One of the more amazing projects coming to fruition this year is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. We have commented on this project before here, and will continue to keep track of it.

Here is a video of Opera CTO describing the XO laptop:

The project is important for several reasons, the first and most blatant is that it will provide an information source for children of the third world. If anyone has had to suffer the expense of textbooks, it is easy to understand how digitalizing education can cut down on the prolipheral costs of education.

The sideline elements of this project are also interesting. It is the product of new thinking, as can be seen by the call for programmers to make games for the system. The project continually uses fresh open source thinking in its development.

Sometimes to it’s detriment. AMD developed the low voltage chips for the XO, or Children’s Machine, laptop. Coincidentally, chip giant and AMD rival, Intel has announced a competitor unit to the XO, due to launch this year as well. It is not as dynamic technology, but is cheaper. Many people (including me) accuse Intel of “dumping” in the market, to keep market share and to derail the OLPC project.

We will continue to follow this project as it develops, as it is so exciting.