Other ideas

Other Ideas

Other ideas, not specifically for hardware or software of the laptop itself:

VoIP

Skype or somesuch?

Low-cost Graphing Calculators

Starting this year in schools across the world, the use of graphing calculators is being incorporated into the education syllabus of mathematic subjects such as algebra, trigonometry and calculus. Graphing calculators are more expensive than the already costly scientific calculators. And this has raised issues of costs and funding, as well as the logic of burdening students with a US$100 device that's never use after a semester/term. One idea is to put software-based graphing calculators into entry-level/used mobile phones. For example: Tea Vui Huang's TVH-72g Graphing Calculator for mobile phones. Ref: One Graphing Calculator Per Student

UMPC

I think the function of OLPC and UMPC should be the same, right?

Wireless Networking

A book called Wireless Networking in the Developing World is now available on the net in pdf at http://wndw.net/. It has a lot of information that might be useful when deploying the OLPC program. In addition to covering WIFI theory and design, it covers practical, social, and economic problems that they encountered. One idea is to share the cost of the infrastructure with other local groups like businesses and local government. Another is to disperse the knowledge of how to operate the system so that if one person moves away, critical knowledge isn't lost.

Wireless Thin-Client as alternative?

The main counter argument for a thin-client approach is probably the need for maintenance/administration and general dependency on the central server, think e.g. particularly power in this context?

Still, maybe providing a (much) cheaper wireless portable thin client (think one-chip LCD+wireless controller; nothing else inside, particularly no memory and real CPU, which are probably the next most expensive part after the display?), for say $20 instead of $100, plus a commoditized say $1000 Dual-CPU with 2 GB RAM server, per school/entire village, could of interest in some situations? This is assuming that the configuration and loaded software etc. of all devices would be very homogenous, which is probably a fair assumption in this context? If the server could run say 100 clients (essentially running very similar software to what was built for the full $100 laptop of 128 MB RAM each, but with all of the OS and application code shared, thus only using about 16-32 MB for per-client data) then this seems at least imaginable, and would mean a total cost of just $3000 instead of $10'000 - for the 100 children.

That's a lot of ifs and assumptions of course, and only real pricing, scalability and the "market" can tell if there was an interest for (also) providing this - later. Just an idea, really.

It's a good idea, Ndiyo is doing just that right NOW. Except, because you're tied to the server there's no need to use complex wireless network technology. Also as you say the server is tied to a reliable power source; e.g. at least diesel generator which means the machines are only of use in a classroom or office. The prices are high at the moment, compared to olpc targets, but the boxes aren't being mass produced yet. 62.252.0.11 01:55, 18 March 2006 (EST)

Development Process

How much coordination of the Software Development Process is useful? Just make an SDK available and hope for self-organization? Or maybe e.g. a registry of suggested/needed software, a forum to coordinate software development between parties using this. Or how about volunteer summer projects for CS university students, like Google's summer of code thing?

User interface

Get John Maeda involved with the UI and other design elements.

Ergonomics for the hand-crank handle is not there. I believe Oval is good, even better is a triangular shape with rounded edges. Rectangular shape fits the profile of the computer well, however, with hand crank being one of the most used and stressed portion of the laptop, minimizing unnatural gripping forces to be applied to the handle may increase the life of the handle and improve ergonomics at the same time. By M. Harada Buford, GA

Physical USB Stick data transport

Some villages don't have telephone or other networks and will not have that for years. People are traveling to markets and commute to work, public busses and other scheduled vehicle reach more villages than the internet does it now.

There should be a possibility to send and receive email using a village based server. There should be a easy to handle mechanism to transport email messages using a USB stick that travels in the pocket of someones trousers. Plug an USB stick into the village server, transport it to a village with internet and plug it in to an other server should be enough.

A more difficult project would be to send the email data to a passing public bus via WLAN. A vehicle can make to connection between an WLAN island and an WLAN connected to the internet.

The ping is horrible but 1 GByte per day is possible ;-)

Weekly or even daily software updates and bidirectional wikipedia updates could also made by USB in nearly every place - if the software can do that.

