More details of the European OLPC G1G1 offer now released. Seems as though transactions will be in sterling, and via amazon.co.uk.
For full details of the OLPC laptop, and the background to its development, see the official page.
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BBC News has a story that the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) will be available in Europe on a Give 1 Get 1 basis via Amazon.
I've written about the OLPC project before - this is the project started by Nicholas Negroponte to develop a low-cost laptop for educational purposes, aiming to produce the devices for $100. Last I heard, they'd got the cost down to $189. The OPLC runs Sugar Linux (I have Sugar running under VirtualBox, and it's a neat and innovative OS), and has a number of innovative technologies, notably in the low power screen which is usable in sunlight, and the dustproof and waterproof keyboard.
The programme has stumbled of late, with competition from Intel, who have produced the Classmate laptops (running Windows) in direct competition, while supposedly working with the OLP project. In addition to acusations that Intel behaved "interestingly" during their dalliance with the OLPC project, Microsoft have been accused of strong-handed marketing tactics to drive Windows XP into classrooms. One further issue has been the rise of low cost netbooks, pioneered by the Asus Eee, which completely wrong-footed the Redmond behemoth, who were intent on pushing the resource-hungry Vista. Now of course, they've extended the lifespan of Windows XP.
The OLPC has been previously available as G1G1 offer, though only in the USA. I've long wanted to get one of these things, so maybe this announcement is an opportunity. So far I've not seen any mention of this G1G1 programme at amazon.co.uk, but I'll keep an eye out.
Well, it seems I was premature in my triumph at escaping the clutches of BT as my broadband provider. Having switched from BT to Zen on the 10th October, I was surprised to see a credit card charge coming through from BT Openworld dated 14th October.
I rummaged about on the BT web pages for an appropriate phone number, and found it spectacularly byzantine. Or possibly labyrinthine.
I found myself going round in circles (I made many telephone visits to India), and effectively discovered that the only operatives with any knowledge or gumption were those at the phone number for closing Broadband accounts. As far as I can tell, the problems include:
- a claim that it was the fault of my new ISP not telling BT to close my account
- a myriad of different broadband schemes on offer from BT
- the fact my broadband package was not paid through my phone bill
- most of the operatives oversees have virtually no knowledge or understanding of the systems discussed
In the end, and after about 2 hours on the phone, I reached a fellow who very quickly stopped future payments and refunded the 14th October payment. Well, we shall see!
The best telephone number I was given was 0800 111 4567, which merely told me operators were there 8am-8pm Monday to Saturday, then disconnected me. This happened repeatedly between 8am and 8.30am. Maybe they'd all been on the lash last night and hadn't made it in. Or maybe they were just wondering why no calls were coming through!
A final note - this seems entirely in keepng with the rubbish nature of BT helplines.
One week on, and I've got to grips a bit more with the iPod Touch.
- I don't like iTunes! (but perhaps I will ge used to it) It doesn't seem terribly intuitive to me.
- My digital music files live on a Linux box upstairs, and I stream them to the hifi via a Logitech Squeezebox. As I reported in the last iPod post, I was able to access these files for use with iTunes using Firefly, but this wouldn't let my sync them to the iPod. Samba wasn't a bundle of use either.
- Disk space being limited due to the small partition used for Windows XP on the only machine available for iTunes, I resorted to making copies to a portable hard drive, this worked pretty well.
- Why can't Apple make a Linux version of iTunes?
- iTunes could only identify cover art for a very small proportion of my mp3s. This is probably more a reflection of my musical taste, however!
- To be honest, I don't find browing the album covers an efficient way of locating an album when thereis over 29Gb of music files on the device!
- Having access to the MS Exchange mail/calendar is very useful
- My grown up sized finger tips are a bit on the large size for accurate tapping on the screen keyboard!
Some recent developments regarding the obnoxious Phorm:
The Telco 2.0 conference feature discussions from the CEO of a web marketing company. Because the meeting was held under Chatham House rules, individuals and companies could not be named. However, it's a reasonable assumption this was someone from Phorm. The Register reports.
Virgin Media appear to be having second thoughts about Phorm. Or maybe third thoughts. They do seem to be uncertain what their position is.
Orange too have no plans to use Phorm. But of course don't rule out using othe, similar, systems.
The BT's Broadband support fora seem to be continuing in their ghettoisation of Webwise discussion - all posts mentioning Webwise get consigned to a dustbin thread where no BT people ever respond to questions. Curiously BT Business subscribers wishing to enquire what the effects snooping their customer's browsing habits and sending them to competitor's websites might have get sent off to the Webwise thread dustbin where no official answers will ever be made to their questions - check this post and sequelae.
A handful of participants in the current BT-Phorm data pimping trial have surfaced. This guy has all sorts of hassles, and he never even got asked if he wanted to be part of the trial.
BT owned ISP PlusNet customers have been presented with the BT Webwise invitation page, which they shouldn't have been. Apparently this was more than the one-off originally explained as an aberration - 250 or so have been so affected.