Scott's Blog

I just finished posting mm2s5 to code.google.com this weekend. It's a small Python utility to convert a FreeMind mind-map (.mm) file into an S5 presentation. It was a little hack that I put together to make presentations quickly and somebody else found it useful, so I decided to put it on the net. You can see an example presentation here and a picture of what that same presentation looks like in FreeMind here .

I asked for and got an OLPC to test and work on. My first impressions are very favorable. It's very small and cute and something that kids are immediately drawn to, because it's not adult sized. My 6 year old son has been playing with it on and off and I just saw him today explaining how to play on the laptop. I even overheard him saying that the laptop connects to other laptops which he must have overheard me mentioning to someone else. The keyboard is very small, but it's perfectly acceptable for two finger typing. My only complaint is that the space bar and enter keys have dead areas in it, but that ought to be fixed pretty soon. The biggest complaint from my son is the trackpad. He was almost brought to tears trying to use it. It was frustrating for him because he would try to move right and it would move left. Even build 303 seems to have that problem on occasion. I never had problems with it, but I'm more used to using a trackpad. It looks like he was st...

I've asked for and looks like will receive an BTest-1 OLPC laptop for development and testing. My son is working through letters and numbers so I'm looking on adapting a program for that. It should be very interesting seeing how he uses the laptop as my tester. Perhaps I can convince some of my colleagues at Google Brazil to contribute some time as well, it's a very exciting project.

The One Laptop Per Child ( OLPC ) project has an interesting take on building security for the laptop. Here is my list of why the OLPC is especially vulnerable to security issues. 100's of millions of these near identical laptops will be produced, making it a target for crackers. The OLPC group want the child to be able to hack their own laptops, get right down to the code. Some of the children are going to be very young, entering a password or even replying to dialog prompts may be asking too much. These devices automatically connect to each other and automatically connect to the Internet. So what will they be doing to improve security? They have a system called Bitfrost , which comes from Norse mythology, where Bitfröst is the bridge which keeps mortals who live in Midgard from venturing into Asgrad, the realm of the gods. Nearly all programs running on the laptop will be running in a fortified chroot, sort of like BSD jail. Programs will store their data on a new object oriente...

I think I've been vindicated when I said that the Sony PS3 would be a failure. The main issue with the console was the insistence of putting a BluRay player on the device. I think it shows how there's an organizational/cultural problem at Sony. They insist on putting an expensive add-on to the game simply to satisfy some people in the media division of the company. The BluRay player does nothing to improve the gaming experience and in fact it a little slower than a fast DVD player. The rationalization was that some people would by the PS3 just for the BluRay player . And maybe, they might buy a game too. What kind of game do you sell to someone who doesn't really want to play games? In a related note you can buy the PS3 with Linux pre-installed . Although that's really neat, it means there's one more reason to buy a PS3 and not play games! Every current PS3 sold is sold at a loss. The only way Sony can recoup that money lost is by the licensing money from P...

I just discovered Google Notebook that I knew existed but had never tried it, I heard it referred to as a post-it note type tool, but it's more useful than that (I'm not a big Post-it™ fan). If you install the extension, you can quickly select and gather snippets from a web page and throw it in your notebook . It automatically keeps track of the originating link and the date you clipped it. The notebook supports rich text and images, in that sense it's quite complete. The only thing missing is the ability to take an entire notebook and make a blog entry for it. Maybe I could make it my 20% project .

Professor José Antonio Meira da Rocha has done some number crunching and found that the OLPC XO laptop will cost about R$0.59 per child per hour (about 27 cents US). This includes the cost of the laptop, electricity, training, OLPC servers, and internet connection. In comparison having Computer labs where 5 or more students share one computer would cost R$9.90 per hour. His numbers show that the total cost of ownership (TCO) OLPC will be R$94.07 per year (vs. a computer lab's TCO of $R586.00). The problem with computer labs is that the child doesn't feel any ownership of the shared computer, he or she can't just pick it up any time and start using it. Also kids don't like sitting in chairs for hours at a time. On top of that the OLPC has a better display than a typical computer and so is better for reading. Having just spent R$300.00 on books, pencils and paper for my son for school this year, $94.07 looks like a steal.