One Laptop Per Child

A lot of interesting stuff is happening in Tunisia (which is a great place to visit BTW) during the World Summit on the Information Society there. I expect that a lot of interesting announcements will be made - I will share the best here on Hacktivate.

One thing that is supposed to be unveiled though, is the $100 Laptop. Here is the latest picture:



Worldchanging sums up the latest information about it here.

One of biggest selling points put forward by Negroponte is that it can cost effectively replace textbooks. I think this is a great idea. Even simple paperbacks cost $30 here in Malawi - so a $100 machine that can display thousands of different books will be a great leap forward.

I have been reading books on my old Palm for years. Project Gutenberg has most of the world's classics as text files which can easily be converted and loaded onto a Palm and read with the excellent Weasel Reader software. A Palm will run for hours and hours even with the backlight on - which makes it ideal for nighttime reading.

Viva la ebook revolucion!