I had the chance to test out the One Laptop Per Child this week while at the Web2forDev conference at FAO Headquarters in Rome. I was searching for a wifi network and ended up on the rooftop terrace overlooking the city. That's when I ran into Matt Keller, Director of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at One Laptop per Child, and Ethan Zuckerman from Global Voices Online and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Matt had a couple of machines with him, and I assume from the curious look I must of had on my face, knew I was interested and asked me if I wanted to check one out. 

First impression: having really, really small fingers is key, which makes sense given the target audience. After looking at the user interface for a few seconds not sure of what to do because it is very different from anything I've seen before, I dove in. I found it to be very intuitive. Within about three minutes, I had five applications open: a browser, a note pad, a music synthesizer, a video recorder working off of a built in camera, and a text chat program. All it took was some curiosity to find everything, something that I'm sure will be easier with children given their nature and the fact that they're not trying to use the interface in relationship to other systems they've used before. Aside from checking out the different apps, I was most interested in seeing how the mesh networking capabilities between machines worked. It's one of the features I'm most excited about - the idea that it will be easy for kids to use the tool to create a collaborative network. Matt and I turned on the mesh network on our machines, and then within seconds we each appeared on the other's monitor. I added him as my friend, which made him show up in my chat window, and we started chatting. Of course we immediately wanted to see the range on this. Our line of sight was from one end of the building to another, in my estimate about 250 meters, and we were connected at this distance. But then when our line of site broke, so did our connection.

I also was curious to see to what extent other applications could run on the system. Sure enough there are two USB ports on the computer, and I just happened to have the disaster relief stick in my pocket. I decided to give it a shot and plug it in. Sadly the drive did not come up, and I had no idea how to get into the terminal to prompt it or what really do to if I was in there. I'm sure support for drives will improve in the next few months as they continue to work on the system. I'm hoping that some ground is covered in time for the two for one that will be offered by One Laptop per Child - pay $400 to get a machine and give a child a machine.

Of course this got me thinking how fun it will be to start working with other people in Washington, DC to experiment with and build applications that work on these computers. I asked Matt about plans of creating a group space to allow people who buy the computers in this deal to collaborate and build programs that work on the system. Good news, he said that they will absolutely set up an online community to help people interact and learn from each other. I'm not sure how open they'll make the system to developers in the end, but this is a great start.