Re: [IAEP] devel announce list; publicizing major software firmware updates
El Mon, 19-07-2010 a las 17:32 -0400, Samuel Klein escribió: We have a devel-announce list that hasn't been much used. We also have many people who are interested in getting news about any major release or security update, but don't have time to read all of the traffic that goes to devel. Reuben, Paul and I were discussing this earlier today; I would be happy to see more people using devel-announce to publicize major updates. As there is some demand for this kind of low-traffic list, if you are interested in that information, please sign up. http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel-announce Is this list appropriate also for announcing unofficial builds for the XO, such as the F11-0.88 series? (lately I've become too lazy^W busy to post release notes for our builds...) -- // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
[IAEP] Redesigning: Library, Read, Get-Books, and Content bundles
There has been a lot of great progress with the Read and Get-Books (IA) activities. However, we have neglected to think about how we can better fit all of these pieces together. For instance, consider deployments that would like to install content bundles. They package these files into .xol packages and these packages get installed into the Library, which is contained on the left hand side of the Browse activity. Yes, you read that correctly...the BROWSE activity, an activity intended for online exploration is used to view offline content. Every deployment that I have shown this to has found it very unintuitive. Consider another example: You want to use Get-Books to get a new book. So you open Get-Books search for a book and download the book. But where did it go? I guess one could assume (correctly) that it went to the journal. So you close Get-Books. Go to the Journal. Find the book you downloaded. Open the book (in Read.) IMHO, a series of needless steps. So what if we created a Library Activity The activity would: -Open a book from within the activity -Highlight and annotate books -List all of the books you have downloaded -Allow you to search and download additional books from Feed Books, Internet Archive, the XS, etc.. -List the resources in /home/olpc/Library (so this can be removed from Browse) -Allow one to synchronously or asynchronously share a book to their Neighborhood so anyone can download and read it. I have filed a bug here if anyone would like to follow it: http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2110 I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Regards, Reuben ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Humane Reader is a $20 8-bit PC for TVs
Its amazing how cheap you can make a laptop if you leave out the RAM, battery, display, keyboard, networking, processor, and plastic case. It is a much less developed version of AMD's 50x15 terminal. Cheers, wad On Jul 20, 2010, at 6:21 AM, Kevin Cole wrote: http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/20/humane-reader-is-a-20-8-bit-pc-for-tvs/ We can't decide if this is a Smart idea or a Stupid idea in the grand scheme of things, but we love it just the same. Humane PC and its Humane Reader child are open source hardware projects with some seriously low-cost internal components. At volume the PC could retail for as low as $20, and that's with 2GB of microSD storage, USB / PS/2 plugs, and video out. The PC is primarily designed to output low-res, black and white text to a TV, making it a low cost reader for developing countries, and the Humane Reader project pre-loads the device with thousands of Wikipedia articles (much in the vein of the OpenMoko WikiReader). Of course, the Humane PC itself is imminently hackable, and we probably haven't seen the full extent of this sucker's functionality just yet. The project is currently seeking a partner to deploy some prototypes. Humane Reader is a $20 8-bit PC for TVs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.PermalinkMake | Humane Informatics |Email this|Comments ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Redesigning: Library, Read, Get-Books, and Content bundles
On 20 July 2010 12:33, Reuben K. Caron reu...@laptop.org wrote: So what if we created a Library Activity The activity would: -Open a book from within the activity -Highlight and annotate books -List all of the books you have downloaded -Allow you to search and download additional books from Feed Books, Internet Archive, the XS, etc.. -List the resources in /home/olpc/Library (so this can be removed from Browse) -Allow one to synchronously or asynchronously share a book to their Neighborhood so anyone can download and read it. I'd argue that some of this is duplication of functionality that belongs (or already is) in the Journal and the Read activity, having such a design might kill some UI complications but add others. Parts of your concerns could be addressed with some ideas I wrote here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Content_support#Accessing_content_from_home_screen I agree that this definitely merits further design/discussion. Daniel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Redesigning: Library, Read, Get-Books, and Content bundles
On 20 Jul 2010, at 19:33, Reuben K. Caron reu...@laptop.org wrote: There has been a lot of great progress with the Read and Get-Books (IA) activities. However, we have neglected to think about how we can better fit all of these pieces together. For instance, consider deployments that would like to install content bundles. They package these files into .xol packages and these packages get installed into the Library, which is contained on the left hand side of the Browse activity. Yes, you read that correctly...the BROWSE activity, an activity intended for online exploration is used to view offline content. Every deployment that I have shown this to has found it very unintuitive. Consider another example: You want to use Get-Books to get a new book. So you open Get-Books search for a book and download the book. But where did it go? I guess one could assume (correctly) that it went to the journal. So you close Get-Books. Go to the Journal. Find the book you downloaded. Open the book (in Read.) IMHO, a series of