One laptop per child (OLPC)

I came to know about this initiative couple of year back from an article in Fortune. It was an interview with Nick Negroponte – founder of the OLPC initiative.

At the time the effort was in development stage. I remember discussion around the computer to be less than $100; some kind of hand crank process to charge the batteries given much of the developing world don’t have reliable electricity supply; building it rugged for longer life and low maintenance need. Also, there was controversy about laptop going out with an open source alternative (namely Sugar) as opposed to the popular Microsoft Windows.

It is good to see the effort maturing and the laptops made available to the kids in several countries. So as I stumbled on some articles on OLPC this weekend – it is interesting to observe changes/improvement including solar powered battery charger; mesh network to chain these laptops building collaborative infrastructure; and supporting Microsoft clients beside open source (Sugar) available on these machines.

Final price $188. Not bad.

And improving as the next phase gets in development touted XO 2.0 or XOXO with dual touch screen.

 

Here is a review of the laptop on Youtube.

Now comes the responsible (hard) part – ensuring right social behavior gets instilled as millions of kids gets connected and are now accessible to unrestrained information sources; reliable or otherwise. Hole in the wall experiment highlighted some of the accomplishments and challenges in this regard.

Also, I happen to stumble on an article from universities in India quoting to attempt to deliver a laptop for $10.

 

Social networking fatigue

This one is a funny jab on social networking sites. If you have teenagers at home – you are saying good riddance <grin>

Enjoy!!!

MAS 90 4.3 now available too

Now MAS 90 organization delivers next release of MAS 90/200 to manufacturing earlier this week. This release has several customer value features; usability enhancements; business insights improvement; improved integration; and others. It has lot of appeal and value to the customers and prospects.

One of the theme for this release is encouraging our customers to go green, save time, money and the environment by utilizing paperless office and direct deposit functionality. Now save paper, toner and postage costs, conserve office space used for storage, and reduce the time and energy spend in finding archived documents, as well as printing and mailing communications. A relevant theme for the world we live in today helping make world a better place – one small step at a time.

Like an African proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” – hearty congratulations to Eliott, Scot, John, Scott, Becky, Jim, Steve, Doris, Linda, Anna, Maria, Debi, Kevin, Karen, Erika, Roberta and everyone in the organization involved in delivering another quality product to the marketplace!

What a prolific year for the MAS organization!!! Keep it up team.