The 10-person creative team @ the Costeau Collective is auctioning two days of marathon designwork for any project at all; proceeds to benefit OLPC.  A cool idea.
Update: The auction raised over $9,000 — enough to support an entire classroom! A hearty thanks to the Collective for their creative support. (So who was the lucky winning bidder?)
Vera Sacchetti shares a design-geek’s reflections on OLPC from Lisbon, where she recently finished writing a thesis on “design crusades”:  Two billion laptops to “revolutionize educationâ€
Our new site design, first mentioned earlier this year, is close to fruition. You can now see our alpha site online.
We are working on ways to better link the site, wiki, and blog together, and to aggregate and point to every site in the OLPC community. For now, you can add information about your own projects and websites, and links to them. We will be working on other visualizations of this data, and connecting our map of major deployments with the growing olpcmap network, over the coming month. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
A network of South Asian OLPC deployments (including India, Sri Lanka and Nepal) are working together to share knowledge and outreach. Support gang member Shirish Goyal has put together a gorgeous portal covering work in that part of the world, at olpcsouthasia.org
OLPC South Asia homepage
I felt a momentary pang of jealousy, looking at that design. But I satisfied myself with the knowledge that we will have a vibrant new look of our own soon, with the blog integrated into our main site. Here’s another sneak peek:
OLPC News
Toshiba is releasing a Libretto W100 series of laptops this fall, taking after the XO-2 in form factor and design. It’s great to see this make it to market.
Unfortunately, the many interface niceties they have implemented seem to be written only for Windows for now.
Christoph Derndorfer, widely known for his ministry to young XO pilots, fashion sense, and active speaking / writing /editing about OLPC, has recently kicked off a Latin American Tour. (Todd Kelsey, where are your tour-badge-printing skills when we need them?) He plans to visit all of our country partners in the region with significant deployments this summer, documenting his experience.
Christoph’s travel reports are enchanting. Take for instance the recent photoessay from Montevideo’s eXpO photo exhibit in Uruguay – composed entirely of photos taken with XOs by students in 4 primary schools. And with his iconic beard, long hair, and thousand-meter stare (seen below by the pool at the Fame Factory), Christoph is becoming as known for his xoly presence as for his love of good design and Sugarized icons.
ChristophD preaching the End Times (or at least the Shutdown Screen Icons)
To stalk with him across the southern slopes, deployment by deployment, you can follow his online writings, photos, and twext. He is looking for personal contacts along the way, especially people who have played a role in OLPC deployments, so please get in touch with him if you know someone he should meet.