The One Laptop Per Child promotion (G1G1) has been extended to December 31, 2007.  Act now!!

Technorati Tags: One Laptop Per Child,OLPC,charity,xo,AMD,Negroponte,50×15

Act now!  You have until November 26th to donate an XO laptop and get one for yourself.  Some nice perks…  one year free T-Mobile Hotspot access and a $200 tax deduction.  All for $399 (actually $423.95 with shipping).

The mission of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege. Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution.

[One Laptop Per Child]

Technorati Tags: One Laptop Per Child,OLPC,charity,xo,AMD,Negroponte,50×15

I had the pleasure of attending a corporate event with National Geographic in New York City. The theme of the event (which was sponsored by Lenovo and AMD) was “Experience Parks & Conservation“. It was a fun time with co-workers, customers, partners, and even an old friend from my hometown. I also had an opportunity to meet world renowned photographer (and Editor-in-Chief), Chris Johns.

I love National Geographic Magazine — great photography and intriguing articles. How could I pass up being on the cover of their latest issue?

I had a great time this past weekend in upstate New York (in and around Ithaca). Went camping, cycling, hiking, and attended the NASCAR race at Watkins Glen.

Here are some pics from our 36 mile ride through the hills (over 2,600 feet in total elevation) and some light hiking through Robert H. Treman State Park. The hills on this ride really kicked my butt… the grade for one hill at Cornell University was 23.8%… steep! Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region is simply beautiful. I’ll definitely be back. Thanks for the great tour Darren!

Ithaca Cycling & Hiking

More cycling and exercise details here (be sure to export and view any of my rides in Google Earth… wild stuff!):

Dio’s Exercise Log
Dio’s MotionBased Digest

Here are my pictures from ‘AMD at The Glen’. Ironically, I took a bunch of pictures of Kevin Harvick’s car BEFORE the race (he won). Who knew?!

AMD at The Glen

Fun with my Nikon D100…

I finally went to the movies and saw Ice Age 2: The Meltdown with my wife and son. Fun movie and very well done — we all enjoyed it. Ray Romano, John Lequizamo, and Denis Leary continued their antics from the first movie. Also some new characters and voices in this one, e.g. Queen Latifah. Worth a peek if you liked the first one.

BTW, I haven’t been to a movie theater in years and could not believe how much they’re charging for everything. Between admission and concessions it was almost $50 for two adults and one child. Doh!

UPDATE: I neglected to mention that Ice Age 2: The Meltdown was created with the help of AMD Opteron!

Click on the pic for the big version:

Recently I’ve been touting the great experience I’ve had with Skype. A free 1 hour video conference with my relatives in Florida was a recent example of the usefulness of this app. Certainly a well-rounded app for VoIP, IM, and video.

However, the recently announced partnership between Intel and Skype has left me with mixed feelings. In a nutshell, Skype is intentionally crippling its software by only allowing certain functionality when using Intel processors… If the software detects an Intel CPU, you can conference call with up to 10 people. If you’re using non-Intel, e.g. AMD, it only allows up to 5 people!

Not that I plan to conference call with that many people, but this seems a bit ridiculous. Is this the best they could do with a partnership? Is this the only way Intel (and Skype) can compete? Why no AMD support (Athlon 64 X2 chips are more than capable for this functionality)? Could you imagine if other ISV’s started implementing this type of strategy with their applications and partners? Sounds like this is something that should be added to AMD’s lawsuit against Intel.

I guess if crippling software was part of the competition in the Dual-Core Duel, Intel could have won a round. What a way to “Leap Ahead”.

Either way, I’m re-evaluating my support of Skype. It may be back to Yahoo Messenger, or even the Gizmo Project… it’s an even playing field over there.

Please see Sharikou’s “Journal of Pervasive 64bit Computing” for some interesting insight on this and other IT issues.