OLPC:News

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LAPTOP NEWS

1. Brazil: The presidency has created a new working group inside the Ministry of Education to focus solely on laptops and learning. The group is comprehensive, covering all the necessary departments: basic education; teacher and content development; technology; distance support; and integration and coordination. This group will coordinate all activities needed for the deployment of laptops.

2. Michail Bletsas and Barry Vercoe gave a 20-minute progress report in the Media Lab's Digital Life sponsor meeting followed by a flawless performance of Barry's laptop ensemble. OLPC monopolized the audience's questions and overly positive feedback.

3. Display: Acceptance-criteria testing for the LCD panels began this week. Various display artifacts were combined to create worst-case panel configurations. These panels were graded by Mary Lou. Most artifacts were barely (if at all) noticeable. More detailed acceptance criteria will be established (called fitness-of-use testing) in mid-November with materials from the B1 build.

4. This week Marcelo Tosatti and Dan Williams continued work on the Marvell Libertas driver, trying to get it into shape to use in B1. This requires getting enough things working to be able to use it with NetworkManager, one of the standard Linux utilities. The driver, as it came from Marvell, is adequate for embedded platforms, but isn't ready for desktop use. A lot of work has gone into getting things into shape. Dan and John Palmieri also spent time building a NetworkManager front end for B1.

5. Dan also worked with the Thai team to get a group of demos together to take back with them (they returned home after a three-week stay at OLPC).

6. Marco Gritti and Dan have done a huge amount of work over the last couple of weeks on Sugar, getting ready for the B1. The shell is working pretty well and the browser activity has a lot of the nice style elements that Eben Eliason and the Pentagram team have worked on. They also have some group-browsing functions done. The Sugar frame now supports the system tray spec, so other programs can embed icons and functionality into the frame. We'll use this for our network and power status at some point.

7. Chris Blizzard reports that the team is generating builds at 4PM every day. The team at Red Hat is adding their daily work, as appropriate, to those builds. This means that we can test drivers, package updates and changes every morning when we come in. It has also set internal deadlines so that everyone integrates around the same time.

8. We've also started to include a newer D-Bus to our builds to fix a number of bugs and a newer copy of HAL which saves a lot of memory and is much faster.

9. Mitch cleaned up the SPI (system programming interface) recovery code, merged it with the in-system re-flashing code in OFW, and tested it. In the process of testing CAFE NAND support, Mitch solidified support in the OFW code base and developed some diagnostics for the NAND chips themselves.

10. Chris Ball has set up a software stress-test environment and has run it on each of the configurations of our boards, helping to expose an unreliable RAM part, which has now been disqualified from our second-source parts list. The tinderbox has its first performance test, tracking general Python performance for each of our OS builds. The tinderbox will also be used for stress testing of the B1 board in the coming week.

11. Multi-media: Scott Nelson and Greg Wright from Real Networks performed detailed testing of an A1 board. While their findings were “a result of only a few days research and therefore should not be considered final or complete,” they nonetheless give an idea of the lower bound of the laptop's capabilities, which will only improve. Their conclusion: the device is “a capable multi-media platform for everything short of high bit-rate video content and large frame sizes.”


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

24 Oct. 2006 LA Times| Upward Mobility in a Laptop
24 Oct. 2006 Fortune | This PC wants to save the world
11 Oct. 2006 New York Times | U.S. Group Reaches Deal to Provide Laptops to All Libyan Schoolchildren
6 Oct. 2006 Washington Post | $100 Laptop May Be at Security Forefront
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
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
28 Jan. 2006 UNDP | $100 Laptop Project Moves Closer to Narrowing Digital Divide
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.
  OLPC | Quanta Computer Inc. to Manufacture $100 Laptop
11 Dec. 2005 NYTimes | NY Times: 5th Annual Year in Ideas $100 Laptop
04 Dec. 2005 Guardian Unlimited | The $100 laptop question
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.
18 Nov. 2005 The Electric New Paper | Gramophone? No, Laptop
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
  TeitB | 100 US Dollar Laptop Computer Launched
  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
  Reuters | Researchers Unveil $100 Laptop for Schoolkids
  CNET | $100 Laptop Takes World Stage
  CNET | $100 Laptop Expected in Late 2006
  Christian Science Monitor | A Low-Cost Laptop for Every Child
  ADNKronos International | Internet: Wind-Up, Budget Laptop Unveiled
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.
30 Sep. 2005 Times Online | A $100 clockwork computer to help the poor to learn
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.)