Laptop With a Mission Widens Its Audience

From The New York Times - In November, you’ll be able to buy a new laptop that’s spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and drop-proof. It’s fanless, it’s silent and it weighs 3.2 pounds. One battery charge will power six hours of heavy activity, or 24 hours of reading. The laptop has a built-in video camera, microphone, memory-card slot, graphics tablet, game-pad controllers and a screen that rotates into a tablet configuration.

And this laptop will cost $200.

The computer, if you hadn’t already guessed, is the fabled “$100 laptop” that’s been igniting hype and controversy for three years. It’s an effort by One Laptop Per Child (laptop.org) to develop a very low-cost, high-potential, extremely rugged computer for the two billion educationally underserved children in poor countries. | Read full article

Braun Apple

From SpiekerBlog - Braun collectors like myself have known for a long time where some of the ideas came from that led to the perforated-aluminium-look of some Apple computers. I took a few photographs of my world receiver T1000 from 1962 (!). Radii and perforations look almost identical to the ones on a MacBook Pro or a MacPro, 45 years later. | Read full article

Charmr: Solving human problems with design

From Jeffrey Veen - This week in Washington DC, my former colleagues at Adaptive Path are holding their annual User Experience Week conference. Part of me is a little sad - this is the first one I've ever missed and was quite a labor of love when I was still with them. But another part of me is proud and inspired by what they've been showing these last few days.

In particular, they unveiled the Charmr project: A 9-week research and prototyping effort inspired by an “Open Letter to Steve Jobs” posted by Amy Tenderich on her Diabetes Mine blog. In that letter, Amy points out that far more design effort seems to be going into devices that entertain rather than equipment that keeps people alive. | Read full article

Fixing the Web

From Jeffrey Veen - The editors of xhtml.com recently invited me to participate in a series they're running titled Fixing the Web. In particular, they asked, "In your opinion, what parts of the Web need to be improved or fixed in order for the Web of today to evolve into the Web of the future?" | Read full article

Apple patent attack: the multi-touch gesture dictionary

From Engadget - The unstoppable Apple patent machine has struck again. This time, the Cupertino-cash-cow has applied for a patent on a new multi-touch "dictionary" which would establish gestures, or "chords" in multi-touch systems. The dictionary would not only provide a guide and somewhat-programmable system of movements, but would also function as an application which runs either on its own or in the background during other applications, allowing gestures to be recognized. | Read full article