Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Such a system sounds great to me! If it's similar to the widget formats supported by the Mac OS X's Dashboard, Konfabulator, and/or Opera that would be even better, since it would tie into an existing library of useful software. Basically, those use ZIP files with various custom layouts, content-types and HTML. I have constructed a widget package which worked in both Opera and Mac OS X's Dashboard, and it was not too difficult (only the Content-Type varied, which I handled using symbolic link on my Apache server.) -Ben On Sun, Jan 4, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Wade Brainerd wad...@gmail.com wrote: BTW, this activity is a perfect example of what I was talking about with my 'web-activity' and sugar.activity.activity.WebActivity class proposals. You want a way to install it to the home screen, give it an icon, and have it launch seamlessly just like any other activity. As it is, I spent some time last month and ported Yay! Bee See to PyGTK so it would behave as a normal activity, but if we had the system I described in Sugar already, I wouldn't have done so. My link is http://dev.laptop.org/~wadeb/Yay!BeeSee-2.xo Best, Wade On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler bsitt...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I've been playing around with this a bit, and I still can't figure out the xol files. When I download http://wiki.laptop.org/images/2/28/Yay-Bee-See-9.xol In Browse, it does get saved to the Journal, and when I start the xol file from the Journal it launches Browse with the main HTML file from the collection, and a subsequently launched vanilla Browse includes yay-bee-see in the images section of the Library. However, even after I keep both the .xol file and the Browse session, rebooting the machine causes yay-bee-see to disappear from the images section of the Library (and the kept Browse session to show a File Not Found message) until I open the .xol file again. Is this intended/expected behavior? Is there some way to keep user-installed Library Collections installed across reboots? Thanks, -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, that's a fine baseline. As you point out, I had a hard time with the license field; enter what you like but please do include a full LICENSE file in the bundle that provides specific licenses (and attribution where required), image by image. If you download an xol file onto your xo from a webserver that has mimetypes set properly (such as w.l.o) it should automatically install itself into your Library/ directory. I don't know about that page not rendering properly on an XO; what version of Browse are you running? SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler bsitt...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks! A few questions, though: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution, lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.) 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? 3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you wrote fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images. Some of the images are cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.) 4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty otherwise.) Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!) -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler bsitt...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM,
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
BTW, this activity is a perfect example of what I was talking about with my 'web-activity' and sugar.activity.activity.WebActivity class proposals. You want a way to install it to the home screen, give it an icon, and have it launch seamlessly just like any other activity. As it is, I spent some time last month and ported Yay! Bee See to PyGTK so it would behave as a normal activity, but if we had the system I described in Sugar already, I wouldn't have done so. My link is http://dev.laptop.org/~wadeb/Yay!BeeSee-2.xo Best, Wade On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 4:39 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler bsitt...@gmail.comwrote: Hi, I've been playing around with this a bit, and I still can't figure out the xol files. When I download http://wiki.laptop.org/images/2/28/Yay-Bee-See-9.xol In Browse, it does get saved to the Journal, and when I start the xol file from the Journal it launches Browse with the main HTML file from the collection, and a subsequently launched vanilla Browse includes yay-bee-see in the images section of the Library. However, even after I keep both the .xol file and the Browse session, rebooting the machine causes yay-bee-see to disappear from the images section of the Library (and the kept Browse session to show a File Not Found message) until I open the .xol file again. Is this intended/expected behavior? Is there some way to keep user-installed Library Collections installed across reboots? Thanks, -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Yes, that's a fine baseline. As you point out, I had a hard time with the license field; enter what you like but please do include a full LICENSE file in the bundle that provides specific licenses (and attribution where required), image by image. If you download an xol file onto your xo from a webserver that has mimetypes set properly (such as w.l.o) it should automatically install itself into your Library/ directory. I don't know about that page not rendering properly on an XO; what version of Browse are you running? SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler bsitt...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks! A few questions, though: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution, lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.) 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? 3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you wrote fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images. Some of the images are cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.) 4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty otherwise.) Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!) -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote: Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler bsitt...@gmail.com wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.ziphttp://xent.com/%7Ebsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.htmlhttp://xent.com/%7Ebsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin g...