A great new development with the 100 Dollar Laptop

For the past few years, MIT and a number of partners have been working together through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project to manufacture laptops for $100 USD. It is a fascinating project. The central premise is that they want to manufacture inexpensive laptops for use by schoolchildren in the developing world.

I have a gigantic crush on the people who started OLPC, and the crush grows every time I read more about their efforts.

Until now, OLPC made it clear that these neat little laptops will only be available for purchase on massive scale by educational systems in developing countries. Recently, that changed. Now they plan to allow the public to buy the laptops, but with a wonderful hitch: you have to pay for two. One laptop goes to you, the other goes to a student in the developing world. How awesome is that?

Learn more from BBC News: Public can purchase $100 laptop

Part of my excitement stems from the fact that there will be so much opportunity to participate in the education of all the children who receive these laptops. I want to buy one for myself so that I can start putting together tools to help kids build music software on their laptops and then share both the software and the resulting music.

I get so excited about this stuff.