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While everyone has been going bonkers over the OLPC, it seems some folks in the-place-that-occupies-Tibet have truly made a $100 laptop:

In October, Shenzhen China-based HiVision will ship a MIPs-based Linux mini-notebook for $98. The company is currently offering a similar machine for $120, according to a video blog report from the Internationale Funkausstellunga (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin this week.

HiVision's current offering, the "mini-Note," appears to use one of the several MIPS-based processors now available from Chinese semiconductor vendors. It may use a Longsoon-2F chip, or perhaps the Ingenic Jz4740 Multimedia Application Processor, which powers Bestlink's $250 ($180 in volume) Alpha 400 mini-notebook and 3K's $300 RazorBook 400-Mini-Notebook, two other Linux-based models out of China. Both processors use MIPS-like cores...

Here's a link to the product.

Well, there it is - one of my predictions has come true. The OLPC's die-hardest advocates will say that the OLPC has a different mission, and yet that mission hasn't been very well documented and/or supported via infrastructure.

One laptop per child? Sure. Go for it. But the answer has never been in the laptops themselves, has it?

On the Digital Divide discussion list, the mobile phone versus PC discussion came up again. Despite how much I hate mobile phones (a funny thing considering how I have been involved with them), the truth is that I do not hate the phones themselves - I really hate are things that people do with them. That said, they are the technology platform that will make the most significant impact in the next 5 years. Why?

Quite simply, everyone has them. A few of us have noticed this and have said this in the past - and where once we might have been seen as a cult, we're mainstream religion: You can talk about the Ten Commandments of the PC, but we offer you the Sermon on the Mount from Users.

The argument can and has been made that the mobile phone will never replace the PC. This is not a great argument to have - instead, the discussion should be about what users need - and most users need something that they can walk around with and which does things that they find useful. A PC has uses if you're tied to a desktop or feel like lugging around something that doesn't fit very well on your belt or in your purse.

After my first impressions of Google Chrome, I have been avidly using it and have come up with a few things that need to be sorted out. For example, even with Google Chrome set as the default browser, links in Seamonkey's email open in... Seamonkey. I understand that I can have my email on someone else's server (like gmail), but hey - I don't want my data sitting on someone else's server. I want it on my machine so that I can maintain archives without having to connect to the internet to do so - especially when traveling.

Granted, this may be Seamonkey's issue rather than Google Chrome - but as a user, I want an email option with my browser and I don't really want 'yet another standalone application'. The architecture of Google Chrome does permit for this to happen within a tab, and it should be there in a tab at the least. I don't know how many times I have to write that I want my data where I can get to it at all times. Work with me, Google.

And architecture: Don Marti makes an interesting point about the architecture that I hinted at when mentioning Kirix Strata:

...The idea of tabs being first class citizens makes a lot of sense, but why have a sub-window-manager that just manages browser windows in tabs, when you could have a tabbed window manager that can manage everything? I might want a browser and a spreadsheet to share a tab...

After I wrote about Google Chrome, it seems rather unfair that I not try it out. I headed over to Google to find out where they had released it, and lo! There's a link to Google Chrome (Beta) on the front page of Google. Within moments I began writing this on KnowProSE.com.

A few things.

Pages load noticeably faster than they did with Seamonkey and Firefox, especially with AJAX/javascript code running on the pages (such as here on KnowProSE.com). I'd compare it to Internet Explorer, but I don't use IE because it leaves a funny taste on my desktop.

The interface is so simple that this old school geek was just a little confused at first. It is clean, it lets me look at the content instead of wasting real estate on a whole bunch of features, and... did I mention that it's fast? And it seems that it uses the same palette that Mozilla class browsers used. Froody.

The first problem I have with the browser is that it lacks email functionality aside from online email applications. That doesn't make me happy. It means I still have to run an email application for all my email since... I maintain archives outside of an email provider, and I have them organized a certain way so that I can find things if I need them. Now, I know, Google Chrome is a web browser - but guess what? I want email integrated. That's why I like Seamonkey. It's integrated. Would it be too much to ask for this lowly user to have some email functionality with Google Chrome? I hope not. In fact, I hope it's coming because - frankly - I am digging this browser so far.

