I think my respect for Michael Arrington just increased somewhat. He's decided to declare war on Microsoft.
It's the zeitgeist, of course.
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3 comments:
As usual I tend to go off on tangents. This open source effort to make a web tablet is very cool. I also think this post juxtaposed with the conversation about Dell is interesting. What if Dell began making stuff like the web tablet, that is not to get into the market of cheap commodities, but to become a manufacturer of stuff people in networks design? That would be a radical remaking of Dell!
My heart was always into the OLPC project, not the least of the reasons is thinking constructivism a good approach to learning. But in my lame attempts to do things in Uganda, the machine that solved lots of problems seemed to be the Alphasmart neo a super simple word processing computer with fantastic battery life. The problem with it is that I need cheap!
I wonder if we tend to place too much emphasis on economies of scale, so that more limited runs of particular purpose machines might not be possible economically?
Couldn't agree more that creating either cool web-tablet and / or a market for open-source development of products would be a cool idea for Dell. Or any hardware manufacturer.
Having said that, it's quite a step for Dell. What makes this a great move by TechCrunch is that to create an attention-driven, open source project you need a lot of *attention*. And that's what TechCrunch has got.
Even if Dell are a bigger company, with proven hardware experience, they don't have anything like the eyeballs TC can orchestrate.
Alphasmart is interesting. I used to have one of those Sinclair things which was an 8-bit chip and a clone of the Acorn BBC portable. Seems like this is in the same tradition. Although amazingly it looks more expensive.
I wish more people would use black and white, non-backlit LCDs for very long battery life.
What's needed in many places in the developing world is an interface to Internet-connected computers. Many village schools don't have electricity, but access to the Internet is becoming more common. So with something like an Alphasmart kids and teachers can create content at school for uploading to the Internet at the Internet cafe. The Neo gets hundreds of hours with a couple of regular AA cells. It's not fancy but suits the DIY sort of model contra the national model that OLPC devised.
When Alphasmart was sold the new company discontinued their social network. It moved to Flickr. Writers love the things so there's always lively discussion. I thought for sure I could get Alphasmarts cheap at EBay, but no, there's a real niche and the resale prices are high.
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