@garycmartin.com wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Hi, I've been playing around with this a bit, and I still can't figure out the xol files. When I download http://wiki.laptop.org/images/2/28/Yay-Bee-See-9.xol In Browse, it does get saved to the Journal, and when I start the xol file from the Journal it launches Browse with the main HTML file from the collection, and a subsequently launched vanilla Browse includes yay-bee-see in the images section of the Library. However, even after I keep both the .xol file and the Browse session, rebooting the machine causes yay-bee-see to disappear from the images section of the Library (and the kept Browse session to show a File Not Found message) until I open the .xol file again. Is this intended/expected behavior? Is there some way to keep user-installed Library Collections installed across reboots? Thanks, -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, that's a fine baseline. As you point out, I had a hard time with the license field; enter what you like but please do include a full LICENSE file in the bundle that provides specific licenses (and attribution where required), image by image. If you download an xol file onto your xo from a webserver that has mimetypes set properly (such as w.l.o) it should automatically install itself into your Library/ directory. I don't know about that page not rendering properly on an XO; what version of Browse are you running? SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks! A few questions, though: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution, lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.) 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? 3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you wrote fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images. Some of the images are cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.) 4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty otherwise.) Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!) -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Ben, This is brilliant! Definitely brightened my day. I just converted it to an xol bundle which you can try downloading... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-Bee-See-2.xol You should create a page about it (and tell this story!) on our wiki... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Yay-bee-see (page not created yet :) --SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
In a same spirit, a friend of mine created jLearn: http://domosays.net/jlearn/. JLearn (JQuery learn) is a simple program that allows you to learn anything (if a quizz has been written of course!). From japanese alphabet to maths, passing by world capitals, anything can be learnt. JLearn interface is pretty simple: one box showing you the question, and one box to enter the answer. If you don't know the answer, just press the [space key] and it will be shown. Quizzes are submitted by the community, you can find some here or even write your own! He won a contest with OLPC France. Sebastien On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, This is brilliant! Definitely brightened my day. I just converted it to an xol bundle which you can try downloading... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-Bee-See-2.xol You should create a page about it (and tell this story!) on our wiki... http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Yay-bee-see (page not created yet :) --SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:21 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.htmlhttp://xent.com/%7Ebsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.ziphttp://xent.com/%7Ebsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? Correct URL: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/yay-bee-see.html Sameer On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
thanks, i forgot to create the index.html symlink on that web server :) http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/ should work now. On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Sameer Verma [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? Correct URL: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/yay-bee-see.html Sameer On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,) Skype (not bundled, but she uses it to talk to and see far-away family,) and listening to music (theclassicalstation.org). She also likes pressing buttons, rotating the ears and screen, and opening and closing the laptop. However, she seems somewhat frustrated by not being able to do things on it for herself (or as she puts it, do it self!,) so I thought I might write a small program where her keypresses give some feedback, and help reinforce her interest in the digits and letters of the alphabet (she loves being read to and recognizes many letters and digits, but does not seem to understand reading yet.) -Ben ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Thanks! A few questions, though: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution, lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.) 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? 3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you wrote fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images. Some of the images are cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.) 4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty otherwise.) Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!) -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.html an archive of the application (ZIP, ~15 MiB) including all images: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see.zip blog post about it: http://bsittler.livejournal.com/15244.html background: My daughter (who turns two this week) has been enjoying her OLPC from last year's G1G1 program much more than I expected she would (originally I intended to wait until she was older and literate to introduce her to the OLPC, but she seemed to treat it as a favorite toy starting around the age of 18 months.) She likes the Record activity (she calls it Waving hand and uses it like a mirror-image mirror,)
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
