Yesterday the The One Laptop Per Child organization announced the Give 1 Get 1 campaign, intended to help fund their efforts by allowing US citizens to get their hands on one of the ultra-cool laptops by essentially purchasing two, the other going to somebody in a developing country.

Sign me up. Not that I plan on making the laptop my work machine or anything, but it is a really neat device, and after tiring of it a few weeks after the purchase, I’ll give it to one of the local schools. And, as OLPC is a 501©(3) tax-exempt organization, your donation is tax deductible!

The purchase window will apparently be open for a short period of time starting November 12.

http://xogiving.org/
http://laptop.org/

Nicholas Negroponte gave a keynote at this year’s Boston LinuxWorld conference about the status of the One Laptop Per Child project, an ambitious effort to build a very cheap, Linux-driven laptop initially intended for distribution among the third-world countries.

Negroponte’s on-stage confidence, even smugness, that this project would succeed was striking, even in light of the obvious challenges involved in mass-producing a capable laptop at such a low cost.

It looks like those efforts have started to pay off, as the BBC reports that Libya has agreed to purchase 1.2 million of the laptops.

Check out the OLPC website, the prototype pictures are nice, if not downright impressive.

Jason