On October 4th, 2001, I read this post https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... on slashdot. The article it refers to, http://archive.oreilly.com/pub... describes "SMS Relay -- An Idea for Fault-Tolerant Communications", wherein the author proposes building a mesh-like network capability into the SMS programming of cellphones. It's still a good idea. And that article got me thinking about what I could do to make a difference. I shortly got my first ham radio license, volunteered with ARES, then the Red Cross, and now work there.
As someone who had done HA for over 20 years using mostly X10 I follow this kind of topic quite avidly. And I was quite impressed by the Wigwag kickstarter, which I bought into in 2013. They promised not just hardware but a new programing environment. And despite investing over $200 all I've ever received have been project updates, 46 of them, the last one in January. This is more like the Duke Nukem of HA. I have had the opportunity to admin a system running Smarthings. I was appalled to find that everything ran out of their servers, so that if your internet connection goes down, you don't get the nice automated features you programmed in. You can't even log in to your own hub. Homeseer is a decent app for running on a home server, although they like to charge for upgrades, more than I like. OpenHAB looks like it has some potential, as does Open Source Automation. Avoid X10, when that was all there was it was fine, but Insteon or Zwave is much nicer. There are some nice things you can do with home automation and augmented control (state changes based on logic, one button to change multiple items for instance.) And there are finally some nice options coming up. But stick to someone that can actually ship a product.
While I can use my Note2 for all things digital, I still wear a watch quite often, a Casio G-Shock. The main feature that it has that keeps it on my wrist is the compass, although I use the alarm and timers more often. I would like to see what the email/text/whatever is that I just got so I can decide if I need to read it now or later. I would like to have biometrics like pedometer, pulse, etc. Customizable watch faces are a must. Working with the phone GPS to display waypoint direction would be great. Has to have GREAT battery life, it would be awesome to have solar like my current watch. I would turn off some of the features to get better battery life. MUST be water/shock resistant. My last smartwatch, a Timex Datalink, had some neat features, like being able to upload a days worth of MSExchange appointments. This endeared it to the astronaut crowd. It had some neat apps available too, but it wasn't rugged enough, and mine didn't alarm so I stopped wearing it. If Casio or Suunto come out with a smartwatch version of their "adventure" watches they would probably qualify, but I wouldn't want to spend more than $200, so I'm figuring it will be 2-3 years at least for this feature/market intersection.
There are at least two AOSP flavours that offer nightly updates, Cyanogenmod and Omnirom. The slow updates on android are usually because the carriers want to lock you in to their set of apps/restrictions/spyware and insist on vetting updates. My t-Mobile Galaxy Note 2 has been running KitKat 4.4.2 for months, no thanks to T-Mobile. I would love to see a good GNU/Linux phone option. Maybe OpenBSD, where you make calls with a CLI...
Most of the above (thanks for the tip on Greenshot, since Printkey2000 doesnt work on Win7.) Ultraedit is great but I'm hoping to do the same kind of scripting in Notepad++. Firefox with noscript, adblock, request policy, ghostery, https everywhere, mobile barcoder, pluggin toggler and self-destructing cookies and a few others. I have Keepass on my cpu and android phone. Whatever anti-virus Im currently using (Webroot for the moment)
Add: FileMenu Tools - various file utilities accessible via right-click in explorer, includes shredding and an excellent file renaming utility CutePDF - lightweight PDF printer CDRTFE - excellent open source optical media burner RichCopy - Microsofts GUI replacement for robocopy, highly configurable and multithreaded BareGrep - very light GREP search tool, doesnt require indexes, searches filename and content, quite fast. MenuApp - make my own pop-up menus in the taskbar Hotswap - enhanced control of storage devices Jacksum - great hasher accessible via "send-to", Hashtab also works Rainmeter because i hate not knowing what my computer is doing, Samurize when I need to monitor more than one CPU PrismHUD for the same reason
and Audacity (and Lame), GIMP, Inkscape, Foobar2000, Foxit reader, RawTherapee.
I'm surprised at the overwhelmingly negative commentary on this story. I think it has potential, here's why.
In my current morning routine, I wake up to a clock radio tuned to NPR while my server turns on the stereo so I can hear NPR in the bathroom. I check my phone to see if there are any fires at work that need to be addressed, then to the bathroom where as I shave and shower I listen for news, traffic and weather. The local NPR is quite mediocre, so even if I hear the traffic and weather I dont always get the info I need. After my shower I get dressed and go. I do NOT typically turn on any kind of display, viewing that as a slow process, but if it's flooding, the radio mentions a bad accident, or there were fires I may turn on my winbox or a tablet, or just address it on the phone.