Give me about a week with it. I'll see if I can make it scream. ;-)

After about 2 months without broadband, I got wired up again yesterday. It took 5 weeks through TSTT to get their broadband package. It wasn't particularly easy to do, and so in the interim I found other things to fill my time. Things like planting corn, dealing with land issues and... basically doing things that I needed little or no bandwidth to do.

Yesterday, when I got the modem and brought it home, I didn't connect it right away. Standing outside of myself, it surprised me that I was somewhat slow to connect the modem - a few years ago I would have immediately started surfing the net, downloading things and otherwise utilizing the bandwidth. But not this time. This time I read a few articles out of the Harvard Business Review, did some writing on a project I'm working on... only after a few hours did I bother. And when I did get online, what did I do?

Well, I fired up Second Life, or course, to find out that I needed to download an update. No surprise. I logged in and... stood around, said hello to a few people, and... logged out. It isn't that there isn't stuff going on in Second Life - I'm sure that there is - it had simply become a lower priority than getting back to some reading - offline.

So now I'm back online, getting my cyber-life in order and trying to do what used to be the opposite: fitting my life with the internet instead of vice versa. Granted, until recently my main income was off of the web (and it may soon be again), but now I'm not sure exactly what's going on with myself. It's as though the Internet isn't such a big deal anymore - perhaps it was my extended absence, perhaps it's because I've got other things in my life, or perhaps it's because my Life caught up with my plans.

Either way, I'm back. And I'm not sure exactly what that means - but what it does mean is some more regular writing on this site and others. And I'll let you in on a secret: I'm smiling more.

The big news yesterday on the Internet was - and will probably continue to be - the pre-launch announcement by Google on their new web browser which, according to the BBC, will be available on the morning of Wednesday 3rd September, PST.

The Google Chrome Comic Book really does tell an interesting story - if you're at least part geek. The manner in which the browser was designed and tested makes this developer very keen on trying it out. Of course, that means that the comic could be a really good infomercial as well - the proof will be in the using of the browser. But as far as getting me interested - as a good infomercial would - they had me at 'different processes'.

The whole idea, from a technology standpoint, was to rewrite the web browser in a modern context. This could be very good - web browsers are built on code and ideas that existed at the very start of the Internet as we know it and since then, we've been using browsers in ways that could not be foreseen. Web browsers are our portals to information available through different types of standards (and sometimes no standards).

Via a Facebook message, I found out that The Independent Media Producers Association of Trinidad & Tobago (IMPATT) will be launching in September of this year. When that happens, the scope of what IMPATT will be doing will probably be better defined - but if you're working in media in Trinidad and Tobago, or are an independent producer of media (aren't we all?), take a read and consider joining the IMPATT group on Facebook.

IMPATT is going to do a "soft" launch via the internet in September and a proper launch and membership drive in October.

To this end we getting assistance from Caribbean Media Arts to gather some much needed info.

CMA in conjunction with the NTA is doing a quick survey of the current labour landscape of the media industry.

If you work in media:

Look out for the forms in hardcopy at your stations/production companies.
Or request the digital version that you can email back to us.
available by the 8th of September.

OUR CHALLENGE
To get onto the myriad freelancers and support services who are not attached to stations/production companies. So please send suggestions as to how to reach the freelancers.
Even better - get them to join the IMPATT facebook group or the Caribbean Media Arts facebook group.

For more info call Caribbean Media Arts : 625 7752

A change is coming in the industry... be part of it!

Blog Action Day 2008 is about Poverty - and as such, on October 15th I'll have a post on Poverty... oddly enough, I've got a bunch of fragments I've been writing on the topic which I'll try to melt together on the 15th of October, 2008.

Special thanks to Blah Blog Blog for the subtle reminder. ;-)