Our networked world Archives - Page 21 of 24

Geekin’ out on the $100 Laptop (OLPC)

20 April, 2007 by sky Leave a Comment

My friends are all over the map in terms of their opinions of the “$100 laptop” computer by the One Laptop Per Child [OLPC] project. They range from those who think it’s a total scam and rip-off (no link – anonymous for now) to those who are actively seeking to produce software for the computer.

But I was pointed at a really good “review” article today entitled The Laptop Crusade – Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop is a sweet piece of engineering. But can it really change the world? By Tekla S. Perry in IEEE Spectrum online. It’s worth reading. [The picture at the left is the Sugar interface that kids will use to operate the computer and discover their communities.]

You may already know that my opinion is that the OLPC computer:

Will actually work, and will be useful as a communications platform;
Be somewhat “fragile” in the field, and difficult to keep operating;
Cost more than $200 because nobody’s counting the cost of shipping, deploying and making it operational in the field.

All in all, I am positive about its potential and think that it’s worth tracking as the story unfolds.

Episode 239: In Which a Solar Array is Obtained for our Farthest Outpost

31 March, 2007 by sky 2 Comments

If you’ve listened to my recent audio and/or podcasts, you already know that one of the things that’s most frustrating in developing countries is the lack of reliable electric power. Emmanuel was really impressed with the electrical infrastructure in India because here it is the exception, rather than the rule, for the power to be out. In places like Dharamsala, there might be a short outage of 15 minutes in a day, or you might go for days without any interruption. The longest failure I ever experienced was about 4 hours. People take it in stride, but only local commerce can take place during a power failure – it would be a disaster for any Internet-based business, or for any business requiring computers.

2007-03-31-Four-Fold-Solar-Panel

Many businesses do have one or more uninterruptable power supplies (UPS) that provide a short stretch of battery power for their computers in the event of a temporary failure, but in Emmanuel’s area in Nigeria, power outages might stretch for a couple of days, so a UPS won’t do any good. And gasoline is scarce and expensive, so a generator isn’t an option.

Solar power has to be one possible answer. Today Brian took a car and drove to purchase a four-panel solar array for Emmanuel to take back to his school.

Play the interview:

More on offline blogging – Ecto vs. MarsEdit

3 February, 2007 by sky 2 Comments

I’ve got a challenge coming up in March. Looks like I may end up traveling again, and this time I’m going to be fully-prepared for offline creation of blog entries. In preparation, I’m doing some serious researching of offline-blogging tools.

You know that I’ve used Flock to create a few entries, and just the other day I downloaded a trial version of ecto (USD $17.95 shareware) and have spent a few hours testing it.

I just ran across the tool I’m using at this moment, called MarsEdit. So let me make a few quick comparisons while creating this blog entry in MarsEdit.
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More on offline blogging – Ecto

3 February, 2007 by sky Leave a Comment

I’ve continued my experimental use of a couple of tools for offline blogging. My friends think I’m online all the time, I’m sure, but I find that there are long periods – sometimes as long as a couple of weeks – when Internet connectivity is quite difficult to obtain. And during those times, it seems, I am most prone to be writing up experiences or discoveries and making blog entries. So it becomes crucial that I be able to compose a blog entry, including photos or graphics, while I’m offline.

I already introduced you to Flock, which I’d call a “browser on steroids” since its core raison d’être is to browse the web, but Flock contains additional tools that include a blog-entry-creator that’s not too shabby. The Flock team calls it “The Social Web Browser” and they describe it this way… “Flock
is an amazing new web browser that makes it easier to share media and connect to other people online. Share photos, automatically stay up-to-date with new content from your favorite sites, and search the Web with the most advanced Search Toolbar available today.”

Now I’ve picked up an evaluation copy of ecto and have used it to create a few posts. And I like both the process and the tool.

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Offline blogging

28 December, 2006 by sky Leave a Comment

Jim Sky

I couldn’t stand it any longer. When I was in India, attending the AirJaldi summit, on one of the days when the bandwidth diminished to a trickle (due to temporary technical difficulties), I just could not stand trying to create my blog entries thru that little mousehole of connectivity! It was SO frustrating! I vowed to myself at that time that I would look into offline blogging software at the earliest possible moment.

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