JonCamfieldBlog

You may remember Strauss from his NYT article damning the Peace Corps back in January. It made the point that the increasing numbers of volunteers is decreasing the agency's effectiveness and that the agency itself was too stuck on its mission to improve and adapt. Strauss has been a volunteer, and also a country director, with the Peace Corps, and I as a returned volunteer can agree with some of his points.

He's back now in April with a much longer attack in Foreign Policy.com, where he sets up a series of strawmen to knock down.

For example;

“The Peace Corps Is a Potent Diplomatic Weapon”

No. With diplomats stuck inside barricaded compounds or loath to venture from expatriate residential ghettos, a Peace Corps volunteer is likely to be the only representative of the U.S. government that poor, rural populations ever see. As the State Department cuts back on its public diplomacy and cultural exchange programs, the Peace Corps’ predominantly young volunteers wind up carrying more and more of the responsibility for demonstrating that the United States still has good intentions abroad.

He goes on to make the point that the branding of Peace Corps is insufficient and doesn't connect the volunteers on the ground with the foreign policy of the USA -- probably because there's not much connection, and potentially some antagonism. I think this argument falls flat; PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) show the multifaceted America, not just the 51% who won the last presidential election. The fact that they are on the ground and working in solidarity with the local population is probably more valuable than State Department-funded programs will ever be. Of course, Strauss hasn't offered any research or quantitative data, so I don't feel a need to either.

GABRIEL MALAYA/AFP/Getty Images

Best and brightest? As long as applicants meet the minimum standards and are healthy and persistent, the Peace Corps rarely rejects them outright.

If you click through to Getty, you find this description for the photo:

KIANGAN, PHILIPPINES: Wearing an Ifugao tribes outfit, Dustin Butler, (L) an American Peace Corps volunteer based in northern Ifugao province takes part in the celebration of the ten traditional rice rituals in Kiangan, 27 August 2006. American volunteers have been deployed in limited numbers in the country following security threats in certain areas especially in southern Philippines where al-Qaeda linked Islamic militants have kidnapped foreigners. AFP PHOTO / GARBIEL MALAYA (Photo credit should read GABRIEL MALAYA/AFP/Getty Images)

Do PCVs party? No doubt about it. I threw and/or attended quite a few gatherings as a volunteer. It's a tough job, and you need to unwind, decompress, complain about the various systems and institutions, brainstorm on the underlying problems, and just relax. If you're going to ding PCVs for saving up all their "happy hours" for an occasional big party, fine, but don't expect me to want to grab a beer with you after work. Also, no need to abuse a photo of a volunteer integrating himself with his village to make your point.

He complains that Peace Corps doesn't concentrate on the world's poorest countries, and that volunteer numbers rarely match the need (using Mexico as an example). Peace Corps operates only in countries where there's reasonable safety for US citizens to be out and about in country, instead of "stuck inside barricaded compounds or loath to venture from expatriate residential ghettos" as he knocks US diplomats and USAID professionals for. Further, PC only operates on the invitation of a country's government. We actually pressured Mexico into accepting volunteers, and in return they required very specific, business/IT focused volunteers for a very small pilot project.

“The Peace Corps Is a Development Organization” which receives little recognition from development thought leaders. Well, actually, Peace Corps is 1/3rd development and 2/3 cultural exchange (remember the first point you were making?). It's true that Peace Corps has not been effective at evaluating its impact. Neither have big development agencies such as USAID or World Bank. In fact, even the academic crowd has had a difficult time finding statistical evidence of any benefit to foreign aid. If Strauss has actually read William Easterly's book which he notes, he'll find pages and pages of commentary and research on aid effectiveness and measurement problems both "real" and political.

“The Peace Corps Has a Strategy” The Peace Corps has plans, not a strategy. A strategy implies a conclusion, a final goal. The Peace Corps has none. In Washington, plans are already underway to celebrate the agency’s 50th anniversary in 2011. Celebrating half a century of existence ought to be a dubious benchmark for any development organization, particularly one that actively encourages its volunteers to “work themselves out of a job,” yet has no plans for doing so itself in any of the more than 70 countries where it is currently active.

