Archive for December, 2007

In this season of brash consumerism, many of us “haves” look for a way to give back to those less fortunate than ourselves.  The goal of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program is to create a laptop that can be manufactured cheaply enough to distribute to children in developing countries that lack educational supplies such as text books.  As OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte says “It’s not a laptop project.  It’s an education project.”

The XO laptop was just released and looks awesome. It weighs in at just over 3 lbs, is dust-proof, spill-proof and drop-proof.  It has wireless 802.11 access (wifi), full web browsing capabilities, built-in speakers, game control pad and a video camera.  It comes preloaded with software for word processing, music authoring, PDF viewing, software programming and several games. xo laptop In its book-reader mode the screen swivels around ala a tablet-PC, the screen goes to black and white and the battery life is extended from its normal 6 hours to 24 hours.

Another button displays the source code of any application running on the machine and kids can see how the application works and learn to change the code (a restore button is included in case kids’ “improvements” don’t work properly).

And though this laptop was not designed for the American consumer market, for the holiday season the XO laptop is being offered on a “give one, get one” program.  For $420 ($200 of which is tax-deductible) one XO Laptop is shipped to you and one XO laptop is donated to a child in need in a developing country.  Everyone who participates in the Give One Get One program will also receive a year’s worth of access at T1 Mobile WiFi spots (think playing with a funky green laptop at Starbucks).

Don’t be confused though — this will not be your primary laptop.  It has no hard drive, only 1 gig of flash memory.  It does not run Windows and the keyboard has been reported as too small for adult touch typing. This is a laptop designed for children in developing countries, not you.

Most of us at Table XI were fortunate enough to be introduced to technology at an early age… and our lives have been unquestionably enriched because of it.  This project offers a chance to pass that opportunity on to the next generation.

For more information read the NY Times review (and check out the video) or view the official OLPC website.

When it comes to music we have a bad habit of finding one or two artists we really like and listening to them with mind-numbing repetition.  Pandora, billed as “radio from the music genome project”, gets us out of our self-imposed musical ruts.

In 2000, three folks started the Music Genome Project “to capture music at the fundamental level”. The idea was that any given song could be broken down to musical attributes much as our own bodies can be broken down to their DNA.

So for instance when we requested U2, Pandora plays U2 and other songs that feature “electric rock instrumentation, subtle use of a vocal counterpoint, subtle use of vocal harmony and demanding instrumental part writing.” Pandora plays songs that share similar characteristics to the artists we requested.

It’s a really cool concept — applying scientific classification concepts to something as subjective as musical tastes.  But it works…and works really well.

Best part?  It’s totally free.

When it comes to music we have a bad habit of finding one or two artists we really like and listening to them with mind-numbing repetition.  Pandora, billed as “radio from the music genome project”, gets us out of our self-imposed musical ruts.

In 2000, three folks started the Music Genome Project “to capture music at the fundamental level”. The idea was that any given song could be broken down to musical attributes much as our own bodies can be broken down to their DNA.

So for instance when we requested U2, Pandora plays U2 and other songs that feature “electric rock instrumentation, subtle use of a vocal counterpoint, subtle use of vocal harmony and demanding instrumental part writing.” Pandora plays songs that share similar characteristics to the artists we requested.

It’s a really cool concept — applying scientific classification concepts to something as subjective as musical tastes.  But it works…and works really well.

Best part?  It’s totally free.

What do you get for the one guy who’s got everything?

How about the one non-renewable finite resource by which we are all bound:  Time.

We have all heard about the outsourcing of various service jobs overseas that has become prevalent over the last five or ten years.  We live in an age where telecommunication and online technologies have rendered geographic location irrelevant in a wide variety of business arenas.  Economics dictates that the outsourcing trend will not go away.  We can complain about its inherent unfairness… or embrace the trend, get on the bus, and start outsourcing our personal lives.

AskSunday.com offers personal assistants available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Thirty dollars per month buys you 30 “requests” (assumed to take about 20 minutes apiece) and they can perform almost any kind of task that does not require their physical presence.

Have an early meeting that you can’t miss?  Have your personal assistant give you a wake-up call.  Hungry, but don’t have the number to your favorite pizza spot?  “Can you please order a large cheese pizza from Pizza Metro, pay with my credit card that’s on file, and have it delivered to my house?”

Ask Sunday has been a fantastic asset for accomplishing tasks that we would simply never get around to doing (like paying parking tickets).  In the past couple of months we’ve also used them for the following requests:

“Call Sprint customer service and three-way me in when you get a real person on the phone.”

“Call all the Home Depot’s within 50 miles of Chicago and ask if they have__ in stock.”

“Find a housecleaning service that charges less than $20/hr and can be at my house tomorrow at 9am.”

“Order a sync cable for my Treo 650 and have it shipped to my office”

Outsourcing your life is more of an art form than a science.  Some tasks are better suited to outsourcing than others.  To get started, we recommend outsourcing everything you can think of to see what works and what doesn’t.  It certainly takes some trial and error but it is fun, effective and makes your life better.

Check out asksunday.com for details.