Last night we heard that the One Laptop Per Child program would be showing off its long-awaited XO-3 tablet at CES. We’ll be getting a hands-on then, but they were kind enough to send out a couple pictures of the device this morning, and they seem worth sharing.

As you may recall, the tablet has an 8″ screen, so with that for scale, it looks to be about three quarters of an inch thick. The bright green material appears to be silicone, and the rest of the construction will be plastic. The project’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte, wanted the device to be “indestructible,” and it certainly doesn’t look dainty, but it also doesn’t appear to be waterproof — though the front part could certainly be water-resistant.

The silicone case is nice, and likely produces the indestructibility Negroponte covets. It’s not simply a box-top; you can see in the picture above (high resolution versions below) that one side has a curved cut in it; this will allow the user to choose whether the ports on the top are exposed or protected. Useful for all manner of things, I’m sure. The pattern on it looks like a solar cell, but it seems unlikely that an array of any efficiency could be shipped for as low a price as they’d want.

Lastly there are the ports themselves: power, full-size USB (good for accessories), two ports which are likely audio out and in (or possibly both out, I can see that being a requested feature), and something that looks like a MicroSD slot, though I can’t be sure. There also appears to be a front-facing camera at the top.

We’ll have more info at CES or as OLPC sends it our way.

After years in the making, the One Laptop Per Child program’s XO-3 tablet will be shown in more or less final form next week at CES, according to the project’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte. The latest image of the tablet is shown here, though it is from some time back and may no longer be representative.

The price of the tablet will in fact be under $100, he said, though various options will put it over that. It has an 8-inch screen — traditional LCD, though it may be upgraded to a Pixel Qi display for power savings and e-paper-like capability. If they stuck to their original specifications, it will also be waterproof, durable, and about a quarter of an inch thick. The version they’re showing will run Android, though what version was not specified.

Solar panels, hand cranks, a bigger battery, and other accessories will be available, though no pricing has been given. It’s also unclear whether the device will be offered a la carte via retail, or will be limited to bulk purchases.

The tablet comes on the heels of the news that India’s own mass-market tablet, the Aakash, has garnered serious interest, selling thousands and producing interest potentially in the millions of units. The OLPC device will be more expensive, but I feel justified in saying it will likely be of a higher quality as well, though the future of the Aakash and tablets like it is in flux and both are totally incomparable to commercial tablets like the iPad.

Negroponte also said that they would be conducting a long-term experiment using the devices, collecting reading data from youths age 3-8 in India, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone. Apparently the tablets come with a reading platform that records audio and video and adapts its lessons to the needs of the children. Negroponte described it as possibly “the most important thing I have ever done… if it works.” Whether this is related to his plan to airdrop the devices onto remote regions was not made clear.

Needless to say, our team at CES will be seeking out the device and Negroponte himself if he is present. Watch our CES 2012 page for more information next week.

Now, that may sound like crazy talk to you, but the famously ambitious Negroponte thinks that it will work as they expect. Precedent exists for this kind of thing, and not just in The Gods Must Be Crazy. He cited a study showing promising results from hands-off methods of education, essentially giving tools to kids and letting them work out the rest. Never underestimate the intellect of curious kids with a lot of free time.

The tablets (the latest design concept for which is pictured above) will come pre-loaded with 100 books, presumably localized into the region’s language, and are aimed at teaching kids basic computer literacy and advancing their reading skills. The devices would be able to connect to the internet wirelessly, though on what protocol or through which providers, it isn’t clear.

While the project has had mixed success by the standards of its original goals, where it has been implemented it has shown a serious impact. Hundreds of thousands of kids in Peru are using them now, apparently to teach their parents to read. And the devices have proven durable and long-lasting, with few breaking in the field.

But getting them to the people in the first place has proven a challenge. So Negroponte is suggesting this alternative approach: “We will literally take tablets and drop them out of helicopters.” The tablets are apparently easy enough to use that they expect kids will pick it up with no instruction at all, though he elaborated on the plan, saying they would return a year later to check in. The worst case scenario is pictured thusly: “maybe an older brother will get a hold of it, use it for pornography – that’s life.”

The tablet is planned for late 2012; it will be based on a reference Marvell design, will include a solar panel for charging, and the screen will be a new Pixel Qi type. It will be roughly 10″ in diagonal and around a 4:3 aspect ratio.

He said that the material, which they have obviously not settled on yet (which makes his 45-day figure suspicious), may be plastic or some “flavor” of glass — so something like the hardened glass used by Apple and others is an option. Though I wouldn’t call Apple’s glass unbreakable.

As we heard, the initial run of devices, for release in non-developing countries (while cost to manufacture is still relatively high, I supposed), will be Marvell-branded, though Negroponte was not confident that the haptic keyboard on the tablet would be sufficient for anything but basic use. At $75, I’m not really expecting a full computer anyway.

