I've blogged about the OLPC project a couple times already, not as a political statement but just as a fascinating idea based on some interesting technology and a vision - which if bold - could have a long lasting impact on some of the poorest countries in the world. We typically purchase something techie as a raffle item when we sponsor events (monitor, GPS, etc), but the OLPC thing felt interesting and like good karma!

We set it at up the Orlando Code Camp and had a LOT of people stop to ask about it. Here are some of the common comments/questions we received:

• I think most people - me included - expected it to be a little bigger. It's child sized though!
• I think everyone who knew about it (about 50% of those that looked at it) was thrilled to actually hold one and talk about the project
• Of those that knew about, easily half of them were looking for the hand crank. It can be powered by a hand cranked generator, but as noted here it didnt make sense to build the crank into the laptop, instead relying on an external system that could also be used for other things.
• Of those that had not heard about it, most were interested in the idea and the technology, a few were dismissive because it would be of no use to them personally
• Many asked about the software on it. OLPC is based on open source, runs on Fedor Linux, and you see a list of the applications loaded on it. 
• The display is not a touch screen

It was fun to get it and share it with a lot of people and I hope the winner enjoys it or finds a way to give it to someone that will. As a raffle prize I think it wasn't the greatest; we spent more time talking about the laptop than we did about our training services! Maybe the good karma will translate to business though.

Reminder that if you're registered the Orlando Code Camp is tomorrow. If you're registered and plans have changed, please cancel your registration. There's a ton of people on the wait list hoping for a seat at this free event.

I'll be at the Code Camp speaking and representing End to End Training. For the past few events we've been raffling a 22" LCD monitor to drive some traffic to our table rather than giving away a lot of smaller stuff, this time we've got a different prize - a One Laptop Per Child Laptop. I posted briefly about it last year and when they had a buy two get one promotion (one goes to a child, one goes to you) for $400 couldn't pass up the chance to see it first hand. It's a little smaller than I expected, the menuing system seems very nice, and they have a good assortment of software already loaded. At $200 each compared to perhaps $500 for a 'real' laptop not sure I'd buy one for home, but if the price really does drop to $100 I think it gets a little more interesting.

The raffle is business, but it feels like a little good karma to be giving money to something that might make a difference. Imagine what the world looks like if they distribute a couple million of these to people that previously had no computer and now the entire internet is there for them - we could see sweeping change in underveloped counties in perhaps a single generation. Closer to home some lucky .Net programmer is going to win this tomorrow and my challenge to them is to write some software for it (it runs Linux!) and write about the experience, and maybe encourage someone else to try by that effort.

I was discussing the Kindle recently with business partner Steve Jones and while we both like the idea of having a portable reader, the $400 price tag - even when you consider the potential savings on books for buying e-version only - just seems too high, and that trumps any discussion of features! The discussion caused me to look around a little and I found a nice blog called TeleRead that also has a post about One Laptop Per Child, one of my current interests.. If you're interested in ebooks it's worth adding your list. Also found a post about the controversy around display options on Jeff Duntemanns blog where he says PDF would work just fine, it's all in the rendering. I first read Jeff many years ago when he was the editor of PC Techniques and he's always struck me as thoughtful - somehow had not made it to my blog list, but that's corrected now!

Fascination with technology aside, these devices could change the world. It'll also be interesting to see if the DRM issue becomes as challenging in the book space as it has been for music.

If you happen to read ACM Queue there is a great article in the Nov/Dec 2007 issue called 'A Conversation with Mary Lou Jepsen' the CIO of OLPC (sorry, I don't have a URL to it) that talks about some of the technical innovations in the product. They did a ton of work to reduce power usage and to increase the range of supported power beyond standard 110v/12v dc inputs. They went with a solid state hard drive so that they could save the power needed to constantly spin a hard drive. The motherboard is behind the screen so it doesn't get hot on a kids lap! That's just a sample; it's well worth reading and is a really inspiring example of getting out of the traditional box to solve a problem that needed solving.