Sell them! Make them a symbol of global activism

I suggest that the decision not to sell these to the general public be reconsidered. Sales of these laptops could help fund their global (charitable) distribution. For a purchase price of $200, consumers would actually be buying two computers - one to own/use and one for a needy child somewhere in the world. Among first world consumers, these laptops could become quite popular as a meaningful symbol of global activism. Widespread usage of the devices would, in turn, fuel innovation, enhance infrastructure and make the devices that much more useful to the global community for which they were originally intended.

-- suggested by Don Ferris, San Diego, CA

Sell in open market and use royalty to fund free laptops to poor children: I don't understand why OLPC doesn't want to sell in open markets, and why the manufacturing contract has to be exclusive to specific manufacturer(s). By doing this, OLPC is not unleashing the power of the markets. Such a sound concept as $100 laptop, when complemented by the market, will work exponentially well. I suggest a system where the design is made close to open source, and any manufacturer can use the design, and they can make improvements. However, the manufacturers should agree to submit any design or function improvements to the MediaLabs, in return for the original design. The MediaLabs should collect royalty as a percentage of sales, and use it to fund free or subsidized laptops for children of poor countries. [1]

-- Subhas Chilumula, Rutherford, NJ, USA.

Terrific idea! I'd buy one for $200 in a minute. If this idea could be more widely floated (Tim O'Reilly, you listening?), I'm sure the response would be very strong.

-- Tim Lynch, T-burg, NY

I had this same idea this morning while listening to the NPR story about the laptop program. I could easily see buying one at $200 with the knowledge that I was also buying another for a child elsewhere. The one hole that I see in the current plan is that marketing these commercially in the U.S. and other well developed countries wouldn't be enough. I think that to really give the program a chance a rollout within the poor in the U.S./Europe would give a big boost in cost reduction (more laptops less cost) and it would provide for greater addoption and awareness. There are plenty of places within the U.S. and Europe that could benefit from a program like this.

--Nick Acks, Baltimore, MD

I came here to submit exactly this idea. Pay two, get one! I feel it is important that the OLPC hardware is freely available on the market at low price. If not there will immediately a black market being established, where the hardware is sold at much more than 200$.

The OLPC Laptop can be more than consumer electronics. It serves very well as client device for distributed applications even in large companies or public institutions. I were proud to deliver those applications to my customers.

-- Dominik Dahl, Tunisia

Same idea... With a twist. Make an open market version to distinguish it from the OLPC version so that when an OLPC computer DOES come up on an auction site it is immediately recognizable as such. The last I saw the OLPC unit cost was running around $138. Make the open market version $500 and put a couple of SDIO or CF slots on it in place of one of the USB ports. 802.11g and blueetooth would turn it into a device that can connect right in my world. I have been actively looking for a rugged thin client computer with no moving parts. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Keep the hand crank. It is an asset, not a liability.

-- Mark Stewart, Omaha, NE

Agree with all posters above. Demand for the laptop in affluent parts of the world will be huge too, because, lets face it, we are addicted to gadgets, and this is the coolest one to come along since the powerbook. This demand is a double edged sword though. Buy 2 (or more! I'd pay $300+ for this) get 1 is a great concept, but what if demand from the affluent outstrips supply? the "black" (I prefer the word open - the first world have been trying to smash the concept of democracy/free trade into the heads of the third world for centuries now, they can't rightly turn around and complain, using the sinister term "black" market when the third world finally does exactly what they have been suggesting all this time) market scenario is, unfortuntely, a highly plausible one. On the other hand, a larger user base of developers would mature the software platform faster, and if the laptop does eventually get connected to backbone "in the wild" instead of just a local ad hoc network, knowledge transfer can happen in a more open way.

-- Ben Tobias, Australia

The $200 dollar open market version idea is fantastic. So is the idea for a serial number as stated below. I agree that there should be a way to tell them apart. The open market version should sport different colors, slight, but noticable differences in the outer shell, maybe few special markings, and perhaps a different type of serial number than the original OLPC version. These special laptops could be produced in limited numbers so as not to produce too big of a demand on the manufacturers. At that price it would be an impulse buy, especially for us techies and poor college students. I would probably open the thing up and mod the heck out of it.

-- Ulysses Rodrigues, United States, Ca

Don't sell them

There should be written in big letters at the laptop: "Not for Sale" "please report to email, tel.nr,..."