[via PC World and Electronista]

I haven’t been a big supporter of the One Laptop Per Child project but the goal – to offer children in horrible situations a window on the world and a tool that the average first world kid takes for granted – is a noble one. Besides, who couldn’t love it when the founder, Nicholas Negroponte, makes such a cogent argument for the rise of the robots. All hail our metal overlords!

via TVSquad

Marvell’s Moby tablet platform is already one of the leaders in low-cost tablet computing (for what that’s worth), and was already partnering with OLPC, but this will make it more solid than ever. The other major partnership appears to be with Pixel Qi, with which OLPC has had a close but tumultuous relationship over the years.

They’ll be showing something at CES, but not the XO-3 tablet, though Marvell may show off their version of it, which is scheduled to be released first. We’ll be there to tell you either way.

Good news for OLPC users, the software engineering team announced today that they have built in multi-touch support into the next version of the OS. The new features are expected to appear on the XO-1.75 notebook.

The new XO-1.75 is part of the new tablet generation of the OLPC program, and will be one of the first to use the MeeGo virtual keyboard. The new XO-3 tablet (expected at CES 2011) is expected to use the MeeGo and multi-touch exclusively.

[via Electronista]

The tablet will show at CES 2011, but it won’t be final, said Negroponte: the main difficulty is getting the construction to be all-plastic, and by the start of 2011 they will likely still have to rely on a glass screen. He said it would use an ARM processor and run Android at first, although the final product will probably feature their own custom OS. The first prototypes we’ll see will be more Moby-like and less XO-like, so don’t get your hopes up about those renders.

Although the original goals of saturating the world with XO units seems out of reach now, there’s still a lot of good to be done. Even the growth of competitors like the Classmate PC signals that a low-cost, single-purpose computer like this is a compelling device — if they can only get governments, who sign all the big contracts, to agree.

In this case, it’s the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which is working on behalf of kids and refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Good for them.

Off-topic comments will be deleted, by the way.

[via ComputerWorld]

The innovative, power-saving display will now be going into whatever the OLPC project comes up with next, be it a new version of the XO laptop or the rumored tablet.

[via Laptop]

I’m extremely skeptical of this project. I forwarded the story to my friend Rich, who grew up in Africa, and his immediate response was “Well intentioned people who are really good at X look around and say, ‘how can X solve this problem?’, rather than saying ‘what is needed to solve this problem?’” Like Rich, I’m not convinced that the Amazon Kindle is the right solution to the problem of literacy in Africa, or anywhere else. The Kindle is a closed platform. It is a fragile device, and not the kind of thing anyone in Africa is likely going to be able to repair. Even though it has a long-lasting battery, it still requires electricity to charge that battery. And don’t get me started on DRM, or vendor lock-in, or walled gardens, or any of the other subtle gotchas associated with a proprietary device like the Kindle.

Rich reminded me of the Literacy Bridge project, which aims to address the problem of literacy in Africa through similar means, but with a decidedly different fundamental starting point:

The model at LiteracyBridge is that the device is durable, so that it can withstand african conditions. It is simple, and local folks are trained in how to repair it. It is powered by regular batteries, so that they can buy them at a local store, which not only ensures that the device remains powered, but contributes to the local economy. They can put their own content on it, which also encourages local economy in recorded books.

And of course, there’s still the Peace Corps, and countless traditional teaching opportunities to help address the issues of literacy in Africa and around the world. Technology may be one part of the larger puzzle, but I think that the Worldreader project is profoundly overestimating the value of technology for this problem.

You may remember that the sequel to the XO laptop, as the OLPC hardware was actually called, was spied at Davos in January after its initial debut in May of 2008. It was noted at the time that there was some doubt as to whether it would be made, and now those doubts have come to glorious anti-fruition. The XO-2 is dead — but only because Negroponte decided it should be a tablet.

Don’t look at me like that. I know, right? Yet another tablet entering the fray, and this one (claims Negroponte) will only cost $75. Well, that’s it then. Guess we can pack up the CrunchPad (bless its heart) and go home. Apple is probably quaking in its loafers as well, since the same latte-sucking Volvo-jockeys who want the Apple Tablet also love the idea of the OLPC. Charity and all that. Buy one, give one is a great promotion, and for a $75 unit, it’s a price most can afford. Assuming they hit that price target, of which there is no guarantee. On the other hand, Microsoft is probably happy that there’s one less dual-touchscreen device to compete with the Courier.

Here’s what Negroponte had to say about the XO 3.0 in a recent interview with Xconomy:

2.0 has been replaced by two things: 1) model 1.75, same industrial design but an ARM inside, 2) model 3.0, totally different industrial design, more like a sheet of paper… completely plastic and unbreakable, waterproof, 1/4″ thick, full color, reflective and transmissive, no bezel, no holes. 1W. $75, ready in 2012.

