3.5 geeks per XO laptop, at the latest Apachecon
3.5 geeks per XO laptop, at the latest Apachecon
The XO is a laptop for children. A product of the noncommercial OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, and run by veterans of MIT's Media Lab, its brainparent is Nicholas Negroponte, who says "It's an education project, not a laptop project", and its goal is, "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves".
But I've yet to see an XO in the hands of a child. Nearly all the OLPCs I've seen have belonged to geeks, or been in use by them. One example of the latter is the shot taken at the latest Apachecon, above.
As it's turning out, XO isn't just a fun toy for geeks and kids, but a target for development as well. For example, the Sweet SocialCalc project. Writes Dan Brickin,
I purchased an OLPC XO computer during their Give One Get One campaign which arrived around New Years. I love my XO and see its great potential. When I tried my new code on it, the code actually ran quite well
...when we are done I hope we will have native OLPC code driving this (written in Python) so the JavaScript integrates with the OLPC user interface environment (which is called Sugar, hence the word "sweet")...
Feedback is welcome, as are volunteers to help us make this project a reality.
In the future we will also be integrating this code into more traditional platforms for more traditional wiki-like collaboration. Before that, though, I need to complete the implementation of these libraries, adding more commands, functions, etc.
Dan, by the way, is the other half of the pair that created VisiCalc, he first electronic spreadsheet. The other half was Bob Frankston, subject of this month's cover story.
For more, visit the Software Garden OLPC page: http://www.peapodcast.com/sgi/olpc/ .