Everybody, Thanks for your suggestions! I am located in San Francisco, and would be glad to volunteer as coordinator. I hope to travel to Ghana in August 2000 to provide further mentoring for the computer lab, so anything built I can take with me as personal checked luggage. That way everything goes with me thru the airport, and my host can help me deal with any baggage issues. I don't believe that cameras/pictures are allowed in the Accra airport, the military is very strict about enforcing Ghana's airport security laws. I can form a separate email list for this project, so that discussions don't conflict too much with the wearables list. Or, we can keep communicating via this list. Let me know what you think. There are actually two issues which could be tackled: a) small computers based on the embedded-computer/wearable technologies. There are two advantages: 1) easy transportation to Ghana, and 2) low power requirements. Ghana constantly has brownouts and blackouts, with massive power surges. Every time the power goes out every device has to be unplugged, else it will burn when the power surges on. I saw a power regulator get fried black, as well as a television. If these computers used low enough voltage, perhaps they could be supplied with solar energy....maybe? Or a solar-charged car battery? Also, power is often out for 4-8 hours at a time; it really interrupts the flow of learning in the lab. b) A fat pipe to the Internet. The ISPs in Ghana are crap. They way oversell their service (and only the elite of Ghana can afford it), and it is extremnely slow and unreliable. The school is currently sharing its one phone line with the modem on the Linux server, which means slow 'net access for a couple of hours a day. I'd really like to find a way of bypassing the ISPs and the telcos. DSL and cable is not an option in Ghana. DirecPc/Hughes do not cover central Africa. Nevertheless, I would think that there _must_ be an alternative to land lines. Maybe we could begin by working on the specs for the computers to be built. I saw an earlier post indicating that using a Linux interface might be an alternative to Win95. I think that Linux would be fine, as long as we can make it easy for the children to use (Staroffice instead of MS Office, computer games, etc). Lastly, whatever we build/supply has to be sustainable by the folks in Ghana. In the past, several well-meaning people have made fine contributions to schools in Ghana, but neglected to ensure that the Ghanans had the training/equipment to deal with problems, so the contributions weren't of lasting value. Please let me know how you want to proceed. Again, many thanks! Sincerely, Brian Rankin -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org
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