Sounds like a fantasy winner! He also notes that the OLPC program is splitting into a hardware arm and grassroots/education arm. The original XO will be updated with a new processor but will continue to ship pretty much as is. They’re also requesting that OLPC be changed to “olpc,” a demand I find onerous (and pointless).

What the device would actually be capable of is anybody’s guess, but a basic e-book reader and browser seems to be the minimum feature set. I’m torn between an affinity for traditional computing (which is probably fundamental to a modern education) and traditional education, which the XO 3.0 would most certainly make easier. As a commenter at Slashdot points out, “in any third-world country access to ‘open source’ text books on any subject at zero extra cost would be more important than the actual “educational computer” functionality.” Text books to be sure, not to mention the world’s literature and current events. The village library just got a lot bigger.

Whatever happens, we can’t expect it before 2012, which really renders discussion moot, seeing as the entire landscape of tech will have changed by then. So I guess the CrunchPad and Apple Tablet aren’t in danger just yet. Hell, we’ll probably be on version 3.0 ourselves by that time. But while the consumer tech market is a moving target, third-world literacy and grassroots education are always welcome. Even though Negroponte has pretty much said that this is a business endeavor and not a charitable one, it may yet do a lot of good.

[via SlashGear]

It’s still a prototype, but it’s looking promising. The builders have created a pedal power alternative to the hand cranks used on the standard OLPC, and it definitely makes sense to do so. The human body can certainly pedal easier then it can a crank, and the creators of the modification have stated that it’s easy enough to use that a 3rd or 4th grader can power it. Might be hard to type while you’re doing that, but at least you’ll have a full charge.

Got an old sack o’ crap laptop or desktop gathering dust? Sugar Labs has just made its OLPC-friendly “Sugar” operating system into a USB-bootable version called Sugar on a Stick. You’ll need a one-gigabyte thumb drive and about twenty minutes of spare time.

The full instructions can be found here. You’ll basically need to download Sugar on a Stick in ISO form, then use Fedora LiveUSB Creator to “burn” the ISO to the USB thumb drive. Once that process is complete, stick the thumb drive in the old computer’s USB port and boot the machine up (make sure your BIOS is set to boot from USB).

Here’s a little demo video:

Sugar Labs Announces Immediate Availability of Sugar on a Stick; Learning Platform Runs on Any PC or Netbook In The Classroom [SugarLabs.org via Slashdot]

Like this video? View more here…

It’s not like the whole project has been scrapped, far from it, it just exposes the trouble of introducing something as radical as the XO laptop into a school system that isn’t prepared to handle it. Until the teachers consider exploratory learning as legitimate and are equipped to take advantage of the device, the project is doomed to failure. It’s the classic horse/water problem. So the new strategy simply has to include those considerations and work harder on the top-down learning model they have there — something proposed a long time ago but not really implemented. Here’s a talk discussing this and other things in more detail.

I wonder what the risk is of someone considering the XO-2 a toy. They’d probably be hard-pressed to categorize at all.

Update: Commenter Edward notes that this problem is not new, and that it has in fact been encountered and surmounted before. Glad to hear it.

[via Reddit, photo credit: CNET, it's in Nigeria]

Perhaps the success of the pilot program in 2007 has convinced them that this is a good idea. And while an Indian company has attempted to create a $10 alternative, their efforts have had little to no results.

PC World interviewed the CEO of the OLPC India group, who stated that the laptops will go to about 1,500 schools. The bad news is that this isn’t going to help AMD, who had their CPU dropped in favor of the VIA C7-M chipset. The system memory has also been increased to 1 GB, and the internal storage has been bumped up to 4 GB. There are also rumors of a 2.0 model that should be revealed in 2010.

[via Ars Technica]

The ultimate goal would be to implement touch gestures on it as well, but chances are that having so many layers in a low-cost display would damage its durability and increase its cost. In the meantime, they can at least provide a common display for the Classmate and OLPC-style netbooks being shipped to needy communities. According to their site, we’re looking at a late-2009 or 2010 release date, and they sound like they’ve pretty much got it locked down. No shots or video, but hey.

Nicholas Negroponte, the leader of the project, says:

The XO-1 was really designed as if we were Apple. The XO-2 will be designed as if we were Google – we’ll want people to copy it. We’ll make the constituent parts available. We’ll try and get it out there using the exact opposite approach that we did with the XO-1.

Sounds like the right approach to me. And if the pictures are to be believed, the clamshell dual-touchscreen thing may actually be a reality.

Here we have the first image of the new OLPC netbook which may or may not actually ever come to market. Tariq Krim and Michael saw it at Davos today.

This new model has dual touchscreens and replaces the earlier OLPC model. Apparently there is some question as to whether this will actually be made.

via NetBookNews

True to its word, Amazon is throwing its global retail reach into the OLPC XO mission this Christmas season. The site is now offering buy-one, send-one to a developing nation notebook program. Or if you as a seasonal philanthropist choose, Amazon will ship one to a child of your choice. ‘Tiss the season of giving, folks.

via PC World