The $100 laptop project launched by MIT Media Lab, gained a big boost yesterday when the labs Nicholas Negroponte met with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia.
Kofi Annan opening address summed up the project and its hopes succinctly, “The true meaning of one laptop per child, is not a matter of just giving a laptop to a child, as if bestowing on them some magic charm. The magic lies within. Within each child there is a scientist, scholar, or just plain citizen in the making. This initiative is design to bring it forth into the light of day.”
No right thinking individual could possibly doubt the value of this project. There may be a lot of commercial concerns, but we’ll get to that later on.
The Specs
It will be Linux-based, full-colour laptop that uses a wind-up handle as a power source. Run at 500MHz, with 1GB of memory and a built in 1 Megapixel camera it should run most applications that could be required (remember Linux doesn’t suck up a lot of the processors power). Just the laptop screen alone is expected to cost around $35, pretty good when a screen on a laptop is normally $150 alone.
“USB ports galore” will be provided as will built-in WiFi. The only thing it will be missing is a hard drive. We’d imagine that this will be down to the additional power drain they have, and to try and maintain the necessary ruggedness. The networking will be via a wireless mesh.
The driving theory of the project is that Learning is seamless – not just something that you do at school. This has lead to the need for an adaptable design, enabling it to be used as an electronic book (with the fingers at the back controlling the cursor), a games machine, TV set and, of course, laptop.
All software will be open source as in Negroponte view “open source software is the key to innovation in software and learning technology.”
It’s been reported that Steve Jobs had offered Apple OSX for nothing for use in the project, but it was turned down as it wasn’t open source.
Availability and impact
The laptops will be financed though domestic resources (ie the countries government), donors, and what was rather mysteriously described as “other arrangements.” It will be at no cost to the recipients themselves.
The current plans call for producing five to ten million units near the start of late 2006 or early 2007, launching in six countries. Not bad considering that Negroponte first publicly announced it in January 2005. The promise is to bring the price down at each technical advance.
Negroponte spoke about “the same laptop being commercially available, at say $200” for small businesses. They hope to announce the construction partners soon.
The impact of this project could be huge on many fronts – if it comes into being – and we’ve no reason to imagine that it won’t. Giving any and every child access to a computer, and teaching them to use it and inspiring them will be the start of a revolution bring free communication and equal learning to all citizens.
We don’t think that the impact will stop there. If the world is aware that there are laptops, perfectly able to carry out most daily required computing functions, that only cost $100, why would anyone want to pay for other ‘full price’ machines? The impact on the supply of hardware in the part of the world that already has computers will be huge.
All power to this project. Let’s help technology change the world for the better.
MIT Media Lab One Laptop Per Child
Watch the Launch video(Real video)
Ofcom estimates that the digital switchover programme will release up to 112 MHz of spectrum in the UHF (Ultra High Frequency) band for new uses. The UHF band is prime spectrum, because it offers a technically valuable combination of capacity (bandwidth) and range.
Ofcom point out that this is not an exhaustive list – which will please HM Treasury since the greater the potential uses and users the higher the value likely to be realised from auctioning it.
For those who have better thing to do with their lives than fanatically watch every twist and turn of online technology, or if you’re living outside the US of A, you may well not have been using Google’s recently launched Google Local For Mobile (GLM)- or even have heard of it.
Yesterday we revealed how GLM has 
More detail than the browser version
Intertrust must have though that all of the xmases came at once on the day Vodafone confirmed their licensing deal. It’s not every day that the World’s largest mobile operator signs a deal like that with you.
The Vodafone deal goes well beyond these basics and licenses all of the technologies and patent that Intertrust have available.
Both Vodafone and Intertrust declined to reveal the value of the transaction, but given the need for separate deals with the handset companies, it may be here that Intertrust make most of their money. This will not be optional if the handset manufacturers want to be on the Vodafone service and offer content.
Despite their emphatic denial, Google appear to be planning to bring GPS to the recently announced Google Local For Mobile.
Currently the users of the service have to key in or select the desired starting and destination points, and press a key to mimic their progress in the real world. Using GPS eradicates the need to tell the system where you are, or update the system to your progress.
The GPS feature could well be waiting for a second release of the service, or waiting for next-gen handsets with aGPS built into them, to become more widely used.
It has taken the Bluetooth headset industry a remarkably long time to twig that we don’t want to use one headset for listening to music, and then frantically rip it off to use another Bluetooth headset for answering the phone. Anycom has the one… at a price.
And the icing on the cake: a Bluetooth audio gateway. Without further details (actual hands-on reviews!) this is probably going to seem more wonderful than it can in reality be: but what we’re hoping it will do, is allow you to plug several audio inputs into it, and switch between them – from landline phone to Skype, from Skype to iPod, from iPod to mobile phone.
We first reported the news of the 
Well today, Nokia are announcing its actual availability and they’ve expanded its capabilities to enable Web browsing using Bluetooth via your mobile.
For Linux hackers everywhere, there’s the great excitement that the 770 will be running Debian Linux, with the new platform – derived from the Linux GNOME UI – going under the name “maemo”. Development on maemo has continued since May and the end of October saw the release of maemo 1.1 Release Candidate 5. They’ve even given it the fancy new name of Nokia Internet Tablet 2005, if you please.
VoIP was hinted at back in May. It’s now been confirmed by our old mate Janne Jormalainen, “During the first half of year 2006 we will launch the next operating system upgrade to support more presence based functionalities such as VoIP and Instant Messaging.”
Today Nokia announced CoolZone, a Bluetooth-based distribution system that lets mobile phone users locally browse, pay for and download content on their mobiles while they are in shops supporting it.
As the user of the service needs the user to download an application to use the service, we can imagine little hacking groups are already forming plans to hang around near these shops offering their own ‘applications’ with similar names to unsuspecting, or inexperience users.
There’s been an orgy of synergistic back-scratching and brand backslapping going on in Samsung’s schmoozing department as the company announces an alliance with German luxury car brand, BMW.
BMW drivers will be able to link the phone to the iDrive control interface, which features a control knob at the centre of the vehicle’s console, allowing access to various functions displayed on the in-dash monitor.
Samsung have already been poking their dipstick into the field of mobile-to-car technology, announcing a partnership with Audi back in July.
Telefonica SA, Spain’s número uno telecoms company, has agreed to shell out a massive £17.7 billion ($31.5 bn, €21.15bn) for U.K. mobile-phone operator O2, making it the largest acquisition in the European telecommunications industry for half a decade.
Management execs at the two European telecommunications operators were positively purring at news of the deal.
O2 was spun off from the BT Group in November 2001 and currently employs 5,000 people.