OLPC:News

  This page is monitored by the OLPC team.

LAPTOP NEWS

1. Mark Foster happily reports that the DCON ASIC is up and running, and first pass silicon is fully functional. While the chip has a few bugs that will be corrected for future builds—including higher power consumption than planned—we will be able to exercise all the planned capabilities of the chip on the B1 systems.

2. Mark also reports that the CAFE (Camera and Flash Enabler) FPGA is now fully functional, with all three of the device subsystems working flawlessly. The camera, SD card slot, and NAND Flash controllers have not only been tested, they are fully integrated into the OLPC Linux kernel, with complete device drivers also working perfectly. Performance on the crucial NAND Flash controller—the laptop's primary storage device—is already much faster than that of the Geode, and will double again when the CAFE ASIC arrives. Many thanks to the great work by the CAFE team at Marvell, as well as the software team who pulled off the necessary device drivers in record time.

3. For B1 we plan to use a Linux 2.6.19 OLPC kernel with a Red Hat Fedora Core 6 run-time environment; this is lower risk than combining our own work with Fedora changes that might affect us that would not be of benefit.

4. Chris Blizzard reports that this was an exciting week for the software team. On the UI front we've had a lot of progress. Marco Gritti has moved from working on the shell and presentation bits to getting ready to start taking community contributions. This means starting on the parts of the code that allow anyone to build and deploy an activity that they have built.

The B1 build will include basic support for:

• Chat
• Web Browser
• Demo Sketching Program
• Etoys
• TamTam (for creating sounds)
• Musical Memory Game
• Xbook PDF reader

Community work going on as well: we are starting to see activity builds of Abiword (a popular document editor and our probably route to supporting Microsoft document types), and an RSS reader called PenguinTV.

5. Chris also reports that we made a lot of positive changes in the OS images this week as well. We've moved from the upstream Fedora kernels to our own builds to enable closer collaboration and faster turn around on builds. This won't work over the long term but it has enabled us to work faster and smarter in our current mode of development.

6. Crossmark, OLPC's lightweight markup language, has a dual purpose: in the strict sense, it's a markup for (collaborative) authoring environments such as our wiki and blogs; at the same time, it serves as an actual document format, suitable for use in the e-book reader, as well as for conversion to other output formats. Crossmark is designed to be read and written by humans, and only incidentally by computers, although it is parsable unambiguously. Crossmark draft-4 has received positive feedback from community and publishers, mostly trivial changes and clarifications are being incorporated into what will become draft-5 next week.

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 at laptop dot org.

MILESTONES

Oct. 2006	B-test boards become available
Aug. 2006	Working prototype of the dual-mode display
06 Jun. 2006	First video with working prototype [1]
May 2006	A-test boards become available
28 Jan. 2006	World Economic Forum, Switzerland UNDP and OLPC Sign Partnership Agreement news release
13 Dec. 2005	Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture Laptop (html)(pdf)
16 Nov. 2005	WSIS, Tunisia Prototype Unveiled by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan 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).
Jan. 2005	Laptop Intiative Officially Announced at World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

PRESS

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

Video

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