Again, Peace Corps is on the benign side of most development organizations, particularly the Bank, on this one. I might also point out that there are many countries where volunteers no longer serve -- because the country has "graduated" you might say from having a need for PCVs.

“The Peace Corps Is One of the Greatest Things America Has Ever Done”

Dream on. Today, the Peace Corps remains a Peter Pan organization, afraid to grow up, yet also afraid to question the thinking of its founding fathers. The rush to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign pledge was such that the Peace Corps never learned to crawl, let alone walk, before it set off at a sprinter’s pace. The result is a schizophrenic entity, unsure if it is a development organization, a cheerleader for international goodwill, or a government-sponsored cross-cultural exchange program. In any case, the Peace Corps tries to do too many things in too many places with too few people to really get much of anything done at all. ... Based predominantly on the life-changing experiences volunteers had while serving, the Peace Corps continues to generate strong support from the American people. But for the agency to approach its potential, deep, substantive changes must be made.

So, almost 200,000 US citizens have had life-changing experiences thanks to Peace Corps? It's balancing between being " a development organization, a cheerleader for international goodwill, or a government-sponsored cross-cultural exchange program" -- which sounds like the three goals of the Peace Corps Mission to me, so if it's flittering between those, it's on track.

Does the organization have some problems? No doubt. Are these valid attacks? No. We should work on removing the political appointees from the organization, matching funding increases to politically-motivated requirements to increase volunteer numbers, and hold all organizations working in international development to higher standards of unbiased measurement and evaluation and sustainability goals.

I actually believe that Peace Corps is a potent diplomatic weapon -- a loose cannon of idealistic youth who probably don't agree with the status quo of American foreign policy.

And that's a good thing.

Posted by Jon at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Global Youth Service Day will be brought to you in live Twitter form with event updates (and locations, to broadcast on TwitterVision.com) throughout the day.

I'm using Swotter to push out the events we have in our Google Spreadsheet (exported to a more SMS-length-friendly format), which is also driving our GYSD-US Map (warning: VERY resource heavy Simile/Exhibit Map Mashup). I love technology that likes to talk together!

It's pushing the events straight through the API, and then a combination of TweetScan and TwitterFeeds are retweeting any #gysd tagged tweets, which was my original gysd/twitter plan

So... we'll see how it goes...

GYSDEvents on Twitter

Posted by Jon at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Here is essentially a list of resources from the DC ICT4Dev Meetup on careers (you'll have to do the googling and hyperlinking yourselves. Email me at jon @ joncamfield dot com if you're interested in this in a wiki form.

Organizations

Development organizations with ICT: Chemonics, ACT, DAI, CHF

Orgs with real ict4dev departments: AED, Winrock, RTI (n/ carolina ict+health), Nethope, APCD(?)

For africa: kabissa.org, digitalopportunity.org

News / keeping up with the sector

mobileactive.org, globalgiving.org, kiva, microplace, also see sites under job listing

Job listings

oneworld.net, devnetjobs.org, devex, devgateway

...look at the orgs as well as the jobs to see who's hiring/etc.

EVENTS and networking

networking most important, talk tolocal event speakers; set up informational interviews/coffee/mtgs

Volunteering

humaninet, geekcorps/iesc, unvolunteers, telecom w/o borders

non-Bank/usaid

InterAction, InterNews, inveneo (low-power PCs), voxiva (health PDAs => national health infrastructure => platform for mobile data collection hiring now from for-profit)

Posted by Jon at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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The Big NN sent out an email, reposted at OLPCNews.com, with the current status of OLPC and Sugar, it's UI, to address the issues finding their way out of the woodwork after the recent staff turnover:

Sugar is a very good idea, less than perfectly executed. I attribute our weakness to unrealistic development goals and practices. Our mission has never changed. It has been to bring connected laptops for learning to children in the poorest and most remote locations of the world. Our mission has never been to advocate the perfect learning model or pure Open Source.

