From MacWorld.com

The MIT Media Laboratory expects to launch a prototype of its US$100 laptop in November, according to Nicholas Negroponte, the lab’s chairman and co-founder. The facility has been working with industry partners to develop a notebook computer for use by children in primary and secondary education around the world, particularly in developing countries. The laptops should start appearing in volume in late 2006.

“In emerging nations, the issue isn’t connectivity,” Negroponte said at the Emerging Technologies Conference on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Cambridge campus Wednesday. “That’s not solved, but lots of people are working on it in Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, etc. For education, the roadblock is laptops.” He and his colleagues believe that equipping all children in the world with their own laptop will greatly improve the level of education and help stimulate children to learn outside of school as well as in the classroom.

[...]

The laptop can be powered either with an AC adapter or via a wind-up crank, which is stored in the housing of the laptop where the hinge is located. The laptops will have a 10 to 1 crank rate, so that a child will crank the handle for one minute to get 10 minutes of power and use. When closed, the hinge forms a handle and the AC cord can function as a carrying strap, according to Negroponte. The laptops will be ruggedized and probably made of rubber, he said. They will have four USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, be Wi-Fi- and cell phone enabled and come with 1GB of memory.

Think of all the possibilites a lap top like this has in “2nd world” countries. Just some food for thought :)

Apparently not many people are aware of this fact. All I know is that I need this t-shirt.

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I’ve found two interesting articles that I would like to post, but I think posting them this way is better than just copying the text. Instead here’s the URL, the lead line, and a quick comment by me.

Microsoft: Office 12 to anticipate needsThe next version of Microsoft Corp.’s Office software will feature simpler graphics and try to anticipate users’ tasks as the company hopes to make the product easier to use, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Tuesday.
» Hahaha, especially funny is the way Gates introduced the latest version of software. Gates hired the man himself (or actor), Napoleon Dynamite to poke fun at the multi-billionaire’s geeky image. “The skit had Dynamite turning to Gates for help in making his uncle’s business more efficient. At one point, Gates handed him a box for the revamped Office suite of software. [...] “Dang!” Dynamite said, nodding his head. “This thing has all kinds of new stuff. Sweeeet.” Also check out a mention of Microsoft’s new OS due out this year, Microsoft Vista.

Google launches blog search
Google Inc. has added to its menu of search alternatives the option to search through the ever-popular online journals called Web logs, or blogs.
» The service went live today into beta, and I must say this latest Google tool is AWESOME! Google said that they hoped this new feature would perhaps “inspire many to join the revolution themselves.” The new service includes all types of blogs, from live journal to unique domain’s using Word Press (like my blog, which I searched for of course ;) ) It also allows searchers to subscribe to the RSS feed for any set of keywords.

From CNN Money:

ATLANTA (CNN) – Retail gas prices broke their all-time high, surging more than 38 cents in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to an average of $3.01 per gallon, but are likely to back down a bit in the next few days, a national survey said Sunday.

“That price surge is due to the supply shrinkage caused by Hurricane Katrina,” Lundberg said. Her survey was carried out Sept. 9 and August 26 at about 7,000 gas stations.

Lundberg predicted that retail gasoline prices will drop in coming days.

“From about September 2, most wholesale prices charged to stations have been dropping, and we’ll see the pass-through on the street very soon.”

Wholesale prices have been dropping because demand has fallen — as it always does in September — and many of the refineries and pipelines affected by the hurricane have returned to operation, she said.

“More than half of the affected refining capacity that was down in the Gulf (of Mexico) is back and virtually all the affected pipeline capacity is back,” she said.

Still, she predicted, prices will not return to pre-hurricane levels any time soon.

Drivers in Jackson, Miss., paid the least, at an average of $2.61 per gallon of self-serve regular; drivers on Long Island the most, at $3.35.

Here are some other prices: Seattle: $2.86; Atlanta: $2.91; Los Angeles: $2.95; Denver: $2.99; Chicago: $3.04; Boston: $3.24; Washington: $3.27

The Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries is slated to meet Sept. 19, where it is expected to boost capacity by another 500,000 barrels per day, Lundberg said.

In addition, demand for oil from China and India is expected to drop in response to the higher prices, she said.

So far, Georgia is the sole state in the nation to remove its taxes on gasoline, an effort to ease the pain for drivers.

The world’s cheapest gasoline can be found in Venezuela, where a gallon costs 12 cents; the most expensive is in the Netherlands, where a gallon costs $6.48.

It’s interesting to hear people scream at how high gas prices are, and then yell at the gas attendants for the high prices. The people the public should be getting upset with are the oil companies. Katrina had no affect on the gas that is supplying us right now, it was refined months ago. We should only experience an actual scarcity of gas in a few months. Interesting how economics work isn’t it…?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced Motorola’s new music-playing cell phone this past Wednesday at the Apple press conference in San Francisco.

Apple’s new cell phone will be “the next generation of Swiss Army Knife cell phones,” said Mitch Mitchell, an A.T. Kearney vice president. Configured to operate on the Cingular Wirless network, the revolutionary phone combines functions of Apple’s famous iPod and the basic utilities of a regular cell phone.

Motorola earlier announced plans for the new phone, but retracted the statement at the request of Apple who traditionally announces new products soon before they are available in stores instead of months in advance.

Mobile phone-makers including Nokia, Sony Erricsson and Samsung have already announced or introduced mp3 playing cell phones, but Motorola’s is the first to tote Apple’s pioneering iTunes format.

Analysts expect music phones to take on the same path that camera phones have taken in the past year, which now account for about half of cell phones sold in the United States. “The first wave [of music phones] will go to folks who have to have the latest gadget,” said Mitchell. “It’ll be similar to camera phones. Over the next 18 to 24 months, as volume grows and prices fall, they’ll become widespread.”

Motorola has enjoyed a recent resurgence in cell phone sales with their popular and ultra-thin Razr phone. “Clearly, Motorola is really coming back to its roots as an industry innovator,” said Rene Link, vice president at inCode, a wireless industry consultancy. “For a while, they’d lost the innovation lead to Nokia, but with the Razr phone, they regained it, and this iTunes phone keeps them in the lead.”

Although Motorola’s future with their new mp3 phone seems great, the same can not necessarily be said for wireless carrier Cingular. The new phone will allow customers to bypass the Cingular network by downloading music to their phones directly from their home computers. Additionally, music phones will not promote more network usage without an option to send music to other network subscribers.