Recently, Nicholas Negroponte started calling the OLPC laptop the "XO" instead of 2B1 Children's Machine, the name still listed on the OLPC Wiki. This is the third or fourth name change, depending on how you count, in the last two months.
The Negroponte Map
Now Negroponte has made another change that doesn't agree with the OLPC Wiki: Negroponte is using a different OLPC roll-out country map in his presentations.
Spotted at the Forrester Consumer Forum by Christopher Carfi, its colors, and even color scheme is different than the newest OLPC Wiki map.
Gone are the bright red countries listed on the OLPC Wiki map legend as "those countries we plan to include in the post-launch phase." Might this mean that Negroponte is backtracking on the second phase countries? Might he have reality checked country roll-outs to the likes of Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo?
The Wiki Map
Or could there be a less enlightened reason? Might Negroponte be traveling with an outdated map instead?
If you look at Mongolia and Kazakhstan, you'll note that Mongolia went from yellow, "those countries who are currently seeking government support" to orange, "those countries who have expressed interest at the Ministry-of-Education level or higher," while Kazakhstan went from white (no interest?), to yellow.
Then again, India is still listed as orange, when India is quite clear that it has no interest in the OLPC, especially at the Ministry level.
Regardless of which map is the most current, this map madness added to the continuous naming conversions, hints at a disconnect between Nicholas Negroponte and the One Laptop Per Child Wiki. It also questions the accuracy and reliability of both, and more interestingly, makes me wonder who is really running the OLPC show: salesman Negroponte or the hardworking OLPC team?
Recent Comments
Off topic:
Cringely is claiming his new metal foil hard drives are shock resistant and much cheaper than flash. If it turns out this is not vaporware, I wonder if oplc would be interested in them.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20061026_001143.html
Any mechanical item might shorten mean time between failures. If some student needs more
storage, I wonder if it will supply enough power
from the USB ports to support 2.5" hard (or foil)
Disks.