He goes on to argue that Sugar needs to be more agnostic, and even run on a mini-Windows:

That said, Sugar needs to be disentangled. I keep using the omelet analogy, claiming it needs to be a fried egg, with distinct yoke and white, rather than having the UI, collaborative tools, power management and radios merge into one amorphous blob. Otherwise, it is impossible to debug and will be limited to the small, albeit growing, world of the XO hardware platform.

I respectfully disagree. I think that the real path to long-term, sustained success of the OLPC project is to keep the hardware and software married tightly together (like Apple) - creating some powerful externalities with smooth operation and not worrying about really insane hardware compatibility. Unlike Apple, but totally open with it. If Microsoft wants to put effort into making a Windows XP that will work on the laptop, fine. If the open source hacker community wants to get Sugar to run as a "normal" window manager on more Linux boxes, or even somehow in a Windows environment, more power to them. But the laptop, with its stated goals of constructivism, need for simplicity, and requirements on the low-power aspects, will do best without wasting time on these side projects. Continue to work on the Red Hat Linux + Sugar implementation and get every nasty hardware/software interface bug out. A non-Mac laptop that sleeps/hibernates/recovers perfectly would be a truly amazing thing in its own right. One that also comes standard with effortless mesh networking, a videocam and mic, stereo speakers, a tablet mode, and so on -- even better. Tied with a GUI that's light on text and focuses on simplicity and clarity -- a great win for the developing world.

That's all possible (if you keep focused on Sugar + Linux + OLPC Hardware), and could be marketed as a bottom of the pyramid style approach in the developing world, and even (with some tweaks for more office style apps) as an ultra-portable "4P" system in the West.

The one thing that's still lacking (tho with piecemeal progress; Nepal's doing a bang-up job) is the educational programming and content layers. Even there, there's a few Activities built in and some content and promise of more content, but it is in need of further attention and even the creation of not only the activities, but some curricula guides to go along with. Again, there's some progress here, but it lags behind the hardware and software.

My favorite line from NN's email remains the following, which I'll quote out of context: "Because of public attention, anything we say will be quoted out of context." In his opening volley, NN says "Our mission has never been to advocate the perfect learning model or pure Open Source." - but in truth it has been advocating constructivism from the start, to the exclusion of any who wanted to use the laptops in more traditional educational models, and (for the most part) doing this through central use of open source software (and hardware). He goes on to clarify that statement, but (a) I need an excuse to quote him out of context and (b) it's a weak defense. Go read Negroponte's email yourself if you want the context :)

Without an equal amount of resources devoted to contextualizing the laptops, it won't matter what they're running -- it will be a laptop project, not an education project; the opposite of their tagline of it being an educational project, not a laptop project. As the organization shifts to deployment mode, they need to continue to focus on the core hardware and existing software stack to work out the last bugs, and start getting more and more educationally-useful activities, content, and curricula available.

Posted by Jon at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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OLPCNews has been ripe with the continuing disintegration of OLPC, from Mary Lou Jepsen who got out just in time, then with Ivan's departure due to differences, and now as the search for a new CEO goes on so that Negroponte can "step aside", now Walter Bender, Mr. Constructivism himself, has resigned.

If this exodus due to internal politics, problems with technology purchasing (XP or Sugar? All F/LOSS or not?) sounds familiar, it is:

Naturally, it failed. Nothing is that independent, especially an organization ... staffed by highly individualistic industry visionaries from around the world. Besides, altruism has a credibility problem in an industry that thrives on intense commercial competition.

By the end of the Center's first year, Papert had quit, so had American experts Nicholas Negroponte and Bob Lawler. It had become a battlefield, scarred by clashes of management style, personality, and political conviction. It never really recovered.

That quote is from 1983, discussing Negroponte's original Computers-for-education pilot with Apple II computers in Senegal. The more recent news on the OLPC organization is:

But in March, after OLPC's initial run of its $188 laptops reached fewer children than originally envisioned, Bender became head of "deployment."

