Hasta La Ideas

After all the hubbub the last couple of years, we hadn’t really heard much about the One Laptop Per Child project for a while (other than the many bus ads around town here in Chicago this winter). But now a key member of the OLPC team is heading back into the news with one of the heads of the project, designer Mary Lou Jepson, announcing that she has been working to develop a new type of computer screen, hopefully jumping that last major production expense hurdle, resulting in even less building cost. Jepson has come up with a kind of Kindle-like solution, using a model that seems almost e-paper-like (but definitely isn’t, according to a disclaimer on Jepson’s Pixel Qi site) to keep the cost down and the power consumption low, while still being able to display everything a typical monitor would. Sounds like a really great development and even though it’s a for-profit endeavor at the moment, maybe it might also benefit the OLPC down the line. Jepson is currently touring the display at a few tech events here and there, with likely more to come as she drums up support, so if you’re lucky enough to catch her, do so and get a sneak peek at the future.