needless steps. So what if we created a Library Activity The activity would: -Open a book from within the activity -Highlight and annotate books -List all of the books you have downloaded -Allow you to search and download additional books from Feed Books, Internet Archive, the XS, etc.. -List the resources in /home/olpc/Library (so this can be removed from Browse) -Allow one to synchronously or asynchronously share a book to their Neighborhood so anyone can download and read it. I have filed a bug here if anyone would like to follow it: http://bugs.sugarlabs.org/ticket/2110 I look forward to hearing your thoughts. I'm all for keeping activities simple, and then trying to smooth the workflow path when you need to use several in conjunction; however Apple did much as you suggest for their iBooks, a single app that has an epub book shelf, a PDF book shelf, and a store mode for downloading commercial and free ebooks. Read could be extended with a book shelf grid view of all (supported format) books in the Journal, and perhaps integrate download code from one of the get book activities. Would need support from the community as this would make Read harder/larger to maintain... I'd lean towards improving the Journal with a grid view and background sharing, as it could provide much the same thing for _all_ activities not just books (Alekseys Library was along this vector, as are I think his plans for future Journal). Journal is really in need of love, and a plan, for so long now :) Regards, --Gary Regards, Reuben ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Humane Reader is a $20 8-bit PC for TVs
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 3:18 PM, John Watlington w...@laptop.org wrote: Its amazing how cheap you can make a laptop if you leave out the RAM, battery, display, keyboard, networking, processor, and plastic case. It is a much less developed version of AMD's 50x15 terminal. That said, I do not believe their price quote at all. I suspect the inventors added up some prices and reduced by some arbitrary factor to include volume. My guesstimate says $20 for the electronics BOM alone, not including all the other costs of manufacturing. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Redesigning: Library, Read, Get-Books, and Content bundles
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Reuben K. Caron reu...@laptop.org wrote: deployments that would like to install content bundles. They package these files into .xol packages and these packages get installed into the Library, which is contained on the left hand side of the Browse activity. Yes, you read that correctly...the BROWSE activity, an activity intended for online exploration is used to view offline content. Every deployment that I have shown this to has found it very unintuitive. Consider another example: You want to use Get-Books to The original goal was to blur the boundary between offline and online as much as possible. You would have a large-ish cache of online material available offline -- including not only your textbooks, but also many other web sites or educational resources. Updating a textbook would be as easy as updating the online source of that textbook, and the offline copy would get updated from that. Surfing while offline to a page which was not available in the offline cache would create a request for that content, which would be fetched when you are next online, or added to a queue for your teacher to fetch next time they travelled to a place with internet access. This is a pretty straightforward extension of the wwwoffle program, but the necessary tuits to integrate all the pieces never appeared. Anyway, that's just to say that there was justification once for putting library content in Browse. Don't know if that justification still applies. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Humane Reader is a $20 8-bit PC for TVs
C. Scott Ananian wrote on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:25:55 -0400 I suspect the inventors added up some prices and reduced by some arbitrary factor to include volume. My guesstimate says $20 for the electronics BOM alone, not including all the other costs of manufacturing. There are details in some slides in the presentation linked at the end of http://humaneinfo.com/ The problem is the opposite - this thing at $20 is too expensive for what it does. I enjoy minimal systems more than anybody else, but the idea that poor people will be happy with this is just silly. At least the $12 computer (Famicom/NES clones) has color. An SD adaptor for those (and the equivalent software) would be extremely cheap. -- Jecel ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
Re: [IAEP] Humane Reader is a $20 8-bit PC for TVs
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. je...@merlintec.com wrote: C. Scott Ananian wrote on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:25:55 -0400 I suspect the inventors added up some prices and reduced by some arbitrary factor to include volume. My guesstimate says $20 for the electronics BOM alone, not including all the other costs of manufacturing. There are details in some slides in the presentation linked at the end of http://humaneinfo.com/ Which confirm my suspicions, thanks. The cost to make a PCB does not equal the cost of a finished product. Not even going into the intangibles (cost of money, packaging, shipping, distribution, overhead, support), the quoted cost doesn't include an SD card, a PS/2 keyboard, a 5V mini-USB power supply, or an AV cable. It also seems to assume that you can just dip the thing in epoxy in lieu of a case. The price also doesn't include the TV, but I think the idea is that the recipient already has one of those. The cost could be further improved by ditching the Atmel AVRs, which are very nice to program, but quite pricey -- especially if you need to use three (!). Using a single more powerful chip would reduce cost. (For that matter -- he's using a PS/2 or USB keyboard, which already contain processors roughly comparable to the AVR. A better hack would be to just reprogram that.) --scott ps. The presentation also disses PCB, whose autorouter I wrote, as unsophisticated. ;-) -- ( http://cscott.net/ ) ___ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