Officially, OLPC said it was streamlining its organization because the laptop's technology essentially had been built. A different view came from the XO's former top security architect, Ivan Krstić, who wrote on his blog that Bender got demoted. Krstic said OLPC was undergoing a "drastic internal restructuring" and "a radical change in its goals and vision."

Then last week, Bender left the group entirely. That marked a third high-profile departure from OLPC. In addition to Krstić, Mary Lou Jepsen, who had been chief technology officer, left in December.

With Senegal, not much was left once the project fell apart. Let's hope that OLPC has a more lasting legacy with its innovations in 4PC technology and open, educational software -- and maybe an educational computing program will survive as well, but after the fractiousness revealed in the recent email thread, it seems more likely to be survived by various independent projects.

Posted by Jon at 03:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Below the fold are my notes from the Democratizing Development: How Technology is Disrupting Traditional Development Models panel by SID/W at Chemonics on the 15th. Overall it was a very interesting panel with some path-breaking models (especially Kiva's peer-lending system; where anyone can provide microfinance loans through on the ground micro-finance loan institutions to people needing small loans with full feedback and transparency). The speaker from the World Bank was very pro open source, and was involved with linking the Bank to Development Seed to create their BuzzMonitor system to try and hammer into the rest of the Bank that they were not operating in a vacuum. He also seemed pro data-sharing; which would be very interesting, if unlikely, to see happen.

All of the speakers stumbled on the last-mile solution; their solutions never got beyond requiring someone with the time, training, and technology to access websites and do some semi-complex online tasks. With the buzz that MobileActive is getting, I think that there remains a goldmine of low-cost transactions and information sharing that just needs a little development and partnership work put into it to bridge the loan recipients directly back to sites like Kiva.org as a pipeline directly to potential funders.

Read on for my staccato notes.

• Modertor: Mathew Clark; MS Global Strategic Accounts
  • Prop: Dev model hasn't changed since bretton; loans and grants to govts
    • some changes, but transformtive effects not there
    • MS for example changes a lot in business model
    • :. ICT can strain and transform current model; esp. financial models
    • cell phones as information provision; more up to date than project leadership
• DevEx (Raj Kumar) (devex.com new social networking site)
  • devex membership org to provide network of dev professionals globally for hiring and industry info/bizdev; evolving towards social network system?
  • PGC; 1:1 => many:many; peer connections to dev professionals
  • inside out of previous data model; org by group
  • replacing RPR?
  • walled garden for dev professionals
  • realizes market prob that real customers are the poor, but they have no voice in project planning
• Kiva (Premal Shah) formerly at paypal/ebay kiva.org 501c3
  • web 2.0 and microfinance from san fran
  • online market for microloans; orgs post profiles of entrepreneurs, anyone can fund in $25 increments
  • social investors like transparency, sustain, price, uniqueness
  • field instituions: new source of funds w/o interest, loss risk bourne by users/donors, risk subsidized by warm fuzzies
    • => more risky investments??
  • 300k users 27M in donations funding 45k entrepreneurs; 5yr goal 1B
    • growth; $1M and 10k new users every 12 days
  • risk: 97% on time repayment, <1% defaults; <10% of repaid loans withdrawn => compound loan fund
  • $8 raised for each $1 expense
  • S:S lending mex to uganda, etc.
  • supporter network missing "facebook"
  • Key components
    • addictive (easy - story, photo, bizplan, low entry cost not "poverty pornography", fun: rich updated content on xactns, popular entrepreneurs, recipient journals with google translate + lender pages/badges, kivafriends.org)
    • radical transparency (trans=>authenticity=>trust; 100% of online donation goes to recipient, no processing, ask for 10% overage => 70%self sufficient from these donations; reveal problems with orgs resulting from random sampling and audits90% of resonse to failure thanks for truth )
    • crowdsource (flagging enabled to crowdsource dubious transactions, crodsource auditing interns; Fellows mtched with local MFIs, volunteer translators),
    • increasing return on increasing data (moving to be complete db of MFI institutions (guidestar/D&B of MFI) ... pseudo credit bureau of mfis = desoto hidden capital solution),
    • long tail (discover and scale up the next grameen bank?) tier 1 of mfis is GB; way down to tier 4 of local church congregations)
• WB Online Outreach / Dev 2.0 (Pierre Wielezynski)
  • use communications to get social networking in; trickle down to ops
  • wb master of dev data, wants to open further, wb api coming, dropping walled gardens/exclusive membership
  • attention of wb trick: show exsting conversations, etc.: buzzmonitor with devseed => not operating in vaccuum; bureaucratic env slow to adopt, but some champions e.g. a google earth user?
  • shifting bank from "I know best" to partnership / coop strategies; 2 years 3k retirement from bank ; not a tech problem, a culture problem
  • pro open source; need to share even just info could help
• Q&A session
  • rafael mechant blogger; how can locals take advantage of these social media tools? kiva as virtual bb of local financial responsibility
  • bill black - obama and campaign and link to comm model
  • mercy corps; micromentor/match.com for intl dev mentors?
  • kiva data sharing of ontheground data, icts as enabler, => collaboration of partners like wb, devex and kiva
  • bplan writing; all of these fail a last mile system?? best practices from true bottom up? (mobile vs cybercafe, training probs)
  • cost/benefit, need to reveal demand to bring supply of internet access
  • wbank loan transparency???

