The hundred-buck PC:   "The founder and chairman of the MIT Media Lab wants to create a $100 portable computer for the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital and the Wiesner Professor of Media Technology at MIT, says he has obtained promises of support from a number of major companies, including Advanced Micro Devices, Google, Motorola, Samsung, and News Corp. The low-cost computer will have a 14-inch color screen, AMD chips, and will run Linux software ..

An engineering prototype is nearly ready, with alpha units expected by year’s end and real production around 18 months from now, he said. The portable PCs will be shipped directly to education ministries, with China first on the list. Only orders of 1 million or more units will be accepted.

Mr. Negroponte’s idea is to develop educational software and have the portable personal computer replace textbooks in schools in much the same way that France’s Minitel videotext terminal, which was developed by France Telecom in the 1980s, became a substitute for phone books."

  10:14:22 AM    

ComTechReview: Winter 2004-2005.  Interesting journal of digital divide articles, with recent addition of an international section.  This edition includes a profile of the Owerri Digital Village, a project of a recent Reuters Digital Vision Fellow.  (The fellowship is accepting applications this year until March 15, 2005)..  10:11:43 AM