The other day I was having coffee with my good friend Colin and he was telling me about the One Laptop Per Child program. I had heard of this awhile ago, but really have not heard much about it since. Well the laptop is real and it’s called the XO Laptop. Originally the laptop was supposed to cost $100, but the price has been upped to $200. The laptop does seem pretty cool, it is running linux, has WiFi, 6 hour battery, and a built in video camera and microphone. What’s even better is that it is spillproof, rainproof, dustproof and even drop-proof!
Originally these laptops were only for developing countries, not the U.S., but November 12, and November 26 you can get your hands on one of these. One Laptop Per Child, the company behind the XO laptop is doing a Give One Get One promotion where you can donate $399 and you will receive a XO laptop and a child in a developing country will receive one. $200 of your $399 is tax-deductible (fair market value of the laptop). To sweeten the deal T-mobile is offering free WiFi access at all of their HotSpot locations.
This seems like a great deal, but is this laptop really for you? Well first off it runs linux so for those wanting a Windows experience you won’t be getting it. Also there is no CD or DVD drive, no hard drive, and runs a bit slow. But you have to take into consideration this laptop was not intended for mainstream U.S. distribution, it was made for developing countries. If you are looking for a small laptop at a cheap price you might want to check ASUS’s Eee PC. The cheapest model is $199, although it runs on Linux it is Windows compatible. Hopefully I can get one from ASUS to review on ThinkComputers.
If the XO laptop is not for you it is still a great opportunity to help a child and the developing world. And it is holiday time so the XO PC would be a great gift for a young child. Still not sure if I’m going to order one, I should hurry up and decide before they are gone!
Even though I have writers block I couldn’t miss a “The Net” post again! What’s really easy about writing these posts is that you are not actually writing the story, you are telling people about other stories. The only hard part is finding the stories. This week once again has been busy for me as ThinkComputers has been pumping out the reviews, I have highlighted some of the better reviews from the week later in this post. Ok so let’s see what happening on the net!
BlogWord Expo
It seemed like everyone and their mother was at BlogWorld this week. It was in Las Vegas and of course John Chow and Shoemoney were there. Also MsDanielle made the trip out there as well. From the looks of it BlogWorld is a small show, but it’s not like CES. I think it would have been a lot of fun to check out. One thing that is great about any convention is meeting up with other people. Networking is huge at all conventions. Of course John took all the bloggers out to eat! Looks like everyone had a great time, hopefully I can make the trip next year!
iPhone 1.1.2 Firmware
The new 1.1.2 iPhone firmware hit this week and no one really noticed! The only thing the firmware adds is foreign language support for UK English, French, German, and Italian. Also you get a battery status indicator in iTunes. It seems it has already been jailbroken, but there has been no official release. There really is no reason to even upgrade, so until there is an official jailbreak release stick with 1.1.1.
Self-filling Champagne Glasses
With the holidays coming up I know a lot of you will be celebrating. What better way to impress your guests than with some self-filling champagne glasses. This is great an allows you to fill up all the glasses in just 1 pour. The glasses are made from hand blown Pyrex glass. Thinking about getting a set, it will set you back around $1200!
New ThinkComputers Reviews
As I said it is the busy season for reviews at ThinkComputers. We have published 5 reviews the week, 3 of which are really cool products. The first is the ASUS Commando motherboard. It is part of ASUS’s Republic of Gamers motherboard line and is really badass. Second is the ViewSonic VA1930WM 19-inch LCD. If you are in the market for a new 19-inch LCD this is a great choice. And finally the Meizu M6 Mini Player. If you are not a huge fan of iPod’s than you might want to check out this player from Meizu, it can play music, videos, and photos, and costs far less than an iPod.
As you may have noticed I have not updated since Tuesday. That’s not a good thing because I used to post once a day. There are many factors that have contributed to my lack of posts. Now these are not excuses, but I will explain them to you before I go into the other things. Time has been a big issue lately. It is the busy time for product reviews. Over at ThinkComputers we are going to be posting 4-6 reviews a week! So that is taking up a lot of my time. With all the work at ThinkComputers I am working more so the extra time I do have I try to enjoy. I don’t want to be working all day everyday!
Anyways probably the main reason I have not updated much is because I don’t have that much to talk about. I guess I have ideas, but I never seen to be able to make a decent post out of them. Maybe it’s because I do not plan them out or maybe I’m just not interested in the topic. I guess you can call it writers block. Also not being interested in what you are writing about really does not help that much either.
Hopefully in this upcoming week I can get some good posts out. Maybe spending more time at Starbucks will help. Sorry for the slow posts guys, I will get back on track soon!!