If there is a commercial version it should have a different shape, different color, different motherboard size... If it is not possible to buy this laptop or even parts of this laptop legaly it should be easier to find stolen laptops. There should be a database of MAC adresses of stolen laptops.

The CPU should have a different color than comercial available CPUs.

Write everywhere in lots of languages: "If you buy or sell this computer or parts of this computer you will go to jail for 20 years".

Serial Number

The laptop should have a serial number. Maybe the mac-address is ok. If the laptop makes a wifi connection it should send this serial numbers. If it is stolen it should be easy to find them again if there is a database with serial numbers of stolen laptops.

Btw. in South East Asia thefts aren't a big problem.

Social Context

Remember that most of the african countries have not yet been involved in the project.

The targeted community is very very far from being basic computer users. Start distributing devices first to those who already know the concept of a computer; students, public administration, companies administration. One Laptop per Child is the final goal, not the first step.

The whole concept need to be seen in the context of how networking and distribution of data is going to be performed. In the poorest countries, the ideas may need to be modified due to limited scope for immediate networking.

The role of charity will be a major driving force in distributing the hardware to the poorest individuals. Small companies and public institutions even in poor countries are capable of buying basic hardware.

For adults, with limited postal service or reliability, a major application of importance would be political and private communications. To provide privacy and delivery certification a publik key infrastructure is required. In some targeted countries authority wants to read, manipulate or intercept any communication. A policy is needed to cooperate with such authorities: Either not introduce means of communications in these areas or provide authorities with read/write access to all communications.

There will immedately established a black market where OLPC devices are sold. That means these devices will be valuable, even if they are given for free. Consequences are: widespread corruptions, laptops illegaly sold by schools to parents, laptops sold by parents. People express their "rights" to sell what is "given" to them. And the worst: Children robbed or otherwise forced to hand over the hardware. Think about the consequences, when providing value to the weakest. To assure the flawless implementation of this project first eliminate black market by establishing a legal market. Enforcements about buying/ownership or that only those appropriate could carry/operate will be overcome by criminals.

-- This is an edit of an original post of user Ma -- http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/User:Ma -- see the link for original post.

Distribution of Data and Software

Data and software distribution could be a commercial venture for a dweller with transport. Western charity could provide data transfer credits to individuals in remote villages, to be spent on delivery to and from the village. A courier would have a laptop with large storage expansion, and travel to villages to deliver data designated for them, and to recieve data for delivery from them. They would expend their credits in the process of givig their data transmission, and recieve a secure reciept for their last communications sent from the data courier. When the courier returned to the city, they would access the internet via a larger access point if available, or just by telephone if not, and would load the appropriate requested data from several repositories of information - e.g. encyclopedia (possibly wikipedia), educational syllabus for the next month or year as developed by national education system, etc. The delivery of the data would be accompanied by a cashing in of the data-transfer-credits collected on their journy around the villages, and converted to cedits for cashing at a bank, or directly at the internet access point if appropriate. Email based securely encoded credits designated for the individuals in villages as charity gifts would then be recieved from the internet and delivered by the courier to the village on their next visit. To prevent ransom of the delivery of the credits, the entire collection of data intended for the village would be bound in to a 'delivery package' only decodable and seperatable by the intended recipient and then distributed to the individuals by a simple username and password (the username selected from a village specific list, to avoid confusion). With funding of data distribution by digitally secure credits or tokens delivered securely to villagers, access to data by the holders of the laptop can be guaranteed.

Access to personal data must be able to protected, by user/password encoded access only, also for deleting data - there should be a firmware controlled partition or directory on the flash which can only be accessed by users' passwords, or deleted in its entirety (not per user) - also there should be a limit on the space used by each user. There should be a hardware switch for deactivating wifi if installed, to prevent hackers and viruses in potentially unstable political climate - likely used to prevent political dissent.

-- suggested by ma http://wiki.laptop.org/wiki/User:Ma

==SHARED LINUX DISTRIBUTION ACCESS A full linux distribution of 14 CD-ROMs will not fit on a single OLPC laptop with only 512MB non-volatile storage, but it will fit on 100 laptops. If each laptop dedicates 18% of it's non-volatile storage to public wireless access, then 100 laptops each within wireless range of each other at a school can have access to a full linux distribution.

