The Mandelbear's Musings

If you haven't been hiding under a rock for the last two years you've probably heard of the One Laptop per Child project. But, like me, you probably haven't heard much about the software apart from the fact that it runs on Linux. That's too bad, because it's brilliant.

Go read this blog post as an introduction, then go read the OLPC Human Interface Guidelines. They're simply brilliant. They actually use all four edges and the corners. They bring the mesh network into the interface. They get rid of the stupid "Caps Lock" key and add "View Source". Most of the software is written in Python, one of the two best teaching languages in existance at the moment (the other is Smalltalk). They have a journal, for infinite undo and version tracking.

Go read it, and ask yourself what Microsoft and Apple have been doing for the last 15 years.