OLPC 2.0: A Striking eBook and a Step In the Right Direction

Here is the the next-generation OLPC. It will consist of dual touchscreens on a single spine and include keyboard, face-to-face, and ebook functionality. The touchscreens will be built by a start-up by OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen. These screens will be readable in direct sunlight, just like the OLPC.

I’m glad that the second generation OLPC is more of an ebook than a laptop. While the “laptop,” as a designed object, is an excellent tool, books are what define our early education and creating an electronic book that works and is actively useful seems far more intelligent than the original OLPC, which is a stab at a “less is more” mentality that eventually hobbles the very people it is designed to help.

I remember a very interesting statistic from Freakonomics: the single, traceable correlation between a child’s ability in school and his home life are the number of books a family has in their home. I’m paraphrasing, but I’ve taken it to heart and I believe it to be true. A laptop is an interactive tool. An ebook, even if it’s just a glorified, dual screen laptop, is a reading tool. That is why tablet PCs never took off in the mainstream: people don’t know what to do with a form factor that is clearly not a laptop yet is also clearly a powerful computer. There is no way to connect the act of “scratching out words on a tablet” to processing worksheets in a spreadsheet. Why doesn’t the iPhone have handwriting recognition? Because it’s a horrible way to talk to a computer, even now. But that’s a different rant entirely.

That said, I worry about the project as a whole.

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Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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(via TechCrunch.)

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DIY mobile multi-charger: “

Mark and Juliette McLean bicycled there way from Liverpool to Australia. The trip took almost 2 1/2 years to complete and they traveled over 24,000 km. During the trip Mark charged his laptop and batteries via his bicycle. It is a great solution for his mobile power needs.

To keep the lights on and the camera going I have a multi-purpose battery charger. This contains around 24Wh of energy storage in eleven NiMh AA cells and circuitry to charge my laptop, satellite phone, mobile phone, camera battery and a PP3 for Ju’s Dog Dazer. It can also power a white LED tent light that sheds just about enough light to cook by. A cunning design means that some of the AA cells can be removed from the internal battery stack and exchanged with flat ones from a torch or whatever.

Make you own Multi-Charger

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(Via MAKE Magazine.)

Fire-retardant sleeves for your laptop

Filed under: Laptops

We’re not sure if these new fire-retardant covers are meant to protect nearby objects in the event of battery explosion, or if they’re meant to protect the MacBook from thermal disaster in its surrounding environment — but either way, they’re a pretty stylish new necessity. Wrappers, a British retailer, is now selling jumbocord covers made from graphite granules embedded in the supposed contract-quality corduroy that has passed a “100,000 wear and tear rub test” — which we really hope doesn’t mean it was ubbed 100,000 times by a person. MacBook sleeves are £19.50 ($36) including worldwide shipping, and can be embroidered with initials for an additional three quid ($5.63). Regardless of whether or not your order one, we think that Korean Air, Qantas and Virgin should get in touch with Wrappers to make some airplane-friendly fire-retardant sleeves for the type of computers that have a better chance of actually exploding.

[Via Laptop]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

(Via Engadget.)

[tags]laptop, custom, sleeve[/tags]

ThinkPad explodes at LAX, ignites bomb scare

Filed under: Laptops

In a time when you’re not even allowed to say the word “bomb” in an airport (hey, it’s for good reason), it’s got to be like, really freaking embarrassing to have to run up the jetway at full speed, shoving other passengers out of the way as your flaming laptop explodes on the ground. (Sound familiar?) According to an eyewitness report on the Awful Forums, passersby stared aghast or fled crying terrorist, the ThinkPad (which was quoted to be an IBM, not a Lenovo) apparently had a number of death throes as the fire went through various phases, until eventually a United employee busted out the fire extinguisher and laid the laptop to rest. Apparently the machine’s owner already checked its battery against the recalls and it was not listed — and why would it be? IBM and Lenovo aren’t flagged for bad batteries — yet. (Sony, we’re looking your direction.) But the coup de grâce at LAX: onlookers apparently mumbling that “too many viruses on your computer” can lead to this horrendous fate. How true, indeed.

[Thanks, Peter]

 

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

(Via Engadget.)

[tags]explosion, laptop, battery[/tags]

SmackBook Pro

Updates

I usually keep two 20″ screens side by side on my desk, so I can code
on one and test on the other. I find I can work much faster if I can
just make a change in Eclipse, and by the time I turn my head to
the other screen, the tests have already run. My new laptop, however, has a 15″ screen, which feels a bit cramped when I’m
working away from the office. I’ve been using the href="http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/" rel="external">fancy Desktop Manager by
Richard Wareham, which is a very nice utility to let you keep several
virtual desktops, and change between them easily.

Of course, if you’re using something like Emacs or Butler, all your
keys will be taken already, so you’ll need to use some sort of
Command-Ctrl-Shift-4 keystroke
for the actual desktop switching.

Turns out, the laptop has a built-in motion sensor. Nominally, it’s
there to protect the internal hard drive. The basic idea is this: If
the accelerometer suddenly notices that the gravitational pull of
earth is no longer present, the most likely explanation is that the
laptop, sensor and all, is currently accelerating at 9.81 m/s²
towards said earth. In that case, it will (wisely) try to turn the
hard drive off in preparation for impact.

It can, however, also be used in situations not involving lobbing the
laptop across the room, fun though that may be.

[article continue on the page, with code snippets...]

(Via Medallia Blog.)

[tags]tangible, mac, laptop, desktop, tool, productivity[/tags]