• (Is this serious? Linux mini-distributions such as PuppyLinux, Damnsmalllinux and Austrumi are only 50-60 MB compressed and no larger than 200 MB uncompressed, but are very functional distros.)

To handle situations where not all 100 laptops are at a school at the same time, the package file could be striped across multiple laptops using RAID 5. If a particular package file is located on 10 laptops and one is missing the others will use checksums to replace the missing data. -- (addition here by User:Ma) -- I would suggest that a new redundant storage system be developed for this purpose, with specific allocation of storage for this application, if it were considered a useful feature.

Each OLPC laptop could have: A basic set of applications. Access to use or install any package contained on the distributed wireless public storage while at school. Favorite applications cached locally on laptop.

-- TMJ

Ready Operating Systems

According to this story, PuppyLinux is ready to run on the laptop, before other distros have designed their latest hat...

Puppy installs anywhere... http://www.puppylinux.org/

Contact

Main developer

Barry Kauler, P.O. Box 359, Perenjori, WA 6620, Australia

Main forum

http://murga.org/~puppy/

Publicity officer

ed.jason@gmail.com

OLPC friendly sites

Considering that these laptops are going to access the web, it might be beneficial to encourage webmasters to make their sites look good when viewed with a laptop display set to the color mode on 640x480 resolution. Most of the sites today have been made to work with 800x600 resolution or higher which may present a bit of a problem when people start surfing these sites with the color mode switched on in these laptops.

One way webmasters can do it is to just make their sites look good and scale well to 640x480 view, but if that is not feasible then an alternative approach is to design an alternative version of sites design/layout that will be automatically switched once the site detects an OLPC laptop or otherwise if laptop detects the availability of the OLPC compliant version of site design. This detection system should yet be devised.

One way is to tune the preinstalled version of firefox to emit a special user agent id which can then be detected by websites so they know they need to switch to an olpc friendly version.

Another way may be to use firefox greasmonkey extension and have webmasters make scripts that transform their sites into a friendly version. This has been suggested by "TD" on an #olpc freenode IRC channel (to give a credit:). Scripts would then be stored in a central location and invoked by the greasmonkey extension. As new scripts become available on a central server the extension in a browser would automatically add them to its list so that they are applied. It shouldn't be hard to modify the extension to allow for that. This however has a drawback of requiring more processing on part of the client laptop which is something we want to prevent, but the concept could still be something to build on.

I have experimented a bit with this and was able to create a friendlier theme for my site (which is a portal so it is rather challenging). Changes I made would probably easily be convertible to the greasmonkey script.

I have proposed a project around this idea at Libervis.com (which is a site I mentioned above) and there was some discussion that might be found useful. If anyone picks this up as something worth considering and wants to for some reason get in touch with me feel free to drop me a line there. Just use the contact form. :) If I can help in some way, or anyone from libervis community, feel free to make a suggestion.

Thank you's

Danijel Orsolic

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Buy One, Give One Free

"Today the OLPC program has laid down the framework for the assurance of it's success, the team led by Nicholas Negroponte have created a plan for all companies which are not currently involved in the OLPC project to get some 'street credentials' in their local community and for the Developing World to be assured of a ready supply of these Mean Machines. The launch of the Buy one, Give one Free program is simple, Companies to invest in the education of children in the local communities each company buys units of educational laptops at $200 a piece, in bundles of 1,000-10,000, for each laptop they buy to invest in the education of their local community of children a further laptop is sent to a developing country to be used by that child's future laptop buddy or email friend, a child in a developing nation who will hopefully get equal benefit from the use of this education device.

Buy One, Get One Free will be comming soon, do the companies in your local area care enough about educating the community in which they are based, lets find out. Companies complain about vandalism and Graffiti and a lack of community spirit when it comes to theft, well here is a chance to create some real community relations, perminatly!"

Wonderful Idea But Long-Term Support Needed

Having worked in Africa for several years and seen many, many "donation" programs fail due to lack of service, support and follow up, I must suggest that this program will not work unless there is a commitment to long-term support of each laptop. Here's an example: a brand-new x-ray machine donated by the Japanese government after much hoopla and press sat useless for 10 years after an easily repairable part broke and there was no money to fix it. If laptops are going to be donated, there needs to be thought put into what happens when something goes wrong with them. It would be a shame to see thousands of laptops sitting useless once something goes wrong with them. Service programs must be included in any equipment donation if the program is to have long-term sustainability.