On 25 Nov 2008, at 04:55, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? Hi Ben, on an XO, Browse will recognise .xol bundles and will download and hand them to Journal which installs and adds them (if the bundle is correctly formed) to the default Browse home page (linked in the right tool bar, auto unzipped into the library area). At least last time I tested :-) --Gary ___ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Yes, that's a fine baseline. As you point out, I had a hard time with the license field; enter what you like but please do include a full LICENSE file in the bundle that provides specific licenses (and attribution where required), image by image. If you download an xol file onto your xo from a webserver that has mimetypes set properly (such as w.l.o) it should automatically install itself into your Library/ directory. I don't know about that page not rendering properly on an XO; what version of Browse are you running? SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks! A few questions, though: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution, lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.) 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? 3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you wrote fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images. Some of the images are cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.) 4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty otherwise.) Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!) -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour resolution abilities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display --Gary overview: I wrote some software using DHTML (JavaScript, HTML and CSS.) It's to help learn letters and numbers, and is intended to be used with adult supervision and involvement. It is fairly easy to customize it to use different images and support different alphabets simply by editing the contents of the style element in the HTML file. The software is very, very, very simple — it just echoes typed letters and numbers in a large, colorful font and shows a somewhat-relevant background image for each one. The images are various freely-usable ones I found on Wikipedia or in the Wikimedia Commons. View source code for full copyright information for the associated images. online version of the Yay!, Bee, See application:
Re: Yay!, Bee, See (ABC) software
Hi, I just uploaded (after several botched attempts) a new version which adds a LICENSE file with attribution and licensing information for each image. Does this look sufficient? http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-Bee-See-5.xol I'm not sure what I was doing wrong before, but it seems to work with the new version. As for the Wiki problem, the XO-1 can't access the following Wiki page (it gets a message about the page being empty:) http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Yay-bee-see However the following URL works fine: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Yay-bee-see This happened both in Browse and in Firefox on the XO-1. Lynx and ELinks on the OLPC had no problem displaying either page, and neither did Firefox on a Mac. Thanks, -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:08 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, that's a fine baseline. As you point out, I had a hard time with the license field; enter what you like but please do include a full LICENSE file in the bundle that provides specific licenses (and attribution where required), image by image. If you download an xol file onto your xo from a webserver that has mimetypes set properly (such as w.l.o) it should automatically install itself into your Library/ directory. I don't know about that page not rendering properly on an XO; what version of Browse are you running? SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks! A few questions, though: 1. Is there any reason I shouldn't start with your version 2 .xol as my baseline? I'd like to update it to use the new lower-resolution, lower-quality images (which still look just fine on the XO-1 even in greyscale high-resolution mode zoomed out to the 1px = 1px scale.) 2. Is there some way to install the .xol more user-friendly than just unzipping it into the ~/Library directory? 3. I notice that in the description on the wiki for the bundle you wrote fdl text, pd, cc-by and cc-sa images. Some of the images are cc-by-sa and fdl, too. Also, the HTML text is actually pd (or at least it was in the version I released — of course you are welcome to license copyrighted derivative versions however you like.) 4. And finally, is there some reason the OLPC wiki does not work right when viewed from an XO-1? I had to go through URL-hacking contortions to open that page in Browse (it just said the page was empty otherwise.) Thanks, (and please pardon my ignorance!) -Ben On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 8:43 PM, Samuel Klein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben -- When you're zipping up the directory, if you add a metadata file in this subpath: library/library.info and give the resulting zip file the extension .xol, you'll have an XO library bundle. Here is a sample info file, with all required fields : http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Image:Yay-bee-see-library.info Note that the 'name' field in the info file should match the name of the root directory. Our standard is to increment the version # in the metadata every time you make a change; that allows tools like Sugar's software updater know when there are newer versions of packages available to install. SJ On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:31 PM, Ben Wiley Sittler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: yeah, i added a 1200x900 version with more agressive JPEG compression which looks good both in color mode and in monochrome mode and is only 4 MiB or so: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc.zip hosted version: http://xent.com/~bsittler/yay-bee-see-olpc/index.html does that seem any faster? On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Gary C Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 24 Nov 2008, at 17:21, Ben Wiley Sittler wrote: Hi, I have just joined this list and read through the archives, but could not find anything similar. I also didn't find mention of anything similar on the OLPC Wiki. I recently wrote some software for use by my daughter on her OLPC. It runs inside the Browse activity, either locally using a file: URI or over the network. I don't know whether it will be of interest to anyone else, but I have released the software to the public domain and packaged it along with scaled-down (1600x1200 or less) copies of some public-domain images and some copyrighted-but-free-to-redistribute images under GFDL, and various Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, Attribution, and Share Alike licenses. Individual attribution for each image is included in the application source code. Seems a great addition for the younger age range :-) I did notice that even on a high specced laptop (1.5Ghz, 2Gb ram, broadband connection) the background image was very slow to display (until it had been cached locally). One suggestion, 1600x1200 seems a bit large (even as a max size). For the XO, 800x600 (max!) would seem to be a fair max image size to save nand space and keep image quality. The XO screen is capable of 1200x900 in black/white, and 800x600 seems a reasonable number for it's colour