Posted by Jon at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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APCMap has an insightful review of their experiences with Windows XP on the Asus Eee. This isn't (yet) any different version of XP than you'd have on a "normal" PC -- it takes up 2 gigs of the 4G drive, and it's not even up to date:

"Disappointingly, the OS image hasn’t even been updated with the latest versions of Windows Media Player, Windows Live Messenger and so on. This makes for a massive update session the first time the user goes online, and that’s not a good way to start the relationship.

Not only is it a bit cramped on the hard drive, it doesn't even fit well on the screen either (but Everex's CloudBook with the gOS/Linux system is having similar problems):

"It’s as if the Eee PC’s display is a small cut-out window onto a desktop which is slightly taller. You nudge the mouse cursor to the top or bottom of the screen and the display pans up or down accordingly."

With that performance, I'd rather find a way to run a BartsPE liveCD from the hard drive, reducing the footprint to under 640MB. Asus is "prepping a special edition Eee PC that will be preloaded with a cut-down version of XP which is expected to be available within the next eight weeks." however, and it should include current updates and weigh in under 2G (....but not by much).

It seems XP is not only holding on as a desktop OS, but it's getting a new life on mini devices. On the one hand, this will hopefully help convince MS to extend XP's life once again; or at least revisit their approach on OS design to continue to support "low-end" machines. On the other hand, Linux is much better poised to deliver useful, modern, products for low-end machines with their support of older hardware, weirder hardware, and different configurations, and it's make my Penguinista heart warm to see XP continue to fail to deliver a good experience on this growing low-cost; stable performance market.

Posted by Jon at 07:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I updated my OLPC from the shipped build 656 to the release candidate for the muh-anticipated Update.1, here's what I did and what happened:

• from a root terminal, olpc-update candidate-703
  (wait about 30 minutes; you're almost there when it gets to "Verifying")
• Reboot
• OMG your basic activities are all gone! Download the activity pack through at wiki.laptop.org
• Save it to a USB key, and reboot, holding down the "X" gamepad key after the screen comes on during boot
• It will install the activites and shut down -- remove the key or it'll keep installing them on boot and shutting down.
• Your base activites and any you'd added yourself will be back on the next boot. If you'd customized your menu order, though, that's gone.

My SD card wasn't showing up, but shutting down, removing it, rebooting and putting it back in worked. (XP on the XO is closer to reality than we think with all these "reboot and it works" moments!)

So the update was a little complex (I get the desire to separate OS from Activities, but make it two automatic steps folks -- not update, lose the GUI ability to repair or even troubleshoot the problem, and hope people have a spare computer they can download the activities with. It has all the finesse of installing Windows on a computer and having it ask you if it can connect to the Internet to try and download the drivers for the only network card. Right, 'cuz that's gonna work.

