New OLPC Handbook

Our friends from OLPC in Austria have been working on developing a new handbook to support XO laptop users. Here is some background on what they've done:


"We finally managed to finish the first few chapters of the Activity Handbook that we've been working on. The purpose of this handbook is to provide you with all the information you need in order to get started with software development for the OLPC XO."

The current draft includes the first four chapters...

# Welcome to the Activity Handbook!
# Introduction to Sugar
# Preparation
# Sugar Basics

..which basically serve as an introduction to Sugar, to setting up your machine for Sugar development (emulation, sugar-jhbuild, Live-CDs) and writting a simple HelloWorld activity. We're going to expand the handbook over the coming weeks to include chapters about using the journal, collaboration, using the various XO input devices and sugarizing software. So stay tuned for updates!

You can find the Activity Handbook project page (with more information about the project, how you can contribute, etc.) at

http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/index.php/Activity_handbook and in case you're feeling lazy you can simply click on the following link for a direct pdf download:

http://www.olpcaustria.org/mediawiki/upload/a/af/Handbook_20080113.pdf

XO's coming to US schools

In a bit of a reversal the OLPC project will soon be offering US schools the opportunity to participate in the OLPC program. The project will be based in Washington D.C. , giving us an ideal opportunity to continue work here in the States. Expect updates on this in the coming weeks.

Details: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141298-c,notebooks/article.html

We're back!

After a week of technical issues, we have Internet access again and back in business .

Assisting with new users

As the first donors to the G1G1 program recived their laptop right before christmas, there was a large amount of new users who had lots of questions about how to use the XO.

There are many outlets for support questions to allow people to give and recive help in the way they are most comfortable, such as:

• Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - Volunteers on the freenode IRC network, such as myself, providing live support to new users
• Mailing lists: community-support (Also avalible via http://olpc.osuosl.org/forum/ ), olpc-open, grassroots
• help AT laptop.org - group of thirty or so volunteers (such as myself) who answer the flood of emails that arrive every day

People who wish to assist with the help AT laptop.org address should email Adam Holt at holt AT laptop.org