Laura Hendrix

lhamilton_114@hotmail.com

---

This is an important suggestion. How can this service programme be realized? The topic needs its own page.

Laptop Service Programme Ideas

Rollout and Community Building

Rollout and Community Building Ideas are now in their own page.

Rollout and Community Building Ideas

More ideas

Here are a few more ideas: --ArnoldReinhold 09:21, 25 May 2006 (EDT)

Low voltage infrastructure

The power connector should be widely available, allowing connections to a variety of low voltage devices. I believe there are other projects promoting low-voltage, high efficiency lighting for the third world. These systems might be a source of laptop power.

Reuse of dead car batteries

Related to the above, it is my understanding that most 12 Volt vehicle battery failures involve a short circuit in a single cell, reducing the total voltage at full charge to a bit over 10 V. Such batteries should still be able to power the lap top and could be charged by solar cells or a manual generator. They could even be placed in a car or truck and charged from a cigar lighter adaptor during work trips. A discarded vehicle battery should be able to run an OLPC machine for a few days after a full charge.

USB devices

It might be worthwhile to develop educational USB devices. One possibility would be a simple A/D converter with some sensors (temp, light, humidity, acceleration, etc). and input conditioning circuits. This would convert the laptop into a measurement device. With some software, it could be used as the basis for numerous science labs. It could also aid in repairing other laptops. Of course, such a device could be used with any USB-equipped computer.

Vertical retrace data channel

One way to mass download info, at least in areas that have TV reception, is to use the vertical retrace interval to send data.

HF radio

The ham radio community has mature technology for sending data over long distances at low speeds over narrow high-frequency (3-30 MHz) channels using PC sound cards as data modems. This technology could be used for e-mail to remote regions.

Start collecting USB memory sticks

Smaller USB memory sticks are becoming obsolete as flash memory prices drop. It might make sense to start collecting them for eventual distribution with the laptops. They don't take up much space.

THE MILLENNIUM GIFT ETHIOPIA የሺ ዓመት ስጦታ

Ethiopia

1. Poorest country in the world
2. Lowest computer penetration in the world
3. Lowest Internet and mobile penetration in the world
4. Uses unique alphabet
5. Uses unique calendar

• which needs some amount of development investment by software companies. The likely hood of that happening is slim due to problem no1 above. No one would invest on a market that has no money.

-Even if computers trickle in to Ethiopia some how (which is not happening) they are of no use for an ordinary Ethiopian child who do not understand much English. The software companies will not be rushing to build computers for Ethiopian children since there will not be money in it. The present system is condemns every Ethiopian child to computer darkness, for forsiable future.

light in the tunnel

But we are in a very unique time, and opportunity has presented itself to change all this. For those who do not know, at the moment the calender year in Ethiopia is 1998. The Ethiopian millennium comes on suptember 11th 2008. (Don’t mind the date. You cannot imagine how painful for Ethiopians that dreadful day was.) That means the Ethiopian Millennium is going to be in about one and half year from now. And there are about 1.5 million Ethiopians living abroad. Most of this Ethiopians are educated and could help in many ways. Out of this Ethiopians with the most conservative estimate about 100 000 will be celebrating the Ethiopian millennium in Ethiopia.

What The Millennium Gift Project does?

The millennium gift project for the next one and half year prepares a gift of one laptop computer by one travelling Ethiopian for one Ethiopian child to be presented for the millennium celebration.

This project organizes a massive localization and translation project with the participation of all capable Ethiopians, free and open source software developers, institutions such as universities and collages. Helping with organizing, coding, translating, identifying recipients and donors and contributing money.

The software’s to be localized and translated to at least one Ethiopian language are

• Ubuntu Linux Dapper drake (because of the launchpad at Ubuntu facility *Edubuntu
• Amharic wikipedia
• Amharic Wiktionary

Hardware

• One laptop perchied computer
• Any laptop computer
• Any capable desktop computer
• Servers for schools
• Communication and Networking Equipment

Recipients

• Schools
• Classes
• Students

Teferra 05:12, 27 May 2006 (EDT)