[IAEP] Xconomy: Internet Archive Opens 1.6 Million E-Books to Kids with OLPC Laptops

[Jim Simmons]

Sean,

I have had a few email exchanges with the Rural Design Collective.  My
understanding of what they're doing is that they have a static website
on the stick which can be navigated using the Browse Activity.  The
books will be in the DJVU format the last I heard (only a week or two
ago).

Sayamindu has suggested that his "Get Books" Activity (OPDS version of
"Get Internet Archive Books") might be used as an interface to the
library on a stick they have developed.  They seem interested; it
would certainly give them a better named Journal entry for the
downloaded book than Browse gives them.

Lots of good things will happen for young readers when the XO can run
something later than .82.  EPUB support, DJVU support, Text to Speech
with highlighting for Read Etexts, Read will be able to remember the
page you left off reading on, Aleksey's Library Activity, etc.

James Simmons


On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm intrigued by the Rural Design Collective whom I hadn't heard of.
>
> The blog link seems to be bad so:
>
> http://ruraldesigncollective.org
> http://ruraldesigncollective.org/lab/ui/
>
> They seem to be coding an Activity which lives on a USB stick with
> eBooks, but I don't think it is in the Activity Library
> (activities.sugarlabs.org)
>
> Sean