Demonstration build

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Demo Laptop Description

There are many capabilities of the XO that aren't easy to demonstrate on a standard build. The idea for this project is to set up an XO that can show off some of the features described below.

  1. Dual-boot
    • with a Fedora/Gnome or Edubuntu setup (via SD card)
    • with any simple hacks to speed up launch -- perhaps a dual-boot OpenWRT?
  2. Video (full screen)
    • ogg
    • m.youtube / kaltura
    • the best that can be done with mpeg & rm
      • has been done using a completely separate build which was stripped of absolutely everything but the ability to play video (No "OS"/GUI at all), and uses proprietary codecs
  3. Audio
    • Stereo sound to show off speakers range
    • multichannel audio from creative activity (tamtam)
    • Duet example
    • streaming audio from an online source
  4. Book Readers
    • pdf (evince)
    • js (flipbook, ICDL, jresig)
  5. Flash
    • smooth Flash animation with gnash
    • the best that can be done with Adobe Flash
  6. text-to-speech
    • Speak
  7. videochat or at least audiochat
  8. drawing w/ stylus
    • phun / elements / crayon physics
  9. Browsers
    • Full-fledged firefox
    • Opera
  10. New Sugar UI and config screen
  11. Faster load time (now in joyride)
  12. a plot of battery strength/usage over time, however crude, like what the Prius offers for gas conservation
  13. a compressed view for the Journal (or a way to link directly to a compressed view)

There are also a number of activities whose demos should be focused down to a couple of minutes, whose components could all be set up in advance; I'm thinking about how to effectively walk through them, without waiting to long for each one to load and set up, but without having more than one in memory at a given time. Is there some way to launch an activity while simultaneously demanding/reserving a block of memory, potentially killing other processes when starting up to improve the repeatability of demo length?

Progress

Here is what is done (from the list above)

  • full-screen full-motion video
    • Ogg / mpeg / many other proprietary codecs all fully supported via mplayer
      • In full screen mode game keys are used for control
      • Usage: mpalyer filename
      • Media: Elephants Dream
  • Audio
    • Stereo mp3 playback working via mplayer
  • Flash
    • gnash installed + working
    • Adobe Flash player installed + working (does not support youtube yet)
  • Text-to-Speech
    • Speak installed + working
  • Browsers
    • Full-fledged firefox installed + working
      • Works well for the most part, it is not the ideal browser for the XO.
      • Designed for a windowed GUI, full of features that are not helpful in the XO enviornment
    • Opera
      • Works very well, definitely the happy medium between Browse and Firefox
  • New Sugar UI and Config screen
    • integrated into the joyride-1914 build used
  • Faster startup
    • integrated into the joyride-1914 build used

Difficulties / Requests

  • Playing youtube video
    • Gnash not compatible via youtubes website
    • Adobe Flash loads the first 2 or 3 frames but cannon play video via website
    • Mplayer can't seem to play the rtsp stream from m.youtube.com
  • Need a good TamTam demo