With a device like this I would go into the bathroom to see weather with animated radar, the traffic map from the county, and could be streaming the local NPR. I might even check an email on occasion. If traffic looks bad I could email from something larger than my phone. I would be able to set both the shower and sink to the temp I like as a preset so I wouldnt have to take the time to check, adjust, wait, so after shaving the electric razor gets rinsed and straight into a right temp shower. Since my house is older and the hot water has to get there I could save water if it reduced the flow at the right temp. If I get a phone call while in the bathroom I can see the callerid and route the call as desired, or answer it. If someone comes to the door I can view the front door camera, maybe even talk to them. I could view my agenda for the day and reminders of things I need to take. This makes sense because most of the morning routine aside from getting dressed is spent in the bathroom.
I can see where this would be a productivity enhancer. It won't get me out of the house faster, but could reduce water consumption and significantly enhance the quality of my day. I dont know if I want the specific device in the OP, but as i already have a "smart" home the functionality makes sense. Most people may not, but then most people dont have a house that turns lights and media on and off based on rules. Some technologies that I have implemented in the past ended up not making sense, i.e. controlling the outside lights based on time or rules, when a simple photocell does what I need and is more reliable. I think technology can be helpful, and some kind of terminal in the bathroom could be quite helpful.
Knee jerk reactions and superior airs do little to advance technology. Maybe some of the whiners dont have computers at home because they dont need to spend quality home time on the internet. Maybe electric lights offend their sensibilities where a proper gas light would have that perfect glow. In any case I do look for meaningful ways to add useful technology and information to my life. Yes there are risks, ooh, someone might see my butt. But if I can make it secure I will, at least as secure as one of my 3 tablets, two laptops, two cpus and smartphone. They contain risks but I still use them.Ten years ago people scoffed at my Palm phone and ridiculed my Newton, three years ago they wondered why I bought a tablet. Now almost everyone I know have smartphones and tablets. I've already built panels using rainmeter and samurize to monitor local conditions as well as multiple cpus, so I know what kind of info would be useful. And frankly the idea of leaving a video "good morning", "I love you", or "dont forget to..." message for someone that wakes at a different time could be quite keen. Both the bathroom and the kitchen could benefit from task-specific technology. Hell I even have an old laptop in my shop to I can look up procedures in the service manuals or do calculations.
Ive been enjoying Firefall recently. It's an MMO FPS with a complicated craft system. You run around in specialized battleframes and gain resources and xp through a variety of tasks, from mining to random encounters to special missions to outright invasions. It's in beta right now, free to play, and so far paying just gets you a few bennies for those in a hurry. I did pay $25 so I could get a motorcycle and a gliderpad, based on how much I enjoyed playing the first few days, but I could have worked to get the resources and build the bike.
I have to agree. Very few meetings would keep me from monitoring my email, being a tech lead you have to keep on top of things, and the excuse "well,I was in a meeting" means nothing if the department has lost connectivity. Monitoring or responding to social communications is not included, and even a call from the CEO would be taken outside the room. The balance is are you being responsive to your positions demands vs. ignoring them and being involved in non-work conversations, while being able to participate in the meeting so as to contribute as appropriate and retain or record information as needed.
Just as good in many ways as "Space:1999" (which I also loved) was his 1969 series "UFO", which combined live action with some of the sci-fi puppetry from the Thunderbirds. It was dark and foreboding, centered on a secret government agency in an active war against recurring alien incursions, and you had the feeling that "we" were just at the edge of losing. It included an AI satellite which spoke with an English accent and a moonbase "manned" by women in purple hair and short skirts, one of the very few silly parts of an otherwise very serious drama. It seems to have influenced MIB in more ways than one; one of the secret organizations' special tools was a spray that took away ones recent memories, used on witnesses after debriefing, a tool re-incarnated as the "flashy-thing". Gerry was quite the visionary, and certainly influenced this old slashdotter.
