I'm Oriol Pascual, and amongst other things, love tech and new media. At the end of last year, I ordered an OLPC and while waiting for it to arrive, decided to aggregate already existing content regarding the XO.
I created the OLPC Fan Show; a 24/7 tv channel about the OLPC program. The video player is from Mogulus and I use OLPC News RSS to feed the ticker.
Most information available on the Internet regarding the XO is text-based, and this is a good way to get to know all the details for anyone with an interest on the subject. However, I felt that video may be a complementary and friendly way to consume OLPC related content for those that do not have the time and/or patience to read long wiki pages and blogs.
In that sense, OLPC.tv does a great job by aggregating all video and audio related to the program. Moreover, platforms for video distribution like Mogulus allow anyone to deliver a tv-like experience where a series of videos are continuously streaming on a user-friendly player.
There's over an hour of quality content playing continuously on a loop at the OLPC Fan Show. I selected some of the official OLPC Foundation videos, a review from David Pogue, or a visit to a XO user in Africa. I tried to avoid home made and un-boxing videos. The idea is that if you don't know what OLPC is all about, and you want to get a flavour of it at minimum effort...then you should check the OLPC Fan Show.
The aim of the site is to spread the word and efforts of the OLPC program on a user-friendly way. The means to achieve that include the delivery of easy-to-digest content, recreating a familiar tv experience. Additionally, OLPC Fan Show provides the latest news from the OLPC News blog, and a chat to interact with other viewers.
I'd like to invite OLPC News readers to suggest videos to add. And if it happens that you hold a Mogulus account and want to produce some content, or even better, a live show; let me know in the comments below.
Yes, I know I'm starting to repeat myself, but have you found any reports on what use is actually given to OLPCs after the first month? I agree with you that unboxing and first day stuff is getting old and has no use whatsoever, when the long term impact is what really matters (and about which I am finding scant info).
Sorry, yamarant. Anyway, thank you for the effort!
Hey Yama, look at
http://cardal-ceibal.blogspot.com/
http://cardal24-sexto.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
Sure,the last update was in November, but right now Uruguay schools are having their summer vacation and I guess kids have access to the blogs only through their school servers, which is a very suitable safety feature.
Yama
Has anyone been able to view the channel on their XO?
I have tried on opera and browse but no luck. I have gnash on browse. No flash.
> Has anyone been able to view the channel on their XO?
> I have tried on opera and browse but no luck. I have gnash on browse. No flash.
That should be the problem.
How is it, that people, promoting OLPC, seem to prefer doing it with proprietary, closed-source technology? Feels a little like putting a "My other laptop is a Mac"-sticker on your XO.
Nothing personal, Oriol. I was wondering about this for quite some time.
Oriol appears to be using Mogulus on his site as the video stream provider.
It plays on my Eee but the frame rate seems a bit jerky and jumps around but that may just be my network access running a bit slow.
Mogulus uses Flash Player9 as the stream renderer. Its likely that some special features of Flash Player9 are used by Mogulus and not usable in Gnash.
Are there any other streaming technologies that would work well on an XO?
> Are there any other streaming technologies that would work well on an XO?
MMS has a free implementation and works quite well. I couldn't test it on the XO, because I couldn't find an MMS stream right now.
Because most XO's internet connections are probably too slow for streaming, I think the One True Way for XO videos would probably be, to make them downloadable. Second place for MMS. (All IMHO)
Thank you all for the comments.
I'm aware of the current impossibility to run flash-based applications on the XO, or the consideration that it may have as proprietary technology. Undoubtedly, both are issues to consider.
I may be a heavier-than-average tech user, but certainly lack the technical knowledge to work with more open an maleable platforms. Moreover, the development of flash based apps is on the increase, offering what it used to be powerful & heavy software packages as light and accesible to a potentially large user group. It would be great when such tools are also accesible within open source platforms.
I could imagine that an adapted version of Mogulus Studio accesible from an XO -considering a reliable internet connection- would be a powerful development; kids producing their own shows & discussing amongst them!
Moreover, I believe that OLPC is about learning & education, which applies not only to the kids (main focus) but also to anyone interested on the program. So, does anyone know what's the potential to use flash based tools on a XO?
Heng mentions that Mogulus player works on his Asus Eee -Linux- although with jerky image rate. Does anyone have other experiences with flash & open source platforms?
Robert, could you extend on the potential use of MMS to download videos; what format would be required? Any resource out there to recommend?
Yes, my other laptop is a...
Oriol,
"I'm aware of the current impossibility to run flash-based applications on the XO"
See ( http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Adobe_Flash )
Oriol,
it seems you have me mixed up with Robert. So I'll try to answer his questions.
About MMS: I only know it from the client side, MPlayer can handle it. I think the library is called libmms. For the server side, I guess Wikipedia and Google will be the usual friends to ask.
If this is of general interest, we might start a thread in the forum, and I might actually do some research, how to handle this on the server side.
AFAIK, MMS doesn't care, what kind of content it streams.
I am aware, that Adobe Flash runs on the XO, it just seems to conflict with OLPC's goal of having all the source code available. And, from what I hear, the performance for video is less than OK.
Gnash may be a solution, for some of those interactive web tools.
Hi Oriol,
I have it running on our OLPC B4s (build 653/Q2D07). I have installed Watch and Listen and Flash. The former, I installed by unzipping the Watch and Listen .xo file in the /usr/share/activities folder after various results direct installing using the browser. I installed Flash.rpm downloaded from the Adobe site by copying to a temp folder on the laptop and running rpm -Uhv flash.rpm
It works fine! On our slow connection it stumbles along a bit though. I am watching OLPC Nigeria on the XO in a school in rural Solomon Islands as I type.
I have some video clips that you might use, from Solomon Islands. Please do let me know how to upload them to you or the site. They are about 150MB total.
Great idea, well done!
Best
David
Hi Oriol,
MHO:
I like the idea of a OLPC video channel, but I don't like being forced to watch something like a TV. I mean, I like OLPC news because I can see and read the news that interests me, I'd like to do the same with the videos, some videos people have seen before are not interested for them.
VLC runs very well on the XO. If we are looking for open-source video streaming, I think VLC might be an idea.
What a great idea, Oriol! Thanks for doing it! I'm jealous I didn't think of it first.
That said, when I tried to view your channel on my Mac, the video seemed to be jumping around--like from one part of the clip to another. Is that normal?
Also, I have a few videos I cut together documenting my XO adventures on Revver. You can check out my page here: http://revver.com/u/thepete/ Just look for the episodes called "Waiting for XO". I think you can download the episodes from there--or maybe you don't have to? I'm not that familiar with Mogulus, so I'm not sure what you need. I'll be posting more videos soon, too--lots of clips of me trying to do things on my XO. I have so many clips at this point that I'm not sure when I'll be able to cut them all together.
ThePete said
'That said, when I tried to view your channel on my Mac, the video seemed to be jumping around--like from one part of the clip to another. Is that normal?'
Yeah I get that on video as well. I thought it was just a problem with my playback.