 5 Cambridge Center), and we are
having a weekly game development conference call Sunday at 1500 EST.

Testing : installing activities and bundles; this is getting better formalized.

Jams : OLPCPH Curriculum Jam in Manila - moved venue.  See OLPC Philippines for updates

Statistics : see Xoxo/Statistics for the week's wikistat updates.