Submarines are largely blind. Sure, they can hear the ship over there, but they dont have a cool 3d augmented reality app that the captain/helmsman use to drive. Even if they were doing an underhull survey, where you raise the periscope and carefully view/photograph a ship from below, you're not that likely to be able to avoid hitting the other ship, as wave motion makes that kind of fine control impossible. Subs are military ships, and are expected to put themselves into harms way, and just like the army has live-fire exercises and really practice jumping out of helicopters, the subs have to practice crazy stuff so they can do it in theater. And yes, sometimes, and more often they you hear about, they run into things. They may not even know in Control, it may take someone in Engine Room Upper Level Aft to call and say "hey, you know we just hit something, right?" And no, no captain in charge of a modern sub is going to play grab-ass with anyone or anything, they dont have utter disdain for the surface fleet, they have an intense focus on the safety of their and the other crew, as well as a dedication to mission capability that sometimes leads to these events. Try surfacing in a hurricane - no, really, it's a blast, but if you cant try to do it then, how do you know you wont freak out when depth charges start going off? Someone will be relieved of duty over this one, training will be promulgated throughout the fleet, and it was almost certainly the subs fault. And yes, I've seen all of this personally, It's a lot of fun to come back into port as the sub that ran into the surface pukes...
Exactly. Compare to Win6/6.5 and you'd get lots of mediocre phones. I've had about equally poor results with 2 Win6 phones and my G1, oddly enough all made by HTC. So who funded this study?
As soon as I read this I went to my account, and saw a lot of mobile activity from California. I freaked! Then I had a thought - so I went to my WM6 cell phone and had it synchronize with gmail. Aha! I knew it - my cell phone is really in California. (And some mobile activity may be legit, and the state may be wrong, as I'm in Texas, T-Mobile must route it out there.)
I had an error with installing an Exchange Certificate on a winmo smartphone. I was surprised to find a google search returned no hits from M$ itself, but when I switched to bing, it worked. It seems that M$ is blocking google from searching it's site. Then after installing XP on another computer, and updating everything (since she wouldnt) I found that in the newest IE I couldnt use google as my search, the "easy" way of adding it was gone. So sure, M$ still knows how to play the game. I didn't see anything that made bing better though, and with the Search Cloudlet firefox extension I see no reason to change, although apparently there will be times when I will have no choice.
This posting on Slashdot from October 4th 2001 really hit home, describing a "P2P SMS technique where individual handsets act as autonomous SMS relays". And why can't we do this? Would it require independance from cell carriers? With wednesdays report to congress on the failure to upgrade the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, maybe we do need an ad-hoc alternative.
(After feeling useless after 9/11 the October 2001 post got me thinking. By the end of November 2001 I had my first ham radio license, now I'm and Extra class and now when something happens I've usually been at an EOC, although the last couple of years have been supporting Red Cross.)
Please mod the above up. This sounds like one of the very few posters that has actually BEEN to BM. The restrictions are not imposed upon expression, just on commercialization. And something that hasn't been mentioned yet is that you have to ask permission to take ANY photos. These restrictions have nothing to do with profit, and everything to do with protecting privacy, and nurturing a safe environment for radical self-expression.
I'm a first day Give One Get One (G1G1) buyer of the OLPC, and although it certainly doesn't match the specs or convenience of the newer UMPCs, it is amazingly good at what it is designed for - an easy to use and super durable computer for children. Two is pretty young, they need to know not to smash the screen, but aside from that the OLPC has an excellent interface. There really isnt any competition. They just restarted the OLPC G1G1 on Amazon, but you can probably find one at a decent price on eBay - dont be in a rush and you'll get a good deal. You'll find it fun to play with too!
This is very interesting - the ONLY Google tech I have installed at home is Lively, and last night my firewall went crazy asking permission for updates from Google Updater.
I see twitter as a personal rss feed that comes equipped with bridges to various ways of using it. I'm on it, but hardly every use it. That's mostly because almost no-one I know gets it. I compare it to a weather radio - you follow a station, and when it has a bulletin, it notifies you. With twitter you can follow many stations. I've even floated the idea of using it in some limited fashion for emergency notification, but they either didnt get it or, in the case of one IT person in emergency management, felt it would be overwhelmed quickly by any real disaster. How hard would it be to set up an RSS feed and replicate it's functionalities? How hard would it be to get all the micro-webhosts to include a service in this vein, tied via filters and scripts to email and SMS? That said, the idea of what it does (short bulletins) in various formats and with triggers and a ubiquitous ease of placement within channels is a great idea, and even if "twitter" doesnt survive, we'll see this idea refined. After all, we don't use gopher much anymore, but that scheme led to stuff like slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm so sorry to hear this, Slashdot is one of the first websites that got me off of usenet, and he was a major part of that. Godspeed, Rob.
On October 4th, 2001, I read this post https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... on slashdot. The article it refers to, http://archive.oreilly.com/pub... describes "SMS Relay -- An Idea for Fault-Tolerant Communications", wherein the author proposes building a mesh-like network capability into the SMS programming of cellphones. It's still a good idea.
