Hands on with an OLPC, trip to Mbale this week

Wow, I didn't notice it'd been almost ten days since I posted last. How embarrassing!

On the whole I don't feel like there's that much to say: I've been doing more of the same, working on drafting a variety of documents for Question Box and trying to figure out (first) how to do things like cut back on the number of calls we're escalating to our expert and how to make more certain we aren't asking them the same question more than once and so forth. Part of this means finding out just how much this is happening, which I fear will mean some (more) painstaking combing-over of the records.

So far (still) I've been doing my record-processing in Excel; even with my last project, which was a bit of a logic puzzle of figuring out what combinations of a few yes/no questions meant each of a few different outcomes, it was easiest for me to do it in Excel because I know it and its formula language (or whatever you'd call it) functionally. It'd be much more exciting to do it in (for instance) Python, which I am starting to teach myself, as time allows. But for the moment I just don't feel confident or like it's worth the time to try to do something like that in it.

Speaking of Python, rather interestingly, I've borrowed Appfrica's OLPC XO-1, the One Laptop Per Child computer that was donated to us (around when I came up with that older laptop for them). At the moment it doesn't get much use, so I decided to get better acquainted with it. It's certainly cute, and the hardware is pretty impressive. It feels durable and rugged, and it looks cool (especially for kids). I must confess, however, that for a full-size person, the keyboard is dreadful. And it's not just the small size -- I've used small netbooks before, and none have been so hard to use. The keycaps themselves are really small and have a lot of space between them -- imagine Apple's more recent keyboards, but with the keys 1/4 the size and the keyboard area shrunk to 3/4 of full size. Then cover them with a rubber membrane to totally eliminate the click and resistance of a normal keyboard, and you have an idea of this machine's keyboard. I can't imagine it being very good even for a little kid who can touch-type (although admittedly most, especially in the developing world, likely cannot). Anyway, I can definitely type faster with two thumbs on the iPhone's landscape keyboard than with two hands on the XO. It's that bad.

The screen on the other hand, is really, really cool. Instead of each pixel of the color screen having three segments, one for each color, this one works (in color mode) by using one pixel for each color. But then when you turn the backlight all the way down, it switches to monochrome, at three times the resolution, and is visible with front-lighting. It doesn't go all black like a normal computer LCD with the backlight off. Instead, it takes on more of the look of a digital clock display, with that sort of tan background. It's not as readable (or power-efficient) as an e-ink display (such as that on Amazon's Kindle or similar devices) but is nevertheless much more useable outside and consumes much less power when in this mode than any other standard LCD. It's quite impressive.

The software has some pretty neat stuff. The music sequencing software is simple and pretty intuitive and can do pretty cool stuff almost on its own without needing the user to be a musician or recording engineer. Likewise the Python IDE is easy to use and comes with helpful examples (I think I'll use it to learn Python, although on my Mac, with a real keyboard, using the OLPC's operating system in a virtual machine. The keyboard really is that bad). The software called E-Toys which lets you make and script things and let them play out in an automated sandbox is really interesting, too. It includes lots of interesting things, ranging from a simple car programmed to drive around the screen and change directions when it hits something, to simulations of dye diffusing in water or a disease spreading through a population.

So there is a lot of intriguing and potentially educational stuff on there, but it's hard to use (for someone accustomed to Windows, standard Linux, or Mac -- admittedly all operating systems based on the Western "desktop metaphor") and moreover, feels unfinished and rough. This is really my big problem with OLPC in general -- they've said repeatedly that it's "an education project, not a laptop project," yet all they really make happen fully is the laptop, leaving the educational software and curriculum to the open source community and the respective countries. Of course, that's not something you can necessarily standardize to work everywhere, that's true. But I still take issue with these claims on the project's part.

At any rate, my purpose here isn't to write a thorough analysis or criticism of OLPC. They've certainly gotten a lot done -- they invented the XO from scratch, have gotten many thousands of them to kids (and to tinkerers and developers), and have called a lot of attention to the ideas around technology's roles in education and development. And I don't think netbooks would exist as a major genre of computers today without the work OLPC did to show manufacturers they could make a useable, ultraportable, and very low-cost laptop. But there are major problems with the organization and project as well. My purpose here, though, was to give my initial impressions of the device and its software after spending a couple of days with it, and I am impressed in a lot of respects with it, particularly the hardware (keyboard excepted) and the cost. The software leaves a bit to be desired -- and I might get us a developer key for it so as to be able to experiment with other, more standard Linux distributions. I suspect using it with more familiar software will make it feel a lot more useable.

And I know, by my standards this is a fairly short post [EDIT: well, not really. And short by my standards doesn't mean much]. I can write more about the OLPC if there's interest, though of course that's not something I feel like I can say all that much about. (Not that that's stopped me so far about anything else, though).

In other news, I'll be heading East to Mbale on Wednesday, and staying there through most of Thursday, on a trip with Grameen's AppLab to one of the areas their Community Knowledge Workers are operating. While I've met them before (although I notice I never finished/posted what I'd written about our meeting and focus groups), I'm very excited to get to see them doing what they do in the field, and hopefully actually meet with the people they talk to -- the farmers themselves who are the source of the questions the CKWs ask us, and who are the intended beneficiaries of the service. It should be fascinating to see their farming and living conditions in person, as well as the crops and issues they're always asking about. And I think talking to them firsthand will help us get a better idea of just how they see the service, what it's worth to them, and so forth, which are all important questions as we start to figure out how Question Box could be scaled up and how it could be made financially sustainable.

I'll have much more to say about the trip and should have lots of pictures (although some may be confined to film -- haven't used my film camera much yet, but should) after I get back.