OLPC:News

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LAPTOP NEWS

1. Shanghai: Mark Foster reports that the first prototypes of the OLPC XO-1 are up and running! The team hand-assembled the first 10 units to evaluate the system's many custom components, to perform systems-integration testing, and to ensure that the production process is solid, all in preparation for next week's B1-Test build. Quanta will assemble 900 OLPC machines that will be used for destructive testing and distribution to our development partners. Our vision is a step closer to becoming a reality.

It cannot be overstated how much both the hardware and software teams have poured their hearts and souls into reaching this milestone. Kudos to all of them.

2. Washington: IX Reunión Hemisférica de la Red de Educación is the annual gathering of the vice ministers of education from Central and South America at the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). They hold an open discussion about the most critical issues that they are facing; topics are suggested by vice ministers themselves—this year they asked that one laptop per child be the theme of their meeting. Nicholas, Walter Bender, Antonio Battro, and David Cavallo presented at the meeting.

3. The cover story of this month's Technology Review is an article about OLPC, “Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop.” The eight-page article highlights both our technological innovations and our model of “enterprising philanthropy”—an analogy is made to Andrew Carnegie's successful campaign to foster the building of thousands of libraries during the late 1800s. “OLPC will, should it succeed, serve as a new model for getting the nonprofit, private, and public sectors to work together efficiently and productively. Technology Review also filmed interviews with Nicholas, Walter, and Seymour Papert, which will appear on the Video Section of their website, www.techreview.com.

4. An ultraviolet-exposure (UV) test chamber has been built and exposure tests are underway; however, we expect no problem on this. Why? The polarizer—newly selected this week—has extremely low UV transmission to the liquid crystal (0.1% throughput in the 310–400nm). Further data on the liquid crystal was provided by Merck suggesting that it is extremely resistant to UV damage. UV blocker has been added to the plastics in the housing to make it more robust in UV. To be safe, we are testing anyway.

5. Jim Gettys and Chris Blizard report that this week has been incredibly busy for the software team. We have “frozen” for our alpha software release for the B1 machines, although it being an alpha release, "the ice is relatively slushy due to the fluid nature of early development and critical bug fixes will be applied up until the last moment." We expect to have the Sugar framework, web browser, chat, a simple text editor derived from Abiword, a simple version of the music application (mini-Tamtam), a memory game, and eToys in the base system. Numerous other applications and demos will be in a repository where they can be readily downloaded.

6. Pierre Ossman, the secure digital host controller interface (SDHCI) Linux driver maintainer, and Andres Salomon worked on testing SD on CAFE, which has been released for tape-out. Together they got high-speed mode working for some cards. Some patches made it into the official OLPC-2.6 git repository, so users can now do about 5–6 MB/s data reads from SD and MMC cards (rather than the rather slow 1.5 MB/s). Performance of NAND is much faster than the Geode NAND controller, but full performance isn't expected until we get the CAFE ASIC back.

7. Jon Corbet continued working on the camera driver, which can now support multiple image sizes including QVGA. Last to come, probably not before B1, will be hooking up the brightness and hue/saturation controls; this is due to lack of timely response from Omnivision—the requested information only arrived Friday evening. Andres merged Jon's latest updates into the OLPC tree, and worked getting gstreamer's v4l2src plug-in to work with the camera. It provides a quick and easy way to grab images and video from the camera module.

8. Audio has been tested, and, short of formal audio testing that will take place during B-Test, appears to be very high quality. However, we will not have the analog input working at the beginning of B-Test.

9. Mitch Bradley and Richard Smith made innumerable firmware releases, and have one ready for production this week, which is fairly stable in the face of quite a bit of difficulty with the DCON starting up properly; the last blocker bug for the firmware is for the EC code to address power up problems and that BIOS is in test as this is written. The Open Firmware release will be within a couple of days.

10. Lilian Walker delivered to Mitch the first draft of Geode power-management code. That code provides forth words to put the OLPC board into various power management states:

G0/S0/C1: CPU suspends upon HLT
G1/S1/C2: Sleep
G1/S1/C3: Save-to-RAM
G1/S4: Save-to-disk
G2/S5: Soft off

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

10 Nov. 2006 First B1 boards are built
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

Nov./Dec. 2006 Technology Review|Will This Save the World? The $100 Laptop
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

Video

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


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