And that article got me thinking about what I could do to make a difference. I shortly got my first ham radio license, volunteered with ARES, then the Red Cross, and now work there.
As someone who had done HA for over 20 years using mostly X10 I follow this kind of topic quite avidly. And I was quite impressed by the Wigwag kickstarter, which I bought into in 2013. They promised not just hardware but a new programing environment. And despite investing over $200 all I've ever received have been project updates, 46 of them, the last one in January. This is more like the Duke Nukem of HA.
I have had the opportunity to admin a system running Smarthings. I was appalled to find that everything ran out of their servers, so that if your internet connection goes down, you don't get the nice automated features you programmed in. You can't even log in to your own hub.
Homeseer is a decent app for running on a home server, although they like to charge for upgrades, more than I like. OpenHAB looks like it has some potential, as does Open Source Automation. Avoid X10, when that was all there was it was fine, but Insteon or Zwave is much nicer.
There are some nice things you can do with home automation and augmented control (state changes based on logic, one button to change multiple items for instance.) And there are finally some nice options coming up. But stick to someone that can actually ship a product.
While I can use my Note2 for all things digital, I still wear a watch quite often, a Casio G-Shock. The main feature that it has that keeps it on my wrist is the compass, although I use the alarm and timers more often.
I would like to see what the email/text/whatever is that I just got so I can decide if I need to read it now or later. I would like to have biometrics like pedometer, pulse, etc. Customizable watch faces are a must. Working with the phone GPS to display waypoint direction would be great.
Has to have GREAT battery life, it would be awesome to have solar like my current watch. I would turn off some of the features to get better battery life.
MUST be water/shock resistant.
My last smartwatch, a Timex Datalink, had some neat features, like being able to upload a days worth of MSExchange appointments. This endeared it to the astronaut crowd. It had some neat apps available too, but it wasn't rugged enough, and mine didn't alarm so I stopped wearing it.
If Casio or Suunto come out with a smartwatch version of their "adventure" watches they would probably qualify, but I wouldn't want to spend more than $200, so I'm figuring it will be 2-3 years at least for this feature/market intersection.
There are at least two AOSP flavours that offer nightly updates, Cyanogenmod and Omnirom. The slow updates on android are usually because the carriers want to lock you in to their set of apps/restrictions/spyware and insist on vetting updates. My t-Mobile Galaxy Note 2 has been running KitKat 4.4.2 for months, no thanks to T-Mobile. I would love to see a good GNU/Linux phone option. Maybe OpenBSD, where you make calls with a CLI...
For very simple work the FOSS Avidemux is quite nice.
Most of the above (thanks for the tip on Greenshot, since Printkey2000 doesnt work on Win7.)
Ultraedit is great but I'm hoping to do the same kind of scripting in Notepad++.
Firefox with noscript, adblock, request policy, ghostery, https everywhere, mobile barcoder, pluggin toggler and self-destructing cookies and a few others.
I have Keepass on my cpu and android phone.
Whatever anti-virus Im currently using (Webroot for the moment)
Add:
FileMenu Tools - various file utilities accessible via right-click in explorer, includes shredding and an excellent file renaming utility
CutePDF - lightweight PDF printer
CDRTFE - excellent open source optical media burner
RichCopy - Microsofts GUI replacement for robocopy, highly configurable and multithreaded
BareGrep - very light GREP search tool, doesnt require indexes, searches filename and content, quite fast.
MenuApp - make my own pop-up menus in the taskbar
Hotswap - enhanced control of storage devices
Jacksum - great hasher accessible via "send-to", Hashtab also works
Rainmeter because i hate not knowing what my computer is doing, Samurize when I need to monitor more than one CPU
PrismHUD for the same reason
and Audacity (and Lame), GIMP, Inkscape, Foobar2000, Foxit reader, RawTherapee.
I'm surprised at the overwhelmingly negative commentary on this story. I think it has potential, here's why.
In my current morning routine, I wake up to a clock radio tuned to NPR while my server turns on the stereo so I can hear NPR in the bathroom. I check my phone to see if there are any fires at work that need to be addressed, then to the bathroom where as I shave and shower I listen for news, traffic and weather. The local NPR is quite mediocre, so even if I hear the traffic and weather I dont always get the info I need. After my shower I get dressed and go. I do NOT typically turn on any kind of display, viewing that as a slow process, but if it's flooding, the radio mentions a bad accident, or there were fires I may turn on my winbox or a tablet, or just address it on the phone.