As most of you know I purchased an iPhone back in September when Apple reduced the price by $200. After having it for only a few days I found out about the installer.app program and I was able to unlock the phone. By unlocking the phone I was able to customize the phone a lot by adding custom ringtones, themes, and sound packs. Beyond that there were a ton of third party apps that I could install free of charge, like IRC, instant messenger, SSH, and games. This really made the iPhone worth the purchase. Not that long ago Apple released the 1.1.1 firmware and that totally took all of that cool functionality out of the phone.
Instead of upgrading I just waited until there was an upgrade to the installer.app program. I would check the website a few times a week. Finally there was an update! They directed people with 1.1.1 firmware to go to jailbreakme.com on their iPhone’s browser. So not knowing if it would work I downloaded the 1.1.1 firmware and installed it. After installing of course all my customization and third party apps were gone. So I surfed over to jailbreakme.com on my iPhone’s browser. It brings you to the AppSnapp installer. It easily installs and then your phone restarts. Now you have the installer program on your phone and you can enjoy customization and third party apps. The only customization that isn’t there is custom ringtones. There are programs that will allow you to have custom ringtones, but once you sync with iTunes they get deleted. Hopefully someone will come out with a fix for this soon.
You really don’t get that many new features with the 1.1.1 firmware, there is the WiFi iTunes Music Store, Support for TV out, and a louder speakerphone. Besides that the other new features really are not anything that great. One thing that was different was the new version of Summerboard does not scroll up and down, instead you have “pages” for all of your icons as you can see from the photos below.
I’m glad that I was able to easily able to use the 1.1.1 firmware and unlock it, although I would have liked to be able to have custom ringtones. I’m sure that is a work in progress for third party app developers.
Another week has gone by and I’m glad to say I have been working a lot on my time management and I am getting a lot more work done. I’m gradually adapting myself to working more hours and doing more things in one day. With the holiday season coming up I will need to work a lot more if I want to stay on top of things and of course make money! Over the weekend I think I took close to 500-600 product photos for ThinkComputers. You can check out some of the new stuff in the Product Inbox section of the ThinkComputers forums. I will be updating it all week so check back often. So what’s the news on the net this week?
Shoemoney wins the RSS Competition
Well the contest is over and Shoemoney is the winner. When the competition first started things were pretty close, but then John started to take over. Towards the end it looked like John was the clear winner, but then on the last day Shoemoney had a crazy amount of new RSS subscribers (more than he gained in the entire month). Some say he cheated, but we will never know. No matter who the winner was they both gained a lot of exposure and new RSS readers out of the competition. Also a lot of people, including myself got some pretty cool prizes!
Airbus A380 makes its First Commercial Flight
The Airbus A380 “Superjumbo”, the world’s largest passenger airliner made its first commercial flight on October 25th, flying from Singapore to Sydney. All tickets for the flight were auctioned off for charity. Most passengers were amazed at the shear size of the plane, being able to fit 72 cars on each wing! I’ve only been on a 737 and an Airbus A320 so I cannot even image how large the A380 is! Besides being the largest passenger airline the A380 features 12 first-class cabins. Each cabin is outfitted with double beds (world’s first on an airliner), flat screen TV’s, and endless champagne, but that ask that you don’t have sex!
The Current Market Value of Make Money Online Blogs
45n5 has a really cool article on the market value of make money online blogs. They have looked at what make money online blogs have been selling for and came up with people are paying $30.98 per RSS subscriber! That would make this blog worth $4647 at 150 RSS subscribers (we are showing 77, because Google reader isn’t registering today, you might notice this on your blog too). Here are some interesting estimates: Shoemoney: $622,264.28, John Chow: $424,240.12, Earners Blog: $47,337.44, Nate Whitehill: $26,487.90. Of course estimating a site solely on RSS count is not that accurate.
Ice Skating on Lake Las Vegas
It is the holiday season and being from the northeast part of the U.S. it brings thoughts of Ice Skating outside and snow. Lake Las Vegas is about 17 miles from the Las Vegas strip and you wouldn’t even think that you are in the desert. It features world class hotels, spas, golf courses, and amazing residential communities. It is all centered around a 320 acre privately owned lake. What better way to bring in the holidays than turning the lake into an ice skating rink! It is actually a floating rink; the rink uses an ecologically safe glycol mix to freeze the surface of the water. Then they use 110 5-gallon buckets of water and a 12,000 pound freezer to help keep the ice cold. The floating rink is open November 16, 2007 through February 17, 2008. I might have to check this out when I’m in Vegas for CES.
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