Suspend/sleep at least exists on 703; I can tap the power button and it goes into powersave mode (though the wifi light stays on -- probably by design again I realize, but I need to figure out a (hopefully automated) way to sleep/hibernate the laptop for it to really be functional for me.

Also; when will the gamepad keys (pr even Fn-up/pageup/down) scroll the journal? I hate having to click the very tiny scrollbar there.

Posted by Jon at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Wayan at OLPCNews.com has an article up on what he's terming "3P computing" (Power, Price, Performance). Some of the commentators and myself would also add "Portability" to the list.

I think there's still a lot to shake out to give this market it's own identity -- something more than an iPhone or PDA, but still less than a full (desktop-replacement-style) laptop. The problem is that there is also a growing small(ish) but high-powered laptop market (the Air, Fujitsu's lifebook, and many of the portable tablet PCs), so the mini-note (HP's working term) or 3P (Wayan's) will have to compete on price as well as a set of features that the high-powered minis can't beat. This I think is where an expanded notion of Portability comes in.

Portability doesn't just mean small, and it doesn't just mean light. It also means ruggedness -- I need to toss it in a bag and go, not spend 10 minutes repacking it in a specially-designed single-use laptop bag. True portability also requires serious low power consumption (one of the three Ps); which high-powered laptops will really face problems with. Low power consumption means more battery life for the same battery weight (adding to the lightness), and it means not searching for an outlet at every layover, coffeeshop, porch, and so on.

I'd love for vendors to also start building in cell-network connectivity (GPRS/EDGE/EV-DO) with some bundled, reasonable, data plans -- continuing the path from hunting for an ethernet jack to the constant hunt for an open wifi signal to just being connected.

Posted by Jon at 04:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Slashdot's wading in to the discussion on what is a low-cost laptop and what features should it have. At least this time no one's calling me a child hater.

Posted by Jon at 01:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Big thanks to GWU's Organization for International Development for importing their events calendar into google calendars. I was getting pretty close to doing that by myself.

Now, if SID/W and World Affairs Council would do the same, I'd be scheduled for life!

Posted by Jon at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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HP, the current #1 global PC seller, has entered the mini/low-cost laptop market:

Photo by Paul Sakuma, AP of Christine Wright of Hewlett Packard with their new mini-low-cost-laptop

HP's foray comes in the form of a new computer called a "Mini-Note" that weighs less than 3 pounds with a screen that measures 8.9 inches diagonally. The machines start at under $500 for a Linux-based model. Prices go up for Windows Vista models with faster processors.

The processors HP is using are made by Via Technologies Inc., the distant third-ranked player in the microprocessor space, and come in clock speeds up to 1.6 gigahertz. The inclusion is a big win for Via, which trails Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. by a wide margin in the microprocessor market. HP executives say the only major feature its Mini-Note lacks is an optical drive for ingesting DVDs and CD-ROMs, which can be bought separately.

Interesting decision to go with Via, and odd decision to make it Vista-bloat-compatible. HP, like Intel, is still missing what I see to be the important key in the low-cost mini laptop market. If your new product is essentially the same as other laptops, just smaller and lighter; you're not escaping the pressures that will eventually drive you to adding more or the same. Further, price points at $500 aren't terribly exciting and certainly won't inspire people to start "buying two laptops:— a lightweight one just for Web browsing on the go and the full-power machine for the home or office."

Both HP and Intel seem to be aiming at a sub-notebook market, which I think is a failing proposition -- it will either subsume or get subsumed by the normal laptop market and compete on speed/memory, storage, features (webcams, tablet-mode, etc.) as well as weight and portability. At best there'll be slight market segmentation as one branch goes towards the Air - light but large-screened, and another towards ultra-portability by sacrificing the screen size.

If you want people to buy a second laptop that doesn't overlap their "desktop replacement" style system, you have to go cheaper (under $300 I'd think) and someone has to figure out the use cases for this system. OLPC envisioned a specific use case for their XO and created a machine to fill that niche. HP and Intel can't seem to disconnect their thinking from standard laptop usage, and their products suffer from it.

