Open Source at SF State University - OLPC

OLPCSF Community Summit 2009

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:29:12 -0800

"OLPC San Francisco Bay Area Summit 2009 is a OLPC-SF community event designed to primarily foster collaboration amongst deployment teams in the SF Bay Area. We also hope that the event will help in improving the visibility of OLPC and Sugar to a wider group around this area.

The event will be a "Birds of a Feather" type event but largely run as an unconference. Claim your session!

Technology-based social ventures: Lessons from the field

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:27 -0800

Slides from my presentation at the "Social and Technology Entrepreneurship at SF State" Initiative. This presentation was about OLPC in general, and SF State's involvement in various activities.

Technology-based Social Ventures: Lessons from the field<

OLPC presentations in the SF Bay Area

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:17:27 -0800

OLPC President and COO, Charles Kane (http://laptop.org/en/utility/people/charles-kane.html) and Paul Commons (OLPCorps) will be in the SF Bay Area this week. There are two events: one on UC Berkeley campus on Thursday, and one on Stanford University campus on Friday. Both events are open. Details are posted online at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Events

Technology Based Social Ventures: Lessons from the field

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:43:20 -0700

Note: This is an event open to all.

Come learn about how technology driven social entrepreneurship is changing the world – from the experts at SF State

The STEPS Initiative presents

One Laptop per Child and SF State

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:03:24 -0700

One Laptop per Child

OLPC is an epic project of fantastic proportions. Their mission statement says it all:

"Mission Statement: To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. When children have access to this type of tool they get engaged in their own education. They learn, share, create, and collaborate. They become connected to each other, to the world and to a brighter future."

South Africa and San Francisco deployments: OLPC-SF meets on 22 August, 2009

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:47:11 -0700

What: OLPC-SF August 2009 meeting

OLPC-SF will meet on August 22, 2009. Items on the agenda:

Meet and greet - 10:00 am to 10:30 am
South Africa deployment update - 10:30am to 11:30am

eSibonisweni primary school / Saint Mark’s school

Location: Kwangwanase, Manguzi KZN
South African contact: Thulani Madondo, Kliptown Youth Programme
Project organizers: Jennifer Getz, Norm Lyons, Stacey Kertsman; San Francisco, CA

Starr King Elementary - 11:30am to 12:00noon.

Open Source Testing tools

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:41:47 -0700

Just came across http://www.opensourcetesting.org/ which list a whole bunch of FOSS tools used for testing. Here's the list. My favorites are JMeter and Selenium, and both came up in context of some OLPC systems at a meeting today. Selenium looks promising. We use JMeter for testing Moodle on campus. Here's the full list:

My name is Bond. James Bond: OLPC-SF meets on July 18, 2009

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 08:42:29 -0700

As a kid, I loved James Bond movies (I still like the old ones), especially the gadgetry. A shoe compartment, a multi-purpose watch, a micro camera. Needless to say, a lot of money has gone into ThinkGeek purchases Imagine my pleasure when I recently had to introduce the OLPC project to someone (potential funding source for a deployment). I pulled out a 8GB microSD card from a secret zipper in my shirt, placed it squarely on the table, and said "We won't be needing the Internet for now. This little piece of technology holds well over 100 albums and hundreds of books that are freely distributable. It also has a web server, a database server, a collaboration server, backup software, and a bunch more. We won't be needing the Internet to get this deployment off the ground".

Open. Connect. Communicate

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:28:01 -0700

Recently, I presented at a workshop on telecommunications, open source and mobility at the First Caribbean Regional International Telecommunications Society Conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Key points in this workshop were:

The network's value proposition can be fully realized only if it remains open and unencumbered.
Setting up independent, yet interconnected PBXs using Asterisk: small ones with AstLinux, large ones with Trixbox.
Asterisk and the OLPC project. Setting up local phone networks in villages, schools, communities.

