XO Camp attendees, and many taking part from afar, were invited to submit questions about OLPC's future.   Nicholas answered a limited number during two sessions; the full list are posted below.  Now we have to figure out which wiki FAQ to add them to...

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1. Current programs and general questions * What efforts will OLPC make to support the XO-1? The XO-1 will be fully supported, including hardware and firmware up-dates, spare parts and ever growing activities. OLPC is in discussion with several of the large deployments to understand how they help beyond their own national boundaries. * For how long is the XO-1 going to be in production? The XO-1 and its planned revision, which we fondly call 1.5, will be in production for at least two more years, and is expected to remain available to existing deployments beyond that point for replacements and spares. * Is the production of XO-1s at risk if the sales stop? Do you have a plan to sustain the demand for XO-1s in this atmosphere of uncertainty? OLPC itself is independent of sales. At the moment, there is a back order of 500,000 laptops. At the current rate of production, which is 50,000 per month, the world could stop and there is 10 months of life in the supply chain. Yes, there is a global economic slow down, but we do not expect sales to totally stop. Rwanda just ordered 100,000 laptops. Give the focus of OLPC's mission, many of our sales are to entities where funding is a concern even in the best economic times. * Will the XO-2 be developed as an important free software project as the XO-1 was? The XO-2 will continue OLPC's tradition of open development including Open Firmware and open-source operating system support. * In what ways are you planning to involve the community in the development of the XO-2? We may need the community more than ever for XO-2, because we are exploring the degree to which the hardware of XO-2 can be open source (whatever that really means in hardware).  OLPC's strategy for XO-2 support is to build a broader community of interest in the technologies used, to provide greater benefit to participants. * Whats your timeframe for having the XO-2 in the market? Two years. * Are there any updates on dual-boot deployments of XO-1? We expect them soon, less than three months, taking advantage of existing XO-1 hardware. 2. No-cost connectivity program -Great idea, as connectivity is one of the largest challenges for a country or region to implement a one laptop per child program. What technologies are you aiming at? Read the rest of this entry

Yesterday Sébastien Adgnot sent me a lovely message about Dailymotion's drive to make Theora encodings available for all of their videos. Blizzard sums up the implications nicely:

Today Dailymotion, one of the world’s largest video sites, announced support for open video.Read the rest of this entry

Irene Tham of the Straits Times, Singapore writes:

MOST would agree it takes more than a laptop to make a difference in a child's life. But the man behind non-profit organization One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) - whose tagline is 'Give a laptop, change the world' - is not swayed by naysayers. 'When people tell you that something is impossible, they usually have a vested interest in it not coming true,' said Professor Nicholas Negroponte, founder of OLPC. The organization aims to provide every disadvantaged child in Third World nations with a laptop. Its goal - and one which Prof Negroponte emphasized repeatedly - 'is not a laptop project but an education project'. Read the rest of this entry

When I joined OLPC in 2006, the first thing that blew my mind was the open collaborative process  used across the project.  The second was Mary Lou Jepsen's incredible  sunlight-readable screen. When the first prototype came to our machine lab, I used to stop in every day before heading home, to spend a few minutes looking at it or using it.  The displays have a delicious matte quality (the original prototypes had a similar glossy one) that makes anything displayed on them look like a work of art -- not unlike the efRead the rest of this entry