Tuesday, April 03, 2012

One Laptop Per Child

Wow, how freakin' AWESOME is this???

After my previous post about Abel, I had to read more. That cute Peruvian kid called his one-laptop-per-child laptop "his friend" because he can open it up when he is home alone and he can play, and when he doesn't want to play he can write stories or draw instead. Oh. MAN.

So I had to learn more about this organization. It's called One Laptop Per Child (http://one.laptop.org/) and is founded by the founders of the MIT Media Lab. Epic. You know, I think I heard a bit about this a while back but hadn't really heard many details since then. After seeing the laptop in the movie Life in a Day, I wanted to see their progress and it's really impressive.

I wanted to know more about their organization and it looks like the laptops they supply to 3rd-world countries are Linux-based, running a custom OS that they develop called "Sugar". It looks like all the software developed on this system is done in Python (ie., awesome).

The coolest thing is you can propose a project and donate your time to DEVELOP AN APP for these systems?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is really freakin' awesome, and such an interesting way to make a difference. I reaaaaaaaaaaally like this idea.

For any CS friends who are interested, check out their information and their "Contributors Program" here. This is some really fascinating stuff, and what an awesome way to make a huge impact on the world with your software development skills. I friggin' love this.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Contributors_program

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