In Glimmer, I shared the story of how the groundbreaking XO laptop for children in developing countries was designed by a group that included designer Yves Behar and Nicholas Negroponte, head of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. Glimmer also offered an advance peek at some of Behar’s efforts to create the next generation of the laptop. Since the time of that writing, those efforts have been progressing nicely, as evidenced by some news and images released yesterday by Behar’s fuseproject firm.

The newest prototype for the children’s laptop, version XO-3, is shaping up as something special: An all-plastic, semi-flexible tablet screen with an onscreen virtual keyboard and no buttons or wasted space. The device is basically just a screen surrounded by a thin rubber gasket. The goal is to produce it efficiently enough that it can be sold for $75, less than half of what the XO sells for. To learn more details, check out this story on Forbes.com.

Interestingly, Behar and the OLPC team are opening the architecture of the device to allow any other PC maker to take over the project. In effect, Negroponte is chellenging the industry to take his and Behar’s design plans and run with them. "We don’t need to build it ourselves," Negroponte tells Forbes. "We just need to threaten to build it."
 

No related posts, but check around GlimmerSite for lots of other interesting articles.