Sugar on a Stick Brings OLPC Apps (and New Life) to Old Computers

OLPC spinoff Sugar Labs announced today that they are releasing "Sugar on a Stick", a version of the wonderful Sugar learning applications from the One Laptop Per Child that runs from a USB stick (based on Fedora Linux LiveUSB technology).

This will allow children to have access to their software environment from most computers at home, at school, or (maybe) in libraries simply by booting from the USB stick. Since the stick bypasses the machines' own hard disk, it can be used with computers normally running MS Windows, Linux or the Macintosh OS. It can even be used with computers without hard disks.

Not only is this a great software package for kids, but it points to a low-maintenance-cost public computing model that could open up new possibilities for libraries.

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An Interface built around social networking

Sugar is the new interface for the OLPC laptops. Rather than simply using Gnome or some established Linux front end, the folks at the OLPC decided to desgn their own interface incorporating tools to assit if the educational and social-computing goals of the project.

For example, Mesh View is a way of displaying the active laptops in the mesh network-- the peer to peer wireless network the units generate.

Friends View allows users to add and remove friends and invite them to participate in activities with a few clicks.

Other collaborative software will include the widespread use of Wikis.

If only the software we adults use permitted that kind of easy collaboration!