With a device like this I would go into the bathroom to see weather with animated radar, the traffic map from the county, and could be streaming the local NPR. I might even check an email on occasion. If traffic looks bad I could email from something larger than my phone. I would be able to set both the shower and sink to the temp I like as a preset so I wouldnt have to take the time to check, adjust, wait, so after shaving the electric razor gets rinsed and straight into a right temp shower. Since my house is older and the hot water has to get there I could save water if it reduced the flow at the right temp. If I get a phone call while in the bathroom I can see the callerid and route the call as desired, or answer it. If someone comes to the door I can view the front door camera, maybe even talk to them. I could view my agenda for the day and reminders of things I need to take. This makes sense because most of the morning routine aside from getting dressed is spent in the bathroom.
I can see where this would be a productivity enhancer. It won't get me out of the house faster, but could reduce water consumption and significantly enhance the quality of my day. I dont know if I want the specific device in the OP, but as i already have a "smart" home the functionality makes sense. Most people may not, but then most people dont have a house that turns lights and media on and off based on rules. Some technologies that I have implemented in the past ended up not making sense, i.e. controlling the outside lights based on time or rules, when a simple photocell does what I need and is more reliable. I think technology can be helpful, and some kind of terminal in the bathroom could be quite helpful.
Knee jerk reactions and superior airs do little to advance technology. Maybe some of the whiners dont have computers at home because they dont need to spend quality home time on the internet. Maybe electric lights offend their sensibilities where a proper gas light would have that perfect glow. In any case I do look for meaningful ways to add useful technology and information to my life. Yes there are risks, ooh, someone might see my butt. But if I can make it secure I will, at least as secure as one of my 3 tablets, two laptops, two cpus and smartphone. They contain risks but I still use them.Ten years ago people scoffed at my Palm phone and ridiculed my Newton, three years ago they wondered why I bought a tablet. Now almost everyone I know have smartphones and tablets. I've already built panels using rainmeter and samurize to monitor local conditions as well as multiple cpus, so I know what kind of info would be useful. And frankly the idea of leaving a video "good morning", "I love you", or "dont forget to..." message for someone that wakes at a different time could be quite keen. Both the bathroom and the kitchen could benefit from task-specific technology. Hell I even have an old laptop in my shop to I can look up procedures in the service manuals or do calculations.
So maybe not this one, but probably eventually.
Ive been enjoying Firefall recently. It's an MMO FPS with a complicated craft system. You run around in specialized battleframes and gain resources and xp through a variety of tasks, from mining to random encounters to special missions to outright invasions. It's in beta right now, free to play, and so far paying just gets you a few bennies for those in a hurry. I did pay $25 so I could get a motorcycle and a gliderpad, based on how much I enjoyed playing the first few days, but I could have worked to get the resources and build the bike.
I have to agree. Very few meetings would keep me from monitoring my email, being a tech lead you have to keep on top of things, and the excuse "well,I was in a meeting" means nothing if the department has lost connectivity. Monitoring or responding to social communications is not included, and even a call from the CEO would be taken outside the room. The balance is are you being responsive to your positions demands vs. ignoring them and being involved in non-work conversations, while being able to participate in the meeting so as to contribute as appropriate and retain or record information as needed.
That one went down, this one from Reuters works:
http://live.reuters.com/Event/Raising_the_Costa_Concordia
Also this one:
http://globalnews.ca/news/841426/salvage-effort-will-try-to-hoist-costa-concordia/
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
JGS!
This is probably a result of the guy in Dallas that found a meat packing plant dumping blood in a nearby river via his video-capable drone.
Just as good in many ways as "Space:1999" (which I also loved) was his 1969 series "UFO", which combined live action with some of the sci-fi puppetry from the Thunderbirds. It was dark and foreboding, centered on a secret government agency in an active war against recurring alien incursions, and you had the feeling that "we" were just at the edge of losing. It included an AI satellite which spoke with an English accent and a moonbase "manned" by women in purple hair and short skirts, one of the very few silly parts of an otherwise very serious drama. It seems to have influenced MIB in more ways than one; one of the secret organizations' special tools was a spray that took away ones recent memories, used on witnesses after debriefing, a tool re-incarnated as the "flashy-thing".
Gerry was quite the visionary, and certainly influenced this old slashdotter.