So what are the use cases for the ultra-portable, low-cost laptop? I can think of a few from my usage of the XO during my daily routines -- lug around the house to surf and IM while doing other things like watch TV, listen to music, or hang out on the porch. Carry into the kitchen to display a recipe. I intend to take it on a plane and hopefully watch a movie or play some old-school games (tetris, etc.) on it. Read documents (on the porch, metro, at the gym, etc.). Take notes.

These use cases suggest the need for portability (light, easy to toss in a bag, reasonably rugged), long (5hrs) battery life, high-contrast screen for reading, tablet mode for gameplay/movies/reading, somewhat protected from the elements (or at least flour-covered fingers), wifi for connectivity wherever, and the XO's handle is fantastic in toting it with me around the house without bothering about a bag. None of these use cases requires much HD space (movies can go on USB keys, it's not my media center), or excessive graphics or power (2D is fine, it just needs to be strong enough to do video playback).

Basically you're trying to hit a sweet spot somewhere between a good PDA and a small laptop. You need enough flexibility, functionality and power that the PDA market won't overlap you (it's gotta be worth carrying around both this device /and/ an iPhone, Treo, or blackberry), low cost enough that people who already are saturated with computing devices still see the need for it, and with its own unique value proposition that there's a reason it's more useful than a normal, more powerful laptop would be.

The XO seems to still, hardware-wise, be the best device in this new paradigm, with the Eee and the Elonex also getting the right idea but not executing fully. Intel and HP, not to mention Fujitsu's LifeBook, all are trapped in the laptop paradigm.

Posted by Jon at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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You might say that I've at times been critical of the OLPC project, but rarely do I have anything bad to say about their actual technology. Intel has a new hardware revision out for their Classmate, and it reveals that while they get the implementation angle, they continue to miss the innovation needs:

Intel Corp. unveiled new features for its line of low-cost laptops for schools Wednesday, adding bigger screens and more data storage capacity as the chip maker ratchets up its rivalry with the One Laptop per Child organization, which sells a competing machine.

Well, admittedly, the new screen is nice, since their old screen was really tiny, but where are the much more relevant features of dust and dampness resistance, being able to read the screen in full sunlight, and rugged construction designed to get past the challenges of the developing world? Competing on screen size and harddrive space is what got us to the current state of bloated, heavy, overheating computers today, and it'd be a great thing if we competed on innovation instead of agglomeration in the low-cost laptop market. I, at least, want to see the market for ultra-portable, low-cost, low-power, reasonably-high-function laptops expand, and not merge into merely an ultra-portable market.

OLPCNews of course has some more comparisons between the Classmate 2 and the OLPC XO.

Posted by Jon at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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I like the good people day idea all about giving props where due. Since I'll be nose-down in work preparing for the upcoming Global Youth Service Day April 25-28, let me point out the amazing youth around the world who do the real work on GYSD as some people who rock. Last year we had over three million youth in over 100 countries taking up projects to improve their community -- and expect the same or more this year.

BTW; Gary? "...tomorrow people write and talk abd blog and twitter and just flat out SING about people that are AWESOME and GOOD."

Who. Not that. Things are that, people are who. Yes, I do have a problem with grammar (except in lolcats)

Posted by Jon at 03:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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So coming up on 25th-28th of April is the 20th annual Global Youth Service Day, and I'm trying to see if I can do something fun with Twitter; like having youth from around the world send short SMS updates about their projects. I'm looking at various ways to include others without risking problems of needing to monitor the account for inappropriate content and so forth, so SMS-style JOIN GYSDs, #tags, TwitterMail, and so on.

In researching these options I've been looking at other event and automated Twitters; where you have things like the Bonnaroo twitter with lots of activity, and the SXSW twitter with lots of followers, so their "with others" pages is rich, but all of one update "from" the SXSW account.

Nothing nothing nothing, all the way down

I applaud WMATA for having a twitter feed, but how about you remove the constant stream of EVERYTHING IS OK announcements and replace it with one update after the most recent interruption clears? You might get more than 5 followers then...

Posted by Jon at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

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