Slides are up at http://www.slideshare.net/sverma/open-connect-network

LegalTorrents - torrent away legally!

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:19:31 -0700

I just set up an account for creating torrents for legal use at LegalTorrents. I created a DVD recently with OLPC photos for a long-running (almost 1 hour) slideshow. At 1.6 GB, http downloads would be a pain. Torrenting is the way to go, but most torrent sites are loaded with pornographic ads - not something I appreciate. So, I went looking for creative commons style torrenting. Found legalTorrents. After a few e-mail exchanges, my account was set up. My OLPC Photo DVD is now torrenting away from their site. Its much faster than my wimpy home DSL upload. http://beta.legaltorrents.com/torrents/569-olpc-photo-dvd

Download, burn, and loop away!!!

OLPC-SF June meeting

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:59:00 -0700

What: OLPC-SF June 2009 meeting

OLPC-SF will meet on June 13, 2009. Items on the agenda:

Meet and greet - 10:00 am to 10:30 am
Project Updates - 10:30am:

Newbies: How to get involved
Repair Center updates
Lending Libraries
OLPC Photo DVD

Deployments - 11:30am

OLPC Photos on DVD - a cure for post-semester blues!

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:37:43 -0700

Why?

Short version:

This project is the result of a desire to see if photo DVDs can indeed be made using only Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Creative Commons (CC) licenses.

Long version:

At the end of Spring semester, after I turned in all the grades, I started to think about one of my courses - Multimedia business application development (http://www.sfsu.edu/~bulletin/courses/29446.htm). Due to severe budget constraints (meaning no money!!!) and a desire to use new and different things, we have been trying to use only FOSS and CC titles in this course.

I wanted to see if I could use FOSS and CC to complete a real project. For some time now, I have been thinking about creating a looping photo DVD for a whole bunch of OLPC photos from around the world. Personally, I find these inspiring. I find it very energizing to see children using these green windows (no pun intended) to the world to discover, explore, reflect and eventually, learn. Hopefully they will begin where we falter.

I saw this digital photo frame at a store the other day, and thought "Wouldn't it be neat to have a looping slideshow that can be displayed easily at conferences, conventions and expos?". After all, a picture is worth a thousand words! That's a little over 7 full tweets!!! So, putting my plan into action, and trawling through the treasure trove of FOSS and grabbing photos and music from Flickr and ccmixter.org - both CC friendly sites, and a little help from flickrfs, audacity, dvd-slideshow, openoffice, Ubuntu and a near-binging desire to get this done right after Spring semester ended, I now have a shiny 1.6GB DVD iso.Part of it is online at http://www.vimeo.com/5048488

Moving toward open video

Wed, 27 May 2009 21:37:02 -0700

Christopher Blizzard writes on his blog:

Today Dailymotion, one of the world’s largest video sites, announced support for open video. They’ve put out a press release, a blog post on the new openvideo site as well as a demo site where you can see some of the things that you can do with open video and Firefox 3.5. They are automatically transcoding all of the content that their Motion Makers and Official Users create and expect to have around 300,000 videos transcoded into the open Ogg Theora and Vorbis formats. You can view the site they have up at openvideo.dailymotion.com.

DisplayLink finally LGPLs its USB-to-VGA code

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:54:49 -0700

Yay! Finally, I can use my Thinkpad X300's USB dock to do all chores including VGA. I can also use it with my OLPC XO-1 hopefully.

From http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/libdlo:

OLPC-SF May meeting: Deploy!

Mon, 11 May 2009 10:21:44 -0700

What: OLPC-SF May 2009 meeting

OLPC-SF will meet on May 16, 2009. Items on the agenda:

Meet and greet - 10:00 am to 10:30 am
OLPC, Fedora and Communities (Larry Cafiero) - 10:30am
Updates - 11:00am:

Newbies: How to get involved (Carol Ruth Silver)
Repair Center updates (Joachim Pedersen)
Lending Libraries (Sameer Verma)