Submarines are largely blind. Sure, they can hear the ship over there, but they dont have a cool 3d augmented reality app that the captain/helmsman use to drive. Even if they were doing an underhull survey, where you raise the periscope and carefully view/photograph a ship from below, you're not that likely to be able to avoid hitting the other ship, as wave motion makes that kind of fine control impossible. Subs are military ships, and are expected to put themselves into harms way, and just like the army has live-fire exercises and really practice jumping out of helicopters, the subs have to practice crazy stuff so they can do it in theater. And yes, sometimes, and more often they you hear about, they run into things. They may not even know in Control, it may take someone in Engine Room Upper Level Aft to call and say "hey, you know we just hit something, right?" And no, no captain in charge of a modern sub is going to play grab-ass with anyone or anything, they dont have utter disdain for the surface fleet, they have an intense focus on the safety of their and the other crew, as well as a dedication to mission capability that sometimes leads to these events. Try surfacing in a hurricane - no, really, it's a blast, but if you cant try to do it then, how do you know you wont freak out when depth charges start going off?
Someone will be relieved of duty over this one, training will be promulgated throughout the fleet, and it was almost certainly the subs fault.
And yes, I've seen all of this personally, It's a lot of fun to come back into port as the sub that ran into the surface pukes...
Exactly. Compare to Win6/6.5 and you'd get lots of mediocre phones. I've had about equally poor results with 2 Win6 phones and my G1, oddly enough all made by HTC. So who funded this study?
As soon as I read this I went to my account, and saw a lot of mobile activity from California. I freaked! Then I had a thought - so I went to my WM6 cell phone and had it synchronize with gmail. Aha! I knew it - my cell phone is really in California. (And some mobile activity may be legit, and the state may be wrong, as I'm in Texas, T-Mobile must route it out there.)
I had an error with installing an Exchange Certificate on a winmo smartphone. I was surprised to find a google search returned no hits from M$ itself, but when I switched to bing, it worked. It seems that M$ is blocking google from searching it's site. Then after installing XP on another computer, and updating everything (since she wouldnt) I found that in the newest IE I couldnt use google as my search, the "easy" way of adding it was gone. So sure, M$ still knows how to play the game. I didn't see anything that made bing better though, and with the Search Cloudlet firefox extension I see no reason to change, although apparently there will be times when I will have no choice.
This posting on Slashdot from October 4th 2001 really hit home, describing a "P2P SMS technique where individual handsets act as autonomous SMS relays". And why can't we do this? Would it require independance from cell carriers? With wednesdays report to congress on the failure to upgrade the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, maybe we do need an ad-hoc alternative.
(After feeling useless after 9/11 the October 2001 post got me thinking. By the end of November 2001 I had my first ham radio license, now I'm and Extra class and now when something happens I've usually been at an EOC, although the last couple of years have been supporting Red Cross.)
Please mod the above up. This sounds like one of the very few posters that has actually BEEN to BM. The restrictions are not imposed upon expression, just on commercialization. And something that hasn't been mentioned yet is that you have to ask permission to take ANY photos. These restrictions have nothing to do with profit, and everything to do with protecting privacy, and nurturing a safe environment for radical self-expression.
I'm a first day Give One Get One (G1G1) buyer of the OLPC, and although it certainly doesn't match the specs or convenience of the newer UMPCs, it is amazingly good at what it is designed for - an easy to use and super durable computer for children. Two is pretty young, they need to know not to smash the screen, but aside from that the OLPC has an excellent interface. There really isnt any competition. They just restarted the OLPC G1G1 on Amazon, but you can probably find one at a decent price on eBay - dont be in a rush and you'll get a good deal. You'll find it fun to play with too!
This is very interesting - the ONLY Google tech I have installed at home is Lively, and last night my firewall went crazy asking permission for updates from Google Updater.
I see twitter as a personal rss feed that comes equipped with bridges to various ways of using it. I'm on it, but hardly every use it. That's mostly because almost no-one I know gets it.
I compare it to a weather radio - you follow a station, and when it has a bulletin, it notifies you. With twitter you can follow many stations. I've even floated the idea of using it in some limited fashion for emergency notification, but they either didnt get it or, in the case of one IT person in emergency management, felt it would be overwhelmed quickly by any real disaster. How hard would it be to set up an RSS feed and replicate it's functionalities? How hard would it be to get all the micro-webhosts to include a service in this vein, tied via filters and scripts to email and SMS?
That said, the idea of what it does (short bulletins) in various formats and with triggers and a ubiquitous ease of placement within channels is a great idea, and even if "twitter" doesnt survive, we'll see this idea refined.
After all, we don't use gopher much anymore, but that scheme led to stuff like slashdot.