My love affair with the OLPC's XO laptop

I have to admit I’ve fallen in love. (Sorry ladies, it's not that kind of love: I’m as constant as the Northern Star with respect to Susana.) My love affair involves a laptop. It happens so infrequently because there have been so few great breakthroughs in personal computing technology since I hauled around the Compaq Luggable in 1987.

I'm not saying that because I’m a curmudgeon; I can fall in love with technology. To prove that point, let me admit that I’m a little bit giddy while writing this.

Here’s why: For the last week I've been using the “$100 laptop” by the folks at the One Laptop Per Child foundation (OLPC). OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte gave one to Susana and me. Nicholas invested in MessageMachines, and I greatly admired him as an entrepreneur and an IT intellectual before he gave me the XO.

The XO laptop -- it's called the XO because if you turn the logo 90 degrees, it looks like a child -- runs on Linux with a wide-ranging suite of open source applications for basic laptop users. The combination of an open source operating system and applications is the best means yet of lowering the total cost of ownership, which is open source software's (OSS) primary consumer benefit. Then there's the built-in wireless connectivity that helps bridge the digital divide by giving children worldwide access to a network-ready laptop. This fact alone makes Negroponte worthy of a Nobel Prize.

What's interesting is that this OSS-based laptop will absolutely lead to proprietary software and hardware sales. While the XO doesn't come preinstalled with Microsoft XP or Vista, children and their teachers will need more sophisticated software applications, networking and hardware capabilities over time, so they'll graduate to higher-end hardware. There’s no CD/DVD drive in the XO at all, for example, and no hard drive and only a 7.5-inch screen. As the children grow up, they'll naturally migrate to proprietary products, which are fine with me. To adapt a phrase from Richard Stallman, I believe “the future is hybrid,” as opposed to purely open.

More on the XO's openness: I discovered a button located on the keyboard that allows children to view the source code (what XO refers to as the “programming”) behind certain applications. The XO laptop’s highly accessible and flexible user-interface, called Sugar, also promotes sharing and learning. This makes the XO a true OSS machine, from its philosophical underpinnings all the way through its uncomplicated functional capabilities available with one touch of a keyboard button.

My favorite feature is The Neighborhood, which provides, to quote the documentation, a

View of all the connected XO laptops within a child’s community, and what activities they are sharing. Each child is represented by a different color. If there is a shared document or activity being collaborated on by a number of children, it will show up within this view.

The Neighborhood provides an easy-to-use view of the network meshwork in the neighborhood, but it also helps facilitate interactions with immediate “friends” and the building of a community. When combined with The Friends, The Home, The Activity views and Browse, XO provides all the elementary functionality of a desktop plus a means of stepping up to more advanced applications, such as SynthLab a mini-lab for acoustic- and electronic-circuit construction.

For an adult, it takes a short time to adjust to XO's looks. It has a shiny green-and-white plastic outer cover, a handle and two leaf-like antennas. It looks like DreamWorks went out to create Shrek’s personal laptop based on a Fisher-Price design.

The XO is spill-proof, rainproof, dustproof and ruggedized for impacts due to being dropped. There is no fan on this little wonder, it’s as silent as a Caribbean wind gust and it weighs just 3.2 pounds. It gets six hours of heavy activity or 24 hours of reading battery life from one charge. (The battery is made of innovative lithium ferro-phosphate, costing $10 to replace and is good for 2,000 charges, compared to 500 for a regular laptop battery.) It has a nifty built-in video camera and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration. It also has a microphone, memory card slot, gamepad controllers and graphics tablet. The XO is the complete personal computing laptop for children and adults.

There's just so much to love about the XO laptop. I look forward to seeing how it will give new hope to the children of the developing world. In 10, 20 or 30 years, I believe we'll witness a new generation of IT leaders who are getting their start even now on these small green-and-white machines.

I really hope the Nobel Foundation is paying attention.

Eight European countries beat U.S. in broadband penetration

Isn’t it time the United States developed a national broadband policy?

Eight European countries are now ahead of the United States in broadband penetration, according to figures released today [Wednesday]. "We have four countries that are world leaders -- Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland," said Viviane Reding, the European Union's (EU) telecommunications commissioner. "We have eight countries that have higher penetration rates than the U.S. and Japan. We are not doing badly at all."

Badly! Europe is kicking America's butt!

If my tech-savvy American readers still aren't depressed enough, the EU press release has more gory details:

Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden are world leaders in broadband deployment with penetration rates over 30% at the end of 2007, says the European Commission’s 13th Progress Report on the Single Telecoms Market issued on 19 March. These EU countries, together with the United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, all had broadband penetration rates higher than the US (22.1%) in July 2007. 19 million broadband lines were added in the EU in 2007, the equivalent of more than 50,000 households every day. The broadband sector generated estimated revenues of € 62 billion and Europe’s overall penetration reached 20%. However, there is considerable scope for further consumer benefits from a reinforced single market, strengthened competition and reduced regulatory burden for market players.

The U.S. has been against national planning because we do not want to take on the appearance of a centralized economy. We think it's undemocratic and un-American. The common response to calls for central planning or even national strategies is “let the markets decide.”

The problem is that the markets are not addressing the broadband problem fast enough, and as a result the U.S. is losing its competitive edge. I testified in front of the Senate on this issue (read the blog post here).

Yes, I know there are some other very serious problems that need national attention: the economy, the environment, human rights (check out Tibet) and so on. But we can't let IT slip off the radar screen either.

I hope that America's anemic broadband network begins to become an issue in the presidential campaign. In the past, IT issues did not seep into the national political discussion, probably because they were perceived as too techie. But if ever there was a bona fide “pocketbook” issue this year, making sure we have the infrastructure in place to keep millions of IT jobs in America must surely be it.

The good news is that there are changes are afoot. Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch identified Barack Obama and John McCain as the two candidates with the most progressive, thoughtful and “right” positions on IT. So no matter what happens on the Democratic side between now and the party convention, we're guaranteed to have at least one IT-aware candidate on the ballot in November.

Let's just hope the politicians do something about the broadband problem -- and soon. Otherwise our economy could soon be facing a giant blue screen of death.

Jonathan Kraft at the Vilna Shul

Tonight Jonathan Kraft – the president and chief operating officer of the Kraft Group, the holding company of the Kraft family’s varied business interests, and also the president of the three-time Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots – was the featured speaker at the historic Vilna Shul.

The Kraft Group has diversified interests including a huge paper and packaging manufacturing and forest products distribution operation, a sports and entertainment business, and a real estate development company. Additionally, they are involved in private equity investing – especially in early stage technology companies that are synergistic with the other companies in the Kraft Group, and philanthropy.

Jonathan painted very compelling pictures of leveraging the lessons the Krafts learned building a $1 billion packaging business, and their applications, to build the Patriots into a football super-power. He also reflected on his family and personal involvement with Judaism and charity. Jonathan made the evening wonderful by being insightful and offering a wonderfully candid insight into his businesses and NFL football.

Winterborn (This Sacrifice)

And in the fury of this darkest hour we will be your light
You've asked me for my sacrifice and I am Winter born
Without denying, a faith is come that I have never known
I hear the angels call my name and I am Winter born

And in our Dying
We're more alive-than we have ever been
I've lived for these few seconds
For I am Winter born

Crüxshadows

Sightseeing among the glaciers

Over the last two days I have been on vacation with my family in the Parque National Los Glaciares in Patagonia, Argentina. We had two awesome days: One day seeing the glaciers by boat; today hiking among the glaciers' peaks and valleys.

Above are some pictures. (I will add more pictures when I can access a bigger pipe. The Internet connections here are not that fast.)