Thursday, December 20, 2007

Annoying Backgrounds

I used to read The J-walk Blog fairly regularly, but eventually his religion bashing got old and I wandered away to other sites (hey, it is his site and he is welcome to do as he pleases just as I am free to read it or not). Anyway, I stumbled across a post of his the other day that reminded me of a conversation some coworkers and I had a few months back. We were discussing ways to make a web page that was required reading as annoying as possible. Call it a mean streak, but at least we didn't follow through (or at least I have not). Little did I know how truly annoying a page could be. Take a look at some of these backgrounds, but don't blame me if you end up with a headache.

Give One Get One - OLPC

The One Laptop Per Child Initiative is working to provide access to technology widely available to many children already to those in countries developing around the world. The OLPC XO laptop is designed to provide a adaptable power supply, wifi compatible computer at under $100 per machine. That goal is only able to be reached at this point by large quantity orders at this time, but various other programs are in use to finance the distribution of these laptops.
One of these is the Give One Get One option. This allows individuals to purchase an XO to be donated to a child in another country and have one delivered to themselves as well. This is not a desktop replacement, but it is not necessarily a novelty item either. An added bonus is that Tmobile is offering one year of hotspot access to anyone who participates. So basically for $400 you donate a laptop to a child in a developing nation, you get one for yourself and you get around $240 worth of hotspot access. Not a bad deal all in all. Oh, and you can claim $200 as a charitable contribution on your taxes. How is that for a good deal?