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Another OLPC competitor has entered the U.S. market. This time, Hewlett Packard Co. is releasing a lightweight “Mini-Note” line of notebook computers. Each unit weighs less than 3 pounds with a screen that measures 8.9 inches diagonally. A Linux-based model is available for under $500. According to an AP article, the devices are not being positioned for large-scale deployment in the developing world:

The Mini-Note will compete primarily with Intel’s Classmate PCs — which are designed by Intel and feature Intel chips but are built and branded by other companies — and Asustek’s Eee PC.

To a lesser extent, they also will go up against the XO laptop from the Cambridge, Mass., nonprofit One Laptop per Child, which is intended primarily for schoolchildren in developing countries.

NPR reports that the One Laptop Per Child project will provide computers for kids in Birmingham, Alabama. The report highlights a key challenge of the project: Can a slow computer have an impact in a high-speed society? Maybe not.

Meanwhile, Nokia quietly announced the WiMAX edition of the N810 Internet Tablet. As noted here previously, it’s predecessor, the N800, has potential as an m-learning device. The N810 is based on the same hardware and software architecture, but incorporates a keyboard and can connect to both Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks. Can the expanded networking capabilities of the Linux-powered N810 WiMAX fill the low-cost (but highly connected) computing gap in U.S. education?

This is a little bit off topic; but having just experienced a month-and-a-half-long ordeal where my moravec.us domain was taken hostage by “investors,” I believe it’s important to build awareness of this disturbing trend. Jay Westerdal writes at the DomainTools Blog on how Network Solutions, a company entrusted to manage Internet top level domains, is entering the namespace piracy market:

If a customer chooses not to register the domain name with Network Solution (sic) they are forced to wait 4 days for Network Solutions to delete the domain name in the Free Add Grace period. After the four day hostage period the consumer is free from the hostage situation and can register the domain somewhere else. However Network Solutions has now exposed those domains to Domain Tasters that will snipe those domain up milliseconds after Network Solutions deletes them. By registering the domain Network Solutions is exposing the domain in the DNS and every computer in the world now knows about the domain. These domains are now easy fodder for scammers and it is mind blowing that Network Solutions would expose their customers queries to the world in this manner.

Wicked.

I purchased my third hand-held device on Friday. My first was a Newton MessagePad 2000 (which I later upgraded to the MP2100). The second was a Handspring Visor Platinum. The new device is a Nokia N800 Internet tablet.

The N800 is a WiFi device with an 800×480 (!) touchscreen strapped on, and can support up to 16GB of SD flash memory. It runs a light/mobile flavor of Debian GNU/Linux. This means that developers can readily tap into a large library of open source tools. The user interface could use some help. As Sean Luke points out, my old Newton is still superior in many areas.

The N800 has some great things going for it.  I particularly enjoy:

• The huge screen on a small device, allowing me to view Web pages as they’re intended to be viewed
• WordPy, a competent offline WordPress editor (one wish: it needs a means to upload/incorporate images from the N800)
• The option of using a Gecko/Mozilla or a Opera-based browser
• The community-supported Claws mail
• Skype!
• Having a mobile device with an option to use a proper command line interface!

The N800 is not marketed to be used as a m-learning device, but I cannot help myself from comparing it to the Ozing and Noah m-learning devices reviewed last May. Where the Chinese devices fell short on application quality and developer accessibility (at least the Noah NP890+ runs a Linux variant), the N800 has an active, open source development community. Perhaps the Chinese companies will learn from Nokia and open their software to more developers and platforms? Or, perhaps others will leapfrog the Chinese to exploit the m-learning potential of the N800…

Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), the lawmaker behind the pork-barrel Bridge to Nowhere and an infamous revelation that the Internet is constructed of a series of tubes is at it again. This time, he wants to ban Wikipedia at schools that receive federal funding. From Computerworld:

Early in January, Stevens introduced Senate bill 49, which among other things, would require that any school or library that gets federal Internet subsidies would have to block access to interactive Web sites, including social networking sites, and possibly blogs as well. It appears that the definition of those sites is so vague that it could include sites such as Wikipedia, according to commentators.

Remember, this is from the senator, who, on the floor, said:

Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got… an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially. [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material It seems to me that communications and new media literacy needs to be taught in the halls of Congress as well as in our schools.

It seems the senator is concerned all the knowledge distributed through Wikipedia would dangerously tangle the tubes of the Internet. What do you think?

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports their take of the top ten trends affecting education in 2005:

1. The browser-based application
2. Firefox
3. Wikipedia’s news reporting
4. The $100 laptop
5. Podcasting
6. A renewed debate on what students are doing on the Internet
7. OpenOffice.org 2.0
8. Web 2.0
9. Moodle
10. Blackboard’